DON'T FEAR! WHY FEARING, YOU?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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.

1. You will be civilized the day you can spend time doing nothing, learning nothing, & improving nothing, without feeling slightest guilt.
2. You have a real life if & only if you do not compete with anyone in any of your pursuits. 
3. You have a real life when most of what you fear has the titillating prospect of adventure.
4. 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.
5. 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.   
6. You cannot express the holy in terms made for the profane; but you can discuss the profane in terms made for the holy
7. Charm lies in the unsaid, the unwritten, and the undisplayed. It takes mastery to control silence.  

SKINNY STICK-MEN

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

Because my wife dared me.

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.

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

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!

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

Mysore '92.

NEW POST. HUZZAH.

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

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?

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

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

All these years of practice and I could have just rigged up an iron contraption?

Fuck.

15 BREATHS

KILL ALL HIPPIES

I especially like how it's titled "Hippie Weirdo Yoga Farmers." Because really, aren't they all?

GEAR CHECK

Purple tank tucked into white spandex?! SHREDS YOUR FACE OFF.

BUFFET YOGA

New York Times douchebag Stanley Fish, in "Think Again" in the June 14 edition, reviewed Matthew Crawford's book Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work.

The application of Crawford's thinking to an established, systemic yoga practice is apparent. As Fish writes, "Crawford associates ... 'remote control' knowledge with liberalism, a way of thinking that has at its center the individual self unburdened 'by attachments to others and radically free,' a self whose chief commitment and obligation is to its own 'creativity.'

Crawford prefers to the ethic of individual creativity and its 'rhetoric of freedom' the ethic of submission to facts 'that do not arise from the human will.' It is that submission, he says, that characterizes the work of craftsmen, artisans and musicians. 'One can’t be a musician without . . . subjecting one’s fingers to the discipline of frets or keys.'

Whereas craftsmanship 'means dwelling on a task for a long time and going deeply into it,' the 'preferred role model' of the radically free liberal self 'is the management consultant, who swoops in and out and whose very pride lies in his lack of particular expertise.'"

Here Crawford might as well be discussing the difference between buffet-style and systemic yoga practices, the former an extension of the self and beholden only to its practitioners' "creativity."

This in comparison to the latter, which has an established sequence of asanas, pranayamas and seated techniques that cannot "arise from the human will." One thinks here of Krishna's definition of yoga, in the Bhagavad Gita, as "skill in action," the residue of which — yoga — arises only after "dwelling on a task for a long time and going deeply into it."

Here we can also default to Pattabhi Jois' simpler, famous four-word dictum: "Practice, practice. Long time."

Then there's also the idea of "submission." It is a great paradox that freedom, liberation or moksha arises only after submitting to discipline. Richard Freeman uses the image of the ouroboros, the alchemical symbol of the snake swallowing its own tail. A practice like ashtanga yoga is, by its very nature, the limiting or closing off of potentiality, of choice, of freedom.

Yet it is only by rubbing against the edges of the practice — these poses, in this order, using these techniques — that both self and not-self can be transcended. Nowhere else is this made more apparent than in the application of one of the three tristhana, the fundamental techniques of the ashtanga vinyasa yoga practice: drishti. For, in order to see all points, one must fix one's gaze on a single point.

WHY NO STORIES?

Well, the stories occasionally bleed out of here, but you're right — I'm definitely not writing as many anecdotal stories as I used to. I just glanced back at some posts from a trip to India (in 2005!), and realized posts here have drifted into tangential raving about my ideas relating to the practice of ashtanga vinyasa. What gives?

A lot of it stems from the fact that these last couple years I've been teaching a lot more, and more specifically, teaching ashtanga yoga at yoga centers (as opposed to fitness clubs). Who wants to practice where their daily tapas is potential grist for some storytelling mill? I sure don't. So I've toned the jibber-jabber way down.

What's more, as I've come to teach the techniques of ashtanga vinyasa, Leaping Lanka has come to serve an important humanizing function, lest anyone confuse me with the powerful effects of the ashtanga system itself. The system provides the tools, the techniques, that when practiced consistently and correctly, will engender evolution.

I'm merely the semi-half-wit (quarter-wit?) who kept showing up at my teacher's studio in order to practice it. For my part, I enjoy Lil' Wayne, comic books, and naughty words, and at certain nebulous and unspecified times of my life I allegedly may have enjoyed some forms of illicit chemicals. Every 6 weeks I enjoy a glass of wine or a mojito. Et cetera, et cetera.

I really do believe this practice will help us evolve. It shouldn't deform us to an ideal or an obsession. Our lives shouldn't serve our practice. Our practice should serve and enrich our lives.

There you go: more tangential raving. I swear I'll whip up a story that ties eka pada sirsasana to bong-loads, eightballs, and the yamas and niyamas. Next time.

READING LIST

Always easier to hate on dudes, nahmsayin'? I shit on Breaking Open the Head and 2012 before: fine.

Not saying you shouldn't read 'em — I just put 'em on the same level as books by Tom Clancy, John Grisham, Paramahansa Yogananda, or Jed McKenna: pulpy plane-flight entertainment.

Here're a couple books whose authors speak more lucidly, more eloquently and more experientially about practice, its means, its ends, and the various highs and lows in between.

Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism by Chogyam Trungpa

According to Georg Feuerstein's Crazy Wisdom, as well as many other accounts, Trungpa was one very weird dude who got up to some ultra-weird shit. Another instance of an Eastern adept unable to handle the West? Maybe.

Still, this book ought to be mandatory reading for anyone with a daily practice of any sort.

Two asides: First, isn't "Chogyam Trungpa" such a great fucking name? It's an amazing potpourri of consonants and syllables, all arranged most flavorfully. I often wander the house reciting aloud it and its many variations: Chogyam Trungpa, Chungpa Trogyam, Chogpa Trungyam.

Second, and this is empirically proveable in a laboratory setting, but Georg Feuerstein possesses the supernatural ability to string together words — any words! in any combination! — in such a way that sleep is automatically, instantaneously induced in the reader. Sorta like chugging a bottle of NyQuil or being sapped with a velvet-covered blackjack, only without the attendant aches.

Not only will a Feuerstein book stun its reader to unconsciousness, but all Level 3 characters or lesser within a 10-foot radius must make a Saving Throw against Sleep Spells or else succumb to a deep slumber that lasts for three rounds.

Remember, Feuerstein's Enchantment won't work on oozes, constructs, the undead, or Richard Freeman. Mainly because Richard doesn't actually need to read yoga books — he merely glances at a yoga book's Library of Congress summary to parse its contents.

Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Sunryu Suzuki

I can neither confirm nor deny any weirdness on the part of Sunryu Suzuki, though I'm sure there're some tell-alls out there. As with Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, though, it doesn't matter. This is a collection of transcripts of many of Suzuki's talks. He hits on aspects of practice in a clear, lucid, no-nonsense manner.

HIMSA!

I copped a pair of used Chuck Taylors (blue) at Buffalo Exchange ... what, maybe 3 months ago? They were $14.99. "Gently worn," as the tag said.

Some d-bag stole 'em this morning from in front of the door to the yoga studio. Never mind the logistics — like, who's trolling around at 8 a.m. in an empty building? Who would steal a pair of wet, dirty, well-fucking-worn pair of Chuck Taylors? (Well, a smack/crack/meth-head, of course.)

After the incredulity passed, I gleefully entertained fantasies of laying hands on this individual, catching him in the act, as it were, and administering "frontier justice," a stiff dose of pure himsa — "harm" or "wounding."

Also, maybe a little bit of himsa for anyone who chirps "Guess it's just another lesson in non-attachment!" Not so much for the sentiment, of course, but for refusing to acknowledge the dynamic, energizing reality of anger. Anger exists. It's not going away, nor would we want it to.

Reminds me of one of those Buddhist guys — I think Milarepa — whose son was killed by bandits. Milarepa weeps, ragged and wet with tears, and one of his students asks, "But Milarepa, I thought all was illusion?"

"Yes," said Milarepa, "but some is super-illusion."

The shoe-theft anger sparked, swelled, raged, faded. I commiserated with the wife and have since funneled that heat into this post. Consequently the flames have banked and cooled.

Of course, now I'm in the market for another affordable pair of Chucks. I'll take 'em "gently used," too.