Serious inspiration (updated!)

Go ahead, please watch the entire eight minutes.



What an amazing time
What a family
How did the years go by?
Now it’s only me…

Tic toc
Tic toc...

Like a cat in heat stuck in a moving car
Scary conversation, shut my eyes
Can’t find the brake
What if they say that you’re a climber?

Naturally I’m worried if I do it alone
Who really cares cause it’s your life
You never know it could be great
Take a chance, cause you might grow

Oh, oo, oh

What you waiting
What you waiting
What you waiting
What you waiting
What you waiting for?

Take a chance, you stupid ho

Like an echo pedal, you’re repeating yourself
You know it all by heart
Why are you standing in one place?
Born to blossom, bloom to perish

Your moment will run out
Cause of your sex chromosome
I know it’s so messed how our society all thinks (For sure)
Life is short, your capable (Uh-huh)

Oh, oo, oh
Uh, uh

Look at your watch now
You’re still a super-hot female
You’ve got your million-dollar contract
And they’re all waiting for your hot track

What you waiting
What you waiting
What you waiting
What you waiting
What you waiting for?

I can’t wait to go back and do Japan
Gimme lots of brand new fans
Osaka, Tokyo
You Harajuku girls
Damn, you’ve got some wicked style

Go!

Look at your watch now
You’re still a super-hot female
You’ve got your million-dollar contract
And they’re all waiting for your hot track

What you waiting
What you waiting
What you waiting
What you waiting
What you waiting for?

What you waiting for?
Take a chance, you stupid ho

I'd been a fan of No Doubt for years and years. I'd read all sorts of interviews with Gwen Stefani in which she talks about her struggles with weight and body image and how it's damn hard to be glamorous, and in the kind of shape she wants to be in. So when I see that she was this girl, I am blown away (go ahead and skip to 5:10 if you must). (Update: From a Fall 2005 interview with The New York Times: "What she does possess is ... a rigorously self-enforced humility. ... 'Everybody out there has a team of people behind them. That's just the way it is.' "

What are you waiting for?

What am I waiting for?

Pain in the Ass

My left hip/butt has been excruciatingly painfulbothering me for a few months now. I should get it checked out. Of course I know I should get it checked out. But seeing my primary doc, to get a referral to the higher-copay ortho doc, to get an MRI scheduled, to be prescribed physical therapy that I can't afford, seemed like a very expensive rabbit hole (which under normal circumstances would be a stretch, but I'm on the hook for $500 of a big car repair, so, yikes [fucking deer fucking running into me]). My leg isn't falling off, and I'm not even taking Advil or Aleve most days, so I've been fine with just sucking it up.

Until!

Today, the super lovely Josie posted on FB this article, "A Common Cause of Low Back and Sciatic Pain — The Piriformis." Through some web-sleuthing, I'd become pretty sure that the culprit was my insanely tight piriformis, but all the stretching in the world hadn't been helping, just making the pain worse (which is can be pretty characteristic of fibromyalgia, but that could be another post entirely).

The article discusses trigger point therapy and self-myofascial release, even backing up (in the comments section) the idea that stretching is not helpful until the trigger point is released. This is sort of groundbreaking for me to hear.

Doing the work with the foam roller and a tennis ball will be hard; it will be painful. I am notoriously bad at following through on commitments to do anything for more than a week; the writer recommends starting with two weeks of daily work. But it's the least (and least-expensive thing!) I can do for myself to try to bust up the knots that have so negatively affected my quality of life the past few months, specifically.

Perseverance has never been a strong suit of mine, but now's as good a time as any to work on that. I can't wait to get home tonight to sit on a tennis ball.

A little horn-tooting

Last night after the 7:30 class with KTO, an intermittent student gave me (I think) a huge compliment.

"How many classes do you take per day?"

I gotta say, I swooned a bit. After a class that started out with a lot of wobbles, I did find some strength (and KTO noticed, too). It felt pretty good to know that a few of my postures are lookin' good.

My practice has been so all over the place (especially since February, when I busted my knee), as has my mind. I have something like 27 posts in draft version here. As work winds down in November, I hope to get back to blogging on a fairly regular basis. I miss our conversations!

Take a breather

This is one posture that makes me grumble.


I think I coined my new favorite Bikramism last night:

"If you're laughing, you're breathing."

The 7:30 pm class had four new people, and they (mostly) did great. (And by that I mean three out of the four had great attitudes. The one who walked in with an "I can do everything" vibe left the room halfway through and left the studio altogether, against the teacher's directives. Frustrating.) The girl who ate pasta an hour before class didn't throw up; I'd consider that a victory these days.

One woman, this tiny, spunky smoker, had had a nervous laugh-snort out in the lobby as I was giving them the new-student rundown. She ended up behind me in the studio, so I felt like I had to be a good example.

She did great with all of the things newbies usually have trouble with—hands to feet, grip in standing bow, staying still... I fell out of a couple of postures and was sort of grumbling to myself when she caught my eye. A bit of a giggle-fest ensued. She did the snort-laugh thing again. How could I not crack up?

I don't want to be a class clown, but I also want new students to know that it's ok—hell, even encouraged—to have fun in there. We were "debriefing" after class, seeing how the new students felt, and talked about the frequency of fainting (I haven't seen it myself, but I have very nearly done it). All the time, we hear, "As long as you keep breathing, blah blah blah." Talking with the snorter, I said, "As long as you're laughing, you're breathing."

At least for me, this one's a keeper, and a reminder to not take every posture myself too seriously.

Anniver-se-rary

I searched flickr for "gratitude," and this came up. fitting!
image via eekim / flickr

Just a quick shout-out and gigantic "Thank you" to the Bikram bloggers and everyone else who has commented here over the past year-plus.

Today marks the one-year anniversary of starting the work-study program at my New York studio, and although it by definition will never be the same as my first, original, home, home-away-from-home studio, it is what I have now, and I am incredibly grateful for it.

I can say with 100 percent certainty that if it weren't for this Bikram blogging community, I would never have had the courage or motivation to ask for work-study at this studio. It's at least 40 minutes from my home. I wasn't a regular student there (I'd been about three times in two years). I have had tons of drama with my car. And yet, the studio owner trusted me.

Last night, she expressed surprise that a work-study student had been "at it" for a year. I am not exactly sure what she meant by that, but over the past year, I've seen four or five people sign up for the program only to drop out a month later. I'm sure there are a host of reasons that happens. But when she seemed surprised, with a dash of being impressed, that I was still going strong, I myself was surprised. Not holding up my end of the bargain — cleaning and folding towels and signing people in and reassuring newbies — was never an option. Not practicing was never an option.

But I never would have started down that path, a path that has lead in many ways to the fulfillment of this blog's name, without my friends in the computer. Thanks, friends!

Australian news article on Rajashree

(Click on the page, then click on the little magnifying-glass-thingy to enlarge. Or, original is here but who knows when they'll take it down.)

Thanks to @jimwehmeyer on Twitter for sharing this, and Rachel at Alive in the Fire for retweeting it.

I'd so wanted to go to Rajashree's seminar at Kripalu last weekend, but it was just too expensive for me. Everything I've heard about her leads me to believe it would be amazing just to be in her presence, and try to soak up drops of her wisdom, and compassion. Been feeling like I could use some of those lately.

Hope everyone's doing well, and staying warm!

"They are themselves. They are so good."

via davedash / flickr

“We don’t have to run away from this world. We don’t have to feel harsh and deprived. We can contribute a lot to the world, and we can raise ourselves up in this world. We should feel so good. This world is the best world. If you drive into the mountains, you may see the mountain deer. They are so well groomed, although they don’t live on a farm. They have tremendous head and shoulders, and their horns are so beautiful. The birds who land on your porch are also well groomed, because they are not conditioned by ordinary conditionality. They are themselves. They are so good. Look at the sun. The sun is shining. Nobody polishes the sun. The sun just shines. Look at the moon, the sky, the world at its best.”

- Adapted from Chögyam Trungpa’s book, Great Eastern Sun, by way of Ocean of Dharma (by way of Yum & Yuk)