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.
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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