Road rage still exists.
It’s more like, “Oh, bro, COME ON”
and a lazy wave.

Avocado is
so ripe, it’s guac before it
even hits the bowl.

May technique and the
thinky brainstuff be always
subsumed in the heart.

Finally, a nude beach.
I was starting to wonder
what was wrong with them.

At the end of every cycle [e.g. New Years', income tax return filing, SuperBowl Sunday] it is considered yogically appropriate to ponder what you are grateful for in the preceding time period. Well, my blog overfloweth. I’m super grateful that you can live very easily on what

Skeeter, Jayanti and Geordie at the coconut truck

Geordie would call Road Guava and coconuts sold out of the back of trucks. I’m grateful for the peculiarly Hawai’ian affectation of taking every pop song ever written and “hulaizing” it. I’m grateful that the Colts slaughtered Arizona this afternoon/evening. I’m grateful for my first Chakorasana and my first Eka Hasta Urdhva Dhanurasana dropbacks under Leanne’s expert tutelage. And I’m terribly, terribly pleased that this may be the greatest yoga experience, and one of the greatest experiences period of my life thus far.

In the spirit of the Costa Rica Haikus, feel free to skip to the section that best describes you.

IF YOU ARE A:

1. Gourmand and/or hedonist

As we committed to a tapasya of whole foods only, I brought some of the ol’ vegan cooking chops out of hiding. Apart from the rice and greens dish described below I rocked a coriander-avocado-ginger dressing for steamed yam discs, broccoli and sunflower sprouts on a bed of quinoa. We killed a large bottle of Maui Kombucha every day and they also graced me with a fantastic cacao-acai berry torte, which was very well-done [raw food can be a bit spotty]: coconut-oil and hazelnut crust, &c. When the tapasya was completed we went predictably and tantrically all out: Kona Brewing Co. lilikoi wheat ale, nachos with a local raw Montery Jack cheese and backyard-avocado guac, and…and…wait for it…oh God, I can’t wait for it any longer…yet you must…Ono Gelato’s coconut gelato with a dollop of Mauian mango butter. Breakfast at Colleen’s this morning was stellar, from L’s French toast to my tofu scramble wrap. The pineapples here are so refined and sophisticated in their taste it’s like they have vanilla on them. Except they don’t, that’s just the way they taste.

We finally found a place to go swimming in the arms of Mama Maui au naturel as I believe she intended. So today’s break in between workshop sections was spent scampering around in the waves and charging up in the sun like a battery.

There was a bit of an undertow, but not bad

2. Asana athlete

I always love studying with John because it gives me such great affirmation that what I’m teaching is on point, both in the technical sense but most importantly from an axiomatic, first-principle philosophical standpoint. What I mean is, a genuine affirmation that being alive is OK and you didn’t screw up your incarnations or some such jive: our tendencies, while always worthy of our vigilant awareness, are God-given and what feels right probably is. Sure, your technical knowledge increases but at bottom we are working with what my coach Susan would call Core Beliefs: That your body is not broken; that you were designed to move and be fluid and free. The more I study and practice the more I see so clearly that many disciplines of the body are axiomatically derived from an emotion that looks a lot like fear: fear of autonomy, fear of embodiment, fear of lack of knowledge, and of course, the classic hit, Number One with a bullet if you’ll pardon the expression: fear of injury.

I would like you to ponder something just for a moment: Have you ever looked back and thought, “I’m so glad I spent all that time and energy being afraid. It really paid off.”? It’s one thing if you are actually in a position to DO something about it [checking your blind spot, turning off the stove, &c.] But is that really always fear or is that actually the optimistic channeling of your own pragmatism into an optional vision for the future [viz. no sideswiping cyclists, house not burned down and similar]? Our fear circuits are so wired into our action circuits that we think we need to continually terrorize ourselves into doing the right thing. I recently read a phrase, something like, “I want to protect my core”. I want to protect my core, like my core was Fort Knox and physical activity was the barbarian hordes. I want to lengthen my back because that sounds like a nice thing to want to do, so I “tuck my tailbone” and clench my butt and the fronts of my legs become granitic and I wonder why my backbend practice doesn’t seem to be progressing. I want to Stay Safe and Listen To My Body and what my body is saying is “Mmmm….chips”. Because that’s what it always says. And my heart is salivating lustily over one-armed dropbacks and Mandalasana but I Listen To My Body which is basically like CBC Radio 2 and I watch everybody else playing instead. Ever felt like that? Ever wondered who’s gonna sign the permission slip so you can get into the game?

Before we try to fix a problem, let’s say an anatomical problem of pain in the body, let’s first ascertain that there actually IS a problem instead of enslaving ourselves to the hosts of under-the-bed spectres. I have never ever had pain in backbends but I had so many teachers tell me that looking at my body from the outside I really OUGHT to have pain in backbends or that I would at some unspecified time in the menacing future. Ooga-booga. I steered well and truly clear of dropbacks and bearing weight on my hands in Bhujangasana and similar bugaboos for years, waiting for the permission slip. You know who signs that permission slip? I’ll give you three guesses, and the first two don’t count. YOU do, of course. Only you know where things hurt and what things feel absolutely delicious and as John would say, that intuitive deliciousness is God-given. So today’s morning practice in particular was all about relishing the sensuous experience of asana. And unsurprisingly, authorizing yourself to feel good does not result in injury. It actually gives you the personal power to become more expressive in: thigh stretches, baby Kapinjalasana, Parvritta Ardha Chandra Chapasana, a very mellow variation of Pincha, Handstand with a twist, Headstand dropovers, Mandalasana [!!! I know. The craziest feeling in the world]…the list went on and on. And that was just this morning.

Over and over I had the experience of other modalities and teachings shouting for their fear-based space in my head, and my heart just yearning to open. It was like a little kid at the grown-up table, who, after being told constantly to sit still, pulls the smart move, crawls under the tablecloth and Krazy-Glues everyone’s buttocks to their chairs. Yes, yes, I know, all that thinky head knowledge served me and yes I’ve been practicing for a long time and blah blah blah. I’m not convinced that had anything do with it, actually. Yoga teachers are in no way exempt from their own individual anxieties and insecurities, and when I walk into one of these trainings my inner body is like Lebanon in the 80s: I’m worried that the wrong explosive will go off and I’ll have to demo something insane and won’t be able to do it, or get asked a question that I can’t answer or get wrong. Or I’ll get partnered with somebody who wants to use me as their teaching test-tube and have to do every remedial alignment instruction under the sun, including ones that don’t feel good. I’m so glad I spent all that time being afraid. Not.

3. Philosopher, lit-critic, feminist

My review of Kung Fu Panda outlined my discomfort with and questions about the Bhagavad Gita, which was the key text for this week’s philosophy intensive. Weirdly, in spite of not asking my specific questions I feel like I did get some answers, and now my memories of the text will be inextricably interwoven with this experience, which will likely help me get over being so hard-assed. I realize this is flawed critical thinking, though, so I’m-a try and do a bit better:

Puja with the legendary Hanuman banner, also some leis

a) It’s a metaphor, stupid. Well, not all schools treat the Gita as a metaphor. I understand that some historians believe this battle was actually fought, which puts the whole Mahabharata alongside its epic brethren, the Iliad and the Odyssey, which is groovy enough as it goes but I never felt was sufficient to explain the Gita’s devotees. As my commenter Eric points out, it’s uncomfortable to read from the POV of Arjuna being really seriously discomfitted by the prospect of committing violent acts against his family and Krishna being all like, “Sack up, son, the cheque is in the mail”. But reading it literally is terrifically limiting, and I don’t know why I did it the disservice of doing so. For the sake of contrast, I adore the Lord of the Rings, but I don’t think the vertically challenged should undertake long and ill-equipped volcanic pilgrimages to destroy their excess jewellery.

b) Actually, I do know why I did it the disservice of reading it literally, and that’s because I was saddled with the Juan Mascaro translation, the one that makes the unworthy man sound like Hunter S. Thompson and has the hated verse about women in it. Turns out, again unsurprisingly from a scholarly POV, that the translation has a MASSIVE effect on the text as the barely latent antipathies of the translator emerge. Eknath Easwaran’s translation is decidedly more palatable, with the hated woman-verse transposed into some warmly 90-s sounding inclusive lingo and the unworthy man sounding more like a neocon. I’d like to get my Sanskrit chops up to the admittedly bold point of translating it MYSELF, especially the really prickly parts.

c) It’s also worth keeping in mind that one of the reasons why I resonate more with scripture like the Pratyabhijna Hrdayam is that, well, they’re more recent, and Tantric philosophy has made its mark on the modern collective gestalt in a way that simply wasn’t available when the Gita was written. As I make my way through Paths to God I see more fingerholds on the Gita as a relevant text, but it almost always requires [for me] a brief prayer of forgiveness for the caste system, the patriarchy, the martial symbolism &c.

John Friend and Ram Dass. No, really.

As I said above, I won’t ever be able to think of the Gita again without remembering Ram Dass’s incredible presence and hilarious stories [delivered with inimitable Borscht-Belt/Ivy-League timing] or John’s zesty inspirational instruction. So my hardassery is hereby ruined.

Well, dear readers, that about does it for our final day of formal study here in Maui. We have a day and a half more of kicking around and enjoying all there is to be enjoyed. May our discussions continue on the mat and on the Intertubes; I’ll try to post again before I get home. Mahalo.

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