our-yoga

Practice this morning was great, but I felt a little heavy, and binding in Mari D took a bit more effort, because I ate and drank too much last night. One of my colleagues at my new workplace hosted a dinner party to welcome me to the department. Gosh, he's a really great cook. He cooked up a huge Indian feast consisting of: A vegetable and potato korma, mushrooms boiled in some delicious sauce whose ingredients elude me, a bean dish whose name I do not know, raita, and basmati rice. There were six of us at dinner, but I'm pretty sure he made enough food to feed twenty! Wanting to be the gracious guest (which really wasn't too difficult, considering just how delectable the food was), I went back not only for seconds, but even for thirds! The conversation ranged from movies to Haruki Murakami; lubricated by a few too many glasses of wine, it flowed very smoothly and was very lively. At one point, one of the attendees and I even had a lively debate about the merits of 1Q84.

Needless to say, an Ashtangi cannot indulge in so much decadence without having to pay the price for it on the mat the following morning. But even though practice this morning was a little heavy-going, I still managed to get through full primary (complete with dropbacks and standups) in an hour and twenty minutes. I guess this means there is some horsepower in this little Asian engine :-)

I'm going to have to sign off now, as I have to go take care of some stuff at my new workplace. If last night's dinner is any indication, I think I will flourish here in Pocatello. Oh, and a mental note to myself: Must get the recipe for that delicious mushroom dish from my colleague.

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"You gotta dance. As long as the music plays... Don't even think why."

Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance

The above advice was given to Haruki Murakami's protagonist in the novel Dance Dance Dance by another character. It's hard to explain the context in which the advice was given. As with many of Murakami's works, trying to explain one thing properly would involve explaining a highly complicated plot with many surreal and supernatural elements; so if you want to know the exact context, I highly recommend you read the novel, which I think is one of Murakami's better works (all of his works are good, in my opinion, but this one is, well, better).

In any case, there is at least one area of our practice to which this advice definitely does not apply: Utthita Hasta Padangusthasana. From what I've heard, one of Sharath's most-repeated exhortations in UHP is: No Dancing! If you are new to Ashtanga, "dancing" in the context of UHP refers to the action in which the Ashtangi, struggling to keep his or her balance, repeatedly sways from side to side or even hops around a little bit in order to prevent himself or herself from toppling over. Indeed, if you are new to Ashtanga, you may be a regular dancer even if you don't know that this is what the phenomenon is called.

Actually, you don't have to be new to Ashtanga to be a dancer in UHP. I've been a full-time Ashtangi for more than three years now (which probably still counts as "new", in the bigger picture), and I still dance in UHP. This morning, for instance, I was dancing so much on the second side that my left heel crashed onto the kitchen counter with a resounding thud; well, you might also say that I gave the kitchen counter a heel kick (the martial arts applications of yoga asanas... :-)). The kitchen counter was unharmed, but my heel certainly took a beating...

Over the last couple of years, several people have given me different perspectives on what causes dancing in UHP. Claudia told me some time ago that the antidote to dancing is simply Sharath's presence. Apparently, when you are in Sharath's presence (whether at the KPJAYI or during his world tour), you are so nervous and/or under so much pressure to perform that your legs and feet mysteriously become stronger and more able to keep your body in one point in space. I don't want to sound like a crazy brain-washed fanatic (but then again, I am an Ashtanga Fundamentalist...), but I can't help feeling that there is some truth to Claudia's view. For instance, whenever I do Sharath's led primary CD, I always find myself using so much more lower leg power to stabilize my supporting leg in UHP. The result is that (a) my UHP is always so much more stable when I am doing led primary to Sharath's count, and (b) my calves always ache for the rest of the day. I guess (b) may not be such a good thing, because if my calves are aching, this may be a sign that I am not using enough bandhas/core strength to hold the pose together, and am instead using sheer leg power. Definitely something for me to work on here. But it seems that there is some truth to what Claudia is saying here. I mean, if simply hearing Sharath's voice is enough to cause my UHP to be more stable, imagine what it would be like if I am in his presence? :-)

Kino, on the other hand, believes that dancing is often caused by a simple anatomical reason: Lack of external hip rotation when one takes one's leg out to the side in UHP B. More precisely, it is caused by the greater trochanter's not dropping down enough when you bring your leg out to the side. Which leads to instability in the posture. Which leads to dancing. The solution, then, is to drop the greater trochanter of the leg that is going out to the side more. Easier said than done, but it sounds right.

Actually, Kino also has another angle on UHP. In one of her videos, she says that UHP is an exercise in hand-eye coordination. As such, it boosts brain capacity and increases brain function. Here's the video:

Interesting, don't you think? Well, if being able to perform UHP well means that one has good hand-eye coordination and good brain capacity/function, wouldn't that mean that if one regularly dances in UHP, one must have a "dancing brain"? Or, to modify one of Guruji's famous sayings, "Body not dancing, mind dancing!"   

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A cool mid-September afternoon here in a little college town in the upper Midwest. A light rain falls. The trees around here are starting to bleed out the bright greens of summer, and starting to put on the red-yellow hues of fall. It is hard not to think that the rain is speeding up this color-bleeding process. Or maybe it's the other way around: Could the change in colors be bringing about the rain? I have no way of knowing.

I also can't help thinking that I have seen this same exact weather somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, and even in the tropics. Yes, the tropics; except that this kind of light-rainy weather would be a few degrees warmer down in the tropics. But there seems to be something universal about rainy weather everywhere. Wherever the rains come, they bleed out the colors in everything, making everything seem cleaner and more vivid. Along with the colors, the rains also bleed out the smells in everything, so that every little smell of the grass and trees and flowers attains a certain sharpness, imprinting itself subtly yet powerfully into the sensations. So I suppose we can say that rain is nature's great leveler: It makes everything everywhere that otherwise seems so different seem so much the same...

On this cool rainy mid-September afternoon, I find myself reading books that I probably shouldn't have time to read, if I am taking my, ahem, career and the accompanying rat-race more seriously. But then again, if I were taking my career and the accompanying rat-race more seriously and devoting all my waking hours to it, I probably wouldn't be writing this post in the first place. Heck, this blog probably wouldn't even exist! So think about this: At the risk of sounding very self-important here, I think it is no exaggeration to say that you owe the pleasure(?) of reading this blog to a lack of professional ambition on the part of its author. Ah, the irony of life!

But let us move to a happier subject. So as I was saying, on this cool rainy mid-September afternoon, I find myself reading books that I probably shouldn't have time to read. Specifically, I find myself reading Haruki Murakami, one of my favorite authors. Here's a very interesting and insightful exchange between two characters in A Wild Sheep Chase. The protagonist's girlfriend and this caretaker who is taking care of a bunch of sheep on a sheep farm are engaged in a seemingly ordinary discussion about sheep behavior:

'"Do sheep quarrel?" asked my girlfriend.
"You bet they quarrel," said the caretaker. "It's the same with any animal that goes around in groups. Each and every sheep has a pecking order in the sheep society. If there's fifty sheep in a pen, then there's number one sheep right down to number fifty sheep. And each one knows exactly where it belongs."
"Amazing," she said. 
"It makes managing them that much easier for me too. You pull on number one sheep, and the rest just follow along, no questions asked."
"But if they all know their place, why should they fight?"
"Say one sheep gets hurt and loses its strength, its position becomes unstable. So the sheep under it get feisty and try for better position. When that happens, they're at it for three days."
"Poor things."
"Well, it all evens out. The sheep that gets the boot, when it was young, gave some other sheep the boot, after all. And when it all comes down to the butcher block, there's no number one or number fifty. Just one happy barbecue."'

Hmm. Just one happy barbecue, huh? Now let's do a little experiment here. Every time you see the word "sheep" in the above passage, replace it with the word "humans". Now read the passage again. What do you get? That's right, you get a perfect description of human behavior in almost every human society that has ever existed, is existing, and (maybe) will ever exist into the foreseeable future. So in the end, when all is said and done, we're just one happy barbecue! Isn't this a happy thought? Who is going to be eating the barbecue, I wonder?...

Well, all this is getting a little too sermony for a cool rainy mid-September afternoon, so I guess I should stop here. Besides, who really has the time to be thinking these sheepy thoughts when there's a rat race to run? Got to get back into it, you know, before I fall further back than I already have. But well, maybe think about this a little the next time you're mad at somebody and feel like putting him or her in his or her place: Whatever your place is in the pecking order right now, when it all comes down to the butcher block, there's only one happy barbecue.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

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

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

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

Belief A: Ashtanga was designed for teenage boys.

Belief B: Ashtanga was not designed for teenage boys.

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

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

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

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

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I'm still reading Haruki Murakami's 1Q84. One of the main characters in the novel is Tengo, a talented math teacher who is also an aspiring novelist on the side. As a teacher, he has an uncanny ability to engage his students and get them to feel passionate about something that is usually seen as a dry and boring subject (mathematics). Here's an excerpt from the novel that describes his teaching prowess:

"As a teacher, Tengo pounded into his students' heads how voraciously mathematics demanded logic. Here things that could not be proven had no meaning, but once you had succeeded in proving something, the world's riddles settled into the palm of your hand like a tender oyster. Tengo's lectures took on uncommon warmth, and the students found themselves swept up in his eloquence. He taught them how to practically and effectively solve mathematical problems while simultaneously presenting a spectacular display of the romance concealed in the questions it posed. Tengo saw admiration in the eyes of several of his female students, and he realized that he was seducing these seventeen- or eighteen-year-olds through mathematics. His eloquence was a kind of intellectual foreplay. Mathematical functions stroked their backs; theorems sent warm breath into their ears."   

My own lectures as a teacher certainly do not have this kind of seductive eloquence (at least not that I am aware of :-)), but I think I may have gone through a similar sort of experience this past weekend at the philosophy conference I attended in Memphis. I originally wasn't very interested in attending this conference; this being almost mid-term, there is a ton of papers to be graded and a whole bunch of other tasks to see to at work, and the thought of flying out of town for an entire weekend--even if for supposedly professional purposes--seems an unnecessary distraction from these pressing tasks.

But I somehow decided to go anyway, and I'm glad I did. The conference was a lively event, with scholars from universities and colleges all over the country (including, very humbly, yours truly) presenting their works in progress, and getting very constructive feedback and criticism from their peers in the profession; at any rate, I did not see any of the petty and catty attacks that academics are unfortunately famous for; if this is any indication of how philosophy conferences are increasingly being conducted in this country, this can only bode well for the profession.

Being a participant in this event, I personally feel very reinvigorated. I got some interesting feedback and useful suggestions on how to further develop my paper. In addition, I also attended a few other presentations. One presentation on comparative philosophy particularly stood out to me: It was a comparison between Hegel and Advaita Vedanta. The presenter compared and contrasted the views of Hegel, Shankara and Ramanuja on reality and non-reality. Since I know very little Vedanta, and practically no Hegel, most of the presentation simply went over my head. But I am really inspired by the presentation to go read more Vedanta, and maybe do my own exegesis and philosophical analysis sometime in the future.

Perhaps my experience at this conference is similar to that of the female students in Tengo's classes in one way: Like these students, I feel once again the seductive eloquence of philosophy as an intellectual and existential practice. In any case, I have always believed that on a most fundamental level, intellectual concerns cannot be separated from existential concerns. Aristotle said that, "All men by nature desire to know." Since it is in our nature to want to know things--both things about our environment, and things about our inner lives--human existence cannot be truly fulfilling if we do not try at least some of the time to give expression to this desire. And philosophy at its best is an expression of this most natural of desires. Indeed, how can one be human and not be seduced at least some of the time by this desire?

I did manage to squeeze in a brief trip to Graceland yesterday afternoon, after all. Went on a tour of the Graceland Mansion. I don't know that much about the life and times of the King; even so, while walking through the various rooms in the mansion, I really sensed that this is a man who lived life very, very fully. So much so, that virtually everything in his life is larger than life. And his presence definitely still fills every room in the house, after all these years.


Elvis's fans, of course, can readily attest to his seductive power as an entertainer. But I also wonder if he might not be a teacher too, in his own unique way: Perhaps he is demonstrating to us through his life and actions how one can live and love in a larger-than-life manner?          

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"Robbing people of their actual history is the same as robbing them of part of themselves. It's a crime... Our memory is made up of our individual memories and our collective memories. The two are intimately linked. And history is our collective memory. If our collective memory is taken from us--is rewritten--we lose the ability to sustain our true selves."

Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

I started reading 1Q84 a couple of weeks ago. I'm about a quarter of the way through. Reviews of the book so far have been very mixed; some think it is possibly Murakami's best work; others think it is an all-over-the-place piece of work that only Murakami can get away with pulling off (in a not-so-good kind of way).

I happen to fall in the former camp. I really think the story so far is mind-blowing. As is often the case with many of my favorite works, I feel that the experience of reading 1Q84 so far is kind of like peeling an onion: What the story is about isn't revealed to you right away; rather, the reader has to kind of go along with the flow, and "peel off" the unraveling layers of the story progressively. Along the way, one's sense of reality gets upended almost without one's being aware of it: As I've mentioned in a previous post somewhere, Murakami's writing can be characterized as being yogic without the woo. Oh, and speaking of yogic: Not to give away the story or anything, but one of the major antagonists in the novel seems to be this quasi-religious cult leader who does some really unsavory things to people, and who somehow has the absolute unquestioning trust of his followers... does this mirror something that is happening in the real-life yoga world right now, or is it just me? :-)

I guess this post isn't so much a review of the book as it is an unabashed recommendation: Go read it! It's very long (almost a thousand pages), but from what I have been reading of it so far, it's totally worth the investment of time and reading effort.

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Here are some more insightful words from Haruki Murakami:

"...if I don't do anything I tend to put on the pounds. My wife's the opposite, since she can eat as much as she likes (she doesn't eat a lot of them, but can never turn down anything sweet), never exercise, and still not put on any weight. She has no extra fat at all. Life just isn't fair, is how it used to strike me. Some people can work their butts off and never get what they're aiming for, while others can get it without any effort at all.

But when I think about it, having the kind of body that easily puts on weight was perhaps a blessing in disguise. In other words, if I don't want to gain weight I have to work out hard every day, watch what I eat, and cut down on indulgences. Life can be tough, but as long as you don't stint on the effort, your metabolism will greatly improve with these habits, and you'll end up much healthier, not to mention stronger. To a certain extent, you can even slow down the effects of aging. But people who naturally keep the weight off no matter what don't need to exercise or watch their weight in order to stay trim. There can't be many of them who would go out of their way to take these troublesome measures when they don't need to. Which is why, in many cases, their physical strength deteriorates as they age. If you don't exercise, your muscles will naturally weaken, as will your bones. Some of my readers may be the kind of people who easily gain weight, but the only way to understand what's really fair is to take a long-range view of things. For the reasons I give above, I think this physical nuisance should be viewed in a positive way, as a blessing. We should consider ourselves lucky that the red light is so clearly visible. Of course, it's not always easy to see things this way."

Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

As somebody who used to be at least 20 to 30 pounds heavier than what I weigh now, I can totally relate to Murakami's words here. And without being totally conscious of it, I have also, like Murakami, come to see the fact that I tend to put on weight relatively easily as a blessing rather than a burden. If I didn't have this physiological tendency, I would probably not have gone out of my way to find ways and means to keep myself at a healthy weight and size, and would quite definitely not have embarked on the path that led me to Ashtanga practice.

And I personally think Murakami's quite right that regular exercise can slow down the effects of aging. Here's a personal example: Just yesterday, I was chatting with a fellow faculty member in the coffeeshop that I usually do my work in. We had run into each other many times before at this coffeeshop, but this was the first time we actually struck up a conversation. I assumed from the very beginning of the conversation that he knew that I was also a faculty member at the same university. So we were chatting, and he asked me which department I was in. "Philosophy", I replied. And then he asked me who my academic advisor was. At first, I thought he had misspoken, and was meaning to ask who my department chairperson was. So I told him who my department chair was. He said, "No, I mean the person who advises you about what courses to take each semester." And then the realization struck me: He had been thinking I was an undergrad the whole time! I had to clarify and tell him that I was actually faculty. And he exclaimed, "Wow, but you look so young and vibrant! You must take very good care of yourself! All the other guys in philosophy are so, so..." He faltered, looking for the politically correct expression. "So much older", I completed his sentence for him, thereby saving him the trouble of having to find a diplomatic way of saying what was on his mind.  And I also realized that, if I were a more savvy businessperson, this could also have been a very good opportunity for me to advertise my yoga class to him ("Yes, I take good care of myself by doing yoga everyday! Speaking of yoga, would you be interested in taking a yoga class...").

But enough of talking about myself. Coming back to Murakami's words, I think his words apply not just to maintaining body weight and staying fit and healthy. They apply as well to asana practice. Whether we like it or not, many of us are less well-endowed in certain aspects of the practice compared to other practitioners: For instance, some people naturally have less open hips than others, some are less back-bendy than others. Due to certain lifestyle habits, some practitioners may also have certain muscular-skeletal or nervous system issues that make them more injury-prone in some parts of their bodies than other practitioners. As Murakami notes, very often, life just doesn't seem fair: Some people just seem to glide through their asanas, progressing steadily and seemingly unstoppably through the various series, while other lesser mortals seem to crawl along in the lower reaches of primary.

But perhaps, as Murakami suggests, "the only way to understand what's really fair is to take a long-range view of things." Seen in this light, the fact that this or that limitation or issue or injury stares us so squarely in the face is a blessing: It presents us with an invaluable opportunity to understand our bodies and its imbalances more intimately than somebody who's never had to struggle with these limitations. In the process, we gain more body awareness and wisdom, and discover how to do this practice in a way that keeps us strong, flexible and balanced for the rest of our lives in this body. In this way, what originally appears to be unfairness or injustice is in fact a certain unique kind of fairness, a fairness that we can understand and appreciate only through the day-to-day and moment-to-moment struggle of consistent practice. So perhaps there is more fairness in the universe than meets the eye :-) 

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During my trip to Portland last week, I bought a few books for myself. I figured that if I read a little bit of these books everyday, I might be able to trick myself into thinking that I'm still on vacation when I was no longer on vacation. So far, it's worked. :-) It's really interesting how taking just a few minutes out of my everyday life to read something unrelated to work really refreshes me and gives me a new perspective on my everyday life. One might even say that a good book is a portable vacation :-)

Right now, I'm reading Haruki Murakami's What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. It's his memoir about his thoughts about writing and running, and how they intertwine and define his life. There are many things he says in the book that really speak to what I feel about life and the yoga practice. For example, he writes:

"People are at their best at different times of day, but I'm definitely a morning person. That's when I can focus and finish up important work I have to do. Afterward I work out or do other errands that don't take much concentration. At the end of the day I relax and don't do any more work. I read, listen to music, take it easy, and try to go to bed early. This is the pattern I've mostly followed up till today. Thanks to this, I've been able to work efficiently these past twenty-four years. It's a lifestyle, though, that doesn't allow for much nightlife, and sometimes your relationships with other people become problematic. Some people even get mad at you, because they invite you to go somewhere or do something with them and you keep turning them down.

I'm struck by how, except when you're young, you really need to prioritize in life, figuring out in what order you should divide up your time and energy. If you don't get that sort of system set by a certain age, you'll lack focus and your life will be out of balance. I placed the highest priority on the sort of life that lets me focus on writing, not associating with all the people around me. I felt that the indispensable relationship I should build in my life was not with a specific person, but with an unspecified number of readers. As long as I got my day-to-day life set up so that each work was an improvement over the last, then many of my readers would welcome whatever life I chose for myself. Shouldn't this be my duty as a novelist, and my top priority?...

In other words, you can't please everybody."

Murakami's words here remind me of what I went through when I first started practicing yoga. I was in grad school when I went to my first yoga class, and from my very first class, I knew that this yoga thing was something I wanted to do for a long, long time. (For more details, see this post). Soon after that, I quickly realized that if I was going to keep doing yoga everyday, I was going to have to change my lifestyle, go to bed earlier and get up earlier; like many academics I knew at that time, my life revolved around getting papers graded and getting research done (actually, it still does...), and I would often stay up very late to finish papers or write. You can say that yoga single-handedly turned me into a morning person.

Around this time, I remember chatting with a grad student from one of the so-called hard sciences. I told her that I spent a couple of hours doing yoga every morning. She responded by asking me in a slightly derisive manner how I could possibly have the time to spend a few hours everyday on nothing but yoga, and added, "Perhaps I need to switch my major to philosophy!" [Read: Unlike people in the hard sciences, who work very hard all the time and are very disciplined, philosophy grads are just a bunch of pot-smoking, yoga-practicing hippies...] To her, as to many other grads, spending a few hours a day on anything not remotely related to work was just an unjustifiable waste of time (of course, she conveniently forgot that many academics, including those in the hard sciences, spend a lot of hours on things that are somewhat related to work (going out for drinks with colleagues, for instance) but which are probably not very productive in the long run either).

In any case, I somehow managed to resist reacting to her not-so-polite jab (maybe the yoga was already starting to work, even at that time). Instead, I replied that although work is important, it is just that: It is work, and even if I should have to drop out of grad school (God forbid!), I would still be able to find something else to do. But yoga is something I intend to do for the rest of my life. So which is more important? I can't remember her exact response to this, but I think we basically engaged in a little more polite banter before she slinked away. Well... you can't please everybody, right?

But it's not all bad. The cool thing about changing your lifestyle and worldview is that although it is difficult in the beginning (i.e. getting snubbed by people, or becoming the subject of not-so-polite jabs), if you keep at it, you'll realize that even your friends start to change: They will start to see the value of your new lifestyle and come to respect it. Those who don't will gradually drift out of your life, to be replaced by others who do. So, you lose some, you gain some. :-)

Murakami continues:

"Even when I ran my bar I followed the same policy. [It turns out that Murakami ran a jazz bar for a number of years before he became a full-time novelist. Who knew?] A lot of customers came to the bar. If one out of ten enjoyed the place and said he'd come again, that was enough. If one out of ten was a repeat customer, then the business would survive. To put it the other way, it didn't matter if nine out of ten didn't like my bar. This realization lifted a weight off my shoulders. Still, I had to make sure that the one person who did like the place really liked it. In order to make sure he did, I had to make my philosophy and stance clear-cut, and patiently maintain that stance no matter what. This is what I learned through running a business."

I can't help feeling that the same thing applies to teaching yoga. At the risk of sounding very dogmatic, what this means to me is this: One should stick to teaching what one practices, and not go out of one's way to change one's content to please the student and make the class more "palatable" or "enjoyable" for the student. In other words, if you teach Ashtanga (that's the only style I can talk about, since it's what I practice), you should teach it as closely as possible to the way you practice and were taught. Adding fancy stuff like soothing music or mood lighting or incense, while probably not a bad thing in itself, probably won't do very much for the quality of your teaching. In my (humble) opinion, we are here to deliver something to the student (the Ashtanga method), and so long as even one out of ten students "get" it and appreciate it, we have succeeded. Don't get me wrong: I'm not saying that we should go out of our way to antagonize or alienate people. But at the same time, I can't help feeling that a lot of these yoga classes out there that try to make yoga fit the lives of people who otherwise wouldn't have anything to do with yoga (think "yoga for wine-lovers", "yoga for chocolate-lovers", "yoga for sex-lovers"... okay, I really don't know if there is a "yoga for sex-lovers" yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's already on somebody's business horizon somewhere...) are barking up the wrong tree. They might attract lots of curiosity-seekers and be successful in the short-term, but I'm really not sure if they will ultimately do yoga (and themselves) any favors in the long term.

I suppose many people out there may disagree with me on this point. But even if you see yoga purely as a business, it still remains true that a business that tries to be everything to everybody usually ends up being nothing to anybody. Same goes with yoga: If one tries too hard to make yoga something for everybody, one ends up teaching something that works for nobody.

Just my two cents', as always.    

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“I look up at the sky, wondering if I'll catch a glimpse of kindness there, but I don't. All I see are indifferent summer clouds drifting over the Pacific. And they have nothing to say to me. Clouds are always taciturn. I probably shouldn't be looking up at them. What I should be looking at is inside of me. Like staring down into a deep well. Can I see kindness there? No, all I see is my own nature. My own individual, stubborn, uncooperative often self-centered nature that still doubts itself--that, when troubles occur, tries to find something funny, or something nearly funny, about the situation. I've carried this character around like an old suitcase, down a long, dusty path. I'm not carrying it because I like it. The contents are too heavy, and it looks crummy, fraying in spots. I've carried it with me because there was nothing else I was supposed to carry. Still, I guess I have grown attached to it. As you might expect.”

Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Haruki Murakami is one of my favorite writers. I don't quite know how to characterize his writing. All of his novels and short stories feature ordinary people who start out facing seemingly ordinary everyday issues (cat getting lost, a teenage boy running away from home, etc.); issues which quickly metamorphosize into bizarre, surreal situations in which the everyday gets inextricably mixed up with the other-worldly, in which the protaganists (and the reader) are forced to question the very meaning of their everyday existences.

I often feel that Murakami's writing is yogic without the woo; through his writing, he induces the same kind of subtly powerful soul-searching and reflection that yoga practice often brings up. However, he does not pull any punches in doing so. He does not pretend that the universe is anything more than an indifferent spectator of the foibles and flaws of the human condition. Yet through it all, there is a certain compassionate tone that underlies his writing, making what might otherwise be unbearable seem bearable, even funny. My favorite novels by him are The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Kafka on the Shore. I highly recommend them.

Murakami's work brings up one question for me: Is the universe indifferent to human suffering? What is the yogic perspective on this question? I suspect that many newcomers to yoga are attracted to yoga because yoga, at least as it is presented in the west, often gives one the impression that there is a universe that is inherently compassionate, nurturing and caring; all you have to do is to evoke the appropriate mantras, and maybe light the appropriate kind of incense, turn on the appropriate kind of soft lighting and soothing music in yoga class, and that all-pervading feel-good feeling will wash off onto you and follow you everywhere when you step off the mat and into the world.

Ashtanga practice, of course, is nothing like that. There is no music, and (usually) no incense. All you can hear is the sound of your own breathing and those of others (if you practice in a mysore room), accompanied by the incessant chattering of your own chitta vrtti, which tends to get louder and more persistent when you approach postures that you find challenging. All you can smell (if anything) is the smell of your own sweat and that of others (again, if you practice in a mysore room). And there is no teacher to lead the class and tell you that everything is all good and will be okay. You have to listen to your own breath and body, and judge for yourself if anything is not so good or not so okay, and then decide how to respond.

With all of this responsibility placed squarely onto the practitioner, one sometimes wonders where the universe stands in all of this. This is especially so when one is facing difficulties in the practice (injuries or illness, major life changes which bring up strong emotions, etc.). Amid the frustration and sweat and tears, looking up at the clouds (or, in this case, looking up at the ceiling of the practice room) for a glimpse of kindness, one seems to see only one's own frustration reflected back onto oneself. And the only things one can do is to either get off the mat and call it a day, or continue to stare inside of oneself, see all the ugliness that is there in all its full glory, accept it for what it is, and try to work with it as best as one can. In such moments, one cannot help (at least, I cannot help) but wonder: What is the universe doing? Is it just standing around somewhere, spectating with benign indifference at my clumsy attempts to come to terms with myself? If the universe is kind or compassionate, where is this kindness or compassion?

And these moments where one senses the universe's seeming indifference do not end when one gets off the mat. One feels them in everyday life too; in particularly, one feels them especially acutely in those moments where one feels that despite one's best efforts, things seem to be going in the reverse direction: It's as if one's inner computer is offline and disconnected from the rest of the universe, which seems to continue to hum merrily along while one vainly spins one's wheels in the ditch of futility.

Fortunately, most of the time, for most of us, the universe seems to be operating in a state of at least tolerable connectedness to us. It might still be indifferent, for all we know; and we know that there are always problems and issues lurking in the background. But we get by. Seen in this light, perhaps the Ashtanga practice is really a sort of magnifying glass. When one is on the mat, one deliberately places oneself in a situation where one has more opportunities than usual to get offline with the universe; these opportunities most often present themselves in the form of injuries, illness or even challenging postures. The challenge here is whether one can maintain a certain level of composure and equanimity in the face of such "offlineness" and disconnectedness. Will I face these "offline" and disconnected feelings, learn to be with them, or will I simply stand up, get off the mat, and [insert your favorite "comfort activity"]?

Well, there are no easy answers. But on a very, very different note, here's some other news: I will be in Portland, Oregon on the weekend of November 4th to 6th. I will be presenting a philosophy paper on procrastination at a philosophy conference at Lewis and Clark College. There aren't too many jobs in which you can get paid for thinking, writing and speaking about procrastination :-) It's things like this that make me feel that academia is a nice place to be in, despite whatever other issues there might be with it (I'm not going there...). Well, maybe the universe isn't so indifferent to me, after all :-) Anyway, I expect that my schedule will be really packed during the day. But I'm hoping to be able to go to at least one early-morning Ashtanga class while I'm there. So I'm going to start looking online for Ashtanga studios in the area. If any of you out there live in Portland or the surrounding area, and would like to hang out with me/practice with me/tell me about interesting places to practice Ashtanga/tell me about interesting places to eat at/whatever, please get in touch with me. I'll love to hear from you.            

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