our-yoga

[Spoken with Yoda voice] Ah, a very funny thing this blogging is. For most of this month, I have just been averaging about one post a week. But then suddenly, this is the second post for today. The blogging muse is indeed a fickle creature...

Just a few minutes ago, I stumbled upon this article by Anne Finstad, in which she describes Ashtanga yoga as a "House of Pain." As you probably remember, about a month ago, David Garrigues published his by-now-famous blog post on the inevitability of pain in the Ashtanga practice (it's so famous that I'm not even going to link to it here; I bet you have probably read it, like, a thousand times by now). In response to this post, the entire Ashtanga blogosphere was aflame (or should I say "inflamed" :-)) with passionate discussions about whether pain is good/necessary in a "real" Ashtanga practice, how many kinds of pain there are, whether the pain that comes from practice is similar to the pain that comes from poetic creation, and whether some senior Ashtanga teachers might be Cylons (this last one is, of course, entirely my own contribution to the conversation :-)).

Anyway, this article by Finstad is definitely worth a read. She talks about her own experience of pain in the practice in a very honest, heartfelt, no-hyperbole kind of way:

"There was a long time for me, the practice just hurt. I spend my first trip to Mysore having torn a hamstring insert before going. It meant a lot of adjustments from Guruji and made me wonder what was wrong with all of us — especially me. It was not an ideal spiritual journey. It was pure raw pain and it was not only painful it was exhausting. I really was suspicious that Pattabhi Jois was a crazy man and we were all crazy for going to India to go through this. And as many will tell you, he didn’t really explain much to you, he just did it. So there was a great deal or room to wonder.

The thing was, and thank God, that part of the practice wasn’t forever. This magic thing happened where after five years of practice my hips opened. After seven years of practice, my knees stopped hurting. And as people will tell you or you can see if someone sticks with the practice over time and through these things, the body is made new.

It’s not a perfect transformation in all cases and the limits of it are dictated by how we take the practice. But as much as we let it the practice will change us for the better."

One of the first things that hit me when I read this was: "Damn, seven years of knee pain!" Most ordinary human beings I know would probably bail after like, five seconds of knee pain. Seven years? Gosh... But Anne has more to say. Here's the upshot of pain in the practice, according to Anne:

"I am writing this to say that everyone at some point has an experience of pain. We each have an attitude towards our own pain. To me the practice is a good way to start looking at how we approach pain. This discussion isn’t always comfortable, but it is one that a lot of us need to have. To work out how to not seek it, avoid it, or fear it. It’s going to happen, this pain. Just like life is going to happen. Sometimes it calls on us to do something, and sometimes we just need to let it be what it is and not try to fix it.

What the practice teaches me is how to let go of fighting the pain — to move on and through it without hanging on or becoming identified with it. To let pain become another sensation that educates me, to change my behavior, or to accept what is.

This, rather than just putting my foot behind the head, is yoga."

I hope you find Anne's article as edifying as I do... but--and I'm pretty sure you are already suspecting this, but I have to say it anyway--this also means that Anne Finstad is probably also a Cylon. How else could anybody live with knee pain for seven frakking years? 


But here's a different way of looking at this whole pain-and-Ashtanga-yoga business. The German philosopher Martin Heidegger famously proclaimed that "Language is the house of Being." I'm no Heidegger scholar, and am therefore unable to tell you what Being is (maybe Grimmly can, but he's on the beautiful island of Crete, soaking in the sunshine and taking in wonderful yoga instruction from Manju... and who wants to read and talk about Heidegger while on vacation?). But as a very convenient (albeit somewhat bastardized) shorthand, you can think of Being as being akin to the Tao or the Force of Star Wars.

So language, according to Heidegger, is the place where Being/Tao/the Force is most at home, and reveals itself most readily to us. But this revealing cannot take place by trying to wrench meaning out of words by linguistic analysis. Being can only reveal itself to us when we are open enough in our being for language to unfold itself through us. Heidegger's favorite example is that of the poet. The poet does not work with language by analyzing it or trying in some way to force meaning out of it. Rather, he allows the muse to speak to him and, in so doing, becomes an open conduit through which language and Being unfolds itself through him.

If none of this makes much sense to you, it's not you: It's probably a combination of the fact that I am both not a Heidegger scholar and also a very bad poet. But where's the connection to Ashtanga here? Well, consider this: What if Pain is the house of Ashtanga? In other words, what if it is through the language of pain that the truth or Tao or whatever of Ashtanga reveals itself to us? In other words, could it be that Pain is the House of the Being of Ashtanga? Yeah, I know, all this is very awkwardly put (I told you I was a bad poet...), but hopefully, you get my drift here.

But if all this is true, wouldn't this mean that practicing Ashtanga is a form of poetic creation, so that in practicing Ashtanga, we are doing poetry with our minds and bodies? Ha! So the pain of Ashtanga is really akin to the pain of poetic creation, after all. Well, shows what I know, right? ;-)     

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In a previous post, I set forth this theory that Kino and quite possibly all long-time Ashtanga practitioners are Cylons. More precisely, they (we?) are Cylon sleeper agents; they/we think they/we are human, but are in fact Cylons who have been placed here on Earth to fulfill a role in God's grand plan. A little background story here for those who are not initiated into Battlestar Galactica lore: Cylons believe in God, although there is some dispute among Battlestar Galactica fans as to whether the Cylon God is also the God of the human Judeo-Christian tradition.

But let us leave this academic dispute for another time. The reason why I have brought this Cylon-Ashtangi  theory up again is because some recent developments in the Ashtanga blogosphere seem to have provided further support for this theory. The ramifications of this theory are considerable. For one thing, if this theory is true, it would prove the critics of Ashtanga right: Ashtanga is really not for everybody. It's only for Cylons. Which makes a lot of sense, if you think about it: Critics often charge that you would have to either be a teenage boy or inhumanly strong or flexible (or inhumanly able to take a ridiculous amount of mental and physical punishment, six days a week) in order to do Ashtanga regularly. Well, if all regular Ashtangis are in fact Cylons (even if they don't know it), this would prove the critics right, because Ashtangis would then be quite literally not human.  And come to think of it, don't the behavior of teenage boys often make us wonder whether they come from another planet? Well, wonder no more...

But where's the evidence for this theory, you may ask? I'm getting there. Let's start from the beginning: In Battlestar Galactica, there are a total of twelve Cylon models. For most of the series (up to the end of season 3), only seven out of these twelve were revealed. Here are three of the models:

The remaining five models (a.k.a. the Final Five) were only revealed at the end of season 3. A key reason for this revelation was that the Final Five had an important role in God's plan: They are supposed to show humans and Cylons the way to the promised land, i.e. Earth.

Okay, so what has any of this to do with Ashtanga? Well, earlier today, Erica over at Ecstatic Adventures of the Exuberant Bodhisattva alerted us to a very important fact: There are presently seven types of Ashtangis. As a result of recent events in the Ashtanga blogosphere, Erica's Mula Bandha exploded (I hope you're okay, Erica), and God revealed the seven Cylon models Ashtangi types to her in a dazzling vision. According to Erica/God, these seven types are:

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A lively exchange on pain and the Ashtanga practice has sprung up recently at the Confluence Countdown. As with most such lively exchanges, commenters come from all points on the pain/practice/sadhana spectrum. Some people agree and resonate wholeheartedly with Bobbie's view that pain is part of the growing process and sadhana associated with the journey of the practice. Others feel that Bobbie is setting up a false dichotomy between pain/long-term sadhana on the one hand, and no-pain/no-sadhana, on the other. These people feel that Ashtanga is not, and should not be an all-or-nothing proposition, that it is possible to practice Ashtanga and still lead a relatively "happy" and pain-free existence.

As for me, I'm not sure how I should even start talking about this, or if I should even talk about this at all. One problem I've noticed with exchanges like this in the blogosphere is that people tend to talk past each other. One person would say that pain is good and necessary; another might say that pain is bad and should be avoided. But are both people talking about the same thing when they talk about pain? It seems to me that in these exchanges, there is a lot of jumping around between different concepts while using the same word. For instance, at times, Bobbie is referring to the physical pain from her degenerating disks; at other times, when she says "pain", she seems to be referring to sometime more emotional, maybe even existential, like when she compares the pain that arises from the practice with the pain of poetic creation. I'm not sure what to make of this myself. I'm no poet (even though I sometimes try to write bad poetry), but I would be cautious about linking the experience of one process (Ashtanga practice) with another (writing poetry) so liberally; the two are, after all, distinct from each other. And even if there are similarities between the two processes, why tag on more baggage onto our practice than is already there? But well, what do I know about all this? As I said, I'm not a poet...

But in any case, what I'm trying to say is this: In this exchange, there clearly seems to be an equivocation between different senses of the word "pain". Bobbie, as we have seen, switches quite liberally between two different senses of that word. And God only knows how many other definitions of pain the various commenters are working with. Which, as we can imagine, is not too helpful for useful conversation.

But enough of complaining. Let me try to see if I can say something useful for once. Well, I'll just state the obvious. If you have pain of any sort (whether it's the physical kind, emotional/existential kind, or any other kinds that are out there), you have a few options:       

(1) Ignore it;
(2) Push through it; 
(3) Find ways to practice and live with/around it;
(4) Seek professional help, either from a teacher, medical practitioner, psychotherapist or.... poet (?) or.... philosopher (?)

I should also add that these options are not mutually exclusive. For instance, it is possible to find a way to live with/around the pain while seeking professional help at the same time. In any case, we are all adults (whatever definition of "adult" you choose to go by), and are free to choose and live with the consequences of whatever option we choose.

But of course, I should also add that things will probably be a lot easier if you are a Cylon. If you are a Cylon who suffers from unbearable pain (of whatever kind) arising from your practice, you can just kill yourself and then download into a new body; if you don't know what I'm talking about, watch Battlestar Galactica. But would Cylons need to practice yoga in the first place? Well, I don't know; but Cylons have been known to practice taichi on their basestars. Here's a model 8 doing taichi in the nude:

If some Cylons practice taichi, it stands to reason that there must be other Cylons out there who practice yoga. Maybe even Ashtanga? Hmm... might Kino be a Cylon?


Maybe that's why she is so strong and flexible... Heck, maybe all long-time Ashtanga practitioners are Cylon sleeper agents; they think they are human, but are in fact Cylons who have been placed on earth to assume the cover identities of yoga practitioners and teachers. But why would whoever's in charge of the Cylons want to place Cylons here as Ashtangis? Well, how would I know? I'm not a Cylon. Or am I? Yikes... 

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Earlier today, I was telling a colleague--I'm going to just call him R from now on--about my ongoing Battlestar Galactica (BSG) binge (for more details, see previous post). As he was unfamiliar with the basic premise of BSG (he's a middle-aged Canadian gentleman who is not that into sci-fi... speaking of which, Happy Canada Day, if you are reading this from Canada), I had to quickly explain the general story arc of BSG to him (we're talking about the 2003 remake here; the story is slightly different in the 1978 version): Once upon a time, somewhere in deep space, a bunch of humans who make up the Twelve Colonies of Kobol lived more or less happily on a bunch of planets. According to the holy scriptures of these humans, there is a thirteenth colony of humans who live on a planet called Earth, but nobody knows where Earth is, or whether it even exists. Anyway, the humans lived more or less happily in these twelve colonies until one day, the Cylons--a cybernetic race originally created by these humans to be their servants but who later rebelled and went off to form their own civilization--launched a surprise attack on the twelve colonies, which resulted in the near-extinction of the human race. The surviving humans (about 50,000 people) fled the Cylons in a bunch of rather shoddy spaceships (shoddy compared to the Cylon ships, that is). Led by the battleship Battlestar Galactica, they set off on a long journey across the universe to find Earth. Will they succeed? I don't know, I'm still watching to find out :-)

All this must be rather boring if you are already familiar with BSG. My apologies. Anyway, immediately after hearing my synopsis, R, who is well-known for his irony-laced sense of humor, remarked, "So, I take it that the Cylons are the good guys, right?" I was taken aback by this remark for about a quarter of a second, but then quickly saw where he was going with this. This is roughy how the conversation proceeded from this point:

Nobel: Ah yes, I see what you're saying. The humans basically created a slave-race of cybernetic robots to serve their rather trivial interests. All the robots did was rebel and fight back. Which is something any self-respecting race would do.

R [smiles and nods enthusiastically]: So you are on the side of the Cylons?

Nobel [smiles sheepishly]: Well, rationally speaking, I probably should be on the Cylons' side. After all, if we are willing to put aside the fact that they kill humans (like humans don't kill humans, anyway...), they do have a few strong arguments going for them. For instance, many Cylons are deeply religious: They believe that since humans are so fracked-up and corrupt, it is God's will that Cylons should be brought into this universe (by humans, no less: Which shows that God has a very interesting sense of poetic justice) to destroy humans, so that the universe will become a better place. A sort of moral Darwinism, if you will. To be sure, this argument is probably compelling only if you believe that there is a God or some kind of universal agency that is responsible for meting out justice in the universe. But it may still be a great argument if you replace "God" with either your favorite universal-justice-meting-mechanism, or with some notion of the survival of the morally and physically fittest.

Oh, and actually, there is also one more thing going for the Cylons. Since Cylons are basically a bunch of robots, they are, by default, in possession of perfect health and perfect cognitive abilities. Which means that Cylon society does not suffer from the kinds of problems associated with the allocation and distribution of scarce social goods (health care, for instance) that plague human society. After all, who needs insurance or a public health-care system in Cylon society? So, to be a Cylon is to be morally perfect, and also be in possession of perfect health and mental ability. What's not to love about that?   

R: Okay, very nice... so why aren't you on the side of the Cylons?

Nobel: Because I'm human! I hate to have to admit this, but I'm basically what Peter Singer would call a speciesist: I am somebody who favors the interests of my own species over that of another, just because they are a different species, just because they, well, look different from me... Well, actually, that's not even really true in the case of the Cylons. The latest Cylon models actually look and feel human (and rather attractively so, if I may add...):

Contrast these with the earlier robot model, a.k.a. the Centurion:

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