Believe in Yourself & Radical Self Reliance

What a shock it was today, as I was deep in aerial meditation, wildly flying through the multiverses, when I felt a familiar sensation, that of my nose smashing into my face, HARD.

Opening my eyes, I saw not the face of my base, but rather the wood of the floorboards. Shivering and stunned, indeed. It took a second or two to realise what had transpired, and then I tasted the blood. And then I simply laughed. And simultaneously flashed back to that day of skydiving...

When I first got into the Contact Improv community, I found that each and every participant was considered responsible for their own weight and safety, ready to fall at any time.

In AcroYoga, there is a much more pronounced dynamic; instead of constant yin/yang ebb and flow between masculine and feminine, lead and follow, base and flyer, it is quite concrete: a base connects to the ground firmly; a flyer's only contact with the ground is via the base. The flyer can really only perform to the limit of their ability, and the limit of their trust in the base.

As a flyer, I leapt heart forward into this equation, and gave myself up to the flow and the intention of the base. I closed my eyes often flying, enabling me to imagine vast cloudscapes and constellations that I was flying through.... leading me to, my bloody nose today. :)

The point here is, while much theory may speak to who is responsible for your safety, practice points to the cold hard fact of life:

you and only you are responsible for your actions, for your safety, and for the consequences of your own life. Be aware at all times. Even when you fly, keep at least half an eye open... even if its your third eye :)

This has been a public safety announcement.

And now, well primed and awaken, I head to San Francisco for my 5 day, 6-hour-a-day, AcroYoga Immersion.

The Joys of Planning

The plane would leave in 2 hours. I had a 45 minute drive to the airport, barring traffic. I leapt out of the shower. I hadn't even packed yet. I hastily threw a toothbrush and deoderant into my knapsack, grabbed a random book off the shelf, checked that I had my ID, and bolted out the door.

That pretty much described my routine for trip planning up until now. It had its joys, and its consequences.  I've always heard that half the fun of a trip is the planning that goes into it. Until last night, I had never felt that way. But suddenly I see. I see a path unfolding in front of me. And with that path and some lofty goals in mind, the planning has begun.

The first step was to choose a yoga school for teacher training. Thanks to a beautiful Belgian girl I met in an airport, I gained insight into this one. Asking her whether she thought I should train in New York or India, she looked at me quizzically and said: "Yoga came from India. If you have that opportunity, why would you go anywhere else?" That crystallized it.

Following that conversation, I realised that my original school of yoga was actually based in India: Sevananda. I found that they had teacher trainings all throughout the year. I examined all the schools. One is in the Himalayas, a mere 30 miles (a days walk!) from the Tibetan border! That settled it.

Let the planning begin.

Intentions are the Ingredients of your Reality

I had a wondrous dream last night where the meta of life was revealed.

Every intention we set, every dream we hold on to so tightly, every material object we cherish or desire or obsess about, every experience we choose to participate in, every destination we choose to travel to... each of these things is an essential ingredient of the reality we chose to actively create.

In other words, the greater reality of the universe is a manifestation of the energies we choose to focus. These energies can be categorized as:

• intentions (present motivations)
  
• hopes, dreams and aspirations (future plans)
• people we choose to share energy / conversation / food / love with
• places we choose to visit
  
• cherished material things (objects which we infuse with meaning, i.e. clothes, cars, toys)
• collected memories which we choose to share as stories (meme propagation)

Your life can be viewed clearly through the lens of these raw ingredients.

The question is, now that you have this wisdom, what Universe are you choosing to create?

Re-framing Pain

Excerpts from the Tale of Jure Robic, world-class ultra-cyclist:

4 time winner of the RAAM (Race Across AMerica) -- 3,000+ miles from Pacific to Atlantic, 100,000+ feet of vertical climb, in less than 8 days of nearly continuous cycling.

Stats from a recent race:

---

Miles cycled:          2,530
Elapsed time:           7 days, 19 hours, 20 minutes
Total sleep:              9 hours
Calories consumed: 100,000

In all decisions, Stanovnik governs [Robic] according to a rule of thumb that he has developed over the years: at the dark moment when Robic feels utterly exhausted, when he is so empty and sleep-deprived that he feels as if he might literally die on the bike, he actually has 50 percent more energy to give.

Some people ‘‘have the ability to reprocess the pain signal,’’ says Daniel Galper, a senior researcher in the psychiatry department at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. ‘‘It’s not that they don’t feel the pain; they just shift their brain dynamics and alter their perception of reality so the pain matters less. It’s basically a purposeful hallucination.’’

Ultramarathoners, defined as those who participate in running events exceeding the official marathon distance of 26.2 miles, now number some 15,000 in the United States alone. The underlying physics have not changed, but rather our sense of possibility.

‘‘I am older now, but I have the feeling that I am stronger than ever before. Now I am reaching where there is nothing that is too hard for my body because my mind is hard. Nothing!’’

Extreme Core Strength

100 pushups in tight form, no problem. Backbends, check. Straddle to Press Handstand (a beginner move for gymnasts, mind you)... Oh. My. God.

When I first started my yoga practice, I remember the feeling of testing muscles that had literally never been used before, and thinking with awe and wonder: Oh, my body can do that? How cool!

Well, gymnastics is the new frontier for my body. And for someone who felt they had decent core strength coming into the practice, I have been (again) humbled.

Stay tuned for progress reports. And to try on your own, check out the Parallettes Training Guide on PanYoga.com

See the move: 

Killer Instinct

They jumped from the bushes, demanding my wallet and valuables. I began to laugh, a deep, maniacal laugh. Unbeknownst to these would-be predators, they had picked the wrong kid, on the wrong night. That night, as I ran through the pitch dark, I ran mad, I ran angry, and I ran, ran, ran, frustrated and wanted to hit something and throw a tantrum. So what better way to diffuse that energy than to run run run fight win run!?

Backing up a bit... there is a huge radio field near my childhood home, and I slipped deep into thought as I ran the edge path, winding along the circumference, dissapearing into dark thickets of tree and bush at several places. The night was dark, and there are no lights on the field. The thickets are pure inky blackness.

Initially I worried. I thought, those thickets would be the perfect place to jump somebody. Both my brother and I have been beaten up by gangs during our explorations, so it was not an entirely irrational fear. My reaction has always been simply to absorb the blows, give the robbers what they want, and wait for them to peacably depart. However, the last time I was beaten, in the long healing aftermath (going to work with a black eye and answering the inevitable: "how'd you get that" with "i got in a fight" is a fast way to get a rep, but that's a whole 'nother story), I vividly remember coming to the realisation: the next time I'm in a fight, I'm gonna be the one doing the beating.

And so I plunged into the midnight darkness of the thicket, determined to confront my fears and demons. And I visualized what happened next. Two men jumped out, and demanded my money and iPod. Where old Greg would have put his hands up and forked over the goods, wild Greg goes visciously and immediately on the attack, channeling all his anger and energy into punches, screaming at the top of his lungs and pummeling the largest like a bezerker. He falls, and I then topple the accomplice. They are on the ground, and I lay into them with full on soccer kicks, cracking their ribs as they crumple in terror, the roles reversed: attacker has become defender, predator has become prey.

Just visualizing this shot massive amounts of adrenalin through my system; my pace quickened and my awareness heightened.

The sea change has begun.

Greg's Modified Surya Namaskar

Good Morning Sunshine!

That's how my momma always used to wake me up. She's dead now, but her aphorisms still inspire me to this day. I've been getting back to my yogic basics as my wrist is in rehab right now, and its been a really good journey into alignment, energy, and form. Sun Salutation is the archetypal vinyasa flow for practice, and it has really begun to speak to me, opening up into a new sequence. So here it is, in its primordial form:

1. Mountain
- feet together strongly, toes forward
- reach skyward as far as possible with index fingers
- keep arms active
- bring biceps into ears tightly for maximum extension
2. very slight back arch
3. forward bend, exhale
4. fists to ground
5. hop back to plank
- rigid body
- arms perpendicular to floor
- active shoulders
6. reverse push-up to 4 legged staff, exhale
7. flip toes, pushing chest forward into
8. cobra
- straight arms
- active shoulders
- arch back as far as possible
- breath!
9. downward dog
- elevate hips as high as possible
- let head hang loosely with gravity
- step walk legs for stretch
10. raise right leg skyward
- as high as possible
- for extra stretch, try stagging it (bending at knee)
11. swing right leg under and through, plant between hands
12. lift up hands, wings out, then clasp over head
13. arch back
14. come back to spine vertical
15. straighten right leg
16. warrior 1
17. half moon
18. face forward
19. with slight bounce, levitate left leg forward, return to mountain
20. backbend, as deep as you can go
21. raise up, wings out, come in to closing prayer position

and repeat, substituting left leg for right.
do this is pair sets of 2, 4, 6, 8.

finally, what has really worked for me: the "10 minute a day rule". I was slipping in my private practice, until I read this. Just commit to doing 10 minutes of yoga a day. More often than not, that 10 will naturally extend into a full on practice. And when its just 10, thats cool too! :)

injury & why warm-up = juicy goodness

Just this morning I injured my neck again. For the third time in 2 months. I'm kind of tired of injuring myself. So I'm gonna do a little extroverted introspection here to get to the root of it.

So here were the sources of the injuries:

1. Extreme backbend partner yoga, from cold start
2. Swing dance backflip, cold start after 4 hours driving in car.
3. doing 40th (pushing muscle failure) rep of parallette dip / push-ups

The first two I will put in the category of "insufficient warm-up" and the third I will place in the category of both "insufficient warm-up" (those were my first exercises of the morning) as well as "pushing too hard."

As a child I had a body-building instruction manual co-written by Joe Weider and Arnold Schwarzenegger, which amongst its gems included:

1. "Never count your reps. If you need to count, just say in your head "one, one, one..."... all that matters is the last rep. You've got to push your muscles to exhaustion. Its in the last 10% of your reps that you get 90% of your muscular growth."
2. "If there aren't enough weights to load up the bar for your max squat, simply have a friend stand balancing on top of your shoulders to add that amount of weight."

Those have been words of inspiration my entire fitness career. The first part has, honestly, been a bit more useful than the second... though with my acro practice, I am starting to really see the wisdom of point 2... I would actually amend it by saying:

3. Drop all the weights. Add humans atop your shoulders and increase their weight and number gradually as you improve both strength and balance. Start with small children (40-80 lbs), transition into fit girls (80-120 lbs) and move up from there until you can comfortably squat supporting an adult male (175 lbs)

Oh, and to get back to the initial subject line of this blog:

ALWAYS WARM UP BEFORE PRACTICE!!!!  :)

Yours in health and play,

Greg

The List

Alison just asked me, post-completion of my first 10k run ever, what was next on the list... which got me thinking; there's a lot on the list, nows the time to prioritize it. So here's the raw braindump first :)

1. side splits
2. forward splits
3. install gymnastic rings and get started on those
4. 16 consecutive pull-ups
   
5. build parallettes and get started with those
   
6. sustained free handstand
7. full royal pigeon w/o assistance (eka pada rajakapotasana)
8. backflip
   
9. full grasshopper (viparita salabhasana)
10. olympic powerlift (clean and press) of my full body weight
11. New York City Marathon

So, I'm figuring that list should keep me busy for some time. xo, G