The Lying Down Club

As I compose compelling skin care copy, the blog is supposed to be on hiatus. Despite this, I am inspired to write a response to Angela Jamison’s lovely and recent post called “Rest.” Among writers and bloggers, Angela is one of my favourites. Her masterfully selected words stick with you for a long time.

“Rest.” by Angela Jamison is the perfect complement to "How to Wake Up to Yoga,"and "How to Get Up for Yoga Again."

 (Forgive me if I sound like a bottle of re-hydrating anti-age serum. The syntax has permeated my cells.)

Angela Jamison
Ashtanga Yoga, Ann Arbor

 Says Angela,

“Waking up, check. Around here, we like intensity, sharp focus, and fire. Life on the razor’s edge is sweet and clear. But if you only practice getting up strong, and do not practice going to bed soft, then imbalances can form in the nervous system over the long term. Some of the first indicators of lack of deep rest may be: fuzzy mind, emotional unavailability or reactivity, and susceptibility to illness. In this light, deep rest enables creativity, meaningful relationships, and vibrancy.

Conscious relaxation shows in a person’s bodily tissues, in the personality, and in how she relates with time and with the earth. It is the foundation of Jedi mind training.”

I’ve never had too much trouble waking up early. From the age of seven, the hands of my Mickey Mouse watch directed an extensive routine that involved walking the dog, practicing the violin and writing eloquent letters to my grandparents in Manitoba. These letters came out every single day. With my smelly Mr. Sketch markers, I lovingly decorated the envelopes. Over the years, the morning routine evolved and devolved to encompass grueling swim team workouts, and icy runs with ankle and wrist weights.  

As for sleeping, typically I am not terrible. Early into my Ashtanga days, I stopped consuming caffeine around noon, if not much earlier. Like clockwork, a chai at 12:30 results in mild reverberations extending past midnight. If someone needed a sleep coach, stopping caffeine at lunchtime would be my first piece of advice. Alcohol at any time, and Netflix past 8 p.m., these are also risky gambles. Maybe it is worth it sometimes, especially during family visits. You’ll have to figure this out for yourself.

Many Ashtangis go through a stage of being obsessed with food. Little to no dinner seems to be a trend, the ostensible key to a light and energized practice. I’ve tried this a few times, in Mysore and at Vipassana. Most often it ends with me sitting in the dark, quite hungry.  My body has pretty clear needs, and pretty clear signals. This, I have come to appreciate. Keeps the Divorce Diet in check. The Vipassana People eventually took pity on me. By Day 3, they permitted evening peanut butter sandwiches. By Day 7, they granted me a dinner tray with my name on it, plus after hours fridge access. Everyone is different.

Let’s talk about imbalances in the nervous system. During my seven and a half years of unfailingly waking up for yoga, utter exhaustion definitely came up. In January of 2013, I started a job speaking French to (mostly) three, four and five year olds at a Montessori School. It entailed that I rush out of the house to catch the bus at 7:30 a.m. One hour commute, followed by 8 to 9 hours uttering futile sentences to erratic tiny humans. Before embarking on this high-intensity process, I considered it essential that I crank myself through second series, which meant waking up at 4 or 4:30 a.m. It never occurred to me that maybe I could take it down a notch, in the service of early childhood education. Oh no. Didn’t want to “lose” my practice. Within three months, my coping skills had deteriorated to verge on clinical insanity. My body developed an awkward series of involuntary twitches, replicating a bus driver in anticipation of a head-on collision. My mind became flooded with traumatic memories from the eighth grade. Each night I would wail to the Boatman about some traumatic 12-year-old injustice. Particularly raw was the time everyone on the swim team was invited to Kayla Clark’s fourteenth birthday party. Everyone except for me. After five months at the Montessori School, the left bottom half of my body went out of commission. I cut my practice down to fifteen minutes. The twitches and traumatic memories dwindled almost immediately.

Rest is important. I often wonder to what extent hauling dogged ass at non-negotiable hours in the morning has impeded my long-term healing. So many of my Ashtanga years were spent in a state of mild to severe emotional catastrophe, not to mention unambiguous joint pain. To the emotional catastrophe, my fellow practitioners and various teachers would reply, “Oh, the practice is bringing stuff up. You’re getting into the good stuff. It’s working.” They made it sound as though clarity and peace were just around the corner. Although it was pleasant to believe that my suffering stemmed from an important and profound spiritual cause, I now believe that a component of my spiritually “good stuff” was nothing but simple, inconsolable fatigue.

An essential, and often neglected ingredient: Take Rest Posture. Lying Down Club. Sharath insists that it isn’t savasana. Call it what you like, it has never been my specialty. Too hungry, too horny, too caffeinated, whatever the reason, my lying down efforts joined the miserably pathetic four years ago when I moved to Halifax. Ten seconds, ten breaths. I became terrified of lying down. Sometimes a song would help, as long as pressing play didn’t coincide with examining the interwebs and all that Wifi and cellular data had to offer.

Mr. Iyengar recommended that for every 30 minutes of asana, the yoga practitioner should take five minutes of rest. In Mysore, after approximately thirty seconds, Sharath would send us on our way. “Thank you very much. Take rest at home.”  The committed amongst us wouldn’t stop for a coconut. The rest of us would, and maybe that was that.  

Lie down, take rest. Practice dying. Such a difficult posture. Most of the other asanas, I’ve traded in for this. Give the earth your cells. I got this phrase from a contact improv teacher in Halifax. I went to her class the day I decided to leave. In the end, you can’t keep anything.

I lie down to practice dying, and give my cells to the earth. It feels like everything’s unravelling.

Here are some things I think about when I’m trying to relax:

-Metta: "May all be safe, may all be happy, may all be healthy, may all live with ease."

Funnily enough, I learned this from an elephant journal article. While you’re thinking it, you can pay attention to how your heart feels. I used to do this in front of the yoga shala in Mysore, as I waited for the gates to open.

-Another phrase:

"I’m sorry, I forgive you, I love you, I thank you."

I learned this from Simon, my ex-ex-boyfriend who jumped off a building in January. Simon said that you’re supposed to repeat this phrase, both to your ego, and to the world.  The practice cured Simon in three and a half days. It will take me longer than this.

-The Buddha’s last words to Ananda, who served by the Buddha’s side for fifty years or more. As the Buddha lay dying, he said this to Ananda. It makes me wish my name was Ananda:

“Ananda,” said the Buddha,

“Everything breaks down.
Tread the path with care.
Nothing is certain.
Trust yourself.”

Big love to Angela Jamison. Deep rest for all.

The End.

By Angela at AY:A2

Rest.

How to Wake Up for Yoga

How to Get Up for Yoga Again

Baby Jedi

 
Exuberant Bodhisattva on Facebook
Twitter: @mypelvicfloor
I Let Go, by Erica J. Schmidt

The Benefits of an Ashtanga Yoga Practice, Part Two
Simon
Brand New Mysore Clubs
I read "Choose Yourself" by James Altucher and my oxytocin levels increased immediately.
Yours Til Ekam Inhales

 

Mysore Update: The Lady with the Stick

I have moved out of Pushpa’s house, and into a slightly more modern apartment. The apartment is upstairs to the home of a middle to upper class family. I have a little more space than I did at Pushpa’s, though the laundry situation is approximately the same. So far, I have done laundry on the rooftop two times. I have borrowed some official laundry soap from my vegan British roommate. It is liquid and organic. Sometimes I am skeptical of the efficacy of pure organic things and so I continue to use my bar Ivory soap in the hopes that it will improve the overall odour outcome. So far, some of my clothing smells quite nice, while the mildew lingers on in a couple of items. I am doing my best to make friends before the mildew becomes overpowering.

Laundry at my new place

It took me some time to figure out the closest and safest way to get to the shala.  I scored a 4:30 start time for led class, which we have until Tuesday. For my few readers who aren't Ashtanga geeks, 4:30 shala time, means 4:15 for the rest of the world. My alarm goes off around 3 a.m. Once in Halifax, I woke up at 3 a.m. in order to practice before subbing for a yoga teacher. It was one of the greatest accomplishments of my life, and I spoke of little else for several weeks afterwards. Perhaps my whole life has been preparation for 3 a.m.

The obligatory selfie with registration card

Our first led class came the morning after an enormous thunderstorm. The stray dogs close to my apartment were pretty riled up and barked quite emphatically as I walked by.  The ten or fifteen minute route seemed excruciatingly long, and I felt nervous. Three dogs ran towards me as I walked passed a field, where people milk cows every morning. For quite a few blocks, they circled me, and one of them took my flowy pink hippie skirt and purple shawl into his mouth. He didn’t seem malicious at all and reminded me of when my Big Black Dog used to run after me in the house. Still, I remember that once the Big Black Dog accidentally bit me in the butt while he was fooling around. Not knowing what these dogs have been through, the last thing I wanted was a dog bite. Finally, as I got closer to the shala, another yoga student appeared out of his apartment and the dogs found him to be more exciting than my pink skirt.

Although I arrived at the shala well before four a.m. already there was big crowd in front of the gate. A major part of the practice here is trying not to get pissed off at the bizarre line up dynamic. So far I haven’t seen anyone be horribly obnoxious, but it is definitely a rush to get in. Being Canadian, I refuse to push and try to be polite about letting people go ahead of me. For the first couple of days, by the time I got in, the room was pretty full. Lucky for me though, for three mornings I squeezed into an excellent spot next to the door. There, it is slightly less hot which is good for Canadians. Also, I got to practice behind Miami Life Centre’s Daylene Christenson. She is one of the cool kids, and she has a beautiful and majestic practice. Of course my drishti was perfect and I didn’t watch her at all, but I think just having her in front of me inspired my latissimus dorsi, among other things.

 

Some people blog extensively about their practice and all of their body parts. Others feel this is somehow taboo. I will just say that I have recently diagnosed myself with an eighty year old hip. I arrived in Mysore with much trepidation, wondering if maybe I should only be doing Surya Namaskar A. The first day, some Sharath slash Mysore magic kicked in and my pain seemed minimal and manageable.  That said, by the end of the week, the hideous and sketchy clicking returned during practice and especially during the day. This is not just bubbles of synovial fluid popping. Something is off. Rubbing oil on my joints is soothing, but not a cure. And so, the ego will have to bleed to death as I bid farewell to a buffet of postures. Honestly though, with the 3 a.m. wake up, and the dogs and the crowd, postures have been the very least of my worries.

I came home from my first practice distraught and overcome by the fear that the next morning, the dogs would bite me and I’d get rabies. I Facetimed Robbie in tears.

“Yah, if they’re right on your skirt, that’s a bit sketchy,” he said.

My landlady could hear me crying and came upstairs to see what was wrong.

“Oh, I will give you a stick,” she said when she heard. “And if they keep bothering you, I’ll have them poisoned.” To many of the people here, the stray dogs are like rats. It’s sad. They don’t give me any problems during the day. At night they are just protecting their territory. They aren’t trained or loved. What can you expect?

All day I obsessively asked everyone I ran into what I should do. I posted on the Facebook page about a walking buddy, but no dice. I can understand people have enough to deal with at 3:30 in the morning. Many people suggested I get a scooter; however, I feel this an even greater hazard as I am a terrible driver. Robbie thought maybe a rickshaw driver could pick me up, but it would be hard to find someone reliable and it could also be expensive. Anyways, after hours of consulting and redrawing maps, I finally figured out a route that cut down my walking time, almost by half. And it didn’t pass any fields or garbage. I decided I would carry the stick and try the new route the next day.

So far I haven’t had any problems. The dogs I pass on my new route are usually sleeping. The ones I do see veer off whenever they see the stick. Sadly, they are used to being hit and they’re afraid.

On Friday morning before practice, Sharath announced that we should be careful about going into the city this weekend. Because of the festival, it is a crazy weekend in Mysore and foreigners tend to “get snatched.” Sharath also said we should walk in groups because there have been some incidents of people being attacked in the past.

“And I saw a lady with a stick,” Sharath said, looking at me. So now I have a claim to fame. The lady with the stick. After practice, some vegan dude warned me of the angry vegans who would judge me for hitting dogs.

“Pretend it’s for the men in the dark corners,” he insisted. Well, let’s hope I don’t end up having to hit anyone.

Today, Sunday, is our rest day, changed from Satuday, as all the yoga blogs have so thoroughly discussed. I slept in until 7:30. Sleeping here has been a bit rough. For a few days, I attempted to follow the trend of not eating dinner or at least eating light in the evenings. Perhaps it was worth a try, but ultimately this has simply resulted in angsty, hungry insomnia. Food theories are  an inevitable part of the yoga world. I tire of it rapidly, and it remains a constant battle to ignore what’s not helpful and honour my needs. Oh well, I will get the hang of it. (More on this and becoming a peanut butter sandwich person in the upcoming vipassana diaries. These have been put on hold as I struggle with a post that may offend three and a half people, should they choose to read it…)

Speaking of food, I think it is around the time to go off in search of lunch. If you have made it this far, thank you so much for reading.  Drop me a line if you’re in Mysore, and you don’t find me too dorky to hang out with. I would love to meet you.

Much love, The “Exuberant Bodhisattva.”

The End.

 

The Cow wanted in.

Exuberant Bodhisattva on Facebook
Twitter: @mypelvicfloor
I Let Go, my $2 self-help book

More on Going to India:

Our lives will never be the same

Our lives will never be the same, part two
Presents from my father 

Vipassana Diaries

Last Practice Before Vipassana

Bus 

Day Zero

Food Belly

The Vipassana Diaries: Food Belly

A very long gong woke us up at four a.m.  I could hear a couple of my roommates groan and roll over. I ,however, rocked the wake-up. Four a.m. in Montebello was five a.m. in Halifax. Old hat for this neurotic Ashtangi.

The sad part about jumping out of bed first is that if you end up in the hallway next to the gong, it’s horribly abrasive. Better to lie in bed until the gonging subsides.

During Vipassana, I brushed my teeth more than I ever do. Before breakfast, and after. After lunch. Post nap. Everyone else seemed to enjoy brushing their teeth too, and sharing these moments in front of the sinks was the closest we got to a conversation.

For the first couple of days we were supposed to meditate on the breath below our nostrils. When I worked at the Montessori school, I used to try and do this during my breaks. Mostly I’d be so exhausted that I would just space out and fall in and out of sleep. Other times I would try and focus on my nostrils. I realize now that instead of feeling the sensation of the breath below them, I pretty much just meditated on the word nostrils.

Nostrils, nostrils, nostrils, thinking, thinking, thinking, oh no, don’t think, back to nostrils.

Nostrils, nostrils, nostrils…

The technique of observing the respiration below your nostrils is called, “Anapana.” Anapana is supposed to loosen the roots of the impurities at the depth of your mind. Examples of impurities are anger, depression, cravings and addictions.  I think one of my deep-rooted impurities is boredom. I was extremely bored.  I remember thinking, “This is so boring,” several hundred times.

At breakfast I decided that I would take this ten-day opportunity to go on vacation from caffeine. I used to be obsessed with quitting coffee, believing that my addiction represented an internal moral defect. After many miserable self-imposed caffeine fasts, I came to the conclusion that coffee is an excellent beverage and life is way better when you drink it. Coffee helps your mood and your poops. I will consume it for the rest of my life. Still, probably I hadn’t had a caffeine free day since 2011 and all they had at Vipassana was Maxwell House instant. I figured it might be a good time to re-set my nervous system.  Plus if I was all spaced out and snoozy, the meditation process wouldn’t be so traumatic.

It was an okay strategy.

I floated through the first morning in a bored, decaffeinated daze. During anapana, we were allowed to switch our positions as often as we needed to. This was good because I had been previously terrified that I would break my knees sitting cross-legged for ten hours a day. Later I would obsess relentlessly about the most sustainable posture, but for now I remained in a spaced out sleepiness, considering the breath below my nostrils every fifteen minutes or so.

Even though I was bored, I felt calm.

Well, this will be a nice relaxing snooze fest, I thought. Then we got to lunch.
There was pasta and a lentil tomato sauce, and rice, and the vast, abundant salad bar with a million toppings and delicious tahini dressing.

It was only 11 a.m. and besides tea and fruit at 5 p.m., this would be our last meal of the day.
Don’t worry, my hard core Vipassana friend from the day before had told me. We’re used to yoga.  Here we just sit. You don’t need as much food.

But despite the lack of physical activity, I knew that with my eating disorder history, the reduced eating schedule was a bit risky. Skipping meals and losing weight is not a big deal for many people. When they get back to their normal eating routines, their body adjusts. But for me, any kind of weight loss and fucking around with eating usually causes a sketchy head trip.  Determined that I wouldn’t lose weight and/or damage my psyche, I piled my plate high, only skimping on pasta, which remains an intermittently frightening food from my past life.

As soon as I sat down, I felt like I was going to cry. The decaffeinated snooze fest was over.  Now I was deeply ashamed of all the food I had taken. It was falling off my plate. I felt certain that all the girls around me were judging my greed and mess. They all seemed skinnier than me and they weren’t overcompensating the evening’s lack of dinner with massive quantities of food. And I felt distressed by the fact that I was eating according to ideas in my head, and not really because of how hungry I felt.

All this seemed like such a superficial thing to be going through at this magical retreat where I was supposed to transform into a whole new person. While other people were probably seeing flashy balls of light or visions of their past lives, I was having adolescent food angst.

Oh well. Not every revelation can be beautiful and deep.

That night, Mr Goenka provided a seemingly endless discourse about the perils and dangers of Day One. Some people, he warned, made the enormous mistake of filling their plates two times at lunch.

“Nothing doing,” he said, waving his hands. “You can’t meditate if you eat all that.”

He said that if you usually have two plates at lunch, you should switch to three quarters of a plate. Then a quarter of your stomach would be empty which would help with meditation.


Happy Goenka

Mr. Goenka looked as though he hadn’t endured a minute of adolescent food angst in his whole life. He was serene, jolly, and pleasantly chubby. Probably he could leave half of his stomach empty without suffering very much. As for me, I decided that I wasn’t going to hold back, despite the apparent dangers. I would do my best with the no-dinner thing, and if it got to be too much, I’d turn myself in and become an evening Peanut Butter Sandwich Person. 

The End/To Be Continued…

Other News:

As fate would have it, I'm not in India yet. Air France pilots are on strike, so I'm back in Halifax for a surprise week with the Boatman.

Here we are on the flight from Ottawa to Halifax.

Me and the Boatman. Dorky and delighted

I have to admit I was  kind of relieved when I got to postpone the three-month good-bye. So far our extra time together has been dorky and delightful. Hopefully by Monday, I'll be feeling more brave. Fingers crossed that everything's sorted out by next week!

Have to give a shout out to the Air France customer service representatives. They were immensely helpful in rescheduling my flight, and even provided me with a chunk of cash to compensate for my inconvenience and reimburse my extra flight here to Halifax. I guess they heard that I had this famous blog.



In the sky, on the way back to Halifax
 
Twitter: @mypelvicfloor
Exuberant Bodhisattva on Facebook 
My $2 Self-Help Book: I Let Go

More from the Vipassana Diaries:

Our lives will never be the same

Last Practice Before Vipassana
 

Bus 

Day Zero
 
Vipassana Diaries/Ashtanga Memoirs: You Cling To Things Until They Die (Ham Wraps, S.I. Joints Etc.)
Why I Like to Pee Outside

   

Supersize versus Superskinny: A Spiral of Shame

Readers, I’m sorry.  My mind has gone dull and I’m totally ashamed.  I blame it on Lady Gaga.  A week or so ago, she announced to the world that she has endured a lifelong struggle with anorexia and bulimia.  At the time of her great announcement, it was evening and the Boatman was working late.  Instead of following  James Altucher’s Seven Habits for Highly Effective Mediocre People, I made the evolved decision of going on Facebook.  There I learned that in response to someone calling her fat, Lady Gaga launched a movement called “Body Revolution.”  

Lady Gaga poses for “Body Revolution.”

Lady Gaga’s movement is a forum on Lady Gaga’s webpage meant to promote body acceptance.  People post photos and stories about their struggles to adopt a positive body image, be they due to eating disorders, illnesses, disabilities, or whatever reason.  Clicking away I travelled from one article about Lady Gaga to another.  Miraculously, my psyche remained undamaged despite the fact that Lady Gaga is 26 years old just like me and like Kiera Knightley (also my age), she has accumulated heaps more fame and success than me and my sad blog and self-help book. 
 
In case you forgot, the moral of the heartbreaking I-wish-I-was-kiera-knightley story was:
 
We all have high vaginas.  Me, you, Kiera, Knightley, Lady Gaga.  Everybody.
 
Here’ s my High Vagina.  Again.  



Me and my High Vagina at the Boatman's mother's cottage

But a twist of fate occurred when I came across the site, “Healthy is the new skinny.”  Like Lady Gaga’s cause, this site also promotes positive body image.  It also seems to advocate for realistic and healthy models in the media.  Wonderful. I’m all about this.  Healthy is the new skinny has a section of videos from Youtube and beyond.  Some of them feature people sharing their own journey towards body acceptance.  Others contain different news stories about disturbing diets, stereotypes and the fact that if Barbie a real person, with her disproportionate body, she’d suffer horrendous back pain and be hard-pressed to walk.  I like this sort of thing, so I kept scrolling down and clicking.

Then I came across a British reality television show called

“Supersize vs Superskinny.”  The whole thing’s on Youtube.
 
As the title suggests, the show profiles a “diet swap”  between one morbidly obese person and a waif-like, usually eating disordered person.  For five days, the large person will eat the emaciated person’s measly diet, while the poor person who’s used to eating nothing has to stuff his or her face with the multi-caloried mountains of food that the big eater consumes every day.

As someone who used to have a litany of food rules and restrictive habits, I find the diet swaps to be a bit unlikely.  Most of the time, the participants change their ways far more quickly and amicably than is realistic.  After five days, almost all of the superskinnies are putting dents in the piles of the supersize’s feasts.  And just about every time, the supersized participants make peace with their meagre portions, and end up leaving something on their plates.

Apparently a lack of sound, realistic journalism isn’t that important to me.  I didn’t count how many episodes I’ve watched, but I made it to approximately season five, where the outcomes of the diet swaps become slightly more realistic.  I know way too much about this show.  I’ve watched it way too many times.

Between meals, other journalists examine different diet and weight related issues.  For one season, a reporter tries out all sorts of fad diets.  On a couple others, they follow a group of anorexic and bulimic patients.  Season five, if you’re interested, does a bit of both.  The doctor on the show travels to Evansville, Indiana, apparently the fattest city in the United States.  In Evansville, they have ambulances that can carry a 1400 person.  So far most people max out around 800 or 900 pounds.  But still.  Oof.

 This guy would need an enormous ambulance to move him which must make him feel terrible.

Seriously, these people have wounds from surgery that won’t heal because they’re covered in fat.  They have to get someone else to help them shower, or wipe their asses. 

I can’t believe I’ve watched this show more than once. Surely once would be enough.  But no, I can’t stop.  I know I shouldn’t look, but I can’t look away.  It’s a big fat binge. 

Although I’d love to hear your thoughts on all this, if I were you, I’d avoid this show.  My obsession with it has caused me great shame.  I wish that I could say something profound and meaningful about obesity and eating disorders and the world’s ridiculous obsession with food and weight, but after so many hours watching these youtube clips, I’m consumed with lethargy and self-loathing. 

Now it’s time to go teach a core strength yoga class. Let’s hope that my students work very hard, igniting the fire deep within their lower stomach so that I may vicariously burn away this spiral of shame.

The End.

Me being skinny in India. Kerala, 2016.
India is the best diet. Or the worst.

Exuberant Bodhisattva on Facebook
Twitter: @mypelvicfloor
I Let Go, self-help book by Erica J. Schmidt

Tell Me I'm Fat, by This American Life

Are you strong or are you skinny?
Day 69 of Not Puking in Your Mouth
The Benefits of an Ashtanga Yoga Practice, Part Two