Prana · 1 December 2009
Explanations change.
A long time ago in ashtanga years, a woman on her cycle was dirty. Shamed in to second class status and a sense that her body was profane, she was all out shunned on certain days of the month. Signs were posted. Don’t compromise us with your stink. Don’t profane our rituals – be they puja or asana – by participating in them when you are unworthy.
Consciousness grows. The old belief is recognized as a pillar of patriarchy. We react to it, analyze it, mourn it, let it go. Slowly, the background beliefs that maintained the boundaries and the hierarchies are disavowed.
But do we find other ways of making them true?
What is the New Age belief system but a set of superstitions and justifications, codes of fear and prejudice interlaced with little liberations?
The idea that a woman is dirty has been replaced with woo woo physics. Woo woo physics has replaced the English words “up” and “down” with “prana” and “apana.” Somehow if you use a different word for these things, it’s more meaningful and you can make lots of fun claims.
I remember the lanky guy in my first ashtanga workshop, interrogating Richard Freeman about vatayanasana: Is it pranic or apanic? Which? Which? What is the physics of the thing? Tell me!
Dude. It’s not just one thing. We are all upward and downward moving at the same time. Whole postures and PEOPLE don't fit in to your cute orphan categories - prana, apana, kapha, vata, pitta, sattvic, rajasic, tamasic, &c. &c. &c.
But according to the most simplified New Age physics, prana and apana are important because that’s what differentiates men and women. And it’s especially what characterizes a woman’s cycle. That is her apanic – downward moving – time. Once she becomes more "in touch" with the rhythms of nature, she will learn to “respect,” “honor,” and “surrender to” apana when it is “her time.”
We are living an sort of wonderful contradiction here.
As one goes deeper in to this practice, one does start noticing that those women who are, in fact, "aligned with the rhythms of nature" will cycle together. That collected rhythm shapes our life together, tied like everything else we do to the moon cycle. But do the orphan categories really explain our experience?
More to the point: if the women’s cycle is so exclusively “apanic,” then why do the sensitive ones tend to menstruate on the full moon?
Posted by (0v0)
Categories: astanga yoga
, having a body
, morality
, science
, self-deception
, social theory
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Beware: Yoga Matrix reference. Right at the beginning RF makes a comment about how being literal can really wreck the power of metaphor. And then he talks about prana and apana.
I believe there was also some discussion of how unbridled prana/inhale can send us off into flights of ungrounded imagination, and unbridled apana/exhale into throes of fear (i.e., abinivesha).
God, I love me some metaphor.
Posted by: karen · Dec 1, 12:00 PM · #
In addition to the serious metaphorical troubles it causes, excessive exhalation (the likes of which most intermediate level ashtangis practice in attempt to do ujjayi) also makes a person really starved for oxygen! And quite dizzy! :-)
So hilarious that the Yoga Matrix starts this way. I need to re-listen. In the workshop, I remember RF trying to answer this young dude’s insistent question, and the discussion going on, and on. And on. I think this might have been in the fall of 2004. Maybe he recorded that section of the DVD soon after?
It is pretty funny when people try to control women by tying us up in metaphors. And sad how effective that can be at times.
Posted by: (0v0) · Dec 1, 12:35 PM · #
One of the best books ever:
http://www.upress.umn.edu/Books/T/theweleit_male.html
Posted by: karen · Dec 1, 01:37 PM · #
Male Fantasies, by Klaus Theweleit.
Oh. Holy shit. Talk about transformational analysis.
Posted by: (0v0) · Dec 1, 01:54 PM · #
hi 0v0, you know, tangentially related to something you said in the firt paragraph, i was envisioning yesterday while walking, a conversation that could take place by two old practitioners of ashtanga, where they could ask each other how old they were in kapotasana years. “i’m a four year old kapotasana baby” could be an answer for someone for whom it took that many years to master it.
hugs
Arturo
Posted by: arturo · Dec 1, 02:23 PM · #
Oh gurl. I’m having my period too. haha.
But totally agree. Sometimes I feel like telling teachers, “it’s okay, I’ve never heard of a uterus exploding from inversions during menses.”
Though I do find it interesting how the hormones screw with my joints (tight, tight, tight) the week before. Makes it harder, but more necessary, to practice. And as a loosey-goosey type, I find the added challenge kind of juicy.
Posted by: Liz2 · Dec 1, 03:04 PM · #
Haha, you too? Quite the sync going on here this time. It is becoming obvious that phermones can travel through the internet...
Alternatively, I’m tempted to blame this big crazy moon. And it is a crazy one. It calls for dancing tonight…
Arturo, I guess I’m about four in pidgeon years.
Posted by: (0v0) · Dec 1, 03:26 PM · #
At least you girls have some physical manifestation to suggest there just may be something going on that might explain the wierdness. The male is just weird or a prick or sick.
Posted by: OLDDUDE · Dec 1, 03:58 PM · #
Oooh it’s funny cause I was having my “which day is the full moon” debate, according the choices of NYC shalas, and got mine smack dab in the middle, mid day, between the two days in question.
I’ve always practiced on my period and it has never, ever hurt me. My first day of 3rd, with that batch of eleven poses at once, was the first day of my period. I didn’t melt. I didn’t self destruct.
I told a French male teacher that he is free to advise me what to do on my period when he gets HIS. :)
Posted by: boodiba · Dec 2, 05:10 AM · #
RF also points out, somewhere in the freeway of the matrix, the essential-ness of locating these “opposites” inside one another, until the whole mess essentially eats itself up.
A really good “cure” for the headache of new age re-encoding is to stick an ol’ fashioned pad in your panties and meditate on the beautiful, multi-hued red that accumulates there.
After which, color will have the last word & you can feel free to look up at the scandalously full moon in all your smelly glory.
But what i just said might be due to the viscous apanic consequence of eating guacamole in aix-en-provence on stale chips just when the moon was coming out to play.
Posted by: Sara · Dec 2, 12:46 PM · #
Why is it that current thinking assumes old attitudes regarding menstruation were that it was “dirty?” And why is it assumed that attitude would have been instigated by men? (You don’t overtly state it here, but it does seem implied. “Patriarchy,” etc., etc.) Also, I am curious about these assignments of social influences as male-caused. I don’t aim to incite combat here, but I think menstruation wasn’t really stigmatized that way, and I think any menstruation-related stigma wouldn’t have been caused or promulgated chiefly by men. It’s a common modern perception, but it just doesn’t seem to add up.
Posted by: Carl · Dec 2, 04:56 PM · #
Well yes, ahhh…in the Sanskrit, the Aramaic, the Arabic, the Proto-Alannic Sarmatian subgroup etc the respective words do imply filth and general unclean gunkiness. And as most of the more cunning ecumenical linguists of yore were men, I think it’s fair to see men as the instigators. Circumstantially, it’s worth remembering that most of the gents in those days had big bushy beards. You’d have thought that this may have helped, what with the absorbancy capcity of the average ‘unmarred’ Levantine chin but I accept that it would’ve looked a bit off at the elders’ meetings.
Personally, I like to blame the women for the ‘staunch’ support they have given to Patrimalarkey over the ages, but this is not consistent with German empirical science.
So, let’s examine the socio-historic evidence within our own school of discomovulation. Nincy Golgaff was told by SKPJ to get out of the shala and do repetition stair runs up to a local nath, Doner Koningsburg was asked to stay in halasana ‘until the Red Sea parted’ whereas Saraswati recommends lying on a couch, drinking sweet tea and watching hours of Bollywood’s finest! Very confusing.
I have decided to incorporate elements of the ‘ladies holiday’ into my own practice, out of academic interest, you understand, and not just to pander to the squelchy sensibilities of my pre-men peers.
Interesting results. I get terribly snappy and lachrymose whenever some ‘masculinist’ criticises my practice, then I cramp up with dreadful remorse and self doubt and a few days later I feel the love and seek to make things right with the world, though knowing full well that I’ll go through the same shit in a month’s time.
It’s all good, though. I’m starting Pregnancy Yoga next month! It is in Yoga Rahasya, after all.
Posted by: professor A. grumblethwick · Dec 2, 11:47 PM · #
O Grumblethwick: The linguist in me bows to the linguist in you.
Pregnancy Yoga should serve you really well if you stick a water balloon in Your Iyengar Undies (the elastic will keep it secure) while practicing.
Also recommended is to wedge the Yoga Rahasya in your right armpit as you quiet the mind with nadi shodana.
But I’m waxing silly. The choice of how to perceive practice and what to do about that and how closely to heart to take the dictates of tradition— is up to the individual— menstruating or not.
Posted by: Sara · Dec 3, 02:57 AM · #
Thank you for that Friendly re-imagining of yoga anew-sara. My heart will go on.
Posted by: MsMadX · Dec 3, 10:13 AM · #
Professor Garblethwack, you imply that a few miscellaneous bits of esoteric literature accurately represent the attitudes of the ancient peoples the authors of said lit bits are assumed to have belonged to. Is it your feeling that we might always assume miscellaneous bits of literature accurately represent the ideas, attitudes and beliefs of the cultures that their respective authors belong to?
Posted by: Carl · Dec 3, 10:35 AM · #
My feeling is that you should not trouble yourself over these matters. Such speculation on your part has proved fruitless in the past and, doubtless, will do so in the future.
Enjoy ‘esoterica’ for what it is, and don’t forget to pay your taxes.
Posted by: Professor A Grumblethwick · Dec 3, 11:38 AM · #
Quickly, before a lunch meeting—-
Carl doesn’t believe in history; sometimes the resulting skepticism can be a nice challenge...
To be honest, I clouded the recent history in euphemism because things that have been said and done “in the shala” in recent decades are so painful and embarrassing. What’s easy to say is that there was, for years, a sign, made by men, forbidding women to enter the space on three days of the month. The sign was not there to protect women. It was there to protect men.
The period prohibition had nothing to do with women’s health. It was there to protect men from women’s presumed impurity. The same way women in the same tradition, in modern times, have been excluded from performing religious rituals, and sometimes from cooking, when menstruating. Pause.... It's heartbreaking. Pause. As I've asked before, what if men were considered ritually impure for three days every time they spilled some fluids?
I’ve been misunderstood to be say that women oughta practice when they’re in pain. Not at all! On the contrary, I’m interested in women’s health as the only standard here. And in analysis, and merciless destruction, of the old standard. The menstruation-is-dirty belief is still real in ashtangaland (except among people as sweet as Carl), even though—like all really potent prejudice— it’s submerged so deeply in the subconscious that it’s plausibly deniable.
Come on. Why else would thousands of women pretend that they don’t come to practice during their cycles when really they do? It’s shame. I love Boodi and Sara’s shamelessness. Love it!
Now to put a little iron back in my system…
Posted by: (0v0) · Dec 3, 12:08 PM · #
According to your measure of male impurity, my next practice will be on March 15th, 1932 – assuming that it’s not a moon day. I’ll have to check with Encintas central.
Posted by: Professor A Grumblethwick · Dec 3, 12:58 PM · #
It’s not a disbelief in past events — the progression of humankind is what it is. Rather, I’m skeptical of these modern interpretations of past events, and of social neuroses both past and present.
Posted by: Carl · Dec 3, 01:11 PM · #
Why?
Posted by: Professor A Grumblethwick · Dec 3, 02:44 PM · #
Yes, why?!
Posted by: Carl · Dec 3, 02:53 PM · #
Hate to say it, but this round definitely goes to Gumblethwark.
Posted by: (0v0) · Dec 3, 09:55 PM · #
Er who appointed you the arbiter? [REDACTED _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _] stop trying to reconfigure my troll into a sense-making trope-marker.
Posted by: Professor A Grumblethwick · Dec 3, 11:27 PM · #
That’s enough.
Posted by: (0v0) · Dec 4, 03:07 AM · #
You know, I wonder what the problem is with following a traditional practice in a traditional way, which includes deferring to traditional authority.
Guruji was quite clear on this subject: women take a ladies’ holiday every month. That means all of you, irrespective of asana proficiency.
I haven’t had a problem with this stipulation, why would I? If anything, it’s made me a better yogi. Ask any one of my partners and they’ll tell you that this is true.
So, do your practice…or don’t, if told not to.
Posted by: your infallible guyd · Dec 4, 05:05 AM · #
How does the Dalai Lama put it?
Practice is a bird with two wings. Compassion and discernment.
Shut off critical thinking, fly in circles.
Posted by: (0v0) · Dec 4, 12:29 PM · #
Who loves ya baby?
Posted by: your infallible guyd · Dec 4, 05:20 PM · #
who, who.
Dharma glam.
Posted by: (0v0) · Dec 5, 09:22 AM · #
It’s total bullshit that women get 3 extra days off every month but the men don’t. Screw that. Any sane person wants more rest days.
Posted by: Jamie · Dec 5, 10:09 AM · #
Ha ha!!! It’s becoming clear that I’m about the only freak in the house who hates to take a day off.
The men in my life go through powerful emotional cycles about every month or six weeks. Definitely a men’s holiday is needed.
Posted by: (0v0) · Dec 5, 07:47 PM · #
dear j— present your bloody evidence at the door, and rest you’ll get. meanwhile, keep truckin; the asana police are profiling you.
anyway, it’s total bullshit that Omnipotent Oval Which Knoweth the Totality doesn’t grant us all more days off from worrying about what rules to follow in order to be alive properly.
with love to the whole mess—
Posted by: Sara · Dec 6, 02:06 AM · #
Gribbletwitch does win the round, I guess. It’s not a major shortcoming to fail to sit on others’ presuppositions to further incubate them, however.
Posted by: Carl · Dec 9, 03:14 PM · #
Squwak squawk squwak!!!
Go read some history books Carl!
Posted by: (0v0) · Dec 9, 07:05 PM · #