our-yoga

During practice this morning, something which had never happened to me before happened: In Prasarita Padottanasana C, while trying to bring my interlaced fingers to the ground, I lost my balance, fell forward, rolled over and landed in that region somewhere between my butt and legs. It didn't hurt at all, but I think it would have been pretty funny to watch, if somebody had been watching. I'm not sure why this happened this morning, when it has never happened in all these years of practice, but I won't try to analyze this here. This makes me think that somebody should maybe put together a Youtube video consisting of practice bloopers (falling out of the prasaritas, falling out of handstand/headstand, landing heavily on one's butt when jumping through into Bhujapidasana... can anyone think of anything else?). Might be fun to watch :-)

Tim Miller's latest post on his blog is a great read. He relates his struggles with his Monday evening Intro to Ashtanga class. The entire post is very insightful, but the first few lines caught my attention:

"For the past 25 years I have been teaching an Introduction to Ashtanga Yoga class every Monday at 5:30pm.  This class began when we opened the North County Yoga Center in 1988 as my attempt to initiate beginners into a practice that is very challenging on many levels simultaneously.  Over the years I have attempted to present the practice in a user-friendly format, but if the practice is watered down too much it loses its primal potency."   

That last sentence ("if the practice is watered down too much it loses its primal potency") struck me as being a very apt description of what the practice is about. There is something about moving the body in accordance with the breath and a strict vinyasa count that gives a primal, potent transformative character to the practice. In her book, Sacred Fire, Kino observes that you can't beg, borrow, or fake your way through transformation (I'm paraphrasing here, as I don't have the book with me, but I'll be doing a proper review of the book here soon, so stay tuned). The only thing to do is to move and breathe with the vinyasa count as honestly as you can, and let the practice transform you on its own terms.

At his Montana workshop this past weekend, Lino emphasized the same point as well. He said that, in the early days of his studies with Guruji, he knew nothing about the vinyasa count; he didn't even know the names of the poses! He didn't have to, because he had memorized the sequence of postures, and all he had to do was listen to Guruji's instructions on when to do what during practice. The whole time, Guruji was saying a whole bunch of things in Sanskrit (what we now know as the vinyasa count) that nobody understood anything about. Somewhere in the early nineties, Lino began to spend more time studying with Guruji and asking him questions about the practice and the vinyasa count. And this led eventually to his publication of that book detailing the vinyasa count of the primary and intermediate series which is now almost a bible among many Ashtangis. By the way, Lino has published a new book, which I purchased at his workshop. This new book has the vinyasa count for primary, intermediate, as well as Advanced A and B. It also has a Q&A section at the beginning, in which Lino talks about his experiences with the practice and with Guruji. Perhaps I'll try to share excerpts from this book in future posts.

Anyway... that was a whole bunch of neither-here-nor-there thoughts about everything and nothing about the practice and vinyasa and breath. Maybe I'll have more to say later, but for now, there are a whole bunch of things that I need to get done for the day. So I'll leave you here with these thoughts.    

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Happy Moon Day, folks! As you are reading this, you must no doubt be taking a well-deserved break from your Ashtangic labors, doing whatever it is that you do on rest days such as this. I actually did not take a complete break from practice this morning; when I woke up this morning, I was feeling so tight and stiff that I felt that I had to do a few Suryas in order to get through the day. And I did. Perhaps this is a sign that the practice has somehow "hardwired" itself into my system, so that I can't start my day without it. Or maybe this is a sign of not being able to foster non-attachment from the practice; I don't know, whatever works, I guess. These days, I'm starting to think that all this emphasis on non-attachment is really a bit overrated, anyway.

As I mentioned in a previous post, my rate of blogging over the last month has been averaging at around one a week. What's even more interesting is that these once-a-week posts tend to fall on a Tuesday. Makes me wonder if I shouldn't perhaps rename this blog Tuesdays with Nobelji (as in Tuesdays with Timji). But then, of course, I have nowhere near the presence of Tim Miller, so this is probably just me and my grandiosity speaking.

In other news: My days of leisure, of playing online chess and watching seemingly endless seasons of Battlestar Galactica on Netflix, are about to come to an end. The new academic year here in Idaho will begin next week--oh, I guess I never mentioned on this blog that I have been offered a teaching position here at Idaho for another year. Apparently, the good people here have decided that I am not halfway bad as a teacher of philosophy, and have decided to use the services of this itinerant teacher-scholar for another year. Which gives me another year of gainful employment while I continue my quest for that Holy Grail of academia, a.k.a. the tenure-track position. Oh, and speaking of Holy Grail, let's have a quick look at this little clip from what one of my colleagues has termed the Greatest Creation of the Human Mind:

Watching this clip makes me wonder about the state of the blogosphere. I wonder if the blogosphere is also a sort of anarcho-syndicalist commune, minus the voting by two-thirds majority.

But anyway, I see that I have digressed majorly. As I was saying, my days of leisure are coming to an end. Which is just as well. It may well be in the order of things that a good man (or woman) must put the resources from which his prosperity arises to good works, if he or she is to remain in good standing with whoever or whatever is running the universe. This brings to mind these words of Kant: "so paramount is the value of a good will, that it ought not to escape without notice, that an impartial spectator cannot be expected to share any emotion of delight from contemplating the uninterrupted prosperity of a being whom no trait of a good will adorns." (Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals)

So it shall be. But in the meantime, I see that this post has been about everything and nothing at the same time. Maybe I shall have something more substantial to say in the next post, whenever that might come (next Tuesday?). In the meantime, enjoy whatever is left of the summer.   

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It's midnight here in Irvine, California, where I am staying at the home of a couple of friends who are hosting me (I came down here from LA immediately after Kino's workshop last weekend). It's way past my bedtime; fortunately, tomorrow is a moon day, so I don't have to worry about getting up very early :-)

But I want to write about the little yoga pilgrimage that I undertook here in SoCal today before I go to bed. It started with my going to mysore this morning at Tim Miller's studio, the Ashtanga Yoga Center in Carlsbad. I had a little trouble finding the place; apparently, part of the road on which the shopping center in which Tim's studio is located has a different name, and my directions did not reflect that.Which threw me off for a little while, until I remembered from Tim's website that the studio is located directly above H&M (a trendy fashion store). So I asked a few locals where the H&M was (I didn't think many locals would know where the Ashtanga Yoga Center is, but H&M is a different story...), and was able to use the directions they gave me to the H&M to find Tim's studio. Isn't it interesting how you can use something that was intended for one purpose for another purpose? I can't help feeling that it was the energy of Hanuman that helped me to manifest the wisdom to find the place in this creative way.

Practice at Tim's was great. Before class started, Tim walked around chatting with people. When he got to me, he said, "We've met before. You look familiar." I then proceeded to explain to him that I had attended his workshop back in 2008 at Miami Life Center (Kino's studio). In response, Tim simply smiled serenely, and said, "Good to meet you again." It's things like this that sometimes make me wonder if I end up giving too much information to people--information that are, in some sense, not terribly essential to the encounter--when I introduce myself.

Anyway, after the introduction, I proceeded to do my practice. It was great, as I said. I did full primary and second up to Kapotasana. Through it all, I got just one adjustment from Tim (in Virabhadrasana B), but I was happy with my practice. As with many other mysore rooms that I have been in, there was something about this practice room that made me practice at a faster pace than I usually do at home (group energy?), so that by the time I got out of Kapo, I was totally winded. It was all I could do to do three backbends, and stand up from the third one. I just didn't have it in me to do dropbacks and standups. Neither Tim nor his assistant insisted either, so I just went straight to the finishing postures.

After class, I asked Tim if he would pose for a picture with me, and he agreed:

Encinitas, as many of you know, is home to many things yoga. One of them is, of course, the Jois Yoga studio:

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

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

So here goes:       

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

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

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

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

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I just came across this short Youtube video where Tim Miller talks about what the yoga practice is for. A couple of interesting points:

(1) At 0:30-0:34, Tim describes daily Ashtanga practice as a form of daily hygiene, like brushing your teeth or taking a shower. I cracked up when I heard this; way back in grad school, when I first started practicing yoga daily, I would often explain the place of yoga practice in my life to my friends by telling them that to me, yoga practice is as important as taking a shower: You do it everyday, you may not talk about it for the rest of the day, but it's vital and central to your life.  I don't think any of my friends understood me much at that time ("what? taking 2 hours for a shower?!"); I'm guessing they probably still don't. But it's nice to hear Tim say the same thing. Pardon me for being immodest, but great minds think alike, no? :-)

(2) At 2:00-2:20, Tim talks about how it is important that we practice with Vairagyabhyam; not to be confused with Viagra; although, come to think of it, if you have Vairagyabhyam, you may find it easier to achieve the same effect that you were trying to achieve with Viagra in the first place. But this is for another post :-) Anyway, as I was saying... Vairagyabhyam is usually translated as "non-attachment." In my opinion, non-attachment is probably the single most powerful thing that will keep one practicing for a long time. If one is not attached to the results of the practice, then, well, one just practices. And all is coming.

And while we're on the topic of Tim Miller videos, here's one from the early days of him and a few others practicing with Guruji in Encinitas. Enjoy!

 

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