LEAPING LANKA

JANUARY 2011 NEWSLETTER

2012-01-30T13:04:00.000-08:00

Don't you wish you lived in Portland and practiced Ashtanga Vinyasa here?

Not only do we now have three places to practice Mysore-style Yoga, but this spring we are awash in Ashtanga Vinyasa events. It's shaping up to be a real Ashtanga Vinyasa spring ...

1. One Year Anniversary Party!
As Captain Marvel says, Holy moley! Portland Ashtanga Yoga turns one in February!

Come celebrate with a pot-luck-slash-BYOB smash-fest on Saturday, February 18, from 4-6:30 p.m.

Cindi and Ted Wilke have graciously agreed to once again host our wild yogini shenanigans at their house.

Please bring yourself, your spouse or significant other, your offspring, however demonic, your friends, prospective significant others you are trying to impress with your profundity and depth, and/or random hungry acquaintances.

(For this last, please ensure they are good conversationalists.)

This will be a pot-luck: for the love of god, PLEASE bring food that you would LIKE TO EAT, NOT what you think "yoga people" would like to eat.

Also, it will be Saturday afternoon. I will not tell your parents if you bring a bottle of wine.

The Wilke Residence
2840 NE Everett
PDX 97232
http://g.co/maps/xn9hj

2. Kevin Kimple Returns to Portland March 1-9!
Kevin is, as we used to say in Southern California, a pretty rad dude — he directs the Eugene School of Yoga, he spent a lot of time practicing this Yoga and living in Mysore, and he's the only Authorized Ashtanga teacher in Oregon (note that the capital "a" means it's legit).

Kevin's agreed to fill in for me while Tara, Rowan and I are at the Ashtanga Yoga Confluence in early March. He'll be handling Mysore classes March 1-9.

He'll also be hosting workshops Friday ( March 2, 6-8 p.m.), Saturday (March 3, 1-4 p.m.) and Sunday (March 4, 1-4 p.m.) at Yoga Pearl.

Kevin's handling the topics, so stay tuned for more details and info on where to enroll.

3. Richard Freeman in Portland May 4-6
The Ruler's back! Richard "Slick Rick" Freeman will be visiting Portland May 4, 5, and 6. This is an occasion not to be missed — Richard is one of the leading lights in both the Yoga world in general and the Ashtanga world specifically.

Apparently Richard is still deciding on specific topics. But for more information, and to sign up online, visit: http://bit.ly/Ajcodb

This even will sell out, so seriously, don't sleep on this.

5. My Book Is On Amazon
No asana photos. Apparently it's funny. You'll get a kick out of it. I guarantee there's not another book about Ashtanga Yoga like it: http://amzn.to/A592NN

6. David Garrigues at Breitenbush March 15-18
In other Pacific Northwest Ashtanga Vinyasa news, David Garrigues (D-Gar) will be at Breitenbush in March.

David's one of the few Certified Ashtanga teachers in the U.S. (note the capital "c" to indicate it's legit), and he's been teaching and practicing for a long time.

Like many long-time teachers, he's got terrific respect for and experience with the Ashtanga Vinyasa tradition, yet he balances this with the artistry required by teaching.

David's been doing these great "Asana Kitchen" videos lately, so you can get a feel for his style by watching them. He's also been wearing some phenomenal shirts of late. Check out "Asana Kitchen": http://bit.ly/xZqRrp

More info on Breitenbush: http://bit.ly/vKPKuI

7. Where To Find Me Online
Yoga is all about conversation and connection; here're some places online where this conversation is happening:

Leaping Lanka: http://bit.ly/A3InNZ
Facebook Portland Ashtanga Yoga: http://on.fb.me/vNKHbe
Twitter: @leapinglanka

ASHTANGA & MYSORE: SHOULD I STAY OR SHOULD I GO

2012-01-28T14:20:00.000-08:00

As Craig Finn sang, "Let's raise a toast to Saint Joe Strummer." Becca works at the studio; she also occasionally attends the Monday night led Primary Series class.

I have a habit of asking people what they would like to talk about prior to beginning the physical portion (i.e. the 1% versus the 99% practice), and she always makes a point of bringing in questions.

I appreciate this — I appreciate the conversation because it's another means of connection (yoga), and it enriches the whole process.

Yesterday morning she asked my thoughts on traveling to India: "What's up with this Mysore deal?" This in great synchronicity with the conversation that's been percolating of late and which perpetually arises about 2 years into everyone's Ashtanga Vinyasa practice.

She felt that if Yoga was a language, you need to go where it's spoken in order to learn it the best. This is not a bad analogy.

Yoga is a language, or type of knowledge, and it's also a tool (techne), as opposed to knowledge (episteme). Kriya or karma yoga (yoga of action) versus jnana yoga to parallels these Greek concerns.

To stretch this metaphor to other instances of technology use to drive home a salient feature of a good tool — the car was (for the purposes of this argument) invented in Europe; I do not need to travel to Europe to learn to drive. I love the films of Seijin Suzuki; I do not need to travel to Tokyo to love them more or deeper, or even to watch them. I love to play the piano; I do not need to travel to Italy to learn to play it. From a doctor-patient standpoint, a sick patient does not need to travel to England, where Fleming discovered the use of penicillin, okay, you get my point.

I think everyone understands that the the most ideal concept of Yoga-as-technology is that it resembles an artisanal tool rather than an industrial one; that is, one developed by craftspeople and singularly wired up for each individual's use, rather than mass produced (that is, rather than a Bikram factory) — but even so, Eddie Van Halen learned to shred the fuck out of an assembly line guitar, Nicu Vlad trained to win Olympic weightlifting medals on a bent barbell, and your iPod, perhaps the last example of an artisanal item scaled up for mass consumption, will still play the songs you love, and affect you as deeply, as some hi-fi stereo snob fuckophonic sound-system (i.e. fuck vinyl).

If Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga is an effective, powerful, transformative tool, this tool must be powerful, effective and transformative for its user/practitioner, full stop, end of statement, not "powerful, effective, transformative only in Mysore." It can't be dependent on a specific location.

A (wise) friend once said to me, "If God is in all things, as all things, you think he cares if you're chanting Sanskrit, Aramaic or Old English?" To accept this requires heroic affirmation, because it requires the acceptance of the fact that those particular chants are, in fact, just a collection of sounds and in and of themselves bear no intrinsic sacredness separate from you. At best we can say that, for whatever reason, they strike a particular chord in you at that time.

In one of those studio talks, Richard Freeman mentioned hearing Bach, or sitting in church, watching light stream through stained glass windows — and then conflating the ensuing equipoise with the church denomination or the specific piece of music, and trying to recreate that equipoise by returning to that church or repetitively playing that same piece of music.

For my part, I realize that for whatever reason (samskaras, karmas) there are certain pursuits and practices in my life (Ashtanga Vinyasa) that I choose to pick at like loose threads on a rug because I find them compelling. As I continue to do so, part of maintaining their relevance and vitality has been to realize how and when I've used the pursuit of these practices to escape other situations in my life, which has usually been relationships, and then to not do that.

For me, a tendency I personally have is to lean pretty hard into ascetism as a means to power — saying no to experiences and relationships is addictive because it allows a sense of control.

So why should Becca go to India, or to Mysore? I think she should be leery if she thinks she is going to have a better, more pure or authentic, plus ne ultra, or most importantly, other experience of Yoga than the one she has here in Portland.

But I can think of a host of great reasons to go there — travel as a value is very important to me, and travel for yoga is a great way to combine two pursuits. Travel as sabbatical or recovery from burnout. A holiday or vacation. Big life changes free up time and present the opportunity for positive periods of travel and deeper/lengthier practices. Finally, curiosity is a great reason.

WHITHER GOEST THOU: ASHTANGA IN MYSORE

2012-01-25T14:54:00.000-08:00

It is not a bad idea to articulate some reasons to travel to Mysore.

Is it as a yoga tourist? In the novel ShelteringSky Paul Bowles makes the distinction between a tourist and a traveler: “[A]nother important difference between tourist and traveler is thatthe former accepts his own civilization without question; not so the traveler,who compares it with the others, and rejects those elements he finds not to hisliking.”

For example, Chef in Apocalypse Now is a tourist. His mantra becomes "Never get off the boat — there are fucking tigers out there."

Bowles’ idea of a traveler dovetails with Nassim NicholasTaleb’s reinterpretation/revival of Baudelaire’s “flaneur,” a derived meaningof the French word flâneur — that of “a person who walks the cityin order to experience it.”

(From here we move to the Situationists. Christ, that’s alot of name-dropping.)

I am compelled by the idea of traveling to India and walkingthe streets of Mysore, not to consume Indian exoticism or escape my own selfback “home,” but to purely and simply let yoga in Mysore wash over and throughme. Some kind of yogi flaneur.

That said, my understanding of Ashtanga Yoga specificallyand Yoga generally is this: it began in India, has greatly developed in theWest, and part of its practice is continually reaffirming its relevance in my daily life.

With that understanding in mind, I think it can be said there arenow many “hearts” of Ashtanga yoga. But of course I am biased: five years agothis April my wife and I were married by a guy we consider a “heart” (at leasta ventricle) of this tradition.

Where are these hearts? Well, the big ones of course:Encinitas, Boulder, Lower East Side … then there’s Hawaii, Los Angeles, Vancouver,Toronto, London, Tokyo, Barcelona … again, you get the picture.

How is the practice of Ashtanga Yoga different depending ongeographical location? I have been to Mysore and other places in India (and I tell you, practice with Rolf and Marci in Goa will blow you out of your socks). It ismagical to practice there, yes, but no less magical than anywhere else onearth.

In a large part this "magic" arises as an aspect of pilgrimage. Someone travels to Mysore and makes a pilgrimage markedby sacrifices big and small — financial, personal, familial, work-related— that are required in order to undergo the journey.

Then there’s the often tremendous distance, discomfort, andcost experienced en route.

Meaning, by the time you get there, you've seen things. The familiar has long since disappeared out the back of the rickshaw window.

During a pilgrimage you’re subtracted from well-groovedresponsibilities and roles within family, work, and culture.

Once in Mysore you become part of the coming together ofhundreds of like-minded travelers, all practicing together in one room. The shala breathes and pulses with a tidal hum that you can feel inyour bones. It’s intense.

Given this understanding, there is nothing intrinsically magicalabout the Jois Shala or Mysore at all. The walls are not made of candy canes and gum-drops, and Sharath bless him does notlevitate into the room and shoot lightning bolts out of his eyes.

(In 2005 he was fatigued and in pain due to back injury, yetstill with light touch and quick humor. That is, he was warmly human.)

You can’t cut a piece of the rug off the shala floor, takeit home, and expect it to confer the same experience. No saints’ fingerbones orvirgin’s tears to collect.

(You can however purchase logo T-shirts to commemorate yourexperience and communicate to others your journey.)

Rather, it is the collective endeavor and communalundertaking of practice together that makes it special. The intention of thepractitioners and teachers — the sankalpa — is paramount.

Danger and trouble appear when the pilgrimage becomes enshrined as the Grail through which all that is unpleasant in your life will magicallydisappear: the death of a loved one or family member, the bitter break-up,recent job loss, eating disorder, alienating/alienated parents … perhaps even themundane disquiet or dissatisfaction with current choices in life.

(See: Trungpa’s SpiritualMaterialism)

I did one time hear Sharath say, jokingly (half-jokingly), “Dothe yoga — now go home!”

There's also a "big" Sanskrit word bandied about as justification of such a pilgrimage: parampara.

"Parampara" generally means lineage, and in Sanskrit takes the flavor of "order" or "succession."

It's often suggested that Mysore is the location of this parampara, which of course begs several questions: I can only receive or take part in this parampara in Mysore? Is my experience of this parampara greater in Mysore than on my home yoga mat?

The experience of taking part in the living, breathing tradition as expressed through its community is very much a vibrant aspect of practicing Yoga in Mysore, so in that regard there is a healthy experience of parampara available there.

Wedded to this idea of parampara is the Vaidika idea of purity (and pollution). From within this perspective, as a practitioner I want to practice the purest form of Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga, and to do that, I have to participate in parampara, which, I am assured, is an unchanging (and therefore eternal) system of techniques handed down from time immemorial. In this case, from an ancient text called the Yoga Korunta by Vamana. The Indian tendency, as has been noted, is to whenever possible push the dates of teachings, systems and texts as far back in history as possible, as the older (and more unchanged), the better.

Setting aside the issue of whether the Korunta is apocryphal, this idea of the purity of Ashtanga Vinyasa is important because it's what determines value and meaning in this system — by agreeing on behaviors, attitudes, techniques, sequences of asanas performed like this (and not that) (foot to the side, not in front, etc.) value and meaning are created, and following from those agreed-upon values, what naturally follows are notions of identity and place in society, family, and culture (dharma).

I think it's also useful (cynical?) to observe the idea of parampara from a power dynamic perspective. That is, lineage holders often do just that: hold or maintain the lineage. In order to do so and for reasons altruistic or otherwise (see: Bikram), it's in their interests to maintain control over their system or school of Yoga. This expresses itself through maintenance of purity, authenticity, values, etc.

This is an obvious observation; the corollary that follows is that those who receive their authority from this authority then have a vested interest in maintaining the parampara — a byproduct or residue of fostering the importance of purity and authenticity also insures their authority (and often prosperity).

As someone who teaches Mysore style Ashtanga Vinyasa, I try to be very transparent when it comes to the presentation of this system. It's had a tremendous impact on my life (to it I owe my wife, daughter, and current peace of mind), so I try to be cognizant of what I understand to be the tradition, why it works the way it does, and most importantly, when it needs to flex (and when to remain firm) to meet the needs of the person on the mat in front of me.

I also hope to invite conversation on the subject, too (that is, I'm too blabby). These sequences and techniques aren't tablets handed down from the mount. But they work, they work for me and they'll work for you.

To return to the issue of parampara: to paraphrase Del The Funky Homosapien, what is my parampara, and how do I know if I'm shaking it? What does it mean, really, to take part in parampara?

For my part, it means to quite simply have a heart connection with a teacher who has a teacher within the Ashtanga Vinyasa tradition; in this case, Tim considers Pattabhi Jois his teacher and I consider Tim my teacher. I'm lucky in that I know Tim, and more importantly, Tim knows me. There's something vital about that relationship and conversation. It's at once intimate yet politely distant.

Finally, do I think you should go to Mysore? It depends largely on the context — I wish I could just give an orthodox answer (yes or no) but I really think it depends on a person's situation in life, such as your family obligations, work commitments ... even your interest in travel generally and travel to Asia specifically.

I know for example Tara had a great time in Mysore but doesn't really care to go back. She had a great time at the shala and she liked Sharath, but she's just not compelled to visit India — she'd rather see Europe (we still haven't been together).

More t importantly, many years ago she "came home" to the idea of Tim as her teacher. The interest to find other teachers is just not there. For her, taking part in the parampara occurs in our bedroom every morning when she practices and in Encinitas.

When I told Tim I planned to visit Mysore on my first trip, I asked if he had any advice. All he said was, "Go, and have a great time." He was pretty laid back about it.

Still: India will blow your fucking mind. Just don't run away from your life. Be a yogi flaneur.

'ASHTANGA YOGA: Stories from Beyond the Mat' IS OUT NOW

2012-01-12T10:41:00.000-08:00

Friends,

'Ashtanga Yoga: Stories From Beyond the Mat' is now on sale at Amazon: http://amzn.to/wQsTsL

It's a collection of stories, essays, sketches, how-tos, and comedy bit-lets, all written during the last 10 years, and all relating to the practice of Ashtanga Yoga.

It's one of the first of its kind in the Ashtanga community: no asana photos or "Intro to Yoga Philosophy 101," just writings about Yoga filled with reverence, humor, and the occasional artfully employed f-bomb.

(Also, perhaps the occasional gratuitously employed f-bomb.)

The practice of this Yoga has profoundly changed my life --- I hope I shared a glimmer of that in the pages of this book.

QUICK UPDATE:
1. International Amazon
Unfortunately, at the moment I'm unable to list it on Amazon's international sites. This means it's still available to those outside the U.S., though you have to pay shipping.

HOWEVER: I have just found that Amazon UK does print-on-demand, and so I'm gonna get this ball rolling.

Please note: I am not changing any "whiles" to "whilsts" for my UK audience, though maybe I can work in "havin' a slash" or "dogs bollocks" somehow.

2. Kindle, eBook, Versions
There will definitely be one. But not until March.

INDIA 2008.

2012-01-11T17:39:00.000-08:00

Just unearthed some pics from our trip to practice with Rolf and Marci in early 2008. I am the one wearing glasses.

Also, with regards to my wife, I believe the saying is that I am "punching above my weight," or that she is "dating down." My secret: constant yet mild hypnosis coupled with blackmail.

This is Rowan at the local Goan market, which was around the corner from our first house. The kid is such a ham. During our last few weeks in Goa, I was purchasing and consuming copious cans of Pepsi from this shop, driven by some strange but deep culture-shock homesickness-impulse only mitigated by an ice-cold can of brown sugar syrup.

COHEN'S DARKNESS

2012-01-11T17:32:00.000-08:00

"I caught the darkness/ It was drinking from your cup/ I asked, 'Is it contagious?/ You said, 'Drink it up.'"

Guy's 77 and only getting BETTER.

ASHTANGA PRANAYAMA

2012-01-08T15:08:00.000-08:00

There is, from time to time, discussion among the Ashtangacommunity about when to begin the pranayama sequence — Pattabhi Jois(Guruji!) used to suggest students practice the Intermediate series prior tobeginning instruction.

Over the years, that prerequisite stretched to completion ofAdvanced A (or nowadays Third Series).

A woman in conference asked him once when to begin pranayama, and he told her that when she could sit in padmasana for one yama (three and ahalf hours), he would teach her.

Of course, at another conference, someone asked when theycould start pranayama, and he said, “Yes yes, you start pranayama,” which tookeveryone by surprise.

Since December I have offered to those who practice with me the chance to practice the Ashtanga Vinyasa pranayama sequence.

I have always thought Tim Miller has the right idea when itcame to pranayama — he quite simply sits down at the studio every morning(Monday through Friday) at 6:15 a.m. and begins the practice.

Anyone is welcome to join. There are no explicitprerequisites, just a couple implicit ones: you have to be comfortable on the floor for 45 minutes and with minimal verbal instruction.

In this way Tim doesn’t fry himself out explaining to dilettantes again and again the sequence itself and/or the many nuances to the practice.

My “prerequisite” is based around the fact that the best time for me to do the practice is before Mysore — so if interested, people have tobe at the studio at 5:30 a.m. Hardship!

Still, in the last six weeks a couple of people have venturedin to do the deep breathing.

I developed a pranayama practice in 2003, after myintroduction to it in Tim’s two-week teacher training in Encinitas. Irealized all I had to do was show up at the studio at 6:15.

(Nowadays that time seems so late that it borders on decadence.)

For those of you who’ve turned up to practice the pranayamawith me, I thought I’d share a few thoughts on the matter from the Siva Samhita(SS), considered one of three seminal texts on Hatha Yoga (the others being theHatha Yoga Pradipika ((HYP)) and the Gheranda Samhita.)

I consider this or any otherYoga text a basis for conversation and inquiry, as opposedto commandment. What are these texts claiming as truth, and what do they offer us?

The pranayama sequence is built around kumbhaka, orretention. The SS characterizes four levels of intensity with regards to breathretention, each of which manifests external characteristics.

If you’ve done thesequence, you may be familiar with these:

During the first stage the yogini’s body perspiresprofusely; the sweat produced should be rubbed into the skin (SS 3.40; HYP2.12-13).

The second stage involves trembling of the body, the third,‘jumping like a frog’ and the fourth is called gagane-cara, literally ‘movingin the sky’ (SS 3.41).

At any rate, if these sound interesting to you — Sweating, trembling, and hopping around? How could that not sound like a great time? — I’ll once again resume my seat at 5:30 a.m. tomorrow(Monday). I thoroughly enjoy the practice, and I think you will, too. All welcome to join.

YOGA BOOTY

2012-01-06T10:29:00.000-08:00

Where to begin with this one?

1. I don't know Briony, but she is a marketing genius. This definitely one-ups Kathryn "Naked Yogini" Budig.

2. Setting aside the amount of ass on display in this video, she is a perfect illustration of why it's more advantageous to have short legs when doing your pressing to handstand.

3. She is beautiful, she moves (mostly) with grace and fluidity (some arm bending, some falling and not lowering (she needs to practice more), but still, the panties make it forgivable). I can dig that.

4. Porn set hotel location?

5. Who or what the fuck is Equinox? A yoga studio? A gym? Spa? Resort? I am unclear.

6. The comments section reaffirms my faith in the random and rabid hilarity of people everywhere. My favorie comment: "Boner achieved." Which leads me to point seven ...

7. Haters gon hate.

8. Reminds me strongly of Krishnamacharya's approach to promoting Yoga in the '30's and 40's — the parlor tricks and showmanship — he directly referred to it as "propaganda" and it used to be contortionist poses and fakir-like heart-stopping, also entombment — now it's cute women in sexy attire. Get 'em in the door!

RAVE YOGA

2012-01-04T13:24:00.000-08:00

Seriously? Glow sticks and fluouro face paint?!It is surprising yet entirely inevitable. Also, clearly this early morning Mysore thing is bullshit.(Didn't see any E-puddles or nitrous tanks, though.)

BOOK IN HAND

2012-01-04T12:23:00.000-08:00

Ordered the proof on Friday morning; it arrived Tuesday.

Just finished last-minute tweaks and resubmitted to the press.

I've written books before, but nothing personal like this.

Feels weird to hold it.

Stayed up late actually reading it last night. I really liked parts of it. There are a few clunky parts, probably would've helped to have a professional editor eyeball it.

There are also some hilarious parts. Well, parts that I find hilarious. I find myself hilarious. However, as I told Tara last night, I am unfortunately much funnier on paper than in person.

I HAVE WRITTEN A BOOK.

2011-12-28T15:24:00.000-08:00

Photo by Kelly Lynn Hubert!

The book is quite cleverly called Ashtanga Yoga: Stories From Beyond the Mat.

It has 50 stories, essays, how-tos, and the occasional naughty word about Ashtanga yoga, all "with reverence and humor," as I believe the back cover says.

Actually, I know that's what the back cover says, because I wrote it.

This whole process has been like the extended labor of child birth, wrapped in an Ultimate Fighting cage match, sprinkled with Bergmanian Winter Light-style existential despair and angst. "The Chinese! The Chinese!"

I like Ashtanga yoga a lot, so I didn't (and don't) want to fuck this up, you know?

Anyway, I sent the whole package off (actually, just clicked buttons), and now it's under formatting and print review.

The book will be offered print-on-demand, most likely through the services of Amazon. I will have more details very soon.

THE GOOD FENCES/GOOD NEIGHBORS OF ASHTANGA YOGA

2011-12-11T14:09:00.001-08:00

I have been guiding and leading Primary Series (and theoccasional Second Series) since 2005, and in that time. I’ve watched quite a few people move through the sequence,just as I’ve practiced it myself, week in and week out, and in that time I’ve had the occasion to discuss, speak about, and answer questions about the series.

The Primary Series takes root and flowers in bed of soil that is the tristana, techniques that emphasize that we are going to work with thebreath, the body-mind, and ourattention.

This emphasis says several things: first, we work from afundamental, internal point — the breath — and move outward.

Second, everyone and anyone, of any economic class, physicaldisposition and background, gender, class, caste and inclination, can use thesetechniques. They are scalable and adaptable to all.

Third, the tristana are a pyramid — all three formfundamental points of the foundation. There is not one part of the breath,body-mind, and attention or consciousness that is superfluous or irrelevant.

This is an implicit and structural acknowledgment that weare multi-layered beings whose embodiments are not limitations or impediments,rather gifts and tools that can be used to experience and savor ever deeperrealizations.

So Guided Primary Series classes are unique among Yogaclasses in that they’re absolutely prescribed — every breath, movement and lookingpoint is directed. At first glance there is no chance or opportunityfor spontaneous free will or expression to arise.

One way to look at led Primary is as an overly formalizedritual. The tristana and the established sequence create a set of rules,boundaries and limitations (thank you, Cesar Milan) that in effect form a containeror vessel.

The Sanskrit root “dhri” generally means to carry, to bear,to hold — “dhara” is “the one whobears” (or the earth), while “dharanam” can mean prop, support, pillar, stay,hold.

You see where this is going? The practice of Tristana plusPrimary Series can be thought of asdharana itself. This versus dharana as a byproduct or result of the two.

I am indebted to Dr. Douglas Brooks for this more esoteric notion of a collection or grouping of the last three limbs of Ashtanga.

This vessel creates and sustains value and meaning, andtherefore relationship and intimacy (Holy shit, Yoga!) — value and meaning arenever inherent, and rise from the delimiting of choices: by choosing topractice this posture and not that one, in this order of postures, and not thatone, we say that this posture and that sequence have value and meaning tous.

Even the most freewheeling and loose hippy-dippy types (“Nolimits, man! No boundaries! Freedom! He's Captain America, man, and I'm Billy!”) create implicit value and meaningthrough kala and desha, space and time.

Meaning, we choose to begin practice at 10 a.m. at Yoga Pearl, not inthe parking lot of a 7-11 at midnight. At first glance this seems arbitrary,but the consequent value and meaning of these details play a powerful role in creating deeper relationship and connection.

However, the conception of tristana plus Primary Series as a rigid container of dharana, like all large, firm structures such as skyscrapersand suspension bridges, paradoxically also contains a tremendous amount of flex.

The expression of the shapes/seats/asanas, the individualexpression of the transitions, the length of breath, all vary from person toperson, day to day, often moment to moment.

It's this inherent flex that allows the series to be so "rigid."

What follows from this conception of dharana-as-vessel isthe question: with what do we fill this vessel?

Dhyana.

Again, this is an esoteric understanding of this meaning. Thevessel of dharana collects the “single flow” of attention in one direction (asPatanjali says, “pratyaya-ekatanata”).We fill this vessel with our object of contemplation, be it devata orotherwise.

Samadhi becomes then not so much an ecstatic one-ness but a deep andabiding savoring (svada) of this “single flow.”

ANY ORDINARY THING MADE EXTRAORDINARY

2011-12-01T15:02:00.001-08:00

I'm once again in Encinitas. Why keep returning to the Ashtanga Yoga Center? It seemed fitting to unearth this quote:

"It is said ... that a man once came from a great distance to study under Rabbi Shneur Zalman, the founder of the Lubavitcher Hasidim ...

To this distinguished tzaddik ... came the distant visitor. On learning of his quest, the villagers of Ladi all asked with pride if he wanted first to hear their great rabbi read Talmud or to hear him pray.

Neither, he said. He wanted only to watch him cut bread or tie his shoes.

The villagers were stunned as the visitor simply observed the rabbi sitting absently in thought in thc light of the afternoon sun, and then went away edified."

—"The Ordinary as Mask of the Holy," Belden C. Lane, Christian Century October 3, 1984, p. 898

Lane goes on to add: "One begins to suspect that the contemplation of any ordinary thing, made extraordinary by attention and love, can become an occasion for glimpsing the profound."

Ashtanga Yoga Center: shoe-tying, bread-cutting. That is all.

COUPLE THOUGHTS ON "YOGA ADDICT'S NEW MANTRA"

2011-11-23T09:55:00.001-08:00

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:

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.)

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.

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)).)

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.

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?

ASHTANGA YOGA AS INTERNAL REVERSAL

2011-11-08T11:08:00.000-08:00

More from Geoffrey Samuel's The Origins of Yoga and Tantra:

"The Yogasutra has noticeable affinities to the dhyana and jhana meditations of the Buddhist tradition and has generally been regarded as strongly influenced by Buddhist meditational procedures, with Samadhi seen, as in the Buddhist practices, as a state of withdrawal from external concerns and focusing of the body-mind...

Rather than seeing this in terms of ‘Buddhist influence,’ we should perhaps again see this more in terms of participation within a shared ascetic sub-culture...

Thus the Yogasutra I.17 defines an initial meditational state (samprajnata Samadhi) in terms close to the Buddhist definition of the first dhyana state, while I.33 recommends the practice of the four states (friendliness, compassion, sympathetic joy, equanimity) known in Buddhist texts as the four brahmavihara states (Satyananda 1980: 33, 57).”

—The Origins of Yoga and Tantra, page 222

Samuels goes on to suggest the idea of kaivalya not as a withdrawn "alone-ness" but an "internal reversal rather than necessarily involving a cessation of existence in the world," (p. 223).

Though he does go on to mention that a "consistent emphasis on world-rejection is certainly found in major figures of later Indian philosophy such as Sankara." (p. 223)

What's challenging in reading of Shankara is to consistently remember that he appears to only write from the perspective of One-ness/Singularity/Non-duality.

IS YOUR ASHTANGA YOGA OPEN OR CLOSED? BOTH? NEITHER?

2011-11-06T07:34:00.000-08:00

Re-reading Geoffrey Samuel's The Origins of Yoga and Tantra; thought I'd share some of his comments on the Yogasutra:

[David Gordon] White argues against the frequent modern interpretation ofyoga, based in large part on Vivekananda’s selective reading of the Yogasutra,as a ‘meditative practice through which the absolute was to be found by turningthe mind and senses inward, away from the world’ (White 2006: 6) ...

Yogicpractices are about linkages between the microcosm and macrocosm, and theypostulate an ‘open’ model of the human body, not a closed one.

In particular, White notes that the commonest use of theterm ‘yoga’ in the narrative sections of the Mahabharata is to refer to a dyingwarrior transferring himself at death to the sphere of the sun through yoga, apractice that links up with Upanishadic references to the channel to the crownof the head as the pathway by which one can travel through the solar orb to theWorld of Brahman (2006: 7). This channel is called susumna in the MaitriUpanishad, a term that recurs some centuries later in the Tantric context. (page 221)

What do we expect from an Ashtanga Vinyasa practice: a great turning in, or a great turning out? How much of our expectations of this practice descend from Vivekananda? How much from the renunciate tradition of Shankara?

(I have had a tendency to post questions; this morning however I thought I'd share my own journaling/svadhyaya on the questions.)

Shankara, it must be said, viewed practice as useless — well, not entirely: as he says in the Brahma-Sutra-Bhasya, it is of some use "for those of inferior intellect."

Personally, I find introversion and withdrawal easier than extroversion and energetic engagement. I notice I have the tendency to simplify complexity and clarify confusion, and this thread has insinuated itself into aspects of my Yoga practice, maybe from a less mature understanding of vairagya, or dispassion or non-attachment.

However, perhaps the idea that vairagya as an ideal stems from a "closed body" model of Yoga, one descended from Vivekananda's prurient take on the Yogasutra and sprouting from the sramana ("strivers") era of renunciate-ascetic tradition circa 2,000 years ago.

An "open body" model of Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga suggests acceptance and understanding of both increasing complexity and confusion, and consequently increasing difficulty.

It's an interesting perspective or stance to adopt. Rather than dispassionate observation, an "open body" model suggests more appreciation and savoring (svada) of various states.

ASHTANGA YOGA INITIATION?

2011-10-10T05:54:00.001-07:00

Most initiations are about the devolution of responsibility. At the same time, initiations often double as a long and confused moment of shared truths. Essentially, what the adults, elders, or senior members of the group share with the initiates is the knowledge they possess, and then they admit to a terrible secret, the secret of the “tribe”—that beyond the knowledge the initiates have just been given there is no special knowledge.

—Anna Simons, The Company They Keep

There is no specific "initiation" as such when one begins the practice of Ashtanga Vinyasa, though I consider learning the Primary Series an initiation of sorts.

This is markedly different from almost other Yogic as well as other, larger institutions and cultures; the quote above is taken from Simons' book about U.S. Special Forces culture, for example.

With regards to Ashtanga Vinyasa, upon completion of First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth Series, or the Pranayama sequence, there is no "special knowledge" that is transmitted.

(I think here of Tokyo Ashtanga teacher Barry Silver's blog handle: "Nothing Special.")

The "knowledge possessed" by the "Guru" (who has since passed) was the techniques of the breath, gaze, internal focus points — and the practice of discipline!

So then the "secret" of the Ashtanga Vinyasa tribe is that there is no secret.

There is no "special knowledge" contained in, inherent to, and separate from the series themselves — beyond the very intention, attention, and consistency (discipline) that we bring to this practice.

Questions:
Are most initiations about a "devolution of responsibility"?
Do you feel there is an "initiation" to the Ashtanga Vinyasa practice?
What are the pluses, minuses, neutrals to thinking of surrender/submission to a system as a "devolution"?
Is initiation a surrender/submission?

Might we consider initiation an empowerment and invitation?

IGNORE THE PERSONALITY

2011-10-02T07:40:00.000-07:00

‎I saw a great quote the other day on Facebook from Sarah Wells, a teacher at the Eugene School of Yoga:

"The yogi should ignore the personality of his/her yoga teacher, thus focusing on the lineage and practice." — Narasimhan

In Mysore, India, Professor M. Narasimhan used to teach the philosophy portion of Dr. Jayashree's Yoga Sutra chant class.

This really echoes Pierre-Sylvain Filliozat, as quoted in The Yoga Body:

The orthodox pandit is not in the least concerned to restore an ancient state of affairs...
If he were to point out the ... differences between the ... text and his own epoch, he would have to reveal his own share of innovation and his individuality...
He prefers to keep this latter hidden...
For him, the important thing is to present the whole of his knowledge — which contains both the ancient heritage and his new vision — as an organized totality.
(Filliozat 1992 : 92, translation by Singleton, The Yoga Body.)

As Narashimhan observes, if we can side-step or look beyond (look through?) our teacher's personality, we're able to receive the entirety, the totality, the sum of her knowledge — which contains both "ancient heritage" as well as her "new vision."

Often, though, the richest transmission seems to arise from the frisson of realization that there's a seam, a gap, however small, between a teacher's personality and practice and their very own lineage.

If only because then we have to hold onto the seeming paradox ourselves without "solving" it.

ENCHANT YOUR LANDSCAPE

2011-09-30T15:45:00.000-07:00

There's a full interview with Grant Morrison now on Comic Book Grrrl.

Morrison is, of course, a practicing Chaos magician:

"[T]he idea of magic is actually really simple and down to earth --- it's all just about enchanting the world you live in ...

It's about not just taking that [lamp] as something boring to be ignored, but looking at that light and seeing a manufacturer behind it. There are human hands in there, there are atoms that go back and probably appeared in Christ's body, all the way back into the Big Bang.

This is this immense magical process that we're all caught up in, and magic is about being aware of that constantly, making everything special."

I love the correlates between ritual magic and puja; both are an elaboration of the sacred in which we make an offering and receive gifts.

Both Yoga and puja are the practice of one's entwinement with the sacred.

The ritual elements with which I think many of us are familiar, at least in Ashtanga Vinyasa, are the establishment of intention (sankalpa) and the 'application' onto our bodies (nyasa) of that intention, or the archetype that represents that intention (ista devata).

For those who are curious, there are a few more ritual elements in an Ashtanga Vinaysa practice: the summoning or invocation (avahana), fulfilled partly by our opening chant or invocation.

We create a boundary (avarna) or container into which we summon our intention or archetype (ista devata); quite literally, this may be the length/breadth of our sticky mats, or as Richard Freeman once described it, our own "dharma kshetre, kuru kshetre," quoting the opening lines of the Bhagavad Gita and comparing our sticky mats to the "field of dharma" and the "field of the Kurus" (dharma kshetre; kuru kshetre) onto which the drama of the Gita plays out.

Then begins the rhythmic pulsation of the ujjayi breathing as the breath-movement of the Ashtanga Vinyasa practice begins. This heat (tapasya) turns our insides into a blazing fire onto which we heap ... what? That which is inessential, perhaps.

I quite often simply dedicate each breath to my own archetype or intention.

The practice of intention, invocation, and boundary-setting can create a profound and intense inner experience (antaryaga).

The ritual practice ends with the closing chant, which signals the end of the practice, the ritual, as well as the dismissal (visarjana) of the archetype or intention that we established at the beginning.

With visarjana, perhaps we have inhaled/exhaled the sacred such that we now in turn see this archetype or intention everywhere we look: "Everywhere looking, is God!" as Pattabhi Jois used to say. "You look at wall, not seeing wall --- seeing God!"

To paraphrase "Arthur Avalon" (Sir John Woodroffe), it's not that we have shrunk the sacred to fit --- it's that we have stretched our minds to more fully encompass the sacred.

We have, as Grant Morrison suggests, "enchanted" the world in which we live. We've made "everything special."

MOBILITY RESOURCE

2011-09-25T07:38:00.000-07:00

I've been around Crossfit for maybe 4 years now, so I take some resources for granted that I probably shouldn't.

Probably one of the biggest at the moment is Kelly Starrett's Mobility WOD, or Mobility Workout of the Day.

My buddy XX and I took a mobility seminar with Starrett in 2009? Maybe it was 2010. The guy is as charismatic, knowledgeable and inspiring in person as in the videos on his site.

Starrett is a PT who owns Crossfit San Francisco. He's been posting a mobility-flexibility tutorial video a day for almost a year.

The guy is only concerned with results, as in pain/no pain, more mobile/less mobile.

He provides a sharp contrast to a meme that has imbued many depths of Ashtanga Vinyasa: that of the improper amplification of Pattabhi Jois' famous "Practice, practice, long time coming."

In many instances this becomes shorthand for repeated application (sometimes years) of a posture with little to no change in range-of-motion/mobility/flexibilty, and often accompanied by increased and growing pain.

A sip of the venom often builds tolerance. Want more fluidity and stability in urdhva dhanurasana? Do more urdvha dhanurasana.

But a definition of madness is to repeat the same behavior and expect different results.

So I found Starrett to bring a ruthless, brutal and refreshing test/re-test binary approach. Better/not better? Yes/no?

Pain/no-pain is one I use during Mysore class, usually the key and ultimate limiter for both asana and adjustment.

The other dimension Starrett adds is aligned with sauca, or cleanliness. As the sub-head of Starrett's blog says, "Every human being should be able to perform basic maintenance on themselves."

His approach encourages us to examine on a daily basis our (if any) persistent pains, tweaks, pulls from a more rounded and deeper perspective, and then use a multi-tiered approach to address any issues.

Perhaps you have a "mechanical fault" or "movement error," and are gliding in/out of an asana in a less than ideal way (e.g. shoulder position for chaturanga).

Perhaps you just have some soft tissue (fascia) "tacked down" due to repeated shortened ROM.

Perhaps you have pain or limited ROM from a traumatic instance (car crash, bar fight).

Starrett is a fresh perspective for someone like me, who's practiced Ashtanga Vinyasa for well-nigh 15 years.

The practice of the series of Ashtanga Vinyasa can become all-consuming and all-encompassing, 6 days a week, 2 hours a day.

The series are brilliant, but by nature limited and exclusive --- by necessity they must leave out certain postures and approaches.

The risk is to see those series as unlimited and all-inclusive, and from this follows a bit of Yoga myopia. The risk with the practice of Yogasana period is to see Yogasana as the horizon line that addresses all your health and perhaps fitness needs.

These needs often run parallel to sadhana, often overlap --- but equally as importantly, can often diverge.

As the practice of road-biking, and then Crossfit, and now other avenues continues to inform me, these lines are not the same.

I'll post the video from today. Browse the site, look up your problem areas. Don't have any? Congratulations.

You can test the carryover of your Ashtanga Vinyasa practice by doing today's 10-minute squat test; or you can continue to wonder why your heels are not (and will never) touch the ground in pasasana.

"Pistol" drills are revelatory regarding leg-to-leg strength imbalances, as well as ankle flexibility.

Can't recommend MobilityWOD enough, check it out. If you've got the dough, I also recommend seeing Starrett in person --- if only because the Yogi/O-lifter/Crossfitter crossover is hilarious.

MAPS

2011-09-25T06:46:00.000-07:00

"A good map is ambiguous; it is one that intrigues you, manipulates you, instils enough confusion to keep things sparkling -not a nerdy attempt at so-called realism. Just like language. Just like conversation. Like life. (Venice, Dorsoduro - tore the map)

---Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Some of our maps below, and perhaps the realms under which they might fall.

Do they "intrigue," "manipulate" and otherwise "instil [sic] enough confusion to keep things sparkling"?

Realization/Transcendence The eight limbs

Social/Interpersonal: 5 yamas/niyamas ("do's" and "don'ts"?)

Psychospiritual/Body/Heart nadis, koshas, bandhas, granthis

Awareness tattvas, gunas, Brahman/jiva, kevala kaivalya

YOU ARE NOT YOUR IMBALANCES...OR ARE YOU?

2011-09-21T11:30:00.000-07:00

Asana practice lends itself to different lenses of varying depths and utility.

It’s easy to get trapped on the materialist and reductionist side of the map, a place where asanas are mere assemblages of body parts.

Consequently, there then follows a tendency to view our personal list of physical injuries, tendencies, and idiosyncrasies as problems to be solved, or obstacles to be overcome, through Yoga. This view in effect reduces Yoga asana to physical therapy.

The subtler and trickier thinking that accompanies this reduction is the deep cherishment of these idiosyncrasies and injuries, and their acceptance as limiting beliefs.

A.G. Mohan writes that Krishnamacharya, Pattabhi Jois’ teacher, had a useful multi-level framework to view asana practice: as spiritual practice (upasana), therapy (chikitsa), and fitness (shiksa).

So this means we're not shallow for our curiosity about anatomy and physical expression, as though we're somehow less “serious” for not seeing Yoga asana practice only in “spiritual” terms.

I believe an intense focus and interest in the mechanics of asana and anatomy is a stage through which we who practice this system for longer lengths of time must pass.

Also, it's useful to observe that Patanjali suggests that attention to our body (sauca) is essential, and that sickness (vyadhi) is an obstacle.

The Taittriya Upanishad, which Guruji loved to quote, suggests that our food-body (anna maya kosha) is the first of five nested shells or sheaths.

Both Patanjali and the Panchakosha map of our experience suggest that our bodies are vital, important, and inextricably related with other, subtler levels and layers.

So while I don’t necessarily believe one needs to be an anatomist to teach asana, it can still enrich one’s practice to pay attention to the physical food-body realm.

I’ve been fortunate to hold space for Mysore-style classes since 2004, and most of the gift of that time has been quite simply to watch and observe hundreds (thousands?) of bodies as they move through the same ritualized sequence of interlinked postures.

In that time I’ve come to observe a couple common tendencies, whether in people off the street/couch, athletes, dancers or performers, or long-time yoginis.

These are broad generalizations, of course, and don’t apply to all equally.

Also, I have chosen to ignore medical terminology.

1. SHOULDER IMBALANCE; FRONT/BACK
Humans are an anterior and front-facing species.

So it’s pretty much inevitable that the muscles on the front of our body are stronger than the muscles on the back, especially on our grabby bits.

We push and pull with our chest and the front and sides of our arms.

So generally, this means our upper back, as well as the the backs of the shoulders and arms, are a bit weaker.

There is the belief that Ashtanga Vinyasa people have hurt shoulders. Given the high repetitions of chaturangas, lolasanas, uth pluthis, jump-backs and urdvha dhanurasanas, this is definitely a shadow element of which we ought to be aware.

Generally when a person tells me they have shoulder pain, I watch them lower into chaturanga and, nine times out of 10, the top of their arm bone rolls forward in their shoulder --- the muscles that support the wing-bone and the backs of the shoulder are unable to keep the arm centered in its socket.

This imbalance is also why, for example, your hands slide together in pinche mayurasana, or you have a hard time keeping the elbows in when pushing up into urdvha dhanurasana.

2. LEG IMBALANCE; INNER/OUTER
I’m not sure why I see this so frequently. Maybe if we all squatted a lot this wouldn’t be an issue.

This generally is not an issue in former ballerinas or martial artists, that is, people who have done a lot of kicking and leg swings.

This is why you have to pay conscious attention to make sure your knee tracks your toes during virabadrasana.

Usually I see the knee waggle inward and the foot flatten.

3. SHORT HIP FLEXORS
Generally, we sit a lot, so the front of our hips shorten and the backs of our legs get weak.

We do no hip extension in the Primary Series until backbends, so this one's harder to untangle, though tiraing mukkha eka pada paschimattanasana is sometimes a good clue.

WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT
I didn’t want to present a problem and then not offer a solution; however, I wrote five pages of postural suggestions that, upon re-reading, caused my eyes to dry up and fall out of my skull from boredom.

So there’re a lot of great technical manuals out there: Maehle’s book, if for nothing but the technical info. Swenson's book is also always great simply because it's simple.

The act of writing out the alignment suggestions was therapeutic for me, though, because look, let’s face it: you just have to show up consistently and practice the Primary Series with a teacher/friend who has a good eye for energy lines --- or at the very least, has practiced for a little while themselves and can tell when something may hurt further on down the line.

To get too worried about correcting structural imbalances and we drift into the realm of physical therapy and denude the Ashtanga Vinyasa practice of its inherent power, and also become mired in the problem/solution dialectic.

I think this can be okay for a period of time because it can also reveal a lot about our expectations of a Yoga practice.

Do we expect it to take us from one state to another, one totally unlike the one before?

Do we consider life a problem to be solved?

Are we inherently broken and in need of fixing?

These feel like more important questions to savor ... they just have to be asked before they can be contemplated.

KASHMIR SHAIVISM IN A NUTSHELL

2011-09-19T13:46:00.000-07:00

There's been an influx of new people to Mysore class, so I thought it'd be nice to go over a couple principle differences between the different Yoga systems.

It's useful to know a bit about Advaita Vedanta, the system and philosophy of non-dualism that underpins Ashtanga Vinyasa.

It's also useful to reflect on the similarities and differences between Advaita Vedanta and the other systems of non-duality.

This triangulation is useful to acknowledge any unexamined and implicit goals, values, and world-views.

Kashmir Shaivism is the second greatnon-dual (advaita) system that informs and inflects modern Yogapractice.

The Kashmir Shaivites assume the samemonism as Advaita Vedanta, the non-dual system of which Pattabhi Jois(Guruji!) was a modern practitioner.

Both Advaita Vedantins and KashmirShaivites hold that all is Brahman, the expansive, unchangingabsolute.

The Advaita Vedantin Shankaramaintained that Brahman only appears to us to go through changes(vivarta).

The One (Brahman) doesn’t change to become the many --- it can’t, as it’s expansive,unchanging and absolute.

So the appearance of separation iscaused by ignorance (avidya), and is nothing but illusion (maya).

This illusion has no reality. It isonly the appearance of fleeting names and forms (namarupa) which areall unreal and, like a mirage, vanish when ignorance ends.

The Kashmir Shaivites take a differenttack.

An initial and key detail is that theypersonify the One (Brahman) as Siva.

They hold that the One (Brahman) doesbecome the many ... and also remains unchanged.

The One’s essential nature is vibrantcreative energy (spanda).

This vibrant creative energy is inclinedtowards the outward and joyful manifestation of its creative energy(shakti).

This manifestation is brought about bythe free-will play (lila) of the One.

The Kashmir Shaivites replace the ideaof appearances (vivarta) with that of reflection (abhasana).

The many are as real as the one, andare in fact nothing but the reflection of the One’s consciousness.

For the Kashmir Shaivite, names andforms (namarupa) are real. They appear as a result of contraction orlimiting of consciousness (maya). This contraction (maya) cannot beseparated from the One.

To bring this back to Ashtanga Vinyasa,Pattabhi Jois frequently elaborated on the Panchakosha map aselaborated in the Taiitriya Upanishad.

The fifth or most inner layer orcovering (kosha) is the bliss covering (anandamaya kosha).

For the Advaita Vedantin, the anandamaya kosha is equatedwith the One, and we can say nothing about it (anirvacanīya). We do not experience the One (Brahman), because thatwould imply change (an experiencer, an experience, and that which isexperienced --- all are separate).

For the Kashmir Shaivits, this sheath isactive and self-conscious, and our experience is meant to be and can be savored(asvada).

ADVAITA VEDANTA IN A NUTSHELL

2011-09-16T11:55:00.000-07:00

No Crossfit clickbait today, sorry! However, a cross-post from Portland Ashtanga Yoga.

Some recent posts have discussed Pattabhi Jois' (a.k.a. Guruji's, The Boss', The Big Guy's) lineage as a Smarta Hoysala Brahmin, that caste and sub-caste of Brahmins who hold Adi Shankaracharya, the famous Advaita Vedantin, as their root-guru.

It may surprise you that there are several streams of non-dual thinking, of which Advaita (a="not," dvaita="two-ness") is one.

(That's not a pun.)

In a nutshell:

To the Advaita Vedantin, reality or that-ness (tattva) is appearance only (vivarta).

The world is created by error (adhyasa); to use one of their most famous analogies, this is similar to confusing a rope for a snake in a darkened room.

The world is also created by ignorance of the one (avidya), as well as our captivity by appearance (maya).

The One has always been and, most importantly, has never changed.

Interesting, no?

Both Buddhists and Kashmir Saivists have slightly differing ideas. I'll continue with both in future "Nutshells."

SHANKARACHARYA AND MULA BANDHA

2011-09-10T19:02:00.000-07:00

We're coming up on a Full Moon --- no practice on Monday! --- thought I'd share a little more of the philosophy that girds the practice of Ashtanga Vinyasa as taught by Pattabhi Jois.

Jois (or Guruji!) was of the Hoysala Brahmin caste, a subset of the immensely popular Smarta Brahmins whose root teacher or sadguru was Adi Shankaracharya.

Shankaracharya, who most likely lived in the Eighth Century C.E., was one of the giants of Indian philosophy and arguably the forefather of Advaita Vedanta.

Much of Shankaracharya's work is available online; there are of course also later Tantra texts that bear his name that were not written by him.

His Aparokshanubhuti is online and worth a read on your moon day, especially as it addresses many techniques and practices we cultivate in Ashtanga Vinyasa, among them mula bandha.

As lines 114 and 115 read:

114. That which is the root of all existence and on which the restraint of the mind is based is called the restraining root [mulabandha] which should always be adopted since it is fit for raja-yogins.

115. Absorption in the uniform Reality should be known as the equipoise of the limbs [dehasamya]. Otherwise, mere straightening of the body like that of a dried-up tree is no equipoise.

The practice of mula bandha is fit for a King! Also doubtless Rajarajeshwari, the Queen of Kings. You can get an idea of the tenets of Advaita Vedanta by reading the text.

Finally, we'll return to Mysore class to once again to practice "equipoise of the limbs" on Tuesday!

HOW TO DO CROSSFIT AND ASHTANGA YOGA

2011-09-06T16:32:00.000-07:00

This is written from the perspective of someone practicing a full sequence (and change) five to six days a week.

I could probably add to this and get real specific.

1. Eat More

Food and nutrition are highly personal and emotionally charged practices and beliefs.

This suggestion isn't about the content of your food, however, that is veg, vegan, omni, what-have-you. It's about quantity.

I've had conversations with lots of people who practice Ashtanga Vinyasa and, y'know, I've been around for a couple years, so I've seen how some Ashtanga Vinyasa yogis and yoginis eat.

If you commit to Crossfit a couple times a week, you are going to need to ratchet up your food intake.

This is usually not a problem because you will be ridiculously hungry after doing both.

I only have one suggestion as to what you should eat if you do Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga plus Crossfit, though mostly it's a suggestion of what not to eat — processed foods.

2. No Really — Eat More

By "eat more," I don't mean an extra bowl of popcorn, an extra spoonful of cottage cheese, more yogurt, or an extra banana.

You're going to need to put away some protein, fat and carbohydrate in order to recover from your efforts and support your future practices.

3. Sleep More

At least nine hours a night. Seriously.

This is usually not an issue because you will be tired. You will need the sleep.

However, you will dig yourself into a hole if you try to slide by doing both Ashtanga Vinyasa and Crossfit (plus work, family, happy hour, pranayama, meditation, puja) on six hours a night

4. Off Days Are Off

Saturdays and moon days are opportunities for reflection and relaxation. Do nothing.

5. Less Flexible

I'm not going to sugar-coat it for you: high reps plus reduced range of motion (ROM) means your nervous system will shorten muscles accordingly.

You will get less flexible by doing hundreds (Hundreds? Yes, hundreds.) of pull-ups, push-ups, squats, thrusters, dips, muscle-ups, et cetera, et cetera.

Good thing we are not practicing Yoga to get more flexible, right?

Right?

Anybody?

6. More Strength

Maybe you trade off a bit of flexibility — for a period of time.

You will, however, get stronger.

If you've never done resistance training, like I hadn't, you will get a shit-ton stronger.

Your maximal strength, strength-endurance, and endurance will increase (though these last two will diminish when you stop practicing Crossfit).

7. Enjoy Yourself
Ashtanga Yoga's not so hard. Neither is Crossfit.

I mean, they're both challenging, and some days are like a warm, effortless shower and some are like a root canal, but that's not unique to either discipline.

A serious-as-death attitude doesn't help, either on the mat or in the gym. Plus those people aren't as much fun to be around.

So go ahead and enjoy yourself, both on the mat and in Crossfit.

"HOYSALA BRAHMIN" BY EDDIE STERN

2011-09-06T15:52:00.001-07:00

Sorry, nothing at the moment about more Crossfit/Yoga crossover (doublecross?).

I recently discovered Eddie Stern, director of Ashtanga Yoga New York, runs a blog.

I know, I know: get a late pass!

Anyway, Mr. Stern's blog is, as you would expect, essential reading.

Of note was an article on Pattabhi Jois called "Hoysala Brahmin," reprinted on the AYNY blog from Mr. Stern's magazine Namarupa.

I highly recommend Namarupa. It is bar none among the very best Yoga magazines, though to call it a magazine does it a great disservice as it's more of a journal.

The first several issues were in print, and last I heard they'd gone to downloadable PDF and print-on-demand. It's a great read. Check out Namarupa.org for more.

Mr. Stern's article "Hoysala Brahmin" is a fantastic story about the rich social, religious, and spiritual context in which Pattabhi Jois grew up and which, in turn, informed his teaching of Ashtanga Vinyasa.

I've excerpted two paragraphs below. It's important to know that Pattabhi Jois was a Hoysala Karnatkan and a Smarta Brahmin.

"[T]hough Shankaracharya is known as an Advaitin – following a philosophy which is commonly associated with a formless, nameless and unthinkable conception of the Absolute his followers in India, the Smartas, engage in the elaborate worship of several deities for the sake of generating devotion, love and surrender, that create the quality of mind needed for subtle contemplation. They choose an object – an object of devotion – and through the linking of the mind and heart, bring their consciousness into a state of concentration."

"When we look at Guruji’s system, we should understand that the yoga he taught was grounded in the body first and foremost, for we are embodied beings, and we should not negate this fact of our existence. His enthusiasm for yoga, however, was not simply physical – the physical is the gateway."

Check out the entire article on the AYNY blog.

DOES 'YOGA BODY' DISPROVE ASHTANGA VINYASA?

2011-08-26T11:05:00.001-07:00

I received a great question from Matthew, who asks:

"I read the book Yoga Body by Singleton. The entire last chapter seems to try to disprove the validity of the order of the series in our style. How do you feel about that? I don't care whether or not the Yoga Korunta is responsible for the order of the postures, but I feel that there is a wonderful logic to it because of the way my body responds. I used to do "arbitrary" yoga and it doesn't come close in effectiveness for me. What are your thoughts on this matter?"

My response:

I don't feel Singleton's book disproves the validity of the various series of Ashtanga Vinyasa, nor does it raise questions about its efficacy.

What the book does do, however, is pretty well demolish any link between the specific series and either Yoga practices of antiquity (as in the Vedas, Upanishads) or medieval periods (the Sutras, Pradipika, Gheranda Samhita, et al).

The Yoga scholarship of the last 15 years supports the theory that the modern body practices go no further back than modern, 20th century authors. This means we are not practicing techniques handed down in an unbroken lineage from days of yore.

Like I said, though, this does not discredit the efficacy or power of the sequences, or of practicing a set, determined series.

Rather, it means we have to acknowledge they, like all practices, have evolved to meet our needs and conditions as they are now.

What's more, this idea frees us from the notion that we are simply and merely trying to recreate some ancient yogi's experience.

I hope this is useful to you.

Enjoy your practice!

IS THE UNIVERSE INDIFFERENT?

2011-08-25T09:48:00.001-07:00

I saw the following on John Gruber's Daring Fireball this morning:"Stanley Kubrick in his 1968 interview with Playboy: The most terrifying fact of the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent; but if we can come to terms with this indifference and accept the challenges of life within the boundaries of death — however mutable man may be able to make them — our existence as a species can have genuine meaning and fulfillment. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light."I submit that what Kubrick refers to here as a "fact" — that the universe is inherently "indifferent" — is nothing more than the meaning he himself has ascribed.I also suggest that we can expand out Kubrick's perspective to view three possible perspectives, postures or "seats" (asanas) one can take on the universe:1. The universe is against us.This is the belief that the forces of the universe are deeply inimical, antithetical, or opposed to our desires, dreams, and very being.I have known people like this in my life (for example, my own brother) and have, at times embodied this view myself. Ah, the teenage years, when I thought, in alphabetical order, that Bierce, Bukowski, Camus, Celine and Sartre, among others, had really figured it all out, and were offering the best way of thinking about my life.There is a victim mentality that seems to accompany this posture. This asana reminds me of Abel, of Cain and Abel fame, a story that, among other things, tells us that there are predators and there are victims. One of life's questions then becomes, which one are you?2. The universe is indifferent to us.Kubrick's quote above is typical of this view, though it seems to me there's underlying this asana is the idea that the universe is in fact a "vast darkness."It also seems this view is typical of what's considered the modern Western materialist view — that the universe is reducible to tiny components that inhabit a separate space through which we move.On a mythic level, I think of Sisyphus: we are here to roll the rock up the hill again and again, an inherently futile effort, yet one in which we must find beauty and meaning.3. The universe supports us.As emanations of the universe, the "one turning," we are in fact not and never separate from everything else. Different, yes; separate, no. From the perspective of this asana, we are here to move in synchrony with and to participate in it.In this way a Yoga practice becomes the practice of not freeing ourselves from life or overcoming it.Ram, Sita and Hanuman embody this: conditional love, unconditional love, and the agent that re-unifies them, each moving according to their capacities, desires and duties.I think it's important to know how your system of Yoga addresses these postures, as each one does so differently.To look at these three views as asanas is helpful, as the implication of a consciously chosen seat implies personal choice and the power of our intention and attention.Which of the three views do you choose to invest in, knowing that in turn, this view will inform and infuse your life? I think it's also possible to hold opposing seats at different times, too. What situations cause fluctuations in your asana? Family, work, relationships?For example, how does spending an afternoon at the DMV (to choose one of my favorite examples) affect your asana?To return to Stanley Kubrick: his perspective, that of the vast indifference of the universe, infused his films, from Dr. Strangelove and Barry Lyndon to The Shining and Full Metal Jacket.So while his films are among those I respect, admire and am moved by, I find I can't love them like I love Truffaut (and not Godard), Renoir, Pasolini, Anderson.

JAPA OF THE BREATH

2011-08-16T13:38:00.000-07:00

I came across copies of Sir JohnWoodroffe’s books Sakti and Sakta, KundaliniYoga, and Mahanirvana Tantra back in 2006 at the Community ResourceCenter in Encinitas.

The CRC is one of my favorite thriftstores in the world, if only because the books were (and, to myknowledge, still are) between $1 and $2, which means I spent $4.50for all three.

It wasn't until this year, however, that I finally got around to reading thesedense and weighty books. They are chock full of gems. I’ve beenespecially inspired by Woodroffe’s analysis of the differences andsimilarities between Samkhya Yoga, Shankara’s Advaita Vedanta, andShakta Tantrism.

One of Woodroffe’sexplications of an aspect of Mantra Sadhana, or practice, wasespecially relevant to those of us who practice thebreath/movement-based practice of Ashtanga Vinyasa:

“Japa is recital of Mantra ... One ofthe great Mantras is the physical act of breathing. As this is doneof itself so many times a day, now through the right, and thenthrough the left nostril automatically, it is called the Ajapa Mantra— that is, the mantra which is said to be without Japa or willed efforton man’s part.”
(page 454, Sakti and Sakta)

As Dr. Douglas Brooks has mentioned, toadd the prefix “a” before a Sanskrit word often means “not”or “without.”

So to add an "a" to “vidya” orknowledge, for example, turns the word into its opposite, “avidya,” or ignorance.

However, occasionally, as in the caseof japa/ajapa above, the prefix “a” can also mean “never without.”

Dr. Brooks cited “ghora”and “aghora.” If ghora means terrifying, why then is Kali,considered the most terrifying, called aghora? She is not "without terror." In this instance, she is “neverwithout” absolute terror.

As Woodroffe states, the breath isconsidered Ajapa because it is continuous, and we are “neverwithout.”

In the Ashtanga Vinyasa system, the volume of the breath is turned up ever so slightly using the ujjayi breath technique, and as a result, attention comes to one place. In so doing, the breath comes to have specific meaning and intentionalityduring the time we have chosen to turn up on our Yoga mats.

The Japa of the ujjayi breath allowsengagement in Nyasa. As Woodroffe says:

“Nyasa ... means the “placing” ofthe hands of the worshipper on different [body parts], imagining atthe same time that thereby the corresponding parts of the body of her Istadevata are being there placed. It terminates with a movement, 'spreading' the Divinity all over the body.”
(page 454, Sakti and Sakta)

The idea that the asanas, and the transitions between them, are the process of the "meaningful application" — or vi-nyasa — of my intentions and Japa onto my body is one that adds an expansive and progressive richness to my own Ashtanga Vinyasa practice.

Woodroffeis quick to observe that Brahman/Absolute/Source/Istadevata — or the archetype, quality, or icon of choice — is, of course, notsomething that can be physically spread:

“[W]hat may be and is spreadis the mind of the worshipper, who by his thought and act is taughtto remember and realize that she is pervaded by Divinity, and toaffirm this by bodily gesture.”
(page 454, Sakti and Sakta)

NORMAN BLAIR ON ASHTANGA

2011-08-13T11:15:00.000-07:00

An Ashtanga practitioner named Norman Blair has written a three-part op-ed on Ashtanga Vinyasa that's now on Elephant Journal.

Two narrative strands run throughout the piece. The first is Blair's disenchantment with Ashtanga Vinyasa as a vehicle to get him where he thought it might take him, a presentation of the model of enlightenment to which he subscribes.

The second strand is Blair's criticism of Ashtanga Vinyasa both as a system and as the current lineage-holders, Sharath and Saraswati, are carrying it forth.

I was disappointed that his discussion of the latter are full of speculation, rumor, and the re-presentation of third- or fourth-hand quotes, stories, and oft-repeated Ashtanga Vinyasa cliches.

So while he introduces general quotes about the nature of practice from people like, for example, the Zen Buddhist Dogen and a Tibetan Buddhist monk, Blair's criticism of Ashtanga lacks the citation of any sources, the attribution of any direct quotes, and any of the statistics to support any of his more serious claims.

For example, a teacher of Ashtanga Vinyasa broke someone's femur? Really? Who, when, and how? The practice of Ashtanga Vinyasa breaks knees? How many, how frequently, and in comparison to what other systems of Yoga?

In effect, how do I know that any of the anonymous quotes or sentiments he uses were in fact made by real, valid, and most importantly, sane people? There's absolutely no context.

What's more, in any statements that might be taken as critical of Sharath and Saraswati, Blair engages in verbal distancing and does not directly mention them, the Mysore Jois Center, or the Jois Centers now opening worldwide.

The Box: Being Outside, Looking Inside: An Ashtanga Story

CROSSFIT & ASHTANGA YOGA

2011-07-19T17:09:00.000-07:00

This is where the magic happens. The magic, and the suffering.

“Jason? Is that you?” Ben, an acquaintance from Near East Yoga, leaned his head into the gym door and squinted at me.

I was in the middle of a workout — to be precise, I was in the middle of a practice session — at Crossfit Portland.

It's a typical Crossfit gym. There are pull-up bars along one wall, ropes and gymnastic rings hanging from the ceiling, and racks of barbells and bumper weight plates.

A class was in the middle of a row/clean-and-jerk workout, so barbells were clanging and people were grunting on the rowers.

Back in winter 2006, during Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga practices, I tore the meniscus in first my right and then my left knee.

So in spring 2007 I had both knees scoped, about a month apart. I had 25% of the meniscus scraped out of the right knee and 20% from the other. The surgery was ridiculously easy, as much as you can ever say that of surgery. I pretty much limped out of the operating theater within an hour of the 90-minute procedure, and two weeks later I walked down the aisle at my wedding.

The scarring, swelling, and stiffness lingered, though.

Meanwhile, for many years my close friend Nate had bugged me to try this thing called “Crossfit.” Crossfit.com was a Web site that posted daily workouts, and Nate’s older brother, a Navy SEAL, had trained this way for years. They both swore by the system.

People around the world would perform the workouts and then post their weights lifted and times recorded in the comments section of the site.

The workouts themselves were high-volume intervals that blended rudimentary gymnastics movements (push-up, pull-up, dip, muscle-up, air squat), the Olympic lifts, powerlifts, and anaerobic and aerobic work, such as running, rowing, or jumping rope.

Crossfit founder Greg Glassman had defined overall fitness as sustained power output, or “the ability to move large loads long distances over time,” and the workouts were designed to increase this ability.

I wanted to do something to help heal and strengthen my knee, and I didn’t know the first thing about working out on my own, so I took a group class at Crossfit Portland in fall 2007. At the time, the gym was just a small room in the corner of the Academy of Kung Fu in Southeast Portland.

I believe my first workout involved five sets of five deadlifts (5x5), followed by a workout called “Christine”: a 500 meter row, followed by 12 bodyweight deadlifts, followed by 21 box-jumps, repeated 3 times as fast as possible.

I had done interval work/lung-death during hard chaingang road-bike rides before, so I was used to the lung-bursting aspect of the interval work.

However, I had never lifted a weight in my life, nor rowed, nor done pull-ups — any of it. I found that I liked it. More than that, I liked Scott, the owner of the place. Over time I've come to be great friends with him and the other owners, his wife Rochelle, and Xi Xia.

They weren’t jocks, they weren’t aggro, they weren’t meat-heads, and they weren’t dicks — all associations I’d had since high school about sports, athletics, and athletes in general.

If I hadn’t loved riding a skateboard I would’ve been driven to it anyway, simply because I had poor experiences with high-school athletics, in that, at least at James Robinson High School in Fairfax, Virginia, the jocks were fucking douchebags.

I also greatly liked the community feel of the Crossfit classes. Everyone sweated, strove, suffered and triumphed together. There were no hamsters-on-treadmills-watching-TV as at the many gyms where I taught Yoga. It was a lot like a Mysore or led Yoga class, as both touched the same desire for connection and conversation (or Yoga!) that we all have.

So, beginning in fall 2007 and until roughly winter 2009, I began practicing Crossfit two to three times a week.

An established and long-time Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga practice really helped me in certain areas. I had an active, usable flexibility in many areas. It meant I spent less muscular energy on exercises like overhead squats, toes-to-bar, L-sits, or squats.

I had also always considered my shoulders and back “stiff,” but practicing Crossfit in a group let me see just how much the concepts of “stiffness” and “flexibility” are absolutely and utterly context- and goal-based.

Basically, in Crossfit, flexibility was not a pursuit in and of itself. It was only a variable to be considered when practicing or performing a movement. This viewpoint coincides greatly with my appreciation for Ashtanga Vinyasa, in which flexibility is the means and not the end.

I also found I had a fair amount of proprioception, meaning I was able to pick up certain movements fairly quickly. As they say, “Flexibility breeds skill.”

Unfortunately, as far as effort goes, greater flexibility and proprioception were irrelevant. To paraphrase three-time Tour de France winner Greg LeMond, “You don’t suffer less — you just go faster.”

So although I was able to quickly figure out certain movements efficiently, and my flexibility meant I had much less muscle resistance, it just meant I could do more reps. I was still pushed to my limits.

When I say "more reps," don’t mistake me. I was only ever a sub-par or mediocre (at best) Crossfitter. Towards the end of my Crossfit days, I was able to perform at least most of the bodyweight-only exercises with decent proficiency and mediocre times.

I finally worked up to several (but not all) workouts with the recommended barbell weights, such as “Diane,” which is 21-15-9 reps of 225-pound deadlift and handstand push-ups, though I want to say my best time for that was 10 minutes. Many guys typically do it in 3 or less.

I feel like I had a good sense of how to regulate, lengthen, and employ the breath for whatever effort was required, whether it was a short, sharp explosive exhale in a max-effort lift, a rhythmic in-out during lots of push-ups, or a deep belly breathing between rounds to help bring down my heart-rate in order to recover.

These techniques didn’t always work or work well — part of the point of Crossfit is to push you to the point where your systems break down to expose weakness. So don’t misunderstand me: the workouts could be hard and grueling.

Years of smooth and steady breath-movement vinyasa had also utterly detrained my fast-twitch muscle fibers. I had to relearn and practice any explosiveness or speed. Both my wife and I did these ridiculous graceful and balletic slow-motion burpees, absolutely at odds with the purpose of the exercise.

Finally and quite obviously, the most glaring lack of carryover from a Yoga practice was an utter lack of strength. I could handle most of the bodyweight exercises okay, as when I started, I weighed in at a near-starved 140ish pounds.

However, when it was time to move a fixed weight, I was a total novice. I was weak.

The press, the back squat, the deadlift, the snatch, the clean and jerk: I began all of these as a pure beginner, with entry-level weights.

This was humbling because, as most of us know, Ashtanga Vinyasa can be hard, tiring, and sweaty. I often left the Yoga studio and felt I had just worked hard.

Unfortunately, there was little to no carryover in this regard.

The Ashtanga Vinyasa did nothing for muscular endurance, either. All these years of chaturanga dandasanas did not carry over in any way toward performing 20 push-ups, for example.

Also, years of daily pranayama might’ve expanded my lung capacity, but it had done nothing for my use of that lung capacity. Meaning, I still struggled during intense bursts of strength and after 500-meter rows or 400-meter sprints.

I speculate that a seasoned Ashtanga Vinyasa practitioner can perform several of the Ashtanga series with their heart rate at between 100 and 120 beats-per-minute.

So it was absolutely revelatory for me to back-squat a heavy weight 10 times, drop the barbell, then sprint for 400 meters, my heart-rate pinned at 180.

To use a subtle energy-body map with workouts like that, they opened and used radically different nadis than I had been accustomed to.

Crossfit provided did provide some great benefits, too. It greatly aided in rehabbing my knee. I strengthened and supported all the muscles, ligaments, and tendons around, above, and below the joint.

I felt that Bulgarian split squats, back and front squats, single-leg deadlifts, and standard deadlifts really helped.

The Crossfit system tends to pair exercises that work complementary muscle groups. The workouts are generally arranged to work different energy systems as well, which let you work harder and longer than if it had been related muscle groups.

For example, a pull exercise is paired with a push, and then followed by a low-body heart-stopper such as box-jumps or sprints.

The system also favors exercises that strengthen the posterior chain, as in back, glutes, and hamstrings. I believe exercises built around both of these principles cleaned up a couple small but persistent injuries. Specifically, kettlebell swings and glute-ham raises (GHRs) really sorted my low back.

In a much larger sense, Crossfit helped me realize the true importance that strength plays in health, longevity and performance. I got a bit stronger and I felt better, both during Yoga practice and just walking around. Of course, I've also gained 15 pounds.

Crossfit really made me appreciate the various active flexibility components built into the Primary Series. For adults, merely increasing your passive flexibility is not the smartest, safest, or even efficient way to become more “flexible.”

The key, which is a by-product in the intelligent application of the Primary Series, is to get stronger and more flexible at the same.

The practice of Crossfit also led me to greatly appreciate my own unique cycles of effort-adapt-recovery. I began to notice this cycle in my own asana and even pranayama practice.

Crossfit training worked best when it followed the following classic formula: build a foundation or base, follow it with hard efforts, then reduce or back off. This always resulted in super-compensation or break-through.

That formula as transposed to traditional Ashtanga Vinyasa would be: accumulation, or to work “pose by pose” or “one by one”; intensification, or the addition of a new pose; and finally, reduction, or Moon Day, weekend, or holiday.

This explained why I frequently felt stronger after a few days off.

I don’t have a perfect application of these principles to the Ashtanga Vinyasa practice, but understanding them has led me to better understand and work with my energy levels and experiences on the mat.

Still, Crossfit didn’t help the Ashtanga Vinyasa practice in all ways.

I would feel immediate loss of range-of-motion (flexibility) during and after some of their notorious high-rep or high-rep and loaded movements.

For example, after “Angie,” which is 100 pull-ups, push-ups, sit-ups and squats for time, my pec minor and pecs in general really shortened to the new range of movement.

After any workout with thrusters (a barbell front-squat push-press) my hip flexors would noticeably shorten and my Hanumanasana depth decreased.

I personally have never been an immediate and gifted back-bender, so I had to be diligent about maintaining that area of flexibility.

Often I would intend to practice backbends after a Crossfit workout, but this didn’t always happen, often because I was so smashed.

The fatigue from three or four Crossfit workouts a week often added a richness and depth to my practice.

This fatigue, delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS), and neural drain forced me to reframe why I practiced Ashtanga Vinyasa as well as how I could practice it when I couldn’t lift my arms over my head or walk up a flight of stairs, let alone practice an entire sequence.

The relationship between Ashtanga Vinyasa and Crossfit was reciprocal. The practice of samyama, or pratyahara, dharana, dhayana, and samadhi was possible during the short and intense workouts, though not as much during 20-minute or longer workouts.

Certain Crossfit skills, once learned, were simple enough that I was in no danger of muscular or aerobic failure, and the workouts were short enough and timed, which meant I couldn’t dissociate from my body, as I’ve experienced on long bike rides or runs.

Attention was immediate and total. Concentration would subside into contemplation, and absorption would arise. During some workouts and then immediately after there would be the experience of a luminous clarity.

My good friend David Kennedy laughed when I told him that I really liked the flush of health and vitality that accompanied back-squatting. “You think the only way to wake up kundalini is to wear a turban and do funny breathing?” he asked.

It’s like, duh. Of course a universal and pervasive energy isn’t beholden to specific culturally derived techniques.

Don’t tell the Kundalini Yoga people, but that energy arises under a barbell as well as it does performing ustrasana or bhastrika breathing.

Another huge revelation I had during hard efforts was the immediate and somatic confrontation of fear, of failure, and of the unknown.

Personally, it was revelatory to gaze over the edge of absolute muscular and aerobic shut-down.

This to me is similar to a Yoga practice. Not that in Yoga we barf on our mats! At least, I don’t. No, it’s more living with an emotion or thought long enough for it to wear thin and be exposed for what it really is: an emotion or thought.

Some of the workouts also dramatically expanded my horizon as to what I consider difficult, even what I consider possible.

For example, I used to consider the limits of physicality the Sunday led Intermediate series class in Mysore and at Tim’s Encinitas studio.

Spending time under a barbell, though, or doing a “Full Mission Profile,” or any of these other “mental toughness” workouts really expanded my sense of what was really “difficult.”

They drove home one of Pattabhi Jois’ constant points: “Body not stiff! Mind stiff!” A lot of my perceptions of my abilities turned out to be just that — perceptions.

These workouts and this training really made me okay with doing what I could do.

During a 100-percent effort or a max-effort attempt on a barbell lift, often there was literally nothing else physically I was able to do. That was absolutely okay. I put forth honest, sincere effort, and then let go. I simply tried to never quit. To paraphrase Krishnamacharya, “Do the Yoga that can be done!”

Eventually, though, by winter 2009, I began to lean into my passions and interests and away from Crossfit.

Once I learned the movements and the novelty wore off, I realized there was also a routine to it. I didn’t have an event or activity to train for, and without that, Crossfit was just a numbers-collecting game: add one more pull-up to my max, add 10 more pounds to my press, 10 more pounds to my deadlift, ad infinitum.

So, on that day Ben poked his head into Crossfit Portland, I wasn't actually doing Crossfit. I was doing my recent physical practice, of which I’ll write more later.

I wrote this for two reasons. The first was because, some days after Ben saw me, his girlfriend asked my wife Tara, “Does Jason...work out?”

The novelty, minutiae, and exhiliration of the Ashtanga Vinyasa sequences can be profound, stirring and all-consuming.

It’s important to remember, though, that the asana sequences are not the be-all, end-all of physical expression and/or personal devotion.

I also found Crossfit to address fundamental physical, emotional, and psycho-spiritual needs that the Ashtanga Vinyasa practice and culture either ignored or disdained.

The first of these needs was pure physical exertion. Ashtanga Vinyasa is derived from Smarta Brahmin culture, and so there is a veneer, however thin, that physical exertion is lower caste and class.

Group physical exertion also opens the door to competitiveness, aggression, and anger — but also absorption, ecstasy, compassion, and empathy.

In Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga culture, and in Yoga culture in general, we seem intent to play up those latter qualities while ignoring the former, even though they are a fundamental part of human experience.

My understanding is that one of the many questions that Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga asks is not, “How can I get rid of aggression, anger and competitiveness?” but rather, “How can I savor, use skillfully, and work with those qualities?”

So I'm thankful I was exposed to Crossfit. I'm tremendously grateful for the friend's I've made through it.

It has also really made me appreciate the beauty, subtlety and simplicity of the breath-movement that is Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga. It's fun to leap around like a spastic monkey, but the breath-work and the internal focal points, as well as the connection to people of the same interest, are what draw me back to my Yoga mat.

THIS IS WHAT'S UP, JULY 2011

2011-06-30T17:49:00.000-07:00

I haven't been posting specifically to this spot for a while, though I hope everyone can see the new Tweets when they pop up to the right ... I've been posting more thoughts at portlandashtangayoga.com.

However, I just finished a swell Yoga asana practice next to my wife (Don't worry! The child was in the other room huffing glue or something) and now we're gearing up for a Moon Day Barbecue.

I just got Van Halen Van Halen. I lived overseas a lot as a kid, and my exposure to certain aspects of American culture was arbitrary and based around whatever year I happened to be State-side.

So it is with delighted surprise that I have discovered that this album shreds off your fucking face. Plus David Lee Roth is a total fox. Though what's up with Van Halen II? Meh.

As far as pop culture goes, I'm leaning into Dio-era Sabbath and I can't stop playing this State of Mind drum 'n' bass album. Drum 'n' bass? There're interviews with both Samuel Delaney and William Gibson in the new Paris Review. Grant Morrisson's Supergod is out next week-ish. Green Lantern remains my all-time favorite superhero though I was decidedly nonplussed with the movie. There're new The-Dream and Rapture singles that are fucking insane, pure face-melters. The Rapture song is a Chicago piano house line, a saxophone, some handclaps, and oh yeah, the lead singer's paint-peeling caterwaul.

I've got more posts percolating on Ashtanga Yoga and vegetarianism, Ashtanga Yoga and Crossfit, as well as a review of the various ginger beers I have been downing lately.

I'll be sharing some info from one of my fave philosophers, Slavoj Zizek, who has some interesting insights into Vaidika versus Tantra approaches to purity, as well as what that implies for vegetarianism; he also quotes another quite interesting personality, Wendy Doniger, too.

I've received a bunch of questions lately regarding Ashtanga Yoga and nutrition. It's been interesting and fun to share my experiences and resources in that regard. I spent a bit of time under a barbell, on still rings, under a pull-up bar, on a rower, or barfing out my spine on a 400-meter sprint, so what the hell, if you've got questions regarding Crossfit and Ashtanga Yoga, or Crossfit and Yoga in general, or even Yoga and "exercise" or "working out" in general, fire 'em my way.

All these interests continue to feed and serve my practice of and interest in Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga — that's right, even my interest in Ronald James Dio.

So...the Mysore program has exploded this summer; I'm changing up the afternoon practice tip — it's just too hard; I've got a July Vegas trip in the works; we're gonna scrape it together to get to Mysore in fall.

What else? As Vonnegut said, "So it goes" and I'm off to fire up the barbecue and crack a ginger beer.

KIRBY PSYCHEDELIA

2011-06-16T15:51:00.000-07:00

Jack Kirby, Captain Victory

"Are you cast in my image?" Indeed.

I always found something massive, cosmic, and utterly vital about Jack "King" Kirby's work...

SAVE THE DATE: MARCH 1-4

2011-05-17T16:22:00.001-07:00

Wednesday, May 18, marks the two-year anniversary of the passing of Sri K. Pattabhi Jois. The man had a big impact, both subtle and overt, on my life.

All told, I only spent perhaps 8 months in daily practice with him in Mysore, India, and on various tour stops, and he and I certainly never had more than a cursory relationship. I like to think he knew me because he always seemed to be on my mat during my least cherished postures. But then, how much of that is projection and wishful thinking?

Still, his firmness, his solidity, his weight, the twinkle in his eye, his blending of both humor and sternness into some strange alloy, have been and continue to be a huge influence.

The subtle pull he still exerts is of course due to the passion and love he inspired in Tim Miller and all the other wonderful teachers with whom I've practiced, people like Rolf Naujokat, Chad Herst, Tarik Thami, among others.

Indirectly and on a personal level, I would not have met my wife or had my daughter if we hadn't met at Tim's studio, and the discipline and self-inquiry that have sprouted from my practice of Ashtanga Vinyasa has let my marriage grow broad and deep.

Now that Pattabhi Jois has passed, of course, there are no more World Tours, when the Ashtanga Vinyasa community would come together from near and far to reaffirm old friendships and forge new ones, pay our respects and have a good time.

So I saw this flier today on Tim's blog and I almost teared up. I don't know how the event will be run, with led or Mysore-style class, lectures or discussions, maybe all of the above.

But it ought to be a beautiful event. One-hundred-plus like-minded people in one room, all celebrating Ashtanga Vinyasa. Ekam, dwi; inhale, exhale ...

I hope to see you there.

FINAL BLACK FLAG: REALITY 86'D

2011-05-13T16:13:00.000-07:00

Reality 86'd! Apropos of my last post, I just found Reality 86'd online!

It's a road documentary shot from the inside of the last Black Flag tour ever, the 1986 "In My Head" US tour. Heavy and brutal!

What's crazy is that those dudes look like kids to me; but when I was young, they all seemed like grown-ass men.

Also, watching concert footage like this reminds me how much I dislike live music. Hardcore and punk shows were the worst.

BLACK FLAG

2011-05-03T17:42:00.000-07:00

Even though I haven't owned a record player since 1994, I still own a couple records, and for some reason I still own this, one of the first I ever bought. I bought it in either 1988 or '89; I was either 13 or 14 years old. In case you can't tell, it's Everything Went Black by Black Flag. The flag bars and every instance of the band name on the sleeve and on the record label itself have been rubbed out.

The yellow sticker is the price tag. I paid 1200 drachma for it, which I think at 1989 rates would be about US$7.50. I lived in Athens, Greece, at the time, and Eddie Barnes and I had found a series of record shops down near Monastiraki Plaza. Of course, it's more than 20 years later, so I could be misremembering this shit, and if it wasn't Monastiraki or nearabouts, it was a neighborhood just as old. We had our skateboards, and the streets were so narrowly and unevenly paved we couldn't ride 'em.

I might've been 13 when some older kid I used to skate with, an older, cooler kid with a bleached skater-flip hairdo who lived in the international student boarding house, gave me a tape with the Dead Kennedys on one side and the Descendents on the other.

The cassette-tape label was a rectangular oval sticker with graph-paper lines, and instead of writing "Dead Kennedys," the kid had drawn the DK symbol. It was the first time I'd ever heard punk rock, and Jello Biafra's crazy voice, the ominous scraping guitars and vibrating bass sound and above all the pure goddamned anger blew my mind.

Still, no one had anger like Black Flag, and the crackle of vinyl only made it more apocalyptic. Discovering Black Flag was discovering a sonic thermonuclear meltdown. This suited me fine, because at the time I was absolutely furious, just filled with a vast, black anger so much of the time.

I definitely didn't know why then, and I'm still not entirely sure why now: hormones, family trauma and abuse, insecurity and fear, poor choice in friends and poor company, negative attitude, ignorance for what I put in my body ... maybe some, maybe all. We get "anger" from an Old Norse word that also implies grief and sorrow, so maybe there was grief and sorrow there, too.

There were the typical Black Flag crowd-pleasers like Keith Morris' "T.V. Party" and "Jealous Again," which I thought were great, but I really went in for the Dez Cadena hammers like "Depression," "Damaged II," and "Padded Cell."

Black Flag is one of those bands I can't really listen to anymore. They're wedded very tightly to a time, place and emotion that's hard to casually revisit, yet is no less part of me now — the choices I make, from the mental attitudes I adopt to the emotions I share.

Man, just looking at the cover again, with those shears ... that is some scary shit right there.

Contortionism, Yoga, Thomas Kurz

2011-05-02T09:59:00.001-07:00

The following from a post by Thomas Kurz, an influential and renowned expert on flexibility and fitness:

"To excel at contortion one has to have certain predispositions:

1. For hip mobility--the more open the angle between the neck of the thigh bone and the shaft of the thigh bone (angle of inclination of femur) the greater the side range of motion. The more open this angle is, the more it delays the contact of the tops of the necks of the thigh bones against the cartilage collar at the upper edge of the hip socket.

2. For back bending and twisting--high intervertebral discs to keep vertebrae from jamming into each other.

3. For shoulder mobility--high coracoacromial arch to keep it from impinging on tendons and joint capsule as the arm is being raised to a vertical position.

If you do not have those predispositions, yet attempt contortion stunts, you will suffer the consequences."

Are there certain postures in the Ashtanga Vinyasa system the standards of which might fall in the realm of contortionism?

Where does eka pada sirsasana and dwi pada sirsasana fit with regards to #1 above? Kapotasana with regards to #2?

Standards are necessary to insure safety and rigor, to provide structure and meaning ... but how flexible should those standards be?

HOW TO START A MYSORE PROGRAM, PART II

2011-04-03T17:23:00.000-07:00

6. Remember Why You Practice
It's been helpful to articulate and then re-articulate why I practice Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga in the Mysore style. This why is not inorganic and inert, and has grown, evolved, expanded and deepened over the years. I have the sense this depth and breadth as a result of the practice is an infinite process that will never finish, complete, or close itself off.

This process of examination and re-examination is what keeps me energized and interested, so I recommend finding ways to lean into your own interests, Yoga and otherwise, so that you can bring them back to the Mysore room with vigor and vitality.

Some people lean so hard into other pursuits they end up leaning away from Ashtanga Vinyasa, which is okay. Just be clear when that happens.

Personally, I want connection and intimacy, with myself and my own breath, and with other people who want the same.

I find most other systems of Asana-related Yoga to be overly pedagogical: a teacher stands up front and inspires while we make different shapes. This can be fun and inspiring, but ultimately our experience is only transmuted and reframed by our own deep practice. This deep practice has to be one’s own practice, and one’s own practice thrives when aided and abetted, not by an inspirational figurehead delivering sermons from the mount, but rather someone who nudges, pokes, and grunts at you in various ways and on a daily basis.

The Mysore-style setting is profound because we do our own deep practice with each other.

7. Discover Why You Teach
I can often see in others flickers of what I consider samadhi or delighted absorption. Sometimes a detail helps someone reframe their experience of self to a deeper one. Often this is the result of ridiculously mundane verbal cues, physical taps, or even base grunting.

These experiences are infinitely rewarding for me.

I also love talking about this shit, so it's nice to have a community of people with whom to discuss the nuances of the philosophy.

My point is that it might be helpful to know why you teach.

8. Do Your Own Practice
This is the trickiest aspect to hosting a daily morning Mysore practice. I do 6-9 a.m. at Portland Ashtanga Yoga; I have spent time in Japan hosting a program that ran 7-10 a.m. In Encinitas, Tim has opted for 7-9 a.m.

In other words, if you start a morning program, you will most likely give up your morning practice.

I have friends who practice at 4 a.m. before their Mysore classes, and I have acquaintances who rise at 2 to begin practice at 3. So it is possible to commit to a daily morning practice and teach Mysore-style.

Personally, I found it thrilling to practice at 4:30 or 5, though the resultant asceticism became a merit badge, and turned early practice away from upasana or devotion and more towards self-gratification. My hermetic tendencies ran rampant. To wake retarded-early to practice meant I could say no to a social life. The sense of not needing anyone or anything is intoxicating, and I thrived on this sense of power and control over my life, and in fact over life itself.

Still, that period ended, and in fact was only possible during a period away from Tara and Rowan. I enjoy hanging out with my family and participating in my culture (in other words, fulfilling my dharma), and so while I've explored early-morning practice, I'm not currently served by it. I want to put my kid to bed at 8, and not the other way around.

This was just my experience at that time. I suspect now an early morning practice would be different, simply because I would only practice early if it’s that or no practice.

Without the energizing presence of a Mysore community around it, my physical practice has changed quite a bit. It's softer, slower and often bears a different flavor of intensity.

This is a detail to be prepared for, and will be a shock if you still require come-to-Jesus asana practices.

9. You Must Hate Money
Perhaps your financial issues are sorted (employed spouse, inheritance, investments), but it can be lean times in the beginning. Mysore programs are like gardens and require daily, consistent, patient effort. Even then, you might perhaps end up serving four or five people.

I’ve heard it said to expect roughly 10 people per year, and that’s if you aren’t a total mouth-breather, have a good location, show up consistently, and tell people about it. So 4 years, 40 people.

The leanage enters the picture when you start up your studio or program and realize it’s difficult to balance banker’s hours with a daily Mysore program … and your own practice. This means a “career” can be a challenge to maintain.

It is the 21st century, though, and there are tons of off-site, reduced hours and telecommuting jobs that can pay well and require less than the traditional 8 hours per day. Plus there are many smart yoga teachers who seem to handle their finances in a smart way; Pattabhi Jois himself definitely enjoyed the prosperous aspect of his studio.

APRIL POTLUCK; MAY-JUNE SUTRA GROUP

2011-04-03T16:51:00.000-07:00

I have somehow talked Ghretta, Rick and Macy into hosting a potluck next Sunday, April 10, from noon-3 p.m.

If you're reading this, you're invited!

(Yes, even you. And you. But not you!)

Little do the Hynd-Frye clan suspect the hordes of unruly Yoga hooligans, reeking of patchouli and bearing raw sprouted mung-bean casseroles, preparing to descend on their new home.

You know, once in my life before I die, I'm going to attend a Yoga party with a barbecue pit, a keg, and a few pitchers of margaritas.

I guess it's a short step from ribs, beer and Patanjali to Ultimate Fighting on the TV, a halfpipe in the backyard, and some dude with a pit-bull shooting illegal fireworks off the front porch.

But I digress. The potluck's going to be a wonderful time to turn up the volume of the conversation and deepen our social connections — our Yoga — within our community of Ashtanga Vinyasa practitioners.

Plus Ghretta, Rick and Macy just moved into their new digs, so it's a housewarming party of sorts!

The usual applies: please bring a food item of your choosing.

Significant others as well as children are welcome!

POTLUCK PARTICULARS
Date: Sunday, April 10

Time: Noon-3 p.m.
Location:
4223 NE 18th Street
Portland, 97211

There's more info at Portland Ashtanga Yoga.

YOGA SUTRA STUDY GROUP

Patanjali's famous treatise on Yoga, the Yoga Sutras, has impacted and informed every style of Yoga practiced today.

In this 5-week course, we'll read and discuss this dense text, and then relate it to our own practice of Yoga.

There's a $20 commitment fee, and I'm asking everyone to track down their own copy of the Yoga Sutras.

Again, there's more info at Portland Ashtanga Yoga.

YOGA SUTRA STUDY GROUP
Where: Yoga Pearl

Dates: Sundays, May 15-June 12

Time: 4-5:30 p.m.

Cost: $20/entire course

How: Please sign up at Yoga Pearl.

Why: It's going to shred.

HOW TO START A MYSORE PROGRAM, PART I

2011-03-18T06:36:00.001-07:00

I had a brief FB conversation with Lisa (and Charles) about how to start, build, and grow Mysore-style classes, and then I was ranting and raving at poor Andrew and Jess the other night about Ashtanga Vinyasa taught in the Mysore-style. Like, for-real ranting.

My experience practicing and transmitting has been a continual reaffirmation that to show the Ashtanga Vinyasa sequence, one posture at a time, suited and scaled to each person's physical and mental conditions at that very moment, is the best way to teach a Yoga asana practice.

Look, we can get into the issue of whether the Primary Series is the most ideal sequence for that person, and we can also get into the shadow aspects of the Primary Series, as well as the implicit assumptions and belief structure woven throughout. But still, this shit really works.

1. Get a space.
To find a satisfactory space is very tricky. This might be the second most difficult part of hosting, holding, facilitating or, god help me, teaching Ashtanga Vinyasa in the Mysore style.

A lot of people just rent a storefront or warehouse space. This means signing a lease as well as a series of other issues with which I have no experience, such as parking, insurance, renovation, maintenance, front desk and employee management, retail, etc., etc.

A lot of the older Mysore studios in the States were in shadier or run-down neighborhoods, simply because floor space was cheap. The Ashtanga Yoga Center in downtown Encinitas, It's Yoga in SOMA in SF, Yoga Works on Third Street in Santa Monica, Ashtanga Yoga Los Angeles in Los Feliz then Silverlake, Ashtanga Yoga New York, as well as tons of others. Some of those places stuck around long enough to watch their neighborhoods gentrify.

I practiced with Noah and Kimberley at their first space, on Sunset in LA. It had cement floors onto which I poured copious amounts of sweat. I believe the place had been a hair salon or barber shop, because when I left I had 8 pounds of hair trimmings glued to my mat.

The actual physical requirements for a Mysore space are small. It's just a room. Thank god we practice a style of yoga that doesn't require elaborate props, such as these belt-and-wall contraptions I've seen at some studios, as well as elaborate blocks, bolsters and blankets. Sure the props are helpful, just not a necessity.

The best yoga prop I use is an old fold-up massage mat that Kristin, a long-time yoga practitioner, donated. The only "yoga" prop I would ever buy is a Swedish ladder or Stal bars.

We have at Yoga Pearl, where Portland Ashtanga Yoga is hosted, stacks of various blocks. I'm not adverse to using them as the situation arises, though I don't see them as essential.

So if you want to rent your own space, you can sign the lease. You might want or need to put down a wood floor, which would then be the main expense.

There are other ways to find studio space, though, some of which might more organically serve the current needs of your community, which, let's face it, might be five people.

I've practiced at many different places during my global vagabondage. Maybe some of these locations might ring a bell with you.

Yoga studios are the obvious go-to. Once, when I traveled to Michigan, I rang the local studio and paid a drop-in to use their space during an open slot. It's not a far cry to then offer to rent the space each morning to hold Mysore class.

Some other places I've practiced that you might consider leasing: Pilates studios (we had to move the "reformer" machines out of the way each morning), climbing gyms, boxing gyms, martial arts studios, dance studios (the mirrors are always a bummer), the Sandcastle Room and the buffet room at the Encinitas Best Western (cigarette smoke in the carpet in the former, breakfast crumbs in my mat in the latter), living rooms in Tokyo and Mysore, of course, as well as on an enclosed roof-top at Monica's house in Auroville.

Regardless of dirt, mosquitoes, carpet, mirrors, or croissant crumbs, hopefully the space is warm, safe and available daily.

2. Let people know about it.
I have the firm conviction that not everyone will want to practice Ashtanga Vinyasa in the Mysore style. But a lot of people come home to this practice as though it were a long-lost friend.

Those people need to know about it.

The obvious outlet is the Internet. Do not waste your time or money with print ads. Register a web-site for $10 on Google Sites, or get a free blogspot, and put up the particulars: time, location, cost, maybe a brief description of what you offer and of Ashtanga Vinyasa and the Mysore-style.

Get that shit on Facebook. You could also try Craig's List. It's free, so why not? (I've never done this, so let me know how it goes.)

For meatspace promotion, you could always flier New Age bookstores (if you've got one) as well as coffee shops.

Finally, maybe the most important detail of all, if you've attended teacher trainings or workshops, tell everyone with whom you attended that you're hosting a space.

In fact, tell everyone you know, period.

Word of mouth is huge.

3. Show up every day.
This may be the most difficult part of hosting a Mysore space. Constancy is the queen of kings. Constancy is also gnarly. But to grow your community, you've got to show up every day, or as you've scheduled. Be present with the people in the room. Be active. Be engaged, whether there're two people or 50.

As a teacher, a Mysore class hums and crackles with more people than fewer. However, I always feel that regardless of how many turn up to practice — and I've taught Mysore class with 2 people and with 65 — these people woke up early, established their intention and their commitment, turned up at the studio, and unrolled their mat(s). I try to meet that intention and commitment with my own.

Just something to be prepared for.

4. No really, show up every day!
This is not a workshop, a retreat, or a hobby. A Mysore class is every day. Be ready for that! It can also be an additional physical demand. In my case, I am moving around constantly for three hours a pop.

Physical burnout is a real issue, and a key symptom of physical over-reaching is mental and emotional fatigue. I can tell when I'm frying out because my desire to get on the mat evaporates.

I define "over-reaching" as when my physical output has outstripped my recovery. The one-on-one exchange of energy in a Mysore setting can be intense and, if you're not careful, enervating instead of innervating.

Personally, I also have my own Ashtanga Vinyasa practice that I tend, as well as other physical pursuits and interests. I try to be careful when I dial up the intensity of each, and I try to get enough sleep and food.

My personal strategy thus far has been to plan or program chunks of time away from the studio once every month or six weeks. This has been a process, though, and not a fixed schedule. The moon days really help in this instance. I try to plan a trip if the moon days fall on several Saturdays.

I also think there's a lot of value if you can offer a Mysore class Monday thru Friday, or even Sunday through Friday, although I know conditions vary.

5. Stick to your guns.

The longer I've done this, the more I've come to realize that it's the rules, boundaries and limitations that we agree on that add depth, value, and ultimately meaning to our practices.

I teach the Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga pose-by-pose because I've seen again and again that it's the best, safest, most approachable way to learn it.

If someone is interested in exploring their own sequence or another style of yoga, there are other studios in Portland that are better suited to their needs.

I believe this works best for almost everyone, so I try to explain it to them in this way. If they're interested in practicing, great. If not, then, as I said, there are other studios that can help them.

SPRING POTLUCK APRIL 10

2011-03-14T15:42:00.000-07:00

Fellow yogini Ghretta Hynd (and yogi husband Rick and daughter Macy) has graciously agreed to host a "spring" potluck on Sunday, April 10!

Will it be spring by then? Who knows.

Either way, the usual applies: bring either a food item of your choosing, or just your company.

Significant others as well as children are welcome!

It will run noon-3 p.m.

Location:

4223 NE 18th Street
Portland, 97211

CHATURANGA

2011-03-11T17:38:00.000-08:00

Note: I haven't posted here in eons as I'm working on a book, of which the first draft is now complete! Cheers.

I love the practice of yoga asana, so much that quite frequently I drop in at classes around Portland or whichever town I'm in (Bend, Los Angeles, Encinitas, San Diego, et al). I also attend workshops as often as my time, budget and personal interest allow. For example, in January I dropped in at an Anusara workshop by Sianna Sharman here in Portland.

I do all this that I might hear a teacher's wonderful turn of phrase, watch their presentation, or experience their asana sequence. I also like to simply practice with a group of like-minded people drawn together in mutual interest.

There's a lot to refract back through my own daily practice of Ashtanga Vinyasa. It's compelling to me to see and feel the similarities and differences between systems, and to consider what works for me, what doesn't, and why.

I'm not going to talk right now about the fundamental differences between Ashtanga Vinyasa and other systems; rather, I want to focus on the physical presentation of asanas.

The various "key" teachers of the different traditions all observed common physical tendencies in the people performing asanas, and almost all have responded by systemizing alignment cues as to what's "correct" and "incorrect."

These cues are often quite different, though they're all trying to achieve similar goals, whether it's to protect the lumbar spine, the shoulders and wrists, or the knees.

I've heard several variations of cues for chaturanga dandasana. Chaturanga dandasana means "four-limbed staff" in Sanskrit, though you may take comfort and hilarity in that "danda" has also been noted as slang for penis.

This pose is ostensibly the near-bottom portion of a push-up. The two most strident directions I've received have been:

1.) Keep the upper arm just above parallel.

2.) Never let the upper arm descend below parallel.

One of Ashtanga Vinyasa's greatest strengths is this lack of directives like these, although this disinterest in anatomy can cast quite a large shadow. Still, a one-size-fits-all approach ignores individual anthropometry, or specific bone and joint characteristics.

I've questioned these cues for chaturanga dandasana for a while because I have trained daily with guys who have performed dozens to hundreds of full-range, chest-to-floor push-ups on a regular basis, many of them for at least a decade. Basically I've observed a population of guys doing with no ill effects what many yoga teachers might consider anathema.

During chaturanga dandasana the hand is fixed and can't move, so the pose is what's called nowadays a closed-chain movement. If the pose is done correctly, musculature is triggered sequentially through the legs, trunk, and the scap muscles. The pose should activate and strengthen your serratus anterior; our friend the serratus anterior works with lower and upper trap to upwardly rotate the scapula.

As you lower from the top of the plank down to chaturanga, you'll get both "core" stability training and proprioception as you resist gravity's attempt to pull your lumbar spine or low back into an arch or extension. It's also a great proprioceptive exercise for the shoulder girdle.

Chaturanga dandasana ought to help you gain an active range of motion and make you stronger. These are good things. It can be a great asana to perform to maintain or improve shoulder health.

However, poor movement patterns or weakness in this chain caused by poor scap stabilization can contribute to shoulder injuries.

What do these movement patterns or weaknesses look like? If your hips and low back sag to the floor, you're gonna arch your upper back, and your shoulder blades will hike up and tilt forward. This is gonna impinge your rotator cuff. This is not good. This also means you're using your pecs and not your serratus anterior, which is what we want.

Your shoulder girdle works best when its muscles work together to do their jobs. In the case of the rotator cuff, one of its main jobs is to keep the head of the humerus centered in the glenoid fossa.

I take a simple approach. Do what you need to do to maintain this.

This works best in a Mysore-style setting, where a teacher can watch someone's chaturanga dandasana and then make suggestions tailored to that person's specific needs.

For example, one way to scale down surya namaskar is to use scapula chaturangas, in which the person holds an engaged plank with straight arms. They would inhale and retract the scaps, exhale and protract them, and then, still exhaling, move to downward dog.

Scaling might also mean quarter-chaturangas or half-chaturangas, as the person moves through whatever range they're able to maintain a stable, centered arm position.

It also might mean hands by waist, chest a quarter-inch off the floor — chest below upper arms. Heresy, right? As long as the arm remains centered. Also, hips shouldn't sag, and don't lead with the chin! Meaning the chest would hit the ground first, not the chin or the hips.

Personally, nowadays I like my hands near my waist and my elbows, rather than hugging my sides, out a bit less than 45 degrees (like 30). I also try to actively pull myself down to the bottom, chest almost reaching the floor. I experimented for a while with hands turned to the sides, and also the hands turned completely backwards, which torched my biceps and made for an interesting transition to upward-facing dog.

There's a wide range of possibilities for the way this pose can look dependent on the person's features and their current strength levels.

I teach both led and Mysore-style classes, so I appreciate the need for blanket alignment statements designed to decrease overall risk (and therefore teacher liability), though it's a scattergun approach at best — short on details in order for maximum coverage. The verbal cues in many systems are designed to hit the middle of the class' bell curve. People at either end of the curve are either under- or over-challenged.

A led class is a great way to learn a system and to challenge the dozens (hundreds?) or personal tics and nuances in your personal yoga practice. But to learn one-on-one, pose-by-pose, is really the best, healthiest way to learn Ashtanga Vinyasa, or any system of yoga.

POTLUCK REMINDER: THIS SUNDAY!

2011-02-02T11:49:00.000-08:00

Reminder!

January is always a strong month at Yoga Pearl, as people turn to a yoga practice to help with post-holiday ablutions.

However, by February, winter has sunk its hooks and our tamasic, or more inert, tendencies tend to run a shade stronger.

These are the times when community and conversation play as vital a role in practice as posture and breathing.

To that end, Dawn Uchiyama has graciously offered her house for a pot-luck to be held on Sunday, February 6, from noon-3 p.m.

Dawn lives at 1325 SW Upland Drive, between the Zoo and Sylan exits off Highway 26.

I hope to see everyone there!

Dawn's house on Google Maps.

TWO-FER

2011-01-22T23:04:00.000-08:00

This is a two-fer:

The white-noise opening squall of "Nervous Breakdown" still makes my neck-hairs stand up. The song's gotta be 30 years old and still its mushroom cloud anger grabs you by the throat.

Also, Haku was a black cat with yellow eyes. He had three good years with us before the Sickness took him.

NOW UP: PORTLANDASHTANGAYOGA.COM

2011-01-15T17:27:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone, Portland Ashtanga Yoga will be running March 1.

Meanwhile, I'm pretty excited to announce that the Web site, portlandashtangayoga.com, is up and running!

More than just the location, schedule and workshop info, it's got a comprehensive FAQ for those of you contemplating beginning a Mysore-style practice, as well as interesting info on moon days.

Click here; tell a friend.

JANUARY 2011 NEWSLETTER!

2011-01-09T19:01:00.000-08:00

COMING MARCH 1: PORTLAND ASHTANGA YOGA
To practice Ashtanga Yoga in the Mysore style is to commit to a consistent practice.

To be sure, we each do our own practice. Thankfully, though, we don't practice alone. Even as we move to our own unique breath, in a Mysore class we both support and in turn are supported by one other.

I'm asking new and continuing students to make their commitment to this practice official when Portland Ashtanga Yoga launches on March 1.

I'm honored that Portland Ashtanga Yoga will be hosted at Yoga Pearl, one of the premier studios in Portland.

Morning Mysore class will continue from 6–9 a.m. I've also developed new membership pricing and options to better reflect the choice to commit to this practice.

Yoga Pearl will continue to offer my evening and weekend led classes. If you wish to attend these or other classes at the studio, Jen and Alice (the studio owners) have extended a generous discount to Portland Ashtanga Yoga members.

The Portland Ashtanga Yoga Website is set to launch February 1. It will have scheduling, pricing, moon days, as well as answers to commonly asked questions.

Please contact me with your questions.

AUTOPAY?
I'd like to hear from those who prefer auto-pay to see if this is a worthwhile addition.

BHAGAVAD GITA STUDY GROUP
Here's your chance to dive into the Bhagavad Gita, considered the locus classicus of yoga.

A five-week Bhagavad Gita study group, to be held Sundays in Yoga Pearl's Studio II, will begin January 30 and end February 27. Class time will be 4-5:15 p.m.

We'll cover 3 to 4 chapters of the Gita per class, read our favorite passages, look at various well-known interpretations, and discuss their implications to our own practice of yoga. Perhaps we'll enjoy treats from Prasad.

There's no cost to participate, although I'm asking everyone to show up with J. van Buitenen's translation. A renowned sanskritist, van Buitenen did one of the few creditable prose translations of the Gita.

Here it is at Powell's!
Here it is on Amazon!

FEBRUARY 6 POTLUCK!
January is always a strong month at Yoga Pearl, as people turn to a yoga practice to help with post-holiday ablutions.

However, by February, winter has sunk its hooks and our tamasic, or more inert, tendencies tend to run a shade stronger.

These are the times when community and conversation play as vital a role in practice as posture and breathing.

To that end, Dawn Uchiyama has graciously offered her house for a pot-luck to be held on Sunday, February 6, from noon-3 p.m.

Dawn lives at 1325 SW Upland Drive, between the Zoo and Sylan exits off Highway 26.

Dawn's house on Google Maps.

HAND BALANCE INTENSIVE!
Want to explore key yoga concepts embodied in handstands and hand-balancing? Want to exclusively practice handstands and hand-balancing, either kicking up or learning different hand-balance-based asanas?

Then I've got good news for you: I've got a hand-balance intensive scheduled at Yoga Pearl for Saturday, February 19, from 1-4 p.m.

Attendance will be capped at 12 to guarantee one-on-one attention.

Cost is $50. If there're no spaces left, be sure to get on the wait list!

We'll explore the yogic principles manifested when you stand on your hands, we'll undertake an asana sequence designed to prepare for handstand and hand-balances, and finally, I'll work with each person individually to address their unique and specific needs.

All levels are welcome, whether you've just started to address inversions or can climb stairs on your hands! Be prepared to work! Everyone will come away with practical experience, as well as strategies to improve their hand-balancing and incorporate this practice into an Ashtanga Yoga or other daily practice.

Please visit Yoga Pearl's Web site for more information, as well as to sign up on-line.

MEXICO RETREAT IN APRIL!
We'll be deepening, intensifying, and yet paradoxically relaxing our practice during our upcoming retreat to Xinalani Retreat, Mexico, which will run April 23-30, 2011.

This retreat is gonna have it all: pranayama, led and Mysore-style classes, as well as asana workshop, philosophy discussion, and my favorite Hindu and Buddhist stories and myths.

Did I also mention the location will be an eco-retreat on the beach just south of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico?

Amenities include an on-site spa, healthy cuisine, and oh yes, dear god, the BEACH AND THE SUN.

Surya namaskara, or "bowing to the sun," can be radically difficult during Portland's "spring," when the sky is a ruthless gray mono-cloud. This retreat will be your opportunity to welcome Surya into your life, surrounded by good conversation and community.

Here's more detailed information on the retreat!

Check out Xinalani Retreat Center!

Contact Tara to inquire about availability, or to get on the waiting list.

PRACTICE NOTES!
I practice and teach Ashtanga Yoga as taught by Pattabhi Jois and in turn Tim Miller, one of his most senior, beloved students as well as my teacher. Both gentlemen repeatedly emphasize that "Ashtanga Yoga is Patanjali Yoga" as an invitation to explore the philosophical aspects of this practice.

Patanjali, in book II of his Yoga Sutras, suggests that there are three components to kriya yoga, or the yoga of action: tapas, svadhyaya, and isvara pranidhanani.

Generally translated, tapas means "disciplined practice," svadhyaya as "self study," while isvara pranidhanani means "surrender to Source" or to "the Lord."

Patanjali has suggested that a yoga of action is one that encompasses our body, our minds, and our hearts.

The relationship between tapasya, svadhyaya, and isvara pranidhana — as well as between our bodies, minds and hearts — aren't merely different "pieces" or "parts." That metaphor doesn't fully convey their true interdependence. Each contains and is in turn contained by the other two.

Most of you address tapas (literally "heat") daily, simply by practicing in the Mysore style. Perhaps you offer the results of your practice to whatever you feel to be at once larger, yet nothing other, than your deepest self.

These two aspects of kriya yoga may give rise to svadhyaya, or self-reflection — though you will realize at once that svadhyaya has always been there, and in fact, may be why you came to a yoga class in the first place.

If you're interested in reading about yoga, I've recently finished several books that I can recommend to further gird your self-study.

The Yoga-Sutra of Patanjali: A New Translation with Commentary by Chip Hartranft
The Yoga Body by Mark Singleton
Krishnamacharya: His Life and Teachings by A.G. Mohan

CONVENTIONAL ASANA WISDOM

2011-01-02T18:29:00.000-08:00

Can any sport physios, MDs, or PTs out there chime in?

I'm interested to hear about empirical or practical experience with regards to:

1. Chaturanga dandasana, specifically the directive to not let your shoulders sink below your elbows, or to always keep your triceps parallel to the floor.

2. Utkatasana, to tuck in the tail.

I'm curious as to whether these directives are still valid in 2010.

If anyone has any other alignment-related cues they're curious about, post 'em in the comments.

DECEMBER 2010 NEWSLETTER

2010-12-05T18:09:00.000-08:00

WE'RE BACK!

It was a privilege, an inspiration, and an honor to visit Mysore Tokyo. My friend Tarik is a brilliant, charismatic teacher. He's spent a lot of time in Mysore, India, as well as with many long-time
Ashtanga teachers. He's also fluent in conversational Japanese, and his space is in Shibuya, minutes from the city's second largest train station.

Suffice to say the space was utterly packed each and every morning, and next to the Ashtanga Yoga Institute in Mysore, India, it may be the busiest morning Mysore program in the world. Tarik's students practice so diligently and so earnestly that it brought an unexpected surge of devotion to my own practices.

It's been even more wonderful to return to Portland. I'm a little hazy with jet lag — waiting, as William Gibson put it, for my soul to snap back into my body — though I'm recharged and re-energized to resume my classes.

Thank you very much to John Haag, who so ably and terrifically held down the space for Mysore and led classes to continue in my absence. I've gotten a ton of positive comments about him.

I look forward to seeing everyone in class soon!

NEW CLASSES
As of Sunday, December 5, we've added a new class to the Yoga Pearl schedule! The new Guided Intermediate class runs from 8–9:30 a.m. You must practice to at least dwi pada sirsasana to attend; there're a couple other
performance-based criteria as well, such as competency in primary series as well performance of its key asanas. Email me if you're in doubt. We've shifted the schedule to accommodate the new class. Led Primary now runs at a much more humane hour, 10–11:30 a.m.

HAND BALANCE INTENSIVE

Shoulder-angle check in Meiji-dori Park.

Want to work exclusively on handstands and hand-balancing? I've got a hand balance intensive scheduled at Yoga Pearl for Saturday, February 19, from 1-4 p.m.

Attendance will be capped at 12 to guarantee one-on-one attention.

Cost is $50. Reserve your spot today, or get on the wait list!

We'll explore the yogic principles manifested when you stand on your hands, we'll undertake an asana sequence designed to prepare for handstand and hand-balances, and finally, I'll work with each person individually to address their unique and specific needs.

Everyone will come away with practical experience of several key yogic concepts, as well as strategies to improve their hand-balancing and incorporate it into an Ashtanga vinyasa practice

MEXICO IN APRIL 2011

We still have spots left for our Xinalani Retreat, which will run
April 23-30, 2011!

It's gonna have it all: pranayama, led or Mysore class, asana
workshop, philosophy discussion, and stories and myths.

Did I also mention it's an eco-retreat on the beach in Puerto
Vallarta, Mexico? Amenities include an on-site spa, healthy cuisine,
and oh yes THE BEACH AND THE SUN.

More detailed information on the retreat!

Check out Xinalani Retreat Center!

Contact Tara to reserve your space today, or to get on the waiting list.

TOKYO 2010 SNAPS

2010-11-18T00:38:00.001-08:00

The Big Guy watches.

Where the magic happens, et cetera et cetera.

My favorite people. This includes Green Lantern.

Shoulder angle check? Still a little ear visible. Back to work.

Color coded. Also: pink blocks are SO hot.

2010 TRAVEL UPDATE: ENCINITAS, LOS ANGELES, TOKYO

2010-11-05T17:38:00.000-07:00

Well True Believers, I spent last Friday in Encinitas. Tara and I practiced at the studio on Friday morning — full power!

Later, Andrew prepared sambar, dosas and idli ... it was great to reconnect with him.

Many of the relationships I have developed through Ashtanga run deep — unfortunately, it's a global community, and we're all very spread out. I wish I could spend more time with Andrew and many of my friends around the world, so it's a bit sad. The distance really sharpens the joy of being with them, though.

On Saturday, Tara and I drove to Santa Monica to swing on the rings, climb the ropes, and do handstands on the grass. After, we headed to another friend's wedding. The service was on the lake in Echo Park, and the reception was in the Echo Park Rec Center. It was a mega-blast.

We drove back to San Diego on Saturday night, and I left for Tokyo the next morning. Now, one week later, I've managed to slough off most of the jet-lag. I'm still having trouble sleeping past 4 a.m., though.

Ashtanga yoga thrives in Tokyo. I was last here 2 years ago, and am pleasantly surprised to find so many familiar faces still practicing at the studio. There are no dilettantes. It's simply stunning to see the degree of transformation that's taken place.

I've been very inspired by the Japanese dedication and devotion, so much so that my own time on the mat has been deep, rich and compelling.

Fam arrives on Monday night, so until then I'm reading Ramesh Menon's "Siva: The Siva Purana Retold," trying to eat my bodyweight in Japanese food (kilos or pounds, take your pick), and planning to crash a sento.

Here's a link to "Grant Morrison: Talking with Gods," a new documentary on Grant Morrison, one of my favorite authors. "Animal Man" and "Doom Patrol" changed my adolescent life ... and then, along came "The Invisibles," which did it again. I think "All Star Superman" is one of the best pieces of fantasy-science fiction of the last 10 years.

I've got two words for you: Gnostic superheroes.

NEW CLASSES...

2010-11-02T22:36:00.000-07:00

Expect to see this on Sundays.
Yours may not look quite like this, though.

Class promotion:

We're adding Guided Intermediate Series to the Yoga Pearl schedule, beginning Sunday, December 5.

Class time will be 8-9:30a.m.

This will be a challenging and advanced class. Completion of and competency with the Primary Series is required. Please contact me to attend and/or with questions.

The Sunday Led Primary Series class will now run from 10-11:30a.m.

NOVEMBER TOKYO

2010-10-26T13:50:00.000-07:00

Hey True Believers --- I'll be spending the month of November in Tokyo, Japan, one of my favorite places on planet Earth.

The Fam will be joining me for three weeks, too, so we'll see how much kawaii we can soak up before our heads explode.

Why fearing, you! I've arranged for experienced, intelligent and compassionate ashtanga yoga teachers to fill in my classes during my absence.

So do your practice!

In Encinitas, there was definitely a dip in attendance when Tim would go out of town. The longer he was gone, the greater the dip.

During my initial transition phase from led to Mysore-style classes, the first few times Tim was gone proved revelatory opportunities to turn up to morning pranayama and asana practice anyway, if only to see how practice would transpire without an authority or teacher figure on whom to rely.

It turns out my mildly grabby, clingy, clutchy feelings were baseless, and that the ashtanga practice works whether Tim is in the room or not, and whether there are 45 people in the room ... or just me in my bedroom, as is now the case.

So why were we paying Tim the big bucks? Sheesh.

Anyways, I'll be posting photos and stories at my teaching blog, at Leaping Lanka.

As always, anyone's welcome to join the Yoga Pearl Mysore group on Facebook, too!

MYSORE FAQ!

2010-10-11T14:11:00.000-07:00

It's a varied path to a Mysore-style ashtanga yoga practice. Where do you fall on the continuum below?

1. Sporadic led or guided evening classes.

You go to class when you feel like it and when you have the time.

2. Consistent led classes.

You make the time to hit class a couple times a week.

3. Scheduled led classes.

You go to class on a set schedule, for example, every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday.

4. Scheduled morning Mysore classes.

You start attending morning Mysore class on a set schedule, like every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

5. Daily morning Mysore classes.

You hit class every morning but moon days and holidays.

Generally, one's priorities change depending on the seasons and states.

People tend to bail on classes during the dog-days of summer and during holidays.

More than just the weather, the seasons of life also affect one's capacity for the ashtanga yoga practice. I find young adults have a difficult time committing to a schedule, mostly because generally their life-stage is characterized by heavy flux.

Also, your capacity for yoga will vary depending on your state. For example, just have a baby, move to a new city, undergo a massive relationship meltdown, or catch mono?

If you're somewhere between items 3 and 4 above, you may be considering attending a Mysore class. I resist strong-arming people, but at a certain point, after you've exhausted the led class setting as everyone does, a Mysore class is the next stage in practice.

So here's a FAQ regarding morning Mysore classes for those of you considering it.

How is a Mysore Class Different from a Led Class?
In a Mysore-style class, students generally practice an established, predetermined sequence of poses from among the various ashtanga vinyasa series.

They proceed at their own pace, which will depend on their unique situation that morning, and they will follow their own length of breath.

Depending on their current physical conditions, they will address problematic areas by remaining in poses longer or repeating them.

The instructor is available one-on-one for physical assistance and suggestions for scaling, and can therefore meet each student where they are at that moment.

Why Is It Called "Mysore?"
This style, an individual practice set amongst a like-minded group, originated in the south Indian city of Mysore, and was maintained by Pattabhi Jois, among others.

It's Not Called Mysore Because It Makes You Sore?
It's not called Mysore because it makes you sore.

I've Been to Some Led Classes --- Do I Have to Remember All the Poses?

Don't worry, you will remember more than you think. Trust me. Just make an honest effort. Relax. Do less. Try to show up consistently.

For a short period of time, you will make a concession to transition to a Mysore class from led classes. You'll relinquish an entire, familiar sequence for a usually shorter yet more profound practice, one that is entirely internally generated.

You'll move to a finishing sequence when you lose the thread of the practice.

This is either physically --- that is, you're trembling, shaking, exhausted, and quite obviously spent --- or, more subtly, when you no longer remember what comes next. Which usually means you don't know where you are now.

These terminal points differ for each person.

So you'll stop when you're quite clearly tapped out. For those not on the verge of cracking, I'm available to help guide you through those unfamiliar parts of the sequence.

Given consistent effort, you will very quickly learn the sequence that is appropriate for your current conditions.

It's my hope, of course, that you eventually remember the sequence of the primary series poses.

We have print-outs of the sequence (a.k.a. "cheat sheets"), but they tend to become a distraction or worse, a laundry list.

I've Never Been to a Led Class --- Can I Show Up, Too?

Turn up off the street and we'll start in a more traditional style. I will show you surya namaskar A and B and perhaps a few more poses. Then you will sit down and breathe. Finally, you will lie down.

Each time you return, you will be taught another pose in the sequence, usually one or two poses per day, until you hit your first major road-block.

What Time Can I Arrive?

Doors open at 6 a.m.; you can arrive at any point until class ends at 9 a.m. If the door is locked, stand on the sidewalk and jab the button until I come out to let you in.

I'd prefer everyone start by 8, but if you have to choose between arriving at 8:30 or no practice, show up at 8:30.

Do I Have to Get Up That Early?

Listen Buttercup, it's time to rip off the band-aid. If you want to deepen your practice beyond the more mediated led classes, and take the benefit of the intention of a like-minded group --- I tell you, some morning Mysore practices are like stepping into a jet-stream, whoosh, you're off, and you don't do the practice, the practice does you --- if you want to deepen your practice in that way, you have to fucking get up in the morning.

How can I break this to you gently? "I don't do mornings" or "I'm not a morning person" are bullshit. Despite what your mom told you, you are not a unique snowflake. You, as a member of homo sapiens, are a diurnal mammal, which means you're hard-coded to be wired in the morning and tired in the evening (If the opposite is true, you've got other issues).

We're not even talking crack-head early, either, which I rate as a 4:30 a.m. wake-up, so I'm sorry I'm not sorry. We're all adults, and adults know how to prioritize their interests and their energies to meet deep needs.

What If I'm Not Flexible in the Morning?

To paraphrase a quote I saw posted at Vancouver Ashtanga, you're never too dirty to take a shower. Wait to be flexible enough to take a yoga class and you'll wait 'til death.

Morning practice is a ritualized way to welcome the sun into your day and into your life. It also re-establishes a vital psychospiritual balance and, as B.K.S. Iyengar calls it, an "equipoise."

On a purely physical level, consistent morning stretching eventually allows you to perform movements requiring considerable flexibility with little or no warm-up.

Do I Have to Go to Work All Sweaty?

The delightful environs of Yoga Pearl also include luxurious showers, organic soap, and towel service. Prasad Cafe features raw cheesecake, Bachelor bars and other brekkie items.

Failing that, you can always go with baby wipes or, as I used to do in my heathen "corporate" days, simply lather on the deodorant during the car ride to the office.

ASHTANGA YOGA FOOD FRENZY

2010-10-08T17:18:00.001-07:00

The US mascot is a scavenger? Yuk.

Here are several eating modalities to which I've been exposed during my time practicing ashtanga vinyasa yoga.

The word "diet" has been emptied of relevant meaning, so I'm going with "eating modalities" until I come up with a better one.

Scavenger

My friend Tony's roommate was a scavenger --- someone help me with the correct name for this subculture --- but Tony's roomie was essentially a vegetarian. Except for scavenged meat.

As you can imagine, the scavenged-animal food sources in Southern California amounted to road-kill --- squirrels, dogs, the occasional coyote.

I heard there were Raw scavengers, too, as in: they ate uncooked meat.

Watermelon

When I lived in San Francisco, friends practiced with "The Watermelon Man." He ate only watermelon for four months.

Oranges

Apparently, at one point "The Watermelon Man" switched to oranges. I didn't hear for how long; I did hear the citric acid stripped the enamel off his teeth.

Stripped the enamel right off.

Fruitarian

In the same family as the Watermelon Man are the fruitarians, who eat only fruit. I'm not sure if they can cook the fruit, so perhaps they're also considered Raw?

Of note, I met a Fruitarian outside the yoga world. I was at a Fourth of July barbecue some years back where I met this kid with a shall we say interesting smell and glazed-over, sunken eyes.

He'd ridden a bike from Vancouver, Canada to San Diego down the 101. He ate only fruit, and mostly bananas. When was served at the barbecue, he pulled out a bunch of bananas and ate five.

I asked him why he ate only fruit, and he declared that one, the brain ran on sugar, and two, fruit is sugar. Therefore fruit was the ideal brain food.

I have a rough grasp of neurobiology, enough to know there were gaping holes in his logic as well as his knowledge of nutrition and anatomy.

He aggrieved a group of Southern California barbecue-goers, all with veggie burgers in hand, by telling them, "I used to feel like you did --- but I'm beyond that now. You wouldn't understand how I feel. You're just not capable."

Raw

These dudes are vegetarians who only eat uncooked fruit and vegetables. I'm not sure their dairy intake --- I imagine there are sub-groups within groups.

Alien fruit that smells like rotting corpses.

I met Doug in Mysore; he's a very charismatic raw foodist who once had the chance to meet George W. Bush. He shook the former President's hand, looked him dead in the eye, and said, "Mr. President, I believe raw food is the future American diet." He also told stories of utterly depraved orgies of durian consumption.

In his house in Mysore, there were hundreds of coconuts in the kitchen, stacked floor to ceiling and completely covering one wall, a feat I'd only ever seen accomplished before in a dorm room with empty Pabst cans.

Once a week, Doug had a truckload of coconuts delivered to his house. He'd also visited local machine shops to have fabricated a unique coconut puncturing device that let him quickly get the juice. This way, he didn't risk severing his fingertips with a machete.

There was also a fairly healthy sized raw community in San Diego, with several teachers and practitioners at the Ashtanga Yoga Center practicing this eating method. A couple guys who used to practice at the studio maintained a raw house, in which all members agreed to follow raw principles.

Oh man. Just like a

straight-edge X: bad idea.

Vegan

This is no meat, seafood, or dairy. I've met a few vegan ashtanga practitioners through the years, but I don't know any who have stuck with it --- doubtless they're out there, though.

Veganism appears to be very threaded in Portland culture, as many restaurants and cafes offer vegan menu choices and baked goods. Prasad Cafe, at Yoga Pearl, offers a vegan, mostly raw menu. The Bachelor Bars and the raw cheesecake kill!

Ayurvedic

The ancient Indian system of wellness emphasizes a healthy digestive system through eating according to one's dosha, or constitution type. What's interesting to me is that it's not inherently vegetarian or vegan, and diet is one of the first variables its practitioners adjust in order to address health issues.

I want to do a bit more reading to see if its principles are truly cross-cultural --- I'm sure Michael Pollan would agree that laying off over-stimulating and processed foods is a good thing.

Macrobiotic

I haven't honestly run into many macrobiotic yoga practitioners --- perhaps this manner of eating never gained popularity in the yoga world? I do recall hearing Mattew Sweeney jokingly refer to it as "macroneurotic."

There's a macrobiotic restaurant in Tokyo in which, to the horror of the assembled wait-staff, I attempted to eat my bodyweight in gobo root/burdock.

Vegetarian

No meat! This is a popular lifestyle choice within yoga circles. It's the food mode that appears to be the most popular first transition one makes when the practice of asana initiates a deeper look at other quality-of-life factors.

SAD

The "standard American diet." I'm not sure what this constitutes, though I imagine it means simply to eat "whatever, whenever." Most consistent yoga practitioners seem to think a bit about what they eat, though, so I'm not sure how common this modality is among yoga students. Certainly it doesn't seem to hold for long once a regular yoga practice takes root.

HOW TO GET SIX-PACK ABS DOING YOGA

2010-09-24T10:30:00.000-07:00

It is difficult to find pictures of
non-freakish, non-drug-induced
female six-packs on the internet.

You must admit, that is a zinger of a blog headline, designed to generate one shit-ton of page traffic and drive my Google analytics through the roof.

Meanwhile, there's that scene in the documentary Ashtanga NYC in which a woman smiles like the cat with the canary and says,"Well, we all know ashtanga can give you a great body!" As if the particular brilliance of ashtanga vinyasa is that we can be spiritual and have tight buns. Nestled under that is the idea that the harder we work, the more spiritual we will be — that in order to reap the greatest benefits from this system, we really need to feel the burn.

It would be remiss of me to not answer the headline, so: body recomposition — a 'six-pack' of abs, or sub 10-percent bodyfat for men, sub 15-percent for women — is 85% food choice, 15% effort. Eliminate grains, legumes, and fructose. Reduce dairy to the whipping cream you put in your espresso. Notice the words "food choice": do not "diet" or restrict eating. Give it 3 months of ashtanga practice. Submit your success photos.

That better be a real tattoo.

This occasional acknowledgment of the physical transformation this practice creates is interesting. We have this difficult primary series we are expected to practice 6 days a week, and that can and will transform your body in many ways.

The shadow aspect of this and any hatha yoga practice or physical discipline is narcissism. Thankfully we are not the first to confront these issues. Far from it: in the Yoga Sutras, Patanjali balances disciplined practice with equal measures self-study and devotion.

So let's at least acknowledge and honor the desire to look good naked, but let's tease it apart from the samadhi that is the residue of this practice. Meaning, to look good naked does not equal samadhi. Let's also tease apart the Protestant work-ethic notion that the more we put into this practice, the more we get out.

I'm not sure if it's obvious, but I don't practice yoga to eliminate or extinguish desire. I don't believe that's possible; or at least, I've never met anyone free from desire. I've never met a saint. Desire makes life possible, after all, and there's a good argument for the idea that life is desire.

This one's for the ladies.

It's the practice of yoga that balances our desire with our consciousness, which helps clear the confusion of our desires and preferences with our essential nature. It doesn't mean we don't have desires and preferences. It's just that practicing samadhi means our desires and preferences don't lead us around by the scruffs of our necks.

To layer guilt for having the desire to look good naked — or for having any thought, really — will turn this or any practice into an insidious means of self-torture.

These desires will arise. Thankfully we have simple tools — the tristana, or ujjayi breathing, vinyasa, and drishti — that allow us to watch them, and then return to our enlightenment.

* Alternate headlines designed to drive up page-traffic:
"How to Chisel Six-pack Abs with Yoga"
"Easy Six-pack Abs with Yoga"
"Lose Belly Fat and Get Six-pack Abs with Yoga"

MYSORE GUILT

2010-09-17T14:48:00.000-07:00

Nandi on Chamundi.

As of September 2010, it's been 5 years since we've returned to practice yoga in Mysore, India.

The decision to not return to Mysore hasn't been a negation; we as a family have instead chosen to pursue other interests.

For example, we've chosen to return to Encinitas more frequently, rather than make the increasingly larger, riskier, and complex choices we'd have to make to travel to Mysore for a month.

Still, my relationship with the place is a complex one, and from time to time I feel a small but noticeable pressure to return there.

The first time I traveled there, the decision was sparked in part by my first meeting with Pattabhi Jois in New York City. I had such a terrific time practicing in the Puck Building that I began to organize my life to spend an uncertain amount of time in India.

I sold, gave away, or threw out all my belongings beyond clothing, quit a great job, and virtually abandoned my car.

I never had a personal relationship with Pattabhi Jois, beyond that he vaguely recognized me as Tim's student, and maybe even thought my tattoos were vaguely humourous, but since his illness and passing, that gravitic pull to Mysore has lessened.

When I started practicing in Encinitas, a trip to Mysore was a steady if discrete current, because, “When are you going to Mysore?” was a topic of pre- and post-practice conversations.

The feel in Encinitas has changed somewhat during the last several years, of course, as Pattabhi Jois has passed.

Ashtanga in Portland has a different feel, too, in that there's not as much social pressure to travel to Mysore, quite simply because it's not really a topic of conversation. Although I expect I may inadvertently encourage people to travel to India when I share India stories or pass along the aspects of this practice that I picked up in Mysore.

The occasional pang to return to Mysore, occurring less and less over the years, is sharpened by the fact that I'm not authorized by the Ashtanga Yoga Institute to teach. This in itself is the seed for small but nagging doubts about my own validity and legitimacy.

The idea of official recognition is tricky. I know I have the tendency to “collect,” and I know what that means for me — the pursuit of the recognition becomes a goal unto itself, a thing pursued for no other reason than to collect it.

The “Collector” mentality also gives the illusion of direction and meaning, but is another elaborate method of avoidance or disengagement with my life as it is now.

Getting authorized, or even certified — well, I guess it's something to do, right?

Idli.

I am now hungry.

The ashtanga vinyasa community is also so dispersed and spread out these days that it'd be nice to see Sharath and old friends, as well as meet new members of the growing community.

The tours were a great opportunity for everyone to come together in one place and for one reason, which is one of the reasons that, even if they were in an air-conditioned gymnasium, they were very powerful.

Ashtanga vinyasa is a solitary practice — only you can do it. In a Mysore setting, though, the yoga is not practiced in solitude.

The in-breath brings a great many people into your life, and of course the out-breath takes them away again. They come, they go.

Part of the yoga practice is to acknowledge and work with the current situation of your life — not as you wish it to be one day in Mysore, and not as it once was, the last time you were in Mysore, but as it is today, right now.

So a journey to Mysore can be a holiday, a pilgrimage, or a flight. It can be a luxury or an imperative. But we don't need to be there to honor this tradition — we do that every time we practice it.

DON'T FEAR! WHY FEARING, YOU?

2010-09-14T05:45:00.000-07:00

Don't be sad. I'll be back.

It's interesting to me that, all things considered, I spent a limited amount of time with Pattabhi Jois. Yet the strength of the man's personality, combined with my experience practicing the yoga in his presence, indelibly seared many of his expressions into my mind.

Anyways, I'll be back on track this week with articles ... I've caught some freelance writing work, which is monopolizing my writing energy-units.

However! As a teaser for the four readers of this blog, I will give you a sneak peak of upcoming topics. That's right, I have a publishing plan and an edit calendar.

Topics will include "Mysore Guilt," an article sparked by Ragdoll's comment a few weeks back as well as the 5-year-anniversary of our last trip to Mysore, India; "Those Damn Bandhas;" "Freedom in Captivity: The Benefits a Set Series;" "Captivity in Freedom: The Drawbacks to a Set Series;" and "Type A Versus Ashtanga Vinyasa." There're loads more.

So what's gonna happen is I'm going to drop an article a week, additional freelance writing work permitting, and then end of October I'm going to sling the best together, along with older posts, and release the first Leaping Lanka book as Print-on-demand, or POD.

THE AGONIES OF YOGA PHOTOS

2010-09-03T17:28:00.000-07:00

Fruit basket.

It wasn't until I saw photos of myself practicing yoga asana that I became familiar with the term "fruit basket."

While in Tokyo, I'd purchased these blue Nike yoga shorts (on sale), and had my friend Kranti hoist me into kapotasana in order to shoot photos. I'd always wanted to see what I looked like in the pose.

It was the first time I'd ever had to consider my own fruit basket, coin purse, bean-bag or jewel sack. In the resulting photos it bulged prominently, gratuitous and shrink-wrapped in blue spandex.

My basket in photos was not a factor I had ever considered when I began teaching ashtanga vinyasa. The process of evolution by which I came to teach yoga asana — for a living, however slim — was a gradual one, filled with major and minor shifts, all in one direction.

Once the seed was planted that I might teach this style of yoga, it was watered a variety of ways — through conscious choice, the encouragement of my wife and friends, the support of previous teachers, and the occasional stroke of blind luck. The seed flowered because of multitudes of miniscule and seemingly inconsequential choices.

I really do feel very alive while "teaching" a Mysore class — that is, sharing what was shared with me —though I had no real idea of the full scope of what that means in the Twenty-first Century.

Not fruit basket

I'm talking about the fruit basket, but in a larger sense, I'm talking about the Yoga Photo.

Part of the consequence of deciding that teaching was something I might do to feed myself, my wife and my daughter was to approach it in the most intelligent and skillful manner possible. Y'know, like a yogi.

I like very much of Douglas Brooks' definitions of a yogi, someone who "makes the impossible look easy." Part of making the impossible look effortless is the skillful, efficient management of energy.

My practice of the ashtanga yoga system has led me to cultivate a deep appreciation for its maps of energy manipulation. Through the practice of this yoga, we purify, collect and finally direct our energies, personal and otherwise.

Jai.

As Tim Miller tells it, Pattabhi Jois suggested that all yoga studios should have an image of Hanuman the monkey god. As the flying, wind-borne agent of reunification between the divine masculine, Rama, and his wife, the divine feminine, Sita, Hanuman is the symbol of prana.

What Guruji was telling Tim was that Hanuman would help his yoga studio generate that most obvious manifestation of external life-force energy, or external prana: money.

At a certain point, studios, gyms and health clubs started to ask for photos of me for their Web sites or fliers.

It really flushed to the surface my insecurity and fear about teaching. The decision to put myself out there in a picture is somehow deeper and more significant than merely writing a blog. It caused me to face my choices. Was I worthy? Was I ready? Was I good enough? Did I actually have something to share? Did I really understand this yoga well enough to pass along the technique?

Ashtanga vinyasa is a powerful and potent practice, and I doubted my ability to awaken in every person the same feelings that it awoke in me.

Those doubts proved unfounded — not because I cannot deliver this experience, but because I realized that it's not my job to "deliver an experience."

I keep returning to a sentence from Tim's on-line biography — a line I have shamelessly plagiarized for more than 5 years: "My goal as a teacher is to inspire a passion for practice. The practice itself, done consistently and accurately, is the real teacher."

From that perspective, teaching ashtanga yoga is simple: all I have to do is get out of its way.

"Experiences" always and of necessity end. They're over as soon as you walk out of class, at which time the yoga is just another experience to be categorized and filed away. It has a beginning, middle and end, and becomes a memory.

This is similar to my experiences of Mysore — one can go there and have a wild time, a full 'awakening' experience.

Then that time becomes dutifully filed away as "Awakening Experience," and people return home to continually rehash that experience as their touchstone for the practice, either seeking to recreate it in themselves or their students. They also pass on the idea that their experience from last year in Mysore is an experience to which their students should aspire.

All the while, they anxiously await their next trip to Mysore to recreate this condition.

Not that I'm suggesting you shouldn't travel to Mysore! Or return there! I'm just asking us to recognize Idealism for what it is — the mistaken notion that reality and our conditions are what we wish them to be and other than what they are.

As I said, experiences come and go. That's the great thing about conditional reality — conditions arise, are sustained, and then decay, evolving into other conditions. This practice is about clearing up enough so that we can stop identifying with those conditions as ourselves, and perhaps respond spontaneously and creatively to conditions as they are at this very moment.

So once my nagging doubts about my validity as a teacher were addressed, or at least acknowledged, it became obvious to me that some sort of photo would be necessary. I was serious about teaching this yoga, therefore wanted to do it in the most intelligent and skillful manner. If that meant taking photos, then so be it.

Yoga photo? Plus: ass.

There are a host of issues that arise with shooting yoga photos nowadays. First, given the nature of digital media, photos are available at any time to anyone. Which means you have no say over the context or format in which people see them.

Second, the actual content of the photo is troublesome. Do you go for the 'craziest' asana you are capable of performing? Or something less threatening and more inviting? Do you try to look serious and profound, or more lighthearted and personable? What if you can only hold the photo for the second it takes to snap the photo?

Then, of course, you must consider the wardrobe choices ... Do you wear those skin-tight briefs you normally wear, when you're practically naked?

What setting? A yoga studio? Outdoors? Someplace exotic? There were a host of other aspects of yoga photos I had never thought about.

I imagine each teacher arrives at the pranic budget for how much they're will to allot to this.

For my part, I see no problem with wanting to make good, beautiful and, one would hope, true pictures.

Dena Kingsberg in kashyapasana.

You can look at that beautiful photo of Dena Kingsberg in kashyapasana, modeled after that painting. Or you can look at the photos of Eddie Stern on the site for his studio. You can look in vain, actually, because Eddie clearly and consciously chose to not invest any energy in photos.

The more recent photos of me were shot by my friend Kelly Hubert. They work for me, and are a conscious reflection of aspects of the practice that I value. It's a nice, non-threatening asana, there's a nice shot of Guruji in the background, I like the background colors — done and done.

And, it must be said, there's no visible fruit basket.

GRANT MORRISON AND THE MAHABHARATA

2010-08-27T08:14:00.000-07:00

Grant Morrison, one of my favorite authors, is retelling the Mahabharata. "The tone is modern, gritty and emotionally real against a backdrop of techno-mythic super-war," he says. Techno-Vedic!

I haven't read it yet, so it remains to be seen if Grant's mailing this one in for the check, versus sinking his teeth into the project ... but man, All Star Superman was one of the best things I've read in maybe 10 years?

There's more info here at Betwa Sharma's article at HuffPo.

ASHTANGA VINYASA FOR CONTORTIONISTS AND GYMNASTS

2010-08-20T11:41:00.000-07:00

A manna: active shoulder flex,
hamstring flex, pure abdominal strength.

Most people walk into a yoga class, do a forward bend, and have a religious experience.

The pain in the backs of their legs is so immediate, and so overwhelming, that it demands complete and utter attention.

When, at age 23, I did my very first forward bend in my very first yoga class, any memories and any daydreams came to a crashing halt. There was only the grinding discomfort of the back of my legs, a nether region of whose existence I had never dreamt, let alone experienced with such excruciating immediacy.

So what to do when a practitioner folds forward and merely yawns? What if someone comes to a led first-series class and floats and contorts their way through the entire primary series?

Circus performers and competitive gymnasts demonstrate the most complete range of active, dynamic and passive flexibility I have ever seen.

They're both rare in that their annamaya koshas, or "food bodies," are highly trained and conditioned after years of daily, disciplined physical practices, and many if not all elements of first series pale in comparison to their usual training.

These people, and perhaps the odd martial artist or rock climber, during the practice or performance of their endeavors — whether hand-balancing on a set of canes, measuring breath during pommel horse swings, or gripping a large rock with their legs while looking for the next handhold — spend a lot of time in their bodies, integrating the annamaya and pranamaya koshas, the food- and breath-bodies, and absorbed in the latter limbs of pratyahara, dharana, dhyana, and samadhi.

So for these people the first inherent challenge in ashtanga vinyasa is to simply show up to practice the primary series until they've learned it by heart.

It can be quite a shock to a contortionist to be held back or simply ignored when they amply demonstrate physical mastery of the asanas. Let's face it, the primary series isn't a challenge to even an 11-year-old with 2 years of modern gymnastic training.

The second challenge and therefore opportunity for these athletes and performers is to learn the correct breathing and transitions. A concrete and direct participation in inhale-up, exhale-down helps them shift away from a performance or competition mind-set, in which practice is only and merely a means to a much-delayed end.

If contortionists and gymnasts develop a love for the practice, or for their teacher, and their discipline and mental strength flows into learning the first series, they will progress through the various series until they find a particularly interesting pebble in their shoe.

Hollowback planche:
active spinal and shoulder flex.

Pattabhi Jois was, as Richard Freeman has frequently observed, quite a trickster. During one trip to Mysore, when I was practicing the Sunday led intermediate classes, Guruji had us hop up to a half-handstand after vatayanasana and parighasana ... and then he would have us hover there as he walked around and said, "Why shaking?" and laughed.

(Rolf Naujokat later mentioned Jois was just "having fun," and that we shouldn't take those transitions so seriously.)

There are several ways to critically shift the primary series to make it compelling to a woman who can perform 10 L-sit press to handstands, or who can lower and hold herself in a hollow-back planche.

Mostly we talk about scaling down the practice for the 99-percent of us who require it. However, for the 1-percent who require scaling up, I use two fundamental principles.

The first is rooted in the physics of the annamaya kosha: to increase difficulty, and therefore engagement, we must decrease leverage by increasing lever length.

The second principle envelops the first, and is rooted in the pranamaya kosha: the inhale creates expansiveness and corresponds with prana, or upward-flowing sensation. The exhale corresponds with the apana, or the downward, rooting sensation. We use the technique of vinyasa to yoke the different sides of the breath to the corresponding movement.

This last bit is important because it runs counter to the human tendency to forcibly exhale when pressing or pulling strongly.

To use surya namaskar A as an example, if someone arrives in class and slaps their forehead to their shins on their first go, but still hops back, I'd suggest to them to begin a deep inhale, and then use that inhale to begin to press their feet off the floor, with legs as straight as possible. The straighter the legs, the heavier the load, and therefore the more prana-collecting and directing the vinyasa will be.

To follow the vinyasa concept, the transition to chaturanga dandasana should be complete before the inhale stops — this is generally what stops even the most Herculean person from pressing to handstand all over the place.

There are several levels of transition possible from chaturanga dandasana to urdvha mukkha svasana, and from there to adho mukkha svasana, but remember, we're only discussing scaling up.

With that in mind, chaturanga dandasana becomes increasingly more interesting when the triceps approach parallel and the wrists approach the waist.

One-arm split elbow lever.

The movement from upward-facing dog to downward-facing dog can be made more engaging by reversing the entrance; that is, by rolling back down to the bottom of chaturanga dandasana and then curling up into downward-facing dog.

In the Yoga Works videos from 1993, Chuck Miller demonstrates this; they're also know as dive-bomber push-ups.

It is vital to inhale-up, exhale-back — if the breath becomes strained or stops, the transition is therefore too much for the person and should be scaled so that the breath can flow.

As I've heard Pattabi Jois quoted (in turn quoting Patanjali's Yoga Sutras I.31): "Breath shaking, body shaking ... mind shaking!"

The move from downward-facing dog back to standing mirrors the entrance: one can inhale and hop, with straight legs, to lower the feet between the hands, and then, fingertips on the floor, continue the inhale and allow it to raise the head.

It's a simple matter to make suggestions that use these principles and therefore stay true to the letter and intent of the traditional primary series.

Uth pluthi becomes more interesting when one adopts an L-shape rather than a curled-C, a detail I came to understand when, during led class, Sharath would say, "Don't touch your legs!"; ardha sirsasana is more interesting with the legs extended even further away from the midline and a slight tuck to the tail-bone; during seated vinyasas, lolasana can be done with straight legs in an L-shape prior to exhaling back to chaturanga; et cetera, et cetera.

By employing these two principles, the transitions of even the primary series can become incredibly compelling to contortionists and gymnasts alike and yet remain grounded in the tristana, the ujjayi breathing, the vinyasas (movement into, the states of, and movement away from the asanas, which incorporate the bandhas), and the drishti. The practice becomes a vital, immediate, and sensual dance.

Then, when standing and seated sequences are finished, everyone, gymnast and stiff white guy alike, can sit, breathe deeply, take rest, and invite the profound and splendid stillness that is the inevitable byproduct of the ashtanga vinyasa practice.

SHASTA INTERMISSION

2010-08-15T13:25:00.000-07:00

Tim, backlit for maximum halo effect.

I apologize for the delay in publishing last week's article.

I have returned to Portland from a week-long retreat at Mt. Shasta, where I assisted Tim Miller.

During my time in California, I went on an intentional Internet and cell-phone fast.

So there you go — one week, no Internet, no phone, and nature surrounding me on all sides.

It was, despite all that nature, quite nice.

Normal publication will resume shortly. I aim to publish new posts every Friday (or more).

WHAT FIRST SERIES HAS TAUGHT ME

2010-08-06T13:36:00.000-07:00

No flash allowed!

I came to the primary series in my early 20s. I was stiff, weak, and suffering profoundly from the disconnect between my intellect and my physical and emotional intelligence. My consciousness orbited about 6 inches above and just to the rear of my skull, an unfortunate Cartesian ghost haunting the machine.

The primary series, "yoga chikitsa" as it's known in Sanskrit, or "yoga therapy," definitely fulfilled a therapeutic function for me. In my first yoga class, that consciousness spread to my skin, bones, muscle, and sinew in a way that was at once a total surprise yet entirely inevitable.

After the peregrinations of my early 20s, when I lived in San Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco, I once again settled down in Encinitas and began practicing six days a week. I had a flexible job that allowed me to drift in between 9:15 and 9:30 a.m., and so I began attending Mysore classes at Tim Miller's Ashtanga Yoga Center.

At that time I don't believe Tim taught the primary series in the old Mysore-style, pose-by-pose. I recall only ever hearing him teach one person that way — surya namaskara A, surya namaskara B, lie down, come back tomorrow. That person didn't come back after a week.

So I don't know if he taught that way because his Mysore classes had 25, 35, sometimes 45 people in them, or if beginners and newcomers just opted to attend the led classes.

It was during Tuesday's 7 a.m. led primary series class, in which Tim said nothing but the pose name and "Five," to indicate the ending of the pose, that I eventually learned the primary series in its entirety.

It taught me strength, both physical and mental. It showed me that discipline was a muscle and a skill that could improve with practice. I began to pay attention to what I was putting in my body because it directly influenced how I moved, felt, and thought. I began to more consciously organize my life and the direction of my attention to sustain an early-morning practice, which meant an earlier bedtime and less partying.

Primary series really worked for me — it still does — in that all the forward bending and hip mobility was so immediate and so intense that I simply had to breathe or I was going to die.

Yoga chikitsa was the way I learned and practiced the absorption, dissolution, and direct participation (the Brahma-Shiva-Vishnu aspect) that is the wonderful byproduct of engaging ujjayi breathing, vinyasa, drishti and the bandhas. It's how I learned to practice both the diffusion and collection of effort, attention and breathing, or what I understand to be prana.

Despite my monastic and ascetic leanings, there's something wonderfully communal about primary series. Every Friday around the world, rooms full of people inhale, exhale as one, folding and rising.

"Primary series, very important!" Pattabhi Jois used to say. It may not always be easy, but it's always there in some form to keep me grounded and focused. I practice the primary series and my ghost-consciousness is firmly exorcised. For a while, at least.

READ ME

2010-08-03T13:05:00.000-07:00

Released on Guru Purnima ... you best believe my copy is en route. Amazon's got more info!

WHERE I CAN BE FOUND ONLINE, SUMMER 2010

2010-08-01T15:32:00.000-07:00

My name is Jason Stein and I teach ashtanga vinyasa yoga in Portland, Oregon. I currently do Mysore-style classes as well as led primary.

I have also worked as an editor, copywriter, and freelance writer.

Occasionally I travel to teach this system of yoga, and will fill in for friends here and there.

I combined all that — writing about yoga and other odds and ends — on Leaping Lanka, which has been running since 2003.

My current teaching schedule can be found on my personal page, yet another blog.

I'm on Facebook, and also maintain the Yoga Pearl ashtanga group there. If you're not a member, join up! It doesn't matter if you make it to the morning Mysore classes or just enjoy the occasional bout with led primary.

(I was on MySpace before it was a wasteland of strippers and teenagers, but can't for the life of me recall if my account is still active there, which means it's probably not. Also, I don't have much time left for Twitter, though we'll see if that changes.)

Ping me at any of these locations.

MY LEAST FAVORITE POSE

2010-07-30T14:33:00.000-07:00

Everyone has one posture that they absolutely dread. Or do they? If you don’t, perhaps ashtanga vinyasa is not for you? I used to dread baddha konasana. That pose hurt. A lot. I couldn’t put my knees down. I couldn’t go forward. I couldn’t sit up. And yet there it was, every single day.

I went to Home Depot and bought two sandbags and filled them with sand from Moonlight Beach. I would get up every morning, put a sandbag on each leg, and watch CNN while drinking my morning espresso.

Now I quite enjoy the posture. What happened?

There was a gap, a blind spot, between where I wanted to be — where I thought I should be — and where I was. The dread came out of that gap, that disconnection or non-union.

The big dramatic fireworks, the emotional and physical elation, that sense of release that I so craved? It never came. Baddha konasana was for me a slow, steady polishing of perhaps three years. One day I could breathe, go forward, and become absorbed in the breath, the spine, the hips, the belly and navel, the tongue against the top teeth. The sound of my breath swelled and receded in my chest.

The beautiful limitations of practicing an imperfect sequence of postures, as they all are, as in ashtanga, is that there will always be another posture to spark friction between the fixed condition of what ought to be and the fluid condition of what actually is.

Mysore 04 ... L-to-R: Harry, Douglas, Dirty Hippie.

Dread or fear is a byproduct, one I’m pleased to say is avoidable, and the simple, practical physical technique that facilitates a return to what is, a return to this, to this, to this, is quite simple: inhale, exhale.

My experience with hated yet revelatory postures continued predicably from baddha konasana to backbends, to standing from backbends, to bhekasana, to kapotasana, and onward. Over time my appreciation has grown for these opportunities to experience friction, though I still engage a deliberate and daily practice to stay with the breathing and the bandhas and allow the process to occur.

After baddha konasana, I went through the ringer with kapotasana. To strive to perform an asana to the exacting and impossible standards of a fixed, graven image in your head will break you. Perhaps the shards will be beautiful, but the breaking, the physical breaking — the pulling, straining or spraining of muscles, ligaments, tendons — is not yoga.

Mind you, it’s important to work hard. It’s important to have standards to which to strive. It’s important to show up and give your best each day. It’s important to be pushed, or held back.

But it is impossible and disingenuous for me to force my Sunday second series practice to replicate the led second series class in Mysore. To try to do this is to ignore the given conditions of reality as it is at that moment. I know this because I have tried.

The Big Boss

So while I light candles every single morning both Pattabhi Jois and Tim Miller, and they are both responsible in part for every inhale and exhale I take, I have worked hard to get Guruji, the icon of the man, off my mat.

Yes, he was stern, he was demanding, and he wanted us to work hard, but my interpretation of his teaching is that we were to take a living practice with us when we left, and not reduce the yoga to the worship of a memory of a man in Mysore. “Everywhere looking, God,” he would say, and that means looking now, and not backwards at some experience in the shala from 10 years ago.

As I continue with this practice, I’ve noticed that my self-illusions and tendencies don’t go away. I can recognize them for what they are, though: illusions, preferences, and tendencies.

Once named, they don’t seem to such power. The skill of the yogi is the skillful manipulation and enjoyment of those tendencies, and perhaps even the realization that those illusions are gifts to be skillfully shared.

I spent four months in India on my first trip, and on my return to the studio in Encinitas, Tim padded over to me as I prepared to take baddha konasana. He saw what must have been a transformation. He shrugged, and said, “Well, I guess you don’t need me anymore,” and walked off.

Of course, then came bhekasana, kapotasana ... ghanda berundasana, supta trivrkrmasana, raja kapotasana ... It never ends.

I hope it never does.

UPCOMING CHANGES?

2010-07-24T17:38:00.000-07:00

So I've gone for a new look ... Relax! It's just a template.

I'm still into Leaping Lanka. There'll be some big changes coming in the immediate future.

Well, one big change: I'll be publishing here on a schedule. Hooray!

So dust off your blog reader.

Also, catch my teaching schedule at jasonmstein.blogspot.com.

I'm also up on th' FB (Facebrillz), look me up. I've started a Yoga Pearl Mysore group, so look us up!

GBSK: SHIRTZZZ

2010-06-18T10:55:00.001-07:00

Ganesh is my anchor.

My problem with yoga clothing in general and yoga-related T-shirts specifically is that although the sentiments on the shirts are usually heartfelt and, well, yogic, the execution of the designs tend to be, frankly, fucking terrible.

One of the myriad definitions of yoga in the Bhagavad Gita is "skill in action." Barry Silver's T-shirt company, GBSK, gets it right, both the devotional sentiment and the artful expression of that devotion. Barry is also one funny dude.

Shiva Rock City.

They're the only yoga-related T-shirts I wear, now that my friend Kaori from Tokyo has bestowed gifts to Tara and I.

Check out GBSK.

I got dibs on the Hanuman one, though, so back off.

TO BLOG OR NOT TO BLOG

2010-05-17T14:16:00.000-07:00

Today's quote comes via Warren Ellis by way of Bruce Sterling:

Twitter has killed/replaced blogging for lots of people. What’s next? Nothing but bit.ly-style shortcode payloads? I don’t see it. But then, the question invites binary thinking, which is always death. “What’s next,” these days, is always a cloud, not a single arrow.

TALEB TWEETS

2010-05-14T16:06:00.000-07:00

Nassim Taleb has been tweeting aphorisms like crazy.

They are really quite good; a pinch Ancestral with a dash of Situationist, and all highly memorable.

These are some of my favorites.

You will be civilized the day you can spend time doing nothing, learning nothing, & improving nothing, without feeling slightest guilt.
You have a real life if & only if you do not compete with anyone in any of your pursuits.
You have a real life when most of what you fear has the titillating prospect of adventure.
If you know, in the morning, what your day looks like with any precision, you are a little bit dead -the more precision, the more dead.
Their sabbatical is to work six days and rest for one; my sabbatical is to work for (part of) a day and rest for six.
You cannot express the holy in terms made for the profane; but you can discuss the profane in terms made for the holy
Charm lies in the unsaid, the unwritten, and the undisplayed. It takes mastery to control silence.

SKINNY STICK-MEN

2010-05-14T15:44:00.000-07:00

Haters gonna hate.

Y'know buddy, you're not doing yoga in the West much of a favor here, what with your skinny, emaciated Charlie Manson-on-meth look.

Unless this is Charles Manson, of course, in which case, carry on.

'Course, this could be Frank Zappa, too.

Either way, I have no idea of the context of this photo.

Still, it reminds me that there's nothing worse than perpetuating the idea that yoga is something to be practiced by skinny stick-men and women, insect creatures with protruding hip bones and prominent wrist bones, eyes sunken and hollow from the fires of ascetic practices.

This picture calls forth a descriptive turn by the author Thom Jones: "the sound of two skeletons fucking on a tin roof."

My god, not that I'm one to talk — the second time I returned from India, I was 140 pounds soaking wet, a prime example of 90's Skinny. Don't worry, I've packed on some husk since then.

And so I would encourage our friend here to unfurl his twigs from lotus and pick up a fork. You're not entering samadhi. You're light-headed 'cause you're starving.

ASANA, DRISHTI; MUDRA, MANTRA

2010-05-13T16:26:00.000-07:00

Hand mudras.

Ujjayi breathing engages our audio faculties. It is sonic in nature. It as a technique is an intimate and profound mantra, its intrinsic structure dispensing with names and forms.

Meanwhile, drishti, gazing point, engages our vision. As Dr. Douglas Brooks would say, it is photic.

To engage sight, the photic element, with drishti, as well as ujjayi breathing, and at the same time to ritualistically, rhythmically place the body in a grand and unnecessary posture — that is, to engage the tactile sense — is in fact to perform a mudra.

This mudra is not separate from nor does it transcend time, and in fact the very use of ujjayi, drishti, and asana — and mudra and mantra — allows us to experience more fully our time-bodies.

Some say time does not truly exist, and perhaps on an absolute level this is true. But on a relative level, time exists and it is not separate from our bodies.

OH MY GOD

2010-04-30T22:51:00.000-07:00

Officially NSFW. And yet I cannot look away.

So my train of thought went "Gudo Nishijima — gouda cheese; gouda cheese — bacon; bacon — unicorn bacon," which reminded me of that quote by Warren Ellis: "You may bring me unicorn bacon now."

And then I Google image'd 'bacon' in the off-chance I could get a picture of unicorn bacon and Jesus Christ, this is the first picture that came up.

Seriously, though. Hamburgers, chocolate, bananas, pears, breasts, rusty nails, you can even wrap bacon in more bacon — is there anything one cannot make more delicious by wrapping in bacon?

MORE GUDO

2010-04-30T22:43:00.000-07:00

Gudo Nishijima

"The true enlightenment can never be any kind of sudden change, which many ignorant people might admire, but it is very quiet and balanced situations of the autonomic nervous system."

—Gudo Nishijima

3 YEAR ANNIVERSARY

2010-04-28T10:37:00.000-07:00

Today marks the three-year anniversary of the day Tim wed Tara and I on the front lawn of our house in Encinitas.

I was conducting a massive Google image trawl for my other blog when I came on this photo, which for some reason makes me inexplicably happy that I am married to my wife, and that we have such a terrific baby, who is not a baby any longer, of course.

A couple thoughts:

1. I have a very photogenic wife.
2. Rowan was one tiny human when we took her to India.
3. I have gained literally 25 pounds since this photo was taken.

WORKSHOP WONDERWALL

2010-04-25T18:13:00.000-07:00

There is a magic synergy that arises when a large group of people from far and wide gather with the expectation and intention of something happening, whatever that something may be.

During the course of many years of practice with Tim Miller I have attended at least four of his workshops as well as two "teacher trainings."

Still, I did not know I needed to attended this workshop until I was actually in the workshop this past weekend, at which something, whatever that may have been, very much happened.

Thank you to everyone who turned up, and thank you to Jen and Alice at Yoga Pearl for hosting.

It is just Practice.

2010-04-24T20:49:00.000-07:00

Gudo himself.

"It is not necessary for us to get the so-called enlightenment. Because the so-called enlightenment is just a Romantic story, which many children love. But Buddhism is never a Romantic story, but it is just Action. It is just sitting. It is just Practice. It is just Reality."

—Gudo Nishijima

WANTED: YOGA TEACHER. MUST HATE MONEY.

2010-04-24T07:24:00.000-07:00

I had a funny idea for a wanted ad, so I Google Image'd "yoga teacher money" and this pic popped up.

On one hand, it's easy to hate on videos like this, for all the obvious reasons. My European readers might be shocked to discover that I will have to inform our Northern American readers who the hell this is: it's Geri Halliwell of the Spice Girls.

Which begets a second question: Who the fuck are the "Spice Girls"? But I digress; take a tip from me and don't waste time looking them up, either.

It's also easy to go the "It's all good, man" route. It's introducing yoga to a broader audience, increasing exposure, etc, etc.

I always look at shit like this, and no offense, Rodney, but the Rodney Yee videos on the racks at Target ("Yoga Abs") and marvel at the beauty of the packages.

A pretty, fresh-faced and scrubbed-clean blonde in short-shorts with just a hint of abzzz on a flat belly. The font and colors are coordinated with her face and skin-tone, and all are pleasing.

The video is selling a brand of yoga with which I'm not familiar ("Geri Yoga"), but it offers instant perspective on my favorite brand of yoga (ashtanga vinyasa), the ways this tradition is a brand — and the ways it is not —and how it is transmitted, as well as how it is sold in the marketplace.

FREEZER, CONTENTS, APRIL 2010

2010-04-14T12:05:00.000-07:00

Because my wife dared me.

2010-04-07T12:50:00.000-07:00

As the Chinese proverb goes, I had some, shall we say, interesting times as an adolescent and teenager, and but for the grace of god, emerged without Black Flag bars tattooed on my body. During one particularly interesting journey to the depths, I wrote a letter to Henry Rollins, the lead singer of Black Flag and Rollins Band.

Six or eight months later, and well after I'd forgotten all about the letter, a postcard appeared in the mailbox, one side filled with small, neat, hand-printed block letters. "Hang in there," wrote Rollins, "the next 10 years are going to blow your funky mind!"

It was compassion as Dogen describes it, a hand reaching for a pillow in the night, and damn if Rollins wasn't right.

The guy is still out there, doing his thing. Here he talks about the fact that the Black Flag logo is now flash-art at tattoo studios around the country:

"It’s what happens when anything stands still for too long. It’s why there’s bird shit on Buddha’s head, ’cause it’s a statue. That’s why monks laugh and go, 'Well, you shouldn’t be sitting there. The birds crap on you.' It’s what happens when anything sits still — it gets swept into the lexicon."

Those of us practicing and, god forbid, teaching ashtanga vinyasa are transmitting this tradition, this lineage. I have written before that ashtanga is a reflexive practice — just as it informs and transforms us, we inform and transform it.

As Eliot wrote in "The Wasteland," "Lips that would kiss/ Form prayers to broken stone." It is our duty as tradition-bearers to not cast new statues to worship. It is our duty to not practice yoga as though it were flash-art off a tattoo-studio wall.

It is our duty to not let the birds shit on our heads.

YOU NEED TO EAT AND SLEEP MORE. NOW.

2010-04-05T16:49:00.001-07:00

Clearly that is not enough food.

The ashtanga vinyasa yoga practice is a reflexive one, meaning it reflects on, and in turn is reflected upon, other aspects of your life.

Some of the biggest gravitational bodies to exert larger tidal pulls are diet, sleep, relationships, work, and stress.

Are you getting your 9-to-11 hours of sleep a night? No?

If you are a bipedal primate belonging to the species Homo sapiens, you need your 9 hours every night. Especially if you're undertaking a physically demanding endeavor such as two hours of ashtanga vinyasa daily.

The question of what constitutes a supportive diet --- and in turn, the question of how our practice supports, effects and influences our diet --- is much trickier. As you're a bipedal primate of the species Homo sapiens, you are an omnivore, and can survive on wood chips or filtered cow's blood (i.e. milk).

Patanjali didn't concern himself so much with the specifics of what to eat, though his suggestions for the yamas and niyamas, one's personal and social ethical qualities, provide a framework in which to make one's dietary choices.

Pattabhi Jois wrote a bit about diet in Yoga Mala. The guy was nothing if not common-sense.

"If the mortal body is to be sustained, things like food are essential. After all, by sustaining the body, does one not attain divinity through following the righteous path? Thus the food we eat should be pure (sattvic), untainted (nirmala), and acquired by righteousness, and not be secured by cheating, deceit, persecution or other unjust means. Only taking as much food as we need to maintain our bodies, and not desiring things of enjoyment which are superfluous to the physical body, is aparigraha." (P.24)

Guruji also had some suggestions of what our food should — and should not — be comprised. I don't feel the need to talk about that, save to say that genetic, personal, and social context (your samskaras) should be taken into account.

In my experience with this particular system, many people tend to under-eat. That is, many people tend to not eat enough to support recovery and growth from the physical stress of ashtanga vinyasa practice, with its emphasis on 2-hours-plus practices of strength wedded to active flexibility.

I'm sorry I'm not sorry, but if you aren't sleeping right now, you need to be eating.

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE EDITOR OF YOGA JOURNAL

2010-03-19T15:17:00.001-07:00

Dear Madam,

I must sincerely laud your endeavors at Yoga Journal.

The editorial direction and the pictorial content that you and your shareholders have determined to be the most lucrative — that which will attract advertising dollars aimed at 20-to-40-something middle- and upper-middle-class caucasian women — have indeed attracted top-tier women's yoga clothing brands.

However, as a testosterone-laden, red-blooded heterosexual male (can you say householder? Cha-ching!), I must also congratulate you on so successfully capturing another important yoga demographic and, like true market innovators, meeting a heretofore unknown demand. While Namarupa remains the premier magazine for yoga-related philosophy, discourse, photography, and interviews, you are the only high-quality glossy yoga jerk-mag on the market. Kudos!

Sincerely, et cetera, et cetera.

P.S. I anxiously await your "Girls of the Bhagavad Gita" pictorial. "Hardtail," indeed!

JESUS CHRIST!

2010-03-16T12:43:00.000-07:00

Alice Joanou is one of my first asana teachers; she teaches in Oakland and occasionally posts some good stuff.

This is from a new one called "Yeshua Avatara":

"In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says to his students: 'Here I am sending you out like sheep amid wolves, so be smart as snakes and innocent as doves.'

I couldn't help but think of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, who taught that even an enlightened snake should not lose the power to hiss ferociously: 'I asked you not to bite, but I didn't forbid you to hiss!'"

Which reminds me of Jim Morrison: "Ride the snake, the snake is long," which in turn reminds me of riding Lady Gaga's disco stick. (Lady Gaga: banging!)

So there you have it, from Jesus to Lady Gaga in four easy steps. Bonus points for Cobra Commander pic. Also, bonus points for resisting the obvious reference to kundalini.

VIDEO DAYS

2010-03-14T16:36:00.001-07:00

Mysore '92.

NEW POST. HUZZAH.

2010-03-12T17:00:00.000-08:00

This post will be just like Slayer's "Raining Blood." Short and brutal:

Do less on your yoga mat.

If you're banging out 5-6 day weeks (if you're doing it, you know what I'm talking about), I dare you — I dare you! — to take every fourth week at half power.

Half!

Power!

Do less!

Pattabhi Jois would say, "Practice practice, long time. All is coming."

He didn't say, "Practice, practice all primary series, as hard as you can, long time. All is coming."

So you have my permission to unclench your butt-cheeks every four weeks.

That is all. Carry on.

MAD BUSY

2009-12-09T17:27:00.000-08:00

We've had a hectic fall and winter, with heaps of traveling, two weddings, and what the hell, a good ol' fashioned move thrown in for good measure. I still feel like I'm recovering. I've been immersed in several intensive physical practices which for all intents and purposes have drained me of the impetus to write.

Good news, however: we're traveling to Encinitas in a few weeks, and the free time and god hope the sun will recharge some of my batteries. So for the three of you who read this, don't worry. I'll be back.

I promise I'll drop more f-bombs, too, and we can discuss eating copious amounts of meat, the appropriateness of wrath, and other yoga topics probably not under discussion in the intellectual yoga salons in Gokulam.

PRACTICE NON-ATTACHMENT?

2009-10-16T09:21:00.001-07:00

I'm not really that smart. More accurately, I'm dumb-smart, in that I have a mind for minutiae and a steel-trap for trivia. I'm not so quick on the uptake, however, when it comes to translating abstract yoga concepts into everyday experience.

So I greatly admire the poetry of directions like "Lift your kidneys," "Open your heart," or "Practice non-attachment." Feel free to insert your most poetic, flowery yoga chestnut here.

Like, I get it. But only intellectually. Looking back at my experience in various led-class yoga settings, directions like the ones above immediately established in me a glaring gap between what I was really experiencing and what I thought I should be feeling. Like I said, maybe it's my own faulty wiring, but I just don't know how to "open my heart."

The instances when a great heart opening have occurred have never been intentional, and have always arisen independent of my own desires or efforts to do same.

So these aphorisms helped build a model of experience separate from my own, which turned the practice of yoga into my efforts to get to, or achieve, or attain that model.

Over time, the mundane and decidedly simple physical (and thereby mental) yoga techniques that one can actually do are what has grounded me: Inhale, exhale. Activate mula bandha, or "Take yanal control," as Pattabhi Jois used to say.

So don't ask me my thoughts on that book Mula Bandha: The Master Key. I will say that my thoughts on the subject currently are this: if you can stop the flow of urine and feces, you are intimately familiar with mula bandha. Otherwise, what use?

To have a goal or intention is okay — this is, after all, what the bandhas do for our ujjayi breath; that is, they anchor and give shape and direction to the in- and out-breath. So it's okay to want to perform an asana. But to paraphrase Shunryu Suzuki, you make the effort, and then lose yourself in the effort. It is that perpetual return to the breath, bandhas, and gazing points that allow the non-attachment and heart-opening to perhaps (or perhaps not) arise.

Yoga practice becomes an engagement with what we can do, and this relationship with what we can do right now is an engagement and relationship with the boring splendor of everyday, ordinary reality, just as it is, right now.

OCTOBER 17 PRANAYAMA CANCELLED

2009-10-16T09:20:00.001-07:00

For all those of you (cough cough) planning to attend the pranayama class tomorrow at Near East: class has been cancelled as I'll be filling in from 8-9:30 AM at Yoga Pearl

A side note: the class at Yoga Pearl is an Introduction to Ashtanga Yoga, and it'll be very compassionate.

For those heavy breathers out there, pranayama at Near East will resume the following Saturday, October 24.

DEVASTATED, SIMPLY DEVASTATED

2009-09-02T17:33:00.000-07:00

All these years of practice and I could have just rigged up an iron contraption?

Fuck.

15 BREATHS

2009-09-02T12:20:00.000-07:00

KILL ALL HIPPIES

2009-07-31T16:50:00.000-07:00

I especially like how it's titled "Hippie Weirdo Yoga Farmers." Because really, aren't they all?

GEAR CHECK

2009-07-01T10:05:00.000-07:00

Purple tank tucked into white spandex?! SHREDS YOUR FACE OFF.