Yoga Raving...

...Thursday night at the Do Yoga Philly! festival looked intense: shamanism, Jedi training, three hours of very intense asana practice with yoga legends Ray Crist, John Vitarelli, and Simon Park...and something called a blender bike...not that it stopped me taking a twenty-five mile bike ride in the gorgeous fall weather, beforehand....nearly killed me...but in a good way...

...dreamed that night about yoga...somehow ending up riding in the back of a boxy little red car with a strange blonde haired woman I’d apparently just gotten married to...feeling suddenly terrified, realizing I’d inexplicably gone off the deep end, done something quite possibly irreversible, wondering how I’d gotten myself into something like this...was sitting there about to quietly lose it when realization dawned that it was a dream......felt a peculiar sadness mixed with the relief, though, realizing whatever might have been wouldn’t, and I was never gonna to see her again once I awoke...

Fear says ‘I’ll keep you safe.’
Love says ‘you are safe.’
Mahan Rishi Singh Khalsa

...in the morning found out I was on youtube, making smoothies for the yogic multitudes...that evening went to a class with noted teacher and Yoga Journal cover model Marni Sclaroff, who talked about childhood experiences that cause us to contract...I thought that covers pretty much everything from about age seven to seventeen...then, in the past, I’ve tended to think in terms of damage....and when stuff gets damaged, sometimes all the kings horses and all the king’s men can’t even begin to put it back together again....something that contracts, on the other hand, can, with patience and effort, be inspired to open up again...

...the deeper you go, the higher you fly,
the higher you fly, the deeper you go...
John Lennon

...feel like I’m entering a new phase of the yoga practice...deeper...beyond merely looking good in my Lululemon pants*....did sixteen hours or so of yoga over the long weekend...including seven and a half on Saturday...culminating in something called avatar yoga, complete with black light, pounding yogic techno, and a roomful of people whooping it up decorated in glow-in-the-dark body paint....kinda like a yoga rave...acid without the acid....(it could be argued that, deep down, I’m still some kinda hippie freak)....(but definitely one hardcore yoga dude)...



* note: the author doesn’t actually own and has never worn a pair of Lululemon pants...he’s not even sure they make them for men...