Dr. Jay after a really strenuous yoga class, thinking about his next Yoga for Cynics post.......since starting this blog, I’ve developed a reputation as one of the major badasses of the yoga world...kinda like a cross between B.K.S. Iyengar, Keith Richards, and Vladimir Putin...some have even called me a bad mutha...shut yo mouth!....can ya dig it?
...okay, admittedly, it’s mostly been me saying that about myself...nonetheless....yo! I live in Philly...popularly known in some circles as Killadelphia...famous for, in addition to its murder rate, police brutality, tendency to drop bombs on its own neighborhoods, and cheesesteaks that’ll likely clog up yer arteries and kill ya before anything else can (in one famous location, you can even purchase them from a well known and outspoken racist!)....it’s also been called the rudest city in America...and, true, people here do boo their own sports teams, really good opening acts at rock concerts (like the Clash when I saw them opening for the Who, or Sonic Youth opening for Neil Young and Crazy Horse, though both simply cranked it up so they couldn’t hear the boos)...even Santa Claus...
...then, that's kinda what I like about the place...people are straightforward, no BS, no fake smiles....if people are nice to ya, it 's probably because they actually like you...
We are living in the age of inhibition. The 1960s and early 1970s were the years of letting go, doing your own thing in your own time, rolling with the flow, and being cool. Now, it’s no smoking, no alcohol, no drugs, no casual sex, no fattening foods, no fun. We have learned to feel good by jogging, eating brown and tasteless foods, and going to bed early. One of the few remaining thrills available to us is looking down our noses at people who can’t inhibit their urges as well as we can. The New Self-Righteousness has arrived.
James Pennebaker
...there’s this psychologist named James Pennebaker who wrote a book called The Healing Power of Expressing Emotions...does studies in which he has people write about traumatic experiences and then sees if doing so improves their physical health....it does....then he analyzes the words they use, including the number of positive words, and the number of negative words....the test subjects with the best health outcomes, it turns out, are those who use a lot of positive words, and a moderate number of negative words....those who use a lot of negative words tend not to do so well...like Bob Marley says you just can't live that negative way, make way for the positive day...but here’s what’s interesting: those who use very few negative words tend to do as poorly as those who use a lot...
...in other words, it’s good to accentuate the positive, but not too much...if you’re gonna walk around with a forced new-age smile on your face, pretend to have all kinds of positive emotions you don’t actually feel, and generally try to convince yourself that shit doesn’t stink...ya might as well dress in black and sit around reading Camus and quoting Lou Reed lyrics...and some kindsa love are mistaken for vision....well, you get the idea...
