It's yoga challenge time again at OM Yoga, the yoga studio where I practice. By 'challenge' they mean practicing yoga everyday, and the most challenging thing I've found has been finding time to do yoga every day. Out of the past 15, I've only missed 4 days, which is a 73% success rate. Two of the days were due to work deadlines, one due to a hangover (damn strong dark and stormies at the Harbor School Benefit!), and one because I felt I needed a break. I'm half way through, we'll see how the rest of the month goes.
I've been taking a lot of classes with Brian, one of the senior instructors who I hadn't taken classes with before. He's very soft spoken and relaxing to be around, which is good characteristics for a yoga teacher. He also talks about movies and TV during class, and that's entertaining - it loosens things up, sometimes yoga can be so serious. The other day he was talking about Alice in Wonderland, today The Partridge Family.
Strangely, all this yoga is making me want to run. I've been running on Fridays and Sundays, days that I don't need to be up for work or boat maintenance. I tried getting up this morning to run, but with daylight savings, that just wasn't going to happen. Maybe tomorrow.
So Fall is here. It's made its presence known with unseasonably cold temperatures, rainy weather, and gray skies. I was hoping Indian Summer would appear this weekend for the last sailing of the summer, but due to the forecast, the season has basically been scratched other than a couple of more education sails and the trip up to Haverstraw on Sunday through Tuesday. I'm doing the transit and the programs on Monday. It's going to be cold and rainy, and most likely miserable. It's the last chance for sailing this season though, so I'll take it. Hopefully Monday will be sunny, or at least dry. Highs are only forecast for the mid 50's though.
Turn to is 0600 on Sunday, so practicing yoga on that day is shot. Monday, I'll do it once I get home - I doubt I'll be able to get to the studio in time for even the last class at 8PM.
Here's the wrap up of the rest of the week though.
DAY 15 Officially half way there! There is a meeting for all challenge participants on Monday at 6:30, but unfortunately I won't be able to make it. Thursday was the first of the cold raw days. I planned to go to the 7:45PM Stretch/Restorative class. Once I got home after work, it took all I could muster to leave the house again. I grabbed my rain gear and headed out before I could change my mind.
The instructor wanted us to concentrate on being instead of doing. Nothing should be a strain, everything should be with minimum effort. In that way, I succeeded.
DAY 16 I got up in the morning and made a list of things to do on my day off:
Tennis
Yoga
Drugstore
Pick up food for Salem
Pick up medical films
Clean my desk (way overdue)
Hang second window shade (again, way overdue. Hung the first one back in August).
Getting all my errands done for the week is a great benefit of the extra day off.
Tennis was a bit optimistic. It had rained the day before, but the streets were starting to dry. I texted Elena to tell her I was heading to the courts. Once I got there and looked at the courts. They were still soaked and covered in leaves. No tennis.
Yoga's a bit easier to predict. I went to the 12:30 open class. This week I've gone to mostly stretch or restorative classes, so it was good to get to a more vigorous class. The class (like most vinyasa classes) concentrated on variations for sun salutations, but then we moved on to inversions. Those are a challenge. The order the instructor wanted us to do them in: headstand, handstand, forearm stand.
I start out with the headstand. I've been working on the preparation of each of these poses. No matter how much upper body strength you think you have, this is really tested when you need to rely on these muscle groups to hold your body up. For all these poses, its best to start by doing them against a wall so that there is something to stop the momentum of your legs. It also helps with balance. I was able set up for the headstand on the floor (see diagram), and was able to kick one leg up to the wall. I'm not able to stay in the pose yet.
The handstand was next. One of the preparation methods is to do the pose in an "L" position, with your hands on the mat, and your legs perpendicular to the wall. This is harder than it looks. The instructor helped me into this pose by standing behind me with her knees pressing into my shoulders to help me stay up. This pose is also hard due to the muscles in the backs of my legs being really tight also. But I was able to stay up for about 20 seconds. It's a start.
I was also able to get into the crow pose for the first time. That feels like a real accomplishment.
After yoga, I headed over to Diagnostic Radiology Associates to pick up some films in preparation for a mamogram next week. My first one was two years ago, so my doctor figured it was time for another one, especially since I turned 40 this year. October being Breast Cancer Awareness month, seems like a good time for one. They are strange ghost-like images, similar to sonograms and catscans. I don't understand them, but I glad some people are trained to.
Lots of stuff going on this week, but I continued on with the challenge somewhat successfully. I'm not hitting every single day, but I figure that its not exactly part of the practice to get angry at myself for not doing it every day. Its a challenge not a commandment. Days where I did not meet the challenge are in red.
DAY 8 No yoga. Again, didn't quite get up in time to do it in the morning, and I was getting together with Christopher for dinner so no yoga after work. We met for dinner at Rice, and then I got to experience the frustration of parking woes one encounters when living in the East Village while a film crew takes over your neighborhood. Needless to say, we had a side trip in the middle of the evening to Williamsburg to deal with the parking dilemma. Due to the fear of finding a spot, it was a short adventure.
DAY 9 My day of the week off due to the current paycut situation. Carrie was in town for work, so I was planning on meeting up with her and Kathleen in SoHo after having lunch with Roberta in Leffert's Garden. Or is it Manor? I forget. Either way, I had to be in Brooklyn around noon and SoHo around 3PM. Yoga, yoga, when can I fit this in when I've got plans for the bulk of the day? Plans included:
A viewing of The September Issue. Fantastic fashion documentary of the production of the Vogue 2007 September Issue. It's right up there with Unzipped, the Isaac Mizrahi documentary. Although I still can't believe Anna decorated her townhouse with that shabby chic furniture.
Drinks....somewhere. Fancy new hotel on Crosby was not accepting 'non-residents' until the following week. We ended up at Sweet & Vicious.
Dinner at MacBar. Now that I am ok with gluten, a macaroni and cheese fest was in order. I felt as good afterwards as any normal person ingesting massive amounts of processed cheese.
Back to the yoga situation. Thanks to the DVR, I've been taping episodes of Namaste off the Fit! Network. I came upon an episode on strengthening poses. Fantastic.
DAY 10 Woke up to a rainy but somewhat warm day. I was scheduled to sail the morning Harbor School sail from 1100-1500 hrs and then the 1600-1800 hrs public sail. The wind was perfect for sailing. Unfortunately, it also made me complete exhausted and not able to do much of anything for the rest of the day. No yoga.
I was however able to drag myself to Brooklyn for dinner with Heidi and Carrie. Heidi had gotten her share of the CSA bounty that morning, and made a great dinner (with Tom's help on the fish). Halibut, mashed potatoes, fresh green beans, and bok choy. Ice cream for dessert.
DAY 11 In looking at the calendar, I've missed two days this week, so I feel motivated to go today. Today was also the team day for the Ladies Social Tennis Club out in Prospect Park - four hours of play between the different members. I already woke up to sore shoulder muscles from sailing the day before. Tennis today was going to be challenging. Luckily on Sunday nights there is a restorative yoga class at Om. I love restorative yoga. Its a series of poses where you're propped up on pillows, blocks, or bolsters, and you rest for 10-15 minutes in a pose.
I head out to Brooklyn at around 9:15AM en route to Heidi's. This was the weekend that the MTA had decided it would be a good idea to do work on just about every single subway line. Instead of taking the normal route of the A to the F, I just take the A one more stop to Hoyt/Schermerhorn. I discover that although its a slightly longer walk from that station to her apartment, its a shorter trip since I don't have to wait for the transfer at Jay Street/Borough Hall.
Do I thank the MTA for this little bit of transit knowledge? Hell no. That's a small victory in the confounding set of options that I'll have to deal with for the day. We ended up driving out to Prospect Park and avoided MTA pain. For the morning at least.
The tennis wasn't so bad considering that the soreness in my shoulders in the morning was only the beginning of the pain that was surfacing from the day before. In the end, it was my whole back, as well as my sides and abs. Basically, the whole torso. Strangely, my legs were unaffected. I needed a massage.
At 5:00PM, I headed to Union Square for the restorative yoga class. As I was hoping, it was just what I needed. Although I did fall asleep in some of the poses. Really, what do you expect?
DAY 12 Ah Monday. Columbus Day. My office does not take this day as a holiday, so I'm in the office with about five other people. It was a slow morning, so I checked out Om's schedule for the day, and there is a stretching class at 7:30PM. Sounds good, hopefully they will concentrate on the back of the legs where I have the most trouble.
The slow morning turned into a slow day, and it seemed like it was days before I could leave my desk. I get to the yoga studio for the class, and all the students are waiting on the instructor. I'm anticipating a slight man to walk in - most of the teachers are either women or men of small stature. In walks this guy who is about 6'-4" and he's just big. Except he has a small head.
He starts off the class with us in Vajrasana. I hate this pose. It's a seated pose, where you're legs are bent underneath you, and you're sitting on your heels. My knees just don't like being bent that long. We're in that pose with different variations for about 10 minutes. I'm somehow able to unbend my legs afterwards.
Then we moved into downward facing dog. He decided that this would be a partner pose where people would pair up, and one person would place a strap around the other like a harness and help the person get deeper into the pose. Cue the S&M images of someone getting lead around like a dog on a leash. Hilarious.
A while later, he directed us into a pose where we were kneeling with one knee against the wall with the shin against the wall, and the foot of the opposing leg on the floor in front of us. We were expected to be able to sit up straight from this position. Sort of.
All in all, it was a very challenging class.
DAY 13 Took a break. Chey came over after work to do laundry.
I've been practicing yoga on and off since shortly after I finished college. Unfortunately, it's been mostly off. Earlier this year my therapist recommended resuming my practice and going to yoga at least twice a week, one of the classes should be a restorative yoga class. She said that I owed it to myself. I had never thought of it in that manner, and started looking for a restorative class. I figured if I could find a studio where I liked the restorative class anything else would fall into place. This took longer than I expected.
The first place I tried was Om Yoga. I liked the studio a lot, and the instructor was great. Unfortunately the class was on a Sunday, sailing season was about to start, and I usually sailed on Sundays. I figured that since that place was great, it wouldn't be so hard to find another. Again, I was wrong.
Next I tried Virayoga. Their restorative class was in their annex, which was a 100SF room big enough for two people to do yoga. The instructor started out with asanas that would be in a typical yoga class. After about 30 minutes, she started the restorative part of the session. Unbelievably, she continued talking. She went on and on, and it was in no way relaxing not to mention restorative. I nearly left, but being one of her two students, that would have been awkward.
There were other studios, but they had their restorative classes on Fridays. I typically sail on Fridays also, so I didn't bother trying them out. Instead, I decided to start sailing on Saturdays so that I could go back to Om Yoga.
Restorative yoga is one of the most relaxing activities I've ever encountered. Its very close to meditation, but you arrange yourself in different poses where you're propped up on bolsters, blankets, or blocks, and remain in the pose for 15-20 minutes. In its own way, its rigorous. 180 degrees from this are their open classes. I went to one of those today, a class run by Joe, and was invigorated. One thing I really like about yoga is that I can stay focused and my mind does not wander (at least in the open classes. Sometimes that's a little hard during the more relaxing poses). I only think about what I'm doing in the present.
This month, Om is running a challenge - 31 days of yoga. Practice once a day for every day in the month of October. Although I've been going semi-regularly for the last two months, I think participating in the challenge will help me establish a better practice. This is how its been going so far:
DAY 1 Didn't go. Planned on taking a 7:45PM Open class, but was distracted. That afternoon I was at a board meeting at the Cooper-Hewitt, and was invited to the cocktail party after. That was not the distraction, that one I felt pretty good about saying no so that I could go to yoga - one distraction avoided. However, on the way home I remembered that it was Lex's last day at the Seaport, and there were drinks planned for her. Another friend also texted wanting to avoid his own studying. I got caught up in distraction number 2 and joined some Seaport folks in wishing Lex well.
DAY 2 I had Friday off, but couldn't do my typical 12 noon class since I had volunteered to help out on Pioneer in the afternoon. Thursday night I set my alarm for 6:30 so I could go to a morning class. That didn't work, getting up that early on a day that I don't have to go to work wasn't the greatest plan. There were two classes at 10AM, a Basics and an Intermediate. Thinking I wasn't quite ready for an Intermediate class, I went to the Basics class. Too basic.
DAY 3 Open class at 12:30. Joe was teaching, so I was looking forward to it. It was similar in effort to his class that I took last week, but he focused on different poses. It was really enjoyable, and it was the first day of the challenge that I was satisfied with.
I hope that the rest of the month goes as well as today. To deal with days that I can't make it to the studio, I bought a DVD. There's also a cable channel that broadcasts 30 minute classes, so I'm DVRing them. When I put my mind to something, I can usually get it done.
