Asana 2 - Mountain Pose

(Tadasana)


Standing tall in Tadasana, ready to begin the journey.

My feet are firmly planted. Toes spread wide. Energy is drawn upwards from a solid foundation, straight to the crown of my head.

I take Mountain Pose with my palms facing forward, opening my shoulder girdle and heart-space. Symbolically opening myself to a receptive frame of mind.

Tadasana is proud.
Tadasana is confident.
Tadasana is strong.

Chest lifted and shoulders relaxed.
Nothing can stand in my way.

With my eyes on the horizon I see and embrace the road ahead.

Asana 1- Mountain Pose with Salutation Seal

(Tadasana with Anjali Mudra)

A traditional beginning pose, common to many Sun Salutation sequences.

The Anjali Mudra is a centring and honouring seal. The hands are pressed together before the heart, symbolizing unity and wholeness. A joining of my active, energetic need to pound out 2000 words in a day to my creative muse, receptive to the influx and shaping of new ideas.

Anjali mudra is a recognition of the divine spark of creativity in each one of us. It is about remembering to be peaceful in the midst of stress and centred in the midst of chaos, remembering that we are all wonderful wellsprings of creativity with fabulous stories to tell, and remembering that we are all in this together.

When I perform Anjali Mudra I am saluting myself, the new day, and Wrimos everywhere who are partaking of this journey with me.

I honour the place in you in which the entire universe dwells.
I honour the place in you which is of Love, of Truth, of Light and of Peace.
I honour the place in me in which the entire universe dwells.
I honour the place in me which is of Love, of Truth, of Light and of Peace.
When you are in that place in you and I am in that place in me, we are one.

Whoever and wherever you are attempting NaNoWriMo this year, I salute you!

NaNoWriMo SunSal

I mentioned in my previous post that daily yoga practice will be an integral part of my NaNoWriMo experience.

I have practiced yoga for many years and taught yoga for three, but, when I stopped teaching last January, I needed to take a break from the practice. Now it's time for me to get back into it and I feel that the energy of NaNoWriMo is exactly what I need to get going again. Therefore, I have developed a Sun Salutation sequence to practice throughout the month of November which is intricately linked to my NaNo quest.

Sun Salutations are common to most (if not all) Hatha yoga practices. They are a series of asanas (poses) executed in a flowing sequence, traditionally performed to greet the new day. (I personally have seldom practiced yoga first thing in the morning but, since my NaNo regime also involves hauling myself out of bed considerably earlier than I have been rising in recent months, I have decided to give greeting the new day with a Sun Salutation a try.)

The sequence I have designed includes 20 asanas as follows:

NaNoWriMo Sun Salutation:

1. Mountain Pose (Tadasana) with Salutation Seal (Anjali Mudra)
2. Mountain Pose (Tadasana)
3. Extended Mountain Pose (Urdhva Hastasana)
4. Thunderbolt, hands to thighs (Utkatasana)
5. Halfway Lift (Urdhva Mukha Uttanasana)
6. Forward Fold (Uttanasana)
7. Standing Lunge
8. Downward Facing Dog (Adho Mukha Svanasana)
9. Plank Pose (Dandasana)
10. Crocodile (Chaturanga Dandasana)
11. Upward Facing Dog (Urdvha Mukha Svanasana)
12. Downward Facing Dog (Adho Mukha Svanasana)
13. Standing Lunge
14. Twisted Lunge
15. Standing Lunge
16. Forward Fold (Uttanasana)
17. Halfway Lift (Urdhva Mukha Uttanasana)
18. Thunderbolt (Utkatasana)
19. Extended Mountain Pose (Urdhva Hastasana)
20. Mountain Pose (Tadasana)

For readers who are familiar with Sun Salutation sequences: Yes. This one is a bit long. The reason for this is one of the sequence's connections to my NaNo quest.

My goal is to write 2000 words per day. This would get me to my 50K project goal five days before the end of November. (What can I say? I'm an over-achiever. That, and 2000 is a nice round number and 1667 not so easy to work with.) If I perform my Sun Salutation sequence 10 times each day (5 times each side) I will be executing 200 asanas per day. Each execution of an asana therefore represents ten words that I will write that day. It's my own little "word made flesh" warm-up and pep rally for each day.

The sun salutation poses have such wonderful connections to the creative writing process and in particular the NaNo writing process which I will be following in November. I'll blog about each pose separately, with photos and my thoughts on how they relate to NaNoWriMo, but before I do that, the obligatory disclaimer:

The sequence of poses I have listed in this post and will be describing in subsequent posts was developed for my own personal use. There are no intellectual property rights governing yoga asanas. As such, each of the poses described may be used freely by other individuals, however, not every pose is suitable for every body.

If you find these posts useful for your own personal journey, you are free to take from them what you choose, but my words and images should in no way be construed as my directing you to perform any of these exercises. I am not.

It is possible to injure oneself practicing yoga, and any physical exercise regime which you choose to undertake is done so at your own risk. If you are unfamiliar with which exercises are and are not healthy for your own body, please consult with a health care professional before commencing any physical activity regime.

NaNoWriMo and Health

If you surf around the NaNoWriMo web site and participant sites and forums, you're likely to come across references to pulling all-nighters and consuming vast quantities of coffee and sugar. Such is not the path for me.

In my youth (In my youth! Ha! I still feel strange writing that. When did I stop being "in my youth"? I have no recollection of that happening and yet, bizarrely, here I am.) I wrote on caffeine and junk food. At Queen's I even popped chocolate covered espresso beans for a couple of years. (Gave those up the day I injured my wrist doing cartwheels down my residence hallway at 5:00 a.m.) These days, my body doesn't take so kindly to that sort of abuse.

I still very much enjoy fine dark chocolates as a special treat now and then, but the milk chocolate candy bars that were a staple of my diet 20 years ago are no longer edible to me, I rarely consume potato crisps, and coffee is a once-a-year treat (reserved for special occasions when I am out with friends in an establishment that serves really good coffee with chocolate and alcohol in it). These days, any period of being especially busy is not an excuse to lay in a hoard of junk food but rather reason to try even harder than usual to eat a healthy, nutritious and well-balanced diet.

If you've been keeping up with posts over at The Polyphagous Dragon you may have noticed that the quantity of "sweet treat" posts had been increasing as of late. That needs to stop in fairly short order if I am to be ready for November. I need to remember how to eat "healthy in a hurry". I need to make a few other changes too.

Such as: changes to my physical activity regime. Until recently, puppy dog and I were hiking 4 miles a day, every day. Then we moved house, and the new living arrangements somehow led to abandonment of our morning walk and sometimes working right through the evening walk too. The puppy doesn't mind (only dog I've ever known who isn't wildly in love with going for walks), but I do. My body minds. I need to be hiking at least 4 miles a day, and I need to get back into yoga as well. Upping my keyboard time in November equates with an INCREASE in the need to do those things, not a decrease. Therefore, when I decided to participate in NaNoWriMo this year, I resolved that November would not just be about pounding out a novel for me but that it would be about doing so healthfully. I resolved that, during November 2007 I would:

• Rise at 6:30 a.m.
  
• Practice yoga daily.
  
• Check in with the Wrimo community daily but only during fixed, pre-ordained times and strictly refuse to surf or cyber-socialize during other times.
  
• Hike a minimum of 4 miles per day.
  
• Eat three, healthy, well-balanced meals each day.
  
• Write 2000 words per day - no falling behind the 2000 word/day pace and creating a last minute crunch.
  
• Log off my computer by 10:30 p.m. every day.

The above is the aspect of my NaNoWriMo plans that experienced Wrimos will no doubt tell me is an unreasonable goal. NaNoWriMo is supposed to be crazy. It's supposed to be a life-consuming, throw-your-schedule-out-the-window, long-dark-night-(or is that tea time?)-of-the-soul, abandon-all-hope-all-ye-who-enter-in, suffering out of which we all emerge joyful and victorious into the bright light of day on December 1. (There are even Wrimos who, believing that 50,000 words in a month isn't crazy enough for them, are aiming to write 3 or more novels!) For me, however, NaNoWriMo is about a community and a deadline and hopefully a chance to generate enough interest in my project to have some fun with the "choose your own adventure" concept, and an opportunity to practice writing 50K words in a month WITHOUT sacrificing my health. I'm vying for the whole package.

Limping Along

The NaNoWriMo web site is limping along under the weight of early keener sign-ups and addicted veterans rushing back to the forums after a week-long blackout, but it's functioning without too many glitches. (I was successfully one of those "early keener sign-ups" but I've been flipping back and forth between NaNoWriMo and Blogger, updating my blogs while my web browser struggles to load each NaNo update in another tab.)

I'd post the link to my brand spanking new NaNoWriMo Profile Page -- but if you go there now you'll only slow down the servers even more, so let's leave that web site for the hard core WriMos for today. I'll post links once things have calmed down a bit.

The Concept

National Novel Writing Month is "a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing." The challenge is simple: write a 50,000 word novel entirely within the month of November. This breaks down to 1667 words per day - a feat I wouldn't have been daft enough to even contemplate during the last few years when I was juggling two jobs but, now that I'm freelancing and can set my own schedule for November, the word count should not be a problem. So I've set myself a WriMo challenge with a twist:

Each day during the month of November I shall post my NaNo writing for that day to a new blog I have set up for the purpose: Raindancing Dragons. Each day's installment of the story shall leave one of its main characters with a key decision to make -- and you, dear readers, shall have the opportunity to decide which decision is made by voting in the poll posted in the blog's sidebar. I shall then write the decision which has garnered the most votes into the story.

Seriously.

Well, okay, maybe not always seriously. I reserve the right to write your decision into the story irreverently, comically, tragically, seriously or in whatever other vein I see fit -- but I will write it in!

Here's how it will work:

1. I will post the day's writing to Raindancing Dragons normally between 10:00 and 10:30 p.m. my time. (My time = GMT-4 November 1-3 and GMT-5 November 4-30.) [If Life conspires to throw me off my posting schedule, I will attempt to notify you of the next day's ETP (Expected Time of Posting) here in the Dragon Dreams blog when I make my daily post the day previous to the expected anomaly.]
   
2. During this same window of time, I will post a new poll in the Raindancing Dragons sidebar. Each poll will pose a question relating to a dilemma faced by one of the characters at the end of that day's installment and offer choices for how that character may choose to deal with said dilemma.
   
3. You may vote for one of the choices offered by me in the poll, or write in your own choice as a comment to that day's post. (There are a few simple rules for write-in votes, as described below.)
   
4. Each poll is open from the time of posting until the following day's update window (when it will be replaced with the new poll).
   
5. The character choice which has received the most votes during the time the poll was open will be written into the story.

The Rules

1. Please do not attempt to spam the polls. Each reader is entitled to one vote per day.
   
2. Recruiting your friends to read the story and vote for your choice is allowed and encouraged.
   
3. Sadly, I am functionally a monoglot. Write-in votes need to be submitted in standard English or I am not likely to understand them.
   
4. Write-in votes should be proof-read for spelling and grammatical correctness. (I am familiar with a variety of nationally standardized spellings for various English words, but I will not attempt to decipher "textspeak" or plain old laziness.)
   
5. Each poll gives you the power to get inside the head of one of my characters and vote on an important immediate decision in her or his life. The polls do not give you the power to play God. For example: "Laura decides that this entire project is a crazy idea, packs it all in and heads for home," would be an acceptable vote on the question "Does Laura accept the challenge and register for NaNoWriMo?" "Laura decides that this entire project is a crazy idea, packs it all in and heads for home, encounters no obstacles along the way, never regrets her decision to abandon NaNoWriMo and lives a quiet and pastoral life happily ever after," would not be an acceptable vote. Make sense?
   
6. Keep it clean. My story is intended for an adult audience -- but two of those adults are likely to be my parents! I reserve the right to discard any and all votes which I deem (in my sole discrection) to be inappropriate for publication in a public blog with my name on it.

Why am I doing this?

1. Because I think it will be fun.
   
2. Because I found out about NaNoWriMo through Blogger and immediately started thinking of ways to integrate my experience of the two while honouring the spirit of each.
   
3. Because I think it will be fun.
   
4. Because I think it will prove an interesting challenge.
   
5. Because I think it will be fun.

I hope you'll join me in November for a little Web 2.0 meets "choose your own adventure" stories meets NanoWriMo mayhem. Until then, you can continue to check back here for more news of my NaNoWriMo plans and pop on over to Raindancing Dragons for a fun, pre-NaNo practice poll.

Write on!

New Focus

Kendal is leading the way in the blogging realm - far ahead of any of my own blogs with 57 posts to Confessions of a Canine Cyber-Widow since my dog and I first ventured into the blogosphere on June 13th. The Polyphagous Dragon is alone in second place with 28 posts (not a bad showing, since my recipe blog was launched over a month later on the 19th of July). The NCI Alumni blog is currently sitting at 14 posts, all written by yours truly in spite of the fact that it is meant to be a group blog, but I resigned my administrative & leadership roles within NCI last week and handed off management of the blog to a former teammate, so its content should cease to be mine in fairly short order. Which brings us to this blog.

Dragon Dreams was my first blog, meant to be my personal blog and perhaps main portal into the blogging realm, but in three and a half months, I posted 3 times. Not exactly an auspicious start.

Why has Dragon Dreams floundered? Could it be because I am a child of a time when personal journals were considered, well, personal? (I have one, which I've kept regularly for over 18 years now, but it's not published on the Internet!) Add this to the fact that I've become blog-happy and simply launched a new blog every time I set upon a new topic to write about and it's easy to see why my personal, topic-less blog has been sparsely populated. Things are about to change.

Sometime during this past summer's web travels, I stumbled upon a link to NaNoWriMo and knew immediately that I would be taking part. I have been writing fiction since I was five years old and always loved it, but I also love eating well, and the bottom line was the bottom line: My prospects for financial security were greater if I spent my time writing business and technical documents than if I pursued creative writing. So I compromised. I accepted a full-time employment situation and then took on another part-time job besides. I would work hard and save my money and retire to become a fiction writer once financial security had been assured.

My plan worked well for a number of years. Working hard certainly happened. (I frequently gave 70+ hours per week to my employers.) Living frugally and saving money happened too. (I was on track to own property mortgage-free by my 40th birthday.) Then events transpired beyond my control such that I now find myself no longer a corporate slave sometime earlier than my originally planned "retirement". There are strong indications that I still have a long life ahead of me, and a return to full-time employment at some point seems likely, but today I am free and finances are such that I can afford to devote November to writing a novel. So that is what I am going to do.

NaNoWriMo was born in San Francisco in 1999 and has since spread like wildfire around the globe. In November 2007, I will join an international community likely six figures in size, attempting to pound out a 50,000+ word novel entirely between the start of the day on November 1st and the end of the day November 30th. This blog will be an integral part of that quest.

True to form, I have launched a new blog, Raindancing Dragons, which will host the actual content of my NaNovel, but Dragon Dreams will be the staging site for my project and the place to go for news and commentary on my NaNo adventure. Stay tuned for more details coming soon!