Do you know the way to San Jose? · 31 August 2011
There’s this whole risk of the yoga bait-and-switch, right?
Going forward in the physical practice has this tendency to trip people on to an orthogonal pathway.
Their momentum starts pressing down, instead of forward.
There are layers. Koshas or something. What I have seen, or heard about, in long-time practitioners is a patterned un-layering. Here’s a rough generalization of many cases. It’s going to sound vague, but these are the words I can find. I’m not using any of them lighly.
Breath-posture + bandha + drste weirdly (and usually unexpectedly) synthesize into OneSinglePractice. I saw someone with crazy natural ability find this within a year once. But it often takes takes thousands of hours of practice (1) with a good teacher and (more importantly?) (2) alongside practitioners who are more subtle than oneself. There are people for whom this has not happened after 10 or 20 years of rigorous practice. Who knows; maybe these folks are actively blocking tristhana with compulsive thinking or emoting. Maybe they just don't accept that drste is as central to the method as breath.
Anyway, if tristhana finally arises, what this seems to deliver next is the subtle body. Somehow. Which eventually, somehow delivers exquisite awareness of the emotional body. Or sometimes this might come before subtle body. Whatever. People have different experiences. After subtle and emotional layers are awake, there’s pretty soon some new information about the shared nervous system of all humans. Then a lot of information on this. And then not just humans but everyone with a nervous system. And then, if the medium of experience becomes some finer sort of energy, it starts blipping on everythig without a nervous system too. (Sometimes weird stuff happens here: a few people have described going from love of all breathing creatures to love that's less mammal-centric. Or, time and space become sort of fluid because energy’s unevenness is apparent.)
Somewhere in there, the unmanifest starts showing up. Even though it’s not supposed to show up. Not supposed to exist. By definition! But the unmanifest, it might send emissaries. Ghouls, for instance. Some people get nicer emissaries. Or just direct feelings of nothing.
Whatever shows up, it slow-mo chases a person into the perfection of the unmanifest... and straight through it into THIS. Experience as it is, here, now, enough. Where a person is whole, because the apparent opposites have been unified.
That's actual yoga, right? Some people have gone the distance and now have yoga going on most of the time. I am not among them. But I have practiced with and alongside them; and I am following them. These humans are both complete and transparent. They do not have big holes in their lives, nor do they have dark rooms where they keep parts of themselves.They are more able to give, less defensive. More grounded, less sure of what that even means. They are energy-efficient beings. Most of them aren't somebodies, because they don't waste energy advertising themselves. They have a little less skin in the game.
Unlike ALL THE REST OF US, they are not using practice to fight off the unseen, the unwelcome, the unwanted, the unknown.
When the layers open up like that, a person lives with not much tension or resistance. It shows in the way they move, relate, breathe, speak. Their yoga feels strangely natural, highlighting the force, and neurosis, and negativity other humans to leverage ourselves through each day.
Let's say entropy runs the universe, but it’s not alone. Signs point also to self-organization. Evolution. Autopoiesis. Nature running its course leads to death, and at the same time to life. The sophisticates who have done the work and then just let their awareness open up... who are have the discipline to stay open and let stuff continue to happen to them... these are the ones who are more alive than we are. If we are halfway-awake, we know when we are sitting next to one of them. What they produce in us is not the anxiety that celebrity or latent daddy/guru issues calls forth under our skin, but a presence and ease that tamps down any tendency to worship them or make them into gods. Maybe a deep intelligence in us gets the feeling of not knowing.
We do not know what death is. Maybe we do not know what life is either.
There is a safe, effective method for preventing kosha prolapse. To avoid Union and its attendant hazards for your personal identity, moral superiority, grasp on reality, coherent metaphysics, secure personal ontological status, and “dedicated” commitment to getting the next pose and (the same thing) getting authorized, do the following:
Know things. Act knowing. Be circumspect. Know what’s next. Know how it works. Know your anatomy and physiology and astrology and psychology and theology. Know who is the enemy. Know who to belittle. Know what it’s all about. Review the knowledge. Know the correct vinyasa for sarvangasana. Know the words to Nicki Minaj songs. Know the way to San Jose.
Knowing will keep the rational mind (and physical body) contracted around the self. Knowing will keep the heart from getting too big. Knowing will make it easy to assert power over the practice, other people, and over the environment. Knowing is what seals over the kosha rabbit hole.
Posted by (0v0)
Categories: astanga yoga
, esoteric shit
, evolution
, having a body
, integration
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Resonates with what Roshi Joan gleefully and resolutely calls “strong determination”—
and you, owl, you—
When you scribble, I smile.
Posted by: Sara · Aug 31, 02:21 PM · #
How wonderful! What a beautiful and unique post! Thank you , Thank you!
Posted by: min · Aug 31, 02:22 PM · #
This is beautiful. I really don’t KNOW what else to say :-) Thank you for writing this.
Posted by: Nobel · Aug 31, 02:35 PM · #
:-)
Last Tuesday, I went to Edinburgh castle with local comment thread ghoul Carlos Adonis. Talk about an emissary from the unmanifest. In the most beningly creepy place I’ve ever been, no less. Anyway, CATYGAY pointed at me rudely over a Greek salad and told me to go back to writing this blog. Hrmph.
Sara, at my first meditation retreat, the teacher leaned forward from the dais and stage-whispered… Don’t know miiiind. Like, as an alternative to know-it-all-mind.
Posted by: (0v0) · Aug 31, 05:08 PM · #
At the zendo, “Don’t know” is the only answer that’s always right.
And then you start to pay attention to whether you are really worthy of uttering such a phrase.
Posted by: Karen · Aug 31, 08:01 PM · #
This is beautiful; I so love how you paint with words.
It’s interesting to me how those who spend more time at ease with unknowing share that with those around them. It’s as if the rest of us can relax just that little bit more into the next breath when we have the feeling that someone is at ease even if we ourselves are still in doing the work of peeling off the outer layers.
Posted by: Christine · Sep 1, 05:33 AM · #
was thinking of you out of the blue yesterday, admiring how you teach w/o a website; this also is delicious. i look forward to your way with words and consciousness ~ stay brave
Posted by: katherine · Sep 1, 08:12 AM · #
Enjoy your blog Owl. Another great post :)
Posted by: Scott · Sep 1, 12:59 PM · #
A disaster. I certainly did NOT tell you to come back to this foolishness – must have been some craven clot screened (temporarily) from my opticonical omniscience.
I’ve not been so disappointed since Visnhu’s vittals soured before sale that time in San Francisco, a site whose primary thoroughfares are well-known to me. How pleased I was with your preternautical swim to the island of sarvanglottal self-aggrandizement! Oh the shalaschmerzen! Oh the prim and proper Ponzi-schemeing! Oh the potty-mouthed profusion of first person, singulars!
And now? You’ve backslidden into this obfuscationally-challeneged folly. How do expect to enjoy the bucolic bonanza and gopi goodness from those moon-eyed cash cows known comically, colloquially as ‘yoga students’. Tumbleweeds through your teaching practice, I think.
On your own head be it.
Posted by: catygay · Sep 1, 01:07 PM · #
Christine, yes. People who can be equally present to everyone they meet tend to make me remember not to treat them as something special either. Rolf is the best example of this I’ve encountered, ever.
It was not until I started analysis that I realized that beneath a certain aspect of my personality – the sort of high energy, clever, quick, smart side – there is a ragged current of anxiety. I now see the anxiety reflected back to me in the way that personality makes everyone around her very present… but in an edgy, performative way. Awareness changes things a little.
But by the way… Carlos, as I mentioned over ice cream cones and cobblestones, I think there’s a glitch in the English-to-Obfuscationish translator you run all your comments through before posting them. I think you dislike my use of I? We’ll I’ll put that in my panopticon and give it a spin allright.
Scott, hello.
Katherine! I think I might owe you a FB email? I answer those once a month… coming. And sorry.
The unwebsite plus offensively high drop-in rates get the right people interested and redirect others to Power Yoga. Thank you, Power Yoga. It is fun teaching in the same town as Bryan Kest’s ultra-successful kid brother. This summer’s yoga explosion here is to their credit. Now lil’ Kest’s “ashtanga” has attracted a major competitor, the faux-streety “Detroit Yoga” which actually hails from the riiiiich suburb of Royal Oak. It’s like a Beverly Hills studio franchising as Ashtanga Compton. Anyway, Kest and DetroYo are fighting it out over the mostly naked, female 20-year olds that helped double the town’s population again this week. I very much enjoy the young, crazy energy of it all. September first is probably the best day of the year here in every way. But in such a context, yes, some high bars are necessary. We take one new student per month. It’ll be many years before any of the new practitioners here are deep enough in their own practices to assist me, so we’re on a slow growth plan. It’s so nice.
Posted by: (0v0) · Sep 1, 01:43 PM · #
But if you don’t have half-naked 20-something students they you’ll never get your own clothing line, Owlie-o, and then yoga teacher superstardom will never come, no matter how many handstands you do.
Funny to think how it really does unravel from the mind and not the other way around. And I guess that’s where letting go has to start, hm. Lose your mind not your marbles. That kind of thing.
Posted by: rebecca · Sep 1, 09:58 PM · #
Lose your mind and not your marbles.
Sitting here on a serotonin high, somehow this reminds me of something Salvador Dali said. I don’t do drugs; I am drugs.
Posted by: (0v0) · Sep 2, 04:19 AM · #
Saw “YogaWoman” last night – a somewhat irreligious and profane excursion into yogaCelebrity, osteoporosis and hormonal waves and yes, a little compassion too. I heard Kali’s name but once. But the waterfall of watering down this weird work and word known as “yoga” was thunderous. Thank you for concentrating it; dilution is for dumbasanas…..
Posted by: e&sj · Sep 2, 03:42 PM · #
tristhana!!! Christopher did a workshop last winter that focused on this. We did Suryas holding each point (and sometimes half way points) five breaths. And all the way through, relentlessly, C reminded us of the tristhana. It was amazing. That man knows what he is doing.
Posted by: boodibaq · Sep 3, 04:53 AM · #
Ohhhh the feeling of reading she nailed it! How do you do this? How do you transfer it to words so beautifully? You are it and so are we, and i’m feeling a little bit too open to keep talking now.
Posted by: Claudia · Sep 3, 05:07 AM · #
Claudia, teaching has turned my brain to jell-o. I go days if not weeks without being able to muster the cognitive function to look at email. I just kind of said some stuff here because I wanted to post once in the month of August. To put a bead on the thread. I am really glad that the jell-o in my head still can congeal into readable things!
Maybe cognitive function will come back more fully when I’m used to holding this much space outside my head. Or maybe this is just what this work does to a person. We’re a bunch of jelloheads?
Boodiba, I’m so interested in this. It sounds great.
Since I started practicing, whenever I caught myself getting in to some ego-driven fundamentalist trip on correct practice, I’ve sort of funneled that in to the least-observed observance. Drste. So my rigid aspect expresses itself mostly as drste fundamentalism. Not a bad fundamentalism to have in a Mysore room! I am tempted to go to coconut stand and convert the correct vinyasa fundamentalists to the new religion of drste fundamentalism. Because at least then they’ll stop being distracted by their fellow practitioners. :-)
ESJ, ok, I watched the trailer. Seriously? How is this yoga? It’s a movement to get a group of people to identify with their gender. The motive is that this will let them “get back at” all those ancient penised people who didn’t invite the girls to their cave rituals? God. I think we can stop beating up the imagined generations of male oppressors already. If anything, it’s men who could use explicit welcoming to what yoga is here and now.
As for the “yoga has excluded women” thing, I’m reminded of the two breadcrumbs Andre Van Lysbeth (the first western ashtangi) dropped in the west to send them searching back to the unifying tantric practices of his teacher Pattabhi Jois. They were: a book on pranayama. And a book on tantra, what he called “the cult of the feminine.”
Bringing Shakti up to Shiva, baby. As if it matters whether a person's sex part is a 0 or a 1 or a .5 or a .89 or whatever. Give me a break.
Game day today, and a strong heat wave. People are parking in front of the house and walking miles across town to the stadium, wearing gold and blue and beer hats. But their excitement is infectious. I’m going to go teach crim led primary and then spend the afternoon at the pool with Tim. Yes, that Tim. XXOVO
Posted by: (0v0) · Sep 3, 06:05 AM · #
Zen boyfriends… Third guy in this story is an ashtangi.
Posted by: (0v0) · Sep 4, 07:53 AM · #
Can we do another read-along sometime soon? We could even take it in turns to summarise so that the body of the work doesn’t fall to your little talons, Owlie-o.
Posted by: rebecca · Sep 4, 01:14 PM · #
Ok. The book needs to be subversive, plain language, and somehow classic.
Something that meets these criteria is Muktibodhananda’s translation of the Hathayogapradipika. It’s amazing. The commentary is SO useful. But it’s really long.
Is Richard Freeman’s book any good? Desikachar has a new biography of Krishnamacharya. I want to read a couple of academic books on tantra: The Alchemical Body and The Tantric Way. Or there’s the Yoga Makaranda. Wilber’s No Boundary seems kind of timeless. Spiritual Bypassing feels like a contemporary re-write of CTSM.
Other ideas? Yoga Bitch?
Posted by: (0v0) · Sep 4, 01:42 PM · #
‘Sivanada Burired Yoga’ – Yogi Manmoyanand.
Certainly fulfills first two criteria.
Posted by: s · Sep 5, 04:22 AM · #
This guy was my favourite Prof at UCSB.
http://www.amazon.com/David-Gordon-White/e/B001IZ1C62/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1
He’s one of the reasons I wanna do their RS grad program and nowhere else. And also, it’s Santa Barbara. I was looking at The Alchemical Body yesterday- it’s actually the reason I hopped over here and asked if we could have a readalong. Still have Tantra in Practice somewhere from a grad seminar I talked him into letting me sit in on.
Never read anything of Richard Freeman’s. HYP sounds cool… I think the closest I’ve come to reading something about yoga is the Sutras that we did in a class at YogaWorks- but in that we only did the first and second because according to the teacher ‘the last two padas make no sense and are impossible and pointless so we’re not going over them’. That and CTSM, and Wilber’s ‘A Brief History of Everything’ which wasn’t brief at all unless you’re comparing it to the billions of years that encompass the ‘everything’. I think that was the point, but I felt like I’d been tricked.
Posted by: rebecca · Sep 5, 09:00 AM · #
Sivananda Buried Yoga looks good too.
Posted by: rebecca · Sep 5, 09:34 AM · #
I have my Yoga 2 students read the “Mirror of Yoga” by R. Freeman. Its very, very good. A fantastic overview of the many “threads that connect”. And anything that gets people to buy it and support and read it I am all for (I am a total “homer” in this regard).
Posted by: e&sj · Sep 5, 06:09 PM · #
owl, i am a tad sad you got outed on FB! Your blog has that feel of freedom coming from secrecy or being a little under the radar (finding you takes a connection that is direct). But I am also happy your message is getting to more people. I wanted to repost, but I didn’t because I love this blog as it is and i don’t want your voice to change! boo hoo i don’t think you do owe me an email though…i appreciated your tips and am doing same same to the best of my ability (practicing before). Man, what a cool thing to do tho, huh? I should not have waited so long, except it’s so perfect as it is. and i want to blog…but still feel on the fence about it. i may choose to direct that overage energy into microlocal community projects. I’m on a gentrifying block 8 blocks from where the Barnes collection is being relocated from the Main Line next year— real special community— first Latino Barrio apparently, more than 100 years old. I suppose I could do both and blog about it. Hmmm. Former mansions that have been sec 8 for several decades, now on the fly…. I am really hopeful that some of my neighbors will come to the practice.
Posted by: katherine · Sep 6, 05:56 PM · #
This: “beneath a certain aspect of my personality – the sort of high energy, clever, quick, smart side – there is a ragged current of anxiety.” I identify with and recognize. But this, “I now see the anxiety reflected back to me in the way that personality makes everyone around her very present… but in an edgy, performative way.” is true in a way that I hadn’t noticed before. Thanks.
And this: “Know things. Act knowing. Be circumspect. Know what’s next. Know how it works.” (sigh) feels like what Dr. Wombat is faking all the time…
Posted by: Wombat · Sep 9, 09:35 PM · #
beautifully said about knowing. what i have a hard time though, at times, is truly believing what i know…
Posted by: kaz · Sep 18, 11:18 AM · #