Apex · 17 June 2008

Here’s the deal with your teacher. You do it their way as long as it won't hurt you; you honor that relationship for the sacred thing it is; you keep it clean and loving because your practice depends on it and their service to humanity is better than your own. Or my own anyway… heh. If they value loyalty, I deliver because it keeps everything clear and creates even more mutual understanding. If they have particular rules, I reproduce them to the point of being mechanical about it. Yes. Obedience is just engine-grease for the big machine that is a Mysore room.

Mechanical machine, not kidding.

The rules are just there to allow me to shut down the monkey. A container.

The mind likes to be bound. Even if it is, like mine, a big preacher's-kid rulebreaker in other contexts.

That said, this whole rule of primary-only on the day before the moon is a drag. Criminy. Especially if the moon is smack on a wednesday; and if it’s not new but a buzzy hightide action-packed full moon; and if it’s the week of the solstice for godsakes.

Come on. I practiced primary-only this morning and am bouncing off the walls. And I’m supposed to skip practice tomorrow altogether, on this day when sun and moon are both pulling me off the earth and in the meantime I’ve got to find a way to trick myself into looking at a computer for most of the day? I’d fast or something, but my experience is that fasting makes me even more hyper.

This is just ridiculous. I’m tending strongly toward criminal behavior tomorrow unless I stap on some rollerblades instead. 

It is the apex of summer and time for many forms of realization. We are all ripe. Can you feel it? This is it! Put on a dress (you too), climb up something, dance in your livingroom, read Nietzsche and the Bhagavad Gita.

Go create. Go!

 

P.S. Topics  for later, possibly: N's question on the what postrationality can give to rationality (nice); S's question on putting your foot behind your head; and A's question about what in the hell I eat. I don't have answers, but might try to document some ongoing experiments.

Posted by (0v0)        
Categories: astanga yoga , having a body

Comment

1. I’ve got the PERFECT suggestion for redirecting all that energy! Finishing and sending off your P&S article by the solstice! Woo hoo!!! Let your fingers DANCE all over that keyboard!

   Posted by: R · Jun 17, 01:49 PM · #

2. Hey.. We only do primary on Fridays, or if Friday is the moon day, then primary on Thursday.

   If the moon day is any other day, we do normal practice before it. Although, I kind of wish I’d done primary today, since laghuvajrasana wasn’t my pose today. Now I am planning to do primary on Thursday AND Friday this week.

   Yeah, Nietzsche. The novel has got me craving to go back to his stuff. Become who you are!!

   Posted by: susananda · Jun 17, 02:38 PM · #

3. Thank you, I forgot about the SOLSTICE! I should really do ashtanga, I would be more in tune I suspect… but you know I just LOVE kicking a soccer ball around!

   Nietzsche said:
   I tell you: one must have chaos in one to give birth to a dancing star. I tell you: you still have chaos in you.

   and he also said:
   In the end, you only experience yourself

   He was quite smart.

   Posted by: Gregor · Jun 17, 03:38 PM · #

4. Not having heard the pre-moon Primary rule, I put in a Primary plus Pasasana today, but just somehow wasn’t in the mood for more poses…hmm, perhaps a downright Jungian thing is in operation there.

   Tomorrow I plan some extra-curricular backbend work, maybe Sweeney’s Chandra practice.

   If just Primary is not “enough,” why not do it with full vinyasa as Lino and some others sometimes teach it?

   Posted by: patrick · Jun 17, 03:51 PM · #

5. At our shala, and when I was in Mysore in 05 (could have changed since!) you only did Primary on a Thursday if the moonday was Friday. The idea was that your last practice of the week should be Primary.

   Posted by: V · Jun 18, 02:01 AM · #

6. I bet Nietzsche would have said “Fuck you” to this pre-moon primary-only rule nonsense.

   Posted by: RE · Jun 18, 02:07 AM · #

7. Full moon at the last degrees of Sagittarius, fun and frolic and high energy everywhere, go howl at the sun, swim, play, laugh, practice, whatever turns you on. Creation, baby, that sizzle of the solstice, the brink of summer.

   In NYC we do it the way Susananda does – primary Friday or Thursday if there’s a Friday moon. Any teacher I’ve had does it like that. Interesting sometimes the coastal differences.

   Posted by: Anna · Jun 18, 03:55 AM · #

8. Go criminal today, baby! Dooooo it! I double-dog dare you!

   Posted by: LI Ashtangini · Jun 18, 05:36 AM · #

9. Not all of us use Nietzsche’s dramatic profanities. Some of us just roll our eyes in regard to the Moon Day Rule.

   Posted by: Carl · Jun 18, 09:06 AM · #

10. But that makes my going crim seem so much less dramatic!

    I took the dare.

    Posted by: (0v0) · Jun 18, 05:03 PM · #

11. I knew you would!!!!! I’m so proud!

    Posted by: LI Ashtangini · Jun 19, 07:28 AM · #

12. Hi (0v0)
    Wow, I’m so glad to not have heard of this rule. When was it enacted? Really I have to laugh.
    hugs
    Arturo

    Posted by: arturo · Jun 20, 12:10 PM · #

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