Day 348.

But sadly, I still don't look like this.

In this post, I continue to reflect on this list of questions I posed when I first began this project, 348 days ago.  I asked, after a year of daily yoga practice, will I:

• Grow a few centimeters in height?

Okay, so to assess whether I grew any in height, I'm employing a highly unscientific method of standing shoeless against a wall, attempting to draw a pencil line in the exact right place at the top of my head, and then using measuring tape to figure the distance from pencil mark to floor. This process is made all the more unscientific by the fact that I didn't measure myself at the beginning of the year.  On my driver's license, it says I'm 5 foot 6 inches tall, but the last time I got measured at the doctor's office proved that I am one of those people who round up to seem taller.  According to the doctor, I was more like 5 foot 5-1/2 inches tall.  ANYWAY, this morning, I measured myself as 5 foot 6-1/8 inches tall.  Hmmm.... Did my pencil mark aim too high?  Was I slouching at the doctor's office?  Or did I grow a little bit?  We'll never know for sure.

Nope, still too short for Splash Mountain!

I also asked, after a year of daily yoga practice, will I:

• Look different--be slimmer or have more muscle bulk?  Be stronger in my core? Be more stable in my pelvis? Have better posture/alignment? Develop those tiny muscles in my inner hips and the arches of my feet to protect my knees and to help stave off genetic physical ailments? Reduce the frequency of migraines? Improve my circulation? Achieve super healthy blood pressure readings?

Let me start by saying that this here body of mine has served me pretty well during my year of yoga. Yes, I've incurred some injuries. I'm happy to report that none of them have been incurred practicing yoga.  I can't put a value on how many injuries I may have avoided by practicing yoga or staved off "genetic physical ailments," but I know that stretching my limbs and building muscle tone protects me a lot when I do high impact aerobic activities, like running, and even doing little things like getting into my car from a funny angle. The body can get hurt in really small, ridiculous ways.  Trust me, I once re-sprained my ankle trying on a ski boot 

Has my body changed? Of course it has, the body is always changing.  Lately, I feel like my core is kind of weak, but it was super strong in June. It is winter after all, and my body and energy cycles just like the seasons. People have remarked on my fantastic posture over the year, but alignment and keeping my pelvis stabilized seem like things that need lifelong attention and continual adjustments.  I don't know if yoga has helped prevent any migraines, though gentle yoga has been soothing when I've had one.  Circulation?  Sure, while I'm actually practicing, but in general?  Who knows?  And my blood pressure readings, they were pretty dang healthy before this year began, and they still are.

So now for the million-dollar question: do I look different, slimmer or have more muscle bulk?  Honestly.... I think I look pretty much the same as I did last January. My clothing sizes haven't changed. My weight has fluctuated within the same 5-pound window all year. That said, my body has never been in as great shape as it has been at times this year.  Particularly in the spring and summer months.  I definitely am stronger than I was last December, even if my core is a little wimpy at present.

And here's the real triumph: I have never felt so secure with this body as is as I have this year.  And sexy.  This body of mine is strong and sexy and I'm so happy to live in it.  The time I spend every day doing yoga allows me to witness and appreciate my body, while it also puts me in touch with what my body needs and what it likes to keep it healthy and happy.  Even when my muscles burn like crazy from holding a challenging pose, yoga feels like the most incredible gift to my body. 

Maybe I do look different.  Maybe I do stand taller.  Maybe the incredible confidence and respect I've developed for my body on the inside has transformed how I appear on the outside, in ways that have nothing to do with slimness, muscle mass, or the number on the scale. 

Namaste!

My Brain on Yoga: a Flash Yoga Blog!

This blog is a flash yoga blog.  No, this isn't like a "flash mob" (though that would be RAD).  This is more in the spirit of flash fiction.  As Wikipedia puts it, "Flash fiction is a style of fictional literature or fiction of extreme brevity. ... Some self-described markets for flash fiction impose caps as low as 300 words."  So that means: I am going to write this blog like a flash in a pan, or quick as a flash, typing anything that comes to mind, in a short 20-minute frame of time, and not exceeding 300 words in count.

Oh and also, I will be including some flash yoga-photos from my practice today, for comical relief.

My Brain On Yoga, the Home Practice Edition:

Sit still.  Breathe.  Stop thinking about your breath so much and breathe normally.  Right, like that.  Am I sitting upright?  Slouching?  Lean back.  Breathe normally.  Quiet the mind.  How do you quiet the mind?  I have no idea.  Breathe.  

Okay....  It's been a few minutes, right?  Time to put the hands in front of the chest in Namaste. "OOOOOOHHHHHHHH- cough-{oops, too low}...uh, MMMMMMMMMMMM."

"OOOOOHHHHH{too high??}HHHHMMMMMM." 

"OOOOOHHHHHHHHMMMMMM." Perfect. 

Let's get my Sanskrit chanting on!  Wow, wrong key.  I'm not sounding so musical today.  Why do I put a French accent on everything?  Was that the second time through the invocation, or third?  I can just do two, right?  What should my intention for my practice be today?  Something about being kind to oneself, not judging too harsh.  That sounds good.

Cat, cow, cat, cow, cat, cow.   I could cat and cow all day, it feels so good.  Until it gets boring.  

Dog!  Walking, walking....  Full dog.  Bend the knees, draw the groin muscles back, rotate the thighs in and back, don't lock the elbows, push through the pads of the fingers, pull the shoulders into the back.... Broaden the kidney area on your back, tuck the tailbone. Don't forget your core.  Core, ha! What core?!

Plank.  God, I love plank.  My arms are so strong.  Heels over my toes, rotate inner thighs in and up, soften the heart a little.  Don't forget the core!  God, I hate plank....  Now for some obligatory Chaturanga Dandasana torture and cobra.  LOVE LOVE LOVE me that cobra.  But don't forget your core!

 

Step to Uttanasana.  HELLO, hamstrings.  Release the head.  Rotate--wait, I said, RELEASE THE HEAD.  Okay.  Now, rotate the thighs in and back, tuck the tailbone a little, bend from the hip folds, go a little deeper.  AHHHH.   Let's stand up and stretch the arms over head. Core!!! Overdoing the backbend there, back off!  Am I jutting my chest out? Don't do that, silly; there's no one's looking.  Hmmmm, what to do next?

Dog.  Three-legged dog.  Right leg forward in a lunge.  High lunge.  Don't let the right knee extend over the right ankle, keep the inner thigh lifted, hips even.  Get that right hip in and that right buttock tucked under. Don't forget your core! Bend deeper?  Not happening.  Right hip, why do you continue to torment me?  Tight, tight, mean right hip.  Jump Switch!  Ha ha ha--yeah, in my dreams!  Step switch.  Rinse and repeat on the left.

Balance poses!  Grounding the corners of my left foot.  Right foot up carefully...carefully!  Right foot to left calf, rotate in the right hip socket for easy tree pose.  Keep that left leg strong, four corners of the foot, FOUR corners, not two,  wavering, wavering.... Okay.  Got it now.  Square, stupid hips, get square! Core, do not, I say, DO NOT forget the core!  Imagine a string of thread on the inside of your belly button pulling it to the spine and then up just a little bit.  Tuck the tailbone.  Oh, arms!  Up, up, up.  Ack!  Core! Core! For the love of Patanjali, CORE!!!  Wavering, wavering!  Mayday!  And touchdown.  Switch!

I should do some core strengthening... WAH HA HA HA HA!!!

Savasana time.  Relax....  Let the mind release any thoughts....  Damn, my nose itches.  Ignore it.  Ignore it.  How long have I been lying here already?

"OOOOHHHHHHMMMMM."  Crud.  What was my intention?   Oh well....

"Namaste!"

 And now for that picture fun... Adventures in Utthita Hasta Padangustasana (Extended Hand-To-Big-Toe Pose) and Ardha Chandrasana (Half Moon Pose).  These are constant challenge poses for me, so know that I AM making mistakes and struggling and that you should not aspire to look like me!
 

Wobbling.

As straight as my leg goes.

Salute the Nikon judge!

Really don't have it!

Better....

Head turned up, and OMG!  Balanced!  Hooray!

Being present

Blog? What blog?

Hmmm…  It seems to me that, while I’ve been AWESOME at doing yoga for 30 minutes every day for 306 straight days now, my parallel goal to blog regularly and track my yoga minutes ever 10-14 days has totally gone down the toilet.  Oops.  I think I psyche myself out a bit with the blog.  See, I have all sorts of blog ideas, but I want them to be so dang good.  Like, really spectacular investigative yoga blogging.  That kind of thoughtful and thought-provoking work, it takes more than 30 minutes to write.  And I’ve been rather busy writing some earth-shattering copy about memory foam and weather stations and sewing machines during the last month or two.  Ah, excuses, excuses!

Besides, since the wrist injury in August, I’ve gotten out of the habit of writing down exactly how many minutes I’ve spent doing yoga every day on my calendar.  Believe me; I’ve done it every darn day.  I’ve just been lazy about documentation.  But I’m going to try to do some weekly guesstimates below, in the interest of being able to roughly estimate the total amount of time I spent doing yoga this year come New Years Day.

9/5-11: 230 minutes                         10/10-16: 275 minutes

9/12-18: 310 minutes                       10/17-23: 345 minutes

9/19-25: 220 minutes                       10/24-31: 275 minutes       

9/26-10/2: 340 minutes                    11/1-7: 230 minutes           

10/3-9: 340 minutes

Notable practices in the last two months:

• My first class post wrist injury on 9/12, taught by my lovely friend Megan, and captured on video tape to complete her yoga teacher training program.  Yay, Megan!
•  Yoga on the road, part one, September 22-27.  I did yoga in my lovely childhood friend Jamie’s yard in the Astoria hood of Queens, NY for three days.  Then I practiced for three days in Chappaqua, NY, at the home of my brother and sister-in-law, in the room that has since then become 26-days-old niece and nephew! 
• My first handstand post wrist injury, on September 29.  I love them so. 
• Yoga on the road, part two, October 16-17.  I did yoga at my old college pal Liz’s apartment in Portland, which rivals mine in tiny-ness.  There’s nothing like practicing with a hangover…

Cat and Cow--yoga cures for over-imbibing...

             *                      *                       *                      *                

Then there was my practice yesterday morning, my Daylight Savings Time “Fall Back” practice. 

Now, over the past ten months, my home practice has become very comfortable, very routine, and sometimes very boring.  I admit, since my injury in August, my daily practices at home rarely exceed 31-35 minutes.  When I couldn’t do any weight-bearing on my wrist, it was hard to drum up more than 30 minutes of poses and I’d check the clock constantly to find out how much more yoga I had to do.  I didn’t feel like doing yoga daily was a burden, but I definitely had negative feelings about my limitations and the amount of time I’d committed to practicing daily.  I could have embraced the injury as a golden opportunity to meditate more or to cultivate my pranayama practice.  But I have a tendency to let my restless energy dictate.  I’m not going to condemn myself for that—I am what I am.

However, as I healed and my home practice started filling up with downward dog, plank, handstand, and headstand and all those other weight-bearing hand/arm poses again, my clock-watching habit didn’t abate.  I’ve become a pro of the 31-minute yoga practice, barely lying dormant in Savasana for 30 seconds before jumping up off the mat with a quick “Namaste,” eager to go about my day.  In some ways, I feel like my home yoga practice in the last several months has more in common with my showers than my experiences in yoga classes: not a burden, but a necessary part of my day; sometimes luxurious, but generally not; routine.

So yesterday, with the help DST and that extra hour in the day, my morning felt so much more spacious than usual.  And that spacious feeling carried over to my yoga practice.  I was doing yoga “earlier” than I usually do on a Sunday morning, because I woke up “earlier” than usual.  I felt the freedom to linger in forward bends longer, to hold stretches and poses longer, to play with different poses than usual, to practice pranayama even.  I was engaging with my yoga with more intention and intimacy than I have in my home practice since before Labor Day.  It was an incredibly refreshing home practice—sublime.

In the Anusara yoga classes I attend, after we chant Om three times and the Anusara invocation in Sanskrit, the teacher always asks us to bow our heads towards our hearts and to set an intention for our practice before we release our hands, open our eyes, and start moving.  The intentions that I set in this pause are always attuned to my current physical, emotional, and spiritual status and needs.  If my heart is feeling tender, I set an intention to be gentle and patient with myself and to approach poses from a place of openness, without self criticism, and with no expectations except that I attempt poses to the best of my ability in that moment of that day.  If my heart is feeling joyous, my intention may be to express that feeling in my practice, to see how far my limbs can expand, to push the edge just a little bit further.

I googled "Be Present" and got Ernest Hemingway kicking a can.

I would like to set an intention for my home practice in the next 54 days.  Each time I step onto my mat, I will take the time to tune into where my body, mind, and heart are, how they are doing and what they need from yoga that day—set a daily intention, just like in class.  Then I will actively focus in my practice on meeting that intention and filling those needs, abandoning distracting thoughts about my schedule, work, food, and relationships until I am off the mat.  Lastly, I will move the clock so it is out of my line of sight on the mat.

I also hereby set an intention to blog more as I head into the last stretch of this journey!

Namaste!

The Six Month Post: Completionitis

"Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat."
-- F. Scott Fitzgerald

On the 4th of July, I hit the 180-day mark of my 360 days of yoga. That’s six months. I’m over half way there.

I gave my father this little update on the phone the other day. He said to me, “My God, you’re really doing this, aren’t you?” Yes, Dad, I really am. I really am going to see this project through, from start to finish.

In the past few years, I’ve had some issues with completion. Lots of unfinished business.  Some people get hung up on starting things. Not me. I start things left and right. I love starting things! The big finish is where I get stuck. Thus, I am a person who habitually:

• Cooks an elaborate dinner, leaves dishes piled up in the sink until the next night, or next week. 
• Mixes up ingredients for homemade ice cream, and passes off the hand-crank ice cream maker to someone else. 
• Folds laundry and leaves folded clothes in the laundry basket/on the sofa instead of putting them away. 
• Knits the sleeves, front, and back of a sweater, never sews the pieces together. 
• Starts writing a story, or a blog, leaves the piece at day’s end, and never returns to it.

I could go on.

FYI: There are an obscene amount of albums called "Unfinished Business." 

So when I decided to do 360 straight days of yoga practice, one of my goals was not “to complete something for once in my life.” Yes, my ultimate goal is to complete 360 straight days, but I didn’t think of it as a giant exercise in seeing a project through from start to finish. However, that’s exactly what it is.

With this goal of completion, there is a danger of looking at this year in terms of success and failure. This way of thinking doesn’t fit with yoga at all. When Patanjali uses the word “yoga” in his Yoga Sutras, it means “a state of wholeness” as well as the different practices (postures, pranayama, etc.) associated with this state. Should I step onto the mat everyday with the idea in my head that, “I have to do yoga today so I don’t fail,” I would be approaching my practice from a limited outlook. Yoga would become a chore (which I’ve discussed before), and I would be practicing with an ugly sense of obligation, with a fear of failure, and from a place of self-judgment. I would not be in a state of wholeness; I would not be open to whatever experiences might unfold while on the mat; and it wouldn’t be fun at all! As long as I upheld this outlook, even if I “succeeded” in practicing every single day, my yoga 360 would still be a failure. 

In her book, Living Your Yoga, Judith Lasater says, “The only real success in life is living with an open, loving heart.” I think that’s true. If I do miss a day of yoga, if I say to myself, “So you missed a day—it’s not worth beating yourself up over and discrediting all the yoga you did before today and all the yoga you’ll do after today,” then that, frankly, is a tremendous success.

Don’t get me wrong: I fully intend to keep doing yoga every single day until New Year’s. I intend to complete this thing. And it is a gigantic exercise in seeing a project through from start to finish. But it isn’t a gigantic exercise in NOT FAILING to see a project through from start to finish. It is a gigantic exercise in dedication and commitment. I am dedicated and committed to seeing this year through from start to finish, and more importantly, I am dedicated and committed to living with an open, loving heart—today, next month, come January 2011, come January 2021, and so on. 

 That's right, I'm the bacon.

Namaste!

Note to self: yoga should not be a chore.

Well, it shouldn't, right?

This kind of outlook is one of the challenges I've bumped into thus far in my 360 days of yoga quest. There are days, like today, where I wake up, feel kinda of blech physically and blah mentally, and the prospect of doing yoga doesn't exactly make my heart sing. It feels like something I "have to do." So, when I was telling a friend about what my day looked like recently, I said something like: "I want to spend a little time working the office, and I need to spend some time cleaning at home, and I've have to do my yoga still." He remarked that the way I was talking about yoga made it sound like this dreaded chore, and that seemed kind of contrary to why I am trying to do yoga for 360 days in the first place.

And he's right. When devising this yoga challenge for myself, I did not seek to add a daily chore to my life. I sought to add daily joy and calm and movement. But I AM human. Of course, when I wake up with a migraine, I'm not going to skip to my yoga mat. And I've woken up with two migraines this week--which is usually the maximum amount of migraines I have in a month. With any luck, I won't have another one for four weeks. However, I still have to get through today. The headache is fading, but I feel a little weak overall, unfocused, and sort of nauseous. I have yet to do yoga today. When I do, I know to avoid a lot of Uttanasana and to skip the inversions all together: I want to minimize poses that send blood rushing to the head. And I'm probably not going to want to hold Utkatasana for very long today because of my nausea. Today is a day for a gentle yoga practice, a restorative yoga practice.

I know that I am the one who decides what qualifies as a day's yoga practice in my challenge. Some people would craft flexible rules for themselves, rules that bend all sorts of ways so that they don't fail. Now I don't want to fail, but I'm kind of a hard a** with myself. I am writing down how much time I spend doing yoga every day, and on days when I'm crafting my own pose sequence, I'm timing it and making sure I keep at it for over 30 minutes. Which is great! But I also have this idea in my head that I'm "cheating" if I spend a day's practice just doing gentle yoga stretches or restorative poses or doing more meditation or breath work. If I really want to practice yoga though, I absolutely have to let go of the idea that I have to break a sweat or feel my muscles burning in my daily practice. Burning calories is not yoga!!!

In fact, only one of the 8 limbs of yoga, as laid out in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, has anything to do with poses and "exercise" at all--the third limb, Asana, which regards body postures. The literal meaning of the word Asana is not "pose" however. It is "seat," often used in the context of a seated position one can comfortably maintain for meditation. As for the other 7 limbs of yoga, they cover morality, personal observances, control of breath, control of the senses, cultivating inner perceptual awareness, meditation on the Divine, and union with the divine. While I may discuss these more at a later date, I refer you to Wikipedia for now!

My point is: with so little importance given to the sweating buckets aspect of yoga, I really must give more attention to the other aspects of yoga. Especially on days like today: practicing Pranayama (breath exercises) and Dhyana (meditation) may actually help alleviate my migraine, and they definitely won't make me feel worse. Focusing on these other limbs of yoga aren't cheating. However, if I focused only on Asanas, I would be cheating myself.

"Meditate, you must. Yes, hmmm."

Namaste!