Gala (vasana) Anniversary

how it felt the first few times

Today is my one year anniversary of being "given"/shown/ held up in Galavasana.

Last year on  July 25th my teacher David Garrigues, brave man that he, is assisted me in the gateway pose of third series.  Gateway in that...here come the arm balances.

This image was captured by my husband july 25th 2012
This was Garrigues and Faulkner's first go at Galavasana!

I grew up a gymnast. This means I grew up  doing arm balances and press up every things. Flying through the air and spotting the correct place (and time) to land was standard operating procedure. These skills, these upside downs, these twistings, being airborn, condensed, stretched, these ways to spend time, they are my dear old friends. They are my peeps. None of this means this stuff is easy for me. I was always a big girl type of gymnast. My team had to transport and set up a special set of uneven parallel bars so that I would not break the home team's set of bars with my muscle mass' ability to swing.

 So now that I have been working with dedication on some advanced poses, it stirs up a bunch of feelings for me (irritating, amusing and soothing to name just a few),  to see the recent onslaught of  pictures of people doing amazingly difficult poses, and not just that, they are out there in front of the city fountains, on park benches, or with the lakes, rivers and oceans of the world. Shit, I need a damn 2 hour warm up to do that on a nice, even (in some spots) wooden floor in my own house with a mat that has been properly juju-ed, and a bunch of other exquisitely added details.

So, yes, it initially makes me angry. I remember when I first started doing ashtanga, and it was fashionable to poo-poo the gymnastics of it. "Yoga is not gymnastics...., yoga is not a sport, yoga is not a competition." I know, I get it.  But I grew up in a gym, doing the incredibly intense sport actual of gymnastics. I grew up being judged. I never minded being truly judged, you know, with a scoring system. But being judged by other members of the community at the time WITHOUT the scoring system really sucked.  I was often called a show-off for doing tick tacks and handstands in the yoga room. I was judged for doing them in a gymnastics way, but it was my heritage that made me able to do them in the first place.

The anger subsides and is replaced with some amusement and understanding. I know it's a developmental stage the yogi is in, feeling the energy of the pose light you up and wanting to somehow capture that energy for eternity and share it with the world in some way. I did it, and I judge it's a natural urge, and urge to want to celebrate the pure goodness of the shape, and the feeling of you, or the self, or the union of energy that is the body in a wonderful relationship with the planet's gravity. It is sweet, endearing and it makes me smile. It reminds me of the taste of watermelon on a hot day. It reminds me of gymanstics camp when I was twelve and the late night handstand competitions we would have. It was SO MUCH FUN. My face smiles when I see images of talented yogis doing advanced poses, and I appreciate the energy, poise and dedication the poses show me. I am happy for them, but for me, I have to really warm up to even try to do those things and sometimes I doubt that my version has what David calls the "Tom Sawyer effect" of seeing someone channel the energy so well, you want to be doing it. Back to the images, though,  I need the inspiration they supply, the enthusiasm and gusto they have for the practice. Maybe I'm feeling my age and still trying to grasp some of that youth I see around me, but maybe, it's that I can still feel some of that youthful energy in my own body. So yeah, I might have some sour grapes lurking, but I think that my real nectar is just starting to come of age now that I'm 51. So, galavasana it is, picture-worthy or not!

 Garrigues Galavasana adjustments
remind me of the two person  horse costume

The energy of the many new people dedicating themselves to the practice reminds me of my recent bus trips in India. The bus is full, but then 15 more people somehow fit in! It soothes me to know and feel that there is room for us all in this time space continuum of strength, balance and agility.  The yogis that want to know yoga from yoga, we all meet in the crowded expansive place inside ourselves. We share this, we are all on the same team, even if it irritates you that I think of yoga as a team (wait for it....) SPORT. I was never competative in the usual sense. I was more in it for the sport itself. The TEAM. No one is ever cut from my team.  To me TEAM is a big loving, we can do it, work hard kind of thing. The fellowship, the creative process of the individual experiencing the best and truest aspects of self while working in and with the scaffold of the group dynamic. oh yes. My sister in law once said, "well, we all have to find our tribe," and I think I have found mine.

I was and still am eager to take direction, eager for  corrective feedback, even eager for rules and regulations. You gotta know the rules to bend them well.  It is very exciting to have  a forum to  continue  to  cultivate my long standing relationship with gravity into adulthood. It is a big soothing, happy place in my body/mind/spirit entity that I have ashtanga and ashtangis.  If you show up for your practice. well then like it or not you are in my band, on my team, all of it.

So my parting words for everyone, on this great day of celebration of my gala-vasana anniversary are: Damn, it took a long time, as it always seems to do, but I am so glad the cat is out of the bag and people are seeing and feeling for themselves that this shit is fun! Gala type fun. Special occasion type of everyday fun. Like another David says, "hey, it's cheap thrills!", and of course more than that, too.

I'll keep doing these poses for as long as possible in the yoga room actual, mostly all by myself, but always with the power of the practice and the people everywhere practicing, holding me up.

2012 the year of the Dragon
for me it was the year of Galavasana

Olga! Here I come!
Moscow with Garrigues
December 2013
Garrigues and me going to Moscow

or click her for english

I used to do ashtanga.....

The Neek at the Nasher Museum
in our hometown of Durham NC

 still do, but I used to too.

What gets bigger the more you take away?  A hole.  I think Gollum said that…….

me and my boys with Tim
at the Barn in Charlottsville on Hanuman's birthday!

This also applies to my life. My life on ashtanga.

I go to bed as early as possible.  I make polite  excuses for not attending parties.  I don't often go to the movies because even the early show ends too late.   I prefer my husband's cooking to going out to eat.  My very best friends are my dogs. I have no job (besides teaching Alexander Technique and ashtanga in my home studio). I go days without getting in my car. 

If I could have taken a look into the future and seen my life as it is now when I was 20 I would have barely recognized me.  Well…I would have recognized my physique because that looks very similar to how Iooked back then, and I am right now sporting a rather Dorothy Hamillesque Short and Sassy type of hairdo(what was I thinking). It is my mind that  I would have had a hard time seeing as my own.

I used to need so much action, so much noise and commotion. I needed snacks. I needed attention. I loved speed, and heights, and that feeling of the edge of something…. 

I know I was a hard case.  I know I was a consumer, a taker, a loud talker, a close stander, an impulsive just about everythinger. Back in those days  my new year's resolutions were littered with items like: stop doing handstands on the edge of roofs, no more musicians, no more back handsprings in the  flatbed of trucks while driving on the highway, no more TKE parties the night before track meets, no more parachuting of any kind. I used to make NEW MONTH resolutions to remind myself to remember to not take so many risks with my self. I would get a drink in my system, or get an idea in my system, or feel a sense of boredom….. and there I was on a rooftop, there I was in a basement apartment with complete strangers, there I was completely forgetting my own safety.

I am still a thrill seeker, it is just that my thrill has changed.For that shift, I give thanks to ashtanga yoga.

This shift has taken many moons, many years, in fact decades. I started practicing ashtanga in 1993.

The big thrill of each day is/are the kisses I get from my husband at bedtime (how in the name of Ganesha, did I end up with a loving life partner?!) The next biggest thrill is giving Ganesha his little cup of coffee every morning before my practice. After that comes the thrill of my practice, followed closely by the thrill of being a part of my  students practices. A glass of water after practice with all of its hydrogen bonding making it so very water like thrills me like no other beverage ever has. So pretty thrilling, right? To me it is a thrill a minute. And It all happens very early in the day. 

What gets bigger the more you take away?? in my case, my life gets bigger the more I take away.

Ashtanga is my shovel.

   

for our honeymoon we went to a primary series mysore intensive
 taught by Nancy Gilgoff
 at Christine Hoar's studio in Vermont

 Yoga is known from yoga.

So even though my life may look small on  the outside because it looks like I don't do much besides ashtanaga, it is this limiting factor, it is the demands that ashtanga puts on me that allows me to stay focused on it. It used to be hard for me to remember to keep myself and my safety in mind. Ashtanga requires so much attention that it has enabled me to remember it. In remembering it, I also remember myself, because I need myself to do ashtanga. This emerging ability to remember, to look inward, is what has sculpted me into  a person I enjoy spending time with and  person I love enough to keep safe.

Janelle and Ganesha at YogaSpot
in 2003

 David Garrigues (my teacher) leading us through a primary series at my little studio
Ashtanga Yoga Club Durham. I name each workshop. This was DG3

DG and me in Kovalam India this past february

I know this is sounding like a love letter to ashtanga. 

Like every worthwhile relationship that is standing the test of time, ashtanga and I have had some hard times, but we keep making it through. We stick with each other. Me and ashtanga,
we love each other.

I used to do Ashtanaga, still do, but I used to too….

Sincerely Suzanne

PS
Mitch Hedberg video will make you giggle.
He used to do drugs! It's in the first 2 minutes xoxox
Mitch video, you take it.

One Glorious Week

Last week I got a call from my yoga buddy JO, asking if I needed a break from teaching my morning mysore classes. My answer was an unhesitating,"YES"!! JO needed a break from the city of brotherly love where she is studying Ashtanga under the tutelage of our teacher David Garrigues. JO got in her faithful roadster and drove to North Carolina for a working vacation type of get away. For one glorious week, Joanna Darlington was Ashtanga Yoga Durham's in-house morning mysore yoga teacher. This week was glorious for many reasons: I got to sleep in till about 7 AM and then practice with my community. I practiced 6 days in a row, one day second, 4 days all of third(sans that last pose) one day primary. Usually I practice AFTER teaching, and It is often difficult to sustain a full practice. My students received great teaching from JO. Hearing instruction from a new source can help get the ideas into the skull. Everyone's practice has gone up a notch. My husband cooked for JO and me, so we got to hang out together AND be waited on by my terrific husband. When my husband was not around to cook for us, I took JO to many of Durham's great restaurants.(Durham is one of the United States' foodiest cities) JO and I where housemates in India this winter while we studying with David Garriugues. It was fun and familiar to be housemates again. It was incredible to see JO be such an adept and proficient mysore teacher. She is half way through a one thousand hour teacher apprentice program with David Garrigues. WOW! Can't wait to see what the next 500 hours of being an apprentice with David G will bring to her practice and her mysore teaching. I am SO GRATEFUL to be a part of ashtanga yoga's living tradition of daily mysore practice. Thank you T Krisnamacharya for teaching Pattabhi Jois Thank you Pattabhi Jois for teaching David G Thank you David G for teaching JO Thank you JO for teaching ashtanga yoga durham peeps Thank you AYSphilly peeps for letting me have JO for one glorious week!

Medium is big and small

forward-backward

stuck in the middle  or
 there is no I in team.  there is a me in team.

 I am me. you are you. we are that.

yes-no 

let go- hold on

push -pull

excite- bore

balance-fall

up- down

This is rather fun. I could go on all day. I want to stop. I want to go on forever. I need to pee. I could probably go hours without peeing. I must do laundry. I could go days and days without doing laundry.

pleasure- pain

joy -fear

elation-boredom

release-work

love-hate

ashtanga-writing about ashtanga

Here I am stuck in the middle with myself!

and yet, am I stuck? No way.  I only know about the middle due to swinging past it between my extremes. Like opposite of how the stillness of a broken watch allows it to be correct twice day, I am in the middle for many moments of every day due to my pendulum of opposites. Thanks  to motion I know what stillness might be.  

man-woman

demon-angel

monster-puppy

fierce- meek

hunger-satiate

famished- gorged

sweet- salt

high-low

hello-goodbye

attention-ignore

give-take

desire-repulse

honor-shame

I am sometimes embarrassed about begin able to give so much of my attention to ashtanga and the Alexander Technique.  Embarrassed because I know the real issue is global warming, world hunger, over population, drinkable !!! drinking water….. 

Suzanne Faulkner- Erin Brockovich

beauty queen-activist BROCKOVICH

I love that Erin Brockovich  is still doing her thing, OUR THING!!! fighting for people's water supplies to be untainted by corporate greed.

I have a terrific handstand. I planted some marigold seeds from my last years marigolds(and some I smuggled home from indian festivals) and they are coming up in my cutting garden. I am looking forward to offering ganesha the prettiest marigold grown from my garden.

justice-just plain terrible

where am I going with this?  no where. perfect.

I sometimes feel foolish about my life as a perpetual gym class.  I love gym. It is the most important class. It is real.  It is not a fake curriculum filled with fluffer-nutter. I love fluffer-nutter.

real-fake

is movement education and the study of the self, is that fake? is it real?  is it in the middle? I am uncomfortable in the middle. I am a middle child and I love it. The middle. Monkey in the middle. Suzy in the middle.

Is it the middle yet?

Go ask Alice. Ask anyone you know who is unwilling to tell you the answer and  there you have it.
Follow the white rabbit. Black dogs are euthanized to a greater degree than any other color dog. black is not a color, it is all of the colors. Or is that white?

mean, media, mode - calculus

life-death

snuggle-cut

body- mind

self-Self

yes-no

no-yes

that's sort of okay……I'd rather die right this second than be terrific with the sort of okay path.  why is the middle path a good place? If the middle is so good why not just hang out quietly and unchallenged right/left in that middle?

maybe because the middle does not really exist as an actual. The middle is the play/work, push/pull of itself.

I am the most selfish person I know, I am also the only person I  know, and  I gave away all of my costume jewelry when I was a little kid because it feels so good to give  people shiny stuff they want.  Know thyself. Help others. The Giving Tree is my biggest nightmare. Is it selfish to continue to give time and energy, thought and avoidance to go in, when what I seem to really value is going out and kicking ass, exposing the bad guy, shutting down the meth lab, disrupting the chain of command…..I want to change the world ,I want to every person to go to bed with food in their belly. I want to be in a quiet room and do ashtanga.

bhakti man/boy is the new cuddle monster

class clown

team kovalam 2013

devoted student 

                             












                                  

what if Iife really is a box of chocolates?  that would suck because really even though I think about chocolate all the time, my best food is peaches.

I got nothing here people.  I am a little starfish. When the shit hits the fan, I am a valuable team member. oh lord!!, I adore the concept of team. every team is a huge play of opposites. for me, team is a more tangible concept than middle.  Team keeps the play of opposites more happening at the same time in an alive, in breath, out breath sort of way. It is not push or pull or push then pull,  push IS pull. the best offense IS a good defense.

When I was a little girl   in the waiting room of my orthopedic surgeon , I sat across from the  then starting kicker for the Philadlephia Eagles. I was a big little kid, solid and tall. He was not a whole lot  bigger than me, he was a regular sized human being.  I love it when a football game comes down to a kick. All of those big huge extra/extra large guys on the sidelines biting the nails of their big huge muscular fingers, while the little guy(in pro football terms) decides it. If I am able, and I am able, to define the middle as a team of different shapes, sizes, strengths, concepts and talents, it is easier for me to see and feel and be okay with  the big and the small, the balance and the teetering, the rajas and the tamas, happening all at once, one after another,  waiting their turn to work together.
I got this middle concept on lock.
middle does not exist alone, yoh (she/he) needs collaboration.

eaves dropping- active listening

DG just pocket dialed me and I listened in for a few moments  even after I realized it was a pocket dial. So  many moments to make moral decisions about. I simply don't have that kind of time.

If I get out of here alive, there is going to be hell to pay.

have a nice day.

fresh drinking water for  those who would not pollute the drinking water of others.

may the force be with you.

ps

force is good.

devotion-defiance
discipline-chaos

devotion-defiance... ashtangi-punk...mighty-mini needs us NOW click on link below
come on Ashtanga Yoga Club Durham! TEAM DURHAM. Please click on link below and donate dollars !!!!!

DONATEtothebhaktiboymovie.comPLEASE     

beg-demand
rich-poor
art-NO art

I love moon days because I don't do ashtanga. I love ashtanga.

dynamic apple at rest on Spruce Street
center city philadelphia

Philadelphia, We Have a Situation.....

did he just say, "again"?

This is  command vessel Apollo 51.4 checking in for her arrival into the ashtanga atmosphere surrounding 733 Sansom Street on Jewelry Row in Center City Philadelphia....UUmmm...everything was going just fine.  

The flight log confirms  a month of consistent practice:  3rd three times a week,  second with some third, just second, and a primary once a week,  with pranyama everyday. There was of course some turbulence, some resistance, but we got the job done.

Last week we noticed our left knee getting more and more incredibly sore and painful, so we eased up a bit on Virinchasana B for a few days. Just as the knee was regaining some of its use and functioning......about 48 hours later...

The left shoulder lost communication with the rest of the ship. There were several days it could bear almost none of its usual load, so without consulting  anyone about anything... we eased up on arm balances. Some of the power has returned to the left shoulder, but it is not  back to its full capacity as of yet.

Got sick for a few days with fever and report general fever related feeling terrible.

the situation.

Perhaps due to the fever, or perhaps due to how fracking hard this mission is in this aging vessel all alone out here in space....there were a few days of shoddy record keeping brought on by shoddy pracitcing and therefore there was very little  in the way of notes to record in the practice log. We seem to have laid off... well... nearly everything.

Today's practice was ten suryanam A's and that was super (fracking) hard. We can happily report a strong central axis but, please note, self report is notoriously unreliable.

DG and me in parsvakonasana
during OBX 5 day mysore event

And that is where we sit and stand upon our pre-flight arrangements for  touchdown into Ashtanga Yoga School of Philadlephia's  Second Series In-depth Study. Wish me luck, love and stamina as I prepare for re-enty into the ashtanga atmoshpere of my teacher David Garriugues.

Faulkner with her husband actual

Tell my husband I love him very much, he knows..

Suzanne Faulkner 

Captain of Apollo 51.4

signing IN

PS
classes continue at
ashtanga yoga club durham
while faulkner is away.

airport yoga

lady liberty and faulkner at JFK airport

Last time I did  yoga in JFK   airport was the year 2000. I was In NYC to practice ashtanga with Pattabhi Jois. it was an amazing trip. When not having an amazing ashtanga time in the Puck Building with Guruji and a few hundred fired up ashtangis, I was biking around NYC shopping and sight seeing. I purchased a little red tank top  with an American flag on it.  I wore the shirt to yoga the next day. I got a space in the front row.  Guruji gave me a ton of adjustments and called me America. When I jumped back  he said "Good America!" It was such an honor to meet Guruji. When I got to the airport my flight was delayed for several hours, so of course I did a primary series and  of course I wore my America T-shirt to keep the spirit of the weekend going strong.

 I am on my way home from 5 weeks studying ashtanga with my teacher David Garrigues in India. It was amazing, intense, exhilarating and exhausting.  We wrapped up the  five week study with a primary series. Then Saturday I packed and ate as many chapatiis as I possibly could and that night I began my journey home.  A rick shaw ride  to the airport to begin the what is turning out to be a three day event.  Trivandrum to Dubia. That was easy! Not to brag, but I upgraded to business class and got my devi ridden 71 pound  luggage checked in with no charge. I slept like a princess on the plane in my  fully reclining seat with my special super thick princess pillows and blankets. The 19 hour layover in Dubai was not such a dream. I purchased a Dubai Transit pass and went and saw some of that crazy city. It sparkles. It shines. Everything is so clean and tidy. After 5 weeks in India it was like being in opposite land. I sat and drank a coffee at a cafe where  men where smoking hukha-like  water pipes. Across the shiny clean orderly highway filled with shiny clean orderly cars being driven by shiny clean people I spy  ONE piece of trash. A white plastic bag in the middle of the pinkest  flower bed  in the world.  I marveled at that piece of trash in that  bright pink flower bed  for a long time and got homesick for India. 

Then a 14 hour flight to JFK. I watched The Matrix. It was so great, that I watched it a second time without sound. Follow the white rabbit.

I  miss a flight to Raleigh-Durham and here I am with a 10 hour layover in NYC. After a rather fantastic crying spree about not making the  flight, I realized that I could get a practice in.  It is great to be back in the USA. I am home, I just need that last detail of a few hundred miles to occur. I put on my little red American flag shirt that I wore for Gurugi and did a lovely primary series in the jet Blue terminal. It was probably not so lovely to look at , but it sure was lovely from the inside. I sit at the gate and wait for my flight. In a few hours I will seem my husband and my chihuahuas. This is turning out to be a fantastic day.

ashtanga is my daddy's football

I am in India studying with my teacher David Garrigues, so I am in a different time zone than my family of origin.

Before leaving for  this nearly 6 week trip to this wild and wonderful adventure called India, I spent a full day with my dad. I cleaned his room, did his laundry, clipped his toenails, ate lunch with him and his pals and watched television with him while my chihuahuas sat on his lap. It was a lovely day. When It was time to leave I could feel the thought that it might be the last time we would be together in a both of us alive kind of way. He was becoming more and more feeble and his heart and lungs were growing weary. I didn't tell him I was going to India, I didn't want to confuse him, I didn't want him to worry.

So I kissed him on the cheek and squeezed his hand and said "Bye bye daddy, see you soon."

This morning at about 5:30 AM Kovalam time I checked my emails before practice. There were many from my husband, I read them first, and then one from my brother. Uh oh....my father died.  "He slipped off with dignity." My brother assured me that his transition was smooth and that it was for the best.   He was ready to go.

neek, me, dad's real pig skin football, jeff, jenn and valerie

Football had been his life's passion. He had been  a great player and an even better coach. He loved the game, those x's and o's  where wired up in his DNA and it  was everywhere in my childhood. He used to tell me that had I been a boy, I would have been an unstoppable halfback. He beamed with pride  when he said this, and so it made me stand tall to think how unstoppable halfback I would have been  in a slightly different form. He did not exclude me from his football, rather he put me in charge of the pre-season stretching drills for his team. There I was  a fifth grader, whistle around my  little girl neck directing the stretching warm-up drills for my daddie's football team. To this day I feel most at home in a big sunny football stadium with the  smell of popcorn and hotdogs, the sounds of bands banging, and cheerleaders jumping and clapping, the vendors selling the home team's colors, and the little kids running around with little tiny footballs.

But this football season was different than all of the others. My brother Jeff had to remind dad when the games where. Sometimes when Jeff  went over to watch a game with my dad  he was watching an animal show or a Turner Classic Movie. We knew he was not long for this world. He was done and so he went.

My brother and sister and her wife were with him as he went. They made plans to get him cremated the next day, and  to have celebration of his life on his upcoming birthday, March 28th. I will be home by then.

the upper darby high school gang
my dad is on the way right

My siblings want me to stay in India and study my yoga. They know that ashtanga is my football. So being a good middle child, I will do as I am told... I will stay here and do my yoga. My father was about 4 hours dead, I am not sure if he died yesterday, today, or tomorrow, the time zone thing is confusing. No matter what the date, I suited up for practice, grabbed my torch (flashlight) for the walk and off I go to yoga.