Day 25: For Once. For Ever.

Be only here and only now. Let your mind be completely present in this moment and only this moment. This moment is both passing and infinite. You are here forever. You were never here.

That's what they start saying when you've been stuck in Warrior 2 for what's probably been 10 whole minutes--has it only been 10 seconds? it feels like 10 years--and that's the point you start to want to kill them. Your thighs are burning! Your knee is shaking! Your toes are staging a mutiny! Surely you can NOT stand here all day to indulge their masochism.

But you do, because secretly, you can. It's a secret even to your own mind. Why do our bodies default to can't? Is it really survival? What kind of survival instinct says, "I'll bet we can't run anymore. Oh well, here comes that saber-toothed tiger"? In yoga, you use your conscious mind to argue with itself. And focusing on only the infinitesimal present keeps you from giving in to, "okay, it's been too long, if it's going to go on for much longer we're taking a break." There is no time. And there is no The Time Before. You have never chickened out. You have never fallen down. You have always existed here, just like this.

Day 22: What the Hurricane Taught Me

Bitch.

So....Irene.  I live in one of the floodier parts of town, and although I'm up the hill from the river a ways, I'm at the bottom of a small ridge so all the water runs down from the hill and spills into my street, and manhole geysers are a pretty regular thing here. So who could tell whether my first-floor apartment was going to food or not? It was a toss-up. But I decided to wait and see what would happen, and besides if I did flood I wanted to be there to move my Harry Potter books off the bottom shelf of my bookcase. So I hunkered down by myself in my apartment with my supplies: "non-perishable food items" in the form of wine, frozen pizza, chips and salsa, wine, the biggest jar of reduced-fat Skippy I could find, and wine; also my lantern, batteries, duct tape, and a 1000-page book with dragons in it. Oddly, the duct tape was the thing that reassured me most of all. I could duct tape the cracks in the door frame and then the water wouldn't get in? Yes, I did this, laugh at me.

You know what sucks about being all alone during a hurricane?

Ev. Er. Y. THING.

Day 17: I Want to Be a Circus Freak

Day 17 of The 30-Day Yoga Challenge

Want.

"Here's one for all you circus freaks!" 

 ...was the joke that preceded a pretty pretzelly move that I didn't really get that far into BUT MAN there was this guy who nailed it. And then even the reverse, where you put your hand under the opposite way. Don't even try to figure out what I'm saying, even I don't know what-all was going on and I was there. But there were limbs doing things I've never seen limbs do in Real Life. I was supposed to be working on my own remedial version, but all I wanted to do was stare.

Actually, what I really wanted to do was say, "damn you really are a circus freak!" But can you believe some people wouldn't think that was a compliment?

Day 11: How To Pick Up Hot (as in attractive) Girls Who Do Yoga

Day 11 of The 30-Day Yoga Challenge

OHM here often?

1. Go to a yoga class.

Day 10: Chanting Is All The (Uncontrollable) Rage

could you shut it? i'm working out here

In the course of this little experiment, I've started to read some yoga life articles, just to see what other people are talking about and to give me some new things to think about (and write about!) besides, "down dog again...also very sweaty today." And apparently there's a horde of people out there on the Internet who are all, "argh enough with the all the damn chanting already aaarrrrggghhhh!!!!!"

Really, this is a thing?

Day 9: Forgiveness Blows

If you can't forgive yourself, you can't forgive others. Which is probably why after a truly deep, cleansing, powerfully challenging practice (With tears! Yes, more tears--hip openers are Pandora's Box?-- awesome) I was the girl screaming out her car window that "you have a stop sign you jagwad!!"

And Saturday I was all Compassion, etc.  Dang.

What's the Sanskrit for "may all beings be happy and free and also obey traffic laws?"


Further misadventures at the 30 Day Yoga Challenge page.

Day 7: The One Where There Was Disco!

Hadji had me at "my San Fransisco yogi friends call this The Jane Fonda."  But then everything had jazz hands and I was so happy I could Just Die. "This flow is gonna be like a dance, okay? And also do it like you're an animal!" And did I mention he has the greatest taste in yoga music ever:

Day 5: A Tyranny of Handstands

Day 5 of The 30-Day Yoga Challenge

My arms don't straighten. The left WAY more so than the right. I know you're thinking to yourself, yeah, I'll bet they actually do and she just has them twisted around or something. But indeed they do not! I've never had an injury that I can recall, and I do remember getting all kinds of x-rays and the doctor finally concluding something like "golly that's odd." It just decided to grow crooked. Thank you to whichever ancestor gave me THAT latent gene. In the course of living life, this is not a problem.  Most people don't even know it, because you can't really tell unless I'm doing cheerleading moves (and BOY did my coaches have a grand time with me--fantastic jumps, arms for shit).

In yoga, it's pretty much everything.  It makes my down dog go a little itsy tiny bit to the right side. It means my right shoulder usually hits the ground first at the bottom of my pushup. It means that both halves of my body are so uneven that my ability to do the same pose on both sides can vary from Killed It to Almost Got Killed. And it has created for me an arch-nemesis: Handstand.

Day 4: Can't Stop the Signal

Day 4 of The 30-Day Yoga Challenge

Today I did something I do maybe twice a year, tops.  I left work to go to the gym on my lunch break.  Actually, you could take out the "to the gym" part and be just as correct. It's true, I'm a shameful lunch-at-one's-desk-eater.  For some reason I always felt like telling us we have an hour where we can stop working and do whatever we want is a trap they set so they can see who's not busy enough to merit their position being eliminated. But not today! Today I encountered a rare moment where I had not a stitch to do, and also the person who writes up the orders was leaving at the same time so there would be nothing more until he came back anyway. Goodbye desk! Goodbye studio! Wave to the Western Culture of Workaholism on your way out! Oh no, did it see us leaving?

Day 3: I Strap On Some Cojones and Find Out If I'm "Intermediate"

Day 3 of the 30-Day Yoga Challenge

boom.

Even after Sunday's Adventures In Feeling Inadequate, I was surprised at how much I really wanted to go to yoga again. I was actually bummed about "having to" go to kickboxing instead. Is my spirit animal changing already? But, bummer: the only class I could make was a level 2:

Intense & renewing flow practice to enliven the body and balance the mind. Int/Adv. Heated.

And girl, you are not intermediate-slash-advanced! Remember the shame spiral! The falling! Your arms don't straighten! Your biceps are apparently fake! I told all this to my Favorite Boss Rodney, who is my favorite because he lets me talk crazy nonsense and then tells me exactly what I need to hear (he once threatened to turn off the internet in my studio after: "she weighs that? but HOW TALL IS SHE and does that mean I'm fat!?!?!" People, the Internet is a terrible place). And the best part is, he's always, always right: "well, you already cried once, what else worse could happen to you?" Every living creature needs its own Rodney.

Day 2: I Throw Some Money At The Situation

Day 2 of the 30-Day Yoga Challenge

Salvation?

Had to do the laundry today--it takes me about three hours to do since I hate the laundromat and leave it for the last possible day, so I couldn't make the 6p "Realign to Refine" class at my gym:

Focus on your breath while flowing through postures. Develop awareness of your mind, body & spirit. Be adjusted by an additional Jivala teacher during this class to help refine your flow. All levels Heated.

Constant adjustment! Which would have been buckets of fun, right? To have the very thing that was spazzing me on Sunday be happening all the damn time? I guess the point of the class is that the other instructor is nit-picky so maybe I wouldn't have felt bad about it.  Things to be found-out-about next week.

Day 1: In Which I Am Shamed By Hot Yoga

Girl you do not need those legwarmers

Day 1 of the 30-Day Yoga Challenge

After reading Anne Helen Peterson's love letter to hot yoga over at The Hairpin, I became obsessed with trying it out.  Maybe it's a Saturn-return thing, but starting on New Year's Day I've had the nagging desire to just blow everything up and make my life look different, so I was eager to try anything that would "change my life, body, and spirit animal." I've been doing yoga on and off for over ten years, so I know my way around a tadasana like nobody's business. Or I thought I did!