What would Nietzsche do is a concentrated question. Use sparingly and apply only to the affected area. Yields extraordinary mental clarity! But may cause will-to-power-disease if taken incorrectly.
It was a WWND day.
First thing in the morning, I went out the Santa Monica pier and skated north to Malibu and back. A summer idyll—waves big, sun clear, light salty breeze. Me and the runners—tourists don’t show up until later. Listening to Tropicalia and, after that, David Byrne.
It’s indecent to have access to this picture any old day.
Afterwards, still hyper, wrote for a while. Then I hit the asana class NYT billed as “most advanced in LA,” to let the teacher know I still love her. Received some amazing personal instruction (very helpful), was told to take lotus in handstand (ok, interesting that’s possible), and might (as a result) have frightened one or two students. A surprisingly, sweetly internal class for that venue, opening and closing with instruction on pratyhara (which calmed me down the way a few sun salutations and standing postures cannot). This deviation from the tradition is “damaging yoga”? Really? Damaging the monopoly, yes. But a scene like this is so different from ashtanga that the two do not need to fear each other the way they do. I wish they would stop trashing each other. Soon, we need different words to refer to the two kinds of practice: they have little in common and neither is going away.
Anyway.The thing about the ashtanga teacher, the one who does primary before a moon, is that he doesn’t go in for arbitrary rules. He’s got too much positive instruction on tap to need to frame his room in negative instructions. It's different, but there are a lot of reasons one might specify first-only before a moon: my guess is that he knows he attracts physically intense students whose minds could use a super-internal practice at regular intervals on random days. No kidding: this guy is the best asana instructor I have ever encountered. This shocks and amuses me. He is gifted in physical intelligence and has made third easy yet particularly intense for me. And my back, which has been trippy for 16 months, has undergone some kind of healing this spring, in a way that I might try to explain later.
I am still not very “physical” about this stuff—thinking and talking about asana is unbearably tedious, especially where my own body is concerned. I’m interested in the head-trip, energy, culture, history, spirit, emotion—ANYTHING but mechanics. Which is why a very physical teacher, who has mastery in the area I avoid, is a great benefit.
This brings me to something Gregor and I put together in a thread the other day. I think he was drunk when he brought it up but the idea makes sense if you stay with it. Say there are different streams of mastery—physical, mental, spiritual, maybe another. If you’re going to practice something, you’ll probably be drawn to focus on the stream in which you feel most competent. Too, maybe you feel insecure in one of the other streams and try to avoid it. High school athletes (who might claim to be non-intellectual) find a physical practice; introverts (usual klutzes) turn to meditation; mental people (who say "quieting the mind" is a stupid idea) pursue intellectual athleticism.
Would it be possible for a single practice to work in all three streams simultaneously, and actually harmonize them over time? A practice in which you may get in for the appeal of, say, physical mastery, but soon find you have to work with equal intensity in other less familiar streams in order to pursue that supposed strength?
Ashtanga has the potential to be that. A kind of practice that balances the streams.
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“Balance the streams” quickly set off “cross the streams,” from Ghostbusters, and now I have a head full of wonderful and various lines from Harold Ramis, such as “Great, see ya! Thanks for the weed!”
Anyway, more seriously: yes, I can dig that comment from Gregor. Perhaps oddly, I tend toward ashtanga from the physical level; I’m WAY too extroverted to dig it as meditation (although I can), and I’m WAY too burnt out to dig it as intellectualism (I dig EVERYTHING ELSE as intellectualism, and hell, I even have a pack of books about the tradition, and I plan on researching the correct pronunciation of the Sanskrit count, blah blah blah).
Oddly physical? Only because I never identified myself as physically powerful until I began to climb, and that’s at the age of 33. That life change, this practice, this whole zone of my life, comes with a positively BIZARRE physicality that’s totally irresistible. It’s like Fight Club in a way.
“Asana. Mayhem. Pratyahara. Soap.”
Or something.
Ashtanga was the beginning, now it’s moved out of the shala, it’s called Project Mayhem.
I think you’re onto something. Similar to the notion that the physical practice balances strength/flexibility.
Made me think, for some reason, of this mantra: GATE GATE PARAGATE PARASAMGATE BODHI SVAHA
About crossing the stream & going beyond.
Yes, to what Gregor said and then what the two of you expounded on. We all come to this practice drawn to one aspect or another—the thing we think we’re going to well, that’s suited to us. I showed up in yoga class because of back injury-related stiffness and a fear of losing my old friends The Splits forever. Couldn’t see where else they might be useful, but I wanted to keep them anyway. So, ashtanga is healing me and maintaining my stretchy, and giving me the upper body strength I never had. But so? The really amazing part is the happiness that this practice inspires in me, and the focus, and the calm. They’re not even what I came for, but they’re definitely why I stay with it.
I smiled reading about your morning. I was listening to Tropicalia the other day at the beach, too. It’s my favorite from Mutations. Best line: Misery waits in vague hotels to be evicted.
You know I get all envious when you describe life in SoCal, why you gotta be mean like that???
Interesting point, I do see the various ‘streams’ coming together, even at this early (two-year) stage in my practice. I came to yoga for the ‘stress-reduction’, the calm, the peace of mind. Suddenly I was developing muscles in my arms! Whoa! Me the girl with a clarinet in her mouth and her nose in a book! And when I crank the asana practice up a notch, it gives even more physical results. Mental? Well, we’ll see. Developing the mental toughness is my downfall. Perhaps that’s why I’ve been handed an ‘opportunity’ to develop a home practice?
Ok I’m gonna stir this mohito a little.
Mastery, yes, but beyond that. Connection? Is that a better word?
If mind, body and spirit are the parts of our whole that we can attend to, the trick, the next shift, the b-side of that foundation, is that our idea of what that looks like must submit to who we actually are.
Submit in the purest sense, to allow ourselves to be there…Dionysus like of course!
I feel I should learn more about this Nietzsche guy but since he’s a philosopher, I fear I’d be bored to tears by reading his books. They are no doubt quite windy. Do you know of a briefer means to gather his gist? I’d prefer to keep it under 20 pages but considering that he’s probably quite complex, I’m willing to compromise and read as many as 30.
Sonya and Patrick, this blog might be the death-throes of my dork identity? It’s hard to feel wholly bookish and clumsy when one begins to have, like, deltoids.
After the deltoids, the mayhem.
Joy, um, I like your style no small amount. Will you have mercy with the joy and the Tropicalia lyrics? Or bring them to LA to hang out with me very soon?
Gregor. There you go with the surrender again. Now we are surrendering to Dionysus. The last surrender. But then… does all this ultimately lead to the supreme letting go? To UTTER CHAOS?
(Maybe there is a place for Apollo after all…?)
Oh for godsakes Carl. Nietzsche makes Harry Potter look like difficult reading.
Go now and get some Walter Kaufmann translations. Don’t miss Ecce Homo, Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil, The Gay Science, The Geneaology of Morals and The Birth of Tragedy. And you thought the vegetables from your garden were easily digestable. Pish!
Have you read The Road yet? Now that’s chaos due to too much Apollo! No need to polarize, all I’m getting at is that by the time we have ‘mastered’ BMS (if even possible), we can have fun. Thats open-focused fun, our experience of learning the subjective becomes objective and we become somewhat more capablee of presence and appreciation of engaging in life in all its crazy and challenging aspects.
Its a hunch, but there ye go!
Would. Love. To. (!!)
Deltoids are widely acknowledged as the doorway to mayhem, yes. Soon, before you lift off into EPB, you’ll be saying, “His name was Robert Carlson!”
Dang it, make that Robert PAULSON (hah!!)
Hate it when pop culture escapes me.