Playin’ The Edge

One thing yoga does well is make you really conscious about your feet. Not only do you get to parade them around naked for the class, but you get to look at them with every Sun Salutation. Taking care of your feet is a good thing. You don’t want to scare your classmates and you don’t want them to look like gnarly yellow claws when you’re older. The thing I’ve discovered is that feet *can* be improved after ignoring them for a long time and that doesn’t mean $40 pedicures or a lot of time.

Here’s a 10 minute fix for an evening at home:

1. Remove any nail polish
2. Fill a sink with warm water, jump up onto the counter and dunk your feet. Mmmmmm.
3. Lather up some mild soap, rub it on your foot and give the rough bits a good scrub with a pumice stone or one of those pedicure paddle thingies. If you’re low on equipment grab a handful of salt and rub that in. Repeat on the other side.
4. Push down your cuticles so you can see your toenails.
5. Blot your feet damp dry, sit down and rub in something uber-moisturizing. Body lotion is not enough here. Expensive spa-stuff is nice but for inexpensive options try Palmer’s Cocoa Butter . It smells like chocolate - just rub it between your hands to get it soft first. Other good options you’re likely to have around are Vaseline or oil. Really rub your heels and any calloused spots so that the skin gets warm and can absorb more. Don’t forget your nails and toes.
6. Put on some soft cotton socks so the good stuff really sinks in and you don’t leave footprints. Leave the socks on overnight if you can.

In the a.m. your feet will be attention-ready for every Sun Salutation.

Someone told me once that he was doing a finance MBA but absolutely hated accounting. So he took an advanced class in it. Seems counter-intuitive right? If you dislike something you should avoid it like the plague and hope it’ll go away. But what he discovered is that by getting deeper into it he found the beauty (yes beauty) in something he’d previously disliked. He disliked it because he didn’t get it. He hadn’t gone deep enough into it.

I read a bit about this on a Motherhood blog I found. I like #13, it’s so true.

“Sink into it. This is a yoga trick I learned several years ago. When you’ve just about had it with a pose, and your body is screaming at you to untangle!!! and you’ve lost all focus…just sink into it. Every breath, just sink a little lower, or stand a little taller, or whatever you’re doing that’s hard…do it a little more. Yes, it’s hard. Sink into it. When I start to get bored with the knockknock jokes or the diapers, just sink into it. This is my life. Live it deeper. Love it.”

This is a challenge in my home practice. When I reach my first edge sometimes I’m out of the pose before I’ve really thought about it. It’s like the aversion reflex is so familiar I don’t even notice that I’m running off to avoid any discomfort. I’ve been trying to get better at noticing that first edge and then staying for another breath or two. To use the edge as a reminder that it’s time to really notice what’s going on. But next time I’ll go a step further as the blogger suggests. I’ll make a point of just going deeper. To sink in and find the beauty in it.

What Thich Nhat Hanh says in this interview about “right consumption” really struck me.

“….the amount of violence and craving in us and in our children comes from our practice of unmindful consumption — watching television, reading magazines, having poisonous conversation. We bring a lot of poisons and toxins into our body and into our consciousness. If you don’t stop producing these toxic items, and if we don’t know how to protect ourselves by mindful consumption of these items, there’s no way out.”

I’ve tried to become more conscious about what I take in media-wise. I have pretty much stopped watching/listening to the news. I just find the body-count information overload too depressing. Sure it means when someone says “did you hear about the fire that killed all the babies!?” I have to say “no”, but I prefer not to be inundated with that kind of news all the time. It just makes me feel too powerless and sad.

Head in the sand approach? Maybe, but when there is so much information available you have to be selective. When the tsunami happened in South Asia, I read a few stories in the paper and they were really tough to absorb. There was no way I was going to watch the news. I just didn’t want to see interviews with parents who saw their children swept away by water. As a parent, I want to enjoy my son every minute and feel as safe as possible so that he can too.

I believe that what I can control is how I operate within my own sphere of influence. I want to focus on being positive and compassionate and fully present with the people around me. And I can’t if I’m constantly side-swiped by the toxic tidbits swirling around me.

I read an article somewhere urging women to get over themselves and take up weight lifting. This is all good, because strength training builds bones and muscles and all kinds of good things that we lose as we age. But you don’t *need* weights to build strength. Your body weight is pretty handy for this. There’s plenty of yoga that builds solid muscle and if you choose the yoga path, you get all the other benefits as well. You can kill muliple birds with one yoga mat.

I talked a few weeks ago about building strength and wanted to build on that with more Airplane and Warrior 3 pose variations. Airplane pose is just a different arm position - arms are alongside your torso, hands by hips, palms facing the floor.

- More for your butt - from Airplane pose, standing on your right leg, lift your left hipbone up a few inches and bring it down. Repeat a few times. This is a great glute strengthener that will support you in future balancing poses.
- Extra for arms - from Warrior 3, let your arms drop so they’re hanging down toward the floor. Then on an inhale, slowly bend your elbows and pull them back so your fists squeeze in toward your arm pits. Exhale your arms back down and repeat with your next inhale.
- More arm stuff - with your arms hanging straight down again, bring them up on an inhale into a T-position with palms facing the floor. Squeeze the shoulder blades together a little before lowering on the exhale. Repeat.

These poses really challenge your balance so don’t sweat about getting your body *too* vertical because it’ll be hard to keep it all together. After adding one or two of these into your session you’ll have earned a good Savasana break.

Just when you think yoga takes itself too seriously, your favourite action figures go public to show off their mad Ashtanga skills at Yogabeans.

See GI Joe do Chaturanga on one fingernail and one knuckle.

See Hulk weep salty tears of frustration because “Hulk hate yoga”.

Even non-yogis love it. Keep it up Elastigirl….

Here’s a follow-on from yesterday’s post about music. Having the ability to remotely control your music is pretty important in a class. It’s a bit disruptive to pad around the class fiddling with music while your class is trying to focus. And realizing while you’re teaching a pose that you’re competing with the music can be discombobulating - do you stop to change the volume or just holler over the chanting? You need a remote control you can use to tweak the sound right at your mat. But what if your music equipment isn’t close enough to point a remote at?

It’s easy - you need the sexy-named RF Remote Control Extender. I have a studio at home where I teach and this baby works to control the music *throughout* the house. You replace one of the batteries in your remote control with a special one that sends the wireless signal, so you don’t need extra clunky equipment. The replacement battery even recharges itself so it’s really low-maintenance. The little round base station thingy sits in front of your equipment so it can pass your signal to the components, you don’t even need to point the remote in it’s direction. It works like a charm. Last night I was able to start the music, move to the next track, and adjust the volume without moving from my mat - no disruption, no discombobulation.

I’ll also add that ordering from Parts Express was easy and shipping was fast (even to Canada). Here’s an opportunity to focus on playing yoga teacher not DJ.

I mix my own CDs for yoga classes. I mix from a huge range of music and then choose a CD for class based on the weather, the mood I’m trying to create, the poses I’m doing and more. But the most important music is what gets played for Savasana. Anyone who has felt an emotional pull from music knows the power of just the right selection to help you enjoy a good yoga glow and melt into the floor.

Here are my current favourites:

Brian Eno’s Ambient 1: Music for Airports - there are only 4 tracks on the album and they’re all good in a non-linear sorta way. I especially like the vocals in 2/1.

Yoga: Music for the Mind Body & Soul - it’s all good mellow yoga music, but I particularly like “Mountain” and it’s a good length for Savasana.

Yoga Rythms - a must-have. It’s lotsa fun for a spirited Vinyasa session and I hope Shiva Rea produces many more. The Peter Kater tune is great.

Hannibal Soundtrack. “Vide Cor Meum” is my absolute favorite classical tune. It builds so beautifully that I just let it play for the last 5 minutes of Savasana without saying a word. Edit out the final sound (what were they smoking?) before you burn it to CD.

Agnes Dei. This is an amazing choral album, and “Miserere” is 14 minutes of wonderfulness that will take you through some slow stretching right into Savasana. On a technical note - this album plays at a very low volume, so either use burning software that will adjust the levels, or avoid mixing it in with alot of other selections that will have you jumping for the volume button.

I’m a big visualization person. When bodies and minds are finally relaxed and unclenched at the end of class I like to “take” them somewhere. Sometimes it’s so easy to start *thinking* in relaxation and I find if we get the heck outta dodge everyone seems to achieve a deeper relaxation. More often than not lying in a meadow, field, beach or on a feather bed during Savasana. Or we’re playing with light or color or whatever.

But I know visualizations are often challenging for people. I think the common “relax your arm, relax your leg” type of Savasana can be the hardest. Newbies say, “I don’t feel anything happening!”. But I believe that the mind/body connection is stronger than we think and that you’re making a difference even if you don’t feel it. And then over time when you spend less of your energy worrying about it you’ll get even better results.

Visualizations are challenging for me because I’m only a sorta-visual person. We all perceive the world primarily through one of our senses and if you know yourself, you can use that. If you don’t know, practice and see what works. Let’s say we’re visualizing ourselves surrounded by white light. This can be a tough one.

- Visual - if you’re a visual person, no biggie. You can see the white light, it’s practically blinding.
- Auditory - if you’re more of a hearing-oriented person, try to see as much white as you can, but give the light a hum. Something like a flourescent light. Or a breathy sighing sound. Or angels humming, whatever. Then surround yourself with that sound, adding as much color as you can.
- Sensory - if you’re ruled by the sense of touch then give the light a bit of sensation. Maybe it vibrates a little or feels warm or breezy. Then work with that and “feel” the light surround your body, again seeing as much of the color as possible.

Practice makes perfect here. But the key is not worry about whether you’re ‘doing it right’, but just trust that it’s happening and get immersed into the experience. I promise you’re going to feel great.