bikram yoga, class 5

my fifth class, and i still feel tired. not much like a superhero. the one thing that is getting better is my "bikram-style sit up" -- a straight legged sit up that explodes up from a prone position on the floor with two loud exhales. usually i have to bend my legs to do the sit up. i've been able to use my core strength and belly to come up quickly and cleanly and with strength. that is the one part of my practice that seems to be continually improving. oddly enough because i've never gotten better at it throughout the whole time i've been doing this yoga -- over a year.

i came home agitated again from this class. and not sure why. there was no floppy, annoying person in front of me this time and the teacher did a good job. i just felt agitated.

i was able to focus on my breath a lot more today and used my breath to go a little deeper into some of the postures.

i'm still having a really hard time with balance.

the teachers often say at the end of class. "thank yourselves for coming to class. sometimes the hardest thing is just getting here". this is true. i find myself wanting to run the other way for a moment every day when i arrive. especially as i look in the big floor to ceiling windows of the yoga room and see the class in progress sweating and contorting themselves into ridiculous positions.

but each day at the end of class, if nothing else, i am keeping a promise to myself, working on self-discipline and working towards a goal that is fixed and much bigger than me. these things are as important, if not more important, than anything else i get out of this 2 and half week foray into yoga every day.

bikram yoga in austin texas, day 3

so, i've come to austin, texas to visit a friend, to research possibilities for moving here and most of all to do bikram yoga every day. this is a kind of yoga where the room is heated to 105* with 40% humidity and you do a 90 minute series of hatha yoga postures. you do two sets of the same 26 postures to the same dialogue in each and every bikram yoga class from now until the end of time. this yoga has actually been copyrighted by bikram choudhury himself and is fairly controversial for that point alone. it is intense, powerful and life-changing. when i do this yoga regularly so many things i've struggled with in my life disappear -- i feel centered, balanced, clear in my mind and heart, more in tune with myself, strong like a super-hero, and able to do anything. all the loneliness and self-doubt and low self-esteem disappear with my regular practice. it's amazing.

the only studio near where i live in ohio is 45-60 minutes away and i have just found it too difficult to make a regular practice from that distance. when i have time off of work, i can find time to go, but it's not enough. i really want to get the full benefit of a regular practice and i can;'t do that going one or two times a week if i'm lucky.

so, i've come to austin for many reasons but my big goal in being here is to see what two weeks of straight yoga practice will do for me. will it inspire me to do more? will i just be exhausted? will my body feel or look any different? will it inspire me to move?

i'm on day 3 of my daily yoga practice here in austin. outside it is over 100* on the heat index. my first class on sunday kicked my ass. i had to sit or lay down through at least 10 of the 26 postures. i hadn't been to class in over 2 months and hadn't been going regularly since ab out 6-8 months ago. i felt beaten after class, not anything like a super-hero. plus i got a headache. i know this is from dehydration and loss of electrolytes. my body protesting the heat outside and the heat inside the yoga room.

the second day, i already felt stronger, though i still struggled to do both sets of all 26 postures. i felt less dizzy, and more able to make it all the way through class. afterwards though i still feel exhausted. and my head still hurts. i drank a coconut water before class and my headache went away in the short term. but came back after the 2nd class. it's a dull sort of rope of a headache wrapping around the base of my skull on the right hand side of my head -- from the neck to just above my ear.

today, my muscles are so sore, especially my legs (which i've always thought of as strong) and also my shoulders. i'm going to my 3rd class in half an hour and hope to soon get back to the place where my post-class feeling is more on the super-hero side than the super-out of shape side.

i haven't really had much energy to do anything besides prepare for and recover from class. but i know that in the end this is sort of like a run through the fire for me. it will hurt and not be very comfortable and i will probably hate parts of it. but i know -- because i have experienced first hand -- that the end result will change my life for the better. and i need that desperately right now. i need to know that there is more to life than what i've been doing. that the empty and lonely feelings and self-doubt and paralyzing fear can be overcome. it is exactly the reason i am here and exactly the reason why i've considered doing the bikram teacher training even though it's $10,000 and even though i am nowhere close to even being able to attend the training.

there are so many cool things to do in austin and i'm here for 3 weeks. i'm trying to just be kind and gentle with myself and remember the reason i came was to do yoga. i already know i could live here happily.

the FOOL

paraphrased from a very incomplete website, re-printed in a way which casts me in a good light: one shameless and unobjective interpretation of the fool archetype and what it has meant to humanity throughout the ages and what it might mean now to one tiny person quitting her job:

Fool is the teacher. With his lessons, he awakens us to who we are and allows us to explore the true purpose of our soul's journey . . .

His energy allows us to break out of old stereotypes, whether they've been imposed by ourselves, our families, our culture, or circumstance. This is the energy that opens the world of limitless possibilities and it behooves us all to work with it before it destroys us . . .

Someone kindly requested that I remove comments about "fools" from my previous post. Instead, I chose to look at the term "fool" and how it might, in a grand stretch of the imagination, apply to the way I used it there.

In my years of working life, I have constantly been attracted to these "great opportunities" which are very exciting and where I have to become a trail blazer, taking on lots of responsibility, doing the vision work in addition to the nuts and bolts work of making these great opportunities into potential careers all the while working myself to the bone for little to no pay (that seems to be how "great opportunities" work). Each time it has failed. Often it is because the people I work for take issue with my strong personality, grand ideas and potent but well-intentioned critiques. It has taken me a long time to realize that I am not really a good employee. Not because I don't work hard, but because I work as hard for other people as I would if I was working for myself and then end up resenting the fact that they can't see, don't appreciate it, won't compensate me for it, etc. etc.

So, the fools with good intentions I have been working for, have played exactly the role outlined in the above quote: I am leaving this job with a much clearer view of the true purpose in my life, a much clearer understanding of the journey I have been on and how my current difficulties fit into the bigger story of my life. I am also breaking out of old self/other/circumstantial stereotypes by leaving this job now. I believe if I had waited much longer, the job I was doing would have destroyed me. And I would have again been in the position of having to put the pieces back together. Instead I am moving into a place of limitless possibilities.

I have worked for many fools with good intentions and each has taught me valuable lessons that have brought me to this great place of transformation and awakening. I feel like a new person.

I'm happy to be moving on, happy I took this particular and most recent "great opportunity", happy I gave it my absolute best shot and most of all I'm happy that I recognized the right time to get out of a situation that was detrimental to my health and well-being on many levels. (Not the fault of any one person, but a circumstance of a difficult situation where no one seems to be very comfortable or feel really good).

An Overview: Great Life Journeys (mine)

So, after many months and years even of being stuck, world-shy, alone, I am finally ready to move out of my head. I suppose I should explain and any explanation has to begin with a journey.

There are great journeys in life and then there are times when you simply move across the earth and nothing really changes. There are also journeys inward (through consciousness) or outward (across the earth). Great journeys tend to combine elements of both inner and outer movements to completely restructure the psyche of the traveler and the world through which she travels.

I have been a journeyer for much of my life. Really, when I was 3 months old, my parents and their two best friends bundled me, themselves and some stuff into an orange VW rabbit with no reverse and plywood for the back seats and drove from downeast Maine to southwestern Ohio. My first road trip. Most of my childhood was spent back and forth between these places, following the seesawing ideals and hard realities of hippie parents -- the dreams for a better world, a life of redemption, a defining moment in the history of this country.

When we finally settled for longer than a few years, it was in southeastern Ohio, in a little podunk town with few redeeming qualities. I was 10. The journey became a journey into the land of this place and deep into the safest places in my soul. Kids at school did not make me feel welcome in my new home, but the land loved me unconditionally. I learned about growing food in this more hospitable Zone 5 climate, I learned that fruit grew on trees and not just on scrubby carpets of blueberry bushes, I learned how to milk a cow (and how to love fresh cream and milk) and I learned about the sometimes violent "circus tricks" that make new babies come into the world -- this from the horses in my life, not the people. I learned about clear-cutting forests as the forest behind our house disappeared in less than a week. I also learned that my family was poor and that we were different somehow than everyone else in our small little town.

I went inside my self and spent a long time there -- not trusting my self, my family or the world around me.

Later, at 16, I traveled to Idaho to live and work with my Aunt. A journey of epic proportions for my shy, distrustful, withdrawn self. I climbed Table Mountain, in the Teton Range and learned again to trust myself, the world and maybe even my family. The land once again drew me in, offered itself to me unconditionally and I was in love, alive, whatever. I do not think it a coincidence that I had this experience in a mountain range named for the most nurturing anatomical feature of the female of our species.

Later, I traveled to the west again, Idaho, Utah, Arizona (even a short foray into Mexico), California, Oregon and back to Ohio by car. This was not a great journey, but that is another story. New Orleans (pre-Katrina), Maine, New York, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Illinois, Tennessee -- none of these were great journeys either, not even really worthy of other stories.

In 2000, I traveled during my last quarter of college to Ecuador. We arrived in early April but my journey did not begin until Easter Sunday, sitting in the cathedral in the Plaza de Armas in Cuenca. I don;t know why I went there. My catholic upbringing never stuck, but for some reason there I was, sitting in this gorgeous stone room with sweeping ceilings, huge stone columns with soft edges, light streaming through the high stained glass windows, waiting for mass to start. The organ began to play and the sound echoed around the gigantic room and resonated deep into my soul. I knew then that I had come there for this -- not for the words that would later fall, like rote, from the priest's dry uptight lips. It was for this sound that vibrated deeply into my bones and made me cry like a baby.

Later, I returned to Ecuador with an almost stranger who is now a best friend. That journey began with me quitting my job to travel aimlessly along the spine of the Andes with Jacob, the stranger turned friend. That's another story, too which goes from Ecuador to Peru to Chile to a complete awakening of my political self. More on that later.

The most recent journey has taken me inside again, to deep dark places where memory and pain live accompanied by a chorus of repressed emotions related to growing up the 'hero child' in a family of addicts. This is most definitely a long story and a tangent I will come back to again and again. As one of my writing teachers used it say, it is the navel of my dream. The thread that winds its way through my entire life, touching every part of the story that will unfold here.

After several years of alternately inhabiting those deep dark places and working so hard I never have to see them, I am finally ready to take that thread and begin to follow it back through the layers even as I also use it to weave a new life for myself.