Listen harder to yourself

Lately I've noticed lots of coming and going in the yoga room. Refilling water bottles, getting a Kleenex, going to the bathroom. One person starts the exodus, and then it spreads like ringworm. I've observed it more as student than as a teacher. One person leaves the room and soon there are three, four, TEN people jumping off their mats to do something seemingly urgent. But what is urgent during a 90-minute yoga class really? Yes, sometimes a student really truly needs to do some business in the bathroom. Of course, by all means, go to the bathroom. But 99% of the time there is really no great reason to leave one's mat.

As a teacher I'm pretty strict about this stuff and make no bones about my approach. "Strictness", I tell my students, "is the love language of The SweatBox." I remember kids (including me) doing dumb stuff in childhood and adolescence. A teacher or a parent would inevitably respond to our stupidity with, "If Max jumped off the bridge, would you do it?" That cliche phrase is one that most of us heard (some of us with more frequency than others) during childhood. I use it with my own daughter. "Think for yourself," I tell her. "Be your own person."

A regular yoga practice will result in a more connected self. There is more connection between the physical and the mental, the emotional and the spiritual. With regular practice one can also develop a stronger sense of self, a more clear point of focus and direction. Ninety minutes can seem like an eternity some days, and there are potentially thousands of distractions to lead us astray in every session. We have to be committed to following our own path, not that of someone else in the room. As Bikram himself says, "Don't let anyone steal your peace."

When one person in a class makes the first move, hops off her mat to get water in the middle of the posture, there is an interruption in the class that invites other people to follow suit, ("jump off the bridge with Max"). It's so easy. We've all done it. We see that sneaky cat get across the room with no trouble and figure it's easy so we do it too. Some teachers (yours truly) are more vocal about discouraging this behavior. I make it clear as a teacher that my expectation is that people won't do this. So recently, as a student, when I watched 5, 7, 12 other students interrupting their practice with silly distractions, I started to wonder why they do it in this class, but not in my class.

And here's what I realized. We're all human. We live in a world filled with temptations and sometimes we fall prey to them, even when we don't want to. This is why yoga is important, why it makes us healthier, saner, more calm. Yoga helps us develop our own internal voice to guide us through the distractions. It shouldn't matter if a teacher ever says one word about staying on your mat. Part of your yoga practice is building your discipline, honing your internal voice, so that it is louder than any other. You are your most important teacher and your internal voice, your more connected voice, if you listen, is likely telling you to stay on your mat.

Find some stillness in your stillness

On Tuesday, I took Katy's 6am class. For those of you who don't know Katy, she is lovely. That's the first word that comes to mind when I think of her. She is authentic, positive, nurturing, and a damn good yoga teacher. Katy's strengths as a teacher are similar to her strengths as a person. She's authentic, positive, and nurturing. At 6am, this is especially important. To go from deep sleep to Bikram Yoga is not an easy process.

On Tuesday, the class was hot, humid, and full of bodies, so there was the usual intensity you'd expect in a Bikram class. Katy is statuesque and incredibly strong. She's also graceful, and really at home in her body. This strength and confidence gives her the ability to hold the energy of an intense class. She's unapologetic about the toughness of Bikram practice, but also sends the message of acceptance. Like many of us teachers, she makes sure to convey the message, "Be where you are. Every day your body is different."

During the first Savasana after the standing series, Katy was helping us to relax our bodies. She threw out a few instructions, "relax your muscles", "be still in your body." And then she said, "Be still in your stillness", and then chuckled, "if that makes any sense."

It was only later that day when I was teaching a big group of sweaty, intense students, trying to be confident, clear and strong enough to hold the energy in the room, that I had a flash of those words in my mind, "Be still in your stillness." That's so good. As a student, it is relatively easy (some days more than others) to follow the teacher's instructions to keep our bodies still. But most of us know that there is an entirely different ball game going on in the mind. The body is still and the mind is at Wild Waves with a forty ouncer. --- "I have a drip of sweat about to drip into my ear." "The woman next to me must have had a ton of garlic last night." "I wonder who left those bobby pins on the floor next to my mat." "Would it be okay if I served red wine with salmon?" Stillness? What stillness?

It's been a long time since I've been teaching and practicing and it's a thrill when I hear something that helps me in both realms. I relate to simple instructions. "Be still in your stillness" is so dang clear. But like different teachers, sometimes different words help get a message across. The body still. The mind still. Duh!!!! It's like washing the car and cleaning the inside. So much better. So much more complete. Thanks for the clarification Katy.

Warm 106.9

Every once in a while when I'm teaching yoga, the thermometer will say 106.9. This usually means it's time to turn down the heat. It also means I start thinking about soft hits. I know some of you reading this are familiar with Delilah. You know the theme song-- "Love someone tonight."

This fall has been exceptionally busy for me. Work, volunteering at Lucia's school, birthdays, social engagements. My coffee intake in September reached it's highest point since college. Last Thursday, after I spontaneously started sweating and felt like I was on the verge of cardiac arrest, I decided I was definitely switching to decaf. Despite my regular yoga practice (thank god for that), I was clearly not managing my anxiety.

I used to listen to WARM 106.9 all the time. For the last few years I've been pretty unconsciously tuned into KUOW. But recently, something moved me to switch back---and it wasn't a pledge drive. After my near heart attack, I was driving on Rainier Avenue South towards downtown. KUOW was on and the commentator was talking about the upcoming elections. It was stressing me OUT! I happened to be driving to the first of two meetings that day, both of which were going to involve confrontation. I suck at confrontation, and I didn't need more stress to prepare me for it.

I had a moment of clarity, "I don't have to listen to this shit!" I shimmied my dial up to 106.9 and heard Celine Dion. Now I would probably not buy the iTunes single of The Power of Love, but in that moment, it was so simple, so easy, so soft. I loved it. Next came Genie in a Bottle (Christina Aquilera). " oooh oooh.... my body's sayin' let's go."

It was one of those unprecedentedly glorious sunny days in Seattle. Over the course of my 35 minute drive, I heard Cyndie Lauper, Stevie Nicks, John Mayer. I sang my heart out."Your true colors, true colors, are beautiful like a rainbow...." My sunroof was open, my windows were down. I just needed some back up singers to complete my harmonies and a new outfit. I felt so happy, I didn't even mind the Sleep Country commercials.

It was such a small thing, making the decision to change my radio station. But the results were enormous. I'm still tuned into 106.9, not all the time, but a lot. Whenever I find myself wanting to check my email while I'm driving, I know I'm simmering over, stepping out of balance. "Crank those soft hits Culberg," I tell myself. Last week I cleaned my house with 106.9 on and I didn't stop to check my phone for two hours!

You might hate 106.9 (many people do, especially in December when it's all Christmas songs all month long), but there is something out there that helps you dial down the stress. It's too easy to get into a pattern of overdrive. We all have obligations, responsibilities, but life shouldn't be without lightness. I feel grateful to have yoga as a constant in my life, a tool for releasing stress, but sometimes I need more. I need James Taylor, Lionel Richie, Enya, Mariah Carey, Fleetwood Mac......

Well that was just awful....

Yesterday I had a brand new student in class. As always, I fully briefed her on the heated room, taking breaks, and being open minded about what to expect in her first Bikram class. She seemed to be fine for the first few postures. While she didn't smile, she also didn't audibly moan or grunt or signify indications of discomfort. Towards the floor series, I could tell she wasn't loving class, but she stayed.... until the last posture. At spine twisting, she abruptly rolled up her mat and walked out. I called out, "Wait, you're almost done. This is your last posture!" But, alas, she was out the door.

It's very unusual for a student to leave the room at that stage in class. I mean, once you're in the last 5 minutes, it doesn't really make sense to abandon ship. After final Savasana, I found the student in The SweatBox lobby. She was quietly sitting, her mat rolled up on her lap. When she saw me, she stood up. "How are you?" I asked, "you did really great for your first time." (She really did).

"Well, that was just awful" she said. "That was really really unpleasant. I just hated that." I'm not sure what my exact response was. I probably told her the heat takes a while to get used to. I might have said something about the first time always being the most difficult. But she was done. "I'm never coming back" she said, "that was really just awful." Okay. Bye.

I've been teaching Bikram Yoga for over 11 years. I've taught thousands of students. My skin is pretty thick. I didn't take this student's comment personally. Not at all. She's right. Sometimes yoga practice is awful. Sometimes it's really awful. That's the point. We practice through the discomfort, the unfamiliarity, the heat. If you're a new practitioner, you might still be in the throes awfulness. If you've been practicing twenty years, you too will have practices that are awful. And then, you'll have practices that are wonderful, enlightening, epiphanic.

It's hard to tell a brand new student that "awfulness" is part of the process. Until you've endured the struggle of practicing through hard times, it won't really make sense. Once you've been there, seen both sides of hard and easy, inflexible and flexible, wobbly and balanced, you know how important all of the experiences are in your practice.

Maybe I should have tried harder with the new student, pushed her to understand more. I hope that she tries yoga again so she can see the other side of "the awful."
As for myself, the experience with this new student was a great reminder for my own practice. I remember those early days.... Some days yoga class was so hard. And now, almost twenty years later, it still is sometimes. The only difference is that now I know the rest of the story.

Michelle Obama must do yoga....

For years, I have been out of the loop politically. It's just a bunch of mental masturbation to me. Blah blah blah! I vote. I care. But I'm just tired of the bullshit. I grew up in an intellectual household where knowledge of current events was very important. Reading the New York Times and multiple other publications daily was the norm. But not for me. I'm a Sunday New York Times Style Section girl. Cover to cover every week.

Then last week when I was driving home from work, I heard Michelle Obama on the radio speaking at the DNC. I have some background with Michelle. I'm from the same neighborhood in Chicago where she and Barak used to live. I went to the same school as their kids. Like all Hyde Parkers, I kind of feel like I really know Michelle and Barak Obama, so when Michelle was speaking, it felt like listening to a trusted friend. At one point in her speech, Michelle said, "If you succeed you don't slam the door shut, you reach back and help the next person succeed."

Whoa. When I heard her say this, I nearly wept. Her voice, so warm and loving and fierce all at once, made me feel like she really believed that statement. I know Michelle and I aren't really friends, and I know she's speaking to millions of people, but it felt so real, like change is possible if we can remember not to slam the door shut.

The next morning I taught the 6am class at The SweatBox. The class was all women, about ten of them, mostly in their late 30s to early 60s. One older woman made the trek down to Capitol Hill from Shoreline at the ungodly hour of 5:30am to meet her friend who lives near the Capitol Hill studio. Her friend had been complaining about her arthritic shoulder and she knew yoga would help. All of the women worked their asses off. They always do.

At the end of class, when everyone was lying in final Savasana, I did my usual guided relaxation. "I don't know if any of you heard Michelle Obama on the radio last night." (Some whoops were shouted from the corpse poses in the darkened room). "She said, 'If you succeed you don't slam the door shut, you reach back and help the next person succeed.'" Hallelujah and Amen uttered the corpses....

I said, "Michelle Obama must do yoga because she has so much to give." Now I don't know this for sure (because she and I are not super tight friends), but I know Michelle Obama must do yoga or something equally self-nurturing because she is a woman who clearly takes care of herself enough to be able to offer amazing inspiration to those around her. I said as much to this class full of hard-working women. It is only by caring for ourselves (yoga, yoga, yoga!!!), that we can replenish the energy neccessary to support our families, our communities, and (dare I say this semi-political utterance)our country.

I'm still not political, but Michelle Obama's one liner gave me some clarity about how all parts fit into the whole of making our country a better place. Taking care of ourselves is the first step. Give yourself a little and you'll have a little bit more to give. Thanks Michelle Obama.

Bend a little bit

Last week when I was teaching, I had a student who did a standing backward bend so deep that her fingertips almost touched the floor (behind her). It's hard to picture, hard to fathom, but there she was, in the flesh, bending like a bow-- backwards.

People come to yoga with varying levels of innate flexibility. This certainly factors into how deeply a person can backward bend. And the more one practices backward bending, the deeper they can go, but I think there is something more to it. To deeply backward bend, you have be open to feeling really uncomfortable, scared, vulnerable. You have to be open to falling, to being dizzy, to losing a bit of control.

Backward bending is the body movement we do least in our lives. We forward bend to write, to drive, to cycle, to change diapers,to order a latte, to cook. Our bodies default to forward bending, making backward bending not only uncomfortable, but also unfamiliar and often scary.

I have been teaching for eleven years, and every year, I find that I am able to recognize more postural nuances in the bodies I am teaching. This is especially true in students I have taught regularly for years and years. The most common thing I see in the standing backward bend is ambivalence. It's so subtle. The neck is just a little bit tight, the jaw slightly clenched, the shoulders just a bit too hunched. This is the natural, pervasive fear of letting go, moving into the unknown.

The student with the deep deep beautiful backward bend was a first timer to The SweatBox. When she signed in, I got a brief overview of her life. For the past several years, she's lived all over the world, on several continents, going where the wind blew her. She was, as cliche as this might sound, a free spirit.

Of course I do not know this free-spirited woman at all. Perhaps she comes from a long line of Ukrainian gymnasts. Maybe she has that magic cartilage that just moves that way. But my suspicion is that it is likely a combination of things that give her the ability to U-Turn her spine. I suspect that this woman is a little bit more fearless than some of us, myself included.

And when I think about some of my long-time students, I can see that there is indeed a pattern. One student, a woman in her thirties who has been practicing for a couple of years, recently ended a long-term relationship, moved into her own place, decided she wanted a new career, and, moved to a whole new realm in her backward bend. Coincidence? I don't think so.

In life, it is the things we are least comfortable with that we have to push ourselves at the most. I think for me, with my uber-controlling, fairly rigid personality, backward bending will always feel difficult for me. I will probably always fight it like I do any kind of change, but I have noticed that when I let go more, when I open my mind, I actually go deeper. The other day in class, for the first time ever, Frani actually said, "Nice backbend Laura."

Sometimes getting your ass kicked is a good thing.

Summer time yoga practice is hard. Bikram yoga practice in the summer is especially hard. During the cold, dark and rainy months of the year I regularly practice 3-5 times a week, but in the summer because of child care obligations, other activities, and let's face it, laziness, I only practice once or twice a week. Yesterday, I practiced for the first time in 10 days! I'd been gone for a week with my family and, though I brought 8 mats in the car so the whole fandamily could get their yoga groove on, the bag didn't leave my trunk. As many of you know, a break that long makes for an almost inevitably difficult reentry yoga session. And mine was. Yesterday Penni (as usual) kicked my ass. This morning when I took Kristen's class, I felt stronger, but oh my aching muscles. Even my chin was sore from yesterday's practice.

This post-hiatus yoga discomfort is something I rarely experience during the non-summer months of the year. And though it's not pleasant--feeling nauseated, tight, weak, and slightly pathetic--it is informative. Yesterday I got my ass kicked, and today I could feel it ALL OVER. The physical sensations in my deltoids, my neck, my quads, were all reminders of what's happening in my body when I practice. And the mental rigor of doing my 90 minutes of Bikram is exponentially more difficult after a long break. Ninety minutes can feel like 90 years.

I take for granted when I practice very regularly how hard this yoga can be. Of course, like we all do, I have ass-kicking practices year round, but never like the summer. I can be really really hard on myself. I'm known as a bit of a perfectionist (See January 2012 Post "Welcome to the Revolution") so feeling like a loser is not something I do well with (who does?!), but this round of getting my ass kicked, I am taking it differently. Instead of spinning out about what a moron I am for not doing yoga on my vacation, I'm giving myself some props for practicing at all.

If you're out there, worried about your return to yoga, fear not. Yes, it's hard. You might have a wicked hard class, but then while you're bathing your sore muscles in Epsom salts, re-hydrating into the evening, preparing for your next class, you can relish in the greatness of your strength, determination, and struggle. You might have gotten your ass kicked in your yoga class, buy you, my friend, are an Ass-Kicker!