Five-Minute Yoga

Ever walk out of a chest-opening yoga class feeling like you could take on the world – in the most friendly way possible, of course?
You might think that feeling is just an obvious physical result of what you’ve been doing. If you expand your chest, you feel better.

But new research says it’s more than that.
Amy C. J. Cuddy, a social psychologist at the Harvard Business School, recently published a study in which she found that “holding a pose that opens up a person’s body and takes up space will alter hormone levels and make the person feel more powerful and more willing to take risks.”
The opposite is also true: “Constrictive postures lowered a person’s sense of power and willingness to take risks.”
The whole report, “Want to be more powerful? Acting like it will make it so,” is well worth reading.

In brief, the hormones that changed were testosterone, which is associated with dominance, and cortisol, sometimes called “the stress hormone,” which can be chronically elevated in people with low status. Excess cortisol has been linked to negative health consequences.

The subjects in the study weren’t doing yoga.
They spent one minute sitting in a chair in front of a desk, with feet resting on it and hands clasped behind the head.

Then they stood in a pose I fondly call “the McRanor,” after a newspaper editor I worked for who used it to great effect. You lean forward, arms spread, hands resting on a table. This makes it crystal clear who is the biggest monkey in the room.

In order to keep the research untainted by the subjects’ knowledge of what was going on, they were told that the object was to find out how the placement of electrodes above and below the heart could influence the collection of physiological data.

With few exceptions, yoga poses demand a long spine and a broad, open chest. To do them well, we have to take up space. And those exceptions, the poses that call for a rounded back, are hand balancings like Lolasana.
Execute that one well and you’ll feel powerful, rounded back or no. There’s no question that over time, the expanded posture we create in yoga influences how we feel.

Cuddy’s research is part of a growing field of psychological research called embodiment. As Wynne Parry, who reported on the study for MSN Today describes it:

The basic idea is that the mind/body relationship is not a one-way street, with the mind giving orders for the body to carry out. Rather, the body also influences the mind.

No! Really?

For anyone who penetrates yoga past the “good workout” stage, one of the fascinations of practice is how subtle and profound the body’s influences can be.
For a nudge in that direction, check out Swami Radha’s classic, Hatha Yoga: The Hidden Language.

And when you find yourself feeling downtrodden or powerless? You know what to do. Assume the McRanor if you must, or, if you’re near your mat, try Warrior II and then see how you feel.

Do you have a power pose? Or a peace pose? I’d love to hear about it.

Image by Irene Nobrega, Flicrk Creative Commons

If you like this, you might also like:

Pain or Golden Glow: It Matters What You Call It

Four Ways Yogis Can Benefit from the Pomodoro Technique

Five Reasons to Love Your Imbalances

Bite-sized Random Acts of Yoga continue to arrive every day. Here is the Thursday edition.

The legs are an easy link, the same in Dandasana, Ardha Navasana and Setu Bandha Sarvangasana, (the Setu Bandha version is question has a brick under the pelvis and one at the wall with the legs straight.)
But the chest of Ardha Navasana? Not so much.

As ever, I’m keen to know how you’d sequence it, and what you see as the most interesting links.

In the world of yoga, I think of myself as a civilian.

When I started taking classes, I was not a dancer, a gymnast, a figure skater, a personal trainer or an aerobics instructor.

As a child I tried cartwheels, but I never stood on my hands. I had no speed and not much strength. My sole physical gift in asana practice was long hamstrings.
So when it came to learning moves such as stepping forward from Adho Mukha Svanasana (dog pose) into lunge, I had issues.
When I brought my right foot forward, it worked.
When I brought my left foot forward, it landed a foot or so back from my hands.
The reason?

Stepping forward easily depends on hip flexibility. My left hip is tighter than my right hip, so it’s more difficult to swing my leg into place.
I’d be embarrassed to say how long this continued. Over time it became incrementally better, but my left foot still didn’t land where I wanted it to.
Then, at a workshop with Orit Sen Gupta, I learned the secret:  move your body weight forward, toward your wrists.
Unless your weight has shifted forward, the loosest hips in the universe will not bring your foot into place. Once it is forward, the difficulty vanishes.
That is, of course, unless your hips are very tight.
In that case, try this elegant fix I learned from Claudia MacDonald.
From Adho Mukha Svanasana (downward-facing dog pose), come onto your toes. 
Bend your right knee. Shift your weight towards your hands. 
On an exhalation, swing your foot forward.
Ideally, it will land between your hands.
If your foot falls short, here’s what to do:
Drop your left knee to the floor. Keep your left hand in place. Grasp your right ankle with your right hand and lift it forward, until it’s aligned with your left hand. 
Place your right hand back on the floor. Straighten your left knee. 
Check that your right thigh and calf create a right angle at your knee.
Stay in lunge for a moment, then swing your right leg back to downward dog and repeat on the left side.
With practice you will be able to lift your foot smoothly and elegantly into place.
And, as time goes by, you’ll be able to dispense with the interim step completely, and just swing your foot forward.
Benefits: Being able to step forward gives you an easy way to move from downward dog to standing. 
It lets you do cycles of lunges and standing poses from downward dog. 
It also helps to loosen tight hips and bring lightness into your movements.
Sequence: As a Five-Minute Yoga Challenge, try this whenever you want to wake yourself up. To warm up, first stand in Tadasana, hinge into a forward bend, and step your left foot back to lunge. Step forward, and repeat on the right side. 
Then try stepping forward from dog pose.
As part of a longer practice, place this sequence close to the beginning to open your hips and raise your energy.
Or, if your day’s practice is all about hips, do a few rounds of stepping forward and back, then spend 15 minutes with hip opening poses. Try stepping forward from dog pose again, and see if anything has changed.
Ouch: Mostly it’s the ego that bruises, especially if one leg lands flawlessly and the other hangs back. Focus on bringing your weight to your hands and remaining light-hearted and non-judgmental.
Sanskrit Corner: Say: AH-doh MOO-kah shvah-NAH-sanna. Adho means downward. Mukha means face. Svana means dog.

If you liked this, you might also be interested in:

Sit Like a Pretzel to Stretch Your Hips,

Use a Strap to Deepen Your Stretch in Malasana,

Crank Your Thighs in Bound Angle Pose to Protect Your Knees

Oh lovely! Yoga on 7th was featured yesterday in a Granville Online magazine article, “Choosing the Right Yoga for You,” by Insiya Rasiwalla-Finn.
We make her list of the top two Iyengar studios in Vancouver, and she also singles out my partner in yoga, Mary Balomenos, for special praise in the Vijnana yoga section.

For an Iyengar yogi, it’s always thrilling to be included in roundup articles. Iyengar  yoga is often relegated to the sidelines, with newer and trendier forms getting more attention.

Insiya, who is herself a yogi with a blog, Yogue, that covers yoga, sustainability and style, does a good job of describing Iyengar work in the space that she has.

But defining Iyengar yoga is a lot like trying to put an octopus in a suitcase. If you have to close the lid after 63 words, you’re bound to have an arm or too flopping around outside.

Props, alignment, a deep understanding of the poses and a great place to start learning yoga: those all get packed.

Those of us who know and love Iyengar’s work want to add: restorative!  headstands and other challenging balance poses! pranayama!  therapeutics! – and most of all, the happy work of conscious incarnation.

Still, it’s fantastic to be included, and very exciting to be featured in the press.

If you click the building photo, you’ll reach alanjamesarchitect.com and some shots of how it looked before it was restored. The photo is by Eyeye.

Bite-sized Random Acts of Yoga, which began on Monday, turned out to be an entertaining game of chance for more than just me.

Monday’s poses, with the task of linking Chaturanga Dandasana, Urdhva Mukha Svanasana and Malasana, provoked some interesting comment.

Nina Pileggi, who heads the Sunset Yoga Centre in Beaverton, just outside Portland, Oregon, suggested a linkage I plan to work with: extending from the inner ankles to the inner heels.
In an email exchange, she wrote about learning this action in Pune this August:

Guruji was “directing” the classes – i.e. he was telling the teachers what to say.
The teaching about the foot started simple at the beginning of the month just getting us to put our heels on the floor (no matter what) in downward dog.
Then each class he directed he built on that and added more refinements of the foot actions.
My husband told me my legs looked totally different when I returned!

Despite the fact that I’ve had a cold since Thanksgiving – for which I refuse to be thankful – I’m still enjoying finding my three cards every morning.
Even in my present weakened state, I look at the poses, sequence them, and at least think about the linkage.

If you’re a keener, and want to see each day’s set, I do post them on Twitter, @fiveminuteyoga.
But posting them here every day seems excessive. So rather than pick what looks to me like the most interesting combo of the week – how random would that be? – I will arbitrarily post whatever Thursday kicks up.
If you happen to be following on Twitter and want to argue for a longer discussion of a particular set of poses, let me know.

Yesterday I noticed I’d been thinking of Bite-Sized Random Acts of Yoga only as puzzles, things to work on to hone my teaching skills.
It occurred to me that along the way we might also stumble upon three-pose sequences filled with irresistible sweetness and joy.
How good would that be?

Sometimes we all need a gimmick, and I think I’ve found mine.

In the third week of January next year, I’m going to sit my Junior Intermediate I assessment.

Part of the assignment is to be able to teach all of the poses of the Intro I and II syllabi, plus the Junior I poses, add a Junior I instruction to each of the Intro poses, to sequence them in a logical, or at least defensible way, and to link them.

I’ll confess I’ve been falling behind. I was practicing and teaching the Junior I poses, but I knew I was neglecting the detailed work on earlier poses.

There are more than 70 of them. I was overwhelmed.

But now I’m making progress, all because I’ve turned it into a game of chance.

This weekend I made a list of all the poses in the first three syllabi, printed them out on glossy photo paper, and got Alan, who is much better with a utility knife and a straight edge than me, to cut them into separate cards.

He picks three cards for me before he comes to bed. When I get up in the morning, there they are: Bite-sized Random Acts of Yoga, ready for me to study.

As I drink my matcha, I place them the sequence I’d teach them in, note three introductory instructions for each pose, add one intermediate instruction, and link them.

When it’s time to practice, I take them to my mat and see how it all works out.

I could, of course, pick the cards by myself. But what makes it genius for me is the absolute lack of choice.

If I were to pick three poses myself, at random, even with the cards face down, there would always be the temptation to throw back something that doesn’t seem to fit.

Chaturanga Dandasana, Urdhva Mukha Svanasana: they go together like bread and jam.  Malasana? Not so much.

And I know I’d have wanted to throw Chaturanga Dandasana back into the pile.  My nemesis pose on the first day? Not likely.

I borrowed this system from Wendy Boyer, who told me about it in August at the Intermediate Intensive at the Victoria Iyengar Yoga Centre. As I recall, she took the poses and integrated them into a class she was teaching that day.

I might eventually do that too, but for now I’m content just to work my mind every morning in a way I need to work it.

Just for the fun of it, and in case anyone wants to share these Bite-Sized Random Acts of Yoga, I plan to Tweet them, starting today.

If you’re interested, you can follow me at @fiveminuteyoga.

And if you come up with a brilliant idea for linking Chaturanga and Malasana, do let me know.

One of the happiest parts of this fall for me has been resuming my sitting practice after the disruptions of the summer.

It’s not a long practice, but since the beginning of September, it’s been daily, and that makes me happy.

Two things have changed since I last had a regular meditation date first thing in the morning.

I’ve finally learned that I’m not going to get up every day at the same time – for one thing, I teach late two nights a week.

Now, rather than demand that my sitting happens at some ideal early time, I just sit whenever I get up, and let the rest of the day go from there.

And this time, I’ve found myself automatically using the mandala technique, with great delight.

Instead of just noting when my thoughts capture my awareness and run away with it, I note in which of four directions they’ve gone: Past, Future, Me or You.

These feel like geographical areas.

You sits in front of my face, Me is behind my head, Past by my left ear and Future by my right.

Each time I find myself caught up in thinking, I locate where the thought sits, and from that spot, I move my awareness back to the centre: this breath, my spinal column, this body, this exact moment of here and now. Note the story, drop the story, come back to the present, repeat as needed.

Somehow it helps that each story I tell myself  has a spot on the map. Coming back to centre from a specific place makes the return stronger, and the stay longer.

I learned this technique from Richard Moss’s book, The Mandala of Being (New World Library, 2007).
Moss has a much more complete and compelling explanation, of course.
In the first section of the book, he explains why we find it so hard to stay in our bodies and in the present.
In the second, he introduces the mandala and several formal methods of working with it, including setting it up in physical space and stepping from place to place.
When I started to write this blog post, I picked the book up again and found with some surprise that in Moss’s mandala, Me is to the left, You to the right, Future in front and Past behind.

I can see the logic of this, but I don’t intend to change. My own locations work well for me, and feel natural. (I suspect that Past on the left and Future on the right has everything to do with reading, and the left to right progression of words across the page.)

Moss assigns characteristic emotions to each spot.

Me stories lead to grandiosity or depression.
You stories specialize in anger, jealousy, envy or hurt.
The future holds either inherent uncertainty and fear, or infinite possibility, and hope.
And stories of the past come colored by guilt, nostalgia or regret.
At the moment I seem to specialize in Future/fear, at least those times when I’m not off in Me, busily shoring up my separate identity with fascinating stories about why I am the way I am.

Like any good meditation technique, there’s no need to leave the mandala behind on the cushion.

I find it useful to return to at the beginning of my asana practice, for example, dropping the past and then the future, to situate myself in the present, even before Om and the invocation.

Can I stay there? Usually not. But it helps.

The photo of the Yamantaka Mandala was taken by ellenm1, and is used courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons. It was created in 1991, by the monks of the Gyuto Tantric University, and is made from colored sand and adhesive on wood.

When we’re babies, most of us can suck our toes. As adults, we’re much less intimate with our feet.
Yes, there’s a greater distance between brain and big toe, but we add to our disassociation with years spent walking on flat surfaces in rigid shoes.
Why worry?
Because it’s not age alone that robs us of balance and sure-footedness.
When our feet aren’t stimulated, our brains receive less information, and construct a less detailed and less reliable map of the feet. That means we can’t respond as quickly to sudden changes in surfaces, and are at a greater risk of falling.
This Five-Minute Yoga Challenge takes your feet and ankles through a wide range of positions. Make the foot-work series a regular part of your life, and after a week or two, your standing poses will be steadier, you’ll feel more grounded, better yet, you’ll know and trust your feet again.

Kneel on your mat in Vajrasana (thunderbolt pose), with a chip foam block or a book of about the same thickness nearby. (First photo)

Have the sides of your big toes together, and pull your inner ankles towards each other.
Make sure that your toes face directly back, that your ankles are in line with your shins, and not bowed out.
Sit back onto your heels and bring your head directly over your spinal column.
Sit tall. Lift your chest, widen your sternum, roll your shoulder blades back and down.

If you find this position too intense, try putting a chip foam block or a folded blanket between your buttocks and your heels.
Stay for one minute or more, with long soft inhalations and long soft exhalations.

Now tuck your toes under and stretch the backs of your toes. (Second photo)

Take your hands to your little toes and encourage them to spread further away from your big toes.

Keep your chest lifted, and bring your body weight back, so your head is over your spinal column and your spine is over your heels.

If this feels too intense, put a chip foam block under your knees.
Stay for 30 seconds to a minute, with slow, soft breaths.

Lift your knees and balance on your toes. (Third photo)
Again, keep your chest lifted, and stay for 30 seconds to a minute, with even breathing.

Bring your heels to the floor and sit in squat. (Fourth photo)

If your heels don’t connect well to the floor, let them rest on a chip foam block.
Stay for a minute.

Then make your way back through balancing on your toes, stretching your toes, and stretching the fronts of your ankles in Vajrasana.

Looking for more challenge?

Come back to balancing on your toes, and without letting your heels touch down, stand up.
Still on your toes, bring your arms up into Urdhva Hasta Tadasana (upward arms in mountain pose). Then lower your heels and your arms, and be in Tadasana (mountain pose).

Benefits: This series stretches and strengthens your feet, ankles, calves and shins and brings more awareness into your feet. Coming up to standing from being on your toes will improve your balance.

Sequence: Do the foot-work sequence on its own whenever your feet feel weary or deadened by shoes. In a longer practice, do it before standing poses, and stay aware of how much more connected you feel to the ground under your feet.

Ouch: If you haven’t worked much with your feet, this series won’t be comfortable. The pain will diminish if you persevere. Try recasting it as “sensation” – you’ll be surprised how quickly it turns to pleasure.
Work slowly and patiently, and use props to extend your time in the poses.

If you have knee injuries, check with your teacher before trying this series.

Sanskrit Corner: Say vahj-RAH-sanna. Vajra means thunderbolt. Asana means pose.

Baby photo by Charlotte Speaks, courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons.

Tight hips have a lot to answer for, and it isn’t just that they keep you from sitting cross-legged in comfort.
Tight outer hips in particular lead us to stand with our toes rotated outward, putting strain on our knees and lower back. In our intricately connected bodies, they can even contribute to shoulder pain.

Parivrtta Ardha Chandrasana (rotated half moon pose) is a magnificent way to stretch your outer hips.

As his daughter Geeta tells it, it was invented when B.K.S. Iyengar was searching for release for a “catch” in his back. One day, in the deep twist of rotated triangle, he had a sudden intuition. He lifted his back leg and into rotated half moon, and in that moment felt the release.
But here’s a catch of a different kind: if your outer hips are tight, then rotated half moon can be startling in its intensity, not to say painful.

Here’s one way to create more open, flexible outer hips as you prepare for the full pose.

Lie down on the floor with your left side parallel to the wall. Stretch your left arm out to the side. If you can touch the wall with your fingertips, you’re at about the right distance.

Now bend your right knee. Insert your right thumb into your right hip crease and pull down toward your buttock. Keeping the right side of your ribcage long, bring your right foot to the wall. Check that your right shoulder rests easily on the floor.

As you inhale, expand your chest. As you exhale, relax your belly and press your right ribcage toward the floor.

Feel the stretch in your outer right hip. As you inhale, move your breath into your hip, bringing warmth and expansion into the muscles. As you exhale, release tension from your right hip.

When you are well settled into position, close your eyes and visualize your back resting on a wall, and your right foot pressed into the floor. Extend through the ball of your left big toe. With each exhalation, feel your spine rotate towards the “ceiling.”

Hip work takes patience. Spend at least two to three minutes on each side. If you can squeeze a little more time out of your day, five minutes per side is even better.

Benefits: This preparation will open your hips, stretch your legs, improve your breathing by opening your chest, stimulate your abdominal organs and relieve mild back pain. It will also give you that peaceful feeling that comes from hip openings.

If you spend time in the pose visualizing your back against the wall and your foot on the floor, you will create a pattern of the full pose in your mind. When you do try the full pose, your body will already know how it should feel, and have a sense of what’s required to make that happen.

Sequence: Do this position on its own any time your body craves a deep twist. Try it before a standing pose practice that includes deep standing twists, including Parivrtta Trikonasana (rotated triangle), Parivritta Parsvakonasana (rotated side angle pose) and rotated half moon, or seated twists and Padmasana (lotus pose).

Ouch: If your hips are tight, you may have trouble getting your foot to rest on the wall. Move a few inches closer to the wall and try again.

If your hamstrings are tight, you may have trouble feeling the stretch in your hips. Bend the knee of the leg that’s at the wall and move it higher, so it rests in line with your hip joint.

Avoid this exercise if you have a severe back problem, a headache, or diarrhea.

Sansrkit corner: Say par-ee-VRIT-tah are-dah chan-DRAH-sanna. Parivrtta means rotated or revolved. Ardha means half. Chandra means moon. Asana means pose.

Photo credit: Black and white photo by Pandora Yeung.

Is there a better way to return to blogging after a long absence than by posting cute animal pictures? I didn’t think so.

This is Santra, the Yoga Bear who recently mesmerized Finland’s Ahtari Zoo goers with a 15-minute yoga practice. You can read all about it – and see the rest of the pictures – on the excellent Yoga Dork blog.

Bystander Meta Penca, who took the pictures, was quoted in the UK’s Daily Mail, saying, “It was exactly the same as when you see people do yoga – easy, slow, focused and calm.
She looked pretty into it, a really straight face, no looking around just very serious and calm and kept her eyes slightly opened and focused. She looked like she didn’t notice us at all.”
Questions run rampant. Has Santra done this before? Does she have a daily practice? How many poses does she do? And then there’s the big one: what does it mean that a bear can settle and stretch using something that looks remarkably like yoga poses?

Dogs excel at downward facing dog. Cats are masters of savasana. Until squirrels start doing sun salutations, there’s probably no need for an explanation beyond “animals like stretching.”

Still, it’s a cause for wonder just how often body positions that are taught in yoga classes pop up in human and animal activities.
Erotic dance, gymnastics, acrobatics, Pilates, figure skating: once you know some poses, you see them everywhere.
I used to think that was because Hatha yoga was an ancient and highly developed practice that, in articulating the language of the body, had pretty much said all there was to say. Take a look at Dharma Mittra’s poster of 908 yoga poses and you too may wonder what else there is to do with a human body.

But this summer I read Mark Singleton’s book Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice, and now I have no such illusions.
As far as the physical work we do under the heading of asana, there is no 5,000-year-old tradition. There are no 84 poses prescribed by Patanjali, and there’s no lost text, the Yoga Kurunta, that outlines the Ashtanga practice.

For the details, read the book. It’s beyond fascinating.

For our purposes, all you need to know is that the popular Hatha yoga systems we practice today are an amalgamation of bodybuilding, European gymnastics, spiritual movement disciplines and yes, traditional postures. In the 1920s and 1930s, spurred on by Indian nationalism with input from eugenics and a worldwide craze for new physical disciplines, Hatha yoga flowered into the practices we do today.

This is disturbing news if, like me, you fondly thought that there was ancient wisdom in the poses.
Read novelist and Ashtanga practitioner Maya Lassiter’s blog for an exploration of how it feels to learn that a story of antiquity that you had, on some level accepted, turns out to be false. (Be sure to scroll down in the comments for Mark Singleton’s appreciative response.)

Like Lassiter, I’ve come to believe that it really doesn’t matter where the poses come from, or how widespread they are in other movement disciplines. Practice feels good, on more than a physical level. As one part of an eight-part system, posture practice is an essential foundation for what follows.

I believe that what powers every genuine movement is Dylan Thomas’s “force that through the green fuse drives the flower.”
Surely it can flower into Upavistha Konasana, or that wide-legged version of Ubhaya Padangusthasana that bears seem to favor, in any body, human or ursine.
So as long as Santra stays inwardly focused, and behaves like a good yoga student, we might as well call her a yogi.

I spent last week at the Iyengar Yoga Centre of Victoria at the Intermediate Teacher Training Intensive. It’s a workshop for Iyengar teachers preparing for the third, fourth and fifth levels of certification.

The elf in the photo is Shirley Daventry-French, 78, senior teacher and  founder of the centre.

For this intensive, she taught six hours a day for five days. We started at 9 a.m., ended at  5 p.m., and had a two-hour lunch break.

After the invocation, we discussed the previous day’s work. Then we worked on the poses. We did them, analyzed them and taught them to each other. Shirley corrected, questioned, added more ideas and told stories.

The Iyengar system has a high regard for inversions. On Monday morning, we spent two and a half hours working on full arm balance and headstand. Tuesday the focus was less on arm balance, more on elbow balance. On Wednesday, we continued the clinic on arm balance we had started on Monday.

I have leaky elbows. That means I rotate my lower arm bones out rather than keeping them in line with the upper arm bones. This leads to a bent elbow, which is a weak foundation.

In our group of 16, I wasn’t the only one leaky elbows, but I was the one chosen as the student for analysis.

I kicked up, and kicked up again. My pose was analyzed, and adjusted.

Iyengar yoga is a method of inquiry, so there were questions. Could someone take me into correct alignment while I was in the pose? Could I learn not to bend my arms when I kick up? Would it help to put a belt around my elbows? What would happen if I came up with my non-habitual leg?

At one point, wanting to teach me to push more vigorously with my hands, Shirley put her palms against mine and told me to push her away. I couldn’t.

“You’re bigger than me,” she said. And that’s true.

“But not nearly as wily,” I said.

That made her laugh, and she stopped pushing.

When it was over I was enormously grateful for all the full arm balance practice I had done in the last six months. Even so, my arm and shoulders were still sore enough days later that I whimpered when I had to put on a t-shirt.

I am also grateful for the insights and suggestions of that day, and I’ll work with them as I practice.

But the whole episode raised a larger issue for me.

A few months ago, I wrote about my 21-year relationship with arm balance in a post called Arm Balance: a Love Story.

At that time, I had finally learned how to reliably kick up, after years of intermittent success. Barring catastrophe, I still don’t expect arm balance to ever leave me again. And that seemed like the end of the story.

But now my happily ever after has resolved into something less soft and rosy.

It ‘s like the difference between living together and being married. Gears shift, and a different question arrives: now that you’ve said you’re staying, what do you plan to do?

The answer often looks like work.

Back home in Vancouver, on a hot day in the middle of August, I think about the strap, the second kick-up leg, the awareness needed to turn the lower arm bones in a different direction.

I ask myself: “Do you really have the energy for this?”

Well, if I want a chance to float in the ropes in Sukhasana at 78, laughing and making jokes, I guess I do.