Bring it on down to Yoga Town

Just imagine the post title being sung by a bendy, exuberant Justin Timberlake a la SNL skits of yore. You really can't un-think it after that.

My introduction to yoga was about fifteen years ago at the Asheville, NC YMCA - I took a weekly flow class that was sometimes taught by a friend-of-a-friend. A few years later, after a move to the YWCA, I took a few classes there, though not with the same regularity.

Then came the long yoga drought of moving to Portland, going to the 24-Hour Fitness for a bit (which had their brand of yoga, but which also was a weirdly intense meat market for affluent, white, hetero singletons, so no thanks), moving into our home, setting up a home gym, getting hit by a car, rehabbing at the neighborhood gym (which also offers yoga, but my balance was complete shit for a very long time) and then finally. YouTube.

It's the perfect set up for me - I can do yoga any time I have a moment at home and the floor is reasonably clean. I can supine twist to my heart's content without fear of rogue flatulence. I'm not surreptitiously peering at other people, using their bendiness as a measuring stick against my own.

We live in a time of Ought to Know Better. We carry devices in our pockets that can answer just about any question we have. We know what needs to be done to maintain a happy, healthy body/mind/etc. But we still don't. And that's OK. It can take a while to find the perfect combination of accessibility, gear, adaptability, and synchronicity to get a fitness regime settled in. I think yoga might be That Thing for me.

This revelation didn't strike me over night. I'd say it took about three years.

It started with me just wanting to fall asleep more quickly. I'd been starting to use ASMR videos to knock myself out under a cascade of delicious tingles, but it felt like I could be doing more to get settled for sleep. I pulled up a quick search on "bed time yoga routines" and got two videos: one from Sara Beth Yoga, and one from Yoga with Adriene.

Sarah Beth Yoga's 15 minute bedtime yoga practice

Yoga with Adriene's 30 minute bedtime yoga practice

Over time, I expanded my cherry-picking practice to include their videos for spinal health, anxiety, bad moods, digestion... there's really quite an impressive library on both channels. Adriene has also been doing 30/1-day challenges since at least 2015.

Last January, I diligently took part in her "Yoga Camp" 30 day program until the night of the 14th. As part of my annual "birthweek" celebrations, I managed to get completely soused on several forms of alcohol during an "Asian Bar Crawl" (one Asian going to a few bars, not a survey of Asian bars). That night after making it safely home, I sprinted down the stairs in my birthday suit (as it were) to enter in my water intake for the day. Or at least I tried to run down those stairs. Sadly, my leg-eye coordination was impaired and I spectacularly cartoon slipped and landed full force onto my tailbone. 

So I stopped doing yoga for a bit. Again. The pain was stunning and incredibly long lived.

Eventually, over the course of the last year, I've come back to a semi-regular yoga practice. I just finished day 18 of Adriene's new "Yoga Revolution" practice this morning. The program is starting to get to the "you probably won't be able to do this, but just breathe through the discomfort" bits. There might have been swearing. But I'm doing it. And I feel fantastic.

Year of Failure, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying, and Love (the) Bomb(ing)

Dr Strangelove. Photograph: The Ronald Grant Archive

Well, then.

:blows dust off of this corner of the internet:

Five-ish years seems like a good amount of time to let the old blog lie fallow. Time to overturn the cold, crusty, neglected bit of land and see what's been composting under here.

As is my wont, I've entered into the "grace period" of my New Year's Resolution (NYR) process. Most folks either make resolutions, or obstinately refuse to do so. My middle-ground compromise is to allow for a two-week period of introspection leading up to the week-long bacchanalia of my birth-week, followed by a delayed NYR declaration.

One NYR that is already pretty firm is to resume posting to this blog. I've changed the concept from "a la Minna" to "Year of Failure" for both obvious and self-indulgently more obscure reasons.

It became rather quickly apparent that while I can draw to some degree, I really don't enjoy it. So... that sort of stopped happening before it really started. Over the years as momentum and entropy froze this blog into place, another thing became more and more apparent: I hate to fail.

I hate to fail so much that I don't do... anything.

Early on in life, some things came very easily to me. I was not a child prodigy at any one thing like many of my contemporaries (someday, I'll need to explore this whole "growing up Chinese American in the Midwest" thing more thoroughly, when the Abyss maybe doesn't stare back quite so pointedly) but things weren't necessarily all that difficult, either.

And so I was fairly proficient at many things - Jill of All Trades, Mistress of None. And I was OK with that.

In fact, I've drifted through most of my life being Generally OK with Things. Sure, there's been friction and pointy bits, and maybe a wee pinch of conflict here and there, but nothing earth-shattering. Nothing that would force significant change or growth. Then 2016 happened.

Holy shit, y'all.

Plenty of folks have processed all the WTF that went down in 2016 on a global scale (my favorite is Charlie Brooker's 2016 Wipe, which I highly, highly recommend. It will make you feel bad, and then it will make you feel better. Sort of all at the same time.). More locally, I had to deal with a metric ton of WTF at work. The scope, depth, breadth, and complicated stench of all the shit that went down was such that I ended up developing a fairly rigorous list of coping mechanisms just to be able to sleep at night:

• ASMR videos (which I had already been doing since 2013 when This American Life introduced me to the concept, but which became a near crutch in 2016)
• Binaural Beats videos (similar to ASMR, but more wahwahwahwah-y? See also solfeggio frequencies. <-- this link actually debunks SF's, but I still zone out to them - I'm OK with not having my DNA repaired.)
• regular yoga practice (heyo!)
• acupuncture (thanks to POCA, which is my favorite acronym of 2016)

So yeah. I didn't try to do anything and stuff still went South. So... why not venture forth instead?

I've been sitting on this draft for a few days now, and in that time I've released my motto for 2017. For the record, 2015 was "You Do You" and 2016 was "You Do the Best You". 2017 is gonna be "Disconnect, then Reconnect". Basically I'm focusing on turning it off and then on again.

To that end, one of the things I'm resetting is this blog. I intend to use "Year of Failure" to document all the things I'm going to try this year - things that I keep meaning to do, but don't. Things are outside of my comfort zone. Things at which I will most likely suck. But I'm going to do them anyway. And then I'm going to write about it on this blog. Could be the first thing I fail at is blogging. But I should maybe at least try first.

So here we go in three.... two.... one.... *bzzt*.

à la Aardman

Rough sketch, rougher cell phone pic. The Mister thinks this looks like a dude. I think it has rather Muppet-ish tendencies.

Gathering my sources

(photo from biography page on Helen Meany @ HickokSports.com)

Still rambling about the web looking at source photos. So far the water-based athletes are closest to what I'm looking for - synchronized swimmers and divers hit some amazing poses! Gymnasts and skydivers just look way too intense.

Proto-types: Goodfellow Progenitor

This was my first draft for a label design that eventually became Arcana's Professor T.S. Goodfellow Winter Correctives (they're all cheesecake-y and delicious, but I highly recommend the Ooomph for the coffee-obsessed). Our mad scientist started off as a younger, more love-centric fellow before taking on an older, winterier (today, it's a word) mien.

The Moebius tribute drawing crawls along slowly. Turns out I need to go gaze upon some source photos of trampoliners and sky divers to get this one right!

Old Stuff While I Make Some New Stuff

I went through a postcard phase a few years ago... will probably start another one soon. This one was for my mother, who is named after the plum flower.

Random Resolve

I like to make my resolutions on my own time.
This blog is part of the "make more stuff" bullet point that's been hovering out there in the middle distance since autumn.

I've been inexplicably bereft with regards to the passing of Moebius*, which makes no sense - I didn't even know he was still alive. I think rather I'm mourning the middle-to-high-school-aged me that thought I could be Moebius someday. I think I'll start with doing some work to remember him.

Until then (and, really, who knows how long that will be... "on my own time" as it were) please to enjoy a little something I sketched up for a friend's wedding many years ago (they are still happily married, ergo, my art ensures domestic bliss).



*Please go to Monster Brains to see an amazing compilation of Moebius's work.