On teachers...

So, I'm going to BEGIN this post with my Yoga Minutes, for days 100-112!  Note my minutes over the first 7 days in particular:

 Grab-ass=not a helpful teaching technique...

4/14: 90 min

4/15: 75 min
4/16: 60 min

4/17: 90 min

4/18: 30 min

4/19: 90 min

4/20: 30 min

4/21: 90 min

4/22: 35 min

4/23: 90 min

4/24: 30 min

4/25: 30 min

4/26: 35 min

So note that on 5 of those first 7 days I did 60 or more minutes of yoga.  Does Jess have a life, you may wonder.  Amazingly, I do, but that's not my point.  What this indicates it that I went to a yoga class on each of those 5 days.  Here's what the numbers don't show: I went to 5 different teachers' classes on those 5 days.    

Yes, this is a lot of yoga, but that's nothing new.  But I don't think I've ever taken classes with so many different yoga teachers in one week before.  Now I take regular, weekly classes with two different teachers (Denise and Wendy) with the occasional Thursday AM with Rainey or Thursday PM with Meg tossed in for good measure.  These are all Anusara yoga teachers and they often take classes from one another, or teach together--frequently, in one week, Denise, Wendy, and Rainey all will give a lot of attention to the relationship between the pelvic loop and the kidney loop (I could explain these.  Really.  But I'm not going to, except to say that they have to do with alignment), but each teacher approaches the loops with different suggestions and uses different poses in which to apply the techniques.  Sometimes, I wish they didn't draw so much inspiration from this tight Anusara yoga community, but generally, I find that the subtle differences in their approach enriches my understanding of the principals being taught.  Generally, I like the crisscross a lot.

Likewise, it is often refreshing to go to a class outside of the Anusara tradition just to remind me of how many different styles of yoga there are, how practicing in a quick-paced flow class feels versus Anusara's slower pace (which does not equate to "easier," FYI), how each style/school of yoga emphasizes slightly different elements/principals, and how each requires a different kind of attention and care while practicing.  I learn a lot every time I practice yoga somewhere new with someone new.

But doesn't taking yoga classes at all these different places suck up a lot of money?  And really, after doing yoga for over a decade, do I really need that much instruction?  An article that ran in the New York Times this past weekend addressed questions such as these. I'll let you peruse the article if you desire, but here's the gist:

The article is about this yoga studio chain called Yoga to the People and its founder, Greg Gumucio.  The studio's mission statement/manifesto on their website proclaims, "There will be no correct clothes, There will be no proper payment, There will be no right answers ... No ego no script no pedestals."  The NYT article continues that there also are "no “glorified” teachers or star yogis. You can’t even find out who is teaching which class when, or reserve a spot with a specific instructor." (itals. mine) 

The seed for Gumucio's studios was first planted when he was studying with Bikram Choudhury, who advised him to take everyone's classes and report back to him.  Gumucio did so and was frustrated by one particular teacher.  Back to the NYT: "Mr. Choudhury was not sympathetic. Just the opposite, telling Mr. Gumucio to, in essence, suck it up and go back to the class — that the problem wasn’t with the instructor, but with Mr. Gumucio himself. “You are your own teacher,” Mr. Gumucio said he was told. “You are responsible for your own experience.”" (itals. mine)

I both respect and cringe at Gumucio's yoga philosophy.  I really like the no egos, no correct clothes, no proper payment attitude, because those are all things that keep people away from yoga who might really benefit from it and ultimately enjoy it. I know I get a little nauseated by yoga show-offs who occasionally come to one of the classes I regularly attend, and proceed to do insane poses with their body that aren't remotely like the poses the rest of us are doing, and of course they're wearing hipster yoga togs and are ripped like He-Man.  And I've put off buying a new yoga mat for 4-6 months now because they are ridiculously expensive.  I spend a TON of money on yoga classes--I don't know exactly how much, but it's definitely a four-figure amount.  I love the idea of yoga for all.

I also agree that you are your own teacher.  If something feels good to me, I'm sorry, but no teacher in the world can tell me that it doesn't.  Or if something hurts me.  I learn a great deal from my body every time I hit the mat.  I don't go to the mat and assume I know what I can and can not do that day.  I have to spend time figuring my body out, like the Sudoku puzzle in the daily newspaper. What's tight today, how tired am I, what does my body tell me now and what will it tell me in 10 minutes?  What challenges are reasonable to take on--which ones might I rock and which ones might be a little disastrous?  If I move in this way, I can bend more that way, but am I strong enough in that place to prevent strain in that spot?

 If I  listen to my body now, will I be able to do this at her age???

So, with all that I learn from my body, do I need to go to these classes?  I guess I don't NEED to, but I feel that I learn more from myself due to how much I learn from my teachers.  Does it have to be Wendy, Denise, and those specific teachers?  I guess not, but they are really good teachers, which means I learn more from them, giving me more to build on at home, so that I can learn more from myself too.  

These thoughts are in regards to where I am with my practice now, however.  This is very important to recognize and consider.  It took me years to build the understanding of my body that I have now.  I could not always tell when something hurt because my muscles were burning in a "good" way, and when something hurt because my body was bending beyond the point of safety and into the zone where muscles get torn and joints dislocated.  I didn't understand how to harmonize my muscles, joints, and bones to bend deeper, or anything about muscle energy and magnetizing my shoulders on my back, etc.  I had to learn the general guidelines and limitations of a reasonably fit human being's body, and I had to learn how to do all those poses, and do them correctly!  

My teachers were invaluable at that point in my practice.  I am so thankful to my first "good" yoga teacher, Jeri at the Moscow Yoga Center in Moscow, Idaho.  My very first two teachers were not good teachers; honestly, they could have been gymnastics or kickboxing instructors for all I learned about yoga from them. Only after I started studying with Jeri did I really start to understand what yoga was all about, and that I liked it.  The right teacher matters a great deal sometimes.

And per "bad teachers," well, they certainly exist.  At this point in my practice, if I run into a teacher who is questionable, I have the knowledge to tune him or her out during a class and just follow my inner teacher based upon the wisdom of my body in the moment.  I absolutely agree with Choudhury that I am responsible for my own experience in such a situation.  I am lucky that my very first teachers were not dangerous in their mediocrity, just not very helpful, and again, I'm so glad I studied with Jeri before I studied with the individual who I refer to as "The Yoga Nazi" because I could recognize that he pushed students in an aggressive way that risked injuries,  in addition to just not being very peaceful!  I wasn't a great student of myself yet, but I'd learned a lot to know when to be cautious.

In closing, I am thankful to my teachers and I am thankful for my body's wisdom and I am thankful for how my practice at home and my practice in class work in symphony together.  When I think of the interplay between the two, I can really understand and appreciate when my different teachers all seem to be teaching the same principal in their separate ways--this is the teacher inside each of them putting their own spin on what they've learned from those who teach them.  Just like I do when I come to my mat at home again and again.

Namaste!

Stress and yoga do not mix, yo.

I haven't posted my daily minutes in quite awhile, so I thought I would take this opportunity to do that, and to share this article that ran in today's paper. The article is about how more people are turning to yoga to help relieve stress. In light of the fact that this Thursday is TAX day, I'm going to recommend an extra dose of yoga for all to relieve the stress of getting those stupid papers filed away with the pesky IRS. A few poses you might try...

Extended Puppy Pose (Uttana Shishosana)

 

Part Downward-Facing Dog, part Child's Pose--great for wagging your booty in the air and stretching the torso and spine nice and long.  I like to do this before running, but it's nice afterwards too.  Either way, another perk of the Extended Puppy?  Calms the mind!

 

Plow Pose (Halasana)

According to Yoga Journal, plow pose reduces backaches and helps one get to sleep.  Hmm, my back turns into a knot explosion when I'm stressed out...  And I sleep like crap too!  Solution: Jess will spend more time in plow pose.  Besides, I think it feels wunderbar! This picture is of "Supported Plow Pose."  For regular old plow, let go of your back and lay your arms on the ground.  

 Headstand! (Sirsasana)

Standing on your head in perfect alignment calms the brain--it probably has to do with sending all that blood to your head, but maybe it has nothing to do with that at all!  One of my teachers, Wendy of Om Town Yoga, told us a story once about this investment manager who had all his best ideas for work while chilling upside down in headstand.  There is something definitely about being upside down that makes you just feel more grounded when you return right side up!  Do it at a wall, like the ladies above, with padding under your head if you need it.

And of course, how could I forget Savasana?

Corpse Pose, the pose of total relaxation! And dare I say it...the most challenging stress-reducing pose of this littl' bunch?  Relaxation is hard work!  I recommend that you close your eyes, unlike our model in this photo.

So relax away, yogis and yoginis!

Now here are my yoga minutes, for posterity, from March 19 through April 13.  Excuse me if I just type the minute numbers instead of tagging them all with dates.  I have a yoga class in a half hour at Om Town! 

Rest of March: 60, 40, 30, 90, 35, 90, 90, 33, 30, 35, 30, 35, 90!

April thus far: 30, 35, 35, 30, 90, 35, 90, 30, 30, 40, 35, 90, 30!

And... I'm outta here! Namaste!

90 days, suckers!

As of Monday night, I have done yoga every single day for 90 days.  90 days of practicing yoga for at least 30 minutes.  I’ve done Adho Mukha Svanasana every single day for 90 days.  9-0.

I don’t know if I’ve ever committed myself to practicing anything for 90 straight days before, unless I count the basic actions of being alive (breathing, eating, sleeping) or certain hygiene musts, like brushing my teeth.  Commitment is the operative word here; it is entirely possible that I’ve drunk coffee for 90 straight days at some point in my life, but I’ve never made an intentional commitment to do so.  Of course, I haven’t committed to practice yoga for 90 straight days—I’ve committed to practice yoga for 360 straight days.  The 90-day mark signifies that I’m a quarter of the way to my goal.  I’ve still got 270 days of yoga to come.

This got me to thinking about how much time I’m spending on the mat.  I’m away from my special yoga minutes tracking calendar right now.  But, by looking at the calendar at my office, I can note which days I attended yoga classes versus days when I practiced at home to come up with a rough estimate of the minimum amount of time I’ve spent doing yoga in the last 90 days:

-I’ve attended a yoga class on 35 of the past 90 days, spending ~2760 minutes total in those classes. 

-I’ve practiced yoga at home for 55 of the past 90 days for at least 30 minutes each day, so I’ve spent AT LEAST 1650 minutes total practicing at home.  (Given how many 45-minute practices I’ve done, I would guess that 2000 minutes would be closer to the truth.)

-So, I’ve spent AT LEAST 4410 minutes practicing yoga in the last 90 days.

Let me attempt to put this into perspective.  If I sleep eight hours (480 minutes) a night, I’ve spent over nine days worth of sleep doing yoga.  There are 1440 minutes in a day, so I’ve done more than the equivalent of three full days in yoga practice.  However, I’m still 5670 minutes shy of a full week’s worth of yoga.  If I only do 30 minutes of yoga for the next 270 days, I’ll have spent 12,510 minutes doing yoga by the end of my 360 days on New Years Eve, which is about 8-2/3 days worth.  In contrast, if I’ve slept 8 hours every night for the past 90 days and continue to do so for the next 270 days, I’ll end the year with 172,800 minutes of sleep.  With 518,400 minutes in a year, 33% of those would be spent asleep compared to a measly 2.4% spent doing yoga. 

All these calculations start to make me feel like the 90-day mark is hardly worth patting myself on the back over!  Still, it is a significant mile marker in my yoga 360 and I’m proud to have reached it.

For my 90^th day of yoga, I went to my Monday night class with Denise Benitez at Seattle Yoga Arts.  I could go on for quite some time, singing the praises of Denise and Seattle Yoga Arts, but I’ll save it for another post.  But I will say that for every 8-week session at SYA, Denise chooses a challenge pose for the class to work on.  These poses are, indeed, challenging.  Luckily, most of the challenge poses have had lots of adaptations with props to accommodate the tight-hamstringed or balance challenged, etc.  During this eight-week session, we’re doing an arm balance called Eka Pada Galavasana.  It looks like this:

Doesn’t it look impossible?!

I certainly thought so the first time we tried this pose in March.  But now, I think that if I continue to practice it, I might actually be able to do it in the foreseeable future.  Working on the pose in class and in my home practice, I’ve had some success briefly balancing with my back leg bent in.  I need to work on balancing for longer now, and start experimenting with extending that back leg.  This will challenge my balance even more, and it will take TONS of core strength.  But the possibility of executing this difficult pose is very real. 

I don’t know that I would have felt this possibility if we’d pursued this pose last fall.  I really feel like that by attempting it on my mat at home, in addition to on Monday nights, I’ve come to view the pose as more accessible.  The more I attempt to do something that seems impossible, the less impossible it seems.  

This is what I’m taking away from my first 90 days—if I regard something as being very difficult or impossible to do, I can choose to continue to shy away from that challenge (thus it will always be very difficult or impossible) or I can step past my fear of failure and try it, and then try it again.  My attempts may result in many failures, but each time I fail, I learn something and eventually, that learning may translate into a success, which feels wonderful!  In the next 90 days, I would like to take this understanding beyond the mat and apply it to other daunting challenges in my life—an undertaking which I suspect will make 90 straight days of yoga look like a walk in the park!

Namaste!