I had all these grand ideas of what I would do because I was isolated by the snow storm -- revamping websites, reading books, taking online classes, writing some reviews, backing up my data, archiving my music collection, etc. etc. What I did not count on was the physical exhaustion from wrestling with the snow for hours. In the morning, I shoveled because I did not want to get overwhelmed by the snowfall. In the afternoon, I shoveled because I wanted to get newly purchased book (The Art of Happiness by the Dalai Lama.) out of the car. After dark, I shoveled because the snow had stopped — finally — and I needed to finish digging the car out from under the snow. There was at least 24 inches on the ground, though it could have been more because the bottom layers were getting more compacted as the snow kept falling
In between those episodes of physical exertion, I laid around on the sofa focusing on the dull ache in my back, the soreness in my hips, the dead weight of my arms. Who can engage in intellectual activities when corporal sensations are so amplified? I need to do a session of yoga nidra to heal.
In the end, we were digging out to go nowhere because the snow plow was unable to get into our neighborhood because a tree fell on the pavement. By the time the tree was removed, the plow could not get up the slope because it got stuck in the snow and ice. So we have not seen a snow plow in 24 hours, and have no idea of when the contractor will get back to clean up the street. For that matter, we have a serious problem of where we are going to put all the snow. Just doing the sidewalks has piled up the snow to more than six feet tall.
I was too tired to even pick up my camera and take some shots of the snow, like most other people enjoying the blizzard.
Every year, I set an intention for my yoga practice that I bring to the mat every time I take a class or do my home practice. Last year, it was "Listening with the whole body." In 2008, it was "discovery" and empowering my brother's health.
This year, my intention is a kind of mantra that I repeat silently to myself: "Mike, don't work so hard."
I've been practicing yoga for six years, often with explicit goals, like "changing my life," "managing my depression," "improving flexibillty," — and the list goes on. Any when I come up against my limits, whether physical, mental, spiritual, whatever, my instinct is to try harder, to redouble my efforts, to suck it up. But that approach does not necessarily get the results that I want. Yoga is different than Western disciplines and sports in that it requires that you be present in the moment, dwelling in the body as it is now, aware of the present. If I am constantly measuring my posture against some ideal or counting how long I can hold headstand, I am not fully grounded in the moment.
There will be times when I want to explore my edges, as during the Desirée Rumbaugh or Brian Kest workshops, or trying a pose that I had never attempted before. That's fine. But I also need to find the ease and grace that allows me to fully inhabit my body as it is here and now. At my recent workshops, I became aware of what could be called "black holes" in my body — areas that I could not touch or access so I could not move past them to attain certain poses because I could not exert any power or control over my "black holes." Pushing hard does not do anything.
What's required at this stage of my practice is to pause, pull back and focus on determining the topography of my "black holes." I have to let yoga itself show me the way, let yoga do the work. I don't have to "work harder," but sit back in patience, ready for a new compass to guide me forward.
I've had to spend the past few days undergoing a major overhaul in our living quarters. After nearly a decade living independently, our daughter Stephanie is moving back into the house so that she can swing it financially while finishing up her studies at the University of Maryland. To fit her belongings in the house and give her some independence, I have moved my study from the basement to one of the spare bedrooms. I am shrinking my work space by half, at least, but I get to put my desk by a window and have nature light for part of the day. Another plus is that I no longer have a TV in my study nor a couch where I can stretched to read commentary on Patanjali while watching the Redskins beat the Oakland Raiders. My cell phone now picks up a good enough single that I can carry on a conversation. I get a wooden floor, instead of linoleum, so I can roll out a mat whenever I feel like it
My family, my wife and me, really, have accumulated too many belongings for the type of house we own, a small townhouse. My wife has her oil paintings, art booms, her doll collections, her sewing and seamstress projects, stacks of cloth. My son never move his old school (community college, GWU undergraduate, UMd postgraduate) stuff out of the house, and is now dropping off his photography displays. Now Stephanie is going to deposit the physical manifestations of her independence and file up the basement.
Needless to say, the move has been brutal physically. I've moved three book cases and their contents, plus desk, keyboard unit, two filing cabinets and contents, and all my computer gear from the basement to the second floor. My back and legs ache from the exertion. Then, I had to put them all together again. I still have three-four more bookcases. I have taken down bedding, mattresses, bed frame, boxes of belongings,
It's also been a time to sort through stacks of books, magazine, correspondence and just plain junk, and decide whether to keep it or dump it. I have tons of stuff accumulated over 40 years (My parents donated my school books and independent reading when I left home). Do I need to keep a book on DOS 6.0 for sentimental value? Am I ever going to get around to reading my collection for Wired magazine that dates back to 2003? Will I ever send that external hard disk that I dropped during the clean up to a certified lab where they can dig the data out? Should I throw out the files for a story that I was going to write about 20 years ago? That's why I was in the basement, the weight and state of decomposition of these stories weigh heavy with their doom, with the squandered human anecdotes and embalmed statistics. I can move the worst offenders into the closet under the stairway that's under the stairs. No light there, not even a naked bulb. I have to bring a flash light to pull out my old tax returns.
There is a pang of nostalgia in this ascension because I've resided in the basement for 10 years. It was away from family traffic. It had a routine -- I was in charge of the washer and dryer, staging the loads so that they could move through the machines at the least expensive power rates in the evenings. I would take advantage because I could give my yoga kit special treatment by not putting them through the dryer, just hang them on a line or hanger. I could grab my dress shirts out of the dryer before they got wrinkled. But, I also had to clean out the kit litter. My wife can never claim that I did not help her with the household chores. I could let my disorder sprawl over the floor and boxes, and no one would get their fingers in them because, except my wife, to clean them up.
Of course, my wife's solution to this quagmire: sell the townhouse and get a big independent house with garden and storage shed, big closets, lots of windows opening on the east,south and west. Something worthy of our stature. I tell my wife that the market is not prepared for us.
Labels: family, life style, milestone
My brother's obituary as it appeared in the Dallas Morning News on October 25 (only viewable for 30 days after publication):
Richard Elliott Smith passed away Oct. 23, 2009 after fighting a 3-year battle with lung cancer. He was born Jan. 12, 1953 in Anderson, Indiana to parents Lynn and Lorraine Smith. He graduated from Anderson University and Dallas Baptist University. He held 2 Master's degrees.
Richard's special joy was being a special education teacher. He recently worked at Highland Park High School in the Special Ed department. He was featured in the May 1st edition of "The Bagpipe" in which he spoke of his cancer battle. His favorite shirt to wear to school was a T-shirt with the phrase from "Spamalot", "I'm not dead yet". The saying was from a spoof on the 14th century black plague. He also loved telling his doctors and nurses "I'm alive and well and kicking" when asked the question "how are you doing?"
Richard is survived by his wife of 4 years, Susan Peterson-Smith. Also survived by his parents, sister Judy Zack and brother-in-law Sam, brother Michael Smith and sister-in-law Terri, sister and brother-in-law Anne and Mike Hahn, sister and brother-in-law, Christa and Floyd Stanley, nephews Stephen, Jonathan and Benjamin Zack, Matthew Smith, nieces, Stephanie Smith, Gretchen and Delaney Hahn, Emily Stanley and nephew Samuel Stanley and mother-in-law Anne Peterson. Richard was loved by his furry children, Harry Potter, Narnia, Clarrie and Liaku.
Special thanks to Dr. Gupta, Dr. Samsula, Dr. Engleman and Dr. Cheek. Also to the wonderful staff at Texas Oncology Plano Baylor special thanks. A big thank you to Baylor Regional Plano Hospital and their staff for the care they gave to Richard throughout his illness.
Funeral services will be at The Church of the Incarnation on Oct. 30th, 2009 at 3:00 p.m., followed by inurnment at the Church of the Incarnation Memorial Garden, The Reverend Father Matthew Oliver, presiding and The Right Reverend Anthony Burton, assisting. Memorials to be given to the Church of the Incarnation Foundation, Granger Fund.
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| From Richard |
I know that Susan had to undertake the task of putting this together, which really sucks. In the middle of mourning, you're supposed to write a life story that sums up 55 years on earth. I wish she had asked me to do it, but I know only a small portion of his time in Dallas and certainly not enough about his last three years.
I was telling my daughter before I flew to Dallas that Richard really should have felt fulfilled at this stage of his life: he had a meaningful career, teaching special ed, after decades of seeking a profession that was rewarding; he had met the girl of his dreams, Susan, after decades of seeking a soul mate, and both of them had purchased a beautiful house in the suburbs of Dallas. It just a bitch that once he had all these things in hand, he had to share them with the cancer monster.
He was a seeker all his life, and it took him all the way down to Texas. He ended up having two Master's degrees and probably enough extra credits to qualify for another degree. He could have made a fortune at accounting if he had bothered to get certified as a CPA, and indeed his skill with numbers and spreadsheets served him well.
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| From Richard |
I spent six days with him in June. That was the most time that I've had with him since I left for Mexico and Peru in 1973, and he was going to be a sophomore at Anderson College. Even as kids, we were separated by four years, which meant that I was over high school when he started, and graduated from college when he was freshman. When you're young, you think that four years of age difference create huge barriers, but today I look back and think how trivial those differences seem.
Since then, we spent little time together. He made a short visit to Peru in 1976 (he broke his leg just before the Tri-S trip and wore a cast in the Peruvian rain forest, doing service work in Pucallpa). We spoke on the phone, wrote a few letters, had a few family reunions together, but never more than a few hours. When I came back to the States in 1990, he had left my folks' place to work in Texas. More short encounters until his marriage in October 2005 and then the illness.
I wish I had sought out more opportunities to be a big brother to him. Over the past 30-some months, we've spoken on the phone more than we ever did, but it always seemed that he could never hold a conversation for more than 10-15 minutes before getting fatigued, especially in the evening. Plus, at the end, the treatments had stolen 80 percent of his hearing so carrying on a phone conversation was a burden. He hated his hearing aid.
Post Script: Susan has put up a commemorative site with lots of photographs of Richard, some that I had never seen before.
As mentioned last week, I've been trying to get back into a rhythm of practicing and running so that I could step up my condition and deepen my yoga. But something seems to be working against this intention, starting with the four days in a row of cold rain and drizzle that removed any desire to fit a short run in the evening.
On Friday, I wanted to catch a late-afternoon yoga session at Thrive, but my wife picked me up from work (after her doctor's appointment) and we got slowed down by DC traffic and did not get home until late. But I did end up going to the gym to fit into 30 minutes on the stationary bike and another 30 minutes on the elliptical trainer. On Saturday, I was eager to get to my yoga 2/3 class because I expected it to really test my edge. When I walked out into the rain, I was confronted with a flat tire. I tried to fix it, but the lug nuts were on too tight for me to loosen up with the puny tire iron that comes with my car. I called for roadside assistance, which arrived 90 minutes after my call. So much for my Saturday yoga. I was dragging the rest of the day from the aftereffects of my gym workout and sleep deficit.
Today, I made to the morning hatha yoga class at Thrive, but the usual instructor, Marylou McNamara, had mistakenly thought that this weekend was the Brian Kest workshop (it's next weekend) and her class had been canceled. Susan Bowen had to improvise by combining her Fundamentals class with the hatha yoga class. Susan tried to keep it simple for the beginners (hip openers was the topic of the class) while still provide challenge for the more experienced students.
I've decided that I have to take the approach of accepting whatever comes my way: if there's a suitable yoga class available on workday evenings at Thrive, I should take it because I never know if something will come up later in the week to prevent me from attending my preferred classes. Getting on the mat is more important than calibrating the level of intensity or sophistication of the instructor. Even after my "easy" class, my muscles feel sore and my joints stiff. When I'm accessing deeper layers or combinations of muscles for long holds, I am still getting something out of the practice, even if I'm not breezing through a couple dozen vinyasas or Sun Salutations.
By the way, the Smith clan celebrated my mom's 90th birthday today so there really was a milestone this weekend.
Now that Yoga Month has come and gone, we can get on with our regular practice. Shiva Rea is coming back to the DC area in October 9-10 at Flow Yoga. This will be one of the largest mega-classes this year because Flow will probably hold the event in an outside site to pack as many yogis, shoulder to shoulder, into a limited space. Sign up early (if you still can) and go early.
I will be looking forward to the Brian Kest workshop at Thrive Yoga on October 23-25. A leading advocate of Ashtanga yoga on the West Coast, he has been a symbolic bennchmark for me. When I started out doing yoga five years ago, I used to watch the free yoga workouts on my cable service. For a while, it was one of Brian Kest's videos. But they were so demanding for me that I could never get beyond the opening sequence before pooping out. The cable service rotated the video to other yoga instructors so I never got a chance to catch up with Kest's pace. Of course, it took me a couple of years to just make it through a full vinyasa session.
Now I think I can handle it. That's pretty amazing considering that I turned 60 last week. And I look at the coming decade of my life as even more challenging and fulfilling than previous ones because I am a more whole and healthy as a person.
My son, Matthew, has been selected to show his photos in the Washington Project for the Arts's Options 09 exhibit, the 13th installment of the biennial show. He was one of the 250 artists that the WPA evaluated this year, ending up as one of the final 13 who will show. He's the only one who does not have formal art training (a Masters in Fine Arts) so it's his talent that's getting him in there. For the first time, he will be displaying his photos in the format that he originally envisioned them (larger prints, sparing no expense):
As a tradition, OPTIONS is a survey of the brightest and most talented emerging artists in the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia regions and offers visibility for artists who do not have gallery representation. WPA originally developed the biennial series in 1981 with legendary artist Gene Davis and Washington Review Managing Editor Mary Swift as curators of the first WPA OPTIONS showcase.
This year, WPA is fortunate to have Anne Collins Goodyear, Assistant Curator of Prints and Drawings at the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, curate the exhibition.
The exhibit opens today at the Conner Contemporary Art, 1358 Florida Ave, NE,2nd Floor, Washington,DC, and will last through October 31.
Needless to say, this is a big breakthrough for him, and we're very, very proud of him. See his website.
The exhibit got a review in the Washington Post's Weekend supplement: "Other surprises: the sheer amount of painting. Work by Johnson, Mullins, Kim Manfredi and Polly Townsend may give hope to those who have heard rumors of its demise, and the shortage of great photography. True, Ren, Matthew Smith and Matthew Wead all contribute interesting photographic works. But where are the others?"
My family has been in an extended debate about what the last enigmatic line means?
On April 18, this blog will complete five years online. That also means that about two months ago, I should have celebrated my fifth anniversary of practicing yoga. I let the milestone slip by with no major hoopla. Part of this attitude is that yoga has infiltrated itself through many acts and moments during the day and I do not necessarily think consciously about it. It's frequently a kind of mental nagging — "Walk more erect; you're slumping again. Tuck that tailbone; you're not supporting your spine correctly. Slow down; you're just falling forward into the future without being present in the moment."
I'd still like to fit in more classes, workshops and other learning experiences, but my practice does not have the urgency that it used to have. I find it hard to fit in time to read the latest issue of Yoga Journal, much less the stacks of books that sit next to my desk. It's hard to find time to sit down, parse my practice and write in this blog.
I think this new pace is due to an awareness that my body and mind will accept and meld with yoga in their own time. I welcome my Level 1 classes because they allow me to get into the poses without striving (or by sweating less). I like taking my classes with my wife because she keeps my feet firmly grounded.
Labels: milestone
Richard at his wedding, looking Texas-tanned and nervous. Probably the happiest day of his life.
Last night I got a call from my younger brother, Richard, in Texas. The news was not good. He has been fighting cancer for the past two and a half years, first in his lungs and then his brain. His doctor told him yesterday that his condition had turned terminal. While treatment of the small brain tumor was successful, the lung tumors keep coming back and now have spread to the point that treatment can only retard their development, not kill them. He has been given 3-6 months, but knowing him, he'll be able to stretch it out longer. He has been tremendously upbeat throughout the whole process.
Whenever someone is diagnosed with cancer, there is always the prospect that the illness could win out in the end. So it did not come as a complete surprise that Richard's condition had become terminal. No matter what, he'd have to remain vigilant for the rest of his life. Now, he has to concentrate on getting the most out of the remaining time that he has.
I will continue to dedicate my yoga practice to Richard and his struggle, and keep him in my prayers. He lives in Dallas, TX, so I will probably make a trip soon to visit with him. We've only had a few opportunities to spend time together over the past decades. I was living in Peru, and when I came back to the States, he was in Texas. So it was only on the holidays and family events, like his marriage in 2006, that we got together. We'll have to find a way of compensating for that lost time.
Inspired Yoga is getting into the swing of Obama Inauguration with Inaugurating the Sacred featuring master teacher Saul David Raye, stretching from today, January 15 to Monday, January 19. There are too many sessions to mention here specifically (yoga, Thai massage, meditation, chanting). In addition, there's an Om Inaugural Ball on Sunday evening, January 18. Many out-of-town guests will be showing up at Inspired Yoga. More power to them. Recently, the studio and its owner director, Kyra Anastasia Sudofsky, were featured on CNN about the relief that yoga provides stressed out Washingtonians.
Just to update, the Shiva Rea & Seane Corne events have been all booked up for more than a week (if not longer).
Each year I decide on a new intention that will focus my yoga practice. This year, I've decided to use "Listen with my whole body," taking up on my previous blog entry. My body tells me lots of stuff about myself and the world around me, and I don't pay enough attention to it, instead getting carried away by the stream of consciousness that flows through my head like a storm pipe. To start, I need to pay more attention to what my knees are telling me so that I don't get into any more trouble. The intention is also a reminder to slow down both breath and movement.
I've been able to fit in classes at Thrive Yoga every day this week, except for New Year's Day, when the studio was closed. Teresa has been going to most classes with me. I think that I've gotten back into a regular practice and could handle any level of class. It's still going to be months before I recovery my full strength, flexibility and ease.
My daughter, Stephanie, has been awarded her 200-hour yoga teacher credential by the Flow Yoga Center teacher training program. It's taken her a while, in part because she is so conscientious about fulfilling all the obligations and mastering the material. She took it very seriously. For about six months, she has been volunteering yoga classes at one of the House of Ruth's shelters for battered women. Now she's going to be looking for more teaching opportunities.
Great going, Estef!!!
Labels: life style, milestone, Stephanie, teachers, yoga
I did not go into the workshop with Desiree Rumbaugh with any special expectations, aside from that of knowing that an excellent instructor would be guiding the process and a group of yogis would energize the environment. I saw the occasion as a mid-term evaluation about how my practice has been maturing since my last workshop. I wanted to see how the work invested on the mat has paid off. So I pick up where I left off yesterday.
Thrive Yoga's Dave Bowen gets a taste of Desiree's adjustment of wheel pose.
Fourth Finding: The day after the workshop was over, I felt really fatigued, my whole body burnt out. I pampered myself and did not try to do any yoga or exercise except for my walks to and from the Metro, a couple of miles. I felt sore as if I'd really gone through an extreme physical ordeal. I was especially sore and stiff in my hips and shoulders, thighs and arms. Curiously, my knees hurts when I walked, as if I might be a risk of tweaking a tendon. Throughout the weekend, I had been probing my edges and it was natural that my body should feel the strain. At my age (two months short of 59), the energy reserves are shallower, the recovery capacity is slower and the need for healing is more pronounced. But it took me a while to realize that this sensation is really a kind of muscle memory of all the poses that I did and the new edges established. I stop, focus in on my aches and pains, and sense what muscles involved, and then I feel myself drawn into alignment and something lights up inside me.
Desiree stands back in awe, watching Christine Peterson
(you can tell she's a Forest Yoga buff because she uses gloves)
settle into Diving Osprey pose.
Fifth Finding: yoga is an experimental, experiential science. It is a sophisticated universe of knowledge about the body, mind, spirit, energy and their complex interrelation, which has been accumulated, filtered, refined, and aged over millenia. But the application of this knowledge system on the body and mind is left to the individual practitioner. Desiree said that you can tell when a yogi is advanced because they take their time getting into poses. It almost looks as if they were practicing in slow motion. That's because they are observing and parsing all the information coming back from the far reaches of their limbs with scientific rigor: how do the muscles feel, have they reached their edge, is there a risk in pushing beyond the edge, do I feel at ease, can I dwell in stillness in the pose, how can I get out of this knot, what emotions and energies are released by this pose, what am I revealing about my mind or spirit in this vulnerable pose and so on. A beginner will zip through the vinyasa, and in and out of poses, as if he/she is sprinting to a finish line. The intermediate yogis are the ones who get themselves injured, Desiree pointed out, because they are pushing recklessly beyond what is physically safe and worth the risk for the practice. She admitted that she was guilty of this excess in her early years, and her current skills at practicing advanced poses and assisting others to learn yoga were acquired through painful mistakes and the need to heal and avert them in the future. She got really amped up when people started asking questions or giving insights that showed that they were paying attention to the details. The workshop drew a pretty experienced crowd of yogis, but we went over the details of the poses as if we were all beginners.
Thrive Yoga's Lisa Johnson turns inward in Eight-Angle pose (Astavakrasana).
Sixth Finding: Anusara yoga practitioners have their opening invocation "Om namah shivaya gurave..." that starts each session, and then there's the mantra that they repeat for every pose: "Shins press towards the mid-line, thighs spiral in and back, the sit bones widen, the tail bone tucks into the space made by the blossoming of the hips..." The Universal Principles of Alignment are the guidelines that John Friend laid down to unify all the yoga practices and poses across multiple lineages and traditions. Desiree repeated the instructions over and over again, and then came back to them, again and again. But I never found this repetitious or boring. Even though the instructions are similar, each pose opens a different gateway into the body. And since your body is changing in the process, each time you approach a pose, the experience is going to be unique. You can be practicing mountain pose or a complicated arm balance, and the same attitude and approach apply.
The reward of sweat
Seventh Finding: at any time during the workshop, I'd look up and see yogis and yoginis, teachers and students doing their stuff, and all of them were bumping into what seemed to be their own bodies'limits. Desiree would come up and apply pressure with a hand or knee on a specific area and show that it was merely a false floor, that there was space beyond that faux boundary. Desiree was asked about the ideas of some yoga teachers, like Paul Grilley, who make a point of highlighting the anatomical limits that exist in all people, and may be quite different, the conclusion being that you should not ask students to go beyond their physical limits. Desiree said, however, that Anusara celebrates freedom of yoga (as opposed to anatomical limits) and that each individual should assume ownership of his or her own body and take it as far as they can.
Labels: blessing, core, hips, milestone, shoulders, workshop
On Monday evening, I went to a vinyasa 2 class at Thrive Yoga to make up for missing my normal Sunday class. I was met with a teacher substitution: Mary Lou McNamara was replacing Lisa Johnson because of vacation travel. Both followed the Anusara style so there was an underlying continuity between the two. I was breezing through the class without really being tested to my edge when we moved into the seated practice and I was hit by an unexpected breakthrough: Mary Lou asked us to get into Lord of the Fishes pose (Ardha Matsyendrasana). Almost without thinking, I slipped into the pose, which requires me to fold one leg under as a kind of base and the other leg is placed over it, with the foot on the ground -- it requires that both sit bones be on the ground. In the recent past, this kind of contortion was beyond my reach: one hip would be torqued up in the air and I would be completely out of balance. I'd have to extend the bottom leg out before me or put a lot of blankets under one hip. Well, this time, both my sit bones were firmly planted on the mat and my spin could sit squarely over my hips, allowing a smooth even twist when completing the pose. We quickly moved on to other poses, and I could not fully appreciate what had happened.
Let me say that I have not made Lord of the Fishes pose as one of my goals, like full or half Lotus pose. I only practiced it whenever it rarely came up in class, unlike say half pigeon pose that almost always gets thrown into the mix. I recognized Lord of the Fishes as another manifestation of my tight hips, and some day I would move beyond this corporal legacy of sitting in chairs and slumping over keyboards.
Ironically, since coming back from vacation, I have been grousing about how hard it has been to regain my stamina in jogging. My legs seemed dead weight and fatigued. Well, part of this muscular fatigue is probably because the connective tissues between my legs and hips are having to move in new and different ways, while tolerating a lot more range of motion in my hips. As I've said here before, I often feel as if I am teaching myself to run all over again.
My son, Matt, had another set of photographs on public display at Artomatic, the yearly, month-long, DC-area multimedia free-for-all that fills up an empty office building with the creative work of hundreds artists of varying degrees of accomplishment and invention. The show will be taken down tomorrow so we went to see it this evening since our travels had prevented us from taking it in sooner. Matt had to put in his time as a volunteer at the event (a requirement of all participating exhibitors) but he got away from a few moments so that I could snap this picture of him.
Matt drew a lot of attention, apparently, and I had feedback from a friend who chanced upon the exhibit and thought it was really good. Matt also got a favorable review by Mark Power (his photography teacher so he may not have been completely impartial, but probably sensitive): "His work may not have been the "best" photography at Artomatic but I liked it the best." According to the exhibit rules, Matt had to design, build and set up his exhibit himself so he invested a lot of time getting the show ready, even learning how to frame pictures. As I mentioned here previously, he was in an photo exhibit in March.
I thought his photos were quite inventive and the triptych plus one format created a kind of graphic language that tapped into quotidian objects for resonance and irony. Matt had never shown any "artistic" tendencies in childhood; he had plenty of potential as a writer. His training as a geographer (cartography, remote imaging, and other graphics) probably opened him to more visual expression. He's mostly self-taught, except for a few classes that he's taken recently.
Back in January, I did a Personal Year-End Review. I was bowled away. It's taken me since then to assimilate what this inventory means. I'd like to share part of this review as it pertains changes in my physical conditioning and work methods over the past 12-18 months.
- I started jogging regularly by joining a running group at work and having a weekend run, giving me aerobic activity at about 12-15 miles a week. No injuries have kept me from running. I look forward to my run.
- I kept up with my daily meditation practice, focusing more on mini-sessions rather than 20-minute blocks
- I kept up with my yoga practice 3-5 times a week, and made breakthroughs in several poses, especially improving balance and flexibility
- I took at least 2 weeks of real vacation (travel away from DC) - Ontario and Quebec, Canada; Orlando; Eastern Shore MD
- I upgraded my Omega-3 pills to higher quality and increased intake.
- I found my own personal doctor and had a full physical examination
- I brought down my total cholesterol by 23 points while raising my good cholesterol (HDL) by 5 points, compared to 2 years ago
- I got a specialist to check out my sinuses, finding a long-term infection that had been a drag on my health
- I lost about 15 pounds and 6 inches off my waist while increasing muscle mass and strength.
- I am getting to the gym as often as feasible, doing a few exercises every day at home, fitting other simple things in daily routine (walking up 8 flights of stairs).
I've been doing some of these things for more than the past year and I've mentioned them on this blog, but the intensity has picked up. This progress also meant reducing time spent on other activities, like doing outside consulting, watching TV, surfing the Web, reading the news (magazines and newspapers) and some books.
Measurable success (having concrete milestones) has a reinforcing effect on my motivation. I am also aware of other benefits that I had never expected. I hope you don't think I'm just bragging on myself, but I was not really aware of what I had done until I sat down and listed them in the review -- and this is just the physical side of the change!
The most significant conclusion is that I have made physical well being as a top priority, rather than an afterthought to fit between a 9-5 job, moonlighting and TV. That decision translates into time and energy spent on taking care of myself. I made a conscious decision to take command of my body and be proactive about my health. I decided that maintaining the discipline of physical exercise was the single, most important thing I could do to ensure my mental, physicial and spiritual health and a long-term investment in my future. If I can't do that, other efforts at self-improvement have less of a chance of succeeding.
My son Matt 
had one of his photographs selected for a collective exhibit, Photography Exposed, by dcist. There were over 600 entries by 200 photographers and 60-some photos were finally chosen. The exhibit opened last night.
Matt's been working with photography for a couple of years and he's taken a couple of courses. It's become one of his creative outlets, and he's invested a lot of time, thought and money into it. For his birthday two weeks ago, we (including Stephanie) gave him a Nikon lens. This is the first time that he submitted his work for public viewing. You can see more of work at Flickr.
The opening took place at the Civilian Art Projects, just off the DC Mall. The place was packed, and there was a line that went down two flights of stairs and around the corner in the rain because the gallery could only hold so many people. I suspect that not all of them came to see Matt's work. When you have several scores of aficianados showing their works, they tend to invite a lot of friends and family. Stephanie and her steady squeeze Ron showed up as did several of Matt's house mates.
The exhibit will be shown until March 15, 2:00 pm to 6:00 pm, Wednesday to Saturday. If anyone is interested, you can buy the photo for $135. The selected photo is below. All rights reserved.
Andrea Franchini was my first yoga teacher at Tranquilspace and then she moved to Flow Yoga Center and I soon joined her. I introduced my daughter to Andrea and we took classes with her together. Stephanie and Andy struck some common vibes and kept in contack over time. I was really fortunately to find a teacher like Andy. She has a nurturing, therapeutic approach to yoga, typically of the Anusara tradition, so she helped put to rest a lot of my early nerves about doing yoga in a classroom setting. She's always been a kind of marker in my practice
Two years ago, Andy decided she wanted a change of scene and moved to San Francisco, but once or twice a year she comes back to Washington to give a workshop or a master class. Stephanie, Teresa and I joined her this time around at Flow Yoga. Of course, I was going in part because of the ego trip — I wanted to hear her tell my how far my practice has come in two years. For instance, I realized that I had to use a bolster under my hips and back to get into reclining hero's supta virasana pose when Andy was teaching me, and now I can get by with just a folded blanket. But that was only a sidebar in the rush of mat-focused learning that took place in those five hours. Workshops allow me to push through a lot of artificial barriers that I erect in my mind.
This Saturday-Sunday workshop was back in January and I'm just now getting around to writing about it so I am playing catch up. My yoga practice and its internal processes has pretty much overwhelmed my capacity to digest it through writing, either in a journal or a blog. Blasting off a quick entry about a news item on yoga, a website or my trip to St. Thomas is just a gesture to pacify my angst.
This past weekend, I surprised myself by kicking into my first unassisted handstand (Adho Mukha Vrksasana) against the wall. It is probably harder, I believe, to get into handstand (with or without a support) than to actually balance in the pose. Susan Bowen had been leading a class to reach into unexplored poses that we assumed were too difficult for us so it was appropriate that I reached this milestone in the class. We had spent a large segment of the class practicing keeping the core firm and kicking up to the pose, leading with one leg and pushing off with the other. The first couple of rounds I held back; I refrained from attempting the full pose with someone to spot me up for the final push into the pose. But as we were going into the last round of repetitions, I got down into the starter pose and something clicked. I just did the lead leg lift-up and it just kept going. I was in the handstand. My form was lousy: my back over-arched, my shoulders too tight, my legs too loose, but I just held the pose absorbing the sensation of being suspended upside-down on my hands.
I think a key trick was something that Jill Abelson had taught us a week before a Flow Yoga: when using the lead-leg kick-up, make sure that the toes on the lead leg comes all the way down to the ground before kicking it up because it is the full swing that give you momentum to get all the way up to the wall. The tendency after doing a couple of attempts is to bring the kick-up leg midway down, kind of waving it in the air, instead of lowering it completely. I also found that the less I thought about it, the easier it was to get up.
Labels: core, inversions, milestone
