Humunk Humunk

Day 31: DONE!!! And notes on food

2010-03-19T11:24:00.000-07:00

I'm done! Except... I suspect perhaps I'm not.

We made brunch this morning. It seemed the obvious thing to do - brunch is my favorite meal and food category, and I have been really enjoying the mindfulness of preparing food. This was a little stressy due to a late awakening, but still turned out good.

The food was prepared well, and tasted as it should. I'm hesitating to use the word, 'Delicious', because I was totally overwhelmed by the heaviness of everything, and I felt like a stone after eating. I don't think I had a huge portion.

I found myself craving a green drink. I picked up another box of juices this morning, and had one. It was fantastic. So... keeping up with juices + small meals that are not butter-themed. And lots of soup (I love soup!)

Day 30 pt 2: One drink left.

2010-03-18T17:43:00.000-07:00

6:30 yoga, 9pm final drink... and then what?

I was telling Stacy this morning that I can't imagine NOT having green drinks at this point.

Day 30: Oh sure, NOW it gets easy.

2010-03-18T09:10:00.000-07:00

I'm walking on air today.

I've been going through this thing assuming that when I'm done, all the weighty, heavy, sluggishness will eventually return as I gradually devolve back into a fried-starch and red-meat based diet.

Why, though? This is great... I feel great, I'm happier. And... the little bits of soup I've had here and there I've actually enjoyed way more than the burger and fries that I usually have. Why not just keep doing a version of this? Lots of green drinks, more soup, perhaps when nobody's looking, the occasional piece of cheese?

Thank you Stacy, Mary, Nicole, and everyone at Global Yoga.

Day 29 pt 3: A Weird Thing Happened

2010-03-17T20:12:00.000-07:00

So, as has happened a fair bit during this fast, I had to leave work today because I just got exhausted and needed to lie down for an hour or two. Every time this has happened, I've ended up being very energetic at night, and have used the opportunity to get work done later (which I believe is our real natural cycle anyway. YOU GO, SPAIN.)

It was different today. I had an extremely difficulty morning - angry, irritable, and difficulty rallying to do anything. When I got home and slept, it felt 'urgent'. I was really having trouble keeping my eyes open and my head up. I slept for about three hours, instead of one or two, and literally couldn't lift my head off the pillow at one point when my phone rang. However, while this was happening, I had the weirdest sensation. I could tangibly feel a sensation all over my body - a tingling (good, not like leg-asleep). I honestly felt like my body was morphing in real time. In retrospect, it felt like going into a tiny cocoon.

When I woke up, my body shape was visibly different. Enough to be surprising. My entire torso seemed smaller. And, most exciting of all... the shirt that I've never worn because it never fit.... (HELL YEAH!!!)

Day 29 pt 2: TWO TWENTY EIGHT.

2010-03-17T14:04:00.001-07:00

Two. Twenty. Eight.

Wow.... just wow.

Day 29: Not quite.

2010-03-17T09:50:00.000-07:00

My friend Barb once said, "Having too rigid a definition of who and what you are is just asking the universe to fuck with you." I'm probably misquoting a word or two, but I'm getting the basic thrust correct.

Today lacks most of the joy and peace that yesterday had in such abundance. And I'm every bit as irritable and impatient as I've been in the worst of times. It's a Fuck You Friday, and it's only Wednesday.

I know that some days are just better than others, and I don't really need to read into it all that much. I am still very happy that I've done something good, and I trust that I'll continue to feel better, despite the occasional crappy day.

Today is the first day of my FIFTH WEEK. I am 94% done.

Day 28: CAN I GET A WITNESS

2010-03-16T09:50:00.000-07:00

Man, I can TASTE THE FINISH LINE. Which, I might add, would be a fantastic semi-ironic catch-phrase for a sports drink. PowerCrusherAdeGator: TASTE THE FINISH LINE.

I was telling Stacy last night that, compared to where I started, this change in my body (and mind, spirit) seems more significant than the three months of Teacher Training. Admitted, when I went to TT, I had been doing yoga almost every day for 6 months, so I was in fightin' shape before I started, whereas with this - I was on the, "all meat & bread, all fried, all the time" diet before I started, so the comparison isn't really fair.

Still, I can't help but be stunned at how much you can really change yourself in how short a time. All you have to do is commit to something crazy. I look at the changes that a single, measly month has brought and think - not only am I feeling wonderful and thin and young and bright, but my attitude about life and the world around me has changed quite a bit. I find myself being less negative, less snarky, less critical, and less concerned with being "right". I find myself walking more slowly, smelling the morning grass and the flowers on the air of spring. I'm paying attention. What an extraordinary gift! And, really - all things considered.... what a cheap price to pay for it.

Day 25, 26, 27: Nearing the Finish

2010-03-15T09:24:00.000-07:00

I'm going to hold off on summarizing observations, or at least in making them overly grand, until I'm entirely finished with the 30 days. However, I can't help but notice that... I spent this weekend feeling fantastic in every way. When I see my face or my whole body in a mirror, I like what I see, for the first time in a very, very long time. Every little injury I had when I started seems gone, or faded into the background. I've had one and only one migraine all month, compared to almost once a day before I started.

I really do feel like it is a miracle.

Woke up in the middle of last night screaming and gasping for air, like I was drowning. I forgot about it until this morning. I also woke up to write myself an elaborate design note (still in my iPhone) for a simulation system that I first started thinking of in Bali. So, I can only imagine what strange dreams I had.

For the rest of this week, I'm slowly going to be reintroducing a little bit of food - miso soup, some avocado - to ease back in to what I am QUITE certain will be a glorious victory brunch, and then off to visit friends in faraway cities to celebrate.

Day 24: Enough already

2010-03-12T09:15:00.000-08:00

This final stretch is tough. I feel soooooo weak. I've been very irritable and short - yesterday there were kids crying near the day care and I was genuinely upset with them. When you find yourself actually thinking, "WHY WON'T THAT ONE-YEAR-OLD JUST SHUT UP?", you know you've turned the grouchiness corner.

I had to eat a little bit of food last night (indian lentil soup), because I was just spinning in my head, in an almost panicky way, "must eat must eat must eat must eat must eat must eat". I spent a lot of yesterday counting the days, the hours, the minutes left... I realize this is mostly mental, but still - whatever this is, it is hard. I'm having difficulty finding enthusiasm for anything, which sucks.

It'll pass.

Day 23 pt 2: Final Quarter

2010-03-11T15:04:00.001-08:00

As of my 3pm drink, I've passed 3/4 done.

Hunger in the last few days has been apocalyptic. Pang, pang, pang.

Day 23: You kids get off my lawn

2010-03-11T09:19:00.000-08:00

I'm super-irrationally irritable today. I have no idea why. I can definitely say that I'm ready to re-join the food eaters, though. One week left.

I can do it, but man - I'd kill for some breakfast tacos.

Day 22: Parallels

2010-03-10T09:39:00.000-08:00

So, according to the Juice Fasting 'what to expect' link that Nicole sent me last week, in days 16-30, the physical cleansing begins to be 'complete', and the body shifts to emotional, mental, energetic cleaning.

But, I mean... just because physical detoxification was physically challenging, that doesn't mean that emotional detoxification would be emotionally challenging, though, right...? Right? Oooof.

I'm going back to my blanket/couch-cushion fort. I shall only be disturbed for Cinnamon Buns.

(Also, 3 weeks DONE! First day of week 4!!!)

Day 21 pt 3: HUNGER

2010-03-09T13:00:00.001-08:00

Man, this last stretch is challenging. I am really, really, really hungry.

Day 21 pt 2: One more thing

2010-03-09T09:51:00.001-08:00

Hey, if you're reading this... throw down a comment. I could use the moral support! (Nicole & Stacy, you have been doing this, and it's awesome).

Day 21: Final Third

2010-03-09T09:49:00.000-08:00

Today is the first day of the last third of my fast, and also the last day of the third week.

It's getting to the point where I don't really even know how to keep this interesting... I feel like it's just more of, "I feel great, I'm wearing clothes from 10 years ago (the stylish ones), I am more positive and happy, why don't we all do this all the time"?

I am thinking more and more about how to make this feeling last beyond the fast, while still getting to embrace the loving preparation and sharing of food. I don't have any answers yet.

One humorous thing that I've noticed is what I call, "subconscious eating". Yesterday I went to the grocery store to get butcher bones to make bone broth for a friend who just gave birth. While I was waiting for them to package things up, there was a display with samples of chips & salsa. And then suddenly I had one in my mouth. From a consciousness point of view, it was an immediate jump, as though my brain was like, "Right, so - the conscious part keeps thwarting my attempts to get us food, despite all the extra focus and alertness I gave it. Time for plan B. We need to turn off the conscious part for a few seconds - long enough to get chips, but not so long as to end up walking into traffic." I'm not trying to shirk responsibility for phantom snacking, I just think it was funny that the willpower part seemingly got circumvented. Very sneaky, brain...

Day 18, 19, 20: Enlightenment, Slips

2010-03-08T10:40:00.000-08:00

This was an epic weekend. We had friends in from out of town, Avatar won the VFX Oscar, and I sat through not one, not two, but three gatherings of friends in which food was lovingly prepared and consumed. I managed to succeed at not cheating, other than a small taste of the homemade breakfast hash at one particular gathering.

At yoga on Sunday morning, I felt like my body had mostly adjusted to this new nutritional foundation. I felt light, strong, and entirely without panic. I think that's the thing I notice most about this process - a lack of panic, anxiety, and a noticeable decrease in stress, in every-day things. I am calm and cheerful as a default, and that's really refreshing (and new).

I said to Mary after class on Sunday that I didn't know that this process would be a miracle. Indulging my love of hyperbole, for sure, but it really does feel somewhat miraculous. My body has changed more in 20 days than I would have believed possible. On Friday night, I wore pants that I got as a gift on my 25th birthday. On Saturday, I wore the pants that I'd been keeping around as a 'maybe one day' hopeful thing. They were loose.

So... all of this makes me feel pretty bad about totally screwing up last night. For some reason, our fireplace turned on in the middle of the night and I couldn't find the remote to switch it off. As I wandered around the kitchen at 3am, looking everywhere for the remote... it got me. Our friends had ordered pizza from Little Star - deep dish, Chicago Style - and there was like a little less than half a piece left. A taste turned into more tastes turned into there-is-no-more-pizza. It was phenomenal tasting, of course. I feel like I weigh twenty pounds more this morning. I'm not beating myself up about it too much, but I can clearly feel that it has sorta damped the feeling of great change.

Still, I can't be too disappointed, overall. I feel wonderful, and today is a new day.

Day 17: Ow

2010-03-05T09:01:00.000-08:00

A strange side effect of this fasting is that my flexibility has increased dramatically, seemingly by itself. It's not in response to any aggressive stretching on my part. This is fun and interesting, but it also means there's all these new places to find in the poses in Yoga class.

Last night I pushed too hard in class, I think. I managed to fight off the dizzyness, but my whole upper back and neck feel like somebody beat me with a bat. A small bat, to be sure, but a bat nonetheless.

I think this part of my back has basically been frozen - when I move my shoulders, my shoulder-blades make this gross clicking noise as the bones scrape against each other. The tightness back there is enough to make veteran massage therapists express surprise. I think I'm just starting to heal and break down that area, and that's where the discomfort is coming from. Still, I'm grouchy as hell this morning. I'm reminded of something Mary says in class from time to time, variations on, "It's hard to be enlightened when your spine is in pain." (Pardon the misquote, if I have...)

Ow.

Day 16: Past Halfway

2010-03-04T09:05:00.000-08:00

PAST HALFWAY!!!!!

I won't say it's easy.... but it's definitely easier. My focus and concentration have come back, and every day I feel lighter and more expansive. My dreams and daydreams are filled with leaping flips and flight.

I feel like my appreciation for food has (and will remain) changed. I don't want food in a hurry - just because I want to be able to savor and indulge every little bit of every little bite. I want to spend days making Thomas Keller and Grant Aschatz recipes. (Though I don't want to buy any sodium alcinate).

It's funny - I didn't get into this challenge for the purpose of doing a cleanse. Honestly, I mostly did it to see if I could, and because I could tell my body needed clean nutrition and this was the easiest way to do it. If I had decided to do something involving prepared food, I would not have been able to keep it up, or it would have been incredibly expensive. But, though I didn't do this to cleanse, the cleansing effects have been so obvious and dramatic. All the yucky crap that came out of my lungs and sinuses, to say the least...

I feel like the cleansing has moved out of the physical and into the emotional and energy. I have so much more conscious control over my focus than I did just a few days ago, I have such an easier time maintaining calm and not getting carried away or upset about anything.

I would recommend this journey to absolutely anyone and everyone.

Day 15 pt 2: So close to halfway...

2010-03-03T16:59:00.001-08:00

I'm two drinks away from being HALFWAY DONE.

And... in some weird miracle... today I'm a focus machine. Concentration, focus, all of them are through the roof.

Day 15: Through the fog

2010-03-03T09:21:00.000-08:00

The dizzyness is gone! The dizzyness is gone!!!

I feel light and glowy today. I am curious how long my concentration will last. Most days it seems to fizzle out around 3pm.

According to that juicefasting link, I should be getting into the last phase of cleansing - glowing for the next 15 days or so. Here's hoping!

Super helpful information

2010-03-02T19:23:00.001-08:00

This describes my experience so far, pretty much to the letter. If this is to be believed, sometime around day 16 (Thursday), I should be in cleansing nirvana!

http://www.juicefasting.org/detox.htm

Day 14 pt 2: Soup Cheater

2010-03-02T18:54:00.000-08:00

I went home early from work today. I was still dizzy from yesterday's collapse, and still felt weak. I slept for a few hours, and when I woke up, I decided, with some determination: I SHALL HAVE SOUP.

It's kinda cheating, but... I think the wise path through this fast is to listen to my body - not to be indulgent with cravings - but to listen. If I'm so weak I can't work and sleep all day, I need more than what I'm giving myself. So... Let Them Eat Soup! (but just a little).

Interesting info on dizzyness and fasting

2010-03-02T10:10:00.001-08:00

This article describes pretty much 100% of how I feel.

http://chestofbooks.com/health/Isabelle-A-Moser/How-and-When-to-Be-Your-Own-Doctor/Common-Fasting-Complaints-And-Discomforts.html

Day 14: Collapse

2010-03-02T09:21:00.000-08:00

I collapsed in yoga last night. It was gradual - nothing exciting or dramatic, but still a bit frightening. I had noticed that, towards the end of the standing series, I was feeling weaker and weaker, and my balance was off. Then, just as the first set of Triangle finished, I felt a distinct 'moment' of release in my body, like the cords had all just been cut. I was instantly super dizzy - as though my inner ear had been swollen or otherwise messed up. I sat down and waited for the floor series - but when it came time for the sit-ups, I just couldn't do them. It wasn't like, "this is hard, and I don't want to push harder", but instead like a complete failure - the muscles were simply not responding to instructions.

So, I left class. I haven't left class since teacher training. I probably would have felt embarrassed or ashamed, but in this case, I was so freaked out that I wasn't thinking about it. My whole body was shaking. I drank a juice and laid down. Later, I tried to walk back to work with Stacy, but couldn't make it, and she went to get the car to drive me home.

Mary gave me a big bag of navel oranges, and when I got home, Stacy made me Lentil soup. I've made a mental note of the brand and type of Lentil soup. I want to try it when I'm back in the 'real' world and see if it is, in fact, the most delicious thing in the world. Because last night, it was.

I couldn't sleep, so I stayed awake reading the new 'Art of War' translation. Today I feel a little better, but still dizzy, like something is wrong in my brain. I can't help but ask myself the question - is this bad? Is this malnutrition? Or am I breaking through some serious detox walls?

I have enough strength to continue, and at this point, it's no longer that difficult to just have the juice. So, I continue. BRING IT ON.

Concentration

2010-03-01T16:36:00.001-08:00

Still having tremendous difficulty focusing, particularly at the end of the day.

Day 13. Changes sinking deeper.

2010-03-01T09:25:00.000-08:00

Coffee tastes wrong today. I guess this is the last thing to go - I've gotten rid of the fruit bowl in the morning, and yesterday I did not resort to the "part of an avocado" cheat. But I've been perfectly content to continue drinking coffee - I figure you have to have an outlet somewhere, even if it does mean you're doing ten steps forward, one step back.

But today the coffee is bitter and stale tasting. I don't think they made a mistake making it, I think I'm just noticing how icky coffee can be, at its core. I sincerely hope this change isn't permanent. I love my morning coffee.

I'm starting to feel more and more small, subtle changes. My flexibility is through the roof, and I seem to just have a much more nuanced control over my body. I did cartwheels and roundoffs while we were at Pixar this weekend, and I was amazed at how light and agile I feel.

Almost half way.

Day 11-12. Starting not to notice...

2010-02-28T23:42:00.000-08:00

It's getting easier, in the sense that it's no longer novel, and I'm no longer spending all of my time thinking about it.

I had another weird and wonderful abstinance brunch today. Brunch is overwhelmingly my favorite meal. My birthday meals are always "breakfast for dinner". I pretty much like it all, but I particularly love when traditional dishes have been refined in some interesting and clever way. Baked eggs in a metal crock pan, roasted tomatoes, sauteed mushrooms... I love it all. Today I went to brunch with a bunch of friends, sat in the sun, and sipped coffee while my friends ordered and ate. In some strange way, I feel like I got almost as much enjoyment from brunch as I would if I had eaten. The smells, the imagining the food from the description in the menu, the beautiful balance between soft and crisp where toasted...

The fasting magnifies my sense of smell. It's wonderful - I feel like I can smell fresh herbs from a block away, and smelling food, deeply, feels satisfying, almost as though there were some consumption involved.

I'm so glad I'm doing this. The journey is strange and inward. I like how it's about so much more than just food - about the idea of reward, the ways we show caring and comfort. I like seeing how food is a focal point for so much human expertise and the urge we have to create beautiful things... and eat them.

Day 10: Calm

2010-02-26T10:07:00.000-08:00

First day I've not had the fruit bowl. I still haven't completely given up the morning coffee, though... and I think I'm basically okay with that.

Between the Raw Apple Cider Vinegar, the Sun Chlorella, and the morning body brushing, I feel very awake and alive. It's exciting.

I got some very frightening news last night. The building I own a condo in has been leaking in the rain severely, and we need to do a staggering amount of emergency repairs. What it means is that, basically, I'll owe our HOA between 20k and 30k sometime in the next few months. Understandably, my mind is absorbed with this, and there's a dull, panicky anxiety suffusing through the day. I know that there's nothing to do but deal with it - go to the bank, ask questions, make the best decisions, and ride it out. In a sense, it's almost not that scary because there really aren't very many things I can do. So I just have to walk the path, a step at a time.

I'm surprised, though, at how the panic and anxiety produced an intense and immediate desire for comfort food. I guess it's not that surprising, and I'm glad I resisted, but yeah - as soon as this thing hit, I was instantly dreaming of Stacy's Thanksgiving Turkey and all the carb-heavy joy that went along with it.

Mmmm. Mashed potatoes.

Day 9: A Juice-Fasting Pu**y

2010-02-25T10:42:00.000-08:00

Chadd was kind enough to talk shit last night at yoga, upon hearing that I'm having a bowl of fruit in the mornings, he cheerfully told me, "That's called being a juice-fasting pu**y". I have to admit, call me a guy, but this kind of thing makes it a lot easier to stay tough.

Class last night was great. I was weak, but it was so encouraging, it was such a touchstone of certainty that I'm doing something healthy. I can feel it, on my own, in class - that my body wants to do this.

Mary recommended a number of new additions to my daily regimen, all of which I've incorporated. They're interesting. They are:

1. Brushing my body twice a day with a body brush, to help the skin shrink along with my body (which is shrinking fast). I got a great bristley brush and have done this twice now. I feel like a well-groomed horse. Seriously, though, this was invigorating, it made me instantly feel buzzy and alert and grinny.

2. Two shots of raw apple cider vinegar a day. This is also related to helping the skin keep up with the change in body shape. This is not that much fun, but pretty easy to get out of the way.

3. Organic mouth wash. The fasting causes your teeth and mouth to get covered in this weird film. Mary says that this is literally the toxins and crap being expelled. Even after you brush your teeth rigorously, the film comes back really quickly. The mouthwash helps this. But YUUUUCK.

4. Sun Chlorella. I'm just shy of becoming adult-diabetic, and have pretty intense blood-sugar highs and lows. The Sun Chlorella helps regulate these, plus it's interesting - like a little packet of blue-green algae every morning.

Anyway, I like that things are getting weird. I've taken Sun Chlorella before, and it's like Nature's Adderall - very speedy, kinda fun. Plus it turns your spit spinach green.

NINE DAYS.

Where'd the Energy go?

2010-02-24T16:42:00.000-08:00

Like a piano falling on a zombie, so too goes my Energy.

Seriously - I can't keep my eyes open. I slept a ton last night (over 8 hours, which for me is like a year). This is adding to the difficulty.

Fortitude! I hope! Zzzzz....

1/4 done.

2010-02-24T13:20:00.001-08:00

As of this moment, I'm 1/4 done.

Day 8. Reflections on Minor Failures

2010-02-24T11:26:00.000-08:00

Last night I slipped a bit.

I was not feeling all that great - weak, dizzy, and like I was starting to get sick. I really felt like I was missing something, not like I was just facing a crazy craving. I decided to have an avocado and some miso soup - both of which seemed reasonable. We went to the store, and the avocados were just in terrible shape - gross and mushy. The only miso soup we could find was instant, and this turned out to basically be liquid salt. To replace the avocado, we got some mild, organic guacamole.

The instant soup was super gross, but I just inhaled the guacamole. Humorously, I felt super full, like I had gorged myself, after eating just a few forkfuls of this.

I would have preferred not to have slipped, but I really felt shaky. It's weird - today I have lost that feeling of being light and agile, and instead feel slow and heavy, like normal.

Still, I'm determined not to let this small feeling of failure corrupt the effort. Onwards and upwards!

The Mental Game reveals its strength.

2010-02-23T17:17:00.000-08:00

Much like Sauron held back the true size of his troops until finally opening the Black Gates to reveal the utter destruction of the free peoples of Middle Earth, so too has the mental challenge portion of this fast only now begun to reveal its true and epic strength.

For there are pictures, smells, suggestions, discussions, and dreams of FOOD, FOOD, FOOD, EVERYWHERE THIS FOOD.

I shall seek solace in distraction, which weirdly DOES feel like cheating.

Day 7. A week with no solid food?

2010-02-23T11:30:00.000-08:00

I'm surprised that everything feels so normal. I've now almost completely cut caffeine out of my diet. I've gone from a triple-shot espresso drink, to a drink with only one shot, and a few more days from now, I should be off completely. I am still having a small bowl of fruit in the morning, but this does not feel like a cheat to me.

The miracle of food, and the pure human pleasure of preparing and sharing home-cooked food is more vivid to me today than it has ever been. I am hungering for the human connection that food brings. The names always hint at some mysterious past - the way that a piece of Mediterranean food can remind you of the wind from the desert, just because of its name.

Bring it on, 23 more days. Bring it on.

Day 6: Half awake, half dreaming.

2010-02-22T10:29:00.000-08:00

I feel like the game is changing from a physical challenge to a mental challenge.

Last night I had a little bit of pickled cabbage and a quarter of an avocado. For some reason, I'm not troubled by this. I was proud of myself for sitting at a table at one of my favorite restaurants and watching to great friends eat wonderful smelling food and not being overly tortured by it. I actually really enjoyed just drinking in the food smells.

I've really been noticing how food is so much more than food. It is the biggest experience of a 'culture' that we have, it's probably the first place where we start to get curious about the rest of the world, and dreaming of world travels. I also think food is the first place where rifts begin to be healed. I remember eating Afghani food shortly after the 2001 attacks and thinking that we must have more in common with each other than the news would believe, if the food from that mysterious place was so delicious to a white kid from the Chicago suburbs.

I also think food is essence of 'reward'. I was thinking about how I feel so safe and content when I am eating some kind of food that I associate with celebration, like Chicago Style Pizza, or a bad-ass Steak. It makes me feel like my life is where it should be, if I can facilitate something I love so much.

24 days to go. Then, probably, pizza, steak, and afghani food. Probably not all at once.

Day 5: Challenges appear.

2010-02-21T18:28:00.000-08:00

Driving to Healdsburg last night, at around 9:30pm, is when the first of the freakishly intense hunger pangs hit. They weren't so much a feeling of emptiness in the stomach as it was an intense psychological compulsion to get a steak. It was not, "man, I'd love a steak right now". It was, "YOU MUST FIND A STEAK RIGHT NOW OR YOU ARE GOING TO DIE.". I did not succumb to the temptation, and I'm proud of that - I did have a few slices of cucumber and a carrot in Healdsburg, though.

The main thing that has me freaked out is that I don't know how to objectively reassure myself that I'm not actually hurting my body. I feel alert, but I also feel very weak and this cough has lingered. I'm coughing up a lot of infected, gross, thick phlegm. I doubt that this cough was entirely caused by fasting, though I feel like I'm lacking something that I might need to combat it.

I've been doing this for long enough now that it doesn't feel novel to my body. Since the last 5 days have definitely felt longer than 5 days, there's less thinking about how many more days I have to go.

On the upside, I was around a fair amount of debauchery, chemical and otherwise, last night, and I did not feel any desire to participate. That's something of a new thing for me, actually - I often abstain from indulgences, but when I do so, it is an act of will to overcome the desire for participation and immediate gratification. This was different - I could imagine what it would feel like to be drunk, or various kinds of stoned, and I just really didn't want to feel that. I'm glad I got to experience that. I also laid down a fantastic Electro set kinda out of the blue, so... go go gadget new alertness.

Day 4: Sailing.

2010-02-20T12:22:00.000-08:00

So, I find myself really resolute about not cheating even a little bit. There was a tiny voice in my head that was all, "maybe you could just have a little bit of grilled chicken now and again". I've done fasts like that, and I know they are still great, but I am just completely curious about what it will be like to really just DO THE HELL out of this.

That being said, I'm also resolute about participating in "life stuff". Last night I picked up my friend Meredith at the airport and we had a drink at the Burningman bar across the street (Noc Noc). I didn't feel bad about this at all. If I had had six drinks or snuck a piece of pizza or something, yeah, that'd be cheating - but hanging out with an old friend, having a drink is joyous.

We went to the 9am yoga class at Global Yoga this morning. The room was, as always, packed mat to mat. Chadd taught a magnificent 'sprinting' class. He didn't hold the poses crazy long, but there was this rushing, whooshing, energetic flow from each pose to the next - there were savasanas, but the energy stayed really high. The final breathing was this incredible, synchronized celebration of sound and air. Chadd actually said aloud, 'Wow, that was like, the best breathing ever.' I'm not making up the inclusion of the word 'like'. NorCal represent...

I feel amazing. My class today was still a bit weak, stamina-wise, but no panic, no fear, and when I was in the poses they were so open and expressive.

Here's what bugs me. I feel fairly certain that, after this fast is over, I'll eventually cycle back to a lot of my bad habits. I have just noticed that this is how life seems to be, and I don't judge myself for it. It almost feels natural. Still, I know that when I'm in a phase of eating crap and not going to yoga and stressing out at work, I really really loathe the idea of eating healthy, going to class - I find myself actively craving roast beef sandwiches and french fries, almost defiantly. And when I'm in that place in life, I'm almost invariably grouchy, pessimistic, unenthusiastic, and uninspiring. I would love to be able to have this version of me be able to remind that version of me, "hey, even though you don't want to... go do this, you'll feel wonderful, YOU KNOW YOU WILL."

Stubborn bastard.

EN.ER.GY

2010-02-19T17:43:00.000-08:00

So... though my stomach is rumbling a little bit, I have a surprising amount of energy. I feel spry and jumpy (in a good way) and I just feel a swell of enthusiasm. I'm overcome with the desire to get up and do things - small things, big things...

I'm starting to just accept, and attempt to work around, the fact that I really just can't program or concentrate in a single sitting for more than about an hour at a time. I need to get up and walk around, do something else with my brain for a little bit. I don't feel like this will negatively affect my performance at work too much, though, because my need to click on random, meaningless internet crap is significantly diminished.

Plus - and, again, I know this is a temporary thing and not the focus of this endeavor, but... I lost another three pounds since yesterday, and the difference those pounds is palpable. My clothes feel almost loose - my shirt that was too tight is draped falling straight down, and I just generally feel 'light'.

I love this so far. I'm preparing myself for the mental challenge of it - mostly by acknowledging that it definitely will be a mental challenge - but so far, it's easier to do this than not to do it.

Day 3: Already getting easier?

2010-02-19T10:53:00.000-08:00

This is getting a little bit easier, though I am knocking on wood. I find that it helps to have things to do to avoid downtime, where food fantasies can kick in. I had a giggle last night - I'm unabashedly a foodie, and in that context, giving up food altogether for a month is extra crazy.

I do find that I have trouble concentrating and focusing for long stretches of time. I wonder, though, whether that will ever change. I read an article (a published paper) somewhat recently which attempted to make the case that depression and obesity are actually ideal fitness for the performance required to sit and program for long stretches of time - the depression helps create a desire for isolation, the obesity (and the sugar binges which precede it) help create a constant high level of blood sugar, which (according to the paper) helps in concentration on abstract problem solving. Basically, it seems like "spending all day sitting and programming difficult things" can be intrinsically unhealthy.

I realize it's only day three, and I further realize that weight-loss is not the focus of this fast, but... my clothes fit me today. They're not tight. I'm not holding my breath and stomach in all day. Though I know this will probably go away when the fast is over, I do wonder... if healthiness in the body comes from loving your body (cue masturbation joke from Taisuke, Francisco, Joe...), then doing something which may be temporary but gives you a taste of feeling good and proud and happy with yourself can't be bad? I feel like this is a way of laying groundwork for actually preferring eating mostly vegetables, instead of truly craving chicago-style pizza every day. (Which, of course, I do).

The Orange Drinks

2010-02-18T13:49:00.000-08:00

The orange drinks are a challenge. The ginger is SO SPICY, it makes it hard to drink them quickly, and the ginger spice just builds up and builds up. I used to just pound them as fast as I could, but I'm making a conscious effort to really taste things. "Always taste what you're taking".

Day 2: Morning

2010-02-18T09:47:00.000-08:00

Getting to sleep last night was hard. My stomach was rumbling, and I was super alert, in that druggy kind of way that fasting seems to produce.

Last night's yoga class was a bit eye-opening. I was very weak and had poor stamina, but there was very little panic and I was surprisingly flexible. I also noticed that my willpower was much stronger, despite my body being weaker. It may not have seemed that way to anyone looking at me, as I sat out about half of the standing series, but I was repeatedly surprised by being able to find new places in poses. I found a new place in both Balancing Stick as well as Floor Bow... yay!

This morning I am definitely noticing cravings, with a vengeance. I went to the cafeteria to pick up a fruit bowl (and oatmeal for Stacy), and the sight of a delicious fried egg with toast was really difficult. FORTITUDE!

I have a cough that sorta came out of nowhere last night, and my joints feel swollen - particularly my fingers - so typing is hard and painful. In general, this just adds to the feeling weak. I realized last night that I have no objective way to 'know' that I'm getting enough of whatever nutrients my body needs. I don't really know this in normal life either, I just solve it by overeating consistently... (the shotgun approach to nutrition). But, I realize that I'm trusting Mary and the yoga studio completely, without having really done the work to understand the nutrition and logic of this on my own. I have a book from Taisuke and Brenda about raw food nutrition - I think it's time I did more than skim it.

Day 1: A few observations

2010-02-17T15:11:00.000-08:00

I'm noticing a few things.

First - I am just shy of tripping my ass off. My scalp is tingling, colors are vibrant... I assume this is the beginning of the detox? BRING IT ON.

Second - I notice that if I let more than 3 hours go by without a juice, I start to notice an inability to keep focused. (Or type).

Third - I have been reminded of one of my favorite parts of fasting (juice or otherwise). So much more time in the day! The acquisition and consumption of food takes up so much time... It's great to not have to think about it.

0 days down, 30 to go

2010-02-17T09:01:00.000-08:00

Hello friends.

I'm starting a 30-day juice fast today. The juices are being expertly prepared by Mary Jarvis at my favorite yoga studio, Global Yoga. Each day I pick up 5 juices - 3 of which are the green drinks, which just emanate 'livingness', 1 orange drink, and 1 watermelon-based drink. Depending on the day, the mix of juices may include more than 3 green drinks.

So... taking stock. It's been a long three years... almost four years, now, since Bikram Teacher Training. I've moved to San Francisco from New Zealand (though I miss NZ more every day). I do feel like I have a baseline of health in my life that I didn't have before I found Bikram Yoga - a sort of enforced minimum. I don't (usually) feel wretched or hopeless in an ambient way, which I did feel before all this. Plus... I got to have that feeling of knowing that at least once, at least for a day at the end of training, I achieved a body that was, for a fleeting moment, magnificently healthy.

But... the yoga has slipped away from me, little by little. I am still going weekly (sometimes less), and I love our studio. I even love class, though the old "can't breathe, can't breathe" panic is back. My septum is severely deviated, and I have less than 10% airflow through one nostril, and sometimes as low as 20% normal airflow through the other. There are times, particularly in a humid room, when I just have no air flow through my nose at all, and the panic just sets in immediately. But... that's always been there, and long gone are the days of yoga every day for three months. Part of this is just time - our work has long hours which are very draining, and if the day also includes yoga, there isn't much time for much other than going home, eating a quick bite of something, and falling asleep. That's hard to maintain every single day, it makes me feel like life has become a race away from something.

Ultimately, then, it's just a search for balance - how much yoga is enough so that I feel my body staying healthy and getting healthier, without feeling like my life has evaporated? I don't know the answer.

I do know that as of this morning, I weigh more than 260 pounds, which is a new personal record. I know that I can feel my heartbeat in a way that I have not used to. I know that my diet has started containing more and more alcohol, more and more pizza and grease, and that my cravings for junk food are strong. By way of illustration: today I'm starting a 30-day juice fast, and today is also 'free donuts' day at work. I ate the donut. (But before the first of my first box of juices, so technically it wasn't breaking the fast...). Old injuries seem to be reappearing. New injuries seem to appear for no reason, and both are getting inexplicably worse.

Why a juice fast? First, I trust our studio, and I trust that the complement of juices that I'm drinking daily are providing me with enough nutrients to live healthily. Seeing the International Yoga Asana Champions (dig it) train in Mary's studio, some of whom were only consuming the juice (Emily!), convinced me that I don't need protein powder or supplements or anything like that. Secondly, the juices taste really alive and delicious. I still struggle with the orange ones, but the greens are just wonderful. I've had an 8-day juice fast before, and it was very doable. Lastly... I feel like I need a big, measurable change to help me kick the bad habits that I've picked up, and I feel like I'll have support and encouragement on this path.

So, wish me luck!
5 juices x 30 days = 150 juices.
1 down, 149 to go.

I'll be gradually weaning myself off coffee, rather than going cold turkey, and I'm going to continue to have a bowl of fruit in the morning. Steamed spinach with salt and Olive Oil is also allowed. I'm intent on not making a huge deal about having food here and there with visiting friends or special occasions, though I won't use this as a loophole.

Mary is taking a 'big chubby before picture' at Yoga tonight, which I'll post here.

Slowly but surely

2006-06-29T15:34:00.000-07:00

Returning to a place of balance and harmony back here in the "real world". It's interesting - I don't feel like I'm returning to my old ways and my old life so much as learning how to sail through life with a new body, a new mind.

It's somewhat tiresome to continually refer to myself and any changes I've made as the "new me", as if I've had a total plastic surgery and have gone into federal witness protection or something. Realistically, despite the fact that it feels like I was away for a lifetime, in reality it really was only ten weeks, and as such the differences I feel are subtle, small things. However, I think in their subtlety they are powerful and important.

Clodagh and I are moving into a new "temporary" home from now until Burninman at the end of August. This is addressing my need to feel like I have some space to paint, a space to settle - my current room is very small for the two of us an feels very temporary, like I can't relax or unwind. Ironically, the place we've chosen to move is even MORE temporary, as we have to move out by the end of August, so really, the only thing I've accomplished is paying more rent and getting way more space in this temporary time. And then right into burningman! Ha! Yeah, I can't see my soul settling down for a while.

Yoga teaching continues to be a stronger and stronger anchor, reinforcing the feeling that I did make the right decision to do the teacher training, even with all of this turbulence and disruption. And as my friends have pointed out, I wanted a change, and now I just have to be patient while the changes settle. But teaching is wonderful - it's the only time I feel totally, completely like I'm doing what I should be doing - even more so than when I'm practicing. I can't get my class under 95 minutes to save my life, but I feel like my students are getting a lot out of my class. I'm not being too easy or soft - quite hard, I think - but still light and maybe (hopefully) a bit funny. And the dialog is solid! I'm surprised when I go back and look at the dialog how close to verbatim I'm doing!

Reading over the last few weeks of posts, it's difficult not to notice how DRY everything has become. Hopefully that will pass, I don't think it's my nature to be boring.

Somewhere in between

2006-06-25T15:51:00.000-07:00

Theoretically, I should be reacclimated to my life here in Wellington again. I've taught four yoga classes now, taken a few more than that. My clothes are unpacked, the jet lag is gone, and I've said hello to and hugged everybody who missed me while I was gone.

I feel completely out of place here. I feel reasonably centered while I'm teaching yoga class - that feels good. But everything else just feels vaguely, slightly wrong. Or, I think more precisely, it feels like I'm slightly wrong for everything/everybody else. I am more quiet, more observant, and I feel much calmer in social situations, from spending time with Clodagh to hanging out with my friends, but I am coming across as, or being interpreted as, having no energy, being unenthusiastic, not being "the old me". Also, I have difficulty resisting the temptation to talk about yoga all the time, and it's making me into the Amway Salesman of Yoga, which sucks. It's making people less interested in trying or going to yoga. Gack.

Work is another whole episode of weirdness. I find that I'm sorta stuck in this "taking a step back, looking at the big picture" mode. I went to a meeting last week - normally I avoid group meetings because they're unproductive time wasters, but I figured I'd go as part of reentering work society. I found myself looking around the room and seeing people in various states of boredom, fatigue, disinterest, anger, agitation. A few smiles here and there, but largely the crowd seemed genuinely displeased with the goings on. Lots of looks of frustration - I know this is not an original or new observation, but it seemed so silly to me. Getting frustrated and angry over abstract things like the names of directories on file systems. I know those abstract things transform into non-abstract work and frustrations for people that are very real, but it was difficult to take seriously. Except that I can feel little tiny tendrils of that stuff creeping into me - I feel myself getting upset by the little abstractions too, if only in a small way. I still don't feel like I know what I do here anymore.

I take comfort in knowing that the rest of my fellow teacher trainers are experiencing something similar. Another thing I've noticed is the way that the return to "normal life" pulls me away from the place of health. It's not any single person, not any single thing that I can easily decide is no longer a healthy part of my life. Rather, it's a general inertia - a slide away from that place of feeling like my body and mind are coming towards some balance. It's a cup of coffee here, an early dinner there, a second helping, yeah why not have dessert, and so on. I'm letting myself slip back into comfort foods and missing yoga. I just don't want to feel like I am losing the gift that I gave myself over the last few months.

The cold and dreary assault of southern wind and storms upon Wellington are no doubt contributing to this feeling of despair.

Jedi

2006-06-20T21:47:00.000-07:00

I did it! I taught my first class!

I'm back in Wellington, which is impossibly cold, rainy, dreary, and from a weather point of view, wholly unwelcoming. It has been wonderful to see my friends and to see Clodagh, though on some level it's been very much like coming out of the wardrobe from Narnia to the "real world" only to discover you haven't been gone for more than a few moments. I feel like a lifetime has passed, and yet everything here is exactly as it was when I left.

And then there were none.

2006-06-14T20:20:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting in the airport at an internet terminal. It appears to have been designed for people with six millimeter diameter fingers.

I haven't been able to post because I've been without internet access since the end. So I have a lot to write down - I don't want to forget it.

The last two classes were exactly what I needed them to be. They were congratulatory, exciting, sad, empowering, powerful. The friday morning class was taught by Rajashree, the friday evening class, our last class, was taught by Bikram. They were intense and difficult and we all did magnificently. My strength and my enthusiasm and my joy came back to me. My friend Carrie (where do they COME from?) insisted that I finish the training practicing next to her - most of the training we ended up next to each other because we both like to be right in front of the podium directly in front of the teacher. I had been feeling weak through the last week and retreating to the back of the room near the doors, but I wanted to share the end with my friend so I sucked it up and went to the front, and I did great. No falls, kicked out in all the standing head to knees, did all the toe stands, and sat out for nothing. I won't say I rocked, but I represented Wellington and Anika's studio proudly. And then it was done! The roar of applause and congratulation and hugs and tears was overwhelming, but humorously not as powerful as the time when we found out we got to go home a few hours early... A lot of people were crying, lots of people were hugging (delicious, delicious sweaty post yoga hugs... slimy...) For my part, I felt like I was floating. The emotions were there, but not knocking me over. It was calm, happy - surprised. There were parts of me that really, truly didn't think I would make it, and definitely didn't think I'd have the center spot in front of Bikram for the very last class.

Graduation was pretty much what you'd expect - it was hot and humid and long, and I was a bit stressed (though trying to stay in the moment) because I knew I needed to get to the party location and start setting up lights and speakers and wires. Virginia came to watch me graduate, and when it was finally my turn to walk up on the stage, shake Bikram's hand and kiss Rajashree's cheek - I was almost disbelieving. This is the hardest thing I've ever done - more than I ever would have credited myself for, and I rocked. I've never been more certain that I had done the right thing, walked the right path. And now, once I teach my first class, I'll be a YOGA TEACHER! WHO ON EARTH WOULD HAVE SEEN THAT COMING??? Bikram looked sincere and proud as he shook my hand, and Rajashree looked pleased and beaming. I heard the applause and the yogis yelling my name and I felt really, truly thrilled to be me. I wouldn't change a thing. (Lie! Still trying to find a good nostril hair trimmer!)

The party was so wonderful, I doubt I can explain it. A fellow yogi Martinez and I rushed over with Virginia after the graduation to set up lights and DJ stuff as the sun set over the terraced gardens in Malibu overlooking the ocean. As always, it took forever and people were starting to show up while we were still putting up lights. There was a gigantic full moon, the sky was perfectly clear and the air still. We could hear the ocean breaking. HUNDREDS of people showed up, including RAJASHREE!!! I couldn't believe it. We had a meditation that filled me with energy and power courtesy of Ulises - awful, awful cheesy dance music courtesy of a DJ we were hooked up with through the school, and as the evening reached its peak, I stole a page from Ethan and had everybody come down to the main lawn and hold hands in a circle and I said a few words about taking moments like this into their hearts and bringing them home to create more of this in the world. I would have liked to have been more poetic, but you do what you can. It was a magnificent success. I know that everyone who was there will remember the magical, special place and moment for years and years - that it ended the whole training on such a high note of union and, well, Yoga!!! I spent a small fortune in the end, though other yogis pitched in, some with small fortunes of their own. At one point during the evening I got to see Craig sitting in a love seat MADE OF GIRLS. He didn't seem troubled at all. I played a bit of music, but didn't really have with me the kind of music the crowd needed. They just weren't really feelin' the breaks... lesson learned!

And then it was all over! I stayed awake for more than two days with the party planning and the party cleanup and I didn't really eat at all the whole time, and felt perfectly energized. Of course, when I did crash, I could barely remember my name and forgot where I was.

Since the, I've been just wandering around LA - Virginia let me borrow her car, and I took Dave's first yoga class down in Laguna Beach (and then jumped in the ocean directly after class!!!! YAHOOO!!!!) I went back to Bikram headquarters a few times because I didn't know what else to do and I missed it. I stocked the water coolers and helped do some clean up and then realized I was being pathetic and went home.

And now, here I am. I'm in the airport, ten minutes to board - a few days until my first class - dialog running through my brain and over my tongue. I'm nervous about coming home - sometime during week seven I felt like my connections to home got cut (around when Clodagh and Kris went to the South Island), and I feel apart from it. Clodagh has organized a welcome home party for Saturday, and for some reason I feel slightly nervous about it. I would try to explain it in terms of energy, but I don't think I'm quite there yet.

Goodbye, LA. Goodbye Bikram, Rajashree, Emmy, Craig, Doug, and all my friends. I know I'll see you again, and as I said at the party when everybody's hands were held under the full moon over the ocean, I love you all. Namaste.

The Sum of the Parts

2006-06-09T00:48:00.000-07:00

Tonight's the last night. Tomorrow is the last morning. Our last Emmy class is over. Our last Craig class is over.

I'm having a rough, rough day. I didn't want to end Yoga School like this. I wanted to end strong, clear, focused and shining. Instead, I'm depressed, exhausted - everything hurts. I feel so clouded. I feel like I haven't changed very much at all, like I've learned nothing. I know, intellectually, that this isn't true, but I just feel broken.

Bikram taught us the very last thing tonight - a breathing technique that is very, very powerful and potentially dangerous. He made us raise our right hands and swear that we would not practice this breathing for more than ten minutes at a time for the first six months that we practice it, and requested (less dramatically) that we not try to teach it to others. He then led us, with the lights off and our eyes closed - all two hundred and twenty (plus guests) of us in about twenty minutes of the breathing. He demonstrated first, and it was weird - he's pretty hyperactive normally, but for the demonstration he became totally, rock-solid, completely still. He reminded me suddenly of Amrit Desai, and I was reminded that he really is a guru, that it's not all just personality and charm. Then he had us follow along with him. It was SO FUCKING FRUSTRATING. I just couldn't do it. I have such tight hips that I can't sit with my legs folded and spine straight without intense pain, and it was just too strong to ignore. I have to use my abs to fight with my hips to keep me up, and as such my breathing was totally compromised and I just got nowhere. I kept feeling more and more like I have learned nothing, like I'm exactly as inflexible and manic as I was when I got here. Then afterwards people described how overcome and uplifted they were as the experience took hold of them, and I felt like I didn't even belong there. There were a few very quick moments during the breathing when I felt like I had grasped the idea, and could continue to practice it on my own, which I intend to do, so at least it wasn't totally wasted.

Craig's class this evening was fun. I didn't win the Awkward 2 contest - not by a long shot (lost my balance, rather than running out of strength, at about 1:20), but the guy who DID win came in with the new teacher training record of 3:02. HE HELD AWKWARD TWO FOR MORE THAN THREE MINUTES. I'm so impressed - he's a really cool guy too, very understated and quiet, and he was totally still and not shaking at all. Just a rock. He had a rough remainder of the class, though... As with my last few classes, I just felt heavy, full of pain, weak, and mentally worse off than I was when I got here. There's so much noise in my head - so much more than a few weeks ago, and all of it related to panic and heat and self criticism. I know that it's on its way out - hence the surge of it. The Indian Summer of my Discontent, or something like that. I had to move my mat closer to the door after the standing series, which was done as a full sprint. Seriously, Craig took maybe one breath between saying "Change" and saying "Second Set". Like the amount of time you'd spend between two sentences. I was just in awe that the class survived it. I was disappointed in myself for not being stronger or more proud, and then for moving my mat - but I find that once my heart rate goes above a certain point, no amount of breathing can seem to calm me back down. Stupid sympathetic nervous system!!! Stupid fight or flight response!!!. I'm being really hard on myself, which I think is just a result of being so tired.

Planning the graduation party is stressful. It's the same stress I feel before every party, like the Hell Party we threw after King Kong, or the Ice Ball before that - and it always works out in the end, but I think coupled with my exhaustion, it's just more stress than I can take. I'm so worried that people won't have a good time, that nobody will come, that we'll be so far from breaking even that it'll sting, that I'll be a shitty DJ, that the lights won't be enough, that it'll be too cold, that there's not enough things to sit on, that people won't enjoy an outdoor party... (and so on). And Lora's doing far more work than I am! Plus, she's doing triple classes a day! People were talking a lot today in ways that made me feel like throwing this party was a mistake - there was just this cloud of unenthusiasm that made me feel like I misjudged the group and what they'd enjoy, and that I was too presumptuous or too arrogant about planning it. But - I suppose, applying Kris Ardent's worse-case scenario approach - what's the worst case? It rains, nobody shows up, those who spent money lose a few hundred or thousand dollars each, I spin a shitty set, the yogis who do show up decide they hate my DJing and then, by extension, me... None of this is a big deal!! REALLY! Jesus. Let it go. (Still figuring out how to do that, actually).

Please just let tomorrow feel like there's some closure. that's all I really want. To feel a bit complete, or at least like one phase has completed.

Hours

2006-06-08T01:32:00.000-07:00

We've gotten down to counting hours. As of right now, it is 41 hours until we're done. Four classes. The last of which I'm reasonably certain we'll float through on air.

I want to go home, to rejoin my life, but also - I never want this to end. I don't even know how to process the thought of letting go of all of these loved ones, who are literally the substance of a large part of me and my life. I'm going to have to devote my life to travelling the globe just to see them all.

Classes, despite nearing the end, are NOT getting easier. Harder and harder. Clawing through by my fingertips.

The sickness.

2006-06-07T00:08:00.000-07:00

So, my friend Lora and I have taken a bit of initiative and planned the graduation party for this saturday. Lora managed to find a MANSION ON TOP OF A HILL IN MALIBU. It's going to cost a bit more than expected, but it's going to be so magnificent. I have to call the Malibu Police Department tomorrow (stay out of Malibu, Lebowski...) and clear the event with them. This is hilarious.

However, as part of this planning process, Lora and I have to go to Malibu tomorrow morning, and Craig excused us from the morning Yoga class, without having to do makeups. So - dig this for sickness. I'm waking up at 5:45 tomorrow morning to do the 7am class because I have six classes left to graduate, and I'm not missing one. Can you believe this? What kind of person behaves like this? ONLY JUNKIES.

I love party planning. I LOVE IT!!! And I get to DJ, though I have absolutely no set prepared, and my set notes for my Hell Party set are in storage. I'm going to have to use my new Yoga superpowers to put a set together with no planning! Hoot!!!!.

Six classes to go.

Not much to say except...

2006-06-06T02:09:00.000-07:00

85 down. 8 to go.

EIGHTY FIVE. Jesus.

The End Is Near

2006-06-05T00:19:00.000-07:00

Friday night we had a talent show. I was trepidatious prior to the event, for some reason worried that I would be uncomfortable or bored or I don't know what - I'm not sure why I didn't greet the evening with openness and enthusiasm. I sat in the back, near the door, a bit disengaged. This was foolish. I failed to remember that amongst our 220-ish band of sweating yogis, there are more than a few professional entertainers. I've mentioned before the woman who is a presenter for a BBC music show - she and another dutch man with the most amazing voice (who is a dancer) were the MC's for the evening, and they were amazing. Their jokes were actually FUNNY, and their delivery was fast-paced, energetic, and seemingly effortless. The talent show was wonderful. So many different voices and songs and dances - there was a group dance where we all got up and danced together, and my single favorite moment of the evening was a dance by Dax, who up until now had been my single largest frustration here at yoga camp (besides my own failings, of course). Dax may very well be a Jack Black's long lost twin brother. It made me realize that, for all my love of Jack Black, going to yoga school with him might be challenging. We danced for about a half an hour to some trance music after the talent show was over, and it was fantastic fun. Afterwards, I was excited and infused with energy and enthusiasm, and asked Craig if I could help plan the graduation party and spin at it. He agreed. So - if the cosmos are willing and we can find a venue that we can afford (we've got a few possibilities), next saturday I'm going to spin a breaks set for my yogis. I'm going to start with my hell party set and try to rebuild it with a slightly less dark tone.

Today I attened a meditation session led by one of our other yogis, Ulises. He is this deep, spiritual and calm man who teaches and leads meditation circles, and seems just like a shaman walking amongst us. I was a little nervous about the meditation, I think because of a combination of not knowing what to expect and fearing that my emotions might come out in front of ALL THOSE PEOPLE. Gasp. We started the meditation at around 6pm in a dark meeting room here at our yoga dorm, after getting reprimanded for sage wanding the room. ("Who's smoking marijuana in here??!?!?!?"). My hips are tight, which makes sitting with my legs folded and my spine straight immensely painful, and I have great difficulty keeping my back from rounding to place less pressure on the hips. So, the first whole part of the meditation, during which we were breathing very very deeply, gradually increasing the speed of our breaths, was really frustrating for me. I felt like the dominant part of my experience was the shifting pain in my body as I tried to find a comfortable sitting position. I kept being distracted by the worry that our circle would be interrupted by the Oakwood staff (we were starting to get quite loud as the breaths became more primal). And then - at some point that I don't precisely remember, all of the various tinglings in my body merged into one whole body tingling and the pain went away. It was orgasmic and engulfing and so vivid - not abstract in the slightest - I was thrilled at the feeling of ENERGY, this thing I keep trying to narrowly define and wrap my head around and find an equation for - it was so obvious, so simple, so THERE, that I didn't have to look for it. I kept thinking, "I understand now, I understand now, I understand now". The heartbeat of the room got faster and faster. The music playing underneath our breathing became more primal, darker. Ulises sometimes let out gutteral screams, like an animal. Other people followed. Sobs and tears began erupting around me, but all tied to this passionate, almost obscene breath that rose and fell fast and faster, spinning and spinning. My eyes were closed and I was rocking around on my seat and rolling lightly back and forth. The speed and force of my breath causing me to almost convulse. And there was this bloom of light, like a water balloon bursting in my chest - like the chilled pear shot at Alinea - a splash of light inside of me, and I had this rush of seeing all the places in my life and my world where I am a conduit, a channel for happiness and joy for others. The parties we throw in Wellington - the smiles I share with everyone I see, the laughs we all have together. It wasn't a denial of having any moments where I'm not perfect, but just a celebration of all the good things I am and that I share with the world. I felt my whole spirit grow tall inside me and stand up and take responsibility and ownership of all these amazing and wonderful things that I can bring and share with the world. I felt like I was being born. I felt like I could hear bells, like everyone in the room must be realizing what was happening to me, the dead skins that were finally coming off. I felt my smile grinning off my face so big that the room couldn't hold me. And I just started laughing, uncontrollably. It just got louder, and more hilarious, and I couldn't stop smiling - the tears were pouring down my cheeks and I was just laughing and laughing and laughing - soon the room, even the people who were crying - started laughing with me. Ulises started laughing as he led us in the meditation. I'm finally here. My eyes are finally open. I don't need to apologize any more. I'm not smaller than my body - from now on, my body will barely hold me in. And maybe this has been there all along.

As the meditation cooled down and the breaths got slower, we all drew closer and closer into the middle of the circle until there was just a big pile of hugging people, all breathing slowly with their eyes closed. There were heads resting on my belly, my head rested on someone's arm - a back leaning against my feet, and we just stayed there and breathed. It was the best e-puddle I've ever been in, and we were all sober (though distinctly inebriated - oxygen's a drug like any other!!!). I felt like I could feel everybody - I mean, of course I could feel the people who were lying on top of me or whom I was lying on top of, but beyond that - I felt like I knew where each of us was in the room, like I could see them with my eyes closed. I don't know how long we were there - it felt like forever and just a moment. When we finally broke up and came back to normal consciousness, it had been well over two hours. We all shared our experiences somewhat, had a short chant, and went out into the world. Everything smelled intense and fragrant - the colors, despite the sun having mostly gone down, were saturated and pulsing. I want to share this kind of experience with my friends in New Zealand, if any are interested. I am not the shaman that Ulises is, but perhaps he can impart a small seed in me to take back. I'd like that.

The last week is upon me. I am ready for it to be over, ready to feel the final finishing touches to my changes occur, to stand up and face Vader so I may at last become a true Jedi. Already know that which I need. There's only ten yoga classes left until the end. This next week will have no posture clinic - only lectures from Bikram on the essence of teaching his class, on the guts of the poses, on how to breathe. His final gift to us is a lecture in a kriya yoga breathing technique that was taught by Yogananda - part of the meditation that can eventually replace sleep for a yogi. I'm ready. Still, I'm also sad, in a way. I am starting to miss people already, I'm already making plans to see as many people as I can as I travel the world, and thinking about how my life will be, and what I want from it. I saw Xmen3 in the theater yesterday, and I was incredibly proud and humbled by the work that my colleagues and I did. My proudest moment in the film was seeing the shots that I left unfinished in their final state - knowing that the guys on my team did all of that without me, that they stepped up to the plate and created something more beautiful, I think, than what we would have made if I had stayed. Bravo, you guys, You rock. And this confirmed in me the truth that I still love being an effects artist - I will just have to find a balance in life. But I don't think that'll be a problem. I have balance now.

Bring it on.

NO MORE POSTURE CLINIC EVER!!!!

2006-06-01T23:49:00.001-07:00

NO MORE BARBARA STREISAND EVER!!!!

I did my last dialog today! I ROCKED IT OUT!!! I delivered it as the teacher I'm going to be, and already am, and it was strong and powerful and confident and enthusiastic as all hell. I'm barely scraping by in yoga classes, and had to leave the room due to cramping today in Craig's class (which did not contain an awkward competition, thank god). It's so disappointing to leave the room, even when I know I'm not being mentally weak. Seriously, EVERYTHING in my body hurts.

The day began with a dark cloud still sorta hanging over the studio and most of the students, people still uneasy about what happened last night. I found I was not the only person whose opinion flipped back and forth with contemplation. In the end, I agree with Bikram's attitude of refusing to allow fear or panic to enter the situation, and to minimize whatever fear and panic did arrive. I also agree that it was important that he remain in charge of the class, forcefully. Otherwise there would have been two hundred people panicking instead of just one. However, I disagree with the lack of caution, and think it's important to note that if John or Craig or the other staff had actually followed Bikram's instructions and moved John, it would indisputably have made things worse. Also, Bikram insisted throughout the event that John's hip was not dislocated, and in the end it was fully dislocated. I think it's important to note that he was wrong, and that his lack of caution could have made things worse.

John's okay. He has no serious damage, was discharged from the hospital, and is going to visit us tomorrow before he goes back to New York.

We had a lecture with Rajashree this afternoon, after our preposterously difficult morning class. People were still very serious and frowny, and Rajashree kinda was also - she was all business. But then, at some point, kind of out of the blue, Rajashree just started laughing about the hip thing from last night. She said she was talking to Craig and they were a bit shaken - they were talking about how, "Isn't this yoga supposed to HELP us? Why did Bikram hurt his back? Why did John hurt his leg?". But, then she said they realized that injuries happen, and it doesn't invalidate the health benefits of what we're doing. I had to come to a similar realization when I hurt my knee by going too carelessly into Toe Stand a few months after I had started this Yoga. Once Rajashree started laughing a lot, everybody did, and it seemed like the cloud lifted. Then Craig taught the most kick-ass evening class, and despite the fact that I had to leave, it was a really energizing class. I feel so much better than I did yesterday, despite dreading tomorrow's yoga classes.

Still... ONLY TWELVE CLASSES LEFT!!!

Ooooph. Just... Wow.

2006-06-01T00:43:00.000-07:00

The last few days have been overwhelming, in every sense. Bikram's house party was nice, but fairly uninteresting. His house was definitely more of a "house" than a "palatial mansion", up on a hill in Beverly Hills. Really, nothing much happened. We ate indian food - saw people in their nice clothes. I was in a weird mood, quiet and antisocial and sad, without a really clear idea why.

Today was frightening. One of the visiting teachers, who taught a fantastic class last night, has just recovered from a total hip replacement surgery. His surgery was six and a half weeks ago. Today, for reasons unknown (but probably related to the repeated insistence that this yoga cures everything), he decided to first do the advanced class with Emmy at 12:30 and then to do the regular class with us at 5:00, taught by Bikram. I was about two rows behind him, and just a bit to the right - maybe ten or twelve feet. So I had a really good view and was within earshot when, in standing head to knee, his hip completely dislocated. POP. Followed by shreik, and scream, and tears. The class was shocked and frozen, and Bikram reacted very unexpectedly (actually, in retrospect, not unexpectedly).

He yelled at John to stop crying, to calm down, to stop panicking. He never left the podium. John's femur was visibly sticking out of his hip girdle, his leg twisted. Bikram made him turn around on his back, do wind removing pose, flex and point his feet - all while the paramedics were one their way. All the while, yelling at him to stop panicking, that fear was the biggest enemy, that he must be calm. I was fucking terrified. I actually had to lay down and not watch the proceedings after awhile. I couldn't believe how hard Bikram was pushing John, how he was showing no compassion of any kind - and even more - he was lashing out angrily at anyone who was attempting to intervene on John's behalf. The paramedics came, took him to the hospital, and class continued. Oh - it's worth noting that Bikram continued class through most of this, having us do standing bow pulling and balancing stick over John's body while he was weeping to Bikram's commands. A few hours later, during a Bikram lecture, we learned that John had been heavily sedated and after a "few tries" they managed to relocate his femur into his hip bone without surgery. Thank god.

Bikram lectured to us later in the evening about having total strength, not allowing fear to have even the tiniest foothold, and to be a total leader - especially in situations where fear is likely to occur. I couldn't help but think, through all of this, that faced with a similar situation, I know I would not have reacted with Bikram's ferocity. I think I would have kept my shit together and handled the situation okay, but I would not have been able to be that strong. And, I'm not sure I would want to be - I still feel like there should have been more caution displayed - if John had actually tried to stand up, or if we had lifted him, as Bikram suggested (but Craig refused - he is truly a hero), it would have DEFINITELY made things worse. I don't like the feeling of questioning Bikram to this extent, and it makes me feel doubt of the rest of the training.

I feel like, at the moment, this evening's drama and scariness are overshadowing the staggering awesomeness of the other guest lecturers we had this week, but I'll try to describe them so I don't forget.

We were visited first by Dr. Anne Marie Benstrom, who Bikram insists is the only person in the world that he defers to in matters of eastern and yogic philosophy. As usual, I sat in the front row, and she was, for lack of a more imaginitive word, TRIPPY AS HELL. She talked about the chakric system, energy in the body, the persistence of our spiritual energy beyond the death of the body, and towards the end, she described her system of "body reading". It involves looking at the posture of the body in resting state, along with the basic shape of the developed body, and talking about different aspects of the person's life based on their body. The central idea of "the body is crystallized emotion, or coagulated thought" was a very strong recurrent theme. The body reading seemed hokey, except that she had people stand up and she told them their entire life and emotional and familial history, with freakish accuracy, causing one person to start crying immediately. She spoke to me directly a few times, and much like Amrit Desai, I felt very electrified and stilled by her eyes and contact with me. A lot of what she spoke about was out of my experience (seeing energy fields, "orbs"), but like most of this experience, I tried to absorb it and tuck it away for later, when I have more experiences to bring to my understanding. More about Dr. Benstrom: The Ashram .

Today, before the drama, we were also visited by Dr. Mani Bhaumik, a physics professor who coinvented a particular kind of laser and who has spent the last many years of his life using rigorous scientific analysis to understand and share his understanding of eastern philosophical ideas, particularly energy, oneness of all beings, and life force. This lecture was AWESOME. He was TOTALLY unfruity, completely logical and succinct (didn't say "ah" or "um" the whole lecture). He described, in surprising detail for his audience, quantum fields and how they fluctuate througout the universe, and how they interact to form the building blocks of matter and energy, of which we are constructed. He introduced a magnificent idea, which I was so thrilled by - just as every cell in our body - every single cell - contains a copy of our DNA, so every "cell" in the universe contains a copy of that blueprint from which the universe itself was created. He described how the behavior of energy at the sub, sub atomic level in matter exactly mimics the conditions that would have existed at the very beginning of the universe, just after the big bang. This lecture was magnificent, and I felt like so many of my fundamental questions about energy and "chi" just fell into place. I feel like I should let Dr. Bhaumik speak for himself: Code Name God .

This has been a hard week so far - possibly the hardest. Still, only 14 yoga classes left, and then, graduation. (thank god!!!).

Imagine "Rocky" Theme Song

2006-05-28T23:58:00.000-07:00

Sunday, end of Week 7, 10:45 pm:

1:07 - first try
1:07 - second try (without having countdown! weird)
1:10 - third try
hour rest
1:39 - fourth try (shifted weight slightly, turned off tv and iTunes)

I will not go softly into that good night.

Oh, IT'S ON.

2006-05-28T02:34:00.000-07:00

Craig announced in Friday's evening class that sometime in the next two weeks we will have an "Awkward 2-off". I know it's not really the point of all of this to be competing and being macho, unnecessarily, but...

I. AM. GOING. TO. WIN. THIS. CONTEST.

The current record is (staggeringly), TWO MINUTES AND FORTY FIVE SECONDS. I have absolutely no idea if I can do this, but I think I can. There's just one problem, one thing standing in my way. My fellow trainee, Kathy (Cathy?), who is a former national triathlon champion and also the female winner of the IronMan Hawaii Triathlon. (Kathy Kinz-Smith, if you're one of those searchy people...). She's relentlessly focused and disciplined and a NATIONAL TRIATHLON CHAMPION. She's light, has very little body fat, highly trained muscles, and presumably perfect focus. She informed me this evening, in a little fun bit of smack-talking, that she will not be allowing me to win, under any circumstances. She's already practicing at home to hit three minutes.

Fortunately, I'm not too wound up about this. I'm determined to give it everything I've got, and know when it's done that I did all I could do. But, I know I have a lot of muscle mass and a somewhat heavy body. I also know that I've only been training for a comparatively short time and that winning contests isn't the reason I'm doing this. So, if I lose, I don't think I'll be too disappointed. And if I win... heh heh... I'll be unable to walk for a day or two.

Two minutes and forty five seconds. Jesus. Okay. Bring it on. Go go gadget thighs. Wish me luck, y'all.

Smooth Sailing

2006-05-27T00:32:00.000-07:00

Week 7 in the CAN. This week went by in the blink of an eye - I did five dialogs, each one better than the last. Today's dialog was fantastic - I decided to (respectfully) do the dialog in a southern accent, which for some reason made it DRASTICALLY easier to do - my pacing, emphasis and strength were vastly improved in a made-up voice rather than my own voice. I really think it has something to do with the remaining bits of self dislike - when I hear my own voice, my confidence is diminished. That too is diminishing, but it's interesting to note.

I'm definitely starting to feel the sadness of knowing that these people who ARE my life right now will soon be out of my life, many of them forever. Though, I take great comfort and joy in knowing that even if I only get to "keep" five or ten of these wonderful new friends, that's still a miracle and worth it's weight in gold.

My goal this weekend is to get some of my photos posted onto this blog, to show a bit of the world we inhabit. This weekend we've been invited to a party at Bikram's house, which I'm just so incredibly excited about. I can't wait!!! I'll take plenty of photos there too.

I'm not sure what else to say at the moment - I feel like there's a gradual opening of myself from day to day, but it's subtle. The panic is really leaving - and I feel a thousand pounds lighter. I had no idea how much crap I was carrying. But, from a "narrative" point of view (I can't help but think of this journal as a narrative), it's not tremendously interesting - just more of the same.

Based on established patterns, all prediction mechanisms should predict that next week will destroy me. But I really don't think it will. I feel STRONG.

Awkward, Hawaii, Breakthrough and Magnificence

2006-05-25T00:08:00.000-07:00

This journal is funny. Reading back over it, every single time I comment that I've hit some kind of wall, or that I want something to happen - in almost every case, the very next journal entry has some kind of revelation, some kind of breakthrough. And this one's no different. My last entry was whiny and despondent and complaining that nothing is different, it's all the same. Yesterday and today have answered my prayers.

Yesterday we had a lecture from Rajashree in which she began to go over each pose in detail, specifically focusing on the short and long term medical benefits of each posture. With each posture, she asked the class if there was anyone who was really excellent at the poses. First half-moon pose - there are several people in class who can side bend below parallel to the floor with apparent ease and backbend down all the way until their fingers touch the floor. It's mildly frightening. Rajashree measured the spines of the people in the posture as they bent one way or the other - in some cases the spines were lengthening or shortening by more than ten inches. It was cool. After half moon came awkward pose - I have different degrees of skill at various poses, but my awkward is 99% perfect, particularly the second part. When she asked for volunteers, my hand SHOT up. Amrei, one of the wonderful girls in our training, got up with me. We faced each other, sideways to the room, and then went into the postures while people took pictures. When it came time for second part, I lifted my heels up as high as I could, sucked my stomach in, dropped down thighs parallel to the floor, and smiled while we just held the pose. It was great! People clapped and cheered after we had been in the pose for more than thirty seconds - I saw one of the pictures of our poses and they were great! Backs totally straight, arms perfectly parallel, and we held it! I felt so, so proud to have come this far in the training - to go from a point where I didn't think I would even survive to a point where I got to demonstrate a pose for the whole class and do it really excellently. I never thought my life would have these kinds of moments involving my body, it's so encouraging! For the first time, I started to feel like a TEACHER!!! Now I'm feeling cocky and thinking of challenging Craig to an "Awkward 2-off". I'd probably lose, but it'd be fun... And the feeling of starting to feel like a teacher seems to have completely changed my experience here - yoga class isn't a nightmare anymore, my mind is thinking about what parts of each pose I like and might derive enthusiasm from to share with students. And posture clinic is SO MUCH FUN!!! All I have to do is imagine all of my friends in class and how they might be doing the pose, and it totally calms my mind.

Bikram has confirmed, multiple times, that this is the very last teacher training to occur in Los Angeles, and the next teacher training will be held in a luxury hotel on Waikiki beach on the Hawaiian Island of Oahu. He has also confirmed (and Rajashree has substantiated) that the World Headquarters will be moving to Hawaii as well. In our yoga class this morning, Rajashree announced that this is her very last teacher training - she may come to future ones as a guest speaker, but will not be involved on a continual basis. For some reason, hearing this felt like a punch in the stomach - I was so incredibly sad. Rajashree also said that Emmy will probably not move to Hawaii, though other staff members are already making moving plans. I just can't imagine how different this experience will be! I'm incredibly excited about returning as a teacher to future teacher trainings in HAWAII, but also saddened by the thought of a teacher training without Rajashree or Emmy or maybe even Craig. They seem like such important parts of the whole picture. Rajashree seemed very sad and reflective this morning in class - she was talking about the very first teacher training, which had only five students and was six months long, how early teacher trainings had everyone living together in one big rented house, how they learned what worked and what didn't. She has invited us all to her and Bikram's home in Beverly Hills this sunday for a pool party - I can't wait!!!

Finally, FINALLY, some mental calm in classes. The panic is starting to leave. I had to change a number of things - most importantly how I do pranayama breathing, but I can also feel that my mind is calming down, in general. Those icky noises are still there, only not as powerful. Muffled. I keep thinking about how I have to be an example for my students - how if I am doing my postures in an undisciplined or unfocused way, I'll erode my ability to demand discipline and focus when I teach. Weirdly, this is making things easier, not harder. I'm actually starting to enjoy class. There's a girl, Bridget Ann (BA), who smiles gently throughout the WHOLE class. I look at her in the mirror when I'm struggling and remember to smile, and it has totally changed the struggle aspect of class. I'm not quite able to do it the whole class myself, but I'm getting there. My poses, with the exception of Awkward and Triangle, are not really all that advanced from where they were when I got here - some are even less deep, but I rarely fall out of any posture anymore, and my strength and focus lasts through the whole class, instead of just to the end of the standing series, like it used to.

There have been a lot of discussions in the last two days, spearheaded by Doug, about life after training - how we should really appreciate the time we have with each other, because we'll never have an experience like this again, we'll never all be together again, and we'll never have to total immersion in yoga like we do here. I really started to feel emotional and incredibly connected to everyone I've met - I felt an urgent need to get to know the people I've just crossed paths with and to not take anybody here for granted. My life really has changed, already - I was too busy looking for the change to notice it. I have new lifelong friends, that I didn't even notice I had made! People to meet at burningman! And I'm part of this wonderful worldwide FAMILY now! They really do take care of each other, all of them! It's the most wonderful thing I've ever done for myself.

Today I performed THREE postures in posture clinic - Fixed Firm Pose, Half Tortise Pose, and Camel. I did fantastic on all of them, but I totally TOTALLY rocked Camel, and I only had about twenty minutes, COLD, to memorize it and had never said it out loud when I went up there, and it just FLOWED out of me, effortlessly. I really think that it's the feeling, the very new feeling, of almost being a teacher that's changing it. When I get up there, I really feel like I'm getting up in front of students in our studio in Wellington. It felt GREAT. So much fun, so much energy, I could barely contain myself. And now I get to love doing Camel pose in class because of it!!! YAHOO!!!!!!

I thank everyone who helped me get here for this magnificent gift. Thank you Anika - thank you Taisuke, thank you Clodagh, thank you Stef, Jaya, Dagmar, Jaguar, Erik, all my teachers, and all my friends... from the bottom of my heart.

Groundhog Day

2006-05-23T00:47:00.000-07:00

Every day feels like a copy of some other day. I feel like I'm not having any new experiences - just variations on old ones. I have no new ideas, no greater understanding. The only new thing that happened today is that Bikram may have told me to get rid of my fat stomach, which made me feel like shit. I feel like I've done such a wonderful job of doing the most to change here, and I've already lost 28 pounds, and I just don't feel like I have a fat stomach. But, maybe I'm deluding myself. And, whether I am or not, I shouldn't be fixated on how I look when I know I'm doing my maximum.

I did find that by studying dialog with much more focus and dedication this weekend - just devoting more hours to it, really working hard - totally changed the posture clinic experience from one of stress and disappointment to one of calm and triumph. So, I guess that's a bit of a new experience, but overall, I still feel like we're all in a holding pattern. We're not getting killed by this, but we're not sailing, it's still a rough slog. I've heard a lot about having the pheonix burn down, and being reborn from the ashes, and I feel like I'm missing something. I feel like parts of me, here and there, are burning down and being reborn, but I'm still basically the same.

I guess I just don't feel, today, like I'm any different. I still have panic in every class, even if I don't leave the room because of it. I'm feeling deflated.

But - I know I need to focus outward, not inward. Give what I want to get. That much, at least, I'm learning. I wrote (by HAND, can you BELIEVE IT?) letters to my grandfather (father's father) and my father today. This is something I have NEVER done. Seriously, not once in my life. It was weird. I had to remember how to write a return address. I described the yoga in great detail to my grandfather, with the secret hope (expressed, tactfully, in the letter) that he might consider trying it to help him fight the pain and suffering from his heart disease and diabetes. I'm officially a yoga evangelist. Even though I'm personally a bit worn out by it all.

LET SOMETHING NEW HAPPEN. IDEALLY NOT INVOLVING SEVERE PAIN.

Two Thirds Done!!!

2006-05-20T12:37:00.000-07:00

Man, this obsession with fractions! Still, it's the end of the sixth week. Our saturday morning classes were cancelled because we left too much sweat on the floor prior to Bikram's 10:00 am classes, and Bikram cancelled them. It feels really wonderful to sleep in. And TWO DAYS of sleeping in! Can you imagine??? I like how this experience makes the little things so valuable. Like a nap is pure gold nowadays - a nap longer than 30 minutes? Platinum! Diamond! A neck rub or a back rub! All the riches from all the worlds...

Last night I reread this journal from the beginning, and I find it surprising. I'm surprised at how convinced I was that I couldn't do this, or at least how willing I was to say that - but is that really the deep truth? I think maybe the case is more that something deep inside me knows and knew that I could do this, and only this outer layer of learned self-doubt was providing that negative voice. Coming here is like the deep core declaring war on the negative outer layers, which is great. I'm also surprised that the "mental noise" battle in yoga seems to be a constant theme - and that's still with me. As classes get more manageable, I really am spending more and more time confronting this interminable mental "I can't do this" chatter - well, more klaxons than chatter.

We are told over and over and over, "Let it go". When I was in therapy with Cary during our separation and afterwards, I was given that advice over and over - also I've had acupuncturists say the same thing to me. I've generally found it really frustrating, since I don't feel like I'm choosing to hold onto things, I don't feel like I choose what thoughts and responses come into my head. Similarly, I'm not sure how to choose to "Get out of my Head", as I keep hearing this last week. But... I have a theory! A mild variation on "Give what you want to Get", one of my favorite Bikram sayings (though he's certainly not the only person to teach that). I think that the more time I spend thinking about other people and the things in other people's lives that I am drawn to and inspired by, and the less time I spend thinking about myself, the less power this chatter will have. I don't think the point of this whole exercise is for me to be able to look in the mirror and like what I see, so much as it is for me to look in the mirror far less often! Or, as our wonderful teacher Luke said yesterday in his goodbye, when he looks out and sees us all over the last few weeks, he gets to see himself. So - to the extent that I need to see myself, I'll try to start with looking at other people and the things I love about them. Of course, that doesn't really apply to class, so there I'll just breathe.

We said goodbye to Luke, and any doubts left in my mind about the presence and tangibility of energy are gone. As he finished his goodbye, clearly trying to hold back tears, everybody stood up and gave him a standing ovation. The energy in the room was so tangible, so strong, I could feel all of my skin tingling, all of the hairs on my arms standing on end, my breath shimmering, my pupils dilating. Luke was turning bright red and trembling. Then, Group 4 gave him a present and a group hug, then Group 3 gave him a group hug, and then everybody just got up and got into it. I was in a group hug with more than a hundred people! It was beyond amazing, and I was just so happy for Luke. He looked so overwhelmed, and I just kept imagining what it would be like to be given such a gift from people who you've been so instrumental in awakening. I want to go to New York with Clodagh just to take Luke and Troy's classes.

But, as a fantastic woman often says, IT'S THE FREAKIN' WEEKEND!!!! Time for movies and sun and all sorts of fun that will make monday yoga that much harder!

Triangle Man, Triangle Man, Triangle Man hates Particle Man
They have a Fight, Triangle Wins, Triangle Man.

Yoga Prison

2006-05-19T00:38:00.000-07:00

I'm feeling better today, in a resigned sort of way. I still feel like this experience is infinite and will never end, but I'm not quite holding my breath for the end as I have been. I have gotten a lot of encouragement from friends here at yoga camp and friends who leave me comments here on this blog or write me emails, and that helps immeasurably.

Yoga classes are definitely getting easier to survive physically, but the mental chatter is seemingly increasing in volume. My brain wants OUT of that room, even though I'm not dying in the postures as much as I used to. My concentration, despite the noise, has increased, which is interesting.

We had a lecture today from "The Fascia Guy". He's a body health worker - I'm not sure how to describe him, he's not a doctor, more of a yoga-therapist energy-worker. It was interesting, but it was also the first time in this training when my skepticism and analytic side got really involved, and in general I was extremely annoyed. Mostly because the assertions made in the lecture about the nature of Fascia in the body and the descriptions of Energy (Chi, Mana, Prana...) were delivered in such an over-simplified, generalized way. It was impossible to take something seriously that completely and totally discarded all of psychiatry with a wave of the hand, for example. Rather than describe his lecture, I'll let him speak for himself: Jon Burras . I didn't disagree with his central point, which is that most things we do in western society hurt the body, and yoga fixes it, "all over, inside out, from the bones to the skin". The more I'm here, the more absolutely certain I am of that basic assertion. This yoga fixes EVERYTHING. So - I was disappointed in myself for not keeping an open mind, but I just couldn't handle the repeated demonization of "science", as a general term. I feel like science gets bashed by Yogis a fair bit, who then turn around and completely abuse Quantum Physics and Relativity Theory without real understanding of the underlying concepts. To anyone reading who buys into these things, let me state clearly and unambiguously: The Heisenburg Uncertainty Principle is NOT APPLICABLE to every situation in life. It is applicable ONLY on a QUANTUM ELECTRODYNAMIC SCALE, which means at the scale of the size of atoms.

Emmy said something in class this morning that rocked me a little bit, unexpectedly. In an offhand way, she said, "now that you are Yogis, you are going to live much longer than normal people, so you have to take better care of you body so it lasts for you". (Paraphrasing). I've always assumed I would die young, and the thought, presented so simply and factually by Emmy, snapped my eyes open - it's TRUE! I'm going to live longer, healthier, happier! And so will all my loved ones, since I force them all to do yoga with me! Hoot!!! Yeah, I'll survive this yoga prison. One more time... Bring it on.

Sad, lonely, homesick

2006-05-18T00:20:00.000-07:00

I miss home. I miss Clodagh. My friends are dispersing, leaving New Zealand - Trina's gone! Virginia's gone! It feels like the things that made home "home" aren't there anymore. It scares me. Clodagh's leaving for the South Island in a few days, which scares me for some reason - I feel like I'm not part of anything except yoga camp anymore. I don't even feel like I'm part of Weta, or like there's a Weta to be a part of anymore.

I feel like this yoga camp is never going to end. I know that's what everybody feels like right now - I'm right on schedule. That doesn't make this easier. I'm exhausted - EVERYTHING hurts, everything's swollen or in pain - if I move my back or knees even one degree out of alignment, I turn into a big pain machine. I guess this is a cool way of being forced to do the poses with correct form, but it's merciless!

I have no idea what I'm going to do with my life when I get back to New Zealand. I know that I can't continue to work in the same way at Weta - I know that Weta needs to get healthy, as a company, or it'll eat itself alive. It already is, the cracks are showing. But I don't know if that's something I can help to change. I don't know if other people feel similarly about Weta - feel that it's a wonderful, noble institution that has, through neglect not born of malign, become unhealthy. And if they do feel similarly, do they think things can change? Should change? And yet, despite my feeling unable to operate in the same capacity, I still feel like I can guide people when I am asked questions, I feel like my knowledge and wisdom are sharper than ever - my ability to concentrate is orders of magnitude higher than it once was.

I feel HELPLESS! I can't drive myself anywhere, I have no control over anything around me. I know that this is entirely the point, but I hate it - my whole life has been about creating and molding my environment, and now I feel like I have less control than I had when I was a freshman in high school. GAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!!! Sigh. I'm just exhausted with all of this. Yoga classes are not even all that difficult anymore - they're challenging, but I'm kinda zombieing through them, just doing what I can but not pushing to my limit, because I have no energy. And I still barely understand what energy is!!!

I'd love to know how to make this panic go away. I asked Luke, one of the teachers, and he answered (somewhat tough-love-ishly, which I understand) that my emotions are not in control of me unless I let them be. Bikram said something similar in lecture the other night - we control our emotions, or at least our responses to them. Surely there's a pose that will fix this - Next is panic-removing-pose.

And, to add to all of this, another confusing tidbit. Bikram gives people nicknames - lamppost, chickenlegs, "idiot", miss pink, miss blue. I answered one of his questions the other night, and he said, "Correct. You must have studied. Give a big hand for (slight pause)... the Jeweler". What?

Humidity

2006-05-15T23:57:00.000-07:00

Here's a quick and easy way to floor and otherwise incapacitate half of a room full of experienced yogis. All you have to do is cause a giant humidity wave to come into the city, making the humidity in the room over 80%, so that there's a visible haze around the lights and a visible, light fog from one side of the room to the other. Exhale breathing, and YOU GO DOWN.

Seriously, it was like a bomb went off today. Dozens of people left the room in the morning class. I fought my hardest struggle with the annoying "leave the room right now" voice that I've fought so far. Fortunately, there was a teacher right behind me and she did that thing with her eyes at one point when I caught her gaze of, "don't you even THINK of leaving the room". So I didn't, and it SUCKED. I felt like my skin was burning, or like I had gotten the worst sunburn of my life. But I made it, so once again, I have one less thing I'm allowed to get away with one things get uncomfortable. Dammit.

I froze in posture clinic today, during Toe Stand. It was trippy. I practiced this posture a lot, probably more than any other so far except half moon, and I got up there and just went completely blank. I couldn't think of a single word to say. It felt like an eternity, but was apparently only a few seconds. SUCKS!!! And it has nothing to do with nervousness, and nothing to do with practice! Fuck!!! Still, I grudgingly admit it was a good learning experience, and I know what to do to unfreeze if it ever happens - ditch the dialog, look at where the students are, think of what step comes next, and paraphrase. The dialog snaps back like magic, but it still SUCKED!!!

In this afternoon's class, there was a photographer from USA today taking pictures of Bikram teaching. I was right in front of him on the podium, so the photographer took a lot of photos with me in them, and was hovering around me quite a bit. There's nothing like the threat of ending up in a national newspaper doing a pose WRONG to make you concentrate like HELL. I couldn't kick my knee out in Standing Head to Knee, so he took one photo where everyone in the line was kicking out EXCEPT ME!!! Let's hope that my nipple piercings rule me out for inclusion in a family newspaper. Still, I got some good positive feedback from Bikram - he declared that my second set of Balancing Stick was perfectly parallel, which is so cool!!! Also, I touched my head to the floor in Standing Separate Leg Stretching, which I've never done. It was incredibly difficult, but when Bikram is two feet away and yelling at you to do something, generally, you do it. He walked around the room and made manual adjustments to various people's poses while the photographer clicked away madly, and it was really cool.

I received a package today from Anika, the director of the yoga studio I go to in Wellington. Inside was the most heartwarming gift imaginable... When I first started doing Bikram, I was basically completely sedentary, and started right into a 30 day challenge. My first instructor was a beautiful Canadian woman named Dagmar, and she gave me little gold stars on my chart when I completed classes. I think I was the first to get a star, because in those early days, I needed every form of encouragement I could get. I spent most of my first two weeks on the mat, lying down, gasping for air and praying for dear life. My package from Anika today contained about a dozen big gold stars, and on the back of the stars is written encouraging, inspiring, and heartwarming comments from all the students in the yoga classes. I teared up instantly upon realizing what they were! It's incredible!!! I don't feel worthy at all, but I'm determined to make everybody proud and to come back and kick the SHIT out of all of them in class (lovingly). So, if any of you are out there, thank you from the bottom of my heart, I'm touched and humbled. Who knew you could get a group hug from across the ocean?

So much!

2006-05-14T23:41:00.000-07:00

It's been a few days since I've written down my thoughts, and it's really too long. I find that so much happens, at least in my head and my thoughts, that the thoughts from just a few days ago, thoughts I'd like to remember and have a record of as part of this experience, start to get pushed out of my memory. I'll do my best remember everything.

Bikram's last lecture, on thursday, contained an interesting tirade/dissertation on love. He was discussing the body and reached a natural stopping point, at which point he asked if anyone had any questions. A few simple questions were asked that he dispatched quickly, and then a very brave girl from Amsterdam stood up and asked, "You have told us that, as westerners, we fall in love and get into relationships too quickly, and thus we fall out of love and get divorced. How did you fall in love with your beautiful wife, and how did you know it was love?". I thought this was a very brave question to ask, especially considering Bikram's reaction. He practically exploded with the words, "WHO THE HELL EVER TOLD YOU I LOVE MY WIFE?". Gasps around the room of dismay. Bikram loves getting a reaction, and did not miss this opportunity. But people were feeling bold, I guess, and challenges started erupting from around the room, and even from the brave girl who remained standing. You don't love your wife? "We have nothing in common! Nothing to talk about! My parents and my guru said, you should marry this girl, so I did! Obligation! Duty! Love doesn't exist!!!" What about your children? "Obligation! Duty!" More gasps. What about Shirley Maclaine? "She and I are friends! We have more in common than uncommon. We talk about yoga, and making movies, and other things. But that's friends. There is no such thing as love!". Bikram getting louder and louder with each retort, gasps and challenges more and more audible. The room, in general, becoming charged. Nobody sleeping secretly in the back anymore.

Bikram paused for a moment, and the room did too. He took a breath, relaxed his posture slightly, and exhaled. He then described love in such a beautiful and succinct way - I will try to do it justice, but I fear that I will not be able to be as succinct. He first of all said that he would give his life in a moment if it would bring Rajashree happiness. This seemed contrary to his earlier statements. He then said that he would give his life in a moment if it would bring his children happiness. When a person has achieved self realization, and has gotten to know and understand his spirit, then that person can learn to love himself and honor himself completely. When a person who has learned to know and love themselves beyond their illusions, and they meet another person who has accomplished the same, and their spirits have their joys in common, those spirits can join to become something greater. (I wish I could remember the sanskrit words. I want to say that Atma is the spirit and Mahatma is the greater spirit formed by the union of Atmas, but I just don't know for certain). That greater spirit in turn can join with the greater cosmic spirit that ties us all together, and become yet again something bigger.

We are all children of the first spirit, and as the "family tree" of our spirits has branched and branched and branched throughout the ages, our individual spirits have grown apart, but they still all share that common root - and "spiritual love" is when those spirits rediscover their sameness in each other, remembering the single root from which they came and feeling that truly, they are one together. I was very moved by this - I don't feel like I've done it justice, and my understanding and resonation is incomplete, but still, I was very struck by this. It makes sense. It explains, or incorporates, the experience that so many of us have had wherein we feel instantly connected to someone at a glance. It explains how, as you discover and grow closer to someone else over time, you know what they're going to say before they say it, think of the same songs you haven't sung in ten years at exactly the same time. If anyone who heard this lecture remembers it differently, or had a different impression, please leave me a comment - I'd love to get a different perspective on what he said or we heard. It was such a strange and jarring experience - "LOVE DOESN'T EXIST! Here is a beautiful and succinct and limitless description of spiritual love that we all share.".

I think part of Bikram's tirade against love has to do with they syntactical imprecision of how we use the word "love" in the english language. He said, "You say you love ice cream, you love a song, you love this wallpaper, you love your children, you love your wife! What is that? It doesn't exist!". I understand what he means... you can't really define love in a specific way if you use the word love in so many different ways, and so I think Bikram's annoyance at the word has a lot to do with the fact that it doesn't translate to a specific thing, but is instead entirely contextual. So what is love? Which love? The love you have for chocolate? The love you have for your grandmother? The butterflies in your stomach when you talk to your sweetheart? The devotion you feel to your spouse?. So yeah, if we use that word "love" for everything, we steal the power of the word to mean anything specific our profound. But I like Bikram's elaboration on "spiritual love", and will think of it the next time I look into someone's eyes and tell them I love them. I wonder how Bikram feels about the word "dude".

I spoke to my mother today to wish her a happy mother's day, and it was the best conversation I've ever had with my mom. First of all, she did most of the talking, instead of me, which was really great. I don't feel like I've had a lot of opportunity to see what my mom is like as a person, independently of her role as my authority figure and my elder. She's younger than many of the people I work with and many of the people I regard as peers. She was telling me about the last few days and hours of my grandfather's life - her father. He died very recently, and she stayed by his side in Florida through much of the very end. She was telling me about how my grandfather regained his lucidity and personality, lost some of his dementia, towards the end - how he seemed to recognize her again. My grandfather was a B-17 pilot in WWII who flew 17 missions as a captain before being shot down over Germany and spending almost a year in a German POW camp. He was not badly abused, but was severely underfed. Fortunately the war ended shortly after he was imprisioned and he was liberated by Russian soldiers. He was a very deep seeming man - definitely crazy at times. Interestingly, my mom said that he used to do something that was like Yoga that he learned, and told my mother that he had learned to breathe through his feet. The more I learn about breathing, the less crazy this sounds. More than a few times recently, I have found myself asking whatever part of his spirit is in me for help getting through yoga class, and I do feel like something, very very little, opened up in me. My mother told me about all of the different ways my grandparents who have passed (and my great grandparents) have shown themselves to her, in small ways, after they departed, and the peace it gave her. These are things I would have not really heard, or at least have discarded, until really very recently - and I'm really glad I don't have to shut myself away from sharing those experiences anymore. Still, in the end the nicest part was just hearing my mom talk a lot, unaffected. It was scary hearing her talk about how she panicked in the hospice and couldn't stop crying, and it made my grandfather panic because he knew he needed to die but didn't know how to die. I felt such sadness - and still do, even now - at the thought of knowing it's your time to go, being at peace with it, but not knowing how to die. They don't teach us how do die, we never even talk about it. Bikram's guru knew how to die - when it was his time, he simply withdrew his spirit from his body. Perhaps I can learn that, for when my time comes. Thank you, mom. Happy mother's day!!!

Last, but not least - I had an experience today that drove home how much I'm changing - or returning - to some previous confidence. I have had to deal with some business matters from my former company while I've been here. Most of the interaction has been through email up to this point, but today I had to speak on the phone to further negotiate. I could not believe my own voice - I was totally calm, confident - I spoke concisely, and did not get emotionally bound up with the reactions and interactions. I stated my needs and my positions and my offers clearly, hearing my exact thoughts coming out in my spoken words, without all the confusion and jumbling I've come to expect from myself. I felt so powerful! The negotiations went so well, we reached a compromise that we were happy with - and I just felt like I was an entirely new person. I'm so excited for the next time I have to negotiate with someone, it was so much fun! And it was all the better that I really wasn't too attached to how it came out. That made things far easier to say, demands easier to state, compromises easier to stomach.

Every time I feel like I've shed the last of a skin in this yoga camp process, about 1 or 2 days later I get knocked on my ass. Let's hope, for mercy's sake, that tomorrow isn't too unkind. Bring it on, cursed Monday...

Love?

2006-05-12T01:20:00.000-07:00

Bikram delivered a lecture this evening that included a bizarre, hilarious, and surprising lecture on "love", it's nature, it's existence (or nonexistence?) and other elaborations. I want to write about this part of the lecture in detail, but I'm so exhausted and need some time to process what I heard. So... that will have to wait a day or two. Sleep, delicious sleep.

Past halfway.... WHOO HOO!!!!!

2006-05-10T23:58:00.000-07:00

Wow. More behind us than in front of us. Aches, pains, weird acne, fatigue, emotional roller coasters, intense feelings of attachment, annoyance, intimacy, disgust, peace, panic. All kinds of weird shit, but we're all still here. Actually, all but one - we lost one of our yogis about a week ago, he gave up, went home. Still - people have their scars, but we're all holding together as a group fantastically. I'm so proud of the spirit and support that everyone show for each other.

An example... one of the visiting teachers is a former Army ranger (I am always skeptical of anyone who makes this claim, as it is often claimed falsely) and he is pretty tough in posture clinic. One of his rules is that we are not allowed to do our group cheers before people go up to deliver their dialog. Normally, each of the six groups (I am in Group 3) has a specific cheer for their group, which is yelled enthusiastically and chaotically just before one of the group members goes up to perform the dialog. It's an incredible confidence booster - I really love it each time before my dialog deliveries. Group 3's cheer (this isn't dorky in the slightest) is, "Group Three! Lock the Knee!". Anyway, our military teacher does not allow us to do cheers, and so one of the people in our group who is relentlessly upbeat started lifting his leg up in the air before each of the Group 3's dialog performances, locking his knee and pointing to it. Others started following along so that, before each delivery, a dozen or so legs were lifting up in the air, silently, with their knees locked. I was so proud of people for having each other's back so loyally.

Today I had my first truly rock star delivery, for me at least. I shouldn't be too proud of myself, but still it felt SO GREAT. It's silly, but I've felt all day like my wee pat on the head from Bikram last night has given me an oasis of calm and confidence, so when it was time to do Standing Separate Leg Stretching today, I had SO MUCH FUN! A few voice characterizations lightly infused my voice, I made corrections and kept flowing, I had so much energy and excitement, and even began to scratch the surface of my yoga-teacher-dream-situation: Delivering an entire class in a perfect, seamless Samuel L. Jackson impersonation. I know it will never happen (and probably shouldn't), but man it would be fun.

Another thing that's fun to watch is the coupling - it seems like the rampant sexual tension has annealed somewhat, so that people's flirtations in general seem to be settling on the same targets. There is a lot of "pairing" going on - even if it's subconscious, and it's really cute to watch. It's also really relaxing to feel a bit separate from it - certainly there are people I feel closer to or more open with, but I don't feel a pull from anyone or towards anyone, which is so relaxing! Being in a relationship means i'm not looking for any attachments, but the reality is that in situations like this, particularly intimate, challenging ones, attachments sometimes form involuntarily. I was accepting of the possibility that those things could happen and might even be difficult - that's okay - but I'm really relieved that it hasn't been something I've had to think about! All my drama is with my own rebellious and uncooperative body! Hoot!!!

The best thing to see is how some people are really coming out of their shells - the people for whom dialog has been a struggle are really starting to make really visible gains, and it's amazingly encouraging. I feel like I get a charge of strength every time somebody who really has to work gets up and kicks some ass, and I'm trying really hard to give that energy to people who are about to get up there and do their thing.

Lock the knee, y'all.

A Pat on the Head

2006-05-09T23:58:00.000-07:00

Bikram walked over to me after his lecture this evening, right to where I was sitting, and patted me on the head. I'm so glowing and proud, and I feel like such a fourth grader because I'm just so beaming. He just walked right over to me, looked at me in the eyes, and put his hand on my head. I said "Thank you, Boss". I sit in the front for Bikram's lectures. Partially because I'm tricking myself into not falling asleep, and partially because I really want to just absorb as much of this experience as I can. I really try to pay attention, and I'm trying really hard not to editorialize the information - just to let it all in, without comment from me, and see where it ends up. I don't want to make up my mind about parts of things before I experience all of it.

I feel totally different now. It felt, when Bikram looked at me, like he was saying, "good job". Maybe not. It doesn't really matter what he was thinking, I just feel so calmed, and not scared. Prior to this happening, I was planning on writing today about how yesterday's collapse has infected me with a kernel of fear, and my mind was really scared and jumping around like crazy in class today. Humidity has been higher the last few days than it has been the whole time so far, and that's made classes more challenging. I didn't do well today, though I feel like I'm starting to rebound - 80%. However, after this evening's lecture and Bikram's kind gesture, I feel like I don't have to be afraid tomorrow, which is great.

Tomorrow is halfway. I can't believe it. Halfway. And everybody insists that the second half is easier, and goes faster, than the first. My memorization capabilities are definitely highly accelerated - I feel like I can memorize things with less work - plus I have a NEW TECHNIQUE. It goes something like this... I noticed that when people are playing the memorization game, they are trying to remember the right sentences, and often saying the wrong words when they make mistakes, and starting over from the beginning. It seems like people end up executing the wrong movements with their voice and speaking muscles more often than the right movements, and on top of that, they're executing the beginning of the pose way way more than the end of the pose. So - instead, I've just started reading the dialog, off of the page, out loud, in "performance voice", over and over and over, start to finish - NEVER halfway. Sometimes bodies in front of me, but most often not - and I'm trying to read each pose 50 times. I find that after 10 repetitions, I don't need to look at the page the whole time. After 20, I look down less. After 30, I barely look down at all, and at 40 I don't need the page anymore. Plus, the muscle memory of saying it correctly is totally ingrained and I don't have to think about it. It seems to be really working fantastically. Plus, I think all of this physical, mental and spiritual purification is just causing us all to become smarter - or at least quicker. People have also noticed, as have I, that their fingernails, toenails and hair are growing much, much faster - sometimes twice as fast. My hair is definitely growing hella fast.

AND I STOPPED BITING MY NAILS!!! The neurolinguistic programming isn't totally complete yet - my fingers still sneak up to my mouth from time to time, but I haven't bitten in a few days. HELL YES!!! I haven't been able to stop that since forever.

Tomorrow - no fear, calm, celebration, and beaming from my pat on the head.

Shame, Ego, Defeat, Despair, Acceptance, Release

2006-05-09T01:31:00.000-07:00

Today killed me. I left the room. I didn't even really choose to, when it finally happened. There was no choir of angry voices in my head demanding that I leave. I don't really remember making the decision. I got up and walked to the open door to take a breath, because I couldn't breathe and my heart rate just kept going up, and up, and up. When I got to the door, Antonia, one of the staff members, was outside, took a look at me, and said I should come outside, sit down, and drink some Pedialyte. I was shaking so bad, and so, so, so ashamed and disappointed. Craig said first week that we should imagine being able to look back on our training and be able to say we never left the room unless it was an emergency, that we never took the easy way out. I don't know if this was an emergency. I didn't know what else to do.

When I was in the lobby, I started to cry, but no tears came out - my body just did the crying motion in my shoulders and chest, the shaking and the wracking. I was, and still am, so disappointed in myself. The disappointment was quickly replaced by anger at seeing one of the fellow teacher trainers, whom I have mentioned before, the guy who doesn't seem to think he has to do any actual work, sitting in the lobby with his legs crossed, having a conversation with somebody, "cooling off", perfectly calm. I drank my pedialyte, shot unnecessary eye lasers into him, failing to cause his death, realized I was just projecting my own shame, and got back into the room. I couldn't really do the rest of the postures very well. I tried Camel, had to take it super easy, and did finish all of Rabbit and the end postures, but with only the bare shreds of energy. Bikram finished class (he was teaching) by saying "You guys did pretty good, physically, but mentally you are shit." He then got down of the podium and left class without a final savasana, which has not happened before.

I worked really hard this weekend studying anatomy. I really, really wanted a perfect score - for no really good reason other than to feel like I was doing all I could do. I got two questions wrong on the test, and it just completely took the wind out of my sails. More disappointment. The question I got wrong was not in the study guide, is not in our anatomy book, and was mentioned in passing in the lecture. AND, according to the internet, is WRONG. The question was, "What is another name for Adrenaline", and the answer they're looking for is "Norepinephrine". This is incorrect, even if that's what Dr. T said in our lecture: Wikipedia Adrenaline . I'm really pissed about that. And I got another question wrong, because I let my logic (faulty) override what we were told in the lecture. The thing about all of this is that I really, truly know that it doesn't matter whether or not I got 98 out of 100 correct or 100 out of 100, yet I still have this disappointment about the whole dismal day.

In the end, it was Clodagh who helped me get over this. I could barely hear her on the phone, as I was using my precious break minutes to wolf down a burrito in the fast food place, but she reminded me that I didn't come here to win an anatomy award or to have some superficial boy scout badge of "never left the room". I came here to find out who I am, to find out what I can do, and to learn to teach so I can help other people start in the direction of finding themselves. (Hey! I can answer that question now!!! And mean it!!!) What matters is that I know the anatomy, which I do, and that I can use it to help myself and help people, which I can. What matters is that I'm honest and disciplined with my practice, not that I'm perfect at it, and that I did the best I could, correctly - which I did. These are the things that will make me a better teacher and a better student - not little boy scout badges. Thank you, Clodagh - I love you.

The day ended with a 4 hour Bikram lecture on yoga philosophy. Again, somewhat meandering and abstract, but good. He does manage to say some things that I find deplorable, though - today's gem was that "Man likes another Man, they do coochie coochie, they go against the nature and the god, they get AIDS and they DIE." Bikram seemed to lose a few supporters on that one. During a break, a boisterous Australian girl burst out with (quite loudly), "Somebody should ask Bikram, 'HAVE YOU EVER SUCKED COCK? NO? MAYBE YOU SHOULD, YOU MIGHT LIKE IT...'". Quite an evening indeed.

One of my teachers, Stef, is here - she made me a bag of super secret super power seeds to eat, and gave me some support, despite my rough day. It's wonderful to feel like people got yo back. Thanks everybody. (Two more days until HALFWAY MARK!!!)

That shit's got you SIDEWAYS, man!

2006-05-07T00:11:00.000-07:00

Last night was a bit of an adventure - an interesting tutorial on having a new body and what (not) to do with it.

Our Friday evening class was very intense. It was taught by Jason Winn, who is a bit of a "Yoga Superstar", to the extent that there are such things. Here's a bit about him: Jason Winn . Jason is a drill sergeant. He began the class by lining everyone up to exactly their toes behind the blue lines on the floor, and then toured every line of the floor aligning every person who was out of line by even half an inch. He then informed us that nobody leaves the room, period. His demeanor was extremely serious, almost humorless, though not entirely, and his central focus was discipline. He held the poses for exactly 60, or 30, or 20, or 10 seconds, on the clock, depending on the pose. He insisted that we not fall out of the poses, and, for the most part, we didn't. I held my foot out in Standing Head To Knee for the entire pose, not one fall. (My standing leg wobbled a bit at the end, though... I can't lie). This seemed epic to me. Something about Jason's unrelenting precision dragged more out of me than I could have consciously delivered on my own, I really like that. But the result of all of this is that I pretty much extracted exactly the maximum amount I could have given. This is important for what follows.

Normally, we have an hour dinner break after the evening yoga class, before returning for posture clinic from 8pm to 11pm. However, as we finished class Jason informed us that we were done for the evening and could go home. I'm certain this was in no way related to it being Cinco de Mayo and the instructors wanting to go out for the night. Definitely not. The cheer that arose from the yogis was deafening. Really astounding. So, of course, we drove home... without getting dinner. I really wanted to go get Mexican food to celebrate the holiday that I know nothing about, but nobody wanted to join me. I can't drive, so I decided to walk to Universal Studios City Walk, which is about a 40 minute walk. By the time I had arrived at the City Walk, it was 9:30 pm. I had not eaten anything since lunch at 11:30am, and had gone through a pretty intense yoga class and a bunch of posture clinic and other draining stuff. I put my name on the list, was told there was a 1hr wait, and I took my seat outside to do some quaiity "attempting to meditate while people watching". I'm such a dork. At about 10pm I noticed myself feeling distinctly unusual - colors and sounds intensifying, dizzyness, a feeling of separateness from my body.

I finally got seated at about 10:30, and was immediately brought out a basket of chips with a little bowl of salsa. Clearly delirious by this time, I requested a "spicy" salsa. When it arrived, it was a little bowl of blood red viscous sauce, almost paste, just FILLED with seeds. I proceeded to wolf the entire basket of chips and the bowl of extra spicy salsa down in about 10, 15 minutes. Again, not firing on all cylinders here. No less than five minutes after beginning this feat of stupidity, my entire body was flushed with chills and I began vibrating, a LOT, in every muscle. And I couldn't stop it! My whole body was shaking like crazy, I broke the chips as I picked them up, spilled water, and was shaking so hard that the table of people next to me were, with the most charming display of tact and subtlety, pointing at me and remarking to themselves. I didn't quite hallucinate, but the room got hazy and weird and sounds became a little distorted. Sadly, my spirit guide (voiced by Johnny Cash) did not appear. Still, I feel I have gained a greater understanding of the mysterious Guatemalan Instanity Peppers. When my food arrived (enough food to feed a family, no wonder Americans are gaining weight), I was so freaked out that I figured I'd eat as much as I could to diminish the reaction. This worked slightly, but I was still really shaky when I left.

This morning's subsequent yoga class was an adventure unto itself. Good GOD. Can you imagine rolling all your weight onto your belly and maintaining nearly full lungs while your stomach and intestines are stuffed with too much food, lined with liquid fire? It was not one of my more impressive classes. I'm stunned that I survived it without vomiting or shooting flames out of my clenched buttocks.

I'm gradually becoming aware that my body is different, and needs different foods. I ate a burger today and it just didn't feel right. The first few bites were somewhat satisfying, but then it just became a heavy, greasy chore. It's weird. The old cravings are coming apart, but the only new cravings I have are for watermelon and chai. I'm finally starting to change shape - now that just a little is happening, I feel like I can stop worrying about it, since it was really not important. Still, I can't avoid vanity entirely, and maybe don't even want to; today while shopping on Melrose I tried on a pair of pants that fit without me sucking my stomach in - a tiny bit snug, but still wearable. They were a size 34, which I haven't worn since I was 17. I was stunned. Of course, I bought the 36 in the end, but STILL!!!! Whoo HOO!!!!

As my anxieties about whether or not I'll survive yoga camp subside, they're gradually being replaced (or revealing) a new set of concerns that I don't need. How am I going to maintain this commitment to health when I return to my life, without completely throwing my job and possessions away? I'm certain it's possible, but how can I approach my old job and tell them that I only have 40 hours a week, maximum, to give, and that I'm not willing to sacrifice my health any longer, under any circumstances? This will be the biggest challenge of them all, I think.

Keep on keepin' on.

2006-05-05T00:35:00.000-07:00

So.. I'm feeling a little bit cautious. Because... yesterday's ephiphany (epiphanies?) seems to be sticking. I had two magnificent, powerful yoga classes today, and I feel like I'm glowing. The classes weren't easy, by any stretch, but it seems like if you make the primary "thing that you're doing" in the posture breathing, you almost forget about all the other stuff, particularly if it hurts. Plus, we got to yell "YEE HAW" and "FUCK YOU" during our situps as loud as possible. If that's not cathartic, I don't know what is. Yoga teachers from texas are a TRIP. Craig was talking more about the "yoga truck" today and how we should be wary of it, that it might sneak up on us, and to be honest, I feel almost a bit nervous, like it must be sneaking up on me. I don't want to feel overconfident, but right now... things seem to be going fantastically.

I have a visualization about breathing that I want to describe. It seems to be working magnificently for me. I imagine a plastic piece of PVC tubing, about 1.5 inches in height and 2.5 inches in diameter. It has little wheels inset inside it, all along the middle circumference, little wheels which spin when air blows through the tube fast enough. I imagine this little device right in the center of my windpipe, just behind the sternum (a little lower) right near where the windpipe bifurcates out to the lungs. In each pose, as my body bends forward and backward and side to side, I can imagine where in my body the non-deformable little tube thing has been moved to - if I bend backwards, my spine pushes it up into my chest. If I bend forwards, the tube thingy moves into my back, feeling almost near my spine. In each pose, I spend almost 75% of my mental energy trying to spin the little wheels with my breath, imagining pulling the air through from below the device, hard. This has kept my heart rate down dramatically, and seems to have made the entire class not so panicky. Anyway, there it is.

Dr T's poop lecture was disappointing. In a nutshell: Don't grunt or push too hard, just... you know... poop. There's a much longer and more verbose version of it involving the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, blah blah blah... yeah. Just poop. I guess we'll have to wait on the revelations.

Click and Lock

2006-05-04T01:14:00.000-07:00

Great Glorious Expanses of the Infinte and Beyond!!!! WHOO HOO!!!!

It works. It's there. It's true. It's not bullshit, it isn't marketing.

I woke up this morning in the foulest mood I've been in for AGES. Pissed off at EVERYONE, my roommates, my vanmates, the yoga school, everyone in LA, annoying kids from my 3rd grade class - my annoyance and irritation knew no temporalspatial bounds!!! Class began horribly and annoyingly. Fuck this lady, who the hell is she? Why the hell doesn't she go back to Kansas? These pranayama breathing cycles SUCK! They're too fast! They're inconsistent! I hate her voice! RARRRR!!!!!.

And then... somewhere around, well (big surprise), ahem... (cough)... camel pose... it just evaporated. It was gone. In a moment, like a splash of water that drenched me for a moment and then slid away. It would be great if I could say these moments of breaking - well, this wasn't the biggest one of the day, but it'd be great if they suddenly made the class easier, but no... class is still hard. But the day was suddenly light, joyful, hilarious, stupid, magnificent, funny, absurd. I belong here! I'm doing this! I love it! May every day from now on be filled with challenges, may I be pushed to where I think I'll break every day, so that when I do rest, I'll SLEEP THE SLEEP OF THE JUST! (as Joe would say...). Yoga Teacher from Kansas whose name I cannot remember, I SALUTE YOU! I was a fool to ever doubt your pranayama pacing!!!

That wasn't really even the big break. I fucked up my dialog today - I was not as practiced as I could have been, I was a bit low on energy, and the dialog dragged out of me, reluctantly and without excitement. Those poor folks in Standing Bow Pulling Pose - they had nobody there to make them give it their all. But I think I needed that to happen - because it was a failure, but not in the way that I'll beat myself up for it - it was really clarifying. Why did I fail at it? Not because I'm stupid or not cut out for this or lethargic and dull - because I didn't practice it mindfully enough, precisely enough, often enough. Cut and Dry. Simple. And I don't have to feel bad or anxious about the next one, because the next one (Balancing Stick), is going to be incredible. Fun. Hilarious. Exciting. Because, when I go up there, I won't have a sliver of a doubt in my mind that it's going to rock - in fact, I won't even consider it. It will be ingrained. And really - it doesn't take that much to make that happen. Mindfullness, precision - and I'm going to DO THE DIALOG.

And THAT wasn't even the big break. The second class of the day. Was so rushed getting dressed and ready and so on that I didn't have time for the ritual pre-class, "Ugh... not more yoga" exasperation. Got into class - we've transitioned to being in rotation around the room, so it's somewhat forced where in the room you are. I was not quite under a heater, but close enough for sizzletoes. Tight quarters... clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right... and CRAIG IS TEACHING. The remnants of "oh fuck", but not quite as much as usual, and a new feeling - excitement. Just at the end of breathing, which was dizzying - Craig said, "Okay, we're almost halfway through training, you guys are getting a lot stronger now, let's let the horse run a little bit." My heart jumped a bit at it, but again, a new feeling - okay, let's do this. I held awkward part 2, first set, for over one minute, solid as a rock, no sinking, no rocking, face calm, breathing slowly. My thighs were on fire, they were screaming, but I was so focused on trying to keep the breath big and slow and the stomach in and the arms electrified that it was like a voice outside the door. A fucking LOUD voice, of a dude with giant arms and a shotgun. Second time around, a stumble, but only one. It's actually easier to just stay in and live with the pain than it is to get BACK in, I learned tonight.

Craig's class felt like sixth gear. I know we've got more to climb, I know this is not the fastest or most intense or strongest class we'll have, and I know I'll find more in me, but I really WENT for it. I stayed in the loathsome standing head to knee, even though I can barely express it. I held bow on two sides without falling, without having bad form. And camel... it was like one of those shows where they have to crack open the sternum to get to the heart, it just folded open, I seriously felt like my sternum was a v-shape pointing out of my chest. Surrender, release - I drank almost nothing for the whole class.

And this evening has been like wearing a new pair of clothes. I feel like something just snapped. I'm SO ENERGIZED. I can feel my skin sizzling. I feel like I can reach out with my feelings and actually FEEL my friends in New Zealand, just the hint of them, but they're there, especially Clodagh, who I can almost reach out and touch. I'm bouncing of the walls, and feel like I have a giggle inside my chest that I can barely contain - it's just shy of uncomfortable, but solidly in the territory of AWESOME. I don't know how many times I'll get to feel this way, but the hairs on my legs are literally standing on end. And I want MORE.

Actually, I'm avoiding the real truth here... Dr. Trapani, or "Dr T.", our esteemed Anatomy/Physiology teacher has promised us, on his honor, with great seriousness... to teach us tomorrow how to properly poop. I'm completely serious. And he even wagered that, after his "How to properly have a Bowel Movement" class is complete, that not a single one of us will be able to say we've ever previously contemplated what he will provide us to ponder. Pinky... are you pondering what I'm pondering? Yeah, Brain, but where we gonna find twelve rubber duckies and a bucket of yogurt at this time of night? So, tomorrow.... I shall report on how to poop. CORRECTLY. Be prepared. (We speculate here that it will involve 3 feet of rubber hose, a plastic bag with NO HOLES, a rubber band, and a meat thermometer. The jury is out on the WD40).

The slumps are BORING.

2006-05-03T00:13:00.000-07:00

It's so boring to be melancholy! I know I'm worn down, but I'm not worn down so much that I'm approaching a breaking point, and I'm almost disappointed - it seems like, for many people, the breaking down is a sacrament of some kind, a doorway to something else. I suppose I could intentionally drive myself into the ground, but that doesn't seem like the right thing to do.

I wonder if the training of the movie industry and my "previous life" has given me tools for managing chaos. I'm good at ignoring madness and doing as much as I can, even pushing myself for excellence, without beating myself up for not dotting all the i's and lower case j's... but then again, perhaps I am beating myself up for it.

Two noteworthy things happened today. First of all, I instinctively used my friend Kris's mocking theory of reassurance on a friend who was struggling, and it totally worked. I was so thrilled. One of my new yoga friends was sitting on the floor outside in the lobby, looking a bit vacant and shattered, crying very lightly. I watched a bunch of people go over to tell her she'd be okay, and she responded and nodded, but still looked a bit distant. As I was leaving, I walked past her and gave her a hug and said, something along the lines of, "Yeah, you're a total broke-dick. You're so broken. You should probably give up, clearly you're not made for this... soooo retarded". My tone was caring, but with that loving mockery that Kris has taught me. And she laughed and shook it off and hugged me back. I think Kris should have mockery teacher training. And make a reality show out of it.

The second thing that was interesting was a dialog delivery by one of our dialog superstars. We have a girl in our group who's a television personality in the UK, sorta a VJ on a music show on the BBC, as it was explained to me (I'm probably getting that wrong). Anyway, she got up and delivered Standing Head to Knee pretty much flawlessly, as usual. Because it seemed to be effortless for her, the advice she got from the instructors was that she needed to get out of her comfort zone, to fuck up a little bit. So, when we transitioned to the next dialog, Standing Bow Pulling Pose, she got right up in the front of the line, announced that she did not have the pose memorized, but was going to "fuck up", as instructed. She proceeded to deliver the best dialog I've heard so far. Amazingly, she managed to get about 75% of the dialog correct, but more importantly, she taught. She gave individual corrections, she spoke quickly, she was enthusiastic and excited and pulled them into the depths of the pose. I was so inspired! I feel like this is a lesson I want to learn. I don't feel like I'm teaching. I'm somewhere in between performing and trying to remember. I don't feel like I'm doing badly, but I'm still very conscious. I want to feel like the instruction is just flowing out of me.

I almost cried in savasana today. Almost - still working on it - the teacher had mentioned that she was humbled and giving respect for the fact that we had given up money and time and our loved ones so that we can make this commitment to learning to help people. She said that in a few weeks (my first class is in like 6 weeks! Holy shit!) we'll be in front of a room of people who are looking to us to HELP them. Not just teach, or explain, but HELP. This got me for some reason. I felt shocked by it. I know that my reasons for coming here were not really principally about helping others. They were about helping me, really pretty selfishly, to superficially look better, discover some new tricks, and hopefully find a way to like myself more (that theme is getting so boring!). Still, I'm here, and the prospect of not only helping people, but voluntarily choosing to make a life change so I can help people, and myself... that's really a big deal! I've never thought about doing something like that before, and have been in a small amount of awe of people like Clodagh who specifically chose their life path so they could help people.

I'm going to see if I can get a bit extra sleep tonight, as an attempt to find some passion for doing this, instead of this meandering dread about having to struggle. I also must note - I feel a little bit of pressure now to be interesting in my blog entries, knowing that people are reading them! It's so weird!!!

Under, under, under my skin

2006-05-02T01:12:00.000-07:00

When do we learn the MOTHAFUCKIN' ATTACK YOGA? They keep talking about shooting figurative lasers out of our outstretched hands and feet - when do we get the literal lasers? Because I have a bunch of people I need to incinerate!!!

Well, maybe not quite so drastically. It seems that I'm about a week behind everybody else, because the irritation and annoyance that everybody seemed to have been hit by last week hit me like a mack truck today. The specific irritants aren't worth describing, that'd just exacerbate the problem. To quote Ruben & Ed, "It's not the problem that's the problem, it's how you handle the problem that's the problem". I'm really frustrated with myself in the physical aspects of the practice - of course, in areas that I shouldn't waste time being frustrated about. I'm frustrated with myself because I can't empty and still my mind while under a heat blower in a 106F room. And these frustrations are just bleeding out into irritation with things I'm surrounded by, things that probably wouldn't normally trouble me enough to get worked up about it.

Last night I stayed up until 2am writing a computer program to randomly quiz me in anatomy/physiology to help study for the midterm, which was today. I got 100% correct (even without the giveaways!), but I seriously doubt it was worth the sleep deprivation and general shreddedness in class today. Still - I can use the same program for the next midterm next week, so that'll be something.

I feel like I'm in a stalling place. Usually that feeling is shortly followed by something drastic, so I'm a little expectant. Bring it... on?

Amrit Desai

2006-04-28T23:28:00.000-07:00

Today we were blessed by a teaching from the Guru Amrit Desai. The yoga studio was all buzzing today because Amrit Desai is a very honored guest, one who has never come to teacher training before - or at least not for the last 6 years, I'm uncertain of the exact details.

I'm still feeling buzzy and floaty from the encounter with him. I sat in the first row, near him, because my vision is fairly blurry. When he entered the room, there was a distinct sense of an almost electrical charge in the air. After being introduced, he led us in a guided meditation with mantras and the chanting of "om". At first I was a little self conscious, and felt like I was out of my element, but I relaxed into the experience quickly and tried to open my heart. I've never been in a room with a few hundred people all resonating the sound "om" at exactly the same frequency - but when it happened, when my own sound merged with the room's sound - my whole body vibrated and I felt like a fountain of light emerged behind my closed eyes. My cheeks and face felt suddenly cool.

After the mantras, Yogi Desai led us in a teaching about his Kriya Yoga. The contrast between Yogi Desai and Bikram was almost comical. Bikram is very chaotic - his philosophical teachings are presented in machine gun firing fashion - one of them bullets has got to hit. Amrit was like a surgeon. He explained each idea in slow, simple terms, and then cemented each idea firmly before taking a small step forward. I never for a moment felt like I needed to take notes or catch up. It was hypnotizing. Several times during the lecture, his eyes met mine and for that moment I felt rooted, almost cemented to the spot. At one point, Amrit performed a prana breathing exercise - just himself - and about 3/4 of the way through I felt like the room began to warp and vibrate in my vision while Yogi Desai stayed perfectly still. Other people later in the class described feeling and even seeing the hairs on their arms stand up.

I summoned my courage and asked the burning question that plagues me - "What is Energy?". I asked Yogi Desai to explain energy as he might explain it to a child. His initial response was "Energy is the fuel that fuels the thoughts of the mind and the actions of the body." He then elaborated, describing how an elderly person (grandparents) who no longer has lust for life or zeal to do things has very little energy, while a young child who is bouncing off the walls has very much energy. A definition through inference, sorta. I then asked how this "interpersonal energy", which I can accept the existence of through inference without too much trouble, relates to the concept of energy between people and things. There's so much talk in yoga of "the energy in the room" and "keep your energy aligned with the class, stick together, and you'll be able to surf that energy like a wave". I've actually experienced that feeling in a yoga class of getting swept up by the momentum of the whole class. Yogi Desai answered that the energy in a person is the same as the energy that connects us, and that furthermore, by gaining consciousness of the energy in our selves, we connect to that larger energy outside ourselves and become larger than ourselves. I've got a lot to chew on... (ruminate!)

Doug taught class after the teaching, and it was trippy. It was like a whole different yoga. The hum from a billion bees in the room during the whole class. I found myself moving without deciding to or even thinking about it. And my breathing is becoming automatic. It was a day of revelations. During some of the savasanas, particularly after camel and in the end, people were sobbing quite loudly and uncontrollably. Even though I did not (cannot?) cry, I felt like it was a release for all of us through those few people who let go.

Third week, almost in the bag.

For those of you who would like to know more: Amrit Yoga

Waves

2006-04-28T00:47:00.000-07:00

With every up, there is a down. With every down, there is an up.

I was pretty crushed the other night. The feeling of separation from my New Zealand friends and especially Clodagh is wearing on me. The lack of sleep, the relentlessness of this process, the feeling of falling behind and falling behind. Eventually it just reaches a breaking point.

I felt like today was a bit of a breaking point for me, but not in any huge dramatic way - I just had so little energy I couldn't do anything. In class, I managed to attempt the poses, but the entire time I was just trying to find energy just to stay present. I kept falling asleep for 20 seconds in the floor series savasanas, and waking up abruptly everytime Emmy said, "Second Set" or "Sit-Up". This would be the perfect alarm clock for me - a recording of Emmy saying, "Sit Up".

There was a weird upside to all of this, though. Almost every day, I beat myself up constantly during yoga practice - I hate that I'm so weak in the poses, I hate that my hips are so tight, I'm so fixated on the place where my pose "sticks" on its way to the perfect expression. I know that the "secret" is that, no matter if I do this my whole life (or several lifetimes, if I start buying into THAT whole thing...), I'll still be hitting a sticking point in my yoga - it'll just move further and further in, but still be every bit as difficult, physically. But... just maybe, my mind will get calmer. I feel like that started to happen today, for a weird reason: I was too tired to think. My mind would start the usual, "Oh shit, Standing Head To Knee is coming soon, I fucking hate that posture, it kicks my ass" and just run out of gas as I stared blankly at somebody's water bottle. And class was calmer, less of a panic. I feel like this is my battle right now - or one of them - not the physical part, but letting the mental chatter pass me by.

Of course, reading over that, it all feels almost scripted - but, it's happening, so there you have it.

Dr. Lillian Glass, "Speech Pathologist to the Stars!" came and gave us a lecture yesterday, after our Anatomy/Physiology lecture with the very unusual Dr. T. Anyway, it was a very strange experience... it felt very distinctly like a "motivational speaker seminar" that business people pay lots of money for based on ads in the back of magazines that they give you on airplanes. She was very succinct and effective and did manage to unblock a few of the most challenged public speakers amongst us, and she had a few cool pieces of advice (my favorite was, "Be Interested, Not Interesting"), but...

My mother gave me a piece of advice when I was in high school that has stuck with me ever since then and feels like one of my most useful social tools - it goes, "Don't Take Advice From People Who Don't Have What You're Looking For". And applying that to this situation - while I enjoyed Dr. Glass's instruction on interpersonal communication - it seemed heartless and superficial on some level, and at the end of the day - I don't want to end up communicating the way Dr. Glass did to our class. She seemed uncompassionate and superficial - not entirely, she did smile very geniuinely at us, but it was bizarre to have what we're doing framed in terms of "selling" and "being a winner, not a loser". I am aware that these tools and mindsets help us achieve our larger goals of helping others and ourselves, but I didn't feel that conviction underneath it all. With Bikram, despite his grandstanding, I do genuinely sense a basic, fundamental desire to help people. And I just didn't feel the same compssion from the lovely speech pathologist. Still, I got up and made a stab at public speaking - expecting to be given a shopping list of things to fix, and instead being told, "Perfect. A+. No changes". Heh...

I was expecting this experience to be all about adding new abilities and new features to myself, and so far, it seems to have a LOT more to do with coming to accept and celebrate the abilities I already have. To stop being so critical of myself. In shorthand, I guess, to stop feeling revulsion when I see myself in the mirror. (Which, little by little, is starting to happen). I find it interesting that my entire assessment of my appearance, and subsequently self, is defined almost exclusively by the things I can pick out on myself that are undesireable. Instead of noticing that my shoulders are getting really rounded and defined, or that I'm smiling more often and easily, or that I'm not furrowed with frustration or anger really ever at all... I see my flabby stomach, or my chubby skin, or my messy hair, or whatever... Thank GOD this shit is changing, if only little by litte.

Dialogue delivery becomes more and more fun. The thought of returning to Wellington and forcing all of my friends and a few helpless strangers to kill themselves in a stupidly hot room tickles me. And - I love that if I screw up, or forget my dialog, it just means that they all have to hold the poses longer and have their muscles and minds scream at them while they shoot eye daggers at me. BWA HA HA HAHA HA!!!!!

Almost a third week down the drain. I feel weirdly torn - I'm anxious about the coming weeks and the challenges they'll contain, and I'm counting the seconds until I'm reunited with my friends, and yet.... this experience is so magical, so wonderful, so BIG - I never want it to end, in a way. I love that my life consists almost exclusively of getting my mind back in touch with my body and taking care of my health. Why did it take so long to get here?

Screw you guys, I'm going home...

2006-04-26T00:01:00.000-07:00

No. More. Yoga. Camp.

So... tired. Behind on memorizing my dialogue. Have tons of raw food ingredients to cook, but too tired to do it. Need to eat more, too tired to find food to eat. Can't imagine making it through 7 more classes this week. Have no idea how to integrate the comments I've been given into my dialogue. Miss Clodagh terribly, miss my friends, miss stupid video games. I'm not even losing weight.

Blah. Meh. Hrmph.

Big Crazy Monday.

2006-04-25T00:32:00.000-07:00

Today was an interesting and chaotic day. Woke up with the wonderful sciatica pain, which dominated my morning until yoga class. We had a super senior teacher, Cindy, who was WONDERFUL. She's been teaching for 27 years - started along with Emmy as two of Bikram's first students in the United States, and has been doing it ever since. She taught us the literal meaning of various sanskrit words while we lay in savasana. I had to run out of the room right before the first breathing pose to pee, as my bladder suddenly approached bursting point, out of nowhere. But when I came back, she complimented me in Half Moon Pose, saying that she was glad I went to pee because I had a beautiful Half Moon now that my bladder was empty.

We started Anatomy today, meeting Dr. Tripani, yet another of the absurdly overqualified top-of-their-field experts who are here to teach us. Anatomy & Physiology was WAY more interesting than I expected, and the pace of the class was really surprisingly fast. He's a chiropractor, among other things, so when I went to speak to him after his class about sciatica, he felt around on my back and informed me that I have scoliosis of the lumbar spine! Hoot! Like I said, bring on the numbness and nervous twitching. He gave me a series of tips for how to modify and focus my Bikram Yoga practice to address this and fix it - so, THAT's exciting.

I did the first part of Awkward pose today. I got up, delivered the dialogue, and I really thought I rocked it. I thought I had tons of energy, was fast and direct. But when I was done, they said I didn't seem sincere, like I meant it, and that it seemed a bit casual. So I had to do it again - I tried to add "oomph", but they gave me the same criticism - I was starting to feel really embarrassed, and then they demanded that I do the pose as over the top as possible - which I did - it was just LUDICROUS. I felt like Richard Simmons on crystal meth. And when I finished, all this applause and then they responded, "Exactly! Perfect! If you do your class like that, you can charge $100 per class!" Yadda, yadda. To be honest, I am surprised that I had had that kind of energy in me, but also - I'm surprised that this is the kind of class they want me to teach. It felt so crazily overdone. But everyone I asked about it afterwards was so thrilled with it - do I maybe hear my own voice as more intense than it actually is? I had so much energy after doing the pose that way that I was twitching for a half an hour.

So beware, Anika - I may come back and teach class like Richard Simmons on crack.

As an aside, this evening's class was my hardest class to date - I started to actually pass out - seeing darkness on the edge of my vision and little stars. It was scary. I turned out to have extremely low electrolytes, and could barely stand up after class. Scary. Electrolytes! My friend!!!!

Do your worst, week 3.

Sciatica sucks

2006-04-23T19:58:00.000-07:00

Ow! OW! OWWW!!!!

My entire right hand side is a throbbing chunk of PAIN! About a week before I came to yoga camp, I got a bit of mild sciatica. Sometime between yesterday morning and right now it turned into the most unbelievable pain I've ever felt. Last night I could barely lie down in bed, and today I'm walking all funny!

To add insult to injury, an internet search on how to treat sciatica suggested that the best cure is YOGA! Particularly BIKRAM YOGA! GAHHH!!!!

I'm actually not that upset about it. It's kinda funny that this is happening. Let's have some numbness!!! Maybe a nervous twitch! HOOT! Seriously, BRING IT ON.

Excerpts

2006-04-22T22:20:00.000-07:00

Actual conversation snippets floating up around me.

"I'm pretty sure there's a war brewing between yogis and robots. But the yogis are totally gonna win, because, um - you know, we can like, regenerate and shit, and the robots will have to get repaired or they'll like break."

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure there's a post-apocalyptic nightmare world coming soon, so the faster we can get on top of our robot skills, the sooner."

"Dude, as long as there's asymmetrical haircuts and dune-buggies, I'll be happy with it. Bring on the oversized sunglasses."

"So wait, did you say you're going to SRF or to SRL tomorrow? What's SRF? Oh dude - that's the Self Realization Fellowship. Oh. I thought you said SRL. The Survival Research Labs... you know, giant robots killing each other. They're really not the same. No, not really..."

Wow.

Pride and Rest and Cold, Cool Water

2006-04-22T18:18:00.000-07:00

6 days. 11 yoga classes, more than half of which were harder than any I've taken before. I feel so proud of myself and of everyone for making it through this whole week. Certain that subsequent weeks will be okay, though painful. And for the next day and a half, a bit of (sorta) rest! Hoot!!!

War weary.

2006-04-21T23:24:00.000-07:00

People in the yoga studio seem a bit haunted today - lots of dark eyes, pale skin, skinny, skinny bodies. I feel strangely unaffected. I feel a lot of changes in my mind and my calm, and I feel my positivity growing by the day, but my body seems totally unchanging. But people around me seem to be shrinking a lot - and not always in a good way.

Rajashree taught class this morning, and I had to place my mat directly in front of her because I asked her yesterday about my misaligned hips. I have been increasingly worried that I'm not even getting to first base with a lot of poses because my hips are so tight and lopsided. Alas, my delusions of being a misfit were shattered when Rajashree said that I had "excellent form" and that "nothing was wrong with me". I just have tight hips. But in her pre-class mini lecture (just 10 minutes or so), she mentioned that this week was the end of the "ease in" and now they can really start to challenge us. I get a little pang of panic every time I hear that. But she also said that in the next two weeks there are going to be a lot of frustrations and emotions coming up, and people are going to get irritated and angry with each other, so we should be easy on each other.

After she said that, today it was like a BOMB went off. People are pissed off at Bikram, pissed off at Craig, pissed off at Doug, pissed off at each other. Lunch was medium snarky. Dinner was medium-well snarky. Our van ride home was a bit aggressive as well... I'm trying to say positive, but even I am irritated at a number of small things. May as well get these things out...

There's a guy in training who just doesn't seem to think that he has to actually do any work to reap any rewards for this. It's as though he thinks that he paid money for a certificate, and this whole "training thing" is just a formality that he can take or leave. He parks his car blocking other people in, shows up late for class, talks during class, sleeps during class... today he practiced diagonally from me in yoga and just drove me nuts. He breathed through his mouth, made grunting noises constantly - talked during the savasanas.. Bikram called him an "idiot". Emmy called him out during class the other day, Craig spoke to him the other day. Apparently today he got a bit shredded by the visiting teacher Dave. And for some reason, he's totally under my skin! Why do I care about this dude? I'm having a really positive experience, making tons of friends, getting really healthy... why am I attaching to this irritant for no reason? Gotta practice letting go of it... there's always going to be an irritant for me to be annoyed by. Let it go. YOU FUCKING MORON! Okay. There. Whew....

Tomorrow morning we have class at 7:30 am, which means we have to leave here at 6:30 am, which means we have to wake up at 6:00-ish.... SO I AM GOING TO SLEEP!

A day in the life.

2006-04-21T01:31:00.000-07:00

7:00 am: Alarm goes off. "Canned Heat". Snooze. Again and again.

7:30 am: Get out of bed, panic because I've over slept. Run into kitchen, make Quaker instant oatmeal, put fresh fruit in it. Drink glass of orange juice. Try to do this fast, because yoga starts at 9:30am, don't want to be nauseous. Put food into tupperware containers for the whole day, as fast as I can. Run out of the apartment at 8:15am (when the van leaves). Run back to get the two or three things I forgot, get to the van by 8:20am.

8:20 am: Apologize to van mates for being late, AGAIN, and then either try to sleep or practice the yoga dialogue in the 45 minute car ride through hollywood to the bikram studio. Note to self. Good GOD we're all becoming yoga geeks.

9:00 am: Pull yoga mat off of drying lines outside studio, run into building as fast as possible to try to "reserve" a good spot in the room - close to the doors, far from the heaters. Yo soy pussweed. Sign in to the attendance sheets, lie on mat in the big yoga room while the room heats up, reading my little dialog book, trying to memorize. Maybe find a friend and ask them if they'll let me practice my dialog on them (they stand up in front of you, you lead them through the pose). Note, as I do every morning, that yoga people are SO RIDICULOUSLY HOT.

9:30 am: Morning yoga class. Remember to breathe. Remember to breathe. Why am I here? Why on earth have chosen THIS as a life path? Breathe, breathe.. GOD it's hot... Aw dude, get your foot off my head... oh, sorry miss! I didn't mean to put my foot on your head! I just want ONE GOOD POSTURE. My triangle's okay. Not great, but okay.

11:15 am: Lie in savasana, trying to reroute the energy systems to find strength to sit up. Welcome the cool air, gradually rediscover joy in being here. Get off floor at 11:30.

11:30 am: Lunch. Wait in microwave line for 20 minutes, reheat my AWESOME FOOD! (Thank you, Kris), sit down with fellow students - I try to sit with different people every day and meet at least two or three new people every day, so I don't end up falling into the comfort of a "club". Practice dialog. "Arms back, Look back, Fall back, Way back, Go back, MORE BACK!!! Come up and stop in the middle."

12:30 pm: Back to the big room - sit on the funny little floor chairs in the yoga room. Try to avoid giant sweat pools hiding in the floor. Posture Clinic!!!! Everybody gets in a queue (or a LINE, for you americans..) to go up and recite a pose of dialog. We're still in the beginning - basically, you get up with a microphone in front of the whole class and you've got four students lined up that you're going to direct through a posture (or part of a posture). The dialogue has to be memorized and delivered verbatim, with no improvisation. Furthermore, the primary focus is not on the exactness of the memorization, which we were supposed to have done before we got here, but rather on the delivery, in a very theatrical sense, of the lines. I chuckle to myself multiple times a day - I feel like I've become one of those drama kids in high school... I'm all streching all the time, wearing loose clothes, barefoot, hanging out in a mirrored room with a ballet bar, getting and giving advice on how to emphasize the words in a delivery. I am truly dissolving my concept of "me", because... I LIKE THIS. It's so much fun! I get to make big muscley bodies bend by saying WORDS!!! Tee hee. Little pee breaks here and there.

4:30 pm: Break to get ready for evening class. Run into the yoga room to reserve a decent spot. Run into men's bathroom, try not to laugh at the "naked guys standing around having a conversation while completely naked" thing.

5:00 pm: Evening class. Second verse, same as the first. Hot, hot hot.

7:00 pm: Dinner. Virtually identical to lunch, only colder outside.

8:30 pm: Either MORE posture clinics or Bikram lecturing. There's no way to describe a Bikram lecture. It's this chaotic, rambling, repetetive thing, and right when you feel like tuning out, he says something that seems poignant. In true yoga geek fashion, I've begun sitting right at the front, close to Bikram, so I don't have the opportunity to tune out. He notices it immediately. Also, work on sitting in indian style with a straight back.

11:00 pm or 12:00 pm or whatever: Back to the van! Drive home! Or, more precisely, be driven home. Lots of singing along in the van to the radio, or talking about the lecture or some such. Jibber jabber! So much post yoga energy!!!

1:30 am: Write blog entry, talk to Clodagh, wonder why I'm not tired.

Actually. Now I'm tired....

So little sleep!!!

2006-04-20T00:40:00.000-07:00

Bikram's assertion is that, as we do more and more yoga - we're achieving stillness and rest in our savasanas, learning to calm ourselves and rest efficiently, and therefore we need less sleep.

And just maybe... he's right? I've been going on 4 hours a sleep a night for days and days and days, and I feel fine! Also, I wake up so quickly! (By comparison - it normally takes me over an hour to wake up, instead of the minutes it does now). I'm weary, and I do seem to sleep whenever I get a chance - 5 minutes here, 10 minutes there... but I don't feel like I'm approaching burnout, which is great! When I overwork at "regular" work, after a few days I just become useless, but here - I feel like I'm sharpening a fair bit.

My mind feels like it's rearranging itself. You know when you play a videogame, particularly a geometric one like Tetris or Tetris Attack - if you play it ALOT, you start to feel like your brain is recognizing patterns on a larger scale, almost subconsciously? I feel like something similar is happening - I really feel like my synapses are firing faster, connections being made more easily - I can't believe the increase in memorization speed. Last week it took DAYS to memorize the first part of Half Moon Pose, and I memorized Back Bending Half Moon and Hands to Feet Pose in an hour or two today, and it just STUCK. THIS IS SO COOL!!!!!

We had a pretty great class this morning, but this afternoon's class was held by the Director of Teacher Training, Craig - and he, for lack of a better phrase, was NOT FUCKING AROUND. As promised (threatened), he did in fact hold Awkward Pose for VERRRRY long, and promised he'd hold it even longer next time. Ow, ow, ow. Bikram took Craig's class as a student today, and it was very, very strange. He had very inconsistent focus - he'd stay in one pose, but in others, he'd hold them for a short bit and then just stop and lie down. He has been awake for a few days and hadn't eaten anything, but it was strange to see him anything but the invincible I had imagined. Also - this is kinda cool - as a result of his knee injury oh so long ago, he can't wrap his legs in Eagle pose without using his arms to crank his legs into place. This comforted me for some reason. I guess I'm feeling more and more okay with the fact that I'm not perfect at this - I suck at a lot of it, but I feel like I have more and more integrity with trying to do the poses correctly. At one point in the class, Bikram indicated that he felt like he needed to leave the room (super super hot class), and Craig told him he could leave if the class said it was okay. When asked, we unanimously and resoundingly answered, "NO". That was fun. It's interesting - the class was HARD. It took a lot to stay in - the girl next to me literally sobbed throughout most of the class, while still doing her postures! I was impressed. But after a class like this, I just feel like I can walk on air. And I had such calm in waiting to deliver my dialog - last time I was a nervous wreck!!!

I learned today that if you're in one of those horrible balancing poses like standing head to knee, you can make it a lot easier to lock the standing knee by just repeating "lock the knee lock the knee lock the knee" over and over in your head. This is cool.

I suppose, though, my favorite moment of the day was when, while lying down on our mats waiting for yoga class to start, 200+ people in the super hot room, people already starting to sweat - this dude just yelled out, "STEAMROLLER" and rolled, mostly naked, over about three girls, who went into giant giggle fits. So. Awesome. I wanted REALLY BAD to do the same thing, but I think that'd be unoriginal.

This, for some reason, reminds me of a weird thing that's been nagging at the back of my head. People basically wear as little as possible to class - underwear, speedos - you get the idea. Anyway, I'm trying to shed the embarrassment of walking around in my underwear (not that hard, we're usually so hurried anyway). I've noticed as I walk back and forth from the locker room to the classroom that people have been scanning me with their eyes and stopping on my PRIVATE AREA. Some people have frowned slightly. Have you ever had a dinner conversation with someone who keeps staring at your forehead or hairline while you're talking? You start thinking, "is there something on my head? Do I look funny?". But in this case, I keep going back to the locker room to check.. do I have some kinda weird bulge? Am I comically tiny? Did I accidentally split my bits into two pieces? WHAT IS IT? I can't really ask anybody....

Six Months Pregnant

2006-04-19T01:02:00.000-07:00

The last few days have been SO HARDCORE! This is gonna be a long post.

Yesterday we did yoga in the Westin Airport Hotel's Grand Ballroom while Bikram went on a Los Angeles-wide whirlwind of building code compliance madness! And, most importantly... he got the job done. To our stunned amazement, instead of us being three or four days in the hotel, we were out in one. Which made me a little bit sad, because the hotel had a grand piano that I got to play in the break. One of the side effects of this yoga is that my mind is getting really clearly sharper and sharper - I'm remembering names of almost everyone I meet - my thoughts are converting into words much more easily than I'm used to - and when I sat down to play the piano, songs I haven't played in 10 years just flowed out of me, beautifully and cleanly. It was exciting. Yoga class was COLD! And I learned that the heat is there for a reason. Sure, you've got tons of strength and stamina, but KNEES OW! BACK OW! HIPS OW!.

I stayed up until 3am last night making food for myself for a week - Kris made me recipies that were nutritionally balanced with this practice in mind - fajita steak burritos and nepalese gorkhal chicken with spiced yellow dal). I am, as everyone who knows me is aware, the world's slowest cook. More about the food later.

But today we returned to our shiny yoga studio, with two lovely new frosted glass fire doors, and all the little crossed t's and dotted lower-case j's. With the benefit of our new perspective - instead of dreading the heat, I was really psyched about it. Craig gave an explanation of what exactly "stomach tight" means, and it was one of those lightbulb turning on moments. My practice seemed to leap forward now that I actually understand how to tighten my stomach. Anyway, I actually extended my leg in standing head to knee with both legs locked. I didn't make it through the whole 60 seconds (who are we kidding, Bikram was teaching. 90 seconds? 120?). Still, I feel so much stronger.

Bikram had his claws OUT today. We did Half Moon postures today, and he was just cutting to the bone with some people. He was generally happy with most people, but from time to time, somewhat arbitrarily, he would just choose something that he didn't like and just attack it. There were some noteworthy ones, but the jaw dropper was when a very very surfer-esque girl got up and delivered a pretty great dialogue. Instead of commenting on her dialogue, though, Bikram paused and then said "Nobody's going to listen to a yoga teacher who looks like you do. Look at how you are standing!" She had a somewhat casual stance, with her belly a bit hanging out. Bikram then said, "you've got to learn to hold your stomach in, like me" Bikram stands up and shows his six pack , and then he said, "standing like that, you look like you're six months pregnant. ROOM COLLECTIVELY GASPS. To her credit, the girl held her shit together really well. At first I was horrified, but then... this is what we signed up for. I hold (or don't hold) my belly in, just like her. Though now I'm going to keep my belly in come hell or high water. Besides... I do want that nice stomach. There were a few other gems as well - in reference to a gynecologist (not sure how it came up), Bikram said, "Oh, a Pussy Doctor? All day in the same hole. I don't know how he doesn't get bored". There were others, equally tasteless, but... I laughed a LOT today.

I'm totally drinking the kool aid. It's ridiculous. I like Bikram more every day - of course, he hasn't attacked me yet... but if he does, I feel like I'll probably survive and come out better for it.

Oh yeah - the food. It was a huge pain in the ass to prepare, since I'm so damned slow, but the class after I ate the first of it, I was so incredibly energetic, so strong. And, I don't have to think about food for 5 more days. Genius. Thank you, Kris.

My mantra for the moment. Your Focus Determines Your Reality. (Right Leg Locked. No Knee. No Knee...)

The other shoe drops.

2006-04-16T22:02:00.000-07:00

So, that was fun while it lasted. I'm packing my things.

JUST KIDDING!

Sorry, I'm mildly amazed that there's suspense out there about my blog, which seems verbose and dry to me. But here's what went down. I will attempt to be precise and reproduce Rajashree's statements accurately.

Rajashree and her daughter were here at 4:30 pm. They waited for the little crowd to form by the pool - it was so LA, some people were gathering IN the pool. Once the crowd was assembled, Rajashree (very quietly) began. Her demeanor was caring and apologetic and understanding, as she has been in every meeting so far. I have been thinking about the 4-sided star that forms the Bikram teacher training organization, Bikram, Rajashree, Emmy and Craig. Birkam is the passion, the drive - Rajashree is the compassion, the heart - Emmy is the intellect, the brain - and Craig is the strength, the endurance. I think it wouldn't work as well without all four of them.

Okay, back to the plot. I've described Rajashree's demeanor - it's easier to present the pertinent information in a LIST.

The studio is currently temporarily closed due to non-compliance with a fire code building requirement that the studio had been made aware of a month ago or so.
The studio, and Bikram specifically, are constantly minding the fire code issues to make sure the studio is in compliance. They took appropriate measures, ordering a new door and having an architect prepare to have the door installed.
The door is arriving today or tomorrow, and will be installed immediately. Rajashree noted that there is a specific person on the bureaucratic side who seems to have a grudge with Bikram and is using a barrage of minute code violations to interfere with Bikram's business. For example, they insisted that each of Bikram's photographs (there are thousands) must be individually fire-code approved, which is patently absurd.
Most importantly, there is a PLAN B. Bikram has rented a conference room in an airport hotel (the Westin on Century Boulevard) and we will be having classes there until the studio meets these new code requirements. The room will be less hot than the usual (silent prayer of thanks from me), but is slightly larger, and has more bathrooms! I wonder if this poor hotel knows what their carpets are in for. Rajashree expected that we would have three days maximum in this hotel, but hoped only one.
Rajashree noted that they have had to change their doors multiple times over the years, to a specific design requirement, and they still keep having to change. I got the impression of a pattern of harrassment.
Most importantly, Rajashree apologized, multiple times, and it was not just lip service.
Actually, MOST importantly - Bikram has promised he'll make up all our missed classes DOUBLE. Talk about being careful what you wish for. Yow.

So - we'll still going to be yogis. I guess I should have had a bit more faith. I feel so fortunate to be in this group of people and to be able to ride this roller coaster. SO MUCH DRAMA! They've GOT to be filming this. And - I think this is an oblique gift - lemme 'splain. If it weren't for this, I think I'd be tempted to (from time to time) hope for things to be a bit easier. And I think I also that our group of people would not be quite as bonded as we seem to be becoming. Maybe I'm just all flushed with optimism now that I'm not worried about the training being cancelled, but I think this will only add to our training. Particularly if Bikram makes up missed lectures and classes in double. Yeow.

Bring the pain? BRING THE PAIN!

Countdown

2006-04-16T15:37:00.000-07:00

Bikram's wife Rajashree is coming to our apartment complex at 4:30 this afternoon (Easter sunday!), which is 1 hour from now. The negativity has me pretty solidly in it's grip - I'm assuming the news, whatever it is, will be bad. Here's my reasoning:

1. Everyone was assuming we need to go back to class tomorrow morning at 9:30 am, so why send Rajashree out here to talk to us when we were already with the plan?

2. If you had to pick somebody to give 200 highly emotional people bad news, it's Rajashree. And I think this is true for virtually any context. If I had to learn that a loved one had a terminal disease or something, I'd want Rajashree to be the one who told me.

So there's the negative outlook. But then, as I was writing that, I thought of a different line of reasoning. As I mentioned... everybody IS really emotional, really angry - wondering why nobody has given us any official news, expecting explanations, apologies, compensation... Rajashree I think would be wonderful at helping everybody get this off their chest, feel how they're feeling, and then put it behind them so that tomorrow we can begin again solid and whole and present.

So really, ANYTHING could happen. I'll post more in a few hours.

All over the map.

2006-04-16T00:36:00.000-07:00

Today has been an emotional roller coaster. Every time we hear that the Bikram studio is definitely opening again at a certain time - tuesday morning, monday morning - I get that little tiny bit of (clearly illusory) certainty and feel better. After all, I've done 8 yoga classes in 6 days, my body is definitely in some kind of shock, I've got FAR more to think about from Bikram already than I could have absorbed in this amount of time... really, there's nothing missing. I lament the loss of momentum and intensity, but seriously - the days have had plenty of yoga in them.

But then somebody will send me an email saying something like "we just heard that we have to call the studio at 4pm tomorrow, it's maybe again for monday" and my stomach lurches. I can't focus to study my dialogue, I'm sick... I can't breathe through my nose at all, my throat feels burnt, I'm tired but can't sleep... (I have a little bit more whining to do, and then I'll be done). I'm not usually a person who misses my friends in a way that I can't rely on my digital interactions with them for 9 or 10 weeks. But, I think that, without the feeling that there's a concrete reason to be here, and missing my friends who are having hilarious fun having christmas at easter, I just feel like I have nothing.

But big deal! It's only nine weeks! It's only money! Right? But it's not that - it's the thought of losing the change in myself that I was hoping to find here. I don't even know what that change is - if I knew exactly what change I was expecting to find, I think I could do it on my own, without Bikram or this training. I know I want focus. The ability to quiet my mind. A six pack! Good things that come to my mind when I look at myself instead of bad. The ability to levitate? Bikram insists it's simple. Maybe... finally being able to do something with myself to help people? Even if it's a small something. Those all sound like good things, but I don't know - I think whatever the change is is bigger than that - or different - the sum is greater than the parts.

I'm holding my breath. It's the opposite of what I'm learning how to do.

Fred 62

2006-04-14T15:33:00.000-07:00

I can't believe we just drove all the way to Silverlake to take yoga class, and pay for it. JUNKIES!!!! It was hot, the people were hot, feel great after class (though sore), the usual. There's a LOT of fear and anger about the school being closed and there being virtually no information. I can understand it, but I'm not sure what good it does other than making people more upset. We can't change this situation, and all the feelings of entitlement and outrage in the world won't change anything right now. I've heard the phrase "class action lawsuit" more than a few times today, and I sorely missed my home in New Zealand, where as far as I can tell, they don't have lawsuits.

But - to the important business. On the way home from class, we ate at Fred 62 in Los Feliz - near where I used to live - and it was WONDERFUL. America may be largely responsible for the impending collapse of the world, but damn they make a mean omelette. It's magical to be able to order breakfast and actually get it cooked properly! It was a dream. We were surrounded by LA's beautiful people - hip kids with absurdly gorgeous bodies in their magnificent costumes. We ate lunch with Edson, a brazilian from Sao Paolo (sorry if I spelled either of those wrong), and his energy and lust for life were just magnificent. We were all talking about people's attitudes about all of the sexual chemistry that's bouncing around... I, being chaste and innocent and very much taken was opposed, of course - but some of the guys here (and a few of the girls) have some serious hard-core booty call PLANS. STRATEGIES. I was kinda shocked - I suppose partially because Bikram forbade it - I'm of the opinion that we should stick to the plan if we want the most out of it, but I think that makes me old fashioned. Nonetheless, the sexual chemistry conversation led to Edson's passionate monologue on how much he loves kissing, and it was fairly breathtaking. It's really no fair that all you require is that magnificent Latin accent and a deep passion for, um, deep passion and you're suddenly breathtaking. I'm going to have to learn to fake that accent. So to summarize, American omelettes are great, Brazilians love to kiss, and all milkshakes should be malted.

I'm a little weirded out by how achey I am - I'm doing yoga, aren't I supposed to be all loose and flexible and feeling great? I do feel pretty great, actually - but with a lot of aches and pains. Nothing to be done, I suppose.

So much Yoga Drama!!! Why isn't there a Bikram Teacher Training Reality Show?

Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt

2006-04-13T21:11:00.000-07:00

Not only has tonight's evening class been cancelled, but tomorrow's morning class has been cancelled as well. It's ironic - just as I started to get over the hump and started to feel like I was able to approach classes with integrity and strength - without fear - we have no classes!!! And of course all that fear needed a place to go, so I'm spinning around in my head... what if training gets cancelled? Rumors are spreading - mostly the fire code/occupancy violation rumor, which is a bit scary due to its basic unfixability - but also at least one of the "Bikram's computers were being taken out of the business for investigation" rumors floated up to our apartment earlier.

A fellow yoga student, Suzanne, suggested that this is all just part of the process - perhaps not a planned part, but still. We can't take anything for granted, and we do have to take our focus and discipline into our own hands. A bunch of people are planning to drive to a nearby Bikram studio - the studio city location - for class tomorrow morning. I'm planning to tag along, because clearly I AM A JUNKIE. Like everybody else here.

This shift in perspective is kinda valuable - I think I'll be less inclined to find fault with the intensity of this process, now that I know how much I crave it in its absence. Plus - it makes the time seem longer - I still can't believe it's only been 4 days, it feels like a month.

Fortunately for all of us, Rob Schneider's "The Animal" is on the movie channels tonight - for FREE! Can you BELIEVE IT? I'm going to go savor the humor bounty...

Fire!!!

2006-04-13T13:18:00.000-07:00

Imagine you've just completed yoga class - you're lying in savasana, your mind is calm, you begin to relax.... and then a fireman opens the studio door and yells, "Everyone has to leave this room IMMEDIATELY and evacuate the building". Then remember how much you are (or aren't) wearing. I'm to the point where what I'm wearing is only trivially more than a speedo. So almost 300 yoga students are standing in throngs ouside the building, waiting to be let back inside, only to be told - the studio is closed, please go home. Not HOME home, thank god, but back to the apartments. And now I'm all worried we might have to miss tonight's yoga class. Instead of relishing the break, I'm hoping we have another class? What the HELL is THAT???

Rumors abound - somebody smelled smoke, there's a burnt out transformer, though the one we heard the most was that Bikram's studio is in serious violation of fire codes, filled over capacity... if this experience gets shut down now, I'd be so crushed. But for now... at least I get a nap! Yahoo!!!!!

Over the first hump...

2006-04-13T01:31:00.000-07:00

What a difference a day makes.

Today's first yoga class was taught by Bikram's wife, Rajashree. She had heard of some of the nuclear fallout from the evening before, and taught the most caring, compassionate, but stong class I've ever taken. And I don't mean just in yoga, I mean period. I felt like she was my great-grandmother, and that she knew exactly everything that was wrong with us and addressed it immediately and effortlessly. She asked us, just as class began, "Are you scared?". And the entire class said "yes", immediately - me with them.

The class wasn't easy, and I sat near the doors, which were left open, but I stayed strong and found strength I didn't have yesterday. I feel this blanket of calm around me that I don't remember having before. A quick intrusion from the ill-voices said something like, "Yeah, but in two weeks when they crank it up, it'll suck...". But the positive voice, which is getting stronger, replied, "They taught the class this way today because that is what they knew we needed, and could do. And when they crank it up in two weeks, it won't be because we can't take it, but precisely because we can."

But let's make this all out to be TOO serious. Today's magnificent hyperbole included these fantastic claims:

1. Bikram INVENTED DISCO. Actually INVENTED THE WORD DISCO, and opened the "World's First Disco Club".
2. Bikram came up with Chippendales Dancing.
3. Bikram has his own, the "world's largest", private city in india, which cost 60 billion dollars to build.

There were more, but I can't remember them all. They were hilarious. But, again, it's weird - the exaggeration is SO extreme that you actually come around the bend and wonder whether or not the things he says might be somehow partially true - did he maybe inspire disco, and the way he uses language might, if translated into his mother tongue, be closer to the literal truth? The fact that I spent a non trivial amount of time today trying to figure out how Bikram might have tangentially created Disco is hilarious in and of itself. And I suppose all of this comes from the fact that, somehow, you WANT to believe Bikram. I suppose that's why we're all there, among other things. As Anika said, behind it all, the heart is there.

I'm finding - and I hope those of you who are doing Bikram who read this can understand this - that the most important sentence in all of the dialogue is, "99% correct is 100% wrong". I've had to basically start over with most of my poses, and really ask myself if I'm adhering to ALL the parts of the instruction. And I'm finding that the poses require more stength when I'm doing them correctly, even though I can't go as far into them, but they cause less fatigue, and my breathing and heartrate stay much more in control. Understanding how pointless it is to even attempt something that looks like the pose, but that you know truthfully is incorrect - is making a huge difference. I'm finding that it requires letting go of some of the pride associated with feeling like I do the pose well, whether I do or not, and MUCH more difficultly, accepting that I must have patience, and that the improvements will take a long time to manifest. (Ironically, just grasping this idea showed me improvements across the board, in small and subtle ways).

Bikram gives us philosophy lectures for 2.5-3 hours each night, after our second yoga classes. They are difficult, peppered with his fantastical claims, weaving in and out of Indian and Hindu mythology and ancient teachings that he only touches on briefly. Also, most people seem to be either discarding the teachings altogether as silly nonsense, to be made fun of on the way home, or alternatively - blindly agreeing with it, in keeping with the culty aspects of all of this. Woven throughout yesterday's and today's lecture, though, was this idea: Yoga is the union of Body, Mind and Spirit. The mental discipline (Raja Yoga) provides the ability for the mind to control the body and help it achieve greater health and beauty through physical discipline (Hatha Yoga). When the mind and body have united in this way to create a beautiful temple that the spirit will want to reside in, a harmony is reached that is the very definition of life.

My understanding of all of this is obviously incomplete, and a lengthy discussion of how these things were related to Karma Yoga was beyond my ability to distill just yet. But part of the explanation included a stern admonition from Bikram that we (his students) are confused, uncertain, unhappy, unrealized because our lack of mental discipline lets the negative voices run rampant. And I was immediately awash with reminders of how much I hate what I see when I look at myself in the mirror - how I begin almost every class thinking that I might not be able to make it - how I spend my days at work wasting so much of my time instead of achieving a purpose, staying on a track, whatever that track may be. A rapid downward spiral occurred, but then... I was reminded of something I told Clodagh when I first met her. There is one thing I am certain of, beyond even my occasional certainty at solving technical puzzles: I have a good heart. I deeply and truly want my loved ones to be happy, above all things, and I am quick to open myself to new loved ones almost all the time. I think about whether or not my abilities as a yoga teacher might help my grandfather not suffer, help my uncle find himself, help my father find strength... that sounds judgemental, I suppose. So much of my daily mind is filled not with "how do I get a better stomach", though it is most certainly there, but... will I be able to do something to make people better? And that positive feeling drowned the negative feelings out. I feel stronger because of it. Weird.

Man, where is the humor? This shit is getting pretty dry... Okay, tomorrow's post: All Ass N Titties, no airy-fairy stuff.

Operation Successful. Patient Dead.

2006-04-12T01:33:00.000-07:00

What on earth have I chosen to do. What on earth have I chosen to do.

Today was the apocalypse.

I don't have time to write a great deal because we didn't get out of our last lecture with Bikram until 11:30 pm. We left the apartments at 7:30 am. There were three hour long breaks during the day. The rest was machine gun fire.

At one point, after they CARRIED the second person out of the room, Bikram looked around the room at all the people lying on the floor instead of staying in the poses and noted that it looked like a Vietnam battlefield. One of my roommates, Am, lost consciousness and was unable to move for about 20 minutes. Radical electrolyte depletion.

Because I have to be somewhat brief, I'll try to stick to the most poignant elements of the day. First of all, I had class this morning with Emmy Cleaves, who is somewhere between 80 and 90, a concentration camp survivor, and though wonderful, a SERIOUS hardass. She noted with disgust that our class was "pathetic". She did provide a staggering amount of information in the class, though - I felt like I was beginning again for the first time with all the new information. She's been teaching Bikram's Yoga classes for 33 years.

The other reason I felt like a beginner again today was that I got my ASS KICKED, surgically removed, and handed to me. Rodney Leonard Stubbs (achewood reference..) may as well have been there. I was on the floor or checked out 60% of the time. I was fighting for breath, fighting not to pass out, stunned and overwhelmed by the heat, and just beaten, beaten, beaten. And then the second class came and I struggled to stay conscious as yogis collapsed around me. It SUCKED.

But - a few things happened during all of this that made me tangibly aware of what's happening to me, how I'm changing, and how wonderful this all is in the end. The hotter the fire, the sharper the sword. After the first class, as lay on the floor barely able to get up from savasana, a nagging voice appeared in my head and said, "you're not going to make it through this. This isn't for you, you're not a physical person". And I immediately was reminded - hey - this was EXACTLY what my very first class at Anika's studio was like. I felt exactly the same way - performed just as poorly (relatively speaking) and felt just as overwhelmed... and I knew then that I would make it through this, because I made it through that same despair the last time, and with way more against me. And I realized vividly... the fact that I began my yoga journey from a place of weakness and inability - something I had been ashamed of because I wanted to be good at it right away - is the greatest gift I could have received. Because now I know how much stronger I can be than the voices in my head tell me, I have PROOF.

And the second revelation of the day - one that brought clearly home how quickly this environment is reshaping me... At the beginning of each of the savasanas in the second class of the day - the heat of the room was destroying me - my hands, arms and feet were stinging from the heat, and the fight-or-flight mechanism in my head was SCREAMING at me, GET OUT OF THE ROOM. People were leaving quite a bit, everybody was low-key, there's no ego... but Craig, the head of teacher training, said something about being able to look yourself in the eye and truly say "I needed to leave" vs. "I wanted to leave" and the strength we would gain from knowing we never left the room during all of teacher training. Craig also told us that the number one thing we could do is train ourselves to respond to panic by making a conscious effort to breath slowly into the stomach - not the chest - and give ourselves the gift of breath. So when the screaming voice was telling me to leave - I yelled back (in my head) NO. One time, I actually got up and started to leave and then came back. And I made it to the end. It did not get easier - but now I KNOW, I absolutely KNOW that I can defy the negative impulses - and if those are removed of their power - they'll lose strength, fast. Can you imagine what stillness of mind would be like if the negative voices were quieted to a murmur, or gone entirely, and if we had the ability to tell them NO?

And the weight... is falling off me like I have the flu. It's nuts. Last - but not least - I performed "Half Moon Pose" (Ardha Chandrasana) in front of Bikram today (as did many other people). I have to go faster, and I started off without all of my confidence but found it as I went. My next one will be stronger.

Pictures soon... I have taken a few, but cannot find the cord to attach the camera to the computer. D'oh!!!

BRING IT ON!!!

2006-04-10T23:52:00.000-07:00

Well, here we go!!!

Bikram is, well, everything everyone proclaimed and warned he would be. He's unbelievable. My first impression of him, to my great surprise, was a combination of, "He's handsome/He's ridiculously fit/He's fucking 60 years old????" Subsequent impressions were:

1. He is wearing snakeskin shoes, a skin tight black lycra t-shirt with silver spirals on the shoulders, and skinny-guy pants.
2. He is wearing a rolex, or something about as shiny.
3. Wow. He really likes to brag. Not that he doesn't have a staggering amount to brag about, but the onslaught of hyperbole and exaggeration (which we were warned about) seems to diminish the impact of the indisputably amazing things that he's done.
4. He is the GREATEST HYPERBOLIST THAT HAS EVER LIVED OR EVER WILL LIVE.
5. Goddamit, I still like him.

Not that I don't want to like Bikram, but this is the weird part about all of this. It feels very... culty. There were moments when I saw myself in the room, nodding in agreement with everybody else in the class with something Bikram had said, and it just felt so strange. I had a weird revulsion to the way it all appeared, from an external point of view. It reminded me at times of The Organization! The P.P.R.!!! Power Through Positive Real Estate!!!! More than once. I'll have to learn to take what is good and disregard superficial similarities to bad images for me.

I suppose more significantly, though... I MADE IT THROUGH MY FIRST YOGA CLASS TAUGHT BY BIKRAM!!! I want to hug Anika and Eric for preparing me for this. I had this weird suspicion that they were gradually increasing the intensity in our studio of late - and whether or not that was with my impending journey in mind, it worked. I did every pose as best I could. I didn't fall out of standing head to knee, though I couldn't extend... I didn't fall out of standing bow, though I did let myself out twice (I did come back in, though). People were dropping left and right!!! I made the mistake of putting my mat DIRECTLY beneath the heat vent, which was exactly like holding a hair dryer about three to six inches away from the face for two hours. Bikram's classes are LOOOONG. Singing. Stories. Poses randomly held for way long. And I made it! We were so smushed together that the girl in front of me (who was kinda like an evil yoga-snob Sabra) hit me with her leg twice as she fell out of standing bow. It wasn't her fault, she couldn't have avoided me, but the annoyance vibes from her that followed (there was nowhere for me to move, I was hitting people left, right, and behind) were kinda unnecessary. But... NO DRAMA!!!!

However, all of this pales in comparison to the best thing that happened today. Allen - this one's for you. We had the Chief of Medicine of all the UCLA Medical Schools and Hospitals and Extensions come to speak to us about how to prevent hyponutremia (loss of electrolytes) and over/under hydration. He also answered many general medical questions, all with the same basic answer, "this practice, in my medical opinion, works better than anything else I've seen for prevention of sickness and disease and injury". However, there was a lengthy Q&A session following his talk, and people were asking random, bizarre questions about various electrolyte replacement solutions. A woman had her hand up solidly in the back for like three minutes, and when he finally called on her, she just belted out in a slightly weird, loud voice:

Lady: "WHAT ABOUT MANGOSTEEN?"
Dr: "What?"
Lady: "WHAT ABOUT MANGOSTEEN?"
Dr: "I'm sorry, but what do you mean? Mangos? They are a good source of electrolytes, yes."
Lady: "NO, MANGOSTEEN."
Dr: "I'm sorry, I still don't understand".

Then he took the next question. This is the most wonderful thing that could have possibly happened today. OBVIOUSLY the universe congratulating you, Allen, on completing your first yoga class. Namaste, bitches. Namaste.

It has BEGUN

2006-04-09T19:12:00.000-07:00

Wow. This is much more than I thought I was getting myself into... so my WHOLE LIFE is going to change? I thought I was just going to get a nicer stomach and... and... Really, I knew this was about making a big change in my life, I guess it just feels more real now. And we haven't really even started.

When I arrived, there were already several dozen or more people waiting outside - still a half an hour early - and my first reaction was, "I don't belong here. These are those really PHYSICAL people - the dancers, the athletes... there's no computer geeks ANYWHERE!!!" Even though I'm starting to have more of a connection with my physical self, my self image is still that of a non-physical, "stay-inside" type person. As I waited through the next half an hour, more and more and more super fit people showed up (and a few people that looked a bit more like I do...), and I just couldn't believe how many of us there are. 226 people.

We got to hear introductory speeches from everyone, most notably Bikram's wife Rajashree and his daughter, who called her father "a psycho" and then we sung happy birthday to her. We also got a short talk from several of the teachers including Craig, who was very emboldening. He also stressed how those of us (me VERY much included) who don't have the dialog memorized and effortless are going to have difficulty, so though he made me feel stronger with the rest of his talk, the net result is that I'm MORE terrified than I was.

I live with 4 other roommates in a 2 bedroom suite at the Toluca Lake Oakwood Estates, and it's pretty nice, although cramped. I have two roommates Am and Benz (unknown spelling) from Thailand, who insist they would like to cook for us, and I'm sharing a room with two guys, Daniel and Derrick, both American. I don't know very much about them yet, but it feels just like University felt freshman year - all excited, grand imagination about how big/overwhelming/awesome everything's going to be, living in close quarters with total strangers. Of course, now that I know that I am a loud sleeper, I worry for their sanity and whether or not I'll get stabbed or suffocated in my reverberating sleep.

Tomorrow we meet Bikram. He's been suitably overhyped at this point, I'm assuming he'll levitate into the room, and then breathe fire over us while he sprouts dragon wings. Or something like that.

A quiet day at the beach

2006-04-09T10:19:00.000-07:00

My first day back in America. I'm staying at the "Loews" hotel in Santa Monica. It is gigantic and impersonal, but beautiful and shiny as well. It's on the beach, looking out over the ocean, and the weather has been unusually calm. The ocean looks like a mirror. When we were flying in, the ocean was so clear you could see the reflection of the plane below, and see straight into the water to the bottom when it got shallow enough. It made LA look somewhat tropical...

Being back here brings with it all the usual culture shock, which I suppose has ceased to be shocking since it happens every time I return. The place is so BIG, so crowded, so manic, etc. My favorite "America" moment so far has been the commercial for a painkiller on TV. It showed a woman playing tennis, and Mr Voice said, "Alice is a TENNIS ELBOW PAIN SUFFERER" (with a note of disapproval from Mr Voice that anyone should feel pain). Alice says, "When I hit the ball, the pain hits ME". Then the painkiller is introduced - blood red box - and the voice over notes that the effect on pain INCREASES with each dose. A handy graph fills the screen, demonstrating that the amount of pain killing goes UP as you take 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6 doses. Then Alice returns, smiling, and says "After I took PRODUCT, I can't feel the pain!!!". She grinned a bit maniacally and went back to her tennis. There was no opponent. Just balls rocketing towards her from off screen.

But, every complaint must be balanced with appreciation: MEXICAN FOOD. I had huevos rancheros for breakfast as I sat on the balcony and watched the waves crash on the shore, past the boardwalk. And breakfast was SPICY AS HELL. And it was served with perfectly brewed filter coffee that just kept coming. I'm wired as hell - the perfect way to begin yoga boot camp.

I'm still really nervous, and convinced that I won't be able to make it. But there was something I saw yesterday that made me really glad to be here at this time and place learning to be a yoga teacher. There's a sorta "designer yoga" place (not unlike where I did yoga for the first time in Larkspur Landing) called Exhale near the Santa Monica Boardwalk. Meticulously designed, very shiny - expensive yoga clothes for sale in the foyer, and outside, a GIGANTIC SIGN showing a very bouncy dude with a ponytail and the words, in huge block letters, HIP HOP POWER YOGA. I nearly fell over in the street laughing. Sweet.

Last night, while sitting in the hot tub and looking out over the ocean, I met a very friendly guy named "Kyle", who's a freshman at Southern Oklahoma State University, studying Business Management. He was visiting California, for the first time, to see his older brother graduate from Marines Basic Training camp. He had the stereotypical reaction to LA and California, but without the stereotypical disapproval. He seemed genuinely pleased at seeing all these different kinds of people. I was happy that he was so friendly and introduced himself. He wished me luck in my yoga adventure.

3 hours to go...

Chaos Reigns

2006-04-06T16:28:00.000-07:00

My friend Kevin used to be in a "yoga cult", to use his words. In these last days before my exit, I've been noticing that everything's going crazy. The chaos is mounting, everything is crazy and urgent, and I feel like I won't have time to do all of the things I have to do before I leave, much less spend time with the people I won't be seeing for ten weeks. In response to my frenzied agitation, Kevin wrote me this today:

"When I was in my yoga cult, I took a bunch of retreats. It was like teacher training stuff, but 5 days at a time and over the course of 3 yrs. Every time I was to go to one, things got crazy in my life and there was great difficulty breaking away from it. Every single time, it was weird. I came to regard it as a thing. Like gravity and I was a rocket, and my will was the fuel. Pretty soon you will be on your way and you'll have forgotten all about this, cause it won't matter at all."

I'm comforted by this.

I've been flippantly saying to people this morning, "today is my last day as a visual effects artist". I've only been kidding when I said it, but it also feels like it is partially true. I definitely feel like I'm shedding a skin today. I don't think things will be quite the same when I return.

Less than two days to go.

2006-04-05T21:41:00.000-07:00

I'm in my office in Wellington New Zealand. My tiny closet with a view of the ocean through the window that's always covered in shades. Last night I was here until 4:30 am working on shots for a movie. I'm wondering whether or not this is the last of the all night stress attacks over shots for movies. I'm long past the days where I have wished for death because I couldn't make a shot for a surf movie, but not so far gone that I don't still agonize a little bit over whether or not the two seconds of a movie that will be out of the theater in less than a month is just right.

It's thursday, almost 5pm. On saturday, at 1:30pm, I'm flying to Los Angeles to begin (or continue, I suppose) my journey to be certified as a Bikram Yoga Teacher. My practice, particularly the "mental strength" parts, have improved a lot of late, but I still can't shake the feeling that I'm not ready, that it's going to defeat me. I've always been defeated by physical tasks. I'm confident in intellectual pursuits, but when that nausea hits me and I've got no energy, my brain just starts panicking, what are you doing here, what are you doing here...

I'm looking forward to the singularity of focus, though. Having only one thing that I'm doing. Not trying to fit yoga, my loved ones, work, video games, painting, planning another party, all these things into every day.

So, I'm nervous. I'm way over tired. I don't know what to expect, and hope I don't tank.