Who amongst us hasn't faked it?

...............a yoga practice, that is.............

Come on...seriously...who here has never "faked" their yoga practice? You know what I'm talking about...you're "doing the postures", but you might as well be doing calisthenics. Up, down, up down, the breath is there, but it really has nothing whatsoever to do with the postures. You've got prana, of course, but it's doing nothing more than keeping you alive and supporting your gymnastics. Even if you can somehow manage to tie some of your inhales to upward lifting movements and exhales to forward bending and twisting, it's all quite mechanical. In essence, you're faking your yoga. You might even be doing a really good job of making it look like yoga. But your body knows the difference.

And so might your teacher.

I have seen it in some of my students...make that many of my students...signs of "faking it" are seen in their jumping ahead to what they think I'm going to call out next, in their gasping their inhales through their mouths and exhaling through o-shaped lips (it's a LOT more common than you think, no matter how much the idea of "in and out through the nose" is ingrained in all of us), in chatturangas that slide into urdvha mukha svanasanas just a hair too quickly given the pace of the rest of the vinyasa....

But I never realized that my teacher could see it in me. I mentioned in a recent post that Sir and I had had a little talk about my practice. Whereas I have been feeling proud of how well-executed my asanas and my vinyasas are becoming ever since I landed on "Go back to Mari C, do not pass GO, do not collect $200", it turns out that Sir has been onto me for a while now...Yoga Chickie's been fakin' it. He could hear it in my breath, he could see it in my speed.

And here I was thinking that it's a GOOD thing to get the practice done quickly. I guess I started thinking that because in the summer, when I was doing quite a bit of procrastinating (due to my dread of all of the Marichi's, which, happily, I no longer experience), I decided to intentionally move myself through my practice more quickly. And, as Yoga Chickie has a tendency to do, I went a bit overboard.

Non-procrastination soon evolved into speed-yoga. Speed-yoga soon evolved into arriving at Shala X with just EXACTLY enough time to get my entire practice "done"...and not a second more...which ultimately DEvolved into frustrating battles with the FDR Drive and alternate side of the street parking. Speed-yoga became non-yoga...Yoga Chickie began faking it.

And we all know that once you begin faking it, it's hard to stop. You create these expectations (within yourself), and you feel the need to keep following through. But if you're very lucky, someone calls you on it. And if you're even luckier, the person who calls you on it has a way of doing so that doesn't threaten you and allows you to integrate this notion - this notion that you haven't been fooling anyone, including yourself -in your own time and in your own way.

In the days following my tet-a-tet with Sir, I didn't come to practice. It wasn't that I was avoiding Sir or Shala X, it's just that things never seemed to work out so that I could get down there. But I know in my heart of hearts that I probably COULD have gotten down there if I really really wanted to. Something was stopping me. I needed some space. Some distance. I needed to practice on my own, focus on my breath, remember what it was like to actually practice yoga, rather than just looking like I was practicing yoga.

And when I finally came back, the change was apparent, first and foremost to me. But Sir has noticed as well, which, of course, makes me feel happy. Today, in fact, he was giving me an assist in Uttitha Hasta Padangusthasana, and he commented that my practice is completely different now. Well, sure, because it's actually yoga now. I was actually BREATHING in UHP, rather than simply counting theoretical breaths and anxiously waiting for it to be over.

It's like a second honeymoon for me and Ashtanga. Now, if I can get to the Shala earlier (still tweaking the public transport thing...so embarassing to be a New Yorker for 15 years and still not know the ins and outs of the MTA), I can actually get my entire practice in before all of the teachers leave...

(and yes, I bound in Mari C today, and it felt GOOD).

YC