early this morning...

today I taught my very first class.  It was so totally awesome!  There was no music because i forgot, so I filled the room with the sound of my voice.  It was amazing how much babble came out!  Not babble... But instruction!  It fit like a glove.  We began in seiza (virasana or sitting on shins whatevs) and began by opening the shoulders, abs, obliques, and QL.  Then we did a little marauding bear to wake up the spine a bit and begin to feel the guide from within.  Slowly we made our way to our feet in elephant with our arms dragging like a trunk following the ants, and into crane where u bend R leg stretching the groin, hams, and calf, ankle, (other side) and then slowly swaying back and forth until we made our way up to standing and then started 4 part taoist breathing.  Inhaling gather chi, exhale to horse stance press chi out, inhale hands to the ground and draw up the chi from the earth to the sky letting it rain over you, exhale arms press to settle the chi.  we repeated this following the breath, cultivating the sense of chi for several rounds, and then made our way into the infamous golden seed sequence (gather chi, horse, elephant-twist, hollow out draw chi up to the sky, drinking bird, rocking horse, drinking bird, swing up to standing, settle chi)  we repeated this another several times.  Then to wind down again we followed the 4 part tao-breath to just let the breath flow naturally and not make as much of an effort to cultivate chi, but to just feel the cultivated chi.  Then we sat in a few yin style poses.  (butterfly, spinx, cat tail (twist).  Then sivasana I did a few adjustments and held their heads (there were only a couple people in the class)  and that was it!!  It was only an hour  and of course I ran over time, cuz that's how i roll.... but I feel so happy now that I've done it!!!  I will have another class on sunday morning, which is just for the students of OSM, but hopefully it will give me the gumption to find a studio to teach a regular class.  woooohooo.  thanks I hope this sequence will be of service to some of u, and if u want to experience this sequence, comment to me!!!  love love love

prana-oia

yea, so I was at the laundry mat today and WOW did I get an earful from our local paranoid drug addict. He told me what a "warlock" is. It's a cocaine-addicted-human-hater (in essence). These people are pure evil. Lucky for kooky joe, who enlightened me of this kind of person, I was present shoving my washing machines full of clothes and sheets. Lucky- because the warlock was apparently threatening our friend's life. Apparently, the same guy who's father killed joe's bro and pop, with a rifle, and according to joe, and if I hadn't been there he'd have killed him. ? Damn paranoia spreading prana-suckers. I felt a hugeness of my feet on the earth and my crown lit with god-ness. It was almost a sense of being grounded FOR these people. With passing thoughts of "is this person going to attack me?" "god please protect us" and "do I need to get my pepper spray?" and "man, f you for even being in my space" and "what about me made this person think it's okay to spew this paranoid rant on my laundry experience?" I tried to be open right, cuz that's what yogis do, and then I said hmmm, i don't feel like openness has to mean allowing this person to continue blowing out my flame with paranoia, (plus he starting telling me i was asking too many questions i wasn't authorized to ask) and when it started to get personal I just kind of put up a mirror, and began to simply meditate and feel my body relaxed amidst this minor chaos. I was a little too scared to leave my clothes in the dryer with him there alone, so I hung out roasting in my car, thinking "god protects me always, and how can i trust that in this situation?" I felt that the paranoia i felt about my clothes was not "mine" if u know what I mean... but it took about 20 minutes for me to trust. when another car pulled up to the 'mat, I felt, ok I trust. Now here i am at the coffee shop with my laundry next door, hopefully still flopping around in the dryer. The worst that can happen I suppose is that my laundry has been taken by kooky joe, and I'll have to get new underwear and sheets. I dunno, I just think God rocks. I wish I could have laughed more around the poor guy, instead of getting defensive and slightly shut down, but I am only able to do what i can do right now. I pray for the warlocks and the humans they hate and may god protect the laundry mat and all who enter there.

yes it has been a while

So I have been back in Ojai since July 14th, and I can say that my life has changed much. There's something about doing 100 hours of yoga study away from the daily grind that just changes you from the inside - out. I have been back for almost 2 months now and I am still confused how to live life. I'm glad I live in Ojai though because it supports this process of growing into yourself. I am torn by the shedding of my old skin that I had been wearing most of my life, and this new fresh coat of being a yogini. It's not always a cup of tea to be so awake to see the thought patterns I so easilv discarded for at least the last 6 years. Like Kira says, living on the spiritual path is not easier than the life u had before, but as u begin to observe the patterns that made us feel safe we can expand into the change that inevitably occurs. Well I have noticed one thing for sure. Wow, how I run away from a sense of "community". I am such an introvert, and I have depended on my own shell to protect me. But there comes a point when I need to be honest with myself whether I am running away from the support of my community. I mean, my heart brought me to Ojai, I MUST want to learn this. My shell and introverted-ness appear now to drive me into lonely solitude where all I have is my thoughts that drive me mad. This is a huge undertaking, and I think I will be working on it for a long time. Maybe my whole life. My latest excuse is my new-found dislike for sun salutations. When I have my own class, we won't be doing them, but for now I am going to try to be open and maybe learn something new about the sun salutes. Maybe I'll learn about lunar salutations. I don't know. My mom is going to arrive shortly, and perhaps she can help me to gain insight on my flight response to love and community. More on that, next time. Love.

Bija yo mama

The days after the training are slightly sad.  It was such an amazing experience.  But alas, we must continue forward!

Ojai is a nice place to be planted after such an experience.  I'm going to go on a hike after I write this.  

The last days of the training we learned the Bija mantras, a very basic approach using chanting to clear or simply become aware of the chakras.  From the base up: Lum, Vum, Ram, Yum, Hum, Om, and Om.  You can repeat these mantras as many times as you'd like, as many times as you feel it is necessary, and after each chakra spending a moment of breathless awareness to experience the chakra.  The most difficult thing for me is "breathless awareness"  When we tried this in class I found the if I tried to suspend my breathing it wouldn't work, I'd feel out of breath, and suffocated.  But when I tried this mantra at home I relaxed the EFFORT of breath suspension and just allowed my body to fill as it needed, I noticed that I was breathing very, very slightly, almost unnoticeably.  So I had let my initial idea of "breathless awareness" to be that of NO breathing.  That made it painful really.  When I decided that I might not know exactly what is meant by "breathless awareness", and it might be a while before my body understands what to do with these mantras, I could begin to concentrate more on my personal experience of each chakra and how it was affected by the vibrations.  I started to enjoy the awareness, and the groundedness of each chakra, and I even loved all the noises that happened outside of my house walls.  I could hear birds chirping, my neighbors talking, dogs barking  crazily, cars driving by.  I was chanting for the well being of all of these things.  It interested me how each chakra had a different affect on my body.  Lum, Vum, and Ram made me feel very stable on the ground, like I was really planted.  When I got to the upper chakras I started to yawn, or cough, even hiccup and they were a little more difficult to move through and experience, but I just did as much as I could until I felt I had marinated in the mantra enough.  I love the last Om to close the practice.  This is done as a more traditional round of om, and not used with the Bija rhythm that I learned.  It really settles the effects and allows clarity to reflect on the experience.  I'd like to continue to play with the Bija mantras, and experience the effects in all of my various moods.  I think sometimes it'll be harder than other times, but it will help me to just allow things to be different, transform, and allow me an opportunity to stick to something that keeps me turning inward to experience light and life.  

Namaste

Skeleton appreciation day

Day 5,6,7? 

I'm totally, completely, fully, 100%ly excited about my experience here.  We've been doing some awesome yoga sequences that Paul and Suzee choreographed like "flying dragon" and "infant" and "golden seed"  I love all of these.  Infant sequence is the slower/softer of the three, and you can really experience this sequence as if you were a little baby.  Starting on your back, nice and easy, just exploring the first movements as if you'd never done them in your life.  So precious!  and slowly building up to "childhood" ending in standing poses.  The golden seed is slightly stronger starting off with taoist breathing, cultivating chi, it consists of about 12 poses or so including (in english!) elephant, drinking bird, rocking horse, a few twists and ideas of directing your chi towards heaven, earth, space.  Beautiful.  Then flying dragon!!  I love it.  It's more intense, like you'd think a dragon would be.  Starting off in flying dragon (which looks like warrior 3, arms out) gecko, twisted dragon, dragon wings, dragon belly, then the dragon flies OVER the ocean to do the other side... back and forth back and forth until you are practically breathing fire.  I love the balance poses.  I found the in flying dragon/warrior 3/virabhadrasana 3 my balance is better when I invert my base foot slightly.  It was so exciting because I always felt so incredibly unstable in this pose before.  I became so discouraged always in my classes thinking I had so far to go before I could learn "balance"  But in this training I've been liberated by the idea that since each of our skeletons are so different, each pose will look different.  It is always the most important thing in yoga to pay attention to how your OWN body works best.  Keeping my planted foot straight forward took my hips out of their most stable position which of course left me falling over always.  Who would have known- if I had not been freed of universal alignment ideas- that MY hips are more stable with a slight inversion of my planted foot.  Here's the really weird part, I tend to be slightly more externally rotated in the hips (which causes my legs to turn out to the side instead of in towards my center line).  I'm so excited to explore these postures that require balance/stability with a more intuitive sense, rather than a sense of doing a posture aesthetically correct.  Really the more important part is that since we are all so incredibly varied all the way down to our skeletons, I am gaining understanding and compassion for the appearance of postures that do not or even cannot ever look like what you'd see in your modern yoga picture book.  Not everyone is a model, and I'm realizing that most models are chosen based on their god given set of bones (YES! I absolutely do not doubt that these people put in time and effort to get into "advanced" postures)  Most people who have been doing yoga for years and years that still cannot do padmasana (lotus) probably never will because of boney compression that stops the movement.  Bummer, they'll never be enlightened... I guess they'll just have to give up and work in an office. No, just do what you can do, go as far as you can go, and be content.  It's a great thing to recognize your individual range of motion, and it IS finite, recognize it and maintain it through yoga practice.  When you know your skeletal range of motion, you can become more aware of what will help you when you are tight and cannot reach your (skeletal) range of motion, and take some of the pressure off trying to be the greatest most flexible yogi.  

Moral of the story: Yoga postures are ultimately limited by our own individual set of bones, not karma, or necessarily flexibility.

Peace

PGYYTT :-)

Day 2

Wait, it’s day 3 already.  (Day 1 we didn’t do any yoga really, just intro stuff)   Today I woke up feeling empowered after I dreamt that I easily kicked up into peacock pose.  Like, yea man, what’s the big deal about peacock pose? I do this in my sleep. * Only in my sleep as it turns out.  Our lessons in the morning consisted of some more discussion as to whether or not flexing the pelvis was anteriorly rotating it or posteriorly rotating it.  Totally beyond me, yet I was still with it.  I feel like since I know nothing about teaching, and know little about yoga, my mind is still very open to this new kind of knowledge. In terms of massage therapy, however, I’ve gone over this many times before.  Now is an opportunity to really drive it home and personally understand what is meant when tipping the bowl of the pelvis forward or backwards.   (The most powerful adjustment in any pose, really).  Today Suzee started our yoga practice off with a bit of yang, starting in elephant pose (legs wide, fold forward) twisting and rotating from one foot to the other back and forth, followed by 4 Taoist breath exercises (inhale arms up “gather chi” exhale to horse and press the arms out to the side, inhale the arms from the ground palms toward the body, fingers toward the earth drawing energy all the way up, exhale pressing hands down to the earth.)  We  transitioned somehow into a yin practice which involved poses I cannot now remember! We ended the sequence with an 8 minute halasana pose, which I could not even think of doing.  Me and halasana are friends and all, but it takes me a very long time to recover from that pose not matter how long I spend in it.  Like I was in it for maybe a minute, and spend five coming out of it.  I asked some other yogi ladies why it might happen, and they let me know it could be total compression of my diaphragm, not necessarily my discs in my spine.  I’ll have to investigate that further because I always felt it was my spine.  I’m open to looking closer at it.  Paul did a yin practice with us in the afternoon session, which left me feeling so whole.  Like my body was a temple.  That’s the best way I can describe it.  My digestion has been problematic for me lately, and I’m coming to realize just how stressed out I’ve been, in anticipation of so many things.  I’m beginning to unwind all that now, so when I feel my belly cramp up I am remembering to relax and take the pressure off myself.  I am  where I’ve wanted to be for so long, I might as well just plop right down and absorb it all, no pressure.

Paul Grilley's yin yoga teacher training

Day 1

 This morning I took the train into Grover Beach where Robyn picked me up.  She’s so lovely and she and her car were both really clean, and pleasant smelling.  Hallelujah.  I was unaware how short of a drive it was to get up to Atascadero.  “Central coast” is a total scene just like Ventura or SB county.  But the C coast I never heard about until now.  Colleen topped us off and we drove all the way to Land of Medicine Buddha without stopping really but once to get gas, and arrived around 4.  The moment we began to drive further into the forest my heart began to feel at home.  The redwood trees made my eyes explode.  The LMB is a place for .. what do they say? … healing and developing a good heart.  OH!  I wasn’t aware that was what I came here for, but of course!!  It turns out that’s precisely why I’ve come.  That’s precisely what all of the events leading up to this voyage were for also.  I didn’t know the answer to the question I asked a few weeks ago was in the making for the past 6 months.  This is a place to learn and unlearn what makes a good heart.  The land of medicine buddhas is so loud with beauty and peace.  Since right now I am so blissed out, it’s hard to imagine resentment, or wanting to leave this place!!  So I’m just not going to think about it yet.  Maa vidvishavahai or something.  I’m so happy to be here to learn yoga.  I’m only a little baby student who knows nothing.  I’m so lucky to know nothing.  I’m happy I’m starting here.  I will do my best here. 

My stomach isn’t 100% happy, but I’ll settle in soon enough.  The room I’m staying in with Jessica is adorable.  It’s got nice green paint, two cute twin beds, a little desk and night stand, and a bathroom with a BATHTUB!  Yesss!  There is a sauna and a pool and hiking trails galore.  Colleen, Robyn, and I walked up a trail to a temple with a gigantic statue of a buddha and the depictions on the walls made me feel so inspired to draw.  The colors seem extra vivid here, and the detail is so ornate.  What dedication and mastery. I sort of wish I brought my colored pencils now.  Oh well I’m sure I’ll find something. 

I’m going to get a massage one of these days too.  That will probably happen closer to the end of the retreat.  For now though, I’d like to get ready for bed.

 

 I AM SO IN LOVE!