Sequels · 2 July 2008
I am going to Oregon while famous people do strange things in my office. They’re displacing me, and besides I have a perverse abiding love of the Fourth of July and must celebrate it.
Up north, my brother is converting a heavily beautiful, centuryish-old, city-block-sized stumptown building into a contemporary museum. If the Viking is operational, maybe I will make a Cheez-it® casserole. If the vast pine floor is warm, maybe I will test-drive it for yoga. If there is a lull, we will see raunchy action movies!
Meanwhile, back at my office, and speaking of bad film…
…they’re filming the sequel to The DaVinci Code.
In my office. True story.
I will admit right here that I consumed Dan Brown’s famous book like the cardboard-and-canola oil Cheez-it(R) it is, amid gripes about the bad writing and worse research and above all the fact that rips off one of my favorite-ever novels and cribs a cult classic for its macguffin.
But I drew the line at Angels and Demons, the film-version of which may capture my beloved office in the last year of my occupation. All I really know is that Sony’s renting it and adjacent office. The Editor claims my space will only be Tom Hanks’ powder room. Who knows.
Fourth of July meditation:
Posted by (0v0)
Comment [5]
Categories:
FBHII · 2 July 2008
Leave it to the comments function to hiccup when my writing's most nonsensical. If I mangled the subject of auto-pretzeling, or it raised questions, fine to drop comments here.
Posted by (0v0)
Comment [29]
Categories: astanga yoga
Sex and 3S, or, a post about putting your feet behind your head · 1 July 2008
The discussion from 28 June just keeps going. I tried to end it with a kick in the teeth from Chuck Norris, but then the questions got really provocative in a good way. So carry on down there.
Meantime… they say women in third cannot get enough.
I wouldn’t know anything about that.
Nevertheless:
Hypothetical explanations for the observed increase in sex drive among female third series practitioners:
H,a: Doing that practice requires you to go to bed stupid early, so you never go out, never get laid, and therefore become pent up.
H,b: The arm balance stuff puts a woman in touch with a certain aggressive she-wolf vibe that western society represses, and the reconnection with her viscera restores that lost shade of self-expression. You know, dominatrix energy? Catwoman stuff?
H,c: Putting your foot behind your head constricts blood and lymph circulation to the lymph nodes in the groin, and those same glands are flushed with energy when one exits the posture. Over time and repetition this gland cleansing and shift of energy creates some, well, intense feelings.
There’s probably something to each of these, with H,a being not insignificant. But to focus on H,c—the foot behind the head (FBH) thing.
Who wants to put their foot behind the head? This is preposterous.
I said that I’d try to write about this, but I don’t know how much I can contribute usefully since I have not studied many bodies in any variety of FBH. Here’s a scattering of thoughts, for what it is worth.
● When ashtangis talk about FBH, one of the first considerations is anatomy—especially openness of the hips and relative length of torso and legs. There’s also the matter of flesh around the hips, which does make a difference here. I wonder, where do 14 year old Indian boys fare in these matters? From the spindly images I’ve seen, Krishnamachya was probably working with a whole different anatomy when he put together these FBH sequences. (Yes I said that.) One for which FBH was not as preposterous.
● For the people I’ve known, FBH is a big body-transformation that comes in phases. It’s as extreme, and as progressive, as are the back bends… but perhaps we focus on FBH less because it doesn’t look as dramatic as bends bends, because the emotional experience is internal rather than expansive, and because the postures don’t include the intense bonding experience with a teacher that can occur in back bends. But one could consider that FBH is just as big a deal as back bends.
● As several people have said, there are two ways to practice FBH—one that emphasizes external rotation of the femur, and one that incorporates a bit of counter action and is less about getting the whole leg behind the back than it is just hooking the foot behind the head. Susananda has a good discussion of this. I wonder if the more externally-rotated, baddha konasana approach is especially good for people still working to deepen the intermediate FBH—deep external rotation is pretty much a pre-requisite for beginners who are also opening the muscles of the legs. Meanwhile, as the hips become more open and the work is to stabilize them with the pelvic floor and any leg muscles that can be activated, there is somewhat less emphasis on external rotation. For me, this approach also helps keep the IT band from becoming agitated and begins to counteract would-be trouble arising from a mobile sacrum.
● Sometimes, I will practice a deeper leg-behind-the-back kind of thing, especially in more passive postures. But this is, in the context of third, not really for me about letting go. If I happen to be adjusted in either nidrassana or kashybasana, actually, there’s often a feeling in the next many breaths that the entire stability of the sacrum and pelvic floor could be lost. I’ve once irritated my lower back quite intensely this way—by releasing entirely in the passive posture, then beginning to move before strongly re-engaging the pelvic floor. I know they say the mulabandha is a subtle practice, but in order to stay safe in deeper FBH for me it is not too subtle. It’s the center of the awareness in those postures merely to keep my SI joints from gaping open and my sacrum from turning into a plumb bob in a windstorm. Or something. I don’t know that I would be working so close to the edge of instability if I were a skinny long-legged Indian boy, but in my case doing so much FBH requires using the pelvic floor to pull back from the edge.
● A final reason I am interested in less externally rotated, more counter-acted FBH (as long as I can keep the neck clear) is that it’s possible some days to get all the way there on an inhale. This goes to my main question for FBH: What if third series were led? What’s the FBH technique then, what are the ways to sublimate it to a single breath, but in a way that’s structurally sound to the point of supporting a durvasa?
Posted by (0v0)
Comment
Categories: astanga yoga
, having a body
Chuck · 30 June 2008
A man named Dale said this on the internet.
● There is a yoga pose named chucknorrisasana. Only Chuck Norris has done it - and lived.
● When the Universe overcomes its fear, it seeks to become one with Chuck Norris.
● What is the sound of one of Chuck Norris' hands clapping?
a) the sound of the other hand breaking something,
b) a sonic boom,
c)Chuck Norris claps with his feet.
(I can't decide)
● The first time Chuck Norris did a headstand, the universe flipped upside down to avoid disappointing Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris kicked it right-side up again.
● What is Chuck Norris' favorite yoga pose? Kickyourasana.
Posted by (0v0)
Comment [6]
Categories: astanga yoga
Unscientific Postscript, again · 28 June 2008
I. Art/Science
Do practitioners treat eating as a science? Do chefs? Or do they learn the chemistry and then use it to experiment and create interesting variation and rich experience?
(Is ashtanga a “science” or is that reductionis bluster?)
What is lost when personal food choices, a chef’s creation of a menu, or a yoga practice is treated as science? What forms of inquiry, relationship and chances for sublimity?
II. Being Empty
Ashtanga generally feels and works better when you eat less. But… strong practice also kickstarts your metabolism and this, for some, can make it difficult to eat enough. Especially if you’re eating a clean, plant-based diet, given that these foods are expensive and high labor but also low calorie.
Does a person who eats less enjoy food less? (Does food taste better when you’re already full?)
Can one attribute too much or too little meaning to food?
Does it make sense to resent what we have eaten?
Are people afraid to feel empty? Is it correct to associate hearty eating with self-care, and what about western families might wrongly shape that association? Could allowing the belly to empty be a form of self-care… and what would it take to get the mind-body to believe that this was true?
III. Meat, etc.
Holy mechanized death Batman, why are people hostile or apathetic to questions about the morality of eating meat and dairy?
Is this not a moral question?
Are people afraid that if they start knowing about feedlots, animal welfare, and the big environmental picture they will have to take too much responsibility? Is it possible to know these things and still eat meat and dairy?
Have the dork-vegans and the sanctimonius-yogis captured the question?
Posted by (0v0)
Comment [40]
Categories: having a body
Cheez-it® · 25 June 2008
Last friday I walked into the living room and I smelled Nabisco. What?
He wouldn’t do this. Not Nabisco, flagship of American obesity and mindless addiction? Not this level of anti-wellbeing and all-out trash in our home?
I opened a few cupboards and file drawers, looked behind the sofa. The smell of deep-fried salty cardboard, refined flour, congealed corn syrup burnt into dessicated brown bubbles and marketed as “food” was unmistakeable. I tipped over the guitar amp behind the chair and there it was: a large box of Cheez-it® crackers.
A "food" with a registered trademark. A "food" comprising 26 ingredients, among them partially hydrogenated soybean oil and something identified as TBHQ. A substance brought into my house for the purposes of ingestion.
Ok then. It’s either me or him.
Sometimes this contrarian imp comes out—the imp that’s curious just how much shit the practice can neutralize. The imp who’s angry at parents (not mine, bless them thank god) and a culture that teach children to find comfort in “food” with trademarks, and who wants with spite-tainted curiosity to take it on myself. The imp who thinks she can neutralize all shit.
I reached in and took a monkey-fist full, sat down on the floor like a primate and crunched. Cheez-it, for all that oil and salt, tasted exactly like cardboard. Did nothing for me, not even an insulin rush (thanks to the spinach and cauliflower on which it landed). Tasting and feeling nothing, I took several more monkey-fistfuls before returning the Cheez-it® to its hiding place, knowing I’d soon be in more trouble with the Editor than he was with me. Can’t I leave anything a secret? Can’t even the space inside his guitar amp be free from my ideas about clean living?
The next morning the solstice hit and I made 108 sun salutations in the most peaceful quiet home studio in Venice. As I raised my arms for number 20, a severe wave of nausea drew me down.
Gawd. I have to do 88 more of these? Maybe I can get through one more before my first trip to the bathroom. Nice of them to install this beautiful bathroom right off their studio, though. I really hope I don’t throw up.
On salutation 21, a bead of sweat formed on my brow. And all I noticed for the next two salutations was the droplet gaining volume and momentum as it ran up and down my nose. On the 24th, I waited in ardha uttanasana while it rolled to the tip of my nose and flicked it like a frog, rose up quickly, and checked in with the nausea. Gone.
Did I neutralize Cheez-it®? Conquer and assimilate?
Would the anti-human evil of Cheez-it® in my body have even been observable were it not for the practice?
I will write more about food in the next post, about what I actually eat even though I sense that this is not even useful or interesting to anyone because eating is as much play as it is science. Or, at least, should be.
For now here is one idea that might useful across the board.
If you want to begin to hear your body correctly, put the screws to your workout.
If you are having trouble tapping in to good intuitions about how to eat, honestly: ramp it the hell up.
From what I have seen, straight cardio won’t do it. From what I have seen, in order to clarify the messages, and increase their urgency, you want to start making your body build finetuned strength, balance and nervous-system endurance. If you tell it that it has to build smart muscles, excellent proprioception, all kinds of new balance and movement skills: under those conditions, the body will demand what it needs to do that efficiently. It will respond to the trauma of a dramatic increase in exercise by getting smarter.
I say this because, time and again, I see new practitioners realize that they have been doing something wrong with their diet. Of course they are: they live in a Nabisco world. Astanga is the most they have ever asked of their bodies, so it’s no wonder new practitioners try every kind of new eating regime in response to all the new feelings.
You always have the option of making an intellectual decision to nourish yourself “right,” based on nutritionists’ research. But this shortcuts old habits while putting the new ones up to a higher authority.
Posted by (0v0)
Comment [42]
Categories: astanga yoga
, evolution
, having a body
, self-deception
Also Apollos · 23 June 2008
We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,
gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.
Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast's fur:
would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.
-Rainer Maria Rilke, Archaic Torso of Apollo
translated by Stephen Mitchell
Posted by (0v0)
Comment [12]
Categories: evolution
, having a body
Crim, Again · 20 June 2008
A client offered keys. She lives in Venice and the home studio is a silent wooden nest for my 108-beaded Saturday solstice mala. It ain’t Stonehenge, but the space sure is pretty.
I feel like a hippie, having you know I have a thing for the solstice, but I promise my enthusiasm for the longest day of the year long predates the yoga. Yonder up the 49th parallel in the land of my birth (Big Sky Country, Montana), there’ll be no more than 5 hours of shuteye, with the long days pulling the sweetcorn up knee high by the Fourth of July. Or more like chest-high these days, thank you Monsanto. Glad I no longer live in the flightpath of either cropdusters or testflight B2 bombers, thanks.
Here in godless LA we get a close to 7 hours of darkness tonight, but I’m still sun-stoned and loving the light. Did I mention the Editor tends to have business in South American archives? Winters in Buenos Aires or Porto Alegre… would I be an unbalanced person if I double-dipped the longest day and ducked out of the yule?
For now, everybody in town is having a party this weekend and I actually feel like doing something about it. Some dancing, party or two, breakfast with and old friend. Tonight, Billy Wilder and backrubs.
By the way, can somebody tip me to fast new summer music (electronic, hip hop, dub, bachatta, rock?) before I start taking the new Bonnie Prince Billy all seriously or succumb to these nagging memories of Jane’s Addiction, Danzig or (further back) the Beach Boys?
I’ll come down out of this feeling eventually. I do keep meaning to write about food and feet behind the head. Those thoughts have got to go somewhere.
Completely random Saturday links:
*Laksmi is normal, 8limbs and all.
*Fun with gender. Nagging isn’t female, it’s just what you do if you’re the less powerful one in the relationship. Excellent use of comparative- sociological method.
*I stopped reading the NYT and the smartmags. Which sucks. But this is what ABD looks like.
* Via Julian Walker's good blog, Andrew Harvey talking about how huge the shadow really is and how much it's in the body. I haven't listened yet, but will probably get to it during the usual Sunday night kale-washing ritual.
Posted by (0v0)
Comment [16]
Categories: astanga yoga
, beta state
, esoteric shit
, having a body
, sound
WWND, Moon Play, Streams of Practice · 18 June 2008
What would Nietzsche do is a concentrated question. Use sparingly and apply only to the affected area. Yields extraordinary mental clarity! But may cause will-to-power-disease if taken incorrectly.
It was a WWND day.
First thing in the morning, I went out the Santa Monica pier and skated north to Malibu and back. A summer idyll—waves big, sun clear, light salty breeze. Me and the runners—tourists don’t show up until later. Listening to Tropicalia and, after that, David Byrne.
It’s indecent to have access to this picture any old day.
Afterwards, still hyper, wrote for a while. Then I hit the asana class NYT billed as “most advanced in LA,” to let the teacher know I still love her. Received some amazing personal instruction (very helpful), was told to take lotus in handstand (ok, interesting that’s possible), and might (as a result) have frightened one or two students. A surprisingly, sweetly internal class for that venue, opening and closing with instruction on pratyhara (which calmed me down the way a few sun salutations and standing postures cannot). This deviation from the tradition is “damaging yoga”? Really? Damaging the monopoly, yes. But a scene like this is so different from ashtanga that the two do not need to fear each other the way they do. I wish they would stop trashing each other. Soon, we need different words to refer to the two kinds of practice: they have little in common and neither is going away.
Anyway.The thing about the ashtanga teacher, the one who does primary before a moon, is that he doesn’t go in for arbitrary rules. He’s got too much positive instruction on tap to need to frame his room in negative instructions. It's different, but there are a lot of reasons one might specify first-only before a moon: my guess is that he knows he attracts physically intense students whose minds could use a super-internal practice at regular intervals on random days. No kidding: this guy is the best asana instructor I have ever encountered. This shocks and amuses me. He is gifted in physical intelligence and has made third easy yet particularly intense for me. And my back, which has been trippy for 16 months, has undergone some kind of healing this spring, in a way that I might try to explain later.
I am still not very “physical” about this stuff—thinking and talking about asana is unbearably tedious, especially where my own body is concerned. I’m interested in the head-trip, energy, culture, history, spirit, emotion—ANYTHING but mechanics. Which is why a very physical teacher, who has mastery in the area I avoid, is a great benefit.
This brings me to something Gregor and I put together in a thread the other day. I think he was drunk when he brought it up but the idea makes sense if you stay with it. Say there are different streams of mastery—physical, mental, spiritual, maybe another. If you’re going to practice something, you’ll probably be drawn to focus on the stream in which you feel most competent. Too, maybe you feel insecure in one of the other streams and try to avoid it. High school athletes (who might claim to be non-intellectual) find a physical practice; introverts (usual klutzes) turn to meditation; mental people (who say "quieting the mind" is a stupid idea) pursue intellectual athleticism.
Would it be possible for a single practice to work in all three streams simultaneously, and actually harmonize them over time? A practice in which you may get in for the appeal of, say, physical mastery, but soon find you have to work with equal intensity in other less familiar streams in order to pursue that supposed strength?
Ashtanga has the potential to be that. A kind of practice that balances the streams.
Posted by (0v0)
Comment [14]
Categories: astanga yoga
, having a body
, morality
, self-deception
, social theory
, spirituality
Apex · 17 June 2008
Here’s the deal with your teacher. You do it their way as long as it won't hurt you; you honor that relationship for the sacred thing it is; you keep it clean and loving because your practice depends on it and their service to humanity is better than your own. Or my own anyway… heh. If they value loyalty, I deliver because it keeps everything clear and creates even more mutual understanding. If they have particular rules, I reproduce them to the point of being mechanical about it. Yes. Obedience is just engine-grease for the big machine that is a Mysore room.
Mechanical machine, not kidding.
The rules are just there to allow me to shut down the monkey. A container.
The mind likes to be bound. Even if it is, like mine, a big preacher's-kid rulebreaker in other contexts.
That said, this whole rule of primary-only on the day before the moon is a drag. Criminy. Especially if the moon is smack on a wednesday; and if it’s not new but a buzzy hightide action-packed full moon; and if it’s the week of the solstice for godsakes.
Come on. I practiced primary-only this morning and am bouncing off the walls. And I’m supposed to skip practice tomorrow altogether, on this day when sun and moon are both pulling me off the earth and in the meantime I’ve got to find a way to trick myself into looking at a computer for most of the day? I’d fast or something, but my experience is that fasting makes me even more hyper.
This is just ridiculous. I’m tending strongly toward criminal behavior tomorrow unless I stap on some rollerblades instead.
It is the apex of summer and time for many forms of realization. We are all ripe. Can you feel it? This is it! Put on a dress (you too), climb up something, dance in your livingroom, read Nietzsche and the Bhagavad Gita.
Go create. Go!
P.S. Topics for later, possibly: N's question on the what postrationality can give to rationality (nice); S's question on putting your foot behind your head; and A's question about what in the hell I eat. I don't have answers, but might try to document some ongoing experiments.
Posted by (0v0)
Comment [12]
Categories: astanga yoga
, having a body
