On expectations

Just a quick observation, mostly for my own benefit:

I need to eliminate the sentence "But I used to be able to do this posture!" from my brain.

Just do the posture, already!!

Observation without judgment, without attachment. It's a big idea, and it's the main reason I got interested in this yoga in the first place. And judgment comes from expectations, right? Better to let those go and just do some good yoga. The postures come, then go, and then come back again. Just try, and don't do it wrong, and try again! At the end of the day, the postures don't matter and there is plenty of time.

With/Without

Operation Get-to-Ventura-and-take-a-yoga-class: success! 

It took me forever to get there yesterday, but I made it to the 4pm class in Ventura last night and the 11am this morning and had two awesome classes.  It felt ridiculously good to practice again (and I was decently strong, for me, but I was also super bendy, which was a pleasant surprise).  I missed a total of 3 days of yoga this week - HARDLY a catastrophe - but I missed it so much.  Couldn't focus, couldn't settle down, couldn't sleep, couldn't wake up.  Pretty weird! 

I was stretching out before class this morning, doing a couple backbends, and the woman on the mat next to me asked how long I'd been practicing.  I told her I'd been coming regularly for almost 2 years now (and by the way, when the hell did that happen?!) and she said "wow, so have you seen a lot of benefits?"  All I could think of to say was, "YES."

The truth is, I don't even know where I would be right now or what I would be like without this yoga in my life.  All the neuroses I would still be holding on to, all the bad habits and patterns... how bad would they be?  Which problems have I eliminated by doing this yoga, and which ones am I just constantly holding at bay?  That's a slightly unsettling idea.  One thing Bikram always says is that the yoga is only a "cure" for disease in the sense that, if you do it consistently, it will relieve your symptoms, and if you stop doing it, your symptoms will come back.

It's not like I had an awful life without yoga, but without going into detail, I have to say that it is a lot better with the yoga.  I'm not really interested in me-without-yoga.  Sure, I could definitely live without it.  I could also live without showering or brushing my teeth.  But that would just be unpleasant for everyone.  With is definitely better.  It's a good life.  :)

California snow

Nothing new on the yoga front... studio is under fire evacuation, and evacuation area is moving closer to my area. We also have a nice "California snow" going on right - white ash falling steadily from the sky. It gets in my eyes every time I go outside. Seriously? This is why you shouldn't name it the "BABY JESUS FIRE." Got an email from my department saying that we don't have to come in to work today, but got that email AFTER I came in to take a mid-term. I love grad school. On one hand: "Emergency!!" On the other hand: "Come take your test at 10am, and there's a seminar this afternoon that you guys should really go to." Screw that! I'm getting out of here... just as soon as I talk to a couple people about this project that's due Monday...

I'm gonna see if I can get through all the craziness in the downtown area to practice at the Ventura studio tonight. I want my yoga! :( Can't really take the back roads as they are all on fire, but hopefully the freeway won't be too backed up with emergency vehicles. SHEESH.

No yoga today...

... because the yoga studio is in the evacuation warning area for the huge freaking fire that is spreading on the edge of my town!!  Looks like more than HALF of downtown Santa Barbara is under mandatory evacuation right now.

Good thing I live 10 miles to the west!!  I can see the flames, tho.

Seriously, didn't this JUST happen!?  This is the second big fire we've had since I moved out here 8 months ago.  Not cool.  Nobody in my area is terribly alarmed, since this literally happens ALL THE TIME and we are out of harm's way, but I'm still not crazy about it...

Emotional Illusions

So here's the state of my week: I'm being moderately pressured to produce results on three completely separate research projects, I have a lab project to finish and a paper to write in the next week, I have a midterm exam in a couple days for the class that has been killing me this quarter, I'm hitting the espresso again like it's my job, and I didn't even go to yoga yesterday.  (Yes, even I miss days.)  Oh yeah, and the hills on the edge of my town are on fire.  Again.

Came home to my apartment after a long day's work, changed from jeans and tee into my favorite sundress, grabbed my mat, and practiced the 6:30 class.

Class was fine.  Not awful, not brilliant, not unusual.  It was class.

Left class, turned on a great CD, rolled down the car windows to feel the warm night air, stopped at the grocery store for spinach and mango juice, and drove home with the inexplicable but powerful feeling that there could be absolutely nothing wrong, anywhere in the world.

Re-energize, revitalize, reorganize.

The left eye of the bird...

One of the mental qualities that we try to develop in Bikram yoga is concentration, right?

Here's a cool experiment that will test your powers of concentration.  Bear with me on this one!!  First, you need to watch a short video with two teams of people, one team in white shirts and one team in black shirts, passing a basketball.  Your job is to watch closely and count how many passes the white team completes.  Ready?  GO, here.

Do this before you finish reading this post or you will ruin my cool trick!  Don't cheat! I promise it's not one of those lame videos where something jumps out at you and makes you crap your pants.  You don't even need to watch with the sound on.  Just focus on counting the white team's passes.

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One of my favorite parts of Bikram's newest book is the story he tells about concentration: an enlightened teacher gathers all his students together and lines them up in a field, with a single tree standing miles in the distance with a wooden bird in its branches.  Each boy has a bow and a single arrow.  The teacher tells the boys, "Everyone aim at the bird. Then, when I call your name, shoot the bird."

Approaching the first boy, the teacher asks, "What do you see at the end of the field?" 

"I see the bird, Sir!" 

"What else do you see?" 

"I see the tree, Sir!" 

"What else do you see?" 

"I see the sky and everything behind the tree, Sir!" 

"WRONG!  Next boy!"  The teacher goes down the line and asks the same question to 99 more boys, who give 99 different answers, all of which get the same response: "Wrong! Next boy!"

Finally he comes to the last boy, his favorite student.  

"What do you see, Arjun?" 

"I see the bird, Sir!" 

"What else can you see?" 

"Just the bird, Sir!" 

"What part of the bird?" 

"I see the head of the bird, Sir!" 

"What part of the head?" 

"I see the left eyeball, Sir!" 

"What else do you see?" 

"Nothing, Sir!" 

"Shoot!"  

Arjun releases his arrow and pierces the left eye of the bird, passing the test.

I think this is an awesome description of pure concentration.  I put it in the back of my mind sometimes  when I am practicing.  Focus your eyes on one point on your standing knee in the mirror, concentrate very deeply, don't move your eyes, don't blink your eyes.  Lock the knee. What do you see?  Lock the knee. The left eye of the bird.  Lock the knee.  Nothing else.

Now here's my fun trick.  Go back and watch that video again, but this time, don't concentrate on counting the passes, just watch it casually.

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I bet you didn't see that gorilla before, right??  (If you did, and you haven't seen this video before, then you are definitely in the minority.  The first time I saw this, I was in a room of 200 MIT students, and there were only 2 or 3 people who saw the gorilla.  I was not one of them.) The video is from an experiment on sustained inattentional blindness.  

I like this because it shows that you really can concentrate on one thing to the exclusion of everything else.  You can theoretically become so focused that a big freaking gorilla could walk through the middle of the yoga room during standing head to knee, and you wouldn't even notice.

Just don't do it wrong!

If I tend to repeat myself here, it's because some things are always true.

I've been having great yoga classes all week - and they haven't just been good, they've been HARD. Every one of them. Surprisingly so. I've been getting my heart beating so fast that I really have to concentrate to remember to breathe. No cruise control!!

All week, I've been going into every posture with new focus, with renewed attention to the details and nuances that I had started to forget or let slide, and with excitement and curiosity about the new bits of information that I've learned. And in every class, I've had my mentor's words in the back of my head: "You can do it!" and "Just don't do it wrong." Always spoken with love, energy, humor, and belief. So simple, so clear, and so true.

Towards the end of practice last night, an old moment from one of her classes floated back into my head. After giving me a correction on alignment, she commented, "see, even the very flexible body always seeks comfort." I love that reminder: "the body always seeks comfort." I love how she says "the body" instead of "you," because it makes the statement not about blame or laziness or anything like that - it's just saying, look, this is a natural thing that's always going to happen, so know that. Pay attention.

I've spent enough time doing Bikram yoga that my body is very familiar with the postures, and the downside is that my body is very good at finding comfort in the practice, even at the wrong times! So now I'm coaxing myself out, finding the strength and alignment, even feeling HOT and out of breath sometimes, and you know... just kill yourself... just don't do it wrong... it's only yoga...