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?

Every time I think I “know” what Anusara Yoga is about, I am called upon to redefine it, since my “knowledge” places limitations on it. If I think it is rowdy and encouraging, I feel overwhelmed by needing to sustain a rowdy, encouraging energy in class and then I get tired and bummed out and my students get Teh Crazy Eyes [tm]. If I think it is disciplined and contemplative, we all get glassy-eyed and serene and do 27 forward folds and nobody ever comes back, LOL. If I think it is technical and biomechanical we dork out on Shin Loop for a week and everybody gets that narrow little line in their foreheads. If I think it is expansive and expressive and poetic, the boundaries tend to warp and wane until who even knows what the hell I’m talking about and none of that makes any sense and Jesus, Sjanie, keep it together. So here’s my new theory:

There is no style of class that cannot be encompassed by this method. There is no physical action that is not included in the Universal Principles of Alignment. There is no technique or device that cannot be employed by an Anusara Yoga teacher that, if consciously chosen to serve the students, is not part of the method. [NOTE:  This does not include reasons like, "Because I think it would be cool", "Because it's what I did last week", "Because it would make *me* feel good" and "Because it's the only thing I could think of"]  If you want to teach Osho-style free movement and primal scream therapy, and you can cogently explain why you are choosing this and why it serves the students, knock yourself out. I think this comes back to what I know is MY tendency in teaching, which previously was not choosing techniques or devices that served the students but choosing techniques that either gratified me as a teacher/performer [the Sjanie Show] because we all want to be loved, or not really choosing techniques because I lacked the skills or awareness to diversify what I was doing. There weren’t enough tools in the toolbox, in other words. I had only one voice in teaching, so it was a buffet with only one dish [mashed potatoes in this instance...I love mashed potatoes but that's not much of a buffet].

Now that I have more tools, I can choose with more integrity. And I see both in my own mind and also in the inquiries of the new teachers in our community that there is a resistance to a PERCEIVED quality that Anusara should have: that we’re all chatty and motivational-speakerish, that we don’t teach pranayam [!?!? since when was everybody so interested in pranayam all of a sudden? Sheesh, don't let me stop you...sign up for some of the usually miserably attended pranayam/meditation workshops], that we don’t “flow”, and so on…all legitimate critiques as the method is currently instructed with our limited vision but NONE of these critiques actually mandated by the method. I’ve never taken a training that says, “your class must look like this” or “feel like this”. In fact, every training I’ve had has expanded my vision of what is appropriate and possible to serve the student: Chris Chavez sitting beside a terminal cancer patient’s bedside breathing with them, or having us randomly jump up and down for 3 minutes before we start class, John talking about putting blankets on a fibromyalgia sufferer and coaching them through Savasana or using circular movements of the arms and legs to disperse excess vata energy. Just because we don’t often SEE these techniques used in a mixed-level public class does not mean they are not part of the method. It’s not all sidebodylonginnerbodybrightheadofthearmbonesback, although that is of course wicked awesome.

So when you feel like you’re all punk rock and too cool for Anusara, consider whether you are in fact rebelling against your own PERCEPTION of what the method is. Consider what is effective, what works, what generates the type of growth and expression that you intend, and then ask yourself whether anybody is actually stopping you from doing that in your class. It is a blank slate, upon which we shine our message and intention with as much clarity as we can muster. With that being said, the sweet silence of a simple unguided meditation is as much a part of Anusara as the wildest partner handstand. Let’s not forget how we came to the practice in the first place: diversity, freedom and joy.

Oh man, it looks so warm and pretty in this picture.

March 5-7.  The workshop’s overarching theme is the cultivation of a living practice, just in time for Spring.  With the good weather of the February stretch in full swing on this sunny afternoon I’m feeling particularly inspired.  Please contact Pauline Livingstone at www.missionyogastudio.com or phone her at 250.764 .4482 for more details or to enrol.  See you there!

this is, apparently what little boys are made of

This frame was inspired by an episode of NOVA that my Mom PVRed, about fractals and their applications. If desired, and I recommend it, you can watch the whole thing here. I fell in love with fractals in late elementary school/early high school, and it turns out M did as well, only across the country from me. I felt the whole show was a good primer on how this sort of geometry works, and it also explored what I found the super-fascinating element: how fractal geometry was considered this maverick, outlying concept, voodoo mathematics if you like, when we now consider it quite conventional. That’s an old story, that you can’t keep ‘em down on the mental farm after they’ve see Paree, but I’m going to use the P word and say that the paradigm of fractal geometry represents a guideline for how we are to proceed as a species into the future with any sort of integrity. And not just in math and science, because what I know about true mathematics can be inscribed with a blunt crayon around the inside of a shot glass. No, I’m talking about creativity, spirit, healing and consciousness, and I’m going to try to keep my skull well-attached as I do so, because these are subjects that tend to inflate and become overly grandiose. NOTE: I own no tie-dyed clothing and only one pair of MEC sunglasses that are NOT blue or pink coloured and do not flip up like Dwayne Wayne. I just wanted to make that clear.

The Lust For The Known

As my studies and teaching have proceeded I’ve occasionally bumped up against fellow teachers or students who are convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that there are immutable truths in philosophy or anatomy, and that our instruction in this art of yoga should reflect their immutability. That is, it doesn’t matter what the student *wants*, we know better, and our teaching is staple-gunned to this affirmation. Various philosophies that erode the ego are based on this truth, and its immutability. The existence of even ONE exception to this rule creates a swamp of uncertainty so panic-inducing that it is consigned to silence and hostility. Heck, sometimes I’ve BEEN that teacher, and I might be that teacher again [although I hope this post provides a metaphorical finger-string to help me to remember a more effective path].

What’s fascinating about this approach is that it only masquerades as true science: science is about exploration, theory, observation, flexibility of approach and vision. Heck, even gravity is still technically a theory, albeit a fairly effectively supported one. I don’t know about you, but I eagerly await the moment that I throw myself at the ground and miss. So the lust for certainty is FED by science, but IS NOT science. Maybe that lust is the engine that drives exploration, but that’s not the same thing.

From an existential point of view, wouldn’t it be gratifying to know for sure? I mean, not only would you be endowed with this irrefutable, immutable knowledge that would keep people lining up at your door to get a hit of your pure win, but you own soul would be so comforted by certainty…it would be hard not to just sit in Padmasana glowing with your own affirmation. Perhaps that’s what we are looking for when we find spiritual teachers: we see their comfort with reality and we interpret it as certainty. What fractals teach us is that we can be certain about some things. They’re just not very helpful things.

Witch Doctor

We went to see Avatar in 3D as a family sometime in between Nanaimo bars and gravy-preparation. I’m sorry I can’t be more specific but it’s all a glucose-and-tryptophan induced haze since Dec. 22. I’ve heard all kinds of anti-Cameron tirades and some legitimate complaints about plot and script &c., the usual arsenal of I’m-smarter-than-you pettiness that seems to froth around every scifi blockbuster which makes me want to put the “fi” of “scifi” in bold and draw little stars around it. In fact, the friction between “sci” and “fi” is actually what this post is all about.

Without offering too many spoilers, in case you are the last person left alive who has NOT seen this film, it’s about a feral species living on a planet that contains a particularly coveted element, and a corporate-military-scientific installation bent on extracting this element. As a bonus, the sci part of the installation might learn something about said planet in the meantime.

In a traditional left-right political spectrum, the relative ambiguities of the various groups in Avatar might look something like:

Tribal<< Scientific <<>>Corporate>> Military

with left being, well, left, and so on. Those occupying two or more of these groups experience the frictions and syntheses between both: the “sci” and the “fi”, the military brutality and the tribal brutality [yes, there is plenty of that, thank you Kevin Costner]. Notice how the introduction of harder “right” groups like corporations or the military force the formerly hard-nosed scientists into a limbo-land of proto-hippieness. They are as close to the tribal element as makes no odds. It was not always thus. This ambiguity as expressed through the Sigourney Weaver character is what fractals have given us. Not in real science, of course, as there are as many personality- and politic-fests in science over time as there are in any other sub-group; no, what Avatar shows is that we, the blockbuster viewer, Joe Yoga, is ready to see science as explicitly supporting the most outlandish claims of the tribe.

So where we used to see Immutable Truth, The Cold Hard Truth, as the province of the right [perhaps more easily parsed in relation to The Left, who everybody knows uses homeopathy and dreamcatchers and can't do their own Internet banking], now we see that those with a lust for the known [our cartoonishly evil military-d00d: all HE needs to know is that he's got some wicked bad scars on his crew-cut and that's enough empiricism for him, thank you very much] are the furthest away from reality. The movie pretty much sets this up for us and then makes sure the good and bad guys are wearing colour-coded hats, to ensure that we get it, and apart from some tortured face-contortions from Giovanni Ribisi, there’s not too much ambiguity on the topic.

What I particularly liked about this movie is that it posited that this mysterious pantheistic presence that the tribe is worshiping is in fact completely empirical and real, and in fact my most critical comment about Avatar is that I think the movie didn’t take this far enough. As the viewer, as the pixels lavishly unveil a magical phosphorescent world, we can see that everything the tribe proposes is The Truth, common sense even, and that without this common sense survival is not possible or desirable. In the installation’s outpost, common sense is the fluffiest kind of absurdity, not just stupid but downright dangerous, as Evil Military D00d’s scars attest. Sigourney Weaver’s character is studing the friction, the conversation between these two: using the technology, purchased with corporate money and defended with military might, to validate the claims of the tribe. Her receptivity to this greater truth is what makes the conversation possible: she really is listening.

So when did we, societally, wall ourselves off from the greater truth that this and so many other films and artworks and cults and religions know as common sense? Did we just not want to look like hippies? Or is that even acknowledging this truth meant that we were destined to go feral once again: to return to a time with high infant mortality and no indoor plumbing and short, violent lifespans? Why did we throw the baby out with the bathwater? When we stopped really seeing what was there, were we being scientific, or just dogmatic in reverse?

Euclid V. Mandelbrot: Cage Match

This is a Mandelbrot set:

If you like this set, and you think it's sexy, come on honey let me know.

what you might recognize as the Daddy of all fractals. This is the polynomial equation that yields the Mandelbrot set:

z_n+1 = z_n² + c

Looks simple enough, doesn’t it? Looks like, “Thou Shalt Not Kill” or “First, do no harm” or “Om Namah Shivaya”. Concise, elegant, something you can put on a Hallmark card or stick in your wallet and carry as a talisman against the peccadilloes of reality. You can [and I have] teach yoga classes this way: It’s all so simple. All you need is love, stupid. Look, just flow with your breath, you know? Yeah. Dude. Exactly. And in spite of my folly and lack of skill, I’m sure that people DID have openings, because life is clever like that, and yoga is awesome. But it’s radical and unhelpful oversimplification. When you take the big picture view of the Mandelbrot set, you can see that the equation above generates two really different qualities of vision:

- the bounded black beetle-like space in the middle, and
- the colourful, vine-fern-dragon explosions around the perimeter

What you can’t see too well in this pic [but you CAN see in the following iterations on the wikipedia page] is that as you zoom into this fractal-graph and continue running the equation above ["Om namah shivaya, Om namah shivaya, Om namah shivaya"] you’ll get mini-Mandelbrots, which will in turn give birth to more mini-Mandelbrots, each as complex, rich and detailed as the last. So out on the perimeter, on the borders of the known, the fractal is repeating the same truths with different forms every time. Sound familiar?

My theory is that we really like being in that safe, black bounded space. We know where we are and in spite of the radical changes taking place on the perimeter, that space doesn’t change. Or to put it another way, if you zoom in on the black space, you’ll just get more black space. If you want to view the lavish results of the equation’s iteration, you’ve got to go where the action is: you’ve got to go where the conversation is happening.

Euclidian geometry [you know, Geometry Classic: Same Great Taste, Fewer Calories] deals with circles and squares and cubes: known, bounded quantities that don’t get any weirder the closer you look at them. That’s how you build a house or fix your car; it’s how you [used to] program a computer, it’s how you tell time. Straight, uncomplicated lines are delicious in their own way, aren’t they? When you’ve been camping and you finally walk into these rectangular doors and windows it’s comforting, not to mention the warm running water. The NOVA program reminded me that almost everything we have built as a species follows Euclidian geometry. Yet, everything we like to look at [nature, art, woven patterns in complex brocades and rugs] is emphatically un-Euclidean. So Euclid does the heavy lifting and Mandelbrot plays all day in the sun. Right/left…scifi. Euclid does his grad work while Mandelbrot plays handdrum in Thailand. Euclid pays the bills and Mandelbrot daydreams.

But math is math, holmes, and people are people. Cantor discovered fractals back before tie-dye was fashionable, and everybody sort of shrugged and let him knock himself out; it was like talking about carbon offsets in pre-industrial Sweden. We’ve spent so long digging these trenches of what is Immutable Truth and what is Mysterious Art that we’ve sharpened ourselves against one another in the conflict. “Partisan”, I think they call that. The same mathematics that birthed Euclid’s points and vectors spawned Mandelbrot’s dragons, and so the same simplicity that underscores our spiritual beliefs can be a stick to hit people with, anarchy, or the seed that grows the future.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Now that I’m lucid and mobile enough to prepare my own food, here’s an immune-boosting brothstravaganza that soothes the savage throat.  Inspired by phó but beefless:

In a medium soup pot, bring 8 cups water to a boil with:

3 cloves garlic, skins on, flattened with the side of a knife
2 oz. dried mushrooms [we used chanterelles because that's what we had; shiitake would be even better]
1 thumb sized piece of ginger; peel it, set aside about a knuckle-sized peeled chunk, slice the rest thinly and put the thin slices and the peel in the water

That's what the julienne peeler does for the carrot

3 dried Thai chilis
1/2 tsp white peppercorns
1/2 tsp pink peppercorns
2 tsp coriander seeds
the top and tail of a carrot [you'll need the rest below]
the top and tail and leaves of a celery stick [see below]
the top, tail, and half of a white onion, sliced [now you're gettin' it]
5 stars of star anise
1 tsp whole cloves
1 tsp kosher salt

This whole shootin’ match should be brought to a boil, then lowered to simmer, and simmered for as long as you can stand it or until all the colour has been leached out of your veggies and your whole house smells like star anise. Strain and RESERVE THE LIQUID; throw away the spices and veggies. Set stock aside.

For soup:

Splash canola oil
The half of the onion you didn’t use above, super-thinly sliced

om nom nom nom

1 stalk celery, cut into julienne strips
1 carrot, julienned [I used the julienne peeler because I have one]
1 lb cremini mushrooms, super-thinly sliced
The knuckle-sized piece of ginger, thinly slliced
1 clove garlic, thinly sliced
1 bunch bok choy, thinly sliced
1 bunch broccolini, cut on an angle in 1/2 inch bits
Lots of water
4 vegetarian “beef” boullion cubes
Dark soy sauce
1 package thick rice stick; break it up in a bowl, pour boiling water over it, stir to cover and loosen noodles…then drain, rinse in cold water, COVER in cold water and set aside

To garnish:

Bean sprouts
Thai basil, chiffonaded [word?]
Lime wedges
Pea shoots
Chili-garlic sauce
Sesame seeds

In an enormous stock pot, heat canola oil on high. Add sliced mushrooms and a couple shakes of kosher salt; stir to cover until pan bottom is dry; add onion, ginger, carrots and celery, stir just a couple of times. Then add reserved spice stock and water to almost fill the pot. Add garlic, stock cubes and soy sauce; cover and bring to a boil. Add broccolini and bring back to a boil; then add boy choy, rice stick, turn of the heat, stir and cover for just about 30 seconds or until the bok choy wilts.

To serve, ladle into a deep bowl and then throw some bean sprouts on top. I like “planting” the pea shoots at the side of the bowl as a nod to phó tai with raw beef; when you get your soup you stir the pea shoots in and the hot broth cooks them.  Add basil chiffonade, sesame seeds, and top with the lime wedge and some hot sauce if desired.

We’ve been celebrating the holidays by bringing some old traditions back [Nanaimo bars and football] and welcoming some new traditions [family Rockband tours].  At first it seemed weird to be all hanging out in the living room getting ready to play Skynyrd, but in another way, it was so very right.  It helped me get fired up for the one-time only return of BRF:  The Revenge, and here’s what we grooved to:

“For Those About To Rock [We Salute You]“, AC/DC

“Eye Of The Tiger”, Survivor

“Jump”, Van Halen

THANK YOU ST. LOUIS! OR WHEREVER I AM!

“Don’t Stop Believing”, Journey

“Somebody”, Bryan Adams

“Always On The Run”, Lenny Kravitz and Slash

“Consolers of the Lonely”, The Raconteurs [Jack White came up several times in various conversations on New Years' Eve, which in my flaky way I considered a sign of a synchronicity vortex.  Also, the song is made of win.  It sounds sort of pointy and gristly which made it a perfect choice for binds and Tittbhasana.  Also we think that Jack White and Jack Black should TOTALLY get together and do some sort of arcane project.]

“Have You Ever Been [To Electric Ladyland]“, Hendrix

“All The Young Dudes”, Mott the Hooples

“Simple Man”, Lynyrd Skynyrd

“Thank You”, Led Zeppelin

“Wanted Dead Or Alive”, Bon Jovi

“Easy”, Faith No More [by way of the Commodores]

“More Than Words”, Extreme

“Across the Universe”, Beatles

Pudding

At some point in my Amtrakian train of thought on this matter I had what I thought was a very helpful insight: The purpose of cultivating diversity in physical practice is not to increase physical competence, but emotional consistency. Rather than letting that pose, the Sherlock Holmes to your Dr. Moriarty, dictate a host of reluctance and dire prognoses, you learn not to let it mess with you. When that becomes possible, a whole other host of resistance can also fall away. Shoot, I was trying not to use the word “resistance” because in many cases resistance has a very clear and purposeful message for us, and I’ve met many in the spiritual community who simply love to make hay out of “resistance”, being basically a red flag to a bull. But there it is: what you resist persists: it is very tiring to have to hold yourself up above the mud of life and hope that you don’t fall in. A misalignment, you could say. If there is a range of human experience, clenching ourselves shut against its onslaught can only lead to exhaustion and eventually grief as reality sharpens itself against us.

So the knuckle-chewingly deep hip opener may not have a radical physical shift for you for a while. What is within your purview is your approach to said hip opener; that is, rather than scowling at it and having the inner dialogue run something like, “So, knuckle-chewingly deep hip opener, WE MEET AGAIN!” with some ominous spaghetti-western bells and harmonica in the background as it twirls its six-shooters, you have the autonomy to treat it like a workshop of heart: a chance to do your work without getting all tied up in its dramatic narrative, and see how your chosen method of physical practice will see you through this [even this!].

It’s often high-lighted by the energetic difference between a practitioner in simple Vrksasana [Tree Pose], chillin’ like a villain, and a sweaty mud-wrasslin’ practitioner grappling with Visvamitrasana. True, the latter is more challenging, no question…but what happens to the quality of your skin when you undertake it, to your eyes, to the way the air feels on your upper arms? Why do we discard certain poses as being “too easy” and then unload all our self-torment on the ostensibly more challenging ones…what if they were one and the same in their essence, and our work was to find that consistency of vision? To me, that’s where the discipline is: it’s a commitment to find joy everywhere [or to "look for the good" as John says].

Meat

I got a chance to follow up with LTS&F and they were appreciative of the neurons that sacrificed themselves for these posts, but still not quite buying my particular brand of nonsense. Look, they said. So I just eat pizza whenever I want? In my case, that is a *lot* of pizza. I’m not sure you understand what a pizza-lover I am.

mmm...greens...

Which I thought was endearing, and useful, as it pinpointed something I think we all feel at some point or another on our path: The idea that these practices and disciplines might come naturally or easily to so-and-so, since they are ALREADY good people, but I like pizza so much I have to put myself in leg irons and worry down the steamed greens…you DON’T KNOW how venal and obsessed with pizza I am in the darkness of my soul. If I had my druthers I’d be like that guy in Se7en, only with pizza. So I have to work extra hard to make sure that doesn’t happen. What’s weird about this is that everybody I’ve talked to thinks that sure, life is easy for *that person* as their heart is as pure as the driven, so veganism or early-morning practice or long seated meditations are natural to them. But FOR ME I have to MAKE myself participate in those kinds of actions to purify myself of what I know is an endless craving for…stuff. [Sidebar: I'm not sure if LTS&F actually feels this way but that's what our conversation made me think of.]

What if you scratched the surface of the other person’s motivations and saw a heart that was as sweetly fragile as yours? And if you could make them treat themselves more graciously by letting them know it was going to be OK anyway, even if they didn’t sit for a million hours, even if they couldn’t put their leg behind their head, even if they ate pizza, would you do it? Would you give them permission to love themselves more?

LTS&F is monstrously strong and certainly one of the most diligent students I’ve seen. Their commitment is not in question. I do wonder,

And yes, mmm...pizza.

however, if we could turn up the pure delight of the practice, what would that look like? Could you look around the studio and see not one heart that was there so they could “have a good sweaty core workout” to go home with a “clear conscience”? Not one single face that was shadowed by “This is good for me, so I guess I’d better put up with it” or worse, “I’m so bad at this [weak/tight/cynical] I’m going to have to work EXTRA HARD to make sure they see that I belong here”. Awwwww. I know, I just know that is still in our gestalt as a community and it makes me misty because we are so hard on ourselves. It is certainly in my heart, although less and less as I relax and find motivations for practice that are purely joyful. So I guess this post-sequel is an encouragement to find consistency of heart in practice, rather than physical diversity for its own sake. Hope that clears it up a little bit. I am NOT advocating a pizza-only diet

The Rhodes not taken

See, this is one of those conversations that seems pretty simple on the surface and then the bottom drops out.  I pictured the Anusara Syllabus poster in my mind, which is basically a Mandarin All-You-Can-Eat Buffet of yoga asana and so of course I’m thinking right off the bat, Yes, the overall intention of Anusara Yoga is the most well-rounded asana practice possible.  Sounds good, right?  A part of your nutritious breakfast.  Philosophically speaking, we are taught that it is through diversity and expanded experience that the Divine comes to know itself better, and by creating more forms, we create more consecrated expansion of the Supreme Spirit.  Phew.  Not bad for a morning’s work.

Then we get into it and they say, Well, if that’s so, why do I experience resistance to certain poses or groups of poses, and why do I delight in others?  Should I be choking down these other forms because they’ll be good for me [the Broccoli Theory of yoga] even though they make me not want to practice, or bum me out?  They told me that they used to be “up for anything”:  that is, the novelty of their practice ensured that there was a little adventurous spark and receptivity in every single class, and now that their sensitivity and self-honouring was increasing it was becoming more and more challenging to acknowledge the good in classes that favoured these less-pleasant poses.  Sure, they could window-dress it in the dowdy frumpiness of classical philosophy:  discipline and mindfulness and all that other bushwa, but if they honestly addressed their inner condition [which presumably a seeker is being asked to do], it wasn’t the same and it wasn’t pleasant.

At the time I think I babbled some more about creative-diversity-through-form and some anatomical stuff, viz. if you keep practicing the same families of poses over and over again, those parts of you will get stronger and the other parts, maybe the parts that NEED more attention [since you don't want to do the Broccoli Poses] get abandoned.  That seemed like a good solid yoga teacher thing to say.  I realized going home, though, that I actually had just tarted up the Broccoli Theory in softer tones:  I was still basically saying that the inner prompting needed to be squelched, in honour of some external abstract criteria.

The next phase of my contemplation took me back in time, remembering all the times that I thought I knew what yoga was all about and that I didn’t actually agree with most of it.  Turned out that in a way I was right [although of course I was overly hostile and feisty about it all]:  maybe we WEREN’T being taught in a relevant way that reflected our current realities, maybe we were stuck with the impossible task of transcending the body while still in the body, using the body….wait, what?  how is that supposed to work?  If I’d trusted those inner impulses, calmed down about them, and used them in a creative and positive way, maybe I would have been able to create a shift both in my own heart and also in those around me.  Instead, I perceived the status quo as being rigid and unchanging, and mad at me to boot.

mmmm....bread...

So if L-TS&F just stopped taking their medicine, and did what they wanted to do, what would happen?  Would they drift towards imbalance and extremity?  Would they give up practice entirely without the Ghosts of Practices Past dogging their steps?  If you eat what you want for dinner, and what you want is pizza, and then the next day you ask yourself what you want and you still want pizza, and this happens for two weeks or so, will you become morbidly obese?  Or will you one day wake up craving sushi?  If you believe that relaxing the strictures on your behaviour [either in diet or in practice] would result in catastrophic results and entropy, what does that say about your self-esteem?  Or, to put it another way, do you trust your body to make good decisions or is it a burdensome, goopy albatross that you are constantly concerned with caring for and feeding?

I really didn’t realize how little I trusted my body and my intuition until I started thinking about this question.  Sure, we’re told to “listen to our bodies” but when our bodies come up with unsexy answers we say, “Thanks anyway, bod…you’ll have this salad and like it!”  And culturally we are most definitely not encouraged to honour circadian rhythms [weather, sleep, menstruation &c. ] because how we participate in the world is linear and we get Monotheistic Suffering Points for sucking up our intuition and doing stuff we don’t like [e.g. taking Contac-C non-drowsy to slug through a day's work, contaminating everyone you see, because to legitimately stay home sick you have to have lupus, or people start thinking you're not a Team Player].  In fact, even typing this seems edgy and weird because isn’t it just common knowledge that this skin-bag needs constant vigilance and policing, a balanced diet, a diverse asana practice, or otherwise we would simply dissolve into hedonistic anarchy?  How Freudian/Hobbesian of me.

Instead, howsabout a recognition that our TRUE nature will take us towards an elegant balance that is unforced and born of delight?  Who knows why we are drawn to certain forms and not always to others?  I know that when I bang out as many backbends as I really want to do [and there are a lot!] then arm balancing seems natural and sweet, instead of choking them down.  I used to define my delight in backbending in a negative way, that I was “too organic” i.e. lazy and fat, and had to artificially create balance with these other poses because I was a good l’il yogi.  Now I know that backbends are actually the perfect thing for me, both philosophically and physically, and MY BODY KNEW IT.  I wanted what I wanted for a reason, and don’t need to torque those reasons into some semblance of pious virtue.  One of the great McInnis snacks is pickles and cheese.  Not very trendy, is it?  Not very Downtown.  When I went veg the first time around I fell in with some neo-macrobiotic insanity that eschewed pickles and cheese and I thought to myself, “Well, this seems so challenging and bizarre it MUST be doing me some good” and therefore pickles and cheese were off the table for *years*.  Imagine my surprise and chagrine when, years later, various health practitioners recommended probiotics:  commonly found in [hell's bells!] pickles and cheese.  Why do we second-guess our own natures?

1.  Number one with a bullet is the first pair of rubber boots I’ve purchased ever in my life…seven and a half years late if you’re going by Vancouver standards.  OMG everything in my world is better now that I have rubber boots.  And these are no boring galoshes or cold, thin-soled pretenders to the throne.  Mah Tretornz, let me show you them.  They’ve got fuzz inside so they stay perfectly warm and dry as I stomp through puddles like I’m back in Grade 4.  They’re also shiny and purple and look like big grape lozenges for your feet.

2.  The only internet flame-war worth having is, of course, PC vs. Mac.  Having had our new iMac for just over 12 hours I’ve gotta throw my hat in the Mac ring.  This thing makes mincemeat out of tasks that hung the Dell up for 3 days.  Class video DVDs?  Forget the former week-long rendering odyssey. Quad-core processing lets M add jokey titling and Star-Wars-esque wipes and still produce a DVD in just under an hour, with correct time-synch and aspect ratio, as opposed to days and days of messing around with various codecs and Premiere settings.  Keeee-rist.  The rumours are true…do believe the hype…this is a magical machine, and both M and I have competently mud-wrestled perverse PCs for long enough, thank you very much.  Also it’s sexy as hell.  And PVRing NFL games in HD?  Don’t mind if I do.

3.  One of my favourite stores in Yaletown is Beauty Mark, which simply provides excellence in all things girly, from little arm-warmers to jojoba-oil and Javanese clay facial masks, to European rosehip lip balm, to various panties, and my personal favourite, which I’ve been stalking bi-weely since I just can’t bring myself to spend $50 on a tube of goo:  the Bliss blood-orange-and-white-pepper body butter.  Today I showed up to moon at my fave product and not only do they now make a hand lotion in the same scent, which was more reasonably priced and therefore snapped up immediately, but the staff REMEMBERED my obsession, turned me on to the hand lotion, and also hooked me up with the tester of the body butter, which ends up being like $17.50 worth of this stuff for free, and since I’m not

I just want to climb into this picture and go to sleep

paranoid about H1N1 I am more than content to slather myself in used product.  Amen.

4.  I had a fling with Nick and Nora’s PJs a couple of Christmasses ago, and since those who know me know that I basically base my whole life on trying to be in my pyjamas whenever and wherever possible, I take PJ shopping pretty seriously.  Unfortunately both my Dream Designs proper grown-up PJ pants and my nasty men’s-size-large Denver Hayes PJ pants gave up the ghost in the same week, so I just went ahead and shelled out for the Bed Head set I had my eye on since they threw it up in the window in Flesh Lingerie Boutique, right next door to Raw Canvas and therefore rife with window-shopping since I’m down there all the time.  It takes a special kind of company to make pyjamas that feel like full formal wear.

Okay, I promise the next post will be about esoteric, non-material philosophical concerns so I can put my yoga hat back on.  Or food.  Either way.  In the meantime, cultivate gratitude for beautiful and effective ideas that make this embodiment cozy and good-smelling, because, yay.

I’m also preparing some weapons-grade rant-casseroles that I’ll serve up when they’re hot and the cheese is browned.

When DFW died there was this urgency in my heart to finally admit I had no idea what I was talking about but wanted to speak anyway.

DFW, shown here attempting to hold the light

The loss of his voice taught me that even a bad book [or song, or yoga class, or blog post] is better than no more books ever.  It seems pretty damn obvious that he didn’t feel the same way, but that’s what it taught me:  just because subjectively you may FEEL that the world would not miss what you have to say, doesn’t follow that that’s true.  I would have shelled out ca$h money for DFW’s grocery lists.  Now, that may be that I suspect DFW’s grocery lists were more exciting and had more sub-clauses than a NYT article.

Or maybe it’s that he knew he could write another amazing book but that he no longer wished to live as he would need to live in order to complete it:  the hideous double-bind of the artist, as explored in this speech by Elizabeth Gilbert.  That’s the side of the coin I’m on right now.  I have less problems speaking my truth than I used to, since I’ve made it a full-year, full-hearted practice…but apparently I have no energetic budgeting skills.  If I teach 14 classes a week I do what I need to do, but if I teach 3 classes a week I spend THE SAME AMOUNT OF ENERGY.  [They're hella good classes but then I go broke and fall down on the ground]

Or maybe it’s that he knew he could write an OK book that people would love but that it had to be something so great, so true and so relevant, that he would change the whole world and if it wasn’t that he didn’t want to do it.  I’m feelin’ him on that.  Not that I have the capacity to teach a class that would change the world or that everybody would love, but that once you get a certain vibration in your work, a high calibre multi-dimensional kick-ass splendid massive vibration, anything less is uncivilized.

Isn’t it?

My teachers claim that if you can align with the true vibration of a place or person or group of people, you will not get tired because you are relying on something greater than your limited individual energy.  The universal supports you.  I would add to that:  The universal will manifest in ways that are *relative* e.g. bad weather, poor health, grief, simple malaise, and if you do not align with THOSE, She will kick your ass.  For example, your intention may be to teach a revelatory inspirational class about the power of personal will as it manifests in arm balances.  However, you have contracted H1N1.  It is not well-aligned, not “skill in action”, to use the force of your individual will to transcend the relative reality.  It will take a phenomenal amount of limited individual agency to sustain this misalignment [whoa, this is closely related to my incubating rant about the core] and you will lose stamina.

Even more importantly, the lesson you will teach is that the universal cannot be trusted, that it has to be manipulated and conquered somehow, in order to achieve something OTHER than is presented, something assumed to be more desirable than reality.  What poisonous hubris!  And what a dangerous lesson to teach to people who are already at the end of their energetic rope in these trying times.  I guess I’ve been afraid to write about this because, as I approach what will hopefully be the last phase of the Anusara certification process, I’m not always sure that what I want to say really is the message that John wants spoken.  I wish I could be as tough as he is, and as Chris is, and in a lot of ways I’m super tough…but they aren’t any of the helpful ways, just the ones that make me pissy and resentful, so I’m trying to let that kind of toughness go.

Look, I’ve experienced for myself the incredible power and purpose of the individual will.  We are stronger, by far, than we give ourselves credit for, and that is the reality of our true nature.  I just looked up at one of my “dream walls” [like a vision board kind of thing, to help me keep my head in the game] and right at the centre was the phrase “DO THE WORK”.  Because at the time that I made it, I needed more juice, more oomph, to help me over certain humps and obstacles like the one preventing me from writing.  The way that phrase resonated in me had an intrinsic enthusiasm and delight that I didn’t have to force.  [Or did I?  It's hard to know, now, in retrospect, whether I was misaligned even then]  If I’d shown that to DFW, would he have pulled himself up by his bootstraps and still been with us…or would it have taken him into even deeper despair, knowing [as he must have] that he had tried as hard as he could, and that “trying as hard as you can” is not always the lesson?

When I make my new dream wall [and I will!] at the centre it will say “LIFE IS EASY”.  Because it will remind me that I already do the work, that my tendency is to do way too much, and worry way too much, and paralyze and exhaust myself.  It will remind me that the universal manifests in diversity *for a reason*, that is, to teach us how to connect even our blackest despair with the highest concepts of art, life and spirit.  It probably comes as pretty cold comfort to the Wallaces to hear that their son’s creative work was a light for me, and it was that way BECAUSE he suffered, but there it is.  Compassion is the higher vibration [rasa] of depression.  Why do we torque reality into such perverse shapes?  Why are the offerings of the highest insufficient for us?  And I want to be clear that I’m not advocating pure passivity here; on the contrary, a worshipful, consecrated approach to even the most unpleasant realities is a tough practice, one that requires [I'm now seeing] incredible discipline to sustain…but it is well-aligned discipline.

So it’s off to the Richmond Oval for this year’s Yoga4Kidz relay, a drop of generosity in an unbelievable ocean of suffering.  I used to think that such “imbalanced action” [i.e. one little Canuckistani yoga relay against impossibly ghastly poverty, illness and despair] was a sign that Spirit was not present in their suffering.  Now I find it almost impossible NOT to see Spirit in the face of such action.  I suppose it’s a matter of perspective, but this blog will continue to try to cleave to *that* perspective, and say even a plugged nickel is better than to just walk away.  Life is easy.  Do what you can.