our-yoga

During practice this morning, I tried speaking to the cockatiels again while holding my heels in Kapo. I didn't say anything profound, just some rather inane things like "Hello birds, where are you?" I did this, because I recently came up with this theory that if I can speak in complete sentences (albeit rather short and probably creepy-sounding ones, if anybody were around to hear them) in a more or less even tone while in the depths of Kapo, then my breath must be pretty even, and I must not be doing too badly in the pose. Maybe I should even give this thing I do a name: The bird-speaking test for proficiency in Kapotasana.  

For the record, I don't know what the Official Ashtanga Policy is on speaking to animals (or speaking to anything, really) during practice. I don't know if the Ashtanga police will arrest me (or maybe, let me get away with just a citation) for such incorrect method. But I really think there is some truth to this theory of mine: I mean, if you can't communicate with birds during a pose that is named after a bird, well, what good is your yoga practice? :-)

It also just occurred to me that this is one of the little advantages of practicing at home: If I try doing this in a shala, people will quite definitely think I'm nuts. In a shala, the problem will be compounded by the fact that there are no birds there. Which means I will probably have to try speaking to my neighbor while in Kapo ("Hello, so-and-so, what are you having for breakfast after practice?"...).  Which would quite definitely be creepy.

That said, however, there are good reasons for practicing in a shala. Especially if you are seriously thinking about making the transition from a led practice to Mysore style practice. Speaking of which, Kino just made a video about this topic:

I think Kino admirably answers the question in a way that is thoughtful and sensitive to where the student who posed the question is probably coming from: A place of uncertainty, of thinking about taking what seems to be a big step into unknown territory. If somebody were to pose the same question to me, I would probably say something along the lines of, "Sure! Of course you are ready! Mysore Style is traditionally supposed to be the way people learn Ashtanga anyway. So how can you not be ready? You are never more ready, nor will you ever be more ready, than you are right now!"

Which sounds like a nice, pat answer on the face of it, but is probably a bit disingenuous, since I myself did not learn Ashtanga the traditional Mysore way; for more details, see this post. Which is also why I think Kino's suggestion (give it your best shot and really commit to it for one month, and then see what it does to you) would probably do a much better job of reaching the student where he or she is (as opposed to where I would like he or she to be) and setting that student's mind at ease.


A recent post over at the Babarazzi discusses a rather bizarre but perhaps understandable phenomenon: Some yoga teachers in this country (I'm not naming any names here) have adopted this interesting practice of de-culturing or whitewashing yoga; as in, washing it of its Sanskrit nomenclature and other hocus-pocus elements, thus making it supposedly more friendly to white people... well, I mean to say, some white people.

If you read this blog regularly, you probably know where I stand on this issue, so I won't rehash my views here (Is a white-washed Ashtanga Fundamentalist still an Ashtanga Fundamentalist? That's a hard one...). I'm just going to say two things here:

(1) If Americans white-wash yoga in America, wouldn't people in other parts of the world follow suit? The Chinese will then start yellow-washing yoga, Africans, I'm guessing, will also start black-washing yoga, and maybe people in the middle east will then start brown-washing yoga... actually, I have this feeling that the Chinese will probably be quite happy to keep yoga as it is; in my personal experience, Chinese people and culture have always had this syncretistic, pragmatic attitude towards things foreign to them ("You want me to chant this Vande Gurunam thing before I can take practice? Sure, why not? If it enables me to tap deeper into the benefit of the practice and also look kinda exotic in front of my friends, what's the problem?"). But I can't speak for African or Middle-eastern people. But maybe all of this is not a problem, anyway: If there are white-washed and yellow-washed and black-washed and brown-washed (and whatever-other-color-washed) yogas, wouldn't this make yoga more colorful (literally)? So yeah, go ahead, white-wash away. Just don't make me white-wash along with you. I like my vande gurunam the way it is ;-)

(2) But here's another, possibly more significant problem with this white-washing business: Ever heard of Wonder Bread? If you haven't, it looks like this:

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This morning, my fiancee let the cockatiels out of their cage before she left for work, giving them free rein to fly and wander all around the apartment. Which means they were out and about while I was doing my practice. Personally, I still don't think it is a good idea to let them run/fly around while I am practicing; perhaps I need to go do some research about the statistics of yoga-related bird fatalities caused by bird owners stepping on or landing on their birds while doing yoga. Anybody know any reliable sources of such information out there? 

Fortunately, nothing happened to them this morning. Throughout my practice, I tried my best to maintain a "bird-radar" around me, so that at any given moment, I have a general sense of where the birds are in the apartment. Probably not very good for my drishti, I would think, since half my attention is always on pinpointing the spatial location of the birds.

But my "bird-radar" must have worked, because nothing untoward happened to the birds. In fact, a couple of interesting and possibly Youtube-worthy moments happened; at least, I think they would have been very interesting to watch on video if somebody was around with a video-camera, and had filmed them.  One such moment happened when I was in Ardha Baddha Padmottanasana on the second side. I had just finished my five breaths, and was about to exit the pose when I felt a tiny pair of claws digging into my butt. Based on my general sense of where the birds were, I knew that Thelma, the grey cockatiel, had landed on my butt.

Anyway, since she had landed there, I decided to play along and see how long I could keep her there without scaring her away (birds, as you probably know, are easily startled by sudden movements). So I slowly straightened up to a standing position with my left leg still in half-lotus. She stayed attached to my butt. Then I slowly released the left leg back into Samasthithi. Then ekam, dwi. She still remained perched on my butt; birds, as you might know, have an impressive ability to perch on vertical surfaces, including the (clothed) butts of Ashtangis.

I then lifted my feet off the ground into trini position. She was still attached. Damn! Either my movements are so steady that even cockatiels can perch on my butt and fall asleep while I lift up from Uttanasana, or cockatiels have amazing presence of mind (or both). It could also be, of course, that these cockatiels are special beings sent to Earth by Patanjali to test my yogic powers (for more details on this possibility, see my previous cockatiel post). Well, well, I thought, let's see what happens when I float back into chatvari. Well, I didn't have so much luck with chatvari: The moment my feet impacted the ground in chaturanga, she flew away. I guess I need to work on a softer landing :-) Better luck next time...

The other thing I noticed is that birds seem to be attracted to the energy of backbends. When I got into Kapotasana, the birds flew down from their perch, and started walking around near my Mysore rug (I'm glad they didn't try to land on me in that posture...). When I was doing my dropbacks and standups, the same thing happened. I seem to remember reading somewhere (it might have been Eckhart Tolle, but I can't be certain about this) that birds are much more pure energy beings than us human beings, that there is a higher proportion of pure energy relative to dense matter in their beings than ours. Which probably explains why they have less dense bones and can fly, and why they can sense things like impending earthquakes...

Anyway, I'm totally out of my depth here, so I won't say more about this. But could it be that we become more... birdlike when we do backbends, that somehow, backbends tend to increase the amount of pure energy in our beings relative to dense matter? Just wondering. Anyway, if this is true, then perhaps success in backbends can be measured by how "birdlike" we become while backbending? Perhaps shalas should start keeping birds in them, birds which would serve as "canaries in the mines" to indicate the level of pure energy that the practitioners' backbending practices have generated in the environment? Just a thought: Don't take this too seriously.


On a different note, I have recently been toying with the idea of possibly splitting my practice again. But I am thinking of taking a different approach this time. Instead of simply dropping primary altogether and doing second only, I'm thinking about doing it in a much more incremental and gradual manner.

Here's what I have in mind. Right now, I am doing full primary and second up to Ardha Matsyendrasana on a daily basis. What I'm thinking about doing is to add one or two more second series posture onto this practice at a time, while at the same time dropping one or two primary series postures. So for example, I might add Ekapada Sirsasana, and drop Setubandhasana. If this works out, then after a few days, I will add Dwipada Sirsana and Yoganidrasana (it seems to make sense to add these two postures together, since they basically involve the same action), while dropping Ubhaya Padangusthasana and Urdhva Mukha Paschimottanasana. And so on so forth, until I get up to Karandavasna, which was the last pose that both Kino and PJ Heffernan gave me.

Anyway, this is what I'm thinking. I'm thinking that this may just be a better way to split for me; the last couple of times I tried splitting, I basically did it the traditional way: Drop primary altogether, and do second only. Things went quite well for a few weeks, then I injured something. Yeah, both times. So maybe a more gradual/incremental approach would work better for me. Anyway, I'm not going to do this right away. I'll give myself a couple more weeks, and wait for my shoulders to regain their full strength (my strained trapezius insertion from a few weeks ago is healing very well, but it's not quite back to pre-injury strength yet. So better to wait a little more.). In the meantime, if any of you guys have anything to share (feedback, suggestions, advice, etc.), I'll love to hear from you.      

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Something very interesting (or very dangerous, if you happen to be a bird) happened during practice this morning. To get the full import of what I'm about to share, a little background story is in order: A few days ago, my fiancee got into one of her periodic bouts of furniture-rearrangement-frenzies. This latest one ended with her moving a few pretty big pieces of furniture into what used to be my practice/Buddhist prayer room. Which means that what used to be my practice/prayer room isn't so good for practice anymore. Hmm... I really don't get this craze for furniture rearrangement that some people get into. But well, whatever rocks one's boat, I guess :-)

Because of this new furniture configuration in my apartment, I started doing my practice in the living room yesterday. Another little background story: I also have a pair of pet cockatiels. They are very cute and interesting birds. Because of the round shape of their eyes, I sometimes, in my more grandiose moments, think that they may be aliens disguised as cockatiels, sent to earth to monitor my yoga practice. At the end of the day, when nobody's watching, they get out of their cockatiel outfits and go into a cleverly concealed little spaceship (this, I suspect, is disguised as that little stainless steel kettle in the corner of the kitchen counter, next to the stove... I mean, do you really think it is a coincidence that some of the latest stainless steel kettles from Europe look suspiciously like flying saucers?), from which they send dispatches to Patanjali detailing the latest yoga adventures of World Famous Ashtangi Nobel.

But I'm being very grandiose and self-important here. So I'll stop being that way. So as I was saying, I have a couple of pet cockatiels. This morning, just before I started practice, my fiancee decided to let them out of the cage in the living room just before she left for work, so they can fly around the house and get some activity (I think she thinks they have been putting on weight lately, and need some exercise). I had serious misgivings about this decision (you'll soon see why), but I think some wise guy once said, "Thou shalt not disagree with thy significant other before she leaves for work in the morning." So I left it at that.

So I rolled out my Mysore rug in the living room, and started doing my practice. The birds were pretty chill for most of the practice. They flew a couple of rounds around the living room and kitchen, and then decided to perch atop the kitchen cabinet, from where they could get a good bird's eye view--no pun intended--of my asana practice, so that they could file a good detailed practice report to Patanjali later in the day. And then, the moment I got into second series, they decided on a different plan of action. As I planted my heels on the ground and started twisting myself into Pasasana, they landed beside my mat and started waddling around (observing how deep my Pasasana twist is?). And for the next few postures (Krouchasana and the first few backbends of second up to Laghu Vajrasana), they continued waddling around the perimeter of the Mysore rug. Sometimes, they would come up onto the rug for a few moments to get a better closeup look at my alignment. Which made me a little worried that I might crush them by accident. But I was too into the flow of the practice to feel like getting up, picking them up (sometimes, they might not even want to be picked up) and then walking them back to the cage. So I continued to practice, all the while trying to be cognizant of their positions relative to my position on the mat.

And then when I got into Kapotasana, I felt this little soft feathery thing nibbling at my right knee; from what I could remember of the birds' positions before I got into the posture, I knew that it was Thelma, the grey cockatiel. I'm guessing she's probably thinking, "What are you doing? Why are you trying to become a bird?!" She looks like this:

Anyway, I hope you find this latest practice (mis)adventure of mine interesting. Got to go now. More later.    

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