I was gifted Gregor Maehle’s second book on the Intermediate Series for Christmas, so I’ve been reading it and, again, have really focused on the sections relating to breath. This strangely brought me back to my Master’s Thesis (2009), I was about to embark on the first enormous move of my life with the Peace Corps and needed to start writing it so that I could take my degree along with me. The result was, “Breaths of OM and Images of Gods: Allen Ginsberg’s Path to Awareness”; I was very young in my study of pranayam, but through this poetic examination, I sought to analyze the work Ginsberg produced while he was in India, revealing the ways in which he had abandoned (along with many others at the time) the use of LSD for the yogic practice of breathing, which looked something like this, on November 13th, 1962:

Sunset sitting crosslegged on the sand bank

overlooking the ocean below… Orange circle

inching below the horizon, green waters, facing

my eye, in my head—smoking & pranayam holding

breath 4: 16: 8 vaguely as the sky colors

sharpened and the liquid tip of edge light gold

sank, out there so small over the beach buildings

& palms and calm sky (4 inhale 16 hold 8 exhale

breath). (Indian Journals)

Obviously a pranyam practice, but eventually I made a somewhat decent attempt to prove that he had written breath marks into his poems, ultimately infusing them, literally, with him self. At the time I was just overjoyed that I could write my English Literature thesis on something that was really interesting to me and pranayam and Ginsberg was it! On a more serious note, I had no idea how much all of my studies of Ginsberg and his poetry would influence me on my sojourn to the East. Reading poems that looked like this:

Thus crosslegged on round pillow sat in Teton

Space—

I breathed upon the aluminum microphone-stand a

body’s length away

I breathed further, past the sake cup half

emptied by the breathing guru

Breathed upon the vast plateglass shining back

th’assembled sitting Sangha

my breath thru nostril floated out to the moth of

evening beating into

window’d illumination. (Collected Poems)

And then writing poems that, without intention, looked something very similar. Maybe it’s just what happens when one wakes up in a foreign country on the other side, explores temples in the jungles of Angkor Wat, and Giant Buddhas in China, or, maybe, Ginsberg breathed some of that inspiration, via his poetry or no, my way, I really can’t be sure, but I’m grateful either way.

Maehle writes, “The ancient vedic seers saw the universe as performing a pulsating movement of expansion and contraction very much like breathing” interestingly, when we inhale the sound emitted forms something like “sa”, and when we exhale, “ham”—“soham” (I am that). I immediately thought of my first Sunday led practice with Sharath in India after I read this; before things get really sweaty and folks fall out of the unified breath pattern, in those first 10 minutes, it is such a beautiful sound to hear – everyone breathing, inhale and exhale, and no sound (save Sharath) other than that.

Here’s an excerpt:

A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 3,800 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 3 trips to carry that many people.

Mysore Practice with Kino MacGregor at The Great Hall in Toronto.

I thought about quitting Ashtanga a few months ago, but only in the way we sometimes make a threat when we have a bad day and say something like, “kill me now.” Of course, we really don’t want to die, but happiness is not there. I began second series this summer and, truthfully, I sort of knew that something like this would happen; I knew I wasn’t going to love it, so I  really milked primary for all it was worth; lengthening, polishing, aligning, re-aligning etc., I needed to move on. The poses felt awkward at first; second series doesn’t follow the familiar exhale patterns of the first series, so it feels choppy, and of course I can’t fly up into handstands in between poses yet so the sequence doesn’t have the “seamless” flow that I love about the primary series. What’s more, the practice is now longer and the asanas are new; thus, requiring a different approach and degree of stamina. I immediately began to re-evaluate and tried to find a way out it; I considered only doing second series on weekends, when I had time, because it takes so much longer and there is an element of impatience to battle; considered only moving up to Bhekasana, because it is the last asana I like before Kapotasana, currently an impossible feat.

I backed off for about a month, so far off that I was no longer doing drop backs, they seemed inaccessible with the change of seasons; the cooler weather made me stiff and my shifting practice was not providing me with the opening I needed. My practice sans drop backs seemed a valid reason for me to no longer be doing second series–yes! I had found an out. And then I missed it, and I knew I should move forward, but with baby steps. Truthfully, I have gone through several transformations  since then, both mentally and physically, which is what I am learning must happen in order to move through this series, and I don’t think the process is always linear.

Kino MacGregor lectured before an intro to Intermediate Series this weekend during a workshop at The Great Hall in Toronto.  She began by discussing the 3 major asanas in the second series that make students quit: first on the list, Kapotasana (don’t I know it!), Dwi Pada Sirsasana, and Karandavasana. The idea is, if the student doesn’t address what is required for these postures early in the practice through back bending, Supta Kurma, Urdva Padmasana etc., it is very difficult to find it when faced with these asanas moving forward. I remember Sharath spoke to this on a Sunday morning at the shala and shared that people write to him and say, “I quit. It’s too hard.” I remember thinking to myself, “I would never do that, what’s so hard about it? You just do it.” I get it now, though, it’s not just the physical practice; the practice addresses and demands a lot of its practitioner.

Kino brought up the issue of pain, something I have been very interested in considering most schools of yoga and athletics obviously maintain that pain should not be present. Ok, so yoga is supposed to feel good, obviously, no one wants to do “painful” yoga and yoga should not be painful, but what is pain and how do we measure it? Some is required to move on, that is a universal truth.  If a student has never had a physical practice, like dance, or martial arts, this is something that doesn’t make sense. This element of the practice calls on wisdom; if it hurts like you’re going to need a stretcher after practice, it’s obviously not right. That said, it is not always that black or white, the levels of awareness that we develop as practitioners should be ripe enough to determine good pain v. bad pain. Sharath stressed on more than one occasion that we need to be intelligent enough to know what is too much, and I really believe this is where the practice leads us; it’s based on a tradition without room for modifications, but within this tradition, we need to be wise enough to develop a course of action i.e., backing off and coming back, prepping postures (I believe this is necessary), and moving through levels of discomfort with wisdom. Emphasis on wisdom.

“No coffee, no prana; no pain, no gain” – R. Sharath Jois

In a regime of superabundant free copies, copies lose value. They are no longer the basis of wealth. Now relationships, links, connection and sharing are. Value has shifted away from a copy toward the many ways to recall, annotate, personalize, edit, authenticate, display, mark, transfer and engage a work. Authors and artists can make (and have made) their livings selling aspects of their works other than inexpensive copies of them.

The time that used to be spent by the masses working through an idea, pen to paper style, that often would transform into a published work, a letter, a journal, etc., is often now reduced to an update on Facebook or Twitter. It then goes through the motions of “Likes” comments, and shares and becomes many times removed from the place in which it first began – your mind. All a result of our “burning need to share”; a viral instinct we all now have in common. Think about it, when you find something note worthy, or have something to say what do you do? I’ll be honest, I feel like updating my Facebook status because it satisfies the urge to express my idea faster than a well thought out and produced… who knows what? I think of the writers I like to read and what resulted from the times when they had something to say, and then I think, if I could just let some of these impulsive “updates” take shape, I’m not suggesting they would evolve to the works of Tolstoy, but perhaps they might have a longer life than that of my Facebook status. As these engineered snippets of ideas and information, mashed-up and looped together by and through the interweb library grow, it will only continue to change both the quality of the information and the way we receive it. “[it is] is going to change the way we learn and the way we share, and the profits that are made for original ideas, in a e-text future comprised of mash-ups.” I guess the thought of this shifts my “Illegal Art” paradigm, to one that is pretty bleak rather than radical and “cool.”

I have had Sargent Shriver’s address to Peace Corps volunteers in my head recently, considering a concept of service that I hadn’t thought of before. As an RPCV I still “volunteer” in areas that I feel I can be useful and where those I am serving can benefit from me, but I do “pick” and “choose” where I volunteer based on the direction of my career path. I’m not saying this is wrong in any way, I used to think it was somehow less authentic, giving to receive, but thinking about this quote over the past few days has changed what service is for me, and broadened it in a new way.

First, let me say, I’m well aware of the meaning of Slacktivism and I do not believe in causes that require a click of my Facebook self, or a viral status update, to be supportive–what else are we doing? And if we’re not doing anything else, does a simple click just make us feel better about not having the time to do anything? How much ‘awareness’ do a bunch of ‘Likes’ really create? How many organizations do we attach to our social media selves thinking that it is going to conjure change? Even if we’re doing it for our own benefit, to be “involved” with these organizations, the easier it is to be involved the less weight it holds when all is said and done. If the goal is peace, there are things we can do in our every day lives to cultivate this, adjustments of the ways in which we respond to situations, that may or may not require a paradigm shift, and a moment of counting to 10, but will do more to create peace than the ‘Like’ button.

I think about the times I have felt unappreciated in my day to day life, because I do work that others do not recognize, or I  will feel I should be paid more (I’m an adjunct, we should just take a vow of poverty and call it a day), or that the volunteering I do should be paid, because it requires more time than free work should, I have those days, and I know others who do too. Then I think, if I didn’t do this, who would and would he or she do it as well? Would anyone do it at all?

I have discussed this with friends of mine who are married or in relationships, a place where Resentment also crashes occasionally. I hear things like, I do everything and he or she doesn’t understand; she doesn’t know what it’s like, he doesn’t know what it’s like; I spend more time with the kids, etc. Hey, to each her and his own, I am no one to talk to about relationships – but – to whoever is doing the work, especially for a family, it’s getting done beautifully because you are doing it and, maybe, that’s your service. Don’t get me wrong, this certainly does not mean, roll out the carpet and start walking over everyone. I am just highlighting the element of selflessness in service that is challenging in the same way that it is to remove oneself from the resentful martyrdom of giving and not getting back, and you have to be intelligent enough to draw the line where that line needs to be drawn, but it does not lessen the impact of the work you do, if no one ever gives you credit for it.

This is slightly off subject, but I want to write about driving now, because the patience I have had to endure on the road has been monumental, no one needs to give me anything for it, I’m not asking, I just want to express how bad it has been (an aside, Carmageddon is not over, the driving in Buffalo is still apocalyptic) and really, the way people respond to others on the road, with their vehicles, is insane. I get it, I find myself behind people driving astonishingly slow sometimes, this has been happening for months, I’m certainly being tested for something, but that aside,  it is all I can focus on, wondering, “why the ___ are you driving so slow?” And it tries my patience. Still, the person in front of me isn’t doing it on purpose! They don’t deserve the negative juju radiating from my suddenly possessed car self; it’s probably someone’s grandpa going to buy cookies and I’m writhing in a fit of road rage, his own personal demon, all the way down the road, why? I just think that when we’re faced with these situations in our day to day lives, it might just take a deep breath and a reminder to maintain a Positive Mental Attitude (PMA), a mantra that should go on for lifetimes, but that is “the work”, we may not always get credit for it, no one may even know we did it, but that is what is authentic about it. Shriver ended the address encouraging to ” serve, serve, serve, … and shatter your mirrors.” Oh the difficulty of that in our age.

It begins with an essay by Annie Dillard, who I love for her Transcendentalist-like similarities.  She wrote a descriptive essay about a moth that is from a larger work entitled, Holy the Firm and appears as an excerpt in the anthology I chose for my students. She follows it with an additional essay, which explains why and how she wrote the essay. I was instantly drawn to this (yes, like a moth to a flame, lets just get the bad jokes out now), because I had a pet moth back in China days, and though Dillard seems to have paid more attention to her moth friend, I am almost sure Mothra does make a cameo somewhere in my archives.  After explaining at length where she was both geographically and personally during the time that she produced this work, and the strong impression left by the French philosopher and political activist, Simone Weil (crazy, but inspiring) whose journals she was reading at the time, three words emerged of necessity in her quest to find meaning as a writer: dedication, purity, and sacrifice.

I listened to my students discuss the essays they read, each of them adding in their commentary:

It’s really hard to be a writer; I had no idea what it was like to be a writer, but I realized that it is a really difficult thing to do; to be a writer you have to make a lot of sacrifices; a lot of time went into her essay; some writing is better than not writing at all, even if you don’t use it you’ll have it for later; I couldn’t understand why she wrote so much about that moth and then I realized it wasn’t just about a moth.

Dillard concludes asking her students if they really want to be writers, warning, “the choice must mean you can’t be anything else. You must go at your life with a broadax.” Sound familiar? Well if you have any kind of dream you are pursuing or practice you partake of regularly, it should. It all did to me, and after my second full week of before day light practice, everything began to look and feel quite different and similar at the same time.

My students write journal responses after each of the scheduled reading assignments, in addition to the required essays and the final research paper. I know it is a pain for them, but it is a vehicle for me to respond to their writing and allows them to be in a good practice of developing a natural tendency towards the questions we ask when we read—this doesn’t always come naturally. They often get frustrated with having to write so much because if they know their writing isn’t good, they don’t want to do it until it’s better, but it obviously takes time and practice to get there. I find myself advising students to keep writing no matter what it looks like, I will give feedback, and they will learn; keep practicing and it will come etc., and yes it works for both yoga and writers workshop. The sticking point for students is in the mind (for both types of students) and I am no stranger to this: I have had both writers block, and drop backs block and neither is fun. What is so fascinating is to be a student by morning and have my teacher give me advice in a discipline, and then find myself giving almost the same advice to my students hours later in a very different discipline, both of which I absolutely adore.

Richard Freeman writes that as yogis our job is to observe these patterns of conditioning, whether mental or physical; practice, and notice the freedom that unfolds from it.  As shocking as these experiences at times can be, they are also comforting because they are familiar; it’s when new experiences occur that I usually need a moment to except the fact that “I’ve never been here before, and what’s going on?” It is those very experiences that free up the space for more just like them. Patterned existence is a tough pill to swallow, yet it is one that provides comfort to the fearful and annually minded I suppose, but, like, I’m not talking about holidays and sometimes the proverbial “Wheel of Samsara” seems more like the wheel of a lab rat.

This is also mirrored on a physical level: when I travel and practice with other teachers for extended periods of time, for example, I am extremely impatient with myself through the adjustment period of new climates, new assists, new practices; I get frustrated, sore, agitated, annoyed etc. but once I pull myself through it the growth curve is huge. The way I see it, it is the new experiences, both mindful and physical, that are the ones that always produce the growth.

In Indian philosophy, some of the most brilliant I’ve ever read, the most difficult and important challenge is to conquer (as best we can) our mind. We live on memories, we live on thoughts, we live on past experiences, but the present place is always changing and cannot produce the same effects again and again, even those déjà vu moments of the present—their roots are in memory and the attachment we hold in keeping them in the present, experiencing them or fearing to experience them in the same way we did before—seeking out these moments with expectations of past results is where we find dissatisfaction.