flexibility... more than physical

i truly enjoy what my body can do. i have been blessed with a naturally flexible body. i have known this for a while now. i’ve been that guy who can put his foot behind his head or step way too high on the wall to tie his shoe. and then i started yoga a year ago. bang! wow, i had no clue what this body’s potential would be. immensely open hips, shoulders that turn so far around and a spine willing to bring my toes to my forehead. a new toy!! what else can it do?

like most people who get something they want, i immediately put my new toy to use. and like some people, i used my new toy too much. the hips lost some strength, the shoulders found new ways to recognize pain and the spine… wow, the spine. after backbending, i would get headaches, cramps would come from nowhere in muscles i had long forgotten about. and this was just the beginning.

the idea of heart opening really intrigued me. that is why i dove into the backbends. i was seeking emotional flexibility as well. how could i better serve my clients? can i make myself a more giving and accepting lover? if i learn to open more, won’t i then be in a better place to receive? the more i explored this the more i learned about my own history and patterns of emotion.

as it turns out, emotional flexibility was something i already had. just as i was given open, flexible hips, i was given an ability to listen and care rather deeply for people. something like empathy. and just as i jumped into backbending without heed to warming up and maintaining awareness to prevent injury, i had been extremely flexible in my relationships without maintaining awareness to prevent, well, a whole lotta bullshit. many, many times i would compromise and listen without stating where i was at. without giving myself a chance to be listened to.

this created habits and patterns that were out of balance, much like my physical yoga practice with the asanas. heart opening, physically and emotionally, comes naturally to me. preparing myself for the unknown outcome does not.

i’ve wondered why this has come to be. i spent time in therapy, i spent time giving therapy. i read about codependency, i read about being in healthy relationships. i got in healthy relationships, i left when i saw them as unhealthy. it wasn’t until i began practicing yoga, not just asana, that i began to stop pondering the why and started pondering the how can i change. i know that i should not try viparita salabasana two days in a row, but i do it anyways. i know i should have walked away from that relationship two days ago. but i still did both. habits and patterns do not go away simply by will. action is necessary. i must be willing to get uncomfortable to allow space to grow and then actively seek these uncomfortable places.

this scared me. i don’t want to stop being emotionally flexible, i like listening. i don’t want to stop letting my feet touch my head, i feel energized. so i finally put into place what my therapist said years ago…. take time for yourself. simple, i thought, too simple for me. backbends are for me, emotions are for me. yet, taking time for myself means taking time for all of myself. sometimes this means putting just as much attention towards childs pose as i do for king pigeon. sometimes it means saying ‘i love you’ and walking away. i can’t force someone to accept what i give anymore than i can force my body into a forearm balance.

yoga is teaching me that by properly warming up, taking time off and utilizing the bandhas, i can protect my body while exploring its potential as opposed to shying from it. emotionally, i am learning similar lessons. my heart may be open, but that does not mean i don’t need to do a little dusting of the ventricles every now and then.

warrior 2 has been my go to pose these past few weeks. solid, grounding with the legs while allowing my hips to open along with my heart. shoulder blades come out and away so i can replenish myself. and the spine gets space as it rises straight up. for me, its the legs, the grounding foundation that gives me ability to remain stable and accepting while maintaining a willingness to accept where this flexibility may take me.

bonsai yoga

it is really easy for me let myself be dissappointed. i put a bunch of energy into something and just before it is about to blossom, the bloom takes on its own life. it becomes something other than i was expecting. dammit, that is my usual response.

last night was my free class at the rec center here in moab. i had put the sequence together and took it apart 8 or 9 times. i couldn’t fill the time so i added more lunge salutes, the transition from pose x to pose y wasn’t quite right. always something. i posted fliers around town and people actually stopped me in town a few times… ‘are you the guy teaching the free yoga class?’. there is no better way to pump up my ego than by being identified by random attractive people in town.

i got to the studio half an hour early, started stretching and went over the sequence in my head. at 15 til i was on my own. at 10 til a bunch of footsteps made themselves known on the stairs. word up, i thought, here we go. a group of adults came in and looked puzzled, ‘is this the contra dancing?’, ‘uh… no. its a free yoga class.’ ‘oh, free yoga? that sounds good. thanks.’ and out they went. i was rapidly deflating. at 5 til i figured i should just do my own practice here, it is such a nice, big space when you’re the only one.

two people showed up right at 7.thats right, 2. in my head i was waiting for this massive sunflower to bloom, heaps of people excited to try koundinyasana. instead i was given two women eager to have a more or less private lesson. a nice little bonsai bloom.

at first i was a bit put off. i was really nervous and as they placed their mats out in front of i noticed that i was even agitated, directing my frustration at them. ‘whoa’ i thought to myself, ‘you need to knock that shit off right now’. sometimes it takes a stern talking to in order to get myself together.

we started with some centering in baddha konasana, more for me than for them. and then i let them know what i am trying to go for in this class. i can only teach every other week due to my work schedule. the classes are meant to be challenging, arm balances and backbends. i want to offer classes that push our limits a bit so we can start playing with our potential and inspire a home practice. they seemed keen so off we went.

we moved through the opening sequence of namaskar a and c. then a round of standing postures that i had overthought. i thought these would need to be repeated in order to fill the time. after the first round of them i saw that in class the sequence does not follow the same timeframe it did with me in my backyard.

time for some arm balances. this was just plain fun. lots of people in moab go to the pilates class because yoga just isn’t enough of a workout, so i hear. both of these women are climbers, strong, damn strong. this made the arm balances damn fun because there wasn’t a lot of fear. or if there was, their experience on the rock has allowed them to temper that fear. we did more arm balances than i intended mainly because they were so eager to try this. crane came to both of them rather quickly, hurdler or koundinyasana 2 wasn’t far behind. kim lifted herself into it while chelsea was trying to figure out how to contract her abs while laughing. this is my kind of yoga.

the backbends came next and again, we went farther than i intended. both of them were flexible and willing to push it a bit. i started to get nervous again here. i have come across lots of trepidation and caution with backbending and for good reason. this time it was my turn to play with my fear. as a teacher now, should i play with my fears in class? is it possible not to? i thought we could try viparita dandasana. just try it out, upward bow with forearms on the ground. i demonstrated the pose then i explained what happened to me when i first tried it. i had a quick contraction in my erector spinae as i began to straighten my legs. not a cramp, but a very new movement for that muscle that was not appreciated. chelsea experienced something similar. oh no! i injured my first student! she was fine. a few forward folds and a twist and we were lawsuit free.

it was a strange bonding experience. i was surprised that my muscles and hers reacted so similarly. i wondered what would make this so. both climbers? both people? both people trying yoga?

kim was doing great. rooting with her forearms, giving her heart lots of lift, her legs began to eke forward. i was psyched.

we had time for 5 minutes of savasana which i was glad to utilize. this pose taught me a lot this past week. but i am sick of typing right now.

asana sequence

baddha konasana for a few minutes

surya namaskar a x5

surya namaskar c x6

utkatasana

virabhadrasana 1

virabhadrasan 2

utthita parsvakonasana

prasarita padottanasana

repeat warriors and side angle on other side facing rear of room and come back to wide legged forward fold

utkatasana

parivritta parsvakonasana

parsvottanasana

horse stance

repeat facing rear of room and come back to horse

utkatasana

crescent moon with quad stretch

deep lunge (both forearms on floor inside of left foot)

crescent moon

plank

quad stretch other side

deep lunge

plank

down dog

malasana

supta bakasana

bakasana

parsva bakasana

koundinyasana 2

pigeon

galavasana

ustrasana

quad torture at wall w/ backbend

bridge

upward bow

upward bow at wall

happy baby

viparita dandasana

supine twist

plow

supported shoulderstand

savasana

back to work

after not working for almost a month, a lot of my life was in need of some restructuring. bounced checks, cracked windshield, supervisor forgot about my paid time off. word up. i had one day in moab and then off to the wilderness to play with young addicts for 8 days. going to work is easier for me than my off time. i spend 8 days in the high desert sleeping on the ground, making fire with sticks, hiking and ‘counselling’ young drug users. bills, traffic lights, flushable toilets, blogs… all forgotten for 8 days.

my first day back in the field i was anxious still… ‘how am i going to pay my rent? was it a good choice to take a teacher training right after paying for a ridiculously expensive dog?’ money taxes me on more days than the 15th of april.

that same day a client i had met almost a month ago approached me. she is a young woman, 18, with severe bi polar disorder and extremely low self-esteem. her instability manifests in a myriad of ways…. food issues, co-dependent, suicidal tendencies, drug use, lots and lots of self-destructive behaviors. without saying hello she simply asked ‘can we do some yoga?’. so we did some yoga.

i noticed a new anxiety in me. though i had shared yoga with my clients in the past, i now had a wealth of info thanks to the teacher training. i decided to take it real slow and try some heart openers with her as her posture was very poor and i was hoping to share the emotional value of heart opening with her. one staff decided to join in as well.

it turned out to be one of the coolest experiences i’ve had in a long time. this was to be her first time trying yoga. after some hip openers and namaskar c we tried a variation of camel. instead of bringing hands to heels, we clasped our hands behind our back and worked on lifting our hearts higher. this is where i started geeking out. once i started mentioning the importance of the heart chakra i watched myself talk a lot. i was surprised that i felt so strongly about this. i’ve never considered myself a believer of energy work, auras, third eyes, etc. i have been way to intellectualized for that stuff. and now here was this intense commitment to our heart chakra spilling forth. fortunately, she was very receptive to it.

we did some baby backbends. little cobra, swimming locust and bridge. a few twists followed and then some arm balance play. she was able to hold bakasana one her second try for 3 breaths! after almost 45 minutes both she and the staff joining in had had enough.

the next day she again asked to do some yoga. another client joined in as well. and then the next day, another client. on my last day in the field, all but one member of our group had their sleeping pads laid out between the aspens and were standing in warrior 2. this included a 17 year old male who had tried to break his own leg in order to get out of his previous treatment program, a 31 year meth addict that will lose the right to visit his daughters if he can’t stay clean (3 days prior he was planning on jumping off a cliff), all 3 staff and 6 more people who are trying to improve their lives. i had to laugh my way through that session. we all wear the same clothes, basically tan military fatigues. we all become very filthy out there, our faces smudged with the mixing of desert sweat, pine sap and dust. to look at all of us in tree pose warrants a rather boisterous guffaw.

before leaving the field all the clients and staff sit in a circle with the incoming staff and a director and a therapist to give feedback and validations and talk about the week. the 31 year old thanked me for showing him yoga, the rest of the group chimed in with similar statements. i felt myself go red. i was embarassed because i don’t believe yoga cures all. i don’t believe i know enough to teach. and i still don’t believe that i will ever see green light emanating from my chest. i know i am more aware of the emotional confidence that the asanas cultivate in me. and i know that my practice differs from everyone elses, thus i can learn lots from sharing with others. i know that yoga is constantly doing something with me.

back at home my bike has a flat so i drove the two blocks to a yoga class. windshield still cracked, pto going through next payday. pulled money out of savings to pay the bounced checks. it was a really mellow class. lots of forward folds. afterwards the instructor and i were talking when she says ‘when are you gonna start teaching?’ here it goes.

pose X

my expectations are crafty. they tease and taunt me into trying new poses, foods, countries and crafts that many times have proven to be excellent endeavors. they also convince me to stay in my chair and find another yoga site explaing how to do pose ‘x’ before trying it out myself. these thoughts tell me that though my hips are pretty bendy, those noodly arms aren’t quite ready for that pose, no matter how effortless tara stiles appears. so sometimes (more often than not, but who’s counting?) i give in to these expectations and months go by. i end up forgetting about pose x without ever trying it and then the pose morphs and the expectations run around all over again.

baso was sitting out on the grounds of the monastery, meditating. he was in perfect zazen. the master was walking around and happened to come upon him. ‘what are you doing there? sitting like that?’. baso answered him without breaking his focus, ‘i am practicing zazen’…

last night i completed the den mothers final assignment and this morning decided to give it a run through. it was an adaptation of a sivananda series that will be posted soon. i left a big option near the end. i simply wrote out ‘arm balance playtime’. not sure what i wanted to do with this, i started the series anyways. the standing poses gave me more agitation than usual. trikonasana is proving to be the motherlode of expectations. my hamstrings, oh my hamstrings. i fell into my thoughts and came out of the pose after 3 breaths, same on the other side.

…’why are you practicing zazen?’ the master queried. ‘to become enlightened’ baso answered again without losing focus. the master grinned a little…

i let myself drop back into down dog. teaching my hammies a lesson. my head was all over the place… i was still in the training at lulu’s. thinking of that community and the nurturing that went on there. then my mind went wandering again… i was in moab telling myself how there is no community there. how i am there totally for myself and really not looking forward to going back. so i went back to lulus. i did this again and again. thinking of how great it was where i was and how bland it is where i am going. i went to do the ashtanga jump thing into navasana. my left foot dragged and folded upside down. unbelievable. that hasn’t happened to me in months.

…the master sat down and picked up a stone. he spat on it and started polishing it with his robe. ‘master, what are doing?’ baso asked. ‘i am polishing this stone, baso’. ‘master, why?’ the master looked at baso quite earnestly…

i tried the jump through again. this time the right foot dragged along the mat with as much grace as a coat hanger on a chalkboard. i sat there and checked the timer. damn, only 20 minutes into what should be an hour and a half series. my head took off again as my left foot started to swell. i gave up because i couldn’t finish the series, it wasn’t long enough. i’d like to say that i had some revelation. that something amazing happened. in fact, i sat there wondering why something fantastic wasn’t happening. why was my body taking so much away right now? why did i leave ojai, my hometown?

back at lulu’s i had so much fun with yoga. one of my favorite days was the last day when we played with all the arm balances. galavasana had been a pose in my mind for a while. i knew it would come one day when i became stronger and more ‘fit’. when kira began explaining that pose all the expected doubt was still there until i put my right leg across my arms.

this pose falls into the pose x category. it incorporates a bunch of fear for me. starting with standing on one leg in a half lotus. not the most graceful fella when it comes to balance. the forward fold itself is tough enough with these hammies. getting my leg across my arms proved to be a bit easier than i thought with these rubbery hips though. as i was thinking this i naturally started trying pose x again. in the studio i had a hard time doing this pose with my left leg on my arms.

i was in that fuck it mindset so i tossed the left leg across my right thigh. with the right leg bent i began to fold forward. my hands came to the ground as my shin found its place across my petite triceps. the left foot came to life and i watched my toes hook around my right arm. i remembered kira mentioning that here is where the fear sets in, bending the arms can be scary. i really wanted to stay there at lulu’s, listening to kira with all those attractive people to look at but my arms started to bend and my face eked closer to the floor. my hands were pushing down and spreading wide as i let my navel pull back. right here is the hardest point for me, sending that right leg out and up. i had to start with my toes and let the energy draw my leg away rather than push it out from my hip.

…’baso, i am polishing this stone into a mirror.’ ‘master, that is not possible.’ ‘you tell me a stone can not show me my self yet you do nothing but sit there expecting to become enlightened.’

once i felt my leg straighten i noticed a lightness that started in my palms and coursed up to my navel. i found my foundation there, at my navel, suspended almost two feet of the ground. i was aware of how integral the balls of my feet had become and how the toes direct so much of that energy. sure, i can lift my leg higher so it is in line with my spine. and i can root my palms a bit more. and if i do that it’ll look more like this ad on page 48 in LA yoga and less like my self in galavasana.

p.s. baso went on to become a great zen master. supposedly his enlightenment showed up after right after the little story above. and my left foot is still swollen.

opener

once upon a time i started a blog. it was great. it was used to chronicle my peeking into native american spirituality and primitive skills. alas, it was a short-lived affair. as it turns out, i harbor a deep fear of the CAPS LOCK button. there are other puncuation keys as well that insist i take a typing class. instead, i spent many evenings praying that there would be a digital armageddon and the only survivors would be ballpoints and spiral bounds. so as you read on, forgive my defiance of that button left of ‘a’. in the words of tom waits, i don’t wanna grow up.

teaching yoga. sounds to me like a vacation spot i have been saving up for…..t’ching yaogahh, a small, volcanic island east of lake casitas with no inhabitants. reservations necessary. teaching is something i do. rockclimbing, bow making, hide tanning, tracking, conflict resolution (whatever that is). so it is not much the act of teaching that worries me. it is more the act of teaching something i care about that causes me to tense up. and as something sinks closer and closer to my heart, i become more anxious and more insecure when i think of teaching it. its like baking a cake. if i share that cake with my friends that evening we can all giggle together when its obvious that i used twice the amount of cinnamon and waaaaayyyy too much espresso beans. no worries. if i sent that cake to tara for her wedding though, um, sorry? there are expectations involved that scare me.

most of my emotional and spiritual endeavors can be explained with yoga (all of these endeavors actually, just don’t ask me to explain that much). yoga is something i feel like i ‘get’ every once in awhile, but i don’t know where this getting took place. which teacher? what pose? was it during meditation? i don’t know. thus, when i think about teaching i get worried. luckily though, i am very adept at fooling myself. all i need to do is switch some words around. asana becomes pose, teaching becomes sharing and i’m fine.

in moab there is a space that is free to use as long there is no charge for services. i guess i can start there. though it was suggested to start charging when the time is right. so to temper my flakey ojai way i set a date for when free classes will no longer be available.

during the training, it rarely came into my mind that i am learning this to share. it was a rather selfish experience. i’m looking to gain a better understanding of my own practice. so when we were all expected to share our voices i was surprised at what came out. i had set up a series of sun salutations and arm balances. a series i practice at home and therefore felt comfortable sharing it. that first day i never was called on and was secretly grateful. for our next assignment i was totally burned and skipped it. instead i read the yin section and worked into lotus. i tried it again in the morning and really enjoyed it. i didn’t have a script set up but i did have an intense awareness of how i felt laying in those poses for longer than normal. when given the chance to share some of that, i was pleasantly surprised with what came out.

so in the idea of sharing… here is a photo of me practicing scorpion. any ideas of what should be worked on?

i notice all the bend coming from my low back and my arms are confused. theres a wall in the way as well.

thanks so much for those 10 days. i’ll see you all soon.