After the Authors

I had a dream last night that I was a character in Stephen King's The Dark Tower series.  Those who've read know it's partially a story about the relationship between an author and his characters.  My dream placed me at the end of the book, where I had to say goodbye to King as he left the world of the books and returned to Maine.  I knew that, despite any attempts I might make, my narrative was complete, and my story was done.

At some point, the authors of your life will leave you behind.  Or you will leave them behind.  Some difference, no difference.  It could be a girlfriend or an organization or a practice or anything.  She will stop taking your calls or they will inform you that you services are no longer needed or you will no longer be able to do the asana.  It is inevitable.  Entropy comes for everyone.

And when you wake up from the nightmare, you realize that you have no author, or that everything is your author.  Some difference, no difference.  The story keeps going, and what you think is an ending is just a really sad part of the book.

Or a really happy one.  Maybe if enough of your authors disappear, you can stop living narratives and start living reality.

Yoga Book Reports: The Complete Guide to Yin Yoga by Bernie Clark

I've done and loved a lot of yin yoga (thanks Andrea!), but before reading The Complete Guide to Yin Yoga by Bernie Clark, I never really understood why yin is so important or how it benefits the body.  Perhaps my biggest misconception was the yin yoga was meant to be restorative.  Clark popped that balloon by page 2.  Yin is meant to stress ligaments, facia, and other tissue that yang practices (think the typical vinyasa class, ashtanga series, etc.) usually can't get at.

"Stress" is a big word to Clark.  He writes that all tissue, not just muscle, needs some amount of stress to grow strong.  The trick is that the stress one puts on ligaments, face and other yin-targeted tissue has to be even more careful than that placed on muscles in even the most deliberate practice.  One simply can't "go for it" to get deeper into a pose that targets a knee ligament and expect anything but disaster.  Type As need to lose their expectations.

As I have made the space in my life to reintegrate yin yoga into my practice, I've reflected on the relationship between restorative and yin.  One can certainly do a yin class as restorative yoga, or one can pursue the gentle stress that Clark describes as the heart of yin.  However, given the sensitivity of the tissue yin stresses, the relationship can't be either/or.  One has to take a relaxed, inquisitive, careful approach, and Clark himself subscribes to the "if it feels good, you're doing it right" motto.

Either way, highly recommended read.

In Defense of Duck Dynasty Dude (Sort Of)

Unless you think all speech against homosexuality is hate speech, there is nothing hateful about what dude said.  Read for yourself.  Robertson doesn't couple the standard insane comparisons to bestiality with language calling for a jihad against homosexuals.  He's just a dude stating what he "knows" to be true.

I completely understand why people who agree with Robertson would be very, very upset that he is being punished.  American pop culture has just made it crystal clear that they only want to see rural whites at their most buffoonish.  Yes to an offensive caricature of rural life.  Yes to dudes out in the wilderness taking all kinds of stupid risks.  Yes to words with two syllables or less.

Sharing an opinion that challenges the dominant narrative?  Shut the fuck up, redneck.  We don't pay you to think or to have opinions.  We pay you to be a stereotype that makes the dominant class say, wow, my life could be worse, I could be those guys.

Now get back to cooning.

Moving With Intention

Ran Prieur linked to a comment the other day on the myriad of ways we distract ourselves from the present.  For the comment author, productivity was his distraction.

"I have a strong dislike against "wasting time." I don't like myself when I spend time on nonsense. And so I fill all of my day with "constructive things." My walk to work is filled with podcasts, the time waiting for the food to bake filled with news articles. While eating I entertain myself with shows or Ted talks or whatnot."

My distraction of choice is not so high-minded.  I like to mess around on the Internet.  I can't even be bothered to read a quarter of the articles I skim.  I tweet and post to message boards without taking any time to consider what I am reacting to or formulating my own arguments.  I flit from thing to thing without fully engaging in any of it.  I am fully present for none of it, and the comment made me think that this pattern of behavior compromises my happiness.

My new intention is to move with purpose through both the "real" and virtual world.  I am not at a place where I could fully unplug, nor do I want to.  What I can do is to try to make sure I am fully present for everything I do in front of a computer.  If I am writing a blog post, I need to concentrate on that blog post, and not rush over to Twitter or Okayplayer or wherever.  No.  Be with the blog post.  Be fully with the blog post.

And, yeah, for those moments where I can't even remember why the computer is open, I'm going to try to close it.

Letting Go

To let one's self go to the currents of the world is the path to liberation.  To stop trying to force the world to be what one wants it to be and to surf on what actually is can free us all.

And for a recovering overachiever at Step One, it is completely terrifying.

Yoga Is Yoga Is Not Something Else

Maybe you've seen them: the fawning profile of your favorite yogalebrity that grinds to a halt when the author asks said yogalebrity how her personal practice is surviving the rigors of traveling and teaching and such.  The yogalebrity gets very, very wistful and admits the days where she puts in two hours of asana practice per day are over, but she assures us we need not worry for her.  You see, she's found a NEW way to do yoga.  Now, her teaching is her yoga.  Her community service is her yoga.  Her photo shoot to convince you to buy an eco-friendly mat and send your current mat to the landfill is her yoga.

It's all nonsense, of course.

Yoga is yoga is ONLY yoga.  The only problem with that obvious statement is that it, too, is all nonsense.  Yoga is made up of eight limbs, so to do say one "does yoga" is completely devoid of meaning.  One might say that she practiced pranayama or asana or observed the yamas and the niyamas, but those phrases are aggregations as well.  To say one "did" any of them is completely empty.  The only thing you can practice is an individual thing, not a category.  You can't even do downward dog.  You can do THIS downward dog.  The one you do in the moment.  The one in the now.  Your next downward dog will be something completely different that is united with the previous downward dog mostly by linguistic convention, not reality.

Yoga bleaching is real, and the worst form of yoga bleaching might be when one tries to substitute something else for an element of yoga.  The practice of individual asanas confer a set of benefits that, by definition, can come only from the practice of asana.  Meditation, and nothing else, confers the benefits of meditation.  A thing is a thing, and nothing else is that thing.

Feel for the yogalebrity.  She knows she is not practicing asana as she once did, and she misses it.  Her attachments have gotten her all twisted up, and the tragedy is that she need not be.  She has made her choice, and her choice is just fine.  Other things are worth doing!  Other things, like teaching and traveling and making enough money to not live in a van down by the river, offer their own rewards.  If a mature adult weighs the rewards associated with an activity that necessitates she lessen her asana practice and finds that they outweight the costs, we should celebrate such enlightened decision making.  Many paths to the top of the mountain and all, but lying to one's self about what one is and is not doing is a sure way to steer directly into oncoming traffic.

The Fifth Element

"Spirit?  Oh well, it's dazzlingly obvious then.  The spirit's role's always unpredictable, you know that.  It exists to galvanize and revitalize the elements around it.  Here's a boy whose hatred of authority is such that he even rebels against us.  I think he's here to test you to your limits, Gideon, that's what I think.  He's here to shake you to the core."  Grant Morrison, The Invisibles