Frogs and Ravens

The Potter's Ayurveda

Kapha.  Heavy and slow, the mixture of water and earth.

I bought a new bag of clay this month, having used up the first one.  I am returning to the clay I know best, porcelain.  The grains are fine, the body smooth, plastic, yielding.  On the wheel it turns into eggshells, the rippled whorls of flowers, small bowls for sipping something rare and precious.  In the hand it is pliant, waiting placidly to be transformed into tiny faces, mysterious creatures, wild-eyed birds with calm bodies.

Vata.  Dry and rough, light and quick, the mixture of space and air.

Dry greenware, the unfired clay, is brittle.  Drop it, and it transforms into dust and fragments. Push it too hard, and it crumbles.  Porous, it inhales moisture, absorbing the colors of pigmented slip, seizing them and holding them fast.  Abraded gently with sandpaper, the surface becomes as soft as sandstone, a rough-smooth matte texture like the skin of a toad.  Flaws are erased through the actions of the sand, silicon grains rubbing at other grains of earth and crystal.  Dry vulnerability becomes a virtue.  Passed through fire, it becomes strength.

Pitta.  Sharp, hot, and moist, the mixture of fire and water.

Bisqueware seizes the moist glaze aggressively, holding it tight, demanding swift action with no errors.  The element of chance cannot be avoided, only compensated for.  Wax buys some room, a moist-dry shell that transforms hungry clay into restrained form capable of resisting the call of color and shine. 

Pottery emerges from the final firing hot, shining, and bright with energy.  When glaze is applied too thickly, it puddles and forms a glass-sharp edge; too thin, and the clay looks through, resistant to transformation.  Cooling pots sing, a celebration of their survival and adaptation to the world beyond.  Dull textures have given way to brightness and color, fragility to surprising strength. 

There is alchemy in the firing, lessons at every stage; clay and water,  pigment and fire, the unpredictability of air -- all of these keep the potter humble, unable to take any of it for granted.  In the practice, all comes into balance.

Yoga Beans

This most awesome site depicts yoga classes as demonstrated by plastic action figures. It beats the Yoga Bush all hollow, but, then, they are doing different things. Be sure to look at the back archives, too.

link c/o Jill.

Stiff

You know you need to revive your yoga practice when you can't concentrate long enough to get through a page of a book about yoga without being distracted. Still, this part about starting or resuming practice did catch my eye:

...we may feel anger or grief that we have neglected ourselves for so long. "I can't believe I let myself get like this," students say, shocked to discover at the relatively young age of twenty or thirty that their bodies feel like deck chairs left out over a long winter. It may seem as if the body is an undifferentiated block of solid substance and we the owners have a blurry recognition of it at that. We may find that the heart has become hardened and bitter and that our minds may be perpetually scattered.

Donna Farhi, Bringing Yoga to Life, pp. 6-7.

I think it's time to break out the mat again.

Kapha Spring

There was an article in Yoga Journal this month about dealing with the kapha-ness of spring.  Kapha, for those of you unfamiliar with Ayurvedic practices, is the principle associated with cool dampness.  The other two are Vata, cool airy dryness, and Pitta, moist heat.  Each person has their own personal mixture of these principles, tending toward one or two.  I am a Vata-Pitta.  This means I'm anxious, intellectual, thin, freckly, acne-prone, feisty, aggravated by wind and heat and cold, and soothed by calm and warmth and regular habits (though aren't we all?).  Each person should strive to balance their tendencies so they don't get out of whack by means of diet, exercise, meditation and environment.  This means I should avoid vata-aggravating foods like cold cereal and ice cream (alas!) and activities like insane multitasking while increasing my yoga and walks, and avoid increasing my pitta with spicy foods and irritating company (hellooo, women blogger flamewars) while soothing it with cool drinks and yoga and swimming.  It also means that kapha things are essentially alien to my basic nature.

Each season has a tendency to aggravate one or more of these qualities.  Spring, being damp and cool and wet, aggravates kapha.  Kapha is the principle governing things like fertility (in positive amounts) and head colds (in excess amounts).  So we are definitely having a spring with a kapha imbalance.  It is too wet, too muddy, too lethargic and goopy.  (No wonder this sinus thing will not. go. away.)  My apartment feels damp all the time now, and I'm getting so tired of it.  I want some nice warm sun to bask in!

Practicing Practice

I had my first yoga class in months yesterday. They talk about beginning each class with no expectations and an openness to whatever happens, and I try to do this, but even so I was surprised. I've been feeling quite stiff lately, especially along the backs of my legs, so I was expecting that this would be something to work with. It was, but not that much. When you go from very stiff to very very stiff, the poses don't change too much. (My hamstrings have long been a challenge.) What was more surprising was that my ribs were stiff! (I mean, the spaces between the ribs. Eh.) This meant that taking deep breaths was harder than before. Further, I had forgotten to think about strength as well; poses that had become, if not easy, at least not daunting, were now very strenuous indeed. Plank and Downward Dog are no longer my friends! (Weird and unreliable though they had been, I miss their friendship.)

So the class was a strange exercise in my head and body remembering how to do the poses, and at least half the time no longer being able to do them as before. Add in an instructor who reminded me of Eugene Levy intoning soothing admonitions to "reconnect with your body" and you have a downright surreal experience.

I've purchased a series of classes, so we'll see what the other teachers are like. (He was perfectly nice, but the class was crowded and his style of yoga didn't do much for me.) Meanwhile, I will cautiously claim to be doing yoga again.