state of the yoga practice: six months

That’s right. It’s been six months since I started doing a near-daily (more on that in a moment) ashtanga yoga practice. How time flies! When I started I could barely limp through the surys—that’s the 10 sun salutation at the beginning, 5 surya namaskar A and 5 surya namaskar B. It took me three months to build up to doing the whole Primary Series, with lots and lots of Swenson variations. Now, three months later and a lot of the variations have passed by. Most notabe, to me, is that I can hold the real chaturanga  to upward facing dog, suspended in the air, throughout the series now, rather than spending most (all, when I started) of them on my knees (or even chest) on the floor. Woo-hoo! I’m getting stronger!

I dreamed last night that I hopped effortlessly into bhujapidansana  and was terrifically surprised, as in, wow! I can do this! It’s not hard at all! That was a cool dream. In real life, I can’t get my feet off the floor without falling on my bum, boing. (Yes, I bounce, what’s it to you?)

But then today, in practice, I found that I could, in fact, effortlessly do bakasana  , which is part of the bhuja exit, so howdy doody. I’m getting there.

So, about the ‘near-daily’ thing. For the last few months I had been on a three-day-on, one-day-off, schedule, mostly because on the fourth day I felt really tired and didn’t want to do yoga. I’m all about not doing what I don’t want to do. That gave me a five day a week practice. Traditional ashtanga practice is six days a week, but I figured I was in the ballpark. Then I got inspired by some ashtangi bloggers in the cybershala, Grimmly, Boodiba, and Skippity, who were all talking about what a difference that sixth day made. Then I heard Lino Miele, on his South American dvd, being asked, why practice every day? His answer: I asked Guruji this very question and his answer: you eat every day don’t you? So you practice every day.

I thought, heck, what’s one more day? I’ll try it for my own self and see.

Well, it turns out, for me, it isn’t the number of days per week, but the number of days in a row. That fourth day, I was tired, but pushed through (beware pushing in yoga!!!). The fifth day was grueling. I gave it up for the sixth day. My wrists had started hurting, too (see? don’t push in yoga), and I felt exhausted. Interesting. I mentioned it to Grimmly, who suggested shorter practices, perhaps some of the Swensen short forms. And I thought, I can’t do that, that’s cheating! But the lure of the sixth day still called, so I decided to compromise. Sharath, the Big Daddy of ashtanga now that his grandfather has passed (I hate that I’ll never meet Sri K. Pattabhi Jois!!! I found ashtanga just a bit too late….:( ), has a dvd that moves through the whole primary series in about an hour. It accomplishes this by holding the poses for two or three breaths each instead of the traditional five. I thought, well, if I can’t do 90 minutes (my usual primary series duration) six days a week, maybe I can do a 60 minute primary six days a week, for a while, to build up.

I’m on week two of six days of the Sharath Express, Saturdays off. Twice I’ve turned in a short practice of surys, standing, and finishing, then collapse.

It IS different. Hard to explain how, yet—I can feel it, but can’t describe yet. The psychological shift is most noticeable to me so far, but I can feel the physical changes as well. Watch this space for further reports.

And the wrists…I have these skinny little bird wrists, just sticks, and the right one was broken when I was 18 and poorly set, resulting in a lumpy bone thing that sticks out on one side. Definitely a weak link for me. I’m scrupulous about alignment, not resting weight in the heel of my hand, for example, and if they start aching, I start sitting out the vinyasa here and there. When I back off a bit, they don’t hurt. No pushing through. I hope they are getting stronger along with the rest of me. We’ll see.

In other yoga news, I have been possessed by Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra and am reading a stack of them right now. Here are a few of the books on my pile at the moment…

Gobble, gobble. I can’t get enough. Weird.

Finally, I saw this video of Jois talking about ashtanga.

It’s been around a while—check out those sunglasses—but I was struck by how worked up he gets about the equal breath thing. If the inbreath is ten seconds, the out breath should be ten seconds, too. Well, that surely is not the case for me, ahem. So I decided to work on that a bit. My pitiful breaths are about four seconds, so I was counting, one two three four, in my head as I inhaled and exhaled, boring. I thought, surely someone has thought of some cool sanskrit mantra or something to say in one’s head instead of one two three four… Maybe I’ll pick a sutra a day! But that was too hard. Maybe later when the asana get easier. Still, I kept looking for something…

Then I thought of Metta meditation, a Buddhist thing, but hey, Richard Freeman says Buddhism and Yoga are basically the same thing anyway, except, I guess, the yogis get to be fit. I read Sharon Salzberg’s Lovingkindness book years ago on metta, and remembered how nice it was—basically you meditate on good wishes, first for yourself, then for people close to you, gradually expanding to people you don’t like, and then all sentient beings. Something like, “May I be free from hostility, free from affliction, free from distress; may I live happily. May Paul be free, may he be free from hostility, free from affliction, free from distress: maybe Paul live happily.” etc. There are lots of variations on the sayings. I was reminded of metta by this lovely quote in a comment on a yoga blog:

“The Pali word metta is a multi-significant term meaning loving-kindness, friendliness, goodwill, benevolence, fellowship, amity, concord, inoffensiveness and non-violence. The Pali commentators define metta as the strong wish for the welfare and happiness of others (parahita-parasukha-kamana). Essentially metta is an altruistic attitude of love and friendliness as distinguished from mere amiability based on self-interest. Through metta one refuses to be offensive and renounces bitterness, resentment and animosity of every kind, developing instead a mind of friendliness, accommodativeness and benevolence which seeks the well-being and happiness of others. True metta is devoid of self-interest. It evokes within a warm-hearted feeling of fellowship, sympathy and love, which grows boundless with practice and overcomes all social, religious, racial, political and economic barriers. Metta is indeed a universal, unselfish and all-embracing love.”

Now, I know, I know, I can’t renounce bitterness and resentment. Those practically define my personality at least 37% of each day. But for a little while, during practice, maybe…?

So I made up a metta that has a four/four beat, for example, “May Sophie by happy, May Sophie be at peace, May Sophie be safe, May Sophie be free.” I do one sentence on the inhale, one round on the exhale, switching out myself, Paul, Sophie, and Luc, for the most part, and throwing in a few other folk every now and then.

It’s nice. I feel all relaxed and happy after an hour of Sharath Express Plus Metta. Who needs prozac?

And it’s good to have all these positive endorphins going in because I’ve been feeling quite ‘what’s the point’ with the whole writing thing lately. I think this is just the “I’m 3/4 through the current novel and I fear it is all a pile of crap” thing, but still. Bitterness and artistic despair are only a moment’s thought away. Like the icy driveway out there: it’s easy to slip and bust my ass.

And that’s the state of my practice. Maybe I’ll keep on this quarterly report schedule. Maybe I’ll be able to do an actual backbend by my next report. Maybe I’ll have found samahdi.

Hey. It could happen!