With crow, it's like finding the right key for a lock. At that point, the moment of movement clicks of its own accord. You can balance the top and lower halves of the body in air, while using your arms as support with little strength. It looks like an acrobatic feat, when in reality this is one pose that is nothing to crow about.

In this variation, the side crow or parsva kakasana in which one or both of the legs extend out, the legs, too, move with little gripping, tension or muscular might. In fact, it's a neat sensation to feel just how light the leg(s) are in this pose. It's almost like they're floating, and confirms yet again that this pose is one of balancing, not strength. Looks can be -- and are often -- deceptive.

Preparation for the side crow is different from the basic version, kakasana, in that you want to develop an active twist in the middle.

You can spend days, weeks, months just perfecting a twist that allows you to rest both elbows on your thigh. Once you're comfortable with that, then drop the palms down flat on the ground, fingers pointing forwards, head and neck down and stretching out. You have to get used to really bending the elbows and flexing the wrists, hunkering down into the side.

You have to get used to the sensations from all this hunkering down before you even think about supporting the thighs on the arms. Then, rock to the side and back, shifting weight from the palms back to the feet, from the feet into the palms. Again, you may need to just rock and rock for days (weeks, months) before you discover the key to the movement, the key to your flight in space even if it is only a few inches above ground.

My blue jeans caught on fire -- while I was wearing them. The accident involved hot dogs and a sterno that overturned, a 'family fun' day at school and denim blue jeans woven with a heavy amount of lycra spandex as only cheap jeans are.

Humans spend a lot of time worrying about events and situations that may happen in the future. What starts out as a chance thought fluttering on'by turns into a full-blown eventuality that we're playing out in a 1,001 ways and imagining how we'll handle. But it's the situations that we can't even imagine happening that are, in fact, the ones that happen. It's the twist in our logical minds that makes us spend an inordinate amount of time fearful about stuff that probably won't happen, yet blind to the things that will happen. Our logical minds have a hard time dealing with shocks.

Even as my knee was burning, my mind was rationalizing the pain: "It's just a splash of hot water. It's not a big deal. It'll start cooling off." My mind knew all the answers even as my body was in pain and the heat wasn't going away. There was a delay between the body's senses and experiences, and my mind. There was a lag in how my mind processed the physical experience and how "off" it was in its analysis as it tried to "keep control". Even after doing yoga for years, it's been shocking and humbling to have witnessed my mind going into dysfunction so quickly. It was only until I saw the orange glow spreading across my jeans and my shoelace burning did my mind finally get it: you're on fire and you could be in serious danger here, girl. Run, Scream, Shout. Stop, Drop, Roll

How many times do we encounter daily physical and emotional pain that our minds are only too willing to shrug off, justify, rationalize and then try to move on from? It's how most of us live until one day the pain is too great or just so obvious that we can't ignore it anymore and find that none of the tools in our arsenal -- everything from positive thinking to praying to keeping calm and moving on-- help anymore in keeping  our ego swaddled and protected. We have to get real; aware about the change happening around us, all the time, in a blink, and for absolutely no reason, and the focus and discipline to deal with it in real-time. Whether happy or sad, terrifying or joyous, we deal with it all. Real. Deal.

Blue Jeans Blog had needed a reboot for a while and there is nothing like a trial by fire to help burn off a few impurities. Media critiques and the work that comes from my journalism gig don't belong here on my Blue Jeans Blog, for one thing. A separate blog Media Musings has been created for that. Staying focused on sharing the everyday, the ordinary -- both the pleasant and unpleasant -- and the practical disciplines of yoga to manage it all are.

My first new word of 2017 is "boyer."

A "boyer' is a young male who loves to argue about minutia. (A man-boy + lawyer = boyer)

A product of the Information Age, he believes he has all the answers at his fingertips. He replaces experience and the experiential way with a logic that would make Boolean shudder.

Googling his way through life, he believes Google IS Life. The answers are always, always just a short search engine away. And if they're not, then surely your question is just wrong.

All the evidence he needs to convince himself of his correctness and your wrongness is in his Smartphone, only his, and he isn't afraid to let you know.

New year, new calendar, new date, new places, new people, new stuff and new words.

Wishing you much happiness, balance and buoyancy in 2017.

(Joy + Jewels + Buoyancy = Julency)

In yoga, the exercises are not so much about 'getting energy', but channeling and working with the energy that we have been blessed with. 'Revitalizing' is a word that you hear about yoga -- and this happens when we release energy that has been trapped and blocked.

One of the most effective ways to unblock our energy, to revitalize the physical, is to release stuck emotions and the mental structures that keep those emotions from flowing. As socialized beings, we've all learned mental coping mechanisms to deal with painful emotions -- whether it's denial or positive thinking your way through the pain. After all, most of us do learn not to act like the three-year old I saw on a bumpy plane ride recently -- screaming and wailing, her fear, anger and distress fully released. The rest of us on that flight probably would've felt a lot better if we could let out a scream or two, but we learnt not to do that publicly, then not even to display them slightly. Then we learn not even to release them privately and then pretty soon they are completely unacknowledged and ignored.

So the emotional scars build up, tissue upon tissue, hardened on the banks of De Nile and the other infinitesimal ways our strategic minds can come up with until one day - SNAP! Triggers, meltdowns and carnage.

Some soldiers and veterans experience this palpably and in extreme due to the shocks and trauma they've lived through or witnessed. A lot of us haven't been in a war, yet we can relate very much to their plight. Maybe some of us have been through the War of Life a little more than others. We get it, and so we learn to acknowledge the stuff that isn't so pleasant -- all that grit grinding below the surface of our being -- and release this in a healthy way without harming anyone else in the process.

Our Somerset, NJ yoga classes raised $100 during Veterans Gratitude Week for Veterans Yoga Project, which is dedicated to helping veterans and their loved ones heal through the power of yoga and meditation. For more information, http://www.veteransyogaproject.org/

...Free flow play...No schedules...Toys everywhere...
                                     No plans...Stop-and-drop play...Learning the 50 states and capitols
            No play-dates...Doorbells ringing...Neighborhood kids...Warm grass...
                                                             No schedules...Doodling..Shape-shifting routines
Eating when hungry...Hide-and-seeking...burying boys in sand
                No 'Organized Sports'...Skipping rocks...Whiffle ball...Street ball...Garbage can ball...
                                                                                       Sketchbooks and pencils...Learning new card tricks...Magic tricks
                   No camps...Wandering through neighbors' yards.
Ding-dong
"Can they come out and play?"
       Jumping fences...Chalk on sidewalks...Pop-a-Wheelies...
                                               ...Cursive writing...No classes...Reading...
                  No agendas...Running through sprinklers...
                                                                             ...Pools...Swimming at night..."Marco"
   -- "Polo!"
                                           Spraying hoses...Diving from high boards...
       ... Aunt visits...Making mud pies...Lakes...Picking blackberries...
                      ...Dead-heading tiger lilies...Badminton...Ping Pong...
'Baseball-Tennis'...Listening to baseball games on AM...
             ...Pennies on train tracks...Lemonade Stands...
Bowling. Lots and lots of bowling.
     Rummage sales...Yard sales...Trying on fur coats and hats in antique stores...
                                 Bikes on lawns..Spotting stray kittens...Collecting bugs...Looking for turtles in the lagoon.
"It's a mess in here."
                      ...Trampolines...Putting the dog on the trampoline...Putting the cat on the trampoline...
Hanging upside down on monkey bars...Handstands...Cartwheels...Somersaults
                                                        ...Gloopy ice cream cones...Transistor radios...Lawn chairs
'Svengoolie'...Comic books...Making comic books...
         Drawing comic book characters on cardboard...Mailing them to 'Svengoolie'. In a stamped envelope.
                         ...Black-and-white alien movies. Monster movies.
                           ..."Attack of the Killer Tomato", "King Kong", "The Invisible Man"
                                                            ...Westerns...John Wayne..."Shane"..."Red River"..."She Wore A Yellow Ribbon"...
"Gone With The End" in half-hour nightly installments....
            "Pink Panther"..."Charade"..."Every Which Way But Loose"..."Breaking Away"...
                                                                          No Pixar. None.
       ...Long car rides...Dancing to music from vinyl records on turntables...
Time-giving. Date-lost. Day-blur.
Free flow play
Free flow days

If people treated their pets the way they treat their own bodies, they would be charged and fined for animal cruelty. Could you imagine making your dog drink Big Gulps of high-fructose fizz? Or imagine leashing and tethering your cat? Or making your gerbil exist solely on a treadmill. Or never taking your dog into the garden for a mad run, or a walk around the neighborhood? Never exercising it, letting it take naps or playing with it, keeping it from rolling in the grass, digging in the mud or chasing birds? And maybe I'm completely off topic here, but I wonder: why is it okay for humans to eat pig flesh, but you rarely see pork in pet food?

Neglect is not benign when humans choose to live like this. It's like abuse. This complete lack of attention we give our bodies can be a destructive force, a slow death, the opposite of growth and joy.

Humans also abuse their bodies on the other extreme though -- through a domineering willpower. They get an idea of how this body of theirs should act, perform, work, workout, study, eat and how it should look like. Then, they go wild into willing it into some kind of look or behavior and in the process might put their bodies through all kinds of ordeals. This is the most ominous kind of abuse because there is such a sincere desire (usually) to "improve" health, fitness or welling, to "improve" our productivity, to "improve" our looks or physique.

We are so conditioned to think and act this way, too. It's seen as completely normal in society, in our gym culture, our Fitness Industrial Complex. Feel the Burn, Push, Just Do It. However, in the process, the relationship we develop with our bodies can get skewed, one-sided. We do all the talking, or in some cases all the screaming, while our bodies are like oxen in a field, whipped relentlessly under the noon-day sun. There is no listening, receptivity, care or love going on to what is our most important relationship in our life, that of our mind with our body.

So whenever my mind starts acting like a cruel slave-driver to this body that it should feel privileged of living in, I adopt the approach of master to beloved pet. If my body is feeling tired, I let it rest more. If it wants to walk bare-foot through wet grass, I let it. If it is feeling incredibly focused, I channel that into work. If it only feels like doing a few of favorite asana poses, then that's all I do. Sometimes just sitting cross-legged for a few minutes in front of a fire is enough. Other times this body wants to move and groove and stretch for hours at a time. My body, my pet.

Look no further than New Jersey if you want to see how imbalanced American society and the economy have become. The Garden State is one of the wealthiest in the nation and yet hosts Newark, the East Coast's version of Detroit, right on the glittery doorstep of Manhattan. While it does live up to its moniker with farms, plentiful markets, and leafy, landed properties and estates, its poverty level is one of the highest in the nation, at 50-year highs. It's one of the few states where the number living below the true poverty line is actually higher than before the 2008 economic crisis. Calls for ever-more donations from local township food banks are reminders that life for nearly 3 million people here is hardship.

But we've reached a fresh benchmark here, this gap between the top tenth and the lower third, when one man, one individual -- not one corporation, mind you -- has the potential to wreck havoc on a state's finances simply by moving out of state and with it taking his income tax payments. Meet David Tepper, hedge fund maestro of Appaloosa Management. Never heard of him? He'd probably prefer it that way -- the new barons of our financial age love to lay low unless a business school is being named after them. But when your net worth of $10.4 billion is the size of Armenia's GDP and could plug Alberta Canada's deficit with a few billion left over, it's kind of hard to sometimes.

One of these times is now when word is out that Tepper moved his residency out of NJ, his home of two decades, to Florida. It's not known whether he moved because of NJ's high tax rate -- it's 8.97% for the top rate -- or family concerns or just the need for more sunshine in his middle years. Regardless, the loss of his income tax is worrying lawmakers in Trenton because it might leave a gap in the budget of about $140 million -- the amount of taxes that Tepper was estimated to have paid one year on several billion dollars of earnings.

States, like NJ, Connecticut, New York and California have become super-dependent on the super-wealthy. It's the top tenth of the top 1% who continue to see the fastest income gains in the first place. It's such a small group to suddenly find yourself relying on for public aid and healthcare, our 'justice' system, our roads, education, and rebuilding infrastructure so lead doesn't leach from old school pipes into drinking water for children. It's also a notoriously self-interested group, too, with its masters-of-the-universe willful plowing ahead through life; all the offshoring,  calculated charitable donations, and facility to strategise every decision based on profit-loss equations.

Tepper made his billions by buying 'distressed assets', code for businesses and companies that had hit hard times, and then selling them later at a profit. He did this in 2009, buying bank stocks for cheap after the subprime mortgage lending bubble blew up and pushed banks near the brink. That trade alone made him $7 billion, made possible through government bailout funds. Maybe Tepper and others can apply distressed investing to other assets, the human kind, and realize the pay-off can come in lots of ways that help everyone. That quote "with great wealth comes great responsibility" was never truer than today when one man moves and a state wonders how it might pay its bills.

Keep in mind that behind the headline-grabbing record low admission rates, signs of success for American universities, are hundreds of thousand rejected students, many who have spent the last two years completely stressed out as they prepared for SAT/ACT tests, and planned and organized their application documents to schools -- that had no intention of taking them in the first place.

While thousands of children feel like rejects, the schools sit pretty, at least for another year, on US News & World's Report's "Best Colleges List" which helped start the University Arms Race funnily enough during the height of the Cold War in 1983 by being the first to start ranking universities. University chancellors and deans were horrified at the time, begging the newspaper to stop its list, but eventually they adopted "if you can't beat them, join them approach", becoming as corporate as they could in the quest for more consumers, oops, students.

But okay let's look at these low admittance rates, the Ivies' bragging rights, what's being touted. Let's break them down. For example, the official rate at Harvard 'there-is-a-place-for-you' University is 5.2% which equals 2,037 students. Out of that, it's feasible that around 1000 are those who didn't make the grade the year prior, but since they are full payers, hey-ho, bargains are made and deals struck, to defer enrollment for the following year. So this immediately brings the number of available slots down to 1,937. Now approximately 1,000 of those spots will be taken by legacies, alumni's children, or big-donor children. Yes, it could be as high as 1,000. If Harvard or Stanford, Columbia, Yale or Princeton want to provide a more accurate account, then please share.

So instead of the headline 2,037 number of students accepted, the true figure is more like 937 once you strip out deferments, legacies and donors. Less than a 1,000 spots were actually even open in the regular admissions process in which, don't forget, quotas must be met on race, sex, gender and of course geography. How else to brag on press releases about incoming students coming from all 50 states as well as overseas? This, from a pool of 39,000 applications. That 'New York Times' columnist joking about Stanford's admission rate of 0 wasn't really joking after all.

None of the Ivies wanted to discuss this with me, and you can see why as it shows just how ridiculous and absurd the higher education process has become and makes a farce of all their talk of inclusivity. It also shows what big business it's become and in the worst possible way, too, by peddling dreams and fantasies to children, knowing full well the majority won't make the cut and knowing that this works exactly to their advantage. You'd see their Arms Race, their Hunger Games, end really quickly if just a fraction of students refuse to play anymore by just not applying in the first place. 

Worth the stress? Be sure to shave a couple of percentage points off each college's 'official admittance rate' and now look at your child's chances.  https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/04/01/applied-to-stanford-or-harvard-you-probably-didnt-get-in-admit-rates-drop-again/#rates

"You Belong Here. Wherever your life may have started, and whatever its destination, there is a place for you at Harvard." -- Harvard University's website under Admissions, https://college.harvard.edu/admissions

Admittance rates at America's Ivy League universities continued to fall as the number of students applying for Class 2020 spots swelled to new records. Out of the nearly 44,000 students who applied to Stanford, a mere 4.7% were accepted or on the flip-side nearly 42,000 were rejected. Applicants at Harvard totaled 39,041 but only 5.2% were admitted versus 5.9% a year ago and down from 11% in 2009. Who said hope is dead when you have this many students applying in the face of such odds? Who said dreams aren't alive and beliefs aren't strong in our post-millenial, post-modern, post-industrial, digital age?

Out of the 36,292 who applied at New York City's Columbia, 6% were accepted. Columbia's Admissions Officers gushed in a press release over the quality of its record number of applicants ("amazed and humbled"). I'm not sure why they're so amazed when its campus is located where every cool TV and movie is set and given the great marketing lengths universities go through these days, but I have no doubt they're indeed thrilled: At $50 to $110 a pop, coffers increased by millions on application fees alone - before a tuition check even written.

All of these children benefit universities in other ways, too. Since a school's admittance rate is the key statistic used in college rankings, how a college itself 'scores', it's incumbent for these universities to play Pied Piper with talk of you-have-a-chance-to-get-into-our-prestigious-school so as to get more and more children sending in applications. The more children a school can reject, the lower its admissions rate falls and its ranking rises. Climbing up one 'best college' list after another adds yet more magic dust to their images and creates a snowball effect of ever more exclusivity, ever more demand. Let the University Arms Race continue!

To Be Continued