our-yoga

Over the last couple of weeks, I have been reading a collection of early short stories by the science fiction writer Philip K. Dick. As you might know, since Dick's untimely death in 1982, a number of his novels and short stories have been adapted into movies, including Total Recall, Minority Report, Paycheck, and The Adjustment Bureau.

Most of Dick's early stories were very short; written in the fifties, many of them  are less than 20 pages in length. And yet, within these constraints, he was able to paint very vivid scenarios involving space travel and warfare, extra-dimensional beings, and apocalyptic scenarios involving a future in which nuclear war and human excesses have turned this beautiful planet into a toxic wasteland in which humans struggle just to breathe.

One such early story, "Survey Team", paints just such an apocalyptic scenario. The story is set several centuries in the future. Earth has become so ravaged by nuclear war that humans can only live underground, subsisting on food grown in special tanks and breathing air that is highly processed by compressors. Entire generations of children are born never having been on the surface of the planet; as a result of the vitamin D deficiency, their eyesight is severely compromised. A special team--the Survey Team--is sent to survey the various planets in the solar system in search of a new home for humankind. The team concludes that Mars is the only place that may be even remotely inhabitable, and a special team of surveyors is sent to explore and prepare Mars for possible human colonization.

When the team arrives on Mars, they discover buildings and installations left behind by what was apparently a very advanced civilization. They also discover written records left behind by this civilization. From these records, they learn that the original inhabitants of Mars had to abandon the planet many thousands of years ago, because they had depleted its resources. The team also learned that these inhabitants had since discovered another pristine world untouched by development, and have since emigrated en mass to this world. However, upon arriving on this new world, the inhabitants were unable to preserve their original culture. Factions formed among these emigrants, war resulted, and the originally advanced civilization lapsed into barbarism on their new world.

The team members are excited by the possibility of such a pristine world, and they decide to track down this world and emigrate there as well. And then a couple of team members started fiddling around with the equipment that the inhabitants had left behind, and uncovered a very startling piece of information hidden within the equipment: The pristine world that the inhabitants had emigrated to was none other than Earth! Which actually totally makes sense, since Earth is just "next door", in a manner of speaking. What this means is that human beings were all originally descended from Martians, who had emigrated to Earth because they had totally messed up and depleted the resources on their home planet. And then the Martians--who are now Earthlings--went on to mess up and destroy Earth. And now the Earthlings-who-were-originally-Martians find themselves back on their original home planet. They had come full circle (not in a good way), and had destroyed not one, but two worlds in the process.

Pretty heavy reading, don't you think? Especially considering that most people read sci-fi to "escape" from real life. I also can't help feeling that Dick's worldview as reflected in his writings was very ahead of his time, especially considering the fact that he was living and writing in the United States in the '50s, a time of relative plenty in which few people even stopped to consider whether the Earth's resources could ever be used up.

Actually, there are still people who believe that this planet's resources can never be used up; at least, there is nothing in their behavior which suggests that they think otherwise. For instance, I live on the border between Minnesota and North Dakota. The great state of North Dakota has recently become flush with cash, as a result of the oil-fracking boom. The local papers are filled with happy stories of young people who are now able to return to their hometowns from far-away cities to make a good living on the ranches on which they grew up, because of the new-found prosperity that all this oil money has brought. This is so even if there are actually oil pipelines running through their ranches... actually, this is probably what explains their new-found prosperity; I imagine that the authorities have to be paying them quite a handsome bit of cash for the right to run oil pipelines through their land.

Anyway, I often read these happy stories, and wonder if I am in some kind of a time warp: I'd imagine that this must be how Texas and many other places in this country felt like in the fifties, with all this new-found wealth and power... but what do I know?          


Even the yoga world is not untouched by this kind of ideology, the kind of ideology that tells you that you can be totally self-sufficient and do well for yourself, so long as you pull yourself up by your bootstraps, dig deep enough (literally!), stay vigilant, make sure that government is small and limited, and protect your rights from socialists and other undesirables that try to tell you how to spend your hard-earned cash. As many of you who follow yoga news are well aware, Off the Mat, Into The World (OTM) recently collaborated with the Huffington Post to create the Huffington Oasis at the RNC. The Huffington Oasis, according to this Elephant Journal article, is "a unique, alternative space providing yoga, meditation, spa services, and organic food at the DNC", "a refuge where, instead of grabbing a Red Bull and burger between sessions, they could come to reconnect to their bodies, minds and intentions in an environment providing sustainable methods for grounding, health and healing in an otherwise supercharged environment."

Interesting. According to this report by Salon.com, the massage therapists and yoga teachers who worked at the Oasis were working for free, rubbing feet (and perhaps, licking a few boots too? :-)) while being "essentially conned into believing they were performing a public service."

Well, I'll take back that parenthetical remark about licking boots. That wasn't nice. Gosh, why am I so cynical? After all, most (maybe even all) of these yoga teachers and massage therapists at the Oasis probably really believed that they were spreading some good vibes through their pro bono work. How can I be so unkind? But then again, I think this really says something about how gullible we "yoga-types" can be, that we can be so easily conned into doing work for free, that if we even think of asking to be paid for what we do, we are being "unyogic". If this is not brain-washing, I don't know what is...

But enough of all this ranting. It's not going to get me or you anywhere. Perhaps we should really try to take a more charitable view of this whole thing. Maybe the people who worked in the Oasis really did believe that they could change the world, one pair of Republican feet and one tight over-stressed Republican body at a time. Very possible. After all, people are essentially the same, whether they are Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, or Tree-Huggers. Whatever our political persuasions, we all have minds, bodies and spirits. And minds, bodies and spirits can always be aligned and set right through a good yoga practice, which helps us all to make better decisions and be more effective in the world. 

The big question, of course, is: Set right in what way? Become more effective in what way? If I were, say, a Tea Party Republican who does yoga (maybe even, God forbid, Ashtanga Yoga) everyday, six days a week, will I become a more effective exploiter of the Earth's resources, finding new ways to drill for oil in ways never before imagined? Or will I perhaps come to see the error of my ways, and switch sides to become a Libertarian, or even a Democrat? The possibilities are endless...


Gosh, this is becoming one long drawn out neither-here-nor-there post. And I still don't know where I'm going. Maybe I better quit right now while the going is still (relatively) good. Well, maybe I'll end with something fun (at least, I think it's fun). I recently learnt that Republican vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan is actually an exercise enthusiast. According to this article, he actually does P90-X! Which means he does some kind of yoga at least once a week! Interesting... well, here's the question I'll pose to you: If Paul Ryan (or maybe even Mitt Romney) asks you to teach him Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga (for a reasonable fee, of course), would you do it? Yes, I know this is a sensitive question, one which you may not feel comfortable answering directly. So, in the name of good, clean, anonymous entertainment, I have set up a poll in the right-hand corner of this blog for this question. Please participate generously! I'll love to see what your views are on this. I think this is going to be fun. I hope you do too.       

we recommend you to buy some goods below for comfort, safety and ease of your yoga activities

Before I go on with this post, I should issue a disclaimer here: In writing this post, I am not endorsing alcohol consumption (or excessive alcohol consumption). Nor am I implying that practicing Ashtanga and drinking a lot go together. Indeed, I believe that most readers of this blog are probably much more highly evolved beings than I am--beings that are probably way beyond the antics I will describe in this post and in the previous one. However, not being so highly evolved, I find myself prone to excesses such as the ones I will describe in this post and in the previous one. Since I try to tell things in my life like they are in this blog and not pretend to be more (or less) evolved than I actually am, you will hopefully bear with these details of my not-so-evolved existence, and (hopefully) enjoy the story I am about to tell. 

So here's the story: At one point during Christmas dinner at my colleague's place the day before yesterday--roughly, at around the point when I had had my second margarita and was about to down that shot of scotch, but was still sober enough to know that I had had too much to drink (see previous post)--I thought briefly about what reality is. Is there one common reality that we all have access to and experience in the same way in our different minds and bodies? Or do our different minds and bodies, with their uniquely different histories, experience very different realities? If the realities we each experience are each uniquely different from everybody else's realities, how and to what extent are we successful in communicating these different realities to one another?

At this point, you may be thinking: Woah, wait a second! Back up a little... How exactly did you get to thinking about reality in the middle of a Christmas dinner (being intoxicated may admittedly have something to do with it, I suppose, but surely that can't explain everything...).

Well, okay, I guess I do owe you some kind of back-story here. So, around the point when I had had my second margarita and was about to down that shot of scotch, but was still sober enough to know that I had had too much to drink, I started to ask myself if I should perhaps pass on that shot of scotch and call it a night. After all, I rarely drank that much, and I still planned on waking up at a reasonable hour the next morning and doing my regular yoga practice (which is presently full primary and second to Ardha Matsyendrasana), if that was indeed still possible given the state I was already in. Eventually I decided to cast such concerns aside, and just go for the scotch anyway. Why did I do that? One reason may simply be that I was looking forward to the warm feeling that scotch produces in my insides, at least for a few minutes: Compared to this, the fuzzy endorphin high that comes after many an Ashtanga practice seems quite far away. But another reason was that I wasn't confident that I would be able to sufficiently communicate the full weight and reality of my reasons for passing on the scotch to anybody who might think to question my choice. Here's how such a conversation might look like:

Q: Why are you passing on the scotch?

Nobel: Well, I need to not drink any more, so that I can get up in the morning without a nasty hangover and do my yoga practice.

Q: But can't you just sleep in and skip your practice this once?

Nobel: No...

Q: Why not?

Nobel: Because I love my yoga practice too much. I feel good when I'm doing it and afterwards. And besides, it makes me a better person and brings me further along the path of self-realization... [insert big speech about the therapeutic and purifying effects of the practice from Yoga Mala, or wherever.]

Q: Uh, okay...

Given the way most exchanges occur in polite society, it is very possible that the conversation will end at this point, with Q simply accepting what I say (or at least pretending to), and perhaps giving me a somewhat sour, Nobel-you-are-such-a-wet-blanket look. But it is also possible, although not very likely, that the conversation might continue with the following:

Q: So you say that you feel good when you are doing yoga and afterwards. But if you drink the scotch, you will feel good and warm and fuzzy RIGHT NOW! Who can beat that?

Nobel: Yeah, but drinking too much is bad for you [insert another big speech about how excessive alcohol consumption leads to all kinds of terrible health effects that cause one to die eventually.]

Q: Okay.. and if you do yoga everyday, eat organic all the time, and abstain from drinking alcohol, you will live forever, or at least not die of some weird form of cancer? And besides, what's that I hear about yoga practitioners breaking their necks and backs and busting their knees? Hmm.... does doing yoga really give one a better quality of life?

Nobel [grins sheepishly]: Uh...

Of course, the conversation doesn't have to end here: If you are a better speaker than I am, you can probably think of all kinds of interesting ways to respond to Q here. But I guess what I'm trying to get at is that Q and I inhabit two different realities. For me, reality is such that what is "good" in my life are things like yoga, organic vegetarian food, and the occasional session of excessive alcohol consumption. For Q, reality is such that what is "good" in his life are things like sleeping in, eating lots of meat (organic or otherwise), the not-so-occasional session of excessive alcohol consumption, and whatever else rocks his boat. And I suspect that I could try talking to Q until I'm blue in the face, and I probably still wouldn't succeed in arriving at this magical Yoga Journal moment when Q will realize the, ahem, folly, of his way of life, renounce it, and instantly embrace all things yogic and organic. And, to be fair, I also suspect that if Q were to try to do the same thing with me from the other direction, he could try talking till he's blue in the face, and probably wouldn't succeed in arriving at some magical... Sports Illustrated moment when I realize the folly of my wet-blanket ways, and instantly embrace red meat, cigars, and fast cars. In other words, we can say that Q and I live in two different realities, and it is not clear that we will each be successful in communicating to each other (much less converting each other to) each reality.

Which, of course, brings up the big question: What is reality? In his essay, "How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later", Philip K. Dick wrote, ""Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."

Very nice, Dick. But this is really not very helpful for our present purposes, if you think about it: Both Q and I would equally accept Dick's definition of reality, and continue to adopt our respective chosen lifestyles. For me, the benefits of doing lots of yoga and eating organic and vegetarian do not go away even if I were to stop believing in them. Neither, for that matter, would the pitfalls of such a lifestyle (busting one's knees in padmasana, breaking one's neck in Sirsasana, breaking one's back in Kapotasana, etc, etc.). The same thing goes for Q and his lifestyle: The benefits of eating red meat and smoking cigars and drinking excessively not-so-occasionally would not go away even if he were to stop believing in them. Neither would the corresponding pitfalls of such a lifestyle. So at the risk of sounding very cliched, we can say that my reality is just as real for me as Q's is for him. At least according to Philip K. Dick. 
  
So what gives? What is the moral of this neither-here-nor-there story? I don't know, really. Maybe do whatever rocks your boat, for tomorrow we all die, one way or the other.      

we recommend you to buy some goods below for comfort, safety and ease of your yoga activities

I spent a big part of the weekend reading Time Out of Joint, a science-fiction novel by Philip K. Dick. I've never read anything by him before (I was going to write "I've never read any Dick before", but I thought that would have been in very bad taste... but hey, I've written it anyway, albeit parenthetically. Sigh...).

In any case, this is the first book I've read by him. I've heard lots of good things about him; apparently, a number of movies (Total Recall, Minority Report, Adjustment Bureau) were adapted from his novels. I'm not going to spoil the story for you by telling you what the book is about. But let me just say this: If Time Out of Joint is any indication, it seems that Dick's novels are not very fast-paced; the screen-writers who adapted his novels probably took a lot of liberties with the story, and spiced up the plot with lots of action scenes so that people like Tom Cruise and Matt Damon would look good in them. But if you can get past, say, the first fifty pages, the plot thickens, and you get so sucked into the story that you can't do anything else. Including blog; which explains my blog-silence over the weekend :-)

How can you possibly have time to get lost in a sci-fi novel when you have, like, a million other things to do? You may ask. Well, the same question can be posed about blogging as well: How can I possibly have time to blog when there are a million more, uh, "productive" things I could be doing? What about yoga? How can I possibly have time to spend a couple of hours each morning doing this thing called Ashtanga when I could be using that time to, say, write a book that will blow somebody's mind, or at least get more sleep?

The list of such "How can you possibly have time..." questions goes on and on indefinitely. The correct answer is probably "No, I don't have the time for any of this, objectively speaking. But I choose to do these things anyway. Why? I don't know... because I can't imagine not doing them?"  Or maybe it's because I instinctively know that a life spent not doing these things, while possibly more "efficient", would probably not be as fulfilling as this life. 

Practice this morning was quite good. Here are a few highlights and thoughts:

(1) In the Suryas, especially Surya B, I think I am increasingly getting the hang of floating back and forward into Uttanasana. For a while, I have been able to lift up into trini and kind of plop back into chatvari. It's only in the last couple of days that I started to figure out how to do the reverse (floating forward into Uttanasana). I think the trick is to pretend that I am jumping through, but lower my feet at the last moment, so that I end up landing in Uttanasana instead of jumping all the way through. The trick, I guess, is to pretend to such a degree that your body actually believes that it is going to jump through, and then trick your body, and lower your legs to the ground at the last moment. I'm still unable to hover above the ground just before I land, the way people like Kino and David Robson are able to, but not to worry; do my practice, and all is coming... :-)

(2) I think I am making progress in locating the spot in my mid-back that is not open in backbends (at his Minneapolis workshop back in July, Matthew Sweeney told me that my mid-back needs opening; see this post). I'm not exactly sure how and exactly when this happened, but something last week, while going into Kapotasana, it suddenly occurred to me that my mid-back is really lower down my back than where I previously thought it was. Pretty funny when I put it into words, don't you think? That I shouldn't know where my mid-back is, when it has been on my body my entire life! But I think this is what makes yoga practice so intriguing; it's one thing to be able to locate the mid-back on an anatomical diagram, or even to touch your own mid-back in an everyday setting. But to be able to bring forth the prioproceptive awareness to actually know where it is and get it to open up during a backbend... now that is an entirely different ballgame.

In any case, as I was saying, sometime last week, I suddenly had this awareness in kapo that my mid-back is actually lower down my body than where I thought it was; with this awareness came the realization that I had been spending too much energy trying to open that which does not need to be opened further (my upper back), neglecting that which needed to be opened more. Over the last week or so, I have been working on bringing more awareness to this new-found place. I think it's causing my kapotasana to open a bit more easily.

(3) My left knee is not 100 hundred percent recovered, but it's better.     

(4) Lately, I've begun to wonder if breakthroughs in practice can sometimes be a double-edged sword. For instance, I discover a new way to open up something in my body, which leads to a breakthrough in one area (say, floating in the Suryas or landing Karandavasana). But unbeknownst to me, the breakthrough causes me to use certain muscles or to move my body in a certain way, creating imbalances in some other part of the body. Which might then lead to injury. Which then requires scaling back the practice to heal the injury and hopefully, going back to the same place in the practice at a later point in time with a wiser and more balanced mind-body. If this is correct, then it seems that "progress" in practice might often be a 2-steps-forward, 1-step-back kind of process. Do any of you out there have this feeling?

we recommend you to buy some goods below for comfort, safety and ease of your yoga activities