Let me add my voice to the chorus of Anusara bloggingheads to address this NY Times article; Christina Sell has already done a bang-up job responding to what I think are the most salient points [the stuff that is straight up head-scratchingly false and overall tone], so this might be superfluous, but here goes nothing. Or here goes something, here comes nothing, because I can’t stop watching TRON.

Mimi Swartz seems like she had a whole pile of Post-It notes with numbers on them all around her MacAir while she wrote, a journalistic stance I heartily endorse since I’m writing this surrounded by Post-It notes. Some of hers appear to be dates, as she roughs out the Anusara chronology for the n00bs, but most of them are dollar amounts: how much for a workshop, how much for a training manual, how much John gets paid, and how much “normal” yoga teachers get paid. These dollar amounts are accurate so far as they go, and while I’ve thrown a fair amount of ca$h money at Anusara over the years I never once felt ripped off or like I didn’t get what I paid for. As far as how much it costs to travel or get lodging in other cities, unless John is far more wily than I’ve given him credit for, he doesn’t benefit from those monies in any way, and the actual cost of the events is by far the least expensive aspect of travelling for trainings. Plus, if you’re really in bad shape money-wise, you can apply for a scholarship. I don’t really see the exploitative aspect there. (more…)

This is a public service announcement: Avoid people who think they have the answer. In particular, avoid people who think that

I stole this.

there is only one way to the truth. In particular particular, avoid teachers that think there is only useful aspect of human experience, either heart, mind or body. I’ve found some serious pitfalls and personal conflicts with those who seem to find merit in methodologies that favour only one of this trinity, and it’s freaking me out a little to see that that’s really where the wheels come off the rhetorical cart: there are SO MANY PATHS. There are strong camps delineated within a subculture [yoga] that SHOULD be loving and graceful, and most of them have to do with a blind obeisance to only one of the three. This blindness usually manifests in code:

1. “I don’t want to have to think too hard about yoga, I just want to have an experience” [body]
2. “If you can’t intellectually defend what you’re doing, it’s either dangerous or stupid or both” [mind]
3. “I know it doesn’t make sense and I can’t explain why but you have to give yourself fully over to this person or method before you will truly reap the benefits of yoga. You THINK you’re getting something out of it but you’re really not.” [heart]

Holy sweet moly, what a s***show. The very fact that these conflicts exist, to my childish brain, seem to be indicative of a deep misunderstanding of our nature, which is of course the uneasy coexistence of all these aspects as they duke it out in the inner world. I also enjoy these Underpants-Gnomes-esque syllogisms where one of the opposing teams’ beliefs shows up as the consequence of working with your chosen team:

1. Work with the mind only
2. ???
3. Experience a oneness with all creation even though you’re so, like, totally different!!

or

1. Work with the body only
2. ???
3. It knows what it wants and has an intellect that’s like, smarter than your intellectual intellect, and wait, what?

or

1. Work with the heart only
2. ???
3. ???????? [ha ha, that's my dig at bhakti, but seriously folks, tip your waitresses]

Look, stop the violence in hip-hop, y-o. If you’ve found yourself in any of these camps at any point in your path, and ESPECIALLY if you’ve come to see merit where you previously thought there was none, then we collectively acknowledge the possibility, however slim, that your mortal yoga enemy actually has something to offer the world, even if their chosen one of the 31 flavours is not yours. One of your students who’s been getting Rocky Road from you for the last 6 years needs some Pralines’n'Cream from your nemesis, and WE as teachers need to dig that if we really wish the best for them we’ll let them go with a good, if salty, grace. There are many, many paths and many, many souls, and may we keep what John calls a “luminous spaciousness” towards those who make us gnash our teeth and wail.

BTO has guided me lovingly from the weedy darkness of self-doubt to approaching my 34th birthday with some form of identity intact. I’ve put a post-it note on the bathroom mirror that says “I AM NOT GOING TO QUIT” in Sharpie marker. Now, “quitting” could take a number of different forms so for all practical purposes that post-it note is meaningless, but let’s say for the time being that I’m not going to quit teaching and start there. And yes, it was getting to that point after staring down the bleak barrel of the CTG to the energetic holocaust of Vipassana.

One of the ways I self-diagnose my mental state is how much I connect to music: does it seem like some sort of weird minstrelsy or is it oddly prophetic, hearkening to me down the decades? I know that if I don’t relate to the lyrics that I’ve slipped out of my groove somehow, and I’ve actually been listening to the most sad-bastard crap imaginable [indie lo-fi instrumentals!! wtf], in the hopes that my new pretentions to adulthood and spirituality would be reflected in grownup music. (more…)

Okay, I really hope that there are more holidayish summer holidays than the last couple of weeks, for although I was in the picturesque mountains of the Interior in late June/early July, I don’t think I’ve ever worked harder in my life. With the certification process being the hardest thing I’ve ever TRIED to do, a 10-day Vipassana retreat officially assumes the status of the hardest thing I’ve ever ACTUALLY DONE. “Fun” was not a component of this experience, at least not until it was over [viz. the banging-head-against-the-wall phenomenon]

The site explains the circumstances of these retreats clearly enough, so I won’t belabour that; nothing in the bare-bones font and design of the site prepares the human nervous system for 12 daily hours of meditation and what basically amounts to a daily 19-hour fast, as no food other than fruit and tea can be taken after noon…for not being able to even expose your upper arms to the sun or nod and smile encouragingly at a fellow victim, I mean participant, when they are so visibly shaken and miserable that every cell in you is alive with compassion. What’s a soft, decadent little pup like myself doing in this rigorous situation, you ask? Haven’t I structured both my practice and my teaching to avoid the tedious drudgery of “life is suffering”? Well, yeah, sort of, except that this is a vast and rich continent of practice and knowledge and if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em for a 10 day psychic evisceration. (more…)

This has nothing to to with yoga. Isn’t that refreshing? I’m testing the WordPress app for the iPad, in the vain hope that I might either a) legitimize purchasing one by making it seem more businesslike or b) drum up corporate sponsorship by Apple, cause they don’t have enough exposure in the yoga world…wait. Our triple-platform, three-screen home recently became a five-screen home with the advent of the iPhones, which I can’t live without, and now a six-screener thanks to the generous and heart-rendingly temporary loan of a little 16G unit, which I’m merrily tapping away on while M watches guitar pedal videos. Full metal geek.

It’s complicated
to ask for help when they’ve all
been there already.

Acutely realize
that part of your tantrum is
attention-seeking.

NAWTH CACKALACK

I know that a *proper* Heavy Metta Haikus travel post should be written on location and be accompanied with pics, based on my precedent of two [2] previous series, but I was in no energetic condition to embark on blogging when I attended the Certified Teachers’ Gathering last week, due to being completely recalibrated. Recalibration is not often pleasant. I’m just saying. It was a bit dicey. I also took no pictures, due to either feeling very unphotogenic/being concerned about John’s recent no-pictures policy/forgetting Carl at the hotel/not knowing very many people I could do a joyful group shot with. You will just have to imagine a huge Hindu temple hall and a whole bunch of really, really ridiculously good-looking people.

I wasn’t going to blog because there was just too much to say and some of it was political and some of it was just too intimate. Then I was having a bath and looking at my Ziploc travel bag full of all the little presents we got in our schwag-bag [which, by the way, whoever put that together rocks...there was some amazing treats in there] and feeling quite kindly about the whole adventure, instead of my previous crying jags and bleak stares into the middle distance, and I realized: Don’t fix what ain’t broke, McInnis. As Steve says, “better out than in”.

(more…)

I gotta say, this whole Anusara Certification process is f***ing hard.

Not because of any physical or educational endeavour, although it is that. I recently realized that I get most of my energy from

WHAT TIME IS IT?

responding to the status quo with what I think is a balancing force, in most cases rebellion. That’s how I started teaching, actually. I would rumble around in my head with reasons why such-and-such instruction or demeanour was ineffective and think of ways that I could improve upon it. That’s why I started Big Rock Fridays: to puncture the dirigible of piety and passivity that seemed to cloak yoga, and I’ve actually been afraid that somebody would come along and think it was a terrible idea and that I was a jerk and that I was wrong in my passionate instinct.

And finally, they have. I recently got a double-barrelled attack of both anti-Anusara polemic and anti-Sjanie polemic. A more fierce spirit than I would probably respond to such playa-hataz with some serious game but I curled up and died inside because working on “balanced action” as I’ve been asked to do in my training has sapped the zeal and fire out of what started me on this path in the first place.

(more…)

More great conversations, more raw crude oil for the blogmachine as it trundles ever forward. By the way, if you are chafing under the bridle of my infrequent posting, I have decided to make my posts lower in quantity but [hopefully] higher in quality, so that you really get something for your neurons to chew on. Which is not to say that I won’t post recipes, oh heavens no. Had a great quinoa bowl last night with grilled tofu steaks that took me all the way back to old school Torontonian neo-hippiedom circa 1999. I’m just trying to choose my posts with care.

This conversation is one of my personal favourites: [in movie trailer voice:] IN A WORLD! Where all yoga styles APPEAR to use the same language! Of freedom and liberation and connection and bliss! How do you find your path? Which styles move forward with integrity of message and action? Is Coke really different than Pepsi, and if so, how? (more…)

So I’m done day 2 of the Chris Chavez Immersion 2010 Volume 1 and I’m hanging out watching Empire Strikes Back, as one does. The image of 59 newly sprouted Anusarites holding a terminally long plank pose while they inwardly wail and sweat through their scalps is burned into my retinas and I made a commitment to mirror as much of their practice as I can when I go home…that is, not practicing for 3 hours the way they do but to incorporate what I know they have learned this day and use *just that* in a sequence that at least approximates the gristliness and wailing. (more…)

After a lovely warm, quiet teachers’ practice yesterday, I got to thinkin’, I did. There are so many qualities of yoga that we can either ramp up or dial down: contemplative, enthusiastic, sweaty and rockin’, disciplined, et cetera ad infinitum as far as I can tell. That is, I have yet to truly discover the limit of “what is yoga” in terms of the essential quality of a class.

Yet we keep thinking that we can expect a quality out of our teachers or styles that will remain consistent, and I suppose we’re right to do so, since we’re smart and busy people and we deserve to spend our time and our energy in a way that actually rewards our intention [to contemplate, to get sweaty, &c.] It’s a short step from expectation to limitation, though. Or to put it another way, what you think you want out of your yoga can be a trap. And what you think a certain kind of yoga “should be” can also be a trap.

Anusara Yoga consists entirely of straight-legged lunges. That's all you're gonna get to do.

Students are always asking, “What is Anusara Yoga? What make it different from other kinds of yoga? Why should I go to that class as opposed to another style?” It’d be disingenuous of me at this point to pretend that I don’t want them to come to an Anusara class, or that I don’t care what style they practice. Of course I care. I didn’t shift my teaching and my training in this direction randomly; I chose it based on its merits and its pragmatic results both in my personal practice and the manifestation I saw in our community. So I get this question and I’m somewhat nonplussed even though it’s like the simplest, most reasonable question to ask. I think, Should I try to “sell” it since I believe in it so deeply? Or should I tell the truth, which is that the style is defined only by our limited beliefs about it? (more…)