Previous title: “Gang of three” or “The scale of modern practice”

*insert appropriate pithy epigram here*

Another great Teacher Intensive weekend has come and gone and, as all fruitful studies should, it answered some questions and then asked a whole host of others. One of the portions I found the most powerful was our round-table discussion on when and if political material should ever be included in class. As expected, the responses ran the gamut from “good Lord, no, are you kidding? that’s the most inappopriate soapboxing/proselytizing misuse of your teaching energy, ever” to “I love hearing it in class and it connects me to the higher purposes of practice”. And also as expected, the responses to teaching technique have a great deal to do with the context of the class and studentship. I mean, the C word is the one that just keeps deluging me lately: it’s like an even shorter of that excellent Facebook bit that started showing up and going viral a few years ago: “Everything is changing. Everything is connected. Pay attention”.

Since I seem to have garnered the reputation for being so political, even though my own political studies are ham-handed and infantile at best, I thought I’d use this post as a way of explaining why I’ve been drawn to political concepts in recent years and how, if at all, they might harmonize with practice.

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No, I didn’t quit [winky face]. I just had trouble blogging, ’cause TWINSMAS. I’m on Week 8 now which is throwing me some curve balls but in the meantime here are the notes from the last month of the project:

Weeks 3 and 4: Is This As Boring As It Seems

Utthita Trikonasana, Utthita Parsvakonasana, Virabhadrasana I and II, Parvritta Trikonasana, Parsvottanasana, Prasarita Padottanasana I, Salamba Sarvangasana I, Halasana, Savasana

Is this boring? Is it as boring as it sometimes seems? I can’t believe how much I would NOT have wanted to do this even a year ago and how rad it has turned out to be, is why. I have boundary issues with this, like I’m always trying to teach My Old Self from my early twenties, when in fact I occupied a very specific and not altogether savoury energetic and intellectual space at that time that I expect only a small minority of students currently occupy.

No vinyasas, no variations, no linking poses together. If I’m not interrupted by twin related mayhem [which has really ceased to be an interruption and more of a natural extension of the work itself], just jumping legs wide and together [itself a bit of a sore spot for me, since I've always found jumping to be jubbly and undignified] and moving on to the next one. At some point in these two weeks practicing the poses above I realized something very significant was happening inside which was the opposite of boring. Parvritta Trikonasana in particular appears to be functioning at this stage as scoliosis therapy, and as one has nothing more exciting to draw one’s attention away from small asymetries, they take on their own fascination. The anatomical specificity of Weeks 1 and 2 continues, only now with like pop-ups attached, like they’re links on blogs:

…vastus lateralis + gluteus medius [popup: lateral proximal part of foot]…

&c.

Breastfeeding has made Salabasana impossible but I’ve got it waiting in the wings.

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Tadasana, Vrksasana, Utthita Trikonasana, Parsva Konasana, Virabhadrasana I, Virabhadrasana II, Parsvottanasana, Salamba Sarvangasana I, Halasana, Savasana

This is outing myself even further, but what the hell: I’ve never really felt I *had* to practice alignment. I was in various forms of discomfort, all of which felt pretty much under my control, either physical or energetic, and I could basically dial them up or down at will. If I got a little zany, some repeated stuff would come up, and I’d feel it happen and sort of stupidly decide in any given moment to go into the repeated stuff or dodge it, usually go into it, and then deal with the aftermath in my own perverse way. And the alignment certainly helped with some discomfort, and it made my poses improve, and it gave me some stuff to think about. It helped me start to see things in other bodies and see more within. But I never really HAD to think about it if I didn’t want to. I could do a crappy pose and the worse thing that would happen is I might have to crack my SI joint like a knuckle and all would be well.

Not so post-partum, which has removed pretty much all the spontaneous joy from yoga for me. It no longer feels good and free to

move. Which is cool because Mr Iyengar has made it clear that he doesn’t want me to feel good OR free, he just wants me to work hard and take care of business. So, henceforth he and I are in agreement: I picture him berating me and whacking me across the

How many hours have I spent in front of this thing?

flank with a stick. The consequence of not moving intelligently is devastating pain that lasts for days and could previously only be alleviated either by not doing any sort of movement endeavour [which was making me big and slow] or bodywork [which, while delightful, was starting to be a bit of a cash-flow issue] so I suppose I have my own internal stick with which to whack myself. Again, I’ve never felt anything like this before: such a joyless squashing of the creativity I had come to associate with the practice: but after like the 50th time I assed myself up pretending things were OK I finally, reluctantly, learned.

The practice above is not any practice that I would either sequence for my students or come up with for my home practice. In fact, it used to look so Goddamn tedious I didn’t take it seriously on any level whatsoever. In the last two weeks it has come to be as comfortable and healing as one of those old Epsom salt footbaths in your Grandma’s bathroom.. I read the accompanying material and terse and sometimes elliptical alignment instructions [for example, M and I had to Google what was intended by "firm loins"]. I read the therapeutic applications, and marvel at the difference between what Mr Iyengar thinks these poses are good for and what my other teachers have said they were good for, and how they felt to me. Then I do the pose for the recommended amount of breaths/time, and let it go. I’ve only had to miss two days due to flu in the last two weeks. That’s not bad with twins. [Mr Iyengar was silent on the calibre of a seeker with twins.]

My notes: Vrksasana is great for improving blood flow and fat/fluid removal from post-partum inner thighs. The innervation seems stronger there now, even though it’s pretty painful in a skin-tightening sort of way when you’re in it [i.e. not joint or muscle pain, just that irritating asana pain about which nothing can be done]. It’s nice to practice Vira I again, it’s always so nostalgic, and is a nice stretch for the lateral gastrocnemius and soleus provided the heel is correctly rooted. A five-minute shoulderstand is really an ass-kicker. I am not yet strong enough to do it for the full time every time but luckily [?] it repeats for what looks like several more weeks. I did enjoy his aside about how Shoulderstand is the “mother” now that I’m a mother: taking care of all the systems, keeping the household/body in tandem and smooth working order. It’s SOMEWHAT less misogynist than his other asides.

But what’s been especially rad about this first small foray on a multi-year endeavour is that, due to the specificity of the work and the pain of misaligning, my whole body is lighting up like the Anatomy Colouring Book, and each practice colours in a bit more. At some point in e.g. Trikonasana, I will be doing my level best to firm my loins &c., and across my consciousness will float:

“…left side quadratus femoris…”

or

“…top fibres of right oblique…”

and the electricity of my studies colours in the fibres of the newly contracting muscle in e.g. bright blue [it's usually blue]. The names are always in italic, bold Garamond, and they always have those little ellipses around them.

Now, I’m not an anatomy pro; I’m not a doctor, although I do play one on TV. Assisting Chris got my head in the game and I’ve been doing my best ever since. This is a new level of synthesis, of study/awareness/sensation/ healing. It’s pretty awesome. The pain has given me one of those packs of rainbow-coloured felt-tip markers, and as long as I don’t quit, I’ll just keep filling everything in.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that you’ll *learn* more when *teaching* an event, much more than anticipated. The Teacher Intensives have basically blown out my cerebral cortex every weekend, not just because I’m co-teaching in such excellent company but the teachers who attend have been extremely high-calibre; and while I’m always very pleased and proud to offer whatever’s been rattling around in the ol’ brain-pan, I definitely walk away with what I offered plus interest.

This series is a takeaway from Shelley Tomczyk, who spoke so highly and devotedly of a text I’ve always had little to no time for: BKS Iyengar’s tendentious classic Light on Yoga, an ubiquitous dusty offering on many yogi’s bookshelves. My copy, after reading the following [parentheses and italics mine]:

“The feeble seekers are those who lack enthusiasm, criticise their teachers [d'oh], are rapacious, inclined to bad action [yipes!], eat much [that'll leave a mark], are in the power of women [SCREW YOU!!], unstable [see above], cowardly, ill, dependent, speak harshly [why I oughtta...], have weak characters, and lack virility [*&!ing patriarchy].”

remained fairly untouched, and only consulted in moments of examination or under duress. He doesn’t like me, I thought to myself, and I don’t like him: by any metric I would have failed him long ago, and frankly I’m not really in the mood to be hit with

Photo courtesy of Still Yoga, stillyoga.com

dowels or verbally abused which is sort of how he rolls so the whole thing left me cold. But Shelley’s copy was dogeared and falling apart, and we did a little exercise using it, and there was something about the stern, no-nonsense fluffless approach that landed a little deeper this time around. The only hands-on experience I had with Iyengar Yoga was a clinic taught at my old yoga stomping grounds, at which time I was a dillentantish Ashtangi with no idea whatsoever what the hell was going on, so needless to say a 3 minute supported headstand had no attraction to me, much less a supine Warrior II held for what seemed to be a cortex-flattening amount of boring time. Whattaya want, I was like 22.

So, and I realize I am outing myself in a big way here and hope you, gentle reader, will help hold me accountable, I am committing to undertaking Iyengar’s 300-week course of study, and am just closing in on the end of week 2. I can already tell this is going to take longer than the 300 weeks; if all goes as expected, the twins will be about 7 when I’m done.

NOTE: Yes, I’m aware that I’d be better served doing this under the tutelage of an Iyengar teacher; but for reasons of funding and time management I’m just going to rely on my many years of practice, however low-grade, and my [koff, koff] thousand hours of study.

So I sez to Morgan, I sez, it has always bothered me that Yoda says “Do or do not, there is no try” in Star Wars Episode V, because it has always seemed to me that there is TOTALLY SO try.  I mean, the Bhagavad Gita says that one should work without anticipation of reward, not for the fruits but for the actions themselves, which would actually seem to me that try is the most important bit, and that no effort is wasted, which I interpret to mean that “try” is some sort of accruing currency that actually increases every time one tries.

w00t w0000t

I also have this bit that I teach, especially to beginners, where I point out that they are just at the start of their journey and there’s no point getting all het up about not executing e.g. Bakasana to their satisfaction on the first attempt because life is long and keep coming to class &c, and Yoda sort of undermines that whole spiel, because if their options are at the point just “do not” i.e. there is no try, then they won’t come back to class again because “do not” is sort of a bummer [unnecessarily harsh and discouraging] and inaccurate besides, because the preparatory actions of a pose are very helpful and therapeutic even if you don’t get your feet off the ground in Bakasana as above, or whatever pose you’re sharpening yourself against…[ellipsis...]

And you know it’s kind of a bummer to try to do something and then not actually be able to do it, viz. certification [see below] because you’re all like, dude, if there’s no “try” then what in the world have I spent the last however-long doing?  I seem to remember some trying.  And some doing not, I suppose.  But mostly TRYING!  And the complex intersecting layers of how much one wants to try vs. how much benefit one might obtain from doing, or not doing, or trying…it’s all a rich tapestry…I explained about the nexus of tattvas, that is, experiential layers of the universe, where concept,will and execution intersect on an absolute level, and that this in fact is the generative power of the universe [icca, jnana and kriya], which appears to effectively demonstrate the UNIVERSE IS MADE OF TRY:  that every cell of your body is pure try:  that without “trying” there is no BEING, much less doing or not doing, and that the synthesis of spiritual endeavour consisted primarily of the essence of Try, in that no result was expected, demanded or desired and yet the path presents itself, over and tedious over again, pursuing Light in the most occluded and cystlike environments, attempting the impossible triple-axel Sight of Light in spaces where no light should by all rights be and simply by virtue of the pure-hearted attempt GENERATING light in this sclerotic places…By gum, trying makes the world go round, three cheers for try, how can this geriatric little Muppet even dare to sully the good name of Try with his tortured syntax and burlap robes, and I became quite aerated about the whole prospect; I even cultivated a slight bloom of rhetorical sweat on my upper lip.  I may also have been changing Hannah at the time, I can’t quite remember.

M said, “He’s referring to telekinesis”.

I thought for a second.

I said, “Oh, well, that’s true then.”

Since I had such a sweet pregnancy and practiced throughout with very little pain or discomfort it’s been a real ass-kicker not to be able to move as freely as I once was able now that the twins are born.  I know, I know:  what a surprise:  and of course intellectually and empathetically I had heard tales from the post-partum crypt more than I can count.  It’s challenging to operate on levels like, here’s my spirit and here’s my brain and my brain wants to serve spirit and here’s how I do it, I get up at this time and I move my body in this way and that feels good, does it feel good to you too?  It does?  Great, let’s keep doing that and O SNAPS WAIT UP SOME PEOPLE CAME OUT OF ME.  Body totally different=fried.  Brain still wanting to serve, heart still wanting to serve.  Students and community constantly distracted, chatting about diet and buying habits and Ayurveda and raw macaroons and The Core™ and assorted other miscellany that seem to have about as much to do with the twin-raising project as, say, a doodled outline of your own thumb on a message pad has to do with a lunar probe.  Me: not coming up with any even halfway decent answers, mostly cause I’m a bit ashamed of having been SO SURE about yoga asana and Anusara and now I’m not just unsure, I think I’m kind of over it.  So is my spiritual practice consistent?  Yes.  Here’s why.

You can't balance what you can't see

My body is already being used in intense devotional service every single moment of every day.  The very cells I occupy are redolent with life’s purpose by way of estrogen, fat and sleep deprivation.  I am making food with my body instead of poses and directly serving those who cannot serve themselves.  I am remembering God as I do so.  So while I can appreciate that you are finding deep significance in e.g. Tibetan throat singing or Scorpion pose, it all seems PROFOUNDLY beside the point at this stage in my development.  *warning – gender essentialism ahead* Sometimes I think dudes came up with yoga cause they were all jealous of how much women’s bodies are in service by nature.  Regardless of their sexuality or procreative decisions, there is still a pulse that is always serving life.  Maybe dudes just wanted to keep themselves busy playing the sacred flute or some such s**t.  So just as the Vipassana gong rang at 4 am and I got up to sit whether I wanted to or not, so Robert’s fussing keeps me in touch with the relentless divine whether I want to or not.  That’s where my discipline is channelled.

Therefore I have run out of steam pursuing the Holy Grail of Certification, and not only steam, money.  The longer this process takes the more expensive it is and therefore only the comfortable or the very ascetic will attain the position without severe debt and stress.  I am fairly comfortable but not enough for additional $500 mentoring programs after already shelling out (mumble) benjamins at this late stage of the game, and I’m not ascetic at all.  Also, my whole thing with Certification was “I wasn’t doing anything more important” and now I am.  So I’m in the penalty box after my last video [submitted 2 weeks before giving birth btw] didn’t pass, and as my year in the dunce corner whiles away the whole thing is becoming ever more baroque and complicated, and costly, and frankly it’s all I can do to make sure everybody’s set up with some stewed pears and organic milled brown rice cereal if ya feels me.

Okay, so.  Anusara may fall away.  Asana may fall away.  Formal seated practice has been wobbly right out of the gate.  I don’t tend towards formal devotional practices, although I admire those who hold them down, as I’ve always associated the representative forms of God to be just that, tokens, the same way Monopoly money is associated with real money and then the way real money is associated with value and worth.  But I still feel God every day, and I actually kind of dig this new iconoclastic by-any-means-necessary practice, where spirit *has to* be tethered to every action.  The only real suffering I have in this new space is that of loneliness; I was craving companionship both through Anusara and through yoga in general and ironically my commitment to the former seems to have further disconnected and splintered me away from the latter.  It’s lonely to have failed, and it’s lonely to be the gelatinous pie-eyed chronic pain sufferer in the back of the room, but hell, at least it’s real.   Also, my babies are cute, which helps a lot.

Hi everybody!  The following is a public service announcement.  It is almost impossible to stay in a bad mood when listening to either The Jackson Five or Kool and the Gang’s “Get Down On It“.   You can try to scowl but you just end up looking silly.

How you gonna do it if you really don't wanna dance?

If that little tip wasn’t a sufficient energy-adjuster, this weekend Christine Price Clark’s magnificent workshop “In Good Company” is at the West Vancouver Community Centre, hosted by Yogapod.  Having hung out with Christine a time or two I know you will bask in her warm presence and insightful teaching.  Coming up quick, sign up today!

Any of my readers who are also teachers, of any style, I am super excited to announce the Teacher Intensives that I’m co-teaching with Christine and Shelley Tomczyk.  We’ve been brainstorming these for ages:  a high level venue of companionship, mentorship and study for those wishing to hone their offerings to a Ginsu-knife clarity.  So much yoga in Vancouver has been expanding to the point where the seams are stretched and teachers can feel solitary and suffer burnout or lack of inspiration:  this is the cure:  an increased depth of service, understanding, and precision.  Plus the poster is ra-ha-ha-had.  Contact Inner Space to enrol.

Lastly, I’m back to Penticton and Kelowna for a long weekend mini-tour, and I’m thrilled to be a part of the growing strong community there.  Penticton Nov 3+4, Kelowna Nov. 5+6, we’re packin’ the twins and boogieing to the Interior.  If you have friends or folks out there, let them know!  From side bending-twisting-flow to an intermediate/advanced practice to therapeutics, it’s all happening; there’ll be something in there for you.

I really wish I could blog more, but the twins are five months old and generally if I have to actually do any sort of work on the computer that’s more intense than just reading, the sleep deprivation kicks in and the pixels start to dissolve and swim in front of my eyes, so I acknowledge the sporadic and somewhat self-serving nature of this announcement post, and just use it as a hook to say if ya miss me I’ll see you at these events, heh.

You know when you’re on holiday somewhere beautiful and you find every vista and spectacle so irresistibly stunning that you take brazillions of pictures and upload and categorize them all, perhaps with some cunning file naming convention so that you can readily access each splendid panorama (depending on your nerdlitude), checking in on Facebook constantly, charting your trip on GPS, creating clever prose poems about the magnificence you’ve witnessed…

…and when you get home you realize you have no *actual memory* of your holiday apart from camera cabling and digital fluff? My love of the Internet is legendary, and I generally avoid taking neo-Luddite pot shots at people actually using their phones or being really proud of not having a TV. However, I’ve been keeping a really low electronic profile since the twins were born, partly because I’m way too busy feeding them and/or cleaning up after them, and partly because most baby-related material is not exactly riveting journalism to me, and partly because I felt like once I started diving into the avalanche of needed e-communication I’d never dig myself out again. But mostly, just because I don’t want to miss any moment of this, no matter how hallucinatory or hormonally amplified. However, the longer I wait to surface the more it seems like I’m potentially unwell or something disastrous has happened, and I want to be clear that both they and I are in good health and the delivery was a success, if by no other metric than they used to be inside me and now they’re not

Hannah (back) and Robert (front) were born on April 19 at 2:38 and 2:48 pm respectively. Hannah had the cord wrapped around her neck, which if local anecdata can be trusted is true of pretty much half the people I know, and was therefore delivered by forceps (as was I); Robert was helped down the road via vacuum, which gave him a little yarmulke of bruise that we used to differentiate him from his sister while they were still so wrinkly and generic newborns that we had trouble remembering which was which. They don’t actually look anything like each other, but let’s face it: we weren’t the brightest logs on the Yuletide fire in that little postpartum room.

I kept thinking to myself during labour: I haven’t ruled anything out, I am not attached to any one method of getting these guys out, I am “ready” at least on the conceptual level for different levels of pain and different interventions. I did, however, realize that whatever it took to get the first one out I was then going to have to duplicate or intensify to get the second out, and so I elected to have an epidural, which ended up being a great mercy once we knew that Hannah was having trouble. I am about 15-25% guilty that I could not deliver them without intervention, mostly due to some bullshit-fueled narrative about Womyn Goddess Power or some such crap, but I’m pretty much over it (amazing how pernicious that meme is).

,

Hannah (back), Robert (front)

They are as well-put together as we can ascertain with the battery of tests that they launch at neonates these days, like they’re studying for the LSATS or something. I’m recovering well although understandably still pudgy and slow. So! Healthy babies, healthy mom, and a healthy (if stubbly) dad.

Weirdly, the experience of raising these guys so far is more like a meditation retreat than any other experience of mine, but not for any of the poetic fluffy reasons you might expect. Ways In Which Newborn Twins Are Like A Meditation Retreat:

1. Your existence is ruled by time: gongs, beeps, arbitrary chunks of time by which you measure the repeated menial tasks which are your due.

2. Mealtimes and excretions are the most exciting parts of your day.

3. You wear pajamas 24/7. (to be fair, I pretty much did this anyway)

4. Even if you could somehow access an adult to whom you might express some insight arising from the experience, through fatigue and energetic confusion you couldn’t form accurate words anyway.

5. There’s no way to record your insights, either because journals are prohibited or because you don’t have any time and even if you did you don’t make any sense (see #4)

6.  At least for as long as they are 12 days old [yesterday], both experiences last for 12 days.

My love for them, and everything else that I really feel, is too sacred and quiet to write about.

Several people have been asking me whether I’ve been practicing asana through my pregnancy.  This is kind of a sensitive issue and I have been dithering on whether or not to post about it, because I don’t think there’s any one right answer here and I think all humans, regardless of their reproductive status, should follow their hearts and do what feels right.

Hips don't lie.

However, I absolutely, 100%, credit Anusara Yoga specifically and its teachings with helping me through this process with relative comfort, power, stamina and ease.  My understanding of the Universal Principles of Alignment have never been more essential to understanding how to heal and soothe my body as it undergoes this process and sustains the life of not one but two little larval humans.  A huge part of this is due to the fact that I had a strong yoga practice for many years in advance, so again, I’m not saying just jump right in to these particular poses and forms…but if you want to start to practice yoga for prenatal purposes, even before you seal the deal so to speak, find an Anusara yoga teacher.  Here’s why:

- Practices that depend on or begin with a very hard, short front body will either be a) uncomfortable b) painful or c) impossible.  You’ve all been to school, you understand the birds and the bees, so if this baby’s gonna make a break for it there’s really only one legit direction for it to go, and if you wall that off you are fighting life.  In fact, I don’t endorse that kind of approach for ANY body, much less a pregnant body, but it becomes more urgent in this situation.  In addition, the tendency of a pregnant woman to externally rotate her hips and flatten her lumbar spine [a.k.a. "the waddle", you've all seen it] will merely be exacerbated by unnecessarily tight and tense abs and butt.

- Resting is great, believe me; I’ve become a master at the 11-hour epic sleep, and since my 3rd trimester I’ve been breaking up active poses with restoratives [see below].  Hauling ass the way you used to is not respectful of your process and the amount of energy you need to build their little body, not to mention your own health and resources.  However, poses that are *only* passive allow any tissues that are becoming overstretched or excessively pliant to continue getting stringy and disengaged, and won’t actually let the tense, hard spots release [because your body, quite cleverly, knows that in order to safely release those spaces something else will have to do that supportive work].  So, active poses whenever possible.  My personal experience as well as the anecdata I’ve been gathering from other pregnant students and friends seems to indicate that yes, certain parts of your body turn to wobbly goo but others go hard as rocks and so [again, as with *all* humans] to try and treat any discomfort with a one-sided approach will not remedy the imbalance.  Balanced action:  sequential application of the principles.  Okay. (more…)

Another episode of BRFs That 70s Show, this time inspired by dino-rock and Wiley Wiggins and his enormous human-heart sized headphones. I really should see that movie again; I remember it as quite poignant but then I was one of those grungy teenagers completely captivated by all things late 60s/70s.

He looks a bit like my brother at that age

“Tuesday’s Gone”, Lynyrd Skynyrd

“Free Ride”, The Edgar Winter Group

“Rock And Roll All Night”, Kiss

“Space Truckin’”, Deep Purple

“Paranoid”, Sabbath

“Slow Ride”, Foghat

“Sweet Emotion”, Aerosmith

“Balinese”, ZZ Top

“Take The Money And Run”, Steve Miller Band

“Dazed And Confused”, Led Zeppelin

“Nassau/Baby I Love Your Way”, Peter Frampton

“Summer Breeze”, Seals and Crofts

“Lights”, Journey