Rob - My So Called Yoga Blog...

Hello Friends. Remember me? Yeah, it's me Rob - the guy who used to have a blog about yoga, meditation and the like.

It's been quite a while since last posted (almost 2 full months...AH!) and truth be told things have been kind of challenging. I really spread myself thin and forgot about important things like healthy eating and sleep - all while trying to do an overly zealous yoga practice and work three jobs! Well my body taught me a lesson on that one. Two illnesses later (including the beloved H1N1 or Swine Flu as it's affectionately known!) and after about a month of feeling quite like crap I think I'm ready to start treating myself right again!

So that's what's been going on with my body in general. On my spiritual front I've maintained an "adequate" yoga practice in the midst of all this, but it certainly hasn't been every day. Actually it's been pretty sparse. Maybe 2-3 times a week. Certainly not ideal.

I HAVE been quite consistent with my meditation, and that's where things got really interesting. So just a little background before I go a bit off the deep end, I've been reading a lot of Daniel Ingram lately. He's a REALLY hardcore Buddhist writer who talks really in depth about the stages of enlightenment and deep states of meditation. After reading his thoughts about the stages on insight (which BTW aren't his invention, they're based on the original Pali cannon of Theravada Buddhism) a lot of my mental process of late started to make more sense.

Without getting too esoteric, suffice it to say there was much Dukkha in my practice and life, which I think partially manifested in my two illnesses. Everyday tasks seemed almost impossible and I dreaded getting up to go to work. Even yoga seemed unenjoyable. I couldn't sit still for meditation. This finally culminated (after my 1st sickness) with the most intense body cramps in my neck and shoulders that appeared for no obvious reason. I could barely move. And amazingly, all of this is described perfectly in the stages of awakening. And I'll also add that all of this happened BEFORE I even read about it so it's not as if I was manifesting it after the fact. But after reading about this stage and his encouragement to keep just keep going, keep practicing, no matter how hard it is I was able to break on through and remember why I'm doing all this in the fist place. I recommitted to a serious sitting practice and have regained some sense of balance.

Well, with a little determination and evaluation of my lifestyle I think that I'm ready to move on. I've settled into a more calm part of the "Dark Night" (equanimity perhaps?) and am regaining my lust for life. I've rediscover the joys of healthy eating and remember how important it is to my yogic lifestyle! I still have a lot of work to do in my progress, but I think that with some patient determination I can learn to manage this phase and my practice, etc. without destroying my personal life and health.

More importantly to you guys I've also reevaluated how I want to use this blog. I still want to write about my process and commit to a year of solid and truly dedicated yoga practice. What I absolutely want to eliminate is the ideal of trying to practice each and every day and the counting of the number of days. I realized that my practice had gotten WAY too goal oriented and this is the exact opposite of Yoga! So from now on I will write several times a week in here, certainly about Yoga, but I really want to expand the scope a bit. I'm really tired of focusing on the physical "Oh my hamstrings were tight today." "Pose X was really easy". This is a: boring and b: kind of misses the point in my opinion.

Henceforth I'm going to use this blog as a general discussion on the whole of yogic life for me over the year. This will include talks on meditation, healthy eating (recipes, etc.!), philosophy and yes, even my asana practice. I think I'll have a lot more to talk about and this will keep things much more interesting. I'll be sure to keep it true to the original focus, but I think having a broader spectrum will encourage me to write more. I hope you agree!

It's great to be back guys. Much metta, etc. from me to you!

Rob - Day 37: Yin

Well, I actually woke up in plenty of time for Led Primary this morning. But something just wasn't right. I was tired, but not groggy tired. I could really feel it in my body that it was stretched thin. I've been busy busy busy and my body was telling me to chill out. This could only mean on thing - YIN!

I rolled out the mat at home for the first time in a little while for some AM Yin. I popped on a Dharma talk by Rodney Smith about mindfulness of the body and proceeded to practice for about an hour. Afterward I did a relatively short sit (About 20 mins) but dropped in really deep! My mind felt very calm and still.

I'm super glad I opted for Yin today. I can definitely tell that I've had an excess of Yang going on today and I needed to balance it out. I've been neglecting the calmer side of my practice quite a bit so I think I need to renew my efforts on that end.

Not too much to report otherwise other that I'm feeling really balanced and calm. I'm a little concerned about when I'm going to practice this weekend as I have a LOT going on. I guess that's an issue for another time though...

Rob - Day 22: MSM (Meditation Slow-Flow Meditation)

Having learned from my mistakes I made a valiant effort to get some sort of active practice in this morning. Unfortunately my cycle has not completely recovered (it's on it's way though) so I didn't make it to led primary this morning.

I did however make it to the meditation cushion, then the mat, and then back to the cushion. Basically self-explanatory. For the Yoga part I did a little free form flow. Some sun salutes, a few standing poses and that's about it. The asana part was only about half an hour but the whole cycle was about 1:15. I feel pretty good about it.

When I was at work I reminded myself why I do an active practice in the morning. I'm so much more focused and on point. Rest assured yoga friends, I will not be missing my practices henceforth. And tomorrow. Well tomorrows a pretty damn big day.

Rob - Day 6: Meditation/Yin/Teddy Ruxpin!?

Ahhhh...sleep. Went to bed at 9pm woke up at 8:30am. What a beautiful thing. I feel like I took the appropriate measures to recover from my slightly excessive previous day because I feel quite alright today. I took further measures to balance my excess of yang with my practice today.

First I hit the cushion for almost a full hour of meditation - about 10 mins of metta followed by 45 mins of insight practice. It was quite lovely actually. I hadn't really noticed before today but my sits have been much shorter of late - only about 20 mins or so. I almost forgot how much more clear the mind becomes during longer sits. I think that I will need to try to set aside more time for at least a few longer sits per week. I used to get an hour with my group once a week but sadly my old Sangha has dissolved for reasons that I won't discuss on this blog. I guess the good news is starting in September none other than Heather and I will be starting a new meditation group at our yoga studio. Stay tuned for details!

I followed this by a little over an hour of self Yin. Here is the sequence I did:

Wide Kneed Child's Pose - 5 mins
Wide Kneed Child's Pose w/Twist - 4 mins/side
1/2 Saddle - 4 mins/side
Full Saddle - 5 mins
Child's/Laying On Stomach - 3 mins
1/2 Butterfly - 4 mins
Dragonfly Twist - 4 mins/side
Dragonfly - 5 mins
Twisted Root - 5 mins/side
Savasana - 10 mins

As you can see most of the focus was on front hips and hamstrings. Somehow this felt like just what I needed. I practiced in complete silence which was a nice change. Normally at home I put on some sort of ambient music. One funny side note - for no apparent reason the theme from Teddy Ruxpin got in my head while I was laying in Savasana. What the hell!?


But all told it was a lovely day. I'm feeling quite rested and ready to get back to a more vigorous practice tomorrow morning.

Namaste/Om Shanti to all the fly Yogis/Yoginis out in blog land!

Heather - Day Four: A Hiccup

I have done the unthinkable: I missed my yoga practice yesterday. I did not voluntarily skip it, however. I had an actual day off from all jobs yesterday, so I agreed to go to Connecticut with my boyfriend (George Woods of the band Birds in the Woods)for his gig. We thought we would be leaving around three or four. Then his booker got him a radio spot at the last minute and he told me Wednesday night that we would have to be in CT by noon. I thought OK, no problem, I will take my mat and practice in New Haven between the radio spot and the gig which wasn't until 9pm. Well, by the time I got to his place Wed. night, he had not received confirmation that he had the radio spot, so we weren't going to have to get up the morning and leave right away. I thought, "great, I will do a nice yin practice at his place, maybe he can join me..." Well just about the time we were waking up, he got a call saying that they wanted him to get to New Haven ASAP for the radio show. So, there was barely time to take a shower. I still planned on doing yoga somewhere, maybe in a park, or find a class or something. We got there after FOUR HOURS. It is a trip that normally takes about two, but there was a traffic jam and so there was a stretch of road about 12 miles long that took us two of those hours to cross. A runner could have run it faster! But I did not fear, I still had confidence that there would be time for yoga. When we got to the radio station, they made us wait almost 45 minutes before putting my boyfriend on. By this time, my head was starting to kill me and I was starving as I had not had the time to make breakfast before we had to get on the road. So we found some food and went to the park. I couldn't practice right away, I had eaten too much and my headache remained. We had about an hour before we needed to be at the venue for set up. Now I was starting to get nervous. We set up, and he asked me to man the merchandise table. Then he didn't play until 11pm....sigh....so, after a set and breakdown, we got on the road somewhere around 12:30. I still had a pretty bad headache. I walked into my apartment at 3:06. I was out by 3:15 and had to be working at my yoga studio by 9am. If I had known the day of events was going to include the radio spot, I could have planned the yoga accordingly, or at least left George to it while I went to the park and practiced, but it always seemed like there was going to be a little time until there just wasn't.

I am disappointed. There are a lot of shoulda, woulda, coulda's running through my mind today. But the truth is, life is just sometimes unpredictable and I always learn best by making mistakes. So rather than start over I am going to chalk it up to life and count Friday as Day Four. After all, meditation and yoga are practices, in large part, of learning the art of starting over in every moment and treating every moment as new with "don't know mind," right? So, maybe my yoga practice yesterday was to be present for my life as it played out. We come to our mats to streamline our lives for a little bit on a daily basis in order to cultivate and strengthen our ability to listen deeply to our own needs. But yoga doesn't exist in a vaccuum. Hopefully, what happens on the mat doesn't stay on the mat. So all the presence we learn on the mat is something we can take into our lives. The more deeply we can listen to ourselves and respond with compassion, the bigger our capacity becomes to listen deeply to others and respond to them with compassion. My yoga was to be present with my boyfriend. It was a beautiful warm day, full of fun and great music, and hope for his career, and I got to spend a WHOLE day with him. We are both so busy so we were very lucky to have that, and while part of me looked for any opportunity to practice, most of me was just able to be there, without regret, and with a heart full of gratitude to enjoy my life as it was in the moment.


WishIng you happiness and metta from a little dot in the universe called Boston,
Heather

PS. As a side note, I want to add one more change. My meditation teacher, whom I have been studying under for nearly two years now, has gently suggested to me at various times that I might want to try reading no dharma books or yoga books for a set amount of time. This, he explains, would give the chance to work with bare experience and not, as we both know is my tendency, use reading as a checkpoint to make sure I am "getting it right." As a read-a-holic, the very thought horrifies me. As someone who knows I am a read-a-holic, the idea intrigues me, so as an added challenge, I have decided that for this 365 days, I will practice asana everyday, but abstain from reading about it. I will continue to read other things, mostly for current issues sorts of information and - gasp! - for pleasure. So my idea to use "Meditations from the Mat" is officially nixed, though I invite and encourage anyone else to pick it up and use it for inspiration in their own practice whether you have taken up the cause of 365 days or some other commitment.

Heather - Day Two

Today may have been the hardest day of all. I just DID not want to practice after working all day. Mostly because I found out that my license has been suspended for five years now unbeknownst to me due to a speeding ticket I don't even remember getting. It was a VERY expensive ticket! So after spending almost three hours trying to figure out what happened and get it all arranged, I was a little down and definitely in the mood to pacify myself with episodes of South Park or phone conversations with friends and family rather than practice even thirty minutes of yoga!

But I did it. My hamstrings and quads were begging me for attention - being a little sore from the day before and after all, I had made a commitment: I wasn't about to call it quits on the second day for goodness sake!

So I put on a short dharma talk by Ajahn Sucitto which was really more of a guided meditation centered in the breath and proceeded through about thirty minutes of yin yoga. Honestly? It was a relief. Physically, mentally, emotionally, I felt better, more at ease afterwards. I think I slept better as well, though I usually don't have problems with sleep anyway. I was glad I did it regardless of the trepidation and laziness I was feeling so strongly at the time. It is amazing, how, even when we know it to be true from past experience, we can forget how much better healthy habits make us feel. It is so seductive and easy to fall back on the little habits of mindless TV, a cigarette, or a hot fudge sundae we have or have had to lean on in the past for comfort or convenience when it seems like too much effort to address the true needs of our bodies, minds, and spirits.

WishinG you happiness and metta from a little dot in the universe called Boston,
Heather