I saw a hilarious video today that is sure to go viral. I want to do my part to help it out.
Why do I love this video?
Creepy New Agey Dudes. You know who they are. They call women they don’t know “goddesses” and wear “free hugs” signs. Men who look at women way too long and way too softly, as part of their daily practice as walking The Way of the Douchisattva.
I want to think of this as well-intentioned, but it’s just plain creepy. I couldn’t watch the whole thing:
The video reminds me of a lead-up to something. It’s like when I’m sitting on the couch with M and say, “You are such an amazing man, so handsome. Would you get me a glass of water? You will? You’re so great!” or he says, “You are so wonderful and beautiful. Would you mind going outside and turning off the drip irrigation? You will? You’re so great!”
It’s like someone could say, “-Play Video- So what I’m saying is, I’ll clean the garage if you clean the house. Together, we can do the yardwork.”
I am really, really glad several very funny men had the balls to make this video:
Dear Man, please spread this video – the one with Will Ferrell & Will Forte. Together, we can keep not taking ourselves so seriously. (Seriously, lighten the #$@% up!)
I generally open up my basics classes with an explanation that the basics class will be simple – simple meaning it is entirely up to each student whether it will be hard or easy. It’s the simple things that tend to eff us up if we let them because we think “Oh, it’s so simple, I can do this without much thought. No sweat.”
Case in point: sitting.
My teacher training concluded with a retreat at Lake Tahoe. I drove a car full of people up the hill to the retreat center. It was winter, we had a lot of gear, and my Honda Element was absolutely packed. After we unloaded and went to our bunks, I realized my meditation cushion was nowhere to be found. I kind of freaked out inside and hopefully maintained an appearance of being cool about the whole prospect of sitting for hours on a yoga block. I picked up every purple Hugger Mugger in the center looking for the pink embroidery I had lovingly stitched along the handle. Finally, I realized I must have left it behind and resigned myself to the fact there was nothing I could do about it.
Non-attachment, right?
I sat for hours on a mash-up of yoga blocks and blankets over the weekend as I tried to find something that would give me the support I have from my beloved cushion. I finally found it, but it was after hours of bad sitting that wrecked my body for the following week.
If you are interested in meditation or consider yourself a pro at sitting for days, check out this video from Amy Ippoliti. This is a really fantastic breakdown of how to sit.
A week ago, I found out that one of my best friends from Middle & High School died. How it happened, I wish I could say. I heard via Facebook too late to call back east and spent three hours of the next morning sifting through rumors, calling the cops, her phone, and even the newspaper until I got a hard confirmation from a family friend. I still don’t know how she died. All I know is that she is gone, leaving behind twin 3-year-olds and a lot of people who love her.
I’ve been reading (and very much enjoying), Stephen Batchelor’s book Confession of a Buddhist Athiest. In his travels, he came across a teaching that doubt should be explored and celebrated because it mirrors the potential depth of understanding/awakening.
As I cried my eyes out and spent the week finding space to try to wrap my mind around what happened, I thought about that teaching. I started to realize that the depth of sorrow I was feeling over the loss of my friend mirrored the depth of love I have for her, the depth of gratitude that she was such an important part of my life. Grieving is the healing process of finding balance between the two.
Like so many simple teachings, it is such a hard lesson not only to learn but to live.
Once upon a time, priests conducted services in Latin to multitudes of people who did not understand the language. Bibles were printed for select few while the majority of people did not know how to read. Yet the multitudes still went, faithfully, to hear these men speak to them in a language they would never understand and see these men read from these great texts they could never hope to learn how to decipher. Sure, it was convention, but there was also an element of trust.
Some truly beautiful works and devotional pieces came from this tradition. In fact, composers like Palestrina, Dufay and others would use popular (often political) songs like L’homme Arme as the melody for Masses for the masses who may not understand the words but surely knew the melody:
I’ve been thinking about this recently because chanting has been popping up in my teaching and in conversations I have with other teachers. I’ve been chanting a little in some of my classes when I can provide context, translation, and tie it in to the class. I also end each of my classes at one of the studios where I teach with the studio’s mantra. I always share its translation: let love be the yoga of all.
I take time to do this because most of my experiences with chanting have happened with a teacher leading a call and response with absolutely no explanation of what we’re doing or why we’re doing it. I always feel a little left out when this happens and go straight home to type things like “Govinda Jai” into google to find out what the heck I just did at yoga class. On the other hand, when a teacher has taken time to provide context for the chant, it has always been a powerful experience.
And, sigh, there is some ugly: I’ve heard some teachers make small yet slighting remarks about other teachers/studios not chanting enough or at all.
It’s my opinion that chanting for the sake of chanting doesn’t make any one class more spiritual or authentic than another one. People have been singing together as long as we have been people in every language, which is why singing hymns
or kirtan
or rocking the #@%& out at live shows
are all so powerful and beautiful.
I love music and I love to sing – especially with other people. I also like to know what I’m singing and why. Language is communication, no matter what the tongue. Just because Sanskrit is old doesn’t mean it is inherently or exclusively magic. Case in point – the clips above are pretty magical. But so is this:
And this!
We are *so lucky* to have so many resources (books, internet, podcasts, albums) to help us dig deeper into this stuff and provide context to students about what we are doing as a community. I’m really enjoying adding this element to my teaching. I have a blast rocking a little Shiva Shambo at the beginning of a class. I feel much more connection to my students when I know that they know why I’m asking them to close their eyes and sing their hearts wide open.
The post about my man not doing yoga in a studio has sparked some really sweet conversations over the past 24 hours. A friend of mine posted this beautiful quote on his facebook status to honor his father, who passed away recently. It says what I was trying to say so much more eloquently:
Cultivate regular periods of silence and meditation. The best time to build judgment is in solitude, when you can think out things for yourself without the probability of interruption.
Each of us yearns for a special place. With the frantic pace of everyday life, uninterrupted seclusion with special items of comfort and kin make for a refreshing oasis in the media madness, cell phone intrusions and all the characteristics of the 21st century.
I personally find that the fraternity of carefully chosen and well cared for tools coupled with the kinship of workspace, however small or humble, is a great source of rejuvenation-my way of slowing down if you will. Taking time to take joy in the simple act of polishing out a piece of chrome or rebuilding some component serves both purposes of therapy and practicality.
Whether you actually carve out your special corner or vicariously do it through the projects and lives of others you are on your way to reducing levels of stress in your life and increasing quality of life.
~ Gerry Durnell, Editor & Publisher of Automotive Quarterly
I simply love Fleet Foxes. I like to think Hafiz would smile reading the lyrics to this new song:
Grown Ocean
In that dream I’m as old as the mountains
Still is starlight reflected in fountains
Children grown on the edge of the ocean
Kept like jewelry kept with devotion
In that dream moving slow through the morning
You would come to me then without answers
Lick my wounds and remove my demands for now
Eucalyptus and orange trees are blooming
In that dream there’s no darkness alluded
In that dream moving slow through the morning time
In that dream I could hardly contain it
All my life I will wait to attain it
There, there, there
I know someday the smoke will all burn off
All these voices I’ll someday have turned off
I will see you someday when I’ve woken
I’ll be so happy just to have spoken
I’ll have so much to tell you about it
In that dream I could hardly contain it
All my life I will wait to attain it
There, there, there
Wide-eyed walker, don’t betray me
I will wake one day, don’t delay me
Wide-eyed leaver, always going
I get asked this a lot. I used to just say no, it’s not really his thing – he’s tried it, went to class regularly for a while, but decided it’s not for him. It was mostly met with puzzlement – probably since I am on my mat so frequently.
Since diving deeper into the community, we’ve been in social situations where people I know have said things like, “You really need to start going to the studio.” Though well-intended, that sort of language completely turns him off. (We both have a stubborn streak.) I even had someone ask, “what is your husband’s spiritual practice? does he meditate?” My honest answer that he lives and sees the world in a way that brings him peace rather than living a defined spiritual practice – like he doesn’t read the yoga sutra, sit in meditation, or listen to buddhist podcasts. This answer inspired a subtle shoulder shrug, not-so-subtle arched eyebrow, and “oookay,” from the person asking me the question.
Seriously, people, we have to stop this. We must fight the tendency towards yoga a-holeness. Not just for us, but for the students who say, “I wish my girlfriend/boyfriend/husband/wife would start doing yoga.” Why? Because asana does not always equal yoga and we don’t want to seem like a “you’re with us or against us” community.
I teach on Saturdays, so I’m usually away from home between 8:30 and 1:30. One Saturday, I came home and found my husband in the backyard holding a circular saw. He was sweaty, covered in saw dust and smiling just like I was after teaching two classes. After I left to teach that morning, he woke up and decided to build a porch off the side of our shed so he could have more workspace. He leveled the ground and framed the structure all by himself. Working with his hands to create spaces around our home quiets his mind and puts him in a state of flow (flow: when we become one with our actions.) Make no mistake, it’s hard work – maybe even harder than holding chair pose for ten breaths. After his day’s work, when the tools are all put away and the shed is finally locked, he is smiling like he just got out of an awesome savasana.
Yoga is not a perfect triangle or getting into handstand. Yoga is skill in action. There are volumes like the yoga sutra that teach us yoga stops the spinning of the mind. So when people ask me, “Does your husband do yoga?” I think about how he doesn’t have to get on the yoga mat and put himself through vigorous asana to achieve stillness and contentment. (Besides, I do enough of that for the two of us.) He finds the same thing we find in a vinyasa series by working with his hands – by landscaping the front yard, planting trees, building a fence, restoring his bike. That is his yoga.
“Don’t like the way you smell? Change what you eat!”
One of my first teachers used to say this a lot in class. We would all giggle because she often said it at a very sweaty, humid moment towards the end of the session.
We do so much to respect each others’ space in yoga class – wash our clothes, clean our mats, leave shoes outside. All this has to do with the niyama, Saucha: Cleanliness.
Saucha (Cleanliness)
The most common translation of saucha is “cleanliness.” But saucha, at its root, is concerned with keeping different energies distinct. Saucha ensures and protects the sanctity of the energy around us. We can teach saucha through focusing on the grossest physical concerns (such as asking students to come to class without strong body odors, and to wipe off sweat-drenched mats) as well as more subtle energetic issues. from yoga journal
Call it a pet peeve, call it a simple request. I don’t care if it makes me seem lame. I’m thirty-four years old and don’t need the cool kids’ approval anymore. Last night, I ended up (again) in the f*cking emerald triangle during class and had to take child’s pose to deal with it. Later, there was a whole corner I could barely visit while assisting because of the reek.
Here it is: Please don’t smoke pot before a sweaty, potentially crowded yoga class.
I live in California and have ganja-loving people in my life. Twice a week, I walk around a classes full of people soaked in their own sweat with the sole purpose of assisting them – I sit on people, lie on people, run my fingers through their sweaty hair because it is a beautiful service to the community.
We truly smell like everything we take into our bodies and yoga funk+ganja is a really pungent nasty combination that stands out in class. I just think people don’t realize that particular combination has so much power. It doesn’t smell like a treat from the marijuana store (again: I live in California), it smells like dirty hippy. I’m not talking about the cute ones feigning poverty while spare changing with puppies across Northern California and the Pacific Northwest. I’m talking about the nasty dirty hippy that will steal your sleeping bag at a Reggae festival.
So please, spread the word. This is a public service announcement from yaynamaste. You will not be judged if you walk through the door smelling like a bong, but you might have a better practice and connection with other people.
I’m teaching at a studio about 30 minutes from my home. Regular classes will start the second week of April…stay tuned. I auditioned on Friday and the owner asked me to sub a Sunday class.
I woke up this morning on the edge of “to have a cold or not to have a cold? That is the question.” I loaded up on tea and left the house with plenty of time for the drive up the hill.
I got in my car and found a Bach cello suite on the radio. I felt like I could really pull it together to not give in to a cold until the afternoon. I sipped my tea, which was loaded with honey from my grandfather’s bees, thinking about the class I was going to teach about paying attention. Then I glanced up and noticed that the next exit was for 59th Street and I wasn’t driving through downtown Sacramento.
I was on the wrong highway.
I had been so wrapped up in thinking about talking about paying attention, I missed the turn-off. I had to take the next exit, make an illegal U-turn and find my way back to the interchange. I was laughing at myself the whole time – unthinkable two years ago, before my yoga practice. Two years ago, there would have easily been a blue streak trailing behind my car from all the cursing.
Of course I shared this in my class because it is exactly why we go to the yoga mat – to practice paying attention and forgiving ourselves when we don’t. It’s so easy to be on autopilot until we suddenly realize we have no idea where we are or how we got there…and when the hell did we turn on the autopilot? It takes time and effort to get back on track. It is also a practice to be compassionate to yourself.
That is what these 60-, 75-, 90-minute practices are about. The yoga body becomes a side-effect rather than the goal – there are so many more important things that need our attention!
