Category Archives: Readings

Mind and Body, But I Repeat Myself

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Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.
- Mark Twain, a Biography

Oh, Mark Twain.

I am not here to talk politics. I’m here to talk about something I read in the book Buddha’s Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom.

“Your brain interacts with other systems in your body—which in turn interacts with the world—plus it’s shaped by the mind as well. In the largest sense, your mind is made by your brain, body, natural world, and human culture—as well as by the mind itself (Thompson and Varela 2001). We’re simplifying things when we refer to the brain as the basis of the mind.”

And so, like the koshas, the separation between “mind” and “body” is even more artificial than I thought.

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.

When The Real Party Begins

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I’ve been reading Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice, by Mark Singleton, and it is nothing short of mind-blowing. It’s clear Mark has done extensive research and found substantial evidence to show that the physical yoga practice as we know it today is not exclusively “Indian”, and not all of it came printed on a leaf from 5,000 years ago.

This newfound knowledge challenges me in a number of ways, such as the concept of “real yoga” or “traditional yoga”. I learned that the physical aspect of yoga is a synthesis of numerous Movement practices. As Mark wrote:

The history of modern physical culture overlaps and intersects with the histories of para-religious, “unchurched” spirituality; Western esotericism; medicine, health, and hygiene; chiropractic, osteopathy, and bodywork; body-centered psychotherapy; the modern revival of Hinduism; and the sociopolitical demands of the emergent modern Indian nation (to name but a few).

(He’s an academic researcher, if you can’t tell :) )

I’m reminded of works like Reggie Ray’s Touching Enlightenment: Finding Realizations in the Body, and realized that humans have always had a complex relationship with our physical selves. We seek pleasure with it and we mortify it in hope of finding paradise. We glorify it and we detest it, sometimes in the same breath.

With the way most of us live now, attached to a chair and a desk or a wheel, the body is paying a prize. Naturally, physical fitness is the first thing that needs some TLC. You can’t get to Bliss without going through the physical layer, the Annamaya kosha. I suspect this is why yoga has gotten so bodily focused, certainly to extreme degrees in some cases, but hey, it goes back to that addiction thing.

I had always been vaguely aware that a part of a yogasana practice is the innovation of the practitioner, and teacher. How could a craft that’s mainly experiential not be influenced by the people who must experience it intimately in their own body first? Now I know for sure, that for yoga to work, it cannot be packaged and frozen in time. It cannot be merely recited and regurgitated. Its context must be understood.

The tradition of yoga is to adapt and evolve.

And so, with the understanding that yogasana is influenced by a multitude of factors, like people, culture, sociopolitical trends, etc, I’m reminded of a postcard I bought at a coffee shop.

Let me explain.

I used to frequent Cherry Street Coffee House in downtown Seattle, and one day, I met Ali, the owner. He exuded this other-worldly vibe that I couldn’t quite pinpoint, but I was mesmerized. Shortly thereafter, I saw a collection of postcards made by Ali, and I understood. When I read cards like this, and this, I smiled. Here is a man that doesn’t need no stinkin’ yoga! He already understands what it’s all about.

My favorite Ali card of all, the one that I bought many moons ago and have carried it with me to all corners of the world as I moved east, west, north, and south, is one that says: “The party begins when what you want for yourself you want for everyone else. It doesn’t matter which book you are reading.” I see this portrayed by an image of Egyptian Christians protecting their Muslim countrymen while they pray. This image has gotten 1300+ comments on Reddit, including this one:

“I was there! they placed newspapers and towels on the floor so we wouldn’t pray on the hot asphalt, I love Egyptian Christians and although I am Muslim I would die defending any one of them.” – Reddit user sayyeddy.

Egyptian Christians protecting their Muslim countrymen while they pray during protests in Egypt. Image via Reddit http://imgur.com/NhC4m.

Egyptian Christians protecting their Muslim countrymen while they pray during protests in Egypt. Image via Reddit http://imgur.com/NhC4m.

And with credit to Ali, I say, “The party begins when what you want for yourself, you want for everyone else. It doesn’t matter which yoga style you’re practicing.”

Ali Ghambari reminding me of the Big Picture.

Ali Ghambari reminding me of the Big Picture.

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?

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

The Day I Did “Real Yoga”

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I have had a really hard day of traveling, starting off with a mobile boarding pass crashing, some poor planning on my part, some technology failure, long lines at the airport, missing a flight, working with the general anxiety of the consequences of running around worrying about the potential fees I’d have to pay, wondering when I’d be able to come home, all the plans I had made based on a flight depature and arrival time, etc.

Two weeks ago something similar happened. I was having a really difficult morning, driving to a part of the city where I didn’t know there was going to be a huge street fair, where you had to wait and sit in long lines of people and cars for hours just to move two inches. It was not a big deal, in the sense that nothing really tragic happened, no one died, no one’s house burned down. It was just me sitting in my car wanting to be somewhere else, not wanting to be stuck, thinking of the things I coulda shoulda woulda done to not have ended up here.

That day, and today, are the days I do “real yoga.” It’s often said that yoga is about becoming one with the divine. I think that yoga, or at least the test of my progress in yoga, is what happens when things “go wrong”, or in other words, shit hits the fan. Pema Chodron says that we’re always working with our “potential to be bothered”, the times when we don’t feel all that “light and love and the source of truth in your heart.”

All there is, or was, is a sense of tremendous unease, discomfort, a frustration, a nervousness, restlessness, rage, impatience. When I was stuck in the street fair and desperately wanted to be elsewhere (the World Cup final), every time that I had to put my foot on the gas pedal, I wanted to step on the gas pedal twice as hard. This morning, I wanted to scream at all the people in front of me at the airport, “stupid technology”, and my stupid phone. Everybody was stupid and everything sucked.

Well, almost.

For sure, I had those moments and thoughts. I also had moments of catching myself throwing what the authors of Buddha’s Brain call the “second darts.”

“First darts are unpleasant to be sure. But then we add our reactions to them. These reactions are “second darts”–the ones we thorw ourselves. Most of our suffering comes from second darts.”
Rick Hanson with Richard Mendius. The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love & Wisdom. Page 50.

When I became aware of what was happening, I called it out, “Oh yeah, this is fear, this is being frustrated as hell.” To me, this is what my yoga practice is really becoming about. It’s about the ability to go through really uncomfortable situations differently than if I didn’t do yoga at all. It’s not so much about ecstatic bliss and melted heart and unbounded love, the kind of love that soft drink commercials speak of.

Years ago I randomly picked up In Buddha’s Kitchen at a library sale, a book about a woman’s experience cooking in a Buddhist Monastery in Northern California (of course, right? ;) ). I remember a line a lama in the book said, “Anger is when someone shoots a thousand arrows at you, and angry is when you pick them up and stab yourself.”

I know I have gotten super good at stabbing myself, not just with an angry arrow, but with guilt, fear, judgement, impatience, etc., the whole enchilada, really. So yoga, however deep its roots or intricate its philosophy, however “real” or watered-down some of us debate about, really boiled down to something pretty simple for me today: can I stand in a long line at the airport not knowing which flight I could get on, and know that I’m breathing in and breathing out?

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.

Awareness, Empathy, and Emotions

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Here’s one more reason to meditate if you want to rule the world, or like, read and empathize with other people and stuff.

The insula and linked circuits activate when you experience strong emotions such as fear or anger; they also light up when you see others having those same feelings particularly people you care about. The more aware you are of your own emtional and bodily states, the more your insula and anterior cingulate cortex activate – and the better you are at reading others (Singer et al. 2004).

Rick Hanson, PHD. and Richard Mendius, MD. Buddha’s Brain, The practical neuroscience of happiness, love, and wisdom. Chapter 8, Two Wolves in the Heart.

The insuwhat? “The insula plays a role in diverse functions usually linked to emotion or the regulation of the body’s homeostasis. These functions include perception, motor control, self-awareness, cognitive functioning, and interpersonal experience.” In other words, it’s to blame, or praise, for a lot of things. You can read more about the insula to your heart’s content on that good ol’ Wikipedia.

Picture courtesy of spacesuityoga.com. Hmm... chocolate cake.

An illustrated guide to your insular cortext, courtesy of spacesuityoga.com. Hmm... chocolate cake.

An Open Letter of Grace

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One of my favorite authors, Bill Bryson, once wrote:

Welcome. And congratulations. I am delighted that you could make it. Getting here wasn’t easy, I know. In fact, I suspect it was a little tougher than you realize.

…

To be here now; alive in the twenty-first century and smart enough to know it, you also had to be the beneficiary of an extraordinary string of biological good fortune. Survival on Earth is a surprisingly tricky business. Of the billions and billions of species of living thing that have existed since the dawn of time, most—99.99 percent—are no longer around.

…

The average species on Earth lasts for only about four million years, so if you wish to be around for billions of years, you must be as fickle as the atoms that made you. You must be prepared to change everything about yourself—shape, size, color, species affiliation, everything—and to do so repeatedly… The tiniest deviation from any of these evolutionary shifts, and you might now be licking algae from cave walls or lolling walruslike on some stony shore or disgorging air through a blowhole in the top of your head before diving sixty feet for a mouthful of delicious sandworms.

Not only have you been lucky enough to be attached since time immemorial to a favored evolutionary line, but you have also been extremely—make that miraculously—fortunate in your personal ancestry. Consider the fact that for 3.8 billion years, a period of time older than the Earth’s mountains and rivers and oceans, every one of your forebears on both sides has been attractive enough to find a mate, healthy enough to reproduce, and sufficiently blessed by fate and circumstances to live long enough to do so.

Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stranded, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from its life’s quest of delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment in order to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result—eventually, astoundindly, and all too briefly—in you. – Introduction, A Short History of Nearly Everything

I usually laugh, imagining myself licking algae, and often get quite emotional and teary-eyed after reading that. It’s similar to that feeling that you get when you’re out in the middle of nowhere, and you look up to see the whole entire Milky Way spread out above you. You feel so small yet so big, and you just marvel at the wonder of it all, and the fact that you are alive and that you can see this incredible sight.

This post is an expression of gratitude, a huge THANK YOU, a giant virtual hug.

If you were to look at things from a certain perspective, it has been a very tough year for me personally. (I know most people don’t start counting a new year until January 1st, but for me, the new year occurs in November, my birth month.) I’ve gone through lay-offs, rejections, financial losses, physical injuries, family issues. After having lived on my own for so long, I moved back home, waving goodbye to my dear apartment and the carefree, blithe, “single girl in the city” lifestyle.

In theory, I should have slipped into some kind of depression, or at least periods of low self esteem and pity, given everything that happened, and given that I had been well conditioned to being on the other side of the fence: straight A student in high school, Dean’s list in college, groomed to be in a leadership, fast-track career path, etc.

Yet, for some strange reason, the opposite thing took place. I have been living rather, well, ecstatically, running around and appreciating, marveling at life like a goldfish who’s seeing everything for the first time, over and over again.

“Are you okay?”, friends would ask out of concern that I haven’t found a “jobby job”, and I would say, “Oh god, yes! I woke up this morning and went to the bathroom, and there was toilet paper! And a toilet that flushed! I went to turn on the shower and there was hot water! Isn’t that incredible? I’m *more* than okay. I’m like, so lucky to have what I have!” “Um, okay, really now, are you okay?”

I am okay, I am very okay, and I have to say, that I owe a lot of it to yoga.

Now, I know that I may sometimes come across as a bit irreverent, skeptical, cynical, a little disrespectful, even, of “this whole yoga thing”. I know that sometimes it seems like I’m not quite sold on any spiritual context of modern yoga. But, let me say it here and say it now, I am a staunch believer in the transformative and healing power of yoga, for which I could not be more grateful. (And besides, in my humble opinion, doubt is an integral part of a healthy belief.)

Before we go on, I want to emphasize that yoga did not, does not, and will not remove or eradicate any of life’s oopsies and resulting ouchies. It also does not make you numb to life’s realities and ignore your responsibilities. It can, however, help you live more fully in the moment, which is something that all those smart people, living and dead, have been urging us to do since the beginning of time.

“Things are more like they are now than they ever were before”

A little over a year ago, when I started my teacher training at Pacific Yoga in Seattle, little did I know that beyond getting bendy, I was going to be equipped with something akin to a flashlight for the dark and rugged sections of the hike. The flashlight may not tell me where to go and how to get there, but it surely helps me get a good sense of where I’m at, and what’s happening right now.

Right now, I have a dad who’s almost 70, in good health, and driving my mom crazy with his landscaping projects. I have a mom who constantly tries to convince me that I need to eat more (of her food, of course), and who will come nudge me every night to set her up in a Restorative yoga pose. I have a brother who’s also my best friend and occasional drinking buddy, and who will come to me when our parents start to drive him crazy.

Right now, I have a boyfriend who is so supportive of my dedication to yoga, even though he cannot possibly fathom why anyone would voluntarily go without the Internet for 10 days, and how on earth did I not talk during “Meditation Camp” (it was a Vipassana 10-day silent retreat). Right now, I have my health. Today, all my cells have agreed to continue to be me.

Right now, I have been transmitted the teaching of yoga, and I have taken on the responsibility of giving it away in the role of a yoga teacher. These are the two things that I will never take for granted.

I think teaching is the most sacred, the most important thing in life. The subject doesn’t matter—yoga, bicycling, whatever —because it is not what you do that is important, but what you awaken in the other person. – Dona Holleman, from Yoga Journal September/October 1982

It is Wednesday, November 25th, 2009. In the context of yoga, I want to send out an enormous amount of gratitude from the bottom of my heart to all my teachers, mentors, peers, and students (who also teach me much more than they realize). I want to thank you, my readers, whomever you are, for coming by and getting to know me “mo’ betta’” virtually.

And of course, since yoga isn’t separate from my life, and my life isn’t separate from yoga, gracious thanks, too, to my awesome family and friends, old and new, near and far. You may not know it, but you help me practice my yoga, and you help me, you know, keepin’ it real. And I’d like to thank the Academy… oh wait, wrong speech.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Gratitude, I has it.

Gratitude, I has it.

I’m Just Here to Get Lucky – What Your Yoga Teacher Will Tell You, Part 2

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This is part 2 of What Your Yoga Teacher Will Tell You, a response to the Smart Money article: 10 Things Your Yoga Teacher Won’t Tell You. Read Part 1.

What your yoga teacher won’t tell you, number 5: “I’m just here to get lucky.”

While many gyms, training schools, and yoga teachers’ associations frown on liaisons between instructors and students, with all that bared skin and limber bodies, it’s no surprise that this rule sometimes gets broken. It’s not always a big deal, but on occasion these matside flirtations have been known to erupt into full-blown sexual scandals.

I was in my first year in Business school when the Enron debacle broke out. A flood of talk and activities spurred around the topic of Ethics in Business, as if it were something new. I remember being quite snarky about it (some things don’t change, eh? :) ). Really? We’re supposed to be ethical in business? Geez, I hadn’t thought of that!

Over time, I realized how naiive I was. Ethics is more complex than any personal belief of “right” and wrong”. It is not always black and white, as is true for most things in life. This means there should be a forum for it to be discussed, to be defined, to set boundaries, to be taught, and to create awareness.

Human affairs are complicated, and I admit that I prescribe heavily to the laissez-faire philosophy. Live and let live, I say. Yet, hypocritically, I tend to have reservations towards teachers who form romantic relationships with their students. I’m not even really sure why I feel that way, because rationally, I’d say that whatever happens between two consenting adults is no one else’s business, and not for anyone to judge.

However, as a yoga student, I am handing over not just my physical safety, but also my emotional and mental states, and I feel mighty vulnerable. So, I wonder if my prejudice stems from something deep-seated within, maybe some trace of doubt about the teacher’s boundary and my own security?

When I first started teaching, I would try to get my boyfriend to take my classes, and lamented the fact that he wouldn’t. But now, I’m actually glad that the early morning hours prevented him from making it to my classes. As a new teacher, I’m still learning many things, including coming into the role of a teacher. I have taken to heart what Judith Hanson Lasater often stresses: “You must create a sacred circle of safety for your students.” I’m not so rigid to insist that my boyfriend *never* goes to my classes, but I am aware that his presence will change the dynamics of the class.

So yes, sex scandals can erupt anywhere (har, Smart Money, don’t think I didn’t catch that). If it can happen in a somber religious environment under clerical cloaks, then it can surely happen with “magic ass pants” in a Down Dog. If 105-degree heat won’t raise your heart rate, then staring at scantily-clad sweaty bodies in the mirror for 90 minutes certainly will. The Yoga world is absolutely not exempt from unethical wheelin’ and dealins’ and sex scandals.

If you are reading this and thinking, but hey, love is love, and many singers, writers, and poets have rightly declared: you can’t stop love. I would agree. Although, in this case, I don’t know if it’s just simply about boys being boys and girls being girls. In the issue of sexual (mis)conduct, to me, it’s about us knowing our power and needs, and not abusing them to our advantage.

The key to understanding this student-teacher boundary is simple: The teacher is to consider all of his or her actions against a backdrop of the student’s welfare – Judith Lasater, 30 Essential Yoga Poses.

What do you think about this? Have you been in class with the teacher’s boyfriend, girlfriend, or spouse? How do you feel? How *would* you feel? Are you a teacher? Does it feel different with your significant other in the room?

For further reading:

There is no kissing in the yoga studio?

There is no kissing in the yoga room?