…and I’m still rustling up donations for our team.  Please visit the Yoga4Kidz Society webpage and search for the Heavy Metta team.

Go Team Go!!

I know this year is economically tough for so many, but don’t forget that (like all disasters) economic problems hit those who are already down:  women, children, and those already ill, disabled and in poverty.

Sometimes I feel that there is no way to even begin to contribute when so many people all over the world are suffering, and then that makes me feel like I can’t even start, so I am very proud to be doing whatever I can for this organization.

Any amount is much appreciated.  We’ll be rocking out with 24 hours of yoga next weekend.  Give whatever you can!

What I remember the most clearly from this Big Rock Friday was how intensely SWEATY the afternoon became.  Listen to these tunes and go deep….

Apache at the Cake Shop (h/t NewmRadio)

Floyd, “Shine On You Crazy Diamond”

Zeppelin, “Black Dog”

Sabbath, “Iron Man” [abs!]

Zeppelin, “Kashmir”

Journey, “Don’t Stop Believing” [!!!!]

ZZ Top, “Cheap Sunglasses”

Creedence, “As Long as I Can See The Light”

Zeppelin, “No Quarter”

ZZ Top, “Made Into A Movie” [This is a GREAT song btw.]

Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble, “Little Wing”

Sabbath, “Planet Caravan”

Floyd, “Wish You Were Here”

Buffalo Springfield, “For What It’s Worth”

10 Years After, “I’d Love To Change The World”

Sabbath, “Supernaut” [M's been getting involved in the Big Rock Friday playlist preparation and this was his contribution. It worked well for Surya B, what with all of the Utkatasanas and Vira Is and opportunities for Rock Mudra and headbanging]

AC/DC, “Back In Black”

Kansas, “Carry On My Wayward Son” [I can't believe they pay me to do this job]

Sabbath, “Sweet Leaf” [*COUGHkoffkoff*]

Skynyrd, “Saturday Night Special”

Heart, “Little Queen” [This one was so random I'm kind of ashamed of myself and proud of myself all at the same time. My God, she is an amazing singer]

Aerosmith, “Angel” [LOL I had this on cassingle]

Kiss, “Beth” [Big ups to Great Bob Scott, wherever you might be. Good use of the oboe, if you know what I mean]

Hendrix, “1983…(A Merman I Should Turn To Be)” [13 minutes of good solid backbending weirdness]

Sabbath, “Solitude”

Sabbath, “Orchid”

Sabbath, “Fluff” [I had no idea they were so....jazzy. “Fluff” is freaking gorgeous. Check it out if you haven't in the past]

Beatles, “Blackbird”.

Our class was about creativity and music; with Shantala setting up next door and my intention to basically let loose sonic hell on these poor people it really did feel like Fame or band camp; I haven’t felt that way since I was in music school, with PAs and instrument cases and people doing warmup stretches in Lycra gear all over the place. There are so many forms for this huge energy, from Shantala’s lush chants to these crazy songs. I wanted to apologize and be unapologetic simultaneously.

If, under some bizarre circumstances, I was paid every time I heard [or said] the phrase “body & mind” or “mind/body” or “body-mind union/continuum/dichotomy” whatever, I would own these here Internets. Now, mind you I’m in the line of work where that kind of thing comes up a lot, and not for nothing: those are two huge aspects of our human experience, and both the M and the B tend to chatter on an awful lot, often at each other’s metaphorical throats. The body generally wants to sleep, with breaks for eating, and more sleep. As John Friend says, the body’s favourite pose is Savasana! The mind…well, the mind has a bad rep in yoga anyway, undeserved IMHO, but I think it’s generally acknowledged that the mind does tend to go on a little LONG.

Some people have their epic M/B battle in asana class, when the going gets a bit rough; my inner Vietnam actually takes place at home before class begins, where I debate the merits of practice.

B: I don’t feel too bad. I’m a little hungry, actually. Do we still have any of those Fiesta Lime rice chips?

M: Only 41, you lazy sack. Now let’s do the math. I had a good vigorous practice yesterday and a sort of mellow one the day before, which makes for really only like a practice and a half over a 2 day period which isn’t really ENOUGH…and what kind of teacher would I be if I couldn’t motivate myself to get on the mat…but aren’t I just guilting myself into practice? Is that a wholesome and honest reason to engage in this noble art?

B: Yes, you’re just guilting yourself. Everything’s fine. Can you ask me to get those chips? I can’t get up on my own.

M: I can totally feel the tightness in my psoas on the right side. I need more Inner Spiral on the right side. It’s the idiopathic scoliosis. It causes compression in the left kidney area. Those are all facts and they’re all true. I can’t fix that here from the futon. I can’t do that here eating chips.

B: Yeah, I can feel that too but it’s no big deal…

M: YES IT IS A BIG DEAL I AM UNBALANCED I AM OUT OF CONTROL I AM FULL OF THOUGHTS AND THINGS! THOUGHTS!! SO MANY!!!!!!11!!

B: Dude…dude.

I could pretty much do this all day. Seriously, it’s like driving the Great Kia Magentis of Being with two squabbling children in the back.  So what’s the solution to letting these two clown on and on? Only one way to break the stalemate, and that is to introduce the third and most important element:

Don't make me turn this car around....

We practice because of the heart, the part of ourselves that resolves these internal battles; that gets this mind-body debate blissfully in accord. This is one of Anusara Yoga’s most central teachings, to me, and we get so involved in the intoxicating diet of either one of the Wonder Twins above that it is worth remembering: the heart is the trump suit you can play that will settle this, once and for all.

And the really groovy thing is that there is no achievement of either mind OR body that doesn’t become even more glorious, even more spectacular, when it is undertaken in the service of the heart’s kind, open sweetness. They are in no way mutually exclusive; I suspect that you can be brilliant, incisive, accurate and wise…powerful, strong, honest and earthy…and still be kind, open and sweet at the same time. Wouldn’t that be something?

The RAWK that started it all….

David Bowie, “Space Oddity”

All right, boys, bend over and touch the floor for Uttanasana

Janis Joplin, “Summertime”

Led Zeppelin, “When The Levee Breaks”

Creedence, “Fortunate Son”

Van Halen, “Runnin’ With the Devil”

Creedence, “Run Through The Jungle” [I seem to have some sort of “running” theme going here; not on purpose]

The Guess Who, “No Sugar Tonight/New Mother Nature” [CanCon]

Jimi Hendrix, “Voodoo Chile Blues”

Ben Harper, “She’s Only Happy In The Sun” [I love this song but it didn't actually work, here]

Sabbath, “Changes”

Zeppelin, “Since I’ve Been Loving You” [for backbends]

Pink Floyd, “Us and Them [Live]”

Fleetwood Mac, “Landslide [Acoustic]”

Most of growing older seems to consist of finding out that the world is the exact opposite of how I thought it would be. You’d think that this phenomenon would start to slow down as I age but if anything I get my mind blown on an increasingly regular basis.

The latest revelation that’s been in mental embryo for the last few years has been on the subject of “centering” or “being centered†”. I teach yoga to actors at Second Avenue Studios as an adjunct to their scene study classes, as another way of cementing their connection to their medium and [let's face it] encouraging them to relax since acting is probably one of the most psychically stressful things you can do [it's like going out for 5 job interviews a day and getting rejected for all of them, and that's a GOOD day; I have no idea how they manage it, really]. Almost everyone has a pet centering exercise that they can use to prepare before a performance or audition, usually including some combination of the following:

• a visualization or meditation

• breathwork of some sort

• stretches or yoga postures

• a physical release, like fluttering an exhale through the lips, shaking out the limbs, rounding up the spine from a forward bend

[Aside: I think it's pretty groovy that these exercises, although I'm sure they were influenced by yoga if not outright cribbed from it, whether the actors know it or not, include the aspects of a hatha yoga practice: breath, mind, body...it's like a little mini-practice right there on the spot]

The underlying belief behind these is that normal life is filling you up with bodily tension and undesirable mental stress, and that in order to return to Centre™ one must “clear out” somehow: hence the limb-jiggling, primal scream therapy, long sighs and exhalations.

+ four year old + golden Labrador = a challenge to equanimity

And with all due respect and big ups to the actors in question, this is the misapprehension I’m talking about. When the advertising collective consciousness shows us what being centered looks like, we see: blank modern spaces, Zen gardens, esoteric air fresheners. Hollow bamboo. Women with glazed eyes in long drapy minimalist fashions and tiny secret smiles emerging from an essential oil bath. It’s an aesthetic, precarious, perfect, incredibly easily undermined vision. It’s a clearing out, an emptiness. It’s beautiful, fragile, and utterly unsustainable. [Those women in the ads must do NOTHING but Swiffering and laundry. How relaxing can that be?]

I’ve had my share of being behind the scenes getting ready to perform or play and trying these little O-magazine techniques. Ah, a long breath in, and long exhale, and

WHERE IS THE SECOND PATCH CORD FOR THE DI BOX?

Right. Okay. Let’s try this again. Calm blue ocean, calm blue ocean. Inhale, and a loooooong….

DAMMIT I CAN’T REMEMBER THE LYRICS TO THE SECOND VERSE OF LUSH LIFE; CURSE YOU FEEBLE BRAIN

&c. Spirituo-mental mayhem ensues. It’s the psychic equivalent of a child putting poster paint on a white wall, and it includes the initial judgement, savagery and then subsequent guilt at that savagery [“Why am I getting so angry?”] What I am coming to understand is that clearing out and emptying, while absolutely essential to the centering process, is only half of the story. Once you’ve shaken the tension out, once the body/mind is a blank canvas: what will you fill up with? What part of you will you consciously feed? Centering is drawing back together, coalescing around a vision that you wish to make manifest. Nothing can upset that strength. You’ve shifted the inner white wall, the blank aesthetically gorgeous heavily marketted canvas, to a lush primal collage, and your inner child can put as many red handprints on it and thumbtacks in it as she likes. So when you feel like you need to find your centre, FEED your centre. Shake out, stick your tongue out, roll around on the floor, do what you gotta do, prepare yourself to create AND THEN draw in…get solid and strong. Then bring beauty to the world.

How great is this. Thanks to Sara from Rock'n'Roll yoga...link below

Stones, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”

The Who, “Won’t Get Fooled Again” [I wonder if I can time Simhasana to align with the greatest rock'n'roll "YEAH" of all time?]

Mountain, “Mississippi Queen”

Jimi, “Purple Haze” [long overdue in the Big Rock Friday annals]

Priestess, “Time Will Cut You Down”

Janis Joplin, “Piece Of My Heart”

Poison, “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” [I know, I know]

Creedence Clearwater Revival, “Long As I Can See the Light”

Skynyrd, “Tuesday’s Gone” [as requested]

Jimi, “May This Be Love”

Beatles, “Dear Prudence”

Beatles, “Mother Nature’s Son”

John Hartford, “I Am A Man of Constant Sorrow [Instrumental]”

Neil Young, “Helpless”

I’ll be posting the earlier Big Rock Friday playlists for your edification and amusement.  Oh, and hey, look what I found!!

I spent the first coupla decades of my life thinking that the moon phases affecting your life, here on this earthly plane, was the worst sort of fuzzy-headedness. That sort of tomfoolery qualified you to have your own kiln and a skirt made out of wheat. Now that I’m the one rockin’ the hemp poncho I guess I have a lot of free-range organic crow to eat.

The whole first half of this week it felt like I was dragging something heavy and recalcitrant behind me. You know when you’re trying to put a child to bed and they just go limp and also somehow shift their centre of gravity about 4′ below the floor, so they are impossible to lift and also squirmy? That’s what it felt like. Not being the brightest log on the Yuletide fire, I assumed that I was just incredibly lazy. I also suspected that my inability to get into a good bright yogic mood was indicative of a fatal error in my career choice. Dramatic much?

Wednesday night I spent basically breakdancing in bed, thrashing and sweaty. The wind was coming up, and the vata dosha was cranked all the way up to 11, and I still didn’t put 2 and 2 together. I was basically planning asana sequences from 2 to 4:30 am which, what? GO TO SLEEP, DUMMY. It wasn’t until I got in to teach and one of my students reminded me that it was the full moon that it all became clear.

I know I have hardcore empiricist friends whose eyebrows would probably go right up past their hairline reading this, but it’s incredibly comforting to find out there is some larger ground for the apparently random and whimsical energetic tides of life. When you start talking to your coworkers about the weird traffic or the fact that you broke 3 [three!] plates the night before or that your dog was acting strange and had separated all your sock-balls and the resident hippie informs you that Mercury is in retrograde, isn’t it reassuring? IT’S NOT YOU. IT’S THE COSMOS. It contextualizes things, and it absolves us from our usual burden of Total Individualism, wherein not only are you incredibly powerful but you’re also left holding the bag.

Plus, I know the plural of anecdote is not data but how many more months am I going to experience the following:

- heavy, dull sensation and cloudy mental state for days prior to full moon

Get out of my head!1!

- insomnia on full moon

- improved wellbeing subsequent to full moon

and still disregard the pattern? If it makes me look like a chump, so be it. I’m not lazy, it’s the moon! There, doesn’t that make you feel better?

Heh. It hadn’t actually occurred to me to blog about this until Christine, God bless’er, told me to. I trust her instincts in this as in all things. It’s kinda embarrassing though.

I had a teaching nightmare…you know, THOSE teaching nightmares? where you’re naked? except in this one I wasn’t naked. We were trucking along, fully clothed, warming up, and I made this fatal error:

“Please step your right foot forward and lower your back knee. On your next inhale, please lift your arms to the sky for a lunge.”

Immediately, a melée ensued [as M likes to say]. Some people took balancing poses, others Reclined Half Happy Baby. A couple people had a STRAIGHT-legged lunge or other variations. [Remember, this is happening IN MY HEAD while I sleep. No flying, no dragons, no fantastic voyages. Am I dedicated, or what.] I decided to give everybody the benefit of the doubt in spite of the generally descending energetic temperature of the room:

“Okay, so, uh, from Down Dog, please step your RIGHT foot forward, and gently lower your back knee to the ground. When you’re ready, follow the breath and lift the body and the arms for a lunge pose.”

Little to no effect, maybe an eyeroll here and there. So, as we yoga teachers do, I decide to get right back to first principles: I soften and take a breath, and I wonder why I want them to do a lunge so badly, and then I ask them to please just sit on their heels and I’ll tell them…ahem…

“You know, I hope you all feel able in your yoga classes to honour what your body really needs, because nobody knows you like you know yourself, and being sensitive to that call is probably one of the greatest and most noble practices you can cultivate. Having said that, as teachers we are passionate and excited about sharing our experiences and what makes our lives on the mat as rich and joyful as they are, so if I suggest a posture, it’s because that’s the way that *I* know to bring my experience to you. I’d love to talk about those reasons more if you have questions. In the meantime, let’s come back into Down Dog, and…”

People just start getting up to leave. Like, they’re giving me a deadly stinkeye combination of the “How could you let me down like that” and “What type of nonsense is even coming out of your mouth, woman?”

You're not the boss of me!

I’m like, “You guys! Let’s just sit down and talk about this some more because I think we’re getting somewhere…guys…? Please?” As they’re walking out, some students are saying, “That was just unacceptable”…”totally beyond the pale”, &c. I wake bereft, and to be honest, really sweaty. Brr. I’m getting the hot-colds again just thinking about it.

So, teachers: remember to cultivate gratitude that adults pay their nickel and step their right feet forwards when you ask them to. Students†: You have a lot of power and, as in Spider-Man, with great power comes great responsibility. And mamas, don’t let your babies grow up to be Yoga Cowboys: a good teacher should have a reason for why they’re doing what they’re doing, which is a two-way path of clearly conveying and being open to receive.

†I wish to clarify that this did NOT happen in real life; my real life students are game for pretty much anything and laughed their keisters off when I told them this story. YMMV.

The trickiest part of living a life of spirit, these days, is to keep your eyes open and your feet on the ground and not get so “woo” that you miss the vibrance of reality; which is hard, given the intoxicating qualities of spiritual knowledge and practice. Man, if I had a nickel for every abstract energetic Quality I’ve experienced through meditation or asana…I’d have enough to retire young. Colours, lights, vague feelings of well-being; visions of the future, of distant lands, of imaginary places. Contact with what I assume is the Divine. Also some experiences not so pleasant, usually resulting in multiple-hour crying jags. They were all real to me, and they were very strong and potent. And I definitely think they inform my practice and help me discuss similar situations with my students if that comes up.

They just haven’t helped me when I’m having an argument with a friend, or on voting day, or to remember my keys, or when I’m in line for the ferry. You know what helps then? The REALITY of the method of practice, not the energetic woo. The concrete techniques, and maybe most importantly, actually taking action.

Don't just do something, sit there

It’s Remembrance Day today, a holiday with many convoluted layers of sweet and bitter. What’s that line from Lord of the Rings: “Love is now mingled with grief”. In a way, our affection for those in our tribe actually ends up feeding armed conflict in many ways [when we feel those we love are threatened], and those conflicts result in loss, which would not be so poignant if it were not for our love. I never really know how to feel about this holiday, apart from wanting to volunteer at the Legion or something: I don’t want us to have any more wars, but I don’t want to undermine the honour of those men and women who truly, genuinely believed they were fighting for their lives and their loves, just because I have the luxury of pacifism. I want to remember, but I want to take action based on that remembrance.

Colours, lights and sound

This year we are seeing how taking strong action, on this crazy plane of reality, can have tangible results. On the US Election Day, in my classes, I talked about finding unity through our core reasons for voting, even if we ended up choosing differently: everybody wants to be happy. The American voters expressed, in a concrete way, their strong vision of their desired future. And a criticism [unwarranted IMHO] levelled by opponents of then-Senator Obama was that he was all woo, all concept, all Hope’n'Change. The ACTIONS of the voters were undertaken, at least I’m pretty sure, to make this concept concrete. Vision without action: insubstantial woo. Action without vision: a hard, exhausting slog with no purpose and no end in sight. The voters remembered what was important to them, and then they made their remembrances manifest.

I haven’t had the privilege of talking with veterans about the details of their experiences, but I believe that they are asking for more than our remembrance. They are asking us to take action to continue to realize their vision of what was so important to them. When you re-member, it’s not just a mental exercise, it’s a repopulation of the mind and the heart with what is central and vital. The natural extension of remembrance is action. The way back to Spirit is through action.