It struck me a moment ago that there is perhaps a view, occasionally, of the yoga blogger as skipping around, hopped-up on the yoga
cool aid or stomping about, rabid, consumed by angst and rage, envy and petty jealousies, a husk of a Yogi(ni) eaten up by bitterness and malice, all
twisted out of shape. OK I exaggerate, nobody thinks we're that bad...do they? And not actually skipping or stomping around of course, because all we do all day is sit at our computers, plinking and plonking out our endless homages and/or diatribes ( because we switch seamlessly from one to the other). Blogging, (over)analysing our/the practice, it's all we do all day obviously.
Not quite. wish I could say we were that dedicated to the
job .
So here's the day of one Yoga blogger, I've been thinking of doing one on this for a while, now seems as good a time as any.
I wake up a little before my alarm at 5AM...
I make my beloved her lunch, this morning there was a decision to make between the Potatas Praves I made last night, that she missed out on by coming home so late, or the Smoked Salmon I bought especially, a change from cheese, cheese and more cheese. I decide to go with the Salmon. I wrap it in cling film and then slide it into two cut off corners from a Pizza Express box for protection then tie a ribbon around, ( the ribbon from last Christmas' Pandoro). She also has a couple of stem ginger cookies wrapped individually in foil, so she can leave one for later, a small pot of grapes and a clementine.
This is one of my favourite time of the day.
I make an Nespresso, this morning it was a
vivalto lungo, the blue one, and then have a quick look around the web while I sip my coffee. I check the BBC news website, go over to FB and have a quick look at some of the status updates, perhaps '
like' a couple that catch my eye and wish somebody a Happy Birthday....always tricky when you have a couple of people with birthdays the same day, you don't want to say the exact same thing twice but also don't want one to sound nicer than the other, tricky. I'll have a quick look at my YouTube Subscription page to see if anything interesting has come up to watch later (see below).
This one on headstands came in last night form Kino, the treasured patron saint of the Home Ashtangi's. I have a friend struggling with headstand, this one's for her.
I'll have a look at my blog list, usually I'll just glance at a couple of posts with the aim of coming back later to read them more carefully at another time. Something might provoke an idea for a blog post, connecting perhaps with something I've been meaning to bring up for a while, I'll sketch a couple of lines for the post or just a title and save it for later.
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| Example of possible future blog post, some broad outlines sketched, may or may not turn into something |
Some suggest that you shouldn't go online before practice, never really found it a problem. Practice is practice and the monkey mind is no different if I do or if I don't. I've been practicing long enough now to be able to mostly switch it off and get on with practice. If something comes up I'll use the Mindfullness trick, acknowledge it and mentally put it in the
to think about later tray.
And besides I have osteoarthritus, I need a little while for my back to loosen up, someday's it takes longer than others.
So I'm on the mat usually around 5:30, maybe 5:45. Practice has tended to be, for the last three years or so anyway and whichever way I cut It, either a Vinyasa Krama approach to Ashtanga or an Ashtanga approach to Vinyasa Krama. There tends to be an Ashtanga shape to the practice with Standing series/Main Sequence/Finishing but I tend to bring out the Vinyasa Krama sequence from a posture of the Ashtanga series. So that first section of Primary up to Mari D gets the VK Asymmetric treatment. If I want to practice Seated then those seated Ashtanga postures from Primary get a VK overhaul. The first half or third of 2nd series is pretty much Vinyasa Krama Bow and Meditative sequence anyway, I just add in the extra postures. these days my breathing is so slow (8 sec inhalation/8 sec exhalation with kumbhaka's ) that I can only do about a third of an Ashtanga series or part of a VK sequence.
Around 7AM I'm probably starting on the finishing sequence, there are long, ten minute, head and shoulder stands in the Vinyasa Krama approach. Around 7:30/7:45 I'm on to Pranayama, M. might pop in and sit next to me for a moment in frount of the Halogen heater while I breathe, before heading off to work. I'll finish off with Pratyahara and some Japa mantra meditation. Either after asana or meditation I'll lay down in savasana for ten minutes and listen to a chant of Ramaswami's from the LMU course that I particularly like...I usually fall asleep for a couple of minutes.
Then (around 8:15/8:30) I'll either go back to the computer to write (or half write ) a post or read and comment on somebody else's post that I found interesting or stay in the home shala and chant for a little from the sutras or some of the other chants that Ramaswami gave us. Still hate the thought of chanting in public but quite like it at home when there's nobody in the house.
If I post it'll usually come out in around ten minutes (been doing this a long time now, can knock them out pretty quick, although this has been one of the longer ones, spent forty minutes on this), often it's picking up one of the posts I'd sketched out or worked on an and saved or perhaps somebodies comment provided a
hook for a post I'd had in mind (
if a long response to a comment or a blog post comes out of your comment it's really nothing personal but something I've been mulling over for a while, I'm thinking out loud). I tend to spend longer looking for a picture on a Google image search than I do writing a post ( I know, it shows). I usually have to rush out the post because I need to get ready for work. I read it through quickly and hit 'POST' with the aim of coming back to it at lunchtime in the library to edit.
I don't eat Breakfast, Lunch, or Snack during the day, just a small meal in the evening around 7:30/8.00, although I do grab a glass of juice in the morning before I head out the door.
I tend to manage a quick shower and get dressed and ready in ten minutes flat, heading off on the bike at ten past nine ( takes 10-15 minutes to cycle to work).
I'm a Woodwind Repairer in a medium size workshop at a Music shop that specialises in Woodwind and Brass Musical Instruments, there are usually three of us in at one time. We'll chat a little throughout the day but most of the time we're wrapped up with out own repairs. I have a particular interest in vintage saxophones so always try to grab those especially the vintage overhauls.
I have little notes stuck up on my pad draws in frount of me of chants, at the moment I'm trying to learn by heart the 12 suryanamaskara mantras.
We have customers who come in for emergency on the spot repairs but mostly I can quietly get on with my repair. It allows me to mentally chant to myself or I might set targets of half hour ujjayi pranayama with bandhas or Japa mantra while cleaning or padding at different times throughout the day. Often I'm having to work out how damage happened to an instrument in the first place, what it is that stoops it from working, strikes me as a similar process to working out why one's not getting into a posture.
I used to be a teacher, the change in career was supposed to leave my mind untaxed to allow me to study in the evenings but concentrating on padding fries my brain more than teaching ever did ( it was also to allow me to work and play with vintage Saxophones all day).
Bit worried this morning, shoved a large, rusty, tenor sax needle spring half an inch into my finger yesterday. Didn't bleed much once I wiggled it off the spring but it's puffed up a little this morning and is going to be painful to practice on, no jump back for me today.
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| Conn 26 m check out the springs |
Lunchbreak I tend to go to the library, commenting is difficult on the library computer for some reason but I'll tend to tidy up one of my posts and try to answer any of the comment that had come in. I tend to think of that half an hour in the library as blog gardening, taking care of business. I've been blogging for five years now, sometimes it does feel like a business (unpaid), a second job.
I leave work at 5:30, pick up some groceries on the way home and am usually back on the mat at 6pm for a short practice, some more pranayama and a little Japa. In the beginning I used to use this slot for working on postures that I was struggling with, thought of it as workshop time. Jump back's, Kapo, Karandavasana, tic tac etc. all worked out here. Later ( when I stopped giving a damn about new postures) I'd split my day between an Ashtanga and a Vinyasa Krama practice. Currently as my practice is a kind of Ashtanga Vinyasa Krama, in the evening I'm exploring a little Iyengar alignment with John Schumacher audio classes or practicing long Tikonasana's as I try to make sense of Prashant Iyengar's 'Alpha and Omega of Trikonasana' book.
Between 7 and 7:30 I'll tend to do some more blog gardening, perhaps put put down in sketch form some ideas for post, a little research. Currently I'm writing out an interview with Krishnamacharya from the old
out of print biography.
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| Krishnamacharya in Mysore |
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| Interview with Krishnamacharya |
7:30 I'm in the bath with my iPad, it's my favourite place to read. Just started Hugo's Les Miserables, I watched the musical/movie last week ( not really a fan of musicals ...except Fiddler on the Roof obviously) but it weas OK and reminded me of how much I loved the book as a kid,
those candlesticks, so decided to reread it. Reading it on the ipad is OK but bought the penguin classic anyway, still prefer a good sized paperback, especially in the bath.
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| Now, that's a bath book. the 12 Suryanamaskara mantras in the background |
I'll make dinner at eight. Last night was Patatas Bravas (
Thank You Enrique for the correct spelling), Roasted potato wedges with a thick, spicy smoked paprika tomato
sauce, but I scoffed a bunch of the potatoes with salt and oregano before I'd finished making it. I only eat once a day now so try to make it nutritious, include an avocado perhaps, an egg... I don't know, I should probably make more of an effort to eat better (Potatas Praves is a little too rajistic no?.
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| This time in wedges. |
At 8:30 I go up to the Chinchilla's room, in Winter all he wants to do is sit between my ankles under a blanket for two hours while I read. At the moment I'm doing a close reading of Mala Srivatsan's
out of print biography of Krishnamacharya and making notes for future posts, to share as much of the good stuff as I can on the blog. I'm also reading the Taittiriya Upanishad with Sankara's commentary again on my iPad.
M. gets home around 10pm and we get to chat for a bit, usually with Nietzsche ( chinchilla) still under the blanket. 10:30 I put both him and myself to bed, reading a couple of pages of Jung's Red Book before falling asleep.
And that's my day.
Tuesday is different, day off so a later, longer practice - currently one of the long Vinyasa Krama sequences in full. Nice long pranayama, 80 rounds and a decent sit.
I'm studying along with AG Mohan's online yoga Sutra course with a couple of other YS commentaries, and getting stuck into the new (and better, more of his magic coming through) translation of
Heidegger's Contributions to Philosophy, a few chores around the house, takes up much of the day.
I also found out that our local cinema is only five quid on a Tuesday, £3:75 with my loyalty card, so have started going to watch something, last week Les Mis', today it'll be Bigelow's Zero Dark Thirty.
I try to cook something decent for M. on a Tuesday
What else.... Sunday, that'll be mine and M.'s day, you don't want to know about that although often we'll practice together or I'll give her a kind of Vinyasa Krama lesson, she never took to Ashtanga. Sunday is the one day I'll eat breakfast, lunch AND Dinner (often Japanese or Korean).
We have the chance to watch something together Sunday's, recently it's been the original version of The Killing, we started with the 3rd series, then the 2nd and now were on the 1st, working backwards. This weekend we did go and watch the Bolshoi's La Bayadere on the
live feed from Moscow ( who knew watching ballet at the cinema rather than in the theatre could be SO good), Svetlana Zakharova just sublime.
And that's my day, my week, simple and dull perhaps looking at it like this and yet it feels ....rich.
Previous posts
5% theory, 95% practice ?
W
hat did Krishnamacharya study with his Guru in Tibet- Yogacarya Krishnamacharya - The Purnacarya. Edited by Mala Srivatsan
What is Ashtanga? What is a Mysore Room?
Best Practice Dream Ever - My Mysore Room
Krishnamacharya on Samyama in Yogasanagalua and Yoga makaranda ( part II) Chakras, Jivatma, Paramata etc
