The Roblog

Since starting Yoga Teacher Training at Boundless, I’ve often stood in awe of my classmates as they describe the subtle movements of muscles and bones that they experience within poses. Before the training began I’d expected that the greatest challenges would be physical, but as it turns out my most significant difficulties so far have been in learning to listen to my body.

In the past I had predominantly attended classes in the more flowing, Vinyasa style. After 2 months of intensive immersion in the alignment focused classes at Boundless, I’ve now begun experiencing yoga in a very different way. While I still love the graceful transitions of Vinyasa, I now realize that I never had enough time to learn to listen to my body as we rapidly moved from pose to pose.

During Vinyasa classes, I realized, instead of focusing on sensations of the body, I would frequently zone out, losing myself as I transitioned through poses that frequently ran in predictable patterns. Muscle memory became the driver and my mind released, bringing about a relaxed, meditative state.

My classes at Boundless typically feature much more unpredictable series of poses, and each session is designed to elicit epiphanies of sensory experience and muscle control. We disentangle the experiences of each muscle group, learning to use specific muscles while releasing others. At the same time, through our practice we develop a conscious awareness of the complex relationships between the bones, muscles, and connective tissue which bind them together. As a result of this intense focus on the actions (and sensations) that comprise each pose, our yoga evolves alongside our knowledge of our self.

Upon discovering the contradiction between the mental surrender of my Vinyasa practice and the self-consciousness I’ve been striving to foster at Boundless, I’ve nearly completely stopped attending Vinyasa classes. Since changing my focus over to alignment-based classes I’ve been excited to find that I’m slowly becoming more attuned to my physical experiences. There’s still much to be said for the fluidity and grace which define Vinyasa, however, and I looked forward to the point at which I feel I’m ready to once again give in to the mental surrender of a flowing practice.

- Crossposted to the Boundless Yoga blog

Anyone that follows me on Twitter knows how pissed I am at Samsung and Verizon for their complete disregard for their customers using the Galaxy Fascinate.

First they force users to use Bing as a search engine (not default to it — force users to use it). That’s not even mentioning that the GPS is almost non-functional. (Well, I guess I did just mention it. Sue me. Or better yet, sue Verizon / Samsung.)

Then they have Verizon store employees telling people that the new version of the Android operating system (Froyo, or Android 2.2), would be available “any day now.” They’ve been saying that since I got the phone in October last year. They finally released an update earlier this month (after repeatedly falling through on official announcements that it would be out later this month… or that month.. or that month), but it only contained a few bloatware updates (and a GPS fix, thank god). But no Froyo.

whether it’s because they’re purposefully holding off on Froyo because they want to force people to upgrade to other Android models that have it already, I don’t know, but I’ve given up on them. If you’ve got the Samsung Galaxy Fascinate as your Verizon Android phone, you should give up on them too. Here’s how (using a Mac, which is a little more tricky than with a PC)

1. Root your phone: This gives you “su” (superuser) abilities, allowing you to do things that Samsung / Verizon don’t want to allow you to do.
2. Run a backup: Just in case. You don’t want to risk “bricking” your phone.
3. Remove bloatware: I used Titanium Backup Manager (premium version needed), “freezing” software that I didn’t want. Be careful about deleting software, as people have noted that you won’t be able to receive OTA (over the air) upgrades if you’ve made certain modifications to your phone. Freezing makes programs unavailable to the operating system, but you can easily “defrost” them if you want them back for an upgrade.

Removing Verizon’s bloatware made my phone muuuuuch more responsive. I use LauncherPro instead of TouchWiz, Samsung’s custom UI, and I also got a big boost from removing widgets and home pages that I’d left from TouchWiz. Use Home Switcher to move back and forth between both launchers.

I haven’t started playing with Custom ROMs, but based on the success of what I’ve done already I’m not sure I need to bother. If you’re looking to start hacking your Fascinate, there’s a lot of other great resources on this Android Forum sticky.

Layer Tennis fascinates me. Two digital artists bounce graphical designs back and forth, sharing the layers with each other, allowing for continued evolution of the image.

Joshua Davis, the clear winner (in my eyes) of this week’s composition, had a fascinating Apple Pro profile written about him:

Davis creates electronically generated graphic compositions of almost unimaginable complexity and individuality. Equally at home with print and electronic media, he builds his own Flash-based programs to combine and recombine colors borrowed from nature with forms that include organic shapes, text elements, and other symbols.

“Working this way allows me to generate an infinite number of compositions,” Davis explains. “I set the boundaries and the rules, but whatever comes out at the end is a surprise. I don’t know what’s going to happen. It could look cool. It could fail. It could be life-changing. There’s always a surprising sense of discovery with this process, because I’m setting up an environment and allowing a scenario to live within it.”

I take a lot of digital photographs just to extract color. I go to an arboretum here on Long Island at different points in the year and take pictures of the orchid show or the Christmas poinsettias. Nature does a pretty good job of blending. You’ll get a flower that starts with green, goes up to yellow, and blooms red. So already I’ve got a red, a yellow, and a green that all complement each other.

Josh is a catalyst — he harnesses the power of objects in his environment and transforms them.Whether it’s from code or from nature, he mixes together a few ingredients, throws it in the oven, and waits to see what comes out.

A thank you note I got after I contributed to my 1 month old niece’s college fund:

Dear ROB,

Thank you for $. Me go 2 college. Lern to Right. Get smart. U best uncle evr. Thanks to for coming to visit. I likes 3 look at U. Someday when big me come to DC to see you and sleep over. Me vote for you one day. <3 Maya.

With the House passage of the financial regulatory reform bill, this timeline is a useful way of getting context into the economic impact of deregulation.:

For more information, please visit the Dems.gov Financial Timeline.

This vignette about mental filters resonated with me.

The count down is now exactly one week until I leave my job with Congressman Honda and move on to my new office. Just a few days ago I marked my fourth year working in the office. It’s been an amazing place, and I have never experienced a work-family like I did there. It’s hard to imagine any other job matching the warm environment there…

So far, though, I’ve been very impressed with everyone I’ve met in my new office. They’re all incredibly smart, interesting, and passionate. The politics working at this level will be way beyond what I’ve encountered in the past, and I’ll have to step my game up a few levels, but isn’t that what it’s all about? Challenging yourself and working towards continued growth?

Onwards and upwards…

And next in the lovers series…

Why do I love yoga?

There’s a host of reasons that yoga is important to me. The flexibility, exercise, and enjoyment of the practices are all factors, but the core reasons are less easily described. What I appreciate most, however, are those subtle changes that aren’t immediately apparent.

In this month’s Yoga Journal, the editor wrote in with a letter about losing touch with what she referred to as the current of life flowing within her, and how re-engaging in her yoga practice helped her to find it once again. Her story encapsulates much of what I love most about yoga.

I recently moved, which is, of course, one of the great unsettling experiences in life. As the move-out deadline approached — the kitchen packed and my diet confined to caffeine and takeout, the days too full for practicing yoga — I all but lost the connection to my body. I had no appetite, couldn’t sleep, didn’t notice the aches and pains from overusing some muscles and not using others at all.

Then, with the last of our belongings out the door, I spent a moment savoring the sweet home that had contained so much happiness, so many tears, the last moments of family life before divorce — and grief washed over me. I was eager to move but also nostalgic, and nervous about the future. As I felt the emotion in my body, I suddenly noticed the tightness of my chest, the breathlessness, the side effects of living on andrenaline.

…

The move has been a good lesson in dealing with stress and the tendency to become so singularly focused on pressing issues that I lose touch with the current of life flowing through me. This is something we all do, and it only makes hard times harder. The yogis interviewed by Dayna Macy in “Selter from the Storm” (see page 70) suggest weathering the current economic crisis much as you would any other kind of stress — by resting, practicing, and feeling what you feel, but also loosening your grip on all that you “must do,” so you can have a little space to see the bigger picture of your life.