Charleston Yogi

There is a class at Jivamukti Yoga on Sundays at noon that is called Family Yoga.  It is intended to be for all people of all ages and can be shared by any and all family members.  The teachings are simple and useful, there is a sense of fun, and songs that help students easily learn the movements.

It is my favorite class that I have the honor of teaching.  I am often so touched by family togetherness that I am moved to tears.  There have been students who bring in their sisters who visit from out of town, there have been father-son moments, and grandparents and small children who delight us all.  But most regular has been one family, who, come almost every Sunday, because they make it THEIR Family time.  Their time to BE and grow together!  Their time to stretch, and breathe, and SEE each other.  Often they go on a picnic or to the beach or even to the grocery store together afterwards.  But for that one hour, every Sunday, they practice together.   I revel in their beauty every week. 

Last Sunday they were telling me how they invite other families to join them, how they spread the word because they have experienced such value from the practice together.  They inspire me and I am so grateful to their dedication and enthusiasm.  They humble me and are a living example of light.  So may this, my first blog, be a sincere offering to this family who has shown me so much love.  Thank you. 

And thank you for coming to practice yoga together in my presence so many times over.  We invite more Charleston yoga families to join us! And look forward to growing, being, and seeing you more often.

This may upset you.  Or you may have never heard of any of this before.  You may not believe any of this.  You may not like any of this.

Good

There is a story in India about how they catch monkeys.  It seems they would take a coconut, cut a small hole in it and nail it to a tree, with the hole pointing out, parallel to the earth.  Inside it they would put a tasty treat.  A monkey comes along, sees the nice delight and sticks his hand inside, closing his fist around the morsel.  The hole is large enough only for the hand, not the closed fist, the monkey is trapped!!  He’ll remain there for days perhaps thoroughly baffled as to how he’s not able to have both this treat and his freedom.  Soon some trappers will come along, release the coconut from the tree and take our simian friend off to be sold into a circus or some other such fate.

See something here?  Sound like you?  Well it is, it’s all of us.  This idea of enlightenment we’ve been sold sounds great.  But can someone tell me exactly how tree pose will lead me to enlightenment?  And better yet, show me someone who it has worked for.  Come on, any idiot in a white coat can sell this acne cream, where are those 9 out of ten dentists, and why do lawyers use paid actors dressed up as lawyers to tell us we need them.

Ya want to know why.  They’re selling us something.  Yoga classes, books, prayer beads, peace of mind, all this stuff to lead us to non-attachment!

 ”Take it off the mat” they say.  Take what off the mat?  Exactly what?  And why?  And where did I get this, did I not have it before?  And where am I going to keep it in these little tight yoga shorts?

The minute we decide to take something off the mat (I’ll say apply a “Spiritual Concept”) we invest an interest in it, we have an expectation of the outcome an ATTACHMENT.  Practice, let things play themselves through without orchestrating every little aspect.  Quit TRYING to be enlightened, you’ll miss it when it happens.

We have an amazing knack of accessorizing the practice of Yoga.

Not too long ago I was subbing a class for another teacher.  A student came barging up to me and demanded, “Where’s—–, is she not teaching this class?”  “No”, I said.  She stormed out.

I stayed, taught the class and got paid.  I don’t know what she did, I know I didn’t suffer any.

Do you want to know how addicted you are to your attachments?  Use the other hand for a day, brush your teeth in the opposite direction, put your keys in the opposite pocket. 

I taught a class recently to illustrate this point.  I had the students, many of them dedicated regulars, switch sides of the room, and then switch rows!!  There was definitely some tension.  But, many of them almost immediately recognized the purpose of the exercise (remember, they are dedicated regulars) and laughed at their own discomfort.  I was ecstatic.  I encourage everyone to try this, it can change your life.

We have an amazing knack of turning a liberating practice into a binding one.

Yoga teaches that without practicing non-harming (अहिंसा ahiṁsā) realizing the goal of Yoga (samādhi समाधि) is much more difficult.  Notice I didn’t say “Jivamukti” or “Anusara” or some other style?  It’s because the idea is a fundamental and universal one, not particular to a certain style.  It’s expounded upon, made into sutra, verse, chapter, story, allegory, and even the qualities of God Himself are associated with it, it forms the BASIS of Yoga fundamentals and yet…. Don’t like it?  Shop around, you’ll find a teacher/class that will re-enforce your attachment.  A good example is if a student says “What about this vegetarian thing?”, the teacher may say “Well, I think it’s a personal decision, so I don’t teach it.”

Go to a driving instructor and see if when asked about the need to use a turn indicator they say the same.  When you put two of us together with our attachments-LOOK OUT!! 

We have an amazing knack of re-enforcing and justifying our attachments.

Darwin tells us we’re evolved from primates.

I think that may be true, bigger bodies and brains-more advanced thought capacity.  Bigger more complex attachments.

If our simian friend had it to do again from a different perspective, do you think that little scrap of food is worth more to him than his freedom, he had alot of time to think about it while he stood there.  All he had to do was let go, though.  Not analyze the hell out of it.

We have an amazing knack of complicating simple matters.

लोकः समस्तः सुखिनो भवन्तुः

lokaḥ samastaḥ sukhino bhavantuḥ

As I’ve begun my journey as a new yoga teacher over the past year, I’ve been thinking a great deal about the essence or heart of yoga. What is it exactly about yoga that makes me passionate both as a student and now a teacher?

It’s difficult of course to talk about THE heart of yoga, since yoga means many different things to many different people. One of the most noticeable aspects of the modern-day yoga community here in the States is the incredible diversity of reasons why people come to a yoga class. If you were to conduct a poll of people entering any given yoga studio and ask “Why did you come today?”, I think you would be amazed at the variety of responses.

Some are coming simply for a good workout. Some are coming for a personal oasis during the day – a chance to get away from the job, the to do list, the day-to-day grind. Some are coming to recover from injuries and wounds, both physical and psychological. And some come seeking the more spiritual aspects of the yoga tradition – to discover their true selves and perhaps find a little bliss along the way.

I think it’s quite a positive thing that many people are coming to a yoga practice from so many different perspectives. I think it actually speaks to (if you will excuse the pun) the flexibility of yoga in meeting a wide-range of needs of the modern person. Not bad for a tradition that’s been around for several millennia.

As I go into this question of the heart of a yoga practice, I realize that I can only really speak for myself and from my own experiences along the path. I am also a firm believer in the maxim “One Truth, Many Paths” – that there is a multitude of ways to express the same perennial truth. I realize that my words are, at best , mere fingers pointing at the moon.

Even though I can only speak of the heart of my yoga practice, I still think these thoughts may be helpful to someone at the beginning of their yoga path or someone interested in seeing things from a different perspective.

So, I come to this question: when I am teaching a yoga class to a group of students, what am I really trying to get across, what am I really hoping to share with them?

The heart of what I hope to cultivate in a yoga class – whether as teacher or student – is essentially an inner experience. It isn’t so important to me that I or anyone else perfects any one particular posture. I don’t think there is anything magical about an asana in and of itself – as if doing a perfect Virabhadrasana II is the mysterious ticket to everlasting nirvana. I think some people were born to do the uber-flexible advanced postures of yoga – but many of us aren’t.

I’m also not particularly interested in advancing a particular belief system. I think yoga’s current appeal in the West in terms of spiritual matters is that it offers a way of relating to spirituality – of connecting to the sacred, to the divine, to God – that isn’t about believing one particular way or subscribing to a specific dogma.

I believe yoga’s true gift (though it obviously doesn’t belong exclusively to yoga) is an inner experience of transformed awareness. In other words, yoga provides a radically new way of feeling our connection to the world and a transformed way of experiencing ourselves.

As we relax, expand, and open both the body and mind throughout the course of a yoga class, we clear a space within ourselves that is ordinarily cluttered by all the anxieties, fears, tensions, and doubts of our fast-paced lives. Within this cleared, open space, something else, something deeper, something more profound finally has the chance to speak.

If we are bold enough to listen, we find that it is our true selves – a self not exclusively rooted, however, to the narrow confines of me and mine, my story and my wants. This open, expanded self doesn’t necessarily reject what we feel we need and want in life, but it puts it all in a fresh, expanded perspective. I personally don’t subscribe to the notion that a spiritual practice is meant to help us transcend our earthly existence, as if there is something wrong with being a living, breathing human being on planet earth. In fact, my experience has been that a yoga practice helps us reconnect to the splendor of just being who we are, in a gorgeously interdependent world of plants, animals, sunshine, mountains, and all the wonders of life.

This newfound connection to life, brought about by the transformation of our consciousness, offers not just a solution to our modern sense of alienation and dissatisfaction, but also offers a blueprint for relating in a more ethical and responsible way to our fellow human beings and our ecological environment.

At this point, you may be asking: isn’t this a tall order for an hour-long asana class, often scheduled between one student’s business meeting and another’s commute to pick the kids up from school? Well, in my opinion, the heart of yoga doesn’t reside within the walls of any one yoga studio, nor does it always involve a yoga mat. Yoga is a transformative way of living one’s life, right here and now, whether you are attempting a headstand or folding the laundry, whether in deep meditation or looking into the eyes of your loved one.

I hope these thoughts bring some new inspiration and insight to your practice, whether you are just beginning or have been at it for many, many years. Yoga can mean a lot of things to a lot of different people, so I share this not to convince you of the “right” way to do yoga, but to hopefully inspire you to find the heart of your yoga practice.

I had a really phenomenal experience this past Sunday morning teaching a yoga class to a dance group at the College of Charleston. About a dozen people showed up for the class, which took place in a beautiful dance room located inside the brand new Cato Arts Center on the CofC campus. In preparing for the class, I did a lot of thinking about what a yoga practice might offer people who are passionate about dance and creative movement.

One of the central aspects of yoga is cultivating a harmonious relationship between mind and body. Such harmony is of course essential to creating beautiful and graceful movement in dance. In many Eastern spiritual paths, the mind and the body are seen as equal halves of an integral whole. This is the philosophy of yin and yang: things that appear to be opposites – light and dark, tall and short, earth and sky, spirit and flesh – are in fact inseparably connected with one another.

In Western culture, however, there is a very rigid division between mind and body. In the last year, I’ve stumbled upon a number of brilliant Western thinkers who have addressed this division and the disharmony is creates in individuals.

The first is Sir Ken Robinson, an expert on human creativity, who gave a brilliant address at the 2006 TED Conference on creativity in children and whether or not educational systems around the world do an adequate job of fostering that creativity. (The whole talk is worth watching, but the part I’ll be focusing on begins around the 9:00 minute mark).

During his talk, he spoke about the fact that almost all schools around the world tend to place a great emphasis on language and mathematics over the arts, particularly drama and dance. He says: “As children grow up, we start to educate them progressively from the waist-up. Then we focus on their heads – and slightly to one side.”

He goes on to describe what type of person this emphasis on head-only education creates, particularly in the form of the stereotypical academic professor: “They live in their heads. They live up there – and slightly to one side. They’re disembodied, in a kind of literal way. They look upon their body as a form of transport for their heads. It’s a way of getting their heads to meetings.”

Another brilliant thinker I’ve come across in the past year is Alan Watts, who came to popular attention during the 1960’s as an interpreter of Eastern spiritual traditions (especially Zen Buddhism) for Western audiences. In one of his talks featured on YouTube, delightfully illustrated by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, he addresses this split between mind and body that exists in the West and how it shapes our sense of self.

“I’ve always been tremendously interested in what people mean by the word “I” – because it comes out in curious lapses of speech. We don’t say: “I am a body.” We say: “I have a body.” Somehow we don’t seem to identify ourselves with all of ourselves. We say “my feet,” “my hands,” “my teeth,” as if they were something outside me. As far as I can make out, most people feel that they are something or other about halfway between the ears and a little ways behind the eyes, inside the head. That’s what you call the “ego.” That’s not what you are at all, because it gives you the idea that you are a chauffeur inside your own body – as if you your body were an automobile and you are the chauffeur principle inside it.”

The point that both Robinson and Watts are making is that when we identify primarily with our mind and our thoughts, we disconnect ourselves from our bodily existence. The results are usually disastrous, particularly in our modern culture. We stuff food into our mouths that are deeply gratifying to the mind (products high in fat and processed sugar) but which are nutritionally disastrous to the body. On the opposite extreme, we flock to gyms in order to sculpt our bodies into an idealized mental image of what we should like like – usually based on digitalized media images of the super skinny or ultra buff.

What is lacking is a deep listening to the wisdom of the body. Oftentimes, we only start to listen when we are forced to, usually as a result of an illness or life-threatening condition. Many people then realize that they must flip their entire life-style upside down and start living from a more holistic understanding of themselves.

Many of these people, of course, find their way to yoga classes and meditation retreats. A great deal of the popularity of such practices as yoga, tai chi, and seated meditation are found in the fact that they help cultivate a holistic way of looking at the world and our place in it. These practices are based on the realization that the mind and body form an inseparable wholeness – just as each individual human being, animal, or plant is an integral part of the interdependent environment in which they live. The process of yoga, in my mind, is a process of extending the feeling of identity outwards, away from the narrow confines of our egos, and connecting with our bodies, our communities, the planet, and the universe.

In the yoga class I taught to the dance group, I continually encouraged the participants to focus on their breath. The breath is an incredible tool for helping us cultivate mind/body harmony. Mindful breathing helps us turn down the volume on our mental noise so that the wisdom of the body may begin to be heard. A yogi or dancer can then begin to truly feel his or her body. They can begin to discover where they are tight or sore, where they hold anxiety or stress, in what movements they feel confident or terrified. This deep listening to the body can give us insight into the ways we live and in what ways we may need to change.

When the body and mind begin to move and function as one, we become more effective in what we do, we become more graceful and effortless in our actions, we become less worried and anxious in our inner lives. This is obviously helpful not just on the yoga mat or on the dance stage, but in all aspects of our lives.

So the question is… What might your body be trying to tell you? And if you start to really listen, what changes would begin to happen in your life?

~ Matthew Foley

           On Friday evening, my husband and I went to Voodoo Lounge for their delicious tacos during happy hour.  Mattie had a few beers throughout the evening, but I do not drink.  Over the years, I found that my yoga practice actually taught my body to reject alcohol in most forms.  On special occasions such as weddings or New Year’s celebrations, I will have a small glass of champagne.  For the most part, I steer clear because my body tells me to do so, but tonight was different.  For some reason, my body said, “Tequila.”

            The last time I had tequila was over two years ago at a bar downtown.  I used to love tequila; it was certainly my liquor of choice.  I always preferred it to everything else, beer included.  Our last encounter was messy and was a red flag – my body just did not want exposure to the stuff any longer.  So, why was tonight different?  What was going inside of my body that made me desire tequila?  After a short discussion about varieties with the waitress, I finally decided.  Within moments, there it was – a shot glass of clear liquid.  My body taught me for so long to run the other way.  I figured there must be something to learn.  Perhaps my body wanted me to experience this differently and in light of my practice.

            There were about a dozen lime slices on a couple plates in front of me.  My husband looked on surprised and concerned; he knows I do not drink for anyone or any reason.  I said to him, “My mother told me once that tequila makes you brave.  It is not like any other liquor in the world.  I wonder why that is?”  Mattie replied, “I hate the stuff.  It makes me shake.”  I brought the shot glass to my lips, took a deep breath, and sipped.  I did not throw it back.  There was a lesson inside the tiny vessel and I needed to pay attention.  My tongue recoiled and the heat went down my throat and erupted inside my chest, as if encasing my heart in a sauna.

            I thought: “This is why I do not drink.”  The tequila felt like an invader.  It felt like spiritual oppression.  It felt as though the sip was someone I allowed into my body to overtake it, to ravage it, to harm me.  But this small voice inside encouraged me to continue.  Each sip was terrible – yes, awful.  I bit deeply into the limes and felt respite there.  I had never used salt or lime in the past.  After taking the invader into my mouth and then biting deeply into the lime slice, I realized that my body craved that natural fruit.  The taste was soothing and peaceful.  Tequila was a predator.

            I said to Mattie, “So, tequila comes from blue agave, a plant that grows in high altitudes and dry, sandy soil.  I wonder if its effects upon a person are similar to those conditions.”  My husband is in mid-bite, wondering why I am trying to justify my alcohol venture with a deep discussion.  He just wants to eat and drink his beer, but I am truly thinking this through.  If I were in an arid climate with high altitudes, I would feel a little loopy.  I would follow a thought process not typical of me.  Over time without much water, I would feel my body ration out every last bit until all that was left of me was – well, a hallucinating mess.  Is that why it makes you “brave”?

            The very last sip of that shot glass made me giggle involuntarily.  Mattie could not believe his wife was wasted after a shot.  I wasn’t, but I was different.  I was affected.  That small amount of tequila reminded me so much of why I practice yoga.  Pranayama and asana have the opposite effects of alcohol.  When I practice, I am protecting my mind, my body, my spirit, and my heart.  I gain control over the physical aspects of self in order to harness the others.  Alcohol wreaks havoc on my efforts.  It is a thief.  I sat in that booth in Voodoo Lounge, practicing my yoga with greater ferocity because an enemy was in my body.  I allowed myself to succumb in order to be and to learn.

            On Friday night, tequila was a slimy guy in a bad suit, whispering sweet nothings in my ear.  There was a battle inside: tequila enamored me, but also repulsed me.  It soothed me, but also terrified me.  I think that is the nature of things that contradict the yogic practice.  They have very similar results, but deep down one can feel the betrayal of self and of Divine Truth.  Tequila can be an escape much like yoga, but the difference is that the latter shows you reality.  The former pulls you deeper into illusion.  Nonetheless, tequila taught me an important lesson, that all things and all people can teach you so long as you sit near and listen.

Peace be with you,
Natasha Alexandra Akery

http://www.yeshuyoga.blogspot.com