Stories

Thanks for all the feedback!  This is a very new venture for me and according to many, may create world peace by me (anonymously known as Dood the Unblink) finding an outlet for my overwhelming abundance of energy that goes to turbulence with little or no warning. 

     Am I opinionated? Yes.

     Wandering a bit?  Yes.  What in nature really has straight lines anyway?

     Do I go round and round in little circles barking at shadows.  Of course!  What dry scholarly text book holds ones interest for very long anyway?  Seen your life lately?

With all of that said I may as well plunge in and talk about what I do for a living.

I tell stories. 

  
    I tell stories as I teach to lend life and purpose to what you are doing in class and hopefully out of class. How will that help you?  I don't know.  But I do know that stories are what we do as this odd and ever anxious species homo sapiens sapiens (I don't know why the second sapiens, I got it the first time) continues to ramble across the plains of Terra Firma heading toward ever new vistas of whatever the new vistas happen to be concealing at the time.
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    I heard stories from the time I was in my mothers womb (which means there were things going on before I stepped out of the escape pod) and so did you.  I heard the stories of the Wandering Children of Israel.  Stories of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn.  Stories from Pogo Possum and The Hobbit.  Stories that preachers made up to make us feel guilty so we would continue to go to church.  Stories of my family.  All kinds of stories.  Some of them true, some not so true, but most highly entertaining.

     As a venue for stories I currently teach a Western form of Yoga based on the ambitious teachings of one, John Friend founder of Anusara Yoga.  Although currently in the Naughty Chair, he developed a system that is clean and powerful, well suited for the communication of stories.  I integrate some of his concepts with others that I learned through Pilates and Qi Gong. All of the above passed on a great deal of information to me both as a student and a teacher including stories from India, China and Japan.  One important facet is the fact that Yoga does have old origins and it, as a practice for well being, is still valid here in our Western 21st century. 

     Primarily the Western focus is on the asana practice, that is, the postures.  The postures are only one aspect however.  If you dig further than the cover of any current yoga rag or yoga workshop where they attempt to manipulate you into doing something you don't what to practice at home alone, you may discover a whole new world awaiting you.  That is essentially what I try to pass on to people in my classes.  There is more to the asana than meets the eye.  There are stories upon stories upon stories.  All of them true and none of them true (that's Esoterica 101).  All of them personal to you.

     The stories give us a reference point from which to move and live and breathe.  They tell us how it might have been done by another one of our simian cousins and how we might too, do the same.

Let's start with the physical aspect first since this is what is most readily available to our senses.  The word asana originally had connotations relating to sitting.  A handy reference for this is Pantajali's Yoga Sutras.  Pick a translation, any translation, open it (very important!) and see what it says.   Asana are one of the eight branches of this man's compilation of wisdom set down a long time ago.  I hesitate to say when simply because no one really knows and various scholars of repute have cast down their reed as to when it was (as well as their gauntlets, reputations and spittle).  Few of them agree when. There seems to be this weird mythology that indicates that the older something is the greater it's authenticity.  I don't know that to be true or not, but whether it's 200BC or 200AD really doesn't seem to impinge on the material for your practice.

     Pantajali recommended four basic postures.  Yep, just four and they were all for the purposes of stabilizing the body-mind for developing your consciousness so you could wake up with ease. More simply put, seated meditation.   Yup, that annoying practice from the East that indicates there is great benefit to sitting perfectly still.  In the West, we find that will simply not do!  Sit still?  What about my figure?  What about my schedule?  Are we not already awake?  I need to move, I need, I need, I need, I want, I want, I want.  And so on it goes.  Monkey chasing weasel, ad infinitum, ad naseum. 

But wait!  Don't we have cuniform pictures of men in yoga postures? 

     They were sitting.  Moreover, the Saravasti-Harrapan script has yet to be deciphered so we don't know what the dude with horns on his head was really doing or why he was sitting there in the first place.  There are only so many things one can do with ones legs whilst sitting on a dais. Was that a classical Hatha Yoga posture?  Probably he was telling a story.  That, my friends, is what I try to communicate.  

     A story woven into an asana can allow one to penetrate the Forest of Brambles (sorry, switching to some Zen metaphors) that keeps us hindered from what we think this life is for or simply what the practice of the day is.  One major part of this dark forest (whether discovered mid-way or mid-life) is the long held and cherished belief that we know what our life is for and the purpose thereof.

    Yoga wants to mess with that.  Have you ever looked closely at the deities associated with Indian yoga?  Not much of a tender embrace by any of them.  There are plenty of sharp, nasty, wicked implements of destruction in their many armed forms. Not very nicey, nicey.  Even Lakshmi wants your total attention, remember, she is a goddess and goddess's are known for their jealousy (kind of like that beast slouching across the Mideast, zealous for his name and not much else). But the stories are there to guide you through the brambles (with sharp, nasty points that tear at our new yoga uniforms) and lead you to....what?  Another forest of brambles?  That has a contingency placed on it.  Depending on when you find the practice and what you do with it will determine just how smoothly you move through this vast this untamed wilderness that you really are.  The stories tell us this is what happens sometimes, just more brambles.  We grow up a certain gender, race, belief system, culture and education within the aforementioned and then we want the practice to change everything but that.  We expect a partial practice to free us from everything we believe we don't want.  We want to have our cake and eat it without paying for it.  Climbing the rough trail of Cold Mountain the stories have little to do with your cake or really what you think anyway.  The stories and practice of liberation are just that, stories and practice of liberation!  Yes?  The asana are just the physical aspect of that liberation.  They, the faithful and sometimes troubling asana, will tell you physically right where you are and will tell you very clearly what you may not want to hear.  But once more from the Zen masters, having crossed to the other shore you might just lift your eyes and see, there in the distance, the other shore.

     

     Maybe asana are not where your yoga practice is to be.  Too many of my friends report injuries sustained whilst engaging in a practice designed for warrior training or asana practices that have degenerated into just another Western cardio-vascular work out.  Many sutras and good teachers will ask for "some information first, just the basic facts, can you show us where it hurts?" (thanks, Pinkananda).  With seven other branches to choose from you may need just one (1ea.) sitting posture to allow the others to blossom in you.  Focusing on one alone is an imbalance.  Focusing on none is a travesty and a hidden patch of tar. But wherever you are or imagine you are in your practice, just practice.  Pick one aspect and do that.  Do that with awareness of the thread of the others being woven into the very tapestry of your life.

Now that's a story.

Puffed and Reckless

Quite a bit has surfaced over the last few weeks concerning, one, John Friend, and the resulting fallout around the system he developed entitled "Anusara".  Even with a current limited reading I felt that I needed to express myself about this matter and my experience (in brief) with Anusara, even as the tale (full of sound and fury) unfolds in more twisted and convoluted forms.
When I first came across the Anusara method of Yoga I was looking for a certification program to help organize what I had been teaching at the local Y for a few years. I had by 2006 roughly 12 year of Pilates training and teaching (mentor Julian Littleford of JL Bodyconditioning, Inc.), some dabbling in the martial arts world and Qi Gong.  In April of 2003 the Y had asked me to start teaching a yoga class and with my background in patterns found in the above mentioned systems I was able to put together something that looked like a yoga class. Armed with a copy of Pantajali's Yoga Sutras and Iyengars "Light on Yoga" I bravely ventured into the world of Encinitas Yoga.
I had no idea what kind of shit was about to go down (a nod to Bob Dylan).
I had been exposed to New Age thought (everthing from Madam Blavatsky to Kryon to Edgar Cayce, Seth and Egyptian Tarot, Erik van Daniken et al from the 70's and 80's occult "in vogue" crowed) since the tender age of 15 and the grand and eloquent stories of the Bible (New and Old Testaments and various denominational interpretations thereof) for my entire life (from the womb on up or should I say "out"?).  Familiar with dogmatic thinking mixed with magical fantasy I thought all such jiggered  traits would simply fade with the wonderful teachings of love and light dawning on the light of my burgeoning consciousness.  Everyone would get along, truth would prevail, puppy dogs and Popsicles for all and sundry.  Amen.
Ah, but where humans and their basic character exists, so also does something wicked.  And by the pricking of my thumbs it came quickly.
I was at that time struggling with the faith of my Protestant/Baptist fathers and finding one too many holes in the story.  So many, in fact, that my "faith" leaked out all over the ground.  Here, I thought, with so many "spiritual" people I would find my home, fulfill my destiny, achieve enlightenment and not ever have to come back to this vale of tears again.
The cant of love and light, world peace and personal sacrifice to a higher good after awhile began to sound all too familiar.  Had I just changed my faith from Jesus to Shiva?  From Yahweh, that fierce god of the deserts to Brahma, the only One who is really Real? But hooks sunk in deep inducing one to follow the leader (more likely dragged along by my addictions both genetic and learned) who spoke with the most vehemence and authority are not easily removed.  Names are easy to change, hard wiring not so easy.
But I digress.
I landed at Zen Mountain Center in 2002 at a yoga workshop in my search for the "Way".  Cool.  Gotta love those Zennies.  Sit down and shut up.  Far out man.  But there has to be more so on I trudged. In my crises (don't laugh, we all have a crisis or two along the way) I went back up in April of 2004 and began my formal Zen training (does that make me a "Zennie"?  Are you ready to get whacked?).  The teachings of Maezumi Roshi as passed on through Charles Tenshin Fletcher, Roshi, began to give me an ease in my skin that the casuistic observations of the Encinitas yoga cabal had stirred up. So still being dragged (by the noose of Ganesha perchance?) I attended a workshop by a local Anusara Certified Teacher in April of 2006 (still questionable just how certified she really was at the time and why she never came clean with me about the matter until 2011. Hints don't count.  Cleverly phrased dissuasion's don't either.).  Whew, that was a long parentheses.
 Her manner of teaching (assured, bold, unhesitating as she declaimed her view of the universe), the weaving of a theme (probably some of the inane "heart opening" drivel that infests Anusara unto this day) throughout and the emphasis on alignment  left me with the feeling that here was something worth pursuing.  It also persuaded me to give up a neat sum of money.  I still think it was well spent.  On many levels.  And let the record stand in the eyes of the congregation of the righteous that I still consider her one of the best yogasana teachers hands down anywhere.  Other matters stand distinct from that (such as science, how to treat your allies and the uses of whiskey before and after class).
Where does ol. JF come into all of this?  He presented and evolved a beautiful way of not only doing yogasana, but opened a way for me (through her skill at teaching) to use these "principals" to bring to life the postures and see them in my life.  A different view of the world of yoga from northern India  was made available for my perusal (Kashmir Shaivism to be specific).  A view that was all inclusive of every aspect of my homo sapiens self without the attendant shame, guilt and repression that my upbringing and local yoga teachers emphasized. This all was really cool stuff, man.  JF held the bar high.  I felt challenged, honored even, to be engaged "the" avaunt guarde system of the day, nay of the epoch even. We were going to change the world! But he held the bar high, so high in fact that only by following a strict curriculum was one allowed to ascend to the throne of his specially elect.  I struggled for  five long years to reach that bar and was repeatedly told by my teacher that I was not good enough.  Bummer, huh?  Through all of this I persevered until the miasmic stench of a cultic mentality around JF became so pervasive I began backing away from another attempt at presenting myself for further evisceration. Here is a brief timeline as I perceive it.
In April of 2006 I discovered Anusara.  After graduating the basic Immersion, Teacher Training and Apprentice requirements I assisted in all but one Immersion series til the closing of the studio in August of 2011.
 In February of 2007 I met the man and was wowed along with everyone else. He wore his love like heaven.
In May of 2008 I found myself bored to tears with his grandstanding, personal myth embellishment and the endless clapping after someone born to do pretzel poses did just that.
I started getting nervous.
And then during 2010 the dam began to leak.
I really got nervous and after a final fit of enduring my teachers verbal torture I stepped back.
2011 JF boldly declared he was gonna take over where ol' Yogananda had left off (bad idea in Encinitas).
May of 2011. He personally declared to me that he was going to annex a local Anusara yoga studio to abet his new "The Center" that was across the street.  Literally, across the street.
That didn't happen.
The aforementioned Yoga studio closed August of 2011 amongst much weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth.
  September/October 2011. Teachers began to leave the Anusara fold for various reasons.  All of them saccharine and not necessarily honest (no longer in alignment?  Why not just tired of the bullshit and the sex games, the business ethics, the megalomania?  After all, he is just "human" isn't he?).  Kinda like the Iran-contra deal and Reagan's secret wars in Latin and South America.  They never happened did they.
Then it broke   Now a little over a moth ago. The whole shebang came crashing down.  I watched with disbelief as so much that was so good went so wrong so quickly.   I read the denials, the half-truths, the hidden innuendos, the bravado.  There are those who knew for years.  Woe unto them!  JF has been letting his knickers down for years and they stood by and did nothing?  I still feel sick to my stomach when I think about that.  Supporting and enabling a puffed and reckless libertine excuses no one with any labyrinthine platitude about his being human!  What is this nonsense about "practice being above all of that" and "its the good he did for yoga that counts not this recent slip, he is after all only human", "the practice teaches us to forgive and forget" and other such silly and vacuous statements.  Let us not forget his bragging (bragging?! Are we in a high school locker room?) about having sex with employees, married women, and others. Unethical business practices and for Pete's sake, who brings a camera to bed with your partner(s) save a narcissistic  heiress or rock n' roll star!  He's not Ken Stabler for goodness sakes! We expected that of the Quarterback of the infamous Raiders!  Now  we read JF wants to re-establish control from afar and go to Jerusalem to pray for world peace.  Are you kidding me? Alas, what's done cannot be undone.
As for me and my household, I will continue to use the principles and loops, the themes and study of the Kashmir sutras.  But I will also use common sense, and recognize the other centers in the body besides the heart.  Emphasizing one of three creates an imbalance and look what just tipped over.  Being honest I am a bit put out.  That's being honest.  Like when I discovered the lies inherent in Western Christianity, I was and am still perturbed.  I don't like it when people mess with my head. But I can recognize what is the wheat from the chaff.  I will set forth on my painted pony (not forgetting my handkerchief) and continue up the trail of Cold Mountain.  There are white clouds there I wish to see and I hear the view is great with plenty of room for all.
What will become of yoga in the West after this fresh round of lies and deceit?  My hope is that it will, like a dandelion come to seed, find a fresh wind to carry those seeds in many new directions.  Perchance a look at our own practice, demagogues and teachings from the East might show us a way to settle our hunter/gatherer instincts and bring about a pliability to our thinking as our environment changes.  In the meantime, the prelude has hardly ended.  Hang on to your hat, this could be a long ride down the rabbit hole.