April Showers

I planted a whole bunch of seeds on Monday. Basil, cilantro, parsley, chives, tomatoes, radishes, peppers, peas. I've never grown from seed before. I usually just get the little pre-grown plants from the grocery store. But I've got a nice big south-facing porch that gets tons of sunlight, and I am trying to make the most of it this year.

So I started all the seeds inside (with help from my boyfriend, a more expert gardener than me), gave them some water, and put them in little planters on the windowsills around my apartment. I guess this is the proper way to do it - start them off inside, and then when they get bigger and stronger, you can plant them outside.

I went around yesterday to check on all my seeds, and none of them have sprouted yet. Where are they?! It's already been two whole days! So I checked the information on the packets, and of course most of seedlings are supposed to sprout up after a couple of weeks, not days. So much for my instant gratification. I have to be patient! Again!

It's the same lesson in yoga class. This comes up all the time. We don't want to wait around for all those slow changes to happen. We want to make them happen. Serenity now! The beatings will continue until morale improves!

Sometimes that mindset works fine. Sometimes you really can make a change in a single session. The mental stuff is like that sometimes - you can change your mind in half a second. But the physical changes usually take longer. You can't force your body open overnight. You have to give it the right environment - sunlight, air, water - and then allow it to open up, "like a flower petal blooming"!

Before class last night, some of the teachers were talking with a student at the front desk. She wanted to know, "How long is it going to take before I can get into all these postures?" We told her, "It depends. Maybe weeks, maybe months, maybe years." She said, "Oh, ok! That makes me feel better." Turns out she'd only done 3 classes so far and was worried that she might not be able to achieve the postures fully like everyone else. Her joints are full of arthritis and the class is difficult for her, so she needed a little encouragement. We told her not to worry - nobody "gets into" all the postures in only 3 classes! Give it 3 years and then we'll talk!

This same student had some great news for us. After her first 3 classes, she went home and painted her toenails. This was a big deal. Because of the arthritis in her hips and spine, it was very hard for her to reach her toes.... she hadn't been able to paint her toenails in years! Great progress already! Her postures might not look too different yet, but all the important changes are already happening internally, underground.

I had a teacher once who said, "It's easy to forget about the things that you can't see." But that's where the interesting work always begins. It's invisible to the eye, at least in the beginning, but it's all happening underground, underneath your skin.

We had a few glorious sunny days here in Providence, and then the clouds came back and it rained all night. But I planted some new flower seeds out on my porch yesterday, in the afternoon sun, so now I don't mind the rain. It's supposed to be good for my flowers. April showers bring May flowers, so they say. We will see! I'm just trying to practice patience and love in everything I do, tending the garden one day at a time.

NYC Follow-Up - The Journey Continues!

Here it is, the post that I keep putting off writing because I am too busy being lazy and going on yoga strike!

If anybody has been keeping track, you'll know that the National Yoga Asana Championships happened less than two weeks ago in New York City! (In fact I know that quite a lot of you were there, some of you as competitors and some of you in the cheering section.) Since I came in first place for my region in January, I went to nationals as a competitor this year for the first time. Woohoo!

It was quite an experience, and I've decided that I liked it. I liked it more than I expected... because to be honest, I was kind of dreading it. I love doing the regional events because they're fun and friendly and all my friends are there and it's not too much pressure. The national competition is a whole different ball game, much higher level. And I didn't have that long to get ready - there was only about a month between the regionals and the nationals, so I felt like I was cramming a little bit to get ready for the big one.

But in the end, it was a good time. It was pretty nerve-wracking waiting for my turn to get up on stage, and I certainly didn't give my best performance - I wobbled all over the place in standing bow - but I had a lot of fun being on stage! I just smiled through the routine, thought of all my friends and family watching from home, and tried to show how much I loved the postures, even when they didn't come out perfectly. I nailed my optionals at least, including peacock pose, which I had been working on like crazy all month. My other optional was full cobra, one of my all-time favorites. I came off stage grinning, hugged my friend Teri (who was giving out flowers), and walked across the backstage with Esak Garcia, who was on "hug the competitors" duty. This was actually my first personal interaction with the famous Esak. He put his arm on my shoulders and said, "Wow, you seem really happy!" and I said, "Yeah that was crazy, I just learned 20 new things in 3 minutes!" and he gave me a high five. So that was a nice moment!

The whole time I was there, I kept thinking about all the people supporting me at home. My studio held a donation class and raised enough money to cover all my expenses, which was amazing - shout-out to Ocean State Bikram Yoga, the best ever! And I got like 5 text messages on my phone as soon as I got off stage, including a couple from my boyfriend saying, "Good job!" and "The whole family watched you and they all clapped!" (He was visiting with his family that weekend.) I called him like 2 minutes later and said, "Aaah, did they all see me fall?" He said, "No, we had a problem with the internet connection when you were balancing so I couldn't tell if it was you or just the connection." I told him, "Ok, perfect! Just show your family a picture of how I usually do the posture and tell them it looked exactly like that!"

In NYC, too, everyone was so supportive. The audience, the judges, the other competitors, the support staff, the champions - everyone was really cool to us. Rajashree sat there with a big happy smile on her face the whole time. And honestly, it's great how no one thinks less of you if you fuck up a little bit. Everyone understands that if you've made it this far, you can do the postures pretty well, and it's just the nerves that get in the way. I saw some amazing yogis fall out of postures, and it didn't make me think any less of them. I told my friend Lauren from California, "Aah, I fell out," and she said, "Oh yeah, I fell out every year for 5 years before I got it." (She nailed her routine this year and made it into the top ten.)

That was my biggest revelation for the weekend, which I've been sharing with my classes, is that competition is done with the same spirit as the regular class. If you mess up a posture in class, the teacher is never gonna be like, "Hey, what the fuck happened to you today?! Your balancing stick was a mess!" They just say, "Hey, great job today, so good to have you here, come back again tomorrow." And even at the national competitive level, it's the same way. No one says, "Geez, what happened to you up there?" They just say, "Hey, that was great, come back again next year." Doesn't matter if it's your first day of yoga or if you've been practicing for (in my case) almost 9 years. The spirit is still the same.

Oh, and I had a great time watching the finals and demonstrations on Sunday, once I was finished with my part on Saturday night. On Sunday they had the youth division, the top 10 men, the top 10 women, and then demonstrations from 4 previous international champions (Cynthia Wehr, Esak Garcia, Ky Ha, and Joseph Encinia). Those were awesome, and I totally geeked out. Videos are all up here: USA Yoga Finals. The "champion of champions" demonstrations were great because all the champions put together totally different routines that really showed who they were. I was playing around trying to choose one word to describe each champion, and I came up with "clarity" for Cynthia, "classical" for Esak, "fun" for Ky Ha, and "flow" for Joseph. You guys should watch and see what you think - those demos start around the 5:00 mark in the awards ceremony video.

As soon as I finished my routine, I decided to go on a "yoga strike" for the rest of the week to re-set my body, and I almost made it. I only did one class last week, and what a glorious class it was! Apart from that, I did a lot of napping and watching Parks and Rec, and I went on a massive cleaning/organizing spree and totally overhauled my bedroom. Today I skipped out on my usual advanced class (woke up feeling kind of groggy) and went on a run with my brand new running shoes - Couch to 5k, Week 1, Workout 1! I loved it! It was much more fun than I expected and I felt so energized after! I'm still going to take beginners class later today before I teach, and I'm excited about that too. It's definitely a nice time to ease up on the yoga and add some new things into the mix.... before coming back stronger than ever! I've gotta get ready for competition next year - it is on!

Next on the agenda: I'm heading down to Baltimore on Thursday to guest-teach some classes for a week and a half at my old studio in Hampden (while the owner is on vacation). So that will be nice. I'm excited to see some familiar faces. The boyfriend is coming down with me for the weekend and we're going to spend St. Patrick's Day in D.C. Probably at the zoo, looking at animals. Or drinking. Or getting drunk and looking at animals. Should be glorious. Will write more later!

Ninety Seconds

I had a lovely visit with my chiropractor today. I am very stubborn about going to get adjusted, because I always think I can fix everything myself, but sometimes a professional touch is extremely helpful. Especially this month, since I've been working to get ready for Nationals (eek!), I've been trying to make good use of all the talented bodyworkers in my network...

So anyway, I was leaving the chiropractor feeling great - totally relaxed and de-stressed. As I got in my car, I was thinking about my plans for the rest of the afternoon. I thought, hmm, maybe I'll make that call to my car insurance company that I've been putting off. (I hate calling insurance companies.) Then I thought, nah, I don't want to put myself in a stressful situation and reverse all the good work that my chiropractor just did!

What's wrong with that picture?

Shouldn't I be able to deal with stressful situations and stay relaxed? What good is my relaxation and meditation if I can only stay calm when no one is bugging me? As Bikram says, let no one steal your peace, or you are the loser!

Now I have to give myself credit - I am an extremely level-headed person in most stressful situations. It's pretty hard to piss me off. I can usually just take a step back, take a breath, and be objective about things. But of course I still experience stress. And it got me thinking....

I just finished reading a book called My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D. Very interesting book. It's Dr. Taylor's personal account of a massive stroke that she experienced in the left side of her brain, and the recovery she went through afterwards. As a brain scientist, she was able to learn a lot about her brain through the stroke and the recovery process. She basically lost the left side of her brain - which in meditation terms is the "monkey mind", the ego, the storyteller - and was left with just the right side of the brain, which lives in the present moment. As she recovered, she was able to choose which functions of the left brain she wanted to re-develop - such as talking, puzzling, analyzing - and which programs she could live without - anger, frustration, judgement, and so on.

That's a pretty hand-waving summary, scientifically speaking, but I hope you get the idea. The book has all the details, of course.

Here's one of the passages that I found the most intriguing. From chapter 17:

I define responsibility (response-ability) as the ability to choose how we respond to stimulation coming in through our sensory systems at any moment in time. Although there are certain limbic system (emotional) programs that can be triggered automatically, it takes less than ninety seconds for one of these programs to be triggered, surge through our body, and then be completely flushed out of our bloodstream. My anger response, for example, is a programmed response that can be set off automatically. Once triggered, the chemical released by my brain surges through my body and I have a physiological experience. Within ninety seconds from the initial trigger, the chemical component of my anger has completely dissipated from my blood and my automatic response is over. If, however, I remain angry after those ninety seconds have passed, then it is because I have chosen to let that circuit continue to run.

That's so amazing. Only ninety seconds!

For me, this information helps to solve a classic problem that comes up again and again. We always talk about how the goal of yoga is to become still, to cease the fluctuations of the mind. Nothing should steal your peace. And then here's the question (which is a pretty good question): what does that actually look like, in practice? If nothing steals your peace, do you become a completely unfeeling person? Does that mean you can't have any emotional reactions? And then how do you interact with the world?

I love this answer, because it jives with my experience so well. If some unpleasant stimulus comes at you - you get a nasty email, you get cut off in traffic, somebody shouts at you - you're still going to have a physiological response. Your pulse shoots up, you feel hot, your mouth goes dry. Essentially you're feeling the flood of chemicals being released into your blood stream. This response happens automatically. But after ninety seconds, that response can be finished, if you're willing to let go of it. You still have to take that hit, but then you can bounce right back, shake it off, and let it go. It's like if someone tosses a pebble into a lake. The ripples will appear right away, but after a short time, the lake goes back to stillness... unless you keep tossing in more pebbles.

And I love this, because it goes along really well with how we practice and teach in Bikram yoga. We're always playing with that dynamic balance between stimulation and relaxation. Sometimes when you start it seems totally nuts - "kick back more, keep kicking, kick harder!" followed by "completely relax." But it makes a lot of sense. Especially in the floor series, where we alternate between active postures and relaxation in savasana, we're training you to go back to peaceful relaxation even when you've got a lot of stimulation coming in. During the posture, you might sometimes feel frustration, irritation, or anxiety. (It happens.) But when the posture is done, you have to let go of those feelings and just relax. You're learning to take the hit, and then move on. Do the best you can, and then go back to stillness.

It's amazing how quickly emotions can come and go during a yoga practice. For example, my friend always looks sad before triangle pose and happy when it's over - ha! It's just a matter of staying with the present moment. Those chemicals don't stay in your body for long - only ninety seconds. If you're still angry after that time goes by, it's because the left side of your brain picked up the feeling and is running with it.

I definitely recommend this book, and the related website (here). It seemed pretty simple when I first read through it, but it's got a lot of depth and insight. My thoughts keep going back to it.

I could probably say more (a lot more), but I'll leave it here for now.

By the way, I still have not called my car insurance company. (Sigh.) I was too busy writing this blog...

Competition Success!

I promised myself that I would post an update on the competition before the end of the week, so here we go. For the sake of a quick update, this will be mostly just photos, because I don't want to leave you all hanging!

The venue was amazing. Check it out:

We were set up in one of the central courts of the mall, with chairs downstairs for viewing, but also with the whole second level overlooking the stage, so we drew a huge crowd! It was so much fun to hear everyone's reactions to the yoga poses - all the passer-bys were so impressed, and some of them were so mesmerized that they sat down and watched all afternoon.

As predicted, my kiddos stole the show and made everyone cry. Well not me - I was just grinning my head off. Here are a few pictures from their "half-time" demonstration:

Not too shabby!! Actually, they were brilliant. They practiced very seriously, and they had a great time on stage, especially one the audience started cheering and applauding for their every move. All our practice definitely paid off.

We had an amazing turn-out for Rhode Island. There were 10 women competing in the Rhode Island division, compared to ONE person last year, and 7 of us were from the same studio. All my students were first-time competitors, so they were all really nervous/bewildered/excited, but they all did really well. Everyone's been talking about what a crazy experience it is to compete. It's simultaneously empowering and humbling - you get the chance to show off your hard work for an adoring audience, but it also makes you realize how far you still have to go. I'm just so proud of all of them. Here are a few pictures:

Jamie

Briana

Mandy

Britany

Mo

Kat

 Don't they look great?! I'm so happy for them all. They had no idea what they were signing up for at the end of December, but they all made the commitment and did a fantastic job.

Here is also a picture I found of my friend Ashley, showing us how it's done. She placed first for Massachusetts and first overall. She's gonna be the international champion some day, for sure. Here's her awesome tumblr - 1hotGOAL - and here's her gorgeous standing bow!

And of course the news that you are all curious about (possibly).... yes, I managed to stick all my postures this year! (Unlike in previous years, which have been slightly traumatizing.) I wouldn't say that I did my best postures ever - looking at the pictures from the event, I still have a lot of little things to work on! - but I definitely gave my best performance to date and I ended up winning 1st place for Rhode Island. On to Nationals in NYC, March 2nd!!

Ta-da!

Overall it was a really great day. Getting on stage is always nerve-wracking, but it was so much fun to do it in front of a big audience surrounded by wonderful friends and yogis, and it was so inspiring to see some of the other routines. I couldn't believe how many people from our Rhode Island studio made the hike out to Natick to support us - it means so much. Our community is simply the best, no question.

More soon....

Competition Time!

Oh man - the countdown is on. The annual New England Regional Yoga Asana Championship is only a week away!

For those who are not familiar with this event, the regional yoga championships are held every year all around the country as qualifiers for the national USA Yoga event. The national event is the qualifier for the international event, and the international champions get the privilege of acting as yoga ambassadors for the year - touring yoga studios, visiting schools, giving demonstrations, teaching classes, and so on.

The mission behind USA Yoga is to bring the spirit of healthy competition to the United States, inspire yogis to improve their practice, and inspire more folks to take up yoga. I think Joseph Enicinia (last year's champion) explains this mission beautifully. He says that yoga sport will not "change" the yoga and make it more competitive - instead, the goal is to change sports into something more yogic. I love this. Instead of all the little girls wanting to be ballerinas and all the little boys wanting to be football stars, we're inspiring a generation of kids who want to grow up and be yogis!

The New England Event is being held at the Natick Mall, which I think is fricking brilliant, doing it in the middle of the mall. It makes the event more of a legit demonstration. Instead of a bunch of yogis sitting around in a closed room critiquing each other's leg position in standing head to knee, we're going to have a bunch of yogis getting up on stage and demonstrating their postures to people who are barely even aware of yoga. People will just be wandering around kids, going into Macy's to buy gloves or whatever, and then will be like, "Oh, Susie, what's that? Let's go see what they're doing!" Genius.

The organizers put it very nicely this year:

The more people who practice yoga the healthier our nation will be. We can reduce the rates of heart disease, diabetes, childhood and adult obesity, depression and so much more. By holding these friendly “competitions” or demonstrations in public places like malls, we can reach people who normally might not be aware of yoga and the many health benefits it offers. Those who are aware can be re-inspired to stay involved and to stay healthy.  

 There are some who feel competition seems contradictory to the philosophy of yoga. However, it is important to note that this is not battle to win a medal but instead a personal display for each athlete of what they have accomplished through their yoga practice. Many have come from places of injury or despair and put themselves back together with their yoga. To get up on stage and balance without wavering, to show how they have transformed body and mind is an act of self-realization and of personal fulfillment. This ability to maintain one’s peace in the midst of a challenge epitomizes the philosophy of yoga and is a shining moment in the life of the yogi. It is a beautiful thing to witness.

So that's all going down next Sunday, January 27th, at the Natick Mall, starting at 12:30pm. And it's free! So if you're in the area, you should come check it out! We'll be on the first floor near Macy's.

Logistically, the event is pretty straightforward. Each competitor has three minutes (maximum) to demonstrate his or her routine. The routine is made up of 7 postures. The first 5 postures are compulsory for everyone: standing head to knee pose, standing bow pulling pose, bow pose, rabbit pose, and stretching pose. The final 2 postures are the "optionals," which are the contestant's choice. These can be any 2 postures for the beginning or advanced classes - ideally postures which together demonstrate a combination of strength, flexibility, and balance. Each posture is scored out of a maximum of 10 points, with deductions for technical errors or incompleteness. (There is always room for improvement!) There is also a 10 point allocation for "grace," which includes breathing, composure, and stillness.

I've competed off and on since 2007, and my first competition was actually in New England, when I was practicing at Bikram Yoga Boston. That was the year that got me hooked on Bikram yoga! Since then, I've been all over the place and competed for various states. This year will be my return to the New England competition, and I'm psyched about it. No offense to the wonderful yogis anywhere else, but this is where I got started and these are my hometown peeps. It's gonna feel so good to be up on the New England stage again, for my brief 3 minutes of fame!

This has already been my favorite (and busiest) year of competition prep, because I've had the chance to coach a whole group of first-time competitors at the studio here in Rhode Island. Last year, there was only one person competing for Rhode Island. (She won. She's amazing, actually.) This year, we have seven competitors registered, just from our studio. Rhode Island is stepping it up! So I've been working with all these lovely and talented students on the weekends, plus a couple of folks who have been coming to work with us from Massachusetts. It's been so inspiring. With one exception (the amazing Dale K. who appeared from out of the mists to show us her stunning routine), none of these yogis have competed before. Our first meeting was like Competition 101 - this is the routine, these are the postures. Everyone was so nervous to get started. When we practiced this afternoon, we just flew through the routines at the end and everybody looked so good! Still some nerves, which is normal - but I'm so proud of all my students (and fellow teachers) for stepping up to the plate and doing this big scary thing. They are seriously bonding as a group, they are all getting more confident in their practice, and they are going to inspire so many people!

I've also been working with a group of kids on Sunday afternoons. They are all "pre-competitive," too young for the youth division (which is ages 11-17). Instead, they are going to give a little demonstration as a group, with music and everything. I've got two girls and two boys. They've been practicing very seriously. One of the girls, Emma, asked if she could take notes. She spells scorpion like this: "sqorpion." She and Athena can both do a killer scorpion in locust. It's been such a hoot. They're gonna steal the show, I can see it already.

It's kind of magical how everything is starting to come together. Even if my students forget the names of all their postures and fall off the stage, I'm still going to be proud of them. (Actually I have promised Mo that we'll bring her some cue cards for "standing separate leg stretching pose" in case she forgets the words.) I'm so excited to show the community what we've all been working on down here.

I think my own routine is coming along pretty well. I've been running through it every day. The coaching I've been doing really helps, because it makes me focus on all the little details. When it comes to doing it on stage... only time will tell! People always like to say that you're only competing against yourself, and this year I finally understand 100% what that means. If I miss one of my postures, it'll be because of my own tricky subconscious.The only person I need to watch out for is me! But I think this will be a good year. It will be so much fun to do the routine in front of all my friends, teachers, and students.

I'm still not sure which day I'm more excited for: January 27th, when this all goes down, or January 28th, when I will get to sleep in! It's coming soon. I will have to post an update at the end of the month and let you all know how it goes...

Clear Your Mind

Last week I was sitting at the front desk with one of our new teachers, waiting for our students to come in, and she said, "Oh my god, look at this." It was a picture of crying children from the school shooting in Connecticut. She was looking at the news reports online. She started to tell me about what was happening. Meanwhile, our students started to come in. Without even thinking about it, I told her, "Don't look at it right now and don't tell me about it." I didn't look at the news reports until the end of the day, after all our classes were finished. Then I went home, had dinner, and sat at my kitchen table in shock.

I was glad that I waited until I got home.

The great thing about the yoga studio is that it's a sanctuary, a place where you can go to escape, at least for 90 minutes. We don't need to talk about the news there. Anytime a horrible tragedy happens, the news media is saturated with information. It's all over the TV, the papers, Facebook, the radio - you can't get away from it! But at yoga, you can breathe and clear your mind.

As yoga teachers, sometimes we feel like it's part of our job to "say something" during tough times. We want to find the magic words, we want to help our students. It's a strong instinct. But the beauty of the Bikram class is its simplicity. We don't need to say anything - except the dialogue. We just need to take the class through the postures and allow the students to meditate, so that they can find clarity in their own way, in their own time.

Back in 2010, there was a memorial service for Jason Winn just outside the city where I was teaching. Jason was an amazing yoga teacher and a huge presence in the yoga community. (I only had the chance to take his class once, but I'm glad I met him.) Because of the memorial, there were lots of yoga teachers coming into town. I had been out of teacher training for exactly one week - I think I had taught seven classes at that point - and on the morning of the service, a couple of senior studio owners showed up in my class.

I thought, "Oh god, what do I say for them?" because obviously this was a really sad day for these people - they were mourning their friend. And then I thought, "Don't be crazy, Juliana, just teach the class." And that is what I did. Just the dialogue and nothing else, because hey, it was my eighth class, that was all I knew anyway.

Afterwards they both thanked me, and they specifically thanked me for giving them such a clean and simple class. They were so relieved that they didn't get some kind of hokey spiritual "woo-woo" class. A simple dialogue class was "just what they needed," because it allowed them to meditate and relax.

This really proved a point to me, and years later, I still think of it often. When students are going through a tough time - whether it's a personal tragedy or a national one - they're not in class to hear my opinion. They're not like, "My god, I just buried my mother, I'd better go take Juliana's class so that she can say something profound to make me feel better." Absolutely not! And it's a good thing, because I'm not really good at that stuff! I'm not a therapist. I just know yoga. The students come to the yoga studio for the yoga. They have other people who they will talk to for reassurance and sympathy. I will certainly give as much sympathy and support as possible, if I'm given the opportunity, but I will not make the mistake of thinking that it's my job.

Simplicity is amazing. For me, the Bikram class is a powerful form of meditation, especially when the teacher sticks close to Bikram's words. I've been taking classes from our new teachers lately, who both teach wonderful clean dialogue because it's so fresh for them, and it's amazing how much it sharpens my focus. It helps me forget about the outside world for a while. Sometimes the key to solving a problem or healing a wound is to stop thinking about it. When you have a problem, and you keep thinking and thinking and thinking about it, you just dig yourself into a deeper and deeper hole. You're picking at the wound, so it never has a chance to heal. But when you go to class, and focus on moving your body for 90 minutes, you come out feeling better - less angry, less hurt. Sometimes the solution to your problem just pops into your mind. That is the power of the meditation.

It's easy to invent new and complicated ways of describing the postures; it's a challenge to keep the class simple and clean. That's why I always come back to the dialogue. It's simple and it works.

The world is a crazy place. Sometimes it's wonderful and sometimes it's terrible. But at least we have yoga, this beautiful gift, that allows us to find clarity, time after time. As Bikram says - "When nothing else works - come to me, let me see what I can do." So simple. Just do yoga, and breathe. If more people could learn this, I think it would make the world better.

Cycling the Gunas (Not Quite a Book Review)

Last month I learned a new word: guna.

According to old-school Indian philosophy, there are three major gunas that twine together to make up all the qualities of nature. (I apologize if I butcher this explanation a little bit - I'm pulling it together from my memory and the internet.) All three gunas are present all the time, but their balance is always shifting. The gunas, in the order that I learned them, are:

- Sattva - Harmony. In a sattvic state, you feel calm and steady and you can see things clearly.

- Rajas - Activity. Associated with movement. In a rajasic state, you get a lot done. Too much rajas is associated with agitation, hyperactivity, over-stimulation.

- Tamas - Sloth. Inertia. Also a necessary quality of life (everyone needs sleep), but too much tamas is associated with lethargy, gluttony, dullness.

You will never find yourself 100% in one guna or another. Sattva is considered the most desirable state, but the literature tends to describe "seventy percent" sattva as ideal - you can't be purely sattvic all the time. To me, this is the interesting part. What happens in practice is a cycle - you cycle through the different gunas. My teacher described the cycle starting from tamas. In a tamasic state, you are lethargic. You're sitting at home, watching too much reality TV, eating too much processed food, drinking too much, sleeping too much. Depressed. From there, really the only way to go is into rajas, activity. You have to get up and do something! Go to the store, go to the bank, clean all the things!! Go and do some really strenuous, sweaty yoga practice. Go for broke. And then, from there, you can move into sattva, clarity. You don't want to do 5 hours of yoga practice anymore; you just want to sit. You find your balance, your harmony.

Then you fall asleep and the cycle starts all over again! Hee.


You know that feeling you get when you've spent ages trying to think of the perfect word, and then it finally comes to you? That's how I felt when I learned the gunas. This ties straight back into the post that I wrote last month - "Extreme" Yoga - which struck a hell of a chord with a lot of my fellow Bikram yogis. My "big idea" was that, even though Bikram yoga seems super hardcore and intense, it ought to have a calming effect in the long run. Bikram yoga attracts a lot of crazy people, but when done properly, when taught compassionately, it should help those people to become a bit less crazy.

Now I have the precise vocabulary. Bikram yoga is rajasic, especially from the perspective of a new student. But you are not meant to stay in rajas. At some point, you should continue the cycle and move from rajas (activity-movement-agitation) into sattva (clarity-harmony).

But I suspect that a lot of people move from tamas into rajas and then get stuck there for a while. And that is where things get a little bit weird.


Here is a hasty sketch that I drew of this cycle. Sorry about the crappy cell-phone camera quality. There's supposed to be an arrow going from sattva back to tamas but it's very faint.

Yep - some of my readers know exactly where I am going with this.

Now I can talk about Hell-Bent.

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Hell-Bent is a book that was published just a few weeks ago by fellow yogi Benjamin Lorr. It is a very honest inside account of Bikram yoga, including many of its weirdest aspects - teacher training, competition training. Ben Lorr starts off his journey as an overweight (or in his words, "fat fat") couch potato looking to get back in shape. He struggles through his first Bikram yoga class, goes home, passes out, and goes back to yoga as soon as possible. A familiar story! He gets hooked. He loses the weight. Then he goes to one of Esak's backbending clinics for further training. (Back then they called it backbending - these days it's known as "Jedi fight club." I have never been.) Then he goes to teacher training, nine weeks with Bikram. Then he performs onstage in the national yoga championship, totally transformed.

Does he drink the kool-aid? Eh... sometimes. But he's a writer. He's a researcher. So he researches, he takes notes, and he writes about all of it.

This is not really a book review. It's just some thoughts I had after reading the book, which I've now done twice. The first time I read the book, it took me a couple of beers to get through the last couple of chapters and I complained vocally to my roommates the whole time. But there were parts that I really liked and parts that made me laugh out loud. I went through the book again tonight (this time taking a pen to the margins and scribbling things like "thumbs up!" "OR NOT," "classic HAHAHA," and "tsk tsk") and now I feel like I have a better handle on it.

It was hard for me to read this book, even though it's well-written, because I couldn't read about Ben's experience without reflecting back onto my own experience. And our experiences have been radically different.

Gotta talk about myself for a second here. When I started practicing Bikram yoga in earnest, I had just abandoned a rather miserable attempt at a professional ballet career. (I had also left behind the hardcore academic world of engineer to pursue said career.) I felt like shit, but I was supposedly at my physical peak. I was already a bendy, skinny little thing. I was used to practicing for hours a day and beating up my body. I dove into a daily yoga practice as soon as I quit ballet because I needed something to fill up those hours. Bikram yoga appealed to me partly because of the intensity, but mostly because of something else - the clarity, the lack of judgment.

At one point in his book, Ben write that "during class, internally, there is a perfectionism, a demand for an almost hostile conformity that works like metallurgy on the human form." This is where I wrote "OR NOT" in the margin. For me, it was the opposite. I was registering that "if you try the right way, you get 100% benefits." When I practiced yoga, I was able to focus on myself without judgment. It totally changed my relationship with myself. I killed my perfectionist self and figured out how to be okay with who I was.

In terms of the gunas, everything is perfectly clear. Ben was moving into the rajasic state, and I was moving out of it. And we both did a pretty good job!

So that's how I look at this book. There's a lot of truth, but it's only one person's truth. For instance, Ben's stories about teacher training are largely about breakdowns, stress, and one unfortunately hot class. If you've read my blog from a couple years ago, you'll know that I went to teacher training and basically had the time of my life.

It's all good. Both version are true. And actually, I have to give Ben a lot of credit for being clear about the purpose of his book. In his notes at the end, he writes, "I want to reiterate the obvious, and make clear that this is just the record of one person's experience, not a bead on the Truth of Bikram (whatever that may be), or an attempt at a statement on the beautiful, chaotic, confounding community that has grown up around him." I also have to say that I really like Ben, largely because he emailed me before his book was released. He reads my blog! Awesome! We've had a nice chat via email and he's promised me that we will get together for beer/tea/juice and hash things out if I am ever in NYC. (Ben, I am holding you to that!)

I promised that this was not a book review, but I want to run through a couple of points about the book.

First, there's a fair amount of dirty laundry on Bikram in there, which kind of sucks to read. It's not like any of it is secret. Bikram has never been Mr. Appropriate, and he's pretty brazen with his girlfriends. So like, we (the Bikram teachers) all know this stuff. We know that he's pretty crazy and not always in a nice way. And most of us love him anyway, or at least love his yoga, or at least have the good sense to keep Bikram in one mental compartment and his yoga in a different one. But yeah, seeing it in print - it's the difference between knowing that your uncle is a drunk and seeing his picture plastered on the front page of the daily paper for drunk driving. Every family has its issues, but they don't necessarily want to see those issues out in public. So there's that.

Second - and this is more of a concern for the "uninitiated" who may read this book and get a wrong idea - Bikram yoga is not just about pain. For me, it's always been about feeling better. The teachers who I look up to the most are the ones who teach Bikram yoga as a healing tool, not as a weapon. That's how I try to teach it, too. I wrote "tsk tsk" in the margins where Ben wrote about showing his teachers his aches and bruises and they told him it was a natural part of the process. If I had a student who was showing up with black-and-blue bruises from pushing too hard in the postures, I would tell that student to back the fuck off. It's not necessary! All these people going to great lengths to change their bodies fast - what's the big rush? It's a lifetime practice, baby. Just take it little by little.

Third, teacher training! Okay, there's some pretty funny stuff in that teacher training chapter, but there's a huge puzzle piece missing, and it's so glaringly obvious that it took me a week to notice. (Hah.) After the chapter on training, the book goes straight on to an analysis of Bikram's personality flaws, and from there goes back to the subject of competition training.

What about teaching??

If Ben has taught any classes, he didn't mention them in his book. I shall have to ask him about this when I finally meet him for drinks - I know there are plenty of stories that he didn't include. But here's the thing about teacher training - none of it makes any sense until you start teaching. You have to "close the circle," as they say. Without teaching the class, it's all just theory mixed with nonsense. You don't understand the power of the dialogue until you use it in your classes and see its effect. You don't understand why you put up with three hours of sweating every day at training until you realize that, to make it as a teacher, you'll need to spend even more time than that in the hot room and you'd better know how to take care of yourself. Even those crazy hot classes serve a purpose - they remind you of what your poor "fat fat," out-of-shape students will feel like when the room is set at a measly 105 degrees. So even though the book gives a good insider account of the competition training business, it's still - in some big ways - an outsider account of teacher training. Because there's nothing about the actual teaching! And the teaching is the good part!

Fourth, one last thing (I promise). I have to say, on the record, that Bikram himself has always been very, very sweet to me. Maybe it's because I first met him as a regular student in Los Angeles, and not as a teacher trainee, but it's a long time since I've been intimidated by him. He does shitty things sometimes, but in my interactions with Bikram so far, I've found the guy to be lovely and helpful. He's given me good corrections in class, along with occasional compliments. I worked really hard in training, and for that, he always remembers my face and gives me a big hug when he sees me. He's hard on people in class sometimes, but usually - like it says in the book - he knows exactly where to push and he gets good results.

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Now I'm just trying like hell to wrap up this blog post! 

I've tossed out some big criticisms, but much of this book is fantastic. From the first chapter, which describes yoga competition as "this weird collection of antagonism and love," I was hooked. Parts are educational, parts are inspirational, and parts are laugh-out-loud funny. ("I nod silently and note that he poses this as a question.") There are some fabulous people profiled in the book - Emmy and Joseph are stand-outs for me - and I'm psyched for more people to know about them. The bit towards the very end about the "yoga effect," which I don't want to spoil here, is actually brilliant (especially from a Law of Attraction point of view).

I was worried that all the "dirty laundry" would scare people off, but based on the reviews I see online, a lot of the folks who read this book have been inspired to start yoga. Great success?! 

Anybody else who has read the book, I am interested to hear your thoughts. Please comment.... :)