Affectionate Awareness

Sounds True is not only a great publisher but Tami Simon does these unbelievable great and meaty interviews with some of her authors and thinkers and writers.

The other week she interview Jon Kabat-Zinn, which you can listen to here or download from iTunes.

Here are some of my favorite passages....

I love this way of looking at "failure"

you can't imitate anybody else. You have to find your own way, and life being the teacher will show you every time you get caught, every time you get hung up, every time you get attached. All of the things that we most think might be failures are actually just lessons—just the way, I think, Thomas Edison said, after his thousandth try resulted in the light bulb, but [he had] 999 failures, he said, "Those weren't failures at all. I had 999 ways of knowing how not to make a light bulb." And so, in that sense, that again is a kind of generous way of looking at it.

Regarding brain research on the effects of meditation: 

 all this brain research that's coming out that's showing not only changes in the activity of the very important regions of the brain that have to do with learning, that have to do with memory, that have to do with executive function and decision-making and emotion regulation. [They're] not only finding changes in activation of various regions of the brain and the direction of what you might call great cognitive control or greater executive functioning and great emotional intelligence, but they are actually now seeing structural changes in many of these regions of both the neo-cortex and limbic system—the emotional domain of the brain.
So in eight weeks, in MBSR, they're seeing thickening in various regions of the hippocampus and certain regions of the insula and the neocortex, and then the thinning of the amygdala. If these results turn out to be true, it is really demonstrating (and the irony is that it's through meditation research) that the human brain is really an organ of experience and it responds to experience by changing its own structure. And its structure is the most complex structure in the known universe, and consists of over a hundred billion neurons, and neurons are only half the population of the human brain. [Those] hundred billion neurons [have] so many connections that, for our purposes, the number of synaptic connections is infinite.

And another, regarding "affectionate attention":

Mindfulness is—you know, the way I define it operationally, is "the awareness that arises by paying attention on purpose in the present moment and non-judgmentally." And the "non-judgmentally" is the real kicker, because we have judgments and ideas and opinion about just about everything. But that's where the affectionate attending comes in. It's not some kind of cold clinical perspective [where] we're taking on things as you would if you were just thinking about things. It's actually experiencing a sense of being in relationship to everything that is being experienced because the reality is all relational.
I mean, you can't touch without being touched, and by extension, all the senses are in some way relational. If you don't think that when you see that you're being seen by the world—well, you may not feel that way if you're living in New York City where everybody averts eye contact. But if you tried to spend the night in the rainforest in the Amazon, say, you'll have the feeling that you're being seen, not just that you're seeing. That you're being heard, that you're not just hearing. And you're being smelled and it's not just you smelling. And you could very well be being tasted, too, by small creatures, as well as potentially [be] lunch for big creatures.

A Contrary View to Lululemon Flap

Okay, well, this point is fair.  This blog post responds to Lululemon's Chip Wilson's decision to tip his hand as a fan of Any Rand.

Leslie Kaminoff suggests we actually read the novels -

I have read Atlas Shrugged five times, Fountainhead four times, and all of Ayn Rand’s non-fiction. As far as her more formal work on philosophy is concerned, I have had the privilege of personally studying with two of the top Objectivist scholars in the world.  I have been contemplating and applying Rand’s ideas in every area of my life and career for four decades, and I’m well aware of the hard work it’s taken to forge a consistent world view in which the principles of Yoga are compatible with those of Objectivism.  It wasn’t easy, but I did it, and I owe whatever success I’ve had in my life to the effort I put in.

He doesn't really explain how he forged that integral and consistent world view, though, and I wish he had.   Guess All Things Considered has found their Ayn Rand fan yogi (see link above)

David Nichtern's Mindfulness Meditation Instruction

David Nichtern is the one who introduced me to meditation in April 2002. The practice has helped me immeasurably. It's so simple yet so powerful. Here - in only six minutes - David provides his instructions on mindfulness meditation. Check it out, do it and enjoy!

Here is his web site to learn more: www.davidnichtern.com

A Song for the Weekend

Mesmerizing and a beautiful way to start the weekend...

Yoga Improves Student Performance

This warms my heart....grades up, suspensions down...

"Change In An Instant" The New Field of Energy Psychology

Insights from the Edge is a free podcast sponsored by the publisher SoundsTrue.  It’s one of my favorites and always interesting.  I always learn a lot.  

The one from the other day, the 29th, the anniversary of my mother’s death, is about energy psychology which is a new area of psychology, trying to help people live better and happier lives. 

Dr. Henry Grayson, the guest who is a psychologist and a physicist, defines energy psychology this way:

the field of energy psychology is just one that recognizes that everything is comprised of cell energies and that consciousness plays a role in it. And so the field of energy psychology recognizes both the dealing with the energy meridians that we're talking about; dealing with the field of energy that surrounds a body; dealing with the "non-local mind" that it has been called in physics—that our mind is not contained in the brain and the skull but in fact reaches out to countless others around us because it's all a part of "one mind," as physicist Erwin Schrödinger put it. Whether it's the subtle energies of the Eastern tradition of energy—not just meridians but the chakras. And so the broad field of energy psychology has people that work with various ones of these dimensions or all of them. Or just how consciousness seems to affect it without using any specific focus on any of those. That would be the broader field of energy psychology, I would say.

Here is the description of the podcast which you can listen to here or read or print out the transcript.  Or you can download from iTunes.   All free.  And I highly recommend.  

 Tami Simon speaks with Dr. Henry Grayson, a leading psychologist who has spent decades exploring the connections between psychology, physics, and the spiritual traditions of the world. Dr. Grayson founded and served as chairman emeritus at the National Institute for Psychotherapies in New York. With Sounds True, he has created the nine-hour audio training course The New Physics of Love: The Power of Mind and Spirit in Relationships. In this episode, Tami speaks with Dr. Grayson about the role of thoughts in our relationships, how the non-local nature of the universe impacts our consciousness, and the possibility of “deleting undesirable and obsolete core beliefs in the twinkling of an eye.” (60 minutes) 

SoundsTrue has published a CD, which is a 9 hour course, called The New Physics of Love.  Dr Grayson also has a book called Mindful Loving.

In the podcast, Dr. Grayson describes a process he went through on himself to release the disturbance caused by a childhood trauma.  He said it takes about 45 minutes.  I’m not sure what you do for the unconscious traumas..., but here is his process: 

• Place the fingers on the forehead - to focus.  Through the centuries people often did that.  Even Rodin knew that in his portrayal of his statue the thinker.  We learn that it stimulates the frontal lobes of the brain, subtle energies, helps us focus.   Focus on the trauma, memory,  who was in that scene, the scene, how i felt, where i feel it in the body.  Breathe.   
• Place the fingers on the eyebrow I release all fear related to this trauma.  Take a deep breath and exhale.  
• Place the fingers on the outer edge of the eyebrow.  And i release all anger and rage related to trauma.  Take a deep breath or two or three.
• Place the Fingers underneath the eye I release all anxieties related to this trauma 
• Place the fingers on under the nose I release all embarassment related to this trauma
• Place the fingers on under the lip I release all shame and guilt related to this trauma.  And a deep breath.  
• Place the fingers on under the arm - I release all worry and excessive concern related to this trauma.  Deep breathing again.  
• Place the fingers on under the rib cage in front.  I release all hurt and sadness related to this trauma
• Place the fingers on over the heart - I release fear.  breath in love and exhale fear.  6,8 or 10 slow breaths.  
• Place the fingers on the collar bone (one either side).  Has to do with fear again.  I release all fear related to this trauma 

I would assess what came up, how much disturbance remained for me on a scale of one to ten.  Was a 10 when I started.  On the first round I got it down to a 6, second time it came down to a 3, third down to 0.

Then he addressed, for me a key question, the obvious question:  

TS: I think of all of the people who have physical challenges and who have wanted so much for there to be a healing. They have brought all of their intent, all of their openness and capacity into the situation and it hasn't changed for them. They've remained ill. And so when I hear your story about the fingers burning and your belief, I think, well … how do we understand all of the people who aren't healing?
HG: I think that's a wonderful question, Tami. It's one that inspired the book I just finished writing, actually.
What I discovered—I was giving a seminar in Boston a couple of years ago, maybe three years ago and I had the inspiration to start it off by saying, "How many people here want to have a totally happy and healthy life?" Of course everybody's hand went up. And of course my asking this question was inspired by what I experienced clinically and with myself in other dimensions but I thought I'd ask this larger audience. Everybody's hand went up and I said, "With your permission, I'd like to come around and do this muscle testing on everybody very quickly and to see if you believe you deserve to have a totally healthy and happy life or if it's safe for you to have a totally healthy and happy life." I thought that maybe 25-30 percent would have some of those.
The results blew my mind, literally. Everybody agreed to participate in it. And in this workshop there were probably 75 people who were there and I quickly went around and did this. Eighty-two percent of the people had both of those barriers as beliefs. They don't deserve it and it's not safe to have a totally healthy and happy life. The other 18 percent had one or the other. And these are only two of many barriers we could have.
I thought, "Well, let's check this out further. Is it just New Englanders?" I was doing a seminar in New York a few weeks later and got the same results. Raleigh, North Carolina? Same results. Chicago—same results. San Francisco, Austin, Texas, all across the country, I got the same results. Almost identical. There was just a point or two off. And these were only two, as I say, of many different barriers that could be beliefs or traumas or world views or secondary gains or whatever it might be. Most of those are not conscious to us. And all of these people in all of these audiences were mostly people who had done a lot of work in different kinds of self reflection—spiritually or psychologically—and still were not conscious of it.
We can't blame ourselves for it because that's what the ego mind always wants us to do: to blame ourselves for making ourselves sick or whatever. No, we can't blame ourselves. We've just had those downloads. We had those conclusions from childhood. It is part of the human condition that we carry that. You can't sail a boat if we've got anchors holding it back. And maybe the anchors aren't visible to us. We've taken sailing lessons. We've learned how to hoist the sails, how to set the rudder, how to set the sail. The wind is there but the boat's not moving. We've not been taught how to look for all of those anchors. It might be hidden, holding the boat back.
And I think the same thing is true for us, that when we don't get the results that we want there are other hidden anchors. If 90-95 percent of all of our behaviors are not conscious, it's very likely that we have a bunch there that are just not conscious to us. One reason I do the muscle testing is because it helps us access that quite quickly as to what they are and where they are and what it would take to cut loose those anchors.
So I think that that is a role that keeps a lot of things from working. And then the other thing is that sometimes we just have a need, for some reason, whether it's conscious or unconscious, but we have some strong gains for keeping or having the sickness. We haven't dealt with it otherwise. And if we've not dealt with it, whether it's in a relationship or in the body, or whatever it is, we're not ready to let it go. And so we have to be ready to do that. And that's why I like these other methods too because it helps open up that dimension. That's when I say that whether you want to have a healthy and happy relationship or whether you want to have a healthy and happy body or mind, or business success, or money, or whatever it might be, the same thing applies.

How to Transform Suffering

Great dharma talk online with David Nichtern last night the six paramitas, which are teachings of Mahayana Buddhism.  David offers these every Tuesday at 7 pm, ET.  He was my first and is my foremost buddhist teacher.

Paramita means perfection or perfect relationship.   I also read that the Chinese character for this word means "crossing over to the other shore," which according to Thich Nhat Hanh means the shore of peace, non-fear, and liberation.

There are six:
1) Generosity (dana)
2) Discipline, precepts, mindfulness training (shila)
3) Patience, inclusiveness, capacity to receive, bear, transform pain inflicted on you (kshanti)
4) Exertion, energy, perseverance (virya)
5) Meditation (dhyana)
6) Discernment, wisdom, insight, understanding (prajna)

I was reading up on these concepts in Thich Nhat Hanh's The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching (p. 195-196) regarding generosity, what can we give?, he asks.  He answers - our stability (or solidity), our freedom (freedom from craving, anger, jealousy, despair, fair, and wrong perceptions), our freshness, peace (and lucidity), space.

The person we love needs space in order to be happy.  In a flower arrangement, each flower needs space around it in oder to radiate its true beauty.  A person is like a flower.  Without space within and around her, she cannot be happy....And the more we offer, the more we have.  When the person we love is happy, happiness comes back to use right away.  We give to her, but we are giving to ourselves at the same time. 

Giving is a wonderful practice.  The Buddha said what when you are angry at someone, if you have tried everything and still feel angry, practice dana paramita.  When we are angry our tendency is to punish the other person.  But when we do, there is only an escalation of the suffering.  The Buddha proposed that instead, you send her a gift.  When you feel angry, you won't want to go out and buy a gift, so take the opportunity now to prepare the gift when you are not angry.   Then, when all else fails, go and mail that gift to her, and amazingly, you'll feel better right away...You get what you offer.  Instead of trying to punish the other person, offer him exactly what he needs.  The practice of giving can bring you to the shore of well-being very quickly. 

When another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within himself, and his suffering is spilling over.  He does not need punishment; he needs help.  That is the message he is sending.  If you are able to see that, offer him what he needs - relief.  Happiness and safety are not an individual matter.  His happiness and safety are crucial for your happiness and safety.  Wholeheartedly wish him happiness and safety, and you will be happy and safe also.   

What else can we offer?  Understanding.  Understanding is the flower of practice...when you offer others your understanding they will stop suffering right away.   

The first petal of the flower of the paramitas is dana paramita, the practice of giving.  What you give is what you receive, more quickly than the signals sent by satellite.  Whether you give your presence, your stability, your freshness, your solidity, your freedom, or your understanding, your gift can work a miracle.  Dana paramita is the practice of love.
When another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within himself, and his suffering is spilling over.  He does not need punishment; he needs help.  That is the message he is sending  if you are able to see that, offer him what he needs - relief.  Happiness and safety are not an individual matter.  His happiness and safety are crucial for your happiness and safety.  Wholeheartedly wish him happiness and safety, and you will be happy and safe also.  

I also really loved what Thich Nhat Hanh says about patience.  He notes,

Kshanti is often translated as patience or forbearance, but I believe "inclusiveness" better conveys the Buddha's teaching.  When we practice inclusiveness, we don't have to suffer or forebear, even when we have to embrace suffering and injustice.  The other person says or does something that makes us angry.  he inflicts on us some kind of injustice.  But if our heart is large enough, we don't suffer. 

The Buddha offered this wonderful image.  If you take a handful of salt and pour it into a small bowl of water, the water in the bowl will be too salty to drink.  But if you pour the same amount of salt into a large river, people will still be able to drink the river's water.  (Remember, this teaching was offered 2,600 years ago, when it was still possible to drink from rivers!)  Because of its immensity, the river has the capacity to receive and transform.  The river doesn't suffer at all because of a handful of salt.  If your heart is small, one unjust word or act will make you suffer.  But if your heart is large, if you have understanding and compassion, that word or deed will not have the power to make you suffer.  You will be able to receive, embrace, and transform it in an instant.  What counts is your capacity.  To transform your suffering, your heart has to be as big as the ocean. 

I just love that.

Kim Kardashian "Lost the Plot"

When I showed this to my yoga teacher this morning her response was - "My gosh, they've lost the plot!"  


Seriously!  


It's astonishing and such a shame because to associate yoga - which has so much real and necessary benefits - to such malarky is criminal.  


Nearly as shocking as the naked teacher is her thong attire.   


I just was astonished.  I suppose it's the downside to the popularity of yoga.  It's bound to happen, but still it might be a sign of the yoga apocalypse or at least some tipping point.   

Political Yoga

Hmmm, another sign of the yoga into the mainstream - check out this paragraph from the The Week in Review - sorry Sunday Review today.   In Frank Bruni's Craven Political Crudités, he writes:

Buckle up, folks. This presidential race is shaping up to be an especially mean and mendacious ride, and not just because the two Republicans currently in the lead, Romney and Newt Gingrich, have demonstrated a formidable talent for improvisation, starting with thorough revisions of their own positions on health care, climate change and such. They’re a limber duo, primed to teach classes on political yoga. Gingrich’s wife probably gave him a Tiffany-bejeweled mat.

Okay - I had absolutely NO idea there was even such a thing as at Tiffany-bejeweled mat.  Note: There isn't such a thing.  The link leads to a story about their revolving credit account there.  


Phew!  I meant if there really were such a thing....!

Mixing Yoga With Other Activities

This essay, Yoga Addict's New Mantra: "Mix It Up" from the New York Times is cute.  I also like it because it doesn't make out yoga to be the end all and be all of everything.  

Plus she describes astanga yoga this way -

It is widely believed to have been created for adolescent boys and tends to attract former drug addicts and Type A personalities;

which made me laugh out loud.  


I will never forget the time I brought a girlfriend in Chicago to an astanga yoga class.  The workshop was being held over a weekend and the first class was held Friday night.   We met at a wine bar and as she slogged down not one but two classes of wine, I suggested gently she might now want to do that.  


And at about the 20th jump through she sat in danasana and looked at me with a look that asked - "what did you get me into"   We still laugh about that.  I don't think mixing it up is a recommendation for mixing astanga yoga with a cocktail!    


This author, Deborah Schoeneman, after a decade of astanga yoga and a better practice than most, then added a private trainer.  This is her story of what she discovered.  

What??? Is Lululemon Thinking???

 Holy cow.

Lululemon - just in time for the holiday season - has alienated it's base.  

In case you've been living under a rock - Lululemon makes and sells very expensive yoga clothes.   They are actually brilliant - well design (with button holes for iPod ears, pockets folds for an id), great colors and are able to be worn on the street without being obscene.   Up until now I was amazed at how well they knew their market.   They also had a funky web site where you could set up and tend to your goals (called a goaltender).

So then they put on their canvas, recyclable bags - "Who is John Galt"   In case you don't know - he is the a character in Ayn Rand's novel "Atlas Shrugged."  The character embodies selfishness.   Not exactly how yogi's and yogini's like to think of themselves.

(And no, Sen. Rand Paul, the son of GOP candidate Rep. Ron Paul, was not named after the author, though he is reputed to be and Sen. Paul is a big fan of hers.)

As NPR reports -

That question is on shopping bags that Lululemon recently started to give out and it's got some of the company's core customers up in arms, vowing never to shop there again.

Yes, that would be me.  I even called the company up and asked them to close my goaltender account.   Guy Raz of All Things Considered asks:

RAZ: You mean, they don't get into yoga after reading "Atlas Shrugged"?HOUPT: I have yet to find a yogi who has done so. 

The NPR interview is just a view minutes long and worth a listen.  The company would not comment on the record about why they decided to do this.  If it was to get business, it seems to be backfiring.  

Ayurvedic Skin Care in the Cold Season

Or Vata season.  Dr. Pratima Raichur is the author of Absolute Beauty, to me the bible of Ayurvedic health.  I discovered her nearly 10 years ago and gave her book to all my friends who came and celebrated my birthday with me in 2003.   And I had the honor of meeting her finally this past June when I was in NYC.   Her clinic in Soho is amazing and I enjoyed some health promoting treatments there.

Here is a short piece on how to care for your skin during the Vata season, which is now, called "Why fall is skin-freak out season?"  And Dr. Raichur says in part because....

The Ayurvedic calendar says October through February is a time when our bodies—and skin—are plagued by imbalances and change, says Dr. Raichur, who has made skin health her specialty.

Here is her clinic Pratima Spa.  And here is her online store Pratima Skin Care (I love so many of the therapeutic oils but this one Healing Neem Oil with Rose, Lavender and Sandalwood is my favorite).

If you're lucky enough to live in NYC you can see her at Pratima Spa, 110 Green St, Suite 101, Soho

Elisabeth Lesser on Spirituality, Grief and Loss

I am a fan of Oprah's.  And I am even a bigger fan of Elizabeth Lesser because her book Broken Open really helped me deal with the emotional turmoil in dealing with a painful and chronic untreatable illness.

They sat down and talked about the nature of spirituality, how to make pain useful, how to deal with grief and loss -  on Sunday morning, November 13th for Oprah's Super Soul Sunday on Oprah's OWN channel.   I took some notes:

Lesser - When you say a spiritual path what you're talking about it - it's already there inside us, this instinct that we are more than our mind and our body.  The path is just getting the obstacles out of the way so we can wake up and fully know our full aliveness, and know that's who we are.  

Oprah -  Most times people think that spirituality is, well, people have their own definitions of it but a lot of people think it's a lot of woo-woo talk.  When it is really quite the opposite.  It's the most grounding awakening path you can ever pursue in your life. 

Lesser - I'm not a very woo-woo person.  

Oprah -  Yeah, it's not out there, its always right here (gestures towards herself)

Lesser - I came to the title - Broken Open - through an image - the image of a rose tightly wound around itself, the bud, like we all feel so much every day tightly wound, anxious, shut down.  And in order for that bud to open and blossom into the flower we love so much, it has to break its shell, it has to break open.  And it's an irony of this human life, strangely enough it is our most difficult,  broken times - loss of a job, loss of a marriage, illness, loss of a child - those are the times when we are brought to our knees and we open.  Our hearts can open during those times.  And if we fight those times and fight the bud opening, we sort of a half of a life.  But when we open into our brokenness, that's when we blossom....And fighting life, as I'm sure we can all relate to that feeling of life is happening to us, we are in this stream of life and instead of relaxing into it, we are swimming as hard as we can against the current.  That's sort of the opposite of the spiritual instinct.  The spiritual instinct is to relax into the mystery of life as it's happening.  

Oprah - And the spiritual instinct allows you to move through life no matter what is going on in your life, when you are on the spiritual path - it means no matter what happens to you and difficulties will come and challenges will come because that's all part of the human experience.  But the spiritual connection allows you to know that no matter what - you are going to be all right

Lesser - Everything that is happening in our life is a spiritual moment

Oprah - I like what you said on page 105 - "Nothing has awakened my heart as much as the pain of a broken family; nothing has given me as much strength as the time I spent alone in the ruined aftermath of a marriage."   How is that a spiritual path?  I think when you have the most devastating things happen to you, that those are your holiest moments.  That's when you get to see who you really are.

Lesser - Yes, because we spend so much of our life trying to be what we think we are supposed to be...what society wants us to be, what our parents thinks we should be, our husband, our wife, our image....just our image of what a spiritual or a good person should look like....so through that experience of divorce and becoming a single mother, I lost everything - my financial security, my self-image, my home, my support.  I was really a single mom and everything changed for me.  And in the depths of that loss, I found out who I really was.  I began to trust who I was.  I began to find a genuine me who could withstand anything.  

Oprah - how do you do that

Lesser - Well, you can either break down, stay broken down and shut down or you can break open.  It's a decision you make.  A commitment.  I am going through a very hard time, I'm not going to waste this precious experience, this opportunity to become the best me.  

Oprah - I also ask the experience, the crisis, the experience in the moment, what are you here to teach me?  What did your divorce teach you?

Lesser - The first thing that it taught me is that i couldn't blame anyone for what had gone wrong in the marriage.  I had spent a lot of time blaming my ex-husband.  But I had to take responsibility myself.  I had to say - what does this have to teach me about me, not about him, not about how unfair life is.  It wasn't about that.  It was what did I do to make this happen.  And if I could really sit in the pain of that.  The pain is really looking at yourself and what you did to create the mess you're in and if you can look at it head on fearlessly and say teach me.  Teach me about myself so I can grow.  

Oprah - Most people search for closure after the loss of a loved one, but Elizabeth says its one of her least favorite words.  Why?

Lesser - Because if you don't take the time to grieve and to let yourself feel what happens, you just put a scar over it and it doesn't go away.  In fact, it festers.  And it becomes something else.  Perhaps it turns into bitterness or anger or blame and you never get over it.  So letting yourself descend into grief...and letting it do what it will with you for as long as it takes, it a much more intelligent response to loss than cleaning up real fast, going back to work, you get your three days of grief days and then you go back to work. That's not a very wise way to handle it.  

Glenn (another guest discussing the grief of losing his young adult son) - And you never get over it.  It's always there.  You always live with it.  

Lesser -  You wear it as a badge of how well you loved.  Grief is an expression that you loved well.  

Marianne Williamson Defines Spirituality

Also part of the November 13th Super Soul Sunday, Marianne Williamson defined spirituality, which I like very much:

the practice of spirituality is when you get very still and very humble.  There are forces inside you, forces of fear and limitation and chaos and they live inside us saying you can't do that.  Spirituality is where you lay claim to a ground of being within yourself, where you say I want to be that, I really do. I want to be that person that I am capable of being.  We think we are not happy because of what we are not getting but really we are not happy because of what we are not giving.  The most important thing is that we learn how to forgive each other, that we learn how to love each other, how to live in the spirit of blessing and not blame.  What matters is when you are standing in front of a person, is your heart open or is your heart closed?  Are you thinking a judgmental thought or are you trying to see the best in them?  Are you showing the mercy towards other people that you would wish that they would show toward you?  The spiritual path doesn't mean always an easier path.  But it means a choice, a choice that we are making to try our best to be as loving as we can be.

Alpha Males Doing Yoga

This seems to be a theme, though my last post on this subject was based on an essay written in 2010.   This one this time appeared just the other day in the British newspaper The Telegraph.  And this news so excites me because I feel this is a demographic that would very much benefit from yoga.   The piece opens first with how a yoga practice kept one master of the universe from investing in the subprime market.  Then,

Yoga, once the preserve of scrawny men in drawstring trousers meditating on top of a mountain, has, since the Nineties, turned itself into a spirit-lite way for women with Gucci mats and Sweaty Betty vest tops to keep fit and tone their bums, tums and thighs. In the past three or four years, however, an increasing number of people from the top echelons of business, finance and politics, looking to get an edge over their rivals or manage their stress levels, have been following Gross’s lead and adding a yoga instructor to their retinue of chefs, nannies and personal trainers.Suddenly, it’s not only acceptable for alpha males to do yoga; it’s considered by many to be a badge of honour.

Then the piece lists several yogis in business, including Steve Jobs.   But this is my favorite quote:

“Very ambitious, high-achieving people realise that there’s something in yoga that is useful to them,” says instructor Tara Fraser, who, with her partner, Nigel Jones, runs the Yoga Junction studio in north London. “It’s not weird, not hippy. If you’re a man, the fact that you do yoga shows that you’re in touch with your intuitive side and you’re flexible as well as strong.“If you said, ‘No, no, no. I don’t want to do any of that stuff, I just want to work out at the gym and build muscle’, I think, nowadays, people would think, ‘Hmm. What are you trying to prove?’“Yoga shows that you’re a well-rounded individual. You know how to choose the wine, you know which restaurants to go to. Adding yoga to your portfolio of skills impresses people.”

Read the whole thing here - Power yoga: how money has changed a spiritual pursuit (the title is misleading - it's more about how yoga is changing the money industry, plus yoga is far more than a spiritual pursuit!)  Worth the click.

I sure hope it's true that more alpha males are seeing the benefits and value of yoga, and not just in London.  They would be happier, and the world a better place.  I know one or two, myself!

Calling All Dudes to Yoga

I love this piece 5 Reasons Why Dudes Should Do Yoga over at one of my favorite web sites -  Mindbodygreen.com

I won't spoil the piece and give you all 5 reasons here (4 and 5 aren't relatable to me, but then I'm not a dude).

But here is the opening :

I'm not your typical yoga person. In fact, I don't even come close to fitting the profile of a yoga person. First of all, I'm a dude. I'm tall (6'7" to be exact). Yes, is the answer to your next question: I played basketball. I played for four years in college at Columbia, in New York City. I also was president of my fraternity.

Please click over to read the rest.  Really.  Especially if you're a tall-ex-wall-street-trading-fraternity-boy-jock

Yoga Mats in Foreign Policy Magazine

Seriously.

No - seriously.

 It's a metaphor somewhat but also true.

 And a very good question.

"Haiti Doesn't Need Your Yoga Mat"

Busted! Lifestyle Choices of a Yogi

Okay - this is so funny - and admittedly, probably only to yogis.

From one of my favorite yoga sites, Elephant Journal:

The 10 Things You'll Do Once You Start Yoga

I'm guilty of all of them.  All.  Of.  Them.

Does the Popularity of Yoga Cause Something to Be Lost?

Oh, I just love Gary Kraftsow.   He founded and runs the American Viniyoga Institute.  I have all of his books and did a full day of study with him years ago.  He really knows his stuff and is one of the top two yoga therapists in the country.  (Bo Forbes is the other).   If I could, I would be pursuing this course of study furiously.

The founder of Yoga Modern, David Sunshine, interviewed Gary Kraftsow on how yoga has expanded through the United States, what it's popularity means, and what is happening - and he specifically talks about the deeper, inward teachings of yoga.

It's a short video, but in my view he captures well what is really going on.  And I am most excited by the attention of the medical community on yoga's benefits, because yoga has so very much helped me medically.

here is the video:

Beautiful Water Scenic Video

a beautiful water video to calm your nerves, with Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata as the soundtrack.



The Water from TSO Photography on Vimeo.

Ballet and Yoga - from 1952 film

This video is really fascinating.  The voice over most of all.

YOGA DANCING - British Pathe

I love the nexus of ballet and yoga, since that relationship changed the course of my life.

Yoga and Apple

In case you missed this Apple ad when it aired a few years ago......

How Yoga Affected Literary Figures of 20th Century

Vivekananda lived only to the age of 39, but his influence continues today. This essay also shows a convergence of yoga and literary figures of the 20th century including JD Salinger, Henry Miller, Gertrude Stein and Somerset Maugham. So I follow in the footsteps of other writer/yogis..... How Yoga Won the West in today's Sunday New York Times.

Yoga, Sex and Orgasms (for Men Especially)

A provocative headline on a popular news blog, Tina Brown's The Daily Beast.

Are Yogasms Real?

Touch is an integral and important aspect in teaching yoga but the intent behind the touch is what is most important and needs special caution.  The purpose of touching a student is threefold:
1) for bringing awareness to a part of the body or
2) to support the body in a pose or
3) to adjust an alignment.  

If the touch feeds the teacher's ego instead of the student's practice, then the intention is wrong.  And, no matter how subtle, this intention is conveyed and felt.  And it's pernicious because it can undermined so much that is so valuable and helpful about yoga.

So I'm uneasy about this focus, and especially the feeding of the ego teachers in particular.

Yoga brings awareness to the breath and the body.   And help people inhabit and feel their body.   That is inherently beneficial to sex.

And yes, it has once happened to me.

But what I found most interesting about this piece, and worthwhile if not redeeming, is the coverage of men and yoga and orgasms.

Alan Finger, founder of ISHTA (Integrated Science of Hatha, Tantra and Ayurveda) Yoga argues:

that men actually benefit sexually from yoga more than women. “The man starts at a disadvantage because his orgasm is outwards, which makes it briefer and shorter than a woman’s."...one can experience an intensely meditative (and arguably spiritual) full-body orgasm. “It fills your being rather than just being something that happened in your genital boundary,” explains Finger.

I came to yoga because of a man.  After we broke up, I missed his emotional strength.  I discerned he gleaned that strength from his daily yoga practice.  I had already been a dancer, so I took a few classes with him and I was interested,  but not won over.   Until I missed those certain qualities about him.   so I walked into a local class here in DC.   And thusly, another love affair began.

Comments?  What do you think of this sort of coverage?  Are you comfortable with touch in teaching yoga?

What are the Yoga Sutras?

Sutra literally means, “thread,” and each sutra contains a thread of a thought.    A sutra is an aphoristic statement or a work containing such statements.  

The Yoga Sutras is the source text of classical yoga.  These 195 aphorisms serve as a concise guide for the philosophy and practice of yoga.   Patanjali compiled them over two thousand years ago.  Although often considered the author of the yoga sutras, historians generally believe that he assembled and recorded the oral tradition of yoga.  

The Yoga Sutras are divided into four chapters:

1st chapter                       on ecstasy samadhi-pada 
Addresses the theory of Yoga is called the chapter on ecstasy
51 aphorisms.

3rd chapter                      on the powers vibhuti-pada
Sets forth the internal rigor and ability a yogi acquires
55 aphorisms.  

2nd chapter                     on the path sadhana-pada 
Introduces the practices of Yoga for the novice
55 aphorisms. 

4th chapter                      on liberation kaivalya-pada 
Delineates the freedom and peace gained from Yoga 
34 aphorisms. 2 

2 Georg Feuerstein, The Yoga Tradition (Prescott: Hohm Press, 1998), p. 216.   

What is Suffering? What is Pain?

‎Suffering differs from pain. Suffeering is caused by the emotional reaction we lay on top of our pain. By becoming aware of our emotions and thoughts about pain, their hold on us can be released...This awareness is the tada, or 'state of yoga' about which Patanjali speaks. From this perspective, spiritual seeking is not what we do outwardly, but what we acknowledge inwardly.

 - Judith Lasater, Living Your Yoga

Judith was the first yoga teacher who helped me understand this distinction.  When she first posited the concept to me, my first reactive (and arrogant) thought was that she didn't know pain.  I was incredulous that the two - suffering and pain - could be bifurcated.  

Indeed, it can be; it can be very hard, indeed.  Sometimes impossible.  

But yoga provides the space, the breathing space, to separate pain - acute physical pain, overwhelming emotional pain - from the experience of suffering.  

In that way yoga has saved my life.  

(Judith was also the first teacher who accurately reflected back my experience of yoga and fibromyalgia.  She correctly observed that sometimes moving is better, sometimes not.  The practice needs to stay nimble and responsive to the body on the mat that day - and it can take 5-10 minutes to feel that out.)   

"The Day is To Be Experienced, Not Understood"

I love this:

‎One day in the middle of their morning prayers, the (Hindu) sage suddenly rose and ushered his students away from the monastery. He rushed about them and shooed them back into life like little ducks, proclaiming, 'The day is to be experienced, not understood!' 

- Mark Nepo

It's the anti-navel gazing mantra.  An important counterpoint.  

Why Truth is Essential

Honesty and truth is one of the yamas in yoga. And the yamas, which are the first limb of yoga, provide guidance for how we treat others, generally. Here Debbie Ford discusses why honesty with our selves is so essential.

On a page where I describe the 8 limbs of yoga, I define satya this way:

Truth Satya
Satya requires honest communication in thoughts, words and deeds. This practice encompasses a trust of our inner values and heart as well as integrity in our actions to our values and heart.

And here is Debbie Ford on honesty with ourselves:

"When we make peace with all that we are, both light and dark, we get to this very honest place where we don't have to be perfect, but we can love our imperfections." --Debbie Ford

Here is Debbie Ford from the Omega Institute web page.

Debbie Ford "Honesty and Integrity" from Omega Institute on Vimeo.

I agree that honesty with ourselves is often the hardest - not only because of ego, but because we just simply don't see ourselves and may not have the awareness necessary. Perhaps that blindness results from the ego, but I think of ego as operating on a more conscious level.

I may need to refine my definition of satya, so to encompass this inner quest.

Give Love Away

A cool video that my friend Riki posted on her Facebook page.  Fun music too.   Reminds me a bit of those old coco-cola ads from the 70s....

Enjoy!

Freedom & Independence!

Awesome and inspiring video to celebrate freedom and independence today:

How to Travel this Summer

A great post from my new favorite web site - www.mindbodygreen.com.   On how to create a sacred space while traveling, which has to be one of the most stressful endeavors with miles between gates, overcrowded flights, weather's unpredictability, etc. etc. etc.  

"Surrender" is my mantra while I travel. 

And this essay outlines some ways to feel at home once you reach your destination:  6 Ways to Create a Sacred Space While Traveling.  

What are your suggestions? 

How to be Mindful

5 specific exercises to promote mindfullness in your every day life.  Very helpful summary and over view for those new to mindfulness and a great review for those already familiar.   

Thich Nhat Hanh on the Practice of Mindfulness

Pema Chrodron on Unconditional Friendship with Oneself

Maitri means unconditional friendship with oneself, how to be at relaxed with yourself, or feeling at home in your mind and your body. She discusses how our relationship to pain affects this.

Strong Emotions and How Meditation Can Help

David Nichtern was my first meditation teacher and he is really special and awesome. Check out his latest post at the Huffington Post.

Yoga Activism

A dear old friend told me of this organization which looks to have been doing interesting stuff.

It's called Yoga Activist. Check it out here. They highlight a session this Saturday with Sharon Salzburg in DC, which is sure to be good.