Changes

So, I just realized that it has been months since I last posted. Here are the things that have happened since November:

1. We bought a house.
2. The love of my life got a new job.
   
3. I started an Anusara yoga immersion, chock-full of insights into my practice.
   
4. I found a Dream Job, at an excellent school in San Francisco. I'm excited about the new school, but sad to be leaving the old one, particularly about leaving my advisees.
   
5. I went on a weekend-long retreat for teens as an adult helper.
   

I've been busy.



All this busy-ness has been good in some ways. The teen retreat in particular gave me time to reflect on the many changes that have recently taken place.

The house is great. The man's new job is OK, though it takes him away from home for 3 days every week right now, which leaves me feeling somewhat unmoored; on the other had, I do get to do things like spend an evening at Spirit Rock, like I did last night. That's a good thing. About the immersion: I'm psyched to be working on my yoga practice in a new, deeper way. In many ways, deepening my yoga and meditation practices couldn't have happened at a better moment.

A story from my practice: three weeks ago, the night before a day-long interview at the Dream School, my teacher asked me to demo a handstand assist. I have a long and painful history with adho mukha vrksasana -- despite my ecstatic moments with it last fall, I have deep mistrust of my body's ability to hold itself up. And fear of falling/failing, of course. I initially balked at demoing the pose. I've done a couple of demos in class before, but never a pose I've had such a hard time with. But some voice in me said to just get out there & do it. So I told her I'd give it a try. And I felt strong and supported and safe and all those good things that come from practicing in a warm, wonderful space, with a wonderful teacher. I took from that class a sense of confidence and awe that I then carried into my interview; I don't think I would have felt so confident and open during the interview if I hadn't had to push myself beyond my yogic edge that night.

I tell that story because my teacher told it to the class tonight (I was both honored and embarrassed), in the context of a lesson on stepping into life with your practice in your heart. Not necessarily written on your sleeve, though my yoga practice is known to anyone who speaks with me for more than 30 minutes. But living from the heart, and generating all of your actions from the heart, is living your yoga -- carrying the practice off the mat.

My feelings about having stepped into that pose in front of a room of people reminded me of what I think is most important about developing as a teacher and as a human being: there is never a perfect pose; there is only true, genuine, honest intention. Everything we do can be done better, but should be done with honesty. That's another post..

Readability

I was doing my usual feed-catch-up and picked up this little test from Clay Burrell.

Here's my grade:



What can I say? Well, it turns out things are more complicated. At first, I double-checked with Juicy Studio's readability descriptions (thanks to Diane Cordell's blog); according to an analysis of my site's URL, it would seem that I'm consistently obfuscatory for those below a certain education level. So I wrote a long paragraph in defense of polysyllabic words and the idea that blogging should excuse one neither from exercising one's vocabulary nor from using proper grammar. I don't believe that I'm wrong about that, but I had to rethink the rest of this post when I noticed this link along the side of the Juicy page.

Recalculating my readability scores using my RSS feed, I score quite high on the Flesch Reading Ease scale, my Fog Index score aligns with Mark Twain's, and you only need to have spent 5 years in school to understand my writing. Whew! Guess I can keep those long words and complex sentence structures after all. Those of you who have been working only with your website's URL and not with your feed may want to recalculate if your results aren't satisfactory. Here's the new grade level:




What a relief!

October is a such a busy month

I haven't blogged lately because I've been too busy with everything. Everything includes school, yoga and travel.

The yoga part has been the best part. Travel was good too, but tiring. I almost decided to dwell on the not-best-parts, but in the spirit of focusing only on the positive, I will write today about the yoga part.

Two weeks ago, I had the great honor of attending a workshop led by John Friend in San Francisco. I started studying Anusara yoga a couple of years ago, when I arrived in San Francisco from the East coast. I had previously practiced Ashtanga yoga, along with a bunch of other schools of asana. But Anusara (true to its fashion) spoke to my heart. And although I've taken some time away from an Anusara practice, in the last few months I've rekindled the connection. I am so glad I did.

I was thrilled to be accepted into John Friend's workshop: I was one of 250 "mixed-level" students who got in. I had no idea what to expect, and never would have predicted what did happen, for the effects of the weekend are still reverberating in my life. I met new "yoga friends" and no longer feel alone at the studio. I got to see who this amazing teacher was, whom my teachers had been raving about. I got to realize that I am still learning and growing as a practitioner. I still have so much to learn, but even more important, I want to learn so much.

The fourth thing that happened to me is less egoistic and more subtle: I felt my practice become lighter. And every time I have practiced since the workshop has been full of joy and full of presence. I'm not just struggling to move into a difficult pose. My whole being is involved in that pose, even the poses I feel least confident about (bakasana, I'm talking to you). And despite a struggle with handstand (one that has been going on for nigh on 10 years), I am beginning to see that pose with lightness and ease. I know that spending 8 hours of one weekend doing yoga has not made me a perfect yogini. I do feel a sense of greater comfort an ease in my body. Maybe my heart melted just the right way at the workshop; maybe I am just happier now that I have a core of new acquaintances. But I'm looking forward to my next day of practice. Maybe that will be the day I kick up into handstand and float there, strong and open.