This just in The New York Times: Yoga Addict’s New Mantra: ‘Mix It Up’
Random thoughts; I've been adding to it; now it's more random and rambling.
Seems to run from food-body-related thoughts to comments on subtler layers:
Random thoughts; I've been adding to it; now it's more random and rambling.
Seems to run from food-body-related thoughts to comments on subtler layers:
1. Calories in/calories out:
Body comp (lean-ness versus otherwise) is 90% food quality. Do a lot of "wining and dining, with renewed vigor" (i.e. wine ((sugars)), refined carbs) and you get fat, most likely (as a woman) around thighs/buttocks (men: umbilicus/low back/obliques).
Doesn't matter if you're running 50 miles a week (in which case you're most likely skinny-fat, like most marathon runners), lifting weights, or practicing Ashtanga: jack your insulin levels and you store fat. No amount of "burn" will reverse insulin and cortisol issues.
2. Adaptation/hormetic response
The body, as is its wont, adapts to stressful stimulus. For fitness, strength, and health, variation is critical in order to elicit a hormetic response. Not enough to kill you, but enough.
For upasana/'adoration,' however, ritual and repetition are critical.
To expect continued physical adaptation to the same series/sequence, practiced day-in, day out, for years, is a clinical definition of insanity (i.e. identical inputs but expect different outputs).
3. Novice effect
Also, she experienced the novice effect. Any novice/beginner/untrained person — I am talking strength and active flexibility (vs. passive) — will experience phenomenal strength gains immediately due to any physical stimulus.
For a sedentary person, untrained person, and quite frequently endurance athlete (i.e. typical American jogger, marathoner, etc) this could be playing Wii, doing Ashtanga or knitting. Doesn't matter, they will show demonstrable increases in strength.
Adaptation is logarithmic, however. When beginning, there are frequent and large gains made close together.
Over time, as adaption occurs, gains plateau and occur with less frequency.
(I could also make the case that deepening/expanding sense of connection arising incidental to Yoga practice follows same logarithmic curve.)
(I could also make the case that deepening/expanding sense of connection arising incidental to Yoga practice follows same logarithmic curve.)
3. Protestant Work Ethic
Displays the embedded notion that long, hard practices built spiritual equity — and six-pack abs. However, we are human. A strong desire to look good naked is integral to existence.
As we age there ought to be strong, ever-increasing acceptance of physical conditions as they are. Enlightenment is your ability to share this expanding sensibility.
4. Comin' Around
I find it great that it took visits with a trainer for her to come around to a deeper, more profound aspect of practice. Practice for its own sake! This is, no joke, seriously wonderful.
5. Conflation of physical difficulty with fitness
This is a logical fallacy. All physical activities that are difficult do not equal fitness or strength. I.e. archery versus Olympic weightlifting; juggling versus pentathlon.
Ashtanga is challenging, true, and will make you a bit more fit than the couch-bound, but gains stop and plateau very soon in context with other physical endeavors.
Ashtanga is challenging, true, and will make you a bit more fit than the couch-bound, but gains stop and plateau very soon in context with other physical endeavors.
If you wish to test this, there are many metrics with lots of recorded results with which you can compare yourself; Army Physical Fitness Test, etc.
(As an aside, my old friend and a long-time practitioner Dr. John K. and I both laughed about this after being tasked with workouts that involved push-ups and 400 meter runs ((that is, around ONE city block)), and we both discovered the 'fitness' of Ashtanga was, as the Kevala Advaitins like to say, confusing a snake for a rope. After the workout, we realized the snake ((our fitness)) was just a rope ((not at all fitness)), and this confusion was the result of ignorance ((avidya)).)
(As an aside, my old friend and a long-time practitioner Dr. John K. and I both laughed about this after being tasked with workouts that involved push-ups and 400 meter runs ((that is, around ONE city block)), and we both discovered the 'fitness' of Ashtanga was, as the Kevala Advaitins like to say, confusing a snake for a rope. After the workout, we realized the snake ((our fitness)) was just a rope ((not at all fitness)), and this confusion was the result of ignorance ((avidya)).)
6. Tracy Anderson is a joke.
I recall one of her quotes: women should never lift more than 10 pounds. Also, her stretch band exercises are ridiculous, and her advocation of baby-food diet is also bullshit.
Succeeding in a Tracy Anderson 'exercise' class is like beating a 5-year-old at Monopoly.
Succeeding in a Tracy Anderson 'exercise' class is like beating a 5-year-old at Monopoly.
7. Ashtanga as Renunciation
As Swenson has been quoted, "Don't let Yoga ruin your life." What's this about going to Mysore and not having sugar, coffee or dairy?! Clearly she missed some facets of traditional Yoga diets as well as typical Indian diet (i.e. ghee, milk, chai, jageri, etc).
Strong indicator of how much projection takes place in our heads versus what we think the Yoga practice is supposed to be.
8. Acceptance
Obviously, article tweaked a strong chord in me. Despite its repetition of bullshit fitness myths, author airs out many typical Ashtangi myths. Sunlight is good for numbers 3 and 5 above.
9. What Lies in Ashtanga's Implicit Structure?
Is this over-reliance and over-emphasis on physicality implicit and therefore inseparable from Asthanga?
As a teacher in the Mysore room, does 'rewarding' the 'perfection' of one asana with the next foster this do-or-die, attain-at-any cost mentality? What is the tone or tenor of your Mysore room? How much is in your head?
Also note that I could make the argument that Ashtanga 'selects' for those with contortionist predisposition (i.e. there are mostly genetic components for leg-behind-head, spinal flexion, femur-hip rotation).
As an incredibly obvious example, I have practiced with one blind woman and the Japanese couple with no legs (three total) since 1998, so we could say Ashtanga selects for people with all their limbs and sight. I.e. selects for the fully abled.
What other selection processes are made? Age? Gender? Economic class? Athletic predisposition and experiences (samskaras, karmas)?
"All Ashtanga Yoginis are Type-As."
It's like saying "All basketball players are very tall," or "All swimmers have long arms and broad shoulders," which is not the case — at each increasing difficultly level more favorable genetic predispositions are generally selected for, i.e. Michael Phelps/Olympics, Michael Jordan/NBA, etc.
So is this true? Does the practice select for Type-As?
Does it foster (reward) so-called "type-A" behavior"? (Obsessive posture-seeking.)
(Leaving aside for a moment the issue of the bullshit factor of the whole personality "type" classification system.)
Interestingly, article does not mention much of practitioner's asana 'attainments,' such as, "I finally completed third series."
One could make the case that an over-emphasis on physical attainments creates the so-called "type-A" behavior. So "type-A's" do not find Ashtanga, but stringent focus on physical postures brings out posture-tunneling.
10. No Quote From Eddie
Would have been nice and dare I say, balanced. Also would have been nice to hear something about 'traditional' emphasis and focus of this practice (i.e. 'Citta vrtti nirodha'). No mention of Patanjali? Did I misread?
11. Connection, Relation, Joining Does Not Result From A Series Practiced Perfectly
"Yoga" is not caused by the perfect practice of an entire and complete sequence of Ashtanga Vinyasa. This is the confusion of "correlation" with "causation." A profound not-two-ness arises — or does not — independently of practice, which I have found through life's vagaries can be 20 minutes or 2 hours. This lucid luminosity is an accident; we practice to make ourselves, as Trungpa said, "to make ourselves more accident-prone."
12. Yoga as Success
This is nothing new, but to reread the Yogic texts as well as the Vedas as well as Upanishads and even Puranas reiterates Yoga as nothing more than a means to attain success independent of morality.
This as Ravana (and every other Asura) demonstrate through the success of their tapasya and achievement/attainment of some rather radical gifts and powers.
Independent of morality, ethics (Patanjali here as brutally utilitarian; yamas and niyamas only serve to smooth out life enough to make kaivalya possible), the question ought to be then, Does your yoga work?
Does it satisfy the claims its adherents make?
For author of the article, clearly she thought that Yoga would flatten her tummy, keep her butt high, help her look good naked.
Clearly, it did not serve to flatten her tummy, keep her butt tight and round, help her look good naked.
This is a "tragedy of small enlightenment" on her behalf (i.e. I submit she is guilty not of desiring the wrong things, but of not desiring enough.)
How to determine if your system does work? Not enough to gaze around a silent Mysore room and admire all the bodies you see there (e.g. you could be at Eddie's studio the day Cirque du Soleil is in town.)
Conversation and engagement (Holy shit! Yoga!) is required, as well as self-study (svadhyaya) and surrender or devotion — I have really been vibing off 'adoration' lately (isvara pranidhanani).
Deeper questions: are your teachers and co-practitioners emblematic of what they promise this system to deliver? Which is what, exactly?
9. What Lies in Ashtanga's Implicit Structure?
Is this over-reliance and over-emphasis on physicality implicit and therefore inseparable from Asthanga?
As a teacher in the Mysore room, does 'rewarding' the 'perfection' of one asana with the next foster this do-or-die, attain-at-any cost mentality? What is the tone or tenor of your Mysore room? How much is in your head?
Also note that I could make the argument that Ashtanga 'selects' for those with contortionist predisposition (i.e. there are mostly genetic components for leg-behind-head, spinal flexion, femur-hip rotation).
As an incredibly obvious example, I have practiced with one blind woman and the Japanese couple with no legs (three total) since 1998, so we could say Ashtanga selects for people with all their limbs and sight. I.e. selects for the fully abled.
What other selection processes are made? Age? Gender? Economic class? Athletic predisposition and experiences (samskaras, karmas)?
"All Ashtanga Yoginis are Type-As."
It's like saying "All basketball players are very tall," or "All swimmers have long arms and broad shoulders," which is not the case — at each increasing difficultly level more favorable genetic predispositions are generally selected for, i.e. Michael Phelps/Olympics, Michael Jordan/NBA, etc.
So is this true? Does the practice select for Type-As?
Does it foster (reward) so-called "type-A" behavior"? (Obsessive posture-seeking.)
(Leaving aside for a moment the issue of the bullshit factor of the whole personality "type" classification system.)
Interestingly, article does not mention much of practitioner's asana 'attainments,' such as, "I finally completed third series."
One could make the case that an over-emphasis on physical attainments creates the so-called "type-A" behavior. So "type-A's" do not find Ashtanga, but stringent focus on physical postures brings out posture-tunneling.
10. No Quote From Eddie
Would have been nice and dare I say, balanced. Also would have been nice to hear something about 'traditional' emphasis and focus of this practice (i.e. 'Citta vrtti nirodha'). No mention of Patanjali? Did I misread?
11. Connection, Relation, Joining Does Not Result From A Series Practiced Perfectly
"Yoga" is not caused by the perfect practice of an entire and complete sequence of Ashtanga Vinyasa. This is the confusion of "correlation" with "causation." A profound not-two-ness arises — or does not — independently of practice, which I have found through life's vagaries can be 20 minutes or 2 hours. This lucid luminosity is an accident; we practice to make ourselves, as Trungpa said, "to make ourselves more accident-prone."
12. Yoga as Success
This is nothing new, but to reread the Yogic texts as well as the Vedas as well as Upanishads and even Puranas reiterates Yoga as nothing more than a means to attain success independent of morality.
This as Ravana (and every other Asura) demonstrate through the success of their tapasya and achievement/attainment of some rather radical gifts and powers.
Independent of morality, ethics (Patanjali here as brutally utilitarian; yamas and niyamas only serve to smooth out life enough to make kaivalya possible), the question ought to be then, Does your yoga work?
Does it satisfy the claims its adherents make?
For author of the article, clearly she thought that Yoga would flatten her tummy, keep her butt high, help her look good naked.
Clearly, it did not serve to flatten her tummy, keep her butt tight and round, help her look good naked.
This is a "tragedy of small enlightenment" on her behalf (i.e. I submit she is guilty not of desiring the wrong things, but of not desiring enough.)
How to determine if your system does work? Not enough to gaze around a silent Mysore room and admire all the bodies you see there (e.g. you could be at Eddie's studio the day Cirque du Soleil is in town.)
Conversation and engagement (Holy shit! Yoga!) is required, as well as self-study (svadhyaya) and surrender or devotion — I have really been vibing off 'adoration' lately (isvara pranidhanani).
Deeper questions: are your teachers and co-practitioners emblematic of what they promise this system to deliver? Which is what, exactly?
10 comments:
LL, you make some very good points, but why the hostility? Aren’t we all entitled to our personal experience of the practice? Can we really judge someone’s practice as more superficial or ignorant than our own? The practice as a personal journey works its magic in mysterious ways. Not everyone who tries yoga is immediately (or even in 10 years) ready for a transformation. Even Pattabhi Jois said, “Not one year, not ten years, many lifetimes…”
May I share my personal experience regarding your points?
1. DIET certainly plays an important role in one’s overall health and weight. I have found that with time the practice changes the diet. After several years of Ashtanga, I let go completely of the last vestiges of meat consumption. This wasn’t the result of peer pressure or even moral principles (since I always believed in the morality of vegetarianism). It just didn’t work for me anymore. As the years pass, my diet has become almost exclusively whole produce based. The practice has made me more aware of the body, and the body is happier with a light natural diet. My friend Andrew Eppler says that you’ll know bad food by how you feel the next morning when you go to do your practice.
2. VARIETY in practice is important to keep the mind & body challenged and focused. My practice includes Ashtanga series 1-4, Matthew Sweeney’s Vinyasa Krama sequences (superb), yin, and combinations of the above. There has to be a balance between discipline (sticking with something for the long run, through ups and downs) and creativity (the freedom to explore and learn new thing).
3. GOD BLESS DAVID SWENSON. He has so many good quotes, the very best practice manual, beautiful videos, and memorable workshops. He’s helped shape by practice philosophy. I always tell students, this is YOUR practice, make it work for you.
4. TYPE As. Why is it we always hear about those type As, but never the Bs, Cs and Ds? I’ve seen people of all types in Ashtanga yoga rooms. The As unfortunately have the worst fate. They have to master Advanced B before they ever start to “get it”. The luckier ones might not have the best handstands or float throughs, but bypassing the gymnastic championship phase gets them honed on what matters sooner.
5. To me personally yoga works. Ashtanga works. It’s a tool that will help you get what you want. The real question is: what do you want out of life?
Namaskara,
EurekaYoga
Eureka Yoga,
Thanks for responding; I will have to revise out the hostility you read, as I responded to her article in chunks and on strong coffee.
As you say, we are all entitled to our own experience of the practice.
However, it is not unreasonable to determine when one's experience of the practice is deeper or more skillful.
This is, after all, how we determine teachers.
I let a car mechanic fix my car because she simply knows more and has a deeper experience of a car engine than I do.
As I mentioned twice above (and in a previous post on "Six-pack Abs and Ashtanga"), the desire to look good naked via an Ashtanga practice is not superficial or ignorant at all! It is an integral part of existence.
But I maintain that to ONLY desire to look good naked is as Krishna says a tragedy of small enlightenment.
Jois (Guruji) is paraphrasing the Sutra when discussing practicing for a long time.
"Practice practice, long time!" was his common refrain.
Yet the other wing to this bird is that your practice needs to have positive, powerful effects right now and every day, or else you are using yoga practice as spiritual retirement fund, or yoga practice as enlightenment lay-away plan.
"Just keep your head down and keep practicing, it'll all make sense," is a great aspect of shraddha and virya but it's also a shadow into which I am not interested in falling.
I am practicing for connection when I'm 70 or 90. But I'm ALSO practicing to deepen the connection, however shallow, I experience NOW.
Regarding a few of your points:
1. As I said, body composition is 90% food choice. The notion of yoga and vegetarianism is deeply intertwined. However, they are independent threads.
I prefer a take on Krishna's understanding, in that a Yoga practice helps us develop a sattvic relationship to our food, rather than a mere list of sattvic/pure/impure foods.
2. Variety in physical expression is one thing; however, as I said, variety in ritual or discipline means it is no longer ritual ... tricky slope. Evolution has to happen slowly.
Also, could make the case to un-entwine physical pursuits and health with upasana Yoga practice: again, parallel yet separate pursuits.
3. Life is desire. Yoga practice helps you know your own more deeply so that you might connect with others ... who have their own desires. Some of which may run counter to yours! As the NYT author shows.
Also, as you say, "variety in practice is important to keep the mind & body challenged."
This again is a confusion regarding the pursuit and aims of a Yoga practice versus physical body culture.
Continually challenging the body-mind means ritual practice is challenging and difficult: you're always changing the ritual.
This system planted in a culture with nitya karmas to be performed daily/frequently and handed down for hundreds (thousands?) of years.
Also, your definition of 'variety' is not variety; it is ultimately constrained within a narrow band consisting of static-active and passive flexibility.
I.e. there is no glycolytic work, no anaerobic work, an extremely (extremely) narrow band of aerobic work, no dynamic work, no ballistic work.
No maximal strength, no strength-endurance, no speed-strength, no speed ...
On just a broader level of fundamental human motor activities, within the various Yogic disciplines you mentioned, there is no sprinting, no pulling, and very little effective pressing or pushing.
How is this physical variety?
Ashtanga can make you stronger ... but context is everything. It can make you stronger than if you merely sat on your couch.
It can make you stronger than, say, an 11-year-old boy.
Is that really strength? How do you determine what that means?
To move on from the anna maya kosha --- what of the selection bias in Ashtanga?
Is this implicit within the structure of transmission (i.e. pose-by-pose in a Mysore room, OR in a group class setting)?
It's also not enough to merely say that your Yoga "works." How do you know it works? What do you consider success?
Please, no editing to tone things down, Jason, or I'll have to resort back to Slayer! LL is a breath of fresh air.
I totally got Schoeneman's message b/c it matched my experience completely. I had that smug walk when it came to my yoga. I did get less fit w/ yoga, even while doing a 2-hour practice. I also find it hard to believe that the only way to a spiritual life is through the body. That's crazy. So perhaps one can move on to a spiritual path that doesn't involve contorting, and maybe have an hour exercise practice on the side for health. Perhaps there's another type of freedom in that. But it's hard hard hard b/c of all that we Ashtangis are told over and over and over. And there's always a reason to find people who move on as bad or inferior or misinformed.
Hi Jason,
I don't see your post as being hostile. It's more about your passion for tradition & the transformative / spiritual aspect of Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga.
It amazes me that there are so many practitioners who can't go beyond the physical aspect of this practice.
As the saying goes , " We are not this body ".
Thanks for your blog posts.
Hari Om Tat Sat.
P.A.
P.A.,
"We are not the body" is a Vedantic approach to Yoga, and an interesting one given that Ashtanga Yoga begins with the body.
Some maintain Ashtanga's great shortcoming is that it then remains with the body.
(As an important note, the Vedantic approach is but one of many models of Yoga (Classic Yoga/Vedanta, Yogacharya Buddhists, the Kashmir, Saiva and Shakta Tantrics, Tibetan Tantra Yoga) ; several models have evolved and some would say matured over time.
So, is this practice structurally and systemically able to help you "go beyond the physical"?
There is an undeniable physical culture surrounding achievement of postures, one that rewards practitioners for more adept physical performance.
The process of Mysore-style teaching is that of an authority figure to distribute postures based on performance of previous poses.
When a pose is given/not given there tends to be a tremendous amount of projection and speculation as to why this happened.
It's hoped that, given time, the novelty of the physical wears off. Guruji was certainly non-plussed by extreme rubbery flexibility.
Also, on a larger scale, is "going beyond the physical" what we're after?
I have heard Guruji say things like, "Body is a rented house," yet as Eddie Stern wrote and I intimated from his Sunday talks, Guruji also firmly reiterated that embodiment is a gift to be cherished and utilized.
Personally, and it should be obvious, I am practicing a deepening integration of physical layers with other layers --- not a transcendence, shedding, or sloughing off of the physical.
The body is inseparable from mind, and therefore quite logically the ego is not something to be overcome, punctured, deflated, transcended.
The body-mind is not a problem to be solved, an obstacle to be overcome, or a liability to be managed.
Also, if it's not clear, this is not necessarily a Vedantic approach.
There is much of the Vedantic tradition rooted in notions of purity/impurity as well as pollution that has never sat well with me.
I quite clearly don't have the cultural or social framework to organize these notions beyond concepts of original sin.
My pure speculation is that this was also Guruji's intimation, yet he realized that it is not an understanding to be verbally transmitted. It's one that sinks in best over time and through practice.
Also, would be interesting to discuss this as another shadow aspect (due to Guruji's cultural, linguistic, and personal limits as well as structure of Mysore post-20th Century ((i.e. just too many damn people!))) --- svadhyaya and surrender should have been emphasized MUCH MORE in Mysore in order to counterbalance over-adoration of the physical.
best,
jason
Anonymous #2,
My experience dovetails with your own.
However, I have found my dalliances (okay: passions) with road cycling, Crossfit, gymnastics training and now equilibre has really softened me up regarding to the Ashtanga sequences.
And you know what? Fuck it, I really like going with my wife and kid to practice together on Sunday mornings, whether my leg goes behind my head comfortably or not.
It's a much sweeter experience, and very different than steely-eyed drishti and stern ujjayi samurai-focus.
I do miss the intensity and rigor of, say, Sunday morning intermediate in Encinitas, but mostly I just miss soaking up the juice from practicing with Tim and all my other friends and acquaintances.
I keep telling people I'm softening in my dotage and it's probably true.
jason
Hey Jason,
Not sure if you've see it, but Eddie Stern has a blog entry on this topic.
http://ayny.org/yoga-vs-fashion-style.html
Steve
Hi Jason - thanks for your comments - lots of great points. I shared your posting on FB and also added a response of my own http://katiescanlongehn.com/2011/11/29/in-response/
I hope all is well!
Katie
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