but what does the sail signify?

I’m at home. I don’t regret a bit my decision not to go to the viewing or the funeral, but I feel quite guilty about having the day off. This post is mostly about yoga, sorry.

So I went to this class last Friday that gave me a lot of food for thought. It was a challenging class, very active vinyasa, mostly standing work but also a good deal of our fabulous friend chaturanga. Because of my stubborn quadriceps, which seem to have decided to get only this strong and absolutely not one iota stronger, I can only hold many of the strength-oriented standing poses (warriors, lunges) for a short period before I need a break. I find this frustrating and my legs get shaky quickly. There was also pyramid pose, wide-angle forward bend, etc. etc., and very little in the way of contemplative poses or floor work. I was beat when I got out of there, and not a little wobbly.

The teacher had worked my edge, but not in the way that I like. I like physical classes, and working hard, but when I’m working to the edge of my strength I am a lot less happy than in a class when I’m working to the edge of my flexibility. This is an important distinction, and one that will help me in selecting the future direction of my practice. I like a class where I’m doing new things – either moving forward (or sideways) in poses I already know, or learning new ones, or new combinations to put the poses together. I like a class where I’m doing old things that move me in new ways. Seeing how long I can hold chaturanga doesn’t really interest me – and I swear it’s not just because I feel like a wimp! It makes my mind critical and chaotic to do strength-oriented classes, and it clears me and makes me feel (ironically) stronger to do more contemplative classes. Everyone knows you can play your edge in any level of class, and the type of edge I like to play apparently matters a lot to me. I look forward to teaching classes in this style, that will be challenging without leaving you feeling rubbery and beaten.

Another thing I didn’t like is that there seemed to be little variation in the class. That matters a lot to me, to do a little bit of everything, unless it’s stated that it’s a specifically oriented class. I wonder if this is a way that the more generic vinyasa style has strayed away from ashtanga in a way that is not beneficial to practicioners. Of course, not all vinyasa classes can be 90 minutes long, or as demanding as the primary series.

Yesterday’s class was another just-me-and-Paul, like last week. At the end of the class I said I was sorry that, at the time, he was being grossly underpaid for teaching an individual session, and he said it was sweet of me to think of that but he didn’t mind at all. At first we did some challenging flow that I  liked a lot, and I wanted to exclaim “See? You can teach flow really well!” (He claims that he doesn’t do flow.) Naturally, we got sidetracked into anatomical and alignment matters, and he showed me some tricks in forward bends that were helpful. He also spent a good deal of time instructing me on downward dog; he agrees with me that it’s really unfortunate that it’s become this iconic pose for yoga, because it’s a deceptively complex pose with all sorts of room for both growth and error. He also told me, and I will take this as a once-and-for-all instruction, that teaching warrior 1 with hips even and forward is stupid, and the back hip has to be back in order for the pose to make sense. FINALLY. JEEZ.

There were two best parts of this session. One was that he was instructing specifically to my body. I explained about my back, and he listened. I demonstrated about my hamstrings, and he instructed me with that in mind. He showed me where I was dropping and where I was missing the point of a pose, noting my anatomy. Good teachers try to do this, I find, in most classes, but it’s hard to listen and notice as well when you’ve got 5 or 10 students than if you just have one. It was a relief and a joy to have someone – especially someone as experienced as Paul is – paying attention to my exact anatomy when instructing me. The second thing was that I had this feeling that he was enjoying instructing me because of the enthusiasm and skill that I have in the practice. If I were a teacher I would love to happen upon a student like me, who wants to grow and move forward and has great potential to do so, rather than your average once-a-week practitioners who just want somewhere to wear their $100 yoga pants. I may have interpreted him wrong, and maybe he was just teaching because that’s what he does, but the vibe I got was “Yeah, awesome, someone who’s worth my time.”

Last night I dreamed that a kid from my high school class was relentlessly pursuing me for sex, over geographic areas that somewhat resembled multiplayer maps in shooter VGs. This guy is an interesting character; he was one of the most popular guys in our class, and outwardly an asshat, but I had a few conversations with him that showed me he had some depth and intelligence that was surprising. His father is an ortho doctor in a local practice that I’ve had to have a lot of contact with via my job, and which is the practice where the lady doctor is helping me with my back, so he’s never really faded out of my mind. Also, he’s the other love story from my graduating class – he and another one of our classmates married a couple of years ago, even though they never dated in high school. I’m sort of bummed out for him, because this other classmate is my go-to person when I think of the word “ditz”. I thought he deserved better.

The night before that I had a very interesting dream. I was living in a teeny-tiny apartment in Paris, and a friend of mine was having a complex, unusual wedding, Islam or Hindu or something, and I had a big part in the ceremony. After a long day of delays, I went to change and get ready for the wedding. (I often have these dreams where things get delayed and delayed and delayed and it takes forever for me to get to whatever I’m supposed to do.) When I was starting to get dressed, my father came in and told me he had something to show me. I told him I had to get ready, but he dragged me out of the apartment and told me it would just take a minute and I had to come look. For some reason, we were holding opposite corners of a large piece of fabric that I think was a sail; it was about the size of a sail for a Sunfish (a small sailboat). I protested, and he cajoled, and finally a half-block away I dropped my end of the sail and told him plainly that it would have to wait, and I had to get ready for the wedding. I walked away, back towards my apartment. Dad kept yelling out behind me “It’ll just take a minute! You have to come see!” but I knew I had to get ready for the wedding and I refused to stop.

I recently told my mom a story from my last visit with my dad that showed a similar carelessness about my priorities, so I think that’s why it’s in my head. But I also think this is one of those dreams that pretty much exactly reflects the real-life relationship with the other person. Unlike the dream I had about the guy from high school, who wouldn’t have been romantically interested in me with a ten-foot pole.