Equation #1 · 25 June 2009

1 = 1

A = A

Inhale = Exhale

How many ways and times has this formula been offered to me? Sometimes as if it’s a secret-in-plain-view, only known to the half-dozen true flying lizards of Mysore; sometimes as if it’s the most boring ever baby pranayama; sometimes overheard from my own mouth instructing the first samasthithi of a private.

This morning everything was d-e-n-s-e, far more than usual. Weird. Is this what 60 will feel like? A few minutes in, I went inner-schizoid and hosted a full-blown dialogue:

So, J, if you were alone right now, would you make it even a surya further?

No. I would fucking bail. [Sorry, just playing back the tape.]

What if this actually were a kitchen-practice? What is the same? Is it fair to draw the juice for your entire work-out from these others… to consciously use them while pretending to be riding your own discipline oh-so-sincerely?

Ok, so I will put myself in the kitchen right now. Draw a practice up out of its dusty linoleum. Shala = kitchen. So west, so east. Same same same.

Fine then yes, here we are in the kitchen. Making it not different from the shala.

It doesn’t mean don’t be strengthened by the group in the abstract. Just don’t suck these four people’s milkshake. Gurglegurglegurgle. It’s not yours and you don’t need it anyway.

It was a useful little trip: practice was extraordinary. Albeit a little weird because I kept seeing that linoleum and remembering I need to swiff. But extraordinary because air-cushioned.

What makes shala practice = kitchen practice on a dense Thursday is one key. That key is not: pushing, churning it out on a performative, exhale-driven autopilot. It is valuing the inhalation as an equal.

Counting it. Literally. (Why is the default to count the exhale or the little space thereafter?) Today I bracketed the exhale—it knows how to do its thing—letting the inhale come to balance. Instead of dying out on the floor as the others in the room inhaled for me. If in doubt today, I inhaled even more.

It is so easy when I allow myself to know this, something that others have tried to give me but I become too unconscious to do when I get tired. Ridiculously easy.

Oxygen. Who knew?

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

Comment

1. YES!
   and I have something you might like, from my trip…

   Posted by: Gregor · Jun 25, 02:03 PM · #

2. Gregor, I love that.

   Not to TMZ my blog, but I just taught a private in my late mentor’s office next door. The whole time, helicopters were buzzing outside our window. Now I hear sirens, a very odd sound here. Word is that several blocks to the south, the entrance to the medical center is roped off and Michael Jackson is inside, dead.

   Two nights ago I randomly got all emotional about him and the Editor and I watched a Japanese documentary on the making of We Are The World. Amazing pelvis, that MJ. Time to walk neath the swarm of copters and see how broadly the paparazzi are foraging.

   Posted by: (0v0) · Jun 25, 02:39 PM · #

3. and in conclusion perhaps, the t-shirts signify 1 for 1, in the sense of consumption, all kinds. That what we consume, we could give back in another form. Sounds like Bakunin with breath. :)
   Synchronicity is alive and well… and the Pelvis is dead, long live the Pelvis.

   Posted by: Gregor · Jun 26, 04:08 AM · #

4. my favorite
   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_hz2am90Hk

   I have that inner-schizoid dialogue going so many mornings. Sometimes it’s quieting down by the time I actually get on my mat (being at it’s loudest while I’m on my walk in… trying to negotiate… maybe only half primary, I’m tired, why not just turn around right now and go back to bed. Are you really going? Yes, I’m going. Blah blah blah). But I know so well that exchange: if you weren’t practicing next to your teacher, would you even stick it out this morning? No, I’d fucking BAIL. That’s it, exactly.)

   And yeah, just breathing. It’s so simple, shut up, do it. And…relief.

   Posted by: joy · Jun 26, 02:18 PM · #

5. “I didn’t inhale (and I didn’t try it again)” -Bill

   Careful Owl… you may later have to deny inspiration.

   Posted by: Jamie · Jun 28, 06:05 AM · #

6. Hadn’t seen that video before (or any of the others before this week, for that matter… as I’ve mentioned, I didn’t really partake in popular culture until I left home… though I did learn a good bit of American Rock ‘n’ Roll by buying the sheet music and pounding it out on the piano). I love the way he is just standing around being awesome (great little backbone-slide there), and that’s enough for him to be entertaining. Great disco-cut suit too. (Big surprise, the kid whose dad forced him to accuse Jacko of pedophilia came forward to recant. Not that I’m interested in his moral worth one way or another, but everything around him is kind of epically screwed up....)

   By the way, I did not have sexual intercourse with that woman.

   Also, this was an interesting little article, esp. at the end.

   Posted by: (0v0) · Jun 28, 10:44 AM · #

Commenting is closed for this article.