Dancing Wildly With Your Eyes Closed

...been goin’ to a lotta kundalini yoga classes....kundalini yoga, for them what don’t know, might be the most blatantly religious type o’ yoga...tied intimately to Sikhism...complete with headgear, long flowing robes, titles, and loads and loads of esoteric beliefs....making it not exactly the obvious choice for one so irreligious as your friendly neighborhood yoga cynic...

I can get you high—high on your breath.
Yogi Bhajan

...it’s also might be called the trippiest form of yoga...did I say trippy?!...I meant inward-focused...sometimes involving stuff like dancing wildly with your eyes closed*...which is why so many hippies got into it....personally, I get a solid buzz from yoga in general...but, in a kundalini class, I’m disappointed if I don’t get visuals.......not that, y'know, that's a reason to do it or anything...




* ...think I gained the respect of the drama club in high school simply by showing up for the West Side Story dance audition...I like to be in America okay by me in America everything’s free in America for a small fee in America...like, I was cool just to try in the face of an innate lack of grace, coordination, etc....in the end, getting the role of the guy who comically tries to make the Jets and Sharks dance rather than fight at the dance...without doing any dancing, myself....learned everything I know about the art of dance a year or two later at Grateful Dead shows...chemically infused & almost totally loose....so that trance-dancing in the yoga studio feels almost like coming full circle...

*thanks to Karin for her always amazing artwork*

From the Coffee Shop at Kripalu...

soft foggy morning,

mist, quite the view from here, is

that a metaphor?*

* ...biggest problem with this place is the food's so good, and there's so much of it...and afterwards, you do yoga....then, I suspect there are worse things a person can experience in this world than a touch of indigestion during camel pose....all morning, stuff kept reminding me of a dream last night I can't remember...just strange amorphous resonances....was telling Brooks...(even better in person than on-line)...about it...she asked what the dream felt like....I thought for a minute, said nice...warm...she said that's good...and I think she's probably right...

Today I Wrote About Nothing

All all the trees go piff
all all the rocks go paff
all all of nature poof.
Daniil Kharms (from Today I Wrote Nothing)

If at first an idea isn't absurd, There's no hope for it.
Albert Einstein

...all in all, doing nothing’s a lot easier when I’m supposed to be doing something...particularly if I have a precise idea of what that something's supposed to be...then I know just what to ignore...(even if I can never really ignore it completely)...and if it’s something I really don’t feel like doing...or, better yet, a whole bunch of things I don’t feel like doing...which, alas, is the case most of the time...almost anything can serve as a distraction...and the hours go by like...nothing...

...but seriously doing nothing...focusing on doing nothing...doing nothing with a sense of purpose...with discipline...that’s a different matter entirely...then, suddenly, everything I could possibly be doing instead seems to intrude as if by some kind of deep imperative...check the oil, clean the bathroom, buy some cheese...run for president, get a sex-change, find out what it’s like to eat a whole pocketful of sand...though, of course, if I quit meditating with an imperative to get all of these things done in a timely and efficient manner...most likely I’ll be right back to nothing in no time...

...started meditating again...like, a day or two ago...half an hour a day.......okay, twenty minutes........

Yoga Raving...

...Thursday night at the Do Yoga Philly! festival looked intense: shamanism, Jedi training, three hours of very intense asana practice with yoga legends Ray Crist, John Vitarelli, and Simon Park...and something called a blender bike...not that it stopped me taking a twenty-five mile bike ride in the gorgeous fall weather, beforehand....nearly killed me...but in a good way...

...dreamed that night about yoga...somehow ending up riding in the back of a boxy little red car with a strange blonde haired woman I’d apparently just gotten married to...feeling suddenly terrified, realizing I’d inexplicably gone off the deep end, done something quite possibly irreversible, wondering how I’d gotten myself into something like this...was sitting there about to quietly lose it when realization dawned that it was a dream......felt a peculiar sadness mixed with the relief, though, realizing whatever might have been wouldn’t, and I was never gonna to see her again once I awoke...

Fear says ‘I’ll keep you safe.’
Love says ‘you are safe.’
Mahan Rishi Singh Khalsa

...in the morning found out I was on youtube, making smoothies for the yogic multitudes...that evening went to a class with noted teacher and Yoga Journal cover model Marni Sclaroff, who talked about childhood experiences that cause us to contract...I thought that covers pretty much everything from about age seven to seventeen...then, in the past, I’ve tended to think in terms of damage....and when stuff gets damaged, sometimes all the kings horses and all the king’s men can’t even begin to put it back together again....something that contracts, on the other hand, can, with patience and effort, be inspired to open up again...

...the deeper you go, the higher you fly,
the higher you fly, the deeper you go...
John Lennon

...feel like I’m entering a new phase of the yoga practice...deeper...beyond merely looking good in my Lululemon pants*....did sixteen hours or so of yoga over the long weekend...including seven and a half on Saturday...culminating in something called avatar yoga, complete with black light, pounding yogic techno, and a roomful of people whooping it up decorated in glow-in-the-dark body paint....kinda like a yoga rave...acid without the acid....(it could be argued that, deep down, I’m still some kinda hippie freak)....(but definitely one hardcore yoga dude)...



* note: the author doesn’t actually own and has never worn a pair of Lululemon pants...he’s not even sure they make them for men...

Mindful Irritation, Graceful Wipe-Outs, and Yogardosing in the Crisp Autumn Air

...had this nasty rash all summer...(don’t worry...I’m not providing details)...(or pictures)...actually, longer than that...and still have it...but the high heat and humidity made it unbearable...(except that, obviously, I did bear it)...(and, as such, like most unbearable things, it really wasn’t)...(just really unpleasant)...which made concentration difficult...and uninterrupted sleep nearly impossible...making concentration even more difficult...causing me to write a lot less and find far less enthusiasm for the mindfulness meditation thing....since, y'know, being mindful of irritation gets old fast...

...yeah, yeah, I know what you hardcore yogis out there are thinking...this is exactly the kind of challenge I should welcome....at this very moment, you’re skimming to the bottom of the post to leave a comment about your guru who not only sat meditating on a fire ant nest for fifty years, but had acolytes continually pouring warm honey over his head....I ain’t him...

...as it is, I’ve gained a new appreciation for Autumn, though...the chill coming through windows I refuse to close, though any sane person would...

...the Wissahickon Creek and Schuylkill river bike paths both flooded Friday, leaving a good bit of mud on the pavement in places...cold rain still pitter-pattering along again on Monday, but I just had to get out on the bike...hit a muddy patch and, feeling the bike falling inexorably to the right, pulled my leg out and managed to sit perched on the left edge of the seat, riding gently to a halt....a passing jogger, once having ascertaining I was alright, complimented me on my graceful wipe-out...

...was gonna try to go to yoga class every day in October...ended up making it all the way through October 1st before one thing after another came up on the 2nd...but plan on serious yogardosing* from here on out, including Philadelphia’s first yoga festival, Do Yoga Philly! this weekend, and, two weeks later, a weekend workshop at Kripalu with yoga legends Brooks Hall and Seane Corn (I’m sooooo unworthy...)...and then might be heading down to D.C. for the Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert Rally to Restore Sanity/March to Keep Fear Alive...which might be yogic in its own way...a meeting at the crossroads of idealism and sarcasm...what could be more appropriate?


* defined...in section 11,266 of the Sacred and Venerable 3,197th Commentary on Ancient and Revered Yoga Cynic Sutra 312:474...as: like overdosing, but good for you...

* also just put up a revised version of an older autumn post "Falling" at Elephant Journal

Dancing With the Stars

...fear and love...love and fear...waltzing at the edge....which one leads?...

Bored?

...hiking at high elevations reminds me of advice given to people who get bored following the breath in meditation...

Take the thumb and first finger of either hand, clamp them tightly over your nose, keep your mouth closed, and notice how long it takes before your breathing becomes very interesting to you!
Jon Kabat-Zinn

...ten years or so ago, was sitting on a rocky beach in Maine reading To the Lighthouse, a novel in which the most commonplace situations are described with stunning color and intensity...making for a beautiful reading experience, though it made me think that, if Virginia Woolf actually experienced passing moments of life like that, without any kind of off-switch...as, I suspect, she did...it’s not hard to to understand why she filled her pockets with rocks and took that last fateful walk into the pond...

There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.
T.S. Eliot

...maybe twenty years ago, was backpacking in the Weminuche Wilderness in southern Colorado, just north of Durango, and, one afternoon, was in kind of an...ummm...ahem...altered state....things got kind of intense...way too much happening in mountains or groves of trees or the sky to keep looking at them....so, decided to simplify things....told myself I’m just gonna look at this rock here...nothin’ too intense or scary, there.....except there was...once I bothered to see...

Look: the sun gods, the gods
of fire, dawn, sky, wind, storm,
wonders that no mortal has ever
beheld...
Bhagavad Gita

...boredom, it occurs to me, is really a defense mechanism...guarding our eyes from the truly dazzling nature of everything around us...