If I Should Fall From Grace With God...

If I should fall from grace with God where no doctor can relieve me,
If I’m buried ‘neath the sod where the angels won’t receive me,
Let me go, boys, let me go, boys,
Let me go down in the mud where the rivers all run dry...
Shane MacGowan

...lemme just come right out and say it: I don’t feel like writing about yoga...not that it’s ever been the sole topic here, anyway...and, yeah, though I keep saying I'm gonna stop, I keep writing comments about it elsewhere...but they’re mostly just arguing against one viewpoint or other...and arguing comes easy...can do it in my sleep...which might explain why I don’t feel particularly rested most mornings...

...which is not to say I’m sick of yoga...it seems, in fact, like the one thing I’m passionate about, lately...when one class ends, can hardly wait ’til the next starts...on average, six days a week....but trying to wrap the mind around yoga, get a grip on all associated ideas, thoughts, theory, philosophy, beliefs, interpretations, traditions and innovations...bleah...

...to sum up: practicing yoga’s no problem...I’m just sick of thinking about it...

...just this past week or so, finally got to where I can hop up to a handstand consistently...though it’s been a long and difficult process...the body gets me there, but the mind panics half way up....so, really, I realize now, the trick isn’t maintaining control and being confident I won’t fall...but letting go the mind’s grip, being open to falling...

Inversions, Foundations, and a Slight Chance of Metaphor

Upside down, boy ya turn me...

Diana Ross

Foundation, foundation, foundation...

Justicia Friese DeClue

...went to this inversion workshop last weekend...two and a half hours of going upside down...headstands, forearm stands, handstands...what might be described as simultaneously the funnest yet most frightening part of the yoga asana thing....almost smell a metaphor there...

...our fearless teacher summed things up with an altered version of a real-estate motto: foundation, foundation, foundation....the idea being...I think...that, if you’re grounded, rooted, operating from a place of surety and strength, you’re basically there...whereas, if you're starting from a blob* of nervous, indecisive internal jello, you’re probably gonna struggle endlessly, flounder about, crash land backwards on a hardwood floor...

...could be a metaphor there, as well...but I'm just not sure...



* just before posting, noticed I'd accidentally written blog instead of blob...but it wasn't a Freudian slip...really...I'm almost positive...

Venomous Spiders, Handstands, Elephants, and Trying Yet Failing to Move With the Peculiar Grace of a Three-Legged Dog

...you’re the blessed, we’re the spiders from mars...
David Bowie

...bourgeois as this might sound, Yoga for Cynics will soon have a second home...as I’ve been asked to write for Elephant Journal...based in Boulder, Colorado...home to Tibetan Buddhists, organic vegan mountain oysters, and ludicrously expensive real estate inhabited by people who wear socks with sandals...(this blog is, as always, best read barefoot)...

...not sure yet how what ends up there’s gonna differ from what’s here...maybe written under my full name...possibly with proper sentences, without ellipses...perhaps a bit less self-indulgent...meaning you’ll still have to come here to find out why I spent all day Monday in bathrobe, fuzzy pajama-type pants, and the ratty t-shirt I’d had on since Saturday’s eleven o’clock yoga class...(featuring my first American handstand)...(as opposed to those laid-back Costa Rican yoga retreat handstands anybody can do)...after which, as rain continued to fall steadily for the second day in a row, decided there was no more optimal use for the day than sitting around drinking coffee...which I did....yeah, I know, there’s much disagreement about coffee amongst the yoga crowd...pure-living non-(as opposed to anti-, since they’re too positive to be against anything)caffeine types on the one hand, irredeemable bean junkies with their steaming mugs filled to the brim with tasty rationalizations on the other....but I’ve got a far more potent and dangerous issue to discuss...we’re talkin’ spiders, people...

...because, that evening, started feeling pain and noticed swelling in my upper foot/lower ankle...which I promptly blamed on yoga...though couldn’t actually think of exactly how, in this instance, yoga could’ve done it...(alright...can feel the eyes rolling from here....change that to how I could’ve done it by bringing a stupidly competitive attitude to yoga and not listening to my body...are ya happy now?)...or why it took all day for the damage to kick in....

...then, as the weekend wore on, pain and swelling steadily increased...compromising my ability to walk...leaving me staggering, limping, hopping, crawling...trying yet failing to move with the peculiar grace of a three legged dog...as well as feeling strange chills...fever...and noticing a little red mark right in the belly of the swollen area...dismissed, at first, as simply one of countless little red marks left over from the Nicoya Peninsula...but, then, remembered this nasty little spider hanging right by my comfortable-yet-stylish IKEA chair earlier in the day...which, out of a deep commitment to ahimsa...or extreme laziness...I left alone...and the realization dawned that this thoroughly non-ahimsa-practicing spider had, in fact, bitten me*...

...now, Tuesday afternoon, I’m on the mend...even changed out of that ratty t-shirt...went to the doctor...who prescribed antibiotics...without bringing up the word amputate even once...though still probably a few days away from doing any more handstands....anyone so inclined is more than welcome to send healing energies...or cash...

* not, actually, the gigantic Costa Rican banana spider in the photo...though thinking that made the story more interesting, didn't it?