Too Much Information

Hi friends!

It's late at night (for me) and I'm high on cold meds -- first ones I've taken in four years -- so I thought I'd quickly write down a disjointed blog entry.

I am riding a hormone rollercoaster, as usual. Last week I saw my gyno for a check-in and she put me on estradiol; it's a transdermal patch and I am to wear it for a week, starting "when the bitchy feelings begin." Which was three days ago. I am also taking natural progesterone, synthroid, zoloft, and a handful of supplements. Do I feel better? Yes. Much. Am I "back?" Well...not quite.

I have discovered the joy of yogaglo. Anusara classes that I can download/watch at home when I want, when I can. It has given me a new love for the practice. I especially enjoy Elena Brower's teachings. I know she's kind of like a rock star yoga teacher, but she seems so down to earth and really earnest about how the practice reaches into her own life. Very simple. Not always after the big pose. Which is not to say that I'm not after the big pose myself, cuz I am. Mothereffin' handstand. But for me, these days, it's more about the connection I need to feel like myself, to actually BE myself out in the world anymore.

Again, the question arises: "Who am I?"

Did I tell you about this? About how, after an entire weekend of studying the Gita with Ma, I came to realize I've been asking myself the wrong question all these years. It's not "What am I supposed to be doing with my life?" It's "Who am I"

Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? 

Ahhh...

I am not (just) the body.

But.

My rotator cuff is finally starting to heal. WOW does it take a long time. I think massage has been the most beneficial treatment. My massage therapist, my friend Melissa, says many people get "Frozen Shoulder 50" somewhere between 46 and 50. My infraspinatus and my supraspinatus are basically fucked. Tweaked through chronic external rotation, weakness, carrying Bodhi, hunching over nursing, doing pushups and chaturanga with a weak shoulder, ignoring twinges, etc. etc. My whole left arm has weakened. The 50 thing seems significant. There is a lot of fear involved. Tremendous fear. Backbends and inversions, which are what I need MOST of all right now, trigger a lot of fear. The most painful pose has been shoulderstand, which asks for a LOT of external rotation in the shoulder. And the shoulder will do it, even if the forearm is tight and weak and doesn't "curb" or "brake" the rotation. The forearms are like the outer shins; they help to maintain the midline, I think. Anyhow, as I get near 50, what do I need most of all? To be able to change perspective, to go upside down. And to be able to fall backwards. Like in a backbend. And my heart needs to STAY open. I know that as we get older we tend to grow more fearful, less flexible, less willing to take chances. Also, backbends and inversions are the core practice for hormonal balancing, so they must be the biggest part of my repertoire.

Anyway. There's that. And it's getting better. I spend a lot of time in agony pressing my upper arm/muscle attachments into a hard little ball at the wall, a "soft ball," a misnomer if ever there were one. As one of my regular therapeutic practice students says, "balls to the wall yoga!" But it does work wonders for releasing the scar tissue and connective tissue, as well as the muscles themselves. Sure hurts, though. I'm also lying back over a bolster in a supported backbend, and working a lot on freeing my hips. No question that tight psoas and QL on the right are pulling on that left shoulder.

I need someone to eyeball me as I move throughout the day and in every pose.

So yeah, enough about that for a minute. What I'm really contemplating, and what I'm really procrastinating, is the writing and rehearsing of my FIRST EVER SOLO SHOW on January 26th!!

The show is called "This Body of Words, Spoken." With a subtitle along the lines of "A feminist, erotic, yogic, transgressive pseudo retrospective."

I'm finally going to do it. I'm finally going to present my work, all by myself. And I will enjoy it immensely. I have old stuff I'm going to read, and probably some new. I've had to reclaim myself as a poet, who became a creative nonfiction writer, who became a blogger, who became a feature writer, who wrote content, who wrote erotica, who became an editor, who writes facebook updates and five minute poems. Who forgot how much she loooooves to perform. And interact with an audience. So we shall see.

I told my shrink that I thought I had to choose between my two great loves, Yoga and Writing. And she thought that sounded odd. Like why not do both? Why not indeed...as a Gemini it's my right.

I don't know that I'm cut out to write directly about my experience with yoga. Every time I try, it comes out like this instead. Like I don't really have the discipline for that. I think I'm more cut out to speak the humiliating truths of my life in public.

My hope is that it will humble me, and help someone other than myself in the process.

Monday Dreamin'

Yesterday blew me out.

I co-taught a class, "Teaching to Beginners," with Genevieve, a sweet soul and intriguing Sanskrit scholar. It was really, really challenging. The students were pretty unruly, acting out in some crazy adolescent manner.

I'm still processing it.

So today I took it easy, having lunch with Donna, who is going to Italy in just a few days, and mellowing out at home. The rain keeps coming.

There was a woman in teacher training this weekend who claimed to have a stomach flu; I don't know if I caught it or what, but my throat is INCREDIBLY sore.

Oh wait, throat.

She said "stomach."

I'm feeling achey all over.

Lord, please don't let me get sick!

Om Namah Shivayah.

I just got a writing assignment a few minutes ago, so I will probably tend to that either tonight or first thing tomorrow.

After the unruly class, I came home and read Jenny McCarthy's Belly Laughs in one sitting.

And that sitting lasted about 15 minutes.

It's a light read.

Nothing new there.

She's kind of funny, I guess.

To be honest I was a little disappointed. I think she's cute and I expected more.

It's an interesting study in what happens when a sort of shallow celebrity type goes through pregnancy. There are all the usual jokes about cellulite, sex drive, weight gain, maternity clothes. Yawn. Her chapter on industrial strength deathscented farting was amusing, I will admit.

Her problems with constipation were the most compelling part of the book for me. She actually went two weeks without dropping the kids off at the pool and had to have fecal material surgically removed.

I will never complain about missing a day again. And that's in my NORMAL, unpregnant life.

As I've mentioned earlier in this blog, my pregnancy poops have been FANTASTIC. I am eating well and drinking lots and lots of fluids. Maybe that's it. And no caffeine.

On a positive note, Belly Laughs does help to clear out some of the negativity you get in all those other pregnancy books. I do want to know what can go wrong, and what symptoms to look for, but instead of reading only about THAT when I turn to "what happens during Week 25" in my preggers books, I'd like to see more of all the miraculous changes that are happening in both my body and in my baby's body.

Andrew and I were reading "What to Expect" and "Your Pregnancy Week by Week" last night and started laughing at what a BUMMER they are. It's like having Debbie Downer come with you to the obgyn's office and freak you out as you wait.

I guess I must be in the positive phase.

Yippee!