Day 3 & Day 4

Continuing the Daily Dose of Yoga with suggestions for December 3 and December 4 — or whenever you like, if you like them, according to how they serve you or not.

Day 3: Considering Ahimsa

I’ve most commonly seen ahimsa translated as “nonviolence,” which is, as far as I know, accurate. However, when considering it as part of a yoga practice, it might be helpful to consider it in a broader or deeper sense. I’ve also seen ahimsa described as “do no harm” and practicing compassion, and as practical matters, both of those strike me as more complete and therefore more helpful. For instance, it’s certainly possible for me to be technically nonviolent toward myself or others while still doing them harm or regarding them without compassion.

Shunning someone out.

Self-deprecating talk.

Guilting anyone for something that has already happened.

Nonviolent — but, I would argue, not really in line with an observation of ahimsa.

And you know what? Developing a consistent practice of ahimsa — learning to feel and act compassionately toward others and ourselves — is tough. It’s worthy of being considered a yoga practice in its own right. Because as the sum total of my life, what matters more: how compassionate I am, or how many sun salutations I could do?

Day 4: Heart Opening Asana Practice

This was uploaded by Esther Ekhart, one of my favorite yoga channels on YouTube. It fits in quite nicely with Day 3′s discussion of ahimsa:

[Video from EkhartYoga via YouTube.]

It starts with a fairly fiery core practice that builds into some heart-opening postures. I’ve only viewed (and tried) the practice once, so my memory is not the most informed, but — This is a practice that assumes ability to get into a number of common asanas without assistance. Additionally, it assumes some familiarity with said yoga postures; they are described some but not in a whole lot of detail and not with too many modifications offered. (To give a complete picture, though, Esther Ekhart has another YouTube channel that details a lot of individual poses with much more instruction and modifications. I get the impression that the new channel’s intended audience mostly includes people who are familiar with the first channel.)

Physically, core awareness and control helps create support for safe backbending, which a lot of heart opening postures involve. In terms of chakra work and the subtle body (if you’re into that sort of thing), activating energy in the heart center can help cultivate the capacity for love and compassion within ourselves. Whether that’s strictly true or not, I find that a heart opening practice does serve to remind me to consciously think about how to do no harm.

That Thing I Do with My Hips

It’s a MenstroMonster kind of day, so I spent my asana practice working on releasing tension in my hips and pelvis. Not that all — or even most — endo pain is tension related, but it’s nice to be able to relieve the part that is. Since a fair number of people, not just folks with endo, tend to carry tension in their hips — and since a few IRL folks have asked me what I use for mine — I thought I’d post my favorite hip opening series.

Note: This is a personal practice, based on my physical needs, abilities, and preferences. Part or all of it may not be suitable for some readers. It’s a good idea to use your own best judgment about whether a given pose is good for you, and maybe to consult an expert — which I am not — if you’re unsure.

A capture I took while making the photo post for wild thing. I am not sure if this is as high as my lifted leg goes — with level hips — or if I was just more focused on the different stages of getting to wild thing. Either way, what’s important is that the Caseydog is Not Impressed.

1. Integration: Child’s Pose — Sometimes I am still and sometimes I wiggle my butt a little, feeling out my hips. I stay here long enough to figure out what I’m working with today and what my intention is for my practice.

2. Half Sun Salutes — About 2-5 of these, depending on how stiff my body feels on any given day. I definitely use them as a warm-up, rising higher and bending less in the first half salute than in whatever number is my last.

3. Sun Salutes — I generally only do 1-2 of this particular version because I add onto it quickly in ways that I still consider warm-up friendly.

4. Sun Salute with Low Lunge and Half Pyramid Vinyasa — I usually do 3-5 repetitions of the vinyasa, but I don’t hang out in either pose very long at all: half or one complete breath cycle. Really, I’m just loosening up my hips for the next sun salute.

5. The Next Sun Salute, with Low Lunge — What it says. With this round, I tend to hold the lunge for 5-10 breaths. I tend to do 1-2 of these salutes, depending on how willing my front hip flexors are.

6. Sun Salute with Warrior 1 — Again, just one of these on each side, held for 5-10 breaths because I’m getting ready to build on in my next salute.

7. Sun Salute with Devotional Warrior — I enter from warrior 1 on each side and hold for 5-10 breaths. I might do 2-3 of these if my outer hips feel tight, or just 1 if what I’m really moving toward is a chance to stretch the fronts and insides of my hips a bit more.

8. Sun Salute with Warrior 2 — Usually I ease into this pose as well, bending and straightening my front leg a few times before I hold the standing pose for several breath cycles. Most of the time, I only “need” one of this series to let my hips relax, but sometimes I repeat it just because I like it.

9. Sun Salute with Triangle — Not gonna lie. Sometimes I hang out here for a good long while, just because I love it.

10. Standing Sequence: Eagle into Half Moon — Because this is a pretty intense balance sequence for me — especially the transitions between the postures — I tend to let my balance guide me in how fast I transition and how long I stay in each pose. Usually, I’ll only enter the sequence once on each side unless I fall out of it so fast that I call a yoga do-over.

11. Transition Poses: Uttanasana and Thunderbolt — Long enough in each one to feel grounded, 5-10 breaths is a good rule of thumb for me.

12. Camel — I generally do 2 rounds of this, one gentle for me, one working my edge a little more. It’s common for me to hold the first pose for ~5 breaths and the second for more like 10-12.

13. Pigeon with Maybe a Side Dish of King Pigeon — This is one of my longer-held postures. Typically, I spend 6-12 breaths in upright pigeon, 12+ breaths in prone pigeon, and 6-12 breaths bringing my back leg in at least a little in king pigeon or a modification. Generally, my back hip flexor needs that extra bit of stretch.

14. Wide Legged Seated Forward Bend — No lie, any practice where I get to do camel and then this pose makes Tori a happy camper. (So, yes, when I self-select my practice, I do this a lot.) And I’m capable of living here for minutes at a time — again, several breaths to get into the posture, and then more to let my body relax into its edge.

15. Supine Spinal Twist — My intent here is to do an easy spinal twist. I use it to decompress after the back and forward bending I’ve done this practice. I usually hang out for 5-10 breaths on a side.

16. Savasana — Sometimes I substitute legs up the wall (legs on the couch?) but not usually, as this sequence doesn’t involve a lot of bending in my low back.

My total practice time usually runs in the 50 minute range and is most affected by how much time I spend in integration or savasana.

Enjoy!

Trucking Through

My dad died a little over two years ago. If he had lived, he would have turned 59 this month. I mean to write about him more than I do, but I can seldom find the words.

Many of my favorite memories of my dad involve camping; most also involve fucking up. Fittingly, this particular story involves fucking up while camping.

Somewhere in the neighborhood of sixth or possibly seventh grade, my church organized a group camping trip at a site about an hour away from our house. What I thought this would mean was that all the families who signed up through the church would have a group of adjacent or at least nearby campsites. What it actually meant was that every other family who went ended up with a spot in the RV section while our family ended up with a spot in the tent section. Since we had a tent and not an RV, this was a good thing in terms of sleeping arrangements. Since it meant we were far enough away not to be able to know any kinds of planned events, this was pretty much fail in terms of being a community camping trip for us. .

Not that we were complaining. Much. Sure, my sister and I whined about not being able to hang out with our friends, particularly as we’d found out that they’d left for swimming on our walk to the RV site. And my dad grumbled about someone or other’s piss-poor organization. But this complaining lasted less than an hour — just long enough for my sister and I to confirm that other kids in our church group were, in fact, making plans and having fun without us — before we decided to get over ourselves and have fun anyway.

But prior to having fun, we had to set up the tent. Under the best of circumstances, this is an exercise in teaching the children creative combinations of cuss words. And this was not to be under the best of circumstances.

“Shit,” Dad exclaimed, rummaging through the back of the van.

I waited.

“There’s the tent,” he continued, tossing a duffel bag on the ground. “But we don’t have any tent poles.”

“We could drive home and get them,” my sister supplied helpfully.

“We could just drive home,” Mom added. Camping was never really her thing.

I didn’t want to leave, not even to get the tent poles. For one, that would be about two hours of our overnight camping trip (it ran Friday-Saturday only so we could all be at church on Sunday) wasted driving in a car instead of engaging in activities that could legitimately be considered “camping.” Moreover, I was worried that if the trip got to be too much of a hassle while we were back at home, someone would say “fuck it all,” and we’d just stay home. I was promised hiking and swimming and hot dogs dropped in charcoal, people. We were camping, and I wanted to stay camping.

Dad, I’m pretty sure, didn’t want to drive back home because he didn’t want to concede defeat. This time around, he was responsible for packing the tent, and so the lack of poles was technically his “fault.” Whether the rest of us were keeping score or not, he was. And the only way he could count this as a win instead of a loss was if he could prove that we didn’t actually need the tent poles.

“Do we have the stakes?” I asked.

Dad sighed. “We don’t have the stakes that came with this tent; they’re with the damn tent poles. But yeah, we do have the extra bag of stakes.”

In my family, we are kind of rough on tent stakes, particularly the flimsy plastic kind. As a result, we’ve been known to purchase an occasional extra set of metal stakes and to keep the mismatched ones in a backup back, just in case.

“So we can stake down the ground tarp and the bottom of the tent,” I replied, thinking out loud. “We just have to figure out a way to get the top to stand up.”

Dad rolled his eyes. “That’s the part that’s going to be a pain in the ass. How exactly do you suggest we do it?”

“Duct tape?” I asked, shrugging and smiling.

“Duct tape fixes everything,” my sister interjected.

“Or we could just go home,” Mom offered.

“If there is a way to pitch a tent with duct tape, I don’t know about it,” Dad said, his voice trailing off. In the same crate as the roll of duct tape — doesn’t everyone keep duct tape in their cars as a necessary supply? — were a dozen or so bungee cords, of varying lengths and thicknesses. He picked one up, examining the hooked metal end.

He unzipped the duffel and pulled out part of the tent, rummaging around until he found one of the nylon loops that would normally guide the tent poles. Threading the hook through the loop, he held it up and showed me, grinning in a way that said, “We are about to do something 100% ludicrous, but damn, won’t it be fun?”

I stared for a second, just letting my brain catch up, until I figured out what he was getting at. I scanned our campsite, which was fortunately almost entirely level. “There are three trees — there, there, and there,” I said, pointing. I looked again.

“I bet we have enough bungees to reach that one,” my sister pointed to a fourth tree a little farther away. “If we hook two of them together.”

As it turns out, it’s actually easier to hook bungee cords through guide loops than it is to thread tent poles through the same. (The poles are straight, and the cloth tent likes to bend, so doing that is about like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. No such problems with rounded hooks and round guide loops.) It is somewhat more difficult to attach the bungees to corner posts — in our case, trees — in such a way that they’re high and taut enough to hold up the tent and secure enough that they don’t slip down in the night or the wind. There is still much creative positioning of cuss words.

But it can be done — at least in a campsite with trees — even without duct tape. The tent held just fine through the night, amid light wind and rain. It is awesome; we still have pictures.

What’s even more awesome is that this is a camping memory instead of a “we gave up and went home” memory. Dad would like that.

Thoughts on a Chakra: Manipura

Confession: As a teacher, I fear parent-teacher conferences more now than I did as a student. To be fair, I’ve spoken with a lot of parents who feel similarly. Because when a teacher or parent requests a conference, something has usually already gone wrong. I’m not a fan of confrontation in general, and I worry that a conference will become a confrontation — and that I’m ill-equipped to confront.

Though this is starting to change, I’m still of an age where I’m mostly younger than the parents of my students. And regardless of absolute ages, parents of high school students still have more years of parenting experience than I do of teaching experience. I worry that parents will use my relative lack of years as a way to dismiss my voice and my concerns. Moreover, I worry that counselors, case managers, and administrators will respond to that dismissal by siding against me — though the latter has never actually happened.

With every conference, I’m gearing up for a worst-case scenario. Even if one hasn’t happened yet (for the most part), that doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen next.

This is maybe why I spent some time today in asanas to activate manipura, the solar plexus or navel chakra, which purportedly governs our will and assertiveness — qualities I definitely think I need when it comes to all the parent conferences we have lined up this week and next.

I’m not sure what it is about these meetings that make me want to fortify my willpower. Maybe I’m afraid a parent is going to enter the room looking for a way to blame events on various teachers (something I’ve witnessed only rarely). Maybe I’m afraid that a student is going to tell a wildly different story than what I know to be true, and the student’s untruth (or at least very biased truth) will be believed. (It has happened to me before in non-teaching contexts. It’s not so far-fetched in my mind.) And maybe I’m afraid that despite the best and kindest intentions of everyone involved, something in the meeting will reveal my teaching to be complete and utter shit — or at least, something that is incompatibly failing with a given student.

That, I think, would be the worst: recognizing that I’m in the wrong but too afraid of change to change it.

It’s probably no surprise that manipura is correlated both to ideas like “gut feelings” (knowing that a particular act is one’s will, regardless of the ability to explain why) and “guts” (the courage to carry out one’s will). It’s certainly no surprise to me that I routinely require extra cultivation of both.

So I hung out with abdominal work today — particularly a lot of supine core work, which lets me concentrate on how my abs are working instead of how my shoulders or wrists or feet feel. I lay back with it, quite literally, until it was intense hard word — and then I stuck with it just a bit more.

And may the Flying Spaghetti Monster smite me with his ladle of marinara if he did not inspire me to this adulteration of the serenity prayer:

[Insert deity, higher power, positive human attribute, or awesome superhero] grant me
the courage to accept the things I cannot change
the courage to change the things I can, and
the courage to admit the difference.

Because for me, those actions all stem from the same place.

Aesthetics

But it has nothing to do with aesthetics, so we all but miss it in every single workout.

– Bryan Kest (via my memory), talking about the psoas muscle during navasana in one of his Power Yoga DVD practices

I may not have every word right, but the basic sentiment is accurately portrayed. And whether a lot of people are particularly likely to need psoas strengthening, the idea, I think, applies to physical fitness more broadly.

First, and this is applicable to my psoas, I tend to ignore stretching some muscles that don’t directly affect my appearance — or that I don’t think of as directly affecting my appearance. For example, I know I have some stiffness in the muscles along the sides of my ribcage. While I do make an effort to stretch them at least a little each day, I’ve never sequenced an asana practice to target the release of those muscles. One part of the reason for that is because my tightness there, while not comfortable, doesn’t really affect the aesthetic shape of my body.

Contrast that with the muscle tightness I feel across the front of my shoulders and chest. Not only have I sequenced personal practices specifically to open up that area of my body, but I’ve also attended a number of classes and used a myriad of videos with the same stated purpose. In some of those instructional practices, the teacher brought in the idea of aesthetics. Having a tight chest and shoulders can contribute to back pain, yes, but I’ve also witnessed plenty of yogis demonstrate the hunched shoulders and rounded spine and remark on how that isn’t very attractive.

Although I’m not sure I’d “all but miss” my heart center if it weren’t a factor in creating what I consider an aesthetically pleasing line to my body, I can’t deny that aesthetics plays some role in the muscles I choose to stretch.

Similarly, aesthetics also plays a role in the muscles I choose to strengthen. Regular readers might have noticed my recent-ish (in the grand scheme of my practice) fascination with feet. For the past few years, I’ve experienced intermittent foot pain in my standing postures. I chalked this up to my foot anatomy and the increasing frequency, duration, and physical intensity of my asana practices, deciding it must be a side effect that comes with the territory. Until I stumbled on the idea online — while researching another topic only tangentially related — it had never even occurred to me that I could stretch and strengthen the muscles in my feet — the way I did the rest of my body — so they’d be better able to support me in standing poses.

Again, I don’t think aesthetics is the only force at play here, but if it were my butt or thighs hurting in the postures? I probably couldn’t avoid knowing how to strengthen or tone those if I wanted to. However, strong, supple feet are really not a showcase image in most people’s conceptualization of the aesthetic ideal.

But it goes deeper — or maybe broader — than that. Recently, the blog Living ~400lbs posted The Fitness Question, asking readers if the benefits of exercise would be worth it if they never lost weight. Weight loss is only one aspect of aesthetics, but I sometimes wonder if there’s a similar principle at play on a grander scale — that is, if a major motivator in people’s exercise habits is the hope or expectation that it will help them to look a certain way.

The expectation can take a number of forms; “tone” is one I hear often — that regular exercise will increase the appearance of muscle definition (which may or may not include muscle mass) while decreasing the appearance of surface fat. Of course this doesn’t happen with every body: on mine, the muscles arrive where they will, but the surface fat that’s always been there I now acknowledge as a permanent fixture of my form.

I also sometimes interpret “tone” as “flexibility” — that is, a truly toned muscle will stretch as well as contract. For a long time, I hung on the hope that if I toned and stretched my muscles enough, I’d eventually develop the flexibility to get into every single yoga asana (or at least every asana a teacher might reasonably demonstrate in class). It took some study of anatomy and even more self-study to understand that:

1. There’s more to it than that. Bone shapes, sizes, and angles vary widely — and they also play a significant role in what a particular asana looks like — not to mention how it feels — for any given individual’s body.
2. Sometimes — like in the case of arm binding — regardless of muscle flexibility or the shape of my spine or shoulders, it ain’t ever gonna happen, at least not in a way that is beneficial for me.

Of course it’s good to use anatomical- and self-knowledge to determine what’s causing any particular limitation and whether it’s helpful or harmful to try to push a given edge. And in the course of that determination, it’s empowering to recognize the pressure (from self or society) to strive for a particular aesthetic and to name that hangup for what it is.

There are aspects of movement, meditation, and health that have nothing to do with aesthetics. It’s a rewarding challenge to find the space for them.

Thoughts on a Chakra: Svadhisthana

(Lucille Clifton reading her poem “homage to my hips.” Found via YouTube. Text available here at Poem Hunter.)

These hips are full of scar tissue.
They need movement to
keep from seizing up.
They don’t tolerate being told to
stay still. These hips
hold my tension and trauma.
They don’t like to let it go.
These hips have nerve damage.
They don’t always go where I want them to go
or do what I want them to do.
These hips are capricious hips.
These hips are caustic hips.
I have known them
to burn me from inside and
drop me in my tracks.

Thoughts on a Chakra: Muladhara

It’s the first week of school for me, and over the course of the summer, my teacher life has been turned upside down. Certainly, a lot of these changes have been positive, but —

I’ve moved classrooms. Our whole school has moved classrooms as we’re basically instituting a school-within-a-school program. A program which, by the way, is under all kinds of scrutiny from other teachers, district administration, parents, and other members of the community. The talk is that this will change the way we do school, which, I know, is what the talk always says. But this time there is action — and budget dollars! — behind it; things are actually changing.

Only partly related to that, our current administration is, on the whole, less experienced than was our administration in previous years. They are competent, approachable, and enthusiastic, but they are not the leadership faces I’m used to seeing. Moreover, a lot of people with whom I interacted personally — the administrators who hired and evaluated me, the department chairs who mentored me — have moved on to the proverbial bigger and better things.

The two teachers with whom I was teamed last year are no longer in the same positions (one is not at school at all; I found this out late last week). In their places are two brand new faces. They are solid and resourceful and independent, so I know we’re going to be fine. But this is the first time I’ve experienced teachers (and administrators, even) regularly looking to me to know the ropes.

And that’s when it dawned on me: I am a leader at my school.

Someone zapped me into a grownup when I wasn’t looking, and I’m not quite sure what to do with that. It’s destabilizing, unsettling.

In the chakra system, the Muladhara or Root Chakra manages what might be considered “survival needs,” including physical location and finances. While I’m not actually afraid that my job is in jeopardy (I mean, no more than normal, considering a state legislature that believes public education is a tool of the devil), I can’t deny that my position in my profession — which has, for the past couple of years, been a grounding identity in my life — is changing in a big way.

In the body, Muladhara corresponds to the base of the spine as well as the legs and feet. It’s totally possible that I’m getting all touchy-cosmic-yoga-spacey, but this might explain why I’ve become immensely attached to my new running shoes so quickly — and why I insisted on wearing them to work for all my pre-student days. I mean, yes, they’re remarkably comfortable and also well suited to moving furniture and carrying boxes. So I might have worn them anyway. But unlike some other shoes that are nearly equally suited to setting up a classroom, these shoes let me feel the ground under my feet.

Because I know, in a few weeks, I’ll have a new routine — and it will seem like I’ve kept it for years. But until then, it’s nice to feel stability where I can.

Thoughts on a Word: Focus

I hear it at the beginning of my practice: “Set an intention or focus.”

I hear it after a physically challenging vinyasa or standing series: “Come back and focus on your breathing.”

I hear it in standing balances: “Set a focus point to steady your body.”

The concept of focus is important to the physical, mental, and spiritual facets of yoga. Moreover, it’s a word I hear and use (whether I’m speaking or just thinking it) in practice all the time, in different contexts and for different purposes, so it makes sense to explore its meaning.

I’m not unfamiliar with this physics-based definition (such fond memories of high school and very tiny cannons):

a point at which rays (as of light, heat, or sound) converge or from which they diverge or appear to diverge; specifically : the point where the geometrical lines or their prolongations conforming to the rays diverging from or converging toward another point intersect and give rise to an image after reflection by a mirror or refraction by a lens or optical system

Though I am surprised Merriam-Webster lists it first. I’m used to seeing common use definitions listed first, so it made me wonder — what if this is really the most commonly used definition of focus?

It actually fits quite well with the way I conceptualize drishti, particularly in balance postures. For me, when I enter a balancing pose, whether it’s a standing balance or an arm balance, it’s not enough to select any non-moving point in front of me as my drishti (which is often how the concept has been taught and explained to me). Rather, my correct balance gaze is the one that’s in alignment with my center line in that pose, that’s at the place where the rays coming from the two sides of my shape would converge.

I think my yoga uses physics, which I suppose should not be shocking. Rather, I think the language of yoga uses the language of physics, which is more of a surprise to me.

Even more surprising, however, is that the science-y flavor of focus travels back with the word’s origins. In Latin, focus originally meant “hearth or fireplace” (or, metaphorically, “home”). At times, it was even used in reference to fire itself and is related to some Romance languages’ words for fire (in French, it’s feu, Italian fuoco, and Spanish fuego).

Astronomer Johannes Kepler is credited with first using focus to mean “a point of converging” in 1604. There’s some speculation as to why he chose this particular word, perhaps considering the hearth the symbolic converging point of the home or thinking of the burning point of a mirror or other lens.

In yoga, fire is often associated with manipura, the third chakra, located near the solar plexus. A healthy third chakra aids qualities such as motivation and willpower, which, while not synonymous with focus or intention, are instrumental in actually putting it into practice.

Similarly, instructors have often called this process of finding and returning to one’s focus before and after a meditative practice “centering” or “recentering.” This fits in with the common contemporary definition of focus too, but some of my favorite instructors and practices have ended with what they call “coming home” — It’s essentially the same thing, of course, returning to oneself and recentering at the end of a meditation, but “coming home” just sounds so nice. Maybe it’s just me as someone who’s lived away from my home for so long, but it’s really easy for me to focus on the feeling that phrase creates.

Note: Thoughts on a Word series is blatantly stolen — not even just “inspired” — from Autumn Whitefield-Madrano over at The Beheld. If you like the concept, you should definitely check her out.

Caught on Video

The inspiration for both this idea and this post come from The Trouble with Proving It at Dances With Fat. Both in the original post and in the comments that follow, there’s a whole collection of pictures and videos of larger bodied people being active and amazing. (TW: The post and comments do discuss fat shaming, so it’s worth keeping in mind if you decide to head over there.)

I did not have the most stellar day yesterday — I’m not sure days spent in gastroenterology procedures ever are — so seeing the videos of awesomeness was progressively more inspiring. When I got home yesterday afternoon, I decided to do something I’d never done before: videotape my own practice.

In a way, it seems counter intuitive to yoga, being concerned about the aesthetics of the asanas. And it’s not something I would do often or if I thought I’d get overly attached to the results. But as an exercise in self-study — not to mention an exercise in courage — the process was very rewarding.

It did have some practical limitations, mostly in the form of my living room is too small. There was no place I could set up my webcam that was far enough away to film all of the space (length, width, and height) where I move in a practice. As a result, I have a lot of frames where I seem to be missing various extremities. It’s sort of good this is not about my cinematography skills.

While I wouldn’t use these videos for any kind of illustration purposes for others, they did give me — who already knows precisely what my personal practice feels like — some excellent visual feedback. I observed some movements — like knee flexion in warrior two and hip flexion in extended side angle — of which I may want to be particularly mindful in the future. And I saw an interplay between spinal angle and alignment — in both triangle and half moon — that I otherwise would not have noticed and that I might want to play with.

I don’t consider these to be poses or actions I’m doing “wrong.” Rather, I consider them points of body awareness that I can incorporate into my practice in a way that serves me best.

I also found viewing some parts of my asana practice to be very affirming for me. Secretly (and sometimes not-so-secretly), I am very insecure about my planks and chaturangas. I generally use an unmodified version (i.e., no knees down). I constantly hear and read about alignment issues and how it’s very much a strength pose — and of course I constantly hear and read negative assumptions about my weight and therefore my relative strength. I’m also keenly aware of my propensity to push my body too far, to do too much. And when I think about that, I’m also reminded of the cultural stereotype of the “lazy fat person.” Viscerally, regardless of what I know to be true, I do not want to be that person.

So when I practice, there’s always this voice — sometimes helpful but often nagging — trying to find the balance between working too hard and not working hard enough.

Reviewing the footage, I discovered that my planks and chaturangas are solid. They’re straight, aligned, controlled, and really, really consistent. That is one nagging voice I can tell to shut the hell up. I have proof for the only person who matters; I have proof for me.

I suppose the fitting ending for this post would be to share a clip of one of my plank to chaturanga transitions. Unfortunately, this is where we run into technical difficulties again (though I probably will upload said clip eventually). Just like my cinematography skills are not so great, my video editing skills are also way in the rookie stage. I did manage to isolate some shorter backbending sequences. A couple of various notes:

1. My webcam did this weird thing where it recorded bits and pieces of my practice music. So while editing, I added other music over that to save you from the strange screeches.
2. As I implied earlier, these videos are not intended to be instructional in any way. Both of the clips depict asanas that, for me, require a lot of experience with backbends. If they’re not already part of your personal practice, I’d recommend learning them from a qualified yoga teacher — i.e., not these videos and not me.
3. Once again, I apologize for the parts of my body that went missing. I will work on remedying that in future recordings, should there be any. If anyone would like to aid the process by providing my a larger living room or more versatile webcam, leave a comment. I’m happy to entertain offers.

Also, please to be ignoring the hot mess that is my clutter. And yes, I do mean “hot mess” literally. It was about 100 degrees when I shot these.

Ultimately, I think posts like this, videos like this, sharing like this — regardless of the media type — is hugely important. I get plenty of opportunities in my life to internalize negative messages about myself. It’s awesome to be able to internalize meaningful positive messages as well.

Down Dog With the Dogs

Because cute, that’s why.

I’ve recently adopted a new dog. And because I don’t have an uploadable picture of the new dog, I am shamelessly going to insert a picture of my Old Dog (who is still with us and does not act old at all). Because when I first got Old Dog, she had this same reaction. Also, because cute, that’s why.

So now when I practice at home with New Dog, just like when I first started practicing at home with Old Dog, New Dog is certain that my adho mukha svanasana is his cue to play. And so he grabs his rope toy, butting it into my hand.

When it first started happening, I’ll admit, I was annoyed. I was very concerned that the dog was interfering with my Very Serious Business of practicing yoga. Then it occurred to me: Completing this asana — completing this entire asana practice — is less important than caring for and bonding with my dog.

Plus, it is kind of fun to see how long I can balance while playing tug of war with a small dog.

Now all I need to know is how to say Downward Facing Rope Toy in Sanskrit.

Me & My Camel

Trigger Warning: This post discusses responding to sexual assault.

There was a time, just after I stopped sharing a bedroom with my sister, when I became… not afraid of the dark, exactly, but leery of what I couldn’t anticipate, what I couldn’t see. I never used a night light though I burned through the bulbs of several flashlights for after-hours reading purposes. I didn’t have nightmares, fear of bedtime, or insomnia.

But I remember always, always sleeping with my back to the wall. And I mean wiggling right up against the wall, which was cool and practical in summer but kind of shivery in winter. Additionally, if I needed to flip sides during the night — say, from right to left — I’d also flip head-to-foot on the bed so I could keep my back to the wall. As long as I could feel that no one or nothing — back then, I’m not sure if I was afraid of people or of monsters under the bed still — could sneak up behind me, I slept fine.

Mostly, folks just accepted this as an idiosyncrasy of mine; I have many and gradually grew out of this one anyway. A parent once commented casually about it, to which I just said, “This is where I’m comfortable.” It was at least part of the truth, and it’s a surface explanation I’d accept, except —

There was a time, just after I was raped, when I became afraid of what I couldn’t anticipate, what I couldn’t see.

This time, my back-to-the-wall vantage point expanded beyond my bedroom. I sat sideways in chairs in class and on the bus, with my back to a side wall, so that I could always watch out for whatever was there. Walking across campus with others, I found ways to be at the back of the pack. Walking alone, I checked regularly over each shoulder. At social gatherings, I found ways to tuck myself into corners so I could watch everything and every one — because now I was sure people were scarier than monsters.

I’m not sure how much these actions interfered with my ability to enjoy life, but the actions were symptomatic of fear, and the fear was entwined in everything I did, pervasive.

Which was why, when I was learning ustrasana (as part of a process of reclaiming my body and mind after my assault), it wasn’t just scary for me. It was downright triggering. Entering ustrasana, or camel, quite literally means dropping backward into what I cannot see. Even though the floor or my feet (or the wall or blocks or a chair or whatever I used as a prop) has never disappeared out from under me, there’s a difference between knowing my support is going to be there because, duh, that’s logic, and knowing my support is going to be there because I can always see it. Especially for someone who has not so logical reactions to the world around her, the difference between trusting my eyes and trusting my mind is huge.

Maybe aside from when I was first working to build the base amount of necessary muscle, I’ve always been more limited by my emotions than by my body in this pose. My body will bend back into kapotasana if I let it, but my fear relinquishes its hold in small and hard-fought increments. I’ve gone from camels that keep my hands on my pelvis to camels that use a chair to to camels that reach for my raised or lowered heels to camels that start reaching overhead for the ground behind me. It’s been years — eleven since I was raped and maybe nine or ten that I’ve been working with camel — and every time I begin in my kneeling shape, that wave of fear still hits me.

But I know now that the wave will ebb, not completely away but back to where I can move again. I know how to sit with my doubts and my terrors until they’re no longer coursing out my ears. I know how to acknowledge rather than fight my fear. I think, though I’m still not sure, this might be what people mean when they talk about cultivating courage.

The courage I’ve found from and in ustrasana is the emotional foundation of all my subsequent arm balances, the poses where I almost certainly have to fall on my face at least once. It’s the courage that lets me try headstand in the middle of the room when I know I have the strength and balance but really want to see the wall. It’s the courage that lets me talk about my experiences with rape and rape culture, to people who may well be unclueful or hostile, without seeing ahead of time what the response is likely to be. And it’s one factor in why I no longer sleep with my back to the wall.

Spine Warm-Up & Self-Massage

Because it’s Friday and I deserve it. Also because apanasana is a great way to move into an asana focus on the erector spinae.

Apana is the term for the force that removes “stuff” from the body — where “stuff” can mean breath, urine, feces, menstrual fluid, or negative energy. (And probably other stuff too. That list is not intended to be all-inclusive.) Apana is generally regarded as originating in the lower chakras and/or pelvic floor, which then might explain why apanasana primarily involves the movement of the low back and pelvis.

One short-term physical benefit of apanasana is that it offers a supported way to stretch and start to move the low spine without putting a whole lot of stress on the body. This can be a great way to send blood flow to the back muscles and to generally circulate fluids around the body. In the longer term, apanasana may also be involved in other benefits to the physical and energy bodies:

I’m also just going to throw this in here as an aside: While a long-standing practice has done a lot for me physically and mentally, I’m not going to pretend I think it’s a magic cure-all for all people or any given condition. That said, I do think it’s worthwhile to approach ideas with an open mind (open critical minds and open skeptical minds do count!) and for folks to work with those ideas in a way that best serves them.

A variation of the pose involves moving the knees in a circle (repeating both clockwise and counterclockwise), still in connection with the breath. I tend to like this variation because I can adjust my thigh position so that my sacrum is always on the ground and the circular movement massages it, which relieves some of my pelvic tension and sacroiliac joint pain. YMMV with that, of course, but it’s not a bad thing to play with.

Finally, apanasana (either variation) can be a good counter pose either after or in between backbends. So, something to remember for later.

I’m tired of being a hero.

In my recent life, both on- and offline, there have been numerous news, personal, and professional references to teachers as heroes — going beyond the call of duty, surpassing expectations, “saving” children, and — my favorite — really making a difference. (As opposed to just, you know, pretend making a difference.) Some have been critical of this labeling; others have phrased it as a professional requirement.

Whether I like it or not, that last part is very much true. In my current educational climate, going above and beyond written and stated job expectations is now a practical requirement of being a teacher. Doing more and more and more — more classes, more students, more working hours, more of my money for classroom expenses, more extra duties, more substantial gains in standardized test scores, more being the ass end of more politicians’ scapegoats — has now become just enough to get by, just part of my job.

It’s not that I’m averse to working hard; I like it. And it’s not that I don’t try my heart out for every student, every parent, every colleague who wants or needs some heroics out of me. I fail sometimes, but I always try, and I have been trying at this level for years. To a certain extent I understand why that in itself may be problematic: Teachers are human too, and sometimes what’s perceived as “not caring enough” is in reality taking care of one’s family, one’s self, or other commitments. Also, there is no magic Caring Enough Pill that makes students smarter, solves their life problems, gets them into college on scholarship, and leads to a happily ever after.

I understand that education is hard and that some folks need heroes.

What I’m finding increasingly problematic, however, is that political figures are co-opting both the terminology and the teachers-as-heroes mindset to set defame teachers as people, to set impossible standards for teaching as a profession, and generally to be douchey and advance their own agendas at the expense of the public good. This is not cool, and it hurts us all.

To be clear:

1. I’m not objecting to the 50-hour work weeks or the fact that I regularly add to that by taking work home over the weekend. I am objecting to the expectation that this is never enough from me.
2. I don’t resent any of the 34-38 kids in each of my classes. I resent the fact that when I say, “This is not what’s best for students,” the response is, “You’ll just have to work a little harder!”
3. I don’t take issue with the concept of standardized testing. I do take issue with the implication that I should be held personally accountable for every graphite circle every student of mine ever makes, despite never having had a say in developing said standardized tests (which overwhelmingly test the ability to regurgitate low-level knowledge) to begin with.

In short, some many the majority of politicians where I am have manipulated “hero” terminology to demonize teachers who fail to live up to the politicians’ ever-increasing (and often bad) standards for heroism. This is exhausting, and from it, I feel like a bad teacher and a bad hero. But more importantly, this manipulation is a lie that:

• Seeks to assign blame rather than correct shortcomings in this system of education (as it is in my location and as it is in many parts of the US).
• Seeks to assign blame to those who have relatively less power to effect systemic change.

Why is it important to talk about this here, on a yoga blog? On a personal level, I bought into this lie for a long time, with and without seeing what it took out of me, believing that education is going to shit and gone because I, personally, am a bad teacher. That’s tough shit to take home every day, and it’s even worse when it’s not true shit. On a wider scale, I feel a commitment to confront this lie that’s creeping up in my community, seeping into my relationships — with friends and acquaintances, professional contacts, family members, and — eventually, I would predict — with other teachers and parents and students.

There is a freedom in Satya, in truth, and this is mine: I still have a responsibility to reflect on, critique, and improve my teaching practice and its results. The reason for this? There are over two hundred of them, and I talk to them almost every day. But it’s 100% okay to evaluate that instruction with the understanding that I am a human and not any politician’s imagined angel or demon.

Heart Opening Multi-Tasking

A couple of salient points:

One: Stretching the front of the shoulder as described almost certainly means the shoulder joint is extended (in a way that angles the arm back behind the torso). When the shoulder joint is extended, the latissimus dorsi is strengthening. Personally, I feel the most lat engagement when I clasp hands and move my clasped fingers away from my torso, probably because this is when my shoulders are in the most extended position (of these variations). However, a reverse prayer or opposite elbow better allows me to concentrate on the front-of-shoulder stretch. (This may well differ for other people, depending on individual skeletal anatomy and muscle tone.)

Two: Though the shoulder variations are demonstrated in tadasana, they’re applicable to a whole slew of other asanas, including:

• Standing postures like warrior I or low or high lunge.
• Seated poses like in a chair or in hero’s or firelog pose.
• Some backbends such as locust or camel pose.
• Some forward folds like prasarita padottanasana.

From a physical perspective — and I’ve said this before — I spent a lot of life time folding forward: over the steering wheel, over desks to help students, over the computer, over the stove, over the sink. I don’t think any of those are inherently bad activities, but I can certainly see how, over time, I might have developed a physical imbalance. Heart-opening postures let me rebalance a little at a time.

From a mental and spiritual perspective, these arm variations remind me that heart-opening is about developing a softness of character. That doesn’t mean being a bleeding heart or a pushover, but it does mean the ability to hold compassion for others. I am coming to the end of another school year with freshmen; I need that compassion and that reminder.

And maybe a second glass of wine.

Quick Share: Importance of Lats

I stumbled upon this YouTube video while checking other things and wanted to share. It explains the importance of the latissimus dorsi in yoga:

The TL;DR text version — The latissimus dorsi is the only muscle that connects the hips and the arms. This is relevant in various postures where the hips are moving in one direction while the arms move in another, such as chair pose (with the hips moving down while the arms reach up) or down dog (with the hips lifting up while the arms press down).

My core take on things: A lot of shit is tied up in the hips. In terms of chakras, the hips and sacrum are home to

Why I Practice Asana

So I’ve been reading a lot of yoga commentary this week, some critical of fitness-focused, US-style yoga, others critical of specific yogis (namely, fat people). I had strong reactions to both viewpoints, and the more I think about it, the more I think they’re the same reaction.

The first category of opinion said that in order to truly respect yoga, a yogi should learn more about the practice than simply how to enter asanas, gain strength, or increase flexibility. I agree with that. The word yoga means “to yoke” or “to join.” As I’ve been taught, the “joining” has always been in the context of joining oneself with the divine, with something larger than oneself. Regardless of how an individual interprets “the divine,” it’s almost certainly going to be more mentally and emotionally involved than repeating mundane body movements in order to change one’s physique.

Some writers went on to say that an asana-focused practice is necessarily a warped and incorrect embodiment of the principles of yoga.

I’m going to leave that statement alone for a moment and move to the next set of commentaries. The nuances varied, but I kept reading over and over that a “lean” body correlated to a “dedicated” practice. (And the implicit inverse, that if a yogi is not lean, then ze is also not dedicated.) Even if they’re assuming yoga to be a totally fitness-focused, physical practice, I don’t find that to be inherently true, at least not for me.

And my asana practice is about so much more than my body.

It’s true that core work, to use a close-at-hand example, has some physical benefits, both aesthetic and functional. But when I’m cultivating that core fire, I’m sort of building up willpower there, challenging myself to do something in spite of the fact that it hurts. I’m learning to distinguish healthy purifying work-pain from damaging overwork-pain.

When I release my abdominal muscles with a backbend, leading with my heart center, I’m taking a supported, controlled risk. In learning to accept what I (in the form of my body) can and can’t do, I’m also learning to accept that my body can do some things that scare me.

It’s true that in a balancing pose, I’m incredibly aware that there is no such thing as balance. There are an infinite number of other energies (people, air currents, emotions, farts) in the universe. When one crosses paths with my energy body, sometimes more action is the correct response to remain balancing, sometimes the correct answer is less action. I’m also figuring out that whether my reaction assists me in balancing or topples me on my butt is immaterial; the important thing is to know.

Every time I take a twist, any twist, it requires me to be conscious of societal expectations about what my body “should” be. My waistline — fuck, my torso, from hips to shoulders — is thicker than what many folks would suggest that a yogi’s “should” be. And me, in that asana, I can see that this is the correct body for me, or I can see it as the result of imbalanced choices that I want to change, depending on what is actually the truth at that time.

And that’s really the big thing. Maybe it’s just the way my brain is wired (though I’m sure I’m far from the only one who works this way), but my asana practice compels me to be with the truth of my existence. It’s never the whole truth, I don’t think, and I’m sure there are times when I don’t even see all of what is there, but… having my body as a medium is crucial to getting the point across to my mind and soul. Which is why my asana practice is valuable to me and why my body — just as it is right now — is key to that value.

Mirrors & Heart-Opening

Let me preface this with: I do not dance.

I’m part of a teachers’ dance group at school. Basically, we learn a routine to spoof the school’s real and very talented dance crew. We perform at pep assemblies, where everyone is heartily entertained.

I enjoy doing this for my school, but I’m already miles out of my element and uncomfortable. Add to this that the room where we rehearse has one wall made entirely of mirrors. Floor to ceiling mirrors. At the front of the room. So I get to watch myself being uncomfortable with myself. Awesome.

In the past, I have minimized this by avoiding looking at the mirrors whenever possible. Navigating a room — let alone a choreographed dance — without ever looking in the direction of forward is its own special skill, let me tell you. There’s forward-left, forward-right, forward-down, forward-shoulders-of-the-person-in-front-of-you, etc. There are many creative ways to avoid my own body.

Yesterday, we started another series of rehearsals, and I decided that I was going to look. Or at least, I wasn’t going to not look, if that makes sense. I wasn’t going to let my own self-consciousness keep me from placing my gaze in what would otherwise be its natural focus.

That was very much an act of courage and determination, though not on any grand scale. And yeah, aesthetically, I was not the most beautiful thing ever. I looked sweaty, my hair stuck out funny, and I was jerky and gangly and uncoordinated because it takes a while for me to commit dance movements (or any movements) to muscle memory, and I’m not there yet.

What surprised me most — even though I saw what I expected to see — was how okay I was with that. It wasn’t especially pretty, but it was me, being happy and doing something good. And somewhere along my life’s journey — somewhere in the not too distant past — I apparently started being able to love me under those circumstances. It is not an epiphany, and it is not necessarily even reliable or repeatable, but it is at least a little bit of heart opening.

Why Backbend? Part 1

Not just because it looks cool, though admittedly, some backbends look pretty darn fabulous.

But I know that for me, it sometimes feels like everything in my day is designed to collapse my heart center. I bend forward over my car steering wheel, over students’ desks, over the stove, over the sink, over my computer. Sitting on pretty much any common piece of furniture (car seat, classroom chair, home sofa — even my home desk stool designed to help posture) plunks me on my tailbone instead of my sitting bones, rounding my spine away from my natural curve. And of course any time I’m anxious, angry, in a hurry, or otherwise stressed, my shoulders creep up and forward, up and forward, up and forward. I even sleep on my side with my shoulders curling in toward one another.

And all that stuff? Accounts for a lot of my day (and night). As a result, the muscles across my upper and mid back have a tendency to be overstretched and lacking in strength. Similarly, the muscles across the front of my chest have a tendency to be tight and constricted, lacking in elasticity. And I don’t think I’m atypical in this.

From a purely musculoskeletal perspective, without even getting into other benefits they have, backbends offer a counter pose to the forward-bending and forward-leaning positions that many of us are in for a good chunk of our days.

SAFETY NOTE: I am not a certified yoga teacher, and this post is not professional advice. That said, my totally non-professional opinion is that you please take care of your neck and low back if and when you attempt any backbending. A guide I’ve found useful is to imagine leading the backbend from the heart center and to work to lengthen the spine, creating space. I recommend — again, totally non-professionally — avoiding overarching the neck and low back, which actually tends to compress vertebrae into one another. It may mean that you don’t create quite as bendy a shape, but in my experience, I’ve found the relative lack of pain and injury to be 110% worth it.

We’re going to look at a few different seated backbends in this post and a few prone backbends in the next, all of which are suitable counter poses to the forward bends from last week. A few general safety tips:

1. Support your backbend from your base. Generally speaking, this is going to mean engaging the muscles of some part of the body below the back, like the pelvis, thighs, or feet. How much support you’ll need will depend on how intense the individual backbend is for you.
2. Where applicable, find a comfortable position for your shoulders, elbows, and wrists, making sure those joints aren’t forced out of their natural alignment.
3. This is important enough to bear repeating: Don’t “dump” into your neck or low back. Rather, envision lengthening your spine and leading the arc with your heart.

The first series we’re going to look at are some seated backbends:

While I do <3 the variety and detail in this video, it's probably worth noting that these backbends can be modified to include other seated positions. Sitting kneeling or in a cross legged position may well weight your lower body enough to support your spine through these bends. The only lower body support you may need is a consciousness that your lower body isn't lifting off the chair, bed, or floor — which, admittedly, is a more or less intense effort depending on the individual.

In terms of arm positions, generally speaking, bringing your arms in front of you or out toward the sides will result in a gentler, subtler backbend. Bringing the arms behind you — particularly bringing the hands close in by your bum — opens the fonts of the shoulders a lot and tends to create a backbend that’s more pronounced and “stretchier” in front. Especially if you’re newer to backbends, it’s a good idea to start out gently and move slowly until you find your edge; that way you don’t accidentally race past it.

Gentle backbending still moves the body out of the “heart closed” position, so it’s still giving a lot of benefit. Although it can be tempting to think that if you’re not doing the biggest bendiest backbend, then you’re not bending enough — that really isn’t true. Simply moving your body into a new shape (or a shape where it doesn’t spend a lot of time) is perfectly awesome.

And although it may not be practical to incorporate every arm position — even if you can do every arm position — in every situation (e.g., in office chairs, riding the bus), in general, chair-based backbends are versatile asanas for a lot of people. For example, when I’m sitting for long periods of time, I like to try to do some kind of backbend — whether or not it’s my most vigorous backbend — every 15 to 30 minutes. Obviously, your mileage may vary on the time between backbends, but it’s something to play with and work out for yourself.

Shoulder Strap Quickie

Thursday is the day I’ve dedicated to heart opening. It also happens to be a day when I’m particularly pressed for time. So a quick prop-based exercise to open up the front of the chest and shoulders.

Why do this?

In the energy body, the heart center is where the more physical chakras of the lower body meet the more metaphysical chakras of the upper body. On a more muscular level, if you spent a lot of time in front of a desk or computer or steering wheel or bicycle handles, that creates a situation where the muscles across the front of the shoulders and chest are collapsed and constricted for maybe several hours a day. Stretching them out can’t hurt. Even if, you know, it sort of hurts.**

** If it does hurt, I’d encourage you to feel it out slowly and to pay attention to both the quantity and quality of pain you’re experiencing. In terms of quantity, there’s being at your edge, and there’s going over it. Don’t go over it; stretching less and not tearing something is better than stretching more and potentially injuring oneself.

In terms of quality, muscle stretching pain usually feels broad and opening — and it tends to become less intense as muscles get warmer and looser. Pain that feels like pinching or stabbing or that doesn’t subside over time is more probably related to bone structure. It’s likely a sign to modify your expression of the pose (holding your arms narrower or wider or adjusting your range of motion) in order to fit your body.

Shoes of Doom

I have a pair of really cute brown sandals that I got at the beginning of this school year. I remember wearing them for days in a row, and… I also remember them being much, much comfier. I wore them again today after a months-long hiatus, and my feet are killing me. So in class today (yoga class, not the other classes), I made sure to do this stretch. A lot.

It’s particularly good for folks who ask a lot of their feet, in the form of AcroYoga, or running, or a job that requires standing for several hours per day, or wearing not-so-supportive shoes. (This list is not exhaustive; it’s just the things I ask of my feet on a semi-regular or frequent basis.)

Fair warning: This stretch was pretty intense for me when I first started doing it. I think I could hang out for, like, 30 seconds, tops, before my feet were screaming. But it’s also one that if I practice it at all — not even necessarily going to my edge, or close to my edge — in a day, it benefits me.