The Paris Hilton of Yoga?

...couple posts ago, made some joking remarks about yoga teachers...specifically involving stuff like the inaudibly soft, ultra-spiritual yoga teacher voice....and, as a long-time believer that, if it’s worth saying at all, it’s worth beating into the ground, have been repeating said jokes all over the place....to the point that I think I may be giving some of my (amazing, wonderful, beloved) teachers complexes.....so, to any who might be reading this, let me make it clear...the jokes aren’t about you..........they’re about those high-falutin’ yoga teachers who write for Elephant Journal...

........just kidding, people...jeezus, aren’t you all supposed to have transcended your egos by now?...

...seriously, I've been going to Facebook lately and finding I'm in demand as a yogi...really...my yoga teacher friends are sending me personal requests to go to their classes...including one that’s supposed to be videotaped for some kind anusara certification or something...(and not, I’ve been assured for World’s Funniest Yoga Bloopers on youtube)...

...not that this is interfering with my totally enlightened egoless state or anything, but it does raise all kindsa pertinent questions...like...could such desirability indicate that the mere presence of the friendly neighborhood yoga cynic now carries such cachet as to confer status and set the yoga world buzzing?...kinda like the way Paris Hilton, I read some time ago, was getting paid fifty thousand bucks just to show up at parties?...could I be the Paris Hilton of yoga?...

...(y’know, like, except for the fifty grand part...but I’m workin’ on that...see below)...

...for all you yoga teachers out there...


FOR A LIMITED TIME ONLY!!!!

You can have ****ME**** doing sun salutations in your very own yoga class!

* Wearing a (mostly) clean t-shirt!

* Large shorts revealing nothing anybody doesn’t wanna see!

* No snoring in savasana, inappropriate groaning during forward bends, or rolling eyeballs if you start going on about your guru!

* Providing the low end, often badly needed in today’s predominantly female yoga classes, on OM! (Or, if you prefer, AUM)!

Just $49,999.99* if you act now!

* additional discounts negotiable**

** seriously, we’ll take anything...

Art is anything you can get away with.
Marshall McLuhan

Kinda Sorta What I'm All About...

...in a dream was staying in a strange hotel and couldn’t find my room...went looking for it and realized I’d lost the floor it was on, too...then couldn’t even find the hotel....woke to find the world outside the window one big melted Slurpee...grey flavored...getting anywhere unscathed near impossible...

My business is words. Words are like labels,
or coins, or better, like swarming bees.
Anne Sexton, Said the Poet to the Analyst

...the only time I like to write by hand is when it’s really deep, go-for-broke personal stuff...so illegible even I can’t read it....when younger, wrote because I had nobody to talk to...nobody I trusted, at least...now sometimes think what I write's brilliant, but never fail to be amazed when anybody likes it...now working with a new computer keyboard just subtly different from the last...an inch or two smaller, maybe...my most passionate prose coming out ;o=lr ‘-ae...

Your business is watching my words. But I
admit nothing….
Anne Sexton, Said the Poet to the Analyst…

...Allen Ginsberg, when he was young, wrote poetry for his father...later, wrote something he had no intention of getting published, because he’d never want his father to read it...and that, apparently, allowed him to Howl…

Mind is the sole source of bondage or liberation.
Maitri Upanishad

...a rehab client who a week before checked and double checked to make sure she’d passed my reading comprehension test so she wouldn’t have to work with me said she really wanted to talk to me about doing some writing because she was going nuts in there...I said writing to keep from going nuts is what I’m all about...

For MLK Day...

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
Martin Luther King Jr.

With a broken computer, and about to head out to take part in the Martin Luther King Day of Service, I'm not saying much, but thought I'd share a few images and words...

Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.
Martin Luther King Jr.

Namaste, & all that...

Off the Deep End, Gladly

It’s easy to be a dedicated student of what you already think.
Ancient and Revered Yoga Cynic Sutra 201:312

...long-suffering non-yogi friends think I’m going off the deep end...then, that’s kinda my intention...

...a yoga teacher friend was encouraging people to choose a word to represent their intentions for the new year...the kinda thing I tend to dismiss as new agey but end up finding useful...looked at my t-shirt, which read Springboard Studio...thought springboard...

...in preparation for the big intense yoga teacher training...6:30 in the morning to 9:00 at night six days a week, deep in the mountains in the dead of winter...kinda like nurturing, compassionate boot camp...been reading about fascia and synovial fluid (first time I’ve studied anatomy since 10th grade biology class)...(where I mostly sat there writing out Bowie lyrics on my notebooks, thinking about comic books and sex) and alignment...finding it kind of intimidating, though frequently coming to surprising realizations that I already know the stuff that seems most daunting and complicated...experientially...through the asana practice...just not the words for or theory behind...which seems a bit ironic...

Follow any analytic discipline, rigorously pursue any science or philosophy to its inexorable end, and you arrive at absurdity. From there, two paths diverge: toward despair of the overwrought intellectual, or toward the laughter of the gods.
Josh Mitteldorf

...first started practicing yoga as a grad. student, half way through a dissertation...more precisely, at the beginning of a lengthy break from said dissertation due to depression so severe I was just about picking a cliff to jump off....then, once the dissertation got going again, the yoga kinda faded away....never really got it going seriously 'til I left the land of theory and ironic quotation marks, entirely....not that there's a connection, necessarily...

...another teacher pointed out I tend to lead with the head...that’s Jay, PhD, she said...

Just how anti-intellectual can a guy with a PhD get before he starts sounding ridiculous?
Ancient and Revered Cynical Zen Koan

Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe?
Ralph Waldo Emerson

...yoga is, to me...or, at least, for me...essentially experiential...making big debates about whether it’s a religion or whatever somewhat moot...does it feel like a religion?...if it does, it is...if not, it must be something else...

...we’ve found that yoga comes to vibrant life when we realize that while we have no stable idea as to what it is, we know that we embody its evolving pulse through our baffled wonder.
yoga 2.0

...then, maybe it's all how you define religion...some would say it’s all experiential, originally...somebody coming down from a mountain and saying whoa, some weird shit went down up there...lemme tell ya about it...beliefs, holy books, rituals, dogma, etc. all coming later...means to codify the uncodifiable, get a handle on what can’t be handled, put infinity in its place...making it clear that somebody else, in some spiritually privileged long ago time and far away place, slipped the yoke....you gotta shut up and do as you're told...

Editor’s note: it occurs to the staff here at Yoga for Cynics that this post about moving away from the intellectual and toward the experiential is getting highfalutin' in a manner that's, arguably, contradictory to its theme. We apologize for the apparent error and assure readers that it probably won’t happen again...at least not in this post....anyway, isn’t it all, really, about finding a balance?...

2011: The Year the Yoga Cynic Goes Legit

I don’t believe in yoga...
John Lennon, God

I don’t believe in yoga, I practice yoga.
Ancient and Revered Yoga Cynic Sutra 360.21

...it’s 2011 and I’ve resolved to stop leaving my yoga mat at the studio....that’s not the big news, though...

...up until now, this humble site has reveled in its unique status among yoga blogs...y’know, the one written by the guy who doesn’t actually know crap about yoga....as stated so succinctly in its very first post...

this woman I was kinda sorta involved with said she was curious about yoga and wanted me to teach her some. I told her I’m still working on not hurting myself by overstretching my hamstrings. Hell, I’m still not even sure what hamstrings are.*

...even cluelessness, however charming, turns out, eventually, to be impermanent...
Ancient and Revered Yoga Cynic Sutra 223:461

...this year, though...specifically in February and March...I’m stepping away from the time honored personal ritual of sitting around depressed until spring...instead heading up to spend a month in the snowy Berkshires, at Kripalu...eating, drinking, and sleeping yoga, while completing...are ya ready for this?...a 200 hour yoga teacher training...

...that’s right, people, the Yoga Cynic’s going legit...

...soon I’ll be able to fill this blog with dry, didactic, and painfully self-satisfied lectures on Real Yoga (i.e. what I learned in my teacher training...as opposed to that crap you do)...as well as to use that legendary inaudible-from-more-than-six-inches-away yoga teacher voice...(though, obviously, I need to come up with a written equivalent to use here)...(perhaps this)...and, generally, to act really egotistical while insisting I’ve overcome my ego...

...or maybe not...though I'll probably find out what hamstrings are...

...seriously, it's gonna be intense and challenging, and I'm excited...hope you all have good stuff coming up this year, too...namaste & all that...


*...this, needless to say, was before Y4C found the magic of ellipses...**

**...Y4C, I’ve decided, is a good abbreviation for Yoga for Cynics...up until now, I’ve used YforC, but everybody else seems to prefer the more succinct YfC...which makes me...and probably everybody else...think of KFC...which, y’know, doesn’t exactly help with the all-important-for-yoga-bloggers vegan demographic...