Heat

The basil has grown to full bloom supplying us with a weekly portion of pesto, apparently it likes the heat too as long as I water it aplenty.

I love practicing in the afternoon on these hot summer days. Temperatures still rising into 98-100+. A brief respite as the later afternoon thunderstorms come through. Then the temp goes back up again until darkness comes. My body seems to be yielding and opening in new ways lately, a letting go of sorts in the hips…As my counselor/bodyworker said I am working through new layers of stuff (shit!). Practice has actually been pleasant lately, hot sweaty and quite concentrated…not thinking as much about the mods they become part of the flow of things. The renewed ability to just be with what arises with the practice and surrendering pushing, aggression, wanting to be deeper, or elsewhere….Recently registered for the YJ Ashtanga Intensive in Estes Park. Going to be rooming with some new friends from the Annie Pace workshop last month. That should be a blast…can’t beat morning mysore in the mountains with Richard Freeman, David Swenson, Tim Miller, Maty Ezraty, etc. All of them in the same room should be pretty wild.

I’ve also been shopping for an engagement ring….lots of money going out and not much coming in these days, but its time for me and my partner to make it official. I’m strategizing on how to make the most romantic and surprising proposal (I hope she doesn’t start reading my blog now…she never has before).

I love Tapas

But I also love my central Air. I know that A/C is awful for the environment and probably for my allergies, not to mention the way it redirects all the tapas I’ve created in my practice, and causes me to lose the healing pranic energy (also raises the electric bill.) I only use the A/C in desperate circumstances, like the last few days where the temperatures have fluctuated between 95-100. I turned it off for a brief interval of about 3 hours when I practiced today, and then switched it back on.

Bollocks! Tweaked again

Today was a ‘good’ practice. Hot, sweaty, somewhat flexible. I’ve lost some flexibility just because I can’t do as many deep hip openers due to the injury. I felt very strong today, lifting up was somewhat easy, and jump through’s were bordering on floaty. Did SNs, Standing, and a couple of sitting poses then went to finishing. Thought I would make it through the whole practice without having any pain at all….then in pushing up into Urdva Dhanurasana, the second one, I felt some strange movements on the inside of the left knee accompanied not so much by pain, but just that strange feeling of things moving that shouldn’t be. I noticed how I mentally freak out whenever this happens and start to get flooded with a lot of negativity about the practice and feelings of fear in my body. I went back down to my back and just took some deep breaths, after the fear passed I tried again. I didn’t bring the foot on the left towards my hip joint as much, leaving it looser. the closing of the joint and the pressure on it as I lift up seems to cause the tweakage. Once up in it I brought the foot into a good position and was able to safely lift through the legs, making sure to really concentrate on the quad engaging. Very carefully I came down and no more tweakage. Was able to repeat this for a third time. Seems like nothing major happened as i didn’t have any more pain than usual (even when I’m not practicing) once I came out of Savasana and the rest of the day. Phew…I thought i was suffering another setback.

Something else i did today, which really seemed to help was to hold all standing postures for 10 breaths. If I’m not actually going to be doing many asanas I might as well work them a little more. My shoulderstands really suck now, its more like a half shoulderstand. I thought they sucked before, but they have taken on a new level of suckage. O well, with more practice I’m sure they’ll come back. My back body seemed overly tense and stiff today….I’ve been playing some more guitar lately, maybe that is the culprit.

S’Mores are the Effing Best

On a recent camping trip I discovered that my favorite food wasn’t dal, whole grains, south Indian cuisine, or even sushi.. what really wets my appetite….its S’MORES! (see pic above)

Woohoo! It was nice that our friends brought the kind of marshmellows without animal products (gelatin) in them so I could fully savor without even a trace of guilt the hard (graham cracker) and soft ‘mellow witht dripping hershey’s squares melting away between. After eating them I felt lighter and I swear the energy in my Nadi’s started to flow more cleanly and smoothly….I do believe I experienced a few moments of samadhi as I performed munchasana, consuming 5 or 6 s’mores each night. Alas I have gone without them since we returned, and gone with my so-called ‘healthier’ diet. I wonder if s’mores would be considered sattvic?

P.S. I dedicate the title of this post to Laksmi, not only did she remind me to post so my stats wouldn’t drop, but she has taken me under her wing and given me stat-building tips that resulted in the use of the word ‘Effing’ in this post.

Pain in the Arse

or more accurately, a pain in the knee(s). Actually the knees are feeling quite good as I’ve been avoiding yoga and sitting on the floor…though i miss my sitting meditation practice, yoga I’m not really missing so much right now. Think I’ll have to meditate in a chair for awhile. I can’t be arsed to get up and try any yoga today. A combo of fear of re-tweaking mixed with actually enjoying the forced rest…..yoga has fallen off the list of daily obligations. Kind of nice, though I miss the cozy embryonic feeling of mari B. Cranky ass mood continues, though I’ve gotten a lot of support from loved ones and friends over the past couple of days, definitely helps to rally the good people.

Everything that I’ve heard about including cuss or swear words in your posts actually works from a pure stats perspective. I received a comment from laksmi…and everything she said was right, ‘cranky’ and ‘ass’ are a killer combo for good stats. Almost had my best day ever yesterday, missed it only by 3 hits.. darn! need to get more extreme, though my sense of good decorum and my lack of profanity in my everyday life is limiting. I need to face these limits and break through them. It seems that either frank and explicit self-disclosure (particularly about relationships/sexual escapades) , or copious vulgarity and swear words are keys to spreading my persona all over the blogosphere. This is a leading edge for me and I thank all of you for your support in this yogic endeavor going forward.

Today’s experiment will the word ‘arse’ and ‘pain’ together garner me any improvement in stats? we shall see.

Cranky ass

Woke up in a bad bad mood for the second day in a row. Gosh I miss the endorphin rush of a hard core sweaty practice, but alas the knees make themselves known and I must relent in the name of ahimsa. I’m curious if having the word ‘ass’ in my title will boost my stats, as DonutsZenMom pointed out. Well, the last couple of days have been a total pain in the ass. I’ve been working on a project that is totally monotonous and the deadline is today…no way I’ll get it done unless I drink a pot of coffee and turn off the phone, I’d also have to cancel an afternoon coffee date with a dear friend, and I refuse to do so!!! So it will have to wait, I call this ‘having boundaries.’ It seems to get easier when you have little or no love for your job and couldn’t give a sh*t if you got sacked. On top of all of this I saw the bodyworker yesterday and she gave me some shocking news about here assessment of my body issues and how they are related to emotional/childhood stuff! Blew me out of the water, and still not sure if I believe in what she said. I was asked to ’sit with it.’ So I’m still digesting……I have to say in my gut I do believe its correct….of course I’ll have to change my life narrative to accommodate the new perspective….being the creature of habit I am that is difficult. And let’s also say to accept what she said is a major assault on my ego…which I’m less able to let go of then I’d like to think.

Rest helps

or yoga hurts. My alternate title for this post. I’ve taken a few days off, firstly because I was camping up in the mountains with my friends. Secondly, because since I’ve been back I’ve been struggling with getting my practice routine back in place. For the first time in 3 days I did my usual sitting practice and asana through Standing, then finishing and done. My knees both felt great before any practice. The left one was still quite stiff, but no pain or weakness. After practice, although I was very gentle and mindful, and did only standing/finishing, the knees both feel slightly stressed and the left one is a bit tender in the usual spots. So is yoga helping or hindering the healing progress? It seems that at this point it is hindering it, though the usual conundrum….my fear of losing all strength and flexibility in the practice versus my desire to heal completely. At this point it seems any yoga at all contributes to pain and re-tweaking, at least on the left side. I can’t imagine doing less yoga, though I guess I could lose everything, but the Surya Namaskars. The so-called knee strengthening (strengthening the muscles around the knee) poses such as Virabhadrasnana A and B even seem to contribute to the pain and re-tweaking.

the other knee

Now the other knee is acting up. My ‘good’ knee. Not nearly as bad as the other, but still its worrying me. Just some sensation around the medial side of the knee cap. Maybe I should just quit practicing all together. Seems this yoga stuff is bad for my body. Even with the extra loving mindfulness I’ve been practicing with….what gives?