Will Teach Yoga For Booze

The shallowest still water is unfathomable.
Henry David Thoreau

File Under: Not Sure What the Traditional Yoga Sages Would Think of This, But Doubt It’d Be Good:

...after much talk, finally taught my first living room yoga class...trucked over to my friends’ place, bringing yoga mats & ancient wisdom...they made margaritas....I was, it should be noted, firm and forthright: no drinking ‘til after yoga...

...next week, I’m heading to the shore with some other friends, who’re already making up a menu of cocktails and exotic beers....in the mornings, I’ll be leading hangover yoga on the beach...

...it’s a start...

2011: The Year the Yoga Cynic Goes Legit

I don’t believe in yoga...
John Lennon, God

I don’t believe in yoga, I practice yoga.
Ancient and Revered Yoga Cynic Sutra 360.21

...it’s 2011 and I’ve resolved to stop leaving my yoga mat at the studio....that’s not the big news, though...

...up until now, this humble site has reveled in its unique status among yoga blogs...y’know, the one written by the guy who doesn’t actually know crap about yoga....as stated so succinctly in its very first post...

this woman I was kinda sorta involved with said she was curious about yoga and wanted me to teach her some. I told her I’m still working on not hurting myself by overstretching my hamstrings. Hell, I’m still not even sure what hamstrings are.*

...even cluelessness, however charming, turns out, eventually, to be impermanent...
Ancient and Revered Yoga Cynic Sutra 223:461

...this year, though...specifically in February and March...I’m stepping away from the time honored personal ritual of sitting around depressed until spring...instead heading up to spend a month in the snowy Berkshires, at Kripalu...eating, drinking, and sleeping yoga, while completing...are ya ready for this?...a 200 hour yoga teacher training...

...that’s right, people, the Yoga Cynic’s going legit...

...soon I’ll be able to fill this blog with dry, didactic, and painfully self-satisfied lectures on Real Yoga (i.e. what I learned in my teacher training...as opposed to that crap you do)...as well as to use that legendary inaudible-from-more-than-six-inches-away yoga teacher voice...(though, obviously, I need to come up with a written equivalent to use here)...(perhaps this)...and, generally, to act really egotistical while insisting I’ve overcome my ego...

...or maybe not...though I'll probably find out what hamstrings are...

...seriously, it's gonna be intense and challenging, and I'm excited...hope you all have good stuff coming up this year, too...namaste & all that...


*...this, needless to say, was before Y4C found the magic of ellipses...**

**...Y4C, I’ve decided, is a good abbreviation for Yoga for Cynics...up until now, I’ve used YforC, but everybody else seems to prefer the more succinct YfC...which makes me...and probably everybody else...think of KFC...which, y’know, doesn’t exactly help with the all-important-for-yoga-bloggers vegan demographic...

Purple Prose

...saved for last...hardest to write about...perhaps operating out of some very deep kinda purple synaesthesia...I tend to be covered in it...purple sweater, purple shirts in numerous styles, purple sheets, purple blanket, purple towels...purple prose all over the place...even that Sanskritish title up there...purple lotus...purple Kool-Aid...Riders of the Purple Sage...and the wild mountain thyme grows around the purple heather...raspberries are best when they turn purple, almost but not-yet overripe...but only when you eat them right off the bush...really, they shouldn’t be eaten any other way...and, in an ideal purple world, they wouldn't be...

...blending blue and red...blood and the sea...rage and contemplation...celebration and melancholia... red-faced embarrassment and boundless sky...purple nurple...owww...

...prime color of psychedelia...even as all colors swirl together...Owsley Purple...Purple Haze...Jimi Hendrix himself seems to me to be purple...maybe that’s how he managed to cross the musical color barrier...he was more purple than anything...lately, I’ve been meeting up with old psychedelic friends...now all invested in purple yoga mats...

...Obama talked about a purple America during the campaign...not sure how well that’s working out, now...purple, of course is the color of royalty...nobility...people you're supposed to call your majesty or your holiness...as if kings and emperors could be any more majestic than convicts and elevator operators...popes and lamas any more holy than prostitutes and laborers...purple should always be for everybody...