...somewhere in the middle of the frozen lake,
a pulse.
Just to dig it all and not to wonder, that's just fine...
Van Morrison
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Kinda Like Boot Camp Except Everybody's Totally Nice to Each Other (Notes from Kripalu Yoga Teacher Training #1)
...somewhere in the middle of the frozen lake,
a pulse.
Just to dig it all and not to wonder, that's just fine...
Van Morrison
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Prepared for Lift-Off...All Systems Go
Now it’s time to leave the capsule if you dare...
David Bowie
...for the next month, Yoga for Cynics, along with its affiliates, partners, and corporate subsidiaries, will be shifting its base of operations from West Mt. Airy, Land of Mellow Sadhana and No Snow Plows, USA, to the mystical highlands of Kripalu...the Berkshires, Massachusetts...cloud hidden, whereabouts unknown...(or, at least, the Google Maps directions are really, really confusing)...where its proprietor, webmaster, chairman, publisher, president, CEO, CFO, Grand Poobah, consigliere, Most Exalted Muckamuck, First Citizen o' Love, minister of information, malcontent-in-residence, spiritual advisor, guru, sensei, Grand Vizier, Imperial Lama, First Among Equals, and most humble author will be attending a 200 hr. Yoga Teacher Training...
...(which, yes, represents a significant step toward laying the groundwork for the long-promised Yoga for Cynics ashram.....anybody out there got a tropical island you’re not using for anything?)...
...was planning on some serious tidying up around the place before I go...but decided spring cleaning’s better left ’til spring....last night my mom gave me an early birthday present a sweater to replace, she said, my old favorite, now full of holes, which she tried to get me to promise to throw out, or, at least, never wear when anybody can see me...I explained that it didn’t matter, because I’ll still be the kinda guy who wears ratty sweaters with holes in them....even if I’m wearing a custom-made, designer-original tuxedo, anybody talking to me will always figure that out in no time...
He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy
He who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sunrise
William Blake
...had coffee three or four...maybe five...times this week, after three months off... which, whether defensible in terms of yamas and niyamas or not, lemme tell ya, felt like three or four big steaming cups o’ happiness...
...which I’ll try to kiss as it flies, before heading up to Kripalu tomorrow, where, most likely I'll spend a month largely without caffeine, junk food, alcohol, T.V...probably a whole bunch of other minor vices, as well...while learning all about yoga...and god-only-knows-what about myself...and beyond that, who knows?...will I come back a Floating Glowing Being of Pure Love?...or at least muster up the energy to clean up that filthy apartment?...throw out that rancid sweater...or perhaps more fully inhabit it?...
...guess we’ll see...
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Parts, Spare and Otherwise
...flying coach might be the opposite of yoga...causing everything to contract rather than expand...(except, of course, in the sense that everything is yoga)...
...out in Colorado for a coupla days...warmer weather than I’ve experienced in months making the body feel like it’s arising from hibernation...eating aloo gobi in Boulder with Waylon Lewis...(you might know him from Elephant Journal or the Dukes of Hazzard theme)...spending the afternoon wandering streets and paths in search of brain cells left behind there long ago...
...a good friend took me further up in the mountains to go cross country skiing for the first time in a years... awaking body parts long forgotten with a strange, snowy exhilaration...even as I wiped out four times on one hill...now reminding me of their presence repeatedly...
...out in Colorado for a coupla days...warmer weather than I’ve experienced in months making the body feel like it’s arising from hibernation...eating aloo gobi in Boulder with Waylon Lewis...(you might know him from Elephant Journal or the Dukes of Hazzard theme)...spending the afternoon wandering streets and paths in search of brain cells left behind there long ago...
...a good friend took me further up in the mountains to go cross country skiing for the first time in a years... awaking body parts long forgotten with a strange, snowy exhilaration...even as I wiped out four times on one hill...now reminding me of their presence repeatedly...
...went with the same friend to see 127 Hours...about a guy who didn’t exactly follow the wilderness dictum to leave nothing but footprints...finding, in the end, no matter how painful the process of separation might be, attaining freedom may involve letting go of a lot...including what appear to be essential parts of oneself...
Wednesday, February 9, 2011
A Passage to Camden
...one time crossing the river from Philly, noticed I didn’t see the Welcome to New Jersey sign ’til past Camden...a notoriously depressed city with one of the worst crime rates in the country, so broke it just laid off half its police and firefighters...
Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking and breeding,
No sentimentalist, no stander above men and women or apart from
them,
No more modest than immodest.
...but that didn’t stop us, fueled by tequila, from crossing the bridge on a winter Wednesday afternoon, to visit an old man’s home...wishing I could show him my rambling Yoga for Cynics posts, ask him what he thinks...but settling for a vague plan to tip back a whiskey flask where he sat to write, despite the park service's no food or drink policy...a quick and surreptitious toast to the poet, patriot, and great American yogi...
Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking and breeding,
No sentimentalist, no stander above men and women or apart from
them,
No more modest than immodest.
...but that didn’t stop us, fueled by tequila, from crossing the bridge on a winter Wednesday afternoon, to visit an old man’s home...wishing I could show him my rambling Yoga for Cynics posts, ask him what he thinks...but settling for a vague plan to tip back a whiskey flask where he sat to write, despite the park service's no food or drink policy...a quick and surreptitious toast to the poet, patriot, and great American yogi...
I depart as air—I shake my white locks at the runaway sun;
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.
I bequeathe myself to the dirt, to grow from the grass I love;
If you want me again, look for me under your boot-soles.
...the flask, as it turned out, was forgotten...which was fine since, truth be told, the margaritas with lunch were more than enough....the house small, narrow, and nondescript on a run-down street...an unspectacular example of what our guide called Victorian working class, even when it was built...a place anybody might’ve lived...which could not, of course, be any more fitting...
There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now;
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.
I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.
I bequeathe myself to the dirt, to grow from the grass I love;
If you want me again, look for me under your boot-soles.
...the flask, as it turned out, was forgotten...which was fine since, truth be told, the margaritas with lunch were more than enough....the house small, narrow, and nondescript on a run-down street...an unspectacular example of what our guide called Victorian working class, even when it was built...a place anybody might’ve lived...which could not, of course, be any more fitting...
There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now;
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.
Saturday, February 5, 2011
Maybe About as Poetic, Spiritual, or Philosophical as I'm Likely to Get at This Point
...been reading lotsa yoga philosophy...rereading, mostly, but paying more attention this time...taking notes...as well as just basking in all that high-falutin’ spiritual shit...
...there’s really no problem here. We can be absolutely human and divine at the same time.
Amrit Desai
...and I’m into all that, of course...have gone on record here as saying that, to me, yoga’s all about openness....while generally avoiding the ever-flowing stream of what-it’s-all-about-and-more-importantly-what-it-isn’t arguments that tend to fill the blogosphere...(along with the pompous expressions of egolessness and meanspirited lectures on loving-kindness)...if ever oscillating between not caring and caring enough I can’t deal with it....
Logic and sermons never convince,
The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul.
Walt Whitman
...for me, really, on a purely practical level, it’s ultimately about getting from point a to point b....no, not samsara to nirvana...not atman to brahman, either...not even self-loathing to self-acceptance...(nor flabby ass to buns of steel).....more getting myself out of bed in the morning to somehow finding my way restful sleep at night...and, for now, that may be about as poetic, spiritual, or philosophical as I’m likely to get...
...there’s really no problem here. We can be absolutely human and divine at the same time.
Amrit Desai
...and I’m into all that, of course...have gone on record here as saying that, to me, yoga’s all about openness....while generally avoiding the ever-flowing stream of what-it’s-all-about-and-more-importantly-what-it-isn’t arguments that tend to fill the blogosphere...(along with the pompous expressions of egolessness and meanspirited lectures on loving-kindness)...if ever oscillating between not caring and caring enough I can’t deal with it....
Logic and sermons never convince,
The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul.
Walt Whitman
...for me, really, on a purely practical level, it’s ultimately about getting from point a to point b....no, not samsara to nirvana...not atman to brahman, either...not even self-loathing to self-acceptance...(nor flabby ass to buns of steel).....more getting myself out of bed in the morning to somehow finding my way restful sleep at night...and, for now, that may be about as poetic, spiritual, or philosophical as I’m likely to get...
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Little Scraps of Wisdom in a Frozen World of Grey Slush
Bred as we, among the mountains,
Can the sailor understand
The divine intoxication
Of the first league out from land?
Emily Dickinson
...strong emotions don’t come easy in a frozen world of grey slush...three weeks to Kripalu...something I never expected, being a full time student again...even if only for a month...and, while grad school’s just about guaranteed to make a person more neurotic, this could, conceivably, do the opposite...
...but, if one thing clearly to be expected, it’s that my final observations on the experience will include...for good or for bad...however stated...it was different from what I expected...
I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren’t trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.
Umberto Eco
...maybe the best way to teach somebody something is not to try to teach them anything...talk, act, throw petals to the waves to watch them float...and the best way to learn is to forget about learning...stop grasping at information as if to save you from drowning...make you rich, thin, good-looking...less flatulent, more confident...more in love, less hungry....just swim in it....forget about being a wise old yogi...just practice...
Can the sailor understand
The divine intoxication
Of the first league out from land?
Emily Dickinson
...strong emotions don’t come easy in a frozen world of grey slush...three weeks to Kripalu...something I never expected, being a full time student again...even if only for a month...and, while grad school’s just about guaranteed to make a person more neurotic, this could, conceivably, do the opposite...
...but, if one thing clearly to be expected, it’s that my final observations on the experience will include...for good or for bad...however stated...it was different from what I expected...
I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren’t trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.
Umberto Eco
...maybe the best way to teach somebody something is not to try to teach them anything...talk, act, throw petals to the waves to watch them float...and the best way to learn is to forget about learning...stop grasping at information as if to save you from drowning...make you rich, thin, good-looking...less flatulent, more confident...more in love, less hungry....just swim in it....forget about being a wise old yogi...just practice...
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