New Practice

I began a new practice yesterday and today which combines asana with breathing and mental exercises designed to train the mind by concentrating it on the chakras.

The first chakra, Muladhara, at the bottom of the spine, is the foundation upon which the others rest. It's represented by a square and governs the lower part of the body, from the soles of the feet to the bottom side of the perineal floor, that diaphragm known as the mulabandha.

It's a slow, deliberate routine, and today I tried the super twist Bharadvajasana for the first time, demonstrated here by Gary kraftsow. However, I couldn't get the hand going behind the back all the way over to the foot, and had to use a strap. Maybe in time...

I had a strange and very lucid nightmare between four and five this morning, and it seemed to last much longer than an hour. I was leaving Santa Cruz for the southland and somehow missed the turn onto Highway One. So I just went on up the road, unfamiliar at that point, and pulled into a strangely-configured mall where I saw a McDonald's sign (of all things). It was a weirdly-fragmented place, broken up into irregularly-shaped little parking lots and clusters of stores. Once parked I couldn't find McDonald's, so I had a sandwich at some other place, and then couldn't find my car. I wandered around through endless parking lots for what seemed like hours, and even though there were a lot of yellow cars and even quite a few yellow beetles, none of them was mine. I asked a few people to help me, but they either laughed at me or just gave me strange looks. By the time I woke up I was sitting on the pavement, nearly crying, and wondering how I would ever get home.

That's probably the biggest universal fear -- that we'll be lost and friendless in a hostile universe, feeling like a motherless child.

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