From Liz: The Slow Burn of Energetic Indigestion.

Here's what's up: I guess I have a case of energetic indigestion. I bow forward (because this practice is half an act of supplication), knit my rhomboids together, and spread my lats like flightless wings. The work in the shoulders and back are chipping off the calcifications in my upper thoracic, and yeah, maybe it is a chakra opening, or finessing. I'm just not used to the rush of verve I get from this complete, unrelenting sequence of poses. You know when you have a great practice, and somehow, you're a cranky beotch for the rest of the day? That's happened a couple of times recently. Like I get so driven into myself and caught up in sorting through the energetic rubble, that I can't handle consciousness for the rest of the day. It's inconvenient when you still have to be a mom, wife and friend, and generally human and social.

In other news, I'm tinkering with my schedule. Getting up early to practice has been a revelation. Just knowing that I can do it is huge. I'm not so hopeless that I can't get on the mat and work at it for an hour or so. And I love the quiet dark time to myself, it's a gentle way to ease into the day. But I make bigger discoveries in my body when I practice later. It's simple enough: I'm more open, more aware, more precise (so less injury-prone) and ultimately a little braver. So I'm playing with doing a morning meditation, instead. And practicing during TT's nap. I think that the really transformative thing about the early-rising is not the yoga, but the simple act of being awake during that prana-rich time of day. Meditation is a great way to bathe in it. And the perfect way to start my day feeling (illusory as it may be) that I am in control, that I am making choices. I'm hoping that this will also soothe and normalize the burn from the ashtanga process. I've been using guided meditations from these people. Definitely recommend.

How was your yoga adventure? Any fresh thoughts from assisting?

From Liz: The Tips of My Shoulder Blades Pierced the Glass Ceiling.

Funky elbows are great learning tools. You have to really balance opposing forces in the joint to make it good yoga, right? It's the perfect place to play strength off of flexibility. Too locked in the joint, and you lose all muscular action, you're just relying on bone stacking to keep you upright. But too much muscular action and you pull the bones out of alignment.

Recent practice discoveries on my end... A couple, yes. I was practicing on my mother's floors recently, and in an effort to keep from waking TT from his nap, I had to work extra hard to control the jumps. I mean, "I reallyreallyreally don't want to wake this baby" hard. Nothing like fear to really engage those bandhas. So that was interesting.

And I've been trying to contact my shoulder blades. As in, I need to use my shoulder blades to guide me through vinyasas. Keeping the little suckers flat against my back, slightly drawn in, opens my chest, lifts my palate and engages my lats all at once. It also keeps the head of my arm bone engaged in its socket. If I keep awareness in this way, jumps are less effort, more about breath and bandha than brute strength (which I don't have much of anyway). Now I'm beginning to see that the mechanics of ashtanga are not just available to men. This may in fact be a gender-blind practice. The secretly self-hating female in me sometimes thinks that she's playing a man's game. But it turns out that a little anatomical savvy neutralizes the field.

Which brings me to this question: do you ever think about the gender politics of this field? Both at the organizational level (teachers, studio owners, etc), and at the asana level, I mean. I need to organize my deep thoughts on the subject. Let me get back to you....

From Liz: Enjoying the Sights.

Funny, this sounds a lot like "do your practice and all is coming." ;-)

And I agree. Sometimes I get really caught up in the outer aspect of a pose, commodifying the end product for my own consumption. But reading your post reminded me to be truly interested in the process; the pose is not a fixed object, but a forever unfolding and fractal experience. The series offers me direction, but only as a framework, the poses are not cages, but springboards for discovery. (Do I sound a bit like a yoga bumper sticker machine?) You know that moment when the pose sort of clicks? Like, "oh yeah, there's trikonasana." It's smug. And ultimately, it's a snake eating its own tail moment: noticing my alignment means that I'm away from the breath, dristhi, "dharana-ness" of the practice. This self-satisfaction is short-lived, because I'm not practicing for the sake of trikonasana (or say, something more virtuosic, to show off like a party trick, in place of lampshade wearing... not that I haven't been guilty of both.).

In a vinyasa sequence, such as the one that I follow, it's easy to just slide from one asana to the next, like each is only a step towards savasana. But I need to stop and see the sights along the way, or I'll get bored with this song and dance. It's like they say about raising kids, that you should "enjoy it now, it goes really fast." You get so caught up in day to day survival mode that you lose sight of the sweetness of each moment. The next thing you know, you have an ornery teenager who won't let you kiss him in public. Terrible Toddler got his head stuck in the wine rack today (don't ask) and I just laughed and thought, "guess this is one of the sights I should enjoy along the way."

In his dvds, Richard Freeman reminds us that "ultimately, this is a breathing exercise." It sounds like an off-hand remark, but it's kind of like footnoting a brief sermon with, you know... the entire Bible. Which reminds me of watching this clip.

Listening to the breath in the room made me cry. Does that make me a big cornball?

From Liz: Saucha and restorative: a.k.a. tidying and resting.

I fell off the daily practice wagon right into "sit-on-my-asana." I could blame stress and fatigue and discouragement. But to start honoring my "no victims" intention once more, I'll just own up to lazyness. Our deal on the house that we were buying has fallen apart in an ugly way. Here's a non yoga tip: don't sign a contract before having a thorough home inspection.

It will be fine. We will be okay. But the whole mess had me fearful (read: full of fear, too full to eat or sleep, or focus on the mat, like mental indigestion that weighs down your whole psyche).

The apartment is a mess, my body is a mess; I have felt disconnected from my domestic space, and the space of my own body. How to fix this? Saucha and restorative yoga. Yes, clean the F up, and simmer down for a while. The simple act of puttering around, picking things up, putting things AWAY, has the effect of organizing my brain, soothing my soul.

And today's practice was a new beginning. I started with a few slow, steady sun salutes, then just slid into prop heavy, drapey, restorative yoga. The sun salutes reconnected me to my breath. Those steady rhythms pulled me away from the frenetic and stacato energy with which I was self-victimizing. And then, settling into Supta Baddha Konasana, with an eye pillow grounding me, I felt like I was settling back into myself. I was like a skipping record, just out of groove, scratching and repeating. But the restorative practice knocked me back on track. This is a practice with gravitational pull. How can anyone possibly have an effort-based practice without the complement of a surrender-based practice? I went through a series of poses, and, as mellow they left me, I also felt like I could climb mountains.

I even feel like I can raise a toddler.

From Liz: No Victims.

This will be short. I've just incorporated a kind of tone setting intention into the beginning of my practice, a personal mantra/dedication. It's a little cheesy and vague on the face of it: "no victims." But it has been serving me well in practice and off the mat. In fact, it has kind of become the bridge between the two realms.

Obviously, I'm not the first to use a mantra to start my practice. But when I thought of what I'd like to use, sanskrit or otherwise, this is what bubbled to the surface. Humble Husband and I are buying a house, and feel kind of at the mercy of inspectors, brokers, contractors, etc; so setting the intention of not being a victim has been really important. Also, mothering a toddler is kind of kicking my butt right now. I need to remember that Terrible Toddler and I are on the same team: he is not my enemy. And in my ashtanga practice, I need to remember not to be a whiny girl, a victim of my own biology, thinking, "I can't do jump backs, I'm too weak in my upper body and I'm tiiiiiiiiired..." This practice serves me, and vice versa. This is my choice and I will deal with each issue and challenge as it arises. I can tell that I'm getting into a weepy victim place easily enough; it manifests physically as a sloppy drishti. So I tidy it up, focus my eyes and pull myself together, and off I fly.

Finally, it's kind of a non personally specific mantra, my way of offering this intention outward: "no victims," means not me, not you, not anyone. It makes this both personal therapy, and service (at least I'm flattering myself into thinking that my physical prayer is making a tiny dent in the cosmos).

Now that you are out of your brief hiatus: how do you set the tone when you step on the mat?

And btw, are you ever going to call me out on my cardio fixation??? ;)

From Liz: Confessions of a Cross Trainer.

In response to your quandry: is this one of those "mat as microcosm" moments? I find resistance to my practice is actually resistance to something else in my life (if you'll forgive the facile insertion of the idea of "tranference" into our wee dialogue).

For instance, I've just come off a nightmarish first family vacation with Humble Husband and Terrible Toddler. I packed my mat, but was so caught up in the drama of difficult travel that I only ended up using it as a changing pad. I was too scattered, pulled by my inherent vatta tendencies to focus and step onto mat/into practice mode. I think this is where the yamas and niyamas would come in handy, if I were to apply them dutifully and consistently. I know they are referred to as "constraints" and "observances." But I think the whole set acts more as an energetic funnel, harnessing prana, rather than a barrier. The ritual act of tidying my kitchen becomes an offering, etc. Maybe set up new rituals related to the yamas and niyamas in your new home??

Anyway, I am back to my routine now. First practice was predictably leaden, but it has gotten better since. In my ashtanga practice, I'm learning to trust my hands. I realized recently that a big part of my problem with jumping back has been that I don't trust my hands and arms to hold my weight, so I never really shift it completely into them as I try to transition. The more faith I've put in the palms of my hands, the smoother it has become. Still a lot of work to do, but "practice, practice..."

And I took an amazing Iygengar class where the teacher focused on having us lengthen our psoas muscles, all while broadening and wrapping our quadratus lumborum (deep back muscle) as we did a bunch of forward bending, and eka padas. For example: in eka pada sirsasana (the version of headstand where you lower one leg parallel to the floor, not this one), he had us lengthen the psoas on the lifted leg side, while wrapping the quadratus on the descended leg side, in order to stabilize. But I noticed that this action has the effect of creating a little uddiyana bandha. Which I got really way too excited about. This must be what Mark Whitwell means when he says, "asana creates bandha."

At any rate, the realization also kind of made me feel vindicated. I've heard a lot of people say that you can't mix styles of yoga, that you really should pick one thing and stick to it. But I really believe that some styles are complementary. I walked away from that Iyengar class feeling like it nourished my private ashtanga practice.

Now I just have to figure out a way to justify my love of cardio, and we'll be all set....

From Anna: The flip side of freedom

It strikes me that we are on two vastly different sides of the spectrum. You have a young child and are, as you said, tethered to your home. Securing childcare to take an hour and a half class is unrealistic at best and so you are left utilizing books and dvd's, and making the best of the space available in your home. I have deep respect, admiration, and even a touch of envy towards your dedication and flourishing home practice.

Meanwhile, I find myself in quite the opposite predicament, although predicament is far too strong a word. After moving cross-country for the second time in 16 months (but who's counting?... ) I'm in a new city with all the time in the world, studios to explore, teachers to meet, and so much flexibility in my schedule that I don't know where to begin. One would think that this would be a dream for me - that finances permitting, I would scamper around town from class to class, pausing only for nourishment and caffeine. But I'm not, and I have to wonder why.

Back in the days when I worked multiple jobs and ran around commuting, my scheduling constraints would leave me with one or maybe two do-able class options. It was a simple non-decision and incredibly easy to get myself onto the mat. But now, as I settle into a new city and life, my lack of schedule overwhelms and engulfs my intention to practice. Despite an agenda of my own accord and responsibility for no one but myself- many days I don't go to class at all. My freedom has become too much of a good thing.

I know that we all go through phases of more and less practice and that this doesn't make me negligent. I also know that throughout my transition, yoga has served me off the mat in plentiful helpings, and perhaps that accounts for some of the divide. But hearing about your home practice and the clarity it has brought you, gives me the perspective that I sorely needed. I have always inserted my practice into available slots of a busy life. But for the first time, I can organize my life around my practice. Even writing it feels luxurious to the point of indulgent. But I know I should seize the opportunity while I can, since it's only a matter of time before life gets hectic and I'm right back where I started. In that overly-scheduled but cozy place, where I can only make it to the 7:30 class.

From Liz: Where's my drishti?

I won't overthink my own intentions with regards to this blog (since they are always shifting anyway, darned vrittis). I know that I want to hold myself accountable for my yoga practice and teaching. And I want an excuse to geek out over yoga with you, my dear Anna, in a structured setting. You've been my sister yogini since we met, and this pranic exchange is just a continuation of that relationship.

So... The state of my home practice. It feels like a huge accomplishment to say that I have a home practice. I never understood why senior teachers insisted that we cultivate one. And right out of the gate, after teacher training, I just turned my practice over to the studio. I absolved myself of all responsibilty (save showing up) and followed the leader. And I took on way too many classes. I was teaching between ten and twelve classes a week (small potatoes to come people, but too much for me). So I kind of burned out. Then I had a baby. And I found myself tethered to my home, needing a teacher, or at least, a point of focus for this practice.

And what do you know, one did appear. I (re)discovered the Ashtanga Primary series, and I finally got what a jillion ashtangis already know: "practice, and all is coming." Really... While motherhood is a sometimes haphazard and improvisational art, the consistency of this series keeps me grounded and renewed day after day. I just keep coming back to the same point, and it keeps unfolding incrementally. At least it has so far, because let's be honest: I've only been playing with about half of the series, using Richard Freeman's dvds for about a month now. But the month's end has marked a radical change in my practice, and it has been all about reclaiming my original love of yoga, the thing that drew me to teach. Now it feels personal again. The series is my meta-drishti, the point around which everything else organizes itself. It is paradoxically both structuring and liberating.