SIXTY DAYS
For sixty days, I will do yoga everyday. Here’s how it went…..
60 Days of Yoga: Day 1
DAY 1 of 60. I bought this giant cat scratch apparatus for the cats and am now learning I can sit on it. It took away a bit of a sacred space I had for yoga practice, but my blue mat squeezes in there just fine. I figured the best way I could use social media for myself is to make another commitment to a routine, and report back with insights and survival tips, but I won’t proselytize nor declare some absolute truths. Posting daily will help me keep a promise I made to myself. It’s a bit of reconstruction I am moved to do, on the inside and on the outside. So here’s to sixty days of an ashtanga practice with rest days where there is a new moon and a full moon. My hamstrings say hi.
“We’ve been trying to organize a Fear of Commitment workshop but we have been unable to nail down a date.”
60 Days of Yoga: Day 2
DAY 2 of 60. I got through a second day of a long morning yoga practice, and succeeded in getting up at 6 am. All I can say about this practice is that I bruised the back of my shoulders with the back of my knees. I wish I could use that as an excuse as to why I didn’t get my work done at the college on time today. Afterwards, I wanted a giant cherry pomegranate pop tart fresh from the toaster oven with too much butter wiped on it, but I decided on the smoothie I make with spinach, bananas, frozen berries, almond butter, and coconut water. Now, I want a lemon pie. Or chocolate.
“The key to eating healthy is to avoid any food that has a TV commercial.”
60 Days of Yoga: Day 3
DAY 3 of 60. It’s a silhouette-oh of a man in a handstand. Today, I dedicated my yoga practice to all the mathematics instructors who teach calculus. For a final exam in vector calculus, I sent the following poem to my students and told them to explain how and why it was written in mathematical detail from what they learned in class. Ten students tried it out and were successful. I told them that most of them, based on what they told me in a questionnaire twelve long snail-slow-thousand-hundred-million weeks ago, should keep the poem with them at all times.
The shadow of the boundary is the boundary of the shadow:
A circling electric field is a changing magnetic field
A circling magnetic field is a flowing electric current
The boundary of a bounded region has no boundary:
Electric fields diverge away from electric charges
Magnetic monopoles do not exist
60 Days of Yoga: Day 4
DAY 4 of 60. I want to visit American Airlines and scream, but luckily I am able to stand on a single leg, with my screaming hamstrings, and laugh. Twice this week, I have been knocked off flights. So began my Harry Potter adventure where I use my magic credit card each time I try to purchase a seat on an airline. I love how corporate America has gotten to the point where, after you purchase a flight, you get to then purchase a seat at some comfort level.
I turned to Delta and found a flight to Memphis, and this time, my bank texts me to let me know they declined my card, after I punched in all the special dashes and digits that allegedly say I am who I am. Once I was able to prove to my bank via machine that yes, I had used my magic card to try to fly three times, they “allowed” me to use my own money to buy a flight to Memphis.
Meanwhile, I wonder where human interaction could have made these exchanges more fun. I hope I make it home. I haven’t seen my family in such a long time. Time for a dirty joke…
“If your right leg was Christmas, and your left leg was New Years, would you let me visit between the holidays?”
60 Days of Yoga: Day 5
DAY 5 of 60. Wow, Seattle, you are overheated way too early in the morning. Headed home to the Delta blues on a Delta. Have a happy pride day, Seattle: include everyone, the ones with ice and the ones with heat.
“The heat of an open fire draws us close. Its shadow gives us a place to hide and softens our gaze.”
60 Days of Yoga: Day 6
DAY 6 of 60. I always struggle with maintaining the same practice when visiting Memphis. There are places to go, people to see, things to do, and lots of butter and sugar to eat. And I want to sleeeeep. This past year has been one in which I haven’t slept much, and there’s something in this house that says sleep. I got to the end of this practice, where you rest flat on your back, and I sank into the floor and became one with the wood there. All my lights had gone out and I was true to the name of the pose: corpse pose.
60 Days of Yoga: Day 7
DAY 7 of 60. I’ve read the novel “Middlesex” more than three times. I think it’s definitely my favorite book. It has the greatest opening sentence: “I was born twice: First, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974.”
And throughout its length, you come across some of the best thoughts expressed by the main character, whose ongoing evolution of understanding humanity is something in which I find solace. I forget about these little passages, which is probably why I enjoy picking up the book every once in a while and getting lost inside the pages.
“Emotions, in my experience, aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in "sadness," "joy," or "regret." Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, "the happiness that attends disaster." Or: "the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy."
I'd like to show how "intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members" connects with "the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age." I'd like to have a word for "the sadness inspired by failing restaurants" as well as for "the excitement of getting a room with a minibar."
I've never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I've entered my story, I need them more than ever.”
60 Days of Yoga: Day 8
DAY 8 of 60. I couldn’t get through my practice today, but at least I got to the part where I balance on my fingertips. My hips are tight, my lips are tense, and my nips appear to be doing an impression of Marty Feldman. Fingertips, hips, lips, and nips…
I know there are days within these sixty where I have that “why am I doing this” feeling, or, like a friend asked yesterday, “what’s the point of this?” I don’t really know. I thought it was a good day to make a case for myself that if I commit to doing something like this, and I run across a day in which I feel sluggish and unmotivated, maybe the point is to force myself to do something: make some kind of movement. Go somewhere, and don’t sit in one place. Move.
I found it inspirational when I saw some friends of mine posting walks they would take during last year’s isolation period where the message was “get your blood moving” somehow. I felt motivated to do something and habit will keep me doing it.
“In this world there's a whole lot of trouble, baby.
In this world there's a whole lot of pain.
In this world there's a whole lot of trouble, but a whole lot of ground to gain.
Why take when you could be giving? Why watch as the world goes by?
It's a hard enough life to be living.
Why walk when you can fly?” MCC
60 Days of Yoga: Day 10
DAY 10 of 60. Yoga balance on a tabletop. Someone said this practice is too “rigorous” and all I could think about was the word “rigorous” when it’s used in mathematics education.
My calculus class was crowned “too rigorous” by a student who wrote this: “He puts questions on exams that you haven’t seen in the homework and thinks that they should be able to be answered, calls them conceptual, and says if we have a conceptual grasp of what we are doing, then we know the subject.
Teaching is about giving us the steps for solving problems so we can know how to get the answers. Like I know algebra well and didn’t get to show it on his exams which are too rigorous. I had to look online at Symbolab and other sites to check steps and it would have helped if he had labeled every step.
He draw things like a curve above the x-axis, and labeled two points on the axis, then ask us to explain if there was another point between the two points where the derivative of the curve was equal to slope of line containing the two points. Didn’t give us the formula for the curve at all. I reported him to his chair. Worst teacher ever.”
Use the word “rigorous” around faculty and you’re accused of making folks do too much algebra or writing proofs.
I need to explore this word “rigorous” some more. In the meantime, avoid flying planes made by students who learn mathematics from me who consider that question “rigorous” and I’ll keep my rigor to my yoga for the time being.
I wish he would have been more colorful with his hyperbole and wrote “worst barista ever” because that’s what I’m starting to feel like in my classroom, but am too stubborn to put on the apron and get out my menu with the list of items I’m suppose to give out to people: A, A-, B+, and B. Prices yet to be determined…
“Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.”
“Teaching seems to require the sort of skills one would need to pilot a bus full of live chickens backwards, with no brakes, down a rocky road through the Andes while simultaneously providing colorful and informative commentary on the scenery.”
60 Days of Yoga: Day 11
DAY 11 of 60. I’m adding some basic skills training from way back when to the middle of a yoga practice. Fun to see how the body negotiates with gravity, what muscles are working and what muscles need awakening, and my swayback struggle, all the while figuring out how to balance again. I forget, again and again, that yoga, or regular exercise for that matter, has a clever way of short circuiting the brain patterns that lead to anxious feelings.
I spent half the morning with a single goal in mind: pirouetting on my hands in three “steps” instead of five. (I figure five is good with the thin mint cookie months safely behind me.) So rewiring the brain is what’s on my mind today. I dedicate this practice to our brains.
“Can't you give me brains?" asked the Scarecrow.
"You don't need them. You are learning something every day. A baby has brains, but it doesn't know much. Experience is the only thing that brings knowledge, and the longer you are on earth the more experience you are sure to get.”
“You know, surprisingly, they don't sell a lot of brains in the local 24-hour grocery store around the corner from my house.”
60 Days of Yoga: Day 12
DAY 12 of 60. Reached my goal from yesterday. The skills come back quick, but wow do I feel my age, even though I don’t fully agree with one friend who said I am having a midlife crisis. “Crisis” is a bit too much for me as I just feel like a kid and most likely will be trying this out at age 60. I think a “crisis” for me would be losing control of any bodily functions, but I know we all have different opinions on things these days. Me turning upside down like this keeps my brain and body at play. Can’t it be more of a midlife awakening? Or a midlife advancening? Advancaningment? Or a midlife upside down celebration? I know I’m making up words, but I think they aren’t as boring and ordinary as the first.
“Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita mi ritrovai per una selva oscura.”
“Imagine what our story would look like if, rather than succumbing to the insistent voices of family or culture, we determined that our vocation was to be a better human.”
“In the safest of places, there is death, divorce, economic recessions, and cancer. Accepting this fact helps you not know any better than to risk adventure in the second half of life.”
60 Days of Yoga: Day 13
DAY 13 of 60. I illegally taught a yoga class on zoom. I say “illegally” because I don’t have a piece of paper declaring I am a bonafide instructor. Dexter, as usual, wished to be a part of the zoom, so I incorporated him into the practice. If you want to see a bunch of almost naked people, join a zoom ashtanga yoga session. I did keep my pants on, if only to honor my Dad, who reminded me to keep them on almost every day. Happy Wednesday, Faceplace!
“Civilization: a scheme to hide nakedness.”
60 Days of Yoga: Day 14
DAY 14 of 60. I am a blue tree working on how strong I am or am not rooted to the ground.
“Storms make the oak grow deeper roots.”
60 Days of Yoga: Day 15
DAY 15 of 60. Friday was a moon day, a day off, and I got my curls cut off the top of my head. And as fast as they were cut away, so was my energy. My body decided to get a little ill, so I slept all day Saturday, and decided I’d better rest on Sunday. My energy is back to where I could manage to get through most of the poses I typically do. So there it is: the other secret message this practice passes along to the practitioner occasionally: “don’t just do something… sit there!”
“My inner Billy Idol began to understand and my Rebel yell could be heard in the tiniest muscle of my body.”
60 Days of Yoga: Day 16
DAY 16 of 60: With all of the preachings and teachings of getting 8 hours of sleep per night, I still cannot get my body to sleep for more than five. One reason I like this 60-day thing is I sleep better but not longer. And overall, my energy in the day is plentiful.
Someone suggested Ambien, but the only and last time I tried Ambien was the night I watched my father take his last breath, dealing with what that was, and taking my sister home a block away seconds after swallowing the pill. I don’t remember driving back and I woke up the next day noticing I had only managed to get my pants down to my ankles, half my body on a couch, car keys in my right hand, and face planted on top of a People magazine with Kenny Rogers on the cover.
So I went to the cannabis store, talked to the experts there about a sleep aid, and took one last night. I needed to make one more math video for my class, so I showered, created the video, and then went to bed. And it was perfect. Dream Sleep. No high, no foggy brain, just normal to the bed and lights out.
I woke up and watched my video on “the concept of integration.” I am trying to find the words—it is the funniest video I have ever listened to. It’s one of those secrets I’m going to keep to myself, but after the hair on my head gets all white, fall off, and I can barely walk, I’m going to play this video to my classes to elicit laughter. …
At one ten minute section of this video, I am discussing the concept of a limit and I have managed to put eyeglasses on my cat, who I am holding in my arms like a baby, and I am comparing a geometric process to what I am seeing in my cat’s deep blue eyes.
So, I give up on sleep aid. Yoga people say “go upside down” if you need sleep help.
“I’m trying to get through a book on how to get better sleep, and I keep falling asleep.”
60 Days of Yoga: Day 17
DAY 17 of 60: Sometimes I figure out how to fly. Just like it says in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the trick is to throw yourself at the ground and miss.
“If your thoughts are as tall as the height of your ceiling, you can’t fly above your room.”
60 Days of Yoga: Day 18
DAY 18 of 60: I’m starting to feel stronger in this practice, and my brain is a bit more calm. I got sad the other night, but I sat with it or on it, like it was a pillow, and was fine. I got overstimulated when someone attractive said hello to me the other day, but I was still able to feed and clothe myself for the rest of the day. Best thing about yoga is the breathing, and what I find out about myself when I pay attention to how I’m taking my breaths, and all the little secrets and fears and fights in them.
“When life gives you lemons, squirt someone in the eye.”
60 Days of Yoga: Day 19
DAY 19 of 60: Shoulder stand at a vacation home in Seaside, Oregon.
60 Days of Yoga: Day 20
DAY 20 of 60: Linus sees corpse pose as the opportunity for some hot loving. The minute I finish a series and am flat on my back on the floor, he wastes no time in coming up close and climbing on top of my chest. He passes no criticisms and withholds any cries for tuna; instead, he just turns his box on and licks my face. I’m certain he is only checking to make sure that I’m not dead and am still able to retrieve the cans he desperately needs at 5:30 AM.
