Where did the time go?

All of a sudden, it's Friday, and I realize I haven't written a thing since Monday. This has to be a first for me. So, what's been going on, let's see...

Well, Monday was the day that I injured my lower back in Supta Kurmasana. I saw my chiro, and she helped me out with electric impulses and a few adjustments - hip, lumbar and cervical spine.

Tuesday, I was able to manage a fairly anemic practice. It took me all 10 Surya Namaskaras before I could bring my head to my knees in Uttanasana, and even then, it didn't feel great. It didn't feel terrible either, and so I pushed on. The rest of practice involved not doing any jump-throughs because my lower back felt tender, and I didn't want to jar it when I landed. I managed to get into every posture right up to Navasana. But Sir let me off of Navasana because I had no lower back engagement to help me with my bhandas, so what would be the point. It just would have hurt. Strangely enough, I was able to pull out quite a nice Bujapidhasana, one where I floated my forehead above the ground, rather than bonking to the ground. I can't reconcile that with my sense that half of my core was not operating properly (i.e., the back of my core - my lumbar spine). But whatever. I didn't bother with Kurmasana or Garba. It just didn't feel right. No backbends either. Finishing poses were not comfy at all - particularly Karna Pidasana. What could I expect? It's one of the deepest forward bends there is besides Kurmasana and Supta K.

Later in the afternoon, I had to go to a Parent-Kid Gym Class. Two actually. one at 6:30 and one at 7:30. One with each of my kids. We climbed ropes, we did some aerobics, we played basketball, we rode scooters. My back felt awesome. I was psyched. But...we didn't get home until 9:00, and then we played "Where Is" with Brian, for a change: Where is my homework on Peter Minuit? You know where it was? In the refrigerator. Something's got to change, and I am not sure if it is external or internal...not sure if the losing things is some sort of passive aggressive thing, some sort of rebellion thing. Or whether it is perhaps just a matter of being disorganized, as in, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Woke up sore on Wednesday. I guess I overdid it on Tuesday night. I don't feel bad about it though because I didn't have a choice. It was my parental duty. Nonetheless, sore or not, I practiced. Wednesday was a home practice due to logistical issues. I had an appointment in the morning and couldn't get to the shala until the Teaching Techniques began at 11:30 p.m. I practiced later in the day, slowly, abandoning my vinyasas after Janu C. I did Buja P about five times because it felt so good. But I still had no feeling for getting into Kurmasana. The thought of it filled me with fear and tension. I did a few backbends, and did the entire finishing sequence, and it was quite nice. I took this as a good sign. I figured I was healing.

Thursday no practice at all. I had a party in Adam's classroom - a celebration of ethnicity. We brought Hamentashen. There were also a few Babkas, some Italian cheeses, some Italian cookies, 100 Chinese fortune cookies and a big plate of Chinese dumplings. There was also one plate of stuffed grape leaves. 30 kids; four ethnic groups were represented. So much for an ethnically diverse classroom. After the party, I went directly to the Teaching Techniques class with Lori. We explored Triangle-related postures. I am LOVING these connections she is drawing between postures. On Wednesday, we did all of the Paschimattanasana-related postures (two legs extended straight out, with a forward bend....Padangusthasana, Padahastasana, Ubaya Padangusthasana, Urdvha Mukha Paschimattanasana, Halasana). The triangle-type postures are Trikonasana, Uttitha Hasta Padangusthasana (and cousin-Parsvasahita) and Supta Padangusthasana. Did I miss any? I don't have my notes. But I will tell you, I am LOVING Trikonasana for the first time in my life. I am finally UNDERSTANDING this posture and it's internal rotation of the back LEG but external rotating of the back HIP. It feels like such a nice stretch of that front inner thing. And today I had the most wonderful time in UHP as a result.

But so, yeah, no practice Thurs. I never got around to it. I never really wanted to. I felt kind of blah. I felt kind of depressed about my pain in my back. And I think I really needed some healing time. And then it was Thursday night, Grey's Anatomy night. Now, Grey's was really heading down an annoying road last year when it was delving into the who will McDreamy pick - his wife or his mistress, and when it was manipulating its viewers into rooting for the mistress. But Grey's has been good lately. Much better than Lost, which, shock of shocks, I know, I didn't even watch on Wednesday. No worries though - I have it on iTunes and will get to it sometime this weekend.

So, anyway, Grey's was pretty enjoyable last night. And then right after, before 11 p.m., I passed out in the middle of that stupid, stupid, annoying, insipid new show with the supposedly blue collar family that lives in a gorgeous colonial farmhouse, which family is headed up by Tom Berenger, and whose prodigal son, Nick, who named gave himself the pen-name of Nicholson when he became a famous "Less Than Zero" slash "Bright Lights Big City" author after spending "one long winter" writing a memoiresque novel, is played by a total young cutie named Bryan Greenberg who is, unfortunately for him, not believable as anything but an affluent Ivy League Jew. I'm talking about October Road, and it's lame. It's pretty much a rip-off of a little-seen Ed Burns movie called No Looking Back, which starred Lauren Holly as the hometown honey of the prodigal Ed Burns who comes back to find that the girl he left behind is now with the still-blue collar Jon Bon Jovi. Oh, the awkwardness of the original movie. Oh the horrible discomfort of watching it played out again with lesser actors and with the blond and bland Laura Prepon as the discarded girlfriend whose scarily, and not in a good way, precocious 10-year old son (upon seeing the grownups are about to have a grown-up conversation: "I think I will discretely extricate myself..."....eew!) might be the spawn of Nick slash Nicholson. And that's all I know because after watching the hometown blue collar guys standing around in their denim overalls poking with their pitchforks and shovels at a pile of manure, chatting in that knowing, smarty, glib, television style that was so offputting in television shows that were actually ABOUT knowing, smart, glib characters (e.g. Mad About You, Gilmore Girls), I closed my eyes - just for a moment - and forgot to open them again. So, I missed all the nonsense about the terrible betrayal committed by Nick slash Nicholson in the form of writing about his now-ex-friends from his hometown in his book and making them look like, as one character puts it in the previews for the show, "buffoons".

When I woke up, it was morning. I got up, went to practice and got all the way through, although I skipped Supta Kurmasana. Kurmasana took a couple of attempts to get as flat as I like. But it was fine. My jump-throughs are back, mostly. It only took two Surya Namaskaras to get my Uttanasana in fighting shape.

So, in about a month, I'm going to be practicing teaching Ashtanga classes - both fundamentals classes, which break down the Surya Namaskaras and some of the standing poses, and actual led classes. I am really, really nervous and do not feel ready at all. It's as if I haven't been teaching all this time. When I teach a vinyasa class, I get up there and totally wing it. Each and every time. I rarely have a class planned out. I go into the room, suss out the vibe, feel out the ability and experience levels of the students and go from there. But now - it's like I wish I had a script. I feel woefully unprepared. I didn't really do this in order to teach Ashtanga; I mainly wanted to deepen my own understanding of the practice. But then the slippery slope began slippery sloping...and here I am...what the????!!!

Finished off the week with a trip back to Dr. Jaime, the chiropractor, who had much less to adjust today than on Monday, YAY! Tomorrow, I am taking Lori's led class since I didn't practice on Thursday. And on Sunday, we are going up to Northern Westchester to look at revisit some of the houses we've already seen and consider making a bid on one particular one that we really love but that might be a bit too far from the train for the husband's liking. But it's so perty!!! I want want want want want it. I do. How does one manifest these things? How is "manifest" any different from "I wish" or "I want"? Does calling it "manifest" make it somehow yogic? If so...or even if not....manifest, manifest, manifest.

YC