Tag: Americanized yoga

and the beat goes on….

by L. Valdez Karl

I promised to write about the talk I went to about whether American yoga is in crisis, but I won’t. That ship has sailed. In the meantime the discussion continued over at elephant journal “Real Yoga Practiced Here” and at Brenda’s house with her post “Whatever happened to dignity?” where she said, “And yet even the yoga community seems full of practitioners keen on branding themselves and selling yoga shoes to “help spread the word”–as if the word wasn’t spreading just fine on its own without a lot of pictures of hot, young bodies doing arm balances.” Even Rainbeau Mars kept popping up to let us know that the “Rainbeau Mars Lifestyle” is really all about just spreading the word about yoga (and buying Adidas clothes) and if y’all don’t see that then y’all are just haters. Nikki asks whether we are practicing real yoga and Diane muses about yoga group think.

Our judgments (whether about yoga or anything else) are based on our experiences and assumptions. So for people who believe yoga is just another fitness class, then American yoga is not in crisis. If one sees yoga as a deeper spiritual (whatever that word means to you) or personal exploration, then one might think American yoga is in crisis if one sees the emphasis placed only on the physical.

AAAAARRRRRHHHHHHH

You do your yoga and I’ll do mine. My yoga contains asana+pranayama+meditation plus occasional chanting and mudras. That’s what I teach and if someone walks into my class and doesn’t like what I do, there are a gazillion yoga teachers out there, find someone else. Simple. And metta to you.

But putting your leg behind your neck or even both legs does not impress me. Children can do that. Show me how you live your life. Show me what you can give up on a 10 day retreat without complaint. I also don’t care how many translations of the Vedas or Upanishads or any other yogic text you’ve read or whether you can chant the Sutra-s backwards.

I have over 1000 hours of training and teaching experience; I’ve been told I have a “beautiful practice”; I have a closet full of yoga books some of which I’ve read more than once. But if I was still operating on automatic pilot, if I was still reacting to things inappropriately, flying off the handle (and I am NOT saying I do not get angry), or treating people badly, what good did all those yoga hours do for me? So is yoga an exercise or is it about transformation? Is it about the journey or the end result?

I returned to yoga in the mid-’90s for a purely physical reason just like many people come to yoga. I returned to yoga to help rehab my severely arthritic shoulder from arthroscopic surgery. But as soon as I started moving my body in that beginning yoga class, barely able to move my right shoulder even after 8 weeks of PT, that whole mind-body-prana connection kicked right in. That bhavana was like an IV. I was introduced to yoga via meditation over 30 years ago when I OMed with Allen Ginsberg, so that barely sprouted seed laid dormant for a very long time until it was watered at just the right time. Conditioned Genesis in Buddhist talk.

So don’t talk to me about Forrest Yoga or Jivamukti Yoga or Bikram Yoga or Anusara Yoga. I don’t care about names with capital letters. Yoga is yoga and why practicing “just yoga” isn’t good enough anymore is beyond me. I’ve heard Krishnamacharya’s son Desikachar say that yoga contains X, Y, and Z and if it doesn’t contain that, then you’re just doing acrobatics. As I’ve said more than a few times about this thing we call yoga in OM-merika, you can call a dog a cat all you want to, that still doesn’t make it a cat.

As Nikki asks in her blog post “Is my yoga practice making any inroad in how I function in life?” Or as one reader said in my post “I am my shadow self”, “if Yoga isn’t pushing you outside your comfort zone, it ain’t really Yoga.”

Why do you yoga? Not “do yoga” because yoga is about undoing, not doing. Yoga does us. I’ve always thought that the reason more people don’t yoga is because stepping into yoga takes courage and many (most?) are afraid to see what might come up.

The abused women I teach at the domestic violence shelter don’t care about Lululemon pants, an Adidas lifestyle, about chanting Sanskrit, about your favorite translation of the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, or whether I can stand on my head in the middle of the room. They care about changing their lives. They care about how focusing on the breath can calm the mind. They care about relieving their suffering, moment by moment. If someone with the idea that yoga is just another way of working out looked into the room and saw our yoga, they might be confused because we’re not in pretzel poses or trying to perfect chaturanga dandasana. We’re not sweating. We’re sitting. Breathing. Maybe facing a few those demons….mindfully.

“Can we do hatha yoga (or any other form of bodily training) with the same wisdom that guides vipassana practice?….

A specific example from my own practice and teaching: I do viniyoga, which emphasizes constant awareness of the conditioned movement of the body and breathing in all postures. This helps bring about a more vivid quality to the breath sensations, making breath awareness meditation more accessible. This is an asset for yogis engaged in ànàpàna-sati [mindfulness of breathing], especially for those with faulty breathing habits, which can incline the mind to distraction. If the postures were practiced with the same deliberate mindfulness used, for example, in walking meditation, such conscious breathing and movement would not only facilitate meditation practice-it would be meditation itself….

That’s just it. It’s not about chakras or kundalini rising, as valuable as this approach may be. It’s just that when I do yoga, I do vipassana.”
BODY PEOPLE, MIND PEOPLE, by Larry Rosenberg

You do your yoga, I’ll do mine.

Friday’s yoga thought

by L. Valdez Karl

“Daily Yoga practice may include Asanas, Pranayama and Meditation in proper proportion, so that the yoga diet is balanced.” — Srivatsa Ramaswami

In this recent discussion of what yoga should have in order to be called yoga, who can argue against having a balanced diet?

Resources for mindfulness meditation practice: “Mindfulness meditation: The Shambhala Sun offers a diverse selection of teachings on mindfulness meditation, from the Theravada and Insight traditions of Buddhism.”

And here’s an oldie but a goodie: Killing Yoga’s Sacred Cows

Finally….

HAPPY DIWALI TO EVERYONE!



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is there an "American spiritualism" like "American yoga"?

by L. Valdez Karl


Yes I know I promised to write a review of the talk I attended about whether American yoga is in crisis, but I think that topic is a very small part of a much bigger picture. So I will throw the question out there: what are we lacking that make people do this:

James Arthur Ray’s Spiritual Warrior Event Kills 2

I’ve never seen the movie The Secret so I have no opinion about Ray and what he puts out, but know many people who have and who have thought it the greatest thing since sliced bread (I’m dating myself with that phrase.) I’ve also heard many New Agey people talk about the Law of Attraction (and who hopelessly confuse it with karma) and just have to wonder: why do you feel you are so utterly lacking in anything? It is almost a luxury in this country — one of the richest countries in the world with so much material and yes, non-material, things available to us — to feel that we lack anything! I have met people in India who have nothing compared to westerners yet are content. But I digress.

The psychology of people who will blindly follow a “guru” (whether American, Hindu, Buddhist, etc.) has always fascinated me so when I read Brenda’s post about American false idols I had to ask, what are we looking for when we follow a “brand name” in yoga and spirituality?

Speaking of false idols, read these posts:

The Unquestioned Gurus of the Religion of the Self (that contains the great subheading “Psychopaths as Teachers of Right Living.”)

The Cultivation of Inflation and The Culture of Narcissism in Personal Development

One of the comments to the first link was this:

“…that you can’t just take the most sacred ceremonies from another culture that you do not belong and have not paid any dues too (sic), mix it with whatever you feel like and sell it off as a business venture. for decades actual native americans have tried to warn the white culture about fraud ripping off and bastardizing their culture and ceremonies. no one listened opting instead for the glittery promises of the new age gurus and plastic shamans.”

I found that one comment (especially about paying your dues and mixing things up and selling it as a business venture) on point with the recent discussions about western yoga. Just sayin’.

Roseanne’s excellent posts on the branding of yoga caused spirited discussions as do my posts on Americanized yoga v. what I practice in India. So why isn’t practicing plain old yoga good enough for us? Has yoga in its partnering with companies like Adidas and fila merely become part of this culture of narcissism? Has yoga in this country become a new religion of the self?

To those who stand around a yoga “master” who performs “advanced” asanas at a yoga conference and applaud and film it to put it on YouTube, are we not celebrating the cult of narcissism in a vacuous yoga celebrity culture that we at the same time scoff at?

Amanda wrote one of her always brilliant comments to this post:

“- I suspect the ‘faddish’ and ‘hypercommercialised’ nature of American yoga is what many people object to beneath this critique of contemporary yoga, but don’t verbalise it as such.

– the question of authenticity also jumps out as an issue: does Anusara, Jivamutki, Forrest or whatever style of yoga represent an immature innovation based on shallow Western values such as commercialism and body image or true cultural change within yoga? (Only TIME will tell on this one!)

– babies teaching babies yoga. I agree but our western culture tells us we can do anything if we have the money. Thus, we see 23 year olds running yoga schools. (see my earlier point about paying your dues.)

– an unhealthy obsession with Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra as ‘the last word’ on yoga at the expense of other texts. Hasn’t anyone read Georg Feuerstein or Mircea Eliade?

– an obsession with difficult and physiologically/psychologically harmful or futile asana which ‘apparently’ grant one the body of a hyperflexible, twenty-something. Again, this is the current Western trope of youth/perfection/image that pervades every facet of our lives.”

“If we wish only to teach poses or postures, it would be better to call what we do by a name other than Yoga.” Donna Farhi in Yoga Beyond Fitness, page 125

I’ll ask again as I did in this post, is Americanized yoga a mile wide and an inch deep? And if it is, I will ask again as I did at the beginning of this post, what are we searching for that so many of us unquestioningly put our bodies and minds and psyches into the hands of false idols, whether it’s in the yoga world or elsewhere?

What say you, yoga teachers? Are you a fitness teacher or a yoga teacher? As a commenter said in Brenda’s post, “We are (essentially) fitness instructors. We need to be happier with that role I think.”

I don’t know about anyone else but I have not spent $10,000+ to be a fitness instructor. I was a certified fitness instructor for a short time and I can tell you that as a yoga teacher what I do now is light years away from what I did before, which is why I think the “become a yoga teacher in a weekend” programs are a great disservice. BECAUSE I deal with peoples’ emotions and psyches when I take on private clients, that’s the main reason I’m applying for a certificate course in Jungian psychology, to learn even more on top of what yoga and Buddhism has already taught me about human psychology. Speaking of dealing with the mind, if I conducted my own yoga teaching training program each student would be required to sit for a 10 day silent vipassana retreat in the strict Goenka tradition. Talk about a brain enema. Teachers, know thyselves.

Krishnamurti said, “it is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”: “…as Krishnamurti suggests, it’s possible to think that we’re spiritually and mentally healthy because we share our mistaken values and understandings with those around us. Collectively, our ill minds create a society that is itself ill, and we consider ourselves healthy because we see our values reflected in our fellow worldlings.”

I think I’ve brought up some more questions, so talk amongst yourselves.

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is American yoga in crisis? part 2…

by L. Valdez Karl

From the last chapter of Yoga Beyond Fitness:

“If teachers grounded in the deeper message of Yoga are not available or do not share what they know, Srivatsa Ramaswami predicts ‘the subject will die because every following generation will know less and less. And the lack of knowledge could be filled with innovations of novices, leading to corruption or the art dying itself.'”

I attended Tom’s talk last night — see this post — and have a lot to say about it but y’all will have to wait until next week.

Until then chew on the above quote from my teacher, Srivatsa Ramaswami (Krishnamacharya’s longest standing student outside of the family), whom Tom quotes a lot in his book Yoga Beyond Fitness.

Talk amongst yourselves.

To be continued….

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and I thought Jazzercise was dead

by L. Valdez Karl

“Ana Brett & Ravi Singh’s dynamic style of Kundalini Yoga is the best of both worlds: its spiritual depth and energy work will satisfy your Eastern yearinings (sic). Its cardio element, with lots of ab work, stretching and toning will satisfy that Western need to get everything covered!”
(emphasis supplied.)

You can’t make this stuff up. I found the video on Facebook via Yoga Dawg’s blog.

There’s a great discussion going on about Americanized yoga at it’s all yoga, baby, so I thought I would post what one of my students thinks about Ana Brett and “her” style of yoga. I want to say from the beginning that I am sure Ana Brett is a nice person and dedicated and I know many people love her bubbly style and yoga videos. If they work for you, great, to each their own. If she wants to dance around to Bollywood hip-hop music, call it kundalini yoga, and make a buck off it, more power to her.

But like any other celebrity (and we certainly have our yoga celebs now), when you put yourself out there, be ready for criticism. IMHO, I have to say that adding the Buddha statue to her “yoga” mix here is pretty cheesy but maybe that adds the requisite “spiritual depth” for those of us with Eastern “yearinings”…just sayin’. Hey, at least Buddha’s face isn’t on her hot pants. whew.

The discussion about Ana Brett and her yoga clothes choices started a long time ago here (sorry I can’t find the exact post.) At that time I asked my students what they thought about the way Ana Brett markets herself and the most pithy comment came from a 17 year old student who will graduate from high school next year. She’s been my student for about three years — she’s a young yogini with an old soul. I wanted a young person’s opinion since I am old, jaded, and cynical.

So given the recent blog discussion on Americanized yoga, this video, and the talk I’m attending this week on whether American yoga is in crisis, I thought it was the appropriate time to publish my student’s comment (I did not change a word.)

“Ana Brett has some very legitimate things to say about yoga and I would be willing to bet that her DVDs are pretty good based on what people said. I understand wanting to see her body to learn about the alignment in certain poses. In Iyengar, which she studied, that is very important so I can see where she is coming from. Now I am not really a conservative type of person, tattoos, piercing, and multi-colored hair I don’t mind and in fact I love. However baring that much skin is out of place in a DVD about yoga. Her outfits would be fine many places but just not with yoga. Yoga is spiritual and so much emphasis put on the teacher’s body is rather distracting from spiritual intentions.

I don’t think that her point is as Blisschick said “as women, we can TAKE back our bodies and change the (negatively) sexualized perceptions of them.”

Because Ana said “We are sexual creatures, and we all use our sexuality consciously or unconsciously. Advertising is almost all about sex! When our DVD covers were shot, I was going for strong, confident, and healthy. Those are the attributes I aspire to and wish to inspire in other women. Some people, I guess, look at the covers and just see overt shameless sexuality. And yes, I can see where, especially the Kundalini Yoga for Energy & Super Radiance cover could be considered “sexy” and mainstream. But is that so bad?”

She said she can see how people would see it as sexual and that it is geared towards the mainstream (which is not inherently bad, getting the Yoga word out is good!) However trying to appeal to the mainstream with sex is not the way to go, and that seems to be what she was implying. After reading her answers to the interview questions I think that she does enjoy the true bliss of yoga and her intentions of happiness and appealing to many are also good. I do think that she is degrading herself and lowering the respect she gets by dressing that way.

When I see her covers of her DVDs I ask why does she dress that way? She said that “it was for the practical reason that it looks better”. Looking better is not really a practical reason. It doesn’t make women feel liberated to see a sparsely clothed woman. To me it seems like mainstream America is influencing yoga and not yoga influencing mainstream America.

I think that truly liberated women, in this day and age, have the confidence to cover their bodies and still feel beautiful/appealing. If she feels like she can’t show proper alignment without showing her body and she can not appeal to the public without bearing so much of her body on her DVD, she is not giving herself enough credit as a teacher. There are so many yogis that raved about her DVDs that she has something going on other than a great body, so Ana Brett, appeal with your bliss and not your looks, break out of the constraints that societal constraints and liberate women.”
(emphasis supplied.)

Talk amongst yourselves.

(P.S. I’m not dissing Jazzercise…I loved it, did it for 10 years, and almost bought a franchise. The video has inspired me to go find a Jazzercise class again! Note I said Jazzercise, not yoga.)


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is American yoga in crisis?

by L. Valdez Karl


Now that I have your attention, that’s the title of a talk I am attending this week at the Theosophical Society:

“Is American yoga just an exercise regimen masquerading as spirituality? While 16 million Americans practice hatha yoga, yoga’s development as a popular fitness workout has lost sight of its ancient roots and transformative power. Tonight is a wake-up call to yoga’s highest aspirations.”

Tom Pilarzyk is speaking on this topic and his bio says he is a “social scientist and author who has written on Eastern religions and American culture, including most recently, Yoga Beyond Fitness.” You can read words of praise for his book on his website:

“Dr. Kelly McGonigal, Editor-in-Chief, International Journal of Yoga Therapists, says of Yoga beyond Fitness:

‘One of yoga’s core principles is self-reflection. Yoga beyond Fitness gives the yoga community an opportunity to reflect on where we came from, who we are and how to return to the essence of a yoga as a spiritual practice. It is a ‘must read’ for anyone who wants to understand Yoga in the United States, and anyone who cares about the future of Yoga in the West.'”

Regular readers of this blog know my thoughts on “Americanized” yoga, so I’m intrigued. Blog post to follow.


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age before beauty

by L. Valdez Karl


(a crazy old yogini)

I’ve written before about how according to Yoga Journal the only good yogi is the young, white, skinny woman sans cellulite and wrinkles. Two years ago when I was 53 I wrote this post about American yoga and ageism. So I was glad to see the latest issue of YJ devote a few pages to American yoga’s spiritual elders: Patricia Walden, 62; Gurmukh Kaur Khalsa, 67; Sharon Gannon, 58; David Life, 59; Angela Farmer, 71; and her partner, Victor van Kooten, 69.

I like the phrase “spiritual elder.” I attended a Buddhism workshop at the Omega Institute over July 4th weekend that was led by Lama Surya Das. Lama Surya referred to an old woman as a “spiritual elder.” She said she’s a former Quaker and she asked many questions and challenged Lama Surya on some things he said. Every time she did, he’d smile and they would spar a little. Toward the end of the workshop he referred to her as a spiritual elder, that unlike the East, in this culture we lack spiritual elders, that we look at certain pop celebrities as our new “spiritual elders”, that is until the next big book comes out then there’s a new spiritual elder.

Like the older yogis in the latest YJ, my yoga practice has also changed the older I’ve become. I wrote this post asking people to get real about their practice if they’re in their 40s, or 50s, or 60s. No offense to the young teachers out there — we all start out green and we can and do learn from everyone no matter the age (I have a 17 year old student who has been with me for three years and she’s a joy)…but I’m just not drawn to a younger teacher. Go ahead and call it reverse-ageism if you want to (I’m too old to care.) I am certainly not saying a young teacher does not know anything or that I know more or that seasoned people like me know everything. I’m saying that there is much to be said about life experience. It’s not all about what you read in the yoga books. I did not become a yoga teacher until I was 48 and frankly I am very grateful for that because for me the difference between 28 and 48 is not just 20 years but light years. You’ll see. Maybe it’s time that younger teachers start listening to us crones in our 50s and 60s. It’s good to be a crone.

Not only my own practice, but my teaching has changed. I used to feel that I had to keep people entertained and like Angela Farmer, I also feel the atmosphere of a class. I want people to intuit their own practice and get out of their heads and into their bodies, I don’t want students to mimic what I do. The longer I teach, the less I demonstrate, the more I walk around the room, even with beginners. I hate routine, one foot has to be this way, the other that way, the arms have to be here or there. How boring. How rigid. How dull. That is yoga prison to me. I choose to be a rasa devi and move in and with passion.

Fancy arm balances and pretzel poses no longer impress me. Show me how you live your life and what you can give up for 10 days at a retreat without complaint — that will show me what you’ve learned from yoga. Show me your service and gratitude.

I live with chronic pain nowadays and like Buddha said, there is no escaping old age, sickness, and death. Yoga and my spirituality has made me comfortable with it all, even the thought of death. During meditations I’ve had visions of myself of what seems like 20 years from now — I now know where that place is, where I will be. Just burn this crazy old yogini’s body and throw my ashes in Ma Ganga. I will have been grateful for it all.

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

UPDATE:


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I am my shadow self

by L. Valdez Karl

Scott from Scott’s Thott’s posted this Seane Corn video and I wondered what your thoughts were about it.

A long time ago I did a workshop with Corn where she said almost exactly the same thing. When she mentioned the junkies and the whores I looked around the room and saw more than a few eyebrows go up and eyes go down. While the asana practice was good, I loved what she had to say even more.

Corn says that the teachers she is most attracted to are the most human, the realists who are honest about their history and path. In my last workshop with Sarah Powers she said the same thing: that her favorite teachers are the ones whose “humaness” shines through. I agree.

Last weekend I became 55, a fit, fabulous, “woman of a certain age.” While I have my aches and pains I don’t allow my body or my thoughts to define me — I am not this body, I am not my thoughts. And on my birthday I realized: I should be dead. There was a time when I and others thought I would not live to see 21. I tried to kill myself when I was 16. Ask me if I care who knows that.

And now I’m planning my 4th trip to India. I’ve come a long way, baby.

I teach at a domestic violence shelter and the ladies told me that they appreciate me so much more because I’ve been where they are now, that I am not a “white suburban do-gooder” (their words) trying to tell them how to be.

I question how some show biz yogis can teach me because I wonder if they’ve been where I’ve been — abuse, rape, addiction, and domestic violence. I usually do not trust the om namah shivaya types with the ethereal smiles and the wispy, breathy voices. I am a survivor, so what can they teach me? I’d rather get down and dirty.

I loved Scott’s comment:

“A friend and I joke about the “Om Shanti” and “Namaste” crowd. These people who say Yoga is all about love and light, peace and happiness are deluding themselves. It’s so pretentious – just say hello, how are you, have a good day… whatever. I would no more say Namaste to someone (outside north India) than I would say bonjour or auf wiedersehen.

If Yoga isn’t pushing you outside your comfort zone, it ain’t really Yoga. Leave the frills off for me, mama, and gimme an extra dose of darkness.”

“If Yoga isn’t pushing you outside your comfort zone, it ain’t really Yoga.”

Why do you yoga? Not “do yoga” because yoga is about undoing, not doing. Yoga does us. I’ve always thought that the reason more people don’t yoga is because stepping into yoga takes courage and many of us (most?) are afraid to see what might come up, we’re afraid of our shadow selves. It’s so much easier to push that shit down and resist our truths.

Roll around with your demons and become uncomfortable until it hurts. Set yourself on fire because that fire will either kill you or transform you.


dog face down

by L. Valdez Karl

This is why my friends in India ask me whether I teach “real yoga” or “American yoga.”

Bonding With Their Downward-Facing Humans

“….Call it a yogic twist: Downward-facing dog is no longer just for humans.

Ludicrous? Possibly. Grist for anyone who thinks that dog-owners have taken yoga too far? Perhaps. But nationwide, classes of doga — yoga with dogs, as it is called — are increasing in number and popularity. Since Ms. Caliendo, a certified yoga instructor in Chicago, began to teach doga less than one year ago, her classes have doubled in size.

Not everyone in the yoga community is comfortable with this.

“Doga runs the risk of trivializing yoga by turning a 2,500-year-old practice into a fad,” said Julie Lawrence, 60, a yoga instructor and studio owner in Portland, Ore. “To live in harmony with all beings, including dogs, is a truly yogic principle. But yoga class may not be the most appropriate way to express this….”

Dog Face Down is what one of my students called Downward Facing Dog.

I feel sorry for the spaniel in the middle — he looks scared and his owner looks a bit intense. Put that dog down and step away from the mat, lady!

Can you do this with your Great Dane? The mind reels.

ARF.

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I have heard these words inside me

by L. Valdez Karl

The narrator of the Gateways of Light video says that we are coming to some type of major defining moment in our history and “those people who are meant to unfold through this are unfolding and are doing it pretty rapidly.”

Words similar to those above were said to me about 15 years ago when I got back on this yogic and spiritual path. The first time I talked with a spiritual adept she stopped and looked me in the eyes. She said that the world as we know it will seem to split into two camps, and that those who have been working on their inner life will ascend while the others…well, it will take them a bit longer, so maybe not in their present lifetimes. Then she said, “and you will be part of this ascension on a global level, part of the new paradigm.” At the time I said nothing and took it with a grain of salt, merely nodding my head. I remember that conversation like it was yesterday.

I’ve had more than few conversations like that in 15 years, and things that were told to me have come to fruition, slowly but surely. Even before India was a thought in my mind a vedic astrologer told me that I would experience “divine grace” around 2010. At the time I did not even know what divine grace meant so I shrugged it off.

But I will be at the Kumbh Mela next year, the “great festival of the pot of nectar of immortality”, on an auspicious day and I’ve known in my bones for a long time that something will happen to me. I can’t say what, but something is calling me there like nothing else has ever done. I can’t explain it so I just let it be. I surrender. I have felt the shakti in certain temples in South India and have broken down. I surrendered. I’ve even thought that maybe I will die in India, and if so, all things happen for a reason. At least I will be on the Ganges and my body can be burned.

The narrator speaks of the disconnectedness of this world and I have seen this more and more in even long time yoga students, their disconnection from their bodies, the fear of closing their eyes. Students I’ve been teaching for over 5 years are suddenly like beginners again and they have no explanation. It is as if they have become afraid to feel.

I truly believe that all the turmoil that is happening in the world today is meant to be — the economy, the layoffs, the environment. This Kali Yuga is a cycle. Sometimes you have to hit rock bottom before you can begin the climb back up. Sometimes you have to lose everything in order to wake up.

My time on the cushion now brings me much more satisfaction than asana ever did. Sure I feel good physically after asana practice, but it’s always a dance between forms and formlessness. As Gary Kraftsow said, “…yoga isn’t about getting to know the postures. It’s about getting to know yourself.” In the past month I have a felt a new spaciousness inside me that was not there before and I know that what I do now will culminate on February 12, 2010. I know this in my bones as well as I know my name.

All I can do is surrender.


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