Bakeram Yoga

I am trying out a new yoga studio.  Tentatively, I like it.  I originally went to this studio when I first got here, but the class I went to was not so much a class as a self guided yoga time in a studio.  There was a sequence of poses that you were supposed to follow, but unfortunately I didn’t know them when I went in.  I got through it, but it was a bit intense for me.  However, since the studio I have been going to provided wonderful physical exercise, but very little of the meditative side of yoga, I decided it was time to branch out and try it again.  This time instead of the super intense class I picked a beginner’s class.  It was lovely.  It wasn’t physically challenging, but the teacher was wonderful at bringing the spiritual side of yoga into our practice.

She talked about vata which is the energy of the fall.  It is an excited nervous energy that causes us to run around and work on feathering our nest for the winter.  I am particularly prone to nesting and with the recent move have felt even more so inclined to nest and make my house comfortable and welcoming.  The negative side to vata is that it causes irritability and anxiety.  I am also very prone to worrying about things so this also struck me as very interesting.  As a way to balance out vata, we did a practice that slowed down our movements and made sure we were very supported in each pose.  Then at the end of class, I got a proper shivasna!   I came out feeling much better.  My whole being felt balanced and relaxed again.

I am underwhelmed with yoga in California.  When I moved out here, I had this lovely vision that yoga would be just wonderful here.  Afterall California is home to hippies and just generally nice liberal people.  But for some reason something is missing.  To me, yoga is not just about pushing yourself to get into a particular pose, but the breath and meditation that accompanies it.  The physical practice is definitely necessary to keep the body strong, but I have always liked to combine the spiritual with the physical and there is just something missing that I can’t put my finger on.

When I walk into a yoga studio, I can tell pretty quickly whether or not the energy and the emotion is good there.  I have found this very positive inviting energy even in places I never suspected like Galveston, Texas.  I have been going to my current studio for about a month now.  The people are nice and the instructors are very knowledgeable in the poses and the yoga, but still the meditative part of the practice is missing.  I am convinced that this partially due to the fact that there is very little shivasna at the end of the class.  The teacher usually leaves about a minute or two for shivasna, and says that we can stay longer and I usually do determinately trying. However, as soon as class is over people get up and roll up their mats, leave the room, and the have conversations outside the classroom.  Sometimes they even talk while still in the classroom while I am obviously laying there doggedly determined to shivasna.  I admit to giving the talkers dirty looks when I was out.

Needless to say this is putting a damper on my yoga enthusiasm.  I am just not feeling it like I use to, something is missing and no matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to get it back.  I was discussing this with a friend who also lives in the Bay Area and she, too, has had similar problems finding a studio.  So if you live in the Bay Area and have found a good yoga studio, give me a shout out.  I am despertly missing my yoga.

In DC I was blessed with a wonderful yoga teacher.  She was energetic and just full of so much positive emotion that I couldn’t help but feel uplifted after each one of her classes.  She encouraged me and was always there with praise when I finally was able to do something new.  In short, any teacher that followed would never measure up in my mind.

I recently moved to California and began the hunt for a new place to practice my yoga.  California seemed like the promised land for yoga.  So when I arrived, I began the googling and the yelping to see what studios were nearby me.  I found two that offered classes when I needed them and were relatively close by.  I went to the first studio and tried Ashtanga, which was new to me.  The class was early in the morning and I enjoyed stretching myself out of my sleepiness.  However, it was also a self-led class.  Everyone was dong their own level of yoga and completely different things.  The teacher came around and helped each student, but I missed the community feeling of the energy of the class coming together as we all worked to hold a particularly difficult pose or flowed through a vinyassa.  Also the students came and went on their own schedule so there wasn’t a chance to get to know others in the class.

So it was on to the next studio.  This one had the added bonus of being close enough for me to bike to (yeah for no carbon!).  It was hot yoga, but more of a vinyassa flow studio.  I had once had a particularly bad experience with bikeram yoga and so I came equipped with lots of water and told myself that I could stop at any time.  The class was much more what I used to and I seemed to tolerate the heat just fine.  However, there was no shivasna at the end of the class!  I left the class feeling like my yoga practice for the day was somehow incomplete.  Shivasna to me is the one time all day when I can feel completely justified in just laying there and doing absolutely nothing.  It is a time to reflect on my practice that day and my yoga teacher says “seal in the benefits of the practice.”  I come out of it feeling relaxed and ready to tackle the rest of my day.

I have since been back the second studio and decided to get a month pass to try it out more because it seemed to be more on my level yoga wise.  The other teachers have given a short shivasna, but I always feel a bit cheated and like to come home and take a proper shivasna.  What about you?  Is shivasna an integral part of your practice or not?

Galveston, Texas: Flattened in 1905 by a massive hurricane, home to the University of Texas Medical Branch and your basic south Texas beach town.  Not the type of place you would look for yoga.

But I was in Galveston and I found myself wandering around downtown towards my favorite coffee shop, Mod. I found myself at loose ends because I was there to visit my sister and she was at lab working on finishing up her thesis.  I noticed that right next to Mod was a new place that looked oddly like a yoga studio.  I knocked on the door and a lady opened the door.

“Are you Sharon?”

“Nope, I am not, but do you offer yoga in addition to pilates?”

“I am afraid not, but just down the street at Market is Yoga Haven and they have the best yoga on the island. If you would like a schedule Mod has them.”

I walked off to get my coffee with a big smile on my face.  I grabbed the flyer at Mod and ordered my coffee and sat down to study the schedule.  There was a class at 10 a.m. the next day.  The next morning it was pouring.  As I drove to yoga, I have to say, I wasn’t expecting much.  I was just hoping for a chance to stretch out and just be at bit. As I waited in my car for a break in the rain, I peered through the rain to study the building in front of me.  Galveston was once a very prosperous port town, but since the big hurricane of 1905 it has been a bit empty.  In certain parts of the island, I always feel like I am wandering through a ghost town of empty buildings where people once lived and dreamed.  The yoga studio was on one of these such empty blocks with many big building lined up side by side.

The rain finally broke and I ran out of the car and across the street.  I opened the door and the scent of incense met my nose.  I stepped further in and looked around.  The inside was warm and inviting with high ceilings and a large expanse of wood floor beckoned from the studio further in. An older gentleman came up to me,

“Are you new here?”

“Yes,” I replied.  “I am in town for the week and saw your flyer at Mod.”

“How you have a regular yoga practice at home?”

I told him that I did and we talked more about where I was in developing my yoga practice and previous injuries.  He was warm and genuinely seemed to want to know my yoga related history so that he could help me with the class he would lead.  As I talked to him and the other students, I remembered just what can be good about Texas and Texans: they lack the need to be “busy and important” as so many on the East Coast do, but instead are straight forward, honest and are just enjoying the here and now of what this particular moment in life has to offer.  I went into class feeling warm inside and protected.  The teacher led us through a class that seemed to just fit what I needed that particular day.  I left with that lovely calm grounding feeling that yoga leaves in me: that there was good in the world and that I had a piece in it.

I felt strong.  As I flowed through the vinyasa I could feel my muscles supporting my body and moving into each new pose with a grace I didn’t quite realize I possessed.  My true goal of whatever particular exercise I do has always been to be strong.  For that brief moment I felt very capable like maybe I could actually do this yoga stuff.  My arms held my body up as I lowered my body to the ground for chaturanga dandasana. I hovered briefly above the ground while I moved my feet from being flexed to supporting my weight on pointed toes.  I had been working on this transition.  I wanted to be able to go into upward dog from chaturanga dandasana without flopping on the ground as I normally did.  My feet moved and I pushed upward with my arms as they shook from the weight of my body.  I reached the point where my arms normally collapse and just decided that somehow I was going to push through it.  My arms wobbled and I pushed.  My arms wobbled some more and I lectured them on not collapsing.  Finally I was in upward dog – I had done it!  My arms fairly hummed as I stretched into the pose.  I paused briefly and then flowed into down dog and paused there catching my breath and feeling proud of myself.

“Come forward to plank.” my yoga teacher called out.  I went forward.

“Now with grace and compassion move into side plank.“  Side plank is hard. There are just no two ways about it.  However, I had done this pose in the past and in my new strong state felt I must be capable of it today.  For the pose, you have to hold yourself up on one arm while balancing on the side of your foot on your side and reaching your other arm up into the air.

“You can do this,” I told myself.  I moved into side plank.  Then all at once my arm started shaking and my sweaty foot started sliding and in the next moment, I went face first onto the floor.

“Are you ok?”  my yoga teacher said with a concerned look on her face.

“I am just fine, just lost my balance.”  I replied.  I pulled myself off the ground and back into side plank, except this time I put my knee down for support.

I often find this in yoga.  I will have a wonderful moment of accomplishing something I couldn’t do before and then collapsing in some way in something else.  My yoga teacher teacher says that part of yoga is letting go of your ego and just honoring where you body is at that particular point in time regardless of what other people are doing or where you think you “should” be.  I am sure some wise yogi was gently laughing at me yesterday.