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…)