Doggies.....and Los Angeles

Just for kicks, here is a picture of my 'boys'. Rocky is the Boston Terrier and Rufus is the Pug. How seriously cute are these dogs????

I'm bored at work, I don't want to do anything but browse online for hotel rooms in Santa Monica. That's right, it looks like I'm going to LA in the beginning of April. Petri will be there for a week, he's doing mysore classes then some workshops over the weekend of the 4th 5th and 6th at my dear friends' studio there. Normally I would either stay with M and G or my friend C but BF insists upon staying in a hotel. So trying to find cheap-ish hotel room close to the studio so I can walk in the morning. That way we'll be close to the beach, the pier and the promenade too. I missed Petri last time due to injury, it was such a bummer because I heard great things about him. Plus he's absolutely gorgeous in person, and that certainly doesn't hurt.

I suppose the second half of the LI Ashtangini yoga history is in order. Soooooo, I was practicing at Jivamukti and I heard (I don't remember how I heard) that Pattabhi was doing another 'world tour' and he was going to San Francisco. So I asked A if he wanted to join me in San Fran to check it out. Then they added a week in New York City so I signed up for only one day's led class. Once I signed up I realized I'd better try some Ashtanga just to see what I was in for. I took led classes for maybe a month or so at my current shala (this would be about two years ago). I flubbed through it ok and tried to at least learn the sequence so I didn't look like an idiot. Went to Pattabhi's led class, it was held somewhere in midtown, I don't remember exactly where. But it was definitely VERY cool. I was in the back where Saraswati and Sharath were. Sharath is gorgeous in person, his smile absolutely lights up the room. The experience was pretty amazing but I stuck with Jivamukti.

About a month later I stumbled across a job opportunity in LA so I took it and moved across the country in a matter of three weeks. Alas, no Jivamukti in LA (at least, not close to where I lived). Well, what's the next best thing to Jivamukti? Ashtanga, of course......I found this tiny studio in Santa Monica that was doing led half-primary classes in the evening and that's where I met one of my teachers, G, who is now also a dear friend along with his wife M. They are students of Chuck and Maty and they teach in a very different way than you would find out here in traditional New York City.

Shortly after I started the led classes G kept bugging me about trying Mysore style. Of course, I was like 'no way, that's not happening'. It was scary and I was afraid I'd make a fool of myself and everyone would laugh at me. Finally I gave in and went. 6:30am???? Jeez, could they make it any freaking earlier? I knew the sequence up through Navasana so that's what I practiced 3-4 times a week for the first few months. Along with FOUR extra hip openers before closing sequence to try to open my stubbornly stiff hips. Practice, even just through Navasana, was almost two hours. I was slow, weak, stiff and had no stamina. It seemed like everyone around me was so much more advanced than I was. But I kept hearing stories from everyone about all the stuff they struggled with so I kept at it.

From the beginning, I had trouble with my wrists. They ached after practice and it got worse and worse. I was doing vinyasas and sun salutations with my knees dropped to the floor for MONTHS. It got so bad that I couldn't turn doorknobs and I was sleeping with wrist braces on both wrists to keep from bending them in weird ways while I slept. I put arnica cream on them, iced them, everything you could possibly think of. That was probably my first real Ashtanga lesson......some things come very slowly and there may be some pain involved in getting there. Eventually, almost a year later, I got strong enough that I was no longer taking the strain of the sun salutations and vinyasas in my wrists.

That's enough of that, more injuries to come......and a practice-altering workshop with Chuck and Maty last October......