our-yoga

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Disclaimer/Warning: The contents of this post will probably reveal all too clearly that I am very much identified with my body, its perceived shape the morning after eating certain rich foods, and its ability to get into certain asanas. Which means that I am probably very much a victim of body-identification/asana-identification/whatever-other-identification there is out there. Or maybe I simply am doing too much asana, as Steve over at the Confluence Countdown would say. If you suffer from any of these identifications as well, and would rather not read this post, I understand: Don't read. If you choose to read this, do so at your own peril. I will not be held responsible for any aggravation of any symptoms of your identification. Consider yourself warned.

So here's the story. Yesterday evening, my fiancee and I went to the local Indian restaurant for dinner. Neither of us was particularly hungry, so we decided to share an entree. Which sounds like a wise choice, except that we both tacitly assumed that just because we were only eating half an entree each, we were therefore entitled to eat more appetizers and side dishes. So this is what we ended up eating: We had Gobi Manchurian (flour-battered spicy cauliflower) and garlic naan bread for the appetizers, and we shared the entree, which was Palak Paneer (pureed spinach with cheese). If you would like a visual, we had:

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1. Meditate for at least 10 minutes every day.
2. Unroll your yoga mat and practice at least 5 minutes—more if the spirit moves you.
3. Write something JUST for you. Read something inspirational every day.
4. Set aside chunks of time for work. Work diligently during that time. Finish what has to be done and move on so you can enjoy your day.
5. Shower, get dressed, and look your best—even if you don't plan to see anyone all day. When you look your best you feel your best.

1. No TV during the day.
2. No junk food.
3. No surfing the Internet, checking email, or refreshing blog posts to read comments during work times.
4. No procrastinating.
5. No skipping meals.

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Ok, so it's no longer Tuesday, but I couldn't help posting this excellent link to Nadine Fawell's blog about How to Protect your SI Joint During Sun Salutes. In particular Nadine focuses on protecting your back as you transition from up dog to down dog.   It's an excellent post with some great diagrams of different pelvic alignments. Plus, Nadine gets extra points because she is a self-made business woman, has her own yoga DVD, and lives in Australia! Which is, like, way cool mate. ;)

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First, a few quotes and a snapshot of the man himself (okay, he's not exactly a man. Whatever: You get the idea...):  

"Attachment leads to jealousy. The shadow of greed, that is."

"To answer power with power, the Jedi way this is not. In this war, a danger there is, of losing who we are."

Yoda

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This morning, I got up quite a bit earlier than I usually do, and was done with my practice before 7 a.m. Why did I get up so early? Because I had to bring my car to the shop. The check engine light came on a couple of days ago, and the idling was really rough whenever the car came to a complete stop at a stop-light or stop sign: It's almost as if the car were rocking out to its own little tune while waiting for the light to change. Which may have been amusing and entertaining for the car (assuming, of course, that cars are the sort of thing that can get amused or entertained), but it scared the daylights out of me. But just a while ago, the mechanic called me, and told me that all that was needed was a spark plug change, which didn't cost nearly as much as I had imagined it would.

If you don't know what a spark plug is, you are not alone: I don't either... well, actually, let me look it up real quick on Wikipedia (what would I do without this all-knowing oracle of digital knowledge? Gosh, how did people even survive in the pre-wiki Dark Ages?!...). So according to Wikipedia, a spark plug is "a device for delivering electric current from an ignition system to the combustion chamber of a spark-ignition engine to ignite the compressed fuel/air mixture by an electric spark, while containing combustion pressure within the engine."

Wow. I just realized that I still don't have much of an idea what a spark plug really is after reading this description like, five times. Oh, well. But let's change the subject a little: Let me try to explain the origin of my ignorance about cars. I only started driving after I moved to this country (about 11 years ago), and virtually everything (which is not much at all) of what I know about the insides of cars comes from all the times when my car broke down, and my mechanic had to explain things to me using words that I never even knew existed: transaxial, spark plug, head gasket, fuel injector, starter, timing belt, serpentine belt, struts... none of this means much of anything to me. If I had to pop open a hood right now and identify these various parts to save my life, I would be so totally dead.

And maybe it's just because I'm not mechanically inclined, but I get the sense that I'm not alone: I get the sense that many people (especially--pardon the stereotype--women and men of, uh, foreign origin...) also share my ignorance of car anatomy. Isn't it funny, though, how the inner operations of something that so many of us rely so heavily upon in our daily lives should be such a mystery to so many of us? Sometimes I think that the power that mechanics have over us is almost frightening: For many of us, they are, for all intents and purposes, a veritable priesthood, a select group of semi-divine beings that are privy to the inner secrets of these things called cars; things that more-or-less miraculously get us from point A to point B most of the time. Except for the times when they break down. And then we bring them to the neighborhood priest--I mean, mechanic--who then fixes it and makes it (almost) as good as new. And when we ask them what was wrong with our cars, they mumble some incomprehensible technical mumbo-jumbo made up of a combination of some or all of the words I mentioned above. Then we meekly nod our heads in agreement (are we in a position to disagree?), and obediently hand over the money to get our precious cars back.

And really, is all this really so far from the truth? I mean, what exactly do mechanics do to "fix" our cars? How many of us actually stand around and watch every single thing that our mechanics do while they are working on our cars? For all we know, they may just go into some secret room in the shop while we are away, mumble a series of secret chants that are shared only between mechanics/priests; chants which have the magical ability of getting our cars running again. And then they come back out and spin a whole story in technical mumbo-jumbo to make the whole thing sound scientifically legit to our scientific-explanation-attuned ears and minds. But really, if you think about it, we have no way of knowing what really happened in the shop while we were away, if the mechanics really did the mechanical things they say they did to our supposedly-mechanical chariots...

Hmm... this is supposed to be a yoga blog. But so far, I have practically written an entire post without even mentioning the word "yoga"! Well, let me try to see if I can somehow relate all this to yoga... Aha! Let's try this. Many of you who are reading this are probably familiar with the story of Hanuman: You know, the part in the Ramayana where he flew from Sri Lanka to the Himalayas in a single leap to try to find some special Himalayan herbs to try to heal the wounded Lakshman. He couldn't identify the required herbs (too many things growing on the Himalayas, I imagine), so he lifted the entire mountain and leapt back to Sri Lanka with it. As you probably know, the pose Hanumanasana is named after this famous leap.

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Disclaimer: Before you read the rest of this post, and possibly accuse me of being disrespectful, irreverent, and/or downright blasphemous, let me say a couple of things here: While this post features existing famous yoga teachers and makes certain religious references that you may be familiar with, any remarks made here about these teachers are meant to be taken in a light-hearted, tongue-in-cheek manner. I certainly have no intention of making any statement about the real-world religious beliefs of these teachers (or of anybody else, for that matter). As such, anything I say in this post should be taken with a pretty large grain of salt. If you find yourself unable to do so, you can try (1) taking a few deep breaths, (2) doing your yoga practice, (3) taking a trip to the bathroom, and seeing if your possibly overly-tightened mula bandha will release of its own accord, (4) going to the kitchen, and making yourself swallow a large grain of salt, or (5) try forgetting you ever read this post in the first place. If none of this works, and you still feel upset... well, you can try sending me an angry email. But I may or may not respond, and you may or may not feel better after writing said email...

If you do not agree to this disclaimer, read no further! But hopefully, you will agree, and we will all have some fun in the name of good, clean entertainment.

So here goes:       

A couple of days ago, Steve over at the Confluence Countdown pondered whether Ashtanga might be a cult. I'm rather undecided on this matter; maybe it really is one. After all, don't I often refer to myself as an Ashtanga Fundamentalist?

But I've recently also begun to wonder: Even if Ashtanga is not a cult, might it not be a religion, a church of some sort? Why do I think this? Well, recent conversations in certain quarters of the Ashtanga blogosphere have left me with such a feeling. To put it more precisely, I get the sense that some ardent Ashtangis approach the practice with the fervor and conviction approaching religious faith. For instance, a commenter on one of Yoga Gypsy's very stimulating recent posts about "breaking up" with Ashtanga commented that when she made the decision to "leave" Ashtanga, she got a lot of flack from other Ashtangis for deciding to do so.

Which leads me to wonder exactly what kind of "flack" she got. Was it just garden-variety flack, i.e. getting teased by other Ashtangis, getting the "cold shoulder", not getting any more invitations to parties hosted by Ashtangis (like we party a lot, anyway...)? Or did this "flack" consist of something more... systematic? Did they send in some senior teacher to give her a big pep talk about why Ashtanga is the best yoga style since sliced bread, and that she would be really losing out on the fast track to Self-realization if she chose to leave? Maybe, unbeknownst to all of us, there is a secret group of senior teachers that run around the world talking to "quitters" or "deserters", trying to get these lost sheep back into the Church of Ashtanga of Latter Day Yogic Saints. And maybe they have been doing this for so long, they have even developed a modus operandi, which can be divided into two stages:

Stage (1): Talk Therapy: They get some senior Ashtanga teacher who really knows his Yoga Mala/Bhagavad Gita/Yoga Sutra, and who is really good at parlaying such knowledge into everyday language, to talk the quitter's ear off. Besides being able to talk somebody's ear off, this person should also be somebody who is personable and easy to relate to. Having a nice, winning smile is a big plus:

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Last week, I posted a letter to Ashtanga about "seeing other yoga". I didn't really mean it to be a controversial post, but it did spark some discussion.  For some more good reading, Damn Good Yoga posted a perspective on her blog which also generated a lot of comments and discussion.

In any case, upon browsing the Ashtanga blogosphere, there seems to be a perception that people leave Ashtanga because it's too hard, or because they can't handle the discipline and commitment, or they are shying away from ego-destroying transformation. And maybe some people do - but I'm not really in a place to judge anyone else's reasons or motivations.

I find this interesting because for me, the decision to branch out from the Ashtanga path was a decision to leave my comfort zone, both physically and on more subtle levels. You see, as I mentioned in my letter, I was taught that Ashtanga was all the yoga I needed. That it was a complete system that would heal and balance my body and my mind, well, completely. So when I recently realised that this wasn't happening for my body, it made sense to me that I needed to modify my practice. It honestly wasn't a big drama for me - after all, my "loyalty" is to myself and my journey, not to one asana system or another. [Not to mention that as a teacher, I feel like I need to learn as many different approaches as possible, to be able to teach to as many different needs as possible!]

The realisation that Ashtanga wasn't working for me in a "complete" way came during my Level 2 yoga teacher training, and in particular I had 3 major "breakthroughs":

• I realised that my shoulders have become imbalanced - partly this is the way my body is put together, and partly it's postural and work-related (damn computers). Basically, the front of my shoulders are quite strong and the muscles on the backs of my shoulders are comparatively quite weak, and this was causing my shoulders to round forward and causing me a certain amount of back pain. When I say "realised", I mean the kind of realisation that is accompanied by immense physical and emotional release - not the kind of passing thought you can just ignore. Yogis will know the kind I mean. Unfortunately, Ashtanga with its emphasis on forward-and-down vinyasas had made that imbalance worse. According to my Yoga Therapy teacher, this is pretty common among Ashtangis - many of whom suffer from shoulder injuries or pain at the back of the shoulder because those muscles remain comparatively underdeveloped. The good news is, it's fairly easy to work on and with the help of some yoga therapy moves, in a few short months since my TT I have already made huge progress in that area.

• As I've already mentioned, I realised that my psoas and hip flexors were just not getting the love they needed. The psoas is of particular concern to me since it affects lower back pain and imbalance, which I already have my dose of thanks to my scoliosis. This became crystal clear to me when we were working on Eka Pada Raja Kapotasana / King Pigeon pose. I couldn't BELIEVE that after 3 years of Ashtanga I had made absolutely no progress with this pose. Wow. That just didn't seem right to me - but once my teacher observed where my limitations were in the pose - those pesky psoas and hip flexors among them - it made sense - and became clear that my Ashtanga practice was just not addressing those muscles in the way that my body needed.

• Finally, as I mentioned, I have scoliosis. Luckily for me, it's quite mild, but it is progressive - i.e. the muscular imbalance, unless counteracted, gets worse with age. When I first started Ashtanga, I accepted the idea that the primary series was "yoga therapy", and therefore, my practice would be enough to relieve my imbalance. And while it did make the weaker side of my back stronger, over time it also caused the QL muscle on the strong side of my back (that's the thick muscle that runs either side of your lower spine) to become a rock-hard, ropey knot, which is exactly the kind of imbalance I need to avoid if I want to manage my scoliosis as I get older. Cue more massive release, and the realisation of just how badly I NEEDED to do some kind of practice that would allow me to dig deeper and really work on that area.

Now, I honestly think it would have been easier to just stay in my comfort zone and keep practicing Ashtanga, maybe throwing in a quick yoga therapy sequence in the afternoons to work on some of those target areas. Easier to remain attached to progressing along the Ashtanga path, and keep working towards second series. Easier on my ego, because I wouldn't have to face Eka Pada Raja Kapotasana or go deep, deep into that damn psoas and feel like I'm losing my mind.  But that would not have been in line with Satya, truthfulness, Aparigraha, non-grasping, or Ahimsa, non-harming. And so I'm taking the other path, moving out of my comfort zone, and into practices that challenge the imbalances in my body - and take me to the edge both mentally and physically.

Is it easier? Heck no. Am I less committed to my yoga? If anything, I'm more comitted. Is my practice suddenly less disciplined, more comfortable, or less confrontational? Actually, the opposite!  Of course I do write this with the caveat that I've been practicing yoga (self-practice) for nearly 10 years, have worked on these issues with an experienced Yoga Therapist, and have 500 hours of formal yoga teacher training that have given me the skills, maturity, and self-knowledge to design asana sequences that both nourish and challenge my body, that are well-balanced but also target my imbalances. And when it feels right, I'll keep practicing Ashtanga, too.

Funny, so much fuss about which type of asana we are practicing, when really, it's only 1/8th of the practice! I have found that as time goes on, I become less and less attached to WHAT I am practicing and more focused on HOW. Which is what yoga is all about, I guess. :)

Readers, what have been your "yoga realisations" or your experience with attachment?v

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"At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.
The inner freedom from the practical desire,
The release from action and suffering, release from the inner
And the outer compulsion, yet surrounded
By a grace of sense, a white light still and moving,
Erhebung without motion, concentration
Without elimination, both a new world
And the old made explicit, understood
In the completion of its partial ecstasy,
The resolution of its partial horror.
Yet the enchainment of past and future
Woven in the weakness of the changing body,
Protects mankind from heaven and damnation
Which flesh cannot endure."

T.S. Eliot, The Four Quartets

During practice the past two mornings (today and yesterday), I decided to continue to work on bringing more inner body awareness into the asanas and the transitions between them. I decided to do this despite the fact that in my last post on this issue, a couple of commenters have mentioned that maintaining this awareness is difficult and impractical to do for a practice like Ashtanga, in which one is continually moving from one posture to another. Tom has also pointed out that Richard Freeman, for instance, gets around this problem by not sticking so closely to the "orthodox" sequence of postures in Ashtanga and introducing extra postures.

I'm too much of a stickler for orthodoxy to try the Freeman route, but I remain unconvinced that there is no way to bring more inner body awareness into a constantly moving practice like Ashtanga, even within the confines of the "orthodox" sequence. Some people may think that because Ashtanga practice consists of almost-non-stop movement, there is no "still point" for the mind to focus on and bring inner body awareness to: I'm guessing this is what at least one of the commenters on the last post has in mind.

But here's another way of looking at this matter: Even if everything is constantly in motion in the practice, might it not be possible for the mind to designate its own still point? I'm thinking this is ultimately what the drishti or gazing point is for in the practice: Even though everything is constantly moving, so long as one fixes one's gaze on the indicated drishti, one can achieve stillness in the midst of constant motion. But here's something else: I also think that another possible still point the mind can focus on is any particular part of the body we are trying to "open up" or bring more awareness to. Here's a personal example: When going into Kapotasana, my mid-back has a tendency to open less than my shoulders/upper back and lower back. By bringing the "mind's eye" to focus on the middle back while going into Kapotasana, more awareness can be brought there. And in so doing, the mid-back becomes the still point of the posture while going into Kapotasana. And then, after I have gotten into the posture, I usually need to remind myself to engage the quads/psoas more, rather than simply use the back muscles to hold the posture. Thus I now bring my mind's eye to focus on the quads/psoas, and in so doing, make the quads/psoas the new still-point of the posture. The general idea here is that the still point of the practice--indeed, of even one particular posture--is something that is constantly changing. Although the still point is constantly changing from moment to moment, what makes it the still point at any given moment is the fact that the mind attains one-pointed focus by bringing attention to bear on it at that given moment in time, thereby attaining Presence. Beautiful paradox, don't you think? ;-) 

In addition to this realization about the still point, there was one more tangible benefit from bringing more inner body awareness into the practice yesterday and today: On both days, my Utthita Hasta Padangusthasana felt very stable: There was virtually no dancing.


I don't write much about UHP, but I've always been a dancer in this pose: For those of you who are unfamiliar with this term, it means your body sways and shifts all over the place while in this pose; a very dangerous thing to do in led class, as you might crash into the practitioner next to you and pose a safety hazard :-). Honestly, it's almost a miracle that I have yet to kill anybody in led class with my dancing... Anyway, what all this means is that UHP has always been a pose that I approach with this get-it-over-with-quickly-so-I-can-do-more-exciting-poses attitude. Which is another way of saying that UHP is a not-so-favorite pose of mine. Now you know :-) But here's what's really cool: Both this morning and yesterday, my UHP was very stable. No dancing at all. I'm thinking that all this focus on inner-body awareness has had the effect of making my feet more stable. I don't want to jinx myself by saying any more than I have to here, but I'm cautiously optimistic that this whole inner body awareness thing is doing a lot of good for my UHP.

So yeah, what can I say? Inner body awareness (and with it, Eckhart Tolle and Taichi and all the chi-cultivating disciplines) rocks!

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There's a new yoga teacher on the block... She's got blonde hair, big boobs, wears too much make up, and I hear she lives in a beach house in Malibu and drives a pink convertible--totally missing the whole point of the practice. She's superficial and materialistic and, you know, plastic.

Introducing Yoga Teacher Barbie! (Coming soon to a Target near you!)

It's ironic, really. All the things that have always made us shake our heads about the unattainable (and maybe a little warped) idea of perfection this iconic doll represents are the very thing that make her such an imperfect yoga teacher. She falls short of what many of us consider the ideal--health conscious, strong but flexible, humble, spiritually awakened, esoteric. Big boobed, anorexic Barbie just doesn't fit the bill. Sorry Barbie! We don't want your kind here.

It's true. We LOVE to tell everyone how great yoga is for all body types. But we were talking about seniors, disabled, plus size and, well, men--not waif-like blondes and their cutesy designer dogs. (Although, maybe Barbie has a rescue Chihuahua.)

It's not all bad news, though. Yoga Teacher Barbie is part of the "I Can Be..." line of dolls that includes Engineer, Architect, Pet Vet, and Dentist Barbie. If yoga teacher is a career as desirable as engineer, it gives a lot of us more prestige and, dare I say, validates it as a profession that takes lots of skill and training. I'm just glad Barbie isn't giving up her other day jobs to pursue her dream of teaching yoga. After all a lot of teacher training programs require the salary of an architect (before the housing bubble burst) just for tuition.

Besides, if this doll sparks just a few little girls' interest learning more about the practice or enrolling in a kids yoga class, I think it's great! It might just set them on the path of a lifelong journey that we all know teaches self-acceptance, confidence to try new things, and positive body image.

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A few days ago, Claudia wrote a very informative post titled "The Definitive Guide to All Yoga Styles". Strictly speaking, she did not succeed in covering ALL yoga styles (she admitted as much towards the end of the post), but it was very informative nonetheless.

As with many of Claudia's posts, an interesting conversation unfolded in the comment thread between her and several commenters. One commenter mentioned that he had been practicing this thing called P90X; he found it so challenging that his legs would "would shake uncontrollably because [he] had to keep certain poses for a few seconds." Claudia responded by saying, 'Oh the P90x... that just by its name sounds like the "get fit quick" kind of thing... not yoga...  funny that you could not get through it...'

I really love how Claudia is able to be so diplomatic and respectful, and yet still maintain the ability to critique something so sharply at particular times. But there's a part of me that can't help wondering if some people out there may not take Claudia's short critique as well as I did. In other words, I wonder if there may be some P90X devotees out there who think that Claudia may be unjustly putting down their beloved system. For the sake of convenience, I'm going to call what Claudia did "Pulling a Claudia." (No offense to you, Claudia: I mean this in a good-natured, humorous way. I really do.) Why would I think that P90X devotees would be offended by Claudia's pulling a Claudia? For one thing, you might notice, for instance, that the P90X guy whom Claudia pulled a Claudia on never responded to Claudia's pulling a Claudia. Now this may or may not mean anything in and of itself: It could just be that the guy was busy and simply did not get around to responding. Maybe, unlike somebody like me, he has better things to do than follow comment threads on people's blogs, and then write meaningless blog posts on said threads... But I still can't help wondering, nonetheless.

But back to P90X. I actually have a personal story to share about this "Extreme Home Fitness" system. A couple of years ago, I was chatting with a friend of mine who is a self-styled fitness enthusiast... is there such a thing as a non-self-styled fitness enthusiast, anyway? I mean, is there an official organization that certifies "fitness enthusiasts"? Hmm... what would that be? The National Association of Fitness Enthusiasts? National Association of Fitness Freaks? What about Fitness Freaks United? Actually, that would make for a very interesting acronym: FFU! Think about that... But anyway, back to my story. As I was saying, I was chatting with my self-styled fitness enthusiast friend. She knew that I practiced this kind of yoga called Ashtanga yoga, and she decided to tell me about what she did to keep fit. The general idea is that P90X consists of 12 different "diverse and extreme" workouts (these includes things like Shoulders and Arms, Cardio X, Ab Ripper X, to name a few), and the yoga component is called Yoga X. Why "X"? I'm guessing that "X" means "Extreme", which means that Yoga X is, well, not your mama's yoga.

Anyway, we kept chatting. As the conversation progressed, I realized that she didn't really know what Ashtanga yoga was. We happened to be standing in front of my computer, so I went online and dug up a chart of the Ashtanga Primary Series. Then I showed her a picture of me in this second series pose:

When she saw this picture, her jaw dropped: "Uh... and you say you have been doing yoga for... how long?!" We proceeded to chat for a while more about yoga, and this and that. And then she told me she was going to go home to work out. Well, I hope I inspired her to go do some yoga. Then again, who knows? It is equally possible that I may unwittingly have pulled a Claudia on her by indirectly critiquing P90X ('Look, can P90X get you into this backbend? How can it be "real" yoga if it can't?...') One way or the other, I'll never know. We never talked about fitness after that. Maybe she picked up on my Ashtanga Fundamentalist vibe from that one conversation, and decided to avoid talking with me about anything yoga or fitness-related from that point on...

Anyway, I guess I should try to soften my Ashtanga Fundamentalist image. At any rate, I certainly did not write this post to put down P90X, or any other fitness system, for that matter. I mean, life is short: If getting a tight ass and ripped abs through an extreme home fitness system is what rocks your boat, then more power to you. One word of unsolicited advice here, though: It is very, very unlikely that when you are on your deathbed drawing your last breath, you will regard the achievement of a tight ass and ripped abs (if you still have a tight ass and ripped abs at that time, that is...) as your crowning achievement in life, the achievement that will enable you to go forth and face whatever lies in the hereafter with perfect equanimity and no regrets. But then again, I suppose the same can be said of Kapotasana as well: I highly doubt that at the moment of death, I will regard being able to grab my heels/ankles in Kapotasana as the crowning achievement of my life. But then again, who knows?...

But in any case, I think it would be very unjust of me not to make this post a bit more balanced, and make at least some attempt to say more about what P90X is about. Well, as they say, a (moving) picture says a thousand words. Here's a video of a P90X enthusiast doing his Yoga X workout at home:

At any rate, these are my thoughts. Have any of you out there practiced both P90X/Yoga X and Ashtanga? What are the similarities? What are the differences? Please feel free to share.      

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