Gotta keep practicing...

Sutras on the Horizon

Before I put the sutras down, give me a moment to bitch.

I know some of you don't give a good hoot about chanting the sutras, and whatever, that's your freedom as a human. I have also heard from some of you that even if you personally are unable to chant all of them perfectly, you still find something calming and centering about sitting up straight with your eyes closed and chest lifted while the chanting takes place. And finally, I know some of you truly enjoy the chanting, and the lessons that the Sutras of Patanjali have for all of us. That said, chanting takes time. If you truly want to chant, please make a point to get to the Wednesday class at least 10 minutes early. On Sunday mornings, please, please, please try to be there at 10 minutes before 9AM. I know it's early, but I have quite a drive in myself and manage to get there in plenty of time, so suck it up.
Okay, that's done, here's the sutras.

1.20 sraddhaa virya smrti samaadhiprajna purvakah itaresam

Practice must be pursued with trust, confidence, vigor, keen memory and the power of absorption to break this spiritual complacency.

It is of interest to read the sutra that precedes this one.
In this state (this state being a level of samadhi, absorption in practice), one may experience bodilessness, or become merged in nature. This may lead to isolation or to a state of loneliness.

Some of the translations and commentaries pose that Patanjali is actually addressing  those who have evolved highly in their practice. So much so to the point that true states of samadhi have been experienced.
I believe that even those of us who are young in our yoga practice can experience more prosaic states of samadhi.

Have you ever come up from Savasana, or down from Sarvangasana, feeling completely at peace, the mind blank, simply a body with a consciousness housed within, but free from mundane bondages?

Then again, have you ever felt completely isolated and alone in your quest for not simply better health and more flexible hamstrings, but something deeper that cannot be touched, explained, much less purchased?

We all need to have confidence and strength when we feel that no one else can possibly understand us, because truly that's our asmita (ego) craving the special individuality that yoga often wipes away. Samadhi, absorption, is a loss of individuality and a joining with everything else that breathes and lives  in the universe. It is natural to feel any amount of merging or isolation, acceptance or resistance through the long course of a life long yoga practice.


2.31 jati desa kaala samaya anavacchinnaah sarvabhaumah mahaavratam

Yamas are the great, mighty, universal vows, unconditioned by place, time and class.

If you do not know what the Yamas are, then look them up.

Simply put, this sutra is telling you that it does not matter who you are or how important you may think you are, you are not excluded from the basic rules of humanity. Be good.

Class Chanting

I have added a separate page with all of the sutras we have chanted in class. So, if you scroll all the way down to the bottom there is a little list that says"pages" click on the one that says "class sutras" and there you go.
Feel free to print it out and bring a copy to class if you like.

There are some things about India that I can honestly say, will never cease to fascinate me. Seeing animals hauling carts along side motorized vehicles is definitely one of them. I do wish that this particular beast was not so under fed, however. 

Questions

Yoga is the stopping of the fluctuations of the consciousness.
Yogas citta vrtti nirodhah. That's the second sutra of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras. That's his definition of yoga.

When we are practicing asana, even when we are in a class under the watchful eye of a teacher, we should be attempting to put a stop to the mind chatter.
In class, most questions are mind chatter.
Instead of concentrating our attention on the particular action or area, we get to a point, let a question pop up and , that's it, the focus is blown. For some reason, most of us are okay with this process. Why is one thread of mind chatter permitted over another, simply because it is put in the form of a question?

Patanjali also tells us that we humans are tormented by afflictions. The first two and most prominent being ignorance and ego, avidya and asmita.
 Our mind chatter is often the product of our avidya  and asmita.

When a question comes to mind in class, it should become part of our self study, our svadhyaya. Unless, of course it is something shattering. For example, "Should my shin bone have broken through my skin? "
Or, "Is it normal to have been stricken blind by that last action?"
That means we should use our memory correctly, store the question, go home to  try the asana again with that question in mind, open a book and see if greater gurus before us have anything to offer on the topic.
Instead, we lose our sense of pratyahara (controlling and withdrawing the senses from the external world) and we open our mouths.
We do this because we think that our question is somehow of import, and sometimes it is, but more often than not, it is a question that need not be vocalized.
 We may even have the answer deep within ourselves, but it so much easier for another person to hand us something than it is for us to take a moment, concentrate and make a crazy face while we dig into the depths of our consciousness for the answer.
The asmita(ego) is so strong in us that we are convinced that our curiousity is justified, even intelligent.

Is this muscle supposed to hurt?
Where exactly should I be placing this hand?
Do it again and find out for yourself.
Then do it again and find out something else.
Then do it again and find out the same thing or still something new.
Then do it again.
We seem to think that we deserve satisfaction, even if it means interrupting the flow of the class and the teacher.

The more I work, the more insignificant my efforts appear to be.
I have to be content with this divine discontent which drives me on.
BKS Iyengar

Turn your dissatisfaction into fuel for motivation.

But, truly, which is ultimately more rewarding, discovering something for yourself after sweating through it for some time or having the answer verbally pushed through the air at you by your teacher? We can be so impatient sometimes.

I think again of what Zubens said about gurus on Guru Purnima in Pune this summer.

" A guru is not someone who gives us answers, but rather, asks us more questions which encourage us to seek the answers."


A true yoga practice is not something that can be purchased. It is something that is earned through hard work. Your teacher is not a customer service representative, standing there to hand out information. Think of your teacher more like a tour guide in a vast, wild place that changes moment to moment. There is no end destination on the tour, and it's not always a lovely vacation spot. At times we are forced to dwell in scummy neighborhoods to clean up some long left trash heap before moving along to a more preferable locale.

So, here's Pincha Mayurasana, dropping over into Viparita Dandasana.
Keep your eyes on my upper back as I begin to take my feet over. It is clearly visible that the shoulder blades and back ribs are not digging in deep enough. Yet.

This dude was hanging out at the beginning of the 200 steps that lead up to Jeguri Temple. The goods in his hands are some colored pastes  that he dipped a little stamp into before pressing it on our foreheads. 

I don't know why, but I found this old Coke truck strangely attractive. I don't even drink Coke.

Just Dance

My New Year's resolution is to post on my blog and dance more. It seems lately, those are 2 things  I don't do enough of.
I try to do a decent job at whatever I do. Making a New Year's resolution seems somehow odd to me. A starting date for doing something good or healthy, an end date for some bad habit.  Not to sound like a shoe advertisement, but just do it.

 There is a difference between preparation and procrastination.

So, here I am posting on my blog and I starting boogeying pretty fervently the other day, and then again the day after that, so I think I am off to a good start. The fact that I haven't been posting or dancing lately is because I have been wound too tightly of late.
About 4 months ago, I was lucky  to get sick enough that it required major medication and major diet change. For the first 3 weeks of the adventure, the drugs made me sick and  the diet changes made me feel like an alien. I would stand in the isle of a grocery store gazing around at all the packaged foods, wondering, who are the people who can eat this stuff? Not me.
In the last 4 months I have had no gluten,  no sugar in any form, no rice, no fruit, no juice, no alcohol, no beans, no nuts and no fun.
I allowed myself to put 'things I do for fun' on the same level with 'things I eat'. Presently, I feel pretty good and I am used to the diet, I even like it. But for the first month it was so hard. I became depressed. I refused contact with my friends. Surely, I thought, they won't want to deal with me, a social retard who won't even eat a cracker.
 I am a loud, obnoxious, tattooed goofball who does not embarrass easily, and I thought diet change was going to be the friendship breaker. Jack ass.
Now, having turned a corner, I realize I was being judgemental and arrogant to think that the people I have surrounded myself with are so small and petty that they  base their friendship with me on diet.
I clearly was not my usual self. I became very tired of talking about it. I had trouble making eye contact with students in classes. I think talking about an experience or problem can be healing up to a point. But how much is concern and how much is curiousity from those inquiring? I felt like I was digging a hole that had no purpose. I believe that we should not treat the people in our lives like some reality television show that satisfies some gruesome fascination. We should be there to help them.
Finally around the third month of eating such a rigid diet, I began to feel better. I started waking up without my alarm clock. An interesting side effect was an amazing freedom in my joints. Always a little cranky from an old injury, my right knee stopped popping at the slightest turn or bend.
So, now, I'm feeling pretty good. For the most part I enjoy my crazy diet.
I'll make a point to post more often, as long as it is interesting and of substance.
And most importantly, I began dancing New Year's Eve with no intention of stopping.

Apollo is making steady improvements with his yoga practice. Seriously, he gets better at it everyday. At the beginning of the practice, he's totally wired, which I find actually kind of helpful, especially if I am feeling lazy or unmotivated. As the practice continues, our rajas and tamas begin to balance out, almost compliment each other, until we are both in a sattvic state, much like you see in the photo. 

Pranayama

I remember my first couple of days in India this past July.
Jet lag had not yet worn off and I walked around in a daze of sorts. Fighting to stay awake in the middle of the day, gulping down lots of chai for the caffeine and falling asleep around 9pm, only to rouse, wide awake at 2am.
It was about 2am my third or second morning there that I crawled from my flat Indian bed onto my sticky mat to practice something close to pranayama. The apartment actually had a couple of bolsters that worked great for laying over and opening the chest. I remember very clearly my first Indian Ujjayi of that trip. As I inhaled to expand my chest and rib cage, I felt 20+ hours of airplane stiffness smooth away. As I exhaled I felt the anxiety and panic that comes from being in a crazy place  and having an irregular sleep pattern transform into calm, content acceptance.
I remember being so grateful that this art of pranayama exists, so grateful that somewhere along the line, my teachers actually looked at me and then decided to teach it to me anyway, regardless of my jackassness.
It's a simple thing, taking a smooth breath with awareness, but it can have such a profound effect.

Pranayama was not always like that for me. For the first 3 years of my Iyengar practice, my pranayama practice usually turned into nap time. Even in classes, with a firm resolve to stay awake, my own small snores would often wake me. But, like anything, if you practice and keep an open mind, you can find a way to make it work. Once I stopped falling asleep and actually stayed awake, I found it annoying, frustrating, sometimes even maddening. Tension would push from the inside of me, feeling like I was going to boil over and explode into a Kquvien mess. I would become frightened and panic.

 Should I get up and run around? Maybe I should just start coughing, or fake a sneezing fit. What should I do? Where should I go?
 Luckily, the  asana practice that was instilled in me kicked in.
Certainly, before I get up and start running around the room, I should just lift my chest. Wow. That was a great idea, so great in fact, that I should do it again. Oh, as my awareness to lift my chest is awakening, I would realize that I was gripping my jaw muscles, okay, no problem, exhale, relax those muscles. As I continued with the physical adjustments, I would lose the anxiety, lose the feeling of needing to dash around, waving my arms and screaming. Somewhere in all of that I felt every now and then, the lovely result of an invigorating inhale and the calming touch of letting the body and mind soften with an exhale.
I never would have been able to do it without the lessons my asana practice taught me.

I can honestly say that it took me 10 years of Iyengar yoga practice before I felt like I was actually doing pranayama.

Here's Steve!

The thali plate at Rupali. Delicious.

Look at the Ganesh shrine in amongst the shopping stalls. The prosaic and the sacred going hand in hand.

Gorakasana

I have been practicing this pose for about a year now. At least 2 or 3 times a week. I am finding that it is a pose that can fit easily into almost any kind of practice. It's great before backbends because of the opening demanded in the lower abdomen and front groins, as well as the thighs. This pose also requires a tremendous amount of muscular work in the lower back to get the sacrum pressed in.
Before forward bendings, this pose also works just peachy, getting the knees, ankles and hips warmed up.

I still have yet to balance freely for more than 10 seconds here and there. No worries, though, I am growing to love this pose, truly.

Urdhva Kukkutasana

The poses are coming along much better than my video recording skills. Don't hurt your neck while you're watching this one, since I somehow managed to record it flipped over.

Every moment, unfathomable, all the while bubbling with bizarre, strange spasmodic and unpredictable activities-this is mind.
Prashant S. Iyengar, Discourses on Yog

Prashant

When I was in India just a few months ago for July, I gained a new appreciation for Prashant, Mr. Iyengar's son.

Prashant demands that we ask ourselves deep questions that have no definite answer.
I left his classes with more questions and a sense of vast openness. A sense that nothing and everything were available to me simultaneously if I only allowed my mind, allowed my normal outlook, what I everyday think of as 'me',  to fall away. As soon as I found myself saying"I do it this way", or "that's not how I do this", I was going down the wrong road of self- definition, further and further from the vast expanse of divinity and freedom.
For what are we but slaves to our own frustrations, irritations and spells of impatience? We hold fast to our whims for new boots, fur ponchos and constantly seek a sense of final satisfaction. We lie to ourselves to make ourselves feel like we are intelligent and justified in our daily nonsense, but really we feel no real sense of completion. Instead, there is more loss, more emptiness, and we start out anew, looking toward some other object of desire, be it material or emotional to keep our ego pleased.

One class in particular has continued to have the most impact on me.

Prashant was asking us if we were 'correcting our pose' or if we 'made a correction' to the pose. He asked us to find out if we were in a state of constant correcting or if we felt like a correction had been made. "Are you doing or are you done?'

The entire class moved along with these questions being thrown out at us over and over again. When do you feel "done', what is "done"?

"How do you define done?"
"How do you decide it is correct?"

What is a correct pose?
What does it mean to be doing a pose 'correctly'?
To a certain extent there exists a level of incorrectness. Certainly, if the shoulders roll forward in Tadasana, that's an incorrect action. Depending on the shoulders, depending on the physical vessel, there may be a sway toward correctness or incorrectness. Does the state depend more on effort? What if the effort is great, but mis-directed?
Is there an absolute correct and incorrect?
I tend to think it has to vary from person to person, body to body. What our ego and our mind tells us cannot always be reliable. Sometimes our body speaks Greek, while we, for whatever reason, translate it as Spanish. Then we meet a teacher who understands Greek, informs us of our ignorance, and we either accept or reject the notions.

"The absolutes of right and wrong can never be absolute, because they are alive. Truth is worth caring about because it gives meaning to our lives, but we must watch for the high moral ground and use non-violence as a tool for connectivity and appreciation instead of divisiveness or puritanical authority."
from Yoga for a World Out of Balance by Michael Stone

Prashant would conduct an entire class without giving one instruction about a leg, a muscle or the spine. We were never told to straighten anything or tuck the tailbone. He expects that you are already in a place in your practice where you are aware of the basic doings and undoings, as well as your own shortcomings. I found it refreshing to discover that years of physical practice have finally begun to manifest somewhere beyond the physical, muscular realm for me. I was able to maintain the basics of the pose and still explore the breath, the state of mind, the concept of correct and incorrect.

I've decided to stop looking for the correct pose. Perhaps the correct pose is simply just another object of desire, when attained, we give ourselves an imaginary trophy on our mental award shelf.  Can I just practice,  uninterrupted, devoted to improving, devoted to evolving, without the trophy? I hope so.

The undisciplined man is attached to the fruits of his action and is in bondage to the desire that causes them. But the disciplined man abandons the fruits of his actions and thereby attains abiding peace.


For the delights that arise from external objects are really wombs of misery. They have a beginning and an end, Arjuna. A wise man takes no pleasure in them.
from The Bhagavad Gita translated by George Thompson


We should not be treating asana like an external object of desire to be attained and displayed. Asana is our laboratory, where our fears, frustrations and weaknesses are laid out before us to re-formulate.

The folks in India are either frightened or fascinated by all the tattoos on my skin. The ones who are frightened look away, have trouble making eye contact and are clearly disapproving.

Now, the folks who are fascinated and interested come straight at me smiling with their arms reaching out to touch me. They rub my arms, pull my hands up in the air and ask question after question. If they have a cellphone or camera, a photo is a must.

I will never forget a lady from my first trip in 2009.

"No wash?' she asked, meaning, they won't wash off.
"No wash." I confirmed.
She laughed, I laughed.
"Well", she said, "I hope you like them!"

One of the many, many tan colored street dogs.

Exorcising demons.

Fungal Adventures

So, I've been kind of sick lately.

I've learned that sickness has an effect on practice.

I've learned that practice has an effect on sickness.

I was unfortunate enough to contract a fungal infection. There are a vast array of unpleasant details that fall under the broad description of "fungal infection".  If you're reading this, it means that I probably know you and like you, so I will spare the gory details.

Unfortunately, I have dealt with this wide spread fungal panic before, more times that I care to remember. Months of diet  and life alteration ensue, sometimes to no positive end.

Is it that my entire body has become completely absorbed with this overgrown fungus? Has it truly embedded itself into my organs, causing me to become sick, depressed and exhausted?

Or is the infection more localized to a single area, with such a unique and hardy strain that whatever tries to kill it, only makes it stronger?

Or, am I so miserable that I am perpetuating this condition with my negativity?

Or, am I simply completely insane, to the point that this entire experience is my imagination, not a true reality at all?

What is true reality anyway?

All of the above?

In 15 days, I shed 10 pounds.

Feeling desperate, I took the counsel of my doctor. Her regimen includes a very controlled diet, where a small selection of foods combine in certain ways. The next part of this regimen includes a long usage of a heavy duty anti-fungal pharmaceutical.  I took a loading dose of the drug 4 days in a row, then follow that up with a smaller dose every 10 days to kill off any straggling fungi.

A day or so after the loading dose was over, I felt like complete crap. I felt so horrible that I didn't eat a speck of food for 2 whole days and starting writing a last will and testament. The drug kicked my ass.
The last time I felt like I was truly dying was almost 20 years ago. I had a second round of inhalation poisoning from paint fumes. When I felt like death was at hand, I put on my favorite album (at that time, it was  Led Zeppelin) and laid down in the dark. This time, I was a little disappointed with the whole death scenario, because my headache was so bad, that I did not even want to die to my favorite song, I just wanted it all to end.

So, I wrote a will, laid down in the dark, with no music and went to sleep. I didn't die. I woke up feeling a little better, and repeated this routine for a few days.
Now I am walking around feeling better, but weird. Has the medication I'm taking caused me to feel so different? Is there a loss of fungus? Did my body adopt the fungus, consider it a loved, integral part to the point that learning to exist without it would make me feel this odd?

My practice has become different. New sensations stream through my limbs as I do the asanas. Aches and pains as well as positive opening, expansive feelings come upon me in places and poses like never before. What was once stabilizing is now disturbing. It's kind of exciting. I always say that the body is a product of nature, and I am intrigued to be presently experiencing that. I am exorcising demons.
The inversions have become more difficult. I am sequencing poses together differently. They feel different. They start differently, they end differently, but it's all good. If I resist the change, it will only become more painful.

Here's Chris O'Brien and our friend Kara from Montreal with Granni.

This is Granni, the elephant (obviously). This photo was taken on my second encounter with her. When I first got this close to her, honestly, she scared the crap out of me. She's big.
The smiling Indian dude who strolled along beside her encouraged me to pet her. "Really?"
He laughed, bobbled his head from side to side and said, "Oh, yes, yes!"
So, as you can see from the photo, I touched her. When I have told people this story, they asked me if she had scratchy skin, they asked me if afterwards my hand might have smelled like an elephant.
Oddly, I didn't notice any of those external factors.
As corny as this may sound, as soon as my hand touched Granni, a wave of love passed through my arm into me. To me, she had the most beautiful eyes that reflected the gentle soul within. I did not want to ever remove my hand from her.
I have only traveled and stayed in India twice. But both times I have noticed how as my days there pass,  my affection for the place deepens. What at first seems filthy and unorganized, becomes lived in and well-worn.
After I reluctantly took my hand off of Granni and walked home, I started hatching schemes in my mind.
Surely, I should skip class at the Institute  tomorrow so that I might find this elephant again. After all, what's wrong with spending my day wandering the streets of Pune with an elephant?

I decided to leave the memory the sweet one that it is.

These folks were taking a break when I happened upon them. The gravel you see them sitting upon started from a pile of bigger rocks just about 50 feet away from this frame. The ladies use the hammers to bash the bigger rocks into this smaller gravel. Then, they fill those plates you see at the edge of the pile, place them on their heads and gracefully walk over to this pile.  Note that the ladies are wearing head wraps so the plates sit on their crowns easier. I love that they wear these beautiful saris while  they are working.

Dwi Pada Koundinyasana. An attempt anyway. Crazy that I figured out how to post video...what next?

I remember when I first began practicing this arm balance.  10 years ago, I was working as the do-all  clean-up garden and pond caretaker at a Rolls-Royce and Bentley dealership, which is no longer in downtown Atlanta. I would sneak downstairs into the parts cellar, and on a packing blanket spread on the cold concrete floor, fall over and over and over again.

I joked with myself. "I am going to practice my falling now." Really, I see now, I was practicing getting up from the fall.