Regarding desires for achievement

When I was practicing Ashtanga yoga regularly, I was trying super hard to learn to do every pose in the primary series as perfectly as I could. My deep desire at the time was to finish 1st series, zip through 2nd series (back bends are naturally easy for me), and then spend some years working on the advanced 3rd series.

When I started climbing, I progressed much faster than anticipated, from not being able to move to very much on the wall at all, to being able to hold on to some pretty bad hand holds with locked bent arms. I thought I would be able to keep progressing at a linear rate and hit the advanced grades at a steady pace.

This mentality makes sense in the 20s and early because the body can handle a lot of training and adapt to the intensity when one is young. I am very glad I exercised my body as much as I did in my 20s despite my culture (most of my relatives and many of my friends do not exercise much at all besides occasional walking).

Now that I start yoga again a little after many years of not doing it, the primary series Ashtanga feels hard again. There are very strong feelings in the hamstrings. I'm not sure if climbing tightens my hamstrings or is it simply from lack of hamstring-specific stretching exercises. I no longer feel the desires to perfect my poses again. I'm just happy to lightly practice yoga occasionally to get some stretching in. I'm still super motivated to continue hard climbing training, but I don't really expect to hit a high grade any more. If I were 25 years old, I would totally aim for an advanced grade, and get disappointed when my improvement levels off.

However, my mind still feels pretty unsettled even though I don't mentally chase high achievements any more. The formerly achievement-addicted mind still wants something else to obsess about. I will keep searching for "it" I guess, hoping to calm my mind and achieve equanimity.

Focusing on the breath is the way to go

I am damn lucky to have a friend who organizes Mysore practice sessions at her house on Sundays. It forces me to practice the primary series at least once a week. Also, fellow Ashtangis' long ujjayi breathing helps remind me to stop breathing like I'm trying to catch a bus.

Today I decided to ease off on refining the asanas and placed primary emphasis on the breath. Best decision ever. I've always enjoyed the primary series because it allowed me a 90 minute period to pay attention to lengthening my breath. While I also need to work on my chaturangas, long breathing is what calms me down and makes me feel good for the rest of the day. I think I should lay off on perfecting my vinyasa and just focus on breath for the next little while.  Hopefully that'll rekindle my passion for the primary series.

The best part? Suuuuuuper yummy food that my amazing friends prepare for us after the practice sessions. Now that's the perfect way to spend a Sunday :)

p.s. I also found out recently that my body prefers me drinking coffee in the evenings than in the mornings. Guess caffeine's useless for me in turns of making me awake and alert.

Primary series kicks my ass again

Before I went to India, I was getting pretty comfortable with my primary series. Sure, bhujapidasana could use more work; jump back/jump throughs weren't happening; but for the asanas that I could do, I was pretty happy with them. The practice itself felt enjoyable and rewarding. I was ready to expand and move forward with my practice. First week of class, my chaturanga was corrected. Apparently I have been doing fake ones where my elbows bent at ~110 degrees rather than 90 degrees, with my butt sticking way up in the air. With that single correction my entire practice became 10 times harder. For the rest of the month I could barely push up from real chaturangas into upward facing dogs. My down dog and up dog got corrected. That made my sun salutations feel totally awkward. I had trouble "flowing smoothly" from one position to the next. I was never given tips on the fancier stuff like bhuja or jump back from the supta kurmasana exit. Instead, all my standing postures got fixed (mostly just take a wider stance, which changes everything actually). With these changes added to my practice, I could barely get through the standing series before I felt totally exhausted. Back home I used  to love my teacher's led primary series practice. In India I hated it. I thought I might drop dead at any point during the practice. Back at home I was really pampered; we had pose modification options, small jokes thrown in here and there, often laughter filled the room when 80% of the class couldn't do something and the teacher brushed it over before we moved on. Here, the led class was the real deal. The counts were strict; no going into a pose before the proper count was uttered; I've never had to hold shoulder stand for so long (it's the real deal!); normally I never had problems doing 3-4 urdhva dhanurasanas, but one day I just collapsed in total defeat when called to do a 5th one. I never used to believe Ashtanga yoga was designed to discipline 14 year old boys, but in that led class I believed. I totally felt like I was in a bootcamp/military training for young boys. None of this bliss out / be jolly stuff. This was the "real" Ashtanga: how it was taught by Pattabhi Jois.

I was so angry. My ego was completely crushed. I thought I was good at Primary series, but I've been faking it all these years. Doing it the "proper" way sucked. I got tired so easily during the series. Savasana did not restore my energy. Sometimes I fell asleep during savasana (this never happens to me back at home) and still woke up tired. I would often have a nap in the afternoon, and wake up feeling groggy. Sometimes I'd nap after breakfast. A couple times I went back to bed right after practice. I really did not enjoy this. This practice is supposed to energize me, not drain all my energy for the rest of the day. I started doubting myself and doubting the Ashtanga practice. When the month-long practice was over I happily slept in and did not practice at all for an entire month. Not even basic sun salutations.

I tried to figure out what exactly happened. When I finally returned home, the first thing I noticed was the ultra-crispness of the air. That must have been it. The heat and the humidity really took a huge toll on me, not to mention the fact that my digestive system wasn't always happy to process all the spices and curries. I wasn't sleeping through the night for the first couple of weeks, perhaps due to crappy mattresses and an unfamiliar surrounding. Also, I normally practice in the evening time back home; switching to a 6am practice probably made a difference in my flexibility  and energy level. On top of all this, I was attacked by multiple mosquitoes during practice, and the incense in the shala often made me feel nauseous. The combination of all these would made my practice a lot harder than it does back home even if my asanas didn't get corrected at all.

So I take this trip as a sort of a "kung-fu" training, where I practiced the primary series with the temperature cranked way up, with (what felt like) lead blocks strapped to my wrists and ankles, and deadly (okay maybe just hungry) mosquitos released into the training room, all with the purpose to strengthen my body and my practice. My ego had to suffer because the training wheels were taken off the tricycles.

Now that I am back home, I've only done two full practice so far. They felt okay. Still tough, but not nearly as draining as I felt in India. One strange thing: my muscles never felt all that sore in India even with all the corrections designed to make my muscles work harder; only my energy levels were deeply affected. Back home I am easily sore for days after each practice, but my energy levels are fine. I have no explanations for why this is the case. Does a dip in the ocean after practice a couple times a week help with the soreness?

I am humbled by the experience and grateful for the teacher for showing me how difficult it is to do primary series properly (not to say my teacher back home taught anything wrong; he just wasn't on my case all the time for cutting corners in my vinyasas and for being lazy in my warrior II lunges). I just need to slowly ease myself back into the practice and hopefully one day feel good about it again after incorporating all the corrections.

Cold practice

It was about 10 degrees Celsius (50 degrees Fahreheit) this morning indoors (no heater at home). First time doing yoga practice in such a cold environment. I did the full primary series practice in long sleeves, and barely broke a sweat. At my yoga studio I usually start sweating in samastitihi, right when we are about to start chanting. Practice certainly isn't easy in this kind of environment, but it's "safer" for me since I can't collapse into poses and over-stretch when it's so cold.

I watched what I could in David Garrigues' video about breath and receptivity (reviewed in Nobel's blog). Couldn't watch the whole thing because I'm "borrowing" neighbor's wi-fi with my iPad and the connection is not so great. Took me 10 minutes to watch 3 minutes of the video. David mentioned that there should be a balance between effort and receptivity. He also said that the breath will do its own thing depending on the body condition and environment. Well, my breathing in sun salutations were done in slow motion today (I am known to rush through the whole series in 60 minutes). I guess in the cold the body's too stiff to rush through the motions. My mind wasn't awake enough to dominate my natural breathing pattern, and it wanted to take its time to heat up the inner body. Cold practice sucks for the ego, but is good for my body and breath.

It's bizarre to be practicing yoga in an environment where everyone else barely cares about their bodies (or they try to eat their way to health - diet supplements sell really well here). My sister has a haunch back so severe, I've only seen such a curved spine among really old people. She refuses to do much about it. I don't understand how she holds herself up. Last year when I saw her, her back got much better since she had a massage therapist friend who manually adjusted her and really improved her spine, but now it's back to an old lady spine. Her son and daughter also both have haunches, non-severe ones but nobody says or does anything about it. One cousin tells me she has lower back pains and unknown foot problem such that she can't walk for more than an hour at a time. As far as I know, no one's conditions are completely hopeless, but everyone seems to choose to let the body worsen rather than doing something to improve it. I guess in a culture where watching TV and eating are the biggest national hobbies, as long as the mouth and eyes still function, the rest of the body parts don't really matter.

Thanks for asking, but I don't feel like talking about my yoga practice with you right now

I never ever thought I'd get to this point, where I don't want to discuss yoga with people (specifically non-yoga practitioners. To my yogi friends: you guys don't apply to this category).

From the amount of yoga videos and yoga articles that I compulsively post on Facebook, most of my friends whom I haven't seen for a long time get the hint that I am slightly obsessed about yoga. When I first started yoga, I couldn't stop talking about it, whether people wanted to hear about yoga or not. Like a zealous religious fanatic, I would shove complementary yoga passes into people's hands and try to get them to come to a yoga class with me. Over time, I learned that most people have strong mental resistance against trying something new. Some people didn't enjoy physical education in high school and concluded that all physical activities suck, period. Others seemed to think that I would be so inconsiderate that I would take them to an advanced yoga class when they are not that active in their day-to-day lives (or maybe they think all yoga movements are too advanced for them). So I stopped mentioning yoga in social situations. However, whenever I meet up with friends, especially the ones who are on Facebook but whom I haven't seen for awhile, they would always casually ask me about my yoga progress. I get questions like "How's it going with you? Are you still doing yoga? (It's only been 2 years) Wow, you must be a yoga master by now"; "So which new poses are you learning lately?";  "Are you going to become a yoga teacher soon? That's not a bad profession, eh? Probably make a good side income."

For awhile I got so tongue-tied that I couldn't even answer them. I blame too many years of grad school for worsening my social skills (which were not so good to begin with). As a total nerd I'm pretty clueless about what people want to hear, since they obviously don't care for yoga. I do admit also I got a little offended by the implications of these questions (which I can't blame them because they honestly don't know much about yoga besides what mainstream media portrays it to be, but it still affected my ability to think straight), so I usually just answered, "Yep, still do it sometimes", and left it at that. I would get a somewhat stunned look and an awkward pause, before people clumsily find another topic to talk about. There's a good chance I have offended them for shutting down an innocently casual conversation-starter like that.

Upon some serious pondering (the only thing that a nerd like me knows to do), I believe that people want me to casually talk about my yoga progress, with a sense of humor, and maybe some gossip, as if I were reporting about my progress in, say, salsa dancing or figure skating: "Oh it's going great! I fell on my butt soooooo many times but I just mastered pirouetting on one foot last week!" "I'm so much more flexible now that before I started yoga. I used to not be able to touch my toes, and now I can almost do a split!" "OMG, there's this one yoga teacher who is super hot! Men who practice yoga have such nice bodies! I go to his class all the time, and he's the only teacher who can get me into a handstand! You should come try his class with me sometime! He has the most sexy voice ever and you'll feel so relaxed in this class!" "My butt is so much perkier now after all the yoga I've been doing. It's super awesome. The yoga inversions help reverse the aging effects that gravity has on a woman's skin and boobs! I feel younger than ever before!"

The above examples have nothing to do with my personal practice, by the way (or maybe some of them do, but I don't really talk like that in real life), but I think these are the type of things people who don't do yoga expect to hear. I'm not sure if they want me to sell yoga to them as a miracle panacea, make self-deprecating jokes about yoga, brag about how many poses I've mastered, demo some fancy asana on the spot, make claims about how close I am in becoming a teacher, or what. Fellow yogis and yoginis, please share your experience with me on this matter.

I guess I personally take (Ashtanga) yoga sort of seriously, even though I haven't been practicing it regularly. I'm not saying it has to be so serious; I'm just in a weird mental state at this moment and just don't feel like going along with what people want by feeding them superficial comments about yoga (I'm 99.5% certain they prefer to hear something short, funny and snazzy rather than how I'm trying to burn through my samskaras with metaphoric/energetic fire generated by breath and postures). Don't get me wrong; I'm not going through post-graduation depression. I'm feeling a sense of peace that I haven't felt for years, as I used to always have my thesis project in the back of my mind at all times. I don't really feel like defending myself or pretend agree with people when they make uncreative assumptions about my vacation plans, career plans, or my yoga practice. I'm aware my social behaviour makes me seem like a total snob, and I'm pissing off some of my friends. Let me be clear: I don't think I'm above other people. I just feel like I need to step off the hamster's wheel of social expectations (how to talk; how to behave; how to proceed through life in a conventional way) for a bit and just be. I'm pretty sure it's only a temporary phase, some sort of cognitive fatigue (societal expectation fatigue?) maybe. Once the phase passes I'll happily get back on the hamster treadmill and conform to social norms again.

Which poses do you find hardest to engage the bandhas?

Source: Yoga Journal

I had no idea my uddiyana bandha was totally not engaged until the teacher came and put his hand on my belly in revolved triangle pose and revolved side angle pose. I normally pay pretty good attention during my sun salutations and non-twists to suck in the belly, but in these poses the twists make it feel like the belly must be sucked in already, since it's squished against the leg (sort of) right? Wrong. I felt like my gut was pushing directly into the teacher's hand and absolutely nothing happened when I tried to order my abdominal muscles to draw the belly back in. Can you imagine how pathetic I felt at that moment? I don't think the belly actually looks that big in twists, but it sure felt like I was 5 months pregnant at that instant. For the rest of the class I was totally self-conscious about my belly in all the twists, and I discovered that I could engage the bandha a little bit in Mari C and D. I don't know if it was because the twists in these poses are kind of lop-sided, providing slightly more space for the ab muscles to maneuver, or did some neural pathway from the brain become established to the abs sometime between the standing series and the seated poses.

So, cybershala, which poses do you feel the easiest to engage the bandhas and which poses are the hardest? For me the easiest pose to feel my bandhas is the 2nd last pose (not counting savasana) -- padmasana. I have heard that bandha engagement should be easy in urdhva padmasana because the organs get out of the way when upside down, but I find it the other way around.. they get in the way of my bandhas (interfering with the diaphram??)  Or maybe I'm just not used to being up side down still.

Don't even ask me about mula bandha. When I worry about it I squeeze everything down there, including unnecessary butt muscles, leg muscles, hip flexor stuff, and a whole bunch of other stuff that I don't know controls what but pretty sure have nothing to do with the perineum.

Drop backs practice report

So I've started doing drop-backs. It's amazing how quickly I've progressed in them. Not saying they're now really nice or anything, but my urdhva dhanurasanas never felt great, so I wasn't expecting to to drop backs so soon. My low back always feels funky in the pose, and I hate it when the teacher says to straighten my legs and shift my chest towards my arms. If I don't do it he'll come and help me and I always feel like I'm about to faint or drown. My neck can never relax in the wheel pose; the neck muscles feel strained whether I try to look up or look down. They refuse to relax no matter how I move my head. Stuff along the spine feels loose, as if the spine will fall apart if I try too hard (but I try hard anyways). Nobel reassured me a little when he told me deep backbends have a spinal alignment effect to them. Not sure if it was Tim Miller or Matthew Sweeney who started the saying, "Backbends are like pancakes. The first two are rubbish." That re-assured me further.

That being said, assisted drop-backs feel a million times safer and easier (psychologically) than attempting drop backs on my own, so kudos to Grimmly and all the people who work on this on their own. I think I sort of tried once at home, and I ended up bending my knees so much I ended up just going into a table top pose instead of a real drop back. Coming back up was like a swim up where I flailed my arms wildly and sort of front crawled my way back to standing, again with super bent knees... I always imagined myself looking like the reverse of Neil doing backbend dodging bullets in the Matrix, except I'm sure it looks a lot dorkier and messier.

Apparently my back is pretty open, so I "don't need to" do hang backs. Actually I just plain can't do them. With the teacher's hands around my waist, for awhile it felt like he was the soul reason I wasn't crashing straight to the floor headfirst since I felt I had zero control over my upper body weight. Coming back up is so much fun with the help of a teacher. A little pull (or pressure into the spine at the low back junction) and I pop right up. But without the teacher I guess I didn't want to look like an idiot doing my front crawl thing in class. I also was really scared of falling back down and landing on my head because my arms wouldn't be ready to catch me or something silly like that.

There are two keys to coming up smoothly: 1. walk the hands as close towards the feet as possible, "past the point where you feel comfortable with placing your hands". 2. Rock back and forth and come up on an inhale while rocking forward towards the feet. So they actually both work, and I've been surprised that some days I can come up on my own. The trick is I have to catch the momentum. If I try to come up at the wrong time during the rock, then I fall back down. My hands did catch me and save me the fate of a head concussion, so my fear was unfounded. If my back feels funny, then I'm not able to walk my hands that close to my feet, and a wide wheel makes coming up impossible.

So now I'm at this inconsistent stage where sometimes I can come up magically on my own no problem, and other times I get stuck in my wheel and can't come up without assistance. Neither the forward bend squish nor the fold itself after the drop backs ever feels long enough, and I can feel my spine screaming "I'm here! Feel my presence!!" at me for the rest of the day. It's not pain.. it's just.. very energized, but not necessarily in a happy or unhappy way. Seriously, who needs a chiropractor if you can just do wheel pose and drop backs? I wonder what chiros think about setu bandhasana and headstands. Setu b. feels super intense right now, probably not from physical strain but from shock. I'm trusting the practice and hoping it'll strengthen my neck and make my neck strain go away. Also hoping matsyasana and uttana padasana will strengthen my mid and low back, because I do not feel peace and calm in these two poses.

Anyways, just a boring recording my practice report. I hope the poses I mention will get easier and my spine will thank me later on. Right now it's questioning what the heck I'm doing to it and the rational brain isn't really sure if what I'm practicing is exactly healthy for my body. I kind of have to have faith, keep at it for a few months and then see what happens.

The nature of Ashtanga yoga

Nobel recently blogged about how his friend doesn't get why Nobel's goal in practicing yoga doesn't seem to be to master all 6 levels of Ashtanga. Megan recently blogged about waiting to hear about results from biopsies and medical test with the possibility of having cancer (sending her well-wishing thoughts). In my previous post, I wrote about how I am coming to the realization of peculiarities in my old habitual behaviors, and one of the commenters, Alison, suggested that perhaps I should look into restorative and yin yoga, since Ashtanga seems to be stirring up quite strong emotions and reactions in me.

If she had suggested this to me a year ago, I might have seriously considered her advice and switch to a calmer, more reflective yin practice. For those who have not tried practicing Ashtanga regularly, on the surface, this style of yoga appears to be a fast-paced, dynamic, heat-generating work out. Indeed, in the beginning I totally exhibited type A personality, coming to the led primary series because it challenged me more than any other yoga classes. I enjoyed the masochistic aspect that my back would ache and my arms would feel jelly the next day. Once I tried to practice two days in a row and the second day's class felt miserable. I had to do all my vinyasas on my knees. The teacher kept mentioning this was meant to be a 6-day practice and I thought he was nuts, that only exceptionally fit people could pull it off. The teacher did keep repeating the fact that this series is meant to be therapeutic, which made no sense to me at the time (which part of having my ass kicked is therapeutic??) Somehow I chose to trust the teacher because he sounded very sincere. I decided to give this class a year and see if my lower back would heal and stop aching at some point, or else I was going to move on to something else.

Well, 1.5 years later, the primary series no longer feels like an ass-kicking work out. It's still not a walk in the park, but it feels more like a full body opening stretching sequence than a heart pumping, muscle building exercising sequence. My heart rate does go up a bit while doing the sequence, but in terms of breathing, I feel no other yoga classes can bring me to breath so deeply for such an extended period of time. My teacher didn't lie; in terms of breath work it really does feel very therapeutic. I now practice Ashtanga for its calming, therapeutic effects more than anything else. So, even though it does build strength in the body, it's not the main reason why I practice Ashtanga.  Even though it doesn't burn as much calories as my previous exercise regime (I am fatter than I used to be), I am sticking with this routine until my mental clutter improves and I free up more time to exercise for the sake of exercising.

I have been thinking about yoga and spirituality. Why are some people totally fine with pursuing spirituality by long hours of sitting meditation, never having the desire to try yoga or even other forms of exercises? How come yogis seem to squirm like worms all the time and the only way to calm down is to contort their bodies into pretzels? Perhaps David Garrigues explains best in his blog post: "Ashtanga is for the hungry, the ones who have something gnawing inside, the ones who honestly aren't happy accepting complacent norms. Ashtanga is for those who are alive with intense feelings that there are worlds to discover, worlds that are found by reaching passionately inwards for expression that will contribute to personal and collective healing. "

I don't feel yin yoga works the same as Ashtanga, nor does "Core Power yoga" or Bikram or Iyengar or Anusara yoga. Don't get me wrong, I am not against these yoga styles and I think they have helped many people. I do feel I would benefit from sitting meditation, but it's the Ashtanga practice that calms down the "gnawing inside" so I can sit still for longer. I've heard there are people who practiced up to intermediate/advanced series, and then realized they actually only need to do the beginning standing series and the closing series in order to calm down and benefit from the practice.

I feel Ashtanga is very vast and deep. Devoting 1+ years to familiarize myself with the primary series is the best thing I could have ever done. From here, I can also choose to do just the opening and closing sequence, and focus on the meditative aspect of yoga; I can just practice the primary series; I can move onto the intermediate series and keep going until I reach my body's limits; I can always fall back to the primary when my body becomes injured, when I grow older, or when I am mentally drained/stressed out. I used to analyze every issue to death, thinking I have to understand everything / rationalize everything in order to find peace/resolution. Now I feel like peace comes from calming the breath, emptying the mind, and letting go of things we can't change. This realization is more useful than any psychoanalysis or any amounts of knowledge/information with which I try to cram into my brain.

I may have problems in life, but practicing Ashtanga helps me experience moments of calmness during the day. It helps clear my mind and put things into perspective, realizing what's important and what's minor. Do other yoga styles achieve the same? It might for some people, but I plan to write a whole post about my thoughts on the current industry of yoga.

A blog post all about my spine

It doesn't matter what style of yoga you practice; a major body part you work on is your spine. From gentle cat-cow warm ups, to downward/upward facing dog, to sun and moon salutations, to headstands and shoulder stands,  to crazy leg behind the head poses, most yoga poses move the spine in all sorts of directions, in much greater depths than most sports and activities ever require. There are apparently 5 major ways to move your spine: flexion, extension, axial rotation (twists), lateral flexsion (side bends), and axial extension (lengthening). Before I started yoga I thought I had a limber body. Now I feel like I'm finally using my spine the way its intended - built to be curved in so many ways, as long as the muscles, fascia, tendons, ligaments etc coordinate with the vertebrae.

When I started yoga I came to heal my spine. My lower back was hurting me, and when I first started Ashtanga it felt worse. I couldn't tell if I was doing the poses wrong or if my lower back was just weak. I asked the teacher and he said my poses looked okay and he didn't see anything wrong with what I was doing. Primary series was supposed to be therapeutic right? So I tried to suck in my belly button more whenever I felt discomfort in the lumbar spine, hoping the sensation would go away soon. Either that or I would have to quit yoga and switch to some other activity. Thankfully, after 6 months the lower back weirdness went away. So it was indeed a weakness and the primary series helped strengthen my spine in a major way.

Then there was my neck. Ever since I started yoga, I noticed I had a neck ache. I went to see a massage therapist which helped make it better. However after a month the achy-ness came back. I learned it was probably due to the turtle haunch position that I have been assuming in front of my computer screen for the past 10 years. I went to see a chiropractor, which tried to fix my imbalance in terms of left twist vs. right twist, but I felt it was such a money scam because he only worked on me for about 20 minutes at a time and charged me $40 per session, and asked me to go back for 8 more sessions. My yoga teachers adjusted me more than the chiropractor during a 75 minute yoga class, and I pay way less for a class. I tried to lengthen my neck whenever I notice my turtle shrug, but the discomfort persisted. Then I noticed headstands made my neck uncomfortable so I had to stop practicing that at home. I still did it in class but usually only for like 5 breaths and often with the teacher supporting my legs. I notice my neck felt worse when I tried to assume thumb drishti in trikonasana and utthita parsvokonasana, so I stopped looking up in those poses and just focused on lengthening my cervical spine.

Recently, my teacher has been coming by, putting fingers on my back and telling me to engage my lats and pull my back muscles down the spine. Hmm, I can't seem to engage my lats at all. I consciously pull them down for a few breaths, then the next time I check my shoulders are up to my ears again. Sigh. That must be the reason why my neck hurts.

I am just noticing recently that I don't use enough of my back strength in matsyasana. When I engage my back more, uttana padasana suddenly feels a lot harder (I've been arching my back and not engaging back muscles in these 2 poses all this time). So suddenly I am feeling a new sense of strength building in my spine. My headstands are feeling better in the neck, and in setu bandhasana, I am finally taking my elbows off the floor and crossing my arms over my chest. It feels pretty creepy but I can feel strength building in my neck as well. I am really hoping this period of neck strengthening will get rid of the neck discomfort once and for all.

Backbends: now that I am starting to attempt drop backs, I am feeling weirdness in my lower back return. Actually, a few posts back I complained about lumbar spine weirdness in urdhva dhanurasana. So it went away for awhile and I thought I was done with low back strengthening, but I guess I'm not done. I look at my own wheel pose in the mirror and it has such a mild arch, despite how intense it feels. And then I look at pictures of yogis grabbing their ankles in their wheel poses, and I wonder exactly what needs to stretch to get to that point. Kino's article and video suggests that we hang over upside down without touching the mat for a few breaths; I'm sorry but I don't have enough strength to hold it half way. I am either upright with a little back bend or I'm all the way down. There's no in between. Does it mean my back is just too weak?

So many people I've seen come to yoga with a haunch in the shoulder/upper back area. When I look at the pictures of long term ashtanga practitioners, they all seem to have a straight back, and when they bend either forwards or backwards, they bend right at the waist, instead of rounding at the thoracic spine. I don't know if this is the case, but has all these forward bends where the teacher has been helping me flatten my spine on my legs resulted in shifting of imbalances to the upper (neck) and lower (lumbar) part of the spine instead?

One thing's for sure: I definitely need more back strengthening and continue to engage my trapezius and lats to keep my shoulder blades down the back. The fascia and the connective tissue stuff I have no control over; they'll just have to keep restructuring on their own. I wonder if non-Ashtanga yoga styles also re-work the spine in the same way, since most yoga styles I know don't emphasize forward bends.

Back to led practice

Yes, today is a moon day, but I practiced anyway because well, that's when the led class happens. It felt really good to be grounded by my regular practice again, but the entire time I sort of wondered why the heck did I go sooooo fast in my Mysore practice last week? I totally thought I was keeping time to my teacher's normal counting. Either my teacher normally counts faster and he chose to count more slowly today, or alternatively, the burden of counting on my own felt so daunting I just rushed to get it all over with.

It's interesting how the mind works. Today I felt like my mind relaxed and allowed me to focus on how each pose felt at the moment I was holding it. In the Mysore practice it seemed like all my mind could do was to hear my breathing and do counting, that was it. Anything other tasks would become over-burden for the conscious brain. As I got into my janushirsansa b and c, I couldn't help but to wonder: did I even do these 2 poses in my Mysore class? I'm pretty sure I must have done them, but I have zero recollection of feeling my heel pressed into mula bandha, or the toe crunching / achilles tendon stretching sensations that I felt today in class. Did I bother going to my edge at all in my Mysore practice? I think the only perception I could manage besides remembering the sequence was that I felt no pain sensations.

It seems like a significant part of the practice of yoga is to understand our inner workings of our own minds. With this little Mysore back to led practice experiment, I discovered I have major blind spots in my brain. When the brain is occupied with being in an unfamiliar environment and new tasks, it drops the perceptions of less important things, like the details of how each pose feels in different parts of the body. Even though my focus on breathing was much better in the Mysore class (because it was what I used to pace myself) than in a led class, I felt less calm after the practice (more calm than before I practiced, but less calm than practicing at my usual class).  I wonder when I will reach a point where I feel completely at ease and be able to fully enjoy the practice without being my own yoga police, worrying if my bandha's engaged, if my legs are straight, if my neck's crunched, if my shoulders are away from my ears, if my side bodies are lengthened, so on and so forth. I fantasize about a perfect practice with no extraneous muscle strains, everything stays aligned, jump-throughs don't feel like dragging a bag of heavy bricks across the mat, and my breathing feels super smooth. It's something I would like to work towards.

My first Mysore class experience

So I recently went to my first ever Mysore class. It felt sooooo different from a led class. It was so hard to concentrate on my own practice when everyone around me is doing something different! I kept miscounting my surya namaskara Bs (accidentally making some of them into surya As). I would also skip a pose, then realize it a few poses later, do that pose, then go back to what I was doing, totally re-ordering the Primary series. I was also totally not used the teacher's adjustments. My usual teacher normally starts with a gentle push, and then deepen the adjustment, holding it for 3-5 breaths, for both sides. The teacher at this shala would give me a 1-2 second squish one side only and walk away. For Mari D I got a non-gentle double shoulder grab - upper body deepening twist that was neither painful nor unsafe, but still left me kind of surprised. I guess I've been too pampered and spoiled in my regular led primary series classes. Supta kurmasana was a towel grab rather than a bind, but this teacher gave a pretty strong adjustment that got my feet crossing above my head, and that felt good. In supta padangusthasana A, usually I pull my leg down to my face, but this teacher held my leg straight in the air and made me come up to meet it. Made the pose feel totally different (ie. much more challenging, which is probably exactly what I needed).

I guess the idea of Mysore classes is to go at your own pace, spending a few more breaths in poses that need more work, and even repeating things that need work. However I felt totally insecure without a teacher verbally going through instructions on things to watch out in each pose, or what was supposed proper pace. I'm too used to being told what to do, so I ended up rushing through the entire series due to nervousness. I think I caught up and surpassed several people who started much earlier than I did. I might have also completely skipped a few poses by accident, but there would be no way to know because I had no memory of what I did and did not do 2 poses earlier, and the teacher wasn't really watching me (the shala was pretty happening). I think I also might have started counting my breaths while I was still getting into each pose, so probably I only held each pose for about 3-4 breaths.

Overall it was a very rushed practice at the fault of no one but myself. It was fun watching people do intermediate poses at close proximity. Hey, don't judge me for my drishti violations; it's my first time experiencing this so I just had to check out poses I'd never seen in real life before. It'll probably take awhile before I get used to Mysore style practice; for now I will stick to led Primary classes (and my regular teacher's handholding style adjustments, hehehe).

Update: I want to stress I'm not dissing Mysore style of practice. This is just my personal experience after over one year of led primary practice with the same teacher. I would happily switch to a Mysore class if my regular led class 5 minutes from where I live no longer becomes available to me.

Recent asana progress summary

Sirsasana - can do it at home okay, but in class I'm having trouble doing it towards the end of class. Takes me quite awhile to mentally prepare before going up, and once I have the pose I can't hold it for long, for fear of falling over and just not enough stamina or something. Claudia talked about 2 kinds of sirsasanas in her blog. I think I like the bregma version at home. In class I seem to do the crown headstand, or whatever version that will permit my feet to lift off the ground and provide a drishti so I don't get distracted by classmates behind me. Balance is a bigger issue than back curvature at the moment. Teacher told me to have my elbows closer together (because apparently they move apart once I'm up in the air. Who knew?) and that helped.

Jump backs - played with blocks today. I can get my legs off the ground with blocks under my hands for added arm length, yay! However, once I'm in lolasana I am completely stuck. I have no momentum for jumping back. Apparently I'm supposed to bend my arms to shift my center of gravity... hmm.. not happening right now. Arms are still not strong enough and ass is so heavy any shift in center of gravity (ie. shift of pelvis in mid-air) results in my body gets confused about what it can and cannot do. 2 solutions -

1. Keep practicing for many more life times.
2. Reduce size of ass (harder to achieve, but I think it'll be sooooo effective). I need a junk food police to hang out with me 24/7.

Forearm stands and handstands - yes yes I know they are not part of the Primary series, but I've been playing with them since I've discovered that achieving them is possible within this life time. Too chicken to do either of them without a wall within reach yet. I feel like my lower back isn't stable enough for me to hold these poses on my own, but it could be more of a mental block than a physical issue.

Urdhva dhanurasana - again, lower back feels unstable. I can feel stuff is moving around in the lower back spinal area, and that creeps me out. Can anyone share with me their experience working on this pose? I can't figure out if it's my spinal discs moving around or if it's my ligaments or whatever else is holding up my spine in that area. I can't distinguish actual pain sensations from soreness/discomfort from strong emotional feelings in this pose.

Chakrasana - exactly how important is the correctness of this move? I've been doing a judo/kung fu backward roll, using all momentum and trying to stay off the head completely. I think the "correct" way of doing this is actually going on the crown of the head a little bit. I haven't gotten any corrections yet, probably because the teacher thinks it's better to try to do some version than not to try it at all.

Bakasana - I seriously thought I'd totally have those pose down after 1 year of yoga practice. It's still difficult after 1.5 years! Another ass-heavy problem? I think I can hold the pose for about 3 breaths before my knees start sliding down my arms. Maybe it's a legs-are-too-heavy problem too.

Supta kurmasana - I can bind finger tips now! This is happening after I've been instructed to bind my wrist in all marichyasanas rather than just clasping my fingers together. I'm literally pulling my hand slightly out of its socket in every bind.. is that healthy for the joint? I can also cross my feet above my head, but not at the same time as binding my fingers. It's one or the other right now. Doing both simultaneously is considered as multi-tasking and too complex for my body/brain to handle.

General body issues - hips often feel over-stretched. Upper back between the shoulder blades are often sore; lower back feels a little lose, like it could use more strengthening. Sinus often feels kind of blocked. Neck always has issues. muscles around elbow area do not like the amount of chaturangas I put them through.  Gee, with this much complaints, my non-yogi friends for sure would advise me to stop with all this yoga madness. I'm hoping when I read this entry 6-12 months from now I'll be able to answer all of my own questions and provide better insights into whether or not my body issues have improved.

Yoga Teacher Training

Nobel talked about teacher training in his post, wondering if "yoga teacher certification" may give students the idea that a the learning yoga knowledge is terminal and that a 200YTT certification makes someone a "yoga expert".

Image source: http://www.bikramyoga.com/TeacherTraining/AboutTeacherTraining.php

As I mentioned in my very first blog post, I started yoga because a number of my friends suddenly got their yoga teacher training completed at around the same time. You don't really hear someone taking up jazz, golf, crocheting, taekwando or whatever, and suddenly announce they are getting certified to teach that activity. What's special about this "yoga" that makes people want to teach it? I always thought of yoga as just simple stretching exercises. My friends' actions made me think that there might be more to this activity. Other people sign up for yoga for health reasons. I signed up for yoga as a Sherlock Holmes wannabe, wanting to get to the bottom of this phenomenon. From the very beginning, I didn't just try to learn yoga; I started analyzing yoga teachers and the whole logic to a yoga class even before I got used to placing my limbs and spine in positions they had never been placed before. At the time I didn't realize there were so many yoga poses, so many yoga styles, or that each each pose contained so much alignment information (you mean it's not just copying what the teacher demos?), or that yoga teachers knew so much about the human anatomy, or that there was a sequencing logic to a yoga class. Talk about overwhelming oneself with information. Each yoga class I tried was so different from the other class (I alternated between hot yoga, yin, pilates, Kundalini, hatha, power, and Ashtanga my very first month into yoga, because I had no idea what the heck I was doing), and I couldn't easily figure out a simple logic to it. I was absolutely fascinated by the complexity of yoga.

Only a few months into yoga, I attended a free information session for a one-month intensive yoga teacher training program with at a studio at the far side of town, not because I wanted to become a yoga teacher myself, but because I was on a mission to find out what it takes to become a yoga teacher. I was expecting them to tell me I should practice for at least 2-3 years before I sign up. I was shocked when this teacher told me anyone can sign up for teacher training. I asked her how could I expect myself to teach people if I couldn't even do the most basic arm balance poses like bakasana. The teacher smoothly answered, "Maybe you'll be able to get into one during this teacher training". Hmm.... I have no doubt she would be able to teach me all the theoretical stuff about yoga, and I am confident in my memorization and understanding skills. But some poses take a lot of practice in order to get the strengthening, balance, and flexibility in place. How could she be confident that I would gain enough strength to do those poses within one month?  Ironically, her attempt to ease my concerns made me more sure that teacher training was not worth my money at that time. She reassuringly told me, "Don't worry, you won't have to learn how to put your foot behind your head". Why not? I thought at the time. For $3000+, shouldn't I be able to learn how to do almost every single yoga pose? 

At the time I did believe that all certified yoga teachers knew all the poses. Now I know that you can have a great asana practice yourself but suck as a teacher, and you don't have to pull off perfect asanas yourself in order to be a great teacher. I've been to simple hatha classes without any advanced balance or strength poses, and walked out of class feeling that my body had a well-rounded stretch, my core was sufficiently challenged, and my energy were properly balanced. I've also gone to power classes where I got really aggravated because I couldn't breath with the teacher's "choreography", or I was asked to attempt an advanced pose when my hamstrings weren't sufficiently prepped top open up fully in the  warm up sequences leading up to the pose. Teacher training program can only teach you technical stuff and give you some basic tips on how to lead a safe, logical yoga class. But amazing rock star teachers shine through with their own unique charisma, through a combination of teaching experience as well as their innate ability to connect with students and inspire. With Ashtanga teaching, the sequencing of primary series already makes mechanical sense in systematically opening up the body, where the beginning poses prep for later poses. The greatest challenges are to figure out how to engage the students and keep them interested, and how to lead beginners who are stiff and not very body aware through the sequence without having them feel defeated and over-challenged.

After all the serious investigations and analyses I've secretly conducted, violating drishti focus every class by curiously watching how my teacher adjusts other students, observing other students' poses, analyzing what are the alignment corrections for that particular version of the pose, what are the modifications that can be provided for that particular student, trying to figure out why the teacher would choose to adjust some students but not others, I think I am finally ready to stop being a busybody and  settle down as a yoga student to focus on my own yoga practice. Yah I know, I'm weird this way :)

p.s. To learn how to put your foot behind your head at no cost to you whatsoever, see this video for instructions. It worked for me! (after a few months of hip opening poses practicing yoga. My hips were pretty open to begin with though.)

Discussion of ujjayi breathing, mula bandha and core-centered practice

Sorry this post is a bit all over the place. I always have the urge to talk about 10 things at once and I don't feel like splitting this post into three, so here they are, a whole bunch of topics in one. Feel free to read and comment on only parts of this post.

Kino's video on "Accessing Forward Bends in the Ashtanga Yoga Primary Series" is a great reference video of the foundations of Ashtanga - the tristana: breath, postures, drishti. She offers excellent explanations of Ujjayi, or rather, "free deep breathing" (3:04 in the video), as well as the mula bandha, and the mechanics of a forward fold. I learned a lot from this video. Some yogis (including me) like to close their eyes during practice. Grimmly also questioned when dristi came about in the traditions. I can't comment on that because I am not familiar with the sutras or the history of yoga (I am not a diligent enough yogi >_<~), but at least Kino cleared up the purpose of the drishi, i.e., the energy goes where our gaze go. So if we look down in our forward folds, we probably bend downwards instead of forwards.

Now for a little bit of controversy. David Robson blogged about how Sharath mentioned at a conference that ujjayi is a pranyama technique to be practiced once a student reaches advanced series and not part of the Primary series asana practice. Say what? I guess there's no name to the breathing we do in Asthanga. The new official name is "free deep breathing (with sound)", like Ujjayi but not actually Ujjayi. This was in the comments section of the blog:

"A student had once asked Guruji if the breath we do during practice is like Ujjayi. Guruji didn't give a clear answer (I picture the Indian head bobble), and so the misnomer was born."

That wasn't too bad unless you're not used to being anal about the correctness of labels.

Now, mula bandha: Michael Stone (a psychotherapist who studied Ashtanga with Richard Freeman, but also studies other styles of yoga, plus he can read Sanskrit) gives his interpretation of mula bandha at about 5:25 in this video: The inner traditions of yoga. I highly recommend watching the whole video by the way. Unlike Kino who went into detail on the anatomy of mula bandha, Michael talked about not squeezing the anus or the pelvic floor, but rather a natural toning of the pelvic floor at the end of an exhale. The "bandha" is not really a lock but a yoking of attention and the feeling of the breath (he describes prana not as the breath itself but a feeling pattern of the breath, a life energy that's associated with the breath) at the end of an exhale. To be honest, I find it hard to focus at the end of the breath (still a beginner), but I understand why he teaches it this way. Mula bandha is probably a pretty subtle engagement, but as a beginner practitioner, it's hard to engage the right amount of muscle fibers, so students were just taught to "squeeze the anus". If you squeeze everything in that general area the mula bandha will be engaged. However like Michael says, it's pretty uncomfortable and students forget to breath. That I agree with from experience. I think with Michael it's free breathing first, the bandha comes later.

In my practice today I experimented with both "general area squeeze" and no squeeze in various asanasa + vinyasas, and found that Michael was correct in that it's not necessary to do the massive anal squeeze to engage the core. Poses that require a lot of core (e.g. utpluthih), muscles in the core area get engaged anyways, otherwise the pose won't happen. Mega-squeezing did actually induce extra unnecessary strains. On the other hand I noticed it was really hard to keep the uddiyana bandha engaged at all times.  I think with more practice I'll be able to engage the right set of muscles; for now I'll go easy with the "mula bandha overs-queezing", and focus on the uddiyana bandha instead.

Nobel wrote two posts on the topic of core-centered practice. My take is that for Ashtanga yoga and utpluthih (probably some other poses too) specifically train for core strength. Jump throughs are not possible without hardcore core engagement. It is totally possible to do a lot of the more basic poses without bandha engagement, e.g. warrior II, tree pose etc. However, no core engagement makes it really easy to get injured. Coming up from a standing forward fold is unsafe when core is not engaged to protect the spine. So is upward facing dog. In fact, my colleagues recently strained their lower backs from doing YogaX (a power yoga sequence in P90X) because Tony Horton didn't emphasize the concept of "sucking in the belly button", a.k.a. core engagement in upward facing dog or coming up from standing forward folds. People love him, and macho people who would otherwise never try yoga in a million years are practicing yoga because of him, so I guess I shouldn't judge. Nobel asked if bandha (core) control is necessary for safe yoga practice, how should beginners approach yoga then, if they start out having little core strength? That's when I think pilates classes come in handy. I do think it's a good idea for people to build some basic core strength through pilates before getting into power / Ashtanga yoga. However, I noticed some people in our studio would only take pilates classes and avoid yoga classes. I had a discussion with a yoga teacher friend who thinks it's because pilates classes offer straight-forward feedback - "feel the abs burning!" whereas yoga requires more body-limb coordination and upper body strength. People who lack upper body strength and who only want the satisfaction of "getting a good work out" minus the frustrations of a learning curve may prefer pilates over yoga.

Anyways, it sounds like I'm becoming totally judgmental, but I just find it fascinating trying to figure out why some people will only do restorative and yin yoga, some will do 2 hot yoga classes in a row every day, some will only do pilates, and others will only do power yoga. Hmm.. and which of these people have the strongest vs. the nicest looking core muscles? :D

How yoga helps me appreciate my body type

I'm a pretty idealistic (read: unrealistic) girl who spends the majority of her day fantasizing about alternative realities (precisely why I need yoga, Buddhism teachings, and Eckhart Tolle to help bring me back to the "Now"). The body type I dream to possess is tall, slender, lithe, with mile-long model legs and narrow, dainty feet that fit into store display size 7 strappy sandals. Something that looks like this model. Yes, I want to look like a human clothes hanger that may be blown away on a windy day.

In reality, my genetics have given me a long torso, relative short legs (I usually have to hem all pants that I purchase or buy the "ankle length" jeans), large ass, thunder thighs, ultra-wide size 9 feet that cannot fit into half the shoes I try on in stores (most shoes do not have an "extra wide" option). Strappy sandals are out of the question for my feet. Skinny jeans will never be part of my wardrobe. This is quite depressing. Luckily yoga is helping me discover some advantages to aspects of myself I normally despise with vengeance.

Below is a list of body parts that yoga is helping me appreciate.

Short legs - facilitates wrist binding in paschimotanasana C.

I actually would rather have long model legs and never be able to bind in this pose. It's not like any time I have to spend the money to hem my too-long jeans I can just drop to the floor, demo the pose and get a discount. It makes me laugh when people who do have the skinny-jeans ready gorgeous long legs express genuine frustration that they can't do this pose. Seriously, appreciate your gorgeous legs that people admire in awe whenever you're not in an Ashtanga yoga class! But I guess that goes the same for me. I should enjoy the rare opportunity in my life when I can gloat about my ability to bind my wrists as a direct benefit from possessing stubby legs.

Meaty gluts - provides cushioning and facilitates balance for navasana, upavistha konasana b, ubhaya padangusthasana, and urdhva mukha paschimottanasana

My skinny shalamates with tiny bums were complain about tailbone pain in these poses. I tried rolling slightly forward and back, tilting my pelvis in various angles and found myself unable to have my tailbone make contact with ground due to the amount of meat cushioning my derriere. Despite the fact I envy small bums I am very happy not having tail bone pains doing these poses.

Fat calves - facilitates landing after supta konasana. (From this pose to this pose)

I just learned this pose recently. The teacher told everyone to hyperextend their legs and land on their calves. The sounds of everyone else's heels banging against the ground made me and my teacher cringe. This is about the only time in my life I appreciate having fatty calves (and hyper-extendable knees). Normally I try not to look at my calves. If I unfortunately notice them, I stare at them with hatred, secreting wishing my laser-sharp gaze would melt the fat. Alternatively, maybe if I massaged them hard enough the fats would break off and get metabolized. This is wishful thinking by the way.

Thunder thighs - it's a little difficult to come up with reasons to love these things. They serve to hinder kukkutasana and binding in supta kurmasana. Hmm... maybe they make binding in marichyasana C more comfortable (again, cushioning effect)? Forward folds are also more comfy because my belly gets to lay on cushy meat rather than bony legs? Wow, I'm really stretching to make up reasons to love my thighs. Thunder thighs are hard to love.

I'm trying hard to work with the body type I've been given by my genes. My arms will never look good in Kate Middleton's lace-sleeve styled tops, but Michelle Obama arms aren't impossible for me! Not that I really want arms like that; it's just the built is possible for my body type. My mom complains that I exercise too much and look like an athlete (not desirable for Asian women). Well, I simply don't have the skinny Asian body type. I have a choice between 1)long-term starvation, 2) exercising and looking muscular, or 3) not exercising and looking pudgy. Already tried the 3rd option and hated it; never succeeded with starvation (I think I would need 24-hour manned surveillance), so it's number 2 for me! Going to yoga class in a few hours!

p.s. Check out Gisele Bunchen doing Urdhva Dhanurasana. Look at those mile-long legs. She's going to have so much trouble walking her hands all the way to her heels :D :D :D

Ashtanga practice with a gimpy leg

So I went to Ashtanga practice yesterday, my right leg already feeling way better than Monday. I had to modify my triang mukha eka pada paschimottanasana as well as all poses involving half and full padmasanas. For vinyasas, instead of crossing my legs and hopping back, I swung both legs to the right side and walked back to plank, and for jump forward I swung both legs to the left (instead of jumping). I looked and felt like I was doing some funky break dancing move. The day before I could barely hold weight in my right warrior lunges, but yesterday my lunges were much better. So the only things bugging me now are full knee bending (calf touching hamstring) and extreme internal rotation of leg.

Modified primary series felt kind of bleh... I'm at a point where I don't easily feel a stretch, except maybe hamstrings. Even with the hammies I feel like it's only a matter of time before I stop feeling an intense stretch in the tendons and muscles. I've been told before (not by a yoga teacher) that I have longer ligaments than average people, hence I find it hard to feel a stretch in my muscles even though my joints have been pushed to their limits. I always feel my muscles need a good stretch; I'd love it if I could tighten all my ligaments by a few millimeters (not really possible without surgery).

My mom mentioned to me that I seem kind of addicted to exercising. Hmm... yah, I guess I do appear that way, compared to those who consider a 30min walk or a 10min run on treadmill once or twice a week as adequate work out. I admit I don't frequently do girly stuff like baking, cooking, crafting, sewing, knitting, scrap-booking, finger nail painting, spas, etc. I feel for me, the "rewards" for practicing yoga far exceed any of the above mentioned activities. I'm just glad it's possible to still do some yoga with a gimpy leg. Hopefully next week I'll be 99% back to normal.

Ashtanga practice... finally doing (almost) the full Primary series!

Ashtanga practice update in point form:

- Question: does anyone else find it difficult to hold up the arm in utthita parsvakonasana B? The arm just feels insanely heavy and my shoulder burns in this pose. I kept expecting it to go away as my shoulder becomes stronger but it's still there after many months of practicing the full pose.

- Prasarita Paddottanasana C: I thought normal human beings are not meant to actually touch their hands to the ground, or something would tear in the shoulders; but my teacher got my fingers to touch the ground with slow but steady pushing after 5 breaths. So okay, with someone pushing on my arms this can happen. But after a few assists I suddenly found myself being able to do this without assistance. Freaky!

- Mari D: left side binding is totally inconsistent (some days I get it and other days I don't); no idea why

- Kurmasansa: heel lift is consistent, but holding for 5 breaths feels impossible. I aim for 2 breaths and then just give up

- Supta kurmasana: my teacher said when he first learned this pose, he felt pain/discomfort in the upper sternum near the collar bone area. I said I wasn't feeling it when I first started practicing this pose. I'm feeling it now! Does this mean I'm getting closer to achieving the actual pose?

- Garbha pindasana: not happening unless I lose a few pounds of meat on my thighs. I have NOT lost any weight since I started yoga! Does this mean I have to start dieting?

- I just started doing the rolls (like 2 weeks ago). Can't even get all the way around in 9 moves so there's no way I'll be able to pull off 5 rolls. I'll stick with 9 (or 10) for now.

- Teacher still hasn't taught chakrasana yet; I searched a few Youtube videos today and am going to try to learn it on my own (I'm really impatient) By the way, do non-Ashtangis call urdhva dhanurasana -> chakrasana? It was not that easy to find actual chakrasana transition videos.

- In place of no chakrasana, teacher tried to teach me padmasana jump-backs today. I started laughing uncontrollably when I heard the instruction "make cleavage with your elbows" so I was unsuccessful with this move.

- Just learned setu bandhasana today. Definitely feels weird. Oh well, new pose to work on!

- Utpluthih: I can lift off the ground for a few breaths now. Exciting!!

I once had a massage therapist who pushed his forearm hard on my back and ran it all the way down the spine (perpendicular to spine). Lots of cracks and pops were generated from this technique, which was kind of scary, but afterwards the back felt awesome. I could use that chiropractic adjustment again right about now.

Yoga is not a synonym for stretching!!!!

I have a bunch pretty fit friends who bike, run, hike, swim, run marathons, compete in triathalons, rock climb, kick box, ski at a competitive level, lift heavy weights, you name it. When I told them I've switched from mix martial arts to yoga, to them I sound like I've gone from an abled-bodied person to a wheel chair- bound granny. I notice they way they see look at me, they manner they talk to me have subtly transformed. Some of them would gingerly ask me, "Is yoga enough of a work out for you?" When I replied "yes", that seemed to only confirm their suspicions that I've dropped 10 fold in my fitness level. It seems like they longer have common topics to chat with me. I've "gone to the dark side". To make me feel better, when I meet up with some of these friends, they would tell me, "Hey, I did some yoga this morning. It felt great!" Or, "I try to do some yoga after my gym workouts now; I can see it's good for me."

What the heck am I supposed to answer? Yes people - stretching is good for you - especially in the morning and after exercising. But just because you did a few stretches that somewhat resembled some sort of yoga poses (and I bet you probably held them for less than 5 breaths.. did you even breath while you stretched?) does not mean you were "doing yoga". Even if that's about as much "yoga" as you're ever planning to do, fine. But please don't assume that simple stretching is all I do in my yoga practice.

There was a guy who told me he would like to try a yoga class with me but he's afraid he would get bored. Hmm.. I've never heard of anyone who died of boredom from ONE yoga class. When I asked him why he would feel bored (if he thinks the poses would be too easy - if he has zero attention span and canNOT manage to focus on his breath), there was no clarification. Fine, I won't force anyone to endure the hardship of boredom if one feels so strongly about it.

Then there are those who tell me yoga is boring stretching that does not even count as a warm up, but, hey, they've heard of HOT yoga - now THAT's something challenging! Yes yes, hot yoga is great for type A sporty people who are scared of stretchy peace-talking chanting meditation yoga. Why don't you actually try one class out? I'll even suck it up and go to a Bikrams class with you! And no, hot yoga is not the best type of yoga for improving flexibility, because your flexibility only temporarily improves in the heat -- try Yin and Ashtanga! And you need to stick with it! ONE class will not open up your hips permanently!

Can you tell I'm frustrated today? :P  Guess I'll keep on working on my utplutih, where I noticed observable improvements in my arm strengths over the past year, versus the crap push ups I've been doing with my friends for years which got me so far but didn't help me do proper chaturangas when I first started yoga.

Inhale... breath in fresh air and happy thoughts. Exhale.... let go of anger and judgement. I feel better now, thanks for asking :)

Taking Sharath's led class through live stream

I learned about this Sharath's led class on livestream through Claudia's blog post . I wasn't gun-ho on doing the class but I did set the alarm clock just for the heck of it (you have no idea how many mornings I have unconsciously switched off the alarm, went on sleeping and ended up late for school). I didn't think I'd wake up for it but turned out I did (3:30am west coast time!) Being somewhat lazy (understandable at this ungodly hour of the night), I just wanted to turn on the computer to see a bit of the streaming video then head back to bed.

I got to the website at around 3:27am. The screen was still just a Jois Yoga logo but the audio was on already. I was hearing excited background chattering in the NYC yoga room. Somehow this got me really excited too. I felt like I was participating in some epic event. Knowing that there must be some other hardcore Ashtangis in other parts of the world following this streaming video in their own homes at the exact same time made it feel special too.

Then at 3:30am, the visual came online. There was the smiley Sharath, sitting in padmasana on a high chair, addressing a roomful of eager looking yogis. I just realized I've never taken a Primary series class with anyone other than my teacher! Can I even follow this class? Will there be technical difficulties with the streaming? Turned out I was way too much of a worrywart. There was zero technical problems with the streaming; multiple-cameras provided different views of the yoga room, which was awesome. Sharath counts way slower than my teacher (which made this led class tough at times) and offered almost no instructions on how to get into any of the poses, but I was fine most of the way through, besides the stuff I can't do yet of course. Overall it was a super cool experience and I have learned a lot, which made it an experience well-worth the suffering from lack of sleep the rest of Friday.

In my class I'm always staring at people's backs or staring at the wall if I'm at the front row. This was the first time I got a front view of a primary series practice. Also, my observation of Ashtanga practice have been restricted to either beginner practices (most people in my class have been practicing for less than 2 years) or expert practices (demos from my teacher, plus Richard Freeman and Kino McGregor DVDs, who are all super bendy and nearly perfect in all their poses). I didn't have a reference point of what intermediate level practices looked like until today.  I was amazed that almost the entire room could bind in Mari D and get into supta kurmasana (or at least people in the first few rows whom the camera focused on). I really enjoyed watching different variations of vinyasas: how most people, or at least ppl in the front rows, had no trouble with the jump throughs. It was also cool to see some of the super strong people who could hold a high utplutih through the slowest counting I've ever experienced, but were not able to do all the poses perfectly (again, I had no reference point until now).

Here are a few things I have learned from participation in this led class:

1. It's not necessary to tie my hair up and pin them back with 50 bobby pins, or wear body-squeezing Lululemon yoga-wear to prevent all the jiggly parts from hanging out while doing yoga. I was in my loose pajamas and was still able do the practice, albeit having uncombed bed hair in my eyes the whole time. Now I'm not going to show up to class looking like I just rolled out of bed, but it's cool to know that technical sweat-wicking clothing is not absolutely necessary for yoga (sweaty t-shirt still interfered with some of the binding poses though, but I couldn't really bind for most poses at this hour anyways).

2. If I don't put 100% effort into it, the primary series is, surprisingly, not an insanely tiring practice, especially if I skipped all the arm balancing poses, hooray! (I was too sleepy to pull them off). No wonder I always walk out of my yoga classes feeling utterly exhausted while some fellow yogis look like they've barely broke a sweat. While I do think I need to ease up a bit, I'm happy with the quick progress I've made in this practice. I figure once I get over the initial muscle-building pains, chaturagas, navasanas and utplutih will eventually feel less like self-torturing moves right?

3. I was surprised how much people fidget during savasana. One woman even refused to do it at all. She just rolled up her mat and sat cross-legged instead. My teacher always says, "Resist the urge to fidget  around during savasana". I took it to mean that we shouldn't even wiggle into a more comfortable flat back lying pose, which is kind of tough, but now I see that people actually roll around and do all sorts of major limb movements, very obviously not emptying their minds in this pose.

4. I have so much respect for Sharath and all the Ashtanga teachers. I can't believe Sharath's been doing this almost all of his life. Takes a lot of commitment to just count for people day in and day out. I originally had the plan to just watch the video instead of doing the class but I ended up doing the series because it was so boring to do nothing and watch, at least for the first half of the series. The second half was more interesting because starting at Bhujapidasana I began to see a lot of variations in how people got into the poses and the poses themselves. I also noticed how Sharath kept on scanning the room with his eyes the whole time, even while he was supporting someone in a pose.

5. There was a petit young women in blue pants who didn't seem to have as much strength as everyone else in the room to do all the poses, but eagerly kept up anyways, which I found admirable. In a roomful of yogis who all seemed to be able to pull off sirsasana, she stood out as the only person who kept kicking up with one leg to get up to a headstand. Now, if I were a beginner (I still have trouble with consistent headstands actually, but I've been taught never to kick up), I'd be pretty intimidated about getting Sharath's assistance, especially among a roomful of advanced yogis. However, this girl seemed to be totally ready for Sharath when he finally walked over to bring her into a headstand. After the practice, the girl walked up the front and cuddled up to Sharath while he was giving his closing lecture; that was when I finally saw her face and realized who she was and how young she was.. Sharath's cute little girl is perhaps only about 10 years old? Kudos to her for completing the 90 minute practice!

Anyways, I probably wouldn't do it again next Friday, but I'm glad I woke up and tried out yoga with the guidance of the head of the Ashtanga Institute in the middle of the night :)  Oh, one more little thing for my personal reference: karnapidasana felt especially difficult at what was it, 4:30am?  Maybe I was too sleepy to command my body to move properly, LOL. Maybe this means I'm not ready for Mysore, India yet :P

No tiny yoga shorts in my class today :( :( :(

I looked around in my classroom today and noticed that not a single person wore short shorts! None of the women wore anything shorter than crop pants. The guys either wore super long shorts that went all the way below the knees (basketball shorts I think), or bicycle shorts, or shorts that covered at least half the the thighs. I was kind of disappointed :( I swear I've seen women in sports bras at least and somewhat short shorts (butt cheeks still covered) in yoga classes before, but I guess today in particular was a G-rated, family-friendly class. Sad.

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Onwards! A bit about dristi. I try hard to stare at my own nose, but truth is, I'm fascinated by everyone's body types, athletic backgrounds, flexibility levels, teacher's personalized adjustments for each individual, asana progresses, so on and so on. What can I say, I am super curious! I generally keep my head facing in the direction of the drishti but my eyes are constantly checking these things out. I just learned today that for Mari C, the head faces straight behind, but the drishi should still be on the nose. LOL, no wonder I've been feeling super awkward having to look eye-to-eye at all the people behind me this entire time I've been practicing this series! The thing is, people in this class have worse drishti than I do. Even for people who are stiff as a board, shouldn't they at least be looking towards the side wall, rather than staring straight at me? How the heck do you do a twist when you're still facing forward?

Hmm, never mind, I just tried it; it's still possible to do a twist while looking ahead, but good luck getting deeper into the pose (especially without a bind)!

Oh, and for Karnapidasana + Pindasana, the drishi is what, navel? So why do I find myself staring at the anti-camel toe patch on my pants instead? It's better than the alternative of what I'd be staring at if the patch weren't there I guess.

I realize drishi for forward folds is the big toe, but right now I'm just looking down at my large thighs because I'm having neck strain issues. I can't figure out if I'm straining my neck from yoga or if it's from bad postures working long hours in front of the computer. It's probably a mixture of both. Anyways, forehead kissing my knees right now until my neck improves, which could take awhile.

Drishi's definitely necessary in a classroom setting. Otherwise I'd be admiring people's fashion instead. Oh wait, I do that anyways. I guess I've always been admiring people's cute tanks tops and new hair styles. Today was the first time I paid attention to people's shorts, which seemed to be not as short I'd expected :D

Yah I know, my dharana, pranayama and pratyahara kind of suffer with this bad habit, but I think if I take yoga too seriously there's the danger of getting tired of it some day. Never know if that day will come, but I don't want it to come too soon. Still fascinated with many aspects of Ashtanga right now.