awesome class today! i love the baker’s energy and pace. she was my first teacher and, well, ya’ll know how you feel about your first, right? tonight was an exciting evening! triple overtime in the celtics/bulls games. i don’t care who wins, but it was still exciting. after that i biked downtown to catch the nocturnal sunshine dance troupe. there was a dancing in the streets event this evening and the fire dancers that closed the show were amazing! i managed to get some pictures. it’s late, so here’s one for now, but don’t worry, i’ll be posting more in the coming days! see you tomorrow for the 4! i know i said i was gonna go back to the noon, but i might as well take another baker class tomorrow.~m

another 8 am bikram yoga class. i kinda like the 8, but i’ll be happy to be back on my noon schedule tomorrow. class with sally today was great! everytime i take a class with her, i find something i never had in me before. today after she told me i had a beautiful sasangasana, she helped me find a little more stretch in my ankles. the only problem with the 8 is i never have enough time to eat enough before class. luckily, i can ride my bike with no hands, so today i had a cup of grapes and blueberries as i pedalled along the mighty san lorenzo. i like to have a lot more food than that if i’m practising at noon. i’m pretty much on a schedule when it comes to eating. practising bikram yoga is more than just being able to physically do the poses, it’s what you eat, how you live. you need to take care of yourself all the time to have a good 90 minutes in the studio. when i figured this out, i devoured my favorite website—world’s healthiest foods! to make it on the list of the world’s healthiest foods, it has to be available at any market. there’s lots of healthy foods out there, but if you can’t buy it in idaho, it’s not making the list. i like that because it takes away the excuse “i can’t get good healthy food where i live.” it’s like the lowest common denominator, you know what i mean? this list is partially fucked though because you will not find chocolate, cookies, donuts, m&ms or any kind of sour candy on it, but whatevs. they have lots of great information for each food item that made the list. not just what nutrients are in it, but they also include what the nutrients do and any pertinent research information that may have been done. there’s lots of reading involved with this website and some of it is kinda long winded and often above my head medically-speaking, but it’s worth going through. because of their nutrient values, i try and eat strawberries, chard, romaine lettuce, beans and almonds every day. everything else is metaphoric gravy on top of that. since i started practising at noon, i prolly have a half pound of fruit and a half-cup of almonds in the three hours before, as well as a lot of water. after yoga, i can’t wait to go back to work so i can eat my lunch! i have a small wheat bread sandwich with mustard, chard, lettuce, smoked turkey and cheese plus never enough salt & pepper potato chips. i buy my bread at longs drugs because it’s only $2.50 a loaf. it’s sara lee, but it says it’s heart healthy. it’s kinda like a wonder bread version of wheat bread, but i’m poor, it’s what i can afford. [side note: my lettuce and chard this week were grown at the farm across the street!] in between lunch and dinner are snacks like oranges, lately, but i’m looking forward to plum season! i only have a toaster oven right now, so i’ve been living on roasted potatoes and carrots, with a small piece of chicken, or salmon if i can afford a piece that will feed me for two dinners. my ideal dinner is a huge plate of chard, romaine lettuce, cilantro, tomatoes and cooked beans. Mmmmmmm, that makes me so hungry thinking about it! i can’t afford a hot plate right now (i’m pathetic, tell me something i don’t know), but that’s what i’d rather be having. once i’m able to start eating beans daily, i think i’ll be able to cut out the daily dinner meat at dinner, but even when i do, i’m sure i will still crave chicken every two or three weeks at least that’s the way i was when those salads were my usual dinner. that reminds me, i read an article about hugh jackman’s diet while he was training for the new wolverine. he said he ate a ton of chicken and he apologized to vegetarians and said you could only eat so much tofu. he, coincidentally, did a daily 90 minute workout to get in shape for the movie. anyway, i don’t drink soda, coffee, tea, alcohol, okay, every once in a blue moon i have a soda, but not a cherry coke, something good like a hansens. i only drink water and most days i’ll also have an emergen-c mixed with a few drops of whatever fruit i might be eating when i’m mixing my one flavorful drink of the day. in case you’re wondering, yes, i eat the same thing almost every day! when you live alone, it’s cheaper on the wallet and it takes away a lot of the hassle associated with preparing your own food. is this way too much information, sweat friends? sorry to ramble, sometimes it’s just nice to talk to you and i can’t stop myself. hey, guess what happened to me this afternoon! i was walking up the driveway and i scared a little doe! she ran away, but stopped to pose for a picture. see you tomorrow, m

“legs come down with control.” quick, what pose is that? i guess there’s only one pose when your legs are coming down with control, so it shouldn’t be hard to figure out i’m talking about poorna-salabhasana. i always use the indian names when i refer to the poses, so it made me happy to see someone else doing the same on twitter yesterday. she said she needed to work on her trikanasana. what pose do you need to work on? i need to work on all of them! well, not really, but really i do, you know what i mean? i try and work hard in every pose, but sometimes i get winded towards the end and start slacking. that hasn’t been the case lately, today was another day of me giving 100% effort for 90 minutes! i hate to say it, my sweaty little vegan friends, but the biggest difference in my diet the last few weeks has been the addition of a small amount of chicken with my dinner. i’m honestly not doing any else that different. locally-grown strawberries are also recent to my diet but i’ve been eating out-of-town strawberries since march. i haven’t even had almonds in two weeks, that’s something i should be complaining about nutrient-wise, but i haven’t noticed a drop in my energy. i know some of you are vegans or raw food, i consider myself a non-practising vegan, in theory, i love eating only fruits and vegetables, but i need more than that! i blame it on my metabolism, forgive me. um, so what pose do you need to work on? ha ha. quickly, i will say, i need to start looking down at my knee and touch my forehead to said knee and stay there until it’s time to come out of the pose, coming out of the pose as we went into the pose. i can lock both knees and flex my foot towards my face, but that’s about all i ever do. okay, enough about me, what about you? does that sound like a line? i’m all scattered because i met someone kinda cool today! i told her i was obsessed with birds of paradise—that’s my favorite flower. i like them because they look like people to me. i’ve been photographing them for a couple of months now, but i still haven’t even shown you one of them! well, sweat friends, here’s one of my favorite flowers, enjoy, m

i love the fact that my friends know my routine so well. i showed up the 8 am bikram yoga class and i got razzed all kinds of ways—”you know it’s not 12?” that sort of thing makes me feel like one of the gang! it was nice to see some of my early morning friends today. early morning, i guess 8 isn’t really early, but it sure felt like it. since there were no classes beforehand, the room din’t get really warm until we were on the floor, so it was another day when i finished like gangbusters. i have to be honest, there is really something to be said for making yoga the first thing you do in the morning. i don’t really notice a difference in my flexibility, so much as the strength in my legs and knees. i know i’m not super great at either, but my dandayamana-dhanurasana and dandayamana-janushirasana both seem so much stronger when i haven’t been sitting at a desk for hours before. i guess that really means i just need to work harder and build endurance so i can lock both knees in the morning and at night. alright, time for me to rejoin the real world. here’s a beautiful sea of flowers for you to enjoy! ~m

8 am bikram yoga was a fun class today. i love all my teachers, but today’s has such a great pace and voice, she makes class a breeze! i finished so strong and energized, what a way to start my day. i love having classes like that, when you’re ready for every pose and giving it your 110%. i really should have stayed for the next class, my first was so high energy and one of my favorite bikram buddies was back from vacation! she practised at a studio in new york state and said there was no humidity. her klean kanteen got really hot. weird, i din’t think about that, mine is always really cold. i guess baby bottles wouldn’t happen if they were hot! alright heartbreakers, that’s enough yappin’ about bendin’ for a sunday. how about these flowers at the farmers market? see you tomorrow. ~m

even though it was mat-to-mat, that was prolly the coolest class i’ve had all week. i have to be honest, it’s so nice to practise around so many focused people. the girl on my right even smiled at the end of the floor series! but what was up with the chick in front who was doing her own version of bikram. does that ever happen in your class? someone who does the pose their own way? one of the many great things about bikram yoga is the group energy. if you’re gonna do your own thing, at least practise in the back of the room instead of the front where you set a bad example for others. that’s enough of my yapping, i was lounging here in the birdhouse when i smelled some smoke. i looked around, i thought it was a controlled burn and it was at first, but then it got out of hand! i had to run out and help with the water hose! not the first time i’ve had to be a firefighter here. check out the fire trucks. santa cruz is such a surf city, the fire trucks have a surf board. take that, h.b. bro! see you tomorrow s~m~okey

as you may remember, yesterday i sliced a big chunk of my finger off. right now, it feels like it was just cut, like, just this second. it hurts a lot, to say the least. i wasn’t sure how class would go, it’s duct taped up so i can’t bend it after the knuckle. you wanna know what? the pain in my finger made me forget all about the heat and i had a relatively strong class! granted, it was another small class and i had the middle row all to myself again. i can’t imagine practising at a studio with 100 people in class all at the same time. and for everyone going to teacher training this weekend, it’ll be more like 300! anyway, getting back to my practise, my mind was so focused on ignoring the pain in my finger, i pretty much ignored the heat too! there was one guy today who was totally out, during the standing series. during the floor series, i caught a look at him and his face looked like he was in shock. sadly, i know i’ve had the same look. we’ve all had classes where we just couldn’t go any further. i remember early in my practise when sometimes it felt like i couldn’t get a breath because the air felt so thick with humidity. who am i kidding, it still feels like that, but at least i can control my breath now. remember to breathe, that’s the important thing, it doesn’t matter if it’s yr first class, yr 21st class or yr 421st class, remember to breathe. okay heartbreakers, that’s enough from me, click and look at the big version of these flowers. i love the star shape created by the negative space of the petals! see you tomorrow! ~m