"For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult task of all...the work for which all other work is but preparation." (Rilke, as quoted by Jack Kornfield in A Path with Heart)
As you practice today, remember that no matter how hard it gets, it is nothing compared to staying calm in the face of a frustrating interaction, remaining loving when someone close to you pushes your buttons, and being kind even toward those who seem to wish us harm.
Do the work that prepares you for that most difficult task. Embrace the challenges and obstacles on your mat so you can be ready for the challenges to loving and showing that love. Take a long shavasana at the end to let it all sink in, so you rise from your practice knowing that you are ready for the task and the privilege of loving others.
(I highly recommend Kornfield's book, by the way, if you'd like to read further.)
25 August 2010
17 August 2010
We are what we repeatedly do.
"Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit."
I don't usually put much stock in Aristotle, who was deeply and unfailingly dualistic in his view of the world and has helped embed our western world in that way of thinking for centuries. But this quote strikes me as quite yogic.
Practice one or more of the techniques of yoga--asana (posture), pranayama (breath and energy expansion), bhakti (devotional chanting and acts), dhyana (meditation), karma (service), or some other-- and soon we realize excellence.
Not necessarily a perfect backbend or a divine voice or an entirely still mind, although these will come with time, I hear.
But excellence in ways that creep up on us without us forcing them: we can be a little kinder, we feel less grasping for things we don't have and more gratitude for those we do, we stay calmer in the face of disruption.
This is because we practice these difficult things, little by little, even when we seem to just be bending and breathing on the mat. (And the bending and breathing help prepare the body for these broader changes as they bring to an optimal state all its systems: nervous, digestive, muscular, cardiovascular, endocrine, and so on.)
Aristotle was saying something quite in line with the yogis: It's not all about genetic gifts, and it's not about what you believe or think. It's about what you DO.
Do your best, each time, with what you have. Such a cliche, but so true. And if it is something you wish to excel in, do it over and over and over. The yogis were talking about daily, committed, intense practice. (They weren't talking about a six-week workshop and then a video once in a while.)
As the Gita reminds us: Put forth effort and let go of your attachment to results. And then do it again. And again. And again....
I don't usually put much stock in Aristotle, who was deeply and unfailingly dualistic in his view of the world and has helped embed our western world in that way of thinking for centuries. But this quote strikes me as quite yogic.
Practice one or more of the techniques of yoga--asana (posture), pranayama (breath and energy expansion), bhakti (devotional chanting and acts), dhyana (meditation), karma (service), or some other-- and soon we realize excellence.
Not necessarily a perfect backbend or a divine voice or an entirely still mind, although these will come with time, I hear.
But excellence in ways that creep up on us without us forcing them: we can be a little kinder, we feel less grasping for things we don't have and more gratitude for those we do, we stay calmer in the face of disruption.
This is because we practice these difficult things, little by little, even when we seem to just be bending and breathing on the mat. (And the bending and breathing help prepare the body for these broader changes as they bring to an optimal state all its systems: nervous, digestive, muscular, cardiovascular, endocrine, and so on.)
Aristotle was saying something quite in line with the yogis: It's not all about genetic gifts, and it's not about what you believe or think. It's about what you DO.
Do your best, each time, with what you have. Such a cliche, but so true. And if it is something you wish to excel in, do it over and over and over. The yogis were talking about daily, committed, intense practice. (They weren't talking about a six-week workshop and then a video once in a while.)
As the Gita reminds us: Put forth effort and let go of your attachment to results. And then do it again. And again. And again....
10 August 2010
Get a grip. Then let go of it.
"If you let go a little, you will have a little peace. If you let go a lot, you will have even more peace." (Achaan Chah)
Where do you feel yourself holding on, maybe even gripping tight? I feel it in my hip flexors--the fronts of my hips-- and in my lower back. Maybe you feel it in your jaw, or in your shoulders, or in your pelvic floor. Maybe you feel it most in your mind, holding on to a goal or an idea of how things 'should' be.
Chah is speaking in the Buddhist tradition, but the yogis have their own way of saying the same thing. They claim that the best way to catch a monkey in the jungle is to simply put out a jar of treats with a narrow neck. When the monkey finds it, he will thrust his open hand into the jar, grasp the treats, and try to pull his fist out. The narrow neck will prevent him from extricating himself. He will try like anything to free himself with his fist grasping the prize, and remain stuck no matter how hard he tries...because he is unwilling to let go.
I don't know if this is true of real monkeys; the yogis are talking about the monkey mind. And there the story holds true, at least in my experience.
In your practice today, watch for what you're grasping, gripping, holding. Maybe you notice a relationship between what you're mentally grasping and someplace you are physically tightening--but that's not necessary. Just noticing either the mental OR the physical holding gives us an entry point for letting go of it. That's the beauty of raja and hatha yoga.
Notice the tightening. If it's physical, you can even exaggerate it to really make it conscious and volitional (this is the PNF or "resistance" method I teach sometimes, for those of you who have learned it). If it's mental, do that, too! Focus on it, let it really percolate up.
Then let it go.
Where do you feel yourself holding on, maybe even gripping tight? I feel it in my hip flexors--the fronts of my hips-- and in my lower back. Maybe you feel it in your jaw, or in your shoulders, or in your pelvic floor. Maybe you feel it most in your mind, holding on to a goal or an idea of how things 'should' be.
Chah is speaking in the Buddhist tradition, but the yogis have their own way of saying the same thing. They claim that the best way to catch a monkey in the jungle is to simply put out a jar of treats with a narrow neck. When the monkey finds it, he will thrust his open hand into the jar, grasp the treats, and try to pull his fist out. The narrow neck will prevent him from extricating himself. He will try like anything to free himself with his fist grasping the prize, and remain stuck no matter how hard he tries...because he is unwilling to let go.
I don't know if this is true of real monkeys; the yogis are talking about the monkey mind. And there the story holds true, at least in my experience.
In your practice today, watch for what you're grasping, gripping, holding. Maybe you notice a relationship between what you're mentally grasping and someplace you are physically tightening--but that's not necessary. Just noticing either the mental OR the physical holding gives us an entry point for letting go of it. That's the beauty of raja and hatha yoga.
Notice the tightening. If it's physical, you can even exaggerate it to really make it conscious and volitional (this is the PNF or "resistance" method I teach sometimes, for those of you who have learned it). If it's mental, do that, too! Focus on it, let it really percolate up.
Then let it go.
07 August 2010
Top down or bottom up
Next time you have a chance, read some of the Hatha Yoga Pradipika (Bihar School of Yoga translation has the best commentary). Or read a book by Georg Feuerstein to get a sense of earlier hatha yoga techniques and the influence of tantra on yoga and Buddhism.
In the wake of the Yoga Journal controversy about their ads, it's good to remember the fuller picture of yoga practices. It is, after all, a practice that focuses on the bodily practices so that the student can realize nonduality; that is, really GET the way that the body is not separate from the mind, nor from other bodies, nor from other material things.
I am all for a discussion of why YJ needs to reconsider their editorial (both text and image) emphasis on asana and why the relationship between editorial and advertising sales is increasingly twisted in most magazines, including YJ.
But to say that Kathryn Budig's photographs in Toesox ads are just more "naked women" and say they are not "about the celebration of the beauty of the human body or the beauty of the poses" seems misguided to me. The photos show a woman in motion who is strong and focused, not waifish or pouting or staring blankly or any of the typical "I am a sexual object" indicators.
And if we consider the many techniques of hatha yoga, we find many that are far more salacious and eyebrow-raising than naked asana practice. For instance, there's going into a river to draw the water up into one's anus, hold it there, and then expel it. There's having ritualized sex. There's meditating on corpses in a burial ground.
There are lots of practices, especially the ones from the "left-handed" tantric schools, that encourage the practitioner to shake herself out of ordinary consciousness by doing something forbidden, exotic, unusual. It can help to wake us up.
AND there are many others that encourage the student to shake herself out of ordinary consciousness by doing the mundane and ordinary. That is, by practicing the same thing OVER and OVER again. And finding the freshness in it even though it is, on the face of it, very familiar.
You may remember this argument from the movie My Dinner with Andre.
I think the two approaches work beautifully together. A yoga practice of asana (moving and holding postures) and pranayama (breathing consciously) and pratyahara (turning senses inward) and dhyana (concentrating) can do BOTH.
Sometimes I take a class and it blows my mind. The teacher gets me to do things I'd never think I could do. I move and breathe steadily until I let go of everything but just this breath, just this moment. I am alert and calm and totally focused. They usually have to exhaust me and get me right to the edge for this to happen. They have to remind me of my true Self, which is bigger than the little one I usually identify with, and threatens to dissolve little-self.
Other times my practice is so familiar I can feel myself starting to get bored and I have to work to make what is so familiar fresh. I have to make an effort to notice what is different about this easy inhale from the last one, this Warrior B from yesterday's. This is another way to wake up.
So in today's practice, your intention might be to make way for either of these to occur...either the huge unusual event that shifts your perspective suddenly, or the gradual changes that take place when we apply ourselves to a regular, ordinary practice and notice what happens over time.
Top down or bottom up? I'll meet you in that middle path.
In the wake of the Yoga Journal controversy about their ads, it's good to remember the fuller picture of yoga practices. It is, after all, a practice that focuses on the bodily practices so that the student can realize nonduality; that is, really GET the way that the body is not separate from the mind, nor from other bodies, nor from other material things.
I am all for a discussion of why YJ needs to reconsider their editorial (both text and image) emphasis on asana and why the relationship between editorial and advertising sales is increasingly twisted in most magazines, including YJ.
But to say that Kathryn Budig's photographs in Toesox ads are just more "naked women" and say they are not "about the celebration of the beauty of the human body or the beauty of the poses" seems misguided to me. The photos show a woman in motion who is strong and focused, not waifish or pouting or staring blankly or any of the typical "I am a sexual object" indicators.
And if we consider the many techniques of hatha yoga, we find many that are far more salacious and eyebrow-raising than naked asana practice. For instance, there's going into a river to draw the water up into one's anus, hold it there, and then expel it. There's having ritualized sex. There's meditating on corpses in a burial ground.
There are lots of practices, especially the ones from the "left-handed" tantric schools, that encourage the practitioner to shake herself out of ordinary consciousness by doing something forbidden, exotic, unusual. It can help to wake us up.
AND there are many others that encourage the student to shake herself out of ordinary consciousness by doing the mundane and ordinary. That is, by practicing the same thing OVER and OVER again. And finding the freshness in it even though it is, on the face of it, very familiar.
You may remember this argument from the movie My Dinner with Andre.
I think the two approaches work beautifully together. A yoga practice of asana (moving and holding postures) and pranayama (breathing consciously) and pratyahara (turning senses inward) and dhyana (concentrating) can do BOTH.
Sometimes I take a class and it blows my mind. The teacher gets me to do things I'd never think I could do. I move and breathe steadily until I let go of everything but just this breath, just this moment. I am alert and calm and totally focused. They usually have to exhaust me and get me right to the edge for this to happen. They have to remind me of my true Self, which is bigger than the little one I usually identify with, and threatens to dissolve little-self.
Other times my practice is so familiar I can feel myself starting to get bored and I have to work to make what is so familiar fresh. I have to make an effort to notice what is different about this easy inhale from the last one, this Warrior B from yesterday's. This is another way to wake up.
So in today's practice, your intention might be to make way for either of these to occur...either the huge unusual event that shifts your perspective suddenly, or the gradual changes that take place when we apply ourselves to a regular, ordinary practice and notice what happens over time.
Top down or bottom up? I'll meet you in that middle path.
03 August 2010
Liberté, équanimité, fraternité!
Tonight in class I'll be teaching a lot of twisting, sidebending, and inverting postures. So I've been thinking about what we need to do to get into each of those positions.
It's pretty basic: to enter any yoga posture safely, we need to find a neutral posture and even breath first.
But NEUTRAL is not the same thing as HABITUAL. Our habitual posture and breathing is often far from neutral.
This is where ujjayi samavrtti pranayama and bandhas come in. They help us create a steady breath with equal-length inhalations and exhalations, plus find neutral pelvis and a long, tall spine, as we begin each movement.
Then we can twist safely. We can sidebend without crunching. We can invert without compression.
It's tempting to think that we can wring ourselves into position with muscle and force, and once we get there start to breathe fully again and maybe "fix" the areas we've tensed up...but it will always feel better when we remember to work the equanimity in our breath and the neutral spine with space between the vertebrae FIRST.
In our everyday lives, we can find equanimity before putting ourselves in positions that could cause strain. We find "neutral" so that we can enter a difficult situation and still breathe...so that we can emerge from a place of constriction even stronger, even more spacious than before. As the systems of the body--respiratory, skeletal, muscular, circulatory, etc.--find a calm, steady state, so can the mind.
So, as many teachers have pointed out: Find the Tadasana (Mountain) in every posture. Even breathing, neutral pelvis, tall spine. In today's practice, focus on that FIRST, before any movement to twist, side bend, invert, back bend, or forward bend. So what if you don't grab your toe or wrist or get into some extreme new variation of a posture? Explore equanimity--it might be the most extreme thing you do today!
It's pretty basic: to enter any yoga posture safely, we need to find a neutral posture and even breath first.
But NEUTRAL is not the same thing as HABITUAL. Our habitual posture and breathing is often far from neutral.
This is where ujjayi samavrtti pranayama and bandhas come in. They help us create a steady breath with equal-length inhalations and exhalations, plus find neutral pelvis and a long, tall spine, as we begin each movement.
Then we can twist safely. We can sidebend without crunching. We can invert without compression.
It's tempting to think that we can wring ourselves into position with muscle and force, and once we get there start to breathe fully again and maybe "fix" the areas we've tensed up...but it will always feel better when we remember to work the equanimity in our breath and the neutral spine with space between the vertebrae FIRST.
In our everyday lives, we can find equanimity before putting ourselves in positions that could cause strain. We find "neutral" so that we can enter a difficult situation and still breathe...so that we can emerge from a place of constriction even stronger, even more spacious than before. As the systems of the body--respiratory, skeletal, muscular, circulatory, etc.--find a calm, steady state, so can the mind.
So, as many teachers have pointed out: Find the Tadasana (Mountain) in every posture. Even breathing, neutral pelvis, tall spine. In today's practice, focus on that FIRST, before any movement to twist, side bend, invert, back bend, or forward bend. So what if you don't grab your toe or wrist or get into some extreme new variation of a posture? Explore equanimity--it might be the most extreme thing you do today!
27 July 2010
The Real Thing
Seen the big NYT Magazine article on Anusara yoga this weekend?
One of the main themes was whether American schools of yoga are "authentic" or not. This article focused on the founder of Anusara, John Friend, and how he trained with yoga masters like BKS Iyengar and then broke away to form his own "brand" of yoga, which has become extremely popular in America.
I think the writer did a fair job of explaining in a few words what Anusara classes emphasize that makes them distinct from other major American styles.
She also quoted John Friend in ways that make him seem spectacularly grandiose, and she consistently framed the story as one of yoga as a business--a very big business.
My experience with Friend is limited to a large workshop, which he taught as an advanced Anusara vinyasa flow, making his way around the 100+ students and giving individual adjustments aplenty along with his assistants. It was a great class, as are so many of the Anusara classes and workshops I attend, with teachers like Shalini Latour, Irena Miller, Marni Task, Ami Hirschstein, Betsey Downing, Geri Bleier, and Todd Norian. I highly recommend all of them, and I take their classes whenever I can.
Of course, I've also wound up in some classes with Anusara-trained or -inspired teachers who use the Anusara terms as shortcuts to say something that is never made clear, and the classes wind up feeling hollow and filled with jargon. That can happen with any style.
(I've come to think that really, there are much bigger differences among yoga teachers than among yoga styles. If you're looking for a teacher who teaches like your favorite yoga teacher does, then you need to look far and wide, because taking classes in the same tradition, school or style of yoga won't always get you there. There's a LOT of divergence within one style of yoga!)
But I digress. Generally, American media report upon 1) health claims and/or documented benefits of doing yoga and 2) the commercialization of yoga in America (unusual fusions of yoga and other activities, how masses of people have quit their jobs to become yoga teachers, how many people do yoga now, how some yoga teachers have become "brands" of their own, how some teachers have tried to copyright their yoga posture sequences, etc.).
I don't blame journalists for avoiding experiential stories. How do you put into words what the regular practice of yoga feels like or how it affects the rest of your life? As soon as you do, you sound like an infomercial for Yoga, Inc., and you know you haven't even done justice to what it actually is/does! It doesn't make for a neutral and unbiased story.
My point, which I am slowly coming around to, is this: Discussions of authenticity vs. commercialization are interesting. For yoga, for music (did my favorite band "sell out"?), for the feminist movement (remember "is it feminist to wear lipstick"?), for lots of things.
But eventually, we have to be our own Charlie Brown and just go for our own spindly Christmas tree, regardless of what metal and plastic offerings are around us, bright and shiny and winking their seductive lights.
Yes, we could buy the calfskin yoga mat bag or the diamond-encrusted OM pendant. (I'm not making those up.)
Or we can joke about those who do. Or bitch about how anyone could do that to yoga, make it so obviously and excessively about image or material possessions.
Either way, we each have to come back to the spindly Christmas tree of our own yoga practice. Sometimes it feels droopy and sad, sometimes it perks up and feels strong and green and full of life...particularly when we're surrounded by those who care.
Most of the time it just IS. And the doing of the practice allows us to feel how it IS.
WE are what make our yoga practice authentic. Whether we pay for a class, practice in the yard, wear fancy togs, or throw on a T-shirt. Whether we focus on re-aligning our spine, or flowing with the breath, or what the air feels like on our skin.
I'll admit it: I've once or twice gotten myself to the mat with an intention no higher than, "I need to do this so I'll look better in the mirror." Those have not been my most inspired practices. And if that had been my intention every day, my practice would have been empty; I probably wouldn't have stuck with it very long. It's essentially a way to pump up the ego, make it believe it is a freestanding unit of body/mind, separate from everything and everyone else. That intention, to improve the individual self, can wind up separating you from others. Luckily, the techniques of yoga are designed to get you to pay close enough attention that you realize that separation is an illusion, and your intentions change as a result of what you notice (not because you force yourself to change).
When my focus is some (small or large) part of the interconnectedness of all things, that is when the practice feels authentic. That is when my body sings with feeling as I move. That is when I end with a sense that everything will be okay; no, it already is okay, and I am a part of that. I can do the right thing, because I can see more clearly.
So wear your fanciest pants or leave your pajamas on...practice with someone from India or someone from America...enjoy the silence or play Depeche Mode's "Enjoy the Silence"...just bring yourself and your highest intention today, and the practice will flow through you, and there will be no question that it is authentic.
One of the main themes was whether American schools of yoga are "authentic" or not. This article focused on the founder of Anusara, John Friend, and how he trained with yoga masters like BKS Iyengar and then broke away to form his own "brand" of yoga, which has become extremely popular in America.
I think the writer did a fair job of explaining in a few words what Anusara classes emphasize that makes them distinct from other major American styles.
She also quoted John Friend in ways that make him seem spectacularly grandiose, and she consistently framed the story as one of yoga as a business--a very big business.
My experience with Friend is limited to a large workshop, which he taught as an advanced Anusara vinyasa flow, making his way around the 100+ students and giving individual adjustments aplenty along with his assistants. It was a great class, as are so many of the Anusara classes and workshops I attend, with teachers like Shalini Latour, Irena Miller, Marni Task, Ami Hirschstein, Betsey Downing, Geri Bleier, and Todd Norian. I highly recommend all of them, and I take their classes whenever I can.
Of course, I've also wound up in some classes with Anusara-trained or -inspired teachers who use the Anusara terms as shortcuts to say something that is never made clear, and the classes wind up feeling hollow and filled with jargon. That can happen with any style.
(I've come to think that really, there are much bigger differences among yoga teachers than among yoga styles. If you're looking for a teacher who teaches like your favorite yoga teacher does, then you need to look far and wide, because taking classes in the same tradition, school or style of yoga won't always get you there. There's a LOT of divergence within one style of yoga!)
But I digress. Generally, American media report upon 1) health claims and/or documented benefits of doing yoga and 2) the commercialization of yoga in America (unusual fusions of yoga and other activities, how masses of people have quit their jobs to become yoga teachers, how many people do yoga now, how some yoga teachers have become "brands" of their own, how some teachers have tried to copyright their yoga posture sequences, etc.).
I don't blame journalists for avoiding experiential stories. How do you put into words what the regular practice of yoga feels like or how it affects the rest of your life? As soon as you do, you sound like an infomercial for Yoga, Inc., and you know you haven't even done justice to what it actually is/does! It doesn't make for a neutral and unbiased story.
My point, which I am slowly coming around to, is this: Discussions of authenticity vs. commercialization are interesting. For yoga, for music (did my favorite band "sell out"?), for the feminist movement (remember "is it feminist to wear lipstick"?), for lots of things.
But eventually, we have to be our own Charlie Brown and just go for our own spindly Christmas tree, regardless of what metal and plastic offerings are around us, bright and shiny and winking their seductive lights.
Yes, we could buy the calfskin yoga mat bag or the diamond-encrusted OM pendant. (I'm not making those up.)
Or we can joke about those who do. Or bitch about how anyone could do that to yoga, make it so obviously and excessively about image or material possessions.
Either way, we each have to come back to the spindly Christmas tree of our own yoga practice. Sometimes it feels droopy and sad, sometimes it perks up and feels strong and green and full of life...particularly when we're surrounded by those who care.
Most of the time it just IS. And the doing of the practice allows us to feel how it IS.
WE are what make our yoga practice authentic. Whether we pay for a class, practice in the yard, wear fancy togs, or throw on a T-shirt. Whether we focus on re-aligning our spine, or flowing with the breath, or what the air feels like on our skin.
I'll admit it: I've once or twice gotten myself to the mat with an intention no higher than, "I need to do this so I'll look better in the mirror." Those have not been my most inspired practices. And if that had been my intention every day, my practice would have been empty; I probably wouldn't have stuck with it very long. It's essentially a way to pump up the ego, make it believe it is a freestanding unit of body/mind, separate from everything and everyone else. That intention, to improve the individual self, can wind up separating you from others. Luckily, the techniques of yoga are designed to get you to pay close enough attention that you realize that separation is an illusion, and your intentions change as a result of what you notice (not because you force yourself to change).
When my focus is some (small or large) part of the interconnectedness of all things, that is when the practice feels authentic. That is when my body sings with feeling as I move. That is when I end with a sense that everything will be okay; no, it already is okay, and I am a part of that. I can do the right thing, because I can see more clearly.
So wear your fanciest pants or leave your pajamas on...practice with someone from India or someone from America...enjoy the silence or play Depeche Mode's "Enjoy the Silence"...just bring yourself and your highest intention today, and the practice will flow through you, and there will be no question that it is authentic.
23 July 2010
You'll never know unless you...
ask.
When you practice today, let your intention be an inquiry into the state of things. There is so much we don't notice...so formulate a question about how things are in your body, or in your mind, or in your emotions, right now. Let that be your focus.
I've practiced with inquiries such as:
How do I feel when I encounter a new and difficult situation?
Where does my mind go when it gets bored?
What happens when I breathe deeper into my lower back?
How do I feel when I go about 70% into each posture, instead of 100%?
So ask the question today. And tell us how it goes!
When you practice today, let your intention be an inquiry into the state of things. There is so much we don't notice...so formulate a question about how things are in your body, or in your mind, or in your emotions, right now. Let that be your focus.
I've practiced with inquiries such as:
How do I feel when I encounter a new and difficult situation?
Where does my mind go when it gets bored?
What happens when I breathe deeper into my lower back?
How do I feel when I go about 70% into each posture, instead of 100%?
So ask the question today. And tell us how it goes!
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