Small Changes

The last calendar year can be characterized yoga-wise as being sporadic. I'm going to change that and get back on track. Granted, as I mentioned in an earlier blog, this down-time has given me much cause for reflection and a different tack for the idea of practice. As such, I am now in a good position to change yet another thing: how I approach a project.

Usually, I jump in with lots of vigor and dogged intention. When I do this, I push and push myself, sometimes resulting in frustration or even injury. This time, I'm going to take things more easily. Not lazily, not with any less intent, but by doing a small thing or two each day. By making smaller, more consistent changes, I may find that I achieve my goals or at least certain ones with a lot more ease than through my personal tradition of powering through.

In fact, I've already begun before I had thought about it. Every day after the show my work partner Kelly and I have made it a point to juggle together. Through no particular effort, we wind up spending at least a half hour each session. These practices have capitalized on the prior months of work and I've experienced a number of realizations or noticeable leaps of improvement both physically and mentally.

Now I'll see how it goes with other things.

Usage of Time

As I've mentioned before, I'm in the second period of extremely diminished yoga practice that I've experience in a year that is not directly due to injury. As has been typical, I have been pretty unforgiving of myself while sliding in micro-practices throughout each day. Just this past week it dawned on me that I haven't really been slacking as much as I've been thinking. Instead, I've been using this time differently, exercising different yoga muscles.

A longtime friend of mine in Portland, OR always seems to know what to say to me when I go through these periods. The most effective thing she said to me recently was "That's okay: you've been doing a lot of mental yoga." I guess she's right. If nothing else, since my arrival in Japan in mid-December, I've been working most on not forcing things and easing into them. I haven't been hammering Japanese language and writing each day, but I practice and enrich in some way or another, even if it's something as basic and broad as cultural observation.

From the physical side of things, I have developed an even greater intimacy with my body. Over the past two decades-plus of my life , I've been cultivating an awareness of my body through various physical activities. Even though one person once described me as having the physical sense of an elephant – not always entirely aware of how much space I take up within a space-limited environment – I still think of myself as having above-average coordination despite my gangly build. Now I find myself even more attuned to little tightnesses in joints and muscles that might have gone unnoticed. My awareness of body positioning and posture seems even more acute. And I still engage in some type of physical activity each day, whether I'm on the job or not.

There is also a great carryover to mental and emotional practices. As I continue to strive to better myself – especially in the areas of patience, forgiveness, and understanding – I find it increasingly easy to identify and call out thoughts that don't seem to fall in line with my expressed goals. In doing so, I can face them. I've learned that it doesn't make them go away any more quickly, but it has been sharpening my practice at nipping them before they affect my disposition too greatly. I'm most appreciative that if I'm struggling, at least I'm not burying or hiding.

This all sounds so self-helpy and granola it's making me a bit queasy, but that doesn't change the fact that it's a true experience. It's nice to feel progress and I appreciate the new knowledge that even when I haven't been working like I think I should, I still wound up working.

Laughter Yoga

Here's one of many aspects/faces of yoga that I'd like to experience. It's on my list of personal research projects:

Laughter Yoga

I took special notice of the "Wu Wei" entry, as it relates to a great many things in my life, some of which I'm examining right now.

Fixed Faith

I realized that although I had the html for linking in the "Speaking of Faith" entry, I neglected to add text to use as a place from which to link.

I have fixed that. I feel smart.

Progress Through Complacency? What?

One thing that I am currently re-discovering is still confusing me.

I am in a second period of low yoga activity; I'm not doing a whole lot of it. I found that there are a couple of postures that I'm able to engage more deeply that I had been when I was doing yoga three-to-five times a week. This confuses me. This runs completely counter to my work ethic and the idea that progress is the payoff for work. Instead, I find occasionally that not-working has delivered progress that I have sought.

I'm trying to wrap my head around the idea that not-working on something yields progress where working on something did not. I'm not entirely comfortable with this. My immediate, deeply ingrained response is that by being lazy, something can be accomplished? That hardly seems logical or fair.

Of course I should look at the discovery, accept it, and move onward, but I do not like to accept something without a satisfactory understanding of it. I don't like not-understanding.

Speaking of Faith Interviews

One of the growing pool of podcasts that I download and listen to is NPR's "Speaking of Faith." I subscribed and received an archive of the last three or so years of programs! While it's exhaustive and features a few encores and extended/unedited interviews, these are the two that I found on yoga:

Body's Grace

Yoga

The first features paraplegic yoga instructor Matthew Sanford. The second features instructor Seane Corn.