So I undertook to systematize my learning a little bit for the last few days. I have some flashcards now with things on them that I'd like to have in the front of my mind. I'd like to say that I am choosing to memorize the things that are most important and feel as though they are useful for integrating my mind into a yogic state, but really I am choosing things that I think would be impressive or make me sound credible to know off the top of my head. That's embarrassing to say. Tryin' to be brutal.
Actually though deliberate memorization gets a bad rap. I think this is a modern education debate thing - like we should "learn how to learn" instead of by rote. I agree somewhat, but I have a lot of faith in the nature of the mind to make connections based on the information it has stored away and ready to recite. I can't make connections to things I've decided I can just "look up whenever I need them" - understanding is more than knowing you could know if you wanted to. Making information take shape in your mind requires a little repetition and memorizing, a little deliberate connection-making to become solid and useful. I heart memorizing. Also I am pretty good at it and enjoy it. But my memorizing endeavor isn't totally vanity-based really. It really helps me "see" things better.
And I've taken on another little self-directed project to give more shape to my yoga learning, and I'm really glad about it since I realized it combines some things I've been thinking about: injuries, pain, and yoga beginners. Since I've hurt my back my asana has been pretty scaled back - I did none for about five days, really. So as I continue to repair, I'm thinking about how to ease myself in to some yoga without provoking the same injury over and over again. At the same time I've been ruminating the issue of the yoga beginner. Specifically, I have a really willing friend, a Yoga Beginner, available to me to let me practice my new yoga knowledge on, and I want very badly to make yoga interesting and appealing and satisfying and transforming and to make this Beginner love yoga as much as I do. I am treating this as a test, actually. Because the other part is that the Beginner is not really interested in yoga but is just being extremely nice to me, so now basically It's On, Big Time. And on top of this, Beginner has some limitations that make a lot of stuff that I would offer impossible due to the pain the asanas provoke in said Beginner. So here I am, in my own bit of physical pain, dealing with a pretty significant limitation (ever pull your back? suxxxx big time, you use it for every single thing you do, including brush your teeth and sit still), and wondering how to make yoga appealing for someone with limitations. What to do?
Initially when I was thinking about how to entice Beginner into loving yoga, I thought, "Oh laboratory of the self, reveal to me the keys of challenging and excellent as well as accessible yoga," and I practiced on myself and it didn't really work that well. And I watched some beginner yoga recording on youtube, which was pretty useful actually, but kind of boring. So then yesterday I was looking in Light on Yoga, and remembered that there is a big long list of yoga series in the back which Iyengar created as a week-by-week program (in the course of over 180 weeks, damn!) for mastering asana systematically. Buh, duh, meh, blergh, RTFM, genius! So now that's my new plan. I'm trying out the Iyengar weekly systematized yoga prescription, and that's going to be my guide for teaching Yoga Beginner as well. I'm not going to limit myself in my own practice to the guide, since I'll go to class and do other stuff, but I think recreating Iyengar's recommended process for learning asana will be really useful. I started today and it's really illuminating already - Iyengar doesn't offer downward dog (a serious central staple of yoga class which Beginner happens to have trouble with) until somewhere around the 18th to 20th weeks! It makes so much sense given how tough downward dog is on the wrists. You can't just jump into that (ha ha accidental dorky yoga joke if you know what I'm talking about - hint: you can "jump" into downward dog). Anyway yay! I'm excited by my little project. Combine that with some good old fashioned memorization, and you've got a yoga journey on your hands, daaaaaamn.
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