My room is clean and the middle channel is opening (THANK THE HOLY HEAVENS!!!!!)

First, let me just say I am so thankful that you started the class off reading “How Yoga Works”. I would not be this into the yoga philosophy if you didn’t.

So my practice for this week left much to be desired. However, I got myself into gear yesterday. Before I talk about my yesterday, I want to talk about practice in class. First, I  apologize for invading your space I didn’t meant to just awkward setting and I don’t know if I apologized for kicking you in the face that day but I am sorry for that too(geez I would fail me on principle). Speaking of headstand in the middle of the room, I am so surprised I could do it. When you said I should be ready to try it in the middle of the room, all I could think was “yeah right but what the hey”.  It shocked me when I could actually do it but thee success made we realize that is why you get paid you the big bucks (because you challenge your students beyond what they believe their limits are).  Practicing a headstand in the middle of the room is like starting from scratch: I am wobbly, a little unsure, and can’t hold it for long but that is okay because I am up (so yay me). Now on the other side of the spectrum I can’t do a proper shoulder stand to save my life; it is ironic but sums up my life in a nutshell. The difficult stuff I try, I fail a couple of time but I keep trying and eventually I not only succeed, I start to excel. The “easier” things I can’t accomplish.  I try and when it doesn’t work out I get frustrated and basically give up because this is supposed to be easy so what is wrong with me that it is not. So instead of working on what is proving more difficult I focus all my attention on what I am having no problem in (makes me feel better about myself….I should stop that). Oh you know how in my last blog I mention not wanting to go to class felt the same this week but I went Tuesday and Thursday I had to meeting about my student show so it saved me the fight with myself.

Friday I cleaned my room and wrote my practice blogs for the week before and it felt so good. I even vacuumed and before you think me disgusting, I usually sweep all the trash in a corner because I have to borrow a vacuum. Yesterday, I walked over to the office and check one out came back and clean and with that I started my at home yoga practice for that first time that week (the cleaning of my room is the practice I am referring too). Today I did a real practice: tadasana, standing forward bend, tree pose(my foot actually stayed on my thigh), all three warriors, triangle, revolving triangle, dancer pose, camel, locus, and I think cobra, down dog, up dog, plank, headstand(of course), and I even attempted shoulder stand to no avail.  I feel like I am finally breathing for the first time in a month. You can always tell when I have a fulfilling practice because I can’t stop talking. So I am ending but my question to you is “How can I improve my shoulder stand without props to set up?” Oh and on the middle channel……it is starting to un-chock.

Last thing the harassing thoughts sutra is II.33 and is on page 255 if you have “The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: New Edition, Translation, and Commentary” by Edward F. Bryant….I think it is the one you suggested.

My room is dirty (practice blog week Oct 23-29)

I know what you are thinking and no I have not lost my mind yet (bet I am giving it my best shot). I point out the fact my room was dirty for that tell you two things…..I wasn’t knocking on the pipes or cleaning out the inside with a stick. Since my home practice was nothing more than a sketch or headstand here or there, I will turn my attention to practice inside of class. I did not want to go to class. I didn’t want to go that Tuesday or Thursday but I went anyway and I am glad I did. I didn’t read but at least I went to class. It helps, the yoga practice helps. I think it is a mixture of the actual practice and the laughing done in the class (so please never stop the joking). See this is the problem with writing a practice blog two weeks after it is due and your mind is in disarray, your weeks start to blend together. I don’t know what it that is keeping me from practicing yoga philosophically but I need to find out and eliminate it because it is driving me crazy. Even trying to practice for my brother isn’t working anymore because he pulled some tom foolery and though I know with every wrong move I make I am planting negative seeds to keep a vicious cycle going I still plant them. I can’t cultivate positive thoughts because I am exhausted from the constant hammering of the bad. It is like the negative moods and thoughts that were replace   with a month or so of positive growth are retaliating with a vengeance and I was caught off guard. I don’t even think this a practice blog anymore except that I didn’t really practice a home and the only positive seeds I planted that week was when I went to class even though I didn’t want to go. I wish I could say the next week got better but it didn’t. You will hear about that tomorrow.

Practice Blog for Weeks Oct 3-22

First I know what you are thinking. You are thinking “really….really Ashley really” yes I am really going to do this because I notice a trend and how said trend made me feel. So my practice for that week October 3-8 was awesome. I found a rhythm that didn’t take much time out of the day and made me feel wonderful afterwards. Since I my inversions were getting better I did them often for a longer amount of time. My routine for this week went as follows Tadasana, standing forward bend, downward facing dog, plank, upward facing dog, hand stand, head stand, shoulder stand downward facing dog, and restorative poses. It was a mighty good routine not to many poses but works up a nice sweat, which makes me feel like I have accomplished something. So I followed this routine for Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Then Saturday I did a full blown practice: standing poses, sitting poses, backward bends, forward bends, and of course inversions. However, I noticed that I stopped actively planting seeds. I am not sure if I stop because I wasn’t reading or what but I noticed my practice didn’t feel complete.  Though I noticed this I didn’t do anything to correct it. I just went on with my days.

The next week my practice slowed down significantly (Oct. 10-15….you can tell by how I didn’t write a blog because I didn’t check my syllabus). The routine that I started the week before slowly reduced itself to just headstand by Wednesday because of all the work I had to do and kept putting off. I remember telling you the Thursday in class that I was going to make my mom do some yoga. Yeah that did not happen. Not only did I not introduce my family to Iyengar yoga, I also didn’t practice it. This happened for a couple of reasons. First,  I have two dogs that are not trained so when I showed my mom a headstand (not that I was going to make her try just showing her) one of my dogs started licking me in the face; and  If I weren’t against the wall that would have ended badly. Second, my mom was less than enthusiast and found that I didn’t have the energy to make her try something new. Third, I fell back into the routine of being lazy at home. The environment at my house and at school is drastically different and it was so easy for me to not do what I knew I needed to. So that being said I know I am going to have to work extra hard when I graduate to keep up my home practice and even harder to try to get my family into a healthier routine.  

So by the time I get to the week of Oct. 17-22 by I am back to my old way of thinking because not only was I not knocking on the pipes hard enough from the outside; I also was cleaning them out on the inside. You know the being harassed by negative thought concept well my negative thoughts that were slowly starting to change attack me with a vengeance I haven’t seen in a long time. Which shows me two things: first it shows me how far I came and second how easy it is to get back to the negative place inside my head.  Then I started my cycle sometime this week and I thought “Yes! This is the reason I am acting moody”. Which is halfway true but I know if I were diligent in my practice both physically and mentally, my thinking process would not have been that bad. So this past week not only have I been cranky and negative; my body has been yelling at me because I have neglected it. So I have to make up for that this week. Writing this blog is a good start and so is reading The Bhagavad Gita. So yeah the moral of this story I am not strong enough to go a week without serious practice and reading because if I do I will spiral downward. Oh and I realized that I need to make my blog page happier but not yet(Halloween and all).

Waking: Yoga, Bodies, and Baby Boys

Before I start his blog I want to say, I want to read the book again. Actually I want to read the book at least two more times. The next time I read it I want to pay closer attention to the silence he refers to throughout the book and the third time I read it I want to just enjoy it as a piece of literature.

This blog will be significantly shorter than the other ones because well I don’t have much to say about it. I think it is funny and cute that his beginning experiences with yoga reminded me of How Yoga Works. The one on one practice with the teacher…the practicing at home…..the learning about the flow of energy and how that flow works in different poses….but mostly the breaking of the femur because for some reason he and the Captain thought they could achieve the benefits of yoga quicker if they held their poses longer. I also want to point out that he stills refers to what the doctor told him as a child (the feeling in his legs wasn’t real) but this time struggling and succeeded to overcome that mindset.  This is going to sound horrible but after part one and two this section of the book seems anti-climactic. Even the labor scene seemed lacking, happy, and not as traumatic as the first 2/3 of the book.  Over all it was a wonderful book and reinforces my idea that yoga helps everything if you practice it whole heartedly. I just realized, this is the first section neither his mom nor his brother is mention. Maybe that is why it feels different. I know I should probably talk about the inspirations in this part of the book but I can’t. It is strange; this book basically has a happy ending. After everything he has been force to deal with Matt has found his purpose in life and he has a loving wife and beautiful son to share his life with and I want more. I need something else to make this story finished.  Which makes me realized I wouldn’t be able to hear the man yelling on the back of the elephant. Obviously he is happy and at peace and still working through things but I want another break down on the side of the road. I don’t know maybe I am being a pessimist… …maybe my lack of yoga practice is showing through but a happy ending is some much easier for me to except when I know the story is fictional. This bodes horrible for my future if I don’t change because all I want to be when I grow up is happy.  This is another reason I want to read the book again.....I am hoping if I read it in a continuous flow then I will be more appreciative of the end(you know if the beginning is fresh on my mind).

Waking: Initiation

First I want to start this response off by commenting on how cool I think he ended this section of the book. “I make another vet appointment; I will help him sleep. As my hand rests gently on his side, we wait for the injection. He is quiet, his breathing shallow. Maybe I just met this cat; maybe we are old friends; maybe it doesn’t matter. I wonder as the flicker leaves his eyes. I am stricken with unrealized grief. It is time for yoga” It seems like when the life or light left out of the cat it transferred to him. Though he was stricken by grief it was what he needed to start trying to live again.

This blog will a little different than the last because I want to address a concern I have about the hospital staff. This issue I have with the hospital staff was present in the part one but so many other things were present in that part as well. It bothered me how uncaring some of the physicians seemed. I understand the need to not foster false hope in your patients but goodness sakes he was a child still; there are better ways of dealing with a child sensibility than to tell them “nope what you feel isn’t real…it is all in your head…..get over it”.  This is a prime example of planting a negative seed. The crucial moment between beginning to live and struggling to survived and the doctor pushed him firmly to the struggling to survive with the simple statement “what you are feeling isn’t real….it is better if you forget you felt it”. People in general do not understand how detrimental saying something like can be to a fragile person or even a strong person. That one statement…that one negative healing story followed him for twenty-two years. Twenty-two years of him saying to himself “what I am feeling is not real…..I should just forget about”. It is no surprised that he felt disconnected with his body and with his action because in his mind…in that negative silence it didn’t matter what he could have, would have, should have felt because it wasn’t real anyway. The worst thing that can happen to a negative seed is for it to get fertilized with more negativity. I could have kicked the males PT butt for one he needed to understand everybody heals different. He should have also known that the worst thing you can do is compare one patient to another in a negative light. This type of discouragement only intensifies the feeling of disconnect. However, telling a child (which I know it, was a different PT but still) “you tricked us with fake foot movement....you didn’t really move your foot…….so forget it happened focus on your arms” was unnecessary. First of all he didn’t do it on purpose so say “you trick us” implies that he did(Matt points this out in the book). Secondly, the PT not only re-established what you feel isn’t real but they also planted the seed of what you do isn’t real either. The doctor and PT effectively said to Matt and made him believe that “what you think you feel and what you think you have accomplished is not…therefore it is not important so you should just forget about it and focus on what everyone else knows is best for you”. So moral of this rant is mind your words because someone may live there life by them one day.

Speaking of a small action affecting someone’s life; “This second issue came down to an ill-advised decision by a sand-truck driver not to sand on the morning of November 26, 1978. He hit the snooze button and rolled over-beginning the innocent unfolding of an accident. The result was not one, but three cars slid down that embankment within a span of twenty minutes. Our family sustained the only serious injuries”, no one would have thought that one hit of the snooze button caused three wrecks, two deaths, one paraplegics and a family course change forever. The moral of this story you are given responsibility for a reason…..the reason being someone is counting on you to do them.

There are so many things I want to talk about with this session the presence of dreams again this time as a helpful source of information instead of a way to comfort. I could also talk about Matt return to school and his “relatively normal life”.  I could talk about how the quote “It takes more than three years, but I am ready to acknowledge just how damage I am, how difficult my life is. My will is tired, my body is tired, and my mind finally admits to living in a protracted survival mode. It is not a relatively normal life.” I could say so much about that statement but I will only say this……is at the moment you finally admit you are not okay and you are not fine that you can start moving towards being okay and fine. What I want to spend my last couple of sentences talking about is James. James the only person who walked away with nothing but a lot of emotional trauma and no one to see it or help him through it.  I want to dedicate some part of this blog to him because before Matt brought it up……James was just the person in the background nothing happened to. I can’t even begin to express how sad I feel for James now the person who suffered because he was healthy. The son that came out healthy…… so he should help his mom and younger brother. The son who came out healthy……..so he shouldn’t get any type of financial settlement.  The son whose trauma is only on the inside so nobody notices he needs as much help and acknowledgement as Matt. He needs to live a “relatively normal” life as well.   My heart goes out to James. I hope he found the positive healing story he needed as well.