Re-boot.

July 6, 2009 · Filed under Body Pains, Exhaustion, Yoga

I don’t consider myself a demanding woman. The glass is almost always half full, the simplest pleasures are oftentimes the greatest, and life really is all about the little things.  Those are my mottos.  (Usually.)

But…  Um, excuse me, Yoga?  I have some demands of you.

Please wring out all of the alcohol I consumed this past weekend.  Yes, all those beers, those vodka tonics, those vodka sodas, oh and the 900 “Life Is Good” cocktails my girlfriends and I sucked down like water.  Also, if you squeeze out the five gallons of salt water I accidentally guzzled while riding waves, swimming, and splashing around like a five year old, I’d greatly appreciate it.

Please squeeze out the ridiculous amounts of lactic acid coursing through my muscles right now, thanks to laughing for hours, bike-riding close to 20 miles, running on the beach, diving through surf, playing ocean Frisbee, scaling fences, shaking my booty (on the dance floor and, yes, on stage, too), throwing horseshoes, sitting in beach chairs, squishing too many people into too-small cars, and laying on rock-hard sand.  I hurt, all over, “from coxis to toes.” I’m bruised and sore and stiff.  Help.

Please sweat out the toxins I took in, from the booze to the burgers to the hot dogs to the cupcakes, from the croissants to the coffee cake to the Cape Cod chips to the candy.  In the last four days, I ate more bad food than they sell in your local 7-Eleven.  Sweat it out of me, I beg you!!

Please steady me, as I stare down a long post-vacation to-do list.

Please forgive me for ignoring you, for going away for so many days, for stretching in the sun rather than in the studio.

It was a gloriously fun, relaxing, hilarious, indulgent, busy, and bountiful weekend, and I soaked up every second of it. I feasted, on my friends’ laughter and stories, on the island’s plentiful array of food and drink, and on the ocean’s cold and salted company.  Not a moment wasted, not a minute spared.

And while I absolutely love (and need) mini vacations like this, I also pay dearly for them, physically and mentally.  Part of me is downright petrified to hit the 6 p.m. yoga class today.  (How much will it hurt??) Another part of me can’t wait.  (Ohhh, how good it will feel!) 

But, that’s the way it goes, right? 

We yank ourselves apart and then begin the slow recovery, the dutiful process of putting all the pieces in place again.

Let’s pause, please, for just a second, and wish me luck, though.  I have a feeling I’m gonna’ need it.

Comments (2) »

Island-bound…

July 2, 2009 · Filed under Life

After the rainiest ferry ride—so much rain fell even the ocean overflowed—I and two friends arrived on Nantucket for a long holiday weekend.  The island looked dark and gray and thunderous but beautiful, peaceful, lovely.  I cannot wait to enjoy a few days of relaxing, laughing, eating, drinking, beaching, biking.

No yoga. But, so it goes.

Have a great holiday weekend, friends!  Catch you on Monday.

Comments (1) »

For whom do you practice your yoga?

June 30, 2009 · Filed under Hard Times, Life, Yoga

I dreamt last night that my mother died.

Well, first, I dreamt that a small boy I once knew fell from a balcony at a swim meet and landed 15 feet below on the deck, dazed, bleeding, barely whimpering or moving. And then, after awaking from that nightmare, I fell into yet another horrible dream that my mother had passed, and she had left me an envelope filled with crumpled bills that amounted to a little less than $1,000, and a tangled old necklace, and a scrap of paper with a scribbled note in her barely legible script.  Oh, I wept and wept.  And I awoke so convinced the dream was real, so enraged and saddened and confused and frightened and alone. It was awful.

Then, at the office this morning, a coworker came up to my desk and told me about how a woman in our office just found out that her boyfriend died.  Also, one of my coworker’s friends had been hit by a car this weekend and her leg was broken. We then discussed the latest Airbus tragedy (note to self: do not get on a plane flying across an ocean anytime soon).  Then, of course, we had to pause and pay heed to how Michael, Farrah, Ed, and Bill all died within the last 10 days.  Oh, and did you read about the bombings? About the shootings?

What is going on, world?!

Tonight in my yoga class, the teacher said to us as we laid in our final savasana that we do this yoga for ourselves first and foremost, but we also practice for others, “for the people in our lives, for the people we love, and even for the people we don’t like.”  After ruminating on this during my walk home, I think what she meant was: We do this yoga so that we may live longer with our loved ones.  So that we may be happier, healthier, stronger, sturdier.  We practice patience, stillness, fortitude, determination, courage, with a little bit of humor and a lot of hard work, and we try to practice these same virtues off our sweaty yoga mats. We do this yoga to find balance in ourselves so that we may help put balance back into the world beyond our studio walls.

Well, that’s the hope anyway.  Right?

But, does it work?  Does my yoga matter, in the grand scheme of things?  I can’t stop terrorism with triangle pose.  Nor can I convince a gunman to lower his arms by explaining how to breathe through the torture that is camel or standing bow.  I can’t save a dying child by completing a 30-day challenge.

That’s taking things uber literally, I know.  Let’s take a step back then.

An old high school friend e-mailed me today asking about my yoga practice—she’s trying to get back into Bikram and struggling to find motivation and wondering whether this yoga is really for her.  I eagerly wrote her a long-winded e-mail all about what my yoga means to me, all the lessons I’ve learned, how yoga has changed my life and how I am a better person today because of my practice.

And that’s certainly enough for me, for the bubble that is Hannah. But, what about beyond?  Has my yoga helped the loved ones around me become better people, too?

Doubtful.

Still, I’m intrigued by this idea of my practice affecting the lives around me. Does it? And how?  When?  Why?

I’d like to think that the power we yogis generate in a single class could feed a large, hungry family with love, strength, belief, hope. And I’d like to think the effort we exert to move diligently and carefully and powerfully could stop a murderer or terrorist or rapist in their tracks. I’d even like to think we’re capable of passing grace and forgiveness to those who we might not think deserve much of a second chance.

Yes, I know—this is my naiveté speaking.

But, like I said to my friend, the trying is what really matters.  The simple act of showing up.  Of looking yourself in the eye—or looking your demon in the eye—and saying, “Enough already. Let go, be free.”  You make room for the good by releasing the bad.

The simple act—of saying “I love you” when you really mean it, of volunteering, donating, giving beyond what’s expected or asked of you, to friends and strangers. Of seeking the goodness in others, of working to forgive yourself, the same way you work to forgive the flaws in those around you. You seek balance, serenity.

I don’t think I—or even an entire troop of yogis—can bring about world peace from the perch atop a $20 yoga mat. No, friends.

But, what I think I can do, what I think my teacher was saying, what I think my dreams and my fears of late about the great tragedies and sorrows in the world are trying to tell me, is that action trumps all.  Showing up, letting go, giving, nurturing, tutoring, working hard, saying what you mean and feel, helping, hoping, loving—these things we can do, on and off our mats.

And then I, we yogis, and those around us, and our worlds, separate and intertwined, will be the better for it.

At least, that is the hope. My hope. In all its radiant naiveté.

Comments (7) »

Let’s talk tattoos.

June 29, 2009 · Filed under Self, Yoga

An observation, if you will.  A lot of people who practice yoga have tattoos.

Or, perhaps, just a lot of people in general have tattoos and in yoga you’re forced to show them, thanks to teeny-tiny tops and skimpy shorts.

A second observation, if I may be so bold. More yogis in Boston have tattoos than yogis in Washington, DC.

Okay, okay.  Now I’m just making gross generalizations.

But, really, friends.  Each time I sit up on my mat in my Boston studio and look around me, taking in the great array of Bikram devotees practicing alongside me, I marvel at the artwork on display.

One woman who I’ve seen only a few times has a single sentence of text running down the back of her left arm, the lean muscle of her tricep serving as the dotted line.  I’ve never practiced close enough to her to read the writing, but, I love the idea. Our bodies—a page upon which to pen a thought, a bit of poetry, a favorite quote.

A man I see every once in awhile has a Celtic symbol slapped onto the middle of his back.  It’s big and black, aggressive, angry.

Another man, gray-haired and wrinkled just about everywhere, wears his old U.S. Army tattoo on his right shoulder. That badge of honor has faded to a blur; but, I look at it every time, in salute.

A younger Asian woman bears a sprinkling of stars across her lower abdomen, a flat band of skin acting as sky. Some nights, before class has begun, I catch her trailing her fingers lightly across that dimly lit cluster, an unnamed constellation.

One of my yoga teachers has an intricate but unidentifiable marking on her lower back.  I have yet to ask her its significance, but I always wonder what it means, what it symbolizes.

Several women, in fact, have tattoos on their lower back. Pictures of dolphins diving through imaginary surf. Sometimes a flower, all but one of its petals out, or a sun that has, sadly, stopped shining. A lot of Celtic symbols. Only a few Chinese characters, perhaps one or two Sanskrit markings.

My yoga crush carries his tattoo on his outer bicep, like many a men.  It’s not particularly attractive—possibly an impromptu decision, a last-minute trip to the tattoo parlor. But I like it, because it is his, and because it is on his body.

As for me…  My skin reads like a blank page, minus the dusting of freckles on my shoulders from too many summers in the sun.  I don’t even have a birth mark. Scars—those I have. Those come in droves. After all, we used to pretend your lips tattooed my skin, your kisses creating my unique markings.

Lately, I’ve begun to think I might like a tattoo—a real one, that is. The idea of having something permanently placed on my skin doesn’t bother me nearly as much as it used to, especially if I chose wisely, carefully.

I wonder what “Strong, brave, true”—one of my mother’s classic sayings—would look like written in another language, perhaps Spanish or possibly Sanskrit. I imagine where I’d let the needle go in—the inside of my wrist?  The top of my foot? The flat ridge between my shoulder blades?

As I think about placement, interestingly, many of the tattoos I see each night in my yoga class are covered day in and day out.  Meaning, my fellow yogi might work with the same person for five years and that coworker would never know about the palm-sized print laying beneath those blouses. And yet, I see it. And I don’t even know her name. There’s something incredibly intimate and revealing about that.

Maybe I’ve just finally been seduced by the painted flesh I see day in and day out. Perhaps I’m just smitten with all this body artwork, those symbols and shapes, the strange pictures, these sharp, silent etchings in ink.

Comments (11) »

We pause for fundraising.

June 29, 2009 · Filed under Yoga

In these great times of economic uncertainty, upheaval, and general mayhem, we all can probably rattle off at least one (or maybe a dozen) people we know who have been laid off, suffered salary cuts, taken forced unpaid vacations, and so on.  It’s tough, it’s tragic, it’s the way things go these days in the good old U.S. of A.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but in most cases, I feel fairly helpless in my ability to do anything for said friends who have lost their jobs.  I don’t consider myself “well-connected” in the business world; I work in communications (i.e., not the most lucrative or happening industry right now); and, networking, unfortunately, isn’t necessarily my strong suit.  Don’t get me wrong—I’ll do what I can for you.  But, well, that “doing” might just be buying you a good, strong martini or treating you to a night on the town to drink away the day spent scouring the internet for jobs. 

This morning, I found in my Gmail account an e-mail from a fellow blogger, Crisitunity, who also just found out she’s getting the pink slip come the end of July. Interestingly, she’s taking this forced life change and trying to make the best of it….by saving up for yoga teacher training.

Freaking awesome.

Teacher training is expensive.  Saving for it can be hard and can take years, depending on what kind of training you want to attend and at what level. 

So, help a yogi (and a writer) out. She’s selling some stories over at her site, seeking some donations (five bucks! ten bucks!), striving to take a great leap forward in pursuing her dream.  Cliche, but every little bit helps.

And that is my Monday morning solicitation.

Comments (5) »

« Previous entries
Next Page »