Autumn Lotus Yoga

Damn, Boston is cold this week.  Freaky cold, IMHO.  It makes me feel better hearing long-time residents also complaining about the cold.  It’s in the teens & I am blaming the cold for my recalcitrant attitude & muscles these past two days. 

Tues & Wed were nice bendy days.  Wed was  long ‘un.  4-5 hrs of yoga.  Thurs I was a wee tired & sore & did one of two intended classes.  Same today.  They were fine classes but dear lord, it’s been like moving stone.  Added a little extra stretching at home tonight & am hopeful for a better day tomorrow.

The body goes around & around.

Well, actually it’s ours.  But there was a flood.  And an ark.  And animals marching two by two through the basement going “crap, man, no way we’re all gonna fit & btw, the water’s rising near your neighbors storage unit & the hyenas won’t stop laughing at the platypuses.  Maybe they’re called platypi.  Dunno.  Ooops, irrelevant cuz after the lions finished off the lambs they started on the platys.”

Okay, I exaggerate.  If you’re our downstairs neighbor, I’m completely fabricating this whole post & nothing of interest happened this morning at all.  Nothing to see here, move along & have a nice day.

Last night was a fabulous date night with Beloved Husband & we were out late (for us, anyway) so I stayed home for practice.  Flexy day & all.  Started a load of wash & did like 30 minutes pretty much just rolling around on the floor listening to Massive Attack under the guise of moving around synovial fluid so as to lubricate the old joints.  Popped out to go down & change the wash & walked into the diluvian chaos alluded to earlier. 

Recruited BH & a raftload of towels & we sopped, soaked, sloshed, slogged our way through.  Mopping, mopping, mopping.  Interrupted by dancing up & down on the aforementioned neighbors’ rug which we sandwiched between towels to encourage drying.

This was just waaaay too remiscent of Lucy & Ethel grape stomping & might have turned into a little tiny moshpit.  It’s good to be married to someone you can have fun with in a flooded basement.

Unless you’re our downstairs neighbor, of course, in which case we were just washing the floor, like the good citizens we are.  These are not the ‘droids you’re looking for.  (Geek.

Tomorrow, back to big day at Back Bay!!

Second time this week — we’ve had snow in Cambridge!  It’s not sticking again, but awful pretty coming down in big clumps outside our bay windows. 

Mellow day of home practice today.  Did some warm up dancing with a Shiva Rea track, then a home practice.  Mostly working through the lesson plan for tomorrow morning’s class at Back Bay.

Yesterday was one sort of perfect day.  Class with Peter, made a new friend, caught up with a returned friend, cleaned the ENTIRE house  & did approximately 19 tons of laundry in a burst of post-headcold energy, then out to dinner with a Beloved Husband & a dear friend from college.  (It’s fun now to have friendships in the 20-plus year range!) 

I kept thinking how I wished I had that sort of energy every day, to live like superwoman bounding from rooftop to rooftop — one event to the next. 

But today was another sort of perfect day.   Chillin’, home practice, cuddling with Beloved Husband & kitties.  Rain turning into snow outside a snug little home.  Pizza on the way.

Good thing there are lots of possibilities for perfect days.

We finished hanging all the pictures last night & Beloved Husband has officially declared us Moved In & Ready.  For what, exactly, still remains TBD.

Plus, my awesome Blog Enabler/Webmaster solved the photo posting problem, so here’s a few shots of Chez Lotus!!

What brings us Home though?   In a place, a relationship, in our practice, in our skin?

Okay, that may be a wee tiny bit deeper than I can handle before getting on my mat for the day. ;)  Heading there in moments for an appropriately deep three hour session — woo hoo, happy lower back again!!

But Home seems to happen a lot more gradually than can be marked by hanging some things (granted, waycool things .   Feeling safe & settled & Home at any of those levels snuck up on me, sometime after the total abject panic attacks . 

It built through the course of making some new friends; reconnecting with old ones; sweating in the mini home shala/study; finding work & a home-away-from-home at Back Bay Yoga; going away to New Haven & being thrilled to return, and even through cleaning & caring for this new space. 

At the most basic level, my external Home is where Beloved Husband, the cats & the mat are.  

And my internal Home happens whenever I’m embodying my spirit rather than checking out or running away. 

But it’s nice to make some memories, some neuro-patterns attached to the pretty balconies, French doors, hardwood floors, the grill out back, our little tree-lined street…   And those pictures do look awful purty on them there walls, Beloved Husband.

Okay, so the song reference is waaay old — but still!!!

Got the dream job I was hoping for and starting mid-August will be assisting a Forrest Yoga class on Wednesday nights and teaching on Thursday nights at Back Bay Yoga, Boston.  Woo hoooooo!!!

It’s funny, getting ready for the audtion I could see so clearly all the options I had to self-sabotage but was amazingly, record-breakingly quite easily able to dismiss them & choose things that would actually help me.  Like, oh, getting a good night’s sleep, doing the 2 hr Forrest Intensive Day 4 to warm up, reviewing my lesson plan over & over & planning adjustments & cues — but also, recognizing that it was just a chance to learn & life would be a-okay if I didn’t get the job.  Taking the pressure off helped keep me centered rather than hyper-spazzed out (which is often the Atomic Squirrel default mode. : )

Afterwards, got to take a teacher-special 2 hr restorative class which the awesome studio owner gave after having spent last week with Judith Lasater in San Francisco.  120 minutes, about 6 poses, with 7 blankets, 3 bolsters, 4 blocks, 2 straps & 1 chair used as props.  Total opposite of my norm & SOOOO nice after all the excitement. 

Plus, discovered that peanut butter, banana & yogurt smoothies are AMAZING.   Beloved Husband can’t believe I hadn’t tried one before today. : )

Big hugs to the loved ones who had more faith than I did on this whole job scenario.  xoxoxoxo to infinity!!

I do believe the storm broke today.

Quite literally as well as metaphorically.  It was pouring from late last night up until mid-afternoon.  BH (Beloved Husband : ) discovered this when a wet cat jumped into bed at some ungodly time.  He investigated & discovered we’d left the skylight was open.   Ooops.  Bless his sweet heart, BH mopped up both cat & kitchen without waking me. 

Which might have been nigh impossible without a marching band anyway.  Stress storm swelled & broke &  I slept almost the entire day, distributing time pretty evenly between couch & bed.  The cats kept me company & approved highly; it was obvious they were thinking “FINALLY, she recognizes the important teachings we offer daily!” : )

Now the sun is out, I revived enough to do a short (hourish) practice of simple breathwork, abs, bridge, dolphin, sun salutes, headstands, lying twists.  We’re planning an easy, early dinner out in our eclectically cute new neighborhood.

They say of Boston, “If you don’t like the weather, just wait a minute, it’ll change.”  Same with our internal weather.  Rest, rain, recovery, renewal, all in their own time.

Thank effin heavens, cuz otherwise my head might have exploded. : )

(Comcast was a day late, but I am f-ing THRILLED to be back online & will be catching up on folks in the next day or so.  YAY!)

So, the remake of The Italian Job (ya know, the one with Donald Sutherland, Marky Mark Wahlberg, Charlize Theron…) is a personal guilty pleasure.  Not just as an homage to the estimable Mini Cooper, but because of a classic breakdown of the useless pleasantry:  ”I’m fine.”  Spelled out, it means Freaked out, Insecure, Neurotic and Emotional.

The move has been F.I.N.E.; I’m doin’ F.I.N.E. : )  

Yeah, it’s been stress central for ten days. Oh. My. God. 

To say I can be a bit highstrung would be a ridiculous understatement.   To throw a few more cliches at it, my fight-or-flight mechanism is on a hairtrigger.  I’ve been wired, tired, and practically jumping out of my own skin.  Cortisol and adrenaline on full power.  Beloved Husband calls this my “Atomic Squirrel” mode.

What’s weird is that this is how I used to live, seriously, every single day.  But since back in the day I DID actually jump out of my own skin & dissociated entirely, these days it all seems much harder because I’m sticking around and actually experiencing the stress. 

This particular healing from yoga practice seems a bit of a Pyhrric victory (look it up : ) (and if you didn’t have to, welcome to my kinda geekdom : ).

Buddhism reminds us that there is never any solid ground & the only “comfort zone” possible is the present moment.  Still, I’m searching for some solidity, familiarity, a sense of self-efficacy, control, something… these will come as I learn my new surroundings.  The fact remains: truly, really, my only solid ground is a mat & some heavy breathing.  

I don’t practice every morning because I’m a disciplined person, but because I Can’t Function Otherwise For the Rest of the Day.  Especially when the world has turned upside down.   This morning was an hour of self-practice, then a T trip to a 6:15 am Forrest class at Hopeful New Home Studio which ROCKED.  Do the math — I woke up randomly at 3ish am to fit all that in.  Atomic Squirrel, yes?

Which reminds me of  something Pema Chodron (waycool Western Buddhist nun) says that echoes the Italian Job’s F.I.N.E.   She reminds us that it’s still okay to be crazy, after all these years.   Though I’m aiming for semi-sane tomorrow.  Or maybe the day after.  I’ll let ya know. : )