Tag: yoga

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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I’ve got a secret — and it’s not deodorant

by L. Valdez Karl

Amazingly I received the link to this video from a friend in India who saw it in the Washington Post — “The Dirty Little Secrets of Yoga Teachers.” Or, the light in me honors the stink in you.

http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f8/271557392

I don’t know which is worse: the smelly butts or the creepy dude yoga teacher. “Savasana massages”? I don’t want anyone touching me in savasana! Let me guess…he only massages the young and the skinny.

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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.

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UPDATE:


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circle of life

by L. Valdez Karl

“I did not begin when I was born,
nor when I was conceived.
I have been growing, developing,
through incalculable myriads of millenniums.
All my previous selves
have their voices, echoes, promptings in me.
Oh, incalculable times again
shall I be born.”
–Jack London

I will die in India….

and be reborn in Africa.

this I know in my bones.

time for old paradigms to die.

the end of the beginning.

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because my spirit moves me

by L. Valdez Karl

…because my 55th year on this planet will be a year of world travel for me….touching ground in 7 countries in 9 weeks…from here to Abu Dhabi to India to either Qatar or Dubai to Kenya to Zanzibar to Tanzania, back to Kenya and then landing somewhere in Europe before flying home….

…because plans are in the works to teach in Australia and Bali next year….

…because I was given travel brochures from Spain and was told “put your group together and go for it”, “it” being a yoga retreat in the Pyranees, in a place where there are no border guards and you can walk back and forth from Spain to France…another sign that this is what I am meant to do….

…because I saw the movie Julie & Julia yesterday, a movie about two women — one young, one who was my age when she found herself — finding their passions and rebirthing themselves….

…because I will anoint myself with water from the holiest river in India….

…because I dance with wildness knowing that I would rather fail at the right thing than succeed at things that are not right for me….

…and because I like Dead Can Dance.

enjoy.

The Invitation
(Oriah Mountain Dreamer)

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for
and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon…
I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened by life’s betrayals
or have become shriveled and closed
from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us
to be careful
to be realistic
to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
“Yes.”

It doesn’t interest me
to know where you live or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like the company you keep
in the empty moments.


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kudos!

by L. Valdez Karl

I want to acknowledge the two yogini bloggers who awarded me the MeMe Award. I am in good company with all of these blog award winners!

Thanks to girlwarrior of it’s all yoga, baby who said that I am “sassy, opinionated and sincere in her practice”, and thanks to Brooks at Yoga, the Mind and Culture who said “she’s really doing her yoga, and shares inspiration and road bumps along the way.” Thank you, thank you, thank you! I especially want to thank the yoga bloggers who supported me during the Troll Event — you know who you are!

I’m not really into rules but the rules to this award are that I should (1) share 7 tidbits about myself and (2) share this MeMe Blog Award with 7 blogger friends. As for those tidbits about me, I think if you read LYJ from the beginning you will certainly glean more than 7 tidbits about me (!!), but here goes:

1. My first OM was with Beat Poet and Buddhist Allen Ginsberg in 1973 when he came to my junior college for a poetry reading.

2. I’ve been green since the first Earth Day in 1970, many years before being green became the thing to do. I helped organize my high school’s Earth Day celebration and I ordered the Earth Day flag decals (they were cool!). I’ve never seen decals like that again.

3. I am also a garden designer. My business is Loba Landscapes…Gardens With a Touch of the Wild. My niche is native plants in the home landscape and eco-gardening.

Yes, that’s my backyard.

4. I was in a riot in 1970. Sly and the Family Stone were supposed to play a concert in Grant Park in Chicago and in those days Sly was known to show up late or not at all for concerts. People got upset and a riot broke out. I ran from the police just as they started to tear gas us. Ah….those were the days…the smell of tear gas and major doobage in the air, flowers in our hair….

I still loves me some Sly!

I am sure 1970 must sound like the olden days to many of you but throw the peace sign up, it will do you no harm!

5. I was named one of Illinois’ best high school poets when I was a junior.

6. Besides being an activist for the environment, I’ve always been an activist for women’s issues. I know some of you don’t remember the days before Roe v. Wade, but at that time when I was in junior college abortions were legal in New York City. As a member of a women’s liberation group at that time, I helped a few women get to New York City.

7. I am clairsentient and clairaudient.

I give this award to:

Shelley, for caring so much about India’s children;

Svasti, for being so real and open and honest and brave (we are both survivors);

Nadine, for being a fellow KYM-er, for being sweet enough to consider me her “yoga mother”, and for becoming a friend;

Amanda for supporting me and also becoming a friend;

Flowergirl, because I love her stories about India as much as I love India and because she has become my thankachi;

Fernanda, because she is as passionate about our Mother India as I am, and for becoming mi amiga (and who is trying to get me to teach in Brazil, YAY!);

YogaDawg, for obvious reasons!

Blog on!


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I get it….it was REVERSE PSYCHOLOGY!

by L. Valdez Karl

Brenda left a comment on my Facebook page that maybe the Commenter Who Shall Remain Nameless is using reverse psychology to keep me on the air, to get me mad enough to keep me around.

Since my last post, the contributor in question to the Sadhana Bliss Chicago blog has made their Blogger profile unavailable and has changed their name to “fooled you” as if that in some way absolves him or her. You can form your own opinion about that.

I am shocked (in a good way) but heartened that two bloggers took up my cause, so to speak. Brooks wrote in her blog Yoga, the Mind and Culture:

“What provoked me to write about this is a comment she received about her announcement. It starts out like this: “would that you could go quietly into the night, but that would be too much for you to manage, wouldn’t it? at least you’re GOING.”

I am so saddened and shocked by this comment. Using a metaphor for dying quietly is just so hurtful and wrong to receive…”

…and AnthroYogini in Australia who went on to comment that it’s “cyberbullying by adults who should know better. I’m sick of people hiding behind their ISPs and typing nasty shit they’d never have the balls to say to your face.”

A blog troll is a troll is a troll so let’s not feed the trolls. They always come back to see what kind of a rise they got out of of the blogger. They lurk around, always reading the same post or comments to that post. And you know they keep coming around because you can tell by your site meter (and you also know where they live.) In actuality I probably should not have published the comment or written about it because doing that is exactly what the troll wants, but I felt that enough was enough, it was time to bring that type of activity out into daylight especially because it was in the yoga blogosphere.

Both I and this blog are acquired tastes so if you don’t like my style or my voice, don’t read. Simple. But for those of you who do like the spice, I will continue my “cathartic musings and occasional rants about my trips to India to study my heart’s passion, and my sweet adventures along the yoga path” albeit not as frequently. Only when the muse calls. I am concentrating on my upcoming trip to India and Africa.

Since I don’t want the last post for a long time to end on a sour note, I leave you with some good notes from one of my favorite musicians (and true yogi) Alice Coltrane. Enjoy.


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taking a long savasana

by L. Valdez Karl


For what is it to die, but to stand in the sun and melt into the wind? And when the Earth has claimed our limbs, then we shall truly dance.–Kahlil Gibran

Savasana is the dying that brings life so I’ve decided to slowly fade away. I may post sporadically, I may not. How can I not write about the goat sacrifices at the Kali temple in Kolkata or the naked Shiva babas at the Kumbh Mela next year? I’m bringing yin yoga to Africa next year which will surely be fodder for a yoga blog. But that’s next year.

At this juncture I feel written out. I see on my site meter what brings people here and the most searched for phrases are “St. Theresa’s Prayer” and some variation of “naked yoga” or “hot yoga chicks.” Take your pick. If those are the only reasons people are consistently coming here, have at it. As the author of the book that I mention below writes: “All words are lies. At best, they point toward the truth. At worst they totally mislead and create confusion. We already know everything there is to know…”

For those of you who are interested in more than a dead saint’s prayer or a photo of a naked yoga babe — the juxtaposition of those two images is supreme — you can start reading at the beginning of this blog. I’ve been writing since 2005 and I think I’ve laid down some rather pithy posts along the way, this one in particular being a favorite. Hey, maybe I can get a book deal. Or maybe someone will write my obituary in the yoga blogosphere — R.I.P oh snarky one, we hardly knew ye.

There have been internal shifts going on for some time now and I’m going to honor them. Shifts with my yogic path, shifts with my relationships with friends and husband, shifts with my relationship to myself. It’s all good because life is about change. If you don’t evolve, you die, just like the dinosaurs. It’s good to step away from things, whatever those things are, and let the chips fall where they may.

I wonder whether in this journey, instead of feeling more connected (as we are told we are “supposed” to feel the longer one does yoga or meditates), a consequence is feeling even more alone or apart from others. Not disconnected, but truly being in the world, but not of it. Sometimes I feel as if I am on a merry-go-round, and the faces of people I know are circling faster and faster away from me, eventually disappearing. They’ve stopped and I’ve kept going. As I’ve always said, people float in and out of our lives at specific times for various reasons and I stopped trying to figure it out long ago. It just is. The holding on (to anything or anyone) is what causes the suffering. My friends, it’s time to move on.

I will leave you with some quotes from one of the post potent and powerful books I’ve read in my 30+ years of being on a spiritual path: Shadows on the Path by Abdi Assadi , a book I learned about on AnthroYogini’s blog. If I had my own teacher training, this book would absolutely be on the required reading list. There are so many passages that I have underlined and highlighted, that if I cited all of them I would rewrite his entire book in this post. So I will just cite some sentences that have meaning to me right now, in my present experience.

“To undertake a spiritual quest as a defense mechanism against pain without addressing the underlying psychological issues will always lead to a deep splitting of one’s psyche.” (p. 19)

“In my own experience, every teacher I have had had been a perfect mirror of myself at that time….every new partner is an uncanny reflection of our subconscious needs and issues. …I also learned that fully enlightened teachers who have worked through their personality distortions are incredibly rare.” (p. 22)

“The important thing now is to do the work, to prepare the internal vessel for whatever truths may enter. Think of this as a process of simplification, not sophistication.” (p. 23)

“Spirituality is a process of dying, not gaining. This important and obvious point is not often properly acknowledged. The spiritual path is about the death of the needs and wants of an insatiable ego and its endless cycle of desire, acquisition, suffering and renewed hunger.” (p. 16)

“Grace is not a product of our willful volition but something that appears in spite of it. One of our ego’s false presumptions is that it can lead us toward grace instead of understanding that we are already swimming in it. We need to let go to feel this — but that means facing the terror of our best-kept secret: that we are not in control.” (p. 74)

“I do know that to live fully we have to practice dying while still alive. Meditation is this practice. I invite you to practice daily, letting go of who you think you are and being born into who have you have always been.” (p. 96)

I am going to practice dying.

MAY ALL BEINGS HAVE HAPPINESS AND THE CAUSES OF HAPPINESS
MAY ALL BEINGS BE FREE FROM SUFFERING AND THE CAUSES OF SUFFERING
OM MANI PEDME HUM

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"the truth is as it is"

by L. Valdez Karl

Narrated by Ram Dass.

I visited the ashram in Thiruvannamalai on my second trip to India. Amazing. I want to go back.

It really is so simple. Really.

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In Memoriam: Sri K. Pattabhi Jois

by L. Valdez Karl

Sri K. Pattabhi Jois died this morning in Mysore after a year of declining health. He was 93 years old.

While I am not an astangi and the only time I did astanga was 6 years ago when Guruji’s son Manju did a workshop at the Chicago Yoga Center, I know many people who have gone to Mysore to study at his shala. My own teacher, Suddha Weixler, studied in Mysore three times.

It is a great loss for the entire yoga world, not just for the astanga community.

Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. What is never born can never die.

Those of you who knew Pattahbi Jois or studied in Mysore, feel free to leave your remembrances in the comment section.

OM SHANTI

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