WE JAM ECONO

The history lesson.  Is it necessary?  I mean, Be Here Now, right?

My first exposure to yoga practice was when living in Berlin in 1994.  I was doing a little bit of English conversation, some for money, some for trade.  A yoga teacher traded me conversation and I went to her yoga classes.  Ok, I got by just fine in German, but there's a big difference between "where's the bathroom?" and "lift and spread your upper, inner arm bones" when it comes to foreign language vocabulary.  It was kind of a crack up, me, the young bike messenger, in a little studio in west Berlin doing physical imitations of people practicing yoga and then sitting around with the teacher for an hour correcting her (really pretty horrible if I recall correctly) English.

Then, fast forward about 5 years, and perhaps you've heard this story before.  Boy meets girl, girl drags boy to Bikram Yoga class.  I was a bicycle racer at the time.  I had heard Mike Sayers say he did Bikram in the off season.  Mike Sayers raced professionally, mostly on domestic teams, and was based in Santa Rosa.  (You probably haven't heard of him.  Domestic pros jam econo.)  But when a professional bike racer says "I practice yoga," an aspiring amateur listens. 

Then a couple of years later I burnt out hard on the bike racing.  Leesville Gap Road Race, 2001.  Overraced and experiencing bad allergies I got dropped on the main climb, and while toiling away for the next 40-ish miles to the finish there was a revelation:  You don't have to suffer like this.  I didn't know it at the time but that was it for road racing.

Pretty quickly I turned a corner and started going to a nearby yoga studio.  I figured it was a practice that I could grow into and do for the rest of my life.  And after being a bike racer, giving 90 minutes of my day to a yoga class was really nothing.  Most racers at the level I was at will easily log 10-15 hours of riding during the race season, and that's when you're doing races every weekend.  Over the winter you may ramp up to at least 20 or even 30 hours/week.  90 minutes a day: no prob, bob.

That last road race was on July 1, and by September I was enrolled at the teacher training at the Yoga Source in north Berkeley.  That's also a story you may have heard before: the student who dives head first into yoga, starts practicing at the closest studio to their house, and without ever going to another studio commits to a 200 hour teacher training.  This is probably less common now in the inner bay area since most people have 3 or 4 yoga studios near their house.  The main teacher was Jazz Poitier and there were a handful of other teachers.  One of the more notable was Chris Hoskins.  You should check him out; he teaches at his own little space called Studio Yoga 6 in Berkeley.  Sure, I could say in hindsight I wish I would have practiced for a few years so I would have understood what I was doing more, but I also can't say that doing a training that quickly has been a disservice to me.  Jazz was an intense and talented teacher and it got me going to this place I'm at today.  No complaints.

But while I was too much of a n00b to understand a bigger picture of yoga and asana I was exposed to a lot of different teachers and then began exploring on my own.  Weekends with John Friend and Ana Forrest, checking out some of the deep, rich resources around the bay like (then bay area resident) Rod Yee or Richard Rosen.  And I ended up spending a lot of time in Alice Joanou's classes when she taught at 7th Heaven.  If you haven't been to Alice, she has her own studio in Oakland called Loka Yoga.  Alice jams econo.  

Shit or get off the pot

Newsflash: this is gonna be my yoga blog/site.

When I'm driving around the bay area that's one of the sayings I refer to. This place is a bit crowded and we have to keep things moving. I've also realized that if I don't do some self promotion as a yoga teacher I may as well not bother with it, just enjoy my own practice, spend more time with my family or direct my energies elsewhere. So this is it: shit it or quit it.

I should probably choose a different analogy, but instead I'll just not continue with it.

What I plan to do here: For me, learning yoga is not a 'start at step one and proceed methodically' process. Yoga is far too dynamic for that, rather it is more like the onion from which one can peel layers, or, differently, a flower to which one continuously adds petals (aw, how pretty!). So should be a blog about yoga, huh? Like a session on the mat, the postings add up to a dynamic picture over time. We'll see. Guess I should post a few times before I have such grand ambitions.

Thinking out loud

Tomorrow I join a couple of friends bright and early to teach some yoga classes at SF Juvi. We did this back in June, and I guess it was successful because we're doing it again.
The classes are unusual. The kids file into a gym all wearing the same color shorts and t-shirts (last time there was green, yellow, purple, gray...but probably not the main gang colors of red and blue), and shoes. They don't know what the hell they're getting into, but last time they were pretty receptive and it went at least as well as could be expected.

I'm not too worried about the sequencing of the classes I'll teach, though I did give it a good amount of thought. What I'm trying to be very prepared for is giving a brief introduction to yoga before the class. The sections are only 45 minutes long and I want to give as much of that time as possible to my main asana goals of giving the kids a bit of a workout, some challenges and some conscious quiet time in their bodies. I figure that if these kids are stuck in Juvi all day they're not really getting a lot of exercise, and thus the movement and challenges (the challenges are also to prove to skeptical young men and women that yoga isn't a bunch of stretching and relaxation), but also a safe place to find calm and relax. It's somewhat of a challenge because it's in a gym with loud florescent lights buzzing overhead, and the supervisors of the kids (most of whom look like they could use a lot of exercise themselves) sit back in chairs and watch. Last time one of the guys sat and talked on his cell phone during the final relaxation: that was some weak sauce. But whatever, it doesn't really matter. We just do what we can.

But how to say/write something concise about yoga? My sophomore year compostition and rhetoric teacher in high school called me an obtuse writer, and I'd agree--that's also the way I tend to think: wide angles, nothing narrow and sharp. So when I think of a subject--what's yoga?--I really start to spin in my head.
"Yoga is a lot of things to a lot of people. On a broader scale it's a practice about getting to know yourself, but as we're teaching it today it's primarily a physical practice. So you can get to know yourself by seeing if you can touch your toes. We're going to start with a sequence of movements called sun salutations that are designed to warm up the main muscle groups in the body... Please come to standing at the top of your mat with your hands in prayer in front of your chest."

What I'd love to explain to them (though let's be honest: none of them may really want to hear it) is that yoga is not just an ancient practice, but myriad practices that happen to include making these funny shapes with our bodies. While making funny shapes with our bodies, a more important thing is happening, which is paying attention to one's breath, and making conscious movements with the body. The practice works with releasing, controlling and observing energy in the body, with the ultimate goal of balancing and quieting. This is where my wheels really start to spin and things get complicated. And I'd greatly prefer to keep things simple. So, another take: the asana practice is about strengthening and opening the physical body, with a general aim of liberating the movement of the spine.

Wheels will continue to spin. More to come.