The road to lotus

So as if I don’t already have enough things to strive for – i.e. make time to get on my mat every day; keep the houseplants alive; make sure Scotty consumes a green vegetable at least once daily… I’ve decided to complicate my life further by making a concerted effort to – someday – do lotus (Padmasana) pose.

And by someday, I mean sometime in 2013.

I know, I know. It is quite anti-yogic to place an expiration date on such a complicated posture, particularly when my hips are tighter than a drum after running competitively for more than ten years, but, ‘eh, it’s the Type A in me. I can’t help it.

The thing is, wheedling the hips (and groin…and knees…and ankles) into lotus isn’t something that happens easily. (At least for most, anyway.) It’s not like, say, a brunette who has designs on becoming a blonde, goes to the store, buys a box of color, spends an hour in the bathroom and then – presto! – she’s blond.

No.

Getting your lower extremities to pretzel into lotus is decidedly more complicated, and, if you’re not careful, decidedly more painful. A whole slew of speed-bumps can slow you down, besides requisite tight hips: sickling ankle joints, knees that scream “No!!!!!!” as soon as you so much as attempt to rest your foot on your upper thigh. You catch my drift. The point is, if you are not careful, you can do some serious damage. Like, irreversible.

I don’t want to go that route.

So instead, here is my daily I-want-to-do-lotus-someday plan:

*Bound angle (cobbler’s pose) with arms extended on the floor in front of me for three minutes

*Lizard for two minutes on each side

*Supine Frog for as long as I can take it comfortably.

I’ll report back every now and then to share my journey.

Wish me well. (And do say an extra prayer or two for my knee and ankle joints.)

 

Peace,

Courtney J

What I already miss about summer.

So the other day I got an automated e-mail from Parents magazine -- their Daily Parenting Tip -- entitled “Beat End-of-Summer Blues.”

Pffff. Delete.

I mean, I love me some summer and all, but fall is all that and a bag of California grown shelled almonds. It’s my absolute favorite season. And what’s not to love? Football. The comfy aroma of bonfires and burning leaves. Apple orchards with hot cider. Miss summer? Um…no.

But then a funny thing happened when I was walking my son yesterday. I kind of -- dare I admit -- got a little misty-eyed.

This was it. This was all she wrote. This was, by all intents and purposes, the end of summer. Sure, the weather Gods will probably smile upon us a few more times and give us an 80-degree day here and there. But when I glanced down at the ground, I noticed that the leaves were already starting to fall. And come to think of it, the air felt different. Heck, when my son and I walked today at the same time, a school bus zoomed by. It was a reminder that I had closed the book on my 11-month-old son’s precious first summer.

And it was then that I realized I would miss summer. And here’s why:

1. Morning walks, when the air smells of nature and nothing else.
2. Keeping my plants outside on the front porch or on the deck in the backyard.

3. How my son hooks one or both big toes under the tray of his stroller when we go for walks. When he does this, I can tell he’s happy. (He won’t be able to do this when we go for walks in the winter, however, because he’ll be wearing his Uggs.)

4. Living in my nursing tanks, khaki shorts, and Birkenstock Gizeh sandals.
5. That it is light outside at 8:30 p.m.
6. The sound of the ice cream truck coming down our street.
7. Doing yoga in my living room near an open window.
8. Teaching sitkari breathing (a pranayama breathing exercise) to my yoga students.
9. Sleeping with our bedroom window open and hearing crickets chirping.
10. Going to the park with my husband and son, and pushing my son on the swings.

11. The feeling of my feet connecting with the earth as I walk on the grass barefoot.
12. Sun bleaching my son’s cloth diapers on the deck.



13. Fresh fruit!
14. The hum of lawn mowers…and then the smell of fresh-cut grass afterwards.

And here are the petty annoyances I’ll miss, too. Thank goodness there are far less of those:

1. Trying to cool down the inferno that was the inside of my car.

2. Constantly having to take my shoe off and shake the rocks out of it during walks -- we live on dirt roads. This won’t be an issue during the winter walks because I’ll be wearing my Uggs.
3. High humidity. Great for the skin; bad -- very bad -- for blowouts.
4. Mosquitoes.
5. That it’s often too hot to enjoy hot coffee.
6. Having the AC on when I’d much rather not.
7. Mosquitoes. I really dislike mosquitoes.