Vegas, Baby!

I just got back from Vegas! Yes, I know, excess, water in the desert, waste of electricity, blah, blah, blah. Look, The Boy hates warmth.* He got sent to Vegas for a conference. It was my one shot at a warm-weather vacation with my sweetie. I took it, environmental concerns be damned.

To alleviate the guilt, I look at it this way, I've lived around the Great Lakes most of my life, from which Vegas gets most of it's water. So, really, the water is mine. I should be able to enjoy it wherever it ends up.

And they did a fabulous job with my water. I gave them a pure, natural, resource and they bedazzled the eff out of it. 

Michigan Water  / Vegas Water

I am used to Great Lakes water. It is wholesome, woodsy, you fish in it, grow strong strapping young boys around it. Vegas took our water and made it FABULOUS. Capital F. Capital ABULOUS. The raw material for Zsa Zsa Gabor is evidently Mumford and Sons. 

I stayed at the Mirage with the intention of never leaving the pool. The Mirage pool is called a lagoon. It is exactly not like a lagoon at all. The "lagoon" is never more than 4 feet deep because it is very hard to doggy paddle with a 22oz margarita. 

There are multiple waterfalls majestically falling over faux rocks that appear to be designed by the same team that did the zebra exhibits in any zoo that concerned itself with authenticity in the 70s (St. Louis, Detroit, San Diego).  Two, maybe three secluded hot tubs are tucked away in coves near the pool. All of this is surrounded by lush greenery and sky-scraping palms. There are actual cabana girls.

After lounging four hours in this giant, sunny, adult play-pen, mojito in hand, I was shocked back into reality by a cloud. The puffy white bugger had moseyed right between our not-lagoon and the sun! 

Instantly, the entire pool, about 300 tipsy adults, started BOOING the cloud. The beach-ball stopped being thrown, girls' twittering stopped, the only noise was the singular "boo!" that arose from the entire crowd. Every human in the pool had taken up the same indignant skyward glare.Thirty seconds later the cloud had passed. The pool instantly resumed its revelry, each person content they had done their part to shame the poor forsaken cloud.

And THAT is exactly what Vegas and it's grand desert castles is like. Booing a cloud; a false sense that we, and our 300 new bff's, control the universe. And it is grand.

* Doubt this statement? He wants to go to Reykjavik. Our prior vacation spots include Bosnia, in fall. Italy, in the fall. Whitefish, MT, in the winter. Traverse City, the most Northern point in Michigan before you reach the upper peninsula, AKA: Canada, USA. All my summer vacations involve winter coats.

CISPA Day of Action

CISPA passed the House. Please raise your voice before it gets through the Senate.

Hi All! I know this last week has been such a rough ride that most of us want to bury our heads in our pillows and not peek out again until the land is covered in gumdrops and rainbows. I am right there with you.

Bombings, rape, racism; mother nature even kicked us when we were down with flooding. You feel pretty powerless, right? Dedicating a class to world peace just doesn't have the same gratifying release as kicking a nazi in the teeth, does it?

Well, I have some good news for you! There is a real baddie out there that we can all help stop together! Like, for real action is needed! CISPA* is back, and it passed the House. A day of action has been called to stop it from passing the Senate.

Please call your Senator or write a quick email, it will take less than 5 minutes of your time and you will feel like you have control in beating back the bad guys for once. Hooray! Good guys triumph!

*CISPA, first introduced in 2011, would allow corporations like Facebook and cell phone companies to share internet traffic information with the US government with few safeguards on when and how the government can monitor a person's information.

Days of HTML

My last three days has been staring at code. I am not a programer.
I have found my own personal hell. 

OMG Hot! Don't Panic! (or do, but then stop)

The heat isn't a big deal...until it is. At first you notice your sweat has made its debut unusually early to the class. You return focus to your breath and keep going, maybe a little more cautiously. By the end of eagle pose hysteria has taken hold and you are absolutely positive that you can see your heart-beat in your chest. And your big toe. And the rest of the room. Oh, god! Your eyeballs are beating! You sit down.

Focusing on your breath becomes near impossible with all the heart-beating around the room but you try anyway. Then your impending death occurs to you and you start to question your life choices. Especially that one about going to Bikram Yoga. The rest of the class is spent laying on your back, with an internal monologue that could win a Oscar drowning out the teacher.

So when this spiral starts, don't panic. You have your towel safely beneath you.* Be aware that this is a common spiral and that this is why you are here. Some days you get to work your edge on the physical posture some days you get to work your edge on the mental posture. Congratulations, you are having a doozy of a day for mental improvement!

Some days your ability to focus is helped by the heat, some days, you are fighting it. That is okay. In fact, it's good. Liken this situation to any other stressful situation:

You get in a fight with someone very close to you. During the course of the fight, emotions run high, voices get raised. Eventually, you are seriously contemplating putting your fist through his or her jawbone. The rest of the room just falls away. You don't hear the argument anymore, what you hear is your internal monologue telling you what a horrible, spiteful, fool this other person is. 

Feels kinda similar to what you just felt in the room, doesn't it? It is. Your mind has gone waaaaay off track and is working against you. You need tools to steer it back on course, to slow it down and to make the escalation stop.

The controlled stress of the room puts you in a safe environment (nobody is judging you, trained experts are watching you, and there is an emergency phone, coconut water and air conditioning 5 feet away) where you can experience intense mental pressure and learn, safely, to work through it.

So when you start to spiral, take a breath and start talking yourself down from the spiral. With enough practice in the room you will get good at it out of the room. The DMV, fights with family, when the landlord neglects to mention that the fumes from the work he's doing to the first floor of your building on Christmas day will be so bad that you have to huddle under a pile of blankets on your couch with the windows open fearing for each dying braincell in your poor cat (maybe I could use a little more work myself), will get much easier to manage.

Not fair. You have a fur coat.

*42. If you don't get the joke by now, please get off the internet. I say that for your own protection. I am afraid 4chan may eat you alive.

Blog Statistics

Google Analytics is a powerful marketing tool. When used in conjunction with my business site I can see how people find me, track their journey through the site and scrutinize how long viewers are perusing my portfolio pages.

When used in conjunction with my yoga blog I can see that the number one search term that leads people to Yoga Badassery is, "farting in yoga class." Followed closely behind by, "do people fart in yoga class." An equally high number of Yoga Badassery readers use more concise language and search simply by the words, "farting during yoga."

What? People do that during yoga?!

I am thrilled and honored, although not surprised, that people come to me looking for such high-brow humor. In an effort to further increase my SEO I submit the following:

• fart
• flatulence
• poot
• pass wind
• wind removing
• message from the interior

Google Analytics also shows the search words, "peeing during hot yoga" has lead someone here. Whoever typed that one in, welcome. I sincerely hope that search was not post-experiential.

And Sometimes You DON'T Fall Down

My sister, brother-in-law and twin nephews drove from DC to New York City to surprise me at nationals. They missed my performance by a mere 20 minutes because I went on early. I don't mind because she didn't mind. I got to hang out with them either way, so I'm happy (Thanks guys! Love you!).

The reason I was early was because nationals was running late.

Nationals were running an hour behind when I checked to estimate what time I would be on. A three-minute routine is a three-minute routine so I figured we were safely on track to continually run later. They couldn't ask people to change to a two-minute format half-way through the event. I added the number of females before me at three-minutes each with a half-hour break that I would be first after, and figured I had roughly two-hours. Plenty of digestion time.

I ran across times square and grabbed a bag of disappointingly bland wasabi peas and some tea. I carried them up to the fifth floor, an area of the adjoining hotel we had taken over, and settled down with a good book.

I was holding a handfull of peas at an 80 degree angle, letting them roll into my upturned mouth, when an organizer, Griffin, appeared at the foot of my couch. "You're on next."

I nearly spit my peas.

Instead, I pushed them into my cheeks like a squirrel holding nuts and shouted, "But I'm EATING!"

Can you come back at the end of the chapter, please?

While they could not change three-minute routines to two-minute routines, they could eliminate breaks to push everything quickly forward. I had neglected to consider that option.

I scooped my belongings into my arms. Peering over the pile to my phone, barely grasped by my fingertips, I texted The Boy, "Schedule change. Up next." We headed down the elevator, bypassing the warm-up room, which I had no time for, to the stage.

My devoted coach, Jessica Rask, and the lovely MJ were calmly filing people on stage; giving a quick hug, words of encouragement, laughter, or a quick nod, each according to the competitor's temperament.

Panic-stricken, I confronted my coach with a singular sentence I hoped encompassed both my unpreparedness and the current affliction I would have to cope with, "I was EATING!"

She calmly looked back, "Kate, you are ALWAYS eating."

Each according to the competitor's needs. I laughed. She laughed. It didn't matter. Part of the mastery of yoga is a mastery of your own breath, your own calm. Slow your breathing, calm your mind. I ran through the mental check-list of things that needed to be done before going on stage. I had lotion still on my leg and hand. I was directed to a sink backstage. I lifted my leg into the sink and soaped it off. I hugged Jessica, hugged MJ, rolled my shoulders back, smiled into the bleaching white of the stage lights and walked on stage.

I am very proud of my performance. My postures rocked, and by that I mean that they teetered, weebled, wobbled, but I did not fall down! I brought none of the seven poses to what I am fully capable of. I forgot to announce the first three entirely,* which I think means that they can't score them at all. But I came off that stage BEAMING. I did it. I competed in nationals, a feat I never thought myself capable of.

Please, when you set out to accomplish something, give yourself credit for the effort. Try something new. Be proud of the effort before you evaluate the shortcomings. No matter how flawed, the attempt itself is glorious.

* Coach and I laughed about that later. I remember very clearly getting into floor bow and thinking, "Hey, this is going really well! Wait...isn't there supposed to be sound?"

Nationals Approach!

The USA Yoga Federation's National competition is in just a few days. I will be leaving in less than 24 hours and make it to the NYC theater (if my good luck with Southwest Airlines holds) within minutes of registration closing.

One of the beautiful yogis that is sure to do amazing things at nationals, Roxanne Janecki (drawn above), posted this on Facebook just before leaving yesterday for nationals:

All packed up and ready for NYC. This year's USA Yoga National Asana Championship is going to be awesome! 2013, you really are proving to be a memorable and extraordinary year for me. I already have so much to be grateful for and the opportunity to demonstrate my yoga, connect with friends new and old, and to take a moment to reflect on and appreciate all that is and all that was, is icing on the proverbial cake. I'm ready for a week filled with yoga, friends, love, and lots of good times. In the the words of my favorite Living Legend, "How great and glorious is my life?" Time to get on the road with the best partner a girl could ask for.

See what I mean about these yogis? So balanced, so centered.

In the meantime, I am not packed and keep thinking, "OMG OMG OMG OMG! WHEEEEE!!!!! OMG OMG OMG!"

I am experiencing a roller-coaster ride. I'm having a blast but with the distinct impression that I am barely holding on.

My goal for my three-minute routine is firmly in place: BE STILL. And through my flurry of activity from now until my three minutes of slow movement, punctuated by perfect inner and exterior stillness, I will remember to be thankful for whatever I accomplish, what I have accomplished, and what is yet to come because something amazing is happening.

PS For those who would like to watch the championships they will be streaming live on USA Yoga's site. I am told I will be on after the 5:30 break on Saturday, March 2. But be forewarned that these events are about as organized as 52 card pick-up because yogi herding is more complex than cat herding. So times, although presented as fact, are merely a suggestion.