Day 4

Today was cold and rainy and gross.  All-in-all it should have been a stay-at-home-in-your-sweats-and-watch-tivo type of day, but alas, I need a paycheck.  It occurred to me as I was walking home from the Metro tonight that this was the first time this season that I could see the fog of my breath in the air.  I wondered if Baron had ever thought about doing yoga in the freezing cold to get this point across?  Don't get me wrong, I don't particularly want to practice yoga in 40 degree weather, but for a discipline that is so focused on the breath its funny to me how much easier it is to notice one's breath outside of a warm yoga studio.

For those of you who don't know Baron's yoga, it's a hot yoga (read: 90 degree heat and a good bit of humidity) and its vinyasa style (read: fast-paced, one breath per pose usually).  While we do this fast-paced yoga in a hot and humid room we practice this type of breath called uji breath - which is breathing through your nose with your mouth closed and making a sound like Darth Vadar.  Imagine trying to fog up a mirror you're holding right in front of your face but with the breath from your nose not the breath from your mouth.  You end up making this old-person-with-emphysema kind of raspy noise through the "whisper" muscles of you throat.  In addition, your supposed to lock your core and only breathe into your rib cage (not into your belly) to build up your internal heat during the practice.  Needless to say, even though I have been practicing Baptiste yoga for a while, this type of breathing is still very hard. Holding in your gut, breathing through your nose, expanding your lungs so you get enough air, etc. is harder on some days more than others.  Frankly, most times I practice in the studio I feel like a dog after a long walk and I just want to open up my mouth and pant a little to cool down.

But today, perhaps because I was focused on the fall air, I really focused on my breath.  I know the practice now well enough that I know what I am aiming to do breathing wise - its just hard to keep that focus as you move through all the poses, get distracted by your alignment, which pose you do next, etc.  Brad was busy in the kitchen cooking dinner (more on that in a minute) and his clanging around almost challenged me to breathe louder and to focus on the noise that I was making through the sound of my breath.  One time in class a teacher said that if the person practicing in class next to you couldn't hear your breathing, it didn't count.  If, as yoga suggests, your breath is the core of your power and your being, I like being reminded on these cold days of the existence of my breath.  When you breathe out and steam up the air you realize how much there was inside of you -- how far it travels away from your mouth before it dissipates into the air, and how much space it takes up as a cloud in front of your face.  There is a lot of something stored in each breath.  It was nice today.  I like breathing.   

I must confess though, I did stumble today in the scheduling of the yoga and meditation.  I slept in (again) and ended up doing my yoga in the evening.  I was proud of myself that, while I missed out of doing my meditation first thing in the morning, I did close my door at work and make a quiet space to sit for the allotted five minutes rather than fudging and meditating on the busy Metro.  Baron doesn't say you have to do your meditation and yoga in the morning but he does remind us that if we get it out of the way at the beginning of the day it's done, and then we don't have to worry about getting caught up in the day and running out of time.  I think part of the trick for me with this journey is going to be making the time - if I don't get into some sort of pattern I know that as the yoga and meditation practices get longer and longer it will be harder and harder to "squeeze" them in at night and I will end up running out of time. 


And Now For Something Completely Different . . .

Brad has begun to officially channel his inner Julia Child (yippee!)  While he has been doing a great job of making sure we have lunches to bring to work and healthy snacks to munch on, there has not been a ton of complex cooking.  I went ahead and bought him a Julia Child cookbook - The Way to Cook - just so we would have a springboard of recipes that did not succumb to current cooking fetishes of "30 minutes," "quick and easy" or "one pot meals."  Tonight we had sauteed pork chops and a potato-carrot puree.

...Okay, now it's my turn to hijack this post... (insert Brad's devilish grin)

I think my "inner Julia Child" as Clare calls it still has some growing to do... While dinner was good, it wasn't great, which, I suppose is the point (growth by doing, rather than perfection all at once).  I wouldn't learn anything if I didn't have a few hiccups along the way :^)  Anyway, the pork chops were good, but the mashed potato/carrot puree turned out like glue... I have to work on my mashed potatoes.  Maybe instead of blending with the hand mixer, I'll try whipping with a wire whisk.

Another thing I should think about is setting up my recipes over the weekend, that way I don't have to think about it when I come home (other than getting ingredients on the way home or during one grocery trip).  Coming home late for the last couple of nights really was a challenge.  I'll do better during the coming weeks.

That's all for now :^)