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Yoga Journal's Makeover Blogs
« January 2007 |
Main
| March 2007 »
Hara Mara, Mexico is an hour east of my favorite Mexican resort—Puerto Vallarta—but it might as well by in the rainforest. There is no electricity, but an abundance of scorpions and crabs.
And I’m was there without a partner, even though everybody else has one.
Not only is the four hours per day of yoga hard, but then I also have to pretend to have fun and with all these couples over a gourmet vegetarian meal three times a day. This drops me into my sadness and aloneness after a 20 year marriage that failed.
I didn’t know how sad and alone I was till I confronted it head–on like looking down the barrel of the wrong end of a gun.
However, I made it to 10 of 11 sessions and made the best out of it. Believe it or not, I was uplifted by the end and more committed to my yoga practice than ever.
It’s been a long time since I’ve learned something completely new. Just like everyone, I pick up new skills and refine old ones all the time, but usually they relate to things that I’ve had some experience with. Yoga is something I’ve had almost no exposure to. It’s a new language, a new way of thinking about your body, and a new way of breathing. After 30-plus years, it’s a real challenge. A challenge compounded by the fact that yoga is not an easy thing to teach.
I’m sympathetic to the challenges faced by yoga instructors who teach beginners. You’ve got 20 students who, despite the fact that the class is designated for beginners, have all levels of experience. There are the lapsed students. These are people who haven’t done yoga in a few months but who before that went every day for a year. So within 10 minutes, they’re back in the groove. There are the timid intermediate students. These are folks who have been doing yoga for a while, but are intimidated by the intermediate classes so they stick with the beginners. Like their lapsed counterparts, these students know what they’re doing. And then, there are the actual beginners like myself. We are unquestionably the minority, at least in the classes I’ve gone to. So, the instructor starts with a bunch of folks with different expectations and backgrounds, and then the challenge is compounded by the need to describe complex movements in easy-to-understand language while simultaneously watching to make sure that nobody screws up their backs or their necks in the process. It’s a tough job. And I pretty much always feel like I get lost in the shuffle, and leave feeling frustrated. It’s not good.
So, I’m struggling. I don’t like it, but I’m trying to embrace it—to make the struggle a part of the process, and to patiently work through this.
What I’m also rediscovering through this experience, is that I am a solitary learner. When I was in school, I was an unapologetic class skipper. I learned by sitting down by myself with the book and someone’s notes. This is why, I think, my home study is going so much better than the classes. In class, I’m constantly a step or two (and sometimes more) behind. Half the time, I don’t understand the instructor. He or she will use language that I’m not familiar with or describe a movement in a way that doesn’t register. This week, I think I’ll buy a book and a yoga tape and spend some time learning on my own.
On Friday I visited Cal State Sacramento’s Human Performance Testing Laboratory to be tested for various sports performance markers by Dr. Roberto Quintana, a professor of exercise physiology. The purpose was to have some baseline benchmarks for comparison to after this six-month yoga makeover. Although the most information will be gleaned when we compare the before and after test results, there were a few things we found that were already quite interesting.
Dr. Quintana began by performing a lung function test on me, in which we discovered that my functional lung volume (the maximum amount of air I can forcibly inhale and exhale) is about 25 percent greater than average for my high and weight! However, we also discovered that I have mild obstructive lung disease. The test showed that although I can breathe a large total volume of air, the rate at which the air was able to flow in and out of my lungs is slow and obstructed. It would take more detailed testing at a pulmonary clinic to determine if it is due to asthma, my seasonal allergies, or other factors. I grew up around cigarette smoking parents and grandparents, so I have a feeling the second-hand smoke might have something to do with this obstruction.
We also tested my cycling performance on a stationary bike and running on a treadmill. In both cases, I wore headgear and a nose clip so I’d breathe into a mouthpiece connected to a machine analyzing my breath content for oxygen and carbon dioxide. With both the bike and the run, I performed four 10-minute intervals at a pre-set speed or power output, each interval harder/faster than the previous one. The computer analyzed my oxygen consumption and carbon dioxide output, and Dr. Quintana asked me for my perceived effort on a scale of 20 during each 10-minute interval. At the end of each 10-minute test, we pricked a finger for a blood sample to check my blood lactate levels and find out when I reach various thresholds such as aerobic/lactate threshold and my Maximum Level Steady State threshold.
Besides finding my thresholds and noting my perceived efforts, the tests also provided raw data for Dr. Quintana to calculate my efficiency—how much energy is actually transformed into propelling my body vs. wasted on inefficient biomechanics. These markers will be most interesting when we retest in a few months and see if yoga enhances my efficiency.
While we never performed the well-known VO2Max test (popular amongst endurance athletes as it gages a maximal rate of oxygen uptake and predicts a person’s athletic potential), we did measure my VO2 during each of these sub-maximal 10-minute efforts. Based on these VO2 measurements, we have a decent idea of where my VO2Max may be, which can predict my performance potential. This is a round-about way for me to say that the tests indicated that I have a relatively high VO2Max consistent with a regionally or nationally competitive runner. And I have the potential to run quite a lot faster than I had previously thought possible. To be specific, the predicted mile, 5K and 10K race times were ones I have already met in the past, which gives me confidence the numbers are true. However, the predicted marathon time is far faster than I ever dreamed possible for me. Granted, I am not a real runner, but it's still encouraging to break out of my preconceived limitations. I had assumed that a 3-hour 30-minute marathon would be my best hope, but the tests showed that, with appropriate training and without some of the running inefficiencies caused by biking and swimming, I have the potential to run a blazing fast 3-hour marathon!
So, with pranayama practice, I hope that some of my breathing obstruction will be removed, and perhaps my functional lung volume might become even greater. Also it will be interesting to see if yoga asana practice helps me bike and run with greater efficiency and less effort to achieve something closer to my physiological potential. This is definitely a to-be-continued story. Stay with me to find out what interesting changes we discover in a few months.
After all my searching, finally, a woman named Gail from Unique Yoga Retreats in San Jose took pity on me and suggested I meet a young yoga teacher in San Francisco named Jason
I check my mind at the door and go with her to beginners’ class. Jason seemed like a regular guy, so I went with it. I took his class and then agreed to some private lessons. A few weeks in, I can at least emulate a feeble Downward-Facing Dog.
Jason, it so happens, said he plans on taking his first group on a retreat to Mexico the next month. I asked him if I should go—if I could even fake it. He said I could give it a try.
Inside I feel he is challenging me—or laughing at me—which I don’t know. I think I might be up for the challenge.
It’s hard to believe that I’ve been doing this for over a month. I feel like I’m doing the same things that I did the first week I started. And while I’m sure I’m doing them a bit better, I’m starting to get anxious about learning new things. At least the way I’m learning it, yoga seems to be all about repetition. It’s a bit like when I learned the multiplication tables. You just keep doing the same things over and over until you get it right. But the difference here is that "right" isn’t a clearly defined answer, which makes me wonder whether I’ll keep doing the same things for the next three months.
In some ways it’s good. My practice isn’t interrupted by the need to figure out how to do something new. I feel like the poses and the sequence are ingrained in my head. First, I do a few leg poses, then work on core strength, Sun Salutations, more leg poses, restorative, and end with Savasana. If I never ventured out of my own space to do yoga, I’d probably be fine.
The public classes, however, are a different story. There, they completely shake things up with poses I’ve never done before. In the class I took this week, we did Salamba Sarvangasana (Shoulderstand)—or perhaps I should say the rest of the class did Shoulderstand. I tried to get my legs up over my head, but failed miserably. There were some other poses I couldn’t do, but that was definitely the worst. I couldn’t help but peek around the room at the other "beginners" and immediately became terribly intimidated at the fact that none of them seemed to be having any problems. I know that I shouldn’t gauge my own practice by the practice of others, but when you’re in a class with 20 people and you’re the only one who can’t seem to get the pose right it’s hard not to feel like a yoga loser. It kind of killed the whole centering/balance thing I was going for.
Ironically, this made me wish for repetition—or at least that the classes would be the same each week so that I could learn yoga like I learned the multiplication tables—by doing it over and over again until it feels natural.
This week at my private lesson with Jason, we focused on inversions—handstands, headstands, and forearm balance. In the group classes thus far, my handstands against the wall had come along relatively easily. But I knew there was much more to learn in order to balance without the wall. During this private lesson, Jason greatly improved my technique and alignment by helping me incorporate the sense of firmness and stability of standing in Tadasana (Mountain Pose) while upsidedown in Handstand. By incorporating these sensations, I found I had tiny fleeting moments of balance without the wall’s help.
In contrast, headstands and forearm balances were quite a bit of a struggle. Jason helped me to counter the tendency for my pose to collapse in these poses. We worked on shrugging the shoulders while standing and in forward bends. Then we experimented with expanding the palm and fingers. Immediately I noticed the sensations of strength and expansion in the hands directly affected the strength, broadness, and stability in the shoulders and neck. Jason gave me directions on a handful of micro-changes that made it feel more comfortable and stable. I must say that I still do not feel like I "get" these poses. But Jason’s steady and non-judgemental way of being has helped me not to get frustrated or be too hard on myself. So I’m staying patient and hope these inversions will gradually unravel their mysteries to me with consistent practice.
It was only two days after this lesson on inversions that I took my California Acupuncture Board examinations in a large cold cement hall at the Sacramento Convention Center. Although I had dressed in layers, I found myself getting quite cold, and the brain began to stagnate midway through the mind-bending 5-hour exam. Fortunately, my newly acquired handstand skills came to the rescue! I found a round of handstands in the back corner of the hall to be just the perfect remedy for warming the body and un-clogging the mind. And, as it turned out, I did very well on the exams. Not only did yoga keep me sane while studying for the boards, it came in handy during the test itself!
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