Meditation: Can Yoga Make You a Better Person?

Every now and then I find my at home yoga practice needs a little inspiration.

Most of the time I am content to practice a personalized version of Bikram's 26 postures with a few modifications and additions, but when I'm not I turn to Podcasts. My favorite right now is Elsie Escobar's Anusara Yoga Kula ("community"). I've actually been following her for about two years (?) and in that time her life has really changed. She got married, moved from L.A. to Pennsylvania, and had a baby. Somehow she maintained her connection to her kula and is back posting regularly. So yesterday I looked her up and did Episode 70: "Does your yoga make you a better person?".

The topic struck me as particularly pertinent, and now I realize that this past weekend on two separate occasions and with two very different people, I had the opportunity to discuss the relevance of spirituality. My Friday Friend and I tend to have talks about this often. It is something we consider regularly. She is a practicing Christian, and I have an appreciation for various aspects of most faiths. (Can that sound any more vague? What I mean to say is that I believe there is something guiding, shaping, and exploring this reality that is shared and quite powerful; that it is based in love and peace, stillness and respect. And frankly, I have a hard time trying to tie it all down to a few words.) So we sit sometimes to talk about what it is we believe to be true. She is curious because we tend to agree on many many things, but there are subtler aspects of terminology that sometimes make us pause and look more closely. Regardless of the finer points, we both agree that practicing spirituality is an important part of daily life.

My Saturday Sister is also a Christian. The nature of what we discussed was very similar. She simply commented on how attending service on Sunday set her entire family up for a much more pleasant week. Rather than being baffled by just how simple it was to set the mood for happiness and respect, we both simply recognized that again, spirituality is an important part of daily life.

Now here we come to the meat of the matter. Should it matter that I am not a Christian per say? Or that someone else is Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, or Tao? Well, Mrs. Escobar began her class Monday on my mat by suggesting that as long as what you practice makes you shine brightly from a place of love, then truly, the more of that the better, brighter, shinier the world will be. That moving in ways that encourage you to open your heart, stand tall, and support yourself from within extends outward, bringing love, courage, and truth into the way you move through your day.

I think about how in school there were teachers that I learned from better than others, and that the same wasn't necessarily true for my friends. These experiences shaped who we became, who we are now. Spiritual teachers I imagine, are quite similar. There are some that will resonate more strongly for others than the one that resonates for us. But isn't it our collective responsibility as part of humanity to recognize what it is that makes us similar, what it is that ties us together, than focus so strongly on what it is that defines us as separate or distinct? Have we yet to learn that this isolation is not quite sustainable? Perhaps...

I'm reminded of something I learned in college about the I-Thou/I-It philosophy of Martin Buber. The part that made the strongest impact on me then still does today: it is the idea that man can come to see the boundaries between us not as walls, but as permiable screens enabling us to keep our unique shape but see through to the truth on the other side. When man exists in this condition of I-Thou, he is one with his creator, he walks with God. He is in unity. He is in a sustainable relationship with the universe. At least this is how I remember it. I would love to know your thoughts. Perhaps if you've read this far, you might consider jotting your initial impression below in the comment box...

Musing: New Moon, Theater, and Valentine's Day

"This past Valentine's day began on a new moon weekend and I spent it at the theater."

Let me explain. For the last two weeks I've had a version of writer's block. I've had the ideas and energy for writing of a different sort, and that means no blogging. This is natural. When I'm steeped in imaginary worlds I'm removed from this one for sometimes days at a time. Then there is this odd puncture, the bubble bursts and I have the beginning sensations of shame. It is subtle, but soon I'm feeling indulged and I seek to reconnect with the material world. I surface, share a few observations, and then hopefully submerge again in creative bliss. When I am at a loss for words, I sew.

Now let me explain the sentence above. It is completely true, every word. But given the SEO intelligence of today's culture, if you were the engine you might read it as having something to do with some tabloid follow up to a recent smash hit film. The truth is, last weekend we had a new moon in Aquarius and it coincided with the biggest romantic holiday of the year, which I happened to spend in Boulder at an incredible theater.

My husband was invited to be a guest writer for one of the plays that evening at the Hitching Post Theater in north Boulder, CO. Once a month Erin Kelly and Jesse McDonald produce an incredible evening that showcases Colorado talent in an unconventional and spontaneous theatrical experiment that is unique every time. In the morning on the day of the performance writers meet and learn the theme for that evening's performances. They blindly choose the head shots of two actors and then get three hours to write a short play. At noon they relinquish all control and actors, directors, assistants and stage managers take over, learn the script, and perform it that evening to a live audience twice. They have shows the second Sunday of every month. Visit their site for more information!

Musing: Biognosis "knowledge from life"

I'm reading a new book by Stephen Harrod Buhner. It's call The Secret Teachings of Plants: in the Direct Perception of Nature, 2004. I've read parts of it before, but for some reason last night I picked it up and did something I haven't done since graduate school on principle and that is, open the cover and begin at the beginning (said Alice).

On page three of the introduction I learned this,

"This gathering of knowledge directly from the wildness of the world is called biognosis--meaning 'knowledge from life'--and, because it is an aspect of our humanness inherent in our physical bodies, it is something that everyone has the capacity to develop. It is, in fact, something that all of us use (at least minimally) without awareness in our day-to-day lives.

The ancient mode of cognition is crucially important for us, as a species, to reclaim, for we live in dangerous times. The threats to ourselves and the planet that is our home have never been more dire. These threats come from ways of thinking that are not sustainable, that bar little relation to the real world, and that are an inevitable error inherent in the linear fanaticism and mechanomorphism (seeing the world as a machine) of contemporary perspectives. They are threats that come from the dominance of one particular mode of cognition to the exclusion of all others.

To correct this imbalance, we need to come to our senses, to reclaim the ability each and every one of us has to see and understand the world around us (an ability that has been built into us over evolutionary time) in ways far more sustainable and sophisticated than reductionistic science can ever attain."

And that, I thought, is the reason why I identify with my knowledgeable friend when she says she officially can't stand the eighteenth century. That "enlightened" age of reason and change when man believed the only way to truly understand the way a heart worked meant you had to deprive it of the means to do so. Thankfully, Romanticism kept our hearts afloat during such critical times, and I might argue it would do us a bit of good today, to remind ourselves what being Romantic actually means.