Question Answered

The comments ask: "not being someone who knows you personally, i've been wondering what the significance of your blog name/URL is. do you just like marmots, or...?"

Well, maybe I should have a FAQ. When I started this blog, it was a simple run-of-the-mill navel-gazing affair, and did not pertain exclusively to the yoga. When yoga became the focus, I just didn't have the energy to come up with a cute yoga blog name and create a new blog. Kind of a one-blog woman. Anyway, I named the blog for a line in my favorite movie of all time, The Big Lebowski, written and directed by the Coen Brothers, and starring Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, and Julianne Moore. To wit, the operative portion of the screenplay, formatted in play-style for the sake of . . . better formatting:

(One of them holds a string at the other end of which a small animal skitters excitedly about the floor.)

(The Dude looks curiously at the small, nattering animal.)

DUDE: Nice marmot.

(The man with the string scoops up the marmot and tosses it, screaming, into the bathtub.)

(The Dude screams.)

(The marmot splashes frantically, biting at the Dude in a frenzy of fearful aggression.)

I started to paste more of the screenplay here, but I thought some readers might be bored, and others might just want to rent it. HINT!!! NOTE: The animal in the actual film was not a marmot. This is understandable, since they are not normally domesticated (it may, in fact, be illegal.) They used a ferret, which is as it should be, because this makes the Dude's line funny. I, however, have seen actual marmots in an actual national park. They were completely unconcerned by human presence at the time, and so the encounter was rather up-close and personal.

And in case you are saying to yourself: "What a freak! 'The Big Lebowski' wasn't all that great of a movie...this blogger chick is off her nut!" Well, I don't dispute that I may be off my nut, however I'm not alone.

Well, my life is pretty busy. I am sure to stay at my office job 20 hours a week through the end of the year, while the departure of one hot yoga teacher from two of the studios I teach for means I'll now be teaching 8 classes a week! I know my life has changed because I find two things very, very exciting:
1. Getting home before 10:00 at night. Actually coming home anytime if I get to spend more than 20 minutes there.
2. NOT having any calls/messages on my cell phone when I pick it up after a class, etc.
Used to be I was always a bit disappointed if no one called me. No more!

Yesterday and the day before, I took an Advanced Bikram Series clinic at Bikram Yoga of Bellevue. It was actually preparation for the regional Bikram yoga competition at the beginning of next month, so most participants were planning to compete, while I'm not. I was, by far, the least flexible person in the room. So at one point, I spent a lot of time in half-lotus, spectating (because I can't do full lotus.) The class was pretty cool, though. Some of it I was familiar with because of my Barkan training. The teacher was very good. The way they teach the class is pretty snappy, though. I mean, you flow into and out of the postures, but it's awfully fast--guess it has to be because there's nominally 84 poses, if you can get into all of them. It was good, though--knowing or refreshing my memory on some of the advanced poses will enrich my teaching for advanced students in my classes. I did spend a lot of time wrestling with my ego/negative self-talk about not being able to do these poses, and not practicing Bikram 5-6 times a week, but honestly it would months or maybe years of intensive practice to get my hips as open as this instructor and some of the students in this class. I liked the instructor, though--flown in special from NorCal. And by the end of the second day (each day was about 2.5 hours long,) I realized being the least flexible person in the room was a true gift--it gave me the perspective of a beginner in the beginning hot yoga class--not being able to get into all the postures, confused by a lot of the grips, feeling a bit left out or unworthy... So this was very good. Gotta keep the ego in check. The instructor was asking me when I went to teacher training, where I was teaching and you know me, I just innocently flapped my jaw and suddenly I was getting the third degree about Jimmy. In confidential tone, "You know he's not *certified*, right?" And then wanted to know why I'd chosen that training. So, the two most salient points which in my conciliatory, defensive response I forgot to name, I shall now unload on you:
1. It's that 10-page agreement that's so restrictive I'd never be able to make a living and keep it. Plus the way most Bikram-approved studios around here are, they'd never hire me because I wasn't personally groomed at their studios.
and
2. My training isn't certified by Bikram, but Bikram's not certified according to the rest of the yoga world. And everyone else does have more studios.

But overall, a great experience. Good teacher; she means well, she just drank the Kool-Aid. Nice studio, too--tiled showers with phat water pressure. :) Could have been vacuumed a bit better in the yoga room itself, though... Today I sat next to a woman around the corner at Bellevue Whole Foods who asked me where she should go from Rodney Yee's Slow Burn yoga DVD and I sent her their way. (The studio's way--this particular teacher is flying home before too long.)

Today was the first day I worked the teaching schedule for my Thursdays going forward--9:30 Redmond and 4:30 Seattle. After my first class, Alabam and I went running along the river in Redmond. It finally stopped raining! And the sun even shone on our backs on our way back to her office. Tonight, I stayed at the studio to take the 6:30 class (not Bikram) and it was AWESOME. The teacher asked us at the beginning if there was anything we wanted to focus on and when no one said anything, I piped up "Hip openers?" and so it was in this class, I met the pose I'd been looking for my whole life. Or at least, for the last five years. Every time I'm in Savasana (Corpse Pose,) I want two someones to put one of their feet on my two hipbones and lean some of their weight, to open my hips. This pose, a variation of Frog, with belly facing downward, knees rotated out and feet lifted, felt just like that, only it was gravity and the floor opening my hips. I could have stayed there all night, and had an emotional release when I did come out. Oooh, I want to do it every day. I felt just lovely as I left class. I have very tight hips and I just want them to... open. There's a link here that I haven't quite anatomically decoded, because when my hips are really REALLY open, like at training or one mind-blowing Vinyasa class from Krista, the ridges in my lower back just melt and my back is, to borrow from this teacher this evening, buttery!