25 Random Things About Yoga

Click Here to read 25 Random Things About Yoga…on the Huffington Post.

YC

Well…maybe it’s a good thing.

I googled myself. I was trying to determine if Google had yet “crawled” this new blog address and included it in searches. What I found was that (a) no and (b) it seems that my image has become synonymous with my bitching and whining about Ashtanga, at least lately.

It’s always a warm, fuzzy feeling when I find links to my writing, especially when said links are preceded with, “I thought this was smart” or “Check out this funny piece” or even “This inspired me” (okay, that one is rare, usually occurring approximately once per year, around the month of October, when pink pervades). But I was shocked (I don’t know why I should be shocked) and dismayed to see some of the reactions to Five Words That Do Not Belong In Yoga, as presented and linked to by other bloggers. Apparently, I’m perceived by some to be “bitter” and “going through” some sort of “thing”. As if I can’t have just fallen out of love with this particular yoga system. I am also, apparently, perceived to be personally attacking the ENTIRE population of Ashtanga teachers, and individually attacking all of my own teachers, without exception.

Apparently, my communication skills are not what they should be. Either that, or people read what they need to read into my writing, my criticism of certain aspects of the practice (FIVE WORDS, people. FIVE WORDS. Not the entirety of the system), in order to remain confident in their own choices.

I do know that I stand firm on this: criminal, crank, bad, cheating and pain are five words that do NOT belong in any yoga practice unless to say that it is criminal to crank a person into a pose, that it is bad to feel pain in the context of yoga and that cheating is just another way of saying “yes I can”.

YC

Hello…………………

This is very weird for me to be blogging here. Is anyone out there? I think so, based on my newly discovered “Blog Stats” feature on my WordPress Dashboard. Not that that should be important…and yet it is somehow. It’s like, I can’t write anything coherent if I don’t think someone is going to read it.

Unfortunately, Blogger.com seems to be a lost cause for me. Can’t get rid of the malware warning, and truth be told, I think they are very very real: after repeat visits to my blog (my OLD blog, now, sigh), my laptop needed some reconfiguring before I could turn it on this evening.

Talk about an exercise in non-attachment.

YC

Cranked, yanked, spanked

Today, on another blog, I read this: “[P]eople sometimes lose faith in their teachers. I wonder if it isn’t more about a loss of faith in one’s self that then gets projected on the teacher. I wonder if that isn’t the root of teacher discontent.”

I knew who this was directed to, since I am, at the moment, the poster child for “loss of faith” in teachers, and since this particular blogger recently deleted a comment of mine that questioned the sanity of desperately attempting to go deeper in poses that our bodies (aging bodies, I might add) simply are not meant to go deeper in. I had written that perhaps there is a “wall” at which progress stops, and why fight it?

Deleted. Truth hurts, huh?

Anyway, I would like to address it here.

It’s my blog after all, and I would rather expend my words here, than waste them …well…there. So here goes:

Of course, I can’t answer for everybody, but I know why I have lost interest in being “taught” yoga by a yoga teacher (with some exception). It is because I have come to a point in my practice where I totally understand what is going on in my body and where I totally know what my body needs on any given day.

A projection of loss of faith in my SELF?! HA! Not even one bit true. It is the opposite of true.

I am a senior teacher of yoga…of myself. When it comes to teaching me, it doesn’t get more senior than this. I am the expert, plain and simple, inside and out. I know what my body needs, what my body tolerates, what feels good and what causes pain. I choose not to have my body cranked and yanked into poses. I choose to honor my body by keeping it safe from harm caused by teachers who think that we WANT our shoulders dislocated and our spines bent the wrong way (newsflash: the thoracic spine is not meant to be bent in the same direction as the lumbar spine). Well, maybe some of you do. But I no longer see the point.

Yeah, see, I don’t feel the need to seek approval from a teacher, and I don’t need my Intermediate Series “validated” by anyone other than me. God knows, the people who actually matter in my life don’t even know what the fuck I’m talking about right about now.

I am not so desperate to prove…I don’t know…something…about my body, about myself, about my youth, about wielding control over the aging process…that I have any urge at all to get INJURED on a daily basis. And that is what some people are doing. Injuring themselves daily. Getting cranked, yanked, and, basically, spanked. For WHAT? To come back tomorrow and do it again? To grumble about my feelings of inferiority because I will only ever “graze my toes” in Kapotasana?

My backbends ARE inferior to some of those out there. Hell, they’re inferior to many. Halle-fuckin-lujah…I still get to the mat, and I still run, and I still hike, and I still use my body in any way that I desire and any way that I am able. I’m not saving it for the mat. Who gives a rat’s ass?

I like to feel good. All I get when I get put into Kapotasana by a teacher is ripped tricep muscles. I’m over it.

YC

I will now talk about Yoga

Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

Fifty-Cent Word, blah blah blah. Fifty-Five-Cent Word, blah blah blah blah.

Blah-blahasana. I practiced it eighteen BILLION times today. Blah blah blah. It’s not about the physical blah blah blah. I only do it for the spiritual blah blah blah.

Famous Yogi says blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Sanskrit-blah blah blah. Hindu god blah blah blah blah. Don’t remind me of the truth because I will destroy you blah blah blah.

What the world needs now is love sweet blah blah blah, peace, save the children, save the rescue dogs, hate all things republican but love love love, blah blah blah.

Blah blah blah, if you don’t agree with me, you’re stoooopit and just not very good at backbends. Blah blah blah.

YC