Oooommmmm. Did you know that one little syllable represents every single vibration in the whole universe? And it represents the myriad ways each part of the universe is connected.
When you read the word Om, you more likely thought of a very particular part of the universe--a group of yoga students sitting cross legged, getting grounded before their class begins. I've seen this often portrayed in mainstream media (and at numerous cocktail parties) as a joke--something people do with their tongue planted firmly in their cheeks to make fun of people like me, who take this stuff very seriously.
While I wish people would come up with a more original way to make fun of yogis, I don't take offense. I know most people don't get it. For the longest time, I thought Om-ing at the beginning of a yoga class was weird, too. But Om is just the tip of an iceberg. Kirtan, or the ancient practice of chanting in Sanskrit (an ancient Indian language that is now mostly just in practice in yoga studios). There's music. Lots of different Sanskrit chants. And it's interactive--so the audience is invited to sing along and get the benefits of the practice, too. If it's not a part of your culture, and you don't know what to expect, it can be incredibly foreign--like landing on a different planet.
I wish someone had told me what to expect before my first kirtan experience. because I recall several yoga classes when I sat uncomfortably waiting for the singing portion of class to be over so I can start my yoga. I guess kirtan is acquired taste, because after I was exposed to it a bit more--I realized there's nothing that lulls me into a sweet meditative state more quickly and efficiently than the sound of Sanskrit, a harmonium, and, oh yes!, my own voice! (Thank goodness they give the microphone to someone who can actually sing to drown out the tone deaf people in attendance!)
What changed my mind? For one thing, someone handed me a print out that explained (in English) what the Sanskrit words meant. I read it over and could appreciate the beauty and simplicity in the meanings. .
Here are my favorite Kirtan chants and a rough translation.
1. Om Namah Shivaya. I bow to the Self.
2. Sita Ram. Sita and Rama are deities who are husband and wife–to chant Sita Ram is to unite with our own perfect masculine and feminine.
3. Shiva Shiva Shiva Shambho. Mahadeva Shambho. Shiva is the essence and source of joy. Lord, the bestower of good.
4. Om Gam Ganapataye Namaha. I offer my love and devotion to Sri Ganesha; please grant me success in my noble endeavor.
5. Lokah Samastah Sukino Bhavantu. (My favorite!) May all beings everywhere be happy and free.
The other thing that shifted for me was that, somewhere along the way, I realized that I could sing the sounds and appreciate the vibration, without really taking all meanings behind them to heart. I realized my own intention for participating is more important than any abstract meaning someone else attaches to it, anyway. For me, it has nothing to do with praying to Indian deities, and everything to do with being a part of a community, enjoying the music, and feeling my spirit soar.
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A few weeks ago, I mentioned that I will be doing a Skype interview with alt-rock musician and fellow Nichiren Buddhist Ife Sanchez Mora. After overcoming a few technical and scheduling challenges, I am very happy to finally be able to present the interview here. I hope you will enjoy it.
Before you see the interview, I should say a few things about Ife. In her work, Ife blends several different musical genres, including rock, blues, country and funk, to create her own unique and refreshing sound. To give you a taste of her work, here's a video from her recently released album:
In addition to her musical career, Ife is also a practitioner of Nichiren Buddhism, and has been a member of the lay Buddhist organization Soka Gakkai International (SGI) from birth; both her parents, prominent Detroit musicians Francisco Mora and Teresa Mora, have been practicing Buddhists since before she was born. In addition to Buddhism, Ife also practices Bikram yoga, and credits both her Buddhist and yoga practices with helping her to stay grounded amidst the vagaries and stresses of the highly competitive music industry.
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I should probably just shut up and let you see the interview already. But there are still a couple more things you need to be aware of (please bear with my long-windedness). I had originally intended to do the entire interview as one long Skype video session. Unfortunately, I only had the trial/demo version of the Skype recording software: Because of this, I was only able to record two five-minute-long segments of what was actually a 30-minute-long interview. So, in what follows, you will only be able to see 10 minutes of the actual Skype interview. The missing part will be filled by me below in text form. My apologies for this inconvenience. I have just purchased the full Skype recording package, so hopefully, you will be able to see the full length of all future Skype interviews on this blog (Moral of the story: Don't be a cheapo. Get the full version of whatever you have.).
Here's the first segment of the interview. Ife talks about her early life and how she came to choose the path of music:
In the second segment, Ife shares how her supportive family, her Buddhist practice within the SGI, and her Bikram yoga practice have all helped her to grow and develop as a musician:
What follows below is the subsequent part of the interview that was not captured by the Skype recorder:
Nobel: It's interesting that you mention that you practice Bikram yoga, and the place of alignment within this practice. Since this is a yoga blog, I would like to ask you a technical question. I have heard a few stories of people who have injured themselves while practicing Bikram yoga, either because the heated environment of the Bikram studio causes them to push themselves beyond reasonable limits, or because the fast pace of the practice causes them to be less aware of what their bodies are going through. But you also seem to be suggesting that alignment plays an important role in Bikram yoga. This is something I am not aware of, since I have never practiced Bikram yoga. Can you tell us more about the place of alignment in Bikram yoga?
Ife: Sure. In every class, my instructor takes care to ensure that students pay attention to proper alignment while moving through the sequence of asanas. It is unfortunately true that people have injured themselves in the course of the practice. It is also true that this may have something to do with the fact that Bikram can be done competitively. But ultimately, the practice isn't just about pushing yourself physically; it is ultimately a therapeutic practice, and many people have healed themselves on many levels through doing Bikram yoga.
Nobel: Thank you for sharing your yoga practice with us. Sometime last year, you gave a very beautiful interview to Tricycle magazine. In that interview, you said:
"I really feel that Buddhism has taught me how to have appreciation. I think for every human being, appreciation in daily life is key. Through having appreciation for everything, you're able to expand so much as a human being, with your heart and your spirit and your mind. As a creative person especially, you really look to that expansion in order to be able to create, because the creative process is so intense. It takes a lot of digging deep within yourself and pulling things out while you don't really know what you're digging for or what you're pulling out."
What a vivid and beautiful description of your internal creative process! But I also wonder whether, in the course of this expansion and digging and pulling, have you ever pulled out certain unpleasant things from your life (painful past experiences or memories, etc.)? How have you been able to use your art to transmute these painful experiences? I ask this question because a lot of your music touches on the experience of women who are in painful or addictive relationships. Can you share this part of your creative process with us?
Ife: Definitely. In Nichiren Buddhism, we have the concept of transforming poison into medicine (Japanese: Hendoku Iyaku). The idea is that through the Buddhist practice, any painful experience ("poison") can be transformed into something that helps you to grow as a human being ("medicine"). This concept definitely applies to this part of my creative process. For example, when I was working on my latest album, I was going through a difficult time in my marriage. Through renewed dedication to the Buddhist practice and a serious process of reflection, I was able to transform this painful experience into something that helped me to find new grounds for expressing myself creatively in my music. As a result, many people who have listened to my latest album have told me how much the music speaks to them personally and touches them on a deep level. I believe this is possible because of the process of transformation that happened within myself as I made the music.
Nobel: Wow, thank you so much for sharing this deeply personal part of your experience as an artist and human being. Before I let you go, I have one more question for you. In order for you to become who you have become, there must be mentors and formative influences in your life that have shaped who you are today. Can you tell us who your mentors are?
Ife: Absolutely. My grandmother Elizabeth Catlett is a big source of inspiration in my life. She was a renowned political painter who has received honorary degrees from more than 70 prestigious universities and Ivy League institutions in this country and around the world. Her work has been featured in the most prestigious African-American art collections around the world, and she has also been named one of Oprah Winfrey's legends. She accomplished all this at a time when discrimination against African Americans and women was rampant. Whenever I find myself stuck or facing a deadlock in my life, I would ask myself, "What would Grandma do?"
Heidi Pollyea, an Atlanta, Georgia based singer and songwriter is also a great influence in my life. When I first started out as a musician, I was shy and did not have a big voice. I took voice lessons with Heidi, who taught me how to find my voice and give expression to my potential.
Don Lawrence also helped me to develop my musical abilities, and use it to productively further my career in the music industry.
Nobel: Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us today. I hope we get to speak again soon.
Ife: Thank you.
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If you practice Ashtanga, you will know that there are two major obstacles that we commonly have to overcome in order to have a wonderful practice. The first is getting out of bed (for tips on how to overcome the soft seductiveness of your bed on mornings when you just don't feel like getting up, see Angela Jamison's recent post). The second is what I call pre-practice doubt. This doubt often arises from certain physical sensations that we may have, or certain emotions that we may be feeling just when we are rolling out the mat. Common examples include: "I'm feeling a little down/angsty today, and I have, like, a million things to do today... maybe I'll skip practice today", "There is this funny sensation in my lower back. I think doing Surya Namaskars today might just be the straw that breaks this camel's back. Better skip practice today..." You get the idea. There is something very funny about that moment just before we step on the mat: It seems that every possible doubt, every possible reason we could have for not doing the practice surfaces at that precise moment. Wonder why? The simple answer, I guess, is that we are mere mortals who are trying very, very hard everyday to do this crazy practice that seems almost superhuman at times.
But there's hope for us mortals. I just read this very refreshing post by Sarah Hatcher, in which she shares a wonderful solution to pre-practice doubt: Invite your teacher to join you! Sarah writes:
"I too have my own struggles with my practice, yet with dedicated, concentrated, and uninterrupted effort and with devotion, this tears through much of my doubts and struggles... To turn the shakti fire back on, I used chanting to get me focused which set me back on track.
Invite Guruji into the room before you do your practice. And once you have chanted, "Vande gurunam..." and you know he is there, invite other teachers who have inspired you into the room as well. This will create a safe environment where you know you are cared for and not alone. Then it is not just you practicing, it is with them and under their guidance."
Very nicely said. Sarah puts into words what I have been feeling a lot whenever I do the opening chant, but haven't quite been able to put into words myself. I have always felt keenly that doing the opening invocation is a way to set a powerful intention for the practice, to remind ourselves that the practice is not just physical exercise, that the practice is really a practice that connects us to something greater than our intellects and egos. Sarah's words above bring out another dimension to the role of the opening invocation; as she puts it, the opening invocation is literally an act of invocation in which we honor and invoke the presence of Guruji and all the teachers that have helped us embark on this wonderful path of practice, so that with every practice, we are surrounded and protected by their wonderful supportive energies.
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Speaking of the practice being spiritual and more than just physical exercise, I can't help thinking about the Encinitas-School-District-Jois-Yoga-parents-concerned-about-Hindu-indoctrination controversy. My apologies for the long referent here; I just can't seem to find a way to refer to the whole thing that isn't overly sensational or that does not prejudice one party against another (I thought about variously calling it "The Great Encinitas Yoga Debacle", "The Great Jois Yoga Debacle", or better yet, "EncinitasGate", but all this just sounded too sensational; remember, I'm not a journalist who's trying to sell a story...).
In any case, the Confluence Countdown, our de facto provider of all breaking Ashtanga news, has done a really wonderful job of covering the entire controversy in a lot of detail, so I won't rehearse the latest developments here. I just have two things to say about this whole thing:
(1) It appears that there is a lot of talking past each other on the part of all the parties concerned. The aggrieved parents charge that Jois Yoga/the school district is indoctrinating their children in Hinduism. Jois Yoga and, more recently, the Universal Society of Hinduism (which has also jumped into the fray) respond to these charges by saying things like, "But yoga is good for your health! It helps with obesity, diabetes, high cholesterol, and all that bad stuff that sedentary modern living does to our bodies."
Now, do these people think the parents are stupid (or--to use a word I've seen somewhere--idiots)? I mean, I'm pretty sure that these parents know that the physical aspects of yoga, like many other physical activities, can help with various health conditions. These parents, as we know, are concerned with the issue of the spiritual/religious aspect of yoga. More specifically, they are concerned that Jois Yoga/the school district have overstepped the Church/state boundary, and are indoctrinating their kids in Hinduism. And yet as far as I can see, neither Jois Yoga nor the Universal Society of Hinduism have done or said anything to address this issue. Or is their silence on this issue an implicit admission of guilt? Are they basically sidestepping the issue by harping on the physical benefits of yoga?
Well, I don't have any answers here. But I can certainly see why these parents are pissed. I would be too, if I keep asking a particular question, and keep getting answers to a different set of questions.Oh well, but what to do? In this funny land of America, it seems to be common practice for politicians and public figures to avoid answering questions by deliberately talking past each other. Maybe this is what they teach politicians and public figures in Political Survival 101... who knows?
(2) We keep talking about the spiritual and religious aspects of yoga as if they are one and the same thing. But are the spiritual and religious aspects of yoga really one and the same thing? I consider my practice to be spiritual in nature (I do the opening and closing invocations, I refer to the postures in Sanskrit, I see the practice as (hopefully) bringing me to a place that is beyond my ego and intellect, etc., etc.), but I haven't become a Hindu (at least, I think I haven't) just because I see my practice in this spiritual way.
In any case, I really do believe that one can participate in something in a spiritually engaging way without being a part of the religious tradition from which that thing arises. As an example, consider works in Classical or Baroque music. Many of the works of Bach, for example, were originally commissioned and composed to be played or sung during church functions, and Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" contains clear references to God. But most people today, I take it, would have no problem with accepting that we can enjoy, perform, and be profoundly moved by these pieces of music without having any particular religious beliefs. And if being profoundly moved by a piece of music is not a spiritual experience, well, I don't know what is.
In a similar manner, perhaps we can also see doing the Ashtanga practice as being akin to playing a piece of music (actually, PJ Heffernan once used precisely this analogy to explain the practice to a group of beginners at the beginning of led primary). The primary series (or any other series, for that matter) can be seen to be a song which is composed of individual "notes" (the individual postures). And the vinyasa count is like the musical notation which tells you how long to sustain each note. And just as musicians often feel the spiritually transformative effects of the music they are playing even if they themselves have no particular religious beliefs, in the same way, Ashtanga practitioners also feel the spiritually transformative effects of the practice that is linked together by the vinyasa count and which opens and closes with the opening and closing invocations, even if they themselves have no particular religious beliefs.
In this way, Ashtanga, like music, is spiritual without being religious. Now I'm probably being very immodest here, but I really can't help wondering: If the Jois Yoga Foundation had conducted an information/dialogue session with the parents before implementing their yoga program in the school district, and had explained why yoga is spiritual but not religious in the way I described above, would things have turned out differently? I really don't know... I like to think they would have, but I'm also not inclined to be optimistic about this, with so many people being as emotional and set in their own views as they often are today, and with the prevailing anti-intellectualist climate in this country today ("Who has time for your fancy scholarly distinction between the spiritual and the religious? Besides, how do we know the spiritual isn't just a "gateway drug" to the religious? You know, start the kids out with yoga or Hinduism Lite, and then slowly bring them into more and more hardcore Hindu stuff; by the end of the year, they'll all be performing pujas to that elephant god, like any good Hindu...").
Hmm... I really don't know how to end this post, so I guess I'll just end here. (Moral of the story: If you don't know how to end a post, simply stop writing. Right now.) As always, if you have anything to say, I'll love to hear your thoughts on this.
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It's been a busy week readers! Time flies when you're... (fill in the blank! ;) ) working 2 contracts and teaching yoga. :) Time for the weekend, oh yes!
To round off the week I teach a nice slow flow class on Friday evenings. It's the kind of yoga that I love as an evening practice: slow, breath-centered, deep stretching. I've been trying to make the best of my disappointing music purchases of late, and I was fairly happy with my playlist tonight. Still feeling a bit music-starved though!
Anyway, without any further ado... It's fill in the blanks Friday, courtesy of Lauren!
I am... A gypsy girl. Who loves yoga. Go figure!
I wish... that I could see my Grandma more often. Cause I love her but she lives 3 days away by airplane.
I like... the ocean! No, I love the ocean. And all the creatures, big and small, who live in it.
I can... pretty much do whatever I please... and I do NOT take that for granted. It is the most incredible blessing.
I hope... that I see dolphins tomorrow! We are going out on a boat looking for them, and whales too. :D :D
I think... A little bit less than I used to. And I like it this way!
I was... super impressed today with the new solar lamp I bought for my security guards! It comes with a wee solar panel and once fully charged gives off a nice bright beam. Way cool! And totally what we call "appropriate technology", meaning that it's relatively cheap and doesn't require any further investment (like batteries). In addition, low environmental impact (no batteries to throw away) AND... get this - it charges your mobile phone. Bonus!
Have a great weekend everyone!
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We all know that there are 101 ways of practising (and teaching) yoga. Now more than ever yoga is kind of a free-for-all, with something for everyone, from naked yoga in Hawaii to yoga with your dog. And somewhere in between, there is yoga with music.
Different styles embrace different techniques, and music is no exeption. An absolute no-no in Iyengar classes, music is becoming a must for the Vinyasa Flow style. And then, of course, there's the ever-so-exiting new trend of practicing yoga to live music, which you can find more and more (at least, in America) from small classrooms to huge yoga festivals.
Last week the rocking Misanthropic Yogini posted about the challenges as a teacher of making yoga playlists for her classes, here. A great discussion followed, and the overall synopsis seemed to be fairly neutral: few people expressed strong opinions either way. The consensus seemed to be that good yoga is good yoga, no matter what the soundtrack.
I use music in my vinyasa classes and while my own practice is mostly without music I do use it to drown out the occasional distracting ambient noise and enjoy it. For teaching I have about 10 playlists organized by tempo and duration (e.g. "mellow 1.2 hours") that I use in my classes, and every now and then I resuffle them.
Recently though I have been craving new music and sadly have been fairly disappointed by the compilations I've bought. :( My last 5 albums have been pretty much busts - albums that I'm struggling to find even 1 or 2 songs that I can use in my classes! This has got me down to no end...
So, if you practice vinyasa and love moving to the music... Any recommendations?
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