get real

by L. Valdez Karl


I am recovering from a vicious upper respiratory infection and/or flu that I had for two weeks. I went to a yoga class today and we we were in Bow and I had to come down after only a few breaths because I still felt weak. I berated myself and then I told myself, get real. get real because what do I have to prove? I have/had a nasty infection that kicked my ass exactly one month after I had a vicious case of salmonella food poisoning that I brought back from India that also kicked my ass. My reality is that I will be 54 this year and maybe, just maybe, it takes me longer to recover from things than it did at 44 or 34 or 24. get real. be authentic.

If you are in your 40s or 50s or 60s, why are you still doing a yoga practice as if you were in your 20s? get real. be authentic.

“I am of the nature to grow old. There is no way to escape growing old.

I am of the nature to have ill health. There is no way to escape ill health.”

After the class a yoga teacher friend and I went to lunch and we kvetched about what else, problematic yoga students. ahem….yoga teachers talk about students as much as yoga students talk about teachers.

My friend told me about an older student whom she told not to return to her group class because it was not the right type of class for him, he had too many health issues. she told me his whole litany of physical ailments the worst of which was uncontrolled high blood pressure that gave him exploding ocular headaches. she wanted to teach a safe class but he was not honest about himself when she asked if anyone had any health issues. he wanted to do everything, even poses that were contraindicated for his conditions. All I said was, “ego.”

Ego. we’re conditioned to bully our way through a class, whether it’s a yoga class or anything else. no pain, no gain. even if it kills us.

My friend said just because people do yoga does not mean people can or should do every pose, the same way that because you can run three miles does not mean you should run a marathon. she felt that students truly do not understand this. she said that students think because we are yoga teachers we should be able to not only do every pose, but teach them every pose in any class they choose to attend, no matter what their physical limitations. she mused that maybe our calling as instructors is to help students realize that it is the nature of the body to grow old.

yes, we are dharma teachers on the nature of reality which is impermanence! I’m sorry, what did you say…you only came to this class because you read that Jennifer Aniston lost weight doing yoga?

If you are in your 40s or 50s or 60s, why are you still doing a yoga practice as if you were in your 20s? get real. be authentic.

“I am of the nature to grow old. There is no way to escape growing old.

I am of the nature to have ill health. There is no way to escape ill health.”

I’m taking a workshop with Lilias Folan next month. for those of you who don’t know Lilias (or who think yoga was invented by Madonna), Lilias introduced millions of Americans to yoga in 1972 with her television show “Lilias! Yoga and You.”

Her website says that “Lilias has found that her practice and her teaching have naturally and even necessarily changed over time [emphasis added] as she has physically transformed into having what she describes as her current middle-aged body. Lilias draws on her years of experience, along with living in a changing body. In her new book she describes how to adapt yoga for a body growing older.”

The workshop is advertised as “moving at an enjoyable pace we will prepare the body with interesting warm ups, salutation to the hips and more from her highly acclaimed book Lilias! Yoga Gets Better With Age”.

There is a video on her website called “It’s Not Easy Being Real.” She says that as yogis, we want to be authentic, and that our challenge is to be real and to be an authentic human being as we age. she says the realness is that we age and if there’s a glitch such as illness or maybe we don’t move like we once did, that we should accept it with the wisdom that we are not 21. she says she does not want to be 21 again but she wants to be a juicy 81 year old. hallelujah.

I don’t care anymore about learning a fancy arm balance. I choose to be a rasa devi.

If you are in your 40s or 50s or 60s, why are you still doing a yoga practice as if you were in your 20s? get real. be authentic.

“I am of the nature to grow old. There is no way to escape growing old.

I am of the nature to have ill health. There is no way to escape ill health.”

Stephen Cope is one of the teachers in my Mindfulness Yoga and Meditation training in California and I think he’s brilliant. I was googling some of his articles and I came across this video where he talks about how his practice has changed as he has gotten older. he says that he does not want to do the same practice now as he did when he was younger, that at 56 his practice is much more internal and meditative. in the video he advises how to adapt your yoga practice as you age.

yes, yogins, you are aging. every day. little by little. even those of you who can kick up into that perfect handstand will one day feel that crunchiness, that grinding of an arthritic shoulder and it will be your wake up call to your own impermanence. and it will scare the hell out of you because deep down it is your own fear of death. in this Botoxed, liposucked culture, many of us refuse to accept this, even yogis.

If you are in your 40s or 50s or 60s, why are you still doing a yoga practice as if you were in your 20s? get real. be authentic.

“I am of the nature to grow old. There is no way to escape growing old.

I am of the nature to have ill health. There is no way to escape ill health.”

In May, my teacher from Chennai, India, Srivatsa Ramaswami, is coming to do a training. he wrote the book Yoga for the Three Stages of Life. Ramaswami says that as we get older our practice SHOULD change, that the older we get our practice should become more meditative. this is the Krishnamacharya way.

If you are in your 40s or 50s or 60s, why are you still doing a yoga practice as if you were in your 20s? get real. be authentic.

“I am of the nature to grow old. There is no way to escape growing old.

I am of the nature to have ill health. There is no way to escape ill health.”

I find that the older I get, the more meditative I become, the slower I want to move, the deeper I want to go, the more I want to feel. I want to feel the juiciness of this seasoned body. I am not afraid to feel the aches and pains that crop up because I want to face them in order to move beyond them. I do not want to resist my pain because pain that is not resisted begins to soften. no matter how painful it is, it is a relief to feel.

Pain is not suffering.  Stephen Cope writes that suffering — duhkha — is the resistance to that pain. duhkha is the pain of pain. as a wise ass Buddhist once said, life is pain but suffering is optional.

***********************************************************

The Five Remembrances
(as offered by Thich Nhat Hanh in The Plum Village Chanting Book)

I am of the nature to grow old. There is no way to escape growing old.

I am of the nature to have ill health. There is no way to escape ill health.

I am of the nature to die. There is no way to escape death.

All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them.

My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground upon which I stand.
—Buddha

 

Never the spirit was born
The spirit shall cease to be never
Never was time it was not
End and beginning are dreams
Birthless and deathless and changeless
Abideth the spirit forever
Death does not touch it at all.
—The Bhagavad Gita

 

What is never born can never die.
—Sama


being a good yoga student

by L. Valdez Karl

“What you want
(oo) Baby, I got
(oo) What you need
(oo) Do you know I got it?
(oo) All I’m askin’
(oo) Is for a little respect when you come home (just a little bit)
Hey baby (just a little bit) when you get home
(just a little bit) mister (just a little bit)

R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Find out what it means to me
R-E-S-P-E-C-T…”

This post is inspired by an incident that happened to me yesterday — so be warned, this may turn into a rant.

One of the differences I’ve found (and there are many) between yoga in India and yoga here is that yoga teachers in India are respected. When I’m in India and someone asks what I do and I tell them that I teach yoga, there is a big difference in the reaction compared to someone asking the same question here. I don’t expect anyone to bow down and touch my feet, but here I might as well tell someone that I teach a spinning class. or else someone will say, “I took pilates once.” Say what?!?

Now I know that most of you will say “I like my teacher! She/He is a nice person!”; “She/he is a great teacher!”; “I love taking her/his classes!”, and that’s fine. But how many of you RESPECT your teacher as your TEACHER, A MENTOR – and dare I say it to western readers – a GURU, and not just someone who you try to mimic physically 90 minutes a week? My teacher from India will be here for a training in May and I would have no hesitation whatsoever bowing to touch his feet as one would to any revered teacher in India.

I was teaching my usual yin class yesterday morning and two young women came in late. I had never seen them before and as I learned later from the studio owner, they had never been to the studio before. They walked into class about 10 minutes late as I was leading the class in their first breath awareness practice so I was not about to stop, ask them to sign a waiver, and get money from them. They never said hello or acknowledged me whatsoever when they came in, not even when I brought them props. To make a long story short, they walked out during the middle of my class without paying and without saying a word. I walked out into the lobby a few minutes after they left, but they were already gone.

What angers me is not the fact that they stole from the studio owner and from me, but they obviously had no respect for yoga or for the other students.

A friend of mine who is also a yoga teacher teaches at a corporate fitness center. She doesn’t teach a “power yoga” class as one might expect in that situation. The other day she told me that she was leading the class in awareness, asking them to just let go of whatever brought them there today, let go of the bad weather, the bad drive, etc. She said that during class she could tell that one woman was not in her body, she was antsy and nervous. My friend went over to to ask her if she was OK. Apparently the woman did not like the way my friend was teaching the class, so she told her in no uncertain terms, “THIS IS A FITNESS CLASS! F-I-T-N-E-S-S!” and yes, the woman actually spelled it.

I wonder if the woman knows how to spell R-E-S-P-E-C-T….

*********************************************************************

HOW TO BE A GREAT STUDENT
an article by Mehtab, Yoga Yoga’s Founder
(from Midwest Yoga Teachers Network Newsletter)

I was teaching a yoga class and the woman in the back of the room was doing yoga. Only it wasn’t the type of yoga I was teaching or that the rest of the class was doing.

I watched fascinated as she moved through an elaborate series of seemingly invented postures, oblivious to the rest of the class. She did relax at the end with everyone else, however.

I asked her afterwards what she was doing.

“Oh, I am just listening to my body and doing whatever it tells me to do,” she said.

“So why do you want to come to this class?,” I ask.

“You’re a great teacher,” she said. I started to humbly thank her. “So your classes are crowded and I can hide in the back and do my own practice.”

As yoga students, we are always looking for a great teacher, someone who can inspire us, teach us, and take us to the next level. But the search for a great yoga teacher must start within us. We need to become a great student first.

Here are the guidelines to become a great yoga student:

Realize everyone has something to teach you.

Yoga students and sometimes yoga teachers make the mistake in thinking that teaching yoga is about winning a popularity contest. Students compare notes in the studio lobby, “Oh, if you like Teacher A, you will really like Teacher B. I think Teacher C is too easy. Teacher D really works you out. But now I am at the point where I only want to go to classes taught by Teacher Z.”

I have seen students even show up to take a class and then walk out when they discover their “favorite” teacher is not there that day. They miss the point. Yoga is not teacher-centric, It is practice-centric.

Every teacher has something to teach you – and often it is not what you think it should be. I remember going to a yoga class years ago with my wife and telling her afterwards: “The teacher drove me crazy with his fake-sounding, super-mellow voice.” “Yeah,” she said. “He reminded me a lot of you.” Enough said.

Respect the teacher within the teacher.

In the yogic tradition for hundreds of years, the teacher was the most respected person in your life – more than your parents or any figure of authority. We do not understand that in the West because we often mistake the role of the teacher with the personality of the teacher. The role of the teacher is someone who shares the teachings. The teachings are the important thing – not the personality of the individual teacher.

When you show respect to a teacher, you show respect for all teachers, for the teachings of yoga, and ultimately for yourself. If you want to rebel and be disrespectful, please park in a no-parking zone, talk back to your boss, or engage in your favorite self-indulgent destructive behavior – but always respect the teacher within the teacher. It is the only way you can learn what yoga is really about.

Understand a teacher is 90% the projection of the student.

Whatever you think about your teacher is almost all about what you think about yourself and has very little to do with the teacher. A teacher is a mirror that reflects the student. This is the only way we can learn about ourselves – through self-reflection. I remember a comment card we got from one student about a teacher: “He doesn’t even look like a yogi. He’s too fat. He thinks he is better than everybody else, sitting in front of us and making his little jokes.” For this person, appearances are everything and any value the teacher could have offered is lost in a projection of a student’s own insecurity.

On the other hand, students can have positive projective fantasies about their teachers that are also more about their own needs than about the teachers themselves. I remember one woman going up to a nationally known teacher at the end of a workshop and telling him: “During our last meditation, I opened my eyes and I saw you in the most beautiful and blissful state. Your heart center was really, really open. What were you meditating on?” He replied: “Cheese and macaroni. That is what I am having for supper tonight.”

Examine the reactions and thoughts you have about your teacher. They will tell you a lot about your current state of mind, fears, and lessons you need to learn.

When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.

This is an old saying in almost all practices and spiritual traditions. What it means is that you often get the teacher you deserve or, more politely, the teacher you are capable of encountering at the level of your current development. As you advance in your self-understanding, your capacity to recognize and attract the teacher you need to reach the next level also increases. Why should a master teacher waste time with you if you are not willing to master yourself?

Students make the mistake believing that if they can only find an advanced teacher, they will advance. Instead you need to do the work with the teacher right there in front of you. Then you will earn the right to meet your next Teacher.

One simple test is this: Are you ready to meet your teacher when they do arrive to teach you? Are you fully present, sitting in class and ready to learn? Or do you come in after the teacher has arrived and class has begun? We all have an emergency once or twice a year that may cause us to be late to yoga class, but think of the energetic message you are sending by showing up after the teacher has arrived. Who is waiting on whom to appear?

Know that the only purpose of having a teacher outside yourself is to realize the teacher within yourself.

A great student realizes that they are the teacher as well as the student. Ultimately your yoga practice must become self-directed — but not in the same way as the person who does his or her own poses at the back of the class. Through your yoga practice, you will increase you awareness, awaken your intuition, and learn to trust that guiding spirit that is present in all human beings. This awakening will direct you. Others will continue to teach you, but you will realize that is only through your own self-study, discipline, and surrender to grace that will you understand the purpose of yoga.

When you know that teacher lives within you and within all others, then you will become a great student.

May you have great teachers in your life.
May you teach others by your presence.
May you recognize and honor all teachers.
May you recognize and honor yourself.

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"you are all Gandhis"

by L. Valdez Karl





Pongal festivities were in full swing when I arrived in Madurai in January. India has thousands of festivals and Pongal is an important one in Tamil Nadu. it is a harvest festival and I had read in the paper that it is similar to the American Thanksgiving because it is a time to give thanks and hope for a bountiful coming year. wherever I went in Madurai people would wish me “Happy Pongal!”

Just when I thought India had thrown me for a loop this third time around —

a stolen necklace in Chennai…
a four hour bus ride from Thanjavur to Madurai watching cheesy Tamil videos from the ’70s played at full blast, tissue stuffed in my ears all the way…
an Indian cop who wanted to take my swiss army knife I always carried when I tried to re-enter the Meenakshi Temple on one side when I was allowed to enter with it on the other side —

something wondrous happened. that’s what always happens to me in India — my best experiences are born from serendipity.

I had hooked up with a regular rickshaw driver for my stay in Madurai and we were driving through the slums along the river. somehow I always get drivers who know I am not afraid to go off the beaten path into the places that tourists usually don’t go.

We drove past a small school where I saw children in a doorway dressed in their dance clothes. the little girls were beautiful and I told the driver to turn around for a quick photo. of course, as soon as they saw me stop about 10 kids ran outside and surrounded me. some of the teachers came out to see what the commotion was. I saw a stage inside and a woman talking into a microphone. I apologized to the teachers, I said I did not mean to cause such a ruckus and disturb their show by taking a photo.

A male teacher came up to me and said “no problem, madam” and he invited me in to celebrate Pongal with them. he said they had planned a special celebration and it would be their honor if I came inside. I tried to beg off because I knew the commotion my presence would cause and I’m not one to have people fuss over me, but the children grabbed me and the teachers insisted. I had planned to sit in back and watch quietly, but I was led to the stage steps. I stopped and turned around and there had to be at least 100 kids sitting on the floor, all eyes glued to me, big smiles on their faces. I was stunned, and I kept shaking my head no, but the teachers kept pushing and pulling me until I was given the guest of honor seat, between the principal and the head mistress. I felt like a rock star.

The teachers asked where I was from and what I did. they introduced me, telling the children that I had come all the way from America for them, then they asked me to get up and say a few words. I was still in shock so I mumbled something about “stay in school and get a good education” and that got a huge round of applause.

it is the Pongal custom to boil a pot of rice and when the rice boils over the sides, that signifies a fruitful coming year. as the Pongal pot of rice was boiling, the teachers presented me with a Pongal gift — a towel that they draped over my shoulders. the price tag was still attached and it said 20 rupees which is about 50 cents, but to me it was priceless.

as the children danced on stage the teachers told me that these were slum children, that the school gets money from the government to educate them. there are about 600 kids in the school and they are taught English, computers, reading, and math, among other subjects. one of the teachers took my camera and took pictures of the dancers for me. when he returned my camera I took the perfect Pongal picture — a picture of the pot just as the rice started to boil over. serendipity.

finally, the teachers wanted me to say some last words to the kids. by this time it was over an hour later and I was composed enough to say something intelligent. I spoke and it was translated into Tamil….

I told them that I had read in the paper that morning that Pongal is like the American Thanksgiving and I explained a little about what Thanksgiving meant, about giving thanks, having gratitude. after wishing them Happy Pongal, I told the children that their teachers teach from their hearts and to never take their education for granted. I told them that they were the future of India and with their education they could change the world, that they could be anything they wanted to be. I told them, “you are all Gandhis, never forget that.”

When I finished I saw some of the teachers dabbing their eyes and I thought about how some upper caste Indians would look down on these children and down on me for even being with them. I thought about how so many people in my white bread suburban community have no idea, or worse, don’t want to know, how the rest of the world lives. here I was in a slum school half-way around the world and I felt blessed to be with them. all things happen for a reason, there are no coincidences.

a teacher then told the kids how it was their privilege for the American yoga teacher to visit their school today. I said, no, it was MY privilege to be treated with such graciousness, a total stranger. The principal took my hand and said I was a gift from God for them…and that’s when I started to cry.

the principal and I walked off the stage as the Pongal lunch was being served to the children. we went into her office and she asked me to write in their guestbook so I wrote what I said at the end of the program, about changing the world. I was also given the special Pongal lunch, as was my driver, and the principal told me more about the school. before I left I gave her a donation and said she should use it for whatever they needed, food, books, anything. the principal told me she would make sure that each child got a pen, so I bought about 600 pens that day. you have to travel in india to know the significance of the question “one pen, madam?”, so when she told me she would buy pens I thought it was a very appropriate purchase.

the principal wrote the address of the school for me and told me I am always welcome to return. I told her that I had a beautiful time with them and that I would always remember them as long as I live. I got back outside and into the rickshaw as children and teachers came out to wave goodbye to me. the driver started his rickshaw and we left, and when I turned around about a block away they were still waving goodbye.

this is the India that cracks open my heart and makes me count the days until I can run back into her arms and lose myself all over again.


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your true self?

by L. Valdez Karl

what if you finally found your True Self…and didn’t like what you found?

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"ecology of mind"

by L. Valdez Karl

Here is Chogyam Trungpa’s “ecology of mind”, a talk given at Naropa University in 1974. for those of you who don’t know him, Trungpa was the “crazy wisdom” meditation teacher credited with bringing the Shambhala tradition of Buddhism to the west in terms accessible to westerners. The Shambhala tradition believes in the inherent wisdom, compassion, and courage of all beings. It holds that these qualities are ultimately more stable than aggression and greed, and shows us how to use this worldly life as a means to ripen our spiritual potential. Besides his idea of “crazy wisdom”, I love his other ideas of “idiot compassion” and “spiritual materialism.”

since my post body consciousness: a discussion attracted so many comments about “what is meditation?”, I thought I would post some excerpts from Trungpa’s article. talk amongst yourselves!

“Meditation helps to simplify your life. It is the act of surrendering while sitting on your meditation cushion. Then, by relating directly with your breath, body and mind, you have no problems communicating with yourself.”

“When we begin to practice and to learn more, we may think we should be adding tricks or embellishments of all kinds to our practice. This is the approach of spiritual materialism.”

“Spiritual discipline is not about advancement, but it is a question of undoing what we have created already. We are not talking about extending ourselves to become greater or more professional meditators, we are talking about meditation as unlearning.”

“The basic practice of meditation is a question of simplicity. The technique for the practice of meditation that was prescribed by the Buddha is working with the awareness of breath. That tends to cut through the unnecessary chatter of thought….Just be with your breath; just be with your body….Just sit and be with your breath. Let the breath be your thought.”

So let your breaths be your thoughts as Trungpa’s son, Mipham asks you, “What about me?”…..


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spreading the love

by L. Valdez Karl


I was overwhelmed when Vanessa of Vanessa:Unplugged! graced me with the “Spread the Love Award.” She said that I (among other bloggers) are “shining examples of bloggers who uplift and inform.” You are too kind, girlfriend!

Vanessa also received the award from another blogger and she writes about herself, “as one who started blogging without a plan or a niche or following any of the recommended steps and practices in the blogging process, I am honored when another blogger takes the time to recognize and appreciate what I post.”

I feel the same way. I started this blog in 2005 to write about my first trip to India and it’s morphed into something larger than that. I love that some of my posts have created lots of discussion about yoga, meditation, Buddhism, or social action, with no shortage of pithy comments from around the world. I just started a new blog where I will rant and muse about things other than yoga and India and time will tell how prolific I’ll be with that one. however, I guarantee that the posts will be just as pithy and passionate as they are here. now if only I can figure out how to get paid for my rants and musings I’d be set!

In keeping with the spirit of spreading the love, I am awarding the Spread the Love Award to Fran, Gartenfische, and Mike (who I wish would get back to writing, damn it!) I read many blogs but these bloggers were the first three who popped into my mind when I thought about bloggers who “uplift and inform.”

Once again, thanks to Vanessa, and thanks to all my readers. even though I have been miserable for the last 5 days with a vicious upper respiratory infection — two hospitals in two different countries in one month is too much for me, I’ve had my fill of doctors! — I think I will get up and dance to the Love Train…and check out Vanesa’s blog, y’all!

Yoga Action Squad

by L. Valdez Karl


(the dance of Shiva and Kali)

and now for something to take our minds off the Kali Yuga that we are living in…

Yoga Action Squad to the rescue!

a friend sent me this link this morning and I just about about blew my chai tea out my nose watching them. loved the one about the evil pilates teacher….

OM, y’all!

enjoy!

body consciousness: a discussion

by L. Valdez Karl


There were so many comments posted to Body Consciousness that I thought I would turn them into an entirely new post. my readers’ comments are too insightful to be ignored.

talk amongst yourselves!

Steven:
Maybe it’s just wording, but I disagree with “Yoga was meditation and meditation was yoga, no duality.” If they were the same thing, there would be no need for two words. Also, from what I’ve learned, yoga has been a preparation for meditation, and thus separate. Obviously very interrelated, but separate nontheless. Your point remains, though, that the asana practice has become very separated from the meditation practice in the West, but still, even if some people never find or care about the non-physical part, many will, and that’s good. It sure would help if yoga instructors would stop yammering quasi-spiritual stuff through savasana and allow more than 1 minute of silence to clear the mind!

Sama:
asana + pranayama are prerequisites to meditation according to the lineage that I follow. not just asana. and is not asana practice a moving meditation? I suppose it depends on what your definition of meditation is.

come to one of my classes. I don’t yak during savasana. but even if I did, would you be able to observe the external sounds and not react to them, engaging in pratyhara with equanimity?

thinking more about your comment, steven….

have you ever done walking meditation? is the meditation separate from the action of walking? and if you are walking, are you JUST walking? or is your mind “in here” instead of “out there”?

gartenfische:
This is so insightful (and yeah, we’re thinking along the same lines!). I know that we Westerners—me included—are way too head-oriented. It’s why yoga and meditation are so important for us.

I think that yoga and meditation are different, but that yoga (asana, that is) can be a meditation.

I am not a teacher like you, but as I practice longer, I see how asana, breath, the bandhas, the driste, all lead one into a meditation. Presence is so, so important—inhabiting each pose, as Pattabhi Jois says (Iyengar says this, too, and I’m sure the other great teachers); otherwise, like you said, it’s just acrobatics.

Yoga is such a gift. I am so grateful for teachers, like you, who bring it to us here in the West—we so, so need it!

Sama:
the thing is, gartenfische, each time I come back from my studies in India, the more I feel like an outsider here, in the western yoga world.

Kate Holcombe, a teacher in San Francisco and who has studied extensively at the same school I do, has said that for a long time she hesitated calling what she does yoga because it was so different from what is practiced in the west.

I now know what she meant.

gartenfische:
So is there a way to bring more of the true yoga into the West, or is it hopeless?

Most of my teachers are, at least, trying to be very true to the Indian teaching (Annie Pace, especially).

Even if it is not yoga as it is supposed to be, I have known a lot of growth and healing as a result of my practice, and I am grateful for it. I don’t know—I may never get to India.

Sama:
gartenfische, I am in no way saying that the yoga I study is the way it’s “supposed to be”! that would be so autocratic! and no way am I saying that all yogins/yoga teachers have to go to India to study! HA! India is definitely not for everyone! however for me, the first time I put my foot on indian soil, I felt like I had come home.

I just know that what I study there resonates with me and it is a traditional style. for example, when I’m there I study chanting, pranayama, meditation, asana theory, etc. and from my teachings I’ve come to realize that (for example) pranayama is taught indiscriminately here in many classes I’ve been to, like an afterthought, or with no purpose. A teacher will announce “ok, let’s do kapalabhati” in the middle of the class. I can tell you after my first training, I immediately stopped teaching that pranayama in group classes. that’s just an example.

my classes are always asana/pranayama/meditation. of course, YOUR yoga is what resonates with YOU!

gartenfische:
I have the same hesitations about pranayama, but I think they came from reading something several years ago that warned that it should not be taken lightly and that beginning yoga students shouldn’t do it at all. I have heard of teachers teaching it indiscriminately (it seems) and I’ve wondered if they know what they are doing.

Earlier, I was reading about pranayama in Light on Yoga. He recommends Nadi Sodhana Pranayama for headaches, but elsewhere, he talks about supervision by a guru or teacher being necessary to practice pranayama. So I don’t know if it would be okay to try it as a remedy when I have a headache. Probably not. I have noticed that even ujjayi breathing helps, though

Sama:
yes, I agree about having a qualified teacher to teach pranayama. another thing that is never taken into consideration regarding pranayama in group classes is the dosha, or the body type, so to speak, of each student.

a certain pranayama might be appropriate for one student while it may completely agitate another student, in a group class. how does a teacher know the dosha of each student in a group class? just like yoga, pranayama is not one size fits all, so that is why I believe pranayama is indiscriminately taught in western yoga classes.

also, regarding the bandhas: Krishnamacharya believed that bandhas should not even begun to be taught unless the student can comfortably inhale 10 or 12 counts, and exhale 10 or 12 counts. now tell me how often a teacher in a group class will announce “engage mula bandha!” or whatever bandha as if every student knows what she/he is talking about!

this is why I have said time and again what I have been taught: personal transformation can begin in a group class but is accomplished in a one on one relationship with a teacher.

and THAT is the difference between east and west as I see it.

gartenfische:
Mula bandha is a common teaching in Ashtanga, including with the teachers who study in India. I am NOT saying you are wrong! There just seem to be different “rules” coming from different teachers.

But it is confusing for people, because we don’t know! All these teachers are teaching pranayama and then other teachers say they shouldn’t be. Then everybody’s teaching the bandhas and others say no.

Sama:
I know that mulabandha is common in astanga — altho I’m not an astangi, I did a workshop once with Manju Jois, Guruji’s son. what I am saying that things like pranayama and the bandhas sometimes are taught indiscriminately or not deeply enough. and Krishnamacharya was Iyengar’s teacher AND Patabhi Jois’ teacher, so how THEY interpreted his teachings was up to them!

Nadine:
I for one, totally agree with your post (as I would!)
I am so tired of that other yoga, that is in fact not-yoga.
And the hotpants/ flashy yoga gear that goes with it. Why are people so very very afraid to face themselves, unarmed, undressed (as it were)?

Sama:
yah, what’s up with the hot pants?

it’s the words, not the asanas

by L. Valdez Karl

This is a video of a Chicago yoga teacher I know, Jim Bennitt. I’ve taken his workshops and he’s an excellent teacher — pure yoga and from the heart. Although he can twist his body into a pretzel, he is also humble. I need to see that humbleness first from a teacher in workshops — the showbiz yogis that are on all the yoga conference tours don’t impress me. Jim studies with Rod Stryker but I’ve told him that the way he teaches and what he talks about is right from Krishnamacharya, the Teacher of Teachers.

He has a beautiful practice in this video, but what he says about yoga is even more pertinent given the shootings at Northern Illinois University on Valentine’s Day.

peace
shanti
salaam aleikum
so shall it be

be here now

by L. Valdez Karl


DeKalb Chronicle photo Eric Sumberg

Campus Horror

“What is known about the gunman late Thursday is that he was an NIU sociology graduate student in spring 2007, said Peters, who added that the gunman apparently has no police record and there was no known motive for the shootings as of Thursday evening.”

I was not at NIU but I had yoga students who were upset because they have friends at NIU. Even though I did not directly experience this tragedy it has still affected me. I keep thinking about the looks on the faces of the students who came in late to class and said, “there’s been a shooting at Northern. my friends….” I have never seen so much fear in someone’s eyes before.

DeKalb is down the road from the community college where I teach. the yoga studio where I teach is in a small town that is literally across the street from DeKalb.

The area is corn and soybean country, farm country, it’s about as Midwestern fresh-faced as you can find. many of these kids are still innocent about the world, they aren’t tough Chicago kids like I was growing up. many of them are farmers’ kids.

A friend in India told me that the story even made the International Herald Tribune, he had already read about it last night before I wrote about it here. I always laugh when people ask me, “aren’t you afraid to go to India by yourself?” Let me tell you: I feel safer being alone in an Indian village than I do in America. I feel safer being on the streets of Chennai at 2 AM than I would being in Chicago at 2 AM. Every time I go to India, when someone asks me what country I’m from and I tell them, more times than not I am asked whether I own a gun. This is the image that America has even in a remote Indian village.

The reality is that the same thing can very easily happen at the school where I teach. maybe somebody did not like the grade I gave them and they’ll walk into my class, look at me and say “I GOT YOUR YOGA RIGHT HERE, BITCH” and start blasting. Buddha taught that death is certain, the time of it is not. our lives can change in a split second as many people found out yesterday in DeKalb. yet we live our lives as if we will never die.

Tragedies like this always bring home to me how important it is to live in the present moment, to be mindful and to live mindfully. thinking back on yesterday I recall how before I taught my class I went to my department’s office to make copies of some handouts. two department secretaries were in the room complaining about one thing after another — how the hot water in the sink was not hot enough, how the faucet in the sink was loose, how someone on campus did not respond fast enough to a secretary’s email. it was a constant barrage of negativity and I could not wait to leave that room. I remember thinking, man, if they complain about that stuff, how do they handle the really big events in their lives? most of the stuff that we think is important really isn’t in the grand scheme of things.

The other night I read excerpts from this article by Phillip Moffitt to my private students. I loved what he said at the end of the article:

“Looking back over your life, how many weeks, months, even years have you wasted anguishing over something you didn’t get from a parent, a spouse, or in life? Did all that anguish serve you, or would it have been more skillful to have received fully the experience of the loss, accepted it as what is, and then allowed your emotions to go on to experience what is possible in the present moment? More importantly, are you still caught in an endless cycle of wanting mind, imagining that it is the next accomplishment, change in relationship, or piece of recognition that will make you happy? Pay the boatman at the river of loss and sorrow his three rupees and cross over to the other shore. Your life is here, now.”

Be present. Be here now. Be love. Be peace.

peace
shanti
salaam aleikum
so shall it be