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.

But then, I believe that people should get paid for their skills and offerings, and here’s where Mimi and I diverge in our assumptions. “Pays himself a salary of $100,000, a fortune in the yoga world”…but works harder than anybody else I know, massive long days of serving hundreds of people…What is she really implying here?

1.  That yoga isn’t worth being paid for, or paying for? [It doesn't work and has no value]
2.  That yoga is too grand, too esoteric and spiritually pure, to soil with filthy lucre? [It works, but its value is immeasurable]
3.  That what John is doing isn’t yoga, or not ENOUGH like yoga…but what about point 2? If what John is doing isn’t “really yoga” [wouldn't be the first time I've heard that hoary old chestnut] then why can’t Anusara grow freely as a company without censure?
4.  And if it’s not yoga, and he’s more like megachurcher Joel Osteen, a cat I don’t know anything about and will therefore reserve judgement, what are we churchgoers receiving in exchange for our money, and why is this transaction not OK?

Maybe this is getting down to it [better late than never, Sjanz.]. Anybody who has even taken one yoga class asks the same question: What did I get out of that, and was it worth it [time, physical and mental exertion, and sure, money]. This changes us from students to consumers, which is dicey when it comes to spiritual practice, since in many cases you’re going to be asked to do stuff you don’t wanna do and consumers don’t usually find themselves in that position. What I find refreshing about Anusara Incorporated, apparently a huge enough corporate menace that Mimi is distracted from BP and Wal-Mart, is that they actually GIVE you some thing for your money, even if it is an amulet or a shirt or “credit hours” or a new assist…or what the megachurches and NASCAR can also give you: a good laugh or a new friend. I don’t have to wonder whether I got what I paid for out of any AnusaraBucks I’ve spent. Sure, I didn’t feed the orphans and my karma is accumulating like crazy, but when I do my internal bookkeeping, the energetic slate between John and I is squeaky clean. So I APPRECIATE that he keeps things on a monetary footing. That way we’re all clear.

Perhaps Mimi is pointing out a broader truth: that we don’t know how to assign value to things, as a culture, we don’t know how

“]

John Friend [artists' rendition

“Friend, of course, is not ashamed to sell this new American cocktail of spirituality and exercise.” Should he be? Would Anusara Yoga have more merit if he kept it a secret, or didn’t charge at all…or didn’t charge as much? Is it the transaction, or the amount of the transaction? Plus, “new…cocktail of spirituality and exercise”? When were they ever truly served separately? It all just seems like the old indie-rock snobbery, this great fear of “selling out” when everybody knows you need fans to survive and wrote music because you want to connect…how popular can you get before the guardians of purity decide you’re not punk anymore?

Okay, so. I still don’t get why this article needs to be so snarky. What does Mimi think is going to happen here: that John’s gonna lobby the government with shraddha-based non-scientific woo to interfere with same-sex marriage or reproductive rights legislation? Because that’s what the megachurches do. That John’s gonna scam somebody who thinks they’re getting yoga for their money and instead all they get is handstands? That anxiety appears to be the greatest concern regarding yoga styles and methods, hence the great “that’s not yoga” trope. I know we all think we’re too cool to write poetry about tigers and do hula hooping, and that yoga should be burdensome and tedious, but I still don’t really consider any of the former to be *threatening* or exploitative. She seems to be lathered up about something and I can’t for the life of me figure out what it’s supposed to be. I’m going to go teach and get paid. By a big scary company.

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.

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.

All I can say at this point is f*** that, the delayed adolescent rock out will continue. It was a nonstop iPhone mix of BTO and Doobie Brothers for 3 days that put my inner state on the road to wellness that neither John Friend nor SN Goenka could. Check it out:

What the people need is a way to make them smile. It ain’t so hard to do if you know how. Gotta get a message, get it on through….Listen to the music.

Sorry, mom

This is a longwinded way of saying I hereby abdicate any feeble pretentions to being a spiritual teacher and will only attempt, within my limited ability, to be a soulful teacher. To paraphrase Tom Robbins, spirit is gassy puffery and the soul connects to the earth and Her waters, which is where I want to be.  In the last several months, I’ve revisited the ghastly chasm where I thought, so many times:  “If this is what yoga is, I don’t want to do it”.   I have no idea if I can continue with Anusara Certification, since I don’t wish to pollute their diligent know-how and purity of intent with my zany shenanigans, and while I do sit for an hour every day I have taken the teachings of Vipassana and mangled them unethically towards the unapologetic light: desire, love, craving, connection, delight, sensation [yes, even the Unspiritual kinds, eat drink and be merry if you know what I mean] and joy. Goenka would probably bitchslap me for creating more karma or sankaras or whatever they’re called, and I’d take the blow with a rueful grin. I’m sorry, I like the world. I love life. If that means I’m stuck here for a few more go-arounds, thank you sir, please may I have another. The aspect of life that causes *me* the most suffering is believing that life is suffering.  I don’t even want to try to associate my TRUE nature with the “Y” word if it means all this Judgey McJudgstein bollocks.  Clear the beam from thine own eye.

Big Rock Fridays will return when Yoga For The People unveils its fall schedule, I’m so flaky and disorganized I have no idea when that will be. We’re ready, I’m ready, you’re ready, let’s kick some ass. I had a friend who asked me how yoga worked. I have no idea, I just know that it does. Come out and play on Fridays at 4, probably after Labour Dabour Weekend, watch this space for playlists and deets. Damn, it feels good to be a gangsta.  PS my mom’s in France.

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.

I’ve ranted against my half-witted definition of pop-Buddhism here and there; John’s language is more graceful and more accurate when he says that “some forms of discipline will amplify spirit, and other forms will diminish spirit”. I’ve had my spirit diminished by language like “suffering”, “craving”, “aversion”, “ignorance”, “misery” and even “equanimity”, borderline stoicism that can so easily jump the shark to apathy and inner death. Then naturally, since balance is apparently a foreign concept to me, I went wide in the other direction, joyfully embracing Tantra’s affirmation of life’s intrinsic divine unity as an excuse to marginalize/avoid/oversimplify other paths. UR DOIN IT RONG. Tantra means “to weave”, meaning in this instance that no methodology or path is excluded from its purview, from euphoric bhakti-fun, to grim Spartan rectitude. I figured I’d be a pretty sad excuse for a teacher if I couldn’t suck it up for 10 days, and I had various philosophical and pedagogical theories that needed experiential testing for validity. So your intrepid field reporter handed her iPhone to the wardens, put on M’s old T-shirts [the dowdiest items I could find] and went into the trenches.

Start again.

If you really want to know what the method and practice are all about you should probably just sit a course, since SN Goenka, the teacher and primary living exponent of this method is emphatic that its fruits will arise only from experience. Any description I could offer regarding the technique would be inaccurate and amateurish. I will say it is exquisite in its simplicity and admirably effective at addressing the nature of the mind. Nothing like it. Non-sectarian, resolutely intellectual, clean crisp lines that made me yearn for a splattery Sanskrit yarn, people with 500 heads, jewelled saris and blueskinned demi-immortals…alas, no such drama here…it’s all like a big food processor for your head.

And of course I’m not just here with my own special mess to clean up; I’m also here as a little baby teacher trying to see how the big dogs do it, and how to connect with students who might be more familiar with this type of technique…or how to bring it to those who really need to do it, and don’t wanna. So I’m running a couple of different subprogams throughout the process, usually resulting in me pacing around our little enclosure, chewing on the inside of my cheek and muttering to myself like a…really, really stable and well-balanced person, heh. So much of what was instructed was in the language described above, and as the vast chunks of the day spent in meditation chewed up the cognitive grist, you’re already pretty much as bummed as you can be, so it really seems like piling on. I missed what I perceive as the heart of practice. I felt very hollow when I wasn’t pissed off or bored. It seemed like we were in a time capsule, bodies hidden, eyes down, trapped in this energetic dead zone where animals and birds even steered clear while we did our work. I had promised that I would do my very best not to pollute this method with the more familiar, though, so unless I really needed to call my lifeline in moments of psychospiritual duress I avoided mantra or emotional narrative.

Due to the misunderstanding of the nature of Tantra mentioned above my stance was usually skeptical and combative, especially ironic as Goenka accurately describes the daily experience of the new meditators with chilling accuracy, particularly weird considering the instruction is given via video, recorded in 1991…how does he know about my special snowflake experience IN THE FUTURE? What a guy. I’d gird my mental loins every day at 4:20 am when I shuffled down the hall for the dawn session, ready to sneer at anything that seemed dated, irrelevant, body-negative, patriarchal, or inaccurate. I found plenty of material to inwardly bitch and mutter about, which naturally made my practice even more awkward and graceless. I spent a lot of energy trying to SEPARATE this grim experience from my familiar practice, forgetting over and over again that Tantra creates CONNECTION. So, what’s the hook? Should you, as an Anusara-curious student, live in the mountains for 10 days? Is there a relationship there, and if so, what the heck is it when the two techniques seem so radically dissimilar?

What rang cherries for me was on the morning of day 5, we heard a long and exuberant chant that Goenka has recorded, in Pali [e.g. not Sanskrit] that nevertheless mentioned terms and structures that those of you who have studied Anusara Yoga seriously will find familiar: the bottom 25 tattvas, from the elements of the material world, through the senses and their objects, through the mind and cognitive processes, all the way up to the mutually exclusive categories of Spirit and Matter [their exclusivity is why these philosophies are described as "dual"]. Tantra arrived subsequent to these tattvas or “principles of existence” and, *without modifying or removing any of them*, ADDED another 11 on top to create a non-dual system, that is, no more exclusivity: the substance of all experience, in their view, was the same single, vast, indivisible consciousness. Sounds pretty good, right? We

This is not endorsed by any authority or governing body, I've gone maverick

little pups often conflate this indivisibility with an abandonment of the exclusivity that preceded it, but in a very real way the world is of course quite dualistic: fraught with paradox, irreconcilable difference, wild diversity, and of course the animating spirit does appear to leave the physical body at death, a hard process to reconcile no matter how enthusiastic your non-dual practice might be.

I realized I was living in a little lab, a test-tube where the subject is your own head, and the raw materials of the experiment are described so elegantly through these tattvas of the mind and senses, particularly the part that uses the senses and APPROPRIATES them as being “mine”: my aching leg, my osteopath-hungry sacrum, my twitchy left eyeball. There was no need to argue* with Goenka’s videotaped image [as if!]; in spite of the surface differences in the practice I was simply focussing on this one little “chunk” of the principles of existence, and about time, too. We don’t spend very much time on them, for the simple reason that it’s really uncomfortable and difficult. It’s also dangerous, which is why you are necessarily cloistered for 10 days, so you don’t wander down the mountain road towards the gravel pit with your medulla oblongata hanging out [of course, each course can have its own attrition, because, well, it sucks a lot of the time]. Vipassana is a safe and well-supervised way to develop rudimentary psychonautical skills: you learn how to swim in this deep sea in a very clear and rigorous way. And then those discoveries and skills can naturally be recontextualized in light of your core values, whether they reflect life’s duality or non-duality; you can choose.

Oh, my body. Holy moses. Lest we come to think that we are the doers, the sole agent of change in this embodiment [anava mala], watch what happens to your body when you have to sit still for hours at a time. What a trip, man, I have a whole new spine in addition to my brain’s new firmware download. [Upload?] You could also think of this level of sensitivity and awareness as a new depth of understanding Anusara Yoga’s first principle, including “softening and feeling”: nothing in my experience of those two words prepared me for the lessons of Vipassana. You can’t use all your 90-minute mixed-level class tricks and hope to hold Sukhasana [crossed legs] for an hour straight. You have to get more efficient or you’ll blow up. I practiced for the first time this morning [you're not allowed to do yoga while you're there, I know right?] and was as wobbly as a colt, panting and baffled.

The transformation was effective and global; there was not a single co-meditator of mine whose body did not visibly shift in its energy and posture over the course. This of course came about due to the gruelling rigor with which they all did their work, so lest you think I’m implying a quick or easy fix here, nothing could be further from the truth. I’m just saying. The only other transformation I’ve seen like that was 2009’s Immersion with Chavez and where that took a year, this was 10 days. I would think that without maintenance the previous patterns would likely return, also, so we’ll have to see how it plays out.

So what’s the punchline? Nothing makes you appreciate a smile like not seeing one; nothing makes the radiance of the summer sky shine like having your eyes closed for hours at a time while you scour out your cranium. Goenka relates the Buddha’s experience of enlightenment as “pulsating”, “true, deep happiness and peace”…sound familiar? Om namah Shivaya. On the last day you can start talking to each other with your new voice and your new head, and what you want to say may surprise you in its affection and grace after almost two weeks of sturm und drang. So while this method has different texts, different language and languaging, and a fierce determination, it’s all one love…at least if that’s your bag, and if you’re reading this blog then it probably is.

*One beef that I still have that I think we could collectively attempt to describe more consciously is insisting that the mind is some sort of incontinent infant or wild animal. Sure, it can seem like that as you Roy-Rogers your way through lassoing the sucker, but the mind is gorgeous and potent, and I’m getting a bit honked off at the paradigm of treating it as though it has soiled itself. I feel so strongly after this experience that the mind is not a dog or bull in the soul’s china shop: the mind is a wizard. The body is a warrior. The Heart is Lord.

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”.

In the spirit of HM’s policy of full, sometimes unwise disclosure, I’m just going to come out with it: I really thought this would be It. I thought I’d meet my assessor and they’d be simply overwhelmed with my pure win and there’d be a ticker-tape parade and John would tell me how proud he was of me and there’d be ponies and rainbows and chocolate-chip cookies. I thought I’d meet Noah Maze and look him right in his bendy little eye and say “Hi Noah, great to meet you, can’t wait to see you in July”. I thought I’d go right on over to Sianna Sherman and she’d give me a hug in honour of my pure win and hugging her would feel like hugging a little girl and she’d remember that she spilled Cabernet Sauvignon on me in Costa Rica and we’d have a laugh over times long past. I know, this is provoking either cackles at my hubris or that “oh, honey” face you get just before you pat somebody on the shoulder. But this is how I felt before I left and even though I KNEW how silly this fantasy was, it was very compelling. Forgive me, for I know not what I do.

Yeah, it didn’t play out like that at all. Which is not to say that OTHER people weren’t extremely kind, gracious, generous and open. Particular mention should be made at this time of Mark Shveima, who rocks in all kinds of quiet and stealthy ways, and gave me some really sweet insight about Handstand that will come in handy in the future. And of course practicing beside Chris C. was magnificent. No, nobody shut me out. I shut myself out, because I knew on some reptile-brain level what was going to be revealed at this Gathering, and was, upon meeting my assessor.

With really wise people it doesn’t take long for them to get your number. I remember with my first teachers I couldn’t even be in the same room as them for long, because it’s really uncomfortable to be SEEN, sometimes. I know I proclaim with much rending of garments that I wish to be seen, for real, but the flipside of that is that when they see your beauty they also see your flailing and infancy. I met my assessor and they were nothing short of insightful, kind, generous and accurate. However, they didn’t let me get away with a. ny. thing.

And I’m not certified yet and it doesn’t look like I’m going to be without some serious heavy metta.

Many, many times
love is a hard hit to the jaw.
this is metaphor

I’ve been testing Anusara just like a toddler tests their parents. I’ve been throwing weird imagery and poor communication out there just like asking “WHY? WHY? WHY?” until you just want to punt my soft little body out into the street. I actually had this fully formed thought many times in the last weeks, wondering when the hammer was going to come down. I had fiercely girded my intellectual loins, thinking that the hammer would be my excuse to bail on the whole project. I mean, there are so many other kinds of yoga out there. Why go through it, you know? What’s the point after all. But of course the hammer is the divine weight of the guru [the guru principle, in this case] saying you know better, saying you have known better this whole time.

I’ve been jamming different concepts and techniques into my head, testing the boundaries of this ostensible “intrinsic goodness”, basically saying “Will it float? Will it float? is there light here? how about here?”. Well, no duh, OF COURSE it’s there. It’s a given. Rebelling against the light is siding with the dark dominant current, and it’s not like the world needs more doubt. Cultivate your certainty. Contemplate your reasons for doing what you do. Then tell me what they are and I’ll steal them. No, wait. That’s my project for the next…decade?

And I realized, in the tub, that this is every new student’s great dilemma…are you ready to be seen, in all your disastrous glory?  Are you ready to make friends?  I was as hostile and self-limiting as my first Bikram’s class.  Are you ready to consider the radical prospect that they might like you anyway?

Will it float? Well, are
you ready for it to float?
Are you ready for yes?

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.

It’s this way. The world is not optimally aligned. Patriarchy and capitalism keep us from being ourselves. During today’s superlative lecture on this history of yoga with M. Chavez on Day 1 of Immersion II 2010 Planet Earth, he mentioned that all spiritual philosophy strives to seek liberation, and their different tenors will derive from what they perceive to be preventing liberation. Well, for myself personally, I came to Anusara because it was the only place I saw a healthy body image…not just paid lip service but literally embodied in the philosophy and alignment. And I stand by that. And I stand by it with a particular gusto given how UNFREE patriarchal concepts of female body image has made me and my friends. Until this changes worldwide [LOL] my teaching will always have a political element…it will always be “unbalanced” in bringing balance to an extant, unhealthy extreme.

I have ranted about this until friends have backed away slowly from the inferno of verbiage with their hands in the air. Watching the worlds’ climate drift forever towards mo money and mo problems makes me convulse with fury, and that fury gives me a lot of power. If you’ve ever been around me when I’m ranting you know how much power that is. It’s actually kind of scary, even for me. Kali Ma takes out her political ginsu knife and just starts slicing and dicing and that’s part of who I am. A really crappy situation takes a lot of power to address. That’s balanced action, Goddamnit: A LOT of power going against the prevailing dark current.

Thanks to Tobyn Ross and Yoga For The People

On a smaller scale I guess I’ll always be a jnana yogi, forever examining myself/systems/methods/techniques/words/metaphors and saying “Neti, neti [not this, not this]” because [and I'm really only just realizing this now] I get a lot of power from that inquiry. I get a lot of juice from the dark; I get a lot of good answers from my doubt. When I see my role as a teacher in an iconic sense I see myself living in the dark, in like a little hut like the witch in Hansel and Gretel, and when YOU are ever in the dark you can come see me because that’s where I live and frankly I’m more comfortable there. My darkness is my light, if that makes sense. So when I see too much faux-enthusiasm, phrases that make no sense, teachings that are psychically harmful, I can pretend to not care, and maybe you’ll never even hear me say anything about them [LOL again], but inside I am redefining what is needed in MY self-expression to make sure I balance that action of fear/emotional dishonesty/self-hatred/hardness/smallness with something courageous, authentic, loving and grand, even if its grandiosity is derived from excess and folly. I don’t do it on purpose. Sometimes I wish I didn’t do it. But I do and it’s my gift.

Yes, I’ve seen some of these eyebrow- and hair-raising actions in Anusara Yoga teachers. So naturally my nature is to say, “NOT THIS O HELLZ NO” and figure out how I can never make anybody else feel as bad as they made me feel, as lonely as they made me feel, as rejected at my essential level as that: like I’m broken, like they should send me in for repairs because I don’t like kirtan or I don’t “look for the good” or I don’t weigh 80 pounds and eat peanuts and weeds. What’s interesting is that a lot of this psychic abuse comes in the guise of the most ostensible brightness….that the most luminous and radiant words cloak a judgemental soul, picking and choosing where God can be found.

When my friend Steve Merkley saw whatever it was he saw in me and gave me my first teaching gig, with very little fanfare or preparation, not even a training, all I did was say what I thought would help address the lies that I’d been told were a part of this practice. Yes, I know they’re not lies for everybody, but I suffered so long at their hands I can’t pretend my soul isn’t still hurt. My pain is my power, and I REFUSE to believe I’m the only person like me out in the world, the only person who feels MORE lonely in the fake light. In that way I suppose I’m a feeble sort of activist; there are so many who do so much more than I, but this is how it starts: Opening to Grace is also opening to the reality that there’s some stuff out there that’s gotta change. The process has been hard because we first look to our teachers for our voice and our techniques and then you have to dig deep to find your own. Mine is kind of awkward and a bit of a flail at this point, I’m afraid, but I will leave no dogma unquestioned and no piety unpunctured, because that’s who I am. In the rebellion of one against the other, we find the true one.

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?

My personal harangues with this deal more on the aesthetic level than actual beef with any particular yoga technique or method. I have always loved the romantic, glorious dancerly aesthetic of various vinyasa and flow styles. I love the overwrought energetic

I am attempting to create some sort of record for most lolcats used in a yoga blog

charge of throwing your head back in delight in a huge lunge pose and leaning pendulously to the side in preparation for Trikonasana from standing. I’m an emo kid from way back and I love drastic emotion, what can I say? Temper tantrums, crying jags, ebullient joy, that’s my stock in trade and I felt those qualities reflected in those styles. Interestingly, I do not resonate with the aesthetic of, say, the Anusara website. I’ve never loved purple, associating it primarily with growing up in the 80s and legwarmers/eyeliner, neither of which I employ, and if I didn’t know what riches of heart and message it contains I don’t think I would hang out there wanting to learn more. On the other hand, Jivamukti’s ornate, baroque take, melding India with Washington Square, has much more going for it on an artistic level and I can see how they snare many a creative mind with such a gorgeous design. [AUTHOR'S NOTE:  I drafted this post with a memory of a really wicked awesome site and when I went to link to it, not only was the Jivamukti site also purple, or, well, mauve really, but it ended up being sorta boring.  Their studios and practice aren't boring-looking, though, so MY POINT STILL STANDS]

So one style looks more conventional, more boring than the other…and yet I actually felt encouraged to EXPRESS and explore those dramatic extremes of emotion in Anusara by way of the philosophical teachings. How can this be? Why does one form of romanticism show up in theory, but not in practice?

The conversation that inspired this blog post was with a teacher searching for the the key, the “hook” to deliver their message with integrity and consistency. They never actually connected with the purple, Arizonian-American life-coaching flair of Anusara as it presents itself as an organization, and wanted to see their red-wine-and-Bon-Iver late-night lavish discussions of heart reflected AESTHETICALLY in their chosen style. So they, understandably, were considering moving to a more flow-based training, one that directly incorporated the stunning beauty of classical yogic iconography and teaching.

As with getting to know the gorgeous guy in Grade 9, with a full soundtrack of The Smiths to let you know how DEEP he is and how much he UNDERSTANDS you, after a while you realize he only really cares about his TurboGrafx 16, Camaros and David Lynch movies [I'm not actually referring to anybody specific here, in spite of the cultural specificity, I just don't know what the Kids These Days think is cool so I have to dredge my own past for nuggets], and that you have both been props for your collective delusions of heart. You can’t feel as deeply as you want to feel in a method of yoga that has absolute rules, or no cogent guidelines at all. You can’t love somebody deeply, no matter how great they look, if they don’t see you for who you are.

As with all late-night red-wine emo festivals, the splashy wildness has a hangover: throwing your head back in delight in a

Ooh, he's so dreamy. From deviantart.com

huge lunge pose can start to seriously mess with your neck and your shoulders. Leaning pendulously to the side in preparation for Trikonasana from standing, although your heart is full of zeal, does your knee no favours. And you know I’m not big on the Bogeyman Method of yoga instruction, terrorizing yourself with potential injuries so that you are never free: but your Grade 9 crush, the romantic beauty, the drowning, gasping feeling of being overwhelmed with the narrative, starts to create some serious disconnects when you are not seen and loved back. In the moment it is the most intoxicating, glorious feeling. Afterwards the pain sets in.

So over in the corner of the Physics classroom is the guy you grew up with, low on the drama scale but high on the Integrityometer. Anusara Yoga might not have the sexiest website but it has never asked me to do anything that does not align with my hearts’ genuine intention. It’s never asked me not to eat anything or not to say anything…or not to teach anything [Yes, true]. It has always had my body’s health and sustained energy in mind. What’s most fascinating about the boy next door is that he will always bear with your emo tantrums more lovingly than the smoldering drama king. It doesn’t look like Anusara has that drippy poetry in it from the outside, but trust me: if that’s what’s in your soul you have a home there. Just remember to place your feet hip distance apart.

Tadasana

Dude, I told you not to go this way

Urdhva Hastasana
2 minute Uttanasana
2 minute Plank Pose [baaaaaah]
2 minute Adho Mukha Svanasana [DWD]
1 minute each side straight legged lunge
1 minute Plank between each
15 seconds Chaturanga…that’s quite enough at this juncture thank you very much esp. after 1 minute Plank so don’t give me any guff
Bhujangasana
1 minute Vira II, 1 minute Plank and Terminal Chaturanga in between sides
2 minute DWD
1 minute Parsva Konasana, as above
1 minute Crescent Warrior lunge, as above
14 times on each side jumping into Adho Mukha Vrksasana [Handstand] with legs split to 90 degrees [they did 7 times each, I decided to make up for not practicing for 3 hours by doubling up, also it's hella fun]
[They didn't do Pincha Mayurasana but I did, and then a 1 minute Sirsasana I cause I was there]
1 minute Anjaneyasana, with epic Planks in between
1 minute Mermaid II pose, yadda yadda &c.

You get the idea. There were a bunch of seated forward folds today that I also timed and made a commitment to just holding for the prescribed time as I wear out the iPhone’s “Clock” function. The idea, for me, is to limit the extraneous fussing and short-circuit the comfort of having “done the pose” and checking it off the Yoga List. It also helps me simulate what it’s like to have that sort of energy sustained for you which doesn’t always translate into home practice, also it’s way harder without Chris yelling encouragement and suggestions at you [If you're in the Immersion and you're reading this, consider yourself lucky to have that energetic vector hustling you along...it's hard to do alone esp. with M watching from the couch in his dressing gown looking really relaxed].

As I hold these Plank Poses and let my scalp frizzle a bit with the effort I’m watching how I want to tinker around with muscles and do this and that, and how holding the foundation crystal clear and steady keeps everything cycling around inside me, becoming homogeneous and far more wise than I could control with my conscious mind. IT IS ALMOST AS IF adhering unapologetically to life’s goodness and wisdom without wavering will create the template to let its relative forms find their own optimal balance. But I digress.

Hanging out with Buddhists will make you question the whole process of hatha yoga; generally, I don’t recommend it but sometimes they are so smart and so nice you just HAVE to deal with them from time to time. In addressing some questions posed to me about some core philosophical tenets of Anusara and from there my admittedly sketchy knowledge of genuine weapons-grade Tantra, I got all up in my head [ironic] trying to figure out what the role of the physical body is in accomplishing the ultimate goal of formless fathomless understanding of the pure One. Surely you can do this without ever doing Plank Pose, yah? In fact, some of the rantier bits of the Spandakarikas basically make hay out of we feeble hatha yogis who feel we HAVE to jump around and stretch instead of just immediately grasping the painful obviousness of Supreme Consciousness. It is, or can be, incredibly theoretical and vague and leads to a lot of staring off into the middle distance parsing the friction between the immanent and the absolute and was actually starting to cause me a lot of grief.

Until I started this Immersion and starting watching everybody sweat and wail and did some sweating and wailing of my own, and watched Empire Strikes Back. Or, I should say for full disclosure, rewatched Empire Strikes Back for the brazilianth time. There is this bit where Yoda is training Luke in the ways of the Force so he can lift rocks with his mind and use his lightsaber and rescue his drowned spaceship from the swamp and similar, and basically his training is to wear his Rebellion camo fatigues and RUN AROUND IN THE FOREST with Yoda on his back like a wrinkly, Spoonerism-spouting Zen rucksack. I’m watching this, as one does, and I’m wondering why in the world Luke needs to practice RUNNING when a) he lives and works in space and b) he’s supposed to be learning how to use The Force which doesn’t have jack to do with how strong your legs are or whether you can tote a small green Shar-Pei around on your back while you do it. It’s The Force, guy, it’s everywhere and can do anything and theoretically Jedi Knights could be all in rolling wheelchairs like Captain Pike from the creepy first Star Trek pilot and NOT TO CONFLATE STAR WARS WITH STAR TREK but I’m just saying, you don’t have to have any physical chops to use the Force.

Then all of a sudden it hits me, why the intersection of the spiritual and physical is so important…why we come to yoga through asana generally, and why openings in our bodies affect us the most. Also why John is so emphatic about the INTEGRITY between physical instruction and spiritual quality: There is no more immediate experience of the cross-currents of the universe that having to physically sustain something outside of your comfort zone.  I’m not talking about putting yourself in pain or getting up on the cross for some stupid purity stunt you use to impress people.  I’m also not talking about putting up with people who treat you badly, situations that are exploitative or manipulative, or teachers that make you feel crappy about being who you are, in the hopes of accomplishing some karmic gold stars. But the practice of living is an embodied practice…relationships are embodied…this gristly, erratic mess of cells we inhabit is the vehicle for intense transformation. So put your practice in your body. Yoda gets Luke to run around because he knows the intensity of weird friction he’s about to experience what with Darth Vader and all, and if they’re just going to sit around and talk about their feelings Luke will have no visceral understanding whatsoever of the fortitude required to hold the, um, light side of The Force. As he says, “Luke! You must complete the training! You must not go!”. He doesn’t say, “Luke, I’m about to lay a really weird trip on you what with Darth Vader and your dad and everything, make sure you keep a journal and maybe you should go lie down for a little while”. There is no purpose to living theoretically. Make it real!

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.