Living La Vida Alpo

This body ain't no wonderland.

Triceps, biceps, upper and lower traps, rhomboids, delts, glutes, hamstrings, lats, and abs.

Who knew I had them? 

But, yes, I do, and I know this because right now they are burning and screaming and trying to abandon my body.  It's mutiny.  And I have nothing to blame except that yoga class I took yesterday morning.

This is a class that is described as focusing on "basic beginner postures with more attention and refinement of body alignment principles. Sitting, standing, basic twisting postures and gentle backbends are practiced."

Basic and gentle, my ass.  I'd like to rewrite their class description for them, but I don't think they'd allow cursing in their brochure.

I'm just surprised my neck is feeling fine, 'cuz I was doing a lot of craning around trying to see the teacher's face.  This is a studio that was recommended to me by my Momsie, and she recommended this specific teacher, who'd said she'd be willing to pay attention to me and make sure I didn't miss anything.  Sure, sure.  I passed for hearing in that class -- she barely looked my way.

Oh, and Mom?  Next time you send me somewhere to meet someone and say it'll be easy to talk to her, you might want to mention the little, teeny, tiny detail that the teacher has a freakin' ISRAELI ACCENT!

I'd cross my arms and pout now, but that'd hurt too much.

Yogis have better sex.

I knew I liked this yoga stuff for a reason.  Hint: not the spiritual enlightenment stuff they tell you about.

My Altar

or, as CK called it last night because I had incense burning in a room with windows and doors shut: My Drug Den.

I've always wanted an altar -- just a place where I collect things that represent what I hold sacred in my life.  With this book group I'm belatedly beginning to participate in and the book we're reading, Soul Coaching, I finally have the little nudge to do it.  It's a work in progress, of course, just like my life.

I've also incorporated the four elements - to the East is incense: air; to the South a white candle in a red holder: fire; to the West, amethyst: water; to the North, wood, green turquoise, malachite, and iron pyrite: earth.

Above the poster of Saraswati (a birthday gift from a dear friend and Sivananda yogini) also happens to be a photocollage of me at various moments during my adolescence with lots of my favorite people, and how perfect is it that the only place I could find to put my altar was on top of a bookshelf?!

 

More gluttony

Call me crazy, but I really want to do this.  

Find more info at www.infinitelightperu.com

(You may have to turn on the captions.  And the thingy says it's 10+ minutes, but from 7:30 on it's Shamanic chanting and nature noise.)

Blessings are your own creation.

Today, a friend of mine pointed me to the internet, where I found this month-old random photo of me and L'il Red in our backseat on a road trip.

I'm so glad I received this today instead of last week.  Last week I was scared about the future, angry at myself, worried about money and some other trivial things, and generally not in a good place.  Then I went to the ashram and bibbidi-bobbidi-boo, everything was all better.

Yeah, right.  As if.

But going back to the ashram did give me a chance to run away from life for a minute and spend time with my thoughts (or lack thereof) and realize that I was the creator of my own Planet Freakout. 

I saw other people with problems worse than my own -- one of the monks-in-training up there was once a crack sniper with the Israeli army and came to yoga after he realized killing people had destroyed his own soul.  Another guy I met had serious emotional, health, social, and communication problems, and was on the verge of declaring bankruptcy.  He wandered around the ashram, grunting and seeking connection with somebody, anybody.

Thursday night, just before I debating whether to even bother with the ashram trip, a dear friend of mine who is also into yoga paged me, asking for a VP chat just to touch base. 

Her water bill and electricity bill had gone unpaid and she owed so much in taxes she couldn't afford to pay her own rent.  This didn't happen to her because she's financially stupid, I promise -- it happened because she chose to get involved with some people who took advantage of her kind heart, and now she was dealing with the consequences. 

But of course it was hard for her to see it that modestly -- she's an adult, why can't she take care of herself in even the most basic way?

I see it as an absolute blessing that she reached out to me. 

One, I felt so honored that someone felt I was worth talking to about her problems.  Two, she humbled me for worrying so much about my own -- my issues were all temporary, as hers are.  It was easy for me to see her problems that way and for her to see mine that way as well.  And three, it reminded me that simultaneously I was just a small part of the huge sea of humanity, I was my own person who didn't deserve to be this emotionally beat up.

And so off to the ashram I went.  Instead of being preoccupied with the specific intro-to-yoga program the DeafYoga Foundation set up like I was back in July, I spent most of the time thinking about why I should even bother to enjoy my own life.  

I had another precious one-on-one meeting with Lila.  I spent time watching the first-timers in our group, smiling as they acclimated to the strangeness of the ashram experience.  I connected with other people who were on similar journeys, figuring out just how much value to assign to worldly things and spiritual things.  I ate vegetarian Indian food that had been grown on the ashram and prayed over before it was served buffet-style.  I saw an extremely pregnant yogini do a shoulderstand, her blooming belly somehow hanging onto the vine of her spine, instead of drooping to the ground like a ripe pumpkin.  I roadtripped with a perky yogini, seat-bouncing to Fergie's "G-L-A-M-O-R-O-U-S."

I came home physically sore and emotionally exhausted but less negative.  It was as if my soul had been constipated for the last few months and only this weekend had I decided to have a high colonic.  As if on cue, upon arriving home I spent several hours going back and forth as my bowels emptied themselves.

TMI?

Too bad.  We all have poopers we have to deal with sometimes.

Lesson learned.  Healing effects received. 

And now instead of looking at that picture and seeing someone who really needs to work on her parenting skills, I see a precious little girl who fully deserves that kiss her mother's giving her.

I wouldn't trade that shift in perception for anything in the world.

Finding my niche

As an early birthday gift, my sister sent me this gorgeous chakra-balancing bracelet from 2angelwings' etsy shop.  I already wear a Shaman's Hand pendant almost everyday, so this is doubly perfect.

I'm all pompous now with it, shoving it into everyone's faces, going, "look what my sister gave me!  Look, look, the tiger's eye is the root chakra and the carnelian is the sacral one and..."

That's when I get the rolling eyes and the blank stares.  I'm the wacko radical lady all over again. 

Where's my sister when I need her?

That is, until I showed up at the ashram.  Then it was all thumbs up and oohs and ahhs and "oh, there's a chart in the bookstore that'll tell you the properties of each stone!"

Dude, I knew I liked those yoga people.  They can omm me out any day.

Unabashed self-promotion in times of bliss

Lisa e-mailed me this morning to let me know Sociological Images had picked up my post on Baby Trig and the way we're seeing the family/gender dynamics being portrayed in relation to him.  Pretty cool.  I've re-opened comments just in case this sparks new thoughts.

I LOVE that site.  It almost makes me wish I could go back to teaching just so I could use it in every single one of my lesson plans.

And for those of you who were expecting a bit more of an interesting post from me this morning, well... tough tootsie rolls. 

I just got back from a weekend at the ashram last night and am still clinging desperately to that incensed cloud of bliss that results in living yoga.  I've more to share, but first I need to just spend a little time savoring it for myself and digesting all the emotions and thoughts that came up.

Meanwhile, check this out:  Man decorates basement with $10 of Sharpie.  Really, click on it.  The panoramic photo is mind-boggling. 

As Leah likes to say: W.O.W.

I couldn't do it.  I'd be too anxious about screwing it up. 

And then my weekend of ommming would all be for naught and I'd be a much bigger bitch than I usually am.

*EDIT: My memory failed for a min there, but I gotta give props to Jeff for snapping the pic.

Full Moon Magick

According to my moon widget over on your left, tonight's a full moon. Whoo-hoo. 

Go ahead, do it now  -- Turn up your face and howl.

I'm looking up at it right now from my bedroom window and having an awfully hard time hanging on to the last shreds of crankiness I was entertaining while baking banana bread just a few minutes ago.

I've always loved full moons since I was a kid and decided that full moons were mandatory on Halloween, and so my birthdays were always blessed with a mysterious reminder of the world's whims.

In many pagan trads, full moons and the days working up to them are also a great time to do productive magick.  One example I've fallen in love with comes from Suzie, who's built up an impressive following of dreamboarders: every lunar month, these dreamers and magick-workers create a collage of whatever media they please of the things they'd most like to manifest in the coming month.

I think it's a cool idea, fun to do, and great for getting those creative juices flowing.  Besides, Lila, my beloved yoga teacher, has told me that a thought leads to an action, an action leads to character, character leads to destiny.  I love that circle of life.  It's kinda what I've always thought magick was.

Here's mine for this full moon:

(Click pic to see larger version.)

Insane line alert: Come Back

From Claire and Mia Fontaine's joint memoir, Come Back:

My relationship with God has evolved... I no longer rail or beg or sass back.  I was standing on a bluff over the ocean the other day and suddenly laughed out loud as I realized what an illusion that was, what an impossibility.  That would assume a relationship between "me" and an "Other," a separation.  There is no otherness; to be separate from God is to be separate from myself, from life itself.  What I've been looking for, I'm looking with.

This line isn't that representative of the book itself,  a chronicle of the hellacious pit that Claire and Mia need to crawl out of after the aftermath of childhood molestation wreaks havoc on Mia's teenage years (don't worry -- if the subject makes you squeamish, the Fontaines are quite diligent about describing the true consequences rather than the graphic details).  I finished this book while driving up to New York on Friday, have started two others, but this passage keeps popping back into my head.

The idea that God, a relationship with the universe, happiness, the IT that we all seem to look for from time to time is actually buried somewhere deep within, just waiting to be discovered: how poetic.  How yogic.  How pagan.  How... Christian, even. 

How sadly beautiful.

(Amazon link to the P.S. version, which contains bonus excerpts of letters written during Mia's behavior modification program)

Inside the Fifth Circle

Welcome to the hallowed site where I throw down on a daily basis.

Or, perhaps more accurately, this is where I piddle around while I'm supposed to be throwing down.  *koff koff*

Let me show you around, starting in the bottom left corner and going clockwise. 

Writer's Market: my bible.  Where I look for new places to pitch pieces and find publisher guidelines.

My Tarot decks, both designed by Julie Cuccia-Watts:  They used to be in my nightstand where I could consult them occasionally by moonlight or grab them whenever my Tarot teacher sent me an assignment.  But then I discovered I could also use them as a creative inspiration tool for writing, and they've been relocated.

Lakshmi: the Indian goddess of good fortune.  Chandramauli, one of my deaf yoga teachers at the ashram, surprised me with this card on the day I left.  I love looking at her whenever I get anywhere near moody.  Cheers me right up thinking about the ashram and the things I learned there.

Behind Lakshmi is a bumper sticker CK picked up for me in Woodstock, yet another of his travel souvenir fetishes.  I actually kinda like this.  It represents us in that CK knows damn well how emphatically anti-bumper sticker I am and yet he thumbed his nose and bought it for me anyway.  Why?  Because it has the famous Laurel Thatcher Ulrich title on it: "Well-behaved women seldom make history," which really represents me to so many people it's almost redundant; throwing it away seems blasphemous and oh, so wrong.  (aside: CK recently returned from a trip to the Big Apple, with souvenirs for himself and presents for Leah.  For me?  Zip. And when I pouted, he pointed at my blog.  Couldn't do anything but nod approvingly at him.  Dammit.  Can you spell b.a.c.k.f.i.r.e.?)

And behind the bumper sticker is a photo/frame that Leah made for me in school. My li'l Red.  I'll be cremated with it.  I think.  If I die, that is.

The blue lamp is nonfunctional, except as a phone signaler.  Which is quite dumb, since we usually just let the phone ring.  We really should let go of the land line idea.  It's so eighties.

The Yankee Candle Co. is my all-time favorite candle maker. Shhh, don't tell CK, but the original reason "Midsummer's Night" is my favorite scent is because I used to think it smelled like my first boyfriend.  Plus, it's black (ooh, witchy!) and the name alludes to Shakespeare.  How much more perfect can it get?  Oh, the other one?  A gift from CK: ginger and green tea.  Pretty nice, if you like that sort of thing.  *ahem*  Moving on...

You can see the cherry-wood colored stem of my sun-lamp.  I've been using sunlamps for almost 15 years now, especially during the winter, not for a tan, but to battle winter blues.  Sounds hokey, but honest to Goddess, it works.

And last, but definitely not least: Maxine.  Oh, Maxine, Maxine.  My first pooter with wi-fi capability.  She's a Mac!  Need I say more?  Yes?  Okay: I'd have sex with her if she had boobs.

I'd ask for ideas for pimping the place, but now that I think about it, I think I damn well like it the way it is.