Okay, so I lied. THIS will be my last post from Vienna. A short one. I'm in the airport waiting for my veerrryy long flight from Vienna to Washington DC. It took 9.75 hours to get from Portland to Frankfurt, with another hour or so to Vienna. So why does it take 9.5 hours to get from Vienna to Wash.DC??? Then another 5.5 to Portland!?? That's a lot of flying. 3.5 hours in Wash.DC. Yes, I'll be ready to be home by the end of all this. I had a glorious time here in many ways. I feel melancholy leaving Vienna. It has had so much to offer me. Not all of it easy, but I'm very grateful. Zhander was so incredibly giving. So much information with so much caring and integrity. And so much to bring back!!!

So, see you all soon. Can't wait to be home. I have a list of things I want to do and places I want to eat, though after eating simple foods for three weeks I'll have to take it easy! Bye for now...

Last Day (for blogs) in Vienna

This will be my last blog entry in Vienna. It's a good thing there are only two more days left, though. They are doing construction on the floor below, and my pleasant little room vibrates with the drilling of the walls below. Still, I am enjoying my last few days here in Vienna. I'm so glad the clouds parted on Sunday and I've really been able to be present here. I mean, it's Vienna! for crying out loud.

I had a lovely breakfast with fellow practitioners. What a nice group of folks. It helps that I really like being in my own skin. Nice to be able to say that. Had a lovely walk to Stadt Park. My second time there. It was a glorious day, not a cloud in the sky. So lovely.

The practice: Today we learned the very beginning of the seated practice he was going to teach us. It involves correct positioning of the entire body, and the focused breathing I mentioned earlier, bringing it through the nadis on each inhale and exhale, through the 'gates,' the marmas. Today we started to learn to circulate the vayu through the nadis in the legs. Very intense work. Mental work. Focusing the mind inward to these energetic pathways and keeping it there. I was quite surprised the first time I did this. I immediately felt very clearly the vayu moving along the path of my inhale. It was very, very quick and quite defined and I felt it all along the pathway to a clearly defined point at the arch of my foot. It was quite pronounced! My thought was 'oh, there it is!' Amazing how it is so alive there, and all that is required is to just pay attention! I was surprised how clearly I felt it. Then the exhale, a different pathway back to the root of the kanda, where all the nadis begin.

He has impressed upon us the importance of absolutely no forcing, no imposition. Also, how the way he is teaching this to us is specific to this particular group. Same process with each group he teaches, but a different approach to it. We have practiced simple nadi work, inhale and exhale, through each prelude for three days. Now, we do it sitting and add the internal circulation of vayu in steps.

He also has stressed repeatedly the need to be very, very careful when approaching this work and especially in trying to teach it. You can really mess yourself up in a big way doing this work when not ready and without the guidance of a teacher. I believe him. Once I did, without even thinking, exactly what he said not to do--I forced the movement of vayu through the nadi when it felt blocked in a particular pose.

The consequence was immediate. It felt very bad. Very wrong. My immediate thought as soon as I felt this reaction was 'oh, shit, I just did what he said not to do.' And I woke up very dizzy the next morning. Another time I pressed on what I guess to be marma points where I felt blocked. I was fascinated by the level of release I felt when I did so. I did it over and over. Each time my entire chest released and the space in my lower abdomen felt cavernous and my inhale was so much deeper. I also gave myself a mild asthma attack! I guess some of us still have to learn the hard way! But it prepared me well for today, which is even more delicate. I now know clearly not to force ANYTHING! And to leave those marma points alone!!! Geez!!!

But real the point is, while this work will definitely become a big part of my own work, I won't be bringing this practice home to share. Sorry. But I believe in maintaining the integrity of the teaching. You'll just have to come to one of these on your own if you want to learn it! Or wait until Matt or perhaps Andy or Lita feel ready to teach it!

So that's it! 2 more classes, 1 more full day after today, and I come home. To sum it up, a great inner and outer cleansing coupled with deep insights and LOTS of new information to integrate. Along with a very 'revised' perception of what this work is all about. I look forward to seeing you all and sharing more of my journey here!!

Now for the last of the pictures. I visited a couple parks today. As you can see, the Viennese are careful to keep their parks well contained. Wouldn't want them spilling out onto the streets! Ha.

Once inside, quite lovely...

Check it out. A memorial statue to Schindler (for those who don't know who he is, check out the movie 'Schindler's List'):



Cool Viennese street scene...

Another shot of the opera house (otherwise known from earlier posts as Big Building:

Look familiar? TGIF's never looked like this in the states:

Noisy room...

Had to change rooms today. They are doing construction underneath the room I was in. Not good for resting, doing practice, sleeping, or just about anything else you can think of. So I'm in a smaller room, but energetically much nicer. Very clear, while the other room was dense. Okay, so I'm thinking it's not really an accident. I needed the other room while in a more 'dense' place myself! This room is crisp and bright and clean and would not have served to contain or allow for the cleansing of the crap that came out the first two weeks.

The energy work we are doing, as basic as it is, is definitely bringing up more stuff, though more physical and energetic than emotional. Energetic blocks in points along my chest. I could feel them yesterday in the way he had described it, though these are not major transfer points (marmas) but lesser ones a long the line. This AM I woke up with tightness in this whole area. I'm thinking, at least the first layer, is asthma residue. I haven't had any real asthma for years, but as a kid, I had it bed. I almost died when I was 4. Turned blue, went far, far away, was tied to my body by a tether. Then brought back by a woman doctor my father called out of desperation.

So, there's definitely a story there. I've worked with that story plenty, but here it is, in my body. I'm finding something interesting in all this work. I've done a tremendous amount of inner work for about 30 years on and off. Huge, big stuff. Worked with a lot of really deep crap. Had to or I wouldn't be here now. But now what I'm finding is that there are residues, patterns embedded in my body. These things I worked on exist as traces in these energetic bodily patterns. So while I worked on the level of the mind and the emotions, it always remained non-integrated on a very primal, basic level--that of the body.

So I'm finding that many of these old patterns are coming up, but also I'm finding there really isn't a lot of juice behind them! Whatever remains of them have come up and I stayed with them, felt them, let them come up as they needed to, and then they dissipated, and the energy they contained is being integrated through the practice! It's like my favorite analogy--squeezing a sponge! It's there, physically and energetically in my tissues, in the energetic pathways, and the work squeezes them out. So there is NO shortcut to doing this work through the body. But having done the work on other levels has definitely cleared the way for this work in that I'm dealing more with a shallow pool than a deep well of old garbage!

I don't know if that makes sense, but it's very interesting to me to see this at work. Makes me even more glad for all the hard work done over most of my lifetime. Of course, I needed all that hard work just to be able to be functional enough to take this work on!

So there is more stuff coming up, but it's on a completely different vibration than that of the first two weeks. This is purely showing up in my body and energy path. Zhander is stressing the criticalness of NO FORCE in this work. NO imposition! He is hammering this into us day after day. This energetic work has to move slowly and find its own inner intelligence, and I feel in no rush at all. I have so much to bring back with me and work with to make come alive, and the seeds have definitely been planted.

When I did the three-week intensive in Oct/Nov., I knew immediately that I had to come to Vienna. Not any other place but here. What he is teaching us is exactly the thing I've been craving and feeling the internal urge to move into. A whole different level of practice. This is exactly what he talked to us about the first few days. "Revised preludes" is more about revising our relationship to our practice and how we practice it! That is definitely happening for me in a huge way. I see my practice in such a different light. Inviting in the light. That is really what this is all about for me. Creating the most welcoming and stable environment possible to invite the light to stay in. That's how you 'fit' the light into the body. You make the body, the mind, all of it, transparent and then that's all there is, is light. Sounds easy, and it is for the very few who can cut through all this bullshit and get it all at once and live it. For the rest of it, it takes some work. So here I am, having heeded the voice that said 'get thee to Vienna!!' Yes, m'am!.....

Okay, so I'm cheating now and showing pictures that I didn't share before but took earlier. Haven't felt inclined to take more photos, but I'm meeting my Austrian friend, Karin, for lunch at the Museum for Applied Arts and I'll bring my camera. Nice to have as many views of Vienna as I can get while I'm here, eh? The first picture of a cute Austrian cousin of my own Yaris here in Vienna. Of course my Yaris is much cuter. The second is of a car that I think might possibly be the cutest little car I've ever seen. Yes, I love small, cute little cars, if I love cars at all. The rest of the shots are from Sunday's jaunt:

I like Vienna!!!

I definitely am finally enjoying being here!!! Today we started the nadi work Zhander talked about, which, despite my fears, I was not at all excluded from!  He is taking us through it very slowly and very cautiously.  It is intense work, most of it mental focus on where the breath is going. We are focusing on the nadi system involved with inhalations and exhalations. There are points where the prana moves during each and today, we focused on those pathways while doing Bala. No sitting yet, which is where we are heading. I guess he felt we needed more work on the pathways first. This is all the basis for pranayama practice, and I'm starting to really understand why it is so important to take these things so slowly. To jump into working with the breath in this way is not only dangerous, but a complete waste of time without setting the foundation first. And that is not only just to do the pose work but to understand energetically what is happening. To know the 'inner landscape' pretty thoroughly so that when you do go to the floor and work with the breath and energetic pathways there, you can do it consciously and mindfully, working with these energies with understanding. Otherwise, I can really see how you can do damage by awakening energies and not knowing the proper pathways they should be moving through. Let them move the wrong way and things can get stuck or feed the wrong system or whatever.

Anyway, it's fascinating and powerful stuff. Today I definitely know why I am here. The first two weeks, so much shit came out it wasn't even funny. Any residue of crap I had seemed to come flying in my face. I had been feeling very dense, very thick, and congested, bound, conflicted--you get the idea--before I came. So many new things coming into the picture, including my work at the Shala, my own project which is becoming huge. My husband, my dog, all changing, swirling. I felt lost in all the density of being in the world so much. It's easy to focus on the center and stay relatively clear when I'm not so much 'in the world.' But I've thrown myself out there in a huge way, so it's a different way of being for me now.

So, it feels like lots of cleansing and purification as all of this is coming into focus along with the work we are doing. This is definitely not just about preludes. I look forward to bringing back some of the relatively minor changes to the forms. But this work, well, this is where the real juice is for me. I hope we can find a way to continue this kind of study back home. I know I will be doing so on my own, but it would be so good to be able to work with this kind of practice together. Zhander has said that he is moving people in a direction. I feel lucky that I've plugged into this work with him at this time, when he is starting to take us more inward into the subtleties of yogic work. Yogic anatomy, he calls it. Familiar to some of you, I'm sure, but for me, it's only just now starting to really come alive on the inside.

I'm also starting to like Vienna much more. I know my way around now. Found places to buy food. I'm making new friends. I just had a really nice, fun chat with some of my fellow students, people from all over the world. Poland, Vienna, London. An Austrian woman named Sonia lived for four years in Shaker Heights, Ohio, just about 20 minutes from where I grew up in Cleveland. Very funny. And Greg, a Polish fellow who is a bit rakish and rather adorable, was an exchange student in Michigan, which is of course next to Ohio. So in this last week, I am making more connections and friends. I like being here a lot more. Feeling very much better in my own skin.

I think knowing I'll be home in a few days helps! Saturday I'll leave class a little bit early and take the subway to the airport. My plane leaves around 11am and I travel about 20 hours or so. Thanks to the time change, I'll be back Sat. night around 8:30pm Portland time! I plan to spend Sunday eating. Ha! And snuggling with my wonderful husband I miss so much and my two warm cuddly dogs. I hope they remember me!

More from yesterday's very pleasant outing:

Sunday, something is different...

I woke up today and did little but lie around.  Read the rest of the Sword of the Lictor, only to find out there is a fourth volume I didn't know about and don't have.  Have to wait to find out what Severian does next.  I also read today that Severian is a big, fat liar.  An unreliable narrator. Bummer.

Tourist season has started here, but fortunately for me, today it rained.  Hard enough to keep many of the tourists away.  I felt fed, no survival worries.  I stepped out in the early afternoon for a walk and into a whole different landscape.  A different internal landscape more than anything.  It was a peaceful place, quiet and centered.  I felt like I had finally arrived here and returned home all at the same time.  I walked past the tourist buses by the museums and down around the 'ring.' More huge buildings. he Parliament, the volks garten, huge cathedrals.  It started to rain.  Lucky for me I have my little umbrella and I walk in it just fine.  It was so quiet, few people, the smell of horses as carriages went by.  I love the smell of horses, even their manure.  Ambrosia!!!

I walked and walked. Felt like I was 'in Vienna' for the very first time.  Enjoying it.  I have been hearing Zhander's voice in my head throughout the weeks here.  I wake up with the things he is saying wafting around in my head. During evening practice, walking around the streets, the voice winds in and out and around my mind. Not today.  It was quiet in there today.  We weren't supposed to think about practice today and I did as I was told.  Just walked, got a bit wet.  It was good.

I came back to my room.  Did some stuff.  Somewhere at some point, a picture popped into my head.  Things often come to be in pictures, some of which I then sit down and draw out.  I drew this.  A simple picture, to be elaborated on when I get home. A picture of a small pile of wood, a fire burning, the air stirring into wind above it, the wind moving.  A picture of energies, my energies.  How they might work together, feeding and supporting each other.  Water to grease the pipes, to moisten the air and green the desert.  It's a simple picture, and it fits into how my body is put together.  I can connect this picture to to the work we do in class, to poses and stances and movements. I can feel it in my body as I do. There are centers where these energies get generated, where the alchemy happens and these energies come together and one of them is produced and supported by the others.  But then these energies run through my whole body, like rivers, and each of them needs to be working and supporting each other everywhere. Earth supports and feeds the fire, the fire stirs the air, the wind moves, the water keeps the air cool and moist. Keeps the rivers flowing. 

I felt something opening. The glimmer of understanding. For the first time, I think perhaps, just maybe, I'm starting to unwind the knot that binds me. The puzzle that has eluded me. The one about how to live in this body. To not want to rip at it and burn away the skin. To tear my way out of it. To not despise it and hate it and feel confined by it. It is easy for me to find 'home' without the body. To step back and back again and then back again and find Home. But I have a different feeling of being 'at home' today. Maybe this body is 'home' too.

I have never cared about becoming 'enlightened.' My problem is the other way around. My question is how to be embodied! How to BE and be in a body, BE a body at the same time.

Somehow this picture I have, feels like the beginning of a bridge that just might take me between these worlds. The relative world, the absolute world, matter and spirit, body and Self. Because I know what I have always known. The true way home is not divorcing one from the other but finding the truth in both.

Here are pictures from my walk today:

Weekend

I'm entering my last week here.  One more practice this evening, then I'm off tomorrow all day.  Our task is to relax and take things softly and slowly.  We've gone through all the preludes already.  Very quickly through Moving and Circling.  We did the closing poses today, which I knew already.  They are the same for every prelude.  Next week we are going through them all again, but he has planned something else, a pranayama practice that is to be done before the practice.  He says some people will not be doing that. For some reason, I believe I will be one who won't be permitted to do it.  I'll find out next week.

Not much more to say about Vienna.  I would like to see more of it, not just the area I'm in.  But I'm not very inclined to take subways and check it all out.  I'm tired and wanting mostly to stay quiet.  I plan to visit a museum or two tomorrow on my day off and read in the park.  Perhaps go by the water or to Stadt Park to walk a bit.  

Sorry, no pictures today.  I'll take some tomorrow of some nice scenery.  Today I want to get through my evening practice and try to get an early sleep.  I'll do some work on the Shala stuff.  I've been writing for my own project too.  Developing my storyboard a bit as I get ready to start applying for funds.  I started work on the book as well.  

I would love it if they decided to do this workshop in France next year.  Or Italy.  Or Spain.  Off to get away from the cigarette smoke.  Cafe Sperl has good internet but everyone smokes here and my lungs are definitely not used to it!  Which is a good thing.  I understand there is no smoking in London, so that would be a nice place for an intensive too!

Hard night

I'm sitting in Starbucks at 8pm and that shows you just how desperate I am. My hotel room was closing in on me tonight. I'm working on the Shala questionnaires. I am so incredibly grateful for the honesty and thought that went into all of your responses, those of you who did respond, that is! I have a very good picture of where things are and I'll be presenting it all to Jody and Matt soon after I get back! Plus we have some exciting new marketing strategies developing, business cards, all kinds of goodies. It's hard to be here and have all this bubbling up, only waiting for me to get to it!

Two Days LATER: No real reason I never finished that post other than I didn't have much to say! That was a hard night for me. The Wednesday (hump day) of the second week. Not a good day for me. I felt such intense frustration at being here and all alone. It was one of those "I can't stand this another minute" feelings. Of course, I did stand it, and it eased quite a bit once I realized that it really had nothing to do with wanting to come home, which of course I do. It had much more to do with what is emerging for me in this solitude and how nice it would be to be distracted from it. I had a hint of this when I felt some very old, self destructive feelings pass through me. Then it was, 'ah, I get it' and everything eased up and I felt a shift. It is also nice to know I'm on the other side of the 'hump.' One more practice day tomorrow, then Sunday, then the homestretch. Today was nice too in that the London women took me under their wing a bit and invited me to breakfast. Lunch next week. I find that, while I totally miss my family and friends, I also am not very inclined for socializing. So just a little contact was good.

I do have some practice news. Circling form has some changes. Finally, something new to bring home! Of course, one of the changes is beyond my capability, but he said the pose was on the DVD, so I can point to it!! I'm also going to try to work it while I'm here and see where I can take it. At the beginning of Circling, we no longer to the side lunges with reverse prayer, etc. We do Vahni! We are holding it for five breaths. Not sure if that is standard, but we do Vahni, then go right into the Prasarita variations. Oh joy, my favorite. My injured hamstring is very sore. Not re-injured, but definitely a bit pissed off at me for asking it to do this after it thought it had successfully prevented me from EVER going there again. I'm bringing it along slowly this time. I have the rest of my life to master Prasarita, and, I'm giving myself notice, I WILL master it someday. It is my particular mountain to climb, and most likely just the first of many mountains to follow. But perhaps, it is the one that will unlock the door that will make the others much more doable?

Anyway, we do Vahni, then Prasarita variations, no changes there, then we come up out of Prasarita, and into the same sequence we've always done. Up to a point. There are two major changes. The reverse Sarpa now winds much farther and you are to rest on your bent leg with the other leg up off the floor. I'd be happy to demonstrate when I get home, but this is the pose that eludes me as of now. Like I said, the DVD has it. And I'll try to get it better by the time I get home. I believe the reverse Sarpa we were doing before was preparation for this one. 

The other change is in doing Sarpa at the end, we only do it once each side then go into Praying Mantis, which looks to me to be a martial arts pose. Very cool. My injury didn't like it, but once it is better, it will be good to do. You do that once to each side, then right into Surya Namaskar. We will be doing the closing sequences tomorrow (Hanuman, Mayurasana, Paschimo, etc.) 

So a few changes here. Next week he is going to show some of us something to be done before practice that churns the energy. I believe it will be the Shakti Chalana mudra (involves ujjayi breathing, bhastrika, surya bedha, nauli), and I believe we have done some form of this before in our practice at home? I'm not at all sure and may be completely wrong. And I may never know. Only some of the folks are going to be able to do that. I may not be one of them, if what I'm hearing is true. I can't do 5 minutes of mayurasana! Maybe 2 minutes, but wobbling and not fully outstretched. So I may be of no help there either. Sad, because I will fail miserably in my job as emissary for the Shala. 

That's it, except for a few more Vienna pictures. Mostly of one building from different angles that I thought was cool. Until later....