Getting used to my new body

It is time to start playing music and songwriting again. I feel the longing and a strange sense of loneliness. It is a desire to get back to my creative self, a part I have only given sparing attention to for the last 3 years. It seems difficult to balance my meditation, yoga practice, my new career, committed relationship and also maintain any depth in a creative songwriting process. It needs to happen. Though I can channel some creativity into my job it is not satisfying enough, not expressive enough. Music has always been part of my own therapy. So the trick is finding a place with routine and regularity where I can both practice and write. I feel like I’ve just barely found this equilibrium in my yoga and sitting practice. I know from experiene just setting aside 15 minutes to a half hour will start the process going, and it will grow on its own. Now back to the yoga talk…

Today’s practice another weird body day. It seems like any floatiness and malleability in my body has suddenly disappeared. I have noticed that this often happens when I have hit a new plateau in practice, in a way it is starting over, but the foundation, where I hit bottom, is more fit and more flexible than where I started 5 mths ago. The room was cold this morning, I barely broke a sweat. Have started alternating legs in lotus for kukkutasana. Its funny the first day i started practicing this again (since last year) I got my arms through no problem, since then its only been with great pain and struggle that I can get them through at all and its impossible to do the rolls with them in. I now do it modified grabbing around my lotus legs for the first part and rolling with arms out, then sliding them through for the push up into kukkutasana. Though my version is a bit wanky with not much lift to it. In time we’ll see. Practicing up to uptavishta konasana at this point.

I’ve given up listing my food. I have lost quite a bit of the grad school blubber I put on, most of my pants are quite loose. I feel healthier and stronger on the whole.

I’ll be a TA most likely in a Yoga class at my old school this summer, which I’m very excited about. My first foray into the role of yoga teacher. This is contingent upon the school approving the amount it costs to pay a TA for the class…God knows they pay the teachers hardly anything….so we’ll see what happens with that.

Equanimity

Have you ever practiced and felt you were in someone else’s body? That how it was this morning. I felt like I was in a knotted old tree that creaked and groaned, popped and clicked with every asana. I felt much the way I had when i started to practice again back in May after about a year’s hiatus. Lately, my body has been feeling closer to the way it felt a year ago, flexible fluid and fairly malleable. Perhaps it was the copious amounts of wine I drank on Saturday night or the junk food I consumed on Sunday with my hang over….perhaps the lack of Sunday practice my body has come to expect. Who knows? I felt relaxed and concentrated during practice, was just stiff as hell. I guess it is a testament to the practice that i was able to receive myself fully, stiff as I was, without self flagellation or critiscism, as they say in the buddhist world, with equanimity. I simply did the practice and respected my body…met myself where I am so to speak.

The room got very very warm today, it was nice, but I don’t want to get too used to it, the weather happened to warm up today. The heater now turns on at 4am so the room has some time to warm up before I get in there at 5am.

The wedding this weekend was very touching, and gave me some ideas about the future with J. We’re still debating as to whether we will have a ceremony or elope and have a big party for friends and family when we return. I’m still more behind the eloping idea, though I feel I might regret, in some ways, sharing the actual ceremony with our community, family, friends, etc. We both want to get on to some more certain financial footing before we tie the knot. With J’s new job and my private practice growing it could be sooner than both of us think.

Keep on keeping on

Nothing remarkable today. I’ve been practicing regularly about 5 times per week, there seems to always be one day where something comes up…I’ll have to look at that. Things are good, body opening up somewhat, though I felt very stiff today. Perhaps all the halloween candy last night, ha! Been struggling with Kurmasana, Supta Kurmasana. Navasanas have been getting alot better with all the focus on lifting and abdominal strenght. Still not able to jump back but I’m getting floatier. Up to 26 breaths in Uthi Pluthi. Practice Practice Practice….

Alchemy

Wandering dazed from the warm comfy bed at 5am. Walk outside in the near freezing temperature in a darkened world. A few lights on in the apartment complex, though most units are dark, sleeping bodies inside bundled against the cold.

Practicing at 6am, body stiff cold leaden. The space heater and humidifier helping somewhat. Somehow I end up doing the entire primary, and feeling absolutely transformed by the end of it, psychologically and physically. My body feels warm limber, alive and my mind has a similar feeling to it. I remember why I do this practice and smile to myself now as i write this. The middle part of primary Mari D thru Kukkutasana is far from perfected, but the latter postures, including these challenged ones seemed to open my body in ways that it is craving and needing. I remember how in the past these later postures seem to prepare my body for the more challenging ones such as Mari D, etc. In some ways I’ve already crossed the criminal line, by moving to navasana and bhujapidasana though I am not binding in Mari D. I’m not sure how I’ll proceed.

My most recent teacher (a Certified teacher) taught to go as far as feels right and do some postures modified if necessary. For me, this meant doing all of primary with just a few poses modified. This has worked for me in the past, I found that with consistent practice I slowly moved away from modifications and into the full expression of the few poses I cannot do.

Self-practice is a work in progress.

Struggle

It was difficult to get through today’s practice. Just felt plain tired…muscle tired, brain tired. I kept finding myself stopping and zoning out….looks like a concentration problem too. At any rate I completed up to Bhujapidasana. Good lifts today despite the muscle fatigue, getting a little floatier bit by bit. Binding consistently in Mari C, D is a joke, haha! A little soreness in the left knee been icing consistently. That’s all I have to report…other than I started drinking coffee on Sunday again. After about 22 days off. God I LOVE coffee. Back on the bean…. My goal with the fast was to give my adrenals and nervous system a break, and to make the coffee habit an occasional thing. Looks like its turning into a daily habit again…o well surrender

Cold blah’s

After feeling progressively worse over the past few days, I’ve finally succumbed to the cold and did not practice today. It is feeling good to be doing next to nothing, though I did force myself out to do some errands and whatnot. Also did the sitting practice today, which was immensely helpful with any guilt ridden chatter about not practicing today. Hopefully I’ll be fully healed for Sunday’s practice.

Back at Home

Back from the retreat. Wow what a different experience from my usual meditation retreat experience. Everything seems a little more visceral and direct, not so much of my internal filter and ego between me and experiencing the real world. My teacher said I am beginning to experience enlightened consciousness, but its no big deal….just continue practice in the days and weeks, months, years and decades to come. Shinzen is by far the best Vipassana teacher (for me) I have yet to encounter. I am excited about continuing a relationship with him and using his systematic methods. I have a lot of new approaches to work with and a new experience of myself and my world. Getting back into the frenetic world of traffic, huge suvs, gas fumes and rushing people has been quite an adjustment. The first day back was particularly painful. When I am on retreat I feel so at home in that practice environment. When I return I experience a litany of thoughts about how ‘I don’t belong to this world.’ A world so far from its true nature, but its precisely where I belong because any shred of wisdom or insight I gain can be directly transferred into my service here with other beings. I forget that sometimes and wish I could live isolated in a beautiful rural setting….but this is where service calls, right into the discomfort and the edge of what we think we can handle.

Practiced everyday, but Saturday on retreat, which was also the full moon day. Got in the habit of arising at 5am to practice before the first sitting. This has continued since I’ve been home with a little later of a startup time. Because of the cold I contracted I let myself sleep in on Monday and Tuesday, but was on the meditation cushion today by 5:30am and on the mat by 6:15. My practice is getting stronger, I can feel my concentration and breath have grown stronger. I am now practicing up to bhujapidasana. I’ve been binding consistently in Mari C the last three practices, and not just a fingertip bind either, a full on solid bind. Now I’m working Mari D and it seems light years away, but I’m sure I’ll get it in time.

Namaste