When it comes to “Tony & Joy”, I can’t figure out whether we nullify each other or if we have found balance.
I’d like to think balance however, that would entail both of us feeling supported while being supportive, equal and opposite, bending and stretching simultaneously.
When I think of us, I can see that we each hold different pieces of the puzzle to make the picture whole but it’s like we both put the pieces of the puzzle on at the same time, or sit and look at the incomplete picture at the same time rather than taking turns.
Instead of balance we go all out stretching in the same direction (instead of equal and opposite). We all know in yoga what happens when you do such things… You fall over or you hurt yourself.
Physical
Tony is naturally flexible and needs to work on strength, Joy is naturally strong and needs to work on flexibility.
Eyesight – Tony is short sighted, Joy is long sighted.
When fat – Tony is bottom heavy, Joy is top heavy.
Tony is tall, Joy is short.
Tony is naturally skinny, Joy is naturally chunky.
Mental
Tony is the realist, Joy is the idealist.
Vision – Tony will think of a year to 10 years from now whereas Joy will think of the next 5 mins – 1 hour).
Tony’s interests lie in history, technology, cars, rockets and finance. Joy likes biology, psychology, animals, dance and nature.
Tony thinks, Joy feels.
Horoscope
Astrology: Tony is Leo, Joy is Sagittarius
Mayan: Tony is a Blue Storm and Joy is a Yellow Sun
Yes, you heard it. Our studio is trying out something different and playing music while we do our yoga class. Unfortunately we missed the class where they had a live guitarist playing during the class. Shame ’cause that would have been a trip! I wanted to see how a guitarist and his guitar coped in the heat and humidity and hear what his musical interpretation of the series would sound like. Oh well, it wasn’t to be!
We did however, try a music class on the weekend just passed where the dialogue was done over some tunes playing and well, the long and short of it is that at this point, we enjoy the normal classes better!
I had mixed feelings about it because it wasn’t what I expected but done well it would be a pretty fun class to go to.
So when you think yoga plus music, it doesn’t sound too bad right? I’m thinking yoga music would be chanting, chimes, bamboo flutes, birds tweeting, ocean waves, you know all those meditation stress relief type tunes? Something like this:
or this:
You don’t have to listen to it all but you get the drift of what I was expecting right? I figured, it would probably make the class more relaxing or meditative.
OK so it wasn’t like that at all. It was instead yoga to a mix of Popular Music.
Some songs we knew, some we didn’t. Things like Prince’s “Purple Rain” (which we did during wind removing pose and had me imagining my sweat turning purple, as well as using my strength to stop myself from singing “Purple Rain! Puu-urple Rain!” out loud and since it was wind removing pose, my thoughts wandered over to “Hey, if I farted right now, nobody would hear anything!”), Passenger’s “Let Her Go” (which had both Tony and I rolling our eyes) and John Legend’s “All Of Me” (Really? More eye rolling from me because the song doesn’t make me think of love, just a model marrying a successful musician who is completely infatuated with her and would do anything for her. Cynical much? Hmmm). Regardless, this isn’t supposed to be the type of things you’re thinking of while doing yoga!
I did like Massive Attack’s “Teardrop” when it played during Pranayama Breathing.
I love that song so much I ended up with it stuck in my head for the next 2 days!! It’s the beat that replicates a human heart beat that I love. I definitely had a smile on my face during breathing with this song on. Did I mention? I LOVED it!
And when a cover version of Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror” played, both Tony and I got goosebumps “I’m gonna make a change, for once in my life….”. Well, isn’t this why we all do yoga? To make that change? “Gonna feel real good, gonna make a difference, gonna make it riiiiiiiiiiiiight”.
I found if I didn’t know the songs, it was easier to do the poses because there were no compulsions to sing, dance , sway along, cry or cringe to those songs. If I knew the song, then I’d have to fight all those compulsions and when there are words, it puts pictures into my head of all the things that relate to it and I end up thinking about those things instead of being present in the room doing the posture.
Also sometimes the music would be loud and I wouldn’t be able to hear anything the teacher was saying. And there were many times the teacher would abruptly change the song because she didn’t think it suited the posture we were in and I actually found the abrupt changes to songs, would do the same for my focus.
What I liked were those moments of clarity where through the noise, I was able to focus and concentrate so much that it was just me, the mirror, the pose. When there is a lot of noise, there’s a lot more energy you have to put into concentrating and focusing so that moment of clarity and focus, when it happens, no matter how short lived, is much more appreciated than in a normal class when there’s nothing to distract you but yourself. Also the class flew by much faster than it had ever done before.
Would we go again? Peut-être
I think in time they’d be able to build quite a nice soundtrack to the entire series and it would make it a very fun class to go to.
For example, can you imagine during full locust pose, Earth, Wind & Fire’s “Let’s Groove ” was playing? I swear if I was a teacher instead of saying “LIFT! Head, body, legs, come up like a 747 taking off ” I’d be singing, “Just moooooove yourself and gliiiiide like a 747 and loooooooose yourself in the sky among the clouds in the heavens.” This is probably why I’m not a teacher ’cause I’d turn the entire series into a Karaoke session.
Now that I think about it, I’d probably play Massive Attack’s “Teardrop” during standing bow (to regulate heart beat at a time when it’ll start pumping pretty hard) and I’d put PM Dawn’s “Die Without You” as the breathing song – It’s got ample intro for set up and then has clicking to make it easy to count the breathing and as for the words, yeah, I’d say you would die without breathing!
It’ll take a lot of thought, effort and preparation to get the music matching this entire series for 1.5 hours but when the song matches the posture (like “Teardrop” during breathing) it’s a pretty powerful experience.
Thinking now specifically about the Bikram Yoga series of postures, how often would you consider the lower back, butt and hamstrings get used?
a) None of the time
b) Some of the time (less than half the series)
c) Most of the time (more than half the series)
d) All the time
So by now you would know (because I keep complaining about it. Sorry, it’s a real pain in the butt. Literally!) that I’ve had pain, since February in my buttock.
Only in the last few weeks did it start causing me so much grief that I had to see a Physio and I only went to the Physio last week. So far so good, I’ve been taking anti-inflammatory drugs and the Physio is treating me with massage and exercises for an inflamed sacroiliac joint. It does however mean that the pain which was concentrated in that joint has now been distributed to the lower back, butt and thigh as well, particularly the ITB and hamstring. I’m even getting pain in my calf now.
This means I can pretty much feel every single time my lower back gets used and when my hamstring and my butt get used for certain postures… because it all hurts. I don’t think there is one posture that I do now without hurting at all, other than savasana. So the answer to my question is D) All the time.
Which leads me to something else I’ve noticed which is quite interesting! The teachers get all corrective on you when you tell them you have pain. They certainly have on me. There’s not one class I’ve been to in the last week where they didn’t call me out on something.
“Joy, suck your stomach in more, MORE, MORE… This is why you have pain!”
“Joy, MORE compression!”
“Joy, sit back more, MORE, now lift your chest higher, sit deeper, back… more, MORE”
“Joy, hip down more, now more forward, this is why you’re having problems, no, more down, down, down, MORE”
WTF? I was supposed to be taking it easy and backing off! What’s with this “JOY… blah blah.. MORE” business? And why have they all chosen different postures to correct? Am I really doing all those postures incorrectly?
Short answer… Yes. Add all the corrections I got to my physical pain and I pretty much have to pretend I’ve just started in order to cope with my regression. Humility is the name of this game.
My half moon pose is now practically upright. Anything to do with head to knee or involves a forward bend has my knee bent a lot, otherwise I’m in pain. I’m practically squatting in Padahastasana. Anything that requires me to push my hips forward causes some pain (half moon back bend, camel, fixed firm, triangle, tree). Leg raises hurt (locust, full locust, bow). All the one leg balancing postures cause pain to the hamstring of the standing leg (Standing head to knee, standing bow, balancing stick). Need I say more? I’m in pain for the entire series. Why wouldn’t I be? I’m in pain when I’m just sitting down!
If ever I thought I was doing well and improving in yoga, that bubble has long been popped. I am definitely back to square one.
There is a positive to all of this. I can only improve from here!
“Injury is a great teacher, most often arising from patterns and habits of movement developed over long periods of time. Injuries awaken us to these patterns–and to new ways of moving and being within our body.” Yoga International
I went to the Physio today. The first time ever I’ve been to a physio. I always thought they were reserved for athletes you know, long distance runners, swimmers, triathletes…. people who use their bodies and push beyond what we “normal” people do.
When doing yoga, I always saw being in that room like:
a) having a massage
b) sitting in a sauna
c) stretching muscles all over to build mobility and strength
all at the same time. Sounds pleasant doesn’t it? Not what athlete’s do…. which is push and Push and PUSH beyond their perceived limits…
…oh…
hmmmmm…..
2 years and 4 months in, both of us have had to see a Physio. Tones had to go for his shoulder/neck and me? MY PAIN IN THE BUTT!!!
I think the doctors thought I was crazy about complaining about my pain in my butt ’cause they were so reluctant to write me a letter to send me to the physio.
“Where is the pain?”
“INSIDE” that was the most descriptive I could get because no amount of pushing anything on my gluteus maximus was doing anything at all. “Do you feel pain there?” as they push various sections of my butt… “NO.”
“There?”
“NO”
“There?”
“NO…..It’s INSIDE!”
They checked rotation, I got my hip x-rayed and everything was normal and yet I kept having so much pain that I couldn’t actually sit down for more than 30 mins without wriggling around and having to lift my left buttock off the seat (which Tony only confirmed to me last night, looks like I keep lifting my butt to fart. Do you know I’ve been doing this in public for the last 3 months?!!!)
He does this all the time, he’ll let me continue to have massive green chunks in my teeth or makeup running down my face as well because… he doesn’t notice. “Why didn’t you tell me I look like a panda?” will get the answer “because I thought that’s how you wanted to do your make up”….. I tell you, it’s a lesson in humility (or humiliation) for me, every day I’m out in public with him and trust him to be my mirror.
But I digress, back to my butt. It’s gotten worse and affected my practice a lot. There are now many postures I can’t do without being in a LOT of pain so I finally went to the Physio.
Guess what? After initial assessment and testing my muscles etc, she thought it was one thing (where my hamstring connects to my sit bone ’cause this is where I felt pain and mostly kept pointing to) and then only after actually massaging tissue did she realise it was something completely different.
Turns out my hamstring is overcompensating for my relatively immobile back which is why my leg hurts from my butt to my knee. However, that was symptomatic pain. The centre of pain and tenderness, the root cause of the pain is actually in the sacroiliac region. Which is… you got it… INSIDE!!! So deep inside, it’s difficult to explain when you don’t know your own anatomy!
My left side muscles are much weaker than my right side which is why I felt it so much on the left side and felt nothing on my right. Now I have to back off completely on any posture that causes my leg pain, until I improve the mobility in my back.
So looking back on my last post…. I evidently do not know the difference between strain and pain. I’ve always had a very high pain threshold and consider myself to be a bit of a pussy if I give up when I feel pain. You know, if I can cry or scream then it doesn’t really hurt.. ’cause when it really hurts there’s no more energy to make sounds because all focus goes towards numbing the pain? Yup, it has to be pretty damned severe before I’ll stop and look where this attitude gets me!
NOWHERE or Backwards!! Do I know where my limits are? Obviously not until I have to go to a Physio and they tell me that I’ve been pushing too hard and other parts of my body are compensating (to their detriment) to get me where I think I can be.
This is what you call pride, impatience and unrealistic expectations. And that sentence is what you call beating myself up for expecting and wanting more for myself NOW. Ahhh where is the balance? 2 years of yoga and I’m pushing to be a contortionist and getting angry at myself for not being able to do things I “should” be able to do. Well… as many times as I listen to Bob Proctor, it still hasn’t clicked that “There is no should!!!”
In a world of immediate gratification, acceptance of what is now and patience for the time that it actually takes for progress or manifestation of an idea to occur, is a very very valuable lesson.
For not learning that lesson earlier, I now have to look like a numpty in yoga class doing baby stretches instead of the normal things until I can get back to being normal. I now have to back off on every posture I feel any pain in ie, any time I feel any twinge of anything in my butt or leg and say “I can do more” I’m not allowed to unless I want to aggravate my condition further. Considering simply sitting already causes me pain, this will be quite interesting!
It could have been worse. Apparently if it were actually my hamstring injured it would have been pretty bad. So I shall count myself lucky, work on my back mobility, work on my left leg strength, keep getting treatments and forget about what I think I “should” be doing and just do what I can actually do without pain.
Patience they say, is a virtue. To all those people who perceive me as one of the most patient people they know… my pain in the butt has just proven otherwise and my journey back to “normal” will be testing my patience all the way.
Just the thought of this is already making me want to cry. I’ve just realised that pain doesn’t make me cry but having to take it easy and NOT push myself does!!
As for humility, it’s a new lesson for me too. Self deprecation I do quite well but this is not humility.
“True humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less.” ― C.S. Lewis
Ergo I must learn to forgo the ego unless I want to be an a-hole! “There is no I in TEAM!”
I have never been grateful for having awesome skin but I’ve realised that more than ever, now is the time to be grateful.
a) because of my age
b) because more than ever people are using microdermabrasion, miracle creams, lotions, make up and foundations to cover up dryness, wrinkles and blemishes so they look like they’ve been photoshopped and I haven’t yet had to go there. Phew! and
c) because I have awesome skin now that I am grateful for!
Sure I put make up on for special occasions but other than that, my daily skin routine is to wash with facewash, dry and then put moisturiser on. Finito!
For my body, it’s just wash with bodywash. If I have time, I’ll moisturise just my arms and legs but this will probably happen only once a month.
So when people see me they just assume that I’ve always had good skin because I’m Asian. I know it’s what they think ’cause many people have said it.
This reasoning also extends to being skinny and getting good grades at school… because you’re Asian. And you know what? It really annoys me to hear it. Have you seen the number of Asians out there with bad skin? And are fat? And yes, there are really really stupid Asians out there too.
I’ve had to work hard to have good skin thank you very much and also work hard to keep the weight off! And I’m not really smart, I’m just good at regurgitating the answers you want to hear. So it does irk me when people put my healthy skin or slimness down to genetics or luck especially knowing the following:
My mum told me that as babies, me and my siblings all had rashes and eczema. I wasn’t old enough to remember mine but I remember my sister having lots of red bumps all over her body when she was little.
I remember as a child, from around the age of 3 (which is as far as I can consciously remember), all the way through to my teenage years, my fingers would get itchy and when I’d scratch them, they would become red, bumpy and then small bubbles would form on them. These bubbles were tiny blisters which would form on the sides of my fingers and then merge with each other to become bigger blisters which would at first itch but then become really sore when they burst. Then the skin would start hardening and peeling and the process would start all over again.
At one stage, I formed blisters on my legs. They were ugly bubbles of water that would grow quite large (1-2 cm diameter) and be itchy on my shins and thighs. Again, if several formed close to each other, they’d eventually merge together to become one large bubble. I’d usually have at least one big bubble on each leg. This happened in my younger years, up to about 4-5 years old. I remember eating Minties and then trying to stick the wrappers on my legs to cover the bubbles. The bubbles would be so big that sometimes the Minties wrappers would barely cover them.
When I was about 6 years old, I burned myself on the lid of a rice cooker. To warm up day-old rice, I had to pour it into the rice cooker just as the cooker had finished cooking the new rice. This was one of the regular tasks my parents set me to do but I was too short to reach the lid of the cooker on the counter without going on my tippy tippy toes or pushing a chair to the cupboard and climbing on to it.
On this day, I just stood on my toes and reached the lid but the steam had sucked the lid on tighter than usual and the angle was too difficult to lift it. When I finally managed to jerk the lid off, it tilted and burned and stuck to the entire width of my inner right arm. It took me what felt like an agonising eternity to get the lid off my arm but I managed it and put the rice in the pot, closed the lid and wrapped my arm in a tea towel.
I didn’t tell my parents about it because I thought I’d get in trouble. I used to get in trouble for everything.
I managed to hide my burnt arm from my parents for a day or two. Until I was playing, my sleeve rolled up and my dad saw my arm, freaked out and asked me what it was. I responded, “Mosquito bites” (because most of my mosquito bites would be very red, swollen and would form little blisters on them). Remember, I was 6 so it seemed perfectly feasible to me to explain it away as mosquito bites. I could see the panic in his face “No it’s not! What did you do? Did you burn yourself?!” I stared at him blankly.
He called to my mother, who was a nurse and asked her what it was. She took a look and responded “Looks like a burn to me.” He quickly turns to me and says “Quick! Run it under some cold water!”
My mother responds, “Eh! That’s not going to help. It’s not a new burn, that’s an old one, it’s already started blistering. She probably did that yesterday.”
My dad says, “Yesterday? When? Why didn’t you tell me?” and I replied, “Because you’d just put Vicks on it.” He always put Vicks on everything that was red and swollen (insect stings, mosquito bites, bumps on the head) and he’d rub Vicks all over us every time we got sick. Funny enough, at that age, I’d already drawn the conclusion that Vicks didn’t fix anything and it certainly wasn’t going to fix my burn.
My mum looked at my arm and says “Well, it’s your fault for burning yourself and not telling anyone about it. Now you’ll just have to leave it and let it sort itself out. You’ll end up with a big scar on your arm but that will remind you not to do anything stupid like that ever again.”
Over days, I remember the blisters forming, getting bigger and merging together into one huge one which my mother said I shouldn’t pop because if I did, the skin would turn loose and it would turn into the worst scar ever. I was so scared that I’d have some ugly, bumpy arm that I balanced this bubble of water on my arm all day and would wake up in the middle of the night just to check that I’d kept my inner arm facing up all night.
I managed this for a few days, even at school, until, one morning I woke up, my Ragedy Anne doll’s leg was stained and my arm had hanging off it the loose skin of a popped giant blister, raw red underneath. Beautiful.
During my teens, I got a lot of pimples on my face and back. So many in fact that I used to pick them while I studied and I would want them to go away so much, I’d wash my face with cleanser and toner twice a day and not put the moisturiser on because my face was always so oily. My mum would tell me over and over that if I picked my pimples they would scar and form craters all over my face. It didn’t stop me! I’d pick my pimples until they bled and then would put toothpaste or alcoholic toner on them until they stung like crazy.
When I was a teenager all the way through adulthood, I got these pimply bumps / rashes on my arms and back and a little bit on my face. I looked it up and this is what it is Keratosis Pilaris. I used to scrub these with a pumice stone (not my face just my arms) until they started bleeding and scabbing! I wanted them to go away and thought I could scrub them off… I obviously scrubbed too hard.
And now for the piece de resistance. I grew up on a leper colony. Although born in Australia, my mum sent me to live with her mother on Culion Island in the Philippines, an established leper colony. I lived there since I was 6 months old through to the age of 4 years old. My grandfather had leprosy and so did my Uncle. Everyone on that island was either a leper or related to one. So I was exposed to contracting skin diseases that don’t even exist in the Western world!
So why then do people assume I have good skin and have ALWAYS had good skin? Because they don’t see the pimples, I don’t have leprosy and I don’t have bumps all over my arms and cheeks and back anymore and most importantly, they don’t see the scars or any evidence of what was before.
So is it genes? Well, no, just check out my mum and you’ll see all her scars from childhood still on her legs and if it were genetic, I wouldn’t have suffered from all those ailments from childhood to adulthood and then just stopped all of a sudden.
So what is it? Pretty simple…. it’s my diet and exercise.
I am very big on health and on up-keeping my body (because it’s my one and only in this lifetime). Cleaning it inside as well as out, fueling it well by consuming nutrient rich food, drinking a lot of water, avoiding alcohol, avoiding drugs and avoiding smoking and then going to Bikram Yoga as much as possible is pretty much what I do every day to keep the weight off and have good skin.
I put a lot of effort into maintaining the inside of my body and now it shows on the only thing people can see on the outside, my skin.
I also don’t put anything on my skin to clog my pores, so I let it keep breathing and doing its thing each and every day.
So you know what’s good about my skin not being a result of genetics, upbringing or being Asian? It means, you can get yours healthy too!!!
If you want healthy skin, all you need to do is eat the food that will help your body to heal and repair itself. Drink a lot of water and then go sweat the crap out of it in some Bikram Yoga classes!! After 6 months to a year of doing this, everyone will think your skin’s been that way forever and you’ll start getting the “but you’ve always had good skin” comment too.
This is a photo I shared 2 years ago. The photos are of the exact same section of my right calf / shin. As you can see, I haven’t always had good skin!!
Top: Skin before any yoga classes Left Bottom: Skin after a few yoga sessions Right Bottom: Skin after 100 classes (no lotion used before any of the pictures were taken)
Tony & Joy 