Da Balm

Here's the quandry. I want to practice ONLY Primary. But if I practice ONLY Primary, then I think it is quite likely that my backbends will suffer. I have made lots of progress in opening my chest and learning to squeeze the vertical back muscles around my spine to create a semblance of a backbend. But practicing Second up to Supta Vajrasana in addition to all of Primary takes an intimidatingly long time. An a-motivationally long time. I think about it and cringe the way I used to cringe about running 18 miles on a Sunday. On days when I can't make it to the shala because of home or school obligations, I spend half the day thinking about my practice and the other half slogging through it, stopping every few poses to water a plant or move a stone in the garden.

But I can't give up any portion of Primary. Primary is the balm, or da bomb; either one is accurate. It's the panacaea. It seems to me that Primary put me back together. Not that it did much for my backbending. But everything else. Ever since I've been practicing all of Primary (about a year now), as opposed to half of it, and the two thirds of it, I have felt positively vibrational. I radiate energy. I feel like a beacon of health. I can't give that up. My balm. My panacaea.

If you don't count backbending.

And there's the rub. Today, I had an amazing backbending practice, despite practicing only Primary. But I really don't think that would be the case if I blew off Second Series on a regular basis.

I just HATE Kapotasana. It's not like how I felt about Supta Kurmasana, which I looked forward to, with hope, each and every day. I think. Every day, I dread Kapotasana. Cos gets one hand at a time to my toes, and I feel like screaming, even though it doesn't hurt. The hand that she isn't putting on my foot, is flailing around, probably smacking her. I can't be sure because I'm practically unconcious while it's happening. Shock and fear have a way of doing that.

And it's kind of funny because I always thought I wanted to practice Kapotasana. But I have to say, I could definitely do without it. And I really don't care if I ever get to practice anything past Kapotasana either.

Bottom line, I think I am really not "over" Primary. I feel like I'm just getting started. Just getting my Primary groove on. I'm finally keeping the heels of my hands down when I jump forward. I'm finally learning to jump straight into Buja Pidasana.

Oh, woe is me. What a stupid problem to have, don't you think? Too many poses? Too much asana to choose from? Wah wah wah.

I love Ashtanga. I love how it makes me a little bit braver. A little bit stronger. A little bit more fearful even as it makes me a little it more fearless.

But it's kind of a drag talking about it. I have to say. I am losing steam on the Ashtanga blogging. As if that weren't obvious. What is there to say anymore? "My chest cracked open just a little bit today." Blah blah blah. There is nothing to really say. Well, that's not completely true. I AM learning to find a backbend in Mari C and D. But it's too boring to tell.

So there you have it. My perfunctory posting.

Coming soon: my review of a music CD sent to me by Cyndi Lee's publicist, of all people. She must not read my blog. But honestly, I really like the music on the CD. After listening to it a few times, I decided that I actually CAN write something positive about it, as long as I ignore the stick figure drawing of an Om Yoga asana sequence that comes with it, which is pretty easy to do considering that there is nothing at all about the CD that would really lend itself to an asana practice. But it does happen to be really good, mellow ambient music. And Michael Hewett features prominently, and I am a huge fan of his. So. Stay tuned.

Oh, and Lost ROCKS.

YC

A chip off the old block

YC

Life 1, Laptop Zero.

I have like zero desire to blog lately, mainly because I am so busy interacting with people in real life, people like my kids, my yoga friends, my mom friends, my family. Some of that interaction is in person, some on the phone, and a bit is via email. I'm also very very engaged in bringing my garden to life. And then there is, of course, the yoga.

The gardening has become a bit of an obsession. The obsession took hold when I realized that this property is so incredibly full of life, life that I did not know existed when I moved in last summer after the growing season had already ended. When I moved in, all seven Peony plants were leggy shadows of what they should have been, victims of root rot, probably caused by a failure to fertilize and water sufficiently (causing stress; plants, like humans become susceptible to illness when stressed). I cut what was left back, grossed out as I was by the rot. I was certain that the plants were gone forever. Lo and behold, they are bursting with life this spring.

Same with the climbing mini roses near my porch. And the PeeGee Hydrangea tree that looked fine last year but is absolutely exploding with life this year, thanks to a bit of sulfur I added to the soil. Hydrangeas do love getting their fix of acid.

I've come to terms with my love for Hydrangeas, particularly the mophead variety, and I've decided to stop being so proud and just plant some bushes, spray with non-toxic deer-deter and hope for the best.

I've planted bulbs, I've planted some foundation plants in my Woodland Garden area - Holly, Cypress (bring on the deer-deter for those babies), Rhodes and Azaleas (shade lovers all, and deer-bait, so again, bring on that deer-deter spray, which, by the way, consists of nothing more than citrus juice, hot pepper and garlic; apparently, spicy food does not agree with our white-fluffy-tailed friends).

And I've resisted the urge to dabble in annuals, except for about four Dahlias and a couple of Wave Petunias. I just can't bear to see them die off at the end of the summer, never to return again. No matter how delectable they look, I just can't do it.

But my biggest labor of love is my Woodland Garden. It's funny to hear myself call it a garden when right now it's nothing more than dirt, rocks and some worn-out trees (and some new baby trees, as noted above). With the help of my kids, I've mapped out about two-thirds of the space already, with winding, twisting paths bordered by stones of all shapes and sizes. I'm going to pause there for a while and begin to replace all small stones with larger, heavier stones that will withstand the gardener's leaf-blowing come fall. I'm also spending time raking out the remaining sticks and dusty dried leaves that have been blowing around and also filling in the potholes created by my excavating large stones. I'm using last year's "leaf mould" - Debpc, it really really really works!!! I take layers of the discarded leaves that have been decomposing since last summer and fill in the holes with them. They turn to rich, dark soil, and it is quite amazing to behold.

Maybe this will be less snooze-inducing when I can add some photos. I've been so busy out there that I can't seem to get myself with a camera in hand.

Fitting in the yoga has been difficult with this flurry of hard labor. My hands are aching, swollen and raw. I've bought new gardening gloves, and hopefully that will help. But the excavating for good stones has been grueling. Enjoyable and rewarding but grueling. Me and my shovel. It's good for the shoulders muscles. But it's hard on the body, I think. And I am covered in bruises. COVERED. It is scary looking, actually. I was happy to hear from Dr. A today, my internist, that my blood tests are all normal because I was getting worried that something was wrong with my blood with all the bruising. But it's just the hard labor and the fact that I've always bruised easily.

But the yoga is still happening. After the Monday full moon, I shala-ed on Tues (rough, rushed practice) and Wednesday (lovely, calm, unhurried). Today, Friday, Primary only, and yesterday, Thursday, my whole practice, plus some backbend research on my stepladder. Both days, at home because my kids are off from school. Both days, at night, because I was doing work outside during the daylight hours. Nice and flexy and strong, both days.

But worrisome...worrisome that I love gardening more than yoga at this point.

Worrisome that I love life more than my computer.

Why worry? Why not just accept the ebbs and flows of my life? Why not embrace the desire to connect with live things, rather than ether?

I've never been good with change, even positive change. It makes me melancholy. But I get over it.

So, a couple of random observations and notations, while I'm here with my cold, etherized laptop:

I just poured myself a glass of Silver Palm 2005 Cabernet Sauvignon. I have to say that it is the most delectable cabernet for under $20 I have ever tasted. It is just lip smackingly yummy.

I ran into Ashtangi the other day - we've had our bad moments for sure, although I think we have both been trying lately to be nice to one another in blogland. And I have to say, I have never see her look more beautiful. Just an observation. Perhaps a bit of a nonsequitur. But anyway.

I got to practice right next to my friend LGR on Wednesday. What a treat! Here's hoping he can make it on many a Wednesday. It can only be good for his practice, which is really amazing actually, especially considering how hard he works outside of his yoga practice (I am an example of his hard work, as is at least one other yogi I know!).

My nails have never been more disgusting. MUST STOP BITING. MUST. STOP. BITING.

Urdhva Dhanurasana is not even worth attempting without first making sure the chest is open. When the chest is closed off, you press your hands down and push up, but your chest is stopping it all from happening. Talk about resistance. I have consistently noticed that when I properly open up my chest before UD, I have no shoulder or wrist discomfort. But here's the rub...how to open the chest? I know that mine is slowly cracking open. Maybe more like creaking open. But it's happening. I can see it in the mirror. I can feel it in my practice.

How do I feel it? Well, for one thing, my lower back does not crunch when my chest is open. The lower back crunches when there is resistance in the chest. Without the resistance, the lower back can move freely. Just like with the shoulders and wrists. The chest controls the backbend. If it is not cooperating, there can be no joy in UD.

But how to open it up? Direct awareness to it. Relax the back while puffing the chest out. Inhale deeply. Lie on a block, arms out the sides. Stretch the arms up over the head, one at a time, opening up the armpits. Take the pits out of the armpits - de-hollow them.

Tired.

But happy I blogged, incoherent as it might be.

YC

We interrupt this broadcast.

No yoga today.

Hey, it was a moon day.

Oh, wait...did I say that I was taking yesterday as a moon day and today practicing like it was Sunday? Whoops. Woke up, drove over to Home Depot and picked up a couple of dreaded Annuals (Marigolds, if you must know, and Dahlias) to put in containers on my front steps to replace the Rhodedendrons that I was planning on transplanting into my newly forming Woodland Garden area along the East side of my property (technically, the side of my property, although it faces the street; my house is situated on the property perpendicular to the road so that when you enter the driveway, you are facing the side of the house).

I've been feeling a bit desperate lately about this woodland area. Last year, I never thought twice about it. To me, it was just woods. But there's been a blight on pine trees in Northern Westchester, and a good number of mine in the wooded area are dying from the bottom up. Add to that the prior owners' general neglect of the property for, oh, I am guessing, the past three or four years, and what happens is you wake up in March and realize that your woods are filled with not trees but ghosts of trees.

It became clear that some of the ghosts would have to go. And some would be replaced with young spruce. But what I didn't count on was how focusing some energy on this area of my property would lead me to realize how much of it needed to be "cleaned up". Bags and bags of leaves and twigs and old mulch that hadn't decomposed. When the day came that my gardener came all tra-la-la with his chain saw (he loves that thing, man) to take down what started as two and ended up being more like eight tree ghosts, I realized that I not only had a lot of work to do with a rake, but I also had a lot of work to do to re-invent this now comparatively barren area as something else. Perhaps, something that it always should have been.

It didn't take more than a moment or two of walking around amid the dirt and the stumps to realize that this was not "the woods" at all, but rather, the site of a woodland garden, with looping and winding trails bordered with stones and surrounded by and surrounding woodland perennial gardens of Foxglove, Columbine, Bleeding Heart, Rhodedendrum (deer be damned), anchored by Boxwood and bordered by ground-crawling Caladium.

And so, I began raking it out, and picking up stones, and placing stones intuitively where I thought they should go, and over the course of a few days, I have mapped out about a third of the area and bulb-planted a border around the entire area. I doubt that there will be much in the way of flowers growing there this year. It takes time to condition soil. I spent all last summer conditioning my other garden beds - raking them up, addding compost, raking them up some more, growing random vegetables like pumpkins and cucumbers for the purpose of upping the organic content of the soil. I can't say that I am going to go to that extreme with the Woodland Garden, and besides, it's quite shady, and so growing vegetables from seed (a cheap and easy way of getting organic content into the soil) isn't really an option. But I can spend time cleaning out the pine needles, the dead leaves, the twigs, forming my twisting, winding paths with stones the kids and I "harvest" from under the detritus. Brian has even sketched out a system of paths that he would like me to put into effect.

Ultimately, I'd like to make the Woodland Garden a "delightful" kind of place, where there are pleasant surprises at every turn. For example, we already have a large stone in place at the end of one trail that is going to be a "meditation" stone. We would like to name the trails, things like "Garden Path" and "(Not) The Primrose Path" and "Rock Ledge Ridge" (that one is Brian's idea for a path that leads to a whole bunch of stones that are way too big to move). Maybe we'll have a "High Road" but not a Low Road. Maybe the path that leads through the existing Forsythias should be called "Yellow Brick Road" or something like that. And the path that leads around the lilies of the valley that I just planted should be called "Lillies Valley".

I'm going to take some photos of what I've done and put them up with a photo or two of what it looked like before we started. It's quite astounding what a little rockscaping can do. Even without the flowers-to-be, even with just the existing trees and shrubs, few as they are, and the possibilities contained in the bulbs I planted today, it really is coming along.

But patience is needed. Must have patience, NOW! (ahem) Because the rockscaping (also known as hardscaping) is going to take, likely, all summer long. And the plantings (other than the Caladium border and a few Rhodedendrum and the couple of Yews, Norway Spruce and Alberta Spruce that we put in this year, all of which are teeny tiny babies, with the exception of two of the Norways, which are more like pre-teens) are going to have to wait until the rockscaping is done. The rockscaping is the frame for the flowers. You don't want to walk on flowers. You want to walk AROUND flowers. So, the rockscaping has to be finalized design-wise and in-place before any planting can logically take place.

Husband not happy with this project, not surprisingly. He thought we had woods, and woods are so easy! You just HAVE them. You don't have to DO anything to them. This is a huge time suck for me, if you choose to look at it that way. And in fact, I did blow off my theoretical heretical moon day YOGA practice today in order to do THIS practice: sweep and rake and rockscape and dig holes for and place bulbs. I spent over five hours outdoors today on this. And it was a pleasure, every minute of it. And when my kids came home midway through, they were thrilled to help me. That's value, right there!

Tomorrow, I go to the city for practice. Any work I do on the Woodland Garden will have to be circumspect. An hour tops. Raking and placing stones and out of there. Oh, crap. I just remembered, I have to fertilize the Roses, Rhodedendruns and the Evergreens. I wanted to do THAT tomorrow. So, maybe I won't do any work on the Woodland Garden. Maybe I'll just feed my hungry plants.

How can anyone let their gardeners do this work for them? I cannot imagine it. If I don't do it myself, then what joy is there in looking at the end result (if there ever IS an end....)?

Tune in tomorrow, when we go back to our regularly scheduled yoga programming.

YC

Bike Sunday

From May through October, every Sunday, the Westchester County Highway Department closes off a six mile section of the lushly, wisteria-draped, scenic Bronx River Parkway so that bikers, bladers and runners can enjoy a half-marathon's worth of safe and happy trails. Today, I went with the kids. It was great fun and inspiring to see how my kids are capable of biking further than I ever did until I was in my mid-twenties (maybe if I had tried...?).

No yoga for me today. The moon looked full enough for me last night, and I would imagine that if it weren't obsured with clouds now, it would look pretty damn full tonight too. So, moon day!! Tomorrow, I practice.

Speaking of practice, please forgive me for stating the obvious, but gardening is very much a "practice" too. It's never finished. You can't neglect it. You get better as you continue on in your journey. But you never know everything. You never know enough. And you can get overwhelmed by realizing how much you don't know, just like you can be a total show-off and seem to know a LOT even when you don't. And there's always something to discover, and it's often a metaphor for something in your life. And it can be exhausting. But you have to keep going. For what? Who knows.

YC

12:55 Train to Scarsdale: trying to avoid strange, attention-seeking man sitting beside me

He got on at Fordham, and he sat down beside me on an otherwise rather empty train. He's tall and skinny and middle-aged, vaguely handsome if you can get past the whole chaotically crazy vibe that surrounds him like the dirtcloud surrounding Pigpen from the Peanuts Gang.

Perhaps he is a nutty professor. Or a bum, what with his blue corduroy slacks and black sweater, clashing violently, and his general disshevelment.

He spread his bag out on the seat across from him, and took out a legal pad. Then he gestured like he was looking for a pen. Then he tried to make eye contact with me.

That is when I took out my Crackberry.

Sorry, I have no pen to lend.

Oh, look - he found one. He's scribbling in the margin. Something illegible. He looks at me again. Look away, dude. You are in my personal space.

Another glance. He takes out a motorola razor phone. Maybe he is not a bum. Do bums carry skinny cell phones?

He sneezes loudly. Bless you. Allergies, he huffs. I smile ruefully.

It's cold outside, but warm in here, he says. I'm cold in here too, I inform him and then go back to my Crack.

We make a stop, and he addresses a woman getting on the train, offering to make space in our little section of seats. She declines. It's a nearly-empty train after all.

I take the distraction as an opportunity to zip my bag closed. Sheepish guilt ensues. Hey, if I want to close my bag, it's smart of me, not an insult to anyone. It's the bag, it's not you, strange dude.

He quietly says something about West Mount Vernon. Crap.

Are we really going to do this?

Grudgingly, I look up. "Sorry, what?" I ask. He ignores me this time. Oh. I guess I interrupted his conversation. With himself.

At West Mount Vernon he disembarks.

Bye bye.

Delightful practice today, by the way. Good breath. And when I stopped the good breath during backbends, I realized how it was negatively impacting my ability to bend. And I found my breath again. And with that came my backbends.

Task for the day: coming up into a backbend with feet grounded - no tippytoe stuff. For me, a challenge. But I did it, and it felt great. Another task for the day: one breath drop and stand - exhale down, touch lightly, inhale up. Works much better. Elimates all possibility of thinking.

And thinking is the death of the backbender.

At least if the backbender is me.

After practice, with the benefit of time on my side (ah...the friday shorter practice!), I spent a good 20 minutes with a block under my back at various heights and under various parts of my spine.

And I had a revelation. My upper back will never BEND. Instead, my chest must simply open and allow my upper back muscles and shoulder blades to WRAP around my thoracic spine, drawing the whole breathing cage forward. That is how the backbends happen.

I looked in the mirror after I was done and I could swear, the bottom of my ribcage is jutting outward in a way I have never seen. It's as if it is trying to escape from my torso. This is a good thing, for all you laymen out there.

Oh, and I am considering ONCE AGAIN swapping out my stupid implants. This time for the smallest possible ones, unless I have the smallest possible now. I just hate these mothahfuckahs. I am a failed reconstruction. The question is, with the lack of skin and tissue left over from my original cancer surgery, coupled with the crazy stuff I do on the mat each day, is a successful reconstruction even possible? And do I even care enough to endure the necessary down time to find out?

Maybe all I need is a series of steroid shots to take down my capsular contaction...any doctors out there who wish to weigh in?

YC

Oh, yeah: it's about the breath

Sometimes I forget that my yoga practice is something other than a kick-ass workout. Well, I should modify that statement to reflect that practicing Primary is a kick-ass workout. Practicing Second up to Supta Vajrasana after practicing Primary is simply BEYOND a kick-ass workout, perhaps to the point of overtraining...IF it were training. IF it were a workout. And that's when I start to realize that it's about more than the workout.

I guess I really NEEDED Second Series in that sense. In other words, if I dd nothing more than practice all of Primary every day, an arduous task, let's not forget that, it would simply be a great workout. It would be meditative. It would be calm. But I could basically phone in my breath, and everything would still feel perfectly fine (except maybe ever single Up Dog and my Urdhva Dhanurasanas). I might remember my bhandas every now and then, and if I didn't, well, I could get around that too.

Now, add Second Series to the mix and all of that goes out the window. Now, I have to conserve energy throughout my entire practice, which I always should have been doing but never felt the need. Now, I have to direct awareness to my ribcage consistantly, almost constantly, throughout my practce so that by the time I get to my Second Series poses, I haven't burnt out my lumbar spine by lazily letting my updogs settle into my lower back. And of course, that means bhandas must come into play. The lower two bhandas - moola and uddiyana - support the ribcage's expansion. They're like the foundation of a very tall building that gets wider rather than smaller at the top.

None of which is to say that I am requiring myself to think about the next pose as I practice. I have to stay present, or I psych myself out. I dare no think about Pasasana (which is going quite well, thank you, MBT's; today I just did it myself at the wall, heels glued to the floor, and I felt so good about it that when I returned to my mat, I decided to just move onto the next pose, even when He-Sub offered to put me into it...who would have ever thought that the day would come that I would say no to an offer like that; given that I had gotten myself fully ino the pose and felt good in it, it seemed like overkill to do it all over again with a human rather than a wall supportin my balance). I dare not think about Kapotasana. Sometimes I can't even bear to think about Bhekasana, and I am pretty good at that, at least as far as getting my toenail to the floor. The chest lift is really only possible with an assist.

And God forbid I start to think about the big picture - the what the hell am I doing, two hours of yoga every day of my life? It's like walking on a tightrope and looking down. You just DON'T. If you stop to think about what you're doing when you're doing something so extreme...well, you just don't, if you don't want to feel the sudden urge to stop doing exactly what it is you are doing.

So, the breath. Yeah, when the breath is good, the practice is good. It's a no-fail correlation. Can't attribute causation. Could be one way, could be the other. But the correlation is there. Tomorrow, Primary only. Could be good because I won't have exhausted my legs by the time I get to UD. Or could be bad because I won't have warmed up my backbends by the time I get to UD. The only solution: breathe. Long, deep breaths that expand the ribcage, that require the direction of energy and awareness into the ribcage.

Speaking of ribcage: I've noticed my ribs protruding more and more lately. My nemesis, the Squirrel, once noted that those who have become proficient in Second Series tend to have protruding pubic bones. What I have noticed is that backbending prodigies tend to have protruding ribcages as well. And not just because they're skinny. I think that there is some kind of "freeing" action that happens when the chest opens in a way that permits deep backbending, allowing the ribcage to appear to articulate separate and apart from the rest of the torso. Maybe I am stating the obvious. But without having lost a significant amount of weight (or any), I have started to notic that when I am dropping into, say, Ustrasana, if I look down toward my chest, my ribcage looks like two mountains with a large valley in between, and the valley is getting wider and wider, and the mountains are drifting further apart.

Makes sense? Or more craziness?

I'm going to go with makes sense. But then, most crazy people think they make sense.

On other topics: Geshe Michael Roche and his "blonde bombshell" partner (not my description), Christie McNally, were profiled in the NY Times Style Section today. Robert Thurman is NOT amused, apparently, by the monk's having taken a spiritual, if not sexual, bride, and besides, no one out there really is believing that there's no sex going on. But who can tell? Seems a bit Clinton-esque to me. But instead of "I did not have sex with THAT woman" or "I did not have SEX with that woman", it's "I did not HAVE sex with that woman [because we are so spiritual, we do not HAVE sex, we ARE sex, or some such bullshit like that]".

And on related topics, this month's Elle Magazine seemingly asks that we sympathize with another "THAT" woman - one who lives in my town, who left her husband for her tennis pro, and who, boo hoo, was forced to sue her husband for divorce based on "cruelty" because New York requires that divorce be based on fault, and thus the adulterer cannot seek a contested divorce from her cuckholded spouse on the basis of adultery, although the cuckholded spouse could do so. But if the cuckholded spouse does not WANT to divorce, but wants to try to keep the family together, then boo hoo, the cheating spouse is shit out of luck and must make up some assy reason for suing for divorce. It actually IS a stupid set-up. The law makes no sense at all except when you consider how many families it has probably kept together because getting a divorce when one spouse doesn't want to is just too f-ing difficult in his state. On the other hand, how many of those families that stayed together because of New York's ridiculous divorce laws have done so miserably? On the other other hand, maybe it's for the best for them ANYWAY. On the other other other hand, maybe not.

Who knows? That's why I never had an interest in politics or making laws. The one piece of mock legislation I had to draft in law school, I will admit it now, my roommate gave me hers to copy and put my name on. My last name, actually, since we were both named Lauren. And don't go telling NYU to revoke my law degree. The mock legislation was for an elective, experimental, ungraded class.

You CAN tell NYU that I never attended Criminal Procedure except to take the final exam, on which I pulled an A. Because the only one I hurt was myself or my law-breaking clients if I had wanted a career in Criminal Defense (because you only bing up Criminal Procedure issues in cases where the defendant DID the crime but has a way out of getting punished because the cops did something wrong, which, in truth, can never be tolerated, lest we dissemble into fascism).

This is my brain on non-blogging. I'm like someone who's been on a cleanse, and now that it's over, you're showing me a tray of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies (or more accurately, a tin of freshly cooked marble fudge...much more my binge style).

And finally...LOST.

I was so pleased that this third-to-last-this-season episode did not raise an infinite array of mind-assaulting questions. Instead, I am asking "the only question that really matters" (Lost fans will understand what that refers to). And that question is NOT "how do we save the island", but rather, WHY DO THE OCEANIC 6 HAVE TO LIE WHEN THEY GET OFF THE ISLAND?

What transpired immediately preceding or during their rescue that made it neessary for them to fabricate nearly every detail of their ordeal, from how the plane crashed (they say that it crashed in the water, which it did not; it broke apart in mid air and landed on the island in separate pieces), to how many people survived the initial crash (they say it was only, I believe, eight people, not 40-something as we have seen), to the parentage of Aaron (they say that Aaron was born to Kate on the island; isn't anyone, like Claire's mom, suspicious about that, given that CLAIRE was pregnant when she got on the plane; I mean, doesn't that seem very fishy?) and on and on and on because there is almost NOTHING that the Oceanic 6 say that is true.

WHY THE LIES?

The other questions that were raised just seem insignificant enough to brush off - like, how come the Dharma Initiative kept dropping food palletts 16 years after every single member of the Dharma Initiative died in the "purge"? Didn't anyone on the mainland KNOW that everyone on the island who had been a member of the DI was no longer alive? So ten why the food? But...unless this is some important clue to something, I think it bears forgetting.

Now that we know that the Oceanic 6 makes it back, that their escape was filled with trauma and bloodshed and chaos, that Ben can move freely off the island (maybe not back on though, we shall see) and uses that power to take his revenge on Charles Widmore and his associates, I'm just kind of left with the question of WHAT HAPPENED that made it necessary to totally lie about what went down?

That question is so much in the forefront of my mind, that I don't even care about the time travel aspect, am not even keeping track of what day it is when and where, and I have given up on the thrill of "the numbers" and seeing where and when they appear. So, they were in Hurley's muscle car. So what. WHY DID THEY LIE?

That's what I want to know.

Oh, and also, I would like to know if Daniel, poor, adorable, sweet, Daniel, drifts out to see, unable to find the island because Ben succeeds in moving it. That would be sad. But maybe he can use his bearing of 305 to get back to the freighter. Maybe. But somehow, I doubt it. Since I love Daniel and Charlotte, this would make me sad.

Anyway, that's my brain dump for the day.

YC

Everything I know I learned in Third Grade

I could say that if I were my Third-Grader. Today he visited Chuang Yen Monastery in Carmel, New York, with his class. The CYM has a 35 foot tall Buddha statue, surrounded by 10,000 six-inch smaller statues of the Buddha. Or so he tells me. I do know that the 35 foot tall Buddha statue is the biggest Buddha statue in the Western Hemisphere. And that is just plain cool.

I asked Adam if he knew what a monk is. He told me he saw one at the Monastery. He wasn't sure if it was a man or a woman because of the shaved head and the long robes. I clarified for him. He told me about some ritual that the monk performed involving rice and incense. His teacher told him that each lifetime brings you closer and closer to enlightenment, and that in your last life, you will be a monk. Or a nun, I suppose. Like Pema Chodron, I mean.

I asked him if they learned about the Four Noble Truths. Apparently, they did not. Nevertheless, having known Adam since before he was born, I have always suspected that he has been here on earth many times before. He has always had an aura of calm wisdom about him, even as he waited calmly in his little plastic bassinet beside me as the doctors sewed me up after my c-section.

I asked him if he understood why someone would want it to be their last life on earth. He did not. And yet he did not think it odd, as I do.

I have always wanted to come back again. I still do. I am sure that if I do, I will see my husband, because I am quite certain that this is his first time here, at least as a human. You know, with all the suffering that goes along with being human. He struggles with it. As do we all. But with my husband, the struggling is so very palpable. Sometimes I imagine him as a helpless infant, crying for food, for comfort, for love.

My children are 30 years younger than him, roughly. But when I imagine their souls, I see not infants or even children. I imagine that Brian might have been my own father in another life. I feel quite certain that Adam was my son. And I feel quite certain that my children have an innate understanding of things they are too young to articulate.

I wonder if this is just sentimental crap mixed with the ravings of a yoga lunatic. Or if there might be something to this.

YC

Slooooooooooooooow

I am practicing really really really slow. Or I have been this week. Especially today. And I LIKE it. I do. And He-Sub says it's good. I had my best Kapotasana EVER today with him. And no, we didn't even try to catch my feet - it just felt really deep, really strong, really good breath-wise and really safe. I did catch HIS feet though, I should mention.

Satisfying to catch any feet, I suppose. Nice that I didn't have to crank into catching my own in order to get that feeling.

Here's a new wrinkle:

As my Urdhva Dhanurasana gets deeper, my standing up from a backbend gets more difficult. I am sure it is just one of those comings-and-goings of the Ashtanga practice, and my gut instinct tells me that the reason is simple: the better I feel in my backbends, the longer I stay in Urdhva Dhanurasana, sometimes as many as 10 long breaths, and the longer I stay in my UD's, the more tired my legs get. The more tired my legs get, the harder it is to pop back up.

I really think it's going to be alright.

YC

It seems that I have nothing to say

But I do feel obligated to write an update regarding my practice.

Practice Frequency:

I've been practicing every day, although I've been a bit off kilter in terms of what I do on what day (like, I skipped Thursday and did my Thursday practice on Saturday, although I did my Friday practice on Friday with the addition of a few Second Series poses; yesterday, I skipped the closing sequence altogether), and I am rectifying that starting today.

Practice Notes:

When I do my Second Series poses, my Urdhva Dhanurasana is "ready", rather than raw.

On Friday, it was terribly raw. Painful. Pointless. To try to press up into UD when I haven't warmed up my front body is painful and seemingly pointless. When I've warmed up my front body, then the backbend is already there when I place my palms down and press up. When Kino was at the CT Shala, she showed us how when you set up for UD, if you do it right, meaning, if you start by grounding the feet until the hips lift up, and scooping the tailbone to protect the lower back, and pressing the ribs open with the breath and lifting the arms straight up overhead before planting the palms, then by the time you go press the palms into the floor to lift up, you're ALREADY in a backbend. SO true.

Unfortunately, my front body is slow to warm up and quick to cool off, at least at this point. There was a time when my hips were slow to warm up and quick to cool of, when Padmasana (lotus) was possible only after lots of heat and sweat. Now, I can take Padamasana in the tightest jeans, in the middle of the day, at the crack of dawn, whenever. Thus, I assume, or rather, hope, that some day my backbends will respond the way my hips have to steady practice.

My feelings about Second Series:

Kinda not into it.

I know I just said that without Second Series, I have no backbend. (Even with Second Series, I barely have a backbend, at least on Ashtanga Planet). But Second Series is demoralizing and humiliating to me. From Pasasana on, the only pose that doesn't leave me feeling like "The Girl With No Backbend".

I don't have any desire to get my hands to my feet in Kapotasana. Funny thing is that no one who teaches me seems to realize that. I've always been so ambitious. I've always "WANTED" to master whatever pose I am working on. But in this case, I've climbed that mountain - with help - and I don't really think I want to go back there at this time. As I tell She-Sub every day, "It's not you, it's me."

I'm actually quite proud of the fact that I just don't care about Kapotasana at this point. For once, I don't feel like grasping for a pose. Or for once, I am willing to acknowledge and OWN the fact that I don't feel like it.

Aha moment:

Maybe I felt like that for a long time regarding Supta Kurmasana, only I couldn't admit it to myself....I think back to all the times that I didn't show up to practice until it was too late to get an assist from Sir, and all the periods of time during which I didn't show up for practice at all and chose to practice at home instead, giving myself the ability to slowly, gradually, work on the pose. Maybe I just didn't WANT to do Supta Kurmasana for a whole large part of the 15 months in which I "struggled" with it. Maybe I wasn't struggling at all except with pretending to myself that I actually was ready to do it and wanted to do it.

But I keep on keeping on with those Second Series poses. I don't see any other way. Primary Series doesn't help me with my backbending, Updogs be damned. My Second Series poses are prep for Urdhva Dhanurasana. Without them, there IS no Urdhva Dhanurasana.

For as long as I was working exclusively on Primary Series, I was phoning in my backbends. From foreign countries. With really bad reception. So, it's a kick for me to press up and be like, "Hey, wow, this doesn't hurt."

By contrast, it is NOT a kick for me to attempt to put my hands on my feet, or my fingers on my toes even, in Kapotasana. I feel that it is enough at this point that I can drop back and straighten my arms. It's more than I could do a few months ago. Why the need to do the full pose?

The Whole Teacher Thing:

I miss the Good Doctor and hope he comes back soon. But I really like the His and Her Tag Team Teachers. Something I really really like about She-Sub is that she tells me to stop making excuses for myself and to stop saying what I can't do and why I can't do it, and it's enough about the surgeries already. I really really like when people don't see my potential as limited because of the breast cancer.

I guess I had something to say after all.

YC

You know those are perennials, don't you?

What is the deal with THAT statement? I was picking out some flowers (yes, perennials, which for all you city dwellers who don't garden, means that you plant them once and they come back year after year) at a local nursery, and some woman came up to me and asked me if I realized that I was looking at perennials. I told her, yes, and as a matter of fact, I was not interested in annuals at all (annuals survive for one season and then the next year it's back to the drawing board).

Last year, when I moved here, it was already late June, and there was no time for me to get up to speed on what grows here in Northern Westchester, and what gets eaten by deer, and I have to admit, I was quite taken by the loveliness and wide availability of the annuals I kept seeing. Many annuals are brightly colored and lushly petaled:

For example, impatiens. You see these everywhere in New York City, bordering sidewalk trees, in the islands on Park Avenue, etc.


Petunias are another ubiquitous annual.

But when I got to thinking about my garden this year, now that I have had the benefit of time to read up on what works in this climate and what won't attract the damn deer, it struck me as vaguely wasteful to purchase a garden full of annuals each year only to have to do it all over again the next year. Wasteful monetarily, energetically and perhaps even ecologically.

I began reading up on perennials and became fascinated by the way that different perennials show their blooms at different times during the season. Yes, that makes it more difficult to plan the garden. Unlike annuals, which you can count on all season long for strong, bright, lush blooms (as well as for certain death once the first frost hits), many perennials have short-lived blooming seasons. Thus, daffodils appear at the first sign of spring and are gone before Mother's Day.





But there is a definite upside. Plant daffodil bulbs in the fall and then forget about them. In early spring, they emerge, sunshine-colored, from the cold ground, like "Surprise! Bet you forgot about us!" And when they die back, as they do as spring chugs along, if you've done your perennial planting properly, another plant is waiting right beside its roots to emerge when it is its turn. Next to my front steps, where my daffodils are fading, a hydrangea is now beginning to emerge from its winter sleep.




Unfortunately, deer love hydrangeas. It wasn't my idea to plant a hydrangea in the front yard where the deer come out from the woods to browse and graze. The former owners of this house did it. I suppose it was an act of hope. A failed act of hope, of course, since I never saw one bloom last year: the deer nibbled every bud.




So far, in the shady part of my back yard garden, I've planted Columbine,


















Jacob's Ladder



















Foxglove


















and Bleeding Heart



spiraea










In the sunny part of the garden, I've planted a whole bunch of varieties of

lavender
















babies breath














salvia





















spiraea
















And now, I think I have to wait a bit to see what stops blooming when and then plant some other stuff in its place when that happens. For example, we already have about seven peonies , and they're all about to bloom. So, I actually planted some zinnia seeds around them



(yes, zinnias are annuals, but I had some seeds lying around from the brief moment of insanity when I decided I was going to grow annuals from seeds; the sweet peas and sunflowers are doing okay, but not much else) in the hopes that they will germinate, mature and bloom by the time the peonies fade.








So, why would anyone NOT want perennials?

Do I sound obsessed?

Did I skip practice today?

It was strictly a blip, that skip. I just needed a gardener's holiday.

YC

Yoga for the Smelly Dirty Boy

My Smelly Dirty Boy's teacher emailed me yesterday to ask if I could give the class a yoga session on Thursday. They're heavily into an Asian studies unit, even visiting a Buddhist monestary later this month (which supposedly is the home to the largest Buddha statue in the Western hemisphere). Vegetarian bagged lunch required.

My thought is to teach them Sun Salutations, since they have lots and lots of energy, as nine-year olds will tend. And then time-depending, I will teach two Triangle and Tree and then Lion ("HAAAAAAAAAAAA!"), then Backbend (which many of them can do already), then Turtle (Kurmasana) and finally some seated forward bend and then Savasana.

Anyone out there have experience teaching Third Graders? Any thoughts?

YC

Bitch bitch whine whine

Being a mom is a hard job. It's hard whether you work outside the home or not. I've done both. I worked outside the home when my kids were babies - up until Brian was 5 and Adam was 3. I had a full-time job and a full-time nanny. I didn't have to deal with day-care, and I had someone who took care of the home front. She made many, if not most, of the playdates, kept things organized and clean. She gave my kids baths. And by she, I meant, whomever was my nanny at any given time. Not that they were interchangeable because they certainly were not.

I always felt lucky to have both the kids and the career. I felt that one gave me perspective for the other, helped me appreciate whatever it was I was doing at any given time. I managed my time wisely. I was efficient. I made the time for working out at the gym. I made the time for phone calls and maintaining a social life. I made the time to shop for myself and keep myself in fabulous clothing.

I feel lucky now that I don't have to work. I have more time for myself. I could never maintain the yoga practice that I maintain if I were working while mothering. Mothering school-age children/pre-teens is quite different from mothering babies. With the babies, my essential task was to nurture. That came quite naturally to me.

With schoolage kids, my essential task is to stay organized while juggling numerous small, not-engaging tasks. Given my propensity for compulsiveness and add to that a difficulty transitioning from one task to another (as a big-firm corporate lawyer, I usually worked on one transaction at a time for months and months on end), well, let's just say that I find myself swimming in the undertow zone. And I have never been even remotely a strong swimmer. Essentially, this job I currently have is not one that emphasizes my talents.

I just spent nearly two agonizing, angst-filled hours organizing my family's schedule for the next two months. Baseball practice for each kid once per week, baseball game for each kid once per week. Not always on the same day and certainly not always in the same place. Baseball clinic for Brian once per week (in addition to regular practice and games). Lacrosse practice and games for Adam, sometimes more than twice per week, and almost never on the same day or time, and all the hell over Westchester County. Religious school once per week for each kid. Tennis lessons once per week for Brian. Tae Kwon Do once or twice per week for Adam if there is ever time to squeeze it in. Don't even ask me why there is such an emphasis on sports in my household. It wasn't my choice. It just is the way it is. Then there are birthday parties, choir practices, choir concerts, class trips that I need to remind the moms about (since I am a class mom for Adam's class), pediatrician appointments, orthodontist appointments (twice in June, but usually every six weeks).

In all of that, I need to allot time for gardening; notwithstanding that I have a gardener, there are daily tasks that I need to do myself. For example, until the danger of frost passes here in the great green north, I have to cover my annuals with tarps at night and uncover them in the morning so they can get fresh sunlight. I've been shopping for perennials too, because perennials come and go, and you have to buy them when they're available. Luckily, most of the perennials I've been looking for have already been available, so I am almost done with the task of filling the garden beds, hopefully for a long time to come. Almost, but not quite.

Then there is keeping a social calendar, which I almost cannot bear to do, since most of the time, I am too exhausted to even talk...about anything but yoga.

And I don't have a maid, and except for me, everyone in this household tends to leave the toilet seat up. My younger son is currently grooving on the notion of being dirty. And by dirty I mean disgustingly putridly dirty, as in, taking his socks out of the laundry to wear the again, just because he likes to make them as smelly as he can. Don't even ask me how he managed to go an entire week without changing his underwear, unbeknownst to me. But I figured it out when I did his laundry yesterday. Nothing like seeing that there is not even one pair of underwear in your nine-year-old's laundry to make you feel like a totally inadequate loser of a mother.

My nails are bitten to the quick. I discovered today that I have been given the gift of osteo-arthritis in my fingers (pray, pray, pray that it will remain in my fingers ONLY), or at least in both of my ring fingers, and therefore, it sort of doesn't matter what my nails look like because soon my fingers will be all gnarly and gnarled anyway.

I haven't had my hair cut since last summer.

My husband thinks that every day is like a day at Canyon Ranch for me.

It's not. It's hard. Because no one ever thanks me for anything. And no one even realizes that I'm actually working. And no one would probably notice if I didn't do the work. But I would. And even so, sometimes, I can barely do it. And sometimes I do it badly, like today, for example, when a mom called me to tell me she was rescheduling her son's birthday party from tomorrow to next Saturday, and I realized that I hadn't been aware of the fact that there was supposed to be a birthday party tomorrow in the first place. Just a few minutes ago, I dug out the invitation from the abyss that is my inbox. Or the abyss that was my inbox, until that little reality check.

I know that if I had a job outside the house, thus creating a need for a nanny, thus creating a situation where I am thanked for my hard work, thus creating perspective on either side of the equation, I'd be way less stressed out. Even with working. Even with having a boss. Even with practicing less. But I just can't. I just simply can't. It would be better for me. But I won't.

And that, my friends, is the definition of "neurosis".

YC

Catching 22

I had an awesomely amazing practice today. God, how I love Primary Only, but only because I don't only practice Primary. I was thinking about the paradox at some point towards the end of my practice when I actually allowed some thoughts to poke through my happy little autopilot trance: I would love to only practice Primary because then I have so much energy left over for backbends, and now that I am getting a little teeny tiny bit better at backbending, I don't mind practicing Urdhva Dhanurasana immediately after finishing Primary. On the other hand, I probably wouldn't feel that way if I was not also practicing through Supta Vajrasana on all other days.

Had a very odd dream last night. Can't seem to shake it from my memory, as if it all really happened to me. In the dream, I met this wonderful, amazing, superperfect man, and it was the most wonderful, amazing and superperfect relationship for exactly two weeks, at which point, he died. I knew he was going to die because he told me as much. But there was no desperation in the relationship, no clinging. Just happy and perfect interactions. Immediately after he died, which was immediately after I left his home one day, his parents, whom I had never met, called me to ask me to speak at his memorial. The dream went from happy to mildly sad acceptance of a death that was already foreseen to increasing anxiety as I realized that I could not come up with anything to say about him at his memorial that would remotely capture who he really was, since, I did not actually know who he really was. All I could seem to come up with was, "I met him at a Bikram studio, where he was volunteering." Nothing else came to mind. As I ruminated over a piece of scribble-paper and a pen, I was forced to go on a trip (with I am not sure whom). The trip took me to a really expensive fine art auction, where I saw a few people I knew and didn't like, and to what I thought would be a beautiful suburban enclave, which turned out to be ugly and flooded. I was happy to get home, but I felt a bit embarassed that I was 15 minutes late to the memorial.

I woke up at 2:21 a.m., kind of happy that this mishmosh of fleeting images and rollercoaster of feelings was only a dream.

But if it was only a dream, then why does it feel like a memory? Damn
kleshas.

From what I know of psychoanalysis-style dream interpretation, the first part of the dream represents my wish for a perfect relationship with a man who would disappear before things could go wrong, before I could get to know him better. It also represents my fear of having happiness evaporate, or more specifically, of having a perfect relationship only to lose it. So, wishes and fears for perfection and loss. The rest of the dream reminds me of a movie that goes on for too long, with what seem to be artificial endings tacked on and on. Spielberg's AI was like that. What I imagine happened was that after confronting my wishes and fears so provocatively, my conscious mind started to awaken - the dream began to evaporate. But I remained sleeping, and so the dream continued, altered by the intrusion of my conscious mind and all of its anxieties and preoccupations (embarassment, money, people I don't like).

Oh, and also, I watched Grey's Anatomy last night, one of whose story lines involved a man diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor just weeks after meeting AND marrying a woman who viewed him as the perfect catch.

And of course, I also watched Lost, which tends to do a number on my head. For Lost fans out there, anyone notice all of the references to "razors" in last night's episode? Wonder what that was all about. I thought I had read somewhere that The Razor's Edge by Somerset Maugham was an influece for the writers of Lost, but now I can't find anything about that at all on Google. Also, what's up with Kate's use of pronouns instead of names, as in when she says to Jack at the airport in the Season 3 Finale, "I have to go; he'll be wondering where I am" (which I thought we were to understand was a reference to Aaron), and her reference last night to "I was doing something for him" (which I thought was for sure going to be a reference to Ben, but turned out to be a reference to...Sawyer, whom we found out is still on the island in the future)? Now I am beginning to think that the "he" in the former episode might not be Aaron, but Sawyer, or someone else. This much does seem clear: This episode shows us where Kate and Jack fall apart and how Jack turns to drinking and drugging, in the future.

And a note about backbends: what is working for me now is what the Good Doctor was trying to tell me all along, and what Sub Boy restated for me yesterday: arms straight up overhead, not akimbo. Seems elementary, unless you have scar tissue pulling at you. THIS is why having a belt around my arms helped me when I was doing that. And it's why having my hands in prayer at the start of Kapotasana doesn't work for me at all. It's arms straight up, drop back using the BACK. Duh.

Duh.

Duh.

I will not let my elbows splay out in backbends. I will not let my elbows splay out in backbends. I will not let my elbows splay out in backbends. I will not let my elbows splay out in backbends. I will not let my elbows splay out in backbends. I will not let my elbows splay out in backbends. I will not let my elbows splay out in backbends. I will not let my elbows splay out in backbends. I will not let my elbows splay out in backbends. I will not let my elbows splay out in backbends. I will not let my elbows splay out in backbends. I will not let my elbows splay out in backbends. I will not let my elbows splay out in backbends. I will not let my elbows splay out in backbends. I will not let my elbows splay out in backbends. I will not let my elbows splay out in backbends. I will not let my elbows splay out in backbends. I will not let my elbows splay out in backbends. I will not let my elbows splay out in backbends. I will not let my elbows splay out in backbends. I will not let my elbows splay out in backbends. I will not let my elbows splay out in backbends. I will not let my elbows splay out in backbends. I will not let my elbows splay out in backbends. I will not let my elbows splay out in backbends. I will not let my elbows splay out in backbends.

That is WAY easier when you use cut and paste. Hopefully, it will have the same effect as writing it on the blackboard 100 times.

YC

He's newly authorized...

...to introduce yoga into the mainstream. Finally!

Finally!!!!

Never again will I have to explain what I mean when I say that I've been working on Gassy Cobra and Angry Hobo Stealing Pie. Who knew Mike Myers (aka "Guru Pitka") was so flexible? Kind of makes me envious (or nervous) the way he can put his legs so far behind his head. Damn that Guru Pitka!

Seems that what Madonna couldn't do for yoga by doing Pincha Mayurasana during all of her shows and by starring in a movie about an Ashtanga teacher who gets her gay best friend to sleep with her and then proceeds to have his baby (as IF!), Mike Myers is finally doing with The Love Guru, which comes out in theaters later this spring.

And besides, who wouldn't want to learn to play the Sitar from this man?



(here's hoping these posters end up as widely distributed as Dan Smith's...

YC

Oh, how I hate to upstage myself...

but I feel that a plug or two must be made at this juncture.

I think it is because I am feeling so incredibly light and happy because of my fabulous new MBT sandals that arrived today, and which inspired me to do an impromptu non-asana self-timer shoot (see MY FABULOUS MBTs and Me). And also because I had the most lovely practice today. EVAH.

I don't know how or why, but I finally remembered something that I am never supposed to forget, as a yoga student or a yoga teacher. And that is: BREATHE. I breathed all throughout my practice. And it was lovely. I even breathed through Kapotasana. And I felt so much better. Boy Sub and I made a little deal - he would adjust me only until I started to vocalize. And I felt so much less scared. It wasn't my deepest Kapo A, but it was my best Kapo B, for sure, straightest arms, best breathing ever.

I think that one thing that helped to change things today was my decision to take the focus off of Kapotasana. Duh. Seems so obvious. But sometimes what is most obvious is the least obvious.

It all made me think about how we deal with challenges, and the ways in which we take the focus off of what is scary or otherwise unpleasant. Some people, like me, and like my cousin, Debby, go into action. We practice. We walk. We shop. We rake. We plant. We run (well, not we, but she). We bike (well, I do). We do lots of laundry (me, not sure if she). We hem jeans and re-upholster ottomans (me). And, of course, we write.

There's this amazing little girl that I know who is not even 11 years old, who has discovered this last method of dealing. At such an early age, such a brave and wise little girl.

She goes by the name, "Geno Girl", and she happens to be Debby's older daughter. Now, Debby and I are both on the short side. Okay, big understatement. But it turns out that Geno Girl is turning out to be even more so. It also turns out that this might not be her destiny. As such, and in order to help Geno Girl realize her true physical stature, Debby and my cousin-in-law, J, have decided to put Geno Girl on Genotropin, a growth hormone. Geno Girl is writing about her daily shots of Genotropin on Geno Girl Grows On. It's a brave and honest blog and very daring for a pre-teen girl.

I'm not surprised that G-Girl is an amazing and powerful writer. She comes from the right stock.

You should check it out, for the fun of it, or if you need a reality check. And who can't use one of those?

YC

Me love me MBTs

See how happy the MBTs make me?

And so calm.

And so able to do Pasasana.












Everyone should get a pair of MBTs!
















Then you can be thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis happy too!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!







Hooray for MBTs!


YC