Performance Anxiety

There are some yoga poses that are for me a reliable indicator of performance anxiety.

These are any that require balance on one foot.

When I do these at home, I can balance for long periods of time with no problem.

When I'm in a class with other people, I have a lot of trouble getting into equilibrium and staying that way. I'm never conscious of any audience effect in yoga classes-- but what else could cause this difference?

One thing I've learned that helps when I'm wobbly. The Sanskrit word for it is drishtee, roughly translated as "point of focus." That means find a spot to fasten your gaze on and don't look to the left or right.

When I do that, pretty soon I'm maintaining balance. The same principle applies to working on a novel: just focus on the work at hand.

(The photos are at Rancho La Puerta where I've been teaching: the sculpture in front of one of the yoga studios, the one of me taken on the grounds just after I finished with my last class. This is a good example of how we unconsciously reproduce what we see or visualize. I passed that sculpture every day, but didn't realize I had copied the pose, and even dressed the part.)

The Guts to Be First

(First a note about photos, etc. I'm on a Spanish-speaking computer and can't find some of the clicks. So I can't seem to move these the way I want. What's here: the swing under the Rancho pepper tree, a blossom that was growing beside me in the chi kung class, and a bit of BOLD ART in my room. And then the story....)

The couple that started the fitness spa in Baja where I'm teaching this week are an astonishing example of bold creative thinking. They were health nuts in 1940, with some ideas that are treated as news in recent years.

The place now called Rancho La Puerta welcomed its first visitors under the name Essene School of Life: "$17.50 a week, bring your own tent." (The Essenes were, among other things, highly successful farmers of antiquity, producing prodigious crops in poor Dead Sea area soil.)

Founder Prof. Edmond Szekely of Transylvania and his wife Deborah created what was in its early years the home of what the Prof called cosmotherapy, a regimen heavy on grape juice. He also believed that people need 20 minutes a day of direct sunlight for vitamin D, but that baking on a beach blanket is unhealthy. He was sure ahead of a lot of folks on that one.

A 1949 article in The San Diego Union reported that he kept a crystal ball in his study.

Szekely foresight also led to the school being an organic farm with a mainly vegetarian diet.

Today Deborah Szekely is still fit and active and inspiring, and still the grand dame. (The Prof died some years ago.) Grape arbors are still here, visible through a glass wall of the yoga gym. And the food remains largely vegetarian.

Now it costs a bit more than $17.50 and there's no need to pack a tent. The garden campus has enough Mexican-style cottages to house about 160 people, attending classes on mainstream topics like writing and Pilates.

And nobody thinks it's odd any more to eat a lot of vegetables or to drink the fruit of the vine for high anti-oxidant levels or to avoid skin cancer by limiting sun-time.

A fair number of people are comfortable with the idea of a crystal ball.

Back then it took courage.

The School of Life

TECATE, Mexico---This week I'm teaching writing at the health and fitness spa Rancho La Puerta in the mountains of Baja.

The guiding principle of this place is to help make healthy people healthier. Hikes go up the mountains (seriously up) starting at 6 every morning. And there are six or ten different classes going almost every hour from 9 until late afternoon. Most are about physical fitness: dance, yoga, that sort of thing.

In the afternoons classes focus on mind and spirit, to add to the body part of the equation. These are referred to on the schedule as the school of life, and include such topics as bird-watching, introductory Spanish, meditation, how to get the most out of a nap, etc.

This is my fifth time spending a week teaching here, and I love the place. When I'm not on duty, I feel as if I'm enrolled in the school of "improved self" and the process is delightful. (The gyms are charming, which I didn't think was possible--stone and tiles and good art and glass walls with views of gardens. Pictures to come.)

When I'm home, I do work out, but certainly not hours a day. In fact, I was once accused by a significant other of being interested in nothing but words and ideas. (Not so. But it was indeed true that I'm not interested in watching ballgames on TV.)

In any event, it's a huge shift to go from most days spent at my desk, to yesterday's cardio boxing, my first such experience, followed by this morning's 3.5 mile hike, exactly one half of that uphill.

The change--such an immersion in physical activity--feels invigorating. It feels bold. For the moment, I'm a new woman, and enjoying it.

Rancho La Puerta

I'm off to teach writing for a week in a fabulous spa in Mexico called Rancho La Puerta. It is heaven on earth--pardon cliche, but got to pack. Will be in touch here soon.

My Writing Office

Because of popular request, I've posted here the pictures of my newly feng-shuied office, which I wrote about several days back.

It feels about 20% larger than it did. Easier to find things too.

The mantel is now, at the direction of the office organizing person, a promotional center for my work, ("a shrine," she said), lining up books I've written and books that have something by or about me. The one tucked in at the very end that appears to have been published by an elementary school student is a mockup I made of my still-in-revision novel Cobalt Blue. I take visualization of the finished product very seriously.

Grant News in the Form of Rejection

I just now found out that I didn't get a grant I'd have loved to have.

The odds were tremendously against my getting it. Intellectually, I didn't expect it to happen.

Even so-- Pooey!!

On the other hand, I learned recently this encouraging bit of information: many grant sources won't award an applicant until they've applied at least two or three times.

My experience in winning these things is a mix: one fellowship took about ten tries to get (and that means ten YEARS), one took two tries, and, thrillingly, I got a couple of others with my first application. Actually they were all pretty thrilling when the answer was finally yes.

I suppose I could code it as a form of boldness, of creative courage, to apply to the same people more than ten times. In any event, it finally worked.

I've only applied for this grant once. So maybe next year--or in 2017.

"Soft Addictions"

I thought I'd recovered from last week's sudden end of the semester of teaching. But no.

Now I'm not sure if it's Duke withdrawal or caffeine (too much or too little.) In either case, my head, if not my spirits, is light.

I suspect caffeine. My wicked near-constant sweet iced tea habit.

Speaking of which-- I'm in the process of reading a book called The Soft Addiction Solution. Pardon the cliche, but it's an eye-opener. Not that I don't know about my harmless calming strategies: the nights with trashy magazines, the tea, the crossword puzzles even at red lights. What's new to me in this book is a way of reclaiming some of that time for conscious life, not through deprivation at all, but through a focus on something more inspiring.

Of course I ate chocolate cookies while I was reading about this. Nonetheless, I see a door opening before me in this book. I like the fact that it doesn't suggest giving anything up.

After Deadline

So the semester ended Friday.

Saturday I spent on the sofa with a novel, a book of crossword puzzles, and a lot of chocolate cookies. Sounds blissful, exactly what I'd looked forward to--but it wasn't. Instead it was like the days after finishing a draft of a book; theoretically, I feel released. But in fact, I feel foggy, emotionally flat, and irritable.

Sunday was better. I ran some errands, planted a bed of impatiens, stayed awake all day, congratulated myself on having that much energy.

Today, Monday, I'm back at my desk. The work version of post-deadline is: all those little things I was expecting to be eager to catch up on, I'm not. Not eager at all. Any sane person reading this is probably thinking: take a day off! But I don't feel like it. Not eager to do that either.

This mood (which feels chemical/physiological) will pass in another day or so. Most likely by tomorrow. The transition has always taken three days in the past. You'd think I'd learn.

If I did learn, what would I do differently? Probably nothing different. Maybe these periods simply have to be weathered.

I welcome ideas, if anyone knows how to better manage this sort of thing.

My 200th Post--School's Out

I'm about to finish doing the grading for my semester of teaching fiction writing at Duke. So it feels right that this entry is an auspicious round number.

Grading is tough in a creative writing course, as every writer/teacher knows.

I do have a system, but there is an unavoidably subjective element. I'm giving it my best judgment, no doubt, overthinking it--not much else I can do.

I'm also startled to discover that I'm losing these people I've focused on so intensely these last four months. I'm not used to this; it's a long time since I dealt with a graduation or last day at summer camp. I'm not jaded, to put it mildly. I'll be watching for their books forever.

At the same time, my schedule will be my own again. I don't mind that part at all. Also, I'll be chatting at this location more frequently than I have this semester. Let me know if I've gotten over-didactic.