Back to it after the monthly three-day break.
I came to the mat a little angry, again. It's hard to form a fitness habit that you can rely on when your body keeps grabbing hold of you and shaking. I have what have sometimes been described as "catastrophic" cycles. So in my case anyway, all those "feminine" ads you see on TV are dead wrong. I've been hospitalized for it several times and have been asked to consider a permanent, surgical fix on more than one occasion. I may choose to take that route this year but until now I have not wanted to run the risk of making a bad situation even worse. Better the devil you know...
This one's my devil. It makes me anemic, weak for a few days every month and it means I must remain very quiet and relatively still for two days every month. Almost invariably this is a weekend so it's really not that big a deal except it is pretty alarming and now that I want to maintain a fitness baseline, it is truly unworkable.
Physically, I start from scratch every month.
Of course there are many much worse health problems to have but I am not writing about health problems I am writing about being an ordinary woman trying to engage in what is for me, an extraordinary practice. This is a major hurdle to overcome.
When you add in the hormonal impact, it becomes an emotional storm and by the time I am able to be active again, the hormones, to be fair, are still very much in play.
So today my mind was all over the place. I was annoyed at having lost ground, determined to let myself go at my own pace, surprised at how slow my own pace was, (nearly had to pause the DVD) dismayed at how I already seem to have lost some flexibility in my legs, dismayed to think this might be my full range of mastery over yoga - get good for 26 days and then lose it all in the flood (so to speak) then get up, get back on the mat and start again.
You see? All over the place.
I guess, at the end of it, what I take away with me today is that I am always going to have to deal with where I am, even if it is not where I want to be. There must be ways to make progress toward my goals, ways to keep the momentum going and I am going to begin looking for them but I haven't found them yet and I have to accept that until I do, this is what I have.
I start.
I try.
I stop,
I wait.
I start again.
Breathe.
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Saturday, January 29, 2011
yoga diary - day twelve
Down day.
I don't mean that in any bad sense but if you're a woman, there are going to be two or three days a month where some things are out of your reach. For me, today, it's yoga and the sweat lodge I had hoped to attend.
For the sake of anyone who reads this and only knows the news stories about "sweat lodges," that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about a traditional First Nations sweat held in the country, supervised by Elders and not ever arduous much less harmful. If you can't take it, you can leave the lodge. You do not fast for days in advance and you feast afterwards. It is a kind of cleansing and it's tied deeply to the land. Women in "their moon" are filled up with energy that is powerful and pretty chaotic so traditionally we do not participate in sweats or other ceremonies when that's going on.
Same is true of yoga. That's enough said about the nitty gritty. The question for today becomes then, how do you carry on a daily practice when your body has limitations?
I don't want to go entirely without it in case I break the habit and lose ground, however there is no question that physically it's not something I can do today. I slept in for one thing. Then fooled around much more than I should have on the computer. Had breakfast, talked to a friend and then finally settled in here.
The lack of discipline in every aspect of my life except yoga is beginning to eat away at me. Working for yourself, you can go through phases where you do exactly what you have to do and not much more. This leads to anxiety and all sorts of other complications - the mind gets noisy and you end up desperately seeking peace anywhere you can find it and at the same time being sort of garrolously eager to pounce on social and potential networking situations. It's uncomfortable and unattractive. (And I had cake for breakfast so I feel doubly gross and lazy.)
Alright - no yoga to help me so I have to do the yoga in my mind and in my breathing.
Singing helps, to a point. Doing all the mundane household stuff helps too. Trying not to worry though, well, actually getting beyond worry, that helps the most. Singing can get my beyond worry for a while and if it's challenging enough it helps my breathing. But worry will stop me dead in my tracks.
I'm not thinking of yoga in terms of moving anything but the weight off my body. I like the idea that it is calming and so far, my muscles seem a bit more defined but people do ascribe an awful lot to the practice and so far, to be honest, all I seem to have gotten from it that way is a sense of guilt and alarm at how easy it is to slide into being unproductive.
Maybe I'll come back to this. The desk isn't helping.
I don't mean that in any bad sense but if you're a woman, there are going to be two or three days a month where some things are out of your reach. For me, today, it's yoga and the sweat lodge I had hoped to attend.
For the sake of anyone who reads this and only knows the news stories about "sweat lodges," that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about a traditional First Nations sweat held in the country, supervised by Elders and not ever arduous much less harmful. If you can't take it, you can leave the lodge. You do not fast for days in advance and you feast afterwards. It is a kind of cleansing and it's tied deeply to the land. Women in "their moon" are filled up with energy that is powerful and pretty chaotic so traditionally we do not participate in sweats or other ceremonies when that's going on.
Same is true of yoga. That's enough said about the nitty gritty. The question for today becomes then, how do you carry on a daily practice when your body has limitations?
I don't want to go entirely without it in case I break the habit and lose ground, however there is no question that physically it's not something I can do today. I slept in for one thing. Then fooled around much more than I should have on the computer. Had breakfast, talked to a friend and then finally settled in here.
The lack of discipline in every aspect of my life except yoga is beginning to eat away at me. Working for yourself, you can go through phases where you do exactly what you have to do and not much more. This leads to anxiety and all sorts of other complications - the mind gets noisy and you end up desperately seeking peace anywhere you can find it and at the same time being sort of garrolously eager to pounce on social and potential networking situations. It's uncomfortable and unattractive. (And I had cake for breakfast so I feel doubly gross and lazy.)
Alright - no yoga to help me so I have to do the yoga in my mind and in my breathing.
Singing helps, to a point. Doing all the mundane household stuff helps too. Trying not to worry though, well, actually getting beyond worry, that helps the most. Singing can get my beyond worry for a while and if it's challenging enough it helps my breathing. But worry will stop me dead in my tracks.
I'm not thinking of yoga in terms of moving anything but the weight off my body. I like the idea that it is calming and so far, my muscles seem a bit more defined but people do ascribe an awful lot to the practice and so far, to be honest, all I seem to have gotten from it that way is a sense of guilt and alarm at how easy it is to slide into being unproductive.
Maybe I'll come back to this. The desk isn't helping.
Friday, January 28, 2011
yoga diary - day eleven
It was hard again this morning and my first thought was, "oh no, not another angry yoga day."
Why isn't this getting easier? It was hard to get to the mat but I got there. Once there, I expected to be rewarded for my efforts with some good feelings, maybe some more graceful stretching but the first moves of my practice were harder than they have ever been.
It was hard to get my knees anywhere near the floor when I sat down, honestly, I don't think they would have been lower than my hips if I'd been sitting with my butt on a chair, much less a pillow or a rolled up towel. Then the first bends and stretches? No way, the backs of my thighs were resistant to the point of pain. It was harder than doing this on the very first day.
I still don't know why that is but what I did about it was to decide, fine, if it's going to be this hard, I'll take breaks, I'll make it easy, I'll cheat but I won't stop.
Red tide is immanent, it's natural for me to be impatient and angry about everything. This is the point where Kali energy peaks and destroying things, especially things that will shatter, is an attractive thought.
So I gave myself that permission and carried on.
About halfway through this difficult practice I started noticing the instructor's breathing was not perfect, she would say four more breaths and then actually instruct two or she'd say "deep inhale" then wait for solid 30 seconds, (and breathe the whole time) and then finally "exhale slowly." Not possible, I would have passed out.
She sometimes gave instructions twice. "Take one more deep breath and then lower your leg to the floor, now one more deep breath and lower that leg to the floor" speaking of the same leg.
Then I realized I wasn't reacting the way I expected. Instead of being annoyed and frustrated I was thinking to myself, "see? nobody gets it all right all the time." It's ok for things to go wrong.
I wasn't in the usual rut.
Suddenly I started thinking about life and love and how it all starts perfectly in ease and comfort and how we resent effort and resist it all the time and really? who wouldn't effort is pain, it's hard, it's sweat. Then I started thinking - what's the opposite of sweat and effort? It's ease and comfort and stillness, ultimately it's sleep. But sleep can be disturbed so I suppose ultimately it's death - which is like before birth, which is perfect and contained and still and (for the most part) solitary.
Which one do I want?
I was thinking I was at some sort of breakthrough point and becoming very wise when we reached Savasana (corpse pose) the last pose of the practice, lying there still and as "dead" as possible I heard the instructor say, "this is your most important pose."
Right.
It's not all about stillness or avoiding that and it's not about all about effort and extending myself, it's about finding where I am for the day and making the most of it. In love, it's about effort sometimes and repose at others, in life - same thing.
So on what is likely to be the last day of my physical practice for the month, I am back to where I started. Stretching for balance, looking for answers, trying to get somewhere with all of this.
It's not a line, it's a labyrinth.
Why isn't this getting easier? It was hard to get to the mat but I got there. Once there, I expected to be rewarded for my efforts with some good feelings, maybe some more graceful stretching but the first moves of my practice were harder than they have ever been.
It was hard to get my knees anywhere near the floor when I sat down, honestly, I don't think they would have been lower than my hips if I'd been sitting with my butt on a chair, much less a pillow or a rolled up towel. Then the first bends and stretches? No way, the backs of my thighs were resistant to the point of pain. It was harder than doing this on the very first day.
I still don't know why that is but what I did about it was to decide, fine, if it's going to be this hard, I'll take breaks, I'll make it easy, I'll cheat but I won't stop.
Red tide is immanent, it's natural for me to be impatient and angry about everything. This is the point where Kali energy peaks and destroying things, especially things that will shatter, is an attractive thought.
So I gave myself that permission and carried on.
About halfway through this difficult practice I started noticing the instructor's breathing was not perfect, she would say four more breaths and then actually instruct two or she'd say "deep inhale" then wait for solid 30 seconds, (and breathe the whole time) and then finally "exhale slowly." Not possible, I would have passed out.
She sometimes gave instructions twice. "Take one more deep breath and then lower your leg to the floor, now one more deep breath and lower that leg to the floor" speaking of the same leg.
Then I realized I wasn't reacting the way I expected. Instead of being annoyed and frustrated I was thinking to myself, "see? nobody gets it all right all the time." It's ok for things to go wrong.
I wasn't in the usual rut.
Suddenly I started thinking about life and love and how it all starts perfectly in ease and comfort and how we resent effort and resist it all the time and really? who wouldn't effort is pain, it's hard, it's sweat. Then I started thinking - what's the opposite of sweat and effort? It's ease and comfort and stillness, ultimately it's sleep. But sleep can be disturbed so I suppose ultimately it's death - which is like before birth, which is perfect and contained and still and (for the most part) solitary.
Which one do I want?
I was thinking I was at some sort of breakthrough point and becoming very wise when we reached Savasana (corpse pose) the last pose of the practice, lying there still and as "dead" as possible I heard the instructor say, "this is your most important pose."
Right.
It's not all about stillness or avoiding that and it's not about all about effort and extending myself, it's about finding where I am for the day and making the most of it. In love, it's about effort sometimes and repose at others, in life - same thing.
So on what is likely to be the last day of my physical practice for the month, I am back to where I started. Stretching for balance, looking for answers, trying to get somewhere with all of this.
It's not a line, it's a labyrinth.
Thursday, January 27, 2011
yoga diary - day ten
This morning I was angry. I don't want to be doing yoga by myself in Ottawa. I don't want to be plodding ahead and being brave in the snow and ice by myself, trying to prove myself worthy of whatever it is I want and am not getting. I want to be in Austin, that's a fact.
Today yoga was about throwing myself at the practice and resenting it at the same time as digging into it to use up some of the angry energy that was sparking and volting through my body like contained lightning.
I started sweating almost immediately.
That surprised me because I've been doing this for nearly a month now and expect the sweat to come into it a little later every day, which has been the pattern so far and is, I think, the pattern with most strenuous exercise. Today, I was sweating five minutes into it - and it felt good.
The practice was hard but rewarding. I leaned into it. I felt myself tighten when I reached up in mountain pose, I pushed my heart out in cobra and for a second actually did feel like I was floating upward. I never believe yoga rhetoric, I listen respectfully and I follow the postures as closely as I can, I do the breathing as much as possible but I never believe I am going to feel the way the instructor says I should feel. Their descriptive phrases are almost always over my head.
My inner body is not "radiant" it does not "pause." I don't really feel the balance - I strain and struggle and wonder why my belly always seems to be in the way and if it will ever, ever allow me to do a real forward bend. I feel my arms start to tremble in downward dog and when I am asked to twist from a position of a low lunge? Well, sometimes I think that will simply never be possible.
Just the same, I was leaning into it today and thinking only about the physical cadence of breathing and moving, surging up and folding down. I think I was learning something about making an effort even when you really don't want to when my phone rang.
And rang and rang. I knew who it was and I wanted to answer but I ignored it. That made yoga even harder. I kept going.
I wanted to stop and check my phone but I kept going and pushing through my practice, waiting to let the world start until after I was finished with my routine. I made it and felt oddly calm and angry still, both at the same time. I guess resolute is the word I am looking for. (look at all the I's in those last two paragraphs, I'm really seated in myself right now, I guess)
So what am I learning here?
A few things. My anger stays inside me until I release it. Love does not reach me without my permission. The work doesn't end. I do this every day and every day it changes but it does not end, it's a wave that ebbs and flows, not a goal to arrive at.
Both physical fitness and mental clarity are hard, they are not made any easier by deciding to reach them by means of advanced practices in difficult situations.
Winter lasts forever.
(just like the moment we inhabit)
Today yoga was about throwing myself at the practice and resenting it at the same time as digging into it to use up some of the angry energy that was sparking and volting through my body like contained lightning.
I started sweating almost immediately.
That surprised me because I've been doing this for nearly a month now and expect the sweat to come into it a little later every day, which has been the pattern so far and is, I think, the pattern with most strenuous exercise. Today, I was sweating five minutes into it - and it felt good.
The practice was hard but rewarding. I leaned into it. I felt myself tighten when I reached up in mountain pose, I pushed my heart out in cobra and for a second actually did feel like I was floating upward. I never believe yoga rhetoric, I listen respectfully and I follow the postures as closely as I can, I do the breathing as much as possible but I never believe I am going to feel the way the instructor says I should feel. Their descriptive phrases are almost always over my head.
My inner body is not "radiant" it does not "pause." I don't really feel the balance - I strain and struggle and wonder why my belly always seems to be in the way and if it will ever, ever allow me to do a real forward bend. I feel my arms start to tremble in downward dog and when I am asked to twist from a position of a low lunge? Well, sometimes I think that will simply never be possible.
Just the same, I was leaning into it today and thinking only about the physical cadence of breathing and moving, surging up and folding down. I think I was learning something about making an effort even when you really don't want to when my phone rang.
And rang and rang. I knew who it was and I wanted to answer but I ignored it. That made yoga even harder. I kept going.
I wanted to stop and check my phone but I kept going and pushing through my practice, waiting to let the world start until after I was finished with my routine. I made it and felt oddly calm and angry still, both at the same time. I guess resolute is the word I am looking for. (look at all the I's in those last two paragraphs, I'm really seated in myself right now, I guess)
So what am I learning here?
A few things. My anger stays inside me until I release it. Love does not reach me without my permission. The work doesn't end. I do this every day and every day it changes but it does not end, it's a wave that ebbs and flows, not a goal to arrive at.
Both physical fitness and mental clarity are hard, they are not made any easier by deciding to reach them by means of advanced practices in difficult situations.
Winter lasts forever.
(just like the moment we inhabit)
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
yoga diary - day nine
Woke up this morning a little early. I was taking my time getting out of bed when the phone started ringing. It was 7:00 am Ottawa time, 6:00 am according to every time-keeper I maintain. (I am staying on Central Time, don't ask) The Fed Ex guy wanted to know if my address was a mistake and then to inform me the TV would be arriving today.
Sounds like an average morning, right? Well, I have trouble with gifts. They make me feel abandoned. When I was a kid people gave gifts when they wanted to control me or didn't want to bother being with me. Over time I came to associate gifts and gestures of kindness with indifference and cruelty.
All of this means yoga this morning had a certain element of faking it until I make it. I don't want to be controlled by other people. I don't want to have these feelings about gifts. I don't want to get to a point where I resent my yoga practice but truth be told there is some of that mixed in every single time I go through the routine.
So I practiced half-consciously and it was entirely a physical workout. Harder than usual, in fact, because I went into it a little unwillingly.
Fact is, if I want to be comfortable doing anything else in the rest of my life, for the rest of my life, I am going to have to do at least this much yoga every single day for the rest of my life. It's not a New Year's resolution, it's a change of life. And if I am realistic, I have to admit, I am always going to wish I didn't have to do it. I went into this feeling like I was doing it to get to a goal but the goal is to be healthier - that means stepping it up is an option, actually it's probably going to be a necessity but stopping once I reach a plateau? That will never happen. Does it happen in life? I used to think so, now I'm not so sure.
Today I am fed up with Ottawa so that's not helping. It's snowing (still, again) and outside all there is to see are crows, asphalt, white sky and snow. I suppose I should see the humor in my being born in the winter and yet not interested in winter sports. It has been that way all my life. I'm not a winter person. Having to saddle-up in coat, boots, scarf, sweater, heavy socks, mitts, hat and bag full of just-in-case supplies, pockets full of tissues for the never-ending runny nose and the awareness that no matter what I do my fingers, toes and nose are still going to get burned by the cold every time I want to go outside is not ok with me. Still, here I am, in Canada in the absolute dead of winter and so it shall be for the next few months.
Lesson for the day? Yoga can't fix everything. You still have to go through the painful parts.
Maybe it's good that the TV arrived today.
Sounds like an average morning, right? Well, I have trouble with gifts. They make me feel abandoned. When I was a kid people gave gifts when they wanted to control me or didn't want to bother being with me. Over time I came to associate gifts and gestures of kindness with indifference and cruelty.
All of this means yoga this morning had a certain element of faking it until I make it. I don't want to be controlled by other people. I don't want to have these feelings about gifts. I don't want to get to a point where I resent my yoga practice but truth be told there is some of that mixed in every single time I go through the routine.
So I practiced half-consciously and it was entirely a physical workout. Harder than usual, in fact, because I went into it a little unwillingly.
Fact is, if I want to be comfortable doing anything else in the rest of my life, for the rest of my life, I am going to have to do at least this much yoga every single day for the rest of my life. It's not a New Year's resolution, it's a change of life. And if I am realistic, I have to admit, I am always going to wish I didn't have to do it. I went into this feeling like I was doing it to get to a goal but the goal is to be healthier - that means stepping it up is an option, actually it's probably going to be a necessity but stopping once I reach a plateau? That will never happen. Does it happen in life? I used to think so, now I'm not so sure.
Today I am fed up with Ottawa so that's not helping. It's snowing (still, again) and outside all there is to see are crows, asphalt, white sky and snow. I suppose I should see the humor in my being born in the winter and yet not interested in winter sports. It has been that way all my life. I'm not a winter person. Having to saddle-up in coat, boots, scarf, sweater, heavy socks, mitts, hat and bag full of just-in-case supplies, pockets full of tissues for the never-ending runny nose and the awareness that no matter what I do my fingers, toes and nose are still going to get burned by the cold every time I want to go outside is not ok with me. Still, here I am, in Canada in the absolute dead of winter and so it shall be for the next few months.
Lesson for the day? Yoga can't fix everything. You still have to go through the painful parts.
Maybe it's good that the TV arrived today.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
yoga diary - day eight
Last night I was up unexpectedly late. I don't have much of a problem sleeping, as a rule but the people with whom I am most deeply involved always seem to have, at best, a tortured relationship to sleep.
I don't understand insomnia. I know people suffer terribly and I try to be compassionate. The few times I've really had trouble sleeping it was an utterly miserable feeling. However, it must be said that my sleep problems, when they do arise, have invariably been self-inflicted and usually self-inflicted in the service of drama.
This results in There are times when I find other people's insomnia annoying and during those times, in the back of my head I admit, I sometimes find it difficult not to consider it attention seeking behavior. I am that way about physical processes. I believe your body will do what it needs to do when push really comes to shove and if you truly are sleep-starved, your body will knock you out where you sit, it won't wait for your permission to do it. (Actually, I've seen this happen on many occasions)
Anyway, it wasn't insomnia that tripped me up last night, rather it was the fact of someone else's insomniac habits catching up to them and their body ambushing them making them late and tipping the row of dominoes that made me late too.
The result of this was that I stayed up too late and then overslept. Physical things, it seems to me, are all math. Our bodies work to achieve a zero-sum game and we either notice and cooperate, making it easier to be more than just physical creatures, or we don't notice and refuse to cooperate, making us unwitting slaves to the physical process, slaves who are ironically irrational and convinced of our own sublimely unique and ineffable waves and patterns. I swing between these two extremes all the time. I assume everyone does. It's when I think I am the most special that I am really about as average and predictable as it is possible to be.
This morning I was late getting up. Yesterday left me with very little accomplished. The last thing I wanted to do was set myself back another hour to do yoga. The body may have a will to health but the mind is something else altogether.
Somehow I managed to override the desire not to get to my morning practice, tell myself that one hour spent in yoga buys me three hours of productivity in every other aspect of my life (which is true, always.) and got myself to the mat.
Parts of my practice were harder than I expected, parts were easier; the first half of it was practically unconscious. Starting out, I felt like it would take forever to finish. This despite the fact that I use a DVD and it always takes exactly the same amount of time.
I have modified one part of the routine, the lizard pose, which I find too demanding, always have. Now that I've modified it, it is one of the easiest poses in the series. I still dread it.
Observing all of this rolling around in my head something occurred to me; it is not only my practice that influences my life, my life, my thoughts, my resistance - those things influence my practice just as much as my practice influences those things.
When I do yoga daily and eat properly, or at least get five to seven servings of fruit and vegetables every day, my mind clears and I am better able to see the issues that need resolution in my life. I am a more efficient machine serving a mind and soul that are liberated to do their transcendent work.
Does that sound like the opposite of yesterday?
Isn't that interesting....
back to work.
I don't understand insomnia. I know people suffer terribly and I try to be compassionate. The few times I've really had trouble sleeping it was an utterly miserable feeling. However, it must be said that my sleep problems, when they do arise, have invariably been self-inflicted and usually self-inflicted in the service of drama.
This results in There are times when I find other people's insomnia annoying and during those times, in the back of my head I admit, I sometimes find it difficult not to consider it attention seeking behavior. I am that way about physical processes. I believe your body will do what it needs to do when push really comes to shove and if you truly are sleep-starved, your body will knock you out where you sit, it won't wait for your permission to do it. (Actually, I've seen this happen on many occasions)
Anyway, it wasn't insomnia that tripped me up last night, rather it was the fact of someone else's insomniac habits catching up to them and their body ambushing them making them late and tipping the row of dominoes that made me late too.
The result of this was that I stayed up too late and then overslept. Physical things, it seems to me, are all math. Our bodies work to achieve a zero-sum game and we either notice and cooperate, making it easier to be more than just physical creatures, or we don't notice and refuse to cooperate, making us unwitting slaves to the physical process, slaves who are ironically irrational and convinced of our own sublimely unique and ineffable waves and patterns. I swing between these two extremes all the time. I assume everyone does. It's when I think I am the most special that I am really about as average and predictable as it is possible to be.
This morning I was late getting up. Yesterday left me with very little accomplished. The last thing I wanted to do was set myself back another hour to do yoga. The body may have a will to health but the mind is something else altogether.
Somehow I managed to override the desire not to get to my morning practice, tell myself that one hour spent in yoga buys me three hours of productivity in every other aspect of my life (which is true, always.) and got myself to the mat.
Parts of my practice were harder than I expected, parts were easier; the first half of it was practically unconscious. Starting out, I felt like it would take forever to finish. This despite the fact that I use a DVD and it always takes exactly the same amount of time.
I have modified one part of the routine, the lizard pose, which I find too demanding, always have. Now that I've modified it, it is one of the easiest poses in the series. I still dread it.
Observing all of this rolling around in my head something occurred to me; it is not only my practice that influences my life, my life, my thoughts, my resistance - those things influence my practice just as much as my practice influences those things.
When I do yoga daily and eat properly, or at least get five to seven servings of fruit and vegetables every day, my mind clears and I am better able to see the issues that need resolution in my life. I am a more efficient machine serving a mind and soul that are liberated to do their transcendent work.
Does that sound like the opposite of yesterday?
Isn't that interesting....
back to work.
Monday, January 24, 2011
yoga diary - day seven
That's right, skipped days five and six, not because I didn't do yoga but because, for whatever reason, I tend to slack off on weekends.
Anyway, who reads this? It's like hollering into a cave.
So I recently read an article in the New York Times about yoga, apparently there is a woman becoming quite famous on her approach to yoga, Tara Stiles has had the audacity to suggest that yoga might be more about becoming "Slim, Calm (and) Sexy" than anything else (Slim, Calm, Sexy is the title of her book.) She recommends 15 minutes a day.
Ms. Stiles is getting significant flack from everyone else in the yoga world for exposing her dirty little secret - that she's not in it for enlightenment but rather she wants to stay fit, be relaxed and have a decent sex life indefinitely.
Surprise surprise, the book's a bestseller.
Well, me too.
When I am dripping sweat, trying desperately to stretch into lizard pose or lowering myself slowly from plank pose into position for cobra, I am not thinking of enlightenment. I am thinking about how my feet won't swell when I've been trapped at my desk for four hours and how I won't get out of breath climbing the stairs and yes, how much hotter I'll look in my black wrap around dress.
Today I got dressed in some of the old clothes that were too new to toss before I left for Austin last year because they were too tight to wear regularly in my old body. Now my new body isn't what I want it to be either but these clothes aren't tight anymore, they remind me that as little progress as I think I've made, I have made progress and that progress is not toward enlightenment, it's toward being flexible, even lithe, slender - maybe, and sexy the next time I step off the airplane in Austin. That's a fact.
I've done 21 days in a row and every one has been hard in its own way, I'll keep going anyway because I've decided that's what I need to do but if I for one minute thought that nothing dramatic would change in my appearance for all this effort? I wouldn't do it. And neither would most of the smiling yoginis sitting in their half lotus at the yoga studio two hours before they go out to try the newest thing in haute cuisine or buy a new dress without worrying about the steady decline of their physical state.
The body is part of it, sexuality is part of it, why are we all so interested in people thinking we aren't into these things? Like they come effortlessly? They don't. I did my yoga today. I didn't want to, the living room was cold and it wasn't fun but what got me onto the mat was the fact that I will improve for doing it - I will become slim, calm and sexy and I want that. Hell, don't you?
Anyway, who reads this? It's like hollering into a cave.
So I recently read an article in the New York Times about yoga, apparently there is a woman becoming quite famous on her approach to yoga, Tara Stiles has had the audacity to suggest that yoga might be more about becoming "Slim, Calm (and) Sexy" than anything else (Slim, Calm, Sexy is the title of her book.) She recommends 15 minutes a day.
Ms. Stiles is getting significant flack from everyone else in the yoga world for exposing her dirty little secret - that she's not in it for enlightenment but rather she wants to stay fit, be relaxed and have a decent sex life indefinitely.
Surprise surprise, the book's a bestseller.
Well, me too.
When I am dripping sweat, trying desperately to stretch into lizard pose or lowering myself slowly from plank pose into position for cobra, I am not thinking of enlightenment. I am thinking about how my feet won't swell when I've been trapped at my desk for four hours and how I won't get out of breath climbing the stairs and yes, how much hotter I'll look in my black wrap around dress.
Today I got dressed in some of the old clothes that were too new to toss before I left for Austin last year because they were too tight to wear regularly in my old body. Now my new body isn't what I want it to be either but these clothes aren't tight anymore, they remind me that as little progress as I think I've made, I have made progress and that progress is not toward enlightenment, it's toward being flexible, even lithe, slender - maybe, and sexy the next time I step off the airplane in Austin. That's a fact.
I've done 21 days in a row and every one has been hard in its own way, I'll keep going anyway because I've decided that's what I need to do but if I for one minute thought that nothing dramatic would change in my appearance for all this effort? I wouldn't do it. And neither would most of the smiling yoginis sitting in their half lotus at the yoga studio two hours before they go out to try the newest thing in haute cuisine or buy a new dress without worrying about the steady decline of their physical state.
The body is part of it, sexuality is part of it, why are we all so interested in people thinking we aren't into these things? Like they come effortlessly? They don't. I did my yoga today. I didn't want to, the living room was cold and it wasn't fun but what got me onto the mat was the fact that I will improve for doing it - I will become slim, calm and sexy and I want that. Hell, don't you?
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