March 21- Home Again, My Love

I am back in Boston. Yesterday’s wet snow sticks to the boughs of city trees and power lines.  As I write, the chai is bubbling on the stove.  The tea, the spices, the jaggery, all brought from India.  Now it’s almond milk instead of the cow’s gift from Shakti Agro Farm outside of Mysore.  Some things that enter my body must stay familiar for just a minute here.  Some rituals must remain undisturbed, even as the ground shivers beneath me.  My head is still ringing, and I am meditating on how far my astral body might be from my gross body today.  The elements of air and space oscillating.

The chai is done and the color is wrong.  I miss some things of India, already, though I was so ready to come back here. It is some twisted love affair.  I am always plotting our next meeting, though never sure why.  Just drawn by some seed that craves the smelly and sacred waters of India.  Craves a unique rain of color, smell, and ever-present sound.  Like any love affair, there is also diesel, poop, and profanity backstage.

The brightest thing out my window is a red automobile.  The only thing moving is a squirrel.  This is the ripest of moments, homecoming.  The bliss of travel I seek: new eyes, new ears, new tongue, new life.  It can be like this every day, but I travel for 24 hours, scrunched and rumpled to find this simple sense of renewal.  This complete juxtaposition of cultural climates that reminds: none of it’s real, babe.

Where am I?  What happened? And most of all, Who Am I?

Yoga, you brought me here, to this place.  And I trust you will bring me along to so many others.  Yes, I know when I walk into the yoga room you will be waiting there to welcome me, as always, my love.  

My years with Nancy Gilgoff, half-way up the road to Makawao.

March 9- 

Nancy Gilgoff was my ashtanga-mom.  I was like a pre-teen in the practice when I moved to Maui, age 23, in 2002.  I remember being at Robert Moses’ place for breakfast one time when Govinda Kai was there from NYC.  It was NH winter, we were eating Meenakshi’s pumpkin pie with freshly whipped cream for breakfast.  I was complaining about the weather, and then about the parasites in India. 

“I wish I could have the warmth and fruits of the tropics without the parasites,” I said.

“You should go to Maui,” Govinda said.  “If you don’t like the weather, drive an hour.”

“Who’s teaching there?” I asked.

“Nancy Gilgoff.”

And so it began.  My years of weather-chasing at full tilt, I spent the last $500 on a ticket to Kahalui airport, packed a carry-on sized pack, and the name of an old friend of Robert’s from the ashram who might give me work.

I ran into Nancy in the dressing room after Guruji’s class in NYC.  I recognized her from photos, and I went right up there and told her I was moving there in 2 weeks to study with her, and could she help me find a place to land.

She looked at me, and into me, in a Nancy kind of way.

“Well, I guess you could land on my porch,” she said.

She told me later that she saw the energy swirling around me, the high after my first-ever class with Guruji, and while not everyone is welcome to sleep on the porch, she thought there was something going on here.

6 months on the porch, and 5 years on Maui.  Nancy took me through 3^rd series and the first 6 poses of 4^th, as is her way- she learned those 6 as part of advanced A section.  Ouch.

I have since moved to Boston to teach a community of my own, and now study exclusively with Sharath and am working my way back through third in the way it is being taught now.  I teach the practice as it is being taught in Mysore (veering off into the therapeutic when necessary).  But I feel lucky to know first-hand the way it has changed, the way it has been presented differently to different individuals over the years.  And knowing these individuals, as teachers/people: Nancy, David, Ricky, Nicki Doane, Eddie Modestini, Tim Miller- everybody’s got a different body type, personality, and mindscape.  I’ve watched the style of teaching in Mysore change as things got busier and the reigns moved from Guruji to Sharath and Saraswati.  Things start to make sense, why the practice is taught differently, and why now, we all gravitate towards different teachers that balance or complement us with the way they bring the practice. 

But when I learned third from Nancy, here’s how it went down:

I practiced the arm balances after intermediate.  Broke myself, rested and started again for 1.5 years.  During that time, I wanted it so bad, the ole third series.  The dangling carrot of my life.  At some point, I just gave it up.  I remember a day where I thought, well, it may just not be this lifetime, it’s ok, Kate, back down.  And that very day, after intermediate, Nancy came to my mat and said

“I think it’s time for you to try third series again.” I said to myself,

“Nancy is crazy.”

But that was no surprise.  And if you study with Nancy, you go along with the crazy because this is her greatest gift, the surrender to a current not born of the mind- hers or mine.

To my astonishment, that day I went through the entire series, one by one. She kept saying, “one more.”

I could do them all and it felt awesome.  When I got to the poses from 4^th, although I didn’t know there was a split there now, my body knew it had gone beyond the ok-place.  The awesome thing about it, is that Nancy couldn’t exactly remember the order and we all kept trying to write it down, and practiced in different ways, learned it slightly different ways.  We got worked up, we laughed, we fought.  It was a circus; it was not linear; and it left me at some point to just figure it out and do my best.  As my studies of traditional arts in India expand, I find there is a penchant for confusing students on purpose.  Whether Nancy did this on purpose or through her mystical-guide, she was right in line with tradition. 

In a pile with the document Steve Cahn just posted, there was a drawing on yellow sketch-pad, and a cut-and-paste sequence we made stuffed into this dusty old desk in the corner of the yoga room on Larry’s property, half-way up the road to Makawao.  When a student seemed ready, Nancy would pull the wrinkled papers out and begin the journey.  Not one pose at a time, but until the student seemed pretty much exhausted, I’d say.

For me, what followed was a dance between practice and the rest of life for a good 3 years.  The energies unleashed, yes unleashed, by that series required a whole new level of commitment and focus:  food, drink, right speech, rest- all the time, not just in practice.  I fell down and got back up so many times.  Cried, pained, avoided Nancy, moved to another part of the island even.  This is when the Ayurveda really became an important part of my life.

Then I began teaching Mysore in Boston, and my practice had to shift to accommodate and its taken me 5 years, and the help of Dominic Corrigliano who lived in Boston for a spell, to get me back into Third, in the sequence it is now taught in Mysore.  Why?  I have decided it feels best for my body in the new order.

It is possible that Guruji was just pulling it out in a sequence for that student, at that time.  The codification of anything dynamic always makes for trouble doesn’t it.  I am so thankful for my crazy days with Nancy, because I was plucked off a rigid yoga path and stirred in the pot.  Yoga is crazy.  Yoga is fun.  Yoga thwarts the mind.  Now I can never see it as a static thing.  Thank goodness.

2 Months of Tough Love.

What is going on in that last backbend, then?  Why is everyone so intent on taking ankles?  So I am not an exclusionary author, let me explain.  After you do all your jumping around, your sun salutations, standing postures, and seated (or not so seated) postures, you do the backbend- upward facing bow.  Urdhva Danurasana.  This is performed by lying down, bending the knees, placing the feet near the bum at hip’s width, placing the palms on the floor beside the ears, now lifting up so your head comes off the floor and you are on all fours, belly facing up.  Over time, you walk the hands in closer to the feet.  Someday you “walk walk walk” the hands until you touch the feet, and someday later, walk up and hold your ankles, balancing freely on the legs while holding on and looking up towards the backs of your knees.

I’m just holding on right below the knees these days and balancing in a tentative way most days.  A teacher can help one by taking the hand for you, up from the ankle and helping you place the hands higher, one by one.  It’s a real trust exercise, and one the most beautiful gifts about teaching.  Not that helping someone do just about anything scary and seemingly-impossible isn’t awesome.  It’s all relative to the individual what is scary and impossible. 

Once the hands are moved up, then we get the cracks in the spine.  We hope they are in the upper back, not the low back.  Everybody needs to learn how to keep the pose in the upper back by keeping the elbows in and lifting the chest.  Thing is, you don’t know which end is up and where your elbows are, and where your feet are, although you are actually standing on them. And wait- am I breathing?  Relaxing?

This year, I realized I need to look up, really open my eyes and look.  The last thing I wanted to do was watch my body get bent, but it seems to be a key.  Then I can see my left arm is out to lunch, as is the right foot.  Once I have a sense of the landscape, I can get to the center of things.  I am still here.  In this unfamiliar zone, I am still me.  Consciousness steps in and begins to marshal the body around again.  That seems to be how I roll in life.  I do better with a little sense of my environment, a little info on the situation before I charge ahead.  Then Sharath comes and takes the hands higher still, so I am again groundless, and that’s how this system works.  Find ground, lose it.  Sounds like life, doesn’t it?  Forget, remember.

Doesn’t this all sound a little, um, extreme?  Well, I’m so careful. So frickin careful with my body.  I come out of the Ayurveda center today, where I’ve been oiled into submission on a wooden table with no pads or pillows, steamed within an inch of proper hydration, and I’m thinking this is so not a spa.  Out on the street, a rabid rickshaw driver skims by me at break speed.  No coddling here.  It’s a part of the culture, things are a little bit rough.  It’s tough love, in the Ayurveda, the yoga, in everything Indian.  Westerners would do good to step back a bit from the safety obsession in yoga classes.  I feel very lucky to have smaller classes, and one-and-one instruction, because I don’t have to think about how to keep a large group safe.  It’s no accident that I teach Mysore-style Ashtanga.  I certainly had chances to make more money and success in vinyasa.  

But ah, I always knew I wouldn’t be happy.  Here, the yoga becomes specific, effective, and mystic.  Sometimes I watch a student hurt themselves, and I think, well the yoga’s doing some teaching over there.  Other times I have to pound them into a new habit before they get hurt, depends on what type of hurt we are talking about here. 

Tough love.  And I’m getting mine over here this winter.

March 7- Ashtanga Yoga is a Breathing System

It’s an endurance contest.  Waking up so early, drinking chai, and making it over to the shala for a very difficult practice.  At the end of 2 months of this and dreaming of sleep, and that distant memory called dinner.  Everybody in there is maxing out.  All together we are sweating, embarrassed, sometimes fearing, sometimes hurting.  This week, Sunday to Thursday, practice has oscillated from awesome to crappy and somewhere in between.  I find myself thinking the most amazing thoughts. Such as:

I’m too old for this.

Will I really keep doing this every day?

Did this used to be easier?

Past and future, past and future.  Then I come back to the present. Breathe Kate, just breathe.  That’s all you have to do to make this yoga enjoyable and keep that crazy mind from tweaking you right out of town.

Ashtanga yoga is a breathing system! Why do I continue to forget and remember this about 20 times every day?  Wacky, I tell you, this whole human thing is just wacky.  I guess knowing is half the battle.  Some humans move on along through life and remember the Truth after illness, accidents, the occasional jolt back to the Now.  The yoga practitioners, well, I guess we are trying to remember at least once/day.  So maybe 20x isn’t bad at all then?

Feb 4- Election Day

It’s coming, election day for the local government post.  We have rickshaws decorated in party colors, flags, and sporting not one, but two bullhorn-shaped speakers per vehicle.  In the back of each one is a man with a microphone, going on about his platform.  There are 7 parties at bat for the position, so we’ve got 7 rickshaws in the neighborhood, coming and going.  It’s loud, really loud.  Last night we had two park on the street in front of the house, facing each other.  There was a debate, via bullhorn-speaker for a few minutes, then the rickshaws rolled off into the early evening light.

There are also marches happening at different times, usually young men with hats all the same color, or bandanas of white, green, and red.  They are handing out pamphlets, staring at me walk by, and generally having a nice time, doing something important. 

I wonder if we can expect the on-street excitement to continue, perhaps escalate, until the election on March 7^th.

Feb 28- Naked Yoga.

One thing I am noticing about blogging:  posts which have sensational titles including concepts such as Attack, Human dung, and Hotties in short shorts get double the reads of yoga/spiritual titles.  I’m going to write about sensational things.  Yeah, no pressure.  Hang on a second while I go on the balcony naked, to taunt that monkey by waving my passport smeared with peanut butter…

We were talking last night (yes, we talk all the time, too much, this happens when women live together in small spaces) about how we are getting older, and after so many trips here, now the practice here just kind of cruises along.  You know that plateau-feeling I’m sure, no matter what your level and where you live.  A couple new things I’m working on: daily deep back bending, a shit ton of asana 1.5 hours before I even get into the finishing room.  But yeah, you know- we’re saying last night- I don’t feel like anything is really happening this year.  When I was in my 20s, I did that stuff every day.

Over-achieve much?

The next morning I go through my rote 2 hour yoga practice with my legs becoming wrapped around sundry body parts while jumping around and breathing with sound all the while.  Savasana was fitful, and when I got to the coconut truck outside the shala, the sound of about 6 people talking was almost shocking- loud, sharp.  Like somebody dropped a metal pan on the tile.  Some sensitive.

Here’s the thing:  when you’ve been at it for over a decade, one would hope the shapes we make, the order we make them in, and the over-all effect of vinyasa would begin to penetrate.

And here’s what is SO COOL ABOUT THE YOGA.  When yoga is penetrating, I generally don’t know what it’s doing.  I’ve had the experience of a shifting vantage point, a subtle change at some level that is just…barely…perceptible, but hazy.  Not enough to make out what in fact the change is.  This knowledge comes much later.  Meantime, there’s no telling how I’ll digest that meal, might break into song at the coconut stand, or see no sleep tonight.  Some sensitive. 

Last year, everyone kept saying my eyes looked different when I came home.  They did.  Another time, I walked into my apartment and it was no longer my home.  A tiniest little square that had nothing to do with me.  My boyfriend was no longer my boyfriend.  My wardrobe was no longer "me."  

I always have trouble dressing myself when I get back.  Look out Boston- here comes the grey Hanes sweatsuit again.

In my defense, and in defense of Ashtanga yoga:  I have stabilized over the years.  I can at least see the reaction now, and I don’t need to completely revamp my outward life-situation all the time.  Oh, old habits die hard though…I am often called to keep an eye on that draw.

My Self.   That’s the rub isn’t it?  This self, this small self that moves in the world and chatters and dresses and makes the rent.  I’m still at the stage where I want to identify with this self.  Who is she?  Who am I?

And there we have it folks, we have made it from last night’s naïve talk in the kitchen back to what the yoga is all about, and the scintillating title of this post. 

Getting naked.  Strippin’ down to the Self.  Naked Yoga, yeaaaaah.

Wrap your leg around your neck, little self, and try to look pulled-together while Sharath yells “Head Up. Kate. Head Up!”  Just try. 

No actually, don’t.  Don’t try this at home.

Feb 25- Yoga Student Attacked by Monkey!

I’m at the Talakad temple, walking along devoutly with my pink bag and red saree, when out of nowhere- shazam! Monkey attack.  A big one, baring his teeth springs up at about waist level, reaching for the handle of my bag.  It’s one of those bags woven out of recycled plastic, what all the folks use here for going to market and carrying the lunch.  It’s great for spillage, keeps its shape so you can load in the tiffin containers of food, and stands up nicely in the car, rickshaw, or dangles safely from the handlebars of the motorbike. 

Thing is: they always contain food, these bags.  And mine is bright pink and yellow,  Yellow, like bananas.

I don’t back down to monkeys.  I’ve got experience with this sort of thing.  Mmm hmm.  Try me, monkey face.

Generally I yell at it, berate it for its thievery, because yes, monkeys are smart.  They know better than this.  But I was in a crowd, at the temple, and trying to be…ladylike.  So I swung the bag to bash it in the head.  Except the monkey wouldn’t release his hold.  He is swinging;  I am swinging, and nobody’s really having any success.

The locals are yelling in Kannada, “Get a stick!  Find the stick!”

The monkey falls back, but now I’m pissed.  I swing again, two-handed, yelling “hey hey!”  The monkey dodges, springs again, and grabs the bag, taking me by surprise, hanging from the bag.  I shake the bag.  It lunges a third time, hissing, and I realize it could go for my face, scratch my arms, or any other manner of rabies-inducing action. 

I decide I had better hit it, in the head, really good.  The wind up, the pink bag cuts through the air, there is a sharp intake of breath from the general public…

“Aaaack!!!” says Sanjay as he kicks sand into the monkey’s face.  Direct hit to the eye!  The monkey veers off to the side, and into the bush.  I am panting.

“You keep the bag,” says a lady nearby, showing me her market bag tucked under the armpit.  I am embarrassed at flaunting my food bag in front of monkeys.  But he came out of nowhere! Only monkey of the day. 

The crowd moves on, chuckling.  I am mad at monkeys for the rest of the afternoon, white-knuckling my bag. 

Thanks Sanjay.