Merry Mermaid

The weekend was rather mellow and self-indulgent. I’m trying not to feel too shitty about this, but that’s challenging, given the harrowing scenarios elsewhere: plane crashes in Boulder, homeless children in Haiti, plant explosions in Conneticut. Sigh. It just doesn’t seem good enough to say I feel lucky to be who I am, where I am and when I am, as my sense of fortune would be tied to the misfortune of others.

I’ve done embarrassingly little yoga this weekend — my excuse is that I travelled to my mom’s place this weekend, which involved an 800-km drive (each way) with two dogs, one of which gets remarkably, pitifully car sick and was therefore relegated to his crate for the duration of the trip (not including pit stops) to prevent vomit leakage into all the nooks and crannies of the backseat. I found the Prairie terrain uninspiring and the hours in the car exhausting, despite having now listened to two-thirds of Olive Kitteridge (unabridged), a fabulous book (my favourite story so far, “A Little Burst”). And so when I caught myself growing droopy around the town of Bassano, Alta., I pulled over and had a power nap in the gas station parking lot to the melody of semi-trailer air brakes, beneath the town’s signature sign bearing its slogan, “Best in the West by a Dam Site.” The sign said five minutes parking max, and while I doubted anyone would have the gall to make me move when the gas station lot is as big an airfield, I comforted myself with the knowledge I’d get at least five minutes of shut-eye. (For the record, no one made me move, and I was there for at least 45 minutes.)

Mom and I got pedicures Saturday (my idea, though out of character for me, the gal of naked toenails, heel calluses and a recurring touch of athlete’s foot). You’ll be appalled to know I caught myself GRAVITATING TO THE PINK SHADES at the spa. Ralph! What is wrong with me? After silent scolding myself, I insisted that I try a new shade outside my toenail polish comfort zone. Don’t recall its name, but if I like to think of it as “Merry Mermaid.” (Granted, mermaids don’t have toes. Humour me.)

What do you think? OK, OK, let the mockery begin.

Pink overkill

I am not a girly girl, in the giggling-insectophobic-cry-over-broken-nail sort of way. But I don’t take issue with pink yoga clothes. And that’s a good thing, because while I fancy myself an all-black-non-descript yogi, I seem to have acquired several pink items over the years.

Exhibit #1: Pink yoga bra
Shade: Bubble gum
Date of acquisition: January 2007
Excuse: It was on sale, I needed a new sports bra and pink was the only colour left.

Exhibit #2: Pink yoga top
Shade: Fandango
Date of acquisition: November 2008
Excuse: The owner of the studio where I teach (and practise) gave it to me as a thank-you gift.

Exhibit #3: Pink yoga pants
Shade: Cherry blossom
Date of acquisition: March 2009
Excuse: They looked lilac in the Prana catalogue, I swear it!

Tonight, in my home practice, I wore all three pink items together and became a human cotton candy serving (without the, ouch, stick). I did wear a grey headband, just to break it up a bit, but it still felt like pink overkill. Too Valentinesy, too estroginated, too I-wanna-dot-my-Is-with-hearts.

It’s happening

I’ve done two practises in my cute-as-a-button basement studio, and may I just say it’s fabulous! The floor (and my body) are cold when I first start, but the room is small enough that it warms up quickly and the ceiling is high enough to do handstands and urdhva hastasana (handstand upside down, AKA standing with your arms in the air) without fear of bashing one’s hands or toes against a light fixture.

It is so quiet in there, I can barely hear the dogs tapdancing around upstairs, and even yesterday, when my dear husband was labouring to clean and repair the furnace humidifier in the room beside me, all I twigged on were a few thumps and bumps.

In the past, my home practice has been of varying quality. Sometimes it’s good, often it’s lame/half-assed, and often it’s nonexistent because I’ve talked myself out of it for a variety of reasons (the room is too cold, the room is too cramped with the bed and dresser in it, the ceiling is too low, the carpet is annoying, someone’s knocking at the door, the phone is ringing, the cake in the oven is cooked, the dogs are scratching at the door, I want to have a nap, I want to read my book, I want to do anything but yoga, and so on).

No excuses to skip practice now! I’ve got the ideal space. Well, 99% ideal. It will be ideal once it’s green.

Eating on the mat

My colleague Liane sent me this story from the NYT about the collision between the food world and the yoga world. It’s fairly interesting…lots of debate as to what yogis shouldn’t, shouldn’t eat, of course (some say eat meat, drink wine, others say vegan all the way — personally I couldn’t live without yogurt) and even some comments from the fine Mary Taylor of Boulder, Co., who studied with Julia Child and makes a seriously mean nut pate. I know. I’ve tasted it.

When Chocolate and Chakras Collide

May I just say, though, the idea of eating pasta and soup on my yoga mat the minute I finish practise, when I’m all sweaty and smelly, is disgusting. I don’t care how heightened my senses are — the thought of eating in the studio grosses me out.

Isn’t she a beauty?

My new practice space at home. Gorgeous, no? Just wait until I’ve painted it a yummy shade of green…not too dark, not too light, not too sissy, not to bright…

Truth is, I feel exceptionally lucky and mostly undeserving of this small yet meaningful privilege…a room of my own! OK, Virginia, I know you meant a writing room…I can write in here too! On the floor.

Hello Riverdale

It’s official. I’m a Riverdalian!

The hubs and I moved into our new home in Riverdale, a sweet neighbourhood neighbourhood in central Edmonton, on Monday night. The house is still a chaotic sty, but already I love my new address.

Our place is right by the river, so it’s perfect for running and walking the dogs, and only a 20-minute walk to work at the Edmonton Journal. Granted, there is a mega-hill right at the start of my walk, but based on all the huffing and puffing I did moving furniture into the house, I could do with more cardio training.

The ‘hood is eerily, juicily, deliciously quiet. Last night I could hear some faint sirens, probably emergency vehicles up on Jasper, but otherwise, nothing. Nothing at all. Honestly, does anyone live in these houses that surround me?

I’m excited about the Riverdale Community League, which is just around the corner from my house. This is a very active community league, and I’m hopeful maybe I’ll meet some good people and perhaps teach yoga classes there, if the market isn’t already completely saturated.

Also excited because there’s a cosy little room in my basement just BEGGING to become my personal yoga space. High enough ceilings for handstands, no carpet, window, and small enough that I can warm it up with my body heat. Will post a picture of it soon. Can’t say I’ll miss practising in a sloping kitchen in Belgravia! No sir.

Yeah, moving is a pain in the neck (and the back, and the thighs, and the hands, and the toes, which inevitably get squashed by a cumbersome bookcase or sofabed). But once you’re moved, it’s so worth it.

The thing about yoga pictures

So here you are, practising yoga, convinced you’re doing everything fabulously. You feel like a million bucks. You’re bursting with energy, joy, confidence. You fly through the series thinking, I rock! This yoga thing’s a piece of CAKE!

And then someone takes a photo of you in posture X, and you look at the photo, and think, dear God, is THAT what I look like?! I will never practise yoga in public again!

Case in point: Mayurasana. I’ve been practising it for a couple of years, and of course my ego tells me I’m as straight as an arrow. Then, last night, I saw a photo of my Mayurasana. Let’s just say that the ego has taken a MAJOR hit. Arrow schmarrow. I’m a wet linguini noodle. I’m the leaning tower of Pisa…after it falls over. I’m the squiggly line on an electrocardiogram.

My friend Janet doing Mayurasana (beautiful, no?):

Me doing Mayurasana (still needs work, no?):

A sad state of affairs. I am really glad ashtanga studios don’t have mirrors. Because I really do NOT need to know.

Picking pineapples still has some appeal

Back in the teaching saddle, after nearly three months. Given the length of my hiatus, it all felt slightly surreal, as though I was just pretending to teach, as though the students were pretending to be students. I almost got the giggles mid-OM but resisted by clenching my buttocks hard and thinking about my dead cat.

It is a strange thing, standing in front of a room of faces that hang on your every word, watch your every move, obey your every command. You feel like a puppeteer, pulling strings, watching the marionette dance. “Lift your arms,” you say, and 14 pairs of arms lift. “Bend your right leg,” you say, and 14 right legs bend. “Lie down on your mat,” you say, and 14 bodies lie down on their mats. The power you hold is intimidating.

You feel very vulnerable, too, especially when everyone’s expression is so stony, so serious, so impossible to read. Yoga is a happy thing but yoga student expressions are so stoic! It makes me crazy! “We are here to do this yoga thing,” the faces seem to say. “Show us how. No funny business. Just get on with the sweating and stretching and enlightenment.”

I get nervous before every class. The negative self-talker hooks in its claws, tells me I’m crap, that no one actually wants to take my class, that the students are disappointed I’m subbing for their regular person, who is far more awesome than I could ever hope to be, that they’re frustrated by the way I speak, demo, adjust them in postures. Basically, I’m convinced they think I’m an idiot.

I always welcome feedback and questions at the end of class, but rarely does anyone ever say anything. So if they DO think I’m an idiot, they’re being quite polite about it. I appreciate that. Though, if someone were to break the truth to me, perhaps it would spare me the humiliation of future idiocy.

Teaching was never something I aspired to. When I think about it, most important people in my life — my husband, my mom, my stepdad, my mother-in-law, several of my close friends – teach for a living. But I’ve always much preferred the idea of being the student – absorbing, rather than distributing, the information.

Call me greedy. Call me lazy. Call me shy.

Before I “met” yoga, the job of ‘teacher’ ranked rather low on my list of career aspirations. Position #470, or thereabouts, after numerous other less desirable lines of work, including pineapple picker, poultry slaughterhouse worker, bottle depot sorter, drug test urine collector, lettuce washer, Superstore shelving duster and porn theatre custodian.

But once I started practising yoga, I became quite passionate about it, and, well, teaching just seemed like a natural step. I had all this knowledge, and, for the first time ever, I wanted to share it.

Doesn’t make teaching easy, though. Mostly it freaks me out. Sometimes, before I start a class, I think of picking pineapples and how it wouldn’t be all that bad, because, yeah, my hands and arms and legs would be all torn up from the pineapple spines, and yeah, I’d get scorched in the tropical sun, but at least there’s be no risk of looking like an idiot in front of a bunch of yoga students.

Alone together

It’s weird how you can practise daily next to the same people in the same studio and never say a single word to them, even though you know their names and you obviously have something in common.

But when you go into the mysore room, at least where I practise, everyone seems to be doing their own thing. Rarely do eyes meet. Rarely are greetings exchanged. It’s kinda bizarre. We’re all there together, but pretending we’re not there together.

A belated hello, then, to Amy, Nicky, Paula, Pattie, Karen, Cindie, Priya, Laurie, Kristina, guy with the beard, new guy, lady who was going to the Citadel after practice, lady who was in my beginner class one time and lady with short hair I’ve never seen before. For the record, I really want to say hi each and every one of you. It just didn’t seem appropriate. It never does.

More on yoga etiquette soon.

Yoga hill training

The kitchen is said to be the warmest room in the house.

And yogis looooove warm rooms.

But this is ridiculous!

Explanation for photo above: I’m between houses at the moment, living in a temporary place on the south side that has only two non-carpeted rooms — the kitchen and the bathroom. The bathroom is small (and come on, could you do yoga next to the toilet?) so there’s only one room where I can do home practice.

The kitchen is cosy, and bright, thanks to supermarket-style fluorescent lights mounted on the wall, as opposed to the ceiling (!!). There is also a door, which is useful for keeping out excitable dogs.

But there are drawbacks. The flooring in this house lists, which means that I’m forced to practise on a slope – “yoga hill training,” of sorts. And it’s weird, frankly, practising in the same room as a refrigerator. I’ve done yoga in some strange spaces but this is just silly. Though when I’m having a crap practice and feel like procrastinating, I could always have a little snack, or plan dinner.

False yoga

I’ve got two nicknames for Felix, the younger of my two whippets.

One is “Poop Demon” because Felix has a nasty habit of, well, you know, snacking on the caca. He delights in consuming the logs of my other dog, Poppy, sometimes before they even hit the ground. Eeeeeeew.

Felix is also known as “Chicken Liver” because whenever we meet another dog in the river valley, Poppy the Enthusiastic Greeter goes running over to meet it, and Felix cowers behind me, allowing Poppy to be the sacrifical lamb. Once Felix sees Poppy has ’survived’ the encounter and is actually having heaps of fun with the stranger, he’ll join in.

But it’s ME, not Felix, who’s been the chicken liver of late. After two months away from Edmonton and my regular studio, True Yoga (near the A&W on Whyte, just east of tracks), I was all nerves, procrastinating from going to mysore class here in town. Why? Initially I said it was because I was tired, because we were moving and had boxes to pack, because I wanted to hang out with my dogs after not seeing them in so long. LIES. I’ve looked myself in the eye, and here are the REAL causes of my procratination. First, because I was convinced my fellow yogis had huge expectations of me (as in, ‘ooh, she studied with Richard Freeman, surely she can do impossibly-twisty-upside-down-inside-out-posture-X by now’). Second, because I was convinced I’d gone backwards in my practice, at least in some poses like Kapotasana and Baddha Padmasana.

Ego, ego, ego, ego.  How I hate it! I mean, when I examine these anxious thoughts, I can see it’s ALL about me, my performance, what others think about me, etc. Argh! I am so angry with myself. I know yoga is supposed to be an internal practice, and I tell myself I don’t care what other people think of my practice. But then when I look deep inside, I see these old, flawed thought patterns are still there. It makes me think that, even with all this yoga training, I really know nothing! Patanjali is wagging his finger at me from yogi heaven.

Maybe I should start up my own studio and call it “False Yoga”. Sigh.

Yoga garage?

Clutter. Yick.

The accumulation of unnecessary stuff – in the fridge, on my desk, in my inbox – makes me itch.

It brings me great joy, a somewhat sad little high, to get rid of stuff . Delete it! Throw it away! Pawn it off as regifts! Etc. Not to the Up in the Air ‘backpack’ extreme, mind you. As I’ve learned in the lead up to a move this weekend, I have a helluva lot of possessions – boxes and boxes and more boxes. How did I acquire all these cutting boards? All this Tupperware? Four yoga mats? Ralph! Ryan Bingham would be disgusted with me.

My revulsion for clutter includes keys. Clunky, obese sets of keys. Handfuls of keys. Key GOBS. The kind you can’t even fit in your pocket. The kind that could throw out your shoulder when you pick them up.

Why do the key people have so many keys? How many friggin doors do you have in your life? How many friggin doors do you NEED? These mega-key-chain people usually make the problem worse with mega-key-chains-ornaments that dangle from the ignition of the car and bash them in the leg while they drive.

I’ve whittled my key collection down to the very bare bones – house, car and the two yoga studios where I teach. In the summer, I’ll throw on my bike lock key as well. My keys are so neat and compact, I can slip them in my bra – though it does give me one rather bizarre-looking nipple.

Anyway. The other day my husband discovered that one of my yoga studio keys also opens my garage. Go figure. I mean, what are the chances? I’ve been trying to figure out the meaning of it all, since I like to attach meaning to pretty much every insignificant event. Option 1: Convert the garage into a yoga studio. Option 2: Quit yoga and take up vintage auto restoration.

Hmm. I’m a huge fan of the lousy radio show Car Talk, even though I don’t know (or care to know) the first thing about cars. Naaah. I couldn’t handle all the grease under my fingernails. Or all that automotive clutter.

What I missed about Edmonton

I missed a lot of things about Edmonton while I was in Colorado. My side of the bed (the left side, when facing the ceiling). My husband’s sarcasm. The bookcase. The bathtub. Familiar sounds: the furnace cutting in, the backdoor squeaking open and closed, the telephone ringing (I didn’t have a phone).

And of course, my two whippets, Felix (left) and Poppy (right). Separation from them was truly agonizing. I’m skipping my yoga practice tonight just to hang out with them. What a barrel of laughs they are. Poppy is currently curled up in the corner of the couch with a three-foot toy snake (eyes now missing) stashed under her paw, and Felix is belting around ‘killing’ a pair of my husband’s rag-bag boxer shorts. I’ve just removed a black button from his mouth. The dog’s, not my husband’s. If my husband wants to eat buttons, I’m not going to stop him.

Back to Podsville

Where did the last nine weeks go?

It’s Sunday night. January 3rd, 9:09 p.m., to be precise. I’m sitting on the couch with the husband. Our two dogs are nestled on either side of me. One is grunting in his sleep; the other is cooking up silent, nasty-ass whippet farts. Aaaah…smells like home.

Tomorrow is Monday, and I’m back in the Land of Pods, Sticky Elevator Buttons, Noon-hour-Microwaved-Curry-Somewhere-in-the-Newsroom Odours and Scenic Parking Lot Views.

Not that I’m complaining. The last two+ months have been damn fine. Yogariffic. And I’ve written some fiction. Which probably stinks to high heaven with the whippet toots. Perhaps, after much revision, one of my stories will get published by some desperate literary journal willing to print my purplish drivel because they’ve received no other submissions.

My Ginormo-Mat made it home in one piece, strapped on to my backpack, though it got filthy on the baggage belts. Probably a good thing — it forced me to scrub the sucker down today. I hadn’t done that since before I left Canada Oct. 26. Gross, I know. All that sweat, all those barefoot-yogi-cooties. Yup, now she’s clean as a whistle. Alas, this means Richard Freeman’s fingerprints are gone, gone, gone. I scored a few of his arm hairs, though — will add to my Yoga Master DNA collection, which will be displayed on the hearth in small glass jars.

Looking forward to establishing a new yoga routine in chilly Edmonton. Have high hopes of boosting my home practice. Less driving to the studio that way, much as I love practising there. I’m going to aim for the mornings (she says, fingers crossed behind her back). No, seriously I am! Don’t roll your eyes! Alright, alright, it might not happen. I am a rather excellent sleeper…early mornings aren’t pretty. OK, so, I won’t promise. I won’t bet my firstborn on it. But I will try.

I will try.

Nine pounds

…is NOT how much weight I’ve gained living in Boulder since October. (Jeans still fit. That’s a good sign.)

Nine pounds is how much my yoga mat weighs. Can you believe that? I knew this baby was heavy. But nine pounds?!? That’s how much I weighed when I was born!

I’ve been lugging a NEWBORN back and forth to the studio every day. A tubular, orange, biodegradabale newborn. Christ!

Who’s the daddy, you ask? John Friend. Hahaha. Seriously, he’s the designer of the mat I use, the Revolution Natural Sticky Mat. I don’t practise anusara yoga, but I like this mat because it’s very firm, and because it’s wider and longer than your average mat. Which means I can claim a few extra square inches of floor space in a crowded studio. Greedy guts, I know I know.

Check it out: Prana REVOLUTION MAT

Thing is, I don’t think I can bear to haul around this beast anymore. She may be eco-friendly but she’s a bit of a whale. Where can a girl buy a yoga mat stroller? My back is killing me.