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June 23, 2005

Cool Cool Breeze

Yesterday I ingested the following: a Starbucks mocha, a bottle of Focus Vitamin Water, a burrito that was about the size of the palm of my hand, about 1/2 a cup of yogurt with a few tablespoons of granola, about a cup of macaroni & cheese with a banana and 1/2 glass of red wine. When I was getting ready for bed I thought to myself "This is not healthy." I mentioned it to The Husband but he sees no problem with it. One thing I've noticed lately is that I've been seriously considering the food I'm eating and I'm not 100% sure that I'm doing a good job with my diet. Adding meat is one thing, I feel better eating meat but there's something niggling at me that feels not quite right. The Husband thinks I'm getting too much fat (from the granola in particular) but a diet needs some fat and I don't think I'm really eating much fat other than in coffee and granola.

Last night I had crazy dreams! In my dreams last night I could do a light-as-a-feather jump back (not jumping all the way through my legs or anything) and, in my dream, it was like "OH, see, you just hold your bandha and do the little freeze motion in the air and then you are silent." It doesn't work this way in reality though... :) Someday.

The Son came with me to practice today. I mentioned yesterday that I was a bit nervous about it because, well, he has the tendency to make very loud sound effects while playing (whatever he's playing, whether the Gameboy or just playing with a stick). We got to the studio a bit earlier after dropping off The Daughter at Spanish class and sat outside. The Son is a pretty shy, introspective kid and he didn't like everyone looking at him and saying hello. He was also very excited to get to play Gameboy for 2 hours so he kept asking when we could go in. After all the people for Mysore started swarming, he got very uncomfortable... in fact, it was wierd. He started crying. He knelt next to me and told me that he was really scared. I asked of what and he said he was scared to "go in there." I think it was just that there was a swarm of people and that made him uncomfortable. We sometimes forget that when you are little, having a bunch of big people around you can be a bit uncomfortable...it's like being the height of everyone's waist you know? Anyway, once the doors opened I got him situated in the bathroom waiting room (which is like a tiny square room with an open door to the practice area). We put a blanket down for him and put the headphones on. I put my mat right outside the door in the front row so I could keep an eye on him. The beginning of practice was a bit distracting because people kept asking me if he was mine :) One of the things I love about practicing with Tim is that he's definitely not a strict no-breaking-the-rules practitioner. From what I've heard, and I have no first hand knowledge so this is complete heresay, many other studios would never allow me to bring my child and prop him up while I practice. Sometimes when the younger kids get brought by their parents, they run all over the room and play and that's fine too. Yoga is a part of my life, my life is part of my yoga and sometimes the two come together. I was also really happy that my son was there today. I noticed a bunch of times him looking up and watching everyone practice. I want him to see the energy and feel the vibe in the room. He has no real interest in yoga but I figure if he's surrounded by the idea, at some point in life, he might pick it up. I'm thankful that Tim is open to the idea of family and family life and the challenges that presents to his students.

Once I got really started things went well for me today. I was having a good practice day :) The only "problem" seemed to be that the little room where The Son was sitting has a door that opens onto the street behind the studio and there was a cool breeze coming in through the entryway to the little room. So I would get really hot and then do a jump through sit down and be smacked in the face with this nice cool breeze. It felt good in the airways but it also cooled me down somewhat. In the grand scheme of things, it didn't make me less heated or anything but it was sorta of disconcerting and distracting. At one point Tim was helping the girl next to me and he sat down to bind her in Mari B and said "Hey, there's cool air here!"

I just realized thinking about my practice that I didn't get any adjustments today except in Bhekasana which I waited for Rich to come and help me. That's okay, I don't mind at all.. but sometimes when I try to remember my practices I remember by when I was helped :) You know what pose felt awesome today? Purvattanasana which is surprising because I don't generally "enjoy" that pose. Tim happened to be standing right by my feet when I entered it so maybe I was giving it more of my "all" but it actually felt good too which made me sit up and take notice.

So what do you do when you're practicing and you catch someone's eye... or when you're practicing so close to people that you frequently catch the same person's eye? Today there was someone whose eye I kept catching when I was twisting or whatever and after awhile it got uncomfortable :)

The other thing I noticed today was that sometimes Tim (and I could be wrong, this is total perception) makes comments about the practice under the guise of a joke or sarcasm. For example today he told me that I was practicing next to Darth Vader. Had Tim said that about me I probably would have thought "Well, I'm not really supposed to sound as loud as Darth Vader so maybe I should tone it down." The person he said that about didn't but it made me think about some of the more masked comments Tim has made to myself.

I think my jump-throughs are starting to sound much more quiet... I still land heavily but I'm able to maintain without completely dropping into it. This means I'm gaining a lot more upper body strength... which will, sadly, be the first thing to go after surgery.

With the cool breeze coming in, I wasn't as sweaty as the other days this week so I was able to bind and cross my ankles by myself in supta k. I considered Dwi Pada before but had no idea where Rich was in the room... as I was sitting in supta k I heard my son make one of his shazamm noises about this game... so I popped out and he looked at me like "Ooops!" :)

Second series poses are still a joy for me. I like each and every one of them. I feel like I'm making great strides in getting my heels closer to the floor in Pasasana. I'm still focused on the balance rather than the twist but I'm able to bind hand to hand easily on both sides with my heels more toward the ground and actually look all the way behind me for a full 5 breaths. Again, I think this will be one of the hardest poses to get back after surgery because the one breast is definitely moved up and out of the way and sorta smooshed. I did Ustrasana twice again today. I held it longer the second time and really tried to push out of my legs/hip area and focus less on the experience in my back. After doing this and moving into backbends Tim came by. He asked if I was ready. I had only completed one set... I told him I could be ready if he wanted me to be. He told me he didn't want to cheat me out of the experience. HAHAHAHAHA. He knows how I love backbending. For some reason he and I have devised a sorta different setup than others have. Most other people do their two sets of 3, stand up, cross their arms and wait. I get to my 6th backbend and wait for him to come to me and he helps me up. This assist is much easier for me than after assisted dropbacks (maybe a stamina thing or a body placement thing I don't know). So he was pulling on my lower thighs and counted and I came up and he said "HEY! You did that almost all on your own." ALMOST! I've really been concentrating on doing a bit of rocking on my own... I never used to do this I waited for him to indicate to come up. So I've been slightly rocking and then waiting for his count and really putting no attention on my back or front but concentrating on engaging my legs. I guess it's helping. We did assisted dropbacks and on the last one, coming up, I stumbled a bit. I realized I'm afraid of hitting him in the head again :)

All in all it was a great practice. OKRGR, thank you for bringing goodies to The Son (he downed the oj and shared the bagel!) -- you rock. I'm looking forward to practice tomorrow. I'm out of town M-W next week, going to Scottsdale and I think I'm going to get up early and practice outside in the warm air. I definitely will not skip a day of practice now that we are on the countdown.

I am pleased that the weather is clearing up for my pictures this evening at sunset. Hopefully we'll get some good ones :)

Posted by ashtangagirl at 11:28 AM