Hot peppers, Onion rings & “Opening”

This morning I messed up and got to the shala ten minutes early. Which meant a little time to think about how complicated it is to go to the shala before work. I have to make and pack breakfast and lunch, pack clothes and makeup, pack the yoga bag, etc.

Muscle Man was eight minutes late, which meant I sat in the parking lot for 18 minutes, thinking about all the good reasons to practice at home and complaining on Twitter.

But once I was in the Mysore room, I was happy to be there.

Well, kind of.

This morning was actually one of those practices where you want to quit, but just barely hang on, section by section. “Maybe I’ll just do standing.” “Maybe I’ll just do half-primary.” “Maybe I’ll just do primary.” “Maybe I’ll do the intermediate poses but skip dropbacks.” Blah blah.

I did the whole thing.

Why was it so miserable? Muscle Man made a little “well THAT was a lot of work!” noise after he adjusted me in marichyasana C.

“It’s the NFL’s fault,” I said.

He laughed.

But seriously, what was I thinking yesterday? Hot peppers at lunch, and then, in the evening, The Cop and I went to a local sports bar. Where it was astonishingly loud (Minnesota/Philadelphia game). People were yelling and jumping around and the joy and despair and noise made me think onion rings were a good idea.

Yeah. They’re not.

I felt like hell this morning.

But I soldiered through.

Ask me how much I dreaded pasasana. (Answer = a LOT.) Interestingly, Muscle Man helped me out and I ended up with a deep bind and an amazing twist that dug into my quadratus lumborum in a way I’ve never felt before.

Of course I had a rationalization once I got close to kapotasana (“maybe skip kapotasana today!”), but then I decided I really wanted to take the opportunity for the adjustment.

Muscle Man brought my hands to my toes, as per usual. We counted the five breaths, and then he said, “Hey, Hippie Chick, can you help me out over here?”

(“Fast!” I wanted to add. “If you’re gonna help, get over here fast!”)

She came over and Muscle Man asked her to push my elbows together and toward my feet. Which she did. HARD.

“Whoa! Whoa!” Muscle Man said.

I felt something in my left shoulder (the tight, once-had-a-rotator-cuff-tear side) dislocate relocate. It felt weird, but it didn’t really hurt.

I believe it was a classic opening.

With numb hands, to boot.

Now I’m at work and have the crispy nervous system feeling — a little headachey, like after a heavy session with weights or a long hike in the desert in summer.

I also have a salad for lunch (packed last night) that includes hot peppers. I’m definitely going to avoid eating them. I’ve had enough fun with pitta for the rest of 2009.

Across the universe… Well, DC, anyhow & Raw breakie

At My Gift’s suggestion, I watched “Across the Universe,” the musical based on The Beatles’ music.

I was a bit skeptical, of course — how could other people singing The Beatles’ music be any good? Well, what a trip this movie is. The songs come alive, and the plot is sequenced so you can really see what each of the songs is about.

The overarching theme is how to respond in a world filled with injustice. In the 60s, there was a perfect storm of the Vietnam War abroad and Civil Rights unrest at home. All mediated by technology — TV brought war and rioting right into peoples’ livingrooms. There was no way to pretend it wasn’t happening, and suddenly people were faced with making a moral decision. Ignore it? Fight against it? And if you choose to fight, do you protest peacefully, or take up arms?

It’s interesting, because in the movie, during the song “Revolution” (which takes place in an SDS-like office), they sing:

We all want to change the world
But when you talk about destruction
Don’t you know that you can count me out

but they decided to leave out what’s always been the most interesting part of the song for me — where Lennon sings: “Don’t you know that you can count me out… in… out,” as if wrestling with his choice.

Against this backdrop of social turmoil is the story of a handful of friends, each trying to fashion a personal moral center. The songs are used to explore the question that people faced in the 60s (and today): will you choose to be creative or destructive?

Will you choose violence (political or personal)? Will you choose to tune out with substances (there’s a whole segment devoted to the Merry Pranksters and their electric kool-aid acid test)? Will you choose to make art (and is that an adequate response)? Will you take refuge in spirituality?

Actually, the spiritual side of the Beatles wasn’t called out too much. Just one shot of Hare Krishnas dancing through a subway car. Perhaps the spiritual stuff seemed too out there (unlike chemically induced states of alternate reality! LOL!).

I’ve always loved the song “Across the Universe,” with its recurring line of “jai guru deva om.” Ah well, perhaps it isn’t quite time for a spiritual musical.

Wonderfully, the movie winds up with “All You Need Is Love.” Which is a great song, and the moral of the story — no matter how you ultimately get there.

Okay. Writing it out like that flattens out the affect of the experience. I was all weepy through many parts of the movie, and at the end, it’s totally uplifting.

Here: read Roger Ebert’s review. He’s better at this than I.

I’m just happy this movie is available for young people like My Gift to see. She’s seen documentaries and read about the 60s in school, but this movie makes you feel the 60s.

***

This time next week, I’ll be flying to DC for a few meetings at our Washington office. Did I break down and buy a proper winter coat? Indeed I did. At overstock.com. A $400 Michael Kors wool coat for $150. Go, me!

I’m trying to get my meeting schedule squared away so I can go practice with Tova (and Alfia, if she’s around) at their shala.

I think the Ashtanga community ought to reach out to our president-elect and bring him into the cult community. He looks like he’s cut out for an Ashtanga practice. As does his wife. C’mon, Tova and Alfia! You need to get going on this!

***

Current favorite (almost) raw breakfast:

Chopped fuji apple
Chopped medjool date
Chopped raw walnuts
Splash of soy milk
Cinnamon
Nutmeg (LOTS of it! Yum!)

You can use nut milk if you want to be 100% raw. I’m not highly motivated to make nut milk, and I also have a soymilk addiction that I enjoy cultivating.

No led

No led class this morning. Meh.

I always feel conflicted about practicing on Saturdays, but I was going to go to led because Suzie C is in town, and tea after practice would be nice.

Maxine, however, had different plans for me. On Saturdays, The Cop gets home somewhere between 7 & 8 AM. The dogs have been up since somewhere around 5 AM, they’ve had breakfast, and they’re lounging around on the couch when he gets home.

When he goes to bed, Maxine goes into the bedroom to enjoy some lying-on-the-bed time (she doesn’t like to lie on the bed if I’m there). Ty stays with me.

When class time rolls around, Ty goes into his crate in the yoga room (yes, he has a crate for the bedroom and one for the yoga room — The Cop calls them “hangars” because they are freaking huge). Maxine carries on slumbering in the bedroom.

This morning, Maxine wanted to go sleep in the bedroom as per usual. And then she didn’t. She indicates her desire to come out of the bedroom by banging her big pitbull head against the door. The Cop, half-asleep, let her back out. She spent a little time with me, then went over to the door to bang her head on it. If she’s on a switching back and forth jag, it means lots of banging. So I have to hang around here to respond. And quickly, so The Cop can get his rest.

If it were Ty doing this, I’d be annoyed. But it’s Maxine, and she’s about a thousand years old in human years.

Perhaps she is just enforcing the officially prescribed Saturday rest day.

***SC, if you are reading this: apologies! I will see you at Mysore on Monday.***

Mysore-ing in the new year

First Mysore of the year was with a sub I’ve never practiced with. Was I suspicious? Of course I was! LOL!

The Poetess, who is also a teacher, was there this morning. So it was just the three of us — teacher, another teacher, and me — Mysore-ing along quietly.

Just before navasana, I ducked out to pee. As I was returning to the room, I saw a woman standing by the closed door, looking confused.

“Is this the Mysore class?” she asked. “It seems like I’m late.”

“There’s a three hour window,” I told her. “You can come any time and do your practice.”

“I don’t *have* a practice,” she said nervously.

“You’re in luck,” I told her. “There’s a teacher right here,” and I opened the door and pointed to the sub.

I always love when a new person shows up. They suck up a lot of attention, which gives the room a sort of “snow day” feel. The teacher is otherwise occupied, so the kids get a break. 😉

I was happy to go about my business, figuring I’d just ask for a kapo adjustment when I got to it. My original suspiciousness about the sub had faded after a few early adjustments, and I felt okay about getting a kapo assist from her.

Suzie Columbus came in just after the new woman. After a quick greeting, we both settled down to practice. I don’t know if it’s my New England work ethic, but I love that in a Mysore room you can be really happy to see someone you haven’t seen in a year, and then everyone goes back to their work.

Kapo rolled around and I waited for the sub to finish walking the new woman through prasarita padottanasana D. It always amazes me to watch new people go through the standing sequence — I tend to forget how challenging it is.

I was pleased to notice that I didn’t get nervous while waiting for the sub. Used to be that if I had any break between laghu vajrasana and kapotasana, I’d get very anxious. I still don’t like to stop at any point between bhujapidasana/kurmasana/supta kurmasana — it’s like a weird physical superstition.

Anyhow, the sub eventually came over and I went back for kapotasana. And I realized, as I was hanging back, that not all teachers adjust it the same way. VBG and Muscle Man grab my hands and put them on my feet (left hand first, then right) before my head goes on the mat. All I do is “chicken wing” my elbows (that thing where you point your elbows out to try to grasp your feet). My chicken wing is entirely for show — I am not coordinated enough (yet) to actually control where my hands go when my elbows are splayed like that. So my chicken wings are mostly to indicate to the teacher that it’s time to help me… time for them to put my hands on my feet.

The sub waited for me to put my head down, then brought my left hand to my toes, then grabbed my right hand — at which point the left hand popped off, etc.

I asked if we could try again, because I saw The Poetess had packed up to leave and was standing there, watching.

“Will you push my elbows toward my feet?” I asked her. She agreed.

So I went back again, and this time, while my head was off the ground, asked The Poetess to push on my elbows to send my hands to my feet. Which she did, tentatively.

“You can go ahead and push hard,” I told her, even as I was thinking, “Hey, look at me — all breathing and kapo-ing and giving orders!”

The sub grabbed my hands and gave a good tug, which brought my hands to the middle of my feet. I’m hoping that once I am more in the middle of the foot, I can grasp around the arches. I have no idea how I could possibly hang on to the toes — my fingers just pop off. (If anyone has insight into holding on to the feet, please let me know.)

I am thrilled that kapotasana is feeling so darned good. No mental anguish, no panic, no blank mind. It feels like time is going slowly and everything is really clear, and I can talk and understand where I am — which is quite remarkable.

Now all I need to do is learn how to drive my chicken wings.

First practice of 2009

For the first practice of 2009, I downloaded some new music. Seal’s “Soul” CD.

When I first heard Seal was going to do an album of soul covers, I was psyched. Then I read a few reviews. All of them complained that he hadn’t been creative enough in his reinterpretations — that he’d stuck to the originals closely, even down to the orchestral backgrounds.

The lackluster reviews killed my enthusiasm. Until this morning. I decided I wanted some new music. So here’s the deal: if you like Seal’s voice (I do) and you like soul, you’ll probably be pretty happy with the new CD.

What you’ll get is, in fact, covers that are quite close to the originals. Including songs like “A Change is Gonna Come,” “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long,” and one of my all time favorites, “If You Don’t Know Me By Now.” (I can already hear The Cop breaking out into a cheesy version of “If You Don’t Know Me By Now” when he reads this…)

***

Last night, I went to the zendo for New Year’s Eve. I actually left before the scheduled end of the program (it went on until 9 PM, which is equal to midnight for zazen-ers and Ashtangis!) because The Cop was at work so Ty had to be in his crate while I was gone.

I arrived at 2 PM, which was the beginning of work period. You know, I’ve learned a lot about work from zen practice. Yes, yes, the chop wood, carry water thing. Just do what you’re doing. The part I like best, though — and it’s similar to what happens in a Mysore room — is that you work alongside other people, but you don’t talk or interact much at all. For some reason, this really pleases me.

My first task (along with two other people) was to collect all of the pods that had fallen off the enormous… geez, I don’t know what kind of a tree it is — it’s pretty much just a big freaking POD tree. It has leaves for most of the year, but I’ll bet it produces close to as many pods as it does leaves. Big pods, about 6 inches in length. Hundreds and hundreds of them.

So we raked up pods and put them in trash bags. And then we picked through all of the vegetation that grows around the yard to get the ones that had fallen under the leafy ground cover. I did it with my bare hands, which was an exercise in mindfulness because I’m no fan of bugs, nor do I like touching slimy, decaying vegetation.

Whew! I was happy when that was done.

Next, I ironed the cloth squares that are used for napkins during temple meals. Nice. That’s the kind of job I like. Warm, in the house, with lots of different patterned material to look at. While I was there, the cat came in to supervise. Sokai, the abbott of the zendo, wandered by, looking for the cat and carrying a brush. He showed me how the cat likes to have his cheeks brushed and asked me to include it in my work assignment, once I was done with the ironing.

Hilarious.

I brushed the cat’s cheeks until he was sick of it (and it took a good while!), then headed back outside to see what else needed doing.

“Karen, will you help over here?” Sokai asked.

“Sure.”

I walked with him around a corner into the side yard where one of the guys was working with… gah! the compost heap.

Euw. Okay, now I’m gonna need some gloves.

I went back to the shed where all the tools are kept and started pulling gloves out of the glove box. All of them were right-handed gloves. Hmmm, a little koan. 🙂

I did finally find a left and returned to the compost heap. The guy who was working on it clearly was a compost master of some sort — he was totally into it, mixing dry and wet material, and not even wearing gloves.

I was called to help because the compost area is fenced in, and there was a space between the compost and the fence which had collected leaves and pods and other miscellaneous items that needed to get thrown in with “the good stuff” and I am small enough to climb over the compost and into that space.

Lovely.

Compost Guy was all stirring and mixing and nodding as I threw in leafy material and what looked like a rotted potato, and a bunch of clumps of things I didn’t want to inspect too closely, along with a turnip, a celery stalk and some other things which had escaped the main pile. Mostly I just concentrated on containing my “Ick!” impulse. Since we weren’t supposed to talk, I didn’t have to think about how I could ask this guy what he sees in compost without offending him.

As I was walking back from the compost project, Sokai was washing a bird bath with the hose.

“Do you want to wash your hands?” he asked, gesturing toward the running hose.

I had been thinking more along the lines of scalding water and antibacterial soap and maybe some bleach (yes, I have some Howard Hughes issues), but I rinsed in the cold water.

After work period, we sat zazen. But zazen with a twist for the first sitting: Philosophy Monk (who I went to a few years ago for some rolfing sessions) had brought along a cold laser.

He told us a little about how it works, then said, “I’ll walk around, and instead of the keisaku, you can bow if you want laser treatment.”

So Philosophy Monk patrolled the room, applying cold laser instead of the stick.

The laser is interesting: it casts a number of laser lines along your body, and he held it so the lines ran up the spine. The feeling of the laser was one of mild internal warmth and a kind of relaxing. The thing that’s funny with having this done in the zendo with Philosophy Monk is the fact that he is the most strict monk at the zendo, and has a very gruff exterior. It’s hard to relax around him. Still, I could feel the effect of the laser. I didn’t feel inclined to relax too much, though, because I could easily imagine him suddenly loudly yelling, “Wake up!” — as he has at other retreats.

One cool thing about Philosophy Monk, though, is his sensitivity. He’s been a rolfer for 30 years, and after he put the laser on me for a while, he put it down, stepped forward, and pressed one hand on my upper back, and the other — hard — again my collar bones. Right on, Philosophy Monk! Good call! I totally needed an adjustment to my collar bones and he could see that. Very impressive.

Speaking of hands. After my paschimottanasana squish at practice yesterday (and yes, Susananda, you were right about more poses — after kapotasana, Muscle Man said, “Supta vajrasana!”), Muscle Man patted me on the back, and it felt like *exactly* the same pat VBG gives. I looked up and noticed that Muscle Man was also dressed exactly like VBG: loose tank shirt and board shorts. Evidence of a successful transmission. 🙂