The Reading List

There is a cycle around hobbies that repeats itself every so often and it goes like this...

Husband discovers something that he is interested in. Husband searches all over the internet gathering information about his new interest. He reads articles, he reads blogs, he listens to podcasts, he finds out about local meet-ups, and then he orders books and then he orders equipment and more stuff. After a while, (length of time is really not consistent) husband discovers a new interest and the cycle repeats.

We have been through this cycle for kayaking, biking, baking, backpacking gear, and most recently (and still going) is photography. (I know I'm missing something here... perhaps husband will comment and let me know)

I fully admit that I do benefit from all of his time spent researching and reading and learning and practicing. Yes, I enjoy the fact that my husband can fix my bike when it acts moody, that he has all of the knowledge and all of the necessary tools to do any repair. And yes, I love that he knows how to grind his own wheat berries into flour and then bake bread and can make yogurt in the yogurt machine that sits in the back of our hardest to reach cabinet. I also love that he can teach me how to have more control over how my camera captures my photographs and I also love what he can do with photographs once they are in his computer. I love that my backpack only weighs 25 pounds because of the time he spent with careful gear selection.

For a long, long time, I had been complaining (in envy) that I didn't have time for hobbies. Why did husband have time to play while wife did not? Why did husband have the opportunity to learn all these new things when wife was stuck putting up with teenagers? Teaching high school math in East Oakland just took so much time and energy. Especially the emotional energy to deal with students who don't know how to handle all of the drama that is going on in their lives. I would come home from a day at work and not want to think or do anything for the rest of the evening.

But all that is changing. It was about 1.5 years ago that I made a commitment to myself to attend a yoga class once a week. And now I'm hooked. I spend time researching on the internet, I go to classes, I read blogs, I purchased a yoga mat, and now I have purchased books. Lots of books.

Here is my current reading list...plus there are three more in the mail... and a few more that I'm thinking about getting...


Off Topic: Here is a sneak peak for Tim & Anna about a surprise that will come in the next few weeks...

Slump

Last week was my first slump of the school year.

I'm going to change it up and explain this in swimming terms.

By the end of high school, my favorite event to swim was the 500. This was the longest event at the high school level, lasting 20 lengths of the pool, and up to 10 minutes, depending on the swimmer. I wasn't that fast and I usually averaged around 6:40.

The gun fires and you leave the starting block, entering the cool crisp water, heart racing with excitement and anticipation, glad that your goggles didn't fall off, checking out where the other girls are in the pool, hoping that your counter buddy at the end of the pool remembers to flash you the right number. You hit the first turn hard, legs are still fresh, blood still racing. At the end of the second/third length, you quickly remember that you are not a sprinter and that your race is not over yet, you pull up. At the end of length 6, you start to feel the excitement wear off. Your heart settles down, you acknowledge that you still have 14 lengths to go, you buckle down and make the decision to stay with it until the end, you pace yourself, you breathe, you stay focused, you find your groove and you go.

We just finished week 9 of 36 for the school year. I'm about to make the turn into lap 6. My initial excitement and energy about this school year has worn off. I am no longer running on the buzz of hearing the starting gun. The jitters are gone. I know my kids. They know me. The first report card has already come. Reality has set in. We're settling down, we've got a long way to go, we're getting into the groove.

It was just a challenging transition week for me. I'm starting to feel the pressure of a busy schedule. I slept for 9 hours last night and woke up feeling like I could have slept for a couple more. I love what I get to do. But because I get to do it so much, it starts to feel like a chore. So when I woke up this morning, I got all ready to go to a yoga class but I was running late. I was torn. I was looking forward to a class with my favorite teacher, someone I don't get to see that often since my advanced studies program started. But, I didn't want to walk into the class after it already started so I just stayed home. I did my own practice for ~75 minutes and decided I would work on some inversions. To my surprise and great relief, I put myself into a handstand all by myself for the first time ever. I was never the gymnastic type as a girl. I hated even the easy things like cartwheels or forward rolls! As soon as I was up, I yelled for Grant to come see me, hoping he'd get there before I lost my balance (even though I was against the wall). He was proud and also relieved because after today he won't have to help me anymore.

So it was a drag of a week. I could tell I needed a change of pace. So I will now regularly add unassisted hand stands to my home practice and the world will look different.

New pictures from this week... HERE

New Profile Picture

We were at a fund raising party in August hosted by a good friend. The theme was "Rockabilly Pie" and in exchange for giving money to the American Diabetes Association, we got to eat wonderful pie while listening to a live performance of the Fancy Dan Band. YUM and YUM.

After listening to the band, my friend Jane thought it would be fun to take some pictures of me. It's hard for me to say no to being the subject of a photographer's view. Unfortunately, my husband, who is in the process of starting his own photography business, doesn't like taking pictures of humans. So I have to wait for other photographers to capture me on their memory cards. My new profile picture is one of her captures.

She has many other beautiful portraits ready to be viewed... HERE!

Importance of Community

One of the hardest things about moving to Berkeley 4 Augusts ago was not knowing anyone. No friends lived here already. No one was here to help us move in or to greet us. We slowly met people around PSR's campus but very quickly felt out of place. We were neither on campus or off. We didn't live in dorms where we would eat meals with other students. We weren't commuters who had their own community to drive home to. We felt isolated in married housing.

Thankfully we found our church within 6 months of moving to CA and new neighbors moved in across the hall. But even then community has been hard for us to build. With all of the busy-ness that people create for themselves and all of the distractions that our society has invented (TV and internet are the biggest I can think of) to pull our attention away from actual personal interaction, I feel like sometimes I forget how to interact and that people don't have a lot of free time to interact with me. I start to feel self-conscious about what to say or how to be. Then it seems like building a community is an impossible feat.

Even though it has been tough for us to create a solid social network, we know how important it is and we keep working at keeping the community that we have. The work does pay off. The smiles and hugs that are shared have lasting effects. The quick phone calls just to say hi or to report on the small good things in life can change a whole day around. These acts might seem so common to many of you but these are things that Grant and I have not been used to since moving here. I started to think about all of this community stuff because of a post that I read at the No Impact Man blog. This gentleman is nearing the end of a year long experiment on how to live in NYC and finding out what really makes him happy and full of life. It certainly is an encouragement to me to step away from the laptop a little bit more and call up a friend out of the blue.

Damn time zones.

Weekend Adventures

Grant at 8:30 on Sunday morning starting his on call shift at the hospital.Grant, 6 days later, hiking at Mt. Diablo State Park, thankful that it is the weekend again. Grant and I are now relaxing at home, side by side on the couch with our laptops going. We're unwinding from our packed Saturday (packed by choice). I checked my blogs. Did you notice that Grant had a new post? I didn't know until a friend told me about it this evening. We watched the latest episode of After World. We watched the new Strong Bad email. Now it is time to update my blog! While I'm typing this, he is trying to distract me with you tube videos.

Some of my favorite numbers are 1, 2, 4, 27, 36, 225, 169, and 196. Of those, 36 is my favorite. But 27 is also good. One of my friends just turned 27 this week, so Grant and I went to his B-Day party. Being that I wake up early for work and then I like to go to bed early, we were part of the early crowd at the party. We knew that we had a packed Saturday ahead of us, so we happily were in bed by 11pm.

We woke up just after 7am to eat breakfast. Yes, we woke up by 7am on a weekend just to eat breakfast, early. We did this in hopes that our breakfast would be digested by the time my 9am yoga class started. Grant decided that he wanted to try out my yoga class, so he needed to get up early also and eat breakfast in hopes of good digestion in time. After the 2 hour class we were very hungry again. So we went home and finished leftovers from 4 different meals created during the week.

Next stop was the farmer's market. Grant and I split up momentarily for me to walk to the bank and get some cash. The farmer's don't tend to take credit cards. Grant ended up following me to the ATM but I didn't realize it. He should have told me before we split up that he was going to change his mind after us separating and follow me. Because I wasn't looking for him. He told me after that he was talking to a friend of ours on the sidewalk a few storefronts down from the ATM towards the farmer's market and that I walked right past him with great focus and determination. It makes perfect sense to me. I wasn't looking for him until I got back to the farmer's market. And that's where he found me. As planned.

After picking out our vegetables, we walked back to our car (it is unusual for us to drive to the market- we usually walk or ride our bikes but today we were on a special outing together). We put our veggies in the cooler with the cheese that we packed as a snack to go with the crackers, raisins, and sun dried tomatoes, which we had also packed as a snack. We brought a cooler because we hoped to keep the veggies cool while we were on our outing. We entered the freeway and went through a tunnel that lead to the other side of the hills that separate us from the rest of CA (I hardly ever go to the other side of the hills... ever! But we were on a special outing). As soon as you peak out from the tunnel, on the other side of the hills, you can see it. It is round and rolling, but much taller than the other round and rolling things on the other side of the hills. This larger round land mass was Mt. Diablo. Poking out of the ground, reaching 3900 feet, it towers over all of the other hills. It took us about 25 minutes to get to the exit and another 15 minutes driving up curvy roads to the park's entrance. Soon after we parked the car at a pull off called, "rock city." The whole time in the car we were listening to a "This American Life" episode (one of our favorite radio shows).

We spent much time exploring rocks in rock city. Climbed up. Climbed down. Snacked. And I found this artifact. Does anyone know what this is and what it might be used for? Of course I know the answer. Why else would I think it was worthy of a picture? This is really just a test of my audience. Do not let me down audience!

After our trip to the mountain, we drove back to our side of the hills just in time for dinner with our good friends just before they went to a movie. The timing was perfect. Like it was meant to be. We ate at a thai restaurant that we had never been to before and it was pretty good. I had the usual: pad thai. After dinner, our friends went to their movie. We walked them to the theatre and then crossed the street to our car. We then drove about 2 miles down to road to a bar where there was a farewell party for another set of friends who are moving to Chicago. They are moving tomorrow. Their stuff already left. We shared a beer, caught up with some friends, said goodbye, and then made our way home .

This is my favorite graffiti on the rocks at rock city. If you have made it all the way to this point in the blog, you definitely deserve a big TY.

The Scariest Question to Ask a Yogini

Today I’m going to talk about a scary topic. It is something that is “hidden in the closet” of every yoga practitioner. Sometimes we are willing to open the closet door and show you what we have and at other times we’d really rather that you not ask. Today we’re going to talk about “the home practice” and specifically my home practice.

September's theme for my advanced studies yoga program was “home practice.” Based on the application to get into the program, I thought that it was assumed that everyone had to have some sort of home practice to be accepted. Yet we still talked about this in September. Last Thursday was our first class of October. Noting this, the teacher asked us, “How’s your home practice?” Silence followed. No response from the students. She continued, “Well, you have one, right? Last month’s focus was home practice, and now you all have one? Oh and by the way, ‘home practice’ is really code for daily home practice.” Hmm, yeah, that sounds like a good idea!

One problem with developing a home yoga practice is figuring out what to do while you’re practicing. What exactly are you practicing when you are doing yoga at home without a teacher calling out directions and adjustments? By what method do teachers string together a set of poses and what if my sequence is incorrect? What if I don't do this pose correctly? Fortunately, sequencing poses has not been a problem for me. I just get stuck with my own questioning about whether I am doing a pose correctly and how much alignment really matters overall.

A second, and larger, problem with developing a home yoga practice is time. Most yoga students claim that they just don’t have enough time to fit in their yoga practice. We go to public classes which take 1-1.5 hours each perhaps once or twice a week. How do we fit in 90 minutes of yoga every day? But is 90 minutes the perfect amount of time? Could we fit in 30 minutes? When should it be? Before bed? When we first wake up? From our teacher’s perspective, she would be happy if the average yoga student consistently practiced for 15-20 minutes everyday. This student would see changes in their body and mind because of their consistent practice. Our teacher then added that since we were advanced studies students that we should be practicing for 60 minutes every day.

I’m still stuck on the problem of when. Sometimes you just have to create time where you don't think you have it.

Monday night I stayed after school to do some needed lesson planning (since I had spent my work time over the weekend on marking period grades). I got the call from Grant at 4:40pm to come pick him up from the bart at 5:07pm to take him home (as planned). He already knew that I intended on taking a yoga class at 5:45pm. (A perk of the advanced studies program is taking some free classes). I had brought my clothes and my mat with me to school, and I had even had a snack right after school so that my stomach would be relatively empty by 5:45, but I wouldn’t be starving before class was done. On my way to get Grant I started to feel tired and started to wonder how much I really wanted to take this class. But how could I pass it up? It was free! I must go! But I didn’t want to wait around for it to start (if Grant were to drop me off on his way home). But I didn’t want to drive home and then hop on my bike to go back to the yoga studio and I didn’t want to walk to class because I didn’t want to walk home by myself in the dark. I could go to a later class! There were two choices, one at 7:30 and one at 7:45. But that’s too late and if I’m feeling tired now, I will certainly be too tired later! But it is a free class! I have to go! Ugh, what am I going to do?

So what do I do when I get flustered over too many choices? I don't make a choice. I just went home.

And at home I decided to do my own free practice for 60 minutes (which turned into 80 by the time I was done) in the comfort of my own bedroom with my own pillows and blankets. Every pose practiced in the order of my choosing. All of my favorites, one after another and even a few poses that I knew I needed to work on. Oh and I even got to do some of that chanting that I talked about in the last post. It was great.

Home practice. Yup, got one.

Feeling It in my Bones

Most of you know by now that I am taking an advanced studies yoga class. It is a 200 hour program that will take us from September to close to forever to complete since we only have class 3 hours of class a week! This past Thursday we had a very interesting class with Ann Dyer, a teacher who amongst other talents loves the yoga of sound. Her introduction to yoga and sound class usually takes 3 hours. Unfortunately she only had 1.5 hours with us to share her wisdom.

We started out with a simple and well known chant called Shanti Mantra that goes like this…

Om saha na vavatu
Saha nau bhunktu
Saha viryam karavava hai
Tejas vidnau vahai tamastu
Ma vidvisha va hai
Om shanti shanti shanti

Sanskrit, like many other languages, can be translated many ways and it all depends on who is doing the translation. The English translation that we were given in class is:

May we be protected together,
may we be nourished together,
may we work together with great vigor,
may our study be enlightening,
may no obstacle arise between us.

Our next exercise was to learn how to feel sound in our bodies, especially in our bones. We learned different vowel sounds that resonate in our bodies and where each vowel can be felt the strongest. We would chant a vowel sound and then gently touch different places of our body… the sternum, collar bones, shoulder blades, chin, forehead, belly, hips, sacrum, pubic bone, and ribs looking for the vibration.

Through this exploration I learned something about my body that was really no surprise at all once discovered. As I was looking for sound vibration along my clavicles, I noticed that I could only feel vibration on the right side. My left side didn’t vibrate. Ann said that often we don’t feel vibrations in the areas of our body that are giving up trouble. This was so true. My left shoulder and left side of my upper chest has always been tighter than my right. During poses like downward facing dog, I often feel stress at the front corner of my armpit. I’m not sure exactly which muscles are unhappy there.

Ann’s suggestion was that we incorporate chanting into our daily yoga practice to help us reach our “troubled” areas. So yesterday morning, I spent about 10 minutes “a-ing” into my left shoulder and collar bone. And today I can feel a faint sensation.

Over the next few days, my plan is to continue 'a-ing' into my shoulders, but I will also "oouu" into my hips. (how do we spell this vowels?) to see if there is the same vibration increase and hopefully more openness in the joint/muscles.

Almost Famous

There was an article about my yoga class in the Oakland Tribune, our local newspaper. No, it's not as big as the NY Times or Washington Post, but it was still fun to see my picture in print! You can check out the article and some pictures here and video here.

My heart is a flutter.