The Ego, The Superego, and the Tittibhasana

Post-yoga munchies today included a big slice of humble pie.

Tittibhasana: Firefly pose. Perhaps so named because it requires you to stick your angled buttocks into the air. If only it caused my ass to light up.

I ran the Nike Women's half- Marathon yesterday. Clare had given me a gift certificate for a deep-tissue massage as payment for helping her buy her car, and I figured the day after running 13.1 miles of San Francisco's finest hills would be a great use of spa time. After won-ton soup and 15 hours of sleep, my recovery was going much better than I had anticipated. As I sat in the cozy atrium of the spa, waiting to be rubbed down by a strapping young man, I picked up this month's issue of Self Magazine. With much better writing and more heart than I admit I had expected from said 'zine, this article caught my attention. I devoured it, finishing just as the masseuse whisked me to a darkened, humid vault. The author's words followed me as I stripped down.

"I'm learning to be kind to myself, in life and in the yoga studio, to focus on what I've accomplished and let the rest go." -Taffy Brodesser-Akner, Self Magazine, Oct 2011.

The massage was... nice. I purposefully choose a bland adjective because the experience was just that. I'm not sure what I had been expecting--there was little pain from the previous day's run, so not much to heal. I knew what I needed to really feel myself again: a yoga class. I biked to the studio and as soon as I splayed into a supported supta virasana, my mind was on its way to bliss.


"Hip openers today!" Kia intoned. "Advanced ones." My hips and hamstrings were galvanized from the race, providing just the resistance I needed to lock into the coming poses, and my body coiled with anticipation. Finally, Kia called out my favorite series of poses: bhujapidasana, tittibhasana, and the first arm balance I ever learned, astavakrasana.

Someday I will have someone with a nice camera and mad photo skillz take pictures of me in the poses I blog about so I can stop usurping Google images and yogajournal.com.

But I felt a dread begin to eclipse the excitement. It was 85 degrees in Davis today and I had chosen to wear shorts to class. Also, I was covered in massage oil. Look at that pose. That shit requires friction.

"Did it truly matter what my classmates could or couldn't do? Wouldn't it be more gratifying to measure myself against my own abilities? If I wanted to move forward in yoga, I needed to stop wallowing in the negative." -Taffy Brodesser-Akner, Self Magazine, Oct 2011.

Slipping my thighs from atop my shoulders, dismayed, I tried to reflect on what I had just learned. Yoga was not the poses; there is no use in getting attached to them. Also, I had just run a fucking half-marathon. Why was I in such a hurry to prove myself physically? Rather, why did I feel the need to prove myself at all? Well-intentioned friends and family keep asking me how the race went. I have found myself dissatisfied with my answers, especially when limited to the 160 characters of a text. I cannot possibly sum up 3 hours of running, the day of recovery, the sleepless eve, the months of training. But still I try: "It went well!" "It was fun!" Why am I compelled to assure others that my experience fell into the "success!" rather than "failure!" category? Why are there categories at all? It is impossible to simplify such a complex, emotional, and deeply personal experience for someone else. I have resolved to run another half-marathon alone, just like this one. No one was at the finish line for me, just as no one is with me on my mat when I practice yoga. Though upon first glance it sounds selfish, this sort of self-reliance and inward focus is, I think, exactly what yoga is all about.

Hello, world!

Welcome to Habitual Student, a blog written by, curiously enough, someone who has always been able to describe herself as a student. The previous sixteen autumns of my life have begun with a new school year and an accompanying set of notebooks, textbooks, and planners, et cetera. This fall, I've found myself completely unable to detach myself from learning new things in a school, except that the subject at hand is more spiritual rather than scholarly.

Om namah shivaya.

From October to July, I will be studying to become a certified Yoga instructor. It's much less of a career move than a soul-searching move. Nevertheless, among the language, anatomy, ancient texts, I'll be deepening my practice, turning attention inward. Perhaps along the way I will find a path that allows me to share my practice with others.

This panda attempts halasana. I have a feeling he is not being mindful of his C7 vertebra.

So why, you ask, document it all publicly in the blogosphere? The answer lies in the idea of Pranayama (work with me here). Prana is energy and breath. Yama is control and restraint. There are a slew of techniques outlining how to really connect, deepen and pay attention to your breath. Calm the breathing, calm the mind. (Incidentally, it has been suggested [1] that this is the primary mechanism by which smoking cigarettes is relaxing, but I digress...)


Pranayama is part of the natural pulsation of receiving and giving energy. In the anusara tradition, pranayama taps into the balance between muscular energy, generated in your body, and organic energy which you exude and has a positive net effect on those around you. It's sort of like a cosmic pay-it-forward.

When I learned about pranayama, I pictured it like this:

Use the Force, you should.

I can't be sure George Lucas hasn't read the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. But I find the visualization of drawing upon energy generated in an internal anchor (e.g. in standing poses, the pelvis) and radiating it from extended limbs very grounding.

How does this relate to the blag? The next few months will provide me ample opportunity to reevaluate the way I interact with other people, and what my role is in leaving the world a little better than the way I found it. By spattering some of my findings on the intarwebz, maybe I can extend this positivity good juju insight to others.