I'm into taking care of myself lately.
I have to get back into a health regimen that feels right. To that end, I decided to go back to my old yoga studio in South Pasadena, Mission Street Yoga. Apparently, they were rocked by a scandal recently. The founder of anusara yoga apparently was having orgies or sex parties or was involving sex in his practice. Well, I used to go to Naked Yoga in West Hollywood hoping it would devolve into a sex party, but that never happened. So maybe this studio is my kind of place after all!
My instructor Natasha left a year ago to follow her guru in Berkeley. If you go back to old posts, you'll hear how great her lessons were to me. I adored her. But soon after I left because my Dad got sick and I just didn't have time to practice.
Then Dad died...you've been reading ALL about that. :)
And I decided that I needed to get into my yoga, my hip hop dance classes, and running. The running thing is becoming more of a challenge. I'm blaming the heat we're having in LA right now, but I need to get it together. However, I checked with Mission Street and realized I had some class credits I hadn't used yet, so I decided that it was time to check it all out.
I went to a class two weeks ago and I wasn't vibing with it. It felt too hard. Yoga is supposed to be strenuous, but when you are connecting the mind, body and spirit, you push to go deeper into your soul. So the physical effort describes your mental commitment and your spiritual deepening. But there was hardly any spirit in this woman's class. And it's fine. We all vibe with different things, right?
I had seen a class on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 10:45 AM that I was interested in checking out and the guy didn't have a picture or a bio on the website. He was new. So that intrigued me as well.
A quick thing about me and yoga classes: I don't like when they are just about exercise and fitness. I have to go to a yoga class that is about the spiritual. I have to go into it focusing on an idea and then it makes sense to me. When I'm in a dance studio at LA Fitness and the instructor isn't going around doing corrections, it bugs the shit out of me. I also don't like most gym dance classes for this reason, but my guy Michael Allen's routines are so much fun, that doesn't bother me. And the environment for yoga classes at the gym doesn't do me right either. It needs to be serene. I took a Bikram yoga class once in Portland in a studio that was basically an old office space. There was wall to wall carpeting and weird office tiles on the ceiling. I've never been back to a Bikram class since.
Okay, so today I decide to go to this class. I walk in and Jeremy, the instructor, is talking to a woman about handstands and headstands. The conversation was giving me anxiety. Was I in the right place? I've been so patient with everyone lately--my therapist, my bereavement counselor, my boyfriend, my Mom, my managers--I didn't have much more patience to go around. But this guy was young, thin and gay. So I decided that I'd give him a shot.
He opens class talking about his conversation about headstands and handstands. He said he had been really obsessed with the upper body lately. Anything that happens from the shoulders on up. Okay...intrigued. Then he talked about the idea that we carry the weight of the world on our shoulders. He asked us to think about responsibility and what we hold on to. All right, now I'm hooked. I have a theme. I have a physical action tied to an idea. I'm with you, Jeremy.
So we did a lot of work that focused on postures and opening up. How does it feel when our shoulders are hunched forward? How does it feel when we have our shoulders held back at our sides? How does it feel when our heart is forward and open, our palms are up and our shoulders are back? What does this project to the world?
What if we went out into the world in this totally receptive pose? I'm in it to win it, Jeremy. I'm totally there with you. My smile was as bright and open as my solar plexus was out in full display for all to see.
We did do our handstands. We did L pose. We started working towards headstands. Some people even did them.
I love when yoga practice is challenging and you do something you don't think you can do, but you're guided through it. I love when it's incremental and then we end up doing something that seems impossible or super difficult. That's when I feel alive. And I felt really alive today.
I also have been having my massage guy, Aaron work on my shoulders and upper body a lot during my massages. It's because of this pressure that I feel. The weight of the world.
I think I found my class. Deep breath. I needed that.
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