Monthly Archives: August 2010

Don’t Bite the Hook: A Lesson in Working with Anger

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As some of you guys know, I’m on a Twitter/Facebook/Social Media diet. This month, I’m only checking whats-the-haps in the world once a week, on the weekend.

Today, as I had *just* signed on to Twitter, Waylon Lewis, the editor of Elephant Journal, sent out a tweet about the Yoga Eco Nissan ad featuring Tara Stiles. I wasn’t thinking. If I was, I wouldn’t have clicked on the link, because it reeked of controversy, or something that’s redolent of Things That Jerk with Your Emotions.

The article is written by a blogger (a yoga teacher too, it turns out) named Brooks Hall, titled: Slim, Sexy Yogini + Car, and what the heck are we sayin’ here at Elephant? In her article, Brooks is fair and balanced, speaking with logic and rationale.

In this post, I just want to write how I’ve sat here and worked with my emotions about this. I don’t want to comment too much on the bigger picture of advertising and how it affects us and blah blah blah. I’ll leave that to the commentators with sociology, psychology, and political science degrees.

What follows here is only what’s true for me and how I attempt to bring in the things I learn from my yoga practice in something that I’m guessing is familiar with most people: anger.

“You can see a lot by observing” – Yogi Berra

Here are some observations as they arise in me:

+ Bodily sensation: tingling, tremors
+ Physical body: tightness in the chest, short breath, held breath, stomach unsettled, dry mouth
+ Posture: hunched up, head forward, chin and forehead tight, gripped jaws, cold, sweaty palms
+ Mind: frantically flipping through web pages, distracted, thoughts dashing everywhere, self-judging “I shouldn’t think this, I shouldn’t do that, etc.”

I keep telling myself: Don’t bite the hook, don’t bite the hook, don’t bite the hook. It’s a mantra from the lectures of the same title by Pema Chodron.

I thought that I can just not bite the hook by ignoring it. But the sensations stay, and the afflictions in my mind stay. Okay, what else can I do besides just intellectually telling myself to not be angry?

I’m taking big gulps of breath in and releasing them slowly. I’m looking away from the computer screen, out at the mountains surrounding the Puget Sound on this really nice day in August. I’m blinking my eyes (so they wouldn’t bulge out like a cartoon character). I’m releasing my lower jaw and taking a swallow to let saliva flow to the dried part of my mouth. I’m observing myself. I’m writing.

Judith Hanson Lasater always says: “Ask what is true for you? Ask what is essential?” I’ve learned, lately, to be really curious and ask, “What is happening? Why is it happening? Why am I acting or reacting this way?”

“I’m against picketing, but I don’t know how to show it” – Mitch Hedberg

Quite frankly, I don’t really know why I’m so upset at the Nissan Leaf ad. I mean, intellectually, I kinda do know, but I don’t really know *know*. Maybe it’s the way I slept last night, maybe it’s the way I didn’t sleep the night before. Maybe it’s some deep-seated angst having nothing to do with anything.

I will only say what I know is true for me at this moment:

+ As a young woman interested in Health and not screwing the environment to hell, I am all for products that reduce our carbon emission. Kudos to Nissan for that. (Mark Wahlberg’s The Happening, no matter how godawful it was, does give a warning of what it’s like when Mother Nature strikes back. And besides, I like trees.)

+ I can’t speak for men or other women, but I know, for myself, I have had all sorts of body image issues. I don’t blame them on anything or anybody in particular. I just know I’ve had them and worked with them. Messages like: “best-ever body” and “get slimmer, blast calories” have not helped.

+ I have spent far too much money and energy in products that promise “a new body”, a better version of me,  while developing a dysfunctional relationship with myself and my body. Yoga has been the only place that I’ve learned to live in my own skin, and I am *still* learning, every day.

+ Chanting: Yoga is not about chanting, you don’t ever have to chant a single vowel if you do yoga. Chanting, however, is a technique to still the mind. I used to not know that. I used to be allergic to chanting. I used to think it was cultish and weird and creepy. I now know better. I would never ask anyone to chant if they aren’t comfortable with it, but I would tell people what it is and what it’s for. Once you know what the intended goal of something is, you have choices, and you have more information to make them. I am not against not chanting, I am against the illusion of choice.

+ Hard-to-pronounce names: I love Sanskrit, but I know very damn well not everybody does, and most people cary on and go about their lives just fine without ever uttering a single breath of Sanskrit. And in fact, there are many pleasant non-Sanskrit-speaking humans and some real jerk-hole Sanskrit speakers out there.  The issue is not whether I or you say the poses names in some old dead language. The issue is if we dismiss things we don’t immediately understand. The issue is if I beat myself up and call myself a stupid failure because I ate too much, or if I sit down and reflect on what my real hunger is. Where is the yoga in choosing to not be curious?

Calling a spade a spade

In my trainings with her, Judith Lasater talks a lot about connecting with oneself. “You have to connect with yourself first before you connect with others,” she’d say. Another favorite saying from her is, “I’m not telling you what’s right, I’m only telling you what I know.”

I think, after writing all this out, what I know is I have began to discern moments when I’m not mindful, not curious, not making conscious choices (there are LOTS of them). I *know* no one needs to be saved, and change starts, as MJ said, “with the man in the mirror.” So, it’s not that I want to “save” the masses from these kinds of ads and messages. It is that I know my own suffering often results from moments when I act merely out of habitual patterns, addiction, and conditioned-thinking.

To me, the Nissan Leaf ad and others like it, do not work for me. They reinforce the habitual patterns of a self-harming diet-obsessed culture, and then sugar-coat it with the environmental aspect. You can’t be kind to others, the environment included, if you can’t be kind to yourself. Yoga, above all else, is learning to be kind to ourselves. I don’t know about you, but I’m blocking my calendar out for the next several lifetimes to do it, because it will probably take that long.

Anyhow, the big point of this post is not really about advertising or Nissan or what should and shouldn’t and is and isn’t. It’s about how I’m trying to take what I’ve learned into “real life.” It’s about me not denying, escaping or suppressing difficult emotions, and calling out things as they are. It’s me learning to see the difference between blanket statements such as “This is wrong” or “This is right” versus “These are the thoughts and emotions that are happening for me right now”, and articulating them without getting hooked or caught in the drama.

And now that I’ve sat down and written this all out, breathing, examining my anger, I’m happy to report the sensations aren’t there anymore. I think the anger has passed. Happy driving. :)

Sexy Yoga and Meditation

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Okay, I admit it, the word “sexy” didn’t need to be in the title of this post. I literally spent at least five minutes trying to figure out how to work the words “sexy” or “hot” in with the words “meditation”, to no avail.

I suppose that’s why meditation, or Patanjali’s Dhyāna, gets nowhere near the attention that Asana gets. It just doesn’t go with hot or sexy. I mean, when was the last time you saw a magazine headline with tips to “Last Longer Tonight”, and they’re talking about sitting on your cushion, closing your eyes, and concentrating on your breath? Yup, I thought so.

What’s funny is *both* Dhyāna and Asana are branches of the 8 Limbs of Yoga. What’s funny is we now have to say Yoga *and* Meditation. Oh well, that’s the all verbiage, I guess. And really, it’s better to just do it. Talking about swimming does not get you wet. (Like sexy… or… unlike sexy… or… oh, never mind.)

If I haven’t lost you yet, this post is intended for two things: 1) As a response to yet another exciting development in the world of Yoga and Polititics, and 2) To point out a couple of meditation trainings and resources if that strike your fancy.

Can Yoga be, uh… Sexy? What is Yogic, Really?

If you’re keeping track with the exciting world of Yoga and Business, Business and Yoga, recently, Judith Hanson Lasater wrote a letter to Yoga Journal expressing her confusion and sadness with the gratuitous nudity in the magazine’s ads. She said: “These pictures do not teach the viewer about yoga practice or themselves. They aren’t even about the celebration of the beauty of the human body or the beauty of the poses, which I support. These ads are just about selling a product. This approach is something I though belonged (unfortunately) to the larger culture, but not in Yoga Journal.”

Judith Hanson Lasater is not just any ol’ disgruntled YJ reader. She is one of the magazine’s original founders. And then Roseanne Harvey, who runs It’s All Yoga, Baby wrote about The Letter, and followed it up with an interview with Judith. Even Yoga scholar Georg Feuerstein came out of his semi retirement to write several blog posts about this.

Yeah, it’s gotten pretty, uh, exciting?

Amidst the noise, if you are new, or newish, or even oldish to yoga, you might be challenged with questions such as “What is yoga”? Or, “Is nudity yoga?” Or, “Can Capitalism and Yoga co-exist peacefully?”

I’m sorry to say that I don’t have the answer to any of these questions. (And I’m not sure that anyone really does.) Besides, defining what Yoga is is like defining what Love is, or Compassion is. As Judith said recently in a workshop: “Have you noticed how we can’t really define the things that are most important in life?”

So, like I said, you’re on your own with those inquiries. What I *can* tell you, however, that if you like yoga, you might also like meditation. Yoga is about learning about your Self. Self-inquiry requires meditation. Meditation is hard, it’s frustrating, it’s juicy, every once in a while you get it right. Yes, I’m describing meditation. And hey, if people can call web sites or iPhone apps sexy, I’m gonna call meditation sexy. And you, too, can do it.

Some Meditation Trainings and Resources

Recently my student Marco (hi Marco!) asked if I teach meditation. The short answer is no. The convoluted answer is yes and no. I teach primarily hatha yoga: the techniques of asana and pranayama. I sprinkle in stories, info, lores from historical texts, the other branches of Classical Yoga. In the poses I talk about things like observing where your body is in space, listening to the body’s feedback, focusing in something, stability, ease, etc. Those are things that Patanjali described as the ingredients leading to Samadhi, let’s call it Happy Place (that doesn’t involve roller coasters) for now. In my class, I prepare people for meditation.

However, I do not currently teach meditation. In my mind, one must meditate for a very long time to teach it, like, 10 years, 20 years, 40 years.

So, here are some great trainings that I personally do:

Shinzen Young’s Basic Mindfulness Home Retreat

This is a monthly home retreat usually lead by meditation teacher Shinzen Young on the second weekend of every month. I recommend you follow the Prerequisites, or that you have listened to his lectures The Science of Enlightenment first. Shinzen’s teaching is methodical. His techniques and vocabulary are highly developed, and quite frankly not for the faint of heart. If you are determined to learn meditation, however, I can’t recommend him more. Check out his CD: The Beginner’s Guide to Meditation.

The next dates for the home retreat are:

  • August 13-15, 2010
  • September 10-12, 2010
  • October 8-10, 2010
  • November 12-14, 2010
  • December 10-12, 2010

Beyond Sequencing: The Art of Meditation with Chase Bossart

Yoga teacher Chase Bossart will be doing a workshop at Shala Yoga of Portland in 2 weeks on August 20-22, 2010. From the website:

Meditation is one of the most important and potent tools in yoga. In many ways, it is the crown jewel of all yoga practices. Yet many people experience it as one of yoga’s most difficult and confusing tools. These difficulties, however, can be greatly reduced through proper sequencing of the meditation practice.

When properly constructed, a meditation practice gradually develops the attention and mental stability required to stay with the focus. This happens naturally as the practitioner moves through the different steps of the meditation. Learn the principles of proper sequencing of meditation practices and develop these skills through numerous practical examples. This practical ‘how to’ workshop will be useful for practitioners and teachers of all levels.

There you are. Go sit down and shut up. (Though, if your mind is anything like mine, it will be anything but quiet.)

Do you know of any meditation trainings or events? Do you have any personal favorite resources? Please let me know.

David Tolmie gave me this CD as a gift. This rivals any nude + yoga photography I've ever seen.

David Tolmie gave me this CD as a gift. This rivals any nude + yoga photography I've ever seen.

Annie Wood Besant on the Yoga of Action

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I’ve been reading Intro to Yoga by Annie Wood Besant, which consists of four lectures she gave in December 1907, “intended to give an outline of Yoga, in order to prepare the student to take up, for practical purposes, the Yoga sutras of Patanjali, the chief treatise on Yoga.”

I like what she has to say here and am sharing it with you:

“The world is meant for the unfolding of the Self: why should you then seek to run away from it? Look at Shri Krishna Himself in that great Upanishad of yoga, the Bhagavad-Gita. He spoke it out on a battle-field, and not on a mountain peak. He spoke it to a Kshattriya ready to fight, and not to a Brahmana quietly retired from the world. The Kurukshetra of the world is the field of Yoga.

They who cannot face the world have not the strength to face the difficulties of Yoga practice. If the outer world out-wearies your powers, how do you expect to conquer the difficulties of the inner life? If you cannot climb over the little troubles of the world, how can you hope to climb over the difficulties that a yogi has to scale? Those men blunder, who think that running away from the world is the road to victory, and that peace can be found only in certain localities.”

If you’re unfamiliar with the Bhagavad Gita, it is an old story (aren’t them all :) ) of a warrior named Arjuna and his struggle with a TPS report… eh, no, I mean, with a war he’s called to fight. The whole thing is a conversation between him and a guy/god named Krishna, whose blue skin might have inspired James Cameron’s Na’vi people in the movie Avatar.

The Bhagavad Gita is also a book that profoundly influenced Gandhi. You can read more about it on Wikipedia. Or, you can remember how my friend Mehal summarized it: Krishna told Arjuna, “suck it up.”

I like what Annie Besant said in her lecture, and I like that Ghandhi said that whether Lord Krishna is God, in whatever definition of god, is not the point. The point is yoga is about applying the teachings in the world and in our daily lives. I forget this teaching often, and I greatly appreciate it when I’m reminded of it.

Krishna and Arjuna talking on the battlefield of Kuruksetra

Krishna and Arjuna talking on the battlefield of Kuruksetra

Gary Kraftsow Workshop at Yoga Shala of Portland Recap

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As you guys know last week I went down to Portland to see Gary Kraftsow. I didn’t really know what to expect, having had only learned about him through my teacher Kathryn Payne.

I carpooled down with Olivia Esuabana, a friend from the 500-hour teacher training, and a totally cool chick. It’s hard to describe Olivia. She’s got a cool Russian-spy accent. She studies Ayurveda in India. She’s in her 50s (I think), going on… like, 25. We met up at 6:30 a.m. in the morning and took the trip down I-5 South, wind in our hair, figuratively.

Gary’s workshop blew us away, literally, figuratively, and any other way you can think of.

I lack the words to describe to you how much I’ve learned, and how the material affected me. Just think of me sitting in the center in front of Gary (Olivia and I got to the studio way early, and the early birds get the front seat), and despite having slept only 4 hours the night before, my eyes were wide open, ears hanging on to every word from Gary.

I didn’t grasp everything he said. I couldn’t. The concepts he presented are profound and would take lifetimes to fully absorb. Nevertheless, they gave me a glimpse of what is possible. And that was the theme of the workshop: the possibilities for us as human beings to optimize our conditions, not other people’s conditions, but ours. Gary gave the example of an Olympic athlete and a paraplegic person, the end goal for them might be different, but they both have the potential to optimize their current conditions.

Our current condition is that of birth and death, health and illness, joy and sorrow, motivation and discouragement. Our current condition consists of cognition/ideation, mood/feelings, behavior, will & determination. In Sanskrit/Pali, we’re talking about bhava and buddhi, premasakti, annasakti, sankalpa sakti, vyutthana, prakriti, and purusha. If I’ve lost you with these esoteric words, you now know how I felt. There were words/concepts that I had already learned, and there brand new ones that left me in the dust.

Lest you think that we were only discussing esoteric things, we (and by we I mean Gary) also talked about the exoteric concept of Digestion, Respiration, the Immune and Endocrine system, balancing the Nervous system and Parasymathetic nervous system. Gary approached the inner most worlds from the outside in, starting with what we can tangibly feel, our outermost layer: the physical body, or annamaya kosha.

Gary talked about tools to work with what we call goals and motivation, and I’ll write about that another day.

Overall, it was a fantastic workshop, and I recommend seeing Gary Kraftsow if you have the chance. He is a learned teacher with clear command of his domain, and he’s funny and humble at the same time.

Heading home, but the journey continues.

Heading home, but the journey continues.