Second week of my 40-​​day yoga challenge

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More pre­cisely, the sec­ond week is draw­ing to a close.

I missed yoga classes on Tues­day and today because of other com­mit­ments. But I did fit in a restora­tive prac­tice on those evenings. The biggest rev­e­la­tion for me was see­ing the accu­mu­la­tive pay­off of reg­u­lar prac­tice. On Sat­ur­day, in Susan Bowen’s 2/​3 vinyasa flow class, she had us do wheel pose five times. I was able to get up for each one. Even more sur­pris­ing, I did not do a pre­lim­i­nary step of going from bridge pose (Setu Bandha Sar­van­gasana)  to wheel sup­port­ing some weight on my head and then in full wheel (Urd­hva Dha­nurasana). I did a bridge in which I made sure that my legs were doing all the work of sus­tain­ing the pose, my back was arched and then I placed my hands on the mat by my ears and pushed straight up. It was a smooth move­ment. In the past, the half-​​way head on the mat mod­i­fi­ca­tion seemed to jam my neck into my shoul­der gir­dle, mak­ing it much harder to push up into full wheel. I could feel the pres­sure on my spine.

I had seen this trick done by Sadie Nar­dini prob­a­bly in a YouTube video. I had been able to do it a cou­ple of times, but then my prac­tice got com­pletely dis­rupted and I lost the strength to push up. Doing it on Sat­ur­day just showed me that I had recov­ered enough to strength and improve my spinal flex­i­bil­ity to han­dle this power move into wheel.

But I’m already there!

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Last night I went to a hot vinyasa class and let the sweat pour. It’s amaz­ing how a phys­i­cal purg­ing can wring out all the emo­tional tox­ins as well. No yoga class today because I couldn’t get home early enough to grab the restora­tive class at Thrive Yoga. I could not get to the gym as planned because of a mix-​​up on the sched­ul­ing of our car.

I’ve come to real­ize that I already have the right mind­set for the 40-​​day chal­lenge; it’s just a mat­ter of mak­ing time to go to as many classes as pos­si­ble. My daily rou­tines include   mind­ful­ness, med­i­ta­tion, breath work, restora­tive yoga and ther­a­peu­tic yoga. Just qui­et­ing my mind enough to pre­pare my body for bed is a kind of stag­gered vinyasa in which I shift into a more rest­ful rhythm. What I will get out of the 40-​​day chal­lenge is the accu­mu­la­tive impact of step­ping up the fre­quency of attend­ing class, which are almost always more phys­i­cally demand­ing than a yoga ses­sion at home.

Missing my class, but learning discipline

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I got off work at 5:40, walked briskly through the rain to the Metro sta­tion, and caught the first train to Rockville. I thought I had plenty of time to make it home in time for yoga class at 7:30. At the next sta­tion, we were ordered off the train (no expla­na­tion that I could hear). I had to wait as two packed trains passed before find­ing one that had enough room for me to slip in. I arrived in Rockville too late to make yoga class at 7:30. So that ends my streak at five classes in a row.

I’ve been try­ing to change my body clock: in the past, if I didn’t get work early, it was hard for me to leave the office at 5:30. I tended to linger longer fin­ish­ing off one more task, send­ing another e-​​mail. That made it really hard to arrive at 7:30 classes, espe­cially if there was trou­ble on the Metro. In order to hit my goals for the 40-​​day yoga chal­lenge, I have to give my work a full eight hours, but start­ing at 9:00 or ear­lier, so that I have no excuses for stalling.

In order to do the 9-to-5:30 cycle, there are other mod­i­fi­ca­tions that have to hap­pen. I need to wake up at 6:30 am, which in turn means that I have to start my bed time rou­tine early so that I can get my min­i­mum seven hours of sleep.The rou­tine includes some restora­tive yoga, stretch­ing rou­tines for my neu­ropa­thy and med­i­ta­tion. Hav­ing suf­fered through an extended period of insom­nia and sleep depri­va­tion, I have come to appre­ci­ate the value of a good night’s sleep.

Hatha yoga at a deliberate pace

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After a work day full of bad vibes and neg­a­tive loops, I was look­ing for­ward to yoga class as the stan­dard hatha yoga class that would allow me to chill in my com­fort zone.

But tonight, the sched­uled teacher (Mary­lou McNa­mara) was absent so Karen Barlove took over. Karen is an expe­ri­enced teacher who’s been at Thrive Yoga since the open­ing week. She led us through a habit-​​breaking hatha class and I was not chillin’. In fact, I was work­ing up a sweat as we went through some slow-​​motion sun salu­ta­tions. War­rior II was a deep step forward. Luckily, there was plenty of time at the end of class for restora­tive poses. I came out of the class hav­ing purged the emo­tional tox­ins accu­mu­lated dur­ing the day.

Fifth day in a row of yoga class and keep­ing on pace with my 40-​​day yoga challenge.

Picking up the pace

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The fol­low­ing con­clu­sion should not come as a sur­prise to any­one who has taken fit­ness, well-​​being and the mind-​​body con­nec­tion seri­ously: since step­ping up the fre­quency of tak­ing yoga classes and going to the gym after Christ­mas, I’ve noted a sharp improve­ment in my mood, atti­tude, energy and sta­mina. Vinyasa classes still tax my reserves of strength and breath, but I can now man­age to get through them with­out falling to my knees (I will occa­sion­ally come out of a chal­leng­ing pose early).

Since the start of the 40 days of yoga at Thrive Yoga on Fri­day, I’ve made it to four classes in a row. My mus­cles are still sore after­wards, but I recover quickly enough that I am not talk­ing myself out of going to class the next day (I may not take in the 30-​​60 min­utes of aer­o­bic exer­cise at the gym as I’ve promised myself). There are about 14 par­tic­i­pants of all lev­els tak­ing part in the 40-​​day pro­gram, but we don’t nec­es­sar­ily all go to the same classes. Tonight, I was the only 40-​​dayer in the vinyasa flow class.

I look at the whole 40-​​day chal­lenge as a way of bring­ing clo­sure to all the mis­for­tunes and mile­stones of the past year, since my par­ents’ deaths, purg­ing the tox­ins, heal­ing myself and acquir­ing new phys­i­cal and emo­tional vigor. Through­out this period, I’ve never “given up my yoga prac­tice,” just cut back to a kind of main­te­nance plan, empha­siz­ing restora­tive yoga, pranayama and med­i­ta­tion, but there came a point when I was run­ning on fumes. Once I re-​​dedicated myself and stepped up my prac­tice in fre­quency and inten­sity, a dif­fer­ent set of ben­e­fits seemed to click on.

Another use for Yoga Tune Up Balls

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To pro­tect my knees in com­pro­mis­ing yoga posi­tions, such as half pigeon, I nor­mally stick a rolled-​​up hand towel behind my knee, pressed between my thigh and calf, to pre­vent my menis­cus from being pinched.

Today I took my Yoga Tune Up Balls to class and used them in half-​​pigeon in place of the towel. With its uni­form size and resilience, the ball fits snugly in the hal­low cre­ated by my knee lig­a­ments and seemed to gen­er­ate more space in my joint. I will inves­ti­gate what other poses which I can use the balls with.

I got the idea from doing one of Jill Miller’s lower body rou­tines, in which I sit in hero’s pose, with the balls between my thighs and calves, and grad­u­ally work the ball posi­tion from just behind the knee to mid-​​calf, giv­ing the mus­cles a mas­sage by mov­ing from side to side.

From vulnerability to authenticity through wholehearted living

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I’ve run into a per­son who has changed my out­look on life, but I’ve never met her per­son­ally. Her book has deeply influ­enced how I view life.

Brené Brown is a psychologist/​researcher who wrote the book The Gifts of Imper­fec­tion (Hazelden: 2010) and also has an sprawl­ing web­site and her blog Ordi­nary Courage. She first came to my atten­tion when I saw her TEDx­Hous­ton talk, which was recently picked by Huff­in­g­ton Post as one of the top 18 TED videos of 2011:

Her 20 minute talk hit some deep per­sonal scars and led me to her site and then the book. While read­ing the book, I was under­go­ing all the prob­lems with my periph­eral neu­ropa­thy, and there was an amaz­ing inter­play between my myofas­cial release ther­apy and the cen­tral con­cepts of Brown’s book. On the masseuse’s table, I had to strip down to my box­ers and bare myself to the ther­a­pist, com­mu­ni­cate my pain and numb­ness, con­vey how one type of stroke was mak­ing me feel, and trust that he would be able address some of the con­stric­tions of my tis­sues. I had to expose my phys­i­cal vul­ner­a­bil­ity to be able to start healing.

Shame and numbness

On another level, I dis­cov­ered from my read­ing of Brown’s book that I felt deep cur­rents of shame and, indeed, shame may actu­ally have been one of the strongest moti­vat­ing forces in my life. Shame is a “fear of dis­con­nec­tion” that peo­ple might find out what I am really like. Shame is such a blunt instru­ment that I couldn’t use it all the time, but once it’s out, it’s hard to lock it away. One way of deal­ing with this sense of shame is to block it out by numb­ing it. Brown says you can­not numb just one emo­tion (in my case, shame), you end up block­ing the whole emo­tional spectrum.

Although doc­tors might argue oth­er­wise, my numb­ness was both emo­tional and phys­i­cal, and the deaths of my par­ents and the dis­rup­tion that those events brought to my life this year had wors­ened my periph­eral neu­ropa­thy to the point that it was threat­en­ing my well-​​being. I was grasp­ing so hard to to my per­sonal facade that I was chok­ing off parts of my body and soul. Tak­ing pain med­ica­tion was just another way of block­ing out parts of my body, when I needed to get back in touch with them.

Brown’s book, which has the sub­ti­tle of “Let Go of Who You Think You’re Sup­posed to Be and Embrace Who You Are,” does a great job of break­ing down her approach to deal­ing with life and accept­ing the vul­ner­a­bil­ity of being imper­fect, and then lays out 10 guide­posts that can help any­one fol­low her map.

Brown has a man­i­festo that I keep posted near my desk and stashed in my shoul­der bag, and it’s avail­able as a col­or­ful post­card. I am going to cite it in full because it con­veys her mes­sage bet­ter than I can:

Authen­tic­ity is a daily practice.

Choos­ing authen­tic­ity means cul­ti­vat­ing the courage to be emo­tion­ally hon­est, to set bound­aries, and to allow our­selves to be vul­ner­a­ble; exer­cis­ing the com­pas­sion that comes from know­ing that we are all made of strength and strug­gle and con­nected to each other through a lov­ing and resilient human spirit; nurturing the con­nec­tion and sense of belong­ing that can only hap­pen when we let go of what we are sup­posed to be and embrace who we are.

Authen­tic­ity demands whole­hearted liv­ing and lov­ing — even when it’s hard, even when we’re wrestling with the shame and fear of not being good enough, and espe­cially when the job is so intense that we’re afraid to let our­selves feel it.

Mind­fully prac­tic­ing authen­tic­ity dur­ing our most soul-​​searchng strug­gles is how we invite grace, joy and grat­i­tude into our lives.

Today I rested

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Some­times you just have to go with the flow.

I had planned to fit in more yoga and aer­o­bic exer­cise today before start­ing my 40-​​day pro­gram tomor­row. But get­ting lost in North­ern Vir­ginia while run­ning an errand in the morn­ing, tak­ing my wife to a lunch on the town and wel­com­ing a rare visit from my son came between me and over-​​reaching inten­tions. I needed the rest any­ways. Besides, I still fit in pranayama, med­i­ta­tion, and restora­tive yoga before the day was over.

Word­Press (or the theme or a plug-​​in) has the annoy­ing habit of insert­ing hyper­link for­mat­ting in a first para­graph if it con­tains a link, from the link to the start of the para­graph. But it does not func­tion as a hyper­link. This has forced me to avoid putting in links in the first para­graph or do a kind of dummy para­graph (as above) to pre­vent the bug from happening.

Back massage and other tales of balls

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I wanted to pro­vide some addi­tional infor­ma­tion about how I was using balls for ther­a­peu­tic massage.

The two Yoga Tune Up® Balls come in pairs for a rea­son: you apply them to each side of the spline, start­ing at the neck and grad­u­ally work­ing down the spin. They are usu­ally close enough to touch, but they still it into the two grooves along the spinal col­umn. At a seven loca­tions, you apply dif­fer­ent tech­niques to press into the tis­sues. The most com­mon move­ment is to raise up the hips and “chug” up and down or “shimmy” back and forth  on the balls. The balls have a lot of give in them so they never really cause pain — unless you hap­pen to hit a knot or trig­ger point in the mus­cles. You also incor­po­rate arm move­ments that extend and con­tract the rhom­boid and trapez­ius mus­cles, which in turn press against the balls in dif­fer­ent ways.

This self-​​massage is a valu­able learn­ing expe­ri­ence because I am guid­ing the appli­ca­tion of the balls accord­ing to the feed­back from my mus­cles and spinal col­umn. I don’t think I could really assess those mus­cles between my shoul­der blades until about 18 months ago. They were frozen in a sin­gle block from years of hunch­ing over a key­board. It’s where I still accu­mu­late ten­sion so reg­u­lar self mas­sage is both cura­tive and proactive.

Jill Miller has devel­oped a whole set of rou­tines with the Yoga Tune Up® Balls and types of appli­ca­tions, and that can make it fairly straight­for­ward in apply­ing them.

Other balls

I have also incor­po­rated other balls into my self-​​massage rou­tines, mainly because my feet were a pri­mary area of con­cern.  I carry a Foot Rubz Foot Mas­sage Ball around in my shoul­der bag so that I can use it while work­ing at my desk. I also acquired Rhino Ballsfor a more extreme kind of foot mas­sage because they are cov­ered with rub­ber spikes that bite into the flesh more deeply (some would con­sider it a form of tor­ture). The dif­fer­ence is the Foot Rubz has flat spikes while the Rhino Balls have spikes. I’ve also pur­chased Lacrosse Balls because I had heard that they were less flex­i­ble. I am still try­ing to fig­ure out when and how I can incor­po­rate them into my practice.

Four days in a row

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Since Sat­ur­day, I’ve been able to carve out time to go to a daily yoga class, and also put in time at the gym to build up my aer­o­bic capacity. It’s amaz­ing how a ded­i­cated exer­cise regime can improve my out­look on life.

When­ever I can string together three or four classes in a row, the cumu­la­tive effect is extra­or­di­nary, mak­ing the next class feel a lit­tle bet­ter than the pre­vi­ous one. Today, it was a Hatha Yoga class with Mary­lou McNa­mara at Thrive Yoga: it was less intense than the first three vinyasa classes and allowed me to set­tle into the poses and work on align­ment. It also helped that my daugh­ter, Stephanie, was on the mat next to me, just like in the old days.

Book cover art: Baron Baptiste seat in a yoga pose

Set­ting aside 40 days to dive deep into your practice

I’ve signed up for the 40 days of yoga and well­ness at Thrive, start­ing on Jan­u­ary 6, the first time that I’ve under­take the chal­lenge of sus­tain­ing a rig­or­ous pro­gram of six yoga ses­sions a week (a min­i­mum of three for­mal classes, the rest can be at home), plus med­i­ta­tion and other activ­i­ties. It’s based on Baron Baptiste’s 40 Days to Per­sonal Rev­o­lu­tion: A Break­through Pro­gram to Rad­i­cally Change Your Body and Awaken the Sacred Within Your Soulso I will have one and a half months to con­cen­trate on my yoga prac­tice. Thrive Yoga has offered this pro­gram once a year for the past four or five years, so it has become a kind of rite of pas­sage at the studio.