Disclaimer: I'm not an expert on yogic texts. And I will probably miss the mark a lot on terminology and what is meant. These are just my passing thoughts about stuff. Because I spend all day thinking. You know. 'Bout stuff.
According to Patajanli's Yoga Sutras, there are 8 Limbs that make up a yogic lifestyle. The second limb is known as Niyamas, or observances. Disciplines. Things to practice in order to stop being a such a jerk all the time.
The Niyama* that's been all up in my grill lately is called Tapas. And no, it's not the one that dictates that you go out and eat a lot of tiny appetizers. Tapas literally means "heat" in Sanskrit, which is connotative of burning off excesses. Which makes me think of the word "austerity". Did your eye just start twitching when you
saw the word "austerity"? Mine did. Man, do I ever hate that word. It's
on my list right after the phrase "tighten our belts" and "do more with
less". I work for the NYS government, so phrases like that really get my
g-string** in a jumble. Plus, my kid goes to a public school, and it's
been my experience that the term "austerity" used before the word
"budget" is never, ever a good thing.
But.
I'm not talking about that do-more-with-less bullshit
that seems to be flung around with wild abandon not only in my office,
but almost everyone's office these days. It's said to make employees
feel like crap for trying to do their jobs, to place the blame on the
workers when a bottom line goes into the red. By that logic, doing more
less means that eventually, you will be doing everything with nothing.
I'm not a fan of that kind of logic.
Sorry, I got a little off-track there with my prole-spiel. Anyway, what I get from Tapas in
the Sutras is that you don't need lots of extra baggage. You know that
saying about how the stuff you own will eventually own you***? That.
THAT'S what I think Tapas means. It's not practical to live
without certain things like reliable transportation or a computer if you
drive to the office every day, especially if you have a family that
looks to you for financial support. There's an implied hierarchy there:
Yes, don't have lots of stuff, but if your kids are starving because you
gave away your car and you can't get to work, GET A CAR DUMBASS. Feed
kids first, then give away your stuff. Or something.
Here's my take-away bullet-point re: Tapas. I've recently
given up some things. No need to go into gory details because, as I like
to say, Noneya****. And I sweated a lot over giving up those things. I
tend to pull my things around me when I'm backed into a corner, feel
dread about my future, or if something has gone horribly wrong in my
life. I don't even mean physical belongings. Honestly, I could give two
shits about belongings. I've bought, thrown away, sold, or given away
more possessions than I could ever account for. I'm talking about
habits. Ways of thinking. Destructive behaviors and choices. Patterns
that cause pain. The constant need to WANT, and the want to need.
Letting go of them, embracing this kind of austerity has freed me in
ways that I never thought possible. Yeah, I still cling to some really
bad stuff, some really BIG bad stuff. It's hard to let go of the big
stuff. So maybe just let go of, like, two small things. For example,
decide to go one day without beating yourself up over something (I chose
that one because that's actually a BIG bad thing for me, but maybe it's
easy for you). Embrace austerity of the mind and soul. Lighten your
load. Make a burn pile of your useless stuff. You don't need to drag all that crap around with you. It's just
making you sleepy-tired. I promise you won't miss it.
I don't know. Maybe the whole thing I'm trying to say is that
everyone's scrambling so hard to collect things. Not just possessions,
but attitudes, ambitions, habits, whatever. And it's glorified. "Buy
more stuff! Think about this! Try this! Take this pill! Replace this
drug with another drug! Eat everything all the time! Love yourself! Hate
yourself! Hate everyone around you! Now go back to hating yourself!" The world is a constant barrage of
voices and images urging us to collect and hoard. What would life be
like if giving up things were as glorified as holding onto things?
Ya heard?
*What is the singular form of Niyamas? Is it Niyama? Who's fluent in Sanskrit these days?
** AKA The Devil's Dental Floss
***Or, as Yakov Smirnoff would say, "In Soviet Russia, Stuff own YOU!"
****Noneya bidness.
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Monday, January 21, 2013
Voluntary Public Embarrassment
The other night, I had a horrible dream. I dreamed that I had to teach an advanced yoga class, the kind that people come to because they like pain. There I was, up in front of a group of 20 women who looked less like yogis and more they just escaped from a tour of Cirque du Soleil that had recently passed through town. There I stood, all of them in their lithey fitness, and all of me in my..less than lithey fitness, and I was the one who had to lead them.
"Okay," I said as I clapped my hands together nervously. "Everybody know how to downward dog? Yeah? Okay let's do that one." It was awful. Flop sweat poured down my back. The class looked at me, shrugged, and did their downward dogs. While we all downward dogged, I suddenly realized that I had no clue what to do next. The very thought turned me ice cold in spite of the fact that I was projectile sweating. All the classes I'd been to, all the times I've done Sun Salutations, and here I was, bent over, head between my knees, pretty much kissing my own ass goodbye, no idea where to go from downward dog. We all stayed in that position for at least 10 full breaths before I silently tip-toed out of the room, ninja-like, while every one watched me leave.
I woke up covered in sweat. As the relief that I wasn't actually teaching an advanced yoga class to very thin women washed over me, I thanked my lucky stars that I would NEVER, EVER have to do anything like that EVER. Except I will, in 10 months, when I'm a yoga teacher.
------
It doesn't take Freudian prowess to interpret my stressful yoga teaching dream. Not long ago, I attended a fire yoga master class at the studio where I'm studying to be a teacher. It was...well, frankly, it was embarrassing. It was not my best showing. Thirty minutes into the 2 1/2 hour class and I wanted to throw myself out the window just so I could feel some air moving around my skin. The stuffiness of the room, my natural tendency to feel faint when my head goes down and up too many times, and an overwhelming sense of nausea mingled with dread all combined to make me think that taking the class was a terrible, dreadful mistake.
Long story short, I got through it. I crossed the finish line, even though I couldn't put any weight on my arms by the end of the class. I flopped into my car and flopped my head back onto the seat while my fiance drove me home., where I flopped onto more flat surfaces until I finally flopped into bed.
------
I don't know what compelled me to seek out yoga teacher training. Not that it came out of nowhere. Off and on for the past 8 years, I've adored practicing yoga. It's the only physical activity I've ever done that makes me feel like bowl of warm Jell-O bathed in sunshine and pooped on by unicorns afterward. I fell out with it for a few years while Life was Happening, but I returned to it after I quit smoking and got to the point where I could climb stairs without having to stop halfway to the top. It seemed like a good time to treat myself with some enjoyable movement.
At first, I used yoga videos on YouTube, not feeling ready to put myself in front of a group of well-trained yogis. Some of the videos I found were great, like the red-head who taught what she called "Fat Burning Yoga!!!!!!" in a space that was clearly a loft in the city, complete with sirens as the sound track. There was also a 90 minute video that I did a lot. I can't remember what it was called, but I think you can find it on Youtube by punching in "Total Ass Blowout Extreme Yoga TO THE MAX!" I couldn't sit down the day after the first time I used it. I tried every video over 40 minutes. EVERY. SINGLE. VIDEO. Even the weird Kundalini one with the married couple wearing one-piece body suits (I mean, I guess they were married. They both had the same last name, and it seems like it would've been....awkward if they were siblings). Even the "power yoga" one with the guy who looked like a pro-wrestler, wore sneakers, and had no discernible neck. Every day after work, I would slink up to the attic like it was my crack house, unroll my mat, find a new YouTube video, commence to sweating. That's when I remembered that years-old dream I once had of taking yoga teacher training, and how I wanted to help other people feel like warmed up Jell-O bathed in sunshine and unicorn feces.
Two weeks later, I was enrolled.
One year later, after a number of fits and starts, I went to my first training class.
------
My first weekend of yoga teacher training was exactly how I thought it would be, and yet, so completely weird. A month or so before our first training weekend, all of us cadets got an assignment list with a million zillion assignments on it. I started chipping away it over Christmas week, thinking I'd get way ahead of the game by starting so early. Hey, I'd probably even be able to go back and read the assignments twice or maybe even three times! Oh, how fresh and naive I was back then. I ended up breaking off a rather large chunk of the assignment list and then having to hide the books in another room for a week so I could freak out about whether this whole yoga teacher training thing was such a good idea. I mean, really! I'm not young anymore. I have...what? Three jobs now? And a 10 year old? What was I thinking? There's so much homework and reading and Sanskrit words and...and...and. After I talked myself off that ledge (remembering that I'd already paid for the training helped, too), I diligently hit the books all over again, just like I never did in high school.
But back to the training. We sat on the wood floor in the studio for three hours for lecture time, something my back protested loudly over for the duration. I almost cried tears of joy when we stood up to work on poses.
Okay, I have a confession to make before I go any further. I have a hard time wrapping my head around the spiritual practice of yoga. I'm a serious skeptic. I'm that obnoxious friend who always has to put the snopes.com link in the comments section of your that post you shared of that 5-year-old boy who gets a free kidney transplant if you "Like" his picture 97 squazillion times. I recognize and accept that it may end up proving to be rather short-sighted of me in the long run. That's cool. Mad props to the whole "more things in heaven and Earth that are dreamt of in your philosophy Horatio" and stuff, but I'm not there. I've been burned by snake oil salesmen in the past, and I'm kind of a hard-sell when it comes to the metaphysical, so I struggled a bit with the texts that focused on the Sutras and energy types and things like that. The human anatomy textbooks, on the other hand, were a joy to read. Lift up your pantleg and I'll point out your lateral and medial malleoli. But I will stumble over the gunas of Rajas and Tamas in Ayurvedic medicine. But I'm an open-minded skeptic, if there can be such a thing. In other words, I'm open to the prospect of changing my mind, but it's going to take a ton of convincing.
Although I prefer getting down to the physical nitty-gritty of the poses and what muscles are involved, all of that might change next week. Who knows? I am open to anything and everything at this point. It's all on the table.
------
So, I made it through the first weekend of training. My head didn't explode, I didn't spill coffee all over myself (intentionally avoiding bringing coffee with me helped a lot), my yoga pants didn't rip up the butt seam, and I didn't say anything terribly stupid. But it's only been one weekend. Only about 10 more to go. So many more opportunities to embarrass myself in front of a group of people, which is, apparently, what I love to do best.
"Okay," I said as I clapped my hands together nervously. "Everybody know how to downward dog? Yeah? Okay let's do that one." It was awful. Flop sweat poured down my back. The class looked at me, shrugged, and did their downward dogs. While we all downward dogged, I suddenly realized that I had no clue what to do next. The very thought turned me ice cold in spite of the fact that I was projectile sweating. All the classes I'd been to, all the times I've done Sun Salutations, and here I was, bent over, head between my knees, pretty much kissing my own ass goodbye, no idea where to go from downward dog. We all stayed in that position for at least 10 full breaths before I silently tip-toed out of the room, ninja-like, while every one watched me leave.
I woke up covered in sweat. As the relief that I wasn't actually teaching an advanced yoga class to very thin women washed over me, I thanked my lucky stars that I would NEVER, EVER have to do anything like that EVER. Except I will, in 10 months, when I'm a yoga teacher.
------
It doesn't take Freudian prowess to interpret my stressful yoga teaching dream. Not long ago, I attended a fire yoga master class at the studio where I'm studying to be a teacher. It was...well, frankly, it was embarrassing. It was not my best showing. Thirty minutes into the 2 1/2 hour class and I wanted to throw myself out the window just so I could feel some air moving around my skin. The stuffiness of the room, my natural tendency to feel faint when my head goes down and up too many times, and an overwhelming sense of nausea mingled with dread all combined to make me think that taking the class was a terrible, dreadful mistake.
Long story short, I got through it. I crossed the finish line, even though I couldn't put any weight on my arms by the end of the class. I flopped into my car and flopped my head back onto the seat while my fiance drove me home., where I flopped onto more flat surfaces until I finally flopped into bed.
------
I don't know what compelled me to seek out yoga teacher training. Not that it came out of nowhere. Off and on for the past 8 years, I've adored practicing yoga. It's the only physical activity I've ever done that makes me feel like bowl of warm Jell-O bathed in sunshine and pooped on by unicorns afterward. I fell out with it for a few years while Life was Happening, but I returned to it after I quit smoking and got to the point where I could climb stairs without having to stop halfway to the top. It seemed like a good time to treat myself with some enjoyable movement.
At first, I used yoga videos on YouTube, not feeling ready to put myself in front of a group of well-trained yogis. Some of the videos I found were great, like the red-head who taught what she called "Fat Burning Yoga!!!!!!" in a space that was clearly a loft in the city, complete with sirens as the sound track. There was also a 90 minute video that I did a lot. I can't remember what it was called, but I think you can find it on Youtube by punching in "Total Ass Blowout Extreme Yoga TO THE MAX!" I couldn't sit down the day after the first time I used it. I tried every video over 40 minutes. EVERY. SINGLE. VIDEO. Even the weird Kundalini one with the married couple wearing one-piece body suits (I mean, I guess they were married. They both had the same last name, and it seems like it would've been....awkward if they were siblings). Even the "power yoga" one with the guy who looked like a pro-wrestler, wore sneakers, and had no discernible neck. Every day after work, I would slink up to the attic like it was my crack house, unroll my mat, find a new YouTube video, commence to sweating. That's when I remembered that years-old dream I once had of taking yoga teacher training, and how I wanted to help other people feel like warmed up Jell-O bathed in sunshine and unicorn feces.
Two weeks later, I was enrolled.
One year later, after a number of fits and starts, I went to my first training class.
------
My first weekend of yoga teacher training was exactly how I thought it would be, and yet, so completely weird. A month or so before our first training weekend, all of us cadets got an assignment list with a million zillion assignments on it. I started chipping away it over Christmas week, thinking I'd get way ahead of the game by starting so early. Hey, I'd probably even be able to go back and read the assignments twice or maybe even three times! Oh, how fresh and naive I was back then. I ended up breaking off a rather large chunk of the assignment list and then having to hide the books in another room for a week so I could freak out about whether this whole yoga teacher training thing was such a good idea. I mean, really! I'm not young anymore. I have...what? Three jobs now? And a 10 year old? What was I thinking? There's so much homework and reading and Sanskrit words and...and...and. After I talked myself off that ledge (remembering that I'd already paid for the training helped, too), I diligently hit the books all over again, just like I never did in high school.
But back to the training. We sat on the wood floor in the studio for three hours for lecture time, something my back protested loudly over for the duration. I almost cried tears of joy when we stood up to work on poses.
Okay, I have a confession to make before I go any further. I have a hard time wrapping my head around the spiritual practice of yoga. I'm a serious skeptic. I'm that obnoxious friend who always has to put the snopes.com link in the comments section of your that post you shared of that 5-year-old boy who gets a free kidney transplant if you "Like" his picture 97 squazillion times. I recognize and accept that it may end up proving to be rather short-sighted of me in the long run. That's cool. Mad props to the whole "more things in heaven and Earth that are dreamt of in your philosophy Horatio" and stuff, but I'm not there. I've been burned by snake oil salesmen in the past, and I'm kind of a hard-sell when it comes to the metaphysical, so I struggled a bit with the texts that focused on the Sutras and energy types and things like that. The human anatomy textbooks, on the other hand, were a joy to read. Lift up your pantleg and I'll point out your lateral and medial malleoli. But I will stumble over the gunas of Rajas and Tamas in Ayurvedic medicine. But I'm an open-minded skeptic, if there can be such a thing. In other words, I'm open to the prospect of changing my mind, but it's going to take a ton of convincing.
Although I prefer getting down to the physical nitty-gritty of the poses and what muscles are involved, all of that might change next week. Who knows? I am open to anything and everything at this point. It's all on the table.
------
So, I made it through the first weekend of training. My head didn't explode, I didn't spill coffee all over myself (intentionally avoiding bringing coffee with me helped a lot), my yoga pants didn't rip up the butt seam, and I didn't say anything terribly stupid. But it's only been one weekend. Only about 10 more to go. So many more opportunities to embarrass myself in front of a group of people, which is, apparently, what I love to do best.
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