Scientific Litteralsim

Science is only one way of knowing, and its purpose is not to generate absolute truths but rather to inspire better and better ways of thinking about phenomenon.
-Wade Davis

Mulabandha

This doming principle, which is so perfectly embodied by jellyfish, is what creates sustainability in our yoga posture. Create this feeling in the pelvic floor, the soft palate, the palms of the the hands and soles of the feet, the root of the throat,  the armpits, and all the major joints of the body. Embody how the jellyfish looks, feels, and moves (the pulsation) in these energy centers and the posture will feel lighter and more joyous. It may take slowing down at first to begin feeling in this way.



photo source: http://pixdaus.com/single.php?id=120690&from=email and http://www.flickr.com/photos/cronos/

Shift Towards Relationship

"We have to shift our attitude of ownership of nature to relationship with nature. The moment you change from ownership to relationship, you create a sense of the sacred."
-Satish Kumar  

Lineage and Orientalism

I wonder about yoga teachers who don't have a teacher, or have a mystery somebody, somewhere, from a mystical foreign land. Where is the root, baby? I don't think yoga needs to derive power or legitimacy through an outdated orientalist notion of the "magical East." If you are claiming a lineage, what is the basis for that claim?


Don't get me wrong. I place a lot of value on teachers from the East (Tibet, India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, etc.) but the value they've given me has to do with the here and now, and I maintain transparency about that. You study with me, I tell you who I studied with. If you want to go study with them yourself, then by all means go! I'll even tell you the texts that I read. But for god's sake, why do we need to create "legitimacy" from East. We are applying these teachings wherever we are, and this moment is just a rich a field for realization as was a moment in the past. Or a moment in India. Just like the veins of a leaf, the lineages of true yoga practice remain connected to central vein, or impulse. To take the metaphor a step further, just as each vein needs the other vien's support to maintain flow and vitality of life force in the leaf, so too do the various yoga schools need each other in order to keep the entire weaving, or tantra, alive, grounded, and engaged.   


Some folks think that because they studied with someone who studied with Krishnamacharya that they can consider themselves a student in the "Krishnamacharya lineage." Ok, think whatever you like, I am just wondering why you think that claiming this somehow empowers or legitimizes your studentship when you haven't even studied with the master himself. Why isn't it enough to say, I practice in the lineage of Pattabhi Jois, or BKS Iyengar, or Desikachar, who are actually legitimate students of Krishnamacharya. Can we consider the system to be valid if it's not linked somehow to a more ancient root? To what extent have yoga schools and philosphical systems emerged from historical contexts in the past and claimed themselves to be different? I think quite a lot. And I think this is good. Multiple schools bring us multiple visions of the Supreme. The Buddha did this. Gaudapad and Shankara also did this. It is good, clearly, but these schools emerged from realized beings, who had a clarity of seeing that many of us simply do not have, or do not have yet!


I say go ahead and make your own lineage for the sake of business, but know you're doing for that reason. Please don't overlay your notions of spiritual grandur on a system that you've created to make money from. Please continue to pay respects to your roots, to those that came before you. Please continue to pay homage to the lotus feet of the teachers, and the teacher's teachers that walked this path before you; that proved it to be functional and of lasting value. Please be humble enough to acknowledge your roots. Business is good for yoga and as a result of well-direct business initiatives many thousands of people have been effected by the power of yoga. However, if your business and the accompanying model of yoga that is being taught, has been made up because its gonna give you firmer abs or a tighter ass, or more muscular arms, or because its gonna make you sweat, please call it something else other than yoga. Perhaps a calisthenics would be more accurate. Why are you sequencing the postures in that way? Why are you doing them so quickly or slowly? and is this practice facilitating Awakening? What matters is the persistance of inquiry without becoming paralyzed by it. Continue to ask why throughout your practice in the spirit of continual awakening. A continual checking-in process; if not with your teachers then with your self and your true intentions. Yoga is not acrobatics. Yoga is not just posture. Yoga is not just breath. Yoga is not all happy and not all sad. Yoga is not limited one school or another. Yoga is arrived at through a process of inquiry and through a reminder of the process of the Upanishadic "neti neti" or a "not this, not this" analysis. If you put a box around it the spacious effulgence of the energy of awakening is lost. 

Walk Your Path

Lotuses in the same pond don't grow at the same pace. While some are blooming, some are still in the water, and others are at the level of the water. You should do what you can according to your abilities. If you wait for the other, you might be eaten by the fish and turtles.
-Ajahn Chah

Las Tablas Finca, La Amistad Biosphere Reserve, Costa Rica

This is a composite image to two shots that were spliced together using photoshop. The exposure was not adjusted to reflect the true softness of the early morning light and the stark red of the tree's tissue. Take note of the bromeliads and other epiphytes growing in the branches.  The yellow flowers are from an Oncidium orchid. 

Don Marcos

I Like to Sit

An embodiment of the Bodhi Tree along a riverbank in Costa Rica

Meditation provides one with the ability to choose; to look at what is arising and decide "yes I want to work with this," or "no, it is not necessary to work with this." I experience this when I suffer from insomnia, where thoughts are churning out virally and preventing sleep. In learning this type of discernment we free up vast quantities of energy that allows our mind to function more efficiently and to naturally be more easeful. In this sense, it gives our experiences more space, more of a balanced context from which we can perceive emotions, thoughts, and feelings for what they really are. It also supports us to see what we need (if anything) from these patterned unfoldings (the vritti). I need to meditate more.

Life on a Banana Flower

Weave a Nest for Yourself: seedling on a palm frond

Weave a nest for yourself in the depths of my eyes. O your slender body that resembles a young tree growing from the garden of my heart. At the sight of a bead of sweat on your face I may suddenly die.

- Ali Shir Nava'i of Herat, 14th century Turkish Poet

A Relative Relative

Inner and Outer Heavens

Glass Frog and the Porch View

High Altitude Cloud Refraction Over the Rocky Mountains