Stop the self-congratulation train, I want to get off.
Talking to you, Elephant Ashtanga. And you, yoga teachers with bios written in the third person and featuring the phrase “is a dedicated practitioner.”
Should we really be talking so loudly this about how our practice is so searingly honest, and so radically no-bullshit, and so relentlessly badass?
How badass is that? How much room is there for the hard questions in the, like, seventh- series- smug narrative? Vulnerability? The still small voice?
Let’s save the self-massage for those aching intermediate series quadriceps.
I’m remembering the history of the ashtang-o-sphere tonight. I can see four distinct eras and the rise of a fifth.
1.0 was a yahoo group. Burned up in a flame war featuring pre-crash hedge fund managers. Still out there, Senor Pinche Wey?
2.0 was the EZBoard, rising out of those flames. Solid gold, with a little snark on the side. This lurker read every word. And so can you. I suggest it. The ashtang-o-sphere was never better.
3.0 was blogs. Remember those? Blogspot all the way. Practice journals. Whole people. Big questions. Relationships. Much funnier flame wars. I visited fellow bloggers in Seattle, Santa Barbara, Encinitas, Portland, Boston, Scottsdale, Austin, NYC, London, Toronto… where else? Oh yeah, Ann Arbor. We called it the cyber-shala.
4.0 was when entrepreneurs figured out that posting every day could generate some newly coveted internet energy. And following the media experts’ lead, ashtanga teachers discovered the same thing. Bling. Content got more frequent, more shallow, more driven, and more naked. Not a bad thing. I just bore easily.
5.0 is coming. It is partly small groups in chat-rooms. Did you know? Yes, it’s totally happening. It’s the EZBoard with gate-keeping and way better technology. From cyber-shala, to cyber-sangha. Thank you, skype and google hangouts.
But, for all the sparks in the splinter groups, 5.0 will be more about what emotions… what driving questions… what thrills… what spiritual turn-ons… what images… what community slang… we bring out of ourselves in “public.” In the feeds anyone can see.
What are our values now?
I dunno. Let’s start again. Here’s what I’ve been missing around these parts.
Brokenness. Not-knowing-ness.
Slily-enthusiastic-awkward shit. Stupidcrazy openness.
Surrender to what is. And of what is not.
Like, don’t break your spirit. Do break your exoskeleton.
The jyotish charts say tonight is the end of an era allright. And goddam these crusty old yoga myths can be useful.
12.12.12 is staked out in the myth – from the best we can decipher – for a massive karmic burn.
Of old identities, old defenses, and especially old grudges.
Pull it out of the gut. Ughhhh. Yes. Write it down on a piece of kindling. Get a match.
Forgiveness is coming.
23 Comments
Interesting… I guess I’m still in 4.0, minus the entrepreneur part. Although I guess if wanting more people to read and comment on my posts count as entrepreneurship, then maybe I am an entrepreneur after all. Whatever… what’s in a name?
I know nothing about 12.12.12, not being versed in astrology, Jyotish or otherwise. Nice number, though
Well, let’s see what tomorrow brings…
No man, you are solid 3.0.
You, Sereneflavor, Damngoodyoga, Patrick, Boodiba, a few others who might not want to be outed, and probably several more I don’t know.
There are definitely still real diarists in the ashtang-o-sphere. If you weren’t doing your thing, the whole sphere would be all commercials, no episodes. The people who actually write sentences and paragraphs of original thought on their own practice are the main content providers. Don’t stop.
Thank you, thank you. I am very happy to be a provider of serious content
Although it’s also a bit sad to think that if you are right, then the whole notion of the cybershala may be becoming passe in the eyes of certain folks. But really, who cares? I blog, therefore I am. If people read and comment, great. If not, I blog anyway.
I like this idea of visiting bloggers around the country, maybe even around the world… I hope Ann Arbor will be my next stop
4.0 is an inevitable development from 3.0, across all content spheres. It makes it harder to find the gems but they are there (here!).
Also…forgive my ignorance, but what is the “exoskeleton”?
Mmmm…good to be nudged into giving some thought as to why and what I write. I notice that writing on the blog either more or less frequently seems to have more to do with how full my head is of thoughts and a feeling of needing somewhere to put them…and come to think of it, I don’t know that anyone really reads them. Like Nobel, I expect I’ll keep on writing anyway…at least as long as I have thoughts and a need to put them somewhere.
…and Nobel, when are you going to pay a visit to GNV on your blogger tour? It’s been too long since we’ve practiced together in person!…studio’s always open.
D, I think “exoskeleton” here means something like “armor”, i.e. whatever appearance or outer shell of being-put-together-in-a-yogic-seeming-way which makes us appear to be good and yogic and dedicated practitioners, but which ultimately make us less vulnerable and therefore less open. At least, this is my take.
Christine, I think of Florida, especially GNV, all the time. But the winds of fortune seem to be keeping me up here in the frigid north
That works for me re: exoskeleton.
AY:A2 loves ashtangi visitors. Info.
Good explanation Nobel – thank you. Now that you’ll be in Idaho you’re closer to California so come visit!!
fucking amen. thank you.
Why did this post leave me feeling so bad?
bindi, for your putting “fucking” and “amen” in the same two word sentence, i say fucking amen!
Laura, sorry I can’t answer that one for you.
Oh, Sara…
yes on the brokenness and not-knowing. lots of that over here. no blog though and haven’t found my 5.0 sangha yet! my virtual sangha is 0.0, all psychic connection. a little harder to call up sometimes though.
Always so fruitful to catch up on OVO posts.
As to the self-congratulatory train: My husband practices Okinawan karate, and I find myself thinking a lot about the contrasts between yoga culture (not making Ashtanga-specific cases here) and what I perceive to be a broad martial arts culture. I wonder if your call to action would put yoga culture more along the lines of what martial artists embody. Yogis very often seem to be in your face about their practice; I rarely get that feeling from martial artists. Is it because after a certain state of practice, yogis start to see yoga all around them and try to insert it everywhere accordingly? And that martial artists see overall restraint as part of their discipline? What do we lose when we talk too loudly, and too often, about the honesty/badassedness/dedication of our practice? But…part of me can’t help but wonder if a martial artist might lose something by not talking enough about his or her discipline outside the dojo. Very interesting to think about.
Definitely because I did not arrive early enough to be part of earlier Ashtanga scenes — which affects my standards, since I don’t have good old days to compare to — and perhaps also because I hardly get to read Ashtanga blogs (no time = story of my life), but I agree with everything you say here as it applies to the yoga blogosphere generally. (It’s an informal game I sometimes play to see how many articles or posts I have to read before I hit someone with has trademarked their own style of yoga/clothing/equipment etc. This is a very quick game, as you can imagine.) I understand you’re not making a blanket statement, and that you feel good content is being produced. But when it comes to Ashtanga blogs, yeah, some feel like business operations, but I see a lot of vulnerability and I-don’t-knowedness aired in the ones I do get to read. The ones you mention here plus a couple newer ones (sadly, though, one of the newer ones I have enjoyed has already ceased to publish) often impress me with the blogger’s ability to sit with uncertainty. Or am I saying this because I’ve drank the Kool-Aid on the Ashtanga front?
In any case, if this new era involves the cyber-sangha, that would be a potent development. I’m part of a password-protected group, and because of that, things are able to be shared that would not happen if this were a public space. Technology is being marshaled in super smart ways all over the world, and I love it.
On the yoga blogging front generally, there seems, to me at least, to be a lot of nakedness right now — physically with asana porn and in terms of apparent baring of emotions. Reading your post has me wondering, however, how honest the baring of emotions really is. Put another way, what are we baring and is it helpful? Or are we merely deluding ourselves into thinking people have never been as honest as they are now, thanks to quantity (blogs galore) over quality? Can we as a collective yoga blogosphere — bringing other schools into the fold here — be comfortable becoming more exposed but with less in-your-face nakedness that actually speaks to a deeper experience?
Finally, I think it’s funny that I just wrote a new bio two days ago and now I am wondering if I should go back to read it and test it against what you say at the beginning of the blog. Ditto for all the yoga-related bios I’ve written over the past few years! That said, if I fall into the “dedicated practitioner” yogi bio-writer as charged, then I would say it’s because there is no other way I can explain to the world at large who doesn’t know me that so much of my story now has to start with the changes that have grown from the seeds of practice. Where I share your bristling is that the Yoga Bio Generator seems to have “gratitude” and combinations of “light and love” as basically template punctuation — no offense to anyone who has says that in their bio (clearly, I too fall too easily into yoga cliches). But somehow when repeated too often, those sentiments don’t tell me anything at all about the person, and I know they are way more interesting than that.
This post made me happy b/c I got to remember El Senor! Ole! (And how I used to love EZboard—so long ago.) How hard it is sometimes to be an old time practitioner, and how good too.
Old identities. aka Pranajockey.
Ah, the boards. El Senor and yoga criminals. It could go a bit Salem’esque at times, but entertaining. The martial arts analogy is apt but I worry about confusing repression and nobility. When I practiced martial arts in a secret earlier life I followed the writings of the legendary Scott Wong. He wrote in the days of paper. Full-contact. No monetization. No love and light either. I could have used some.
Forgiveness is hopeful. If family life is seventh series, forgiveness may be all the rest of them.
So many people used to practice.
I think its time for a Royal Tanenbaums of Ashtanga, the swearing and truth telling would be gloriously cathartic.
Like with any kind of writing, the quality of an ashtanga blog is surely measured by what it offers to the reader. It needs to be geared to a certain idea of use value and practical benefit. So a certain amount of crafting and external orientation are indispensable. That doesn’t mean ‘inauthenticity’ or even repression or restraint. It simply means sharing information or experience in such a way that the greater number will benefit.
Louise and Rose: Yes. I guess the baring of emotions can be pretty much a call for attention just as is the baring of physical body parts. I don’t want to reduce pranamaya kosha to annamaya, or vice versa, but either way, if getting a certain kind of attention is what is wanted, that’ll do it.
From what little I gather, publicly declaring one’s feelings towards the practice is one way of baring new emotions without really reflecting on them these days? Like, I’m going to use the internet to (a) break up with ashtanga, (b) ask ashtanga to marry me / declare that I am already married to ashtanga© work out my authority problems vis-a-vis my projections onto ashtanga. Etc etc etc.
Maybe these are processes that have to happen somewhere, or maybe they’re just a plea for “ashtanga” to speak back to the writer in the form of commenters who agree, disagree, et cetera.
Yoga bio generator, ha! Rose, I seriously want to write a teacher training module to give to corporate TTs. On the topic of how to write your yoga bio. Maybe you and Joslyn Hamilton would join me…
Pranajockey, Tara, Ole’!!
Yes, EZ Board could get rough at times. I’d forgotten about that until some newer people I sent there reflected on that. But, I didn’t mind that at the time, even if the less anonymous internet of today is more civil.
Tara, on that note, I’ll admit I was delighted to encounter this more textured and interior internet-version of you in tumblr space. Beautiful.
Jamie and Rose: on ashtanga/martial arts and whether relative silence about one’s practice is more repression or nobility.
So I’ve thought about this a lot – about the ways that I resonate so much more with my Yin Style Bagua brothers (with whom we share studio space) than with, like, yoga studio culture. I’d submit that the resonance has a lot to do with the economics and the grassroots, family-business nature of how martial arts studios work. Martial arts is just not that sexy, no matter how many sixteen year old boys want to be like water, my friend, or how big MMA gets. It’s never going to be a drop-in work out. Same as ashtanga. It’s just a very tender, economically risky venture that entirely eats the life of the studio owner. Nobody, I imagine, opens a martial arts studio because it sounds like a good business venture.
Also, there is the whole Bodhidarma thing. Shaolin. It’s all connected. I love that myth, and see more and more threads between kung fu and kalari (and thus more broadly between karate and ashtanga) the more I learn about MA.
So there is this whole terrain of ashtanga – MA similarity. But then there is this cultural gap in the ways we talk about and relate with the practices. I dunno…