It's Only A Paper Rose

Hello, book friends who haven't yet deserted me (heh). What I had anticipated to be a constantly-scrabbling-to-find-this-or-that-piece-of-paperwork process (i.e. closing) has turned out to actually be mostly waiting, with only occasional scrabbling for this or that piece of paperwork. (My lender, my realtor, and my attorney (or his paralegal, really) have all complimented me on my speed and organization. I sorta feel like, compared to when I was regularly working as an admin, I'm only halfway to where I should be, but apparently that's enough to put me in the top percentile when it comes to filling out forms/finding personal information to fork over.) In any case, I have time to read again, albeit not a lot—my as-yet-unnamed Giant Writing Project of Goth Angst is spilling out into my paper diary, my playlists, and has begun scrapbooking pieces from the Met Fashion Gala. I've redownloaded Scrivener just to have a virtual corkboard where I can organize things. Not a lot of actual writing happening as of yet, but given how complex this is becoming in my head, I think a little more outlining than I usually do is in order.

What I've just finished reading

Nothing recently! Hoping to fix that this week.

What I'm currently reading

The Cloud Roads, by Martha Wells. I picked this up as a freebie from Antigone Books, which should give you an idea of how long ago it was (this was not on my recent trip back to Tucson). I have a thing for the symbolism of wings (says the woman with the giant wing tattoo on her thigh) and I suspect that's going to crop up somewhere in my Giant Writing Project of The Dark and the Light In All of Us, so I thought I'd give this a read and see what another author's done with it. It's turning out to be a competently if somewhat artlessly written bit of fantasy about a race of winged humanoids and their political maneuverings; I feel like the author could maybe stand to learn a bit from Ann "Screw Two, Make Every Scene Serve Five Purposes" Leckie, but the pacing's moving along at a good clip and Moon's outside perspective on the Raksura is interesting.

The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. LeGuin. I've only just started this one (I was listening to it while I did my hair the other day), but it's put me in mind more than anything of Ada Palmer's Too Like the Lightning. There's been a little less philosophy (so far), but something about the intellectual tone and the descriptions of a world with a single androgynous gender contribute to s similar sense of atmosphere. I have a feeling there will be far fewer "characters debating moralism vs. determinism while engaging in an orgy" sequences...though I wouldn't necessarily mind being proven wrong, haha. I'm interested to see if the comparison holds up; it wouldn't surprise me if this was one of Palmer's major influences.

What I plan to read next

I still have Yoga Sequencing on my plate, and now I've got another yoga book on top of that—I'm going to be a coach-in-training for the Sauganash studio's teacher training in October, and we have a new book that we're having the students read from. (Which I am 100% in favor of. When I was in training we were using Baron Baptiste's Journey Into Power, which I found almost offensively self-helpy and simplistic in its message. Obviously anything that's wrong in your life is wrong because you aren't doing hot power yoga! Start doing hot power yoga and you'll be amazed at the changes in your life! Yoga can heal the sick/make the lame walk/make blind men see/fill your wallet/find you a new job/cure cancer/bring about world peace! I'm only exaggerating slightly; I get that Baptiste was writing this as a sales pitch but man did I feel oversold to. Possibly the more so because I'd already been through the "yoga is making all of these positive changes in my life, everyone should try it!" phase and felt like I'd come to a more nuanced understanding of why it works for me, what its limitations are, and why it might not work for others.) So probably I'll be picking up Michael Stone's The Inner Tradition of Yoga.

I had an interesting experience with yoga teaching and anxiety yesterday.

Like most people prone to anxiety issues, I have good days and bad days. I learn what's likely to trigger anxious days (low blood sugar, which in me is directly linked to crappy diet; overfull schedules; fear of disappointing people) and figure out ways to avoid or minimize them (wholesome food, physical exercise, good time management, shifting my focus from mental triggers). But, like most people with anxiety, even with all the management skills in the world I'll fall down on something now and then, or just have a day when everything feels looming and threatening for some reason I can't control or haven't identified yet.

In any case, yesterday was a bad day. Not awful; on the worst days my brain feels like a hamster trapped in a wheel, running faster and faster trying to escape the feedback loop and never getting anywhere. On the worst days my body dumps regular shots of adrenaline into my bloodstream; sleep is nearly impossible and focus difficult.

This was just a bad day. The adrenaline-based fight-or-flight response wasn't fully present, but it was looming, hovering around the edges, just waiting for a sequence unwary thoughts to trigger it, for the hamster to start running in its wheel. Some of this might have been that I have a fairly full week planned. And some of it might be that it was Monday, when I teach my C2 class. Even though I'm generally feeling less hapless in the format, as my near-disaster a couple of weeks ago demonstrated, I'm far from comfortable with it.

In any case, teaching my afternoon C1 helped (somewhat ironically, despite the anticipation being a trigger, both teaching and massage themselves are great salves for anxiety - they require precisely the kind of focus and mindfulness that help restore mental balance), as did taking my usual Monday afternoon class. Afterward, I was sitting in the studio going over my sequence, and there was some lovely meditative music playing over the PA, and I had a passing thought that I know I've had before - something to the effect of "Wow, this music sounds so relaxing. I wish I could be that relaxed right now."

And it occurred to me - why not? What was stopping me? There were two classes in session and no one due in the studio lobby for a good twenty minutes; I could try meditating for five minutes or so without interruption.

So I set my work aside, and set the little "Breathe" app on my Apple Watch to five minutes (it gives rhythmic vibrational feedback to encourage you to breathe mindfully). And I sat and just...breathed. Noticed where I was tense, encouraged myself to relax, listened to the pretty music.

And nobody died. My class wasn't a disaster. I wasn't as Zen as I would like to be, but there was a distinct improvement in my state of mind while teaching. Even though I forgot a chunk of the last sequence, I just added it in at the end. It wasn't my best class by a long shot, but I felt better about it than I have about some of my objectively better ones.

None of this is particularly revelatory - we're all aware that we do better at difficult focus-requiring tasks when we're not anxious, and it's well-documented that meditation and mindfulness practices are good at controlling anxiety. I think, for me, what made it feel so novel was the fact that, rather than just having the passing thought and then going right back to the anxiety, I said to myself, "Why not? What's the worst that's likely to happen if I just...breathe?"

I think I'm going to have to ask myself that more often.

As I mentioned earlier, I've hit something of a bump in the road with my yoga teaching. Or maybe less of a bump than an extended rough patch, replete with "Fresh Oil" and "Rough Grooved Surface" signs. Which probably wouldn't be so frustrating if there were also a "next 500 feet" sign, or at least some indicator of how long it was going to last. And I'm probably extending the metaphor past the point of awkwardness, so let me back up.

A couple of months ago I started teaching C2 classes at CorePower. This is their signature offering and therefore sort of the 'big leagues' for teachers; you teach in a hot studio (93 to 95 degrees F) and have the option to create your own sequences for class. Other than that, it's not much different from the C1 format, at least not unless you change it up; you're supposed to stick with the CPY formula when building your sequences (though veteran teachers have been known to change it up some), so the arc of the class remains similar, as does the cue formula and theming and everything else.

And yet...I'm having a lot of trouble finding my groove in this format. It feels a little like learning to drive stick when you're used to an automatic, except it took me a lot effort time to pick that up. And to make it extra frustrating, I don't have a concrete idea of what's wrong; my classes just aren't...gelling. They're not disasters, not usually; nobody's hurt themselves or even given me negative feedback. I get lots of "Thanks for the class" and "Great class" from people as they leave. But I'm not connecting with them the way I want to, the way I know I can; after my C1s and CoreRestores, people linger and want to talk. After my C2s...not so much. Brian thinks I'm overthinking it, and maybe he's right, but dammit, I've taken a lot of yoga classes, and taught a few as well; I know the difference between an okay class and a great class, and I want to teach the latter. I've managed to hit that feeling exactly once - the third one I taught - but the rest have felt...awkward at best. And I can't seem to figure out what the problem is.

Initially, I wondered if maybe my sequences were too advanced for the population I was teaching. I usually go to class at Uptown, since it's close by, so that's roughly the level I was aiming for - but while it's not quite to the level of Gold Coast in terms of hardcore yoga folks, it still has a strong community of dedicated yogis who go multiple times per week. Sauganash, where I have my C2 class, is a little more laid-back; the regulars there are more the "go once or twice a week when I can find space in my schedule" types. Given that people were starting to nope out by midway through the second flow, and that the majority reactions to my peak pose demonstrations ranged from "uh-uh" to "WTF?", I figured - after several weeks, heh - that maybe I should scale it back a bit.

So last week, that's what I did. And the results were...mixed. It definitely felt more in line with the capabilities of the class I had, so that was helpful. But I still felt like I was flubbing half the cues, my timing was off, and I couldn't find that sense of flow. And it didn't help that I forgot basics like the hands-on assist opt-out at the start of class. Augh.

Some of it is probably just lack of familiarity with the material. I've gone from teaching a set sequence every week to doing a new sequence every couple of weeks, replete with poses I've never taught before; while writing out cues to use with them has helped, it's harder to respond in a timely and articulate manner to the various trouble spots and misalignments I see in class. Anatomy training helps, but often I'll think something like "engage your adductors", which isn't terribly useful to someone who doesn't know the name of their inner thigh muscles, and also presumes they have the body awareness necessary to know how to tighten them. "Squeeze your thighs together" is better, but I feel like I use that cue a lot; maybe developing a stable of action cues meant to engage various muscle groups would be a good step.

Some of it, yes, is overthinking; I feel like I spend so many cycles trying to remember what's coming next in the sequence that I end up dropping cues I intend to use or sometimes whole sections of the flow (although luckily the students usually remind me when that happens). Sometimes I'm trying to figure out how to articulate a particular cue and end up with an awkwardly long period of silence, which throws off the whole rhythm of the class. And of course when I'm already feeling off-balance I'm much more likely to mentally freak out about forgetting something, or not having enough poses to fill the time, or spending too much time in one place, or any of the plates I have spinning at a given moment.

But here's the thing - I didn't expect this to be easy. Learning C1s wasn't easy; even CoreRestore, the format I enjoy teaching most, took time to get comfortable with. I'm a little frustrated at how long it's taking me, but given how much more material I'm dealing with, it's not that surprising. So I'm trying to figure out why I'm feeling so frustrated about this.

The best answer I can come up with is related to my perfectionism. I've gotten better about needing to always be 100% perfect every time I do something (because when that's the case, you never learn anything new, heh). But it's much, much tougher for me to be imperfect in front of people. With music, with writing, even with learning a new language, I've been able to learn a fair amount entirely on my own, or with the help of a trusted few; by the time I've shown my efforts to the world, I'm at least competent. But with teaching, by definition it's going to be a performative effort, which means the only way to get better is to mess up, publicly, over and over again. And the fact that I'm being paid (not a lot, but still paid) for what feels like continually messing up adds a whole other layer of expectation and frustration.

I know I'm probably being a little hard on myself. But...I'd just really like to get past this part. Please?

As I mentioned before, I very much loved Ancillary Justice, in part because of the multilayered approach - the story works very well on its own, but there are a lot of Big Ideas addressed both overtly and subtly, and so many crunchy questions of ethics and morality and technology and culture to debate. The aspect that caught my eye the most, though, was how a little over midway through the book, it also became a parable about identity.

( Spoilers ahoy! )

I recently came across a wonderful metaphor for consciousness in (of all things) Come As You Are. Nagoski describes our minds as being like a flock of birds - at any given time you have your ideals, your assumptions, your values, your emotions, your opinions of the world, the information given to you by your senses, your feelings about that information, your memories, all flying at once. When they're all in harmony with each other - when they're all on a level and all agree with each other about which direction to fly - all is well. When some are in disagreement, however - when past actions disagree with your values, or when you receive new information that's at odds with your assumptions of how the world operates - this causes cognitive dissonance, which can be uncomfortable enough to eventually alter our values and thus the direction of the entire flock. In extreme cases, where traumatic events take place and our flock goes all over the place, we end up paralyzed. But most of the time, it's not that extreme; we continue on, and eventually resolve the dissonance by changing what we can -
whether that's our behavior or our beliefs.

But how often have we accidentally entrapped our friends within that dissonance? How often have we, in not wanting to address our own shortcomings, put those we care most about in a no-win situation? I think particularly of romantic relationships, because they're so emotionally fraught and full of scenarios where our feelings don't live up to our values. Say a partner breaks up with us; we believe that they're an individual and have the right to pursue their own happiness, so we do our best to keep our chin up and bravely soldier on. But breakups hurt; social disconnection hits at our very core sense of self-worth (not to mention our more primal fears of survival, as social connection is fundamental to that survival). Then some weeks later - long enough for us to have gotten over the worst of the sting, but nowhere near long enough to have recovered entirely - someone we care about approaches us and tells us they've been wanting to see our former partner romantically, and is that okay with us? We're faced with a dilemma - no, emotionally it's not okay with us, but to say so means admitting our humanity and our vulnerability on this point, not to mention demonstrating that we're not living up to our vision of ourselves as someone able to Get Over Things. So we say that it's quite all right, thus setting our friend up for precisely this kind of failure - if they take us out our word, we resent them and possibly lash out at them later; if they don't, they're as good as saying they don't trust us. Either way, disconnection.

I think this is one of the biggest reasons I find teaching yoga so rewarding. My emotional integrity has improved by leaps and bounds since I began practicing regularly; something about the meditative aspects of yoga really helps me acknowledge and be more compassionate towards the parts of my consciousness that don't align with who I most want to be, and the physical activity helps to defuse the stronger emotion and get that part of me flying in line with the rest of the birds. I hope that, to some extent, I share that same feeling with my students; it's the kind of small-scale change that can have a huge effect in a person's life, and perhaps even ripple out to have positive effects on everyone around them.

I was working during the eclipse yesterday and it was pretty cloudy here in Chicago, so I didn't do much of anything special. I did leave for work early, expecting the traffic to be nutty - you can bet I had all my brightly colored reflective gear plus blinky lights on my bike. But if anything, it was the opposite; the on-road portions of my commute were calm, and the parks nearly deserted. I did pass a few people in various neighborhoods standing outside looking up with their eclipse glasses; combined with the quieter-than-average streets, it felt more than a bit like I'd stumbled into a sci-fi movie about a culture that takes in its energy from the noonday sun.

I was a little surprised to have three students (a not-unusual number for a daytime beginner class); I'd half-expected everyone to be busy eclipse-watching. I'd built a vaguely eclipse-themed playlist, too, but Apple Music was giving me trouble, so I wasn't able to use it. Luckily nobody there had been to my C1 class before, so I was able to reuse a previous playlist and not feel like I was slacking, heh.

I've been in a somewhat subdued place, this week. I've been ruminating on loss, and how it affects us; even something like a job or a relationship (or the hope of a relationship) ending, where there's no physical change, still causes a sense of bereavement. It occurs to me that I am experiencing a loss of sorts; even though I didn't have a lot of plans per se (it's hard to when the other party leads solely by implication), I had a lot of hopes, and ideas for the future. It's tough to realize that those are gone permanently, at least in that form. Something I'd worked carefully toward for so long has just...evanesced, and I feel a little adrift.

Relatedly, I finally finished Come As You Are, and the last section is all about emotional meta-analysis - or how you feel about your feelings. One of the things Nagoski points out that I particularly love is that emotional reactions (contrary to the claims of numerous inspirational quotes) are not something you can choose or control; what you can control is your reaction to those emotions, by either refusing to feel them - staying in the tunnel - or allowing yourself space to feel them, knowing that while they may not feel good in the moment, they will pass; eventually you'll make it through the darkness and out into the light. It's proven to be a good yoga-class theme for the week of an eclipse, as well as for my life right now.

Also, a yoga-teacher milestone reached: yesterday one of my students told me how she'd come into my CoreRestore class on Sunday night extremely nervous about an important job interview on Monday, so my theme about choosing to feel your feelings and let them go really spoke to her. Apparently she slept great on Sunday night, aced the interview, got the job, and came into my C1 class Monday afternoon to celebrate. I was so happy for her. <3

Hey guys! It's been a week. (And it's only Wednesday.) My computer went boing Monday morning, and that afternoon a full quarter of my yoga playlist disappeared...right in the middle of teaching class. Timing! I switched over to the last section of another playlist, and it went fine, but wow that threw me off...I depend on my music to set the pace and the arc of the class, so hiccups like that become significant speed bumps. Seriously considering switching to a non-connected device for music (I think I've got some old iPod Nanos hanging around) so I don't have to worry about that happening again.

Tuesday was supposed to be my rest day, but I spent it biking down to Lincoln Park to see if they could un-boing my computer. They did (yay!) and didn't even charge me (double yay!), so I biked home, used it for a bit without incident, then plugged it in...and shortly thereafter it went boing again. Current theories are either the adapter or the power board are bad; either way, double augh. It's going to have to wait until Brian can take a look at it, because I don't have the time to get back down to Lincoln Park...and he's in Las Vegas at the moment, and then we're both headed to Boston almost directly after that. And of course, Monday was the day I had multiple people messaging me wanting to set up massage appointments, which is a giant pain in the butt to do on my phone. Woo, timing!

On the upside, I've got my old computer with an external keyboard, so at least I'm not completely dependent on my phone. Also, I'm kind of proud of myself - usually when Brian's out of town I live on packaged food and take-out, but instead I hunted down ingredients at the Asian store and tried out a recipe for a cold noodle dish with pork and vegetables that I could separate into single-serving containers and stick in the fridge. (The recipe itself is maybe a 3.5 out of five - like most NYTimes recipes, it needs more spices. But it's edible and halfway healthy...although I was entertained to realize halfway through that I was basically making a more-white-person version of a dish the Vietnamese restaurant next door sells. They do it better.) And this morning I went to Sculpt despite being much more tired than originally planned. I'm glad I did, despite my arms being tired; Rob-of-the-enthusiastic-5:30-AM-sunrise-pictures-#blessed was teaching, and his energy always cheers me up. Especially when I'm grumpy.

So, yeah. I think the theme for my classes today and tomorrow will be something related to perseverance, heh. We'll see if it pays off...

I'm just over halfway through my internship, and picked up enough substitute classes to shave off more than a month (it's been less than two months, as opposed to the three-and-a-half it would have taken if I'd only taught my single regular weekly class). I've successfully dealt with a couple of unexpected issues mid-class - including, one memorable week, a confused-seeming woman bursting in through the emergency exit door (!) in the middle of a class, saying something about wanting her free week. (We have signs in the window advertising a free first week; she had found the front door locked and gone around to the side, where apparently I hadn't pulled the door all the way shut after airing out the studio. I gently-but-firmly explained to her that she'd need to come back before a class, through the front. Fortunately she left without incident; it was disconcerting, but happened at a convenient stopping point and I just skipped ahead to the next section of class.)

As with any performative skill, I have a hard time measuring objectively how I'm doing - whenever anyone asks how my internship is going, I say something like "Well, I haven't killed anyone yet, so I guess it's going well!" That said, I do feel like I'm settling into a rhythm of sorts. I'm more confident, at least within the confines of the format. I'm getting better at the more conversational parts, too, although I usually do some journaling and occasionally practicing in the shower to make sure I can convey my point in the limited time window. Somewhat entertainingly, Dominika (my two-levels-up supervisor/former anatomy teacher/friend/person I greatly admire, who also has taught at CorePower for years and knows basically everyone in the community) came to one of my classes...and of course it was the morning that I'd forgotten I was subbing an earlier class and was mildly hungover. Oops. I got out there and taught as well as I could; I knew I wasn't running at 100%, but past that, I couldn't really tell how I'd come off. So I braced myself for some honest feedback...and then Dominika came out and unhesitatingly told me I was already a better teacher than people she knew who'd been teaching for ten years. o.O Well, I wasn't going to look that gift horse in the mouth, even if I felt a little undeserving, heh. Still, that combined with the fact that I regularly have students inquire what classes I teach on the schedule tells me I'm doing something right.

Making playlists remains one of my favorite parts of the job; this week's, however, was giving me trouble. I'd challenged myself to make something more instrumental-focused, since I'd noticed that it was easier to teach when I wasn't having to compete vocally with singers. And I discovered that figuring out instrumental tracks is a lot more time-consuming - it's harder for me to bring a song's hook to mind without a chorus to hum. I ended up working on that one right down to the wire, convinced that it wasn't one of my stronger efforts...and discovered in situ that it actually was one of my best in terms of mood and timing. (Gift horse number 2!) I also had multiple people comment how much they liked it after the three classes I taught yesterday and today; that marks the first time anyone's commented on the music specifically. Combined with the positive feedback I've seen other teachers get on mostly-instrumental playlists, that seems like a strong indicator...I guess I'm going to have to get better at remembering song hooks and start listening to more instrumental music.

So that's the first half done! I suspect the second may take a bit longer, as I have a vacation coming up and also some visitors, but we'll see. The weather has been mostly excellent, so between teaching at Lincoln Square and Uptown and Sauganash, I've been biking all over the far north side of Chicago; I've been packing my little rechargeable Bluetooth carabiner speaker and having a complete blast listening to the Awesome Mix as I pedal against the wind. My thighs are going to be massive by the end of summer.

On the more liberal side of the current tug-of-war over basic workers' rights, one concept that's seen some experimentation is the idea of the six-hour workday, wherein the traditional workday time is cut by a quarter. The idea is that, especially in white-collar brain-intensive jobs, studies have shown that six hours gives you the best ratio between availability and reasonable productivity, before fatigue sets in and workers start making more mistakes and/or seeing deleterious long-term health effects - so we should take advantage of that and hopefully reap savings in terms of less stressed-out workers.

Interestingly, however, over the past few weeks I've been having almost the reverse issue. Most of my workdays over that time have been only a couple of hours at most - a massage appointment here, a yoga class there, a shift at the spa a couple days a week. And yet I've been discovering the hidden cost to going for weeks without a break, even when the bulk of any given day seems like it should be fine for relaxing.

For one thing, a massage appointment isn't just a massage appointment, especially working out of my home. If someone's coming over, I need to make sure the living room, kitchen, bathroom, and hallway are clean; the furniture is moved; and the table is set up. Depending on how messy the house was before and whether Brian helps (which, dear man, he often makes himself available to do), that's often a two-to-three hour job before I even get to the appointment itself. (Although, on the upside, the house stays a lot cleaner when I have regular clients than it does otherwise.)

For another, although yoga teaching doesn't require any cleaning, there's the transportation time to consider. When I'm teaching at Uptown or Lincoln Square that's maybe ten or fifteen minutes each way on my bike or the bus; however, my regular class is at Sauganash, which is either a 35-minute bike ride or a 45-minute transit ride away, depending on my energy and the weather. For an eight- (or even six-) hour workday, an hour and a half round trip isn't a huge deal, but the proportion compared to a single two-hour shift is, unsurprisingly, much higher.

And that's not even taking into account the mental effects of going weeks without a proper day off. I constantly remind my clients that relaxation isn't what happens in between everything else you do; it's a conscious choice that requires active practice. Needless to say, it's much easier to make that choice when you're not likely to have to suddenly get up and dash - i.e. when you've got that full day off.

I'm not complaining, exactly - I made the choice to take on the workload I did, for various reasons. (Income is helpful! Practice at my trades are good. Feeling useful and productive is nice, too.) And in a lot of ways, I'm privileged - I don't have to take on less-than-ideal schedules if I don't want to, for fear of not making rent or running out of grocery money. But I cannot even articulate how relieved I am to have a couple of full, real, genuine days off on my schedule tomorrow and Wednesday. And while I understood intellectually why a yoga teacher friend of mine would occasionally cancel plans with "I'm sorry, I need to stay home and eat cheese," I grok that mindset in a much more real and immediate way now.

Almost exactly six months after I began teacher training, I have completed my first day of paid teaching. It's official - I'm a professional yoga teacher now!

It's been a long journey, filled with a lot of work, a lot of anxiety, a lot of learning about community, a lot of growth, and a lot of realizing exactly how much I have grown but hadn't discovered it yet. And now I'm here. Which is really only a brief stopping point - I have so much yet to learn. But it's still a point worth celebrating, I think.

I got this card to send to a dear friend, but hopefully he won't mind me using a picture of it here, as it's perfect to the moment:



Here's to learning, and growing, and doing difficult things we want to do in spite of our anxiety about them.