The Christmas Yoga Mat (a really deep and touching holiday story for the whole family)

The photo below is of the yoga mat I’ve been using for the past year or so...or, more specifically, the family Christmas tree, as seen through one of the larger holes in the mat I’ve been using for the past year or so...

 ...whereas this one is my fancy-schmancy so-heavy-it’s-gonna-add-a-whole-new-level-of-athletic-challenge-to-biking-to-yoga-class, ready-to-be-used-by-cockroaches-and-Keith-Richards-after-a-nuclear-war, 85-inch (since, to me, nothing says yoga more than being able to tell the guy next to me "mine’s bigger than yours"), brand new Christmas miracle Manduka mat...under the same tree...

 ...so, needless to say, since this is, of course, one of those ever-so-deep-and-spiritual yoga blogs, there’s a far deeper and more spiritual message here...when you really think about it...with your heart, as well as your mind...about renewal and hope and...um...peace on earth...or something...

...okay, it’s basically a very crass and materialistic kinda modern Christmas story about getting cool new stuff...(kinda like I wrote about here)...

...I’ll try to be more deep and spiritual, next time....for now, oh man, am I psyched about my new yoga mat...

Happy Holidays, y’all...

Questions to Meditate On...Or Not...

This is the third Yoga for Cynics post in the past week or so that’s featured the word not prominently in the title—could my need for this yoga retreat in Mexico thingy be any more stark?

In the immortal words of Neil Young: tell me why is it hard to make arrangements with yourself when you’re old enough to re-paint but young enough to sell?

What the hell does that mean?

Before Mexico, I’m taking a shorter trip...to New York City....could anything be more appropriate before a yoga retreat than a visit to the world capital of angst?

In the words of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards: work and work for love and sex, ain’t you hungry for success success success success? Does it matter?

Are Mick Jagger and Keith Richards people you'd normally turn to for a critique of materialism?

Is to be or not to be really the question?

Why is a person with love considered a loser in tennis?

Is it possible to snort crystal meth mindfully?

Do you think there are people who fantasize about masturbation during sex?

Written in a shelter register on the Appalachian Trail in a very wet month of May, 1992: if April showers bring May flowers, what do May showers bring?

In the words of a guy named “Rudi” in Stephen Cope’s The Wisdom of Yoga: in the end, we all have to write our own scriptures, don’t we?

Sober Reflections on Getting Wasted (Notes from a Car by the Ocean #2)

Wasn’t lookin’ too good but I was feelin’ real well...
Keith Richards

My earliest introduction to the whole Eastern philosophy thing came from friends who were mostly into attaining higher consciousness by other means....generally speaking, the emphasis tended to be on escaping from a world we never made...which, I’ve since learned, is the opposite of what yoga is about, ideally...though some would disagree on that....hell, even if escape might, ultimately, be impossible, it still sometimes seems a lot easier than being here without reservations...and that, it appears, is where drugs and religion tend to meet...with one, of course, far more destructive than the other...though I won’t say which one that is....

I inhaled frequently. That was the point.
Barack Obama

....in The Bacchae by Euripides, Pentheus, king of Thebes, decides the people of his city need to be more rational and sober...no more honoring Dionysus with drunkenness and revelry....to make a long story short, Pentheus’ head ends up on a stick carried by his mother as she leads a group of revelers marching into Thebes....nowadays in America, everybody agrees we’ve got a problem with drinking and driving, though, despite melting ice caps and 45,000 traffic fatalities a year, the main focus always seems to be on the drinking rather than the driving...with the perennial solution being, as with most problems, putting more people in prison...which, when a drunk with a suspended license slams into a school bus, is kinda hard to argue with....nonetheless, living in a place where the last train leaves two or three hours before the bars close, I can’t help wondering what might happen if we let just a little bit of the seemingly limitless supply of funding for new prison construction go toward providing alternative means of getting home from the bars....

...until that happens, if you’re going out for New Years’ Eve, take your toothbrush....