Category Archives: Quotes

Street Yoga for You, Me, and All of Us

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So I picked up a paper, it was more bad news
More hearts being broken or people being used
- You Were Meant for Me, Jewel

I’m writing about something that’s probably out of most people’s mind already: the London riot that happened earlier this month. I’m also writing about related events happening in Seattle in September and October for Street Yoga.

In our attention-deficit 24-hour-news world, where the lifetime of a tweet is but a fleeting hour, yesterday’s horrible news needs to be topped with even more horrible, more outrageous, more destructive news today. This morning I saw a funny tweet, and I paraphrase: “The media could hardly contain their disappointment as hurricane Irene has not turned out to be the calamity they had hoped it would be.”

For the most part, this is life as I know it in this early-21st century media, continuous shock and awe of all kinds of titillating and sensational reporting.

The London riot was no exception. It was big news for a few hours. There was finger pointing, there were promises of punishment, there were comedy materials for late night show hosts and Tweeters. (“Did London lose a hockey game or something?”)

Amidst the sound bites, one man wrote a thoughtful piece reflecting on the root causes and proposed a solution, one that could be considered radical in certain circles. This surprised most of us who may be more familiar with him as Mr. Katy Perry, or that crude comedian dude: Russell Brand.

In his heartfelt essay, Big Brother Isn’t Watching You, the most common impression Mr. Brand left seemed to be: “Damn, who knew the Get Him to the Greek dude can write like that!” For me, his essay hit closer to home as someone who’s been involved with Street Yoga and went through their Teacher Training.

At the training, I was exposed to exercises and concepts that clearly demonstrated to me the complex and intertwined social support system (or lack thereof) for the youths in our society: the ones struggling with homelessness, poverty, abuse, addiction, trauma and neurological & psychiatric issues.

These are the people Street Yoga strives to serve. A homeless child grows up to be a homeles adult, and the vicious cycle continues, as homeless adults create homeless children. How do we nip this problem at the buds?

Here’s Russell Brand on the death of Mark Duggan, a young man gunned down by police, spawning a peaceful protest and the ensuing infamous riots.

However “unacceptable” and “unjustifiable” it might be, it has happened so we better accept it and, whilst we can’t justify it, we should kick around a few neurons and work out why so many people feel utterly disconnected from the cities they live in.

Unless on the news tomorrow it’s revealed that there’s been a freaky “criminal creating” chemical leak in London and Manchester and Liverpool and Birmingham that’s causing young people to spontaneously and simultaneously violate their environments – in which case we can park the ol’ brainboxes, stop worrying and get on with the football season, but I suspect there hasn’t – we have, as human beings, got a few things to consider together.

I found those protests exciting, yes, because I was young and a bit of a twerp but also, I suppose, because there was a void in me. A lack of direction, a sense that I was not invested in the dominant culture, that government existed not to look after the interests of the people it was elected to represent but the big businesses that they were in bed with.

Why am I surprised that these young people behave destructively, “mindlessly”, motivated only by self-interest? How should we describe the actions of the city bankers who brought our economy to its knees in 2010? Altruistic? Mindful? Kind? But then again, they do wear suits, so they deserve to be bailed out, perhaps that’s why not one of them has been imprisoned. And they got away with a lot more than a few fucking pairs of trainers.

These young people have no sense of community because they haven’t been given one. They have no stake in society because Cameron’s mentor Margaret Thatcher told us there’s no such thing.

If we don’t want our young people to tear apart our communities then don’t let people in power tear apart the values that hold our communities together.

As you have by now surely noticed, I don’t know enough about politics to ponder a solution and my hands are sticky with blood money from representing corporate interests through film, television and commercials, venerating, through my endorsements and celebrity, products and a lifestyle that contributes to the alienation of an increasingly dissatisfied underclass.

But I know, as we all intuitively know, the solution is all around us and it isn’t political, it is spiritual. Gandhi said: “Be the change you want to see in the world.”

Now, I, like Russell Brand, don’t know enough about politics. Nor do I feel like I know enough about “being spiritual”. To me the word spiritual is quite a slippery slope and it frequently gets thrown around without context or consideration.

When I read that sentence, I stopped momentarily to ponder what Russell was probably thinking in his head when he wrote it. What could he possibly mean?

I don’t know, but here is what I know for sure. My yoga practice, and especially my sitting practice, has offered me benefits which I don’t think I’d be able to get in any other way. What kind of benefits? Flexibility and strength, surely, but I’m not just talking about yogasana only.

If one were simply doing yoga for the physical benefit, they could easily gain it going for a run, bike ride, or lifting weight. No, I’m talking benefits that involve behavioral changes. I’m talking coping mechanisms. I’m talking about a way of being and a way of existing in the world.

Yoga, first of all, gets me into my own body, it gets me to be comfortable in my own skin. This may be automatic and easy for some people, but for me, it’s a learned and acquired taste. It gets me to not only work out and burn a few calories, but it gets me to get to know myself, from a bodily, tangible perspective: here’s my head, here are my toes, here’s the sensation resulting from this movement.

So that’s on a bodily, physical level.

The sitting practice, the meditation practice, is the next level up. Sitting, of course, is not appropriate for everyone at all times. It is not a cure for many psychosis, it’s not a cure-all for all that ails us. It is not a just-add-water solution. It is not a pill.

It is a red pill, in a way, however, in the sense that, as the red pill wakes Neo up to the truth of the Matrix, meditation wakes me up to the real me. That I, too, have those characteristics which I publicly condemn and punish. I’m selfish, I’m spiteful, I’m frightened. I’m generous, I’m loving, I’m fearless.

Seeing everything all mixed up inside makes me realize that I, like others, have the potential to act one way or another, at all times. Sitting reminds me to have compassion for people with their addictions, their trauma, their neurosis, since I, too, have those to varying extent. I, too, see how difficult it is to change, even the most benign of bad habits.

I am not so different, not so separate, not so above from them after all.

What makes me choose not to destroy other people’s properties and set them on fire in most instances? Like Russell Brand, I have a support system. I’ve got a mother and a father who’ve worked tirelessly and unselfishly for my well-being, from my most basic needs to the highest one: Love.

I’ve been privileged to live in a society where I can go to school, get a degree, and have first world problems, like the fact that the internet connection is so slow today in my office building, and the air-conditioning is on too high.

What about the kids without anyone telling them they are alright, they are loved, and they can be musicians, architects, developers, doctors, or whomever their fancy wants to take flight? That they’ve got other options besides agression or submission?

I think most acts of violence can be traced back to a feeling of worthlessness, or feeling rejected, abandoned, unloved, and ultimate, something extra, disposable, replaceable. Who will tell these kids, as my teacher Judith Hanson Lasater told us in a training: “You are not extra. Stand on your mat like you matter”.

Luckily, self-examination and introspection is not only available to the privileged ones. You can have a private jet and a mansion full of designer clothes and cars, and may not ever reflect inward. Or, you can be in a foster home and get to know yourself, one breath at a time.

This is what Street Yoga aims to do. With dedicated social workers, educators, and yoga teachers, Street Yoga seeks to reach out to create a quiet revolution: to encourage people to know themselves rather than be manipulated by others.

“Each one of us struggles daily to maintain our sense of integrity and personal wisdom. Yoga creates a quiet place for people to experience their own bodies, minds, and feelings. They can evaluate what is useful and true.

They are encouraged to deeply listen to themselves. Their independence, creativity, and sincere questioning are encouraged. Yoga, as we present it, is not an ideology, not a cure-all, not another message that we expect people to buy into.

Yoga is a safe space to look for oneself. Yoga is a place to investigate and to make one’s own assessment and choices. It is an offering and a hope for greater independence, empowerment, and self-awareness.”

So, why am I telling you this?

This September, Lululemon Pacific Place will host free in-store yoga classes every Sunday morning to raise awareness for Street Yoga. I’ll be teaching on Sunday September 4, 2011 at 9:30am.

On Saturday October 1st, we’ll have a Fall into Gratitude benefit event: a dinner and dance party at Waid’s Haitian Restaurant at 1212 E Jefferson St. There’ll be a dance performance, an art show, and of course, dinner, all for only $40. It all starts at 6pm.

I hope you’ll come to the free yoga classes and the dinner, and if the spirit moves you, dance. I hope you’ll consider making a contribution to Street Yoga, or similar organizations like Yoga Behind Bars, YogaG, or YogaHOPE. You can encourage educators and your city school boards to look into programs like Mindful Schools.

Most of all, even if you do none of these things, I hope that you, and I, and all of us have the strength and tenacity to continue to learn to work with our bourgeois and non-bourgeois sufferings, and first world or second or third, or universal problems.

And if you don’t do any yoga or meditation or believe in sending your hard-earned money to any organization, I hope you reserve some room for hope in humanity even after watching the 5, 7, 9, and 11 o’clock morning and evening news.

That indeed there are groups of people taking on the crazy and scary work of working on themselves, and in the process mending whatever destruction the Dark Lord or Red Skull instigates. Isn’t that why we cheer for Harry Potter and Captain America?


Don’t take my words for it. Hear the words from the Street on what yoga means.

Happy Mother’s Day to All of Us

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I was in Chicago this weekend visiting a friend who’s graduating from Northwestern Law (congrats Rabi!) As I was waiting for my flight back at Chicago O’Hare, I wandered around, and I don’t remember if it was a restaurant or bookshop, but there was a sign for a Mother’s Day discount. I was excited for a moment, but after closer inspection I realized that I did not qualify, I was not a mother.

“Well, fine. They won’t get my business then”, I thought, because I am five.

I started thinking about what it means to be a mother, not in the sense that you are pregnant with someone, but in the sense that you are pregnant with something, an idea, a new business, a book, an adventure, a transformation. When I attended a workshop by Jessica Jennings on Anusara Yoga for Pregnancy, I think she said something along the same line, that learning about the literal birthing process is useful even for people who aren’t pregnant with children.

Pregnancy is a creating process. And for all of us who are more or less engaged in this path, we, too, are going through an act of creating. It is messy. It hurts, it is painful. Anyone trying to tell you otherwise is lying to you, or lying to themselves. Shapeshifting almost always involves shedding some skin, just ask the dragon’s bride.

In his book, Do the Work, Steve Pressfield wrote:

The creative act is primitive. Its principles are of birth and genesis. Babies are born in blood and chaos; stars and galaxies come into being amid the release of massive primordial cataclysms.

Jewel sang in her song Becoming:

I am hurting
Oh, I am not yet born
I am the mother and the father
Of what is not yet known
Darkness surrounds me
I scratch, I struggle, I breathe.

Birthing is not even the hardest part; after that come the nurturing, the care and feeding, the relationing, with a person, a project, or a practice. There is equal joy and challenge through it all. And though there’s no guarantee at all of what will be, all we know is some internal urge to create, to manifest something into life.

My teacher Judith Lasater once said, “What do you want, the pain of not growing or the pain of growing?” While I understand what she means, I don’t think we, or I, have a choice of not growing. The cells in my body are always dying and renewing. Mother Nature is always destroying and creating.

As Stanley Kunitz sees through The Layers:

Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.

I am not done with my changes.

Happy Mother’s Day.

Form and Freedom

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I have books that I keep going back again and again, and today I was flipping through my copy of Garr Reynolds’ Presentation Zen Design: Simple Design Principles and Techniques to Enhance Your Presentations, and found this so relevant to asana practice:

Another lesson from Zen is that form (rules or structure) is necessary for freedom to exist. If you have the form, you can exercise great freedom. If you have no form, you get a situation in which everything and anything goes. It’s true that we must use our own good judgement and not let the rules become a kind of bondage of their own. Nonetheless, the form is important.

I can vouch for this. I used to do yoga for many, many years completely ignorant of form—the alignment and position of the body, and function—what the pose is good for. It was much more of a physical pursuit to achieve some predetermined shape no matter the cost.

When I started to learn about alignment, I thought it was, well, to be honest, totally anal and rigid. I’ve since changed my mind, but I can see how the obsession with form can easily turn into a robotic practice, “a kind of bondage of their own”, as Garr says in his book.

Nevertheless, learning the principles behind the form has been the single most important thing for me in my yogasana practice.

May the form be with you.

The Real Work of Yoga

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I was listening to KUOW (our local NPR station) after teaching a class last Thursday night when they aired a talk by Rajni Bakshi, a Mumbai–based journalist and activist. She made a stop at Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle to talk about her book “Bazaars, Conversations and Freedom: For a Market Culture Beyond Greed and Fear”, which won India’s biggest literary prize in 2009.

At the end she closed with a quote from Wendell Berry. I didn’t know who he was, but I loved the quote, so I looked him up. Turns out he’s an environmentalist and author, and the quote was from his 27 propositions on global thinking and the sustainability of cities in The Atlantic Monthly.

XXIII. The real work of planet-saving will be small, humble, and humbling, and (insofar as it involves love) pleasing and rewarding. Its jobs will be too many to count, too many to report, too many to be publicly noticed or rewarded, too small to make anyone rich or famous.

As I heard it, I thought, yeah, that’s how it feels studying, teaching, and bringing yoga to “the real world” too: small, humble and humbling.

Revisiting the Definition of Yoga, Part I

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C’est le Devoir

I’m doing an 800-hr correspondence course with Georg and Brenda Feuerstein’s Traditional Yoga Studies. Among the reading materials (like a study binder the size of a small child) is the book The Yoga Tradition: Its History, Literature, Philosophy and Practice.

I’m reading a part where Georg is talking about the etymology and connotations of yoga. Among the ever-popular definitions of “to yoke” and “union”, yoga also means “conjunction of stars,” “grammatical rule,” “endeavor”, “occupation,” “team,” “means,” “aggregate,”, etc.

I was immediately drawn to the meaning “endeavor”. I like that definition a lot, which dictionary.com defines as “to exert oneself to do or effect something; make an effort; strive.” It’s from the Middle English endeveren, from the phrase putten in devoir to make an effort, assume responsibility; and Ancient French se mettre en deveir.

If you’ve ever studied French, you may have dreaded the word devoir, but there’s no other way to learn something like 52 ways to conjugate all those verbs.

I like the concept of doing your homework and striving for something. I mean, I don’t always *like* putting in the effort and doing the homework, or doing the work. But, since I’m on this path, where there’s bound to be traffic jam, uncourteous drivers, detours, potholes, and bad road signage, it’s a good reminder for myself that I am not here to only pick flowers on a red cushy carpet.

I also like that the dictionary defines endeavor as an attempt, an effort to strive for something. It does not say the End, the Destination. In his workshop this past weekend, Tias Little stressed many times over that there is no “there”. You do not simply “achieve” a pose. You might be *in* it, and by in, I mean, the observing, the noticing, the development of sensory skills.

The prefix en means “to cause to be in”. My interpretation is that there is a deliberate intention here. There’s awareness. That’s the se mettre part, the putting of oneself in it. There’s willingness.

C’est l’ Exploration

Last week, I started another Yoga for Newbies series, and in the very first class, a student asked straight up, “What is Yoga?” I was taken aback for 2 seconds, because that is a big question, but I’m glad she brought it up, because it’s that sense of inquiry that makes a yoga class … well, yoga. (Inquiry is really what yoga is about, but that’s another topic).

I gave the classical definition from everyone’s “starter yoga definition”: Patanjali’s, that yoga = citta vrtti nirodha. We were moments from savasana, and I said that one thing yoga helps us is how to deal with the chatter in our mind, the kind that, even if you don’t invite it, shows up anyway.

When I learned this definition for the first time, I thought this was it, that I had cracked the code, that I had discovered what yoga is. But no, time would eventually teach me about other mentions and interpretations of yoga in the Upanishad, and the Mahabharata, and people like Vyasa and Shankara. And I know it doesn’t end there. The exploration has just begun.

And of course, it is not really about who said what. It’s useful, for sure, to know intellectually, to be informed and educated, but the real deal doesn’t happen until I actually check it out for myself, in the “real” world, where traffic jams happen every day. As Tias Little said today: “It’s one thing to fill up notebooks with notes, it’s another to actualize the teaching.” The emphasis here is the verb *act*.

So, guys and girls, there’s another contribution to the question “What is Yoga.” Tune in next week for part II. In the mean time, what the heck is “grammatical rules?” I mean, really?

Where Is “Within”, And How Do You Get There?

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I’m listening to this audio book called Catching the Big Fish, written and read by David Lynch. (I’m going through this period of looking for inspiration from the Art world, but more on that later.) This is what he says in the very first chapter, and I found his question totally intriguing: “Where is within? And how do you get there?”

David’s conclusion is through meditation, and he reports that he’s never missed a day in 30+ years of doing Transcendental Meditation. I admit I don’t know much about this meditation method, and honestly, I’ve not looked into it, for a couple reasons. I think I’ve let all the skeptics and their criticism decide for me.

In any case, here’s the first couple sentences from the book:

The First Dive

“He whose happiness is within, whose contentment is within, whose light is all within, that Yogi, being one with Brahman, obtains eternal freedom in pure consciousness,” from the Bhagavad Gita. When I first heard about meditation I had zero interest in it, I wasn’t even curious. It sounded like a waste of time. What got me interested though was the phrase “True happiness lies within”, At first I thought it sounded kinda mean because it doesn’t tell you where the within is or how to get there. But still, it had a ring of truth, and I began to think that maybe meditation was a way to go within.

The Years Shall Run Like Rabbits

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One of my favorite movies of all time is Before Sunrise, which I have seen so many times the disc is completely scratched up. One of the memorable scenes that seems to be permanently stuck in my mind is when Ethan Hawke’s character recites the poem As I Walked out One Evening by W.H. Auden.

‘The years shall run like rabbits,
For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
And the first love of the world.’

But all the clocks in the city
Began to whirr and chime:
‘O let not Time deceive you,
You cannot conquer Time.

These last days, as the calendar says it’s time for Spring, though the weather in Seattle today violent disagrees (heavy rain and 30mph wind), these lines remind me: ‘O let not Time deceive you. You cannot conquer Time.

Time goes fast, we keep hearing that. We keep hearing these clichéd phrases until they become tired like that proverbial broken record, but there are moments when they hit home so close that you finally get what they are all about, then they become true on a cellular, experiential level.

This month marks exactly one year since I finished my 200-hour training from Pacific Yoga, a 9-month program that sent me deep into the woods of yogic studies. It left me bewildered, confused, amazed, and humbled. Next month this time, I’ll be graduating from the 500-hour teacher training, a program that I started a year ago.

This morning when I was gathering my training attendance records, I went over the schedule of each session with mixed emotions. I was proud that I had been exposed to so much material, and I was a bit nervous because I don’t think I remember every single thing I’ve learned. But that anxiety did not last very long. I was immediately reminded of how I’m still going over the material that I learned in the 200-hour training, how everything I learned continues to emerge for me to grasp, understand, and learn them again.

I’m comforted by Yoga Sutra I.14, which is something of a personal mantra as of late. I learned this sutra in my 200-hour training, and it’s taken over a year for me to get it.

Satu dirgha kala nairantarya satkara asevitah dridha bhumih – YS 1.14

This sutra roughly says that there are three things that make a practice is firmly rooted and becomes stable:

  • dirgha kala: a long time
  • nairantarya: without interruption
  • satkara: devotion

I’m comforted by knowing that when May rolls around and Graduation day comes, and it will be here soon enough, I won’t really have to be “done”. I’ll still have some time to continue to do whatever work is left to do, which is endless, really. “Your certificate is a certificate to begin your studies,” Judith Hanson Lasater said once.

Having said that, I also know that I don’t really have *that* much time. Recently, a family friend passed away completely unexpectedly, and her untimely death shocked all of us to the core. My mom celebrated her 60th birthday yesterday. We were sitting at the kitchen table talking about it last week when she looked at me tenderly and said, “You’re 28, you turn around, and you’re 60. Time goes so much faster than you think.” I nodded and looked at my mom, I mean really looked at her, trying to capture what she looked like, because I’ll want to remember that exact moment when I turn 60.

In one of her talks, Pema Chodron cited Suzuki Roshi: “Knowing life is short, enjoy it day after day, moment after moment.” Sure, it’s easy for *them* to say that, but what about me? Me who’s got enough Vata to bottle energy drinks for an army? Me who’s constantly distracted and checking my iPhone and the latest tweet and blog and facebook status and what’s hot, what’s new, what’s latest, everything but what’s here and what’s now?

I’m practically a lost cause, running after anything that’s shiny, promising instant gratification and an escape from this mundane moment. My saving grace is yoga. Over these past two years of immersing myself in the teacher trainings, attending workshops, and committing to a daily meditation practice, I have occasionally caught glimpses of what it might be all about, that, “enjoy it moment after moment” thing. You cannot conquer time, but you can learn to be its companion.

To me, that’s what the practice is about, and it’ll take a long time, being consistent, and lots of dedication.  I will not let Time deceive me, and I will not deceive it. I’m humbled by Time, and I will let it run its course. In the meanwhile, all I can do is continue to practice with what I’ve got, one day at a time.

To all you guys reading this, kudos to you for committing yourself to this practice, or any practice for that matter. Kudos to you for showing up, and committing your mind, and body, and time, to whatever it is that floats your boat: climbing, painting, singing, writing, dancing, etc. All I can say is, if that’s your thing, and it’s doing you good, as long as it feeds you, it doesn’t matter where you are in the process, just keep going.

When I’m 60, or 70, or 80, if I will have learned to sit or lie down in Savasana and not think of a million and one things having nothing to do with that current moment, I will probably tell W.H. Auden, “Ha! See? I *can* conquer time.” At which point I’ll remember the movie Before Sunrise and think of all my favorite scenes, and poof, there will go my mind again.

Color-coordinated mother and daughter. With my beautiful mom on her 60th birthday.

Color-coordinated mother and daughter. With my beautiful mom on her 60th birthday.

Four by Four, Sit by Sit

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Alright, it’s March! That means the First Nikki Challenge 28-Day Sit-off Meditation Competition is ovar! How’d it go for you? As you recall the rules were minimal. All I asked was for you to sit. That’s it! 60 seconds, 60 minutes, it didn’t matter. The goal was to create a habit, and as all of us know, if the goal is too lofty, we won’t even get started at all.

Kudos to you if you took it the challenge. And a HUGE THANK YOU to our Sit-off sponsors: The awesome people who gave us a little incentive to do our work. Okay, now what, you’re off the hook, right? Actually, no one was ever really “on the hook” with anyone in the first place, really, except with ourself. And that’s the hardest person to hold accountable with, eh?

If you’ve enjoyed sitting, and enjoyed the “sitoff” spirit, fret not, here comes the iEvolve 90 day Meditation Challenge. Yes, that’s a whole whopping *ninety* days, not 28 puny days. Also, this challenge asks that you sit for an hour a day. From their website:

THE CHALLENGE:

Meditate 1 hour everyday for 90 days in a row. You can sit for 60-minutes straight, two 30- minute periods, or 4 15-minute periods. Whatever works for you. Either way, that’s 90 hours of meditation under your belt! Start Spring 2010 off right and re-energize your practice and your life with our 90 day meditation challenge.

As you know, I’m a huge believer of doing things in an easy, steady, sustainable way. So, I’ve decided to tweak the rules a little bit (“they’re more like guidelines anyway”). I’ve decided to use the divide and conquer strategy. I’ve also included Pranayama as part of the sit. Let’s call it MPx4, Meditation and Pranayama by Four sittings a day. An hour seems like a lot, but 15 minutes? We all have 15 minutes here and there to spare.

Every Day Is A Winding Road

The Challenge calls for 90 hours of sitting, that’s 5400 minutes. My take is you ought to account for mishaps in life, and you ought to be able to make up for them.

If you miss a day, add another day to the challenge. For example, it’s March 1, 2010 as I’m writing this, but you’re reading about this on March 2, or 3. Who says you have to finish May 28, 2010? Why not May 29, or 30? This can go too far, however. You might say to yourself, “I’m putting it off until January 1, 2011, yeah, that’ll be my New Year Resolution!”

So, why not set a deadline of the last day of Spring, which is June 20, 2010? It’s like those punch cards where you get a limited time to use. That adds a whole whopping 23 days to the 90-day sit, that’s like 25% more for the same price!

If you miss 15 minutes, add another 15 minutes. If you’ve only done 15 minutes today, add 45 minutes to your “Credit” column, and save it for a make-up day. DO NOT binge and purge. Well, do it if you want to, but I strongly advise against the dieter’s mentality of having “cheat days” where you go berserk with everything in sight. Don’t think, oh, I’m not gonna sit today, but I’ll sit for five hours this weekend. It doesn’t work in the long run. It’s unsustainable.

The exception, of course, is if you’ve signed up for a sit where you really will sit for five hours, then I think it’s cool. What doesn’t work is the old college habit of cramming. It’s 10pm and that 50-page paper is due at 8am tomorrow morning? No problems, I have a whole *twelve* hours to write. Yeah, that rarely ends well.

Okay, here’s a recap:

  • The challenge is to complete 5400 minutes of sitting, a combination of Pranayama and Meditation.
  • You must do each session for at least 15 minutes.
  • You’re strongly encouraged to sit for an hour a day.
  • You have from March 1, 2010 to June 20, 2010 to complete.

Bonus:

Are you a math/stat geek? Keep tabs and quantify on your effort. For example, you can record when you sit, and do a tally on whether you do more Pranayama or Meditation in the morning, or at night.

Any time's a good time for a spreadsheet!

Any time's a good time for a spreadsheet!

What do you think? Are you in?

When we take the meditation posture, we’re developing a posture and attitude of attentive openness to whatever arises, and this is actually a very brave thing to do. I think maybe we wouldn’t actually even begin on this journey if we knew how brave that is, to just sit, and open our minds, open our whole being, with attentive openness to whatever might arise.

Because in so doing, we’re actually opening ourselves beyond our usual habitual view of ourself and of reality. We actually don’t know what we’re going to see, and one of the first things that one gradually begins to perceive is that perhaps we aren’t quite who we thought we were.

…

We sit, and we just look, with an openness, as much openness as we can, and in so doing, we’re opening ourselves to letting go, or seeing through, or at least seeing exactly who we are and what we do. We’re setting ourselves up, you could say, for some of the ways, and eventually all of the ways in which we conventionally and habitually view reality, to let those fall apart, so it’s very brave. And this path, is considered the Path of the Brave Ones, which doesn’t mean we *are* brave, but it means we begin to cultivate our fearlessness.

- Pema Chodron, From Fear to Fearlessness, Session 1, Beginning the Path of the Brave Ones.

Those rules, they're more like guidelines anyway

Those rules, they're more like guidelines anyway

Santosha, and Resistance and Acceptance

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Talk about weird cosmic timing. I made a short video about Santosha a couple days ago, and today in my inbox, I received the latest blog post from Arnold Ilgner, the author of The Rock Warrior’s Way: Mental Training for Climbers about Resistance and Acceptance.

I absolutely enjoyed reading what Arnold had to say. He said what I wanted to convey in the idea of Santosha, but much more concise. I want to share it with you guys here. I also took the liberty to bold some texts.

We all tend to resist stress. To begin overcoming this tendency, admit that stress is a normal and desirable part of climbing. Accept this not just philosophically but in practice. When you encounter a stressful situation, accept the stress and explore its details. Accepting stress will help you see a situation as it is and avoid the distracting tricks your mind plays to satisfy its desire for comfort.

Acceptance does not equal resignation. It means simply that you avoid wishful thinking and illusions, and focus on gathering useful information about the challenge before you. Saying, “I wish these holds were bigger,” is an expression of resistance. It will not make the holds grow or help you use them. Saying, “I hope there’s a hold up there,” will not create a hold or help you respond if there isn’t one. Saying, “If only I wasn’t so pumped,” will not re-energize your forearms or help you find the least strenuous path through the crux.

Juliet is not a good spotter at all.

Juliet is not a good spotter at all.

Feel All Emotions

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I have been reading A Year of Living Your Yoga: Daily Practices to Shape Your Life by Judith Lasater since December 2007 (thank you, Amazon Orders History). Every time I read the daily entry, I get a new perspective and insight.

Today, February 27, the entry reads:

If you want to embrace the light, you must also embrace the darkness.

LIVING YOUR YOGA: We all long for love, peace, and ease. But in order to fully experience them, we must also be willing to embrace our hatred, anger, and agitation. Today when you feel any strong negative emotions, really feel them. Cutting off negative feelings cuts off our ability to feel all emotions.

I especially enjoy this, because reading it feels like a long relieved exhalation. It’s given me permission to acknowledge emotions that I once thought were “off-limit”.

The Agony and the Ecstasy

One thing about the yoga and meditation world that I think “hooks” people in is the promise of bliss, and not just any kind of bliss, eternal bliss, ecstatic bliss, (uh, not to mention, yoga bliss hips). If you’re not happy, practice it. If you’re currently happy, you could be happier, all the time. My god, even the mat wash oughta be happy.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for happy, love, bliss, and more happy. Nope, nothing against that at all.

What I’ve learned though, that when we talk about abstract concepts like love, compassion, happy, spiritual, bliss, without setting any context, without any preconditions, we can run into all sorts of troubles when we’re not experiencing any of those emotions.

For example, let’s say something has gone very wrong, everything has hit the fan. My uncensored reaction might go something like this, “I’m so pissed! No, I’m fucking pissed! I HATE HATE HATE.” Or, perhaps something milder happened. Maybe I’m slightly offended by something. I might run off, get on my high horse and judge, roll my eyes and get all worked up. You know the drill.

Uh oh, but, I’m a yoga teacher! I’m not supposed to get upset! I’m not supposed to get livid! Quelle horreur! Seeing this, I might tell myself, “Oh, it’s okay. I’m fine. I’m supposed to be happy, and loving. Yes, I love everyone. And we’re all one. Ommm.”

If this is my approach to every crummy moment in life, I’ll end up with a lot of repression, won’t I?

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia

I’m learning that in the context of yoga, things like love and happiness aren’t what we think they are. They’re not the–”I’m so happy it’s sunny out”, or, “I love this present you gave me”–kind of emotions.

Once, when my boyfriend was waiting to hear back from a prospective employer and getting worried and anxious, I told him to be happy and just enjoy the moment. He looked at me like I was out of my mind. “Be happy? How could I be happy when I may not get the job?”. “Is everybody who has a job happy? And all the unemployed people are swimming in giant seas of unhappiness?” I asked him. “Well, yeah. How could you be happy if you don’t make any money?”

I knew then that we weren’t talking about the same kind of happiness. My teacher Shinzen Young often talks about a kind of happiness that’s independent of any conditions. That’s probably the happiness and bliss that yoga teachers and magazines often talk about. But I’m not convinced that it’s clearly explained enough, especially in mainstream yoga. Or, perhaps the ambiguity is intentional. After all, my guess is “Practice Feeling Completely Rotten” doesn’t sell as many magazine copies.

All Fall Down

I’m finding out that taking the role of the Witness, the Observer (or Ishvara) means that I’ve got to call an Ace an Ace. Whatever emotion that’s passing by, no matter how dark, should be recognized. Oh look, there’s anxiety. There’s jealousy. There’s selfishness. There’s self-righteousness.

And the trick is to do so with a kind of tenderness, a kind of… well, love; love for my humanness. How human of me to be scared, to be hurt, to project. Practicing this way, for me, creates a kind of happiness that’s really sweet, and so hard to describe. “I’m happy that I can see how awful this experience is.” I know, it doesn’t make any friggin’ sense, does it?

Well, I can say more, but Pema Chodron has eloquently and concisely put it in one sentence as she talked about Maitri, the practice of loving-kindness.

“Maitri is not about feeling good, it’s about feeling whatever you feel with a compassionate attitude and with extreme honesty” – Pema Chodron, Awakening Compassion Lectures.

Have you ever felt like you were “supposed” to feel anything different than what you’re currently feeling? How do you work with that?

Perhaps you need a copy of Yoga Journal, kitteh?

Perhaps you need a copy of Yoga Journal, kitteh?