What happens to us? (Go to the light little girl)

I was raised catholic.  I attended catholic school as a child and then a catholic jesuit prep high school.  I think I was about 12 when it all started to feel strange to me.  (Not a priest asking me to attend the theatre with him and then join him for a nightcap kind of strange, but strange.) The things I was taught seemed more ridiculous to me as I grew older.  Now I have nothing against the catholic church (except of course their stance on abortion, their propensity to start and encourage war, their hypocritical views toward sexuality and, well maybe I do have some things against the catholic church because this list can go on and on) however I wanted out.  Today, I'm not really sure what I believe in.  Certainly not heaven and hell.  I can't image there is one "being" who has some master plan for us all.

I think I'm more comfortable believing that we are all made of energy and when we die that energy simply moves on to something else or someplace else or maybe even someone else.  Perhaps we are reincarnated or maybe our energy joins the universe and we become something bigger than we can fathom in our current form.  It's a romantic idea to think our loved ones pass on and then become another being.  Is my son the reincarnated soul of my father, my wife's grandfather, my aunt?  Will I become someone that makes  a difference in the life of a relative or friend in the future?

So why am I babbling on about this?  Religion and life after death can be debate, as we all know, until the end of time.  It's just something that I've always thought about and as a practicing ashtangi spirituality comes up a lot.  Sometimes it's all very confusing.

Two days ago my sister was telling me about her good friend (who she works with every day) whose son believed (for a long time) that something was going on in his house.  His small daughter, a 5 year old claimed to be talking to someone in her room.  She gave a number of details about her multiple conversations.  Although the child's parents were pretty scared they certainly didn't show it to their daughter.  Hanging out in their living room two days ago the little girl was sitting on a chair playing with a doll.  Her father had his digital camera right next to him and took a picture.  As he was pressing the button and snapping the picture his daughter jumped up and ran out of the room.  He didn't give it a second thought but the picture shows something very strange.  When he saw it he couldn't believe what he was seeing.  Look at the faint image on the left side of this picture......................

It helped me to pull back from the monitor when I first opened the picture.  You can clearly see the image of a small child in a very old fashioned dress.  Now this isn't a friend of a friend or a whisper down the lane situation.  It's coming directly from this guy's mother.  It's a digital image, it's not some weird issue with an old fashion film camera.

So what is it?  Is it this little girl's energy, her spirit?  I know most people know someone with a ghost story (I can tell you one about my house if you're interested) but seeing something like this truly makes me wonder what happens to us.  I know if and when I die I hope I'm wearing a hip outfit.

Bandhas, Drishti and Snot.........

In addition to a slight twang, it looks like I picked up something else while in Dallas last week, a new cold!  I thought I had completely recovered from the last head cold this little gem of a winter has handed me, now as fate would have it my fight must go on.  It's awesome when I'm in down dog and my chin is tucked, bandhas locked, my drishti set, ujjayi breath strong and my nose dripping.  Love it.

I was talking with a friend after practice about how frustrating it is for me sometimes to struggle with postures that at one time (not so long ago) seemed to come so easy to me.  He was nice enough to remind me that I am old now and it's much harder to wind back that which has been unwound.  It's true but I don't think I'll stop winding anytime soon.  I did buy a new pair of gloves in advance of this impending snow storm.  I almost went with the mittens but I figured I really couldn't dial my phone with those babies on.  The same friend was encouraging me to move on the mittens.  (They were super warm and very soft.  It was sort of like slipping your hand into a, well, never mind.)  I might have to re-evaluate this friendship.  First he calls me old then he's encouraging me to walk around the city with mittens on my hands.  A grown man, wearing mittens.  Something strange is going on here.  Just kidding, I love the guy.

Ok so to recap: Dallas sucks, bandhas good / snot bad, practice hurts (my ego as much as my body) and, lastly, gloves over mittens if you are a 41 year old man.  Oh yea, don't eat high fructose corn syrup.

Ouch, organic linoleum!

I'm going to try and keep this one short because I'm so tired that I'm suffering from double vision.  I had a pretty good trip to Dallas.  The people in the corporate office have really made an impression on me.  They were all very kind, smart and welcoming.  I got a lot of work done and our sales group will be a lot more effective as a result of our meetings.

So as I mentioned, I practiced.  I was lucky enough to get the one of the "organic" rooms in the hotel.  I thought to myself, what a wonderful concept as the person at the front desk was explaining it to me with a smile on her face.  Basically the manner in which the "organic" room differed from the standard room was the carpeting.  Or lack there of.   You see apparently it's the carpeting and the cleaning of the carpet that makes a standard room a cesspool of harmful, cancer causing, toxic chemicals.  Thankfully my room was "organic" so I had a linoleum floor.  Now linoleum can be made in an environmentally friendly way:


"Environmentally preferred linoleum is made from natural, raw materials. Linseed oil, which comes from the flax plant, is the primary ingredient."   - Armstrong Flooring 


The crap that was in my room was vinyl.  It was about as environmentally friendly as pop-pop's Lincoln Town Car.

This is my room with the fake environmentally friendly flooring.
(Sorry it's not a better picture.  I was using my blackberry.  Those shoes are really very nice.)


Have you ever practiced yoga on a linoleum floor?  It's not very pretty.  I felt like I was hit by a truck after my short, but vigorous practice.


Anyway, all is well now.  I'm home, my plane landed at 1AM, I slept about 2 hours last night and I practice at Y2 this morning.  Other than the pain I was getting in my left chest (sort of like my lung was collapsing) I think the practice went pretty well.


Can't wait 'til Sunday!

Right back to you

So I am traveling to Dallas tomorrow and, in preparation for the trip I was really excited to get a good long practice in today.  The second I stepped out of bed, I knew my body wasn't going to cooperate.  I've have some really strong practices over the last two weeks with a number of breakthroughs however, since I'm old, my ability to recharge and bounce back is greatly diminished.  My hips and hip-flexors were so sore I found it challenging to walk down the stairs.  Any-who, I managed to get into the studio and practice but it wasn't pretty (unlike the beauty I display on a typical day at Y2).   My teacher actually chuckled during my drop-backs and told me "that's enough for today".  That is the tell tale sign it's time to pack it in.  So I'll travel tomorrow and practice in my hotel room on Thursday (with the smell of bar-b-q rising from the downtown Dallas restaurants).  I let you all know how it goes.

Later in the day, I bumped into a friend who really got me thinking.  I really like this practice.  Although I had a long hiatus from ashtanga and I'm only 8/9 months into a daily practice again, I can't think about leaving or missing practice for any extending period of time without shuddering.  And it's not just the practice itself.  Really.  Of course that's a big part of it but it's not the whole thing.  It's the community.

I will practice in my hotel room instead of sleeping in because Karen, Rob, Christina, Mariana, Josh, Joy, Alex, Adam, Leslie, Rebecca, Victoria and everyone else that gets on their mat will practice too.  It's the community.  It's my teacher, who I'm sure would be practicing in his hotel room so I would bet he would expect me to practice in mine.  I'll be 1300 miles away but I'll be in the mist of my practice the same time all of my friends are working through theirs.  (I'll just be two steps away from my bed and the hotel room coffee pot.  By the way, I never drink coffee before I practice.)  And this is where that friend comes in.

I couldn't leave my practice, my teacher or my friends because we are all doing this together.  We are pushing through this glorious practice, succeeding and failing together.  (Of course it's an individual practice but don't you feel some bit of pride when one of the others in the room has a breakthrough?)  I do.  We are all there, laying it out for everyone else to see, trusting this outstanding teacher with much more than our physical bodies, completely vulnerable but with the support of each other.  I know it sounds strange but the support from our fellow yogis is as much a part of why we are able to drop back as the strength in our legs or the helping hand of our teacher.  So, to my friend I say: come back and re-join your community.  We need you, your strength, support, energy, wit and love.  We'll take it and give ours right back to you.

Gaga

Ok so it's been a while since my past post (sorry for all of you out there who hang on my every word).  I haven't kept up with this because I'm still not really sure if my life is at all interesting enough for a blog.  I know the blog I read are pretty good by my daily goings on don't seem to have that much punch.

Anyway, between work, yoga, guitar lessons, blogging, reading books, watching Lady Gaga on the Grammy Awards, watching videos about high fructose corn syrup on XTina's blog, chasing my son all over the place and all the other "hobbies" I've been picking up lately, I hardly have any time for myself these days.  I'm pretty tired.  All the hobbies listed above are going really well by the way and just in case you didn't see the Grammy's:

I mean how absurd is Lady Gaga?  It's the craziest train wreck you'll ever see.  You don't want to look but you just have to.  Sort of like looking at me trying to do Padasana:

I don't look like this when doing this posture.

 So David gave me a second series posture yesterday.  Perhaps he wanted to reward me for coming in every day and struggling.  Perhaps he was foggy from the cold he is fighting off and didn't realize what words were coming out of his mouth.  Nevertheless, I did it.  Sort of.  It was fun.  And I'm really having some fun dropping back.  I think I may just be able to complete an unassisted drop back before the decade ends.  (It's good to have goals.)

Feeling a little strange

So, I've been feeling a little strange over the last couple of days.  I'm not really sure what it is.  Tension, anxiety, stress who knows.  I certainly feel it in my practice and even at home.  It seems as if my body is telling me to take a day off and try to sleep a little more or make a more conscious effort to relax more throughout the day.  I'm don't know the cause but this uneasy feeling is not something that I'm liking right now.  Maybe it's a cold coming or perhaps it's a premonition of something worst.  (Not that I'm pessimistic.  Really, I'm not pessimistic.)  I do believe that we can tune into what's coming.  Sort of like a dog knows when an electrical storm is about to pop off.  Maybe I just need to get drunk but after the High Fructose Corn Syrup video, the last thing I want to do is pump an obscene amount of Ethanol into my liver.

Anyway, today I was walking home from the yoga shala and I passed a homeless man on a bench.  He was talking to himself (rather loudly) and I couldn't help but overhear.  I was thinking about how sad it was.  But then I realized what he was saying was pretty interesting.  In fact, I was standing there waiting to cross the street and I though to myself it was one of the better conversations I've heard in quite a long time.  Strange huh?  I'm thinking about carrying a camera around with me so I can record all the crazy crap I see on a daily basis.

Oh yea, don't eat HFCS!

Got it......

When I first started practicing ashtanga (about 8 years ago) it took me one year before I was able to successfully bind in Marichasana C.

Now, I didn't practice every day and I spent the first six months or so in a confused, foggy yoga state of mind not really understanding the practice but eventually I got it.  After two or three years of steady practice, life tighten up on me and daily ashtanga was no longer in the cards.  Cut to today, I've been practicing steadily since August (on and off for two years but steadily since August) and, finally I heard my teacher's emphatic "yea"as I managed to bind in the posture.  Now it may not seem like a huge deal but in many ways it really is.  At least to me it is.  Not many people will tell you, much about yoga is confronting fear.  Typically you hear more about the effort expended for two hours leading you into a blissful sea of tranquility to live out the remainder of your day.  That's not always how it goes and dealing with that fact is a huge part of the practice.  For me, there is something that must be lingering deep in my subconscious that prevents me from twisting enough, while relaxing into the pose.  Today I was able to get it.  Let's see what happens tomorrow, perhaps .......

Na.

PS Don't eat sugar.