The Six Days of Ashtanga Part Deux

So after three blissful and challenging days of practicing primary series (and one day of intermediate series) I hit a road block. Whether this block be real or imaginary will not be known- but I am ready to try again. Sure I was coming down with a head cold, work stress had reached a new all time high, the holiday frenzy was upon me, it was first but not last attempt at the proper practice oh Ashtanga.... but those are all excuses.

But it also raises the question of when the practice of अहिंसा (ahimsa) directly interferes with one's asana practice which one takes trump? How can you ever reach, explore and extend your edge without causing violence to your self? As a long distance runner I live and breathe by 'no pain, no gain.' I try to leave that thought on the road and keep the mat clear of pithy sayings used to justify extreme training but sometimes I find them joining me when I am learning new postures or trying for the bind, holding a posture that extra breath.

The Six Days of Ashtanga

After the fourth Teacher Training weekend I decided to set the intention of practicing Ashtanga the way K. Pattabhi Jois intended- six days honoring Saturdays and moon days. What triggered this I am unsure.

I am a bit apprehensive about this journey- will I be able to make the time, two hours on the days I cannot make the led classes. In my personal practice will I be able to reach and push my edge or will I succumb to my inner doubt and back off? Will I forget my breath, my alignment, will I allow myself to be comfortable in my practice or will I reach for what is not mine?

Today I made it- went to led Primary Series. Pushed through despite being tired from the weekend.

Tomorrow is a new day and I shall see.

Not So Conscience Eating

On Friday and Saturday I competed in the Ragnar Relay, a 12 person team relay running 200+ miles from Cumberland, MD to Washington DC. It was an amazing experience and am looking forward to competing next year. After wards, not only was I physically beat from lack of sleep, dehydration, long hard runs and small recovery time, but my stomach and digestion were also stressed. Here is a conservative estimate of what I consumed from 330AM Friday to 430PM Saturday:

48 oz. Coke/Diet Coke
8 oz. Sprite
128 oz. Gatorade
300 oz. water (at least)
24 oz. coffee
swedish fish
gummi bears
potato chips
2 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches (small)
2 turkey sandwiches (small)
1 Italian cold cut sandwich
2 apples
2 bananas
2 oranges
2 watermelon slices
grapes
1 oz. almonds
1 oz. salted peanuts
2 gluten free vegan waffles w/maple syrup
1 oz. orange juice
4 smoothie samples

This is the worst I heave eaten in years. Let me also say that I follow a gluten free vegan diet, obviously these past two days are a great exception, and am almost obsessive-compulsive about my caloric intake and quality of calories. I found it extremely difficult to eat well, one is either running, recovering, driving, navigating or sleeping on a continuous rotation as well as living out of a van with five other team mates and battling the heat. I found that I had to make myself eat- exception immediately following a run I always craved salty food and Gatorade, other than that my eating was to be sure I stayed ahead of calories burned and dehydration not because I was hungry. When I was hungry I craved quick energy that was calorically dense or protein. Oddly enough, at the end of the race and after I had completed my 'legs' we stopped to support (provide fluids etc., to our runner) and a McDonalds was near by- I craved McDonalds. I have not had McDonalds in at least 15 years and am normally turned off just by the smell of McDonalds. (I did not get McDonalds, I shudder to think of the consequences if I had gone with the egg mcmuffin and hashbrowns.)

What I ate is close to the normal diet of the other racers and lower on the calorie side.

I am almost certain I was dehydrated the entire race, and once you are dehydrated it is impossible to rehydrate while maintaining a high level of activity. I also netted a total of 3.5 hours of sleep between Friday and Saturday.

I am of course now paying the price- but I will run this race again, only plan and implement my food and fluids. Sleep is optional at Ragnar. I will be browsing through Conscience Eating in the coming days.

A week Without Astanga

Yep- the title sums it all up (no obscure literature reference here, maybe because I feel rather unwitty at 3:12AM). I went a whole week, seven days without an astanga class or home practice. No fear- my astanga book, David Swenson's, arrived in the mail yesterday- assuring that this travesty shall never again happen.

And what shoulder, & what art, could twist the sinews of thy heart?

Here it comes again- I am perhaps five, ten minutes into Andrew's vinyasa class this morning, standing in samasthithi and he says the dreaded words: "take this time to set an intention for the practice." Without fail my mind goes blank. I am filled with grossly encompassing trepidation and panic- I can feel the blankness rise up from the ground, like The Second Coming.* I have zero idea of how and what defines a good yoga intention. I can define a 'good intention' in my life off the mat; however, on the mat- should I focus on breathing, being content with my own limits, recognizing that I have limits, focus on listening, being- not doing- being, pushing the limit, hell any number of actions or thoughts meet the parameters of an 'intention' for a class. Perhaps that's the problem: I know what an intention is- but, I want too much from my practice. Is not setting an intention wrong? Does not practicing with intention make me a bad yogini? Is it possible to practice without a set intention?


The Oxford American Dictionary defines INTENTION:

n. 1 a thing intended; an aim or plan. the action or fact of intending
Origin: late Middle English, from Old French, from Latin 'stretching, purpose' see INTEND

INTEND: v. [trans.] 1 have (a course of action) as one's purpose or objective; plan. plan that
(something) function in a particular way. 2 design or destine (someone or something) for a
particular purpose or end
Origin: Middle English, from Old French, from Latin 'toward + stretch, tend'


Thanks OAD, that really clarified things for me, perhaps I should have consulted your more esteemed older brother OED instead.

Moreover; why do I care? Why must I define and place order in every facet of my life? And why do I keep asking 'why?' Many of the great scientific thinkers would argue that it is human nature to give things meaning and order, it is what human beings do. Many teachers (of yoga) can often be heard saying in class be a 'human being not a human doing,' as if the two were mutually exclusive. I will admit that the first time I heard this I found it to be rather insightful and thought provoking as well as a clever play on words- looking at the words now I am unsure if not doing is being human. I also believe that my need for knowing and ordering comes from my academic background- I concentrated in Geosciences, where we got off on ordering and labeling things, hell we even had labels for the labels- and maybe my perpetual obsession with over achieving and controlling.

My rational mind goes into overdrive when I set out to practice something seemingly so irrational such as yoga. And when faced with the concrete objective of setting an intention, my mind immediately yearns to be the best and most correct intention setter- ever. Which in itself is rather un-yogic in principle, thus resulting in me trying to not be rational and be present and to listen to the silent whispers of my muscles, joints, bones, tendons and ligaments (which I am acutely aware of the fact that muscles, joints, bones, tendons and ligaments are inanimate objects; ergo, they do not whisper.) The waters of contradiction flow within me, constantly ebbing and tiding, as I am.


*The Second Coming
William Butler Yeats
http://www.online-literature.com/donne/780/

TURNING and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?



Note:
title is a line from William Blake's 'The Tyger' and the previous post's title is a line from Franz Kafka's The Trial

Yes, but what are you doing here?

I am one week removed from the first training weekend, I suppose I was expecting to see my practice lighten by leaps and bounds- but alas my practice only seems harder. I cannot seem to get out of my head- for every pose my mind is bombarded with a list of things to do: engage your bandhas, breath, relax, shift your weight, make every movement mindful and with intent. And what is worse is that I am terribly aware of how in my head and judgmental I am. Why can I not keep my mat free of my thoughts?

On Day Two of training when exhaustion was palpable, I was unable to merely be present. With every Chaturanga my mind was filled with thoughts, energy and demanding my body keep pace and form perfect. When my body dared rest in Samasthithi- my mind was still going through the actions: Urdhva Hastanana, Uttanasana, Ardha Uttanasana... never still, always moving. Of course the person practicing in my mind's eye looked more like David Swenson or Shiva Rea, every movement had intention, grace and flow not thought just action. The very opposite of my own practice which is boggled and controlled by thought and ration (and sometimes bargaining, "come on quads give me one more decent Utkatasana and you can have extra fruit on your oatmeal tomorrow for breakfast").

Ironically, at Friday's Astanga class Debbie said to try to lead and listen with your heart and not your mind for the next 90 minutes- how easier said than done.