Lewis the Beagle introduces me to all the cool people...

I had no idea there was this whole dog community out there - like the yoga community, like the mom community. Lewis, Adam and I were out for a walk to Central Park yesterday, and Lewis got very excited to see a little Malti-poo walking down the street. Malti-poo's name turned out to be Poptart, and his mom turned out to be very cool AND an Ashtangi to boot AND a pretty accomplished travel writer.

Today, I bound Mari C on my good side with Sir watching over me, for the first time. I've bound before, as I have talked about ad nauseum. But never with Sir there to see it. Not that he seems impressed or even excited for me. You see, Sir and I talked today, in between Mari C sides. Turns out that Sir doesn't really even focus on the physical accomplishments of my practice - the fact that I jump through sometimes, the fact that my asanas and vinyasas are quite graceful (albeit usually not on the same days...I have my "vinyasa" days and my "asana" days....today was more of an asana day) or that I have good posture or have memorized the series, blah blah blah. The thing with me, it seems, is that I am excessively "go go go" and my breath is excessively shallow. It seems that I can bend...but can I do yoga?

It was EXCEEDINGLY difficult for me to hear this from Sir. Yeah, I know, some of my readers here, many of you in fact, have pointed out this very thing to me, without ever having even seen my practice or heard my breathing. I don't know how it is that everyone can observe this about me, even those who have never ACTUALLY observed me in person, and yet I am completely unaware. I am struggling to open myself up to the notion that my Type-A-ness is messing with my yoga practice, so that I can do something about it.

I asked Sir, what, SPECIFICALLY, can I do...you see I understand the concept, abstractly, but I don't know how to put changes into action on a concrete, real-life basis. Sir's suggestions: (1) Try to come to practice in a calm state (ha! right after I drop my kids off at school, finish walking Lewis, get my SUV from the garage, barrel down the FDR drive and hunt for a parking space on the street...as Sir says, we all have our challenges), (2) Breathe trhough the nose, exclusively, all the time, not just in the shala, but all the time and (c) Talk less (now THAT is perhaps the most challenging, although I have to say, since I have been practicing Ashtanga, I am way LESS talkative, which may be due to sheer exhaustion) so that I can keep my breath moving in and out through the nose. I wonder if talking less would also help to calm the chitta vritti's...less "seeds" for mental action. I assume that the corollary is to write less as well, although we didn't discuss my blogging.

Sometimes when it is pointed out to me that my "go go go" tendency interferes with my yoga practice, I get defensive. I feel picked-on. I often blame it on externals like, "Well, that person KNOWS that I used to be a lawyer" or "I TOLD that person that I am Type A". But in this case, I have to admit: Sir knows nothing of me as a person outside of the shala. NOTHING. So everything he observes is purely based on everything he observes. No hearsay (that I know of). No history. Just me, my breath and the way I carry myself.

Sometimes I feel like Sir doesn't like me very much, particularly when he is struggling to get my tense muscles to relax (like in Prasarita Pado C, which now is no longer a problem, and in Parvritta Parsvakonasana, which Sir really had to struggle mightily in order to get me to loosen up so that I could do as he asked). But I have heard others say that about him as well. I can't decide if that matters. I know that my physical practice is improving. I will have to see what I can do about my meditative practice. And I suppose that for now, as long as I am continuing to get to the shala and do my practice, it really doesn't matter if I feel "liked".

YC