Think Body Electric

Back to Basics: Yoga as I know it, 101

2012-02-27T22:13:00.002-06:00

Of course, I've been following the Anusara scandal lately. And I have many, many thoughts about it. And there's many of you that I'd love to sit down and talk them over with - hashing it all out over a cup of tea. Or maybe a luscious glass of red wine.

But otherwise - right now, I'm feeling like it's not my story to tell. So I'm going to write about what I know . . .

Which is:

I spent two hours practicing by myself today in a mostly empty room. And it was wonderful. And I realized that - yes, I am so, so blessed to have this knowledge. Of how to get into my tight spots and feel them start to open. To sense something wonderful, and even mysterious, about such a seemingly banal process. Um, just stretching . . . yeah, just stretching my mind open again, prying off the scabs of ancient samskaras and feeling the liberated fresh skin breathing underneath.

Jail

Mia, a Chicago yoga teacher I don't really even know (we volunteer for the same organization and briefly met once) sent me (and the other members of our little "Yoga for Recovery" group) an email yesterday explaining that she's just had a conversation with a MD who works at the Cook County Jail (where our group runs yoga classes for women on Fridays) that made her realize just how little she (and by extension, all of us) knows about the women we're teaching there.

i felt ignorant. maybe i'm the only one in the dark, but did you know that our clients are in this usually court-ordered "sheriff's women's justice program" for 120 days and are drug addicts &/or mentally disabled &/or prostitutes trying to leave the life?

She embedded the link below, which previews a documentary on prostitution produced by the Oprah channel. Surprisingly to me, it highlights the program we've connected with through our program. Lisa - the woman who starts speaking at 1 minute 24 seconds into the video - is someone I've worked with a number of times. She's our insider point person and a huge yoga booster.

Lisa lights up the room with her enthusiasm whenever she helps me set up the room for yoga, chatting brightly and energetically as we push furniture to the sides of the room. I had no clue that she's been a prostitute for 20 years. I can't even imagine.

But while we're working together to get ready to provide a yoga class to a dozen or so women, the truth is that . . . I don't even care. I don't mean that in a callous way. I just mean that - if we're working together, and if we both believe that the yoga's worth our time and effort, then - we're just together, absorbed in that project, in that moment. And the past and the present and society and its cruelties and inequalities don't go away. But they don't divide us either. We're just there, dedicating some time to some yoga - and to some exploration, and some healing.

And while there's no silver bullet, there is a distinct, real sense that - this is valuable. It does work. How? Why? Right then, it doesn't matter. I don't have to analyze it, prove it, or even say it. I just notice that my mind is clearer, that I feel more grounded. And I see enough students lighting up, and smiling, and thanking us as they say "goodbye" to feel assured that no, it's not just me - they're getting a lot out of the yoga, too.

And it's a good feeling.

Sneak Peek: Prostitution: Leaving The Life

Prostitution: Leaving the Life tells the story of the world of prostitution from the people that know it best - the women that live it. Three former prostitutes work with the Cook County Sheriff to help women in Cook County Jail leave the life, and gain the life skills and confidence to escape prostitution.

Blather

Now, the latest iteration in the endlessly spooling Anusara scandal story is "Science of Yoga" author William J. Broad writing with easy, jocular journalistic authority in the New York Times that since yoga "began as a sex cult," practitioners today shouldn't really be surprised when libidinous gurus color outside the lines when it comes to ill-advised or even abusive sex with their followers. OK . . . sigh. How to muster the energy to even start to address all the problems involved with framing the issues at hand in this way? Right now, I don't have it in me. So I won't.

Basics

There's a lot of interesting talk about Tantra circulating around in the newly opened space created by John Friend's current implosion. What I used to call the "Anusasra Police" formerly had Tantra on commodified lock-down - it was their thing, damn it, and they were going to control the terms of discourse so that it was quite clear that they had their copyright right there, squarely on top of it.

Well, that's no longer the case. And that's good. But still, all of this intricate Tantra talk that's been circulating in the blogosphere recently can just feel like a lot of - blah blah blah. At least to me.

Bottom line is that: I don't really care about your religion or your ideology or your atheism or your science or your whatever. But if you love yoga, and find that the physicality of asana can in fact ignite some magic for you - then it seems to me that the core issues are quite simple:

Is it helping you to heal, and through that process, helping others?
Is it helping you to grow in wisdom, and compassion?
Is is helping you to connect with something mysterious, and sustaining?

If we can pretty much answer "yes" to those questions, then - do we really need anything more?

Kripalu's Reincarnation and the Anusara Scandal

2012-02-08T18:18:00.001-06:00

This isn't the first time that a sex scandal has hit an American yoga community hard. Regardless of how the current Anusara controversy plays out, it's a good time to go back and re-read Chapter 16 of Stephen Cope's classic, Yoga and the Quest for the True Self (1999). (Or, if you've never read it, buy it and read it cover-to-cover! If you have any interest in yoga, it's one of the best contemporary works out there.)

In the book, Cope describes how Kripalu imploded after finding out that its guru-teacher-leader, Amrit Desai, had been secretly having multiple extra-marital affairs for years. The wonderful thing about the story, however, is that it explains how the community eventually emerged stronger and wiser because of the scandal; newly dedicated to and organized around meaningful democratic principles.

Kripalu today (http://www.kripalu.org/article/656)

Cope, a practicing psychologist, astutely describes the deeper psychological roots of the scandal:

Among the hundreds of people of all ages, races, and religions who have been residents at Kripalu, I can safely say that almost all came seeking some version of the idealized family. In the guru and in the community at Kripalu, thousands of seekers sought the perfect Dad and Mom . . . (they) bring a tremendous amount of idealization and projection in their relationships with teachers. We fall in love with our teachers, and with our communities, and as a result we do not see them at all clearly.

As the idealized love driven by unconscious desires projected at them grows, Cope explains, it's easy for teachers who aren't yet ready to handle this wave of adulation to become sucked into these powerful psychological dynamics:

If the teacher is not aware of his own unresolved needs to be admired, highly praised, and adored, he or she may being to believe the idealizations of his students. An air of unreality begins to infuse the entire situation . . . Teacher and student grow further and further from an understanding of their complicated unconscious motivations. It is only a matter of time before the situation collapses of its own weight.

When the guru was exposed, all hell broke loose. Of course, as a live-in ashram, it was impossible to keep things quiet and contained when events including "shouting, screaming, and what sounded like furniture flying" were there for all to hear. ("'You fucked him. For years. You fucked him. Don't tell me you didn't!' The entire building stopped breathing in that instant.")

Did the community then draw on their yogic resources, start taking deep breaths again, tap into their inner peace, step out of their "mis-alignment," and gracefully forgive? Well . . . there was a bit more to the process than that.

Within days, the guru and his entire family were gone. Press releases were written, forthrightly declaring the details of the scandal . . . Standing in the naked truth was difficult to bear, but we were doing it . . . We were standing in the best traditions of yoga. We had learned something. This was good.

But the bonfire did not stop there. There were legal maneuverings. Lawyers' bills mounting into the millions. Challenges from former residents. New allegations of sexual misconduct . . . The guru's throne was smashed to smithereens in the main chapel. The flames raged on . . .

Over the course of the next years, the community would go through a complete death and rebirth. Many of the senior members would leave . . . most did well. The more vulnerable remained deeply wounded by from the betrayal and death of the idealized family. The entire organization was restructured, from the board down.

. . . With several years, signs of rebirth were in the ascendent. But the dream had to die, the guru had to leave, and the idealization had to be irreparably broken.

Cope goes on to explain that the success and failure of Kripalu were inextricably interrelated:

It was not the scandal that forced the death of the old forms of yoga at Kripalu. Quite the opposite. It was the impending death of the old paradigm that required the scandal. It is clear that the fact of Amrit Desai's affairs had been in the unconscious of the community all along. It was not new information. Quite a few individuals held the secret. It was simply information that could not be brought to the light of consciousness until the community was more or less ready for it.

In 1994 when the scandal erupted, Gurudev had not suddenly changed. In fact, the sexual misconduct was by that time many years old. Amirt was who he had always been -- ambitious, brilliant, sometimes a sincere yogi, sometimes just a smooth performer, too often a teacher who was too charming for his own good. It was the community's own capacity to see and bear the truth that had changed.

The bonfire was just as much a sign of success as of failure.

I visited Kripalu back in the mid-2000s and loved it. It is beautiful, and has a clean, clear, positive vibe. Of course, it's not perfect. But the organization does offer tons of valuable teachings to tens of thousands of people each year.

I felt blessed to have visited; it's a memory I still cherish today.

In Praise of the Local Yoga Teacher

2012-01-30T21:41:00.001-06:00

I've learned a huge amount from reading about yoga online. I've connected with amazing people. I've had the opportunity to say some stuff I care about and have some people listen to me. And all of that's been wonderful and gratifying.

But there's also been times when reading about yoga, and learning about other practitioners' views on all sorts of yoga-related issues has been a terrible downer.

And so far, on the whole, 2012 has been more of the latter than the former.

You know, there's been that New York Times article about yoga wrecking your body. Yes, it was good to raise the issue. But then it got depressing, learning about all the yoga injuries, thinking about all the unqualified teachers, hearing about why there's so many unjustified teacher training programs, and on and on . . .

And don't even get me started about the whirlwind of debate that formed around that stupid Equinox video. When Kathryn Budig posted yet another huffy shallow piece in the HuffPo, I couldn't help it - it dragged me down all day.

Sometimes I feel like I've learned too much about yoga - or, that is, about American yoga today. And it's just like - ick. Get me out of here. I hate this shit.

Thank you, thank you

And then.

And then I get back on my mat to practice at home because I'm feeling so cranky and stiff and I know that I just need some asana. And it makes me feel so much better. And it's great. And I think - OK, forget all that crap. Yoga really is great. At least here at home alone in my own little room.

Which is wonderful. But it still feels lonely. Until . . .

I make it back to my local yoga class. I drive to a nearby studio with some friends. We've all managed to arrange our work schedules to attend this class together. It's small. Twelve students would be a big day. Usually it's more like 6 - 8.

bradfordkissellphotoart.com

But it's magic.

We've got 6, 7, 8, 9 women in a room, including the teacher. And we work our way through some really serious stuff. And it's fun, and it's hard, and it's deep, and it's wonderful.

And I realize - all those headlines are important, but they're not the backbone of what's happening. No, it's the stories that are too "small" to be written up in the New York Times.

It's all those teachers who've invested thousands of their own dollars in training programs that will take years, if ever, to pay off. It's the teachers who trek to their local studios, or gyms, or church basements, week after week to teach a small group of students, who may or may not be able to make it regularly, who may or may not be able to use what's being offered to lift off. But who go back and keep teaching anyway. And keep studying, keep practicing.

Who will never be on the cover of Yoga Journal. Who will never be a headliner at Wanderlust. Who can't help but wonder sometimes why they're investing so many resources in something that seems so impractical. Who can't help but feel bad sometimes because they know that they'll never be featured in a video that's gotten two million hits; that they'll never be beautiful enough to command those big advertising dollars.

Who've studied the Sutras not because it sounds impressive, but because they're interested in learning more about yoga. Who've wondered about enlightenment not because they're on some byzantine ego trip, but because they want to plumb the depths of what life really offers.

Who will always try their best for their students - even if there's only three of them in the room, when they were hoping for 20. Who'll be careful to note what each one needs for the next class, and try to devote some of their scant time to learning more about it before they get back in front of that student again.

Who really want to share the best of what they've experienced through their own asana practice with others. Who know that they don't understand what this gift means, but know that they care about sharing it.

Thank you.

http://blog.uvm.edu/iberrizb/tree-houses/

Yoga Teachers with Guns

2011-12-27T16:28:00.000-06:00

One of my blogosphere friends, a yoga teacher who lives in Nashville, had told me that in her world, it's not uncommon for yoga teachers to pack heat. I, living in my bluest-of-blue-state bubble of an uber-liberal neighborhood in solidly Democratic Chicago, was stunned. Yoga teachers with guns?!

I wanted to do a red state-blue state blog post dialog with her on how weird this may - or may not - seem, depending on your political and cultural sensibilities. But the subject didn't interest her. Yeah, yoga teachers with guns. Lots of conservatives around here. So what's new? Not inspiring.

Now I find that CBS produced a little human interest news segment on (female) yoga teachers and moms who like to shoot:

I find this fascinating.There is so much that's so important packed into this subject, it's hard to know where to start. But I'll just mention a few:

Feminism. Bracketing the yoga teacher part for the moment, is this whole trend of women toting guns empowering to women? A recent book, Chicks with Guns, reports that 15-20 million American women own their own firearms. And they love them. "When you get outside of the blue-state cities," explains author Lindsay McCrum, "everybody has a gun.” Shit. Really?

For those of us who associate guns more with criminals, right-wingers, and survivalists than hunters and skeet shooters, that seems pretty scary. But of course, the counter-argument is that guns enable women to protect themselves, and are therefore empowering. One conservative blog on "The Changing Demographics of Gun Ownership" made precisely this point, posting these provocative photos:

Politics and Culture. Statistics show that American gun ownership is disproportionately concentrated among conservative, white, non-urban men (although, as these recent stories about the growing popularity of guns among other demographic groups such as women show, this may be changing). Here's a table reporting on a 2005 Gallup poll:

As Gallup explains, the stereotype of a gun owner being "a white male, most likely Republican, living in a rural area of the South" is essentially true. "While many Americans who don't fit that demographic profile do own guns, the likelihood of owning a gun is higher among people with these demographic characteristics."

So, as someone who's really not into white male dominated, conservative Southern politics, guns carry a lot of negative political and cultural associations - and the data show that these are well-founded.

Buddhists & Yogis with Guns. While it's impossible to say how prevalent it is, it's certainly likely that just as the number of women owning guns is rising, so is the acceptance of gun ownership in the American (convert) Buddhists and yoga communities. When researching this post, I came across the following picture from a blog post on "Buddhists with Guns":

The blogger, Justin Whitaker, notes that "Well, for the record, that’s a yoga instructor (sister), mechanic (brother), and Buddhist scholar (me)":

Growing up in rural Montana – about 10 miles north of Helena, the capital city, neighbors had horses, dirt road, cactus in the back yard – we were introduced to guns fairly early in life. I think I skipped the “you’ll shoot your eye out!” bb-gun that many friends were getting and moved on to a pump-action single shot pellet-gun around the age of 8.

So . . . urban blue-stater that I am, I get that. I understand that guns are not necessarily evil. I think that it can be fun to shoot, say, beer cans (which I've done, and enjoyed). And while I personally would never want to hunt, I'm completely OK with people who hunt for food (as opposed to sport. I definitely have ethical problems with that).

I can also imagine living in circumstances where carrying a gun for self-defense might feel justified - e.g., impoverished rural areas where you're worried about being jumped by meth addicts and know that law enforcement or even other people are likely to be far away.

BUT -

That said, in the bigger picture, I'm not happy about the whole women-with-guns, yoga-teachers-with-guns, Buddhist-scholars-with-guns sensibility at all. Really, I think it's just another unfolding of the dismaying logic of:

Yoga and meditation have become much more mainstream.
The mainstream has become much more right-wing.
Therefore, more people involved with yoga, meditation, mindfulness, Buddhism, etc. are folding those practices into conservative-to-right wing politics. (Witness, of course, the recent Ayn Rand promo by Lululemon.)

Some will say that yoga, meditation, etc. have their own cultural logic in which guns have nothing to do with right-wing politics. For example, when YogaDork posted on the CBS piece referenced above, her one commentator sanguinely suggested that yoga teachers who love to shoot guns is "no different then practicing aikido (a Japanese martial art) or Kyudo (zen archery)."

Um, well, sure - in some cases, that may be true. (It's also true, however, that we don't necessarily want to replicate many of the politics historically connected with, for example, Zen.) But considered as a broad cultural movement, it's not. Instead, what it means is that American yoga is starting to be "rebranded" as something that's no longer associated with cultural liberalism. (If you read the comments on yoga blogs that attract more conservative types, you'll see that there's many out there who're eager to push it in a more right-wing direction.)

Which is why I think that those who'd like to see yoga and meditation as vehicles for realizing a different type of cultural and political sensibility in North America need to step up and speak out. Many, of course, are. (Witness Seane Corn's and Michael Stone's engagement with the Occupy movement.) But there needs to be more.

I think that when it comes to feminism, politics, culture, yoga, and Buddhism, in the final analysis the most important point is that we desperately need inspiring alternatives to the dominant (and growing) view that it's just great to embrace guns as a means of empowerment. The more that people like women and yoga teachers, who've traditionally been more committed to creating other alternatives, instead shift to celebrating the power of the gun, the more impoverished our culture will be, and the more dangerous our world will become.

On Light, Photography, Yoga and the Body

2011-12-03T21:22:00.001-06:00

Sometimes, life's quandaries seem so devastatingly simple: we need to love and be loved in order to thrive, but the world is commonly callous, and cruel. We're hurt by others, and we hurt ourselves because it's so hard to learn better. We're angry at ourselves and others for our human shortcomings. We're fearful of more pain. It seems like too much of a risk to stay open to love. Yet if we don't, we wither and what's precious within us dims into darkness. It's a life's work to create the courage to love ourselves and this fucked up world. Yet no matter how bad it gets, there's always that flicker of spirit to be breathed back into life.

The candle in the darkness image is sooo cliched, right? But that's why I love blogging - a quick internet search, and voila - I found an image that I truly like. It's from the blog, Maggie's Photography, in the post titled, "Weekly Photo Challenge: Light."

Which feels like another small serendipity, as this random image search just brought together the key themes of this day: the week, photography, challenge, light . . .

Concretely, our power went out for the entire evening earlier this week. We hauled out every flashlight and candle we had to get by until bedtime. Most of the flashlights were broken. So we relied on the candles.

They cast off a surprising amount of light. And they captivated us, one by one. I found myself transfixed by the row of flames on my dresser, which arrested me and made me feel how deeply different it was to live in synch with the dark, with only these small flames for illumination. Later, my son, who was doing his homework by candlelight, remarked that he had just realized how much he likes candles. Coming from a kid who's passionate about xBox, skateboarding, urban culture, and electronics, this was notable . . .

But I think we all recognized that unexpectedly finding the house lit up by candles and blowing them out early to go to sleep in the dark . . . and really noticing the darkness of the dark - felt quietly wonderful.

Then there was the question of photography. I stirred up a bit of a ruckus with the lead photo I chose for my latest Yoga Modern post on "women in yoga." It's of a very thin, very young looking woman posing (incongruously) in a lush bed of brightly colored hair scrunchies - you know, those hairband-covered-with-fabric things that were popular at some point in the not too dimly distant past. (You'll have to click through to check it out - I'm not reposting it here. Instead, that's Susan Sontag, above. But more on that later.)

Anyway, so the model in this photo has multiple rings of these scrunchies on her ankles and hair too. Other than that, she's wearing only a skimpy black leotard. She's staring into the camera, looking a little come hither, and a little - whatever. She seems casually but defiantly comfortable with the playful absurdity of the shot. But because she seems so young, and unapologetically sexual, there's also something discomforting about it - it just doesn't seem quite right.

Or so I thought. A surprising (to me) number of people who commented on the post were simply offended by it instead. I hadn't anticipated the intensity of this reaction - the photo was not central to the content, really. But it was meant to reignite some of the same conflicting emotions that images of women in yoga can stir up more generally (at least when they start to be critically interrogated. Many people get really uncomfortable with that, and remarkably quickly.) I wanted to capture some of these warring emotions in one image, rather than juxtapose a "good" photo against a "bad" one (which is what one reader urged me to do instead).

But my intended strategy backfired a bit, as it became a distraction from my written content. But then again, maybe that was the lesson to be learned here: that the ideas I laid out in words couldn't necessarily compete (or hold a candle to, ha ha) the emotions ignited by a provocative image.

It's yet another testimony to the power of the photographic image. Which can be so potent, it's hard to step out of the emotional force field it generates.

So I started thinking about photography, and the ubiquity of these images in our culture today. I wanted to read the words of someone who had thought into this phenomenon long and well, which of course brought to mind Susan Sontag (pictured above). I realized then that we don't own a copy of On Photography, which seemed like enough of a lamentable lack in the holdings of our home library to justify spending $10 to order a copy - so I did.

I also became curious to revisit what Mark Singleton had written about the importance of photography in the creation of modern yoga. I didn't have time to reread the chapter that deals with this (8). But I did skim through to find this quote, which I like very much - there's a lot packed in here, and I think it's charming in its off-handed brilliance (like Mark himself, who I loved being able to meet this summer in Toronto . . . ):

Today, the yoga body has become the centerpiece of a transnational tableau of personalized well-being and quotidian redemption, relentlessly embellished on the pages of glossy publications like Yoga Journal. The locus of yoga is no longer at the center of an invisible ground of being, hidden from the gaze of all but the elite initiate or the mystic; instead, the lucent skin of the yoga model becomes the ubiquitous signifier of spiritual possibility, the specular projection screen of characteristically modern and democratic religious aspirations. In the yoga body - sold back to a million consumer-practitioners as an irresistible commodity of the holistic, perfectible self - surface and anatomical structure promise ineffable depth and the dream of incarnate transcendence.

Well . . . unpack that, and it's sort of like - ok, ouch (at least, perhaps, for us more committed yoga practitioners). But of course, he's right - at least socially and culturally. But being the sort of scholarly work that this is, it does leave out that back door of redemption that doesn't change over time - yeah, breathing some life back into that almost suffocated, but never extinguished inner light.

I also thought about how damn hard it is to find photographs of contemporary yoga that really capture the spirit of what - in any meaningful sense - it's really about. It's easier with meditation - perhaps because there's no impetus toward drawing our desiring gaze to the body, which is so inevitably commodified today. Instead, the photographer's focus is where it should be: on capturing the outer manifestation of that inner light.

Random Yoga Magic: Ballooning Spiders &c.

2011-11-15T22:49:00.001-06:00

I love random moments that feel like magic melded into themundane elements of everyday life.

I had a few of these this week, already. It’s good.

#1. I open the door to the room in my house where I practiceyoga. Stepping in, my eye is immediately caught by the sight of a spiderstrangely suspended in midair.

It’s hovering halfway between the floor and the ceiling,right over my round blue meditation cushion.

I stop moving and watch, curious. The spider drops straightdown, touches the meditation cushion, then bounces straight back up to where itwas before. Suspended in midair. In the middle of a room. No web in sight.

How is it doing that?I peer closer.

I don’t see anything other than a tiny gossamer trianglesuspended in midair a few inches above the spider. How is that there?, I wonder.Has the spider woven some sort of suspension mechanism from a speck of dust?

The spider floats. I stare.

Eventually, though, I decidethat I just want to practice.

I move my mat away from the spider, who’s invaded my normalarea. I decide to just let him be.

I start practicing. Next time I look behind me to check himout, he’s no longer in midair. I look up. Yup, he’s made it all the way up tothe ceiling.

It’s an old house. That was pretty far. I don’t know how hemanaged. But it was impressive.

This feels like a triumph. Even though I normally recoilfrom “bugs” (ewwh, gross), I’m oddlyhappy for this strange feat.

I go back to practicing. Next time I look back to check, thespider’s nowhere to be found. Disappeared. Vanished. Gone without a trace.

I’m glad. It feels metaphorical. I think of the thread thatI try to follow in my own life, in my own practice. It feels just as invisibleas whatever that spider was suspended from. But just as vital. I hope that I’mmoving up too. I think that I am.

It feels like a sign.

#2. Later, I stumble into a post explaining that what I’ve seenis a “ballooning spider.”

From “Travelling on Gossamer Without Wings,” by Tom Turpin,Professor of Entomology at Purdue University:

Spiderssometimes fly. Not under their own power, of course, but by a process known asballooning. Ballooning spiders hitch a ride on their silk as the breeze carriesit. Spider silk floating on wind currents is known as gossamer. It hasattracted attention for centuries. The word "gossamer" is an oldEnglish term, apparently based on a period of warm weather in November, knownas goose summer. That was the time of year when geese were eaten. Late fall isalso the time when ballooning spiders are most likely to be seen floating onthe breeze.

Yes, it was a warm day in November. But who knewthis was “goose summer”? I didn’t. And wtf was the spider doing inside thehouse, above my meditation cushion anyways?

(Besides giving me amagic sign, that is . . . )

I read on. And yes: another strangesynchronicity. Turpin quotes Whitman. Yep, old Walt, none other than thenamesake of this blog:

Anoiseless, patient spider, I mark'd where on a little promontory it stoodisolated,
Mark'd how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,
It launch'd forth filament, filament, filament out of itself:
Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them.
And you O my soul where you stand,
Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space.
Ceaselessly, musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them.
Till the bridge you will need be form'd, till the ductile anchor hold;
Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.

#3. I’m practicing nextto a woman I’m friendly with in my regular weekly yoga class. She’s a teacher,too. This particular class is full of yoga teachers.

Doing minutely detailedvariations of Bow. All of a sudden, there’s something that feels like anelectric CRACK in the air next to me. But all I hear instead is this lovelywoman next to me starting to cry, almost sobbing, and at the same time, ampingup her Ujjayi breathing. Breathing slowly, steadily, strongly, powerfully.Sobbing, and breathing.

I think, this sounds like a heart breaking – andopening. It feels like an energetic body cracking open – and growingstronger. I go deeper into my own backbend, and feel my own chest andshoulders open. It feels like inches; it feels like a seismic shift; it feelslike nothing special. Sobbing. Breathing.

Then everything shifts,and quiets. We finish class. Rolling up mats, our eyes meet. We pause, and hug.“It was nice practicing next to you today,” I say.

“You too,” she replies.“I’m glad you’re here.”

Yoga happens, I think. And then it’s on with the rest of the day.

Buddhist Practices of the Self: Reflections of a Post-Modern Ex-Academic Yogi

2011-10-23T21:15:00.001-05:00

All images in this post are works by British artist Andy Goldsworthy.

I went to a free lecture yesterday morning at the University of Chicago on "Buddhist Practices of the Self." It was given by Steven Collins, a professor in the South Asian Languages and Civilizations program there, who lists his current research interests as "the translation of Pali texts, civilization and gender, madness and possession." Now, how cool is that? This is the sort of academia that I love, truly.

And the experience and substance of his lecture were both right on target for me. After all, I had toiled away for years, getting a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago myself . . . so it was an odd experience to be back, much later, now a certified yoga teacher, writing a book about 21st century yoga - and still in the process of integrating my academic past and yogic present.

Practices of the self, indeed.

Philosophy as Self-Creation

The lecture began by fleshing out the concept of "practices of the self" via several historical examples. (And yes, all you knowledgeable readers out there, the fact that Buddhism doesn't believe in a "self" was discussed. But it would take too long to get into that here.) So, for example, the ancient Greeks believed that studying philosophy transformed the self. And that, really, was the point: meaningful knowledge changes who you are.

Learning in this sense is a very deliberate process of acculturation - a shared tradition designed to develop particular ways of being.

It saddens me to think about how much this contrasts with our taken-for-granted understandings of education and learning. The mainstream model is to accumulate facts and techniques in order to demonstrate our proficiency on tests. It's a consumer-based, factory-model mindset. Take it in, process it, churn it out.

The point of learning isn't to transform your inner state of being; it's to make your social self more marketable and competitive.

I also thought about how dominant cultural patterns in our own society encourage particular ways of being . . . and that if we systematically promote junk food, cheap entertainment, and mindless distraction, it has a profound effect on who we are . . .

And it's a pretty disturbing thought, given what's been going on here lately.

From the Monastery to the Middle Class

Collins also talked about how until recently, practices of the self were found only in exclusive settings, such as monastic communities. In pre-modern Buddhism, meditation was for monks only (and, to a lesser extent, nuns. Collins briefly mentioned how nuns once existed in the Theravada tradition, but disappeared quite a long time ago. It's not clear why.) Traditionally, only a very small minority of people were assumed to be suited for such serious, engaged practices - whether philosophy, meditation, studying scripture, or whatever.

While the masses had their devotional religious practices, these were quite different. And most of the population was necessarily absorbed in the work of everyday survival in any event.

Beginning in the mid-19th century, however, the rise of an educated middle class (particularly in the West, but also worldwide) expanded some of these practices out to a small, but significant minority of interested lay people. And so today, people like yours truly (and probably most of the people who bother to read this blog) practice meditation (and other parallel) techniques that were formerly the provenance of monks only.

Integrating Philosophy and Yoga

Now, I basically knew all this already. But what was interesting to me was the more personally recursive nature of this whole lecture experience. I had studied at the same institution in which I was now listening to this lecture. But at the time, I had no interest in yoga, meditation, Buddhism, or anything like that.

I had, however, been very interested in knowledge. And I certainly believed that serious learning was a practice of the self in the sense discussed in this lecture. But it was only later, after doing some the practices that I was now returning to hear about in this lecture, that I discovered that there are also other, very powerful ways of learning that transform the self too - e.g., yoga.

So I was listening, and reflecting on how much I like this sort of incredibly elegant, erudite, academic learning (when it's well done, as this was, it's an absolute art). But I also realized that even when I had been the most single-mindedly into it, I had also found something lacking there too.

And now I know why. The experience of doing yoga opened up parts of my mind for learning that simply weren't being systematically cultivated before. Or at least that's how I think of it.

ISO More Post-Modern Yoga Philosophy

I wish, however, that the study of yoga today were far enough along that I could go to hear a parallel lecture on "Yogic Practices of the Self." Because I feel that the core idea presented - that these systematic practices of transformation have a long and important history, but that who's engaged with them has expanded, and that as that's happened, the practices themselves have changed - applies to yoga as well as Buddhism.

But yoga, being body-based, tends to be much less intellectually rigorous (today - not historically), mirroring our culture's larger mind/body split.

By the same token, however, I feel that bringing the body back into philosophy, and consciously recognizing how important both are in human development (particularly today, when we are so cut off from nature, and so alienated from our own physicality) is critical.

For me, integrating the mind and body, the academic and the yogic, my past and present feels very synergistic, compelling, creative, and enlivening. And I can't help but think that it would be good to have something along the same lines happening on a broader societal level as well.

And to some extent, of course, it is. I've read some great writing on yoga in the past year. But I also feel like we haven't even explored the full tip of the iceberg. There's still so much interesting and significant work that (in my view) calls out to be done.

I guess my no-longer-secret ambition is to give a lecture on "Yogic Practices of the Self" someday myself . . . I have tons of ideas, although it would take awhile to get them organized. And then, the big question, of course, is: who would come? So for now, I'll just stick to blogging.

http://www.ucblueash.edu/artcomm/web/w2005_2006/maria_Goldsworthy/TEST/index.html

Occupy Wall Street: Then & Now

2011-10-01T23:12:00.000-05:00

PREAMBLE AND DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES OF THE KNIGHTS OF LABOR OF AMERICA, 1886

The alarming development and aggressiveness of great capitalists and corporations, unless checked, will inevitably lead to the pauperization and hopeless degradation of the toiling masses.

It is imperative, if we desire to enjoy the full blessings of life, that a check be placed upon unjust accumulation, and the power for evil of aggregated wealth.

. . . Therefore we have formed the Order of Knights of Labor, for the purpose of organizing and directing the power of the industrial masses, not as a political party, for it is more . . . we declare to the world that are our aims are:

To make individual and moral worth, not wealth, the true standard of individual and National greatness.
To secure to the workers the full enjoyment of the wealth they create, sufficient leisure in which to develop their intellectual, moral, and social faculties: all of the benefits, recreation and pleasures of association; in a word, to enable them to share in the gains and honors of advancing civilization . . .

In order to secure these results, we demand at the hands of the State:

The recognition, by incorporation, of trades' unions, orders and such other associations as may be organized by the working masses to improve their condition and protect their rights . . .
The prohibition by law of the employment of children under 15 years of age in workshops, mines and factories . . .
To secure for both sexes equal pay for equal work.
To shorten the hours of labor by a general refusal to work for more than eight hours.

If you believe in organization, you are earnestly invited to join with us in securing these objects. All information on the subject of organization should be sent to the General Secretary-Treasurer of the Order, who will have an Organizer visit you and assist in furthering the good work.

(full text here)

DECLARATION OF THE OCCUPATION

OF NEW YORK CITY

NYC General Assembly, September 29, 2011

As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling ofmass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write sothat all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can knowthat we are your allies.

As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that thefuture of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that oursystem must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up tothe individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; thata democratic government derives its just power from the people, butcorporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and theEarth; and that no true democracy isattainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you ata time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest overjustice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We havepeaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.

They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosureprocess, despite not having the original mortgage.
They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, andcontinue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.
They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in theworkplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity andsexual orientation.
They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, andundermined the farming system through monopolization.
They have profited off of the torture, confinement, andcruel treatment of countless animals, and actively hide these practices.
They have continuously sought to strip employees of theright to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions . . .

To the people of the world,

We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Streetin Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.

Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy publicspace; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutionsaccessible to everyone.

To all communities that take action and form groups in thespirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of theresources at our disposal.

Join us and make your voices heard!

(full text here)

Yoga, Postmodernism, and the Search for the "True Self"

2011-09-12T12:00:00.000-05:00

Last night, my husband, older son, and I were in thekitchen, cleaning up after dinner. My son, who’s 13 and just starting 8^thgrade, starting talking about how he’s psyched that his Humanities teacher isOK with him doing his report for “Banned Books Week” on the 1950s classic, On the Road, which he’s been reading onand off since mid-summer.

Illegal photo of OTR scroll via T.Hawk/Flickr

Given that my son is much more interested in skateboarding and socializing than literature, the parental ears perkup on hearing that there's a book that he’s really enthusiastic about. And so, rather than just going into the standard, yes that’s good dear now just go and do your homework! mode, we gotinto a really interesting conversation that made me think about what it’s likefor him and all the other creative, adventurous kids growingup in a culture that feels gnawingly consumed by competitive pressures,reactionary manipulations, and apocalyptic-tinged fears.

He sums up Jack Kerouac’s road-tripping madness - driving backand forth and back and forth across the country with the iconic Neal Cassady atthe wheel, who talks incessantly while driving 90 mph (and this back in thedays before interstate highways existed) - with an appreciative: “They were just nuts.”

“And you know what Cassady did when winter came and thewindshield iced up?,” he went on. “He'd just roll down his window,stick his head out, and keep driving.”

“Well, that’s ridiculously dangerous!,” I counter inMom-mode. “Don’t get any ideas.”

But that’s just the obligatory responsible parent reflex. Iknow what he’s getting at. It was in Onthe Road, after all, that Kerouac wrote about the people he loved in waysthat fired the imagination of the crazy-assed 1960s generation to come:

theonly people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk,mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who neveryawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellowroman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you seethe blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!'

And yeah,growing up at a time when well-meaning parents feel that if they want their kids to “get ahead” and avoid the fate of a dead-end, low-paying service sector job,they'd better get them into a competitive preschool, have them doing homework inkindergarten, and make sure they keep going nonstop from there – of course you mightwonder, as my son did: “Whatever happened to all that crazy stuff thatused to be go down? Because there’s nothing like that today.”

Ken Kesey & the Merry Pranksters

My husbandand I said . . . well, you know, back when society was way more traditional andstraight-laced than today, there used to be this belief that if you could justbreak free of the soul-killing constraints of modern society, then you’d be free to fully experience life – full of passion, authenticity, creativity, art, and sociallydefiant meaning.

On the Road was one iconic text of this much larger movement, whichreached its apotheosis in the cultural revolutions of the 1960s-70s.

“But then,when we finally did tear down all these traditions, a lot of people just crashed andburned."

The hippies, who succeeded the Beat movement which Kerouacsymbolized, assumed that liberation automaticallygenerated joy. The next generation of counter-cultural artists, however, was personifiedby the brilliant, suicidal Kurt Cobain.

Kurt Cobain "mock memorial," Seattle

And Kerouachimself died of alcoholism at 47 in 1969.

“So, no onecan really believe all that anymore,” added my husband. (This is what it’slike having two political science professors as parents.) “We have theseincredibly creative writers who are brilliant social critics, like David FosterWallace, but there's an underlying despair.”

Although of course, there's something oh-so-late-20th-century about being so concerned with, let alone despairing over our seeming inability to experience authenticity and meaning. In 2011, it doesn't seem so cool to care so much. Plus there this (in my mind, misguided) sense that we don't have the luxury - "in these tough economic times" - of grappling with the big questions, anyway.

But not in yoga – right?

While themodernist avant-garde believed it was possible to reject conventional values andseize authentic experience, the post-modern writer finds himself stranded inendless simulacra. He can respond with irony and/or despair. But there's an apprehension that we've become irretrievably lost in the meaningless hall of mirrors that constitutes contemporary consumerculture.

But - thisrepresents only the (rather hyper self-conscious) worldview of what’s in fact atiny minority of artists, intellectuals, and others who’re deeply unhappy aboutthe state of our society and share a more-or-less coherent explanation of why we are where we are. I’m pretty familiar with atleast certain parts of that worldview, and find a lot of it quite compelling.

But, now that I’m so immersed in yoga culture, I’m alsoquite aware that what I’ve been writing about in this post so far represents aperspective that most practitioners don’t share – at all.

On the contrary, contemporary yoga is suffused with thelanguage of “finding your true self.” Post-modern despair over theimpossibility of authentic experience is completely alien to yoga culture – atleast, that is, on any self-conscious, explicitly stated level.

I believe, however, that one of the biggest reasonsthat yoga’s become so popular is precisely because it claims to offer a directroute to discovering a deep sense of authenticity by tapping into your “trueself” – an experience of self which most people lack, but deeplycrave.

This promise of “finding your true self” resonates so deeplyprecisely because we live in a culture that makes it extremely difficult to developan organic, rooted, vital sense of oneself.

Yoga also promises to deliver something like that sense ofoverflowing, life-affirming energy that Kerouac’s riff on "those fabulous yellow roman candles" evokes. Andagain, that’s something that’s relatively difficult to find in most of our culturetoday.

In other words, whether we realize it or not, a big reasonthat yoga’s so popular is that it offers an antidote to post-modern despair.

If that’s true, then the gazillion dollar question (ironyintended) is: Can yoga really deliver?

If you're interested, you can read my companion post, "Yoga and the Commodification of the True Self," over at Elephant Journal.

Collective Creativity & Magic: Reflections on Yoga Community Toronto

2011-09-03T14:01:00.003-05:00

It’s already been two weeks since I had the honor of participating in a panel discussion on yoga blogging at Yoga Festival Toronto (YFT), along with the inimitable Roseanne Harvey of It’s All Yoga, Baby, and Bob Weisenberg of Elephant Journal. I’d planned on reporting on this event – a post that I’d written publicizing it generated some good discussion (both supportive and skeptical), and I’d promised to follow up.

Now that I’m back home, however (having tacked on some extra time for a family vacation in Canada), I realize that it doesn’t make sense to report on the blogging panel in a way that separates it from the overall conference. Because much as I valued it, the truth is that the blogging panel was just one, very small part of a much larger, deliciously organic whole.

Rather than trying to give a run-down of the many great classes, workshops, lectures, and discussions that were offered (many more any one person could possibly attend), I want to try and give a taste of the overall YFT vibe. More ambitiously, as I attempt to translate this taste into words, I hope to puzzle out the pieces that created the synergy of this event – that sense, which I certainly felt, that the proverbial whole was greater than the sum of its parts.

Intimacy and Ease

I felt a remarkable sense of intimacy and ease pervading the YFT experience. Being much more of an introvert than a “people person” – I generally hate crowds and find most prolonged group experiences draining – I really noticed how remarkably easy it felt to hang out with the people that came to this conference.

Now, YFT is all about building a yoga community in Toronto, bringing people together across the lines of method, studio, and philosophy that so often divide practitioners from each other. But me, I’m not from Toronto – hell, I’m not even Canadian (although my sons enjoy giving me shit about how I’d like to be, given my dismay over the current state of American politics and culture. But that’s another story). So I did have a bit of apprehension about being an outsider – one of only a few Americans, someone who’s not conversant with the local scene.

But it wasn’t like that. While I did sense that Toronto has an on-the-ground yoga community that I’m obviously not a part of, it felt remarkably open. Rather than coming up against a foreign group that I had to figure out how to fit into, I had a sense of stepping into a culture that fosters intimacy and ease.

I was really struck by the fact that YFT is run by a group of volunteers that’s working quite hard, for many hours with no pay. Yet there seemed to be a remarkable lack of stress, anxiety, and resentment. Of course, life being life, there may well have been tensions under the surface that I didn’t see. But to me, it looked like a group of people who genuinely enjoyed working together to create a larger collective experience. I found that to be hopeful, and inspiring.

Honoring Multi-Dimensional Difference

Another thing that I found remarkable about YFT was the extent to which the programming included not only many different facets of yoga, but also many different ways of working with each one. In addition to asana classes, there were many in-depth explorations of yoga history, philosophy, sociology, service, and so on. And, the asana itself varied from the very precise Iyengar instruction provided by the 9th-level certified Marlene Mawhinny to the “seriously West Coast” vinyasa of Blissolgy master Eion Finn.

Of course, having a mix of asana methods has become standard at most yoga festivals. The fact that YFT coupled this diversity of asana methods with sufficient time to explore some extremely different takes on yoga history and philosophy, as well as the culture of contemporary practice, however, made it feel much richer and more meaningful to me.

YFT’s commitment to honoring different understandings of yoga was most beautifully illustrated by the radical diversity of its three keynote events (which were free and open to the public) that closed each day of the conference.

Dr. David Frawley at YFT, August 2011

On the first day, David Frawley sat cross-legged on an easy chair and serenely expounded on the intricacies of Vedic Science for a good two hours (the longest keynote address, he noted, that he’s ever given). Aryuveda, Jyotish, Vastu, Yoga, Sanskrit. Sacred sound, ritual action, pranic science. His words flowed out with effortless grace. As I listened, I envisioned a diamond lattice of knowledge, each part crystalline, inextricably connected to the whole; each part crystalline, perfectly contained within itself.

To me, it really didn’t matter whether I “believed” his account of the Sanatama Dharma, or “eternal law,” or not. (Frankly, I found it far too much of a totalizing system to swallow hook, line, and sinker.) What mattered was that I had the privilege of listening to an in-depth lecture by an incredibly learned man who’s devoted his life to studying yoga and is masterful at what he does. I loved and valued it deeply.

But what I loved even more was that on the following day, I had to opportunity to listen to yet another brilliant man, who shares a parallel passion for yoga but works with a radically different understanding and craft.

I found it rather perversely delightful that Frawley’s initial address on the unchanging verities of Vedic Science was followed by a second keynote with Priya Thomas (blogger at Shivers Up the Spine) interviewing Mark Singleton (author of Yoga Body) about his path-breaking study of how the cultural construction of the “yoga body” changed dramatically during the modern period – and the undeniable significance of this fact for contemporary practice.

Priya Thomas interviews Mark Singleton, YFT 2011

My favorite moment in the interview came when Priya started prodding Mark to disclose more about how he understands his own practice. “Is yoga – as you personally experience it – ‘spiritual,’ ‘religious,’ or ‘secular’?,” she asked, her tone insisting on an honest answer.

A pregnant pause. “Yes,” Mark replied, looking Priya straight in the eyes.

Another heartbeat of a moment passed. Scattered laughter erupted from the crowd. “No, really.” Priya repeated her question. But Mark, ever thoughtful and polite, simply refused to choose one of her proffered categories.

Instead, he carefully explained why he couldn’t work within the framework that these taken-for-granted, yet culturally baggage-laden words – “spiritual,” “religious,” “secular” – necessarily create.

And I loved this . . . because I completely agree.

Digging deeper, you can’t contain yoga in such boxes – that’s just not the way it works.

Raj Balkaran (far right) & musicians (need names), YFT 2011

And the third and final keynote presentation confirmed this. The last event on the last day wasn’t asana, pranayama, lecture, or discussion – wonderful and valuable as they are. Instead, it was music, chanting, and mythical storytelling, with Raj Balkaran and two young, brilliant musicians weaving a magical web of beautiful sound and ineffable meaning.

We all sat or laid down on the floor, let it wash over us, and shared the collective magic of the moment.

Creative Synergy

The culture of intimacy and ease that the Toronto yoga community embodied, combined with the structure of multi-dimensional difference they honored, created a natural synergy that sparked many such magical moments throughout the three-day festival. And this, for me, is where the deeper experience of yoga is found.

I believe that everyone, yoga practitioner or no, recognizes such moments. There’s a sharply piercing, but also deeply satisfying sense that everyday time’s split open for an infinite nanosecond. There’s so much conveyed in one flash from someone’s eyes, you could meditate on it all day. You see the sunlight and feel it on your body in a way that suddenly makes it completely wondrous, eternally new.

We all have those moments. But if we practice yoga in ways that work for us, we start having them more and more. And if we practice together in ways that create a collective synergy, we open up that wellspring of possibility even more deeply.

I had a lot of those moments in Toronto. And I’m grateful for it. I believe that the people there are doing really good work, and hope that others will support them.

And whether we’re ever in Toronto or not, I believe that it’s important to recognize the immense value of taking whatever opportunities we have to co-create the lived experience that there really is no "us" and “them.”

It is possible to create an open community that’s fueled by hope and trust, rather than a closed one based on fear and cynicism.

And we need that collective nourishment today, more than ever.

With special thanks to Matthew Remski and Scott Petrie for hospitality and inspiration.

The World in a Cucumber Seed: The Universal and the Particular in the Community Garden

2011-08-13T18:22:00.001-05:00

Everyday Beauty in the Garden

I’m an urbanite, and essentially a complete ignoramous when it comes to gardening. Several years ago, I moved into a house with no garden to speak of, which was fine with me. Having grown up in the ‘burbs, I associated gardening with feeling under the gun to hassle with neat lawns and decorative plantings to keep up appearances with the neighbors. It just didn’t inspire me at all.

But now, I’m living in an urban neighborhood with only minimal standards of lawn upkeep (weeds and messiness are fine, as long as it’s reasonably respectable and not raging out of control). So that enervating sense of keeping-up-with-the-Joneses is gone. Then, I have a number of friends who love, absolutely love working their plots in the local community garden. Plus, I’ve become increasingly invested in progressive food politics. And so, voila: Suddenly this summer, I found myself interested in gardening for literally the first time in my life.

I got on the waiting list for a space at a local community garden. Right around July 4th, one opened up – late in the season, yes, but not too late to get started. So with my husband’s help, I carted over much incredibly stinky compost (we have a composting bin in back of our house); some tomato, eggplant, zucchini, and pepper plants from Home Depot; and various organic seeds from Whole Paycheck. We dumped the compost and mixed it into the soil. I stuck the plants and seeds into the ground. From that point on, I was pretty clueless. What happens next?

Garden Entrance

Life, Death, and Rebirth

Me being me, my little more than a month’s worth of experience at the community garden hasn’t simply been about the mechanics of planting, weeding, and watering. Oh no. Every time I go, I find myself slipping into reveries of metaphor and meaning, musing on the symbolism of composting, the politics of community, and the violence supporting the pastoral (more on that later).

The first revelation was the cucumbers. I had planted a few seeds, trying as best I could to follow the directions on the packet. Six, spaced several inches apart, about 1” deep into a mound of dirt. Fine. That didn’t seem so hard.

About two weeks later, I noticed a profusion of little two-leafed seedlings sprouting up – not only where I’d planted the seeds, but all over my little 10’ x 10’ plot. WTF? Were these really cucumbers, or something else? I went home and Googled it. And yes, these were definitely little baby cucumber plants. But I’d planted six, and gotten what looked like hundreds.

How could this be?

Suddenly, it dawned on me: the compost. I recalled reading somewhere, “never put seeds in your compost,” and wondering: Why? What difference would that make?

I remembered my 10-year-old’s stubborn resistance to eating the cucumbers in his salad throughout the preceding year. I remembered a cucumber that had ended up rotting in the refrigerator. And I remembered throwing all those uneaten cucumbers straight into the compost bin.

Cucumbers!

They’d been there through the Chicago winter, buried in a mess of fruit and vegetable peelings, grass clippings, and dead leaves. They’d been carried over to the community garden and dumped. And now, they were springing to life – rich, vital, abundant life.

I was bemused, impressed, and amazed. I had simply thought of composting as being responsible with my garbage – something that I did along with hauling my recycling to the local park for collection (Chicago, shamefully, still not having a citywide pick-up program). But now, thanks to my green trash keeping, my little garden was bursting with fresh, green, resilient, and inspiringly simple beauty.

It was all so metaphorically rich. Cucumbers from the Compost! The Phoenix from the Ashes! The Resurrection and the Cross! Hades and Persephone! Death and Rebirth!

But it was also pretty funny, because really: WTF was I going to do with all those cucumbers??

Triage

Well, I may know next to nothing about gardening, but I’m not a total idiot. I realized that some of those cucumbers had to go. Or they’d take over everything, and then some.

So, feeling chagrined but determined, I pulled up lots of them. Figured I’d keep a good bit more than I’d planted – although one can eat only so many cucumbers, it seemed like it was meant to be.

Random Magic

I felt a little bad pulling out those new little lives after the valiant showing they’d made. But I rationalized that by throwing them into the community garden’s compost pile, I was simply setting them up for their next round of reincarnation and rebirth.

But then – the ones I’d left got bigger. Again, being clueless, I hadn’t foreseen how big those little seedlings might get. A friend suggested that I transplant some to the area outside the garden fence that’s reserved for open picking. That seemed cool – sharing this unexpected abundance! So, I dutifully transplanted several. They didn’t like it too much – went through about a week of wilting – but then rallied and revived.

Still, my remaining cucumbers kept getting bigger. (Duh, right? But I didn’t know!) My savvy gardening friend then pointed out that it’s best to grow cucumbers on a trellis. OK, I thought. Learning by doing. I’ll get a trellis! They can climb up that, and I’ll have room for my other stuff. And I won’t have to kill any more of them!

Well . . . while I succeeded in installing a chicken wire trellis, the neighboring zucchini had gotten so big by that time that I couldn’t help bungling into it while setting it up. Some of the stalks broke, but I figured – hey, so what? Everything’s growing so beautifully, just stick it in the ground and it comes up! It’s be fine!

Oh, the wholesome joys of organic gardening! La la la . . .

But then, a few days later – my romantic bubble burst.

Trouble in Paradise

Bugs. Swarming BUGS. Horrible, grey, leggy, shelly things. Attacking my zucchini like the proverbial plague of locusts. And – much to my guilt and chagrin – they were clearly concentrating their attack on the parts of the zucchini that I’d damaged in my mission to install the cucumber trellis.

Ick, BIG Ick. But what to do? Going back to Google. I quickly identified the invaders as “squash bugs.” Then I started researching remedies. Any intervention had to be organic by the bylaws of the garden. Which was cool with me, but – what to do?

I read through one chat board that proposed a wacko range of homemade solutions. (Garlic and onions steeped in water and strained, hot peppers and coffee grounds, etc.) There seemed to be no consensus on what might work, other than “picking them off by hand and dropping them in a bucket of soapy water.”

Picking them off by hand?! BLECH! I didn’t want to do that. Plus, it’s not like this was in my backyard. I couldn’t hang out in the community garden all day, picking bugs off zucchini.

Happily, I found a solution. A spray bottle filled with organic dish soap diluted in water! Could it really be that simple?

Killer (Biodegradable!) Soap Spray

Full of skepticism, I went back to the garden, armed with my spray bottle. Resigned to my fate, I also lugged along a plastic bucket of soapy water. Figured the soap wouldn’t work, anyway, so I’d just pick off as many as I could.

But – it did work. I started spraying those buggers, and they starting keeling over, dead. WOW. I was thrilled.

And suddenly, my whole metaphorical frame of reference shifted. I had been in the Garden of Eden – everything effortlessly blossoming, verdant, beautiful, abundant, lovely! Now, I was immersed in the Darwinian struggle for survival. The Hobbesian war of all against all – “poor, nasty, brutish, and short”!

I had assumed that organic gardening was so wholesome – peaceful, pristine – full of love and light and harmony and Ahimsa. But now, here I was, up close and personal, going mano a mano against an army of squash bugs, a determined killing machine.

I am going to KILL you squash bug mofos (squirt squirt squirt) – DIE, MFs, DIE!

Really, it would have felt a lot cleaner if I had just sprayed them with pesticide from afar. But there I was, with the squirt bottle, right up in their faces. By the time I was finished, I knew what those bugs looked like in every stage of their lives, from egg to nymph to adolescent to full-grown to ginormous swaggering big ‘uns. And I was determined to nuke them all.

The Particular and the Universal

My attack was successful. After a few minor reengagements and skirmishes, all that was left of the squash bugs were some remaining carcasses being carried off by ants.

I thought about the Jains, a religious sect that includes a tradition that’s so committed to Ahimsa, or nonviolence, that the only food that’s eaten is fruit that’s fallen from the trees – no picking. The highly observant put a mask over their nose and mouth to prevent killing gnats by accidently breathing them in. They carefully sweep the path in front of them before each step in order to avoid inadvertently squishing an ant or a spider.

This always struck me as astonishing – and fascinating. It’s a commitment to realizing a level of ethical purity that’s so uncompromising, it seems that living itself is a violation.

Certainly, nothing could be philosophically further from the vulgarized embrace of Darwinism that pervades so much of American popular culture – celebrating the survival of the fittest, ruthlessly consigning the weak to their fate.

Firepit at the Garden

It’s an interesting comparison to make as I’m drawn into my ruminations about the cycles of life – and death, and rebirth – I see in my little community garden. Nothing seems more elemental and true than connecting with nature. When I celebrate the resilience of the cucumber seeds, mourn the culling of the extra seedlings, and defend my crops from invaders, I feel that I’m somehow plugged into the true, the universal, the authentic.

This is a little snapshot of how it’s done. Human beings have been working to extract sustenance from the earth for endless generations.

And to some extent, it’s true. Bracketing for a moment the grandiosity of elevating my little garden plot to grand philosophical proportions, there remains some mysterious, elemental connection to nature in seeing the compost producing life, which will then inevitably decay, become earth, and regenerate life again.

At the same time, I’m drawn like a magnet to capturing my experience in metaphors. And the meaning I make of my experience plants me squarely into my own culture: Eden, Darwin, Hobbes.

Which is fine. But I’m well aware that there’s also other, radically different ways of interpreting what appear to be the elemental truths of the natural world.

This makes contemporary life extremely difficult – we all seem to have a primordial desire to be members of a like-minded tribe. We’re easily threatened by alternative ways of interpreting the world, sometimes for no reason – and sometimes for vey very good ones. After all, we do have ideological enemies who’d love to squash us like so many bugs.

It all comes down to the same familiar riff. The universally true and the culturally particular are always entwined. They’re not the same, but can’t be separated. We tap into our life force with one. We satisfy our need to make sense of it with the other.

In the beginning, there was Eden. In the beginning, the cosmic egg separated into yin and yang. In the beginning, a ball of dense matter exploded and the universe was formed.

I’m enjoying my little garden. Now, I have a reason to spend time outside, watch life grow, look carefully at what’s happening, and be under the open sky.

Politics, Spirituality, and Postmodern Malaise

2011-08-10T16:51:00.001-05:00

I was at a dinner party the other night with a group of people I don’t know very well. It was a nice evening, if for me a bit socially foreign, as this wasn’t my usual, more culturally sympathico crew. We quaffed icy margaritas in luminous blue “bird bath” cocktail glasses, ate a lovely meal, had a bit of wine. As the night wore on, the talk turned a bit silly. Some of the women started competing to tell the funniest story about the all-American crapola food their mothers had fed them back in the day – “TV” dinners, plastic-wrapped “treats,” and water-reconstituted “mashed potatoes” straight out of the box!

This was all quite funny. It also deepened my feelings of alienation a bit, however (a character flaw, I’m prone to that). After all, my mom had experienced a health food conversion back when I was eight and banned all white bread and the like from the house (which I protested at the time, but have of course since come to appreciate). So I had no stories to share.

The women’s talk then shifted to what they feed their kids now. While the boxed mashed potatoes have been ditched, the tradition of questionable “food” lives on in new forms. “Let’s face it, I don’t even want to know where my meat comes from!,” one vivacious blonde laughed.

“Yeah, I just like it to appear on the shelf in neat little plastic-wrapped chunks on white Styrofoam trays,” a witty brunette chortled. “I mean, that’s just how Mother Nature makes it, right?”

Ironic laughter. But I found it hard to laugh, because I was thinking: Should I launch a little speech about how it’s good to think about these things, even if it’s unpleasant? I could appeal to their maternal interests by pitching it as important for the kids’ health . . . Should I tell them that I avoid eating much meat and that if I do buy it, it’s only organic – and that I’ve even trekked out to a small, family-owned farm in Wisconsin to meet said cows “in person”?

Um, no. I didn’t. I stayed silent. Too worried about being the fish out of water, bursting the fun bubble, seeming stuffy, sounding self-righteous, rocking the boat. Wanting to be polite. Wanting to fit in. Wanting to avoid airing unpleasant facts that might make others uncomfortable – and me even more alienated.

I felt kinda bad about it. I do care about food politics – a lot. (Note: If you don’t know the issues at stake, watch “Food, Inc.” and keep going from there. There’s tons of information readily available about the horrors of industrial food and mass-market meat production.) But I let it go. The moment passed. Life went on.

Yesterday, however, I read this fiery post critiquing the stunning degree of political apathy among American yoga practitioners and started thinking about it again. Because I feel that a lot of what’s going on in the yoga community today parallels my little dinner party incident. Whether we admit it or not, we often don’t want to know the disturbing details of the larger political, economic, social, and environmental realities our lives are enmeshed in. And even when we do know, we often don’t want to take a stand because we don’t want to inflict this unpleasantness on others (or make it more uncomfortable for ourselves).

Spiritual Apathy

In fact, I’d say that these dynamics are so powerful that a whole set of “spiritual” beliefs has grown up to legitimate them. Functionally, these ideas keep many of us from having to confront the disquieting fact that we don’t want to know and don’t want to take a stand.

Here, I’m thinking about beliefs like “thinking positive thoughts produces positive outcomes” – not just in particular circumstances, but all the time, no matter what. One of my (now ex-) yoga teachers, for example, once lectured me on how small-minded I was because I didn’t believe that “sending healing thoughts and breath” out to the BP oil spill would be sufficient to stop the flow! If that sort of belief doesn’t (unconsciously) function to rationalize political ignorance and disengagement, I don’t know what does.

Then, there’s a lot of spiritual beliefs floating around like “everything is perfect as it is right now,” “everything happens for a reason,” and “The Universe always gives you just what you need right now.” Now, these could (and in my mind, should) be interpreted as inspirational calls for a depth of radical acceptance of what is that’s exceedingly difficult to realize, precisely because it entails an eyes-wide-open embrace of both the joy and pain, beauty and tragedy, sublimity and horrors of life.

Really taking it all in like that, however, is fucking hard. And it poses a challenge that’s utterly absent in the way that these ideas tend to manifest in yoga circles, where there’s an implicit insistence that being properly “spiritual” means staying locked inside some pastel-colored bubble where everything looks beautiful and right and good – PERIOD. No unpleasant issues raised; no difficult questions asked.

Confronting Crisis

That’s not reality. Just read The New York Times (not perfect, but one of the only decent newspapers left) and it’ll become clear pretty fast that our world is in crisis. If you’re still reading this post, you most likely know the litany all-too-well already: global warming, environmental destruction, economic recession, double-digit unemployment, growing inequality, dysfunctional government, Wall Street criminality, family breakdown, human trafficking, irrational demagogues, cultural decadence, obesity epidemic, reactionary backlash. The list goes on – and on – and on.

And when you start taking it all in, it’s deeply frightening. Because really, what we’re looking at are numerous trends that point toward the destruction of life as we know it – both socially and, even worse, environmentally.

Plus, most of us who aren’t right-wing reactionaries feel like there’s no existing political movement to join that seems like it might be effective in addressing these problems. Some of us (like me, for example) invested a lot of hope in the 2008 election and are now feeling disappointed and bereft.

Then there’s that horrible feeling of postmodern malaise – that the problems confronting us are too big, too amorphous, too complex, too embedded, and too interwoven to provide us with any solid points of leverage for positive change.

Seeing this, is it really any wonder that we’re attracted to ideas that sugarcoat the situation for us?

Moving Forward

No, I think that it’s perfectly natural – and to some degree, even healthy and necessary. Because nothing’s gained by overwhelming people with so much bad news that they become despondent, dispirited, and depressed. Or, for that matter, get angry, resentful, and possibly violent (because if this isn’t happening in the yoga community, it sure is elsewhere).

I myself stopped reading the newspaper for awhile because I just couldn’t take it anymore. Day after day after day of bad news. What’s the point in knowing this stuff, anyway? What good does it do? Because if you’re not politically powerful (and maybe even if you are), what can you do? And if the answer realistically appears to be “nothing,” why bother with anything?

These are, I think, legitimate questions. I certainly struggle with them. My conclusion at this point, though, is that it’s important to be as politically informed and engaged as we can be without sacrificing whatever practices we (hopefully) have to cultivate inner strength, compassion, equanimity, and other good stuff in our everyday lives.

Ideally, for those of us who experience yoga and meditation as spiritual practices (or have other, equivalent commitments), there’s reciprocity between the individual and the collective here. That is, the more that we build our internal strength, the more that we’re able to take in – and appropriately respond to – the social and environmental crises we face. And, conversely, tackling the challenge of that sort of difficult learning and engagement increases our spiritual strength.

I would love nothing more than to see contemporary practices of yoga and meditation (as well as progressive-minded spirituality, religion, and/or ethical humanism more generally) start cultivating more conscious commitments to engaging with our current crises in newly creative ways. The old models aren’t working. We want – and need – some compelling new paradigms. But nothing’s emerged yet.

Practicing Freedom

So the practice, I think, is to do what we can. It may be as tiny as finding the right way to raise issues about the politics of food at a dinner party. (Next time . . . ) It may be cultivating the inner strength necessary simply to learn about something that you know is important, but find disturbing. It could be as big as challenging damaging politics-as-usual at work – or at the ballot box – or in the streets.

I don’t know what’s coming; none of us do. I do, however, believe that the more people who’re working to be positively engaged with politics and society and to be spiritually centered, the more hope there is for our collective future.

Even though it’s difficult, the more that we do this work, the more that we’re liberated from the pervasive post-modern fear and malaise that’s eating away at us all (whether we recognize it or not).

And come what may, we can be comforted by the fact that even having a taste of such freedom is beautiful, nourishing, life affirming, and good.

"With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,  it is still a beautiful world."

2011-07-31T13:18:00.000-05:00

Apparently this prose poem, written by Max Ehrmann in 1927, is quite famous; even to the point of being so over-promoted with Hallmark Card-esque imagery back in the 1940s-50s that its juice got lost in the rising tide of sap. I, however, never heard of it until today, and so for me, it feels fresh. Not only that, but kinda reassuring as an old-school talisman of a better side of American culture than what we've been swamped in of late, particularly as we watch our political leaders engineer train wrecks that risk much and promise little. At any rate, thought I share in the hopes that others may also find it interesting, and maybe even a bit inspiring - I did.

Desiderata

Go placidly amid the noise and the haste,

 and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible, without surrender,

be on good terms with all persons.

Speak your truth quietly and clearly;

 and listen to others,

 even to the dull and the ignorant;

 they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons;

they are vexatious to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others,

you may become vain or bitter,

 for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.

Keep interested in your own career, however humble;

it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs,

for the world is full of trickery.

 But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;

 many persons strive for high ideals,

 and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection.

 Neither be cynical about love,

for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment,

it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years,

gracefully surrendering the things of youth.

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.

 But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.

Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline,

be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe

 no less than the trees and the stars;

you have a right to be here.

And whether or not it is clear to you,

no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God,

whatever you conceive Him to be.

And whatever your labors and aspirations,

 in the noisy confusion of life,

keep peace in your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,

 it is still a beautiful world.

 Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

Yay, Free Yoga Classes at the Mall! But what are we really practicing in these Temples of Consumerism?

2011-07-27T13:53:00.032-05:00

Reading this news report, I just had to laugh. But when I watched the accompanying news clip and saw all those earnest young women sitting with their eyes closed and hands in prayer, I felt more like crying.

Surrounded by sleek athletic wear, purses and accessories, 30 men and women at the Town Center mall on Friday tried to focus on their yoga poses and resist the temptation to shop.

Employees of Lululemon Athletica, a fashionable yoga-apparel chain that opened in the mall on Friday, moved racks and shelves to the sides of the store to make room for the yogis, who spent an hour before the mall opened doing their lunges, reaches, backbends and hip-openers . . .

Participant Cathy Rosenberg of Delray Beach, who brought her daughter, Eliza, 14, said she was almost panting with consumer lust when she walked into the store and saw the colorful and stylish clothing displays, which emphasize purple, aqua and gray for the upcoming fall season. But she settled into the yoga session and was no longer preoccupied.

"There's a lot in life that can be a distraction," said Rosenberg, 48, a mother of two. "This is a perfect setting to challenge yourself." After class, she bought two tops for her daughter and one for herself.

America is such a weird place. (Although let's not forget that the beloved lululemon is Canadian, so this new yoga goddess of consumerism has really descended on us from our seemingly benign neighbors to the north.) Yeah, I guess that taking a free yoga class in a store stuffed with the most popular, trendy, sex-appeal-enhancing yoga togs (itself located in a mall filled with endless equivalents of the same) offers a good practice in staying inwardly focused amidst temptation and distraction. But let's face it, if you manage to get there, that's a pretty damn advanced place to be. And I have the feeling that these classes are aimed much more toward beginners.

I know excellent yoga teachers who are lululemon ambassadors and teach in their stores. And it's hard to argue that having great teachers offering free classes isn't a good thing, particularly in today's rotten economy. And I know that most of these teachers are making peanuts in order to do what they love, and that they need the sponsorship. So I understand how it can be tempting to smile sweetly and simply embrace all this as simply wonderful.

But not for me. Frankly, I find this marriage of spirituality and consumerism creepy. What energies are you opening yourself up to as you practice yoga and chant "Om" in an environment that's brilliantly designed to sell products - and not only that, but products that are designed to appeal so deeply precisely because they bolster your sense of identity and self-worth?

It's a vexing situation, to say the least. And personally, I feel that I really need to work my practice in order to feel comfortable in my discomfort with it all.

Yoga in the News! 100 Years Ago

2011-07-01T17:16:00.003-05:00

Thought I'd share some fun and interesting historical images and news reports from my online files with you today. I LOVE this kind of stuff.


Swami Vivekananda

Here's Swami Vivekananda. He introduced the American public to Hinduism at the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893, where he was an unexpected sensation.

As someone who wishes that contemporary yoga were more socially conscious than it is, I'm very taken with the fact the Vivekananda was also an outspoken, radical social critic - both of India and the United States.

The 1893 Chicago Daily Tribune article, "Hindoo Criticizes Christianity," for example, reports on what was for the time really quite an amazing attack on the then-championed conceits of "White Man's Burden":

KA-BLAM! Take THAT, you intolerant self-righteous missionaries and colonizers!

( . . . and, perhaps, our wimpily apolitical notions of "ahimsa" today?)

On a lighter note, it's also true that the press loved to make fun of yoga back then just as they do today. Here's The Milwaukee Journal's take on Vivekananda's work teaching asana and meditation in New York City:

Then, as now, women were the main practitioners of yoga in America. Here's a nice pic of Vivekananda picnicking with the ladies:

Once the racist anti-immigrant backlash of the early 20th century got into full swing, however, yoga's popularity with women became Exhibit A of its depravity. Here's a typical report on that era's anti-yoga hysteria from The Washington Post (1911):

Yes, dark skinned Swamis were corrupting America's white women right and left, sending them straight to the insane asylum! Evilly preying on the weakness of our fairer sex! Clearly, it was time for the government to take action. Here's another report from The Washington Post (1912):

If you're interested in learning more about this weird period in American yoga history, Robert Love, author the The Great Oom: The Improbable Birth of Yoga in America, wrote an excellent (and very funny) article about it back in 2006 that you can access here.

In case you're not familiar with them, two other excellent recent books on the history of American yoga are Stephanie Syman's The Subtle Body: The Story of Yoga in America, and Philip Goldberg's American Veda: From Emerson and the Beatles to Yoga and Meditation, How Indian Spirituality Changed the West.

If any of you readers have any good American yoga history links, I'd love it if you could share them here! It's a fascinating story that we're still very much in the middle of writing . . .

What's Too Woo? A New Take on New Age Flakiness

2011-06-20T15:50:00.001-05:00

www.intuitivebridge.com

While waiting to see my chiropractor the other day, I happened into a brief conversation that got me thinking about how much my perspective on what I used to flat-out dismiss as flaky, woo-woo New Age-y nonsense has shifted since I really got into yoga. It’s been an interesting ride.

I was sitting in my chiropractor’s waiting room when she walked in, engaged in conversation with a client. I glanced up to see a tightly wound young guy dressed in impeccable business casual. “ . . . and I really think you should try this breathing exercise next time you’re feeling super-stressed,” she was telling him in soothing, encouraging tones. “Just inhale slooooowly for a count of six, hold your breath 6, exhale 6, and then hold your breath out for 6. Just try that sequence, maybe oh – 3 or 4 times.”

He started hurriedly collecting his stuff. As he walked past me, his eye caught mine and shot a look that glinted, Can you believe this chiropractor woo-woo BS? I mean, WTF?!

I got it. But I also knew that she was right. “Um, that sort of thing really does work, ya know!,” I said brightly, hoping to sound like the reassuring voice of normalcy.

He walked out looking preoccupied and vaguely disgusted.

I got my adjustment and practiced the 6-count breathing routine as I drove home through downtown traffic. I liked it. It worked.

Shifting Perceptions of Flakiness

Even though I’ve spent the last few years teaching breathing exercises myself, this little encounter brought me right back to the time when I shared the mindset of Mr. Gimme-a-Break, let’s skip the weird breathing stuff, OK? And it’s funny to reflect on how much I’ve changed.

Rationality II (photo by Gregor Buir)

Back when I was in grad school, intently studying political thinkers from Plato to Foucault along with a heavy dose of desegregation law (preparing for my now ex-life as a poli sci prof), I went to a party thrown by an old friend who had alternatively been spending the last several years meditating in a remote ashram, practicing Tantric sex, and working in a New Age bookstore in California.

“So what’s your spiritual practice these days?,” she asked me out of the blue, super-casually, like it was the most normal query in the world. I had not the slightest clue what she was talking about.

I don’t remember what I replied but whatever it was, she took it with good grace – equanimity and all that.

Then one of her friends who I found suspiciously hippy-dippy looking, with wide eyes, disheveled flowing hair, and a full peasant skirt, wafted up and started earnestly telling me about how whenever she felt too freaked out, she made sure to keep telling herself to Just Breathe.

Just Breathe? At the time, I had no frame of reference to put this in. And it sounded pretty flaky to me. “Un huh,” I murmured noncommittally, making a mental note to be sure to avoid sitting next to her at the dinner table.

But I remembered her all these years later in my chiropractor’s office, seeing that busy wound-up guy responding with precisely the same barely restrained skepticism to her well-intentioned advice to Just Breathe. I connected with him because I understand that if you’ve never been exposed to yoga or anything like it, being told with such sincere earnestness to breathe sounds pretty damn flaky indeed.

But oh my, how things have changed . . .

Seeing Energy and Empathing

“The Equivalence of Self and Universe”

Today, I know that there is in fact tons of scientific evidence explaining why deep breathing does in fact calm our nervous systems, and that this is really not a woo-woo idea at all. Given that I’m by disposition and training a social scientist, rather than a “real” scientist, however, I must admit that I find too much such detailed physiological information boring. While I do care that there’s a concrete physical basis backing up the advice to “Just Breathe,” too much detail on precisely how it all works and BLIP! my attention’s gone and mind’s wandering.

Not to say that I don’t value such information, because I do. But what I’m really more interested in – rather ironically given my former orientation – is that part of my experience that can’t be adequately captured by science. In fact, I have to laugh at myself because I’m now very much drawn to things that my old self would have written off as way too woo.

For example, one of the things I loved most about the yoga teacher training I did with Ana Forrest was the work we did on “seeing energy and empathing.” (You can read more about this and related training exercises in her new book, Fierce Medicine.) We practiced “reading” each other’s bodies, not simply in terms of physical alignment, but also – much more subtly – in terms of energy flows and blockages. We also practiced intuiting what this told us about the person – again, not simply physically, but on a holistic mind-body-heart-spirit level.

Now, in the old days, I would have found this all ridiculously woo. But through training and practice, I accumulated solid evidence that it works.

In my trainings, we’d practice in small groups and then cross-check with each other to see whether what had been “read” was indeed accurate or not. I’ll never forget one time when a guy I’d been working with later came up to me privately, looking super-serious and a little freaked. “How did you know all that about me?,” he wanted to know. “I’ve never told you anything about my personal life – but everything you said was completely right on.”

Woo?

Or simply learning to use our innate intuitive capacities in new ways, ones that the dominant culture normally doesn’t develop in us at all?

I definitely believe that it’s the latter, not the former. In fact, I feel certain that if we had the proper scientific instruments, we could track our brains shifting into a different gear when we’re actively engaging our intuitive, empathic capacities. And certainly, I’d love to see that sort of research done soon (because as far as I know, it hasn’t been yet, at least in the context of Western science).

That said, I think that it’s also true that having these sorts of experiences – which are quite concrete, yet also quite exotic from the perspective of the mainstream culture – opens us up to feeling states that go beyond what the rational mind can explain or even comprehend.

And I like – no, love – that. In fact, I think that it’s an invaluable dimension of human experience that much of our social experience works – tragically – to trample right out of us.

Staying Grounded

That said, as I’ve become more involved in the yoga community and related worlds, I’ve also become newly aware of just how dangerous venturing into realms that I once laughingly dismissed as too woo can be.

Recent posts on Elephant Journal and Recovering Yogi speak to this quite powerfully. There’ re accounts of spiritual seekers getting sucked into abusive relationships with predatory pseudo-gurus, becoming deeply involved in insular communities full of lies and manipulation, and clinging desperately to crazy beliefs that reinforce pathological psychological patterns. It’s all pretty disturbing, really, and nothing to take lightly.

The Serpent & the Tree (Carl Jung, The Red Book)

While each individual story will always be different, I can’t help but speculate that a good part of the reason that so much of this shit happens is that practices like yoga and meditation open up parts of our brains that are normally inactive and shut down. As this happens, we may have new access to spiritual experiences that are in fact highly valuable. But at the same time, it’s also true that whatever unresolved psychological issues and subconscious garbage we have (and most of us have plenty) are going to start bubbling up – and in some cases, erupting or even exploding.

If that’s happening, and you’re not solidly grounded, and perhaps even entangled with people primed to take you in unhealthy directions, then there’s a good chance of falling into some bad, at times even dangerous situations.

For this reason, I strongly believe that it would be helpful if the yoga community developed a much more active connection to relevant dimensions of Western psychology. This has already happened in the convert Buddhist community, where excellent work connecting meditation and psychotherapy has been going on for decades. In the yoga community, however, there’s much more of a default toward New Age thinking. Generally speaking, I think this is a problem.

So while I’ve found it enormously valuable to go beyond my old boundaries of what I used to write off as way too woo, I’ve also developed a new appreciation of just how treacherous these post-woo waters may be for many.

I do think that it’s important to cultivate what (for lack of a better term) can be called a more “spiritual” dimension in American yoga – and by extension, the culture more broadly. I also think, however, that we’d do well to be sure that such explorations into the woo stay psychologically grounded – preferably by developing stronger theoretical and practical alliances among interested practitioners, teachers, theoreticians, and clinicians.

There’s much valuable psychological and spiritual territory to explore through contemporary yoga and meditation practices. We need more than ungrounded New Age nostrums, however, to keep such work as safe and healthy as possible.

And of course, it never hurts to keep it profoundly simple, and Just Breathe.

Cross-posted on Elephant Journal.

The Beautiful Babe and the Fierce Guru: Contemporary Icons of Yoga Culture

2011-05-26T15:02:00.002-05:00

Two iconic images haunt the collective unconscious of American yoga.

They’re not real. But they are powerful pop cultural archetypes. Let’s call them the Beautiful Babe and the Fierce Guru.

The Beautiful Babe

She’s all of your favorite images from glossy magazine covers rolled up into one delectable package.

She is, of course, beautiful. But not in a way that’s threatening or exotic. Rather, she’s girl-next-door prettiness dialed up to stop-dead-in-your-tracks perfection.

She’s the shimmering image of radiant health. We instinctively know that only the most picture perfect, healthy and of course organic foods ever cross her lips.

Her appetite is ideally balanced. Not too much; gluttony is unknown. Not too little; she’s never abstemious.

She is strong – but not too muscular. She is super-bendy – but without contortionist weirdness or strain. Her perfectly proportioned and just-so toned leg glides effortlessly behind her head as she smiles her serene megawatt smile.

She is “heart-centered.” She is warm and engagingly kind. She feels deeply, but it’s all positive. If she’s ever been sucked into her shadow, it’s all safely behind her now. Lessons learned.

And the fruits of her success are evident for all to see.

Her knowledge has no hard edges. Her wisdom is comforting and nurturing, sweet as honey.

The Beautiful Babe is an imaginary icon of mainstream cultural perfection. She meets the challenges of contemporary life with almost effortless grace and ease.

Ancient yogis were always believed to have superpowers. And in her own cover-girl way, she most certainly has hers.

The Fierce Guru

He’s the flip side of the Babe’s sweetness and light. Not that he’s bad – oh no. He’s good beyond our ordinary imagining.

And because he’s located in such unknown territory, he’s heavy with mystery and portent.

The Guru is most conveniently Indian. (As in Southeast Asian, not Native American.) If Western, he’s been deeply steeped in Eastern spiritual wisdom. He knows the ancient texts. He divines still extant paths of archaic power.

He channels all the dark unknown forces of deep spiritual knowledge that our florescent lit, chemically sanitized culture seems to have banished.

His physical body is not so important. He is beyond that. He may be big or small, fat or thin. While he’s likely to have a beard, it’s not necessary.

He’s a profoundly accomplished yogi, but has no need to demonstrate any mad asana chops. His yoga is bigger, deeper. It manifests on subtle levels invisible to the untrained eye.

While we know he’s benevolent, he feels unapproachable. His presence demands respect in a way that removes him from the realm of ordinary interaction.

He could be your Guru. But he can’t be your friend.

(Or, if you are one of the few who are Chosen, you could be his Consort. But we don’t talk about that.)

Being in the presence of the Guru doesn’t allow for idle chatter. You can’t talk shop or gossip or shoot the shit. You watch what you say, remember your place, and perhaps hope to ascend the hierarchy that leads closer to him.

Like the fabled yogis of old, he possesses powers that most of us don’t understand. But we may be imbued with some of it simply by being in his presence. We sit at his feet and hope to absorb some of his inestimable knowledge.

A Strange Division of Cultural Labor

Considered in tandem, the Beautiful Babe and the Fierce Guru represent a strange division of cultural labor. All of the socially acceptable and culturally non-threatening aspects of yoga have been channeled into the image of the Babe. At the same time, all of its mysterious, challenging, and culturally marginal dimensions have been built into the icon of the Guru.

This puts the collective unconscious of American yoga in a somewhat schizophrenic state. We chase the cover-girl spotlight of the Babe and bask in her comforting light. But we also lay claim to the fierce wisdom of the Guru and weighty spiritual ballast he brings from the East.

Many strange disassociations are in play – masculine/feminine, East/West, exotic/familiar, challenging/comforting. This list could be expanded. But you get the idea.

It all seems pretty dysfunctional. Because yoga, after all, has always been about the union of opposites; the integration of dualisms. It’s about harnessing the energies of paradox and making them generative.

So to the extent they exist (and of course it’s just my perception), the Babe and the Guru form a disempowering dyad in American yoga culture.

Missing in Action: The Sorceress and the Hero

We also miss a lot of alternative archetypes when we cathect too heavily on these two.

The image of the Babe shines so brightly that she white-lights other ways of imagining the power of the feminine right out of the picture.

Many of the traits traditionally associated with femininity have been banished. The Babe embodies no deep mystery, no dark power. She’s neither a Priestess nor a Witch. She doesn’t read the Oracle or speak with a Familiar. And she’s certainly no Crone.

All of that sense of mystery and power has been exported to the Guru. And with it, the possibility of a strong masculine icon is transferred out of our everyday reality to reside in the imaginary of the exotic East. The Guru is not a boy who grew up among us, went on a quest, and came back a man. He’s no homegrown Hero or returning Warrior. (Do we even imagine them to exist?) No, he’s the ultimately unknowable Other.

New Imaginings

While real life doesn’t fit these images, they still have a powerful pull. (Or so it seems to me. I’m interested to know if others share this perception.) And because of the strange cultural splits and erasures they embody, they’re essentially disempowering.

That’s not to say that there is absolutely nothing empowering for anybody at all embodied in these icons. If that were true, they wouldn’t have the appeal that they do.

Arguably, the Babe has helped make the health benefits of yoga more accessible to the average American, who wouldn’t have touched the Guru with a 10-foot pole.

At the same time, the Guru has served as a repository for the magic and mystery of yoga that many of us don’t want to lose.

So yoga got to have its acculturation without completely losing its edge.

But maybe it’s time to get past that. Maybe it’s time to imagine more interestingly integrated icons.

It might be good to see more feminine imagery that embodies mystery and deep power, not just sweetness and light. It might be good to imagine masculine icons that root strength and knowledge in the complexities of our own culture – not in some purified imaginary of Western Civilization, or the Exotic East, or even Indigenous Wisdom, but rather the mundane, wonderful, terrible, hybridized messiness of the here and now.

The time is also ripe for a reinvention of the icon of the ambiguously gendered, that more rare person who naturally embodies neither a strongly masculine or feminine energy, but something more fluid or androgynous.

All possibilities are open to our collective imagining – but by the same token, beyond anyone’s control. Of course, since an effective yoga practice works as a force of cultural deconditioning, whatever collective icons exist aren’t necessarily an impediment to us individually. Nonetheless, it might be interesting to participate in a collective imagining of what the future could bring.

Cross-posted on Elephant Journal.

Yoga in an Age of Anxiety: Sowing Seeds of Transformative Possibility & Magic

2011-04-15T16:37:00.003-05:00

To live in the U.S. today is to live in a culture that’s soaked in anxiety to the point of saturation. What with rampant unemployment, debt, economic instability, social dysfunction, and trash culture, not to mention war, global warming, and the threat of terrorism, millions of Americans have become used to slogging through what’s come to feel like an endless swamp of stress and uncertainty.

There’s a lot of ambient fear. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and feel it pressing in on me like some cold ghostly presence. I find myself wondering if the world as I know it will remain functional long enough for my children to grow up and live “normal” lives. I feel sucked in toward dark fantasies of terrorist attacks triggering right-wing reaction, the imposition of martial law, and the end of American democracy. Or that the next time Wall Street overheats the meltdown won’t be contained and our complex web of interdependent socio-economic relations will crack wide open into anarchy. Or that the ice caps will melt and the oceans rise and beautiful San Francisco will go under along with our hopes of a wiser, more just and more sustainable society.

Most days, these amorphous anxieties stay subterranean. I keep them at bay. I don’t keep up with the news the way I used to. Like most people, I’m absorbed in the busy details of my everyday life. But sometimes at night, in that semi-conscious zone between waking and sleeping, my guard is down and a surge of toxic anxiety breaks through to the surface.

Generally I don’t speak of it. It feels almost unspeakable.

But my guess is that this experience of an amorphous, yet palpably powerful sense of anxiety and fear is widely shared. (And of course, millions are dealing with much more immediate fears like, can I afford to get sick without becoming homeless?) It feels unspeakable because it’s too scary, too much of a downer. It’s too negative. We don’t want to acknowledge it. To verbalize it feels rude. Maybe unlucky. Maybe even somehow wrong, as naming the anxiety and fear that’s collectively weighing on us could have the nasty unintended consequence of intensifying the burden of whoever hears it voiced.

Understandably, we don’t want that to happen. So we maintain the silence.

Acknowledging the Elephant in the Room

But I think that we do need to speak. Or at least I feel that I do. In part, simply to acknowledge the truth of what I feel. But also – more ambitiously – in the hope that by voicing my thoughts I can play my bit part in helping to nurture whatever seeds of a better future have been and are being planted.

Which is, for me, where yoga comes into it. Not that I’m naïve enough to think that yoga will save the world. But I do believe that between the number of people practicing and the transformative possibilities it offers, there’s some real potential leverage there to work with. And given that such leverage is in exceedingly short supply in America today, it’s important, I think, to become fully cognizant of whatever possibilities for positive change we do have.

Artist Billie Grace Lynn captured my feeling that we’re living under a pressing weight of social problems that we sense but don’t speak of. And that we need to learn to see these issues in a new way that enables us to work with them flexibly and creatively, while remaining grounded in a felt experience of the sacred mysteries of life.

Her viscerally arresting sculpture, “White Elephants,” consists of several enormous elephant figures made of shells of translucent white ripstop nylon. Whether standing or lying down on the floor, the elephants maintain a sense of towering yet translucent immensity thanks to internal fans that keep them fully inflated, but constantly shimmering with light and movement. Commenting on the conceptual significance of the work, she writes:

Elephants carry vast meanings on their backs. In particular, white elephants have been considered sacred since ancient times in Asia . . . Possessing a White Elephant conferred great prestige on a family but also a huge burden. Keeping a white elephant was very expensive since it had to be provided with special food and accommodations and could not be used for labor. The gift of a white elephant was considered both a blessing and a curse and it bankrupted many recipients, some deliberately.

Another literary elephant is the English idiom, “the elephant in the room” which means an obvious truth that is not spoken or is ignored usually because it is taboo or embarrassing.

Ganesh, the elephant god, whose effigy is found at the entrances of homes, businesses, and temples throughout India exemplifies the contradictions and connections between the known and the unknown. Ganesh marks the transitional space between the sacred and profane. He is a protector and destroyer, and the creator and remover of obstacles.

At this point, the White Elephant is an apt metaphor for our contemporary condition; too expensive to sustain, too precious to surrender, and in a state of rapid change.

May this ancient symbol of transformation remind us to respect each other, to remember the past, and to protect the future. The elephant is able to move silently in spite of its great mass, perhaps we too will learn to step more carefully.

Yoga and Contemporary Culture

Om Zia Drum (artist: Casey Jones)

Interpreted through the lens of yoga and contemporary culture, I find this incredibly evocative. To be sure, the analogies aren’t exact. But in some ways, I feel that yoga is like the White Elephant – cherished and even sacred, yet also at times exacting a cost.

After all, yoga similarly requires “special food and accommodations” – e.g., a way better than normal diet (ideally locally sourced and organic), open time and space (both usually quite difficult to come by), and, perhaps, expensive classes and retreats (at least for those who can afford them).

And that’s just on the concrete, material level.

Shifting to the level of life choices and experiences more broadly, yoga also offers a paradoxical combination of dual movements. On the one hand, it’s popular because it enables us to cope with the anxieties and fears that are so pervasive today. Scientific studies confirm that yes, yoga does indeed calm the nervous system. To a significant extent (much more, I believe, than is usually acknowledged), yoga is widely valued because it helps us get by in a stressful society with more of our health and sanity intact.

Yet when we get deeper into it, this popular paradigm of yoga-as-coping-mechanism starts to shift into reverse gear. I’ve known quite a few people who decided that they needed to quit their jobs – or make some other, equally wrenching life change – due to the truths that they discovered for themselves in their practice. Paradoxically, they may have started practicing in order to cope with the pressures of work. But after a certain point, they realized that what they really needed wasn’t simply to cope. What they really needed was to change. And significant life change, as any psychologist will tell you, is incredibly stress inducing.

But not all stress is necessarily bad. Just like a really good stretch is one that takes you beyond your comfort zone, the stress of breaking free of unhealthy patterns is a good thing. It may be a relationship that needs to end, an addiction that needs to be broken, or a risk that calls out to be taken. There are countless examples. But it’s that White Elephant thing again: A cherished practice can exact a cost. Positive change isn’t necessarily easy.

Billie Grace also speaks of Ganesh. The elephant god symbolizes the “contradictions and connections between the known and the unknown . . . the transitional space between the sacred and profane.” How do we negotiate that space? How do we live those contradictions? Yoga as the White Elephant is a practice to ride as we learn to accept the uncertainly of the future in the immediacy of the present moment.

And then we come to society:

At this point, the White Elephant is an apt metaphor for our contemporary condition; too expensive to sustain, too precious to surrender, and in a state of rapid change.

I love the fact that she doesn’t come out hating. One reason that I haven’t wanted to speak of our sea of societal fear and anxiety is that I haven’t known how to do so without being negative. And more negativity just adds to the sense of oppression. Of being weighted down and unable to breath freely.

But we do have better alternatives. Perhaps the work to be done is to make them even more widely visible and available. And to speak of them in a way that shatters the silence surrounding the elephants of this age of anxiety in our collective room.

Transformative Possibility and Everyday Magic

During the last 15 years, as yoga’s boomed in popularity in the U.S. and worldwide, it’s been largely understood as a highly individual pursuit. This is, of course, right in line with dominant trends in our culture, which has become more and more inundated by a rising tide of individualism, consumerism, and market-based competition. The public is out; the private is in. The social is ignored, devalued, or trashed. The individual is championed, but under enormous pressure to sink or swim on his or her own.

It wasn’t always this way. Bracketing the question of the pre-modern roots of yoga for the moment, it can be said with certainty that some of its most important modern-era teachers were strong advocates of social engagement, committed to reform and in some cases, revolution. Swami Vivekananda, who first introduced yoga to the American public in the 1890s, was an outspoken critic of chauvinistic Christian missionaries and caste-championing Hindu priests alike. Sri Aurobindo, founder of the highly influential school of Integral Yoga, was a revolutionary dedicated to ending British colonial rule over India. And even as recently as the early ‘90s, Yoga Journal’s mission statement invited readers “to join us in bringing to our troubled world a life-affirming vision of harmony and wholeness.”

I would love to see this tradition of social engagement reinvigorated in the yoga community today. Happily, there are signs that this may be happening. Just in recent weeks on Elephant Journal (an oh so fittingly named reference for this post!), there’s been socially relevant work that:

insists that yoga is for EVERY body and that even implicit messages that assign value on the basis of physical appearance are profoundly objectionable;
supports the growing movement to bring yoga to those who need it most, including adult prisoners and children and youth in detention centers;
interrogates the meaning of the Yamas and Niyamas in the context of today’s world; and
asks tough questions about the yogic response to shocking natural disasters such as the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

Certainly, more examples could be given. But the main point is that there is already good work being done to expand the many benefits of yoga beyond its current focus on the individual to include a larger social ethic and vision. And this, I believe, is a desperately needed medicine in this age of rampant anxiety and fear.

Lakota Medicine Wheel

While it’s impossible to boil down the many possibilities for positive change that yoga offers on a societal level to a simple set that everyone might agree on, I’d like to suggest several that I believe are particularly relevant to the project of planting and nurturing positive seeds of change in today’s Age of Anxiety:

1) A democratic commitment to making yoga available to all. While dedicated yogis might have to restrain themselves from breaking out into brawls over questions ranging from the authority of the Yoga Sutras to the legitimacy of lululemon, one principle that everyone seems to agree on is that yoga should be available to all. This commitment to universal accessibility embodies a deeply democratic ethos that naturally supports even such politically controversial programs as teaching yoga to prisoners. Given what UC Berkeley political philosophy Professor Wendy Brown has aptly identified as the strong “de-democratizing” tendencies in contemporary American culture, this basic democratic commitment is a vitally important ethos to assert and build on.

2) A universal commitment to yoga as a practice of holistic mind-body-spirit health and healing. Again, while practitioners may disagree strongly over issues of “what is yoga,” most endorse an understanding of it as an integrated mind-body-spirit practice that promotes health and healing. Given rampant levels of poor physical and mental health in U.S. society, this is a valuable commitment that – if progressively extended to reach more and more people who need it – could hugely improve quality of life on both the individual and societal levels. Further, the belief that something that we can loosely describe as “spiritual health” is the natural birthright of all people represents an incredibly important ethic in a society that’s increasingly willing to write off social “losers” as collateral damage in a winner-take-all society.

3) Access to a felt sense of the sacred in everyday life. This is where the magic comes in. Yoga practitioners may practice every religion from Wicca to Hinduism to Christianity – or they may be very definitive about practicing none. We can and do have disagreements over all the big questions: whether the soul exists, where spirit and matter are dual or non-dual, whether we are reincarnated or go to heaven or simply cease to exist after death. But I think that one fundamental commonality that most serious practitioners share is a sense that their practice puts them in touch with something that could be loosely described as the sacred. Yoga pours an ineffable magic back into our experience of the world in a culture that’s increasingly stripped of meaning. This sense of connection to something larger than ourselves and more mysterious than we can rationally comprehend is probably the best medicine that we can offer our f-ed up society.

So my prayer for today is this: May we acknowledge the elephants in the room that we’ve become habituated to ignore. May we connect to our hearts, strengthen our spirits, engage our minds, and speak our truths with grace. May we work some crazy White Elephant magic to create positive individual and social change. And may we learn to practice the vexing paradox of becoming fully engaged with life while relinquishing our desire to reap the fruits of our actions.

Cross-posted on Elephant Journal.

Thinking (& Dreaming) Yoga: Integrating Left & Right Brains to Change the World

2011-03-30T21:38:00.002-05:00

Back when I first stated taking yoga classes, I was preoccupied with whether I could meet the concrete physical challenges they presented. Coming in feeling proud that I could touch my toes (having long considered this a note-worthy feat of flexibility), I’d experience some angst mixed with the thrill of a newly ambitious goal when instructed to do some previously unimagined variation such as Padahastasana (“hand-to-foot pose”: standing with feet covering upward facing palms, left over left and right over right.) And that’s what I thought it was all about. Could I “do it” – that is, achieve some particular physical posture – or not??

It’s funny for me to think back on those days. Because now when I get on my mat, I’m much more absorbed in working with my emotional and energetic bodies than in honing my physical practice per se. While I still try to learn new poses and believe that that’s a valuable process, nailing them is far from my primary aim. Instead, I’m much more immediately concerned with the psychological and spiritual dimensions of practice. The visible physical practice is the vehicle, but what really matters to me is invisible – at least to the untrained eye.

Just as I feel my own life force revitalized by asana practice, I have as a teacher “seen” students’ Prana visibly amplify. Which is a strange and wondrous and inspiring “sight” – a vision seen with some intuitive capacity of mind that I previously didn’t even know existed. But it’s also a difficult one to translate into the empiricist rigor and cultural limitations of words as I’m trying to do now – really, I’d have to be a poet to do it justice.

But that’s OK. Because even though I’m not a poet, I do value the process of translation – taking experiences processed through that non-verbal, extra-rational, intuitive right hemisphere of my brain and representing them through the medium of its linguistically structured, rational, analytic counterpart. Trying, in other words, to write in a more-or-less straightforward way about some of the more mysterious and esoteric dimensions of yoga.

In fact, I’ve come to see this kind of writing as part of my own personal practice. Because if yoga is about union, then doesn’t using all of our mental capacities – creating an integrated dialog between those left and right hemispheres – make perfect yogic sense? Sure, I’ve heard a lot of “turn off your mind” directives during my years in the yoga community. But I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t want to turn anything off. Process and drain off accumulated mental and emotional crap? Yes. But “turn off” the innate and incredible human capacity to think? No.

As I see it, yoga is not about turning any part of ourselves “off,” most certainly including our brains. Rather, it’s about learning to work with the multi-dimensionality of our minds and beings more adeptly and fluidly. Yes, I want to dial down the distracting thoughts and hopefully (eventually) root out all that negative internal chatter. But I also want to amp up both my ability to think and my capacity to intuit – sometimes serially, and other times more in tandem.

Through practicing yoga, I’ve gradually come to realize that our brains and the larger bodymind in which they’re embedded offer us much, much more to work with than we’ve been habituated to believe in our culture.

Before I got heavily into yoga, I was super-invested in learning via what we’d normally call “thinking” – but what might more accurately be called analytic rationality. So I spent a lot of time reading and studying, interviewing and analyzing, taking notes and writing outlines. Learning through asana, meditation, synchronicities, and dreams was most certainly not on the agenda.

And while I could certainly see that the “big questions” could not be answered that way (logically, if therefore ironically in line with what Kant called “the limits of practical reason”) – I didn’t have anything else in my life at that point to enable me to work in an alternative way. So I believed that questions that took us beyond the limits of rational consciousness (as we used to jokingly say in grad school, “why is there air and what’s the meaning of life”), put us squarely into the realm of either existentialism or religion.

We might hope and hazard that God would speak to us there – and there were periods in my life where I was convinced that He Did. But I also always remembered – and respected – the heart-felt anguish of a friend who confessed to me that while he wanted to believe in God, and wanted God to speak to him, he couldn’t and He Didn’t.

Now I’m not at all interested in pronouncing on any ultimate questions. Some of the people that I respect most are serious Christians. Others are nontraditional Buddhists, observant Jews, and/or Leftist intellectuals. Many are simply life-affirming souls who don’t necessarily care to grapple with vexing theological and/or existential issues. So if I’m committed to any religious/spiritual view, it’s that there are many paths up the mountain, that the mountain is a metaphor that resonates with us deeply even if we can’t categorize and explain it, and that those tracks have been forged in ways that confound all our culturally-bound categories of atheist, agnostic, or believer.

But what I think is so profoundly valuable about yoga and meditation is that they are accessible practices designed (among other things) to train our minds in ways that allow us to access both the left and right hemispheres of our brains – the rational and the extra-rational, the logical and the artistic, the analytic and the intuitive. This was not a skill that I was taught – or even led to believe might exist – in grad school.

Since the 2000s, however, there’s been a lot of interest in connecting Buddhist-based mindfulness practices with contemporary neuroscience. And there’s more and more empirical evidence coming out everyday that the claim that yoga and meditation can, in fact, “change your brain” is not some airy-fairy, woo woo, flaky New Age-y notion. The fact of the matter is that practiced properly, these methods work.

Which doesn’t necessarily mean that we get our ultimate questions answered on our mats and/or cushions. But it does mean that we have tools for working with the mind that are capable of bringing us to a state of consciousness that’s bigger than any such question/answer dichotomies allow. This is, I think, what the yogic tradition points to when teaching about Samadhi – a state of realization in which human consciousness becomes integrated into and one with all that is.

Now yoga traditionalists might insist that attaining (and remaining in) this state is the only true aim of yoga, but I don’t agree. While that may be the right aim for unique individuals, I don’t believe that there’s ever been a time in human history when such an absolutely ambitious goal made sense as a mass movement. And today, of course, we have millions and millions of people who practice yoga and meditation but are not devoted to Realization. On the contrary, they spend most of their time fully engaged in the super-demanding practicalities of everyday life.

Not to mention, of course, that most contemporary practitioners have most likely never even heard of Samadhi.

But if I disagree with those hard-core purists who might insist that if practitioners don’t set their sights that high, they’re not really practicing yoga, I do agree with them that most of us are setting our sights too low.

Once you move beyond the purely physical, essentially athletic dimensions of yoga, most of us today are in it for stress relief. Which is deeply, and often desperately needed, and shouldn’t be disparaged in any way. Yoga (and meditation) give millions a means of siphoning off stress in order to function in an increasingly psycho society. But surely we need to set our sights higher than this? Because if stress reduction is vital for coping, ultimately it would be much better to go beyond coping to positive change.

What about viewing yoga and meditation as practices that allow us to develop our human capacities to both reason and intuit – to value both science and spirituality – to care about teaching our children both math and art? What if we insisted that this is not some post-hippie flaky fantasy, but rather grounded in what some of our most sophisticated neuroscientists are discovering about the innate capacities of mind?

What if we got hard-headedly rational and insistent about the intrinsic value of our heart-felt, extra-rational experiences and revolutionized our world?

Because if there’s one thing that most people today can agree on, it’s that we need to radically change the dominant paradigm. And based on what I’ve learned through yoga, I believe that this might best be done by learning to equally develop and value the capacities of both sides of our brains.

Cross-posted on Elephant Journal.

"It's All about ME!": Yoga Journal Mission Statements, 1985 vs. Today

2011-03-10T14:57:00.006-06:00

Here's Yoga Journal's mission statement as it appeared in a special 10th anniversary issue back in Spring 1985:

Yoga Journal is dedicated to communicating, to as broad an audience as possible, the qualities of being that yoga exemplifies: peace, integrity, clarity, and compassion. In particular, we focus on body/mind approaches to personal and spiritual development – such as Hatha Yoga, holistic healing, transpersonal psychology, bodywork and massage, the martial arts, meditation, Eastern spirituality, and Western mysticism – and on people who, in their life and work, epitomize these practices. We encourage open dialogue and a range of viewpoints, and we invite you to join us in bringing to our troubled world a life-affirming vision of harmony and wholeness.

This statement appeared regularly in every issue up through the early 1990s.

It's interesting to see how it contrasts to its current equivalent, which is really more of a marketing than a mission statement. (That is, it's the standard blurb that appears on the publisher's website (Active Interest Media), Google Books, etc. - but not on the masthead itself, like the old one did.)

For more than 30 years, Yoga Journal has been helping readers achieve the balance and well-being they seek in their everyday lives. With every issue, Yoga Journal strives to inform and empower readers to make lifestyle choices that are healthy for their bodies and minds. We are dedicated to providing in-depth, thoughtful editorial on topics such as yoga, food, nutrition, fitness, wellness, travel, and fashion and beauty.

There's many things that strike me as significant in comparing these two statements. But one jumps out at me most strongly: namely, that in its current incarnation, Yoga Journal is safely, squarely, and unambiguously "all about ME."

Yoga Journal helps "readers achieve the balance and well-being they seek in their everyday lives." Well, fine and good; of course, we all want that. It "strives to inform and empower" us. Also good. Helps us to make healthy lifestyle choices - check. Provides good content on food and all this other good stuff - well . . . while I have to admit a resistance to the "fashion and beauty" encroachment onto yoga territory, it's sort of - whatever.

In other words, there's really nothing objectionable about the current marketing statement in and of itself. It's only when I compare it to elements of the old one that I feel that something important has been lost.

In particular:

We encourage open dialogue and a range of viewpoints, and we invite you to join us in bringing to our troubled world a life-affirming vision of harmony and wholeness.

Closing statements have a particularly strong kick and resonance. And when I compare "join us in bringing to our troubled world a life-affirming vision" versus providing thoughtful articles on "travel, and fashion and beauty," well . . . let's just say one seems much more trite than the other.

There's been a lot of discussion about how commercial Yoga Journal has become, and the pros and cons of that, in the blogosphere lately. By and large, I'm convinced by those who say that, given the realities of how difficult it is to run a successful print magazine business, YJ does a pretty damn good job. They continue to publish a lot of great articles. Plus, their commercialism allows them to bring yoga to a wider audience than would be receptive to it otherwise.

Which is all fine and good. But I think that the earlier tradition of caring about how yoga fits in to a larger set of practices that are helping to heal the world needs to be remembered and revitalized.

Speaking from my own experience, it's simply true the current yoga scene often does feel like it's "all about me." While generally nice, well-intentioned people, each individual practitioner often seems incredibly absorbed in the minute details of MY life, MY diet, MY practice, MY poses, MY body . . .

But I also see signs that this is changing. For example, I went to a really inspiring Street Yoga training two weeks ago that was full of social workers, therapists, nurses and others fired up about learning how to harness their practice to serving others. And there are of course other examples out there: Off the Mat, Into the World, YogaActivist.org, etc.

At the same time, I think that the new (and overlapping) Web-based projects of Elephant Yoga and Yoga 2.0 offer cool new ways to engage in the sort of "open dialog" that this older incarnation of YJ hoped to provide - but simply couldn't in anything like the way that we can now.

I hope that these kinds of initiatives will grow and prosper. Because really, we are all connected, and yoga is about union, so if it's working, it simply can't be "all about me."

Lululemon Punk Rock Mantra: The Meta-Level is Love

2011-02-01T14:24:00.000-06:00

I’m still reflecting on the latest skirmish in the “yoga wars”: you know, the just subsiding round of arguments sparked by the New York Times’ “Rebel Yoga” profile. (If you’re not sure what this was, a good sample of the bro-ha-ha can be found here, here, or here.)

The debate feels like a record on repeat: The anti-commercial yoga crusaders rant against the evils of air-brushed body imagery and commodification. The “it’s all good” Kumbaya faction denounces such questioning as “judgmental” and “un-yogic.” The traditionalists cast down a pox on both houses from their self-styled mountaintop of an “authentic” eight-limbed practice.

OK, I know that’s a bit snarky. I recognize that there are important issues here, and take them seriously. But if you take a step back and look at it from a different angle, it’s all pretty humorous in a way, too.

A Shared Spark

And perhaps, if we could embrace our differences at the next level, it could be kinda beautiful too - because we’ve got a conversation among folks who, despite intensely felt differences, share a passion for yoga. And fueling that common passion is, I think, some sort of shared spark. Which is different from sharing ideas or even concrete practices. It’s more like an animating sense of something important but impossible to define.

Floyd's Prism by Sudden2 on DeviantART

At the level of culture, the yoga community is deeply divided. Some adore Lululemon; others find their brand of spirituality-lite consumerism creepy. Some love a rock & roll fusion practice; others find that at best distracting, if not corrupting.

Some say slim calm sexy is bringing yoga to the people; others see it as pushing the poison of unrealistic body imagery. Some say debating such divisions is detrimental; others see it as unobjectionable or potentially useful.

Given such divides – and there are many more – many might say that there’s no commonality here to work with. I disagree.

For starters, we’re all essentially interconnected anyway. And yoga provides a means of accessing that fundamental human connection. Ergo, engaging across such cultural divides actually offers an important avenue of practice (for those so inclined).

“Never Waste a Good Trigger”

It’s easy to hang out with your clique and feel comfortable. But it’s very hard to engage with others who have strong feelings that you passionately disagree with –that may even push your buttons in a big way.

Ana Forrest urges her students to “never waste a good trigger.” This means that when someone or something pushes your buttons, causing a much bigger emotional reaction than the situation really warrants, it’s a great opportunity to confront and process some of your “stuff” – that is, the gunky emotional baggage that keeps you weighed down, limited, and less free.

The more that we confront the charged feelings that arise when others disagree with our vision of yoga, the more we have the opportunity to process some of the internal gunk that keeps us shackled. The more that we’re able to connect across our differences, the more we can access that higher level where we experience that common spark.

Street Art by Banksy

Note that this is not the same as silencing disagreement. It’s not maintaining our comfort zone by whitewashing our differences. Rather, it’s engaging with them in order to connect (paradoxically) to our more profound commonalities.

Whether you adore or detest Lululemon, the meta-level is love.

To access this in a way that’s real and powerful rather than saccharine and fake-y sweet, however, can be bone-crunchingly hard at times.

In this sense, maybe the yoga wars offer us a safer battleground on which to practice for the free-for-all of life.

Slim Calm Sexy Yoga Round II: What I’ve Learned & Where I Hope I’m Going

2011-01-22T18:31:00.000-06:00

I know, I know. Most everyone who even caught a whiff of the acrid smoke generated by the fire that burst out over the launch of Tara Stiles' Slim Calm Sexy Yoga last summer doesn’t want to go anywhere near that topic again. Even if you weren’t singed by the sparks or upset by the flame throwing, you probably ended up feeling burned out by the experience. As a participant-observer in this strange new culture of contemporary yoga, I know that I certainly arrived at a feeling of: Let’s just give it a REST.

But as I’m wont to do, I kept on thinking about it. And today’s New York Times story about Ms. Stiles’ skyrocketing popularity has made me want to share a bit about where that’s taken me.

Because my perspective on the whole commercialization-of-yoga debate has been shifting. And since the SCS debacle was the most recent epicenter of it, it’s a good (if dicey) topic to revisit in the course of rethinking the whole thing.

So: At first, I found the sexified lolling-on-hotel-bed-yoga-videos and burn-bra-fat-and-become-a-size-00 marketing that I discovered in conjunction with the SCS launch horrifying. Yes, really. That’s not too strong a word. As an oldster babe in the new cultural woods that had been busily growing up around yoga while I was off practicing in my little subcultural bubble, I had really had no idea that such things were happening. So, it came as a bit of a shock.

And my gut reaction was pretty negative. This isn’t yoga! This is BAD! But then I started to realize that this is a new wave. And that maybe it’s counterproductive to fight the tide. And that maybe I should listen more closely to people who were saying that it was lifting them up and helping them. And that maybe I could learn something valuable by wading through the internal wave of discomfort and reactivity that the whole thing was generating in me.

Just to be clear, this doesn’t mean that I now buy into the view that thinking critically about what’s happening in yoga culture is “judgmental” and “un-yogic.” I still see this as a good thing, at least for those of us who are so moved.

But at some point in the midst of the whole SCS tirade, I read a blog that kinda clicked on a new light bulb for me. Someone had written about how all of this controversy about yoga being too commercial had started making her feel bad about her practice. But then finally she decided that hell, she really loved doing her vinyasa flow to blasting pop music in her Lululemon outfit – and what’s wrong with that?

And I had to stop and ask myself, really, given all of the shit going on in the world, given how many people are overweight and not exercising at all and stressed to the max, do I really want to put my energy into taking a stand against something that’s making people feel happier and healthier? It just doesn’t seem right: kinda churlish and ungenerous, really.

But I don’t want to just “shut up and do my practice” as one friend suggested, either. Because I still think that there’s important issues at stake in this discussion. I still believe that there’s something compelling about the critiques that were made last summer (and in other iterations in the ongoing commercialization of yoga debate before then).

But I also feel that this needs to be better balanced with the equally compelling value of respecting other people’s experiences and examining the deeper nature of our own reactions.

For me, I think that a lot of my reactivity had to do with the fact that I felt like I had something personal to lose by yoga becoming a more and more shamelessly commercialized pursuit. I remember well that during the Bush II years – the politics of which I detested with heart-felt passion – I used to say that "yoga is one of the few things that I still like happening in America today.”

I felt heartsick that so much of what I loved about my country was being trashed and lost. And yoga was the one thing that I loved that was, in contrast, flourishing and growing.

So to see it seemingly swept up into the mainstream pop-cultural tide felt alarming. I wanted my subcultural refuge to remain protected, uncontaminated.

But what about all the other people out there who don’t share my alienated political-cultural views? Don’t I want yoga to be accessible to them too?

And what about the people who are just not for whatever reason ready to deal with the deeper dimensions of yoga – but who could really use some new sense of connection with their bodies, some stress relief, some physical health benefits – and maybe just some fun?

Like the lady asked, what’s so bad about that?

Milky Way over Owachomo Natural Rock Bridge in Utah
Wally Pacholka/Astropics.com

Well, nothing, I think – as long as bridges to the deeper experiences of yoga continue to be strong, visible, and accessible to as many people as possible as well.

It would, I believe, be a tragic loss if “yoga lite” eclipsed the other, deeper potentialities of the practice.

And I think that we we're fooling ourselves if we believe that these bridges will appear automatically, regardless of whatever we as contemporary practitioners may do to build, destroy, or obscure them.

But how to help keep them strong, visible, and accessible? It seems to me that past denunciations of “fitness yoga” have done more to build walls than bridges.

So now, I’m looking for ways to communicate about the deeper dimensions of yoga that feel more like invitations. Like opportunities. Like sightings of bridges to rich and exciting, if mysterious and often challenging places.

I know that passions run deep on questions of what yoga is, and what it could or should be. And I’m not naïve enough to think that there’s not always going to be a danger that if we discuss them, the fires they create may run out of control.

But I’m also hopeful that it’s possible to harness our passions in a way that creates a fire of collective inquiry that illuminates and maybe even warms us.

Either way though, as yoga practitioners, I don’t think that we should be afraid of playing with fire.

Yoga and Hinduism Redux: Kaleidoscopes of Time, History, and Consciousness

2011-01-18T09:49:00.000-06:00

Given the breakneck pace of our 24/7 yoga news cycle, the “Yoga and Hinduism Debate” launched by the New York Times last November already seems oh-so-2010. But my mind keeps circling back to it. The question of how best to understand the relationship between yoga and Hinduism intrigues me. And once my interest is hooked, I have the sort of mind that wants to dig dig dig until I strike something that seems like at least an initial layer of conceptual bedrock.

At first, I thought that I'd hit a good position pretty quickly. Confronted with the Hindu American Foundation’s (HAF) demand to “Take Back Yoga” by “acknowledging its Hindu roots,” my first instinct was to put it in the conceptual boxes that I’m familiar with: i.e., those of American identity politics. Yes, I reasoned, it’s true that the yoga world is full of Hindu symbolism, with images of Shiva, Ganesha, and other deities adorning everything from altars to t-shirts. Yet in years of taking classes, going to workshops, and reading Yoga Journal, I’d never heard any sustained discussions of Hinduism (until, of course, this recent outbreak of debate). And, being aware of the history of anti-Hindu and anti-Asian prejudice in this country, I figured that the HAF just wanted the same sort of cultural acknowledgement that other minority groups have demanded. And that seemed perfectly legitimate to me.

And to some extent it still does. But much less so. Because this case is really not analogous that of, say, African Americans, whose fight to get some cultural respect was nothing sort of revolutionary only a few short decades ago. Back in the 1960s-70s, while what it meant to be African American was fiercely contested, there wasn’t much ambiguity identifying who this group was. On the contrary, given the “one drop rule,” the dominant culture was nothing if not Draconian in policing the boundaries of Black group identity.

Defining the boundaries of “yoga” and “Hinduism,” however – well, that’s quite a different story. Even leaving aside the vexing question of “what is yoga” (and we know how crazy-making that is) the seemingly simple question of “what is Hinduism?” is enough to keep your head spinning for days (if not weeks and perhaps years).

Kaleidoscope by Feeding the Fish

But that’s OK. In fact, in a way it’s better than OK, because it offers a great opportunity for learning on many levels. Trying to pinpoint a robust definition of Hinduism involves tangling with highly contested questions of history, politics, religion, and spirituality – all of which (just to complicate things further) are bound up with competing constructions of individual and group identity.

Such complexity is daunting. Which is one reason many people prefer to stay away from the Hinduism issue altogether: you never know when you’re going to unwittingly stumble onto some ideological minefield you didn’t know existed. Nonetheless, I believe that it’s worthwhile to engage with the yoga and Hinduism question – without, however, necessarily needing to resolve it.

This may seem pointless to some: Why pose a question unless you can answer it? Well, because much of our best learning comes through an ongoing engagement with big questions, rather than a rush to prescribe simple answers. As the Buddhists teach us, the fluidity of the self is a hard, but liberating truth to embrace. And so it is with the question of the relationship between yoga and Hinduism: maybe what we need to do right now is not answer it – or at least not too quickly or definitively. We North American yoga practitioners may benefit more by continuing to sift through it again and again in order to come to more finely grained understandings of its many nuances and complexities.

British India (pre-1947)

The Origins Debate: Was Hinduism Invented, Accreted, or Revealed?

Among scholars, there’s ongoing debate over whether “Hinduism” – understood as a singular, shared, coherent religious identity – really existed prior to the British colonization of India. Some argue that it was “invented” in the struggle to unify the modern Indian state and kick out the British. But others insist that different Indic religious sects shared a common meta-identity as “Hindus” long before the Brits arrived.

Richard King (author of Orientalism and Religion: Post-Colonial Theory, India and "the Mystic East”) writes that it doesn’t make sense “to project the notion of ‘Hinduism’ as it is commonly understood into pre-colonial Indian history”:

Before the unification begun under imperial rule and consolidated by the Independence of 1947 it makes no sense to talk of an Indian ‘nation,’ nor of a religion called ‘Hinduism’ which night be taken to represent the belief system of the Hindu people. Today of course, the situation differs insofar as one can now point to a loosely defined cultural entity which might be labeled ‘Hinduism,’ or, as some prefer, “Neo-Hinduism’ . . .

Prior to 1947, King argues, Indian religious and spiritual traditions were simply too diverse to be bundled into the common identity of “Hinduism.” After India was consolidated as an independent nation, however, its culture correspondingly shifted to produce a more unified, if “loosely defined” religious identity.

(It’s worth noting that from this perspective, even accepting the category of “religion” itself meant shifting into a much more Westernized conceptual paradigm. Arguably, the term “religion” is too bound up with the entwined traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam to do justice to the very different set of spiritual ideas and practices that later became lumped together as “Hinduism.”)

Others disagree. Citing poems, songs, and other folk referents dating back to 1400, Versus Lorenz argues that a common Hindu identity developed in India well before the British arrived:

Whatever the reason for the scholarly acceptance of the idea that there was no religious Hindu self-identity before 1800, the evidence against this view in vernacular Hindu literature is clear and abundant. The bulk of this evidence takes the form of texts composed by the popular religious poet-singers of North India, most of them members of non-Brahmin castes. This literature does precisely what Sanskrit literature refuses to do: it establishes a Hindu religious identity through a process of mutual self-definition with a contrasting Muslim Other . . . Without the Muslim (or some other non-Hindu), Hindus can only be Vaishnavas, Saivas, Smartas or the like.

“During the centuries of rule by dynasties of Muslim sultans and emperors,” he insists, “Hindus developed a consciousness of a shared religious identity based on the loose family resemblance among the variegated beliefs and practices of Hindus, whatever their sect, caste, chosen deity, or theological school”:

From the point of view of a modern observer, one can see the family resemblance taking a recognizably Hindu shape in the early Puranas, roughly around the period 300-600 C.E. Although the religion of these Puranas displays many continuities with the earlier Vedic religion, its principal features and emphases particularly its greatly expanded mythology of the gods Vishnu, Siva and Devi, I think, justify marking this religion off as something new, as the beginning of medieval and modern Hinduism.

The writer Pankaj Mishra, author of An End to Suffering: The Buddha in the World, presents yet another, historically intermediate position. “Hinduism,” he writes, “is largely a fiction, formulated in the 18th and 19th centuries out of a multiplicity of sub-continental religions, and enthusiastically endorsed by Indian modernizers.”

Nonsense, Lorenz counters: “Hinduism wasn't invented by anyone, European or Indian.” Rather, it grew organically through the course of (pre-colonial) Indian history.

Eternal Religion versus Historical Consciousness

Despite their differences, these positions share a secular, historical orientation. Others have quite different perspectives based on other forms of reasoning.

The Hindu Blog, for example, offers a series of essays on the history of Hinduism that begins by rejecting the concept of historical consciousness itself:

If you ask about the origin of Hinduism to a person who has perceived the essence of Hinduism, the answer will be a simple smile. This is because Hinduism has no history, it believes in the present. This might be hard for a common man to digest because we live in a world which gives so much importance to history . . .

The great sages who gave us the Upanishads, Vedas and other Holy Scriptures, never talked about the history of their clan or kingdom. This is because history is of no use to mankind.

Such a perspective insists on the unchanging centrality of eternal truths. The “great thoughts found in Upanishads are eternal and have practical use in everyday life . . . So for a Hindu, religion is ‘Sanatana Dharma’ – the eternal religion.” Still, if we insist on trying to date Hinduism, this can be done:

The earliest evidence of Hinduism is found in the Indus Valley civilization (3300–1700 BC) . . . (but) it would be right to say the earliest seed of Hinduism was laid hundreds of years before Indus valley civilization flourished.

Of course, historically minded scholars and writers like King, Lorenz, and Mishra would counter that while the earlier forms of Indian spiritual and religious practice do indeed date back that far, it doesn’t make sense to retroactively lump these incredibly diverse traditions into the homogenizing category of “Hinduism.” These many distinct religious, spiritual, shamanistic, and yes, yogic traditions, they would argue, only developed some sense of unity under the umbrella of “Hinduism” much, much later.

Hindu Deities

330 Million Gods

Perhaps it’s only appropriate that a religion that says that Brahman (or God) is so complex that its Spirit is expressed through 330,000,000 different gods should not be easily defined. “Certainly, Mishra writes, “most Hindus themselves felt little need for precise self-descriptions”:

Long after their encounter with the monotheistic religions of Islam and Christianity, they continued to define themselves through their overlapping allegiances to family, caste, linguistic group, region, and devotional sect . . . Their rituals and deities varied greatly, defined often by caste and geography; and they were also flexible: new goddesses continue to enrich the pantheon even today. There is an AIDS goddess which apparently both causes and eradicates the disease. At any given time, both snakes and the ultimate reality of the universe were worshipped in the same region, sometimes by the same person. Religion very rarely demanded, as it did with many Muslims or Christians, adherence to a set of theological ideas prescribed by a single prophet, book, or ecclesiastical authority.

Personally, I find this openness and fluidity refreshing – even liberating. There is, I think, something very profound in the belief that God has more manifestations than we can name. In my experience, religions that insist on unwavering faith in a fixed set of beliefs breed fear, self-righteousness, and division rather than spiritual growth.

(Of course, Mishra goes on to say that contemporary Hindu nationalism is moving in precisely that direction, abandoning the traditional inclusivity and tolerance of Hinduism in favor of religious fundamentalism and right-wing politics. This form of Hinduism – or at least the spectre of it – is also at play in the current “Yoga and Hinduism debate.” Some, for example, see the HAF campaign to “Take Back Yoga” as an offshore component of an Indian nationalist agenda – a charge which they strongly deny.)

While I’m no longer inclined to take the HAF’s charge that Westerners are “delinking yoga from its Hindu roots” quite so much at face value, I remain grateful to them to galvanizing what I think is a fascinating, informative debate. If we keep digging into it, it’s not long before we’re confronted with some really deep questions regarding how to think about religion, spirituality, history, politics, and identity.

At the moment, the one that interests me the most is this question of historical consciousness – which applies just as much to yoga as it does to Hinduism. As we learn more about modern yoga history, a parallel debate is starting to emerge. Does yoga have an unchanging, eternal essence – just like the Hindu Blog claims for Hinduism, or the Sanatana Dharma? If so, how do we account for the fact that we have so much evidence showing that the ideas and practices that constitute “yoga” as we know it today didn’t coalesce until the early 20th century?

How do we square the compelling evidence of radical evolution with the felt experience of a seemingly timeless practice?


The Ouroboros: A serpent biting its tail – a symbol of eternity.

Image from the Horapollo Hieroglyphics (1556), where it is said to signify the universe. In the Renaissance, the symbol came to mean eternity.

The serpent that holds its tail in its mouth . . . is customarily taken for the course of a year, for time, for age, for immortality . . . St Cyril gives this reason: that it stretches out, and curls back again and again, and that represents the passage and revolution of the days and years . . . But one might be able to give another reason that the serpent catches its tail: whether one considers the past or the present or the future, all these times are uncertain to us. For we cannot see the past or conceive of its spirit given that it has no beginning; likewise more of the future, because it is not yet, and the end of things is unknown . . .

Old Sages by the Figure of the Snake
Encircled thus) did oft expression make
Of Annual-Revolutions; and of things,
Which wheele about in everlasting-rings;
There ending, where they first of all begun . . .
These Roundells, help to shew the Mystery
of that immense and blest Eternitie,
From whence the CREATURE sprung, and into whom
It shall again, with full perfection come . . .

Emblem from George Wither's A Collection of Emblemes, Ancient and Moderne (London, 1635). This plate was engraved by Crispin de Passe and son, and was first used in Gabriel Rollenhagen's Nucleus emblematum selectissimorum, quae Itali vulgo impresas vocant (Arnhem and Utrecht, 1611). The Greek running around the picture (aionion kai proskairon) means something like "timeless, and timely."

References:

Richard King, “Orientalism and the Modern Myth of ‘Hinduism,’” Numen, Vol. 46, No. 2 (1999), pp. 146-185.
David N. Lorenzen, “Who Invented Hinduism?,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 41, No. 4 (Oct., 1999), pp. 630-659.
Pankaj Mishra, “Who Invented Hinduism?” Axess Magazine (12/9/20) [PDF available at Prana Journal: http://pranajournal.com/history/understanding-invention-hindu/]
Ouroboros image & text I: http://bestiarium.net/bilder.html
Ouroboros image & text II: http://www.mun.ca/alciato/wither.html

Cultural Pathologies of the Body: When Porn Stars are Post-Feminist Icons, Yoga Must Embody Rebellion

2011-01-03T14:55:00.002-06:00

Well, you know, when you’ve got some spare time and are poking around on the Net, one thing leads to another. This post is a product of that process, clicking on links on the Web (and in my mind) connecting Buddhism, “post-postmodernism,” feminism, porn, and – ultimately – yoga.

OK, so here goes. Let’s start with the Buddhism.

Right now, I’m reading Stephen Batchelor’s Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist – a brilliant, fascinating book that came out last spring and is very – and I mean very – controversial in Buddhist circles. Knowing this, but not fully understanding why it triggers such strong feelings, I went online to read some reviews and blogs about it. (There’s plenty out there.)

And thus I stumbled upon the blogazine Beams and Struts, “An Integral Inquiry into the Post-Postmodern Age.” Hmmmm, interesting, I thought, . . . is that like Integral Yoga – or are they devotees of Ken Wilbur – or it is just more generally dedicated to Integral Psychology – and WTF do they mean by “post-postmodern”?

Hooked, I started exploring the site (which, BTW, is largely written by Canadians – why, I wonder, is so much of the writing that I’m interested in these days coming out of Canada??). One title grabbed my attention: “Pop Culture, Porn Stars and the Mis-Guided Revolution: A Window into the Rebellion of Postmodern Young Women.”

OK, moving on from Stephen Batchelor for the moment – what’s this??

As someone who grew up in the shadow of 1970s feminism, was a young adult during the feminist anti-porn crusade of the 1980s (and even taught a bit of Catharine MacKinnon during the mid-90s), and then watched from a distant disconnect as a new generation of 20-something women starting making a name for themselves as provocative “pro-sex feminists,” this looked like a new iteration of an ongoing debate that at this point, I pretty much know nothing about.

Porn Star as (Post-) Feminist Role Model?

My intuition was right. This post opened my eyes to an entirely unprecedented phase in the controversies that have been swirling around issues of women’s empowerment and sex all my life.

But, sadly to say, it’s not a pretty sight . . . except perhaps on the most hollow, soulless, and superficial level, where all the old tropes of the beautiful young female body are being hammered without mercy. But underneath that façade, well . . . I may have morphed into an old fuddy-duddy, but it feels nothing short of tragic to me.

Author Vanessa Fisher starts outs explaining the context of feminism today:

Six centuries after Joan of Arc was burned alive at the stake at the age of nineteen for standing up for her cause, and only 60 years after Freidan wrote her groundbreaking book, The Feminine Mystique . . . we find ourselves at an interesting, and somewhat confusing, juncture in women’s history. The young women of my generation now live in what is often deemed a “post-feminist” world, where freedom of access and unprecedented options are increasingly at our fingertips . . . We have also grown up in a media-saturated postmodern consumer culture where nearly all spiritual depth has been stripped away in favor of superficial and easy to swallow sound bites, and where the role and importance of the individual consumer—including all our personal desires for freedom and fulfillment—have been raised to an all new altar of the sacred. Within this climate, where words like morality, duty, higher purpose and obligation have become largely outdated relics of the past, the young women of my generation find themselves birthing a whole new image of what it means to be an empowered, rebellious and fearless female at the beginning of the 21st century, and she is truly unlike anything we’ve seen in recorded history.

So far, so good. All this is familiar and makes sense to me. But then comes the kicker. “There is perhaps no young woman who embodies the many diverse and often contradictory values of postmodern female empowerment more potently and starkly,” Ms. Fisher continues, “than the 22-year-old porn-star, actress, model and rising starlet, Sasha Grey.”

Who the hell is Sasha Grey? Certainly, I’ve never heard of her.

As if anticipating my reaction, Vanessa’s next sentence is: “For those of you who haven’t yet heard of Sasha Grey, let me suggest that you soon will”:

I first came across Sasha a little over six months ago, while doing research for an article I was writing about the effects of hardcore pornography on teen viewers. As soon as one enters into the underground world of adult films, it is nearly impossible not to stumble upon Sasha Grey, as she has become a fast rising star with an increasingly wide fan base ever since she entered the pornography industry at the tender age of eighteen. Before turning 21, Sasha . . . had received several major AVN awards, including best female performer of the year, best three-way sex scene and best oral sex scene. In 2009, Rolling Stone magazine wrote a feature article on Sasha and distinguished with the honor of being “The Dirtiest Girl in the World,” because of her willingness to do things on screen that would make most of us (and even most pornstars) cringe, including licking toilet seats, drinking her own urine and asking male co-stars to punch her in the stomach.

Despite such degradation, Sasha has successfully carved out a niche in which her primary cultural image is that of an intelligent, empowered woman – even an “artist.” As Jennifer’s post (which deserves to be read in its entirety) goes on to explain:

Sasha is definitely no ordinary pornstar. At 22 years old, she is one of the most successful and wealthy women in the United States, and she is still in the infancy of her career. She is also no porno bimbo, nor an innocent young victim of the malevolent pornography industry; rather, Sasha is well-known for her sharp intelligence, her love of her job and her deep passion for art and existential philosophy.

What’s the evidence for this? Well, Sasha may not have a Ph.D. in philosophy (or even a college degree), but she does have some real cred in the business-and-brains department. Among other things, she starred in “The Girlfriend Experience,” a recent film by acclaimed director Steven Soderbergh; appeared in the HBO series, Entourage; modeled in mainstream fashion mags; was featured in an ad campaign for American Apparel; and appeared in music videos by the Smashing Pumpkins and The Roots.

What’s Happening with Young Women Today??

While this brief introduction to Sasha Grey was arresting, what really shocked me about this post was not the fact that she was becoming rich and famous by combining pornography with self-styled abuse – while I find this sad and disturbing, it doesn’t surprise me that there’s a market for it. No, what shocked me – and really got me thinking – was the author’s claim that Ms. Grey represents a new icon of female empowerment, one with allure even for someone as evidently educated, talented, and thoughtful as herself.

“Sasha stirred a mixture of intense and confusing emotion within me and I often found myself vacillating between flagrant disgust and idolizing admiration,” Ms. Fisher admits.

There was something about Sasha that spoke to something very deep within me. She was in fact a blatantly stark and unapologetic reflection of the very voice of rebellion that I knew so well within myself, even though I had no desire to be a pornstar. More generally, she was the extreme and honest expression of an archetype that has become increasingly pervasive within my generation as a whole.

Wow. I mean, I grew up in the decadent 1970s, and remember the hedonistic feel of the pre-AIDs, post-60s era of “Looking for Mr. Goodbar” singles bars, gay bathhouses, and “wife swapping.” But I really don’t think that women of my generation could have possibly seen someone like Sasha Grey as “the embodiment of a new ‘fearless female’ archetype” (the contemporary equivalent of Joan of Arc?) that Ms. Fisher believes “is arising with force in my generation.”

How can a porn star – particularly one who seeks out degradation and abuse – embody a new “fearless female archetype”? While critical of the fact that there is “no drive behind her rebellion and her uninhibited freedom of expression that really serves anything other than her own personal freedom and self-aggrandizement,” Ms. Fisher believes that this is perversely part of Sasha’s cultural resonance:

I don’t wish to paint Sasha as morally reprehensible, because I actually appreciate her blunt transparency. I simply find Sasha an intriguing example of the wider impulse of rebellion that seems to be pervasive in my generation and embodied in cultural trends like Girls Gone Wild and Hookup culture, as well as exhibited to differing degrees in some of the major female icons of my generation, such as Lady Gaga, Paris Hilton, Lindsey Lohan and Kaci Battaglia. Sasha Grey represents the extreme embodiment of our postmodern impulse to create ever-increasing freedom of self-expression for all.

Now, I don’t know to what degree Vanessa’s sense of Sasha’s cultural significance is right on – I’m too old, too out of touch with popular culture (who’s Kaci Battaglia, anyway?), and the mother of sons, not daughters. Plus (no doubt like many of you reading this), I live in a non-mainstream cultural bubble – hell, we don’t even have cable. So I really can’t judge the extent to which this analysis of what I guess could be clunkily called the cultural climate of post-post-feminism is accurate.

I do know smart and insightful cultural analysis when I see it, however. And this post is clearly that. It’s also clear from the comments that Vanessa’s analysis resonated with a lot of readers. “I have also been intrigued by what I have seen of Sasha Grey,” SarahO wrote, “and can relate to feeling a mixture things, repulsion and attraction, envy even.”

Envy even?! Interesting. And to me, alarming: Certainly, I feel none of those emotions myself. Rather, I feel a deep sense of concern about the type of world that our daughters and our sons (as we’re all in this together) are inheriting today.

It seems that we in the older generation have done a pretty lousy job of working through the issues that second-wave feminism created if intelligent young women today find themselves lionizing someone like Sasha Grey.

And What About Yoga?

So how does any of this relate to yoga? Well, beyond the fact that for me, pretty much everything in life relates to yoga (☺), there are, I think, some very important lessons to be learned here in terms of the relationship between contemporary culture and our experience of our bodies.

A nice bridge is provided by the movie “The Girlfriend Experience,” in which Sasha Grey plays a high-end “escort” working the glitzier side of Manhattan in late 2008, a lush setting permeated by the menacing sense that the global financial system is starting to crumble. Her character, Chelsea (sometimes called Christine), is a likable, but emotionally frozen character. She’s a beautiful, smart, savvy entrepreneur whose business is selling a desirable body along with a simulacra of human connection (i.e., the “girlfriend experience”).

Chelsea’s boyfriend is a personal trainer – a handsome, buff guy who also services clients in a way that’s intimate on a bodily level, but vacant in terms of authentic emotional connection. One scene has him coaching a woman through a suitably strenuous segment of a Sun Salutation. He stands over her as she’s in plank position, and talks her through a very slow, very intense Chatarunga. Her entire body quivers with effort as he bends over her in a close and sensual, yet psychically distant way.

Here, yoga is used to build the perfect bod. It’s part of the whole gym racket – which is part of the larger competitive hustle – to sculpt a body that’s got value in the marketplace. Just as Chelsea (like Sasha Grey in real life) uses her body to sell herself and get ahead, the gym culture (or at least this symbolic portrayal of it) enables us all to turn our bodies into the best commodities they can be.

Certainly, there’s not the slightest whiff of an integrated body-mind-spirit practice here. Nor would this trainer be qualified to teach yoga that way even if he wanted. We can only teach what we know, and if all we know is the mainstream culture of the body, then that’s what we’ll transmit when we teach yoga.

And because yoga is such an effective means of developing a beautiful body, it’s only natural that it will be used in this way. This is a pitfall that any serious practitioner needs to be keenly aware of.

Yet taught as an integrated mind-body-spirit practice, yoga opens up an entirely different way of connecting to our bodies. And at this time, in this culture, that's incredibly important.

Because the paradigm that “The Girlfriend Experience” represents – and that Sasha Grey has taken to an attention-grabbing new extreme in real life – is beyond unhealthy. I’m tempted to say that it’s soulless, but that’s not quite right, and carries too much baggage. But I do believe that relating to our bodies as “things” in an overwhelmingly materialistic, market-driven culture produces profound alienation from our deeper, authentic selves – as well as from that ineffable, but powerful sense of what’s most inspiring and precious about the human spirit.

Now, just to be clear, I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with gym yoga – I’ve had amazing classes in gyms that inspired me to take my practice to a deeper level. It doesn’t matter if yoga is practiced in a gym, studio, or at home – the same pitfalls and opportunities apply.

We can practice in a way that helps to cure the cultural sickness that almost all of us are infected with to some degree – that is, the divorce between body, mind, and spirit that keeps us in a state of psychic fragmentation, alienated from our animating spirits and our true selves. And, if we are teachers, we can give others the opportunity to do the same.

Or we can - whether deliberately or unwittingly - buy into the same old same old commodification of the body and alienation of the spirit.

In a culture in which a 22-year-old porn star can be regarded as a cutting-edge icon of feminine empowerment, we need to make the most out of whatever tools that we have to imbue ourselves and our children with alternative models of value, beauty, and yes, rebellion.

In a society that’s increasingly devoid of values beyond successful competition in the market, perhaps insisting on the importance of something as ineffable as an integrated human being – synergistically connecting body, mind, and spirit – makes for the most important rebellion of all.

Yoga as Postmodern Shamanism: Reading Yoga 2.0

2010-12-18T11:21:00.004-06:00

Thanks to Jay Winston over at Yoga for Cynics for posting his initial reflections on Matthew Remski and Scott Petrie's Yoga 2.0 (as well as the new movie, Black Swan, which I haven't yet seen), and for linking back to my October 2010 review of the book over at Elephant Journal. Normally I am very averse to going back and reading my past writing, but Jay's post piqued my curiosity (what did I say back then??), causing me to get past that resistance and re-read anyway. Happily, I found that I still like it - so I decided to repost it here, for anyone who may be interested but missed it over at EJ - and also to re-publicize Yoga 2.0, which is a little creative gem of a book that deserves to be read, engaged with, and built on. So without further ado (enough already!) here's the original post from Elephant.

When I first stumbled on Yoga 2.0, I glanced at it briefly and dismissed it as wacko.

But when I detached from my everyday busy-ness enough to really read it, I quickly started to believe it was brilliant.

Moving onward, I got annoyed, and once again dismissed it, this time as overly romantic. But then I re-engaged, and found it to be meaty.

Now that I’ve read the whole book and had time to digest it, I find it nourishing. So, I’m hoping that other serious yoga practitioners will muster the time and energy to bite into this quirkily unique enigma of a book.

Be forewarned, it’s not an easy read. Authors Matthew Remski and Scott Petrie state up front that Yoga 2.0 “is not an introductory text.” And truly, those who don’t have a feel for yoga in their bones, as well as some “familiarity with the basic structure of yogic thought and history,” may be utterly confounded by it.

But practitioners seeking to broaden and deepen their practice should check it out. Because the book itself works as sort of a crazy wisdom practice; a melding of evolutionary theory, postmodern irony, and heart-centered sincerity seeking to connect us to our life source by tapping into yoga’s shamanic roots.

Fail. Fail. Fail. REBOOT

Yoga 2.0 insists that it’s long past time to break out of ossified conceptions of “yoga”; whether they are remote and exotic (e.g., artificially canonized “sacred texts”) or popular and taken-for-granted (e.g., glitzy yoga videos).

“2.0” invokes the rapid evolution of cyberspace. Just as the “read-only internet pages of ten years ago (‘Internet 1.0’)” morphed into the interactive web of today, our relationship to yoga needs to shift (and quickly, as the world is in crisis) from one of external authority to internal dynamism:

Yoga 1.0 is history. It is a book on the shelf, and perhaps a lecture talking about the book. Yoga 2.0 is a conversation. 2.0 invokes a move toward empowerment, interactivity, and relationship in its transmission.

Searching for authenticity outside ourselves, we turn yogic texts into false idols that we pretend to venerate, but don’t truly derive any juice from:

Yoga Sutras, Hatha Yoga Pradapika, Yoga Vashistha, Gheranda Samihita: all are extractions from dusty libraries that have gained value more through academic than practical attention. Going back another layer, the pages from which the mostly German professors translated were themselves extracted from the oral tradition. So any current book on yoga is probably a 10th generation extraction, with prana draining away with each printing and recension.

Habituated to hollow representations, we continue to create more and more of them in the name of spreading the supposed “Truth” of “Yoga.” This sets up “a smoke screen behind which all sort of mediocrities and outrages can safely hide”: Yoga magazines pretending to be “more than glorified IKEA catalogs,” self-promoting hucksters pretending to be traditional Indian gurus, privileged Americans pretending to be buying a bit of enlightenment by New Age-y consumption.

“’Yoga,’” accuse Remski and Petrie, “makes culturally adrift denizens of postmodernity fawn over just about anyone in a dhoti and sandals.”

As humorous, pathetic, or simply lost as we may be, however, that’s far from the end of the story. Because despite such denunciations, Yoga 2.0 is at heart a deeply hopeful work. It recognizes our post-modern predicament: awash in the confusing complexity of the modern world, adrift without our old faith in the power of Enlightenment rationality and science to propel us into a better future. But it embodies a hope that other, more creative and mysterious powers are available for us to work with if we only tap them.

And yoga – worked skillfully – is a tool for tapping these powers, “a Swiss army knife of the bodymind.” Practiced at the cutting edge, yoga enables us to slice through the layers of social conditioning that disconnect us from our life source.

Evolution and Integration

Worked this way, yoga reconnects us to the shamanic energies that originally fueled its creation.

To heal our selves and our world, however, this reconnection must also be an integration. Remski and Petrie are not traditionalists, urging us to abandon the present for some supposedly unchanging ideal. Instead, they are evolutionists, calling us to embrace everything from the ancient to the postmodern in the ever-changing immediacy of life.

Yoga 2.0 situates this vision of yoga as evolution in a short but sweeping story that takes us from the primordial to the present. Presented as allegory rather than analysis, it resists simple summation. Nonetheless, I’ll present a bit to provide some sense of the rich set of ideas at play.

The story starts back in hunter-gatherer era, the time of the “bicameral mind.” Human beings are so completely connected to nature that “it’s impossible to tell where the world ends and where you begin.” Meditation begins as a tool of the hunter, a necessity of life integrated with killing and death.

(Interestingly, ahimsa (the yogic principle of non-violence) comes later, with the development of agricultural society. The primordial roots of yoga, however, remain connected to the energies of the hunter – like us, it keeps its fang-teeth as civilization progresses.)

As human society becomes more complex, the unitary consciousness of the bicameral mind necessarily fragments. Different tribes develop, encounter each another, and discover the fact of cultural difference: “their” ways are not “ours.”

While our first instinct is to destroy “the other” for the audacity of being different (a reaction that’s still, of course, all-too-present), over time we generally learn acceptance. Dealing with difference, however, requires recognizing the particularity of our own culture. Consequently, the human mind develops the capacity for “holding and considering different and even opposing points of view” simultaneously.

While this is a good thing, it necessarily cuts our collective connection to nature. The days of simply living according to instinct are over.

Consequently, shamans emerge as specialists of “prayer and magic” – holy men and women capable of reconnecting the tribe back to the primordial source.

Time goes on; even more complex societies develop. Spirituality becomes codified as religion. Priests and Brahmins emerge as religious specialists, dedicated to maintaining their buildings, personnel, dogmas and rituals.

If the yoga of the shaman is wild and primordial, the yoga of the priesthood is civilized and polite. It supports the social order and helps people cope with it. As such, it’s useful but not transformative. While quite appealing to most people, resisters and shamans want more:

Spirituality and bureaucracy begin to mirror each other, while the old yogi watches calmly from his outcaste hut, a machete in his hand.

The story continues on through the birth of Buddhism and the emergence of the Bhagavad-Gita. Each represents a particular paradigm of consciousness, and, consequently, a distinct way of practicing yoga. Fundamentally, however, the narrative continues to elaborate the claim that while consciousness necessarily becomes more complex in concert with society, yoga offers a means of integrating these accreting layers of consciousness with the primordial force of life.

Confronting Postmodern Crisis

Our contemporary situation is symbolized by the BP oil spill:

When we look at the pelican coated with crude oil, blinking its bloodshot eyes through a black slick, its feet glued to the plywood of its improvised cage, we receive a subconscious image of our own bodies, so slathered with self-consciousness and so abused by our extractive manias that we cannot breathe, let alone fly.

All of the externally imposed imagery that we internalize every day keeps us – like the bird – unable to experience our own nature.

How do we, right now, break into the contemporary body – so hard to see beneath the mirrors, cosmetics, images, self-images, magazines, and flatscreens – to fully experience and describe this body, this life?

By connecting us to our own bodies, yoga cuts through the layers of social conditioning and self-consciousness that keep us trapped in a truncated experience of life. And today, as all of nature is in crisis, direct connection with life is critically important – without it, we won’t even grasp what we’re losing until it’s gone.

Practiced as postmodern shamanism, yoga is a weapon for fighting this destruction, a means of pumping prana back into our selves and our world.

The supple cacophony of jungle, forest, and ocean has been overwhelmed by screaming jets, HVAC fans, jackhammers, 2-stoke engines, and white computer noise. The yogi’s typical response to modern racket is to seek silence. But the animals with whom she shares her shamanic heart have always struck their poses with cries of danger, self-assertion, or savage love. Let us then reawaken our asanas – and ancient selves – with calls and caws, hoots and howls.

While I did have some quibbles with the book – some of it seemed overly romanticized, unnecessarily dense, or excessively self-conscious – ultimately I was charmed by this vision and this call.

Because really, what else is to be done? Whether yoga (or anything else) can stop environmental devastation, I don’t know. But I share the belief that it’s a tool that can connect us to the creative energies of life, and that we need this connection to have hope of healing ourselves and our world.


"We Prefer Life": Paris, 1968

Yoga 2.0 is available for purchase through the book website, which you can access by clicking here.

Yoga, Hinduism, and Contemporary American Culture

2010-12-02T14:30:00.000-06:00

I’ve been ruminating on the Hindu American Foundation’s (HAF) “Take Back Yoga” campaign ever since the New York Times shot it to media stardom last weekend. Given my rather weird background as a political-science-professor-turned-yoga-teacher, this story’s combination of yoga and identity politics (the HAF being a self-proclaimed Hindu-American advocacy group) really got me going.

The question at stake is whether the American yoga community is (in the words of the HAF) “disassociating Yoga from its Hindu roots” – and, if so, whether this is problematic.

While I suspect that it runs counter to the views of many if not most of my fellow practitioners, after much reflection my conclusion is that:

It’s quite true that there’s an odd silence surrounding Hinduism in the American yoga community. In 15 years of involvement, I’ve heard a lot about Tantra (not to get that started again!), as well as much less well-known (in the U.S. context) traditions such as Advaita Vedanta and Kashmir Shavism. Yet, what’s by far the most familiar term to most Americans – “Hinduism” – is rarely uttered, either in print or conversation.
And yes, I do think that this is problematic. In fact, the more I reflect on it, the more I find that I feel this way.

The reason that I think this, however, is not because I believe that “yoga” sprang directly from some mythical set of ancient “Hindu roots.” Both conceptually and historically, this seems hugely over-simplistic to me. Both “yoga” and “Hinduism” are words that refer to vast, diverse, and complex traditions. And as such, the reality is that both have always been understood and practiced in a huge variety of ways.

To make much sense of the “yoga and Hinduism” debate, I think, it’s crucial to define your terms. What type of yoga are you talking about? When and where? As practiced by whom? And precisely what do you mean by “Hinduism”? This is such vast terrain that it’s impossible to navigate it in non-specific terms for very long without getting hopelessly confused and lost.

The Cosmic Ocean Reveals Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva, 1835

Talking ‘Bout America, Yo

So let me be clear: What I’m thinking about in terms of this debate is the state of contemporary American culture.

I’m thinking about the 15 million or so mostly white Americans who go to (or teach) yoga classes at gyms or studios, who read (or reject) Yoga Journal (but in any case are familiar with it), who buy yoga books and DVDs, and who perhaps shell out for trainings and conferences when inspired (and solvent).

I’m also thinking about the 2.29 million Hindus of Indian origin living in the U.S. today, and the larger Hindu diaspora they’re a part of.

Just to be clear, I myself have no personal ties to either India or Hinduism. No, I’m pretty much your run-of-the-mill left-liberal WASP (although I did have one Grandmother who was an observant Jew and one who was a devout Southern Baptist, which helps explain why I’m drawn to religious and spiritual syncretism). I’ve had a few close Hindu friends (interestingly including one Latina convert Hindu from Detroit), but our discussions of yoga and/or Hinduism have been cursory, if they occurred at all. We have a big Indian community here in Chicago, but when I go to Devon Avenue to shop or eat out, I’m really just a local tourist.

I do, however, have a professional background writing and teaching about racial and ethnic politics in the U.S. So for better or worse, that’s the lens through which I view this debate.

Many of my interested, involved, and knowledgeable practitioner friends, in contrast, enter into it thinking about ancient Indian history. Some have explained that yoga and Hinduism really have little to do with each other at all. And I’m very interested in what they have to say. But I also think that it’s obvious that this issue is too big to be treated as a simple, open-and-shut case.

Meanwhile, however, I’m thinking about the Civil Rights and Black Power movements and how revolutionary it was for African American culture to get any respect in this country. I’m thinking about how certain Native American advocacy groups have protested against what they see as the exploitative appropriation of their sacred symbols and traditions, and how important it is to at least listen respectfully to their POV.

Mexico City Olympics, 1968: Black Power salute

When I read over the HAF website, I’m thinking about the NAACP and MALDEF. I know the history; I know how important racial/ethnic advocacy groups with some legal/political savvy have been in moving this country closer to ideals of civic equality and individual opportunity that I very much support.

Which is not to say that I think that we non-Hindu practitioners should scramble to follow some arbitrary “politically correct” line about yoga and Hinduism just because the HAF is promoting it. They are only one organization. And while they are apparently the first professionally run Hindu-American advocacy group, it’s always true that no single group ever speaks for all of its purported members.

And even if they did, it’s also true there are now millions of non-Hindu yoga practitioners who have their own experience of yoga and lots of interesting and worthwhile things to say about it. All voices are valuable. No one should be silenced.

What’s at Stake?

It’s important to remember no one is suggesting that you need to be Hindu to practice yoga. On the contrary, everyone agrees that Hindu gurus have been telling us Westerners that yoga is a universal practice since it was first taught to us by Swami Vivekanada back in the late 19th century.

Nor is the question at stake “who owns yoga.” Framed in these terms (as done by both the Times and Deepak Chopra), it’s far too easy to dismissively respond that no one “owns” yoga. Again, most Hindu yoga teachers have been telling us that for over a century now.

What’s at stake, I think, is whether it’s valuable to start a new conversation that acknowledges – and respects – the historical and contemporary connections between yoga and Hinduism.

Personally, I think this sounds wonderful. I know that I don’t have a good understanding of Hinduism, and that it’s a huge and complex subject. I also know that I love yoga and want to deepen my knowledge of it – which certainly includes its relationship with Hinduism! This all sounds completely fascinating and enriching to me . . .

So I’ve been surprised that there seems to be so much resistance to opening up this dialog among my compatriots in the yoga community. Most everyone seems to agree that Hinduism is generally neither acknowledged nor discussed in the mainstream American yoga scene. Yet the dominant response seems to be: Yes, and that’s entirely appropriate.

Why? Some of the responses include: Because no one “owns” yoga. (But again, that’s not the issue.) Or because yoga predates Hinduism. (Fine, but what about the next few thousand years?) Or because “Hinduism” is essentially a modern term pushed by colonial Britain. (True, but contemporary asana practice is modern too. Wouldn’t it be interesting to know more about how both developed in tandem?)

Now, I recognize that by naming their campaign “Take Back Yoga,” the HAF took an aggressive, proprietary tone that some may find off-putting, or even offensive. But let’s remember that they are an advocacy group – their job is to get attention for their cause.

Controversial bumper sticker slogans attract attention in ways that nuanced, considerate discussions do not. Such is the nature of cultural and identity politics, not to mention politics in general – that’s just the way that it goes.

But the slogan “Take Back Yoga” accomplished its essential purpose: that is, calling attention to the almost eerie silence surrounding the subject of Hinduism in the American yoga community. Now that this is on the table, I think that it’s up to others interested in seeing a new discussion develop to step up and get started.

I, for one, would love to see it happen. Anyone else out there willing to join me?

Note: "Cosmic Ocean" image from http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00routesdata/1800_1899/hinduism/greatgods./greatgods.html

Yogis, Ascetic, and Fakirs: Fascinating historical images of India that I don't pretend to understand

2010-11-16T23:28:00.000-06:00

Searching through Google Images last night for pics to illustrate my latest post at Elephant Journal ("The Oprah-fication of Patanjali: Culturally Homogenizing the Yoga Sutra" - please check it out if you haven't yet!), I stumbled across an incredible web page full of historical photos and prints of Hindu fakirs and ascetics from the 1700s-1960s.

On further investigation, I figured out that this collection is part of a much larger set of online resources put together by Dr. Frances W. Pritchett at Columbia University. Given that there's nothing that says that these images can't be shared online, I figured that it would be OK to post some of them, along with some personal ruminations, here.

This print is labeled "'The Sunyasees,' by William Taylor of the Bengal Civil Service, 1842." While obviously a highly Europeanized rendition, there's something about the weirdness of English pastoral feeling infused into an illustration of Hindu mendicants smoking bhang in tiger skins that I really like.

Many of the images are not so soothing, however. I find this one, labeled "An ascetic with his full traveling equipment: a photo by a soldier, World War II," full-stop arresting:

Note again the tiger skin. (An interesting article that briefly explains their significance, accompanied by an absolutely stunning late 19th century print, can be accessed here).

I thought about using this photo in my EJ post, but somehow, in that overly loud and crass forum, I thought that it would be disrespectful. So I didn't post it there. But I did want to share it, because I find it quite powerful.

I feel that this is not an image that should be taken lightly. I don't know remotely enough about India and Hinduism to understand its significance, but that's precisely what I like about it. It really drives home the reality of cultural difference - as an American who's never even been to Asia, everything that's symbolized and represented here is completely foreign to my experience.

And it blows my mind that it was taken during World War II.

Here is another image that just stops me in my tracks. As you can read faintly under the photo, it's labeled "Hermit at Gem Lake doing penance--exposed to mid-day sun and intense fires--Mt. Abu, India. Copyright 1903 by Underwood & Underwood."

1903 is really not all that long ago - heck, I had grandparents alive then. But there's something about this photo that feels to me very ancient. It conjures up something like the feelings I had as a young child back in Sunday School looking at photos of Jerusalem and hearing wild and sacred stories of men being swallowed by whales, floods almost destroying the earth, seas parting, the dead rising, casting out demons, and walking on water.

In other words, all of the cultural referents that were hard-wired into me at an early age were Judeo-Christian. This is not good or bad; it just is. But it is significant.

I can work to understand Hinduism, traditional yogic austerities, or whatever. But it's not encoded into my cultural DNA.

Even in today's highly globalized, mulit-culti world, I still feel very conscious of being a Westerner.

Here are two much more disturbing images. I would be lying if I didn't admit that they rouse up some rather stereotypically Western feelings of horror that such practices are considered worthy austerities.

Yet it's also true that this gut-level sense of repugnance is genuinely mixed with a feeling of wonder and respect for a religion and culture that I recognize that I really don't understand - at all.


"An ascetic with a metal grid welded around his neck so that he can never lie down; photo, late 1800s."

"A photo by T. A. Rust, c.1880s, of an ascetic who constantly keeps his arms extended upward."

The next image is not so disturbing, but I think that there is something terribly poignant about it. I wonder who these men were - what their lives were like - how did they think about themselves and the world - and - what's the connection to someone like me?

I don't know even the beginning of the answers to any of these questions.

"Fakirs, Bombay," a photo by Taurines, c.1880s"

These next two photos illustrate the phenomena of yogis and fakirs turning into an odd sort of - not exactly tourist attraction, but perhaps exotic street performance. (Mark Singleton discusses this in his book, Yoga Body, in a section that I reference in my EJ post mentioned above.)

This "stereoscopic" presentation of a man lying on the classic "bed of nails" may conjure up odd associations for those of us old enough to remember the viewfinders that we may have had as children. For those who never had them or are too young to remember, these were binocular-like contraptions that you would put a double-imaged slide into in order to view images in 3-D. (Positively prehistoric technology by today's standards, to say the least! But I remember them well. I used to really be really excited to buy packs of viewfinder slides to look at on family vacations to Yellowstone and places like that.)

"Hindu devotee doing penance on a bed of spikes near the shrine of Kali, Calcutta"; a stereo view, c.1900"

However, needless to say, my childhood viewfinder slides never contained images like that . . .

The next photo gives me the sense that the ascetic pictured is engaged in some sort of street performance - there is something very posed feeling about it, with the trident on the left and the pillar with garlands and framed pictures in back.

"An ascetic on a bed of nails, Calcutta, c.1920s"

This morphing from holy man to object of European "voyeuristic fascination" is also disturbing -- although, unlike the radical austerities pictured above, in a non-visceral way. But it makes me think of how some tribal peoples were violently opposed to being photographed by Westerners because they believed that the process stole something of their souls.

There is something compelling but almost indecently intrusive in the photographic gaze.

From Beds of Nails to Contemporary Yoga

Of course, we've all heard of the proverbial "bed of nails" - but I, at least, had never seen such photos of them before. (There are quite a few more posted on the same site.) And certainly, I'd never quite so directly connected the dots from them to anything that I think of as "yoga" prior to reflecting on these images.

Which gets us into the whole "what is yoga" debate - which on the one hand is so fascinating, but on the other so difficult. Because it's impossible to give a single comprehensive answer. And, there's so many people that have such strong - and strongly differing - takes on it.

The most recent comment on my EJ post was from someone who was clearly irate because he felt that today's regular practice was once again being dissed. Which wasn't at all my intent - in fact, it's rather ironic, because I see myself as a passionate advocate of contemporary, syncretic, post-modern yoga.

But I also respect people who take ancient texts and traditions seriously. Who devote themselves to trying to understand and engage in practices that have always remained quite foreign to mainstream American society.

What bothers me (and this was the point of the EJ post) is blurring everything together so much that there's no sense that what we might be doing today - powerful, worthy, and wonderful as it may be - is essentially the same as what yogis were doing in India in the past. Muddling everything together in this way - which, it seems to me, is the default cultural perspective in at least a lot of the North American yoga community - strikes me as a tremendous loss.

Our world grows smaller to the extent that our capacity to recognize and respect cultural, religious, and yes, even spiritual difference shrinks.

And I hate that. I want the world to remain big - open, diverse, and mysterious. I look at these photos and recognize how much I don't know. And I love that.

To me, this sort of not knowing feels like a gateway to an ever-expanding universe of possibilities.

Yoga is Like Brushing Your Teeth

2010-11-03T23:07:00.000-05:00

As slightly icky as the metaphor may be, for me, sometimes, practicing yoga really does feel like brushing my teeth.

Don’t get me wrong. I love brushing my teeth. It’s one of the first things that I do after getting up in the morning. I relish getting that old stale overnight sleepy mouth feeling efficiently cleansed out at the start of a new day.

And on it goes. I love brushing my teeth because it always provides a sense of a fresh start, a cleansing of any weird tasting or smelling or feeling gunk that’s built up in the course of the day.

What’s this got to do with yoga? One might think the serious practitioner, who tosses around talk of Tantra, Prana, and Hathayogapradapika, might find this tooth-brushing analogy inappropriately mundane. Maybe even (for more sensitive souls) slightly insulting . . . ? But I hope not.

Because like most yoga practitioners, I’m mired in the gunk of everyday life. Not living in a cave in the Himalayas, not off (or at least not often enough) luxuriating in a serene, pristine retreat center.

Rather, I’m dealing with bills and car repairs and the unwelcome news that my nine-year-old may have gotten head lice from his friend. I find that one of my two cats has once again barfed on the rug . . . and continue to cope with the rather demented one who regularly insists on peeing outside of the litter box.

There’s back injuries and communication breakdowns. Anxious partners, nutso family members, and over-busy friends.

And that’s when things are going really well.

Then there’s the ambient anxiety of early 21st century life . . . does the Tea Party / financier alliance remind you of Weimar? Oh, and getting out of the car the other day, my nine-year-old matter-of-factly asks, “Mom, Gabe says that if we keep not taking care of the environment, the world’s going to end in five years. Do you think that that’s true?”

So when I step onto my mat to practice, I’ve got all this psychic gunk that’s built up in my mind-body-spirit system over the course of just another regular day.

And just like brushing my teeth, it feels really great to do something to clean it out – at least as much as can be done for the day. (Certainly, my teeth aren’t going to become perfect, and neither is my body/being.)

But I trust in the process, and it always works.

As reliably as my favorite Cinnamint toothpaste . . .

     Breathe. Shift from thinking into feeling. Move.

     Spinal twist. Forward bend. Inversion.

     Shoulder opener. Hip opener. Mind opener. Feeling processer.

I finish my practice; open my eyes. The light is brighter, clearer, softer – more radiant, more beautiful.

I reconnect with the energy of life a bit more deeply.

I feel

so much

. . . better!

And then it’s back to “regular life,” where the gunk builds up even while I’m tasting the sweetness.

But that’s OK, because I’m fortunate enough to have a good toothbrush, and a simple Hatha yoga practice.

Nothing fancy today. Sometimes it’s different – sometimes yoga feels more like transformation and transcendence than brushing teeth. But since I always return to some version of the “real world,” I’m grateful to have that mundane, tooth-brushing type of practice as a cleansing part of my everyday life.

The Poetry of the Body: Yoga, Whitman, and American Tantra

2010-10-25T09:23:00.000-05:00

Note: This post was originally published at Elephant Journal as 'Yoga, Spirituality, and the Body: Walt Whitman and American Tantra."

Walt Whitman, 1855

Although the method of yoga I practice never uses the term “Tantra,” I’ve long been intrigued by those that do.

Some of my Anusara friends casually refer to themselves as “Tantrikas,” and I love the sound of it: mysterious and exotic, kinda sexy and a more than a little bit edgy.

But the scholar in me always wants to know more: What does this evocative word really mean?

I’ve been thinking about this for awhile, and reading about it on and off. Finally, I’ve come to my own, at least preliminary conclusion, which is that Tantra (speaking strictly as it’s used in the North American yoga community today) has much more to do with Walt Whitman than with Indian tradition.

That’s not to say that there’s absolutely no connection between the two. Whatever linkage there may be between Tantra in its contemporary, North American and traditional, Indian contexts, however, exists more in the realm of the mystical and the poetic than the concrete. That’s OK, though – no, it’s really much more than OK; it’s intriguing, even fascinating. Certainly, it’s where the mystery resides.

That’s probably quite cryptic, if not completely opaque . . . so let me try to explain.

Power and Transgression

Since I was interested in learning about the relationship between Tantra and Hatha yoga (and geeky by nature), reading Geoffrey Samuel's The Origins of Yoga and Tantra: Indic Religions to the 13th Century seemed like a good place to start.

Samuel – a British scholar who studies really interesting stuff like “Tibetan yogic health practices” – argues that Tantra can be traced back to a “relatively coherent set of techniques” developed in India during the 9th-10th centuries C.E. During this formative medieval period, its “key elements” included:

Elaborate deity visualizations of fierce male and particularly female deities,

Use of transgressive “Kapalika”-style practices associated with cremation grounds and polluting substances linked to sex and death, and

“Internal” yogic practices, including sexual techniques, intended to achieve health and long life, as well as liberating insight.

“Tantric ritual,” Samuels explains, “is about powerful and dangerous forces, which must be encountered and dealt with for the good of the community. These forces can only be manipulated by specialist priests and ritualists, and even then there is still a risk that things can ‘go wrong.’” As such, Tantra has always been controversial: Many wondered “whether these practices were legitimate and appropriate, which is perhaps hardly surprising, because their position on or beyond the edge of the legitimate was intrinsic to their power.”

Hmmm. Not sounding that much like “Tantric philosophy of intrinsic goodness” described on the Anusara Yoga website, which naturally makes practitioners “nicer and more considerate” now, is it?

“Liberation is possible in the world”

Certainly, contemporary yoga teachers working with Tantra aren’t trafficking in trangressive techniques involving sex and death, or even (as far as I know) “elaborate deity visualizations.” So what are they doing?

While there’s no simple, single answer to this question, Nora Issacs identifies “non-dualism” as the “one core aspect” of Tantra consistently taught in the West. As explained in her recent Yoga Journal article, this boils down to the belief that “one’s true essence (alternatively known as the transcendental Self, pure awareness, or the Divine) exists in every particle of the universe”:

‘In Tantra, the world is not something to escape from or overcome, but rather, even the mundane or seemingly negative events in day-to-day life are actually beautiful and auspicious,’ says Pure Yoga founder Rod Stryker, a teacher in the Tantric tradition of Sri Vidya. “Rather than looking for samadhi, or liberation from the world, Tantra teaches that liberation is possible in the world.’

In keeping with non-dualism, contemporary Tantra stresses a strongly positive view of the body as a “manifestation of spirit” and potential vehicle for liberation. “’As soon as you like your body, it’s pretty much Tantric,’” Issacs quotes Anusara founder John Friend as saying. “You see the beauty and the Divine in it.’”

So what’s not Tantric?

As someone who’s been around the yoga community for years, this non-dualist, pro-body, this-worldly orientation feels very familiar. So familiar, in fact, that it pretty much describes all the schools of yoga that I’ve ever been exposed to – including ones, such as Iyengar, that claim nothing to do with the “Tantric” label whatsoever.

Yet in a recent EJ interview, John Friend claims that:

Anusara yoga is based on Shiva-Shakti Tantric philosophy, while Iyengar yoga is based essentially on Classical Yoga (Patanjali Yoga Sutra). Tantra focuses on removing the differences between the world and Spirit, while Classical Yoga tries to separate Spirit and the world.

Undoubtedly, as neither an Anusara or Iyengar practitioner (although I have done a reasonable amount of the latter), I’m getting in over my head here (and fear getting slammed by irate commentators). But, really? That doesn’t square with my experience of studying with several certified Iyengar teachers or reading books by Mr. Iyengar himself.

For example, in Light on Life, Iyengar writes that:

If you say you are your body, you are wrong. If you say you are not your body, you are also wrong. The truth is that although the body is born, lives, and dies, you cannot catch a glimpse of the divine except through the body.

I could give many other examples. But the point is: Can you honestly characterize any of the popular forms of yoga today as anti-body? As wanting to separate the body from spirituality? Sure, there’s a lot of “fitness yoga” that’s not interested in the spiritual side of yoga at all. But all other methods seem to have a positive orientation to the body, and to embodying spirituality in the world.

Anusara Yoga class (www.toddboston.com/Blog)

In other words, it seems to me that all of forms of yoga today (bracketing the purely fitness-oriented ones) are essentially “Tantric,” at least given the YJ definition of the term (which seems to capture the common sensibility of the North American yoga community pretty well). Yet, only particular methods, such as Anusara, describe themselves that way. Either I’m missing something here, or “Tantra” (again, speaking of it only as it’s used in the N.A. yoga community) really means something different.

The Poetry of the Body

So what is it?

It’s tempting to dismiss talk of “Tantra” as simply a marketing gimmick. But I’m not going to. Having taken a teacher training with Shiva Rea several years ago, I’ve drunk some of that (American) Tantric Kool-Aid. There was something identifiably different in that experience, which I at least felt connected to Shiva’s references to Tantra.

Now, I’m only speculating. But based on my experience, what felt identifiably “Tantric” had nothing to do with abstract theories of dualism versus non-dualism. Rather, it was practicing in a way that brought us into what might be described as the “ecstatic realm.” It’s asana worked in a way that catches a ride on a vibrant wave of joy, connection, and liberation – right in this sweat-soaked room, right on this rubber mat, right in the here and now.

I did a little online reading, and found that some of the ancient Tantric texts captured the feeling I had experienced quite well. From the Spanda Karika:

when the Tantrika becomes established in the sacred tremor of reality, he liberates the flow of manifestation and return, and in this way takes pleasure in the universal freedom, as a master of the wheel of energies.

And from the Vijnana Bhairava:

Contemplate over the undivided forms of your own body and those of the entire universe as being of an identical nature. Thus will your omnipresent being and your own form rest in unity and you will reach the very nature of consciousness . . . Feel your substance: bone, flesh and blood, saturated with cosmic essence, and know supreme bliss.

Still, based on what I’ve read about the history of Indian Tantra, I’m strongly inclined to agree with Baba Rampuri’s recent insistence that “Yoga, as practiced in the West, has nothing to do with Tantra as it is practiced in its high and low forms in India.”

The fact that I found some passages in ancient texts that spoke to me, in other words, isn’t enough to convince me that what we refer to as “Tantra” today has much to do with ancient (or even contemporary) Tantric practices in India.

Illustration from 1940 edition of Whitman's Leaves of Grass

Singing the Body Electric

On the other hand, I think that it has a lot to do with Walt Whitman.

While I’m interested in ancient Tantric texts, I’m even more fascinated by how my experience of ecstatic yoga maps onto his poetry: a man who was, after all, a visionary, mystic, and shaman of my own culture – someone whose energy I still feel resonating (although not nearly as much as I would like) in America today.

From Song of Myself:

I celebrate myself, and sing myself,

And what I assume you shall assume,

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,

I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this air,

Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same,

I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,

Hoping to cease not till death.

Creeds and schools in abeyance,

Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,

I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,

Nature without check with original energy.

2

Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with perfumes,

I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it,

The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.

The atmosphere is not a perfume, it has no taste of the distillation, it is odorless,

It is for my mouth forever, I am in love with it,

I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked,

I am mad for it to be in contact with me.

The smoke of my own breath,

Echoes, ripples, buzz’d whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine,

My respiration and inspiration, the beating of my heart, the passing of blood and air through my lungs,

The sniff of green leaves and dry leaves, and of the shore and dark-color’d sea-rocks, and of hay in the barn,

The sound of the belch’d words of my voice loos’d to the eddies of the wind,

A few light kisses, a few embraces, a reaching around of arms,

The play of shine and shade on the trees as the supple boughs wag,

The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields and hill-sides,

The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising from bed and meeting the sun.

Have you reckon’d a thousand acres much? have you reckon’d the earth much?

Have you practis’d so long to learn to read?

Have you felt so proud to get at the meaning of poems?

Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origin of all poems,

You shall possess the good of the earth and sun, (there are millions of suns left,)

You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead, nor feed on the spectres in books,

You shall not look through my eyes either, nor take things from me,

You shall listen to all sides and filter them from your self.

American Tantra? I, for one, say “yes.”

Walking the Elephant Walk

2010-10-19T23:07:00.000-05:00

I posted my first blog over at Elephant Journal – where I’m now going to be a regular columnist (!) – this morning: “Yoga, Spirituality, and the Body: Walt Whitman and American Tantra.” If you haven’t already done so, please head over to EJ and check it out!

I’ll be reposting my Elephant blogs here at Think Body Electric once they’ve had a chance to establish themselves there a bit. I’ll also keep posting things here that feel better suited for TBE, pure and simple.

All this is a big experiment for me. Blogging still feels pretty new and strange: as recently as last winter, it’s just not something that I ever imagined myself doing.

But I’m finding that I like it. The freedom to write without constraints is liberating. I love the ability to add links, images, and videos. The multi-dimensionality of it is exciting – a whole new way to work and play with the written word.

Being able to immediately get comments from whoever out there in cyberspace happens to stumble across your blog, decide to take the time to read it, and then take the extra step of saying something about it is also interesting and energizing. On the one hand, it makes the whole enterprise feel a little dangerous – who knows who you will encounter? Will they be nice; will they be crazy; will they be safe??

On the other hand, I’ve found that blogging builds a weird sense of connection and trust. Despite all the well-merited warnings about protecting oneself against cyber-stalkers and so on, in a few short months I’ve encountered a good number of people that I feel like I’ve connected to in some genuinely meaningful way.

Even more surprising to me, I’ve even met a few of them in person – cyberspace Zapping into real-time multi-dimensional “reality”!

At any rate, because elephants on are my mind, I wanted to share this wonderful graphic of Ganesha that I found today. May we all find the strength to walk our spirit walk and navigate the inevitable obstacles on our path with beauty, truth, and grace.

Off the Mat Vs. the Old New Left: Subverting the Dominant Paradigm, With Love

2010-10-12T14:56:00.002-05:00

A few evenings ago, idly wasting time on Facebook, I stumbled across a post on Elephant Journal with the provocative title, “SEANE CORN, FOUNDER OF OFF THE MAT, CHARGED WITH BEING WHITEY YUPPIE DILETTANTE BY ARMCHAIR ANTI-RACIST.” Say what? As a fan of Seane’s, as well as an ex-political science professor who used to write about issues of race, class, and equality, this sounded pretty interesting.

The EJ post linked to a lengthy piece at Tikkun (read the original here) that strongly criticized the yoga service organization, Off the Mat, Into the World (OTM) as the latest incarnation of a "paternalistic, feel-good philanthropy that is rooted in 19th century Christian missionary work." Well, ouch. Them’s fighting words, even for peace-loving yogis!

True, the post’s author, Be Scofield, rather condescendingly conceded that OTM is “well-intentioned.” He insisted, however, that its work nonetheless generates “problematic issues of paternalism, ‘feel-good’ service, white U.S.-centric privilege and racism.”

Christian missionary in Africa: Courtesy of www.rethinkafrica.org

Who IS this guy?!, I wondered. I clicked over to his website and was impressed to find an interesting, diverse, and engaging arrays of links to articles, videos, podcasts, and other resources dealing with important issues of social justice, spiritual activism, and environmentalism. Regardless of his hostility to OTM, Mr. Scofield has some impressive bona fides, which made me want to take the time to read his very long post (not to mention the 62 comments (!) on it).

Soon after posting a link to the EJ article on my Facebook Page (which focuses on yoga-related news and information), I found out that Elephant had taken it down. I have no idea why (note: now I do - see comment from EJ, below), but it made me wonder if Be’s piece was judged as too negative to share; something that would hurt the good work OTM is doing. Personally, I don’t think this is the case – provided that it’s read critically, rather than simply defensively.

True, Be’s article is irritatingly (some might chose a stronger adjective) framed as unsolicited tutelage to OTM: I’m-going-to-explain-to-you-clueless-white-liberal-ladies-why-you’re-really-unconsciously-perpetuating-racism-and-cultural-imperialism. Well, gee, thanks a lot (not). Nonetheless, I think that we yoga types can take a deep breath, get past that, and benefit from thinking a little more into how the issues he raised square with the model of service and activism being developed by OTM and others in the yoga community.

It’s a conversation worth having. And even if it means taking some unwarranted knocks, it’s exciting to see yoga-centered activism attracting attention outside of the yoga community. Besides, I think that old school Leftists (such as Be) actually have a lot to learn from the yoginis of OTM, who have broken out of some of the ossified paradigms that have rendered left-of-center politics unattractive, irrelevant, or unworkable for many people for many years now. Ideally, dialoging with such critics can help grow the spiritual activism movement both within the yoga community, and beyond.

The Specter of Self-Serving White Do-Goodism

The Tikkun article raises important and uncomfortable points about race, class, and privilege intersect in what’s sometimes called “volunteer tourism,” in which the lives, cultures, and even suffering of others may (but don't necessarily) function as little more than a convenient means of generating a sense of adventure, self-affirmation, and personal growth for road-tripping do-gooders.

“Corn is a white, upper class woman from the U.S. who leads women, almost all of whom are white, to Cambodia, Uganda and South Africa for service projects that are advertised as opportunities for self-discovery,” Be notes. He goes on to skewer OTM as little more than self-serving yuppie dilettantism:

Connecting activism with tourism, travel, adventure, reward and leisure is central to their project. During the Cambodia trip participants could visit the Royal Palace, National Museums, or travel in a boat along the Mekong River (and then return to their “5-star premier hotel” in Phnom Phen.) The program description captures this sense of adventure, ‘After the leadership training you have an opportunity to add one of the wonders of the world onto your journey: a trip to the historic Angkor Wat, where beautiful temples and sunrises await’ . . . Most troubling is that these emerging leaders are being taught that they can ‘expand their self-confidence and capabilities by exposing them to unique physical and spiritual challenges’ by traveling thousands of miles to ‘exotic’ foreign locations.

Framed in this way, it does sound pretty awful. And regardless of whether it’s in fact a valid critique of OTM (and I believe that it’s not), it’s important to recognize that it’s not simply mean-spirited and crazy to raise these issues. There is a long, unhappy, and all-too-often deeply shameful history of white people traveling to foreign lands in the name of “doing good,” while in reality doing nothing more than serving their own self-interest.

Yoga practitioners interested in spiritual activism definitely need to understand the historical and contemporary dynamics that fuel the concerns Be raised. Regardless of how well OTM addresses them, it’s simply true that photos such as these are going to raise issues of race, gender, class, and privilege for many people, particularly but by no means exclusively people of color:

Where one person might see an inspiring and beautiful photo, another will see yet another white woman affirming herself at the expense of the full autonomy, equality, recognition, and respect of people of color.

This doesn’t mean that such photos shouldn’t be taken and shared, or that the work shouldn’t be done. It’s simply acknowledging that this is the history we’ve inherited, the world that we’re born into.

Regardless of how good or aware OTM and similar organizations may be, some people are going to question the motives of white American women working with Black African children. That’s OK; that’s understandable. More than that: To protect against continued abuses, whether intentional or unconscious, it’s important.

I believe, however, that OTM recognizes these issues and deals with them. I think, however, that Be doesn’t recognize this because they're doing so in a very different way than he thinks is legitimate.

You Say You Want a Revolution?

Be’s post raises crucial concerns about race, class, and the legacy of colonialism. Conceptually, however, it’s framed in terms of standard Leftist assumptions that I find neither practical nor compelling.

Be’s writing reflects two crucial assumptions:

1. All forms of oppression – whether based on race, class, gender, sexual preference, or whatever – are rooted in a monolithic “system” that needs to be attacked and, ideally, destroyed. Meaningful social change is impossible without cutting the systemic roots of oppression.

2. Because the world is divided between oppressor and oppressed, individuals in the former camp face enormous challenges if they want to help those in the latter – structurally, they are simply in the wrong position to do so.

“Taking the best of what is taught on the yoga mat off into the world,” Be writes, “isn’t enough to create just and sustainable communities for social change.”

Nor is meditation or a personal spiritual practice. Why not? Because yoga or meditation do not teach about how power functions to maintain oppressive systems such as racism, cultural imperialism, and patriarchy . . . Knowing how these systems operate is important for the emerging spiritual activism movement to understand.

Well, yes, sort of, but . . . unfortunately, it’s just not that easy. There are many, many ways in which human beings create and maintain social arrangements that hurt, exploit, and oppress each other. Of course, it’s important to educate ourselves about the ones that we’re enmeshed in as best we can.

But there is no simple, singular way of understanding “how these systems operate” – the world is much too complex. They don’t all tie neatly into one, monolithic “system” of oppression. To reference John Lennon again (after all, it was just his 70th birthday) that dream is over. The Leftist belief that positive social change will be automatically unleashed simply by smashing “the System” has been tried and it’s failed repeatedly, often with disastrous results. There is no magic bullet.

Self-Identifying as “Racist”

Be is absolutely right in insisting that those of us fortunate enough to be born into relative wealth and freedom should work to be aware of our social position. He’s also right that most whites unconsciously harbor problematic racial attitudes that need to be identified and critiqued.

But his way of addressing this seems to be to insist that white activists continually lambaste themselves as “racists” – a self-flagellating move that I don’t find at all helpful. “I made it clear that as a white, middle, class male, I am no less racist than Seane Corn,” he wrote, as if this were some sort of badge of honor.

Why, one might wonder, should people working actively to heal racial divisions and promote social justice self-identity as “racist”? Be explains that:

individual instances of oppression — whether they are racist, sexist or homophobic statements, acts, or thoughts — are to be expected even amongst the most passionate advocates for social justice. Why? Again because in the U.S., we live in a racist, sexist, classist and homophobic culture . . . Thus anything that I do as a white middle class male, including activism, is tainted by the dominant narratives, privileges and beliefs that have shaped American and Western cultures.

Well, yes, we all experience negative thoughts – about others, about ourselves – that are connected to social position, pressures, and prejudices. But transforming that negativity with compassion is much more fruitful than violently attacking it via name-calling and self-flagellation.

Besides, demanding that all whites interested in spiritual activism denounce themselves as “racists” is not going to help the cause. On the contrary, most will feel confused and scared, and want to stay far, far away.

Connection and Compassion

I believe that OTM offers a much more compelling and practical way of confronting the very real issues of race and class division that Be raised in his post. (Note: While I haven’t taken their training myself and don’t claim expertise on it, I say this based on what’s available in the comments to Be’s post, the links it provides, and talking to several friends about their OTM experience.)

As Seane Corn explains, OTM’s “first step” is “to invite people to allow the inner work that yoga inspires to be translated into interacting with the world with greater awareness.” Once these internal resources are tapped, the “second step” of engaging participants in “a deep dialogue and education about charity vs. social justice, and some of the larger issues surrounding activism, power structures, non- profit work, and race” begins. Very much in line with Be’s core concerns, “a strong feminist, cultural diversity and power dynamics framework” informs OTM’s intensives and trainings.

OTM’s approach, Seane explains, “is to make sure our participants have the inner tools first so that the complex and confronting conversation about some of these core issues do not become paralyzing.” Rather than guilt-tripping, this approach builds spiritual strength, creating the space in which difficult issues can be confronted and processed with compassion and integrity.

In this paradigm, cultivating internal compassion and discernment lays the necessary foundation for effective service to others. As Seane explains on her blog reporting on OTM’s trip to Uganda on Oprah.com:

For this experience to be sustainable and deeply meaningful, it is essential that we spend time every day connecting to our bodies, breath, each other and God. By invoking the sacred, we can be reminded of what our purpose here is, beyond the obvious, which is the service work we'll do in the field. Through grace, we can remember that we are all connected, all one, and are here dignify the human experience, as it is, with love. Not with judgment or pity, which only perpetuates separation, but with understanding and empathy, qualities that unite.

I suspect that this approach may seem horribly touchy-feely to a good, old-fashioned, hard-headed Leftist. Or maybe I'm just projecting: I have to admit, there's a part of me that frequently feels impatient (if not worse) with the mainstream North American yoga community's culture of pretty, pastel, feel-good niceness. It can feel way too safe and superficial to take on the difficult realities of the world in any meaningful way.

But I don't put Seane Corn in that camp. On the contrary. This cover-girl beauty isn't coaching us on using yoga for weight loss or to make our skin glow. Rather, she's teaching us about how we can find meaning and inspiration even in the most challenging circumstances, and modeling this by working with such heart-breaking populations as children living in Cambodian garbage dumps.

Plus, all of my personal experience with left-of-center politics - as well as just living in general - makes me very much agree with Seane’s observation that the internal work that OTM teaches is crucial:

Over the years, I have met many activists who have had this same need to change or fix intolerable circumstances, but also an unwillingness to look at their own issues, including what might be the motivating factors that are inspiring their interests . . . I've seen great and committed activists burn out as a result of their own need to fight. I've watched them blame, project, rage, insult, be arrogant, act superior, not listen or take responsibility. None of those behaviors create the necessary change, only more separation.

Partners and Projects

Finally (I know, this post is getting to be too long!), I think that OTM’s emphasis on working on good projects with local partners is a refreshingly practical alternative to trying to smash “the System.” (Notably, OTM also supports service projects in locations other than the ones discussed here, including the U.S.) We may not be able to magically transform the world, but we can connect with others to create positive, meaningful change.

As co-founder Suzanne Sterling explains, OTM is “very careful not to simply come into a culture with an arrogant assumption about what is needed to make a situation more stable and self sustaining”:

we consciously work with organizations that are in deep, long term dialogue and interaction with the communities involved in the projects that we are supporting. We do not just come in for a few weeks of work and then leave chaos in our wake. We are funding long-term projects, buildings and training programs that are co-created with the local communities and we have continuing support programs for the projects that we initiate.

“Last year,” Seane notes, “we raised $524,000 to benefit the Cambodian Children's Fund. This year, we raised $566,000 for Uganda. Next year, I'm hopeful we will raise even more when we head to Cape Town, South Africa, to support our partners there."

Effectively spent, that’s not chump change. And coupled with meaningful, emphatic, international, multicultural, and interracial exchange, who knows what the ripple effects may be?

Faith, Movement, and Grace

It’s spiritual activism, and so beyond counting up the money and projects, I also have faith that grace may be at play. And not just with OTM. When we look honestly at the pain and brokenness in our selves and our world, working for healing and wholeness requires some leap of faith.

Harnessed to spiritual activism, asana practice can be a tremendous resource in this regard: Again and again, we practice taking a deep breath, quieting our mental chatter, tapping our intuition, opening our hearts, and moving – sometimes to fall, sometimes to find the strength to get up and try again, and sometimes to experience Amazing Grace.

Rock & Roll Yoga

2010-10-05T14:21:00.000-05:00

I was in some store the other day and this old Velvet Underground song came on the radio:

Jeannie said when she was just five years old
There was nothing happening at all
Every time she puts on the radio
there was nothing going down at all
not at all

Then one fine morning she puts on a New York station
You know she couldn’t believe what she heard at all
She started shaking to that fine fine music
You know her life was saved by rock & roll

Despite all the amputations
you know you could just go out and dance
to the rock & roll station
And it was all right

The lyrics are sooo innocuous; and 40 years later, they seem almost embarrassingly so. But when Lou Reed sings in that gravelly NYC been-around-the-block-to-places-you-are-too-straight-to-even-dream-of voice it lifts the whole thing up (at least for me) into the realm of pop culture poetry. An early ‘70s post-modern shaman, semi-ironically, semi-sincerely channeling the history of this strange magic that broke us – us being body-repressed white youth, I guess – out of our amputation to dance into – into what?

Aha, well, yes. There’s the rub. Because the liberation rock and roll offered was always double-edged at best. The vision of freedom was unbounded, intoxicating but not infrequently deadly. Certainly the Velvet Underground was hip to the dark sex-drugs-and-death dimensions of that scene; that was their whole thing, they celebrated it.

I was still very very young when this song came out, but I’m old enough to get a sense of the historical moment that it references, when hearing a rock & roll song transmitted from New York to whatever boondocks you were in could break you free and change your life.

And while that world has been completely swept away, I think that with all of the pressures to conform and compete today, with the generic corporate dominance of the human landscape and the concomitant eclipse of nature, it still speaks to the desire to break out of the box, to dance, to connect viscerally to the body, to experience freedom.

Shot of Prana

I’ve felt this deep connection between yoga and rock & roll for awhile now.

It took some years for it to develop. Certainly, I had no sense of it back when I started my first yoga class, which I vaguely imagined as a nice way of adding some stretching to my “real” workout. But with time – and particularly after studying with some of the more rocked out and/or shamanistic teachers like Ana Forrest, Julian Walker, and Shiva Rea – it’s become a feeling that I’ve re-experienced regularly.

The connection between yoga and rock & roll is that jolt of prana that comes from feeling fully embodied; from experiencing the deep pleasure that comes from moving, loosening, and maybe sometimes even breaking the bonds that keep us feeling small, restricted, repressed.

Freedom to Dance

Back when I was in elementary school, I used to watch the Black girls in my grade go out on the playground and practice their dance routines; synchronized, polished, super-cool. I wasn’t growing up feeling any of that dance energy in my household, which embodied a typically white, WASP-y, striving to be upper-middle-class sense of physical repression (except when we periodically blew up from overloads of stress and anger).

At the time, I couldn’t do what those girls were doing, but it was easy for me to see that there was something important, something valuable going on there.

It wasn’t until I was in high school that I finally said, fuck it, I’m not going to stay locked in these boundaries any more. I discovered Patti Smith and saw a female rock & roll model that embodied art, poetry, freedom. I started going to rock & roll shows; I started to dance.

Although that first shift to a sense of physical freedom occurred decades ago, I still remember it clearly. It was important.

And I see other people still needing the same thing. Just last year, I went to a yoga retreat at Esalen that went beyond asana to include free movement and ecstatic dance. I talked to several workshop participants who had never moved so freely before in their lives.

When I said that it brought me back to high school, they looked at me incredulously. They hadn’t been post-hippie rock & roll chicks, they had never known how transformative it is to move freely. Asana put them on a path where they finally felt free enough to dance, for the first time in their lives.

For many people in this culture, experiencing such a sense of embodied freedom remains a revelation. “Her life was saved by rock & roll.”

The Paradox of Workable Freedom: Boundaries, Discipline, Practice

But the freedom of rock & roll is unrooted. Even if it doesn’t embrace nihilism (which of course much of it does), it slides easily into dissolution (think of all those nice happy Deadheads burning their brains out on acid).

Yoga offers the experience of embodied freedom in a way that leads to health and wholeness, rather than dissolution, fragmentation, and, at worst, the kind of death that’s full of waste and tragedy.

It’s not that I no longer love rock & roll; I still do. But I have come to believe that it’s a truism that without any boundaries, any center, anything to root and ground us, freedom becomes a destructive energy, spiraling out of control.

Paradoxically, the discipline of asana – postures, alignment, the marriage of movement, focus, and breath – enables a deeper and infinitely more sustainable sense of embodied freedom than the unboundedness of rock & roll. And, when asana is embedded in a full life practice that includes ethics and spirituality, yoga becomes a path to true freedom, loosening the bonds of ignorance, fear, and negative thought and emotion that keep us from living an increasingly liberated life.

Syncretism and the Evolutionary Zeitgeist

Still, in the best of our crazy North American yoga culture, I believe that we can experience a marriage of the energies of yoga and rock & roll in a way that enhances both.

Rock & roll is one of the vital energies of our time. Conceptualizing it more broadly, it’s very much embedded in the long-standing Western project of tearing down the social, cultural, and material barriers to individual freedom. Coming out of the mixing of European and African music and culture, it’s also a product of the radical syncretism of modern/post-modern life.

John Lennon and Chuck Berry

Yoga is in many ways the same. An ancient Indian practice, a modern 20th century re-invention (read Mark Singleton, more on that later), a contemporary North American phenom – yoga is nothing if not multicultural, and at its best, magically syncretic.

Putting the two together – whether literally by combining asana and dance, or abstractly, by connecting energetic experiences in our lives – the relationship between yoga and rock & roll is part of the spirit of the time; a Zeitgeist to further explore and develop.

Think Body Electric

Back to Basics: Yoga as I know it, 101

Kripalu's Reincarnation and the Anusara Scandal

In Praise of the Local Yoga Teacher

Yoga Teachers with Guns

On Light, Photography, Yoga and the Body

Random Yoga Magic: Ballooning Spiders &c.

Buddhist Practices of the Self: Reflections of a Post-Modern Ex-Academic Yogi

Occupy Wall Street: Then & Now

Yoga, Postmodernism, and the Search for the "True Self"

Collective Creativity & Magic: Reflections on Yoga Community Toronto

The World in a Cucumber Seed: The Universal and the Particular in the Community Garden

Politics, Spirituality, and Postmodern Malaise

"With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world."

Yay, Free Yoga Classes at the Mall! But what are we really practicing in these Temples of Consumerism?

Yoga in the News! 100 Years Ago

What's Too Woo? A New Take on New Age Flakiness

The Beautiful Babe and the Fierce Guru: Contemporary Icons of Yoga Culture

Yoga in an Age of Anxiety: Sowing Seeds of Transformative Possibility & Magic

Thinking (& Dreaming) Yoga: Integrating Left & Right Brains to Change the World

"It's All about ME!": Yoga Journal Mission Statements, 1985 vs. Today

Lululemon Punk Rock Mantra: The Meta-Level is Love

Slim Calm Sexy Yoga Round II: What I’ve Learned & Where I Hope I’m Going

Yoga and Hinduism Redux: Kaleidoscopes of Time, History, and Consciousness

Cultural Pathologies of the Body: When Porn Stars are Post-Feminist Icons, Yoga Must Embody Rebellion

Yoga as Postmodern Shamanism: Reading Yoga 2.0

Yoga, Hinduism, and Contemporary American Culture

Yogis, Ascetic, and Fakirs: Fascinating historical images of India that I don't pretend to understand

Yoga is Like Brushing Your Teeth

The Poetry of the Body: Yoga, Whitman, and American Tantra

Walking the Elephant Walk

Off the Mat Vs. the Old New Left: Subverting the Dominant Paradigm, With Love

Rock & Roll Yoga

"With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,  it is still a beautiful world."