Confessions of a Yoga Cynic?

For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
Carl Sagan

Loneliness is not a problem. Loneliness is nothing to be solved.
Pema Chodron

...was briefly...(perusing the interweb news in a grouchy moment)...thinkin’ it might be time to start a new, less-yogic type o’ blog...specifically, one just to piss off people who piss me off....which I guess would be kinda like Cynicism for Cynics........whereas, here, I try more to simply acknowledge the negativity...give it its due, credit its often quite solid reasoning, rather than trying to dismiss it with empty feel-good sentiments...(that’s called repression, people—it only looks like positive thinking)...then, y'know, try to grow something reasonably funny out of it...(um, yeah...that is kinda like a lotus flower, now thatcha mention it)...

...I understand the ahimsa of biking- rather than driving-drunk...possess the self-awareness necessary to realize that running on a treadmill, loudest music I can find blasting through headphones, eyes wavering between magazine and TV screen, pushing myself to burn as many calories as humanly possible within the hour while doing everything imaginable to distract myself from the experience, is the complete antithesis of yoga, even if I sometimes do it anyway...just as I get that all these time-wasters I put so much energy into are merely flimsy, ultimately ephemeral, and ineffective bulwarks against a deep loneliness that’s always still there no matter how many empty distractions I throw at it, and yet, I love me some good distractions...

...at the same time, gotta admit my cynicism towards yoga tends to manifest itself more in theory than on the mat....teachers and others have, in fact, left me dumbfounded, remarking on my apparently prodigious energy...dedication...even the positive attitude they see manifested in my practice...like, seriously....sure, I might disagree with some, or a lot, or even most, of what they say...(see that totally snarky empty feel-good sentiments remark, above)...but, then, they mostly know that and don’t mind, so why should I?...(hell, the only real yoga arguments I ever get in are on-line...generally with people I've never seen up close, sitting in chairs and typing on computers)...and while, true, I don’t revere my teachers in any classic, Eastern hierarchical kind of sense, and don’t plan on starting any time soon, I do like them an awful lot...

Reptiles of the Mind

The man who never alters his opinions is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.
William Blake

...thinking about stuff is generally easier than actually doing it, but less satisfying...unless, of course, you’re thinking about doing something really stupid...
Ancient and Venerable Yoga Cynic Sutra 16:731/2

...just wrote this review for Elephant Journal of a book called Writing Yoga...and, in the process, got kinda self-indulgent...which is what I do...without apology...(I mean, seriously, it’s not like I get paid for this shit)...(and, anyway, like to think I’m working in the tradition of the late great Lester Bangs)...(remember reading Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung while in grad. school, and thinking “why can’t I write literary criticism like this?”...probably shoulda known my days in academia were numbered right then)...

Some years ago, my yoga teacher told me about a retreat she was leading on a beach in Mexico, involving instruction in not just yoga but writing.** The yoga and beach-in-Mexico parts sounded awesome, but thought I’d probably skip out on the other in favor of more wandering-on-the-beach time—I mean, I got me a PhD in English, done taut reedin’ n’ ritin’ at the college level, for chrissake, completed a novel, and published all kinds o’ crap; so y’know, what could be more fun on a trip to the tropics than having somebody correcting my split infinitives and instructing me not to end my sentences with prepositions?**** As it turned out, the writing teacher, Ann Randolph, was more holy lunatic than didactic schoolmarm. Right from the get-go, she had us radically stretching, pushing boundaries, moving beyond comfort zones into all kinds of places I really wasn’t expecting to go.***** At the end of the week, when asked how I felt about the balance of yoga and writing, I said I didn’t feel it was a combination, per se. Rather, it felt to me like it was all yoga, the writing as much as the asana practice. And this, along with, according to what I’d read, a desperate need for writers these days to have something called a web presence, led me to create my semi-famous blog, Yoga for Cynics…(mentioned in Yoga Journal and yada yada yada).****** (And, when people point out that, often, the content isn’t really about yoga, I point out that writing the blog is yoga…and, at least fifty percent of the time, I mean it).

...(yes, in this blog where, in better times, I’ve shared the words of Whitman, Shakespeare, and Kinky Friedman, I’m now quoting myself...at length)...(you’ll have to read the actual article to see the hilarious snarky footnotes, as well as get to the point where I move beyond shameless self-promotion and actually mention the book I’m reviewing)...(and yes, this is also shameless self-promotion)...

Oh, help me in my weakness, I heard the drifter say...
Bob Dylan

...so, anyway, running through this bit of personal history, particularly the cryptic web presence thing, reminded me that part of what got me into the blogging thing...in addition to, y'know, becoming one with the blogosphere and spreading peace and contentment throughout the interwebs...was a need to market my writing...(for which I also need to work on the shameless self promotion thing...as I’m doing in this post)...specifically the novel I put the finishing touches on nearly four years ago, but still haven’t gotten published, Drifter’s Escape...(yes, the title comes from that Dylan song)....(what are songs and poems good for if not to provide titles?)...(note how well that Blake line fits with the pic from my trip to Costa Rica, up there...even if it doesn't have all that much to do with the content of the post....can't have it all)...

...though, as it turns out, Yoga for Cynics has kind of taken on a life of its own...and perhaps the strategy of continually planning on getting back to the process of querying agents really soon but never actually doing it might be reevaluated...though whether that means actually getting back to querying agents, or developing a different strategy...(and, y’know, actually implementing it)...is up to question.....more on this, perhaps, as it develops...

...trying to get shit published might be yoga, too...but we're not too sure about that...
Ancient and Venerable Yoga Cynic Sutra 121:97

There Could Be Worse Ways To Spend My Time

...tonight the women at the rehab were in the living room, that legendary Wizard of Oz/Dark Side of the Moon mash-up playing on the T.V....I told ‘em you may be the most sober group of people who’ve ever watched this...

God knows, it’s sacrilege to waste the talent for idleness which I possess.
William Faulkner

...to get busy, first get organized...(sounds like something Sun Tzu would've said...or maybe it was me)...made myself a big to-do list...a series of bulleted goals to be accomplished...with, one hopes, a sense of optimism, hard work, and perseverance...in the coming days....and then, within an hour or two, started feeling a dry, crusty, utterly nasty feeling from the back of the throat to the sinuses, along with an overwhelming need to bundle up, lie down, and close my eyes at two-thirty on a sunny Saturday afternoon...

...that was more than week ago...the nasty sinus cold still lingering just a bit, but mostly, it seems, off on its way....that to-do list serving as a bookmark in the novel I tried to read in between blinding headaches, desperate noseblowing, endless games of FreeCell, and the latest seasons of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Breaking Bad, watched from start to finish on the computer....so now, I’m starting over...

...and I went down to the demonstration,
to get my fair share of abuse,
singin’ we’re gonna vent our frustration...
Mick Jagger

...at least managed to get some yoga in, if far less than usual...including a vinyasa class on Friday, where, actually, not having biked for a week, I noticed a refreshing lack of soreness in the leg muscles...and, then, ever the glutton for punishment, got back on the bike for a ride downtown on Saturday....a pretty day along the river, except where I had to detour around a gathering of aryan nations-type people blocking the path....seriously....maybe ten beefy, angry-looking, Gothic-tattooed, generally goonish-looking skinhead guys holding flags, one speaking into a bullhorn...though whatever he was saying...(apparently something having do with the statue, there by the path, of Viking explorer Thorfinn Karlsefeni...no doubt muttering can’t you please just leave me out of this crap? in some ancient Norse tongue, somewhere beyond the grave, at that very moment)...was drowned out by a slightly larger, equally angry-looking, group of dudes, perhaps fifteen or so, dressed head-to-toe in anarchist black chanting “nazis suck,” while a couple of cops stood in between, simply looking miserable...

...and it occurred to me, thinking back on over a week of relative inactivity in the face of a long list of important shit to do, there could be worse ways to spend my time...

Sick Again

...been sick yet again...(necessitating, yes, yet another horrifying Edward Gorey image at the head of the post)...a bad sinus cold, this time, though containing suspicious similarities to whatever that was a month ago...leaving me wasting away indoors during what were likely the last eighty degree days of the year, a perfect weekend for occupations or wandering aimlessly in the park...

...not to mention creating another regrettable gap in the ever-so-close-to-daily yoga practice...yeah, I know, but let’s face it, despite having learned a few timeless truths...(headstand while drunk=bad idea)...I’m simply not yogic enough, at this point, either to practice every day no matter what kinda toxic waste facility it feels like I've got lodged in my sinuses nor to not practice for three or four days and yet feel so centered-and-totally-okay-with-myself-and-the-universe-as-it-is-in-this-totally-sacred-as-fuck-moment as to not feel self-conscious about it...(though, admittedly, by this definition, I was never more yogic than in my first thirty-five years of life, when I never even thought about practicing yoga and, if anything, made fun of people who did)...(oh, these spiritual paradoxes)...

...so, laid the mat out just a little while ago, and got right into it...incense, Miles, and a strikingly satisfying post-neti-pot headstand...and, though, as it turned out, I wasn’t quite up for everything intended, actually found myself feeling better than I had in days, if, still, well below 100%...(yeah, you blissed out yoga hippie types out there, I hear ya...but you’re always 100%! you're always perfectly yogic!! you’re perfect just as you are in this moment, brother!!!...um, yeah, but, in a more practical sense, if I were really 100% right now, I’d have a snappy comeback...instead I just wanna blow my nose...again)...and in the mood to write for the first time since last week...so here we are...

...(meaning that, yeah, this post is ending up like one of those lame-ass movies about some stereotypical writer dork struggling to finish a novel and then, just before the credits, it turns out it’s actually the book the stupid movie’s based on!...bleah...like I said, not yet 100%)...

The Clinically Depressed Trickster Figure

You know, I'm sick of following my dreams, man. I'm just going to ask where they're going and hook up with 'em later...
Mitch Hedberg

...turning leaves, blankets and warmer clothing, and lotsa tasty stuff made from various forms of squash...shifting from that edgy, anxious spring-and-summertime depression to the more cozy, lethargic fall-and-winter variety...

We can as easily become a prisoner of so-called positive thinking as of negative thinking. It too can be confining, fragmented, inaccurate, illusory, self-serving, and wrong.
Jon Kabat-Zinn

a mystic looks at the universe and sees mystery...an existentialist looks at the universe and sees absurdity...I look at the universe and see absurd mystery...or mysterious absurdity...

Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness.
Chuang Tzu

...would like to start a non-religion based around a clinically depressed trickster figure...offering annual, year-long retreats at the long-awaited Yoga for Cynics ashram...where the mountains kiss the sea and floppy-eared dogs wander among recycled building materials inscribed with inspiring words from Chuang Tzu, William Blake, Jon Kabat-Zinn, and Mitch Hedberg....all specific commandments, sutras, and holy dogma written on any available outdoor surface in colored chalk, to be seen, or changed, or ignored, by anyone at any time, or simply washed away by the rain...

If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise.
William Blake



*was looking for an image for this post and googled “trickster figure”...and what did I see but the cover of this obscure book of literary criticism called Trickster Lives, published a full decade ago, now, and happening to feature a chapter on a poet named Thylias Moss, written—in semi-fluent academic jargon—by none other than your humble author in PhD-student mode...never woulda imagined that was still in print...*

Learnin' n' Unlearnin'

...it’s been...good gawd...over six months since the two hundred hour certification...during which I’ve kinda taught yoga five times...groups of one to three people...only one of whom insisted on drinking a beer while practicing...(as well as assisting with that class of, I’m told, two-hundred and fifty people)....meaning, ya could say, I’ve not been overly ambitious...perhaps lazy....or, maybe, to take a more positive view, simply humble...egoless...just too damned enlightened...

...at Kripalu, they said what we were doing was less about learning than un-learning...and I most certainly did that....still confused about those esoteric fancy-schmancy Sanskrit-derived terms...particularly that pesky pair: right and left....used, generally, in reference to something even more confusing: the human body...its anatomy, physiology, alignment...

...over a series of weekends, beginning tomorrow, I’m gonna be continuing my yogic education through a fifty hour Align and Flow training...based in principles of anusara...a Sanskrit term which, as I understand it, means something like don’t care how long you’ve been practicing yoga, your alignment’s waaaaaaay off...
...this time, it's only a twenty-minute drive away...(maybe a forty-five minute bike ride, if I could figure a route that wouldn’t likely leave me sprawled out on the blacktop with alignment off in ways all the king’s yoga teachers might never put back together)...with a great teacher I’ve known a few years, and at least one fellow student I know...who's an advanced teacher, too, actually....raising suspicions I could be one of the more unlearned persons in the room...the Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel of yoga...Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yogi...sittin' on my mat muttering downward facin’ dawg?! whut th’ heck’s that?!....I'm looking forward to it...