our-yoga

I just read David Robson's latest post on Elephant Journal about doing the practice to the correct vinyasa count. If you practice the primary series to the correct vinyasa count, you can actually complete the practice in an hour and five minutes (those of you who have practiced to Sharath's led primary CD, or better yet, have done led primary in Mysore with Sharath, will know what I'm talking about here).

But trying to do the practice to the correct vinyasa count is such a humbling experience. Well, at least for me, it is. For me, the attempt to keep up with the vinyasa count reveals with brutal honesty how I often consciously or unconsciously "cheat" in the practice by taking extra breaths to get into more challenging postures or to do fancy stuff like floating or jumping back with straight legs (yes, these things cause you to "cheat" in the practice, because most mortals--well, at least this particular mortal--have to take at least one extra breath to do such fancy stuff, which messes up the vinyasa count). In this sense, the vinyasa count really calls me out; it's saying to me, "No fancy bullshit, my friend: Just do the practice!"

But back to Robson's article. It's such a great article. I learnt so much from his words. The following passages really stand out to me:

"...more struggle often seems to create an opportunity for more mindfulness. My practice is just as often about the discrepancies in the vinyasa as much as it is the times I actually match the count. Both experiences are mired in citta, and can provide the same opportunities for observation and non-attachment.

However, while I don’t have to be able to do floating jump backs, or get into Marichyasana D in one breath to gain the benefits of the practice, I do have to try as hard as I can—whether I can do it or not, the vinyasa count does matter. The count keeps me focused on the breath and in the present moment. And it is only by striving to match the vinyasa that the deep, internal heat of tapas, and its corresponding purification, will come.

In Ashtanga we work at our personal edge every day. That work is to balance sincere effort with ease and surrender. The vinyasa frames our experience during practice, limiting our focus to the prescribed breath and movement. But we also need to apply non-attachment, vairagya, to the experiences that practice yields.

I believe that the unattainable quality of the vinyasa count and the never-ending difficulty of the poses are designed to cultivate softness as much as strength. We need the ideal, the strong rules of the practice to direct and focus our energy. And we also need to accept the results of our efforts, whatever they are, with equanimity. When both sincere effort and non-attachment are present in our practice, correct vinyasa might just happen."

I totally agree with Robson here, especially that last paragraph. Very often during the practice, I tend to get a bit too attached to the physical outcomes of the postures. When that happens, a lot of chitta vrtti is aroused ("What?! How come I can only just barely catch my fingers in Supta Kurmasana today? Oh no, am I getting fat?! But I practice everyday, and do my best to limit my intake of potato chips. Why is this still happening to me? Why?!..."). Keeping to the vinyasa count is the practice's way of telling us that none of any of this really matters. Just breathe and move, and all is coming. It's like this with the practice. And it's also like this with life. In a word: Vairagyabhyam. Non-attachment.

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In a recent post, Steve over at the Confluence Countdown offers us a concise history of the modern sticky yoga mat. According to Steve's research, the first historically-recorded use of a sticky yoga mat was by Angela Farmer in 1982. Steve writes:

"She [Farmer] seems to be credited with being the first person to grab a piece of “carpet underlay” — you know, that multi-colored squishy material — and cut it down to size. She did so when teaching in Germany in 1982, and when she returned home to England, the idea caught on in her local yoga scene. Her father then worked with the German manufacturer, and voila! The first yoga sticky mat (apparently in white) was born.

Hugger Mugger gets the nod for being the first mass producer or yoga mats, sometime in the early 1990s. In other words, 20 years ago."

So the first mass-produced yoga mats came on the scene only, what, 20 years ago? Who knew? You know, this is kinda weird: I can almost swear that I've seen vintage videos of people doing yoga in the 50s or the 60s on sticky yoga mats! Well, this is probably just my mind projecting a reality that never existed... isn't it funny how we often see the reality that we want to see? I should write a post on this some day... In any case, all this musing about the origin of the sticky yoga mat got me really curious, and I decided to do a little research on my own. Not being as industrious as Steve is, I confined my research to looking for old yoga videos on Youtube, to see if people back then really did not do yoga on sticky mats. One of the videos I found was this video featuring this very charming lady by the name of Lilias Folan. Apparently, she was really big back in the early 70s, with her very own show on PBS. Check this out:

Wow. This was a very all-over-the-place post. From the history of yoga mats, to Lilias Folan, to Haruki Murakami and 1Q84, to Kino Shorts. Quite a tour de force, wouldn't you say? :-)

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Kino read my post yesterday about her latest Elephant Journal article and going to Mysore (or Timbuktu). She has the following to add to what I wrote, and has given me permission to share it with the blogosphere. She writes:

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I just read Kino's latest post on Elephant Journal. It begins with an entertaining story about Kino bracing herself for a pick-up line: I'm not going to reproduce that story here; you can go read the actual post yourself :-) But I'll like to share the following lines from the later part of her post:

"All the handstands, acrobatic jump throughs, deep backbends and exciting postures are all just cheap tricks, but the miracle of the practice is no joke. The gravity of what happens underneath the physical through the practice of yoga is something that is incredibly hard to explain in words. It borders on the ineffable because the magic of yoga happens exactly when you touch the divine within yourself.
 
When your mind shifts awareness to the highest nature of spirit, the physical body heals, transforms and changes. But if you get caught in trying to master only the superficial tricks of the practice, you run the risk of preventing the experience, the magic, that is at the heart of yoga...

If you are not willing to let the experience of learning how to do a handstand literally turn your perspective on the world upside down, then a handstand is just a handstand. But if you are willing to let the process challenge your attachments, humble your ego and unlock compassionate strength then the process of yoga is happening. It is your choice what you focus on through the practice."

I really feel that this last paragraph really captures the essence of the asana practice. If you have been practicing Ashtanga for a while, you will no doubt notice that there is a certain paradoxical nature to the asana practice: It demands that you work really, really hard on a physical level to achieve some very specific physical outcomes, be it mastering a jumpthrough, getting into a deeper back/forward bend, or mastering a handstand. Indeed, I sometimes think that if somebody were to just randomly stumble into a mysore room and observe everything that's going on, that person might very well get the impression that all that's going on is a bunch of rather scantily-clad people doing gymnastic moves in a rather amateurish manner, accompanied by some unusually loud breathing. Because that's really what's happening, on a purely physical level.

And yet we also know that's not the whole story. What matters is not just what you do, but with what spirit you do it. Am I reaching for my heels in Kapotasana just to get that ego gratification that comes from getting my heels in Kapotasana (I may as well 'fess up here, and admit that I am not beyond such ego-gratification)? Or can I allow the process of reaching for my heels to be a sort of surrender, an exercise in challenging my attachments, humbling my ego, and unlocking compassionate strength? Therein lies the paradox of the asana practice: What appears to be extreme physical exertion and striving from an external perspective can actually be a tool for transformative surrender.

I'm now going to take this discussion in a rather different direction. At the risk of flogging what may be a very dead horse (there's got to be a less Ahimsa-violating analogy here...), I'm going to draw your attention to a striking parallel between Kino's words and something that we have been talking a lot about recently in the blogsphere: Going or not going to Mysore. (You should have seen this coming... well, it's still not too late to stop reading now :-)) Where is the parallel? To see this, simply replace "learning how to do a handstand" in that last paragraph with "going to Mysore". Here goes:

Although I have yet to go to Mysore, I have always suspected that going to Mysore isn't just about going to a physical place and practicing in a particular shala under a particular teacher (Sharath or Saraswati), although these are wonderful things in themselves. I suspect that a big part of the experience lies in getting way out of one's comfort zone, letting go of what one is or was, and laying oneself bare on many levels (physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual), allowing the experience of practicing and living in a very strange and unfamiliar place to change one in ways that one cannot anticipate. I think this may be part of what Owl has in mind when she writes about being a zero. In this sense, the physical act of going to Mysore is like the asana practice: It's not just what one does, but with what spirit one does it. 

But I suppose somebody could probably respond to all this by saying, "Well, if it's just about going to a foreign place and getting out of your comfort zone, how is going to Mysore to practice different from going to, say, Paris or Timbuktu?" Well, aside from the fact that the KPJAYI is not in Paris or Timbuktu, I'll say that there probably isn't that much of a difference where you go; again, it's a matter of with what spirit one goes where one goes. I suppose it is possible to go to Timbuktu (I've never been there, and know nothing about the place: I basically just pulled this place out of my mind's a%%; if you are reading this, and happen to be from Timbuktu, please feel free to call me out, and educate me about the intricacies of the place. I'll humbly accept whatever you have to teach me), stay there for a couple of months, do the practice while there (or not), and have a totally transformative experience. There. I said it. So it appears, in the final analysis, that there is nothing particularly special about going to Mysore after all.

Oh well. There's a part of me that feels that I should probably write more, and try to say something about why practicing in Mysore might be very different from practicing in Timbuktu. But since I have never been to either of these places (yes, I'm an armchair Ashtangi... how about that?), I think any such attempt would be in bad faith. And besides, today is clearly not a good blogging day. My mind is running all over the place, as you can see, and it would be very unfair to subject you to more of my chitta vrtti if you have been kind enough to actually read this far. So I'll

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sign off now. More later.

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The recent discussions over going to Mysore (or not) have brought up a lot of interesting perspectives from lots of people in the Ashtanga blogosphere regarding what might be called the Mysore Question. But in addition to all these interesting responses to the Mysore Question, all this intense discussion has also brought to the surface certain fundamental questions about the purpose of blogging. Why do we blog? What is the relationship (if any) between our blogging lives, our practice, and our everyday lives off the mat? Is there supposed to be any coherent relationship between these things in the first place?

These questions are especially significant for Ashtanga bloggers. As we know, Guruji famously said that "Yoga is 99 percent practice, 1 percent theory." There are many ways one can interpret this, but one way to interpret this is to understand Guruji to be saying that too much theorizing/discursive thought takes away from the practice, which is essentially something to be experienced and felt, not overly discoursed about.

If this is true, then there seems to be an inherent tension between being an Ashtangi and being an Ashtanga blogger: One is basically writing and discoursing about something that is not meant to be written and discoursed about (at least 99% of the time). So what should somebody like me do? Shut down this blog? Well, I'm not quite prepared to do this just yet...

But here's a slightly different way of approaching this issue. It is an undeniable fact that human beings are beings of words and concepts. We make sense of the world and find our way in it by comprehending and manipulating words and concepts. So perhaps we can think of words and concepts as signposts that guide us in our interactions with the world and with one another... wait! Actually, this is not correct: Words and concepts have to be more than merely signposts. I mean, can you even begin to imagine what a world without words and concepts would be like? I don't know about you, but I can't: It's like trying to paint without brushstrokes, trying to conceptualize without concepts. Thus, the relationship between words and concepts, on the one hand, and the world, on the other, cannot be like the relationship between signposts and the things that they signpost. It's not like you can just wake up one day and say to yourself, "From now on, I'm going to live in a word-free and concept-free world!", and then set about removing words and concepts from your life in the same way in which you might remove all signposts from a place which you already know very well. You can't do this; Just try it, if you don't believe me: It's not just that you would have to stop speaking to anybody (that is the easy past), you would have to totally stop thinking, because it is impossible to think of anything without framing what you are thinking of; and you can't frame anything in your mind without concepts.

What all this means, I think, is that words and concepts are not just things that signpost a world that is otherwise word- and concept-free. For us humans at least, there is a very real sense in which words and concepts are our world, so that any world without words and concepts would simply not be a recognizably human world.

Okay Nobel, you may be thinking, but what has any of this ruminating on word/concept/world to do with what you started off talking about (Ashtanga blogging and practice)? Well, my apologies for the digression (although, as you will presently see, this digression is actually necessary). Let me just start (again) by making a rather prosaic observation: The Ashtanga practice is an activity that is done in this world. Which means that doing the practice is a way of being in the world, as Heidegger might say. At any rate, as something that is in this world, the practice is something that we cannot make sense of without words and concepts, even if many of those words and concepts are in a language that is quite different from the language of our everyday industrial world. Actually, this underscores the importance of words and concepts all the more: The words that we take so much for granted in our practice (yamas, niyamas, tapas, samadhi, to name a few) refer to concepts that constitute a different reality from the sort of industrialized model of physical movement that you find in gyms and other places of recreational movement. At the risk of sounding like the Ashtanga Fundamentalist which I actually am, this is why if you try to strip Ashtanga of all its "yogic" or Sanskrit trappings, and try to present it insipidly as a form of "exercise to invigorate the mind, body and spirit" (think Power Yoga), you lose something very vital to its identity: The Sanskrit words and concepts that we use to talk about our practice are not just signposts for things in the practice; signposts that we can discard and replace with other signposts. There is a very real sense in which these words and concepts are the practice. As Heidegger would say, "Language is the house of Being." I'm no Heidgger scholar (actually, I'm no anything-scholar, but this is something for another post :-)), but I can't help feeling that Heidegger may well be talking about the practice here: There is a very real sense in which the words and concepts that describe our practice are structures which house the practice. Without these structures, the practice would have no home, and would be condemned to roam the wilderness of unintelligible primeval chaos. Ha! You didn't know that Guruji was a Heideggerian, did you? :-) (I hope I'm not being disrespectful here.)

Okay... I see that I still haven't gotten to talking about Ashtanga blogging and practice. Damn, I do digress, don't I? Okay... let me just bring your attention to another prosaic observation: Guruji did not say, "Yoga is 100 percent practice, 0 percent theory." Why didn't he say that? In my humble opinion, I think it is because that 1 percent theory is a small but not insignificant part of the practice. If I am correct in saying that the words and concepts of the practice constitute a home for the practice, then a yoga without theory would be... homeless! Which brings me (finally) to Ashtanga blogging: Insofar as blogging involves using words and concepts to talk about and describe the practice, Ashtanga blogging can be seen as a sort of housekeeping: In judiciously using words and concepts to clarify and reflect on various aspects of the practice, the Ashtanga blogger is maintaining and keeping the "house" of the practice in good shape. In so doing, he or she is helping to provide and maintain a sound and safe structure for others to maintain their practices.  In this way, the Ashtanga blogger contributes to both her own practice and those of others. Actually, approached in a certain way, there is also a sense in which Ashtanga blogging is a practice in itself. In my opinion, skilful and effective blogging often demands creative insight, a certain willingness to be vulnerable and to open oneself up to whatever the universe/blogosphere may throw at one, a certain love of oneself and one's fellow beings, and a certain amount of fearlessness--all qualities which we associate with Ashtanga practice. Actually, Owl said something in a comment on her most recent post that really expresses what I am trying to convey here. So maybe I'll end this post with her words:

"Blogging is dangerous. We can just face the fear of having one’s “self” compromised. No big thing. The only reason I delete comments at all is when community - a more fragile unity - gets strongly compromised."

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"Most people are not looking for provable truths... truth is often accompanied by intense pain, and almost no one is looking for painful truths. What people need is beautiful, comforting stories that make them feel as if their lives have some meaning. Which is where religion comes from...

If a certain belief--call it "Belief A"--makes the life of that man or this woman appear to be something of deep meaning, then for them Belief A is the truth. If Belief B makes their lives appear to be powerless and puny, then Belief B turns out to be a falsehood. The distinction is quite clear. If someone insists that Belief B is the truth, people will probably hate him, ignore him, or, in some cases, attack him. It means nothing to them that Belief B might be logical or provable. Most people barely manage to preserve their sanity by denying and rejecting images of themselves as powerless and puny."

Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

Over the last couple of weeks, I have been intently reading 1Q84. Which may explain my lower level of blogging activity. I've been enjoying the novel so far, but it's a pretty intense read, not easy to get through. To begin with, it's almost a thousand pages, and it appears that Murakami is trying to squeeze every idea he has ever had about the world, every bizarre plot device and development, and every strange or interesting character he can think of into these 900 plus pages. You almost have to be a little ADD to be able to keep up with all these things. The novel is a love story, science-fiction tale and detective/mystery story all rolled into one. Personally, I kind of feel the love story (which is basically the central story-line tying everything else together) to be a bit of a distraction from the many interesting themes that he brings up. But then again, maybe Murakami is trying to appeal to as broad an audience as possible. Who knows?

Anyway, the above passage from 1Q84 really speaks to me. I think there is much truth to the idea that most people (including, probably, myself) prefer to believe in beautiful narratives about life and the universe than to confront certain painful truths, especially if these truths contradict the beautiful narratives they want to believe.

Actually, this is kind of related to what I wrote about in my previous post. Think about it this way. We basically have two beliefs here:

Belief A: Ashtanga was designed for teenage boys.

Belief B: Ashtanga was not designed for teenage boys.

If you have been reading this blog for a while and/or know a few things about what many in the greater yoga world think about Ashtanga, you won't need me to tell you that many in the greater yoga world subscribe to Belief A. There are many possible reasons why people might subscribe to Belief A. One possible reason might be misinformation or indoctrination (I would personally call it "brainwashing", but I get the sense that I've already upset enough people as it is...). For instance, I hear that certain very reputable big name yoga studios which conduct teacher training programs all across the country actually tell their teacher trainees that Ashtanga was originally designed for young boys to channel their hyperactive energies and focus their minds. My acupuncturist, who recently completed a 200 hour training program with one such studio (apparently the program is designed in such a way that upon graduation, the graduate will be qualified to teach, among other things, Ashtanga/Vinyasa classes), also voiced the same belief to me when she heard that I practice only Ashtanga (see this post).

In addition, I also have a hunch that perhaps people subscribe to Belief A because it makes life easier for them, in a sense. What do I mean? Well, if it is indeed true that Ashtanga was designed for teenage boys, then if you are not a teenage boy, you have a perfect reason (excuse?) not to practice Ashtanga: It gets you off the hook, so to speak! Well, okay, maybe there isn't any hook to get off of, in the first place, but I think you see what I'm getting at: The general idea is that if there is a belief that makes your life a little easier, why not believe it?

So why don't I believe Belief A? For one thing, because I really don't think it's true. And I also happen to be an Ashtanga Fundamentalist. And it is actually easier to be an effective Ashtanga Fundamentalist if you believe that Ashtanga was not designed for teenage boys: Otherwise, you will basically be going into every practice with the idea that you are doing a practice that was designed for somebody else's body. This can't be healthy, energetically speaking.         

Anyhow, I think I've written enough for now: I have quite probably reached my daily one percent theory limit, and need to get on with other things. So I'll sign off for now.

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Wow, it's actually been a week since I last posted anything on this blog. What happened? Well, nothing. I just thought I'd take a couple of days off from blogging last weekend. Those couple of days became a little longer, and before you know it, it's been a week! Which is probably just as well: I probably couldn't find anything worth blogging about, anyway...

But now that I'm back, I think I'll flex my blogging muscles by sinking my teeth into this most persistent of Ashtanga myths: Ashtanga was designed for teenage boys. I really don't know what to say about this, except to simply deny it outright: No, it's not. Here's an immediate piece of evidence to the contrary: I'm 36, and am practicing.

But then again, I may not be the best piece of evidence. After all, I'm only, like, one-third to half-way through second series (how far along in second is Ardha Matsyendrasana, anyway?), and I've had to work through my fair share of injuries and other obstacles even to get this far. So fine, don't use me as evidence. Well, let's try another tact: As Steve mentions in his latest blog post, the great Eddie Stern recently proclaimed that this myth is simply not true: Both Krishnamacharya and Guruji taught people of both sexes at all stages of life. As Guruji famously proclaimed, ""Old man, stiff man, weak man, sick man, all can take practice. Only lazy man cannot practice." We should also understand that by "man", Guruji also includes "woman" here. Which means that the only people who cannot practice are lazy men and women :-)

Actually, here's another independent source which busts this myth. During my interview with Kino in Richmond, VA last April (see this post), she related the following story. Back in the day when they were still practicing at the old shala in Mysore, an old man showed up one morning at the shala with what appeared to be his wife (it later turned out that the man was in his nineties, and the woman was his daughter, who was in her seventies). Anyway, the old man had come to the shala to see Guruji because he had heard that Guruji was a great yoga teacher. The man had been diagnosed with a heart condition, and the doctors at the hospital wanted to perform surgery on him. The man decided that he did not want to undergo surgery, and he came to see Guruji in the hope that Guruji would be able to teach him yoga to help with his condition. Guruji agreed, and immediately set about teaching him.

Notice that Guruji did not say to the man, "Sorry, my friend, I can't teach you: This yoga is only for teenage boys." Why didn't he say this? Well, because Ashtanga is not only for teenage boys!

That said, it is probably true that if you did not start Ashtanga as a teenage boy, your chances of getting beyond, say, third series are probably not very high. But I'm okay with that: One only needs to do primary series to get the therapeutic benefits (yoga chikitsa) of the practice, and I'm happy and grateful to be where I am.

I'm also aware that some supposedly distinguished yoga scholars like Mark Singleton and Norman Sjoman support the view that Ashtanga was designed for teenage boys. Well, I don't know... (have these distinguished gentlemen tried doing the practice themselves, I wonder?) But really, would you rather believe Guruji and his words and actions, or the words of some supposed scholars who think they can tell you stuff just because they have read some books and spoken with some people? Besides, these days, it seems that almost anybody who cares to sit down and write something and cite a few sources here and there can call themselves a yoga (or whatever) scholar. And besides, if Sjoman and Singleton really think that Ashtanga is only for teenage boys... well, nobody's telling them they have to practice Ashtanga, right? They can always go practice Anusara, no? :-)

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