our-yoga

I have a bad feeling that this is going to be one of those posts that contribute to the popular (mis?)conception of  Ashtangis as self-torturing pain junkies who delight in inflicting pain on themselves. I hope I don't contribute too much to Ashtanga's already bad rep in this area. But everything that I'm about to describe here actually happened yesterday and during this morning's practice. So I can at least say that I am being honest, if nothing else.

Before I go on to tell the story proper, I think it would be useful for me to give you a little background story. I am going through a rather nerve-wracking and angst-provoking time in my life right now: I don't particularly feel like going into the details here (although I might when all this is over, however it turns out), so you'll have to bear with me for being a little vague about things here. Suffice to say that I am waiting for a couple of things to fall through (or not), and I'll know in a couple of days whether they do. Right now, there is nothing to do except wait. And wait some more. And in the meantime, continue to eat, sleep, go to the bathroom, do the practice, blog, and try to stay sane the whole time. I have tried reading Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now, but honestly, it hasn't been helping much. He's just too harsh and rational about this whole being in the present moment thing for my state of mind right now. For example, at one point in his book, in response to somebody who said, "Surely we need hope to keep us going, and hope is always hope that things will turn out better in the future. So doesn't having hope imply not being in the present moment?" To this, Tolle replied that if one is fully present in the moment, one doesn't need hope: When one is able to fully savor the present moment, what use is there for hope for the future? I'm paraphrasing, as I don't have the book on me right now, but I'm pretty sure I captured the essence of his reply. I don't know about you, but I think this is kind of harsh. I mean, it does make for a certain logical kind of sense: If you are fully, fully present, you won't need to hope for anything in the future. But I think it is no exaggeration to say that we humans are hardwired by centuries of cultural conditioning to hope for a better future when things get rough. And, to borrow a phrase from Marx, perhaps Tolle is saying that hope is the opium of the un-present masses, just as religion was the opium of the masses on Marx's view. And maybe it's just me, but isn't it a little bit cruel to deny a frail mortal like me even the opium of hope in a time like this? Well, I'm guessing that Tolle will disagree here; he'll probably say that I need to go "cold turkey" and use this difficult time in my life as an opportunity to rid myself once and for all of the opium of hope. Whatever. Go to hell. (Yikes! What did I just say?)

To add insult to possible injury, I was talking with a friend yesterday about my present situation. He listened for a while, and then suggested that I take a bigger-picture view of things as they are right now. Even though things are not going quite as I would like them to go, there are many blessings in my life: Good health, a yoga practice, etc. He then proceeded to point out that material possessions and worldly position are really quite insignificant in the light of this bigger picture. Wow... this is what happens when one reads Eckhart Tolle: Even your friends start to sound like him. 

But here's another ironic twist: As much as a certain part of me refuses to buy into any of Tolle's talk about being in the present, the Ashtanga practice seems to be the one thing that is actually fostering such presence in my life right now. This morning, I woke up with a rather funky mood. My whole body felt stiff and heavy, and I did not feel like practicing at all. Well, okay, I asked myself, what are you going to do then? Go back to sleep? But I somehow knew more sleep was probably not going to make me feel much better: If anything, I'll probably end up feeling even heavier and stiffer a couple of hours down the road. So I gingerly rolled out my Mysore rug, and started moving through the practice. As I got into primary series, an idea suddenly struck me: The last couple of days, I had been re-reading Matthew Sweeney's Astanga Yoga As It Is, and familiarizing myself with the Sanskrit vinyasa count of the postures and transitions in primary. It's pretty funny to say this, but as much of an Ashtangeek as I am, I have actually never gotten the exact Sanskrit vinyasa count in the seated postures of primary down pat. I figured that now would be the time to rectify this gap in my Ashtanga career :-) Anyway, as I got into primary this morning, I suddenly thought it would be kind of cool to recite the vinyasa count mentally to myself as I did each of the postures. So on I went: Sapta, inhale and jump into posture. Ashtau, exhale and hold for five breaths. Nawa, inhale and exhale there. Desa, inhale lift up. Ekadesa. exhale into chaturanga. And so and so forth. And since Sweeney does the traditional long count, he doesn't "reset" the count to Sapta on the second side of the posture, but continues with the count on the first side. So I get to count all the way up to Ekonavimsatihi (I really love the sound of this particular word!) and then Vimsatihi, which is when you exhale into downdog before starting from Sapta again and jumping into the next posture of the series.

It's really interesting, but before I knew it, I realized that counting the vinyasa to myself really helped to remove all extraneous thoughts from my mind. Who knew that one could pull an Eckhart Tolle simply by doing the vinyasa count? Maybe one day, when all this shit that I am presently going through is over (I know, I know, I'm not being present again, but whatever...), I'll teach a workshop titled, "Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga and Eckhart Tolle: How to use the Traditional Vinyasa Count to bring greater presence into your practice". Maybe you come? :-)

Another, less pleasant thing also happened during practice this morning. My upper back muscles, especially the Trapezius, goes through periods of tightness. Such tightness tends to recur during periods of stress or anxiety. Over the last couple of weeks, I have been feeling this tightness from time to time whenever I sit in front of my computer or when I am reading. These past couple of mornings, I have been feeling the tightness during practice itself, especially when I lift my legs to put them behind my head in Supta Kurmasana. But I thought that if I moved into and out of the pose carefully, I'll probably be fine. And in a sense, I was right. Nothing major happened in Supta Kurmasana this morning. But something major did happen as I rolled over into my second Chakrasana (the one following Setu Bandhasana). As I rolled my legs over my head to go into downdog, I felt this sharp pulling sensation in my trapezius. Somehow, I still managed to land my feet in downdog. But I knew the damage had been done. Damn... no more Chakrasana (and probably also no more putting legs behind head in Supta Kurmasana) for the next few days, or maybe even for the next few weeks. We'll see. Anyway, my traps have been aching since then. In fact, they are aching right now, even as I am typing these words. I am doing a whole bunch of gentle trapezius stretches throughout the day to relieve the soreness. But the funny thing is, even this pain has its upside: It is making me more present in my body, and causing me to fixate less on the other things in my life that are causing great anxiety. I guess this says something about my state of mind, when I am actually at a point where I actually prefer physical pain to mental anxiety. I hope this doesn't mean that I need to go see a psychiatrist or something. Scary. Anyway, I guess I'll sign off here. More later.

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I just saw this video that Kino made about practicing Ashtanga Yoga in Mysore and her thoughts on the path of Ashtanga practice. It has the same aesthetic feel as the Mysore Magic movie that came out earlier this year; which is not surprising, really, since James Kambeitz, who did the cinematography for the earlier movie, is also the director, cinematographer and editor for this one. As with the earlier movie, this video also opens with some street-level shots of Mysore, then cuts to scenes of practice in the shala, with Kino's running interview/commentary throughout the whole thing.

I am probably a bit biased here, but I feel that this video goes more in depth into the character and nature of the practice and what it does to you than the earlier Mysore Magic movie. But maybe I'm not being fair here; perhaps the two movies have different "missions": Perhaps the role of the Mysore Magic movie is to give people who are uninitiated and know little about Mysore and the shala a taste of what the experience is about, as told through the perspectives of various practitioners. And perhaps the role of this video is to go into a little more depth into just what practicing in Mysore (and practicing Ashtanga in general, wherever you happen to be) does to the practitioner. As such, I think it is a great video.

Kino is quick to say, at the very beginning of the video, that going to Mysore to practice at the shala is not a vacation (despite claims made by some people in the blogosphere about Club Mysore), and that yoga is not an escape. The physical practice serves as a mirror to seriously look within oneself. As Kino notes, very often, when one is practicing, many thoughts and feelings (some of them not very pleasant) come up. Unlike in most other life situations, when unpleasant thoughts and feelings come up in practice, one can't point to any particular person or event as the trigger. Which means that one is left with no choice but to face these feelings, breathe, and continue to practice with those feelings. Or, I suppose, one can just roll up the mat, go home (if one is at a shala), turn on the TV, and settle back with some popcorn with the TV tuned to one's favorite reality show. But if you are in Mysore, this is not really an option, right? Not with Sharath watching you... Well, maybe this is the real magic of Mysore. Damn! Got to get my a$$ there soon...

There is one other thing that Kino said later in the video that really resonates with me: In practice, as in life, if you try to accomplish things by brute force, you inevitably end up hurting yourself and others. The trick is to lean into whatever it is that is bringing up fear in you, breathe, be with that thing, and wait patiently for things to open up. Easier said than done, of course, but think about it this way: All fear is ultimately the ego trying to hold us back from expanding and deepening our lives. When we go into uncharted territory and feel our fears without running from them, we shine the light of consciousness on these fears; the fears lose their power, and we powerfully and fundamentally expand and deepen our lives. The ego tries to avoid this expansion and deepening. Why does it do this? Because it knows that if it allows life to expand and deepen, it will bring about its own death. And since the ego fears death, it will do anything to avoid having to face fear directly. Which is why it always tells us to just put on an appearance of being put-together, and push through and accomplish things by brute force, at any cost. To do the practice seriously is to face and feel these fears head-on, without either running away from them or trying to eliminate them by brute force. We could even say that to do the practice is to constantly allow the ego to die a natural death. Actually, I was just reading something by Eckhart Tolle that really expresses this point very succinctly. So perhaps I'll leave you with his words here:

'Fear seems to have many causes. Fear of loss, fear of failure, fear of being hurt, and so on, but ultimately all fear is the ego's fear of death, of annihilation. To the ego, death is always just around the corner. In this mind-identified state, fear of death affects every aspect of your life. For example, even such a seemingly trivial and "normal" thing as the compulsive need to be right in an argument and make the other person wrong--defending the mental position with which you have identified--is due to the fear of death. If you identify with a mental position, then if you are wrong, your mind-based sense of self is seriously threatened with annihilation. So you as the ego cannot afford to be wrong. To be wrong is to die. Wars have been fought over this, and countless relationships have broken down...

Since the ego is a derived sense of self, it needs to identify with external things. It needs to be both defended and fed constantly. The most common ego identifications have to do with possessions, the work you do, social status and recognition, knowledge and education, physical appearance, special abilities, relationships, personal and family history, belief systems, and often also political, nationalistic, racial, religious, and other collective identities. None of these is you.

Do you find this frightening? Or is it a relief to know this? All of these things you will have to relinquish sooner or later... You will know the truth of it for yourself. You will know it at the latest when you feel death approaching. Death is a stripping away of all that is not you. The secret to life is to "die before you die"--and find that there is no death.'    

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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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I'm guessing that some of you out there might be getting a little sick of reading my quotes from Eckhart Tolle in my posts over the last two weeks. Well, if you are... I'm sorry that you are. But I blog about what I am thinking about, and what I am thinking about at any given moment is often informed by what I am reading at the time. But I don't just randomly quote what I am reading either. I try to pick quotes that are more or less yoga-related, or can be related to the practice in one way or another.

But anyhow, I read something in A New Earth yesterday that really pertains very directly to the practice. Tolle talks about cultivating inner body awareness as a way of moving beyond identification with the body. Through cultivating inner body awareness, you can gradually shift your attention "from the external form of your body and from thoughts about your body--beautiful, ugly, strong, weak, too fat, too thin--to the feeling of aliveness inside it. No matter what your body's appearance is on the outer level, beyond the outer form it is an intensely alive energy field."

Tolle continues:

'If you are not familiar with "inner body" awareness, close your eyes for a moment and find out if there is life inside your hands. Don't ask your mind. It will say, "I can't feel anything." Probably it will also say, "Give me something more interesting to think about." So instead of asking your mind, go to the hands directly. By this I mean become aware of the subtle feeling of aliveness inside them. It is there. You just have to go there with your attention to notice it. You may get a slight tingling sensation at first, then a feeling of energy or aliveness. If you hold your attention in your hands for a while, the sense of aliveness will intensify... Then go to your feet, keep your attention there for a minute or so, and begin to feel your hands and feet at the same time. Then incorporate other parts of the body--legs, arms, abdomen, chest, and so on--into that feeling until you are aware of the inner body as a global sense of aliveness.'

Lying in bed last night, I tried this exercise in inner body awareness, starting with the hands and feet and then moving into the rest of the body, as Tolle suggests. It felt really good to be so aware of the entire body. Actually, the feeling is a bit similar to the kind of calm feeling that I get during my acupuncture sessions. I'm starting to think that this inner body awareness may be what Taichi practitioners are trying to cultivate when they work on cultivating chi or life energy during their Taichi exercises. Very interesting.

This morning, I also tried to see if I can bring the same level of inner body awareness to the practice. Starting from Ekam position in Surya A, I brought my attention to the hands as I raised them over my head. And then to the hands and the feet as I went into downward dog in Shad position. I was able to maintain a reasonably high level of body awareness throughout Suryas A and B. And then, without quite knowing it, I lost this awareness as I went into more challenging postures. I realized that, without knowing it, as I got further into the practice and encountered more challenging postures, my focus had shifted from simply being aware of the body to using the body to do this or that posture. In other words, I had shifted from a state of simply being to a state of doing; in so doing, I was no longer so aware of the body as it simply is. Or, to put it in slightly more fancy terms, I was no longer with the is-ness of the body in the present moment.

Herein lies the dilemma: For most of us, the practice consists of postures of varying degrees of physical difficulty. Thus it seems that for most of us, the only way to be totally aware of the body as it is in the present moment without asking or expecting anything of it would be to stop the practice at the precise moment when it becomes physically challenging. But that would mean that most of us would have to do practices that are way shorter than what they are right now. For me, I might have to stop practicing somewhere around Utthita or Parivrtta Parsvakonasana! I mean, I'm not sure if it would ever be possible for me to do, say, Kapotasana while being totally present in every part of the body as it is without asking or expecting anything of it. Then again, isn't this what Sthira Sukha Asanam ("Asana is effort without tension, relaxation without dullness") mean? Maybe it will come one day. Dirgha Kala...

Do you have any thoughts on this? How do you balance (i) being with the body in the present moment and (ii) getting the body to do this or that challenging posture in the practice?    

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Happy Moon Day, Ashtangis! If you are not an Ashtangi, and are reading this, Happy Moon Day anyway! For those you who are Ashtangis, I hope you are taking a well-deserved break from your Ashtangic labors, and indulging in whatever it is that you indulge on days when you do not have to (who said you have to, anyway?) spend one and a half to two hours bending yourself into all kinds of funny shapes. Hmm, really: What do Ashtangis do with the couple of extra hours that they have on Moon Days? Here are a few options that come to mind:

(a) Sleep a couple extra hours;

(b) Play video games (Somebody should seriously come up with a Wii version of Ashtanga for hardcore Ashtanga OCD folks; that way, if you, say, can't grab your heels in Kapotasana in your regular practice on the mat, you can try to "achieve" it on Wii. True, it's not the same as nailing the posture on the mat, but hey, you got to take what you can get :-));

(c) Read books (on Ashtanga or other subjects);

(d) Spend more time blogging (or spend more time reading Ashtanga blogs like this one :-));

(e) Have coffee or tea (with oneself or with others);

(f) Have sex (with oneself or with others);

(g) Some of the above;

(h) None of the above.

Actually, this looks like good material for a poll! So let's do it. In the right hand corner of this blog, you will see a poll with these eight options. As usual, polling is anonymous; not even I will know what you choose. So feel free to choose honestly, and to your heart's content.

Recently, it seems that a certain corner of the Ashtanga/yoga blogosphere has been abuzz with intimations of Ashtanga infidelity: This blogger has courageously confessed to Ashtanga that she is "seeing other yoga". Hmm... I'm pretty sure I know what Guruji would say about this:

Interesting. Let me start by talking about the Ferrari analogy. Honestly, speaking from my own experience, I'm not entirely sure that I would describe Ashtanga as a Ferrari (or any other kind of sports car). Maybe there is a certain "turbo" element to the whole thing, at least from the outside: Those jumpbacks and jumpthroughs sure look pretty impressive and "turbo-charged" to an onlooker. But this is just an appearance; and appearances, as we know, are deceptive. Beneath the facade of speed and panache lies a long, painstaking process; a process marked by many plateaus (brought about by physical limitations, pains, or injury), punctuated by the occasional spurts of "progress" or "achievement" (i.e. you "master" a particular pose, get a new one, do an "old" one with greater ease and less effort, or get one-tenth of an inch deeper in a challenging pose).

I guess I'll say this: If Ashtanga is a sports car, it is a very high-maintenance sports car, one that breaks down quite a lot. In fact, if what I said above about plateaus in the practice is any indication of what most Ashtangis' practices are like, I would go so far as to say that breakages are the norm rather than the exception in the practice. So why bother to practice? Why not choose an "easier", "lower-maintenance" vehicle? In order to answer this question, we need to consider another, related question: What should we do when we encounter breakages (plateaus, injuries, pains) in the practice? What is the most productive attitude to take toward these breakages? Even though he doesn't practice Ashtanga (at least not that I know of), Eckhart Tolle actually has something to say about this. He writes:

"Whatever you cannot enjoy doing, you can at least accept that this is what you have to do. Acceptance means: For now, this is what the situation, this moment, requires me to do, and so I do it willingly... For example, you probably won't be able to enjoy changing the flat tire on your car in the middle of nowhere and in pouring rain, let alone be enthusiastic about it, but you can bring acceptance to it. Performing an action in the state of acceptance means you are at peace while you do it. That peace is a subtle energy vibration which then flows into what you do. On the surface, acceptance looks like a passive state, but in reality it is active and creative because it brings something entirely new into this world. That peace, that subtle energy vibration, is consciousness, and one of the ways in which it enters this world is through surrendered action, one aspect of which is acceptance."

To illustrate what Tolle is saying here, let's apply his insight to a common occurrence in the practice: Injury. Sometimes, despite our best efforts at alignment/healthy movement or listening to our bodies, we still get injured in the course of the practice, because bodies are physical things, and physical things break. One could react to the injury by resisting it, asking "Why? Why me?!", and then proceed to either (a) try to deny the existence of the injury by simply pushing through the pain, or (b) give up the practice altogether. As anybody who has worked with injury in the practice knows, neither (a) nor (b) are productive responses. (a) is not productive, because it subjects one to more unnecessary pain, and can possibly aggravate the injury. (b) is also not productive, because although not practicing might mean no pain (at least temporarily), whatever it is that caused the injury in the first place is not being addressed, and the movement pattern that caused it will continue to lurk in the mind/body, setting the stage for possibly more pain and injury in the future. Here, one can't help recalling Tim Miller's famous words: "Avoidance is not the answer."

A more productive response would be one of acceptance. In this state, one tries one's best to practice with the injury, either by modifying and/or moving around the pain, even if doing so is not pleasant physically and mentally. By doing so, one not only allows healing to take place on a physical level; one also becomes able to understand the mind/body connection better with regard to this part of the body, and is able to bring the light of consciousness to bear on this part of the body. In so doing, one is able to gradually undo the deep-seated samskaric pattern that led to pain and injury in the first place, leading to healing on a deeper level.

When we understand that the most productive attitude to take towards pain and injury (and, for that matter, any kind of plateau-inducing phenomenon) in the practice is one of acceptance and surrender, the question of "Why bother to practice?" also answers itself: Although there are many obstacles and plateaus in the practice, these obstacles and plateaus are what make the practice "real" and meaningful. Working through these obstacles and plateaus presents a valuable opportunity to practice the surrender and acceptance which lie at the very heart of yoga. Indeed, I think we can even go as far as to say that these obstacles and plateaus constitute the raison d'etre of the practice: Without obstacles and plateaus and the surrenderful attitudes of acceptance that they demand, we may just as well be training to become gymnasts or acrobats. Or ninjas. Now don't get me wrong; ninjas are way cool. In fact, my childhood dream was (and probably still is) to become a ninja when I grow up. But we'll see...

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At the risk of flogging what is by now a very dead horse--sorry, I can't seem to think of a less ahimsa-violating metaphor--I would like to say a few more things about my probably-not-happening-this-summer Mysore trip (officially, I'm supposed to be there from July 1st to August 1st; so, until July 1st comes and goes, I'll continue to refer to it as "probably-not-happening" rather than simply "not happening", out of a somewhat desperate hope that something might somehow materialize to make the trip possible at the last minute...).

But back to what I was going to say. Michelle left a very thoughtful comment on my previous post about this probably-not-happening-this-summer trip. She writes:

"...consider that there is never a "right time" for anything that is really "big" or profound in our lives, or that could change the course of our lives. These experiences seem to arise - to use your word - organically. They happen when they happen, and sometimes planning way ahead for them isn't possible - i.e. falling in love; having a child, finding your dream job."

These are very wise words. When I first read these words, the first thought that struck me was that perhaps we as a society or culture have overused the word "right." What do I mean? Let me start by telling you a story. I have this feeling that as a society or culture, we are conditioned to think that there is a set of rules somewhere that applies universally to every situation we may face in our lives: Just apply those rules correctly, and we will automatically know what the right action to take will be. It's almost as if somewhere, someplace, God (or whoever it is that runs this bad reality show we call "life") has written this Playbook of Life which contains an exhaustive set of rules that can be applied to every conceivable situation in life. Want to land your dream job? Follow steps A, B, and C on page x of the playbook, and you will get that job for sure. Want to find the love of your life? Follow steps D, E, and F on page y, and you will find the love of your life waltzing into your previously mundane and meaningless existence. Want to be a perfect parent? Consult steps G, H, and I on page z. And (in my case) want to know whether this summer is the "right" time to go to Mysore? Follow steps J, K, and L on page w...

And so and so forth. We are conditioned to think that in every conceivable situation in life, there is a "right", Playbook-sanctioned action that will land us dream jobs, find us our loves, turn us more or less magically into perfect parents, or tell us when the right time to go to Mysore is. Depending on who you are and what your background is, the Playbook may take many forms. For some people, the Bible or some religious text functions as such a playbook. For others, it may be what their parents or grandparents taught them growing up, while for yet others, it may be loyalty to a country or organization. For some yogis, it may even be the Yoga Sutra.

Anyway, whatever concrete incarnation one's Playbook happens to take, the general idea is the same. If you don't know what the "right" action to take in any situation is, then either you don't know the Playbook well enough, or you haven't tried hard enough to do what the Playbook says you should do. Or maybe you simply haven't grown old enough: There is this idea that the older we grow, the more pages of the Playbook will be revealed to us, and we will be "wiser" people who are better able to do the "right" things.


But what if this Playbook is merely a figment of our ego-fueled-imagination? What if it never actually existed? What if there is no such thing as the "right" action in any situation? What if there are no steps A, B, C, or D,E,F, that we can follow to get what we want in life?... I can keep multiplying these "what ifs", but I think you get the drift here. If you don't, then no amount of "what ifs" will get the point across anyway; in which case, I'm sorry I wasted so much of your time making you read this post :-)

But if you get the drift, then the next question is: Where does that leave us? If nothing--not even, say, the Yoga Sutra--can tell us what the "right" thing to do in any situation is, what are we to do? One answer is quite simply: Nothing. There is nothing to be done. Here's something from Eckhart Tolle:

"If you are not spending all of your waking life in discontent, worry, anxiety, depression, despair, or consumed by other negative states; if you are able to enjoy simple things like listening to the sound of the rain or the wind; if you can see the beauty of clouds moving across the sky or be alone at times without feeling lonely or needing the mental stimulus of entertainment; if you find yourself treating a complete stranger with heartfelt kindness without wanting anything from him or her... it means a space has opened up, no matter how briefly, in the otherwise incessant stream of thinking that is the human mind. When this happens, there is a sense of well-being, of alive peace, even though it may be subtle."

But what has this feeling of being present, this feeling of spacious well-being or alive peace, to do with doing anything or nothing? Tolle continues:

"Presence is a state of inner spaciousness. When you are present, you ask: How do I respond to the needs of this situation, of this moment? In fact, you don't even need to ask the question. You are still, alert, open to what is. You bring a new dimension into the situation: space. Then you look and you listen. Thus you become one with the situation. When instead of reacting against the situation, you merge with it, the solution arises out of the situation itself... Then, if action is possible or necessary, you take action or rather right action happens through you. Right action is action that is appropriate to the whole."

Taking a cue from Tolle, I would like to make a little suggestion here: Perhaps the time has come in our society or culture where the idea of "right" action is no longer very helpful in navigating this crazy reality show called modern life. Perhaps it is better to speak of appropriate action, action that is appropriate to the whole at any given moment. But how can I know whether my action is appropriate to the whole at any given moment? After all, it's not as if I can call time out and go hide in a corner and ask the universe, "What is the action that is appropriate to the whole at this moment?" any time a decision needs to be made. Well, I don't know of any easy answers to this quandary here; I'm also still trying to figure out this bad reality show myself. But the following story from Mencius might be of some help here:

"There was a man from Sung who pulled at his rice plants because he was worried about their failure to grow. Having done so, he went on his way home, not realizing what he had done. “I am worn out today,” said he to his family. “I have been helping the rice plants to grow.” His son rushed out to take a look and there the plants were all shriveled up. There are few in the world who can resist the urge to help their rice plants grow. There are some who leave the plants unattended, thinking that nothing they can do will be of any use. They are the people who do not even bother to weed. There are others who help the plants grow. They are the people who pull at them. Not only do they fail to help them but they do the plants positive harm”  

Moral of the story? Do not be the kind of person who either (i) pulls at his rice plants, trying to help them grow faster, or (ii) simply neglects the plants and don't even bother to weed. In any situation, if we are to take the action that is appropriate to the whole, we need to look, listen, and know what we are dealing with. Pull what needs to be pulled (the weeds), then back off, and give the important things (the "rice plants") the space they need to grow and flourish.

Actually, this applies to asana practice as well: Although we may not know this, most of the "work" that we do in asana is done with the intention of removing obstacles and giving the body the space it needs to express the asana naturally (think about, say, opening the front body to facilitate backbending). And this is also true of many other things in life too. The idea is: Do what needs to be done, then back off, and get out of your own way. Easier said than done, I know. But we do our best :-)       

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A couple of interesting things happened during practice this morning:

(1) During dropbacks/finishing backbends, I worked on grabbing my ankles in Chakrabandhasana using the method that Kino suggests in her recent video (see this post): Walk hands to heels. Then (a) grab one ankle with one hand, while keeping the other hand firmly planted on the ground. Then (b) switch sides: Grab the other ankle with the other hand, while keeping the non-grabbing hand firmly planted on the ground. And then, finally (c) try to grab both ankles.

The whole process is harder than it looks! Trust Kino to make everything look so easy and effortless... :-) I got through steps (a) and (b), but by the time I got to (c), my quads were burning so intensely (or was it the psoas? Hard to tell when you are in pain...), I had to exit the posture and come back up to standing (with control, of course... no more jacks-in-the-boxes ;-)). Well, maybe I'll have better luck with (c) next practice. Having said this, there is something very sweet about having your quads burn so intensely in a backbend; certainly a better feeling than a backache :-)

(2) The second thing that happened came up much earlier during the practice, and is probably more interesting on a spiritual/emotional level. During Surya B, my mind started wandering, and I suddenly found myself thinking about what I had to do today: There are a few important work-related emails I have to send out today, and I was pretty anxious about what the replies to those emails would be. One thought led to another, and I soon found my mind spinning into a downward spiral of anxious energy. I almost wanted to stop my practice, run over to the computer, and start sending those emails. Then I caught my mind in mid-spin, and asked it a few simple questions: Look, even if you were to send these emails right now, do you seriously think that anybody would reply at this early hour? Even if they did, you would have no obligation to reply right this very minute, would you? So why don't you just do the practice?

And do the practice I did. I'm really happy to have caught my spinning mind before it stopped me from doing what I needed to do at that moment. Isn't it funny, how our minds (or at least my mind) runs us in these circles? Here's something from Eckhart Tolle that speaks to this kind of experience:

"Most people are only peripherally aware of the world that surrounds them, especially if their surroundings are familiar. The voice in the head absorbs the greater part of their attention. Some people feel more alive when they travel and visit unfamiliar places or foreign countries because at those times sense perception--experiencing--takes up more of their consciousness than thinking. They become more present. Others remain completely possessed by the voice in the head even then. Their perceptions and experiences are distorted by instant judgments. They haven't really gone anywhere. Only their body is traveling, while they remain where they have always been: in their head."

I was going to relate Tolle's words here to the experience of the practice, but I can't resist the urge to tell you a little story that just came to my mind a moment ago. Please forgive the digression here. But hopefully you'll like this story. So here goes. Many years ago, when I was still living in Singapore, I knew this middle-aged woman who had just returned from a vacation to Paris with her husband. This being her first trip to Europe, I was quite excited to hear what she had to say about the beauty of this city of cafes. As I was reading a lot of Sartre and Camus at the time, I was half-expecting her to regale me with stories of charming French men dressed in black, smoking cigarettes and drinking strong coffee in cafes while philosophizing about the absurdity of existence. No such luck. The first thing that came out of her mouth was, "Do you know how much dog poop there is in the streets of Paris? And Parisian women stink! They are so unhygienic! How come they don't bother to clean up after their dogs, or clean up their own bodies?! And why does everybody think that Paris is such a romantic place? I don't get it..."

I remember listening to her impressions of this great city with something between bemusement and amusement. It immediately occurred to me that her perceptions of Paris were distorted by what she had in mind from the many Asian cities she had already been to (many Asian cities, especially Singapore, are obsessed about cleanliness and hygiene); or, as Tolle would put it, only her body was traveling, while her mind remained where it had always been: in her head.

But then again, maybe I shouldn't be so harsh here; I actually haven't been to Paris myself. Maybe if I were to go there, I would also end up forming the same harsh judgments about its dog-poop-clogged streets and stinky women! (no offense to any French woman who may be reading this now...)

But to come back to the topic at hand: The practice. I really feel that the practice, with its fixed sequence and structure, "forces" us to be in a certain fixed place. Since there is nowhere to go, and the only thing to do is to do the posture as best we can while paying attention to breath and drishti/gazing point, we are "forced" to really pay attention to what our bodies and minds are going through in the moment on the mat, and attain greater presence.

Then again, the practice also often makes us "travel" and "visit" unfamiliar places. This is most obvious when we get new poses, or when we work with poses that really push us to our limits (Supta Kurmasana, Pasasana and Kapotasana are some common examples). During these times, our bodies have to work so much harder, and visceral perception/experience naturally ends up taking up so much more "space" in our beings than conscious thinking, and we can then use these poses to help us attain greater presence. A similar thing also happens when one is working with injury. Especially when the injury is new, and one is as yet unfamiliar with how to work the practice around the newly-injured body part, one is forced to pay so much more attention to how to move around the injury, and work in such a way as to use the practice to heal rather than aggravate the injury further. In this sense, injury can also become a gift of presence. I'm not saying that we should all go injure ourselves deliberately just to attain presence! But let's face it: Ashtanga is a physical activity that demands a lot from the body. As such, sometimes, despite our very best efforts at healthy alignment and listening to our bodies, injuries still happen. Why? Because bodies are physical objects. And physical objects go through periods of breakage (and will eventually break down forever, whether we like it or not...). So when breakages happen, rather than asking in exasperation: Why? Why me?, the more productive questions to ask might be: How can I gain something from this breakage? How can I use this breakage to learn something about myself, and continue to move on this path of practice?

Wow, I ended up writing a much longer post than I intended: I was only supposed to say a couple of things about practice today :-) Well, my writing often takes on a certain life of its own once I start writing a post: All I can do is to flow with it, and let it all come out of me like a big verbal stream! But perhaps this is a good place for the stream to stop, at least for today. Have a wonderful afternoon :-)      

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I don't think I have ever written a negative movie review on this blog. Well, there's always a first time, and that time is now. Last night, we (my fiancee and I) went to see Chernobyl Diaries at a local movie theater here. I really only have one thing to say about this movie: DON'T SEE IT. Actually, this is probably not strong enough as an anti-recommendation. So let me try this again: DON'T. FUCKING. SEE. IT.

But I guess you are probably thinking: Why should I listen to you? Good question. Well, I guess that means I actually have to say more than one thing about this movie. Sigh. Okay, here goes. First, the premise: A group of young and good-looking American tourists, armed with the all-too-youthful belief that they are invincible and that nothing can possibly hurt them (because they are (a) young and good-looking and (b) Americans) are traveling across Europe. When they get to Kiev, Ukraine, they decide to go on an "extreme tour" of the ghost town of Pripyat, which is located right next to the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, which, as you probably know, was the site of the greatest nuclear power plant disaster back in 1986. Led by Uri, a Ukrainian "extreme tour guide" who is supposedly an ex-member of the special forces (and who, ironically, is the first person in the movie to get killed and disemboweled), the group soon find themselves stranded in the nuclear ghost town, and systematically attacked (and killed off) by a group of mutant beings/zombies/super-angry-nuclear-survivors/God-knows-what: It was never clear throughout the movie what these beings were; they just kind of appear very quickly in flashes, kill off whoever the director wants them to kill off, and then disappear, leaving our, uh, heroes in a state of extreme terror. And leaving the audience in a state of perplexed, puzzled disbelief ("WTF was that?!").

I have to admit that the initial premise was somewhat promising. But the whole movie is short on plot, and even shorter on character development. So much so, that it is virtually impossible to develop any empathy for the characters (which, if you are a horror movie fan, you will know to be an indispensable ingredient of any minimally successfully horror movie); midway through the movie, I actually, to my horror, found myself thinking, "OK, mutant beings/zombies/super-angry-nuclear-survivors/God-knows-what, please kill off these Americans already! Put them (and me) out of their misery. I mean, doesn't any American who is dumb enough to wander into this kind of place deserve to die anyway?"

Arghh... I can't believe I wasted nineteen dollars going to this movie. I'll say what I said at the beginning: DON'T. SEE. IT.

To add insult to injury, I almost got into an accident on the way home from the movie. We were driving home. As we were approaching an intersection, the car in the lane to my right suddenly swerved into my lane without any warning. Without even thinking (there was literally no time to think), I swerved into the next lane to the left to avoid hitting him (or her?). Good thing there wasn't a car in the next lane, or things would have been very not pretty. The thing is, that driver wasn't even cutting me off, although that would have been an asshole enough move on its own. We were virtually neck to neck next to each other, and he (or she?) just swerved into my lane, as if I wasn't there. Damn! Where do some people learn to drive? Maybe he (or she?) had too much to drink?

Maybe I'm being a little superstitious here, but I can't help feeling that there is a connection between watching that sucky horror movie and almost getting into an accident. To borrow a term from Eckhart Tolle, I felt that watching that movie somehow activated my pain body and brought it to the fore, attracting other pain-bodies in the vicinity. Tolle writes:

"When you realize that pain-bodies unconsciously seek more pain, that is to say, that they want something bad to happen, you will understand that many traffic accidents are caused by drivers whose pain-bodies are active at the time. When two drivers with active pain-bodies arrive at an intersection at the same time, the likelihood of an accident is many times greater than under normal circumstances. Unconsciously they both want the accident to happen."

Interesting, don't you think? You know, I really felt a big energy surge during and after the near-accident. Immediately after I swerved and avoided the accident, I was filled with many angry thoughts: Among other things, I really wanted to speed up, catch up with the offending driver, stop him (or her), shake him (or her) by the shoulders, and go, "WTF's wrong with you? Who taught you to drive this way?" Even after I got home, it took me the better part of half an hour to bring my energies under control.

Moral of the story? I don't know... Don't watch bad horror movies?

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First, a few words about practice this morning. This morning's practice was a "good" practice, backbend-wise: In Chakrabandhasana, I succeeded in grabbing my ankles and holding them for five breaths before coming back up to standing. Over the last week or so, grabbing the ankles in this posture seems to be something that happens on a "good" day. On a "not-so-good" day, I might succeed in grabbing one ankle, and then pop back up to standing like a jack-in-the-box when I try to grab the second ankle. And it doesn't seem to make a difference which ankle I grab first: Whether I grab the right or left ankle first, the odds of popping back up to standing are about the same, statistically speaking.

What does seem to make a difference, though, is the quality of the breath. I have noticed that on days when I am successful in grabbing both ankles and holding them for five breaths (like today), the quality of the breath is different. Different in what way? Well, for the last couple of weeks, whenever I walk my hands to the feet to get into Chakrabandhasana after the third drop-back, I always try to imagine my breath being the anchor that anchors my hands to the ankles: The deeper and more steady the breath, the more stable it will be as the anchor that "roots" the hands to the ankles. Conversely, the more shallow and hurried the breath is, the more likely it is that the body will be "swept up" back to the surface (i.e. back into standing) by the "currents". I'm not sure if this image of anchoring the body in the backbend makes sense to you, but don't you think that backbending is a little bit like deep-sea diving; after all, we do speak of deep backbends, don't we? :-)

A couple of weeks ago, after reading about the pain-body issues that were so clearly manifested in my pity-party post about the prospect of going to Singapore (yeah, I really have issues), Claudia sent me a copy of Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth. It's been a very interesting and fascinating read so far (thank you, Claudia!). I would like to share the following passage from the book:

"Form means limitation. We are here not only to experience limitation, but also to grow in consciousness by going beyond limitation. Some limitations can be overcome on an external level. There may be other limitations in your life that you have to learn to live with. They can only be overcome internally. Everyone will encounter them sooner or later. Those limitations either keep you trapped in egoic reaction, which means intense unhappiness, or you rise above them internally by uncompromising surrender to what is. That is what they are here to teach. The surrendered state of consciousness opens up the vertical dimension in your life, the dimension of depth. Something will then come forth from that dimension into this world, something of infinite value that otherwise would have remained unmanifested. Some people who surrendered to severe limitation become healers or spiritual teachers. Others work selflessly to lessen human suffering or bring forth some creative gift into this world."

Citing an example of overcoming severe limitation through uncompromising surrender, Tolle relates his meeting with world-renowned theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking. Hawking is widely regarded to be the world's leading theoretical physicist; as you also probably know, he has motor neurone disease and is almost completely paralyzed, and can only speak with the help of a voice synthesizer. Tolle describes his meeting with Hawking thus:

"...when I held the door open for his electric wheelchair to come through, our eyes met. With surprise I saw that his eyes were clear. There was no trace of unhappiness. I knew immediately that he had relinquished resistance; he was living in surrender."

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I just watched this video of a conversation between Geneen Roth and Eckhart Tolle that Claudia posted in her most recent blog post. A couple of things really struck me about this brief video:

(1) Roth remarked at the beginning that she had for many years made a subtle separation between spirituality and making money in her life ("spirituality is fine, and then... there's money"). She had for many years believed that it is not possible for her to become fully awakened, to become "fully alive to the aliveness" in this lifetime.

This is really interesting. I think many of us (well, maybe I can't speak for others... but this is at least true for myself) have this tendency (at least I do) to erect a separation between whatever it is that we do in our spiritual practices and the "rest of our lives." We do whatever it is that we do in our spiritual practices (yoga, meditation, whatever), and then we go out there and revert to being the assholes that we usually are. After all, we might say to ourselves, "The world is very harsh, you know. All this yoga/meditation/whatever is fine, but how can I get ahead if I am not assertive/asshole-like?"

Actually, if you think about it, this is precisely why difficulties in life and practice are so important: They serve as valuable teachers that really force us to make our practices "real", to bring our practices closer to the grimy reality of life as it is. For Roth, it was Bernie Madoff that came into her life as such a teacher. For the rest of us, it may be a crisis at work, some difficulties in our relationships with people close to us, or even an injury that happened within or outside the yoga practice. Anyway, all of these things, as sucky as they may seem in the beginning, are valuable for us, because they force us to pause and ask ourselves: Who am I? Am I just my life savings/my job/my favorite asana that has now been taken away by injury?

(2) Watching the video, I am also deeply struck by Eckhart Tolle's humble yet dignified bearing and his posture of sincerely listening to everything Roth has to say. Frankly, I don't know much about Tolle; for many years, listening to so many people rave about Tolle and The Power of Now, I really couldn't understand what the big deal was with this guy. Honestly, before I watched the video, I half-expected to see this self-important new-age guru spouting all kinds of feel-good platitudes.

But seeing Tolle's earnest attitude of sincere listening really bowed me over. I personally believe that you can learn a lot about the kind of person somebody is simply by observing how he listens to others. As Confucius would say, "The gentleman is exalted and yet not proud. The petty person is proud and yet not exalted." Along the same lines, the thirteenth-century Japanese priest Nichiren also says, "The purpose of the appearance in this world of Shakyamuni Buddha, the lord of teachings, lies in his behavior as a human being." Watching Tolle in this video, I really feel that Confucius' and Nichiren's words describe him perfectly.

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