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...

Rite of Spring, 2012 (kind of a haiku)

biking, wearing shorts
in March; it stung me on the
thigh—first bee of spring

.,

The More Un-Yogic, the Better?

What is here is elsewhere; what is not here is nowhere.
Vishva-Sara-Tantra

Folks, you know I’ve never been a fan of yoga. If I wanted to spend all day on the ground sweating in a contorted position, I would eat another gas station hot dog.
Stephen Colbert

...sometimes I arrive at yoga class in what might not be considered the most, y’know, yogic mood...at some strange juncture in a difficult day, full of anxiety, anger, and/or general misery, exacerbated by the trip to yoga class, driving through traffic in the rain or nearly getting plowed into by a truck on my bike...or nearly getting plowed into by a truck on my bike in the rain, the guy who nearly killed me though I had the right of way having the nerve to yell at me...you get the idea...leaving me tromping in and rolling out my mat in a an utterly wired and generally negative frenzy....really, there couldn't be a better time to practice yoga...

...making me especially grateful for these kind, calm, and centered teachers who help me to let go...

...though, of course, as I’m learning, now, it’s a bit more complicated...or maybe simpler, but more difficult...if, ultimately, more rewarding for that...when I am the yoga teacher...

You Can Tell the Troublemakers by Their Yoga Mats

...seriously, earlier this evening I was refused entrance to a prominent Philadelphia hotel, apparently because my yoga mat made me look like an undesirable radical trouble maker...

...there I was, having biked downtown earlier for yoga class, mat strapped neatly beneath my knapsack, heading to meet friends at a bar with what they told me was a surprisingly affordable Happy Hour ensconced inside a venerable hotel bordering Philadelphia’s lovely Rittenhouse Square...(where I was apparently stalked by a psychopath as a young child in the late 60’s, but that’s another story)...

...got there to find the place surrounded by cops, with a crowd of Occupy Philly people protesting the presence, apparently at some auditorium within, of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney...carrying signs reading Greed Is Good: Romney/Gekko 2012 (which, for what it’s worth, with no offense intended to any readers' well thought-out social and political sensibilities, I thought was clever) and repeatedly yelling REVOLUTION!!! (which, for what it’s worth, with no offense intended to any reader’s well thought-out social and political sensibilities, I thought was stupid)...

...so, I head for the front door, only to find a member of the hotel’s security personnel moving over to bar my way....he asked if I was a hotel guest, I explained that I was going to meet some friends in the bar, and he let me know it was restricted, and maybe I could come back in an hour...

...so, figuring that meant nobody was allowed in, apart from registered guests, and the location for our meet-up would have to be changed, if it hadn’t been already, I called one of my friends, Marge, who, as it turned out, was just around the corner, only to see another friend, approaching through the park...

...Marge said that she’d talked to yet another friend who was already in the bar...said maybe it was your yoga mat...a possibility she found amusing...so decided to go try her luck at the door...where the same guy who’d physically prevented me from entering, mere minutes earlier, ushered both her and our other friend in, without asking if they were guests, only to turn angrily to remind me that I'd already been denied entrance....I said I’m with them...and, apparently not wanting to offend my respectable non-yoga-mat-carrying companions, he let me in...

...notably, a bit later, after I’d told this story to people at the bar, a nicely dressed older woman walked up and said that she, actually, was one of the protesters, and had no problem getting in....then, she didn’t have a yoga mat...

Two Reasons to Practice Yoga

...gorgeous afternoons...rumbling Wissahickon and gently rippling Schuylkill reflecting vibrant greens and blues as the bike floats past with minimal effort, beyond sculpture garden and gilded greco-roman art museum, all the way to the studio...cheerful vinyasa and laughter with teachers and students, all friends...then fueling up at the Indian buffet place with samosas and malai kofta for the ride home...

...and those other times...grey and cloudy outside, but even moreso in....roll out the mat for lack of any better idea, thinking maybe just maybe this’ll get me through the day...and, somehow, it does....not so much providing an esoteric heightened state that can only be described in Sanskrit or with reference to something some semi-mythic incredibly enlightened person wrote in India or Tibet three thousand years ago....and not a spiritual orgasm to be translated into new age positive affirmations or old time religion or a marketing campaign for the latest Yoga for Rich People With Big Houses and Nice Butts© DVD series....but revealing at least a window...some little bit of space...not much, maybe, but enough...that didn’t appear to be there before...

Big Time Yoga

...got asked to assist at the Philly version of this big worldwide yoga event called Salutation Nation...(9:00 this morning)...(really probably shoulda said something beforehand....but, well, y’know, focus on the present moment, don’t get too hung up on past mistakes, & all that positive life-affirming shit)...a huge outdoor class...(picture above taken when things were still getting set up)...so a major deal for somebody who’s never taught more than three people at a time...particularly since it started & ended with me sitting up on stage with amazing senior teachers on all sides....a friend was impressed...(maybe just a tinge sarcastically)...said you’re playin’ in the big leagues...and it did feel kinda like that...may have to start tellin' people to call me Swami Jay instead of Dr. Jay....well, maybe not quite yet...

...was gonna bike down there, as one eco-minded yoga blogger urged everybody to do...but, still recovering from some strange sickness...(think it may’ve started with smelling two week old garbage that’d been submerged in a flooded trash can since the hurricane)...(seriously)...(yuck)...decided simply showing up and helping people get that dog-tilt might be as much as I could handle...

...so, was drinking coffee in the car on the way down, and...just ‘cause it’s kinda what I do...spilled some on my t-shirt...which was a bummer...like, I’m gonna be one o’ the major yoga dudes at this thing & got brown spots on my duds....started wondering if assisting might merit some schwag...like, specifically, a shirt...

...as it turned out, one was waiting for me, thanks to the event's generous sponsor........meaning that I now own, and have worn, in public, a notably stretchy item of clothing with an ambiguously-spiritual-looking symbol on it....

...yes, friends, the 'til now reliably grungy Yoga Cynic has been spotted wearing Lululemon.......take it as you will...

Rehab and Elsewhere

They tried to make me go to rehab,
I said no no no...
Amy Winehouse (1983-2011)

We’re all doing time.
Bo Lozoff

...last night, had an awesome dream...nothing too exciting...just standing, talking, after a yoga class, apparently, on a sidewalk, to somebody who, as far as I know, doesn’t exist in the world outside that dream...though, all day long, all I can think about is how much I want to see her again...

...was thinking that on the way to yoga class, and there, on the sidewalk out front, as I chained my bike to a parking meter, was a little girl, crying, and her mother, who yelled shut up, and kept walking...

...little while ago, wrote a post called Lost My Sacred Mala Beads Last Night at a Hipster Pool Party...which I mentioned to a friend from the teacher training, who still had his, wound around one wrist....that’s okay, he said, showing me an empty space on the string, one of mine broke and fell off when I got drunk and punched somebody....it was a long story...

...there’s a sign on the wall of the room where I work at the rehab that says Group Rules, with a long list underneath....one is no sarcasm....I look at that, every Tuesday night, and think I wouldn’t last five minutes...

Surfacing...with Court and Spark, Enlighten Up, and my new chair from IKEA..

He who knows does not speak. He who speaks does not know.
Lao Tzu

...I have very little to say...so this is gonna go on for a while...
Ancient and Revered Yoga Cynic Sutra 1:1

...have always loved Joni Mitchell’s Court and Spark album...despite always disliking that really slick L.A. production kinda sound....but, then, that’s kinda what Court and Spark’s about: she trades her guitar player boyfriend with the madman’s soul for the city of the fallen angels...as her friend David Geffen gives up feeling unfettered and alive in gay Paris for stroking the star maker machinery behind the popular songs...turning to surfaces because depths and ideals have gotten too painful....and yet, it turns out the superficial life sucks, too...since, even at the most stylish and faceless people’s parties, the old emotions and desperate search for love and contentment keep welling up....so, in the end, she ends up with jazz and the therapist’s couch....I can relate...

...speaking of surfaces...finally saw Enlighten Up!...okay, actually, I’m watching it as I write this...while also eating my dinner...yeah, I know, not mindful at all...though, for what it’s worth, my dinner’s vegetarian...unlike my lunch....so it goes....anyway, this filmmaker sends this guy who has no particular interest in spirituality on a spiritual quest...which, to me, seems somewhat self-evidently silly...and—big surprise—he doesn’t end up having a spiritual experience...not even after sampling this vast yogic smorgasbord, ranging from your most fundamentalist religious kinda scenes to your most crassly superficial gym class kinda scenes to your most totally style-conscious new agey kinda scenes...not to mention all the disagreements about the history and definition of yoga, as well as the ubiquity of practitioners who don’t seem to know or care....raising, I'm told, all kinds of major, troubling questions...

...whatever...personally, I got into the yoga thing because I thought practicing in ways that made sense to me, and avoiding those that didn't, might have a positive affect on my life...and, as it turns out, it has...in some ways I didn’t anticipate, even...so I’m gonna keep doing it...no big whoop...

...gotta admit, though, in recent months I've mostly been trying to counteract the effects of sitting on the crummy beaten up futon couch in my apartment...lumpy as a gigantic, lopsided bag of potatoes on top of a bent frame...but, what the hell, it was there when I moved in...and filled a need, as I’d just returned the easy chair I’d been using in my last place to the dumpster where I found it....seriously, there was nothing wrong with it, then, other than a stain...and my chair before that one was this old recliner, which was basically okay except that I kept finding nuts and bolts and things every time I cleaned under it...I mean, lots of them...like more than you’d think would even be part of a chair in the first place...so, it seemed like only a matter of time before it collapsed, causing untold injury...and, when I saw the one with the stain out by the dumpster...which couldn’t’ve been placed there more than a few hours earlier...y’know....anyway, it started falling apart, as well, and most likely wouldn’t have survived the trip to the new place, and so began the physically abusive relationship between the old futon couch and me, which lasted until...

...one rainy Saturday morning...when I got in the car and drove to..............................................IKEA...yes, dear friends and readers...IKEA...and, before I left, made a vow never again to shop anywhere other than IKEA....if they don’t sell it at IKEA, I don’t want it....am even quitting the yoga thing in favor of whatever traditional Swedish equivalent to yoga they offer at IKEA....this blog will soon be renamed Whatever Traditional Swedish Equivalent to Yoga They Offer at IKEA for Cynics...which, I believe, will make it the first and only whatever traditional Swedish equivalent to yoga they offer at IKEA blog on the interwebs....and, thus, more cutting edge than ever...not to mention written...like this post right now...while sitting in my new IKEA chair...with matching IKEA footrest...and ooooooh is it a cool chair...and really not difficult to assemble at all...

....only trouble is, now I gotta make the rest of the room worthy of the chair...which could take a while...

Timeless Wisdom du Jour

...one way to see how mindful you can be is to bike to yoga class in a cold winter rainstorm...then try to get through the class without thinking constantly about how much it’s gonna suck to put your soaking wet socks and sneakers back on for the ride home...
Ancient and Revered Yoga Cynic Sutra 15:357

Silence is the mother of truth.
Benjamin Disraeli

Death is the mother of beauty.
Wallace Stevens

...truth and beauty are a couple of heartless, ungrateful bastards who can’t be troubled to send so much as a lousy Mother’s Day card to silence and death...
Ancient and Revered Yoga Cynic Sutra 643:278

The universe is not only stranger than we think, it's stranger than we can think.
a Hubble scientist, quoted by Barbara Crooker

...all is impermanent...except perhaps for that lingering scent of fish in the microwave...
Ancient and Revered Yoga Cynic Sutra 316:239

...it's better to give than to receive...but both beat the hell outta having to go Christmas shopping...
Swami Yoganandasutkatasanatikkamasalakaliyugaroseannadanna (author of much maligned 19th Century commentary on Ancient and Revered Yoga Cynic Sutra 316:239)

Life is both dreadful and wonderful.
Thich Nhat Hanh