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HAṬHA YOGA TANTRA

2/5/2020

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Haṭha Yoga Tantra

Haṭha yoga is a tantra

Tantra and Yoga are classic examples of Sanskṛt words that encode vast oceans of meaning. Tantra and Yoga are huge, vast topics. I find it somewhat tragic how narrow and attenuated a sense of meaning these words evoke for some people these days. I would suggest that we can all benefit from working with tantric principles to invite yoga more fully into our lives.

Simply stated: yoga is balance, integration, harmony. Who does not want more of these?

Yoga is the experience of oneness, of all-one-ness, of all-togetherness, wholeness, in the middle of the constant change and whirling wonder of nature.

Tantra is the ‘technology’: the ’means’ to work with the reality of ever-changing nature and our multifaceted experience of existence so we can experience yoga.

Yoga comes from the root ‘yuj’ which means to connect, to link the various powers of our individual human nature: our emotions, our sensings, our bodies with their motor and sense powers, our minds and intellects; all of these miraculous powers of which we are constituted. The idea in yoga is that we yoke them to the underlying consciousness that enables and animates them all, so we may integrate them into a cohesive whole.

Tantra can be construed in different ways.
One meaning of the verb ‘tan’ is to expand. The noun ‘tanum’ signifies the body, and it connotes the fragility of our human body as a non-stable entity that is always changing and is susceptible the manifold influences of the broader nature of which it is a part.
The verb root ‘trā’ means to protect.
One of the ways tantra can thus be understood is as the means to protect our body-housed individual consciousness from the natural sense of limitation ‘that flesh is heir to’. Given that the body and the body-borne powers that we experience life through are always subject to change, it is altogether normal that we can become identified with change and limitation. Tantra works with the reality of nature and the phenomenological world of pulsating pairs of opposites to foster integration, harmony and help us expand our limited ideas about who we are and what we are made of.

Haṭha yoga is tantra, because it works with spanda, pulsation, a basic tantra concept.
Ha means sun, heating, expanding
ṭha means moon, cooling, contracting
And yoga means balancing, harmonising
So the term haṭha yoga tells us explicitly what yoga is all about: the harmonisation of the apparent pairs of opposites.
Yoga is the balancing of seemingly opposing forces.
First of all, this means that Yoga is about letting the pairs of opposites meet and get acquainted, get to really know and appreciate each other. Yoga is about working with these forces, allowing for the apparent pairs of opposites to become so deeply intimate that they can join in a type of ‘marriage’. With practice and patience, these different forces and capacities can become more thoroughly and beautifully integrated. As integration deepens, the mutually complementary potential of the different and sometimes seemingly opposed forces or polarities within our being emerges more fully. In such a dynamic, integrated state, these different capacities can then readily and seamlessly work to deepen and sustain harmony, even as life, with all its constant change, ups and downs, continues to whirl about us.
This is establishment in yoga.
And this is yoga āsana.
Āsana means ‘seat’. It is defined in the Yoga Sūtra as sthira sukha meaning steady and easy. Yoga āsana is the seat of sustainable, steady, easy awareness: when we sit, stand, experience, established in that integrated state. In a state of yoga āsana, all of our powers are connected and attuned, and illumined by their connection to the light of our conscience.

It is thus ironic that haṭha yoga or āsana practice is sometimes these days being propagated as some limited outlying branch of yoga or a type of ‘partial’ yoga, a merely physical practice, a mat practice, or some kind of fitness option; because haṭha yoga, just like all the other yogas, karma yoga, jñāna yoga, bhakti yoga, rāja yoga for example, is yoga. That is the principle that counts, to connect, to integrate, to ‘yogify’.

So certainly, yes, while many haṭha yoga techniques use the body and the bodily powers more overtly, more grossly and a little more outwardly demonstrably than some other yoga modalities or techniques, if these physical practices are really yoga then these techniques will also invite the powers of our senses, of our minds, intellects and our hearts into the moment, into the movement, into the practice: into the opportunity to train our innate capacity for all-oneness, for togetherness, for wholeness, balance and integration.

There is no such thing as partial yoga.

There is no such thing as ‘just the physical yoga practice’! One can do physical practices that makes use of shapes or forms that are derived from yoga methodologies, or that ‘look like’ yoga. But if the practice we are working with is yoga, then it will always be more than just merely physical, or merely mental, or merely intellectual, or merely emotional, because yoga is about inviting the whole system into the practice.
Yoga is always about inviting the whole system into the present moment. Tantra-s, such as haṭha yoga, are thoroughly tested technologies, or methods, that work with the reality of life, our human condition and constitution, to help train us more deeply in the ways of whole system presence and integration.
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YOGA, AUTHENTICITY AND AUTHORITY

1/30/2020

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One of the ways that an advanced state of yoga is described is as kaivalya - to stand alone: to be in a state of 'all-one-ness'. Not lonely, but whole and integrated. The more we can establish ourselves in such a place, the easier it is to act authentically, attuned to the guidance of the pilot of our conscience; less impeded, influenced or swayed by the accumulated veilings of our conditioned ideas.

A foundational teaching in yoga - from Kṛṣṇa in the Bhagavad Gītā - is that what we do and how we do it is basically up to us. Our actions are our responsibility. At the same time, we have no control over the outcomes or fruits of our actions. Still, we do know from experience that certain types of action tend to bring ‘bitter fruit’ or ‘barren harvests’. With practice, when we pay closer attention, we may notice that when we act from a place of confused motivation, it tends to bring more confusion; when we act from a place of pain and woundedness, it tends to beget more pain. So, even though we have no control over outcomes, we can still learn from experience and take care to avoid needless suffering. And, we have to act. No one rests outside the field of action even for a moment. The mere maintenance of our bodily existence obliges us to act.

Action is inevitable.
When something is inevitable, the yoga teachings urge us to be with it as skilfully as possible. If something is inevitable, no point getting down about it. That will just reduce our chance of navigating the situation as well as we might. So yoga tells us: whatever comes, meet it as best you can, with steady presence, with the most balance you can muster. As far as possible, meet it with even-sightedness, resisting the tendency to lapse into prejudiced patterns of perception. Set yourself up to engage as skilfully as is possible.

We often have a lot more agency than we allow ourselves to admit.

Yoga reminds us that our life, our experience, is our responsibility.

We never know what life will bring to us, but we can, at least to some degree, determine how we meet it.

Yoga urges us to be the author of our own life. To let our life be an authentic expression of our uniqueness. Yoga urges us to practice authenticity, to live in true, authentic rhythm, respecting the cycles and seasons of life, working with nature, within and around us, to do our dharma, the action that supports lokasaṅgraha, the wellbeing of the whole.

When we practice, we may realise that sometimes, perhaps often, we are not really the author of our own lives, we are not claiming authorship as wholly as we might. Sometimes, we may be a ‘co-author’, our decisions and apparent ‘choices’ being significantly influenced by parental, familial, or societal forces. And sometimes, we may even abdicate authorship altogether, lapsing into autopilot, or a less conscious place, where we are just a minor character in a narrative foisted upon us by the influences and currents of the time: of the people, media, and advertising around us, and by the inertia of our accumulated habits and conditionings.

Yoga reminds us: you are the sovereign of your life. A famous proverb in Sanskṛt states that the sovereign is not shaped by the time, but rather the sovereign shapes the time. Yes, we are each a small speck in the cosmos. We can perhaps only be a co-author, with the larger forces of Nature, life, existence. Nonetheless, when we claim responsibility, when we accept that we are each the captain of the ship in the journey of our own life, we can strengthen our authority and our authenticity. 

As we practice living the authentic expression of our soul’s deep calling, we can become more established on the ‘seat’ or ‘āsana’ of yoga: a steady, sustainable, easeful place of self-trust and authentic expression, of authority for our own experience.

And this is part of what Kṛṣṇa in the Bhagavad Gītā teaches us as he explains karma yoga, the yoga of action: the practical way to, as best we can, make all that we do dharma - the action that supports lokasaṅgraha - the wellbeing of the whole: of all parts of ourselves, of all parts of the field of our experience, and beyond.


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ECONO-BEE

1/29/2020

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ECONO-BEE
On how ecology - the understanding of the ecos: the environment, the resources - is the foundation for economy - good management of the ecos. On learning from other species, especially bees, and pollinators more generally, considered emissaries of the Sun, the Source of Life by the ancient Egyptians, and by me, too. On the bee capsule at Barefeet biofeedback in Samara, Costa Rica. And on the sufficiency economy advocated by the 9th King of the Thai Chakri dynasty.

In my recent article ‘Into the Grey’, I mentioned that when I saw Satish Kumar speak on Soil, Soul and Society, he said many things that have stayed with me in the years since. That day, Satish related how on a previous occasion, he had been invited to speak at the London School of Economics. On taking the dais, Satish asked the audience who was there from the Ecology department.
No one raised their hand.
“We don’t have an Ecology department here Mr Kumar.”
Now I paraphrase Satish’s response:
“Mmm, no Ecology department, in a school of Economics… something’s amiss here, no? Something is not really adding up.
Economia - management of the ecos, of the resources. Ecologia - understanding of those resources.
There can be no economy (good management of the resources) without ecology (understanding of the resources).”
Indeed.

Some politicians and media voices repeat again and again how ‘we need a strong economy’. Sometimes, in what I would say is a spectacularly flawed and fallacious way, they suggest that we need to prioritise ‘the economy’ over all other concerns. Making such assertions, they speak as if ‘economic growth’, or having more and more of this imagined construct called money displayed in figures on a screen, will enable us to have a better life. We are strange creatures us humans. Surely, ecology, and looking after the long-term wellbeing of the environment is a necessary foundation for a functioning and healthy economy. We risk there being no ecos to enjoy if we do not look after it.

This is one of the reasons why I would like to ask that we ‘change the climate’ of our discourse around the environment. I was born in 1977. When I started secondary school, undeniable facts of environmental degradation were already well-known. Deforestation was decimating species, weakening the resilience and adaptability of the overall ecos and biosphere. Industrial and chemical pollution was known to cause all sorts of respiratory problems, diseases and ailments in humans. We knew that chemical pesticides and fertilisers were not viable long-term ways to provide nourishing food. We knew that industrial and chemical pollution was making fresh drinking water scarcer. We knew we were soiling our own nest. In the late 1980s, the ‘green movement’ was ‘on’/‘in trend’, at least that’s how it seemed to me. As I recall it, in England then, the Body Shop, with its high profile campaigns Against Animal Testing and for Recycling, Reducing, Re-using, was huge. It seemed that we had the awareness that big changes needed to happen. Thirty years later, the foundational problems persist. We still rely on energy sources that ravage and pollute our environments and make our home less healthy, and in the case of nuclear fission, more precarious. We still use an outdated method of food cultivation and distribution which may boost some of those ‘economic’ figures on a screen for some big companies, but which deplete the soil and people’s health. There have been many encouraging developments, but these underlying problems remain. All the while, the ‘climate change industry’ has grown. And with it, the ‘climate change argument/debate’ in which a lot of hot air is pumped out as people argue about opinions and interpretations of data.

For me, these arguments are somewhat beside the point. Whether or not human pollution and burning of fossil fuels will lead to however many degrees of global warming is not the real issue. I would say that the real issue is not speculative. The real issue is that as a species we are not living in harmony with our environment. We are not living anywhere near as healthily as we might. Consequently, we are spewing into the atmosphere habits that perpetuate and entrench needless suffering.

Even amongst the pundits who go on about the importance of a ‘strong economy’, some of them also say that health is the ultimate wealth and agree that without health we cannot be happy. When ‘economic growth’ or ‘economy-centric’ policies come with a significant cost to all our health: polluting earth, water, soil and sky, it certainly doesn’t look like a strong ‘economy’ in the true sense of the word. It looks rather like gross mismanagement of the ecos.

So what to do?
Perhaps we can learn from other species. Perhaps we can learn from the observation of nature, as our ancestors who bequeathed us the great, practical riches of our wisdom traditions did. Perhaps we can consider what I will refer to as Econo-bee.

Let me explain.
I’m on the beach in Samara, Costa Rica, talking to a local nature lover. As our conversation goes on she says, “I think I need to take you to the bees.”
“The bees?” I wonder. She then tells me a bit about the bee capsule at Barefeet Biofeedback and the story behind it - I summarise now, and resort to layman’s terms.

“It has long been a legend,” she told me, “that those who keep bees never have asthma, nor do they suffer from other respiratory problems.”
Was this just what people in the England I grew up in - a place largely severed from much of its ancestral wisdom - called ‘an old wives tale’? Or was it one of those old tales that actually contain much truth, much ‘gold’, much practical wisdom?
Well, I guess you guessed that it’s the latter.
In Russia, scientists started researching this. They found that the bees maintained such high air quality (antiviral, antibiotic, anti-inflammatory) within their hives, and such a harmonious frequency, that the beekeepers’ exposure to this ‘super air’ and ‘symphonic field’ (my lay terms) was giving them significant health boosts. The Russian researchers then started successfully treating people with asthma by having them ‘be with the bees’ and breathe the air from the hives.

Meanwhile, in Costa Rica, a young man, still a teenager, has a vision, of how we need to save the bees and how they can help save us. He started looking after local bees and then built a capsule of the type I would soon experience. A capsule similar to those used by ancient Egyptian kings and queens who would meditate or rest in them. While the ancient Egyptians worshipped Horus and Ra, Solar or Sky deities, they also worshipped the bees as the tears of the Sun. And with very good sense too. Without the Sun, we are nothing, no life on Earth. Without the Sun’s emissaries, the great pollinators who allow the earth to give and grow nourishing vegetation, we cannnot survive. No food, no life. The bees were recognised as emissaries of ‘God’, in the sense of the Source of Life, and as deities to be honoured, respected, worshipped. Worshipping the bees means honouring the web of life, respecting all parts of the ecos. Worshipping the bees, the kings and queens would also put themselves in close proximity to them. Which is what I got to experience.

Yoga, traditional Indian systems of knowledge and philosophy, and now modern science all recognise that life is pulsation. All living beings are pulsating, vibrating at a certain frequency. Humans who spend time around animals often notice that the animals are quite adept at sensing a human’s ‘vibe’.

When a person enters and lies down in the bee capsule, we are close enough to the hives that our energetic frequency enters the bees’ field. We enter a field in which the bees are constantly working to ensure harmony. The bees start working. They start ‘doing their duty’. True to their nature, they do their dharma, the authentic action which supports the wellbeing of the whole. When we lay down in the capsule, the bees sense us, and ‘do a scan’. Each bee then works to re-harmonise the field, and so help harmonise our field and bring us into resonance, into cohesive balance and harmony. Natural medicine fit for a Pharaoh.

I found my time with the bees wonderfully healing,  and it left many layers of imprint, including this idea of econo-bee.

Economic models that ignore a foundation of ecological health are deeply flawed. One way this is evidenced is by how our so called ‘economic’ model has failed to keep up with changing reality and understandings. In relation to food for example, it is based on systems of ‘production’ and methods of distribution that seemed a good idea in the years after the second world war, but which have not made as much sense for decades now. Modern science has long since recognised that harmony and diversity are hallmarks of long-term, sustainable, antifragile, natural systems, and that mass-scale chemical agriculture is not sustainable. Life is constant change. A viable, sustainable system is one that is adaptable, one that is responsive, one that owns and knows that there is no ‘fixed way’. The appropriate response is a thing of the particular moment. A strong economy is one based on the reality of ecology: that recognises the cyclical nature of life, that is diverse, locally variant, adaptable. It does not put all its eggs into one, or just a few baskets.

Human craziness can appear to be deeply entrenched, a habit with a lot of inertia. But the bees remind us, there is another way. So what do I mean by econo-bee, or learning from the bees’ society?

First, the bees take responsiility for their own health and harmony. When in balance and harmony, they then contribute to the wellbeing of the wider community and beyond. They contribute to the wellbeing of the whole, a principle known in Sanskṛt as lokasaṅgraha.

Sometimes people talk about a supposedly ‘major’ difference between political conservatives who think that the way to wellness is personal responsibility and to ‘pull oneself up by one’s bootstraps’, and socialists, who believe that the government or state should provide a safety net and ensure certain opportunities and services for all. I do not belong to any particular political party, but neither do I see these ideas as having to be contradictory. Rather, could we recognise them as two mutually complementary aspects of a healthy society?

I certainly agree that we each have to take responsibility for our actions and motivations. But at the same time, it is normal in life that sometimes we will need ‘a little help from our friends’. We no longer live in tribes of a couple of hundred people. Many of the things we do, like travel significant distances, like undergo expensive medical treatments, like gather to study, work, play with people from different places, are things that many, many people are involved in. They impact the whole, global community. It makes sense to collaborate to provide public transport, education and health care. It makes it more efficient for almost everyone.

So how about we learn from the bees? Take care of ourselves and our homes so we are better able to share positively with the wider world, so we are better able to help those in need. Sooner or later, we are likely to be in need one way or another. Even if we are not, when we act for the good of the whole, lokasaṅgraha, each of us is rewarded, each of us gets to live in a healthier, more harmonious hive of creative possibility, of vibrance, congruence and greater efficiency.

Looking after ourselves and our home also means looking after the bees, means looking after the soil, the air and water quality. Scientific research is showing that organic, local produce is vastly more nutritious than the misleadingly and I would say somewhat criminally named ‘conventional’ produce grown with chemical fertilisers and pesticides that have been ‘conventional’ only since  the Second World War. Nature is amazingly abundant. We may trash our home to the degree that it is uninhabitable for humans, Nature will survive, no problem. I would suggest that if we are to survive and thrive as we really can, we need to shed this artificial lab coat trying to mask our insecurities, we need to shed this idea of thinking we can govern, dominate, control Nature. How about we abandon the delusion that this Earth is our possession? And then enjoy the lightness and spaciousness of a new way? A way of collaboration with Nature. That works with its diversity, its resilience, its beauty, that repectfully harnesses its abundance and munificence?

We have a lot of time-proven understanding of how to tend land sustainably, how to grow real food. It is our economic model that needs updating. The way of domination and exploitation does not work, has already malfunctioned. Our overly large scale and ultimately damaging and wasteful methods of cultivation and distribution need reform.

When I lived in Thailand, the 9th King of the Chakri dynasty, Bhumibol Adulyadej was still alive and the longest reigning monarch then on the earth. He was already elderly and not so active in public life as he had been. At that time - early 2000s - his major project, the idea that he had been advocating was the ‘sufficiency economy’. Thailand is a land of plenty. We should look after our abundant resources, feed ourselves, produce for our essential needs and then share, sell, export the surplus, engaging in mutually beneficial trade not from a place of need, but from a place of sufficiency, of ‘enoughness’. I am summarising this in broad brush strokes, but it appealed to me then, and it still does. Unlike its neighbours, Thailand was never colonised. The kings of the Chakri dynasty demonstrated a keen intuition and sage foresight when it came to long-term viability. I think in terms of the sufficiency economy model, King Bhumibol Adulyadej was continuing this legacy. I also think it’s a lot like the bees, the great pollinators revered by kings and queens of a much older great dynasty. First, they tend to the harmony of their immediate hive, or home. Then, healthy and vibrant, they go about spreading health and vibrance, pollinating, helping fertilise and distribute nutrients for the good of the whole land and its inhabitants of so many different species.

I would suggest that when we engage in practical efforts to reconnect to the soil, and to care for the pollinators, we will be able to see myriad ways to support a large human population from a place of vibrant harmony and abundance.

Here is a link to
https://barefeetbiofeedback.com/ where I got to experience being with the bees like this.
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Into the Grey

1/27/2020

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For some time now I have been feeling to write an article about what I see as the need to go beyond divisive black and white thinking and step ‘into the grey’, to honestly, courageously wrestle with the nuance of reality and the complexity of life’s challenges.

Following my last newsletter, a couple of people contacted me asking if I might explain my views on travel, especially in the context of ‘climate’. It appears that for some people, air travel, along with eating meat, or accepting a plastic bag for example, has become something of a badge of dishonour. It has been placed on a ‘blacklist’ of banned items: ‘evil’ actions to be avoided, ‘irresponsible’ things that ‘should not be done’, ‘that should not be tolerated’… I feel rather that if anything should be ‘blacklisted’, it should be this type of extreme and reductive, absolutist attitude and its attendant sweeping blanket statements.

In recent times, I have noticed quite a lot of very extreme, polarising language in public discourse. I think we can do a lot better. I feel that exclusive, condemnatory or absolutist statements often block or limit the type of deeper deliberation and broader discussion that can help us move forwards to deal positively with the complex challenges we face as a species.

A foundational yoga teaching: sometimes that which would ordinarily be unconscionable is actually the appropriate action.

There is no list of ‘don’ts’ in yoga. If you see such a thing, it is a reductive interpretation of a subtler, more nuanced teaching. Yoga, like all the major traditional systems of Indian Art, Science and Knowledge, recognises that anything and everything in existence can be poison, anything and everything in existence can be medicine. It all depends: on the situation, the constitution, and the dose.

Another foundational teaching of Yoga: Life, Nature, is not black and white.

Life, Nature, is a realm of nuance in which there are always many, many more ways of looking at a question than from just two sides. There are infinite ‘sides’, shades, perspectives. So rather than dos and don’ts, rather than reductive lists and black and white thinking, yoga invites us into the grey: to wrestle with our conscience, to explore the ‘darklands’ that our conditioning may shield us from or blind us to.

With regard to the ‘climate’ or environment ‘issue’, for example, I had a powerful experience that showed me how much my prejudices or belief systems influenced how I perceived and even was able to perceive the issue.

A decade or so ago, I saw a film that was being promoted by the 350 organisation, (who were saying that we need to keep carbon parts per million below 350 if we are to survive as a species). The bigger message of the film, as it landed with me, was that we need to do a better job of looking after our home, this planet, that we need to start changing some of our inefficient and polluting habits: like shipping food hundreds and thousands of miles instead of eating predominatly local and seasonal food; like drinking water out of plastic bottles that are shipped hundreds or thousands of miles instead of investing in clean, healthy drinking water on tap all around the world, and so on.

Sympathetic to the film’s global message, I ‘swallowed’ its contents whole. Convinced of the good intentions of the makers and recognising from personal experience that many of the ideas they highlighted were real and true, I found myself easily persuaded by some of the other ideas that were novel to me. Enthusiastically, and with good intention, I sent an email encouraging all my friends and contacts to see this film and share its important message.

One of my friends wrote back asking, “Have you seen this other film James? You might want to have a look before you endorse this other one so unequivocally.” My friend pointed this out in a very humane way.  He invited me to consider some additional perspectives. This was a man I met regularly and knew to be a person of integrity. I followed his tip and watched this other film. It presented a very different perspective on the issue, one that could perhaps be described as that of a ‘thinking skeptic’. This second film presented ideas that challenged some things I had previously felt quite convinced about. I also felt that its spirit went against certain ideals or values that for me ran much deeper than the particular arguments about ‘speculative science based on modelling’. I felt this second film ignored what for me was the bigger, underlying point, of our need to change the way we relate to ‘ecos’, to our home this Earth. I noticed though, that I watched this second film through very different eyes from the first, whose overall message by and large accorded with the ideas that I had brought with me to the cinema. When watching the second film, I noticed that my critical, analytical toolkit was instantly activated. As I was watching, I was instantaneously picking holes in its arguments. I was very aware of how certain things were being presented in a selective, partial, biased way. But what my friend’s prompting me to consider this other perspective left me with was an undeniable recognition that the first film had also presented things in a selective, partial, and yes, biased way. But as its general message accorded with my pre-existing sympathies and ‘alignments’, I had not examined all its arguments with anything like the same rigour as for the second film. This made me see that I too had been somewhat ‘selective’. It had been easy and expedient to align with a particular ‘side’. But this experience showed me that I had been deluding myself. Both ‘sides’ had the gall to present in a skewed way, in a manipulative, partial way. Both sides presented as ‘unassailable’ fact things which were really just ‘pieces’ of a much bigger and more complex picture. The inconvenient truth* of the matter was not black and white. It was grey. The truth was in the grey. (*The two films I saw were not Al Gore’s film of this name, though both did reference it if I recall correctly. The film associated with the 350 organisation was called The Age of Stupid. I do not recall the name of the second film, and the emails are in a now many-years obsolete account I no longer have access to).

The Truth of things is grey.

A little while after this, I had the privilege of meeting Satish Kumar speaking on Soil, Soul and Society in my hometown in the North of England. Satish gave a memorable talk and facilitated a day which has been of great lasting value for me. One of the particularly memorable messages from what he shared that day was:
“Let us make all isms wasms!”
In other words, let us make divisive, black and white thinking a thing of the past. An ism is a reaction. I’ll mention feminism as an example. Yes, I’m a man. Yes, I’m a ‘white’ man (at least by some people’s standards) in his fifth decade on this Earth. However, I did study British, American, French and Italian feminism and women’s writing when I was an undergraduate and have read several of the classics of feminist literature, so I will dare to mention this ism as an example and I do not do so casually. Like any ism, feminism could be seen to be a reaction to an imbalance, a terrible imbalance. The feminist, or women’s, movement has brought many great benefits, has helped redress some aspects of this imbalance. However, sometimes more extreme voices calling themselves ‘feminist’ go against what I understand to be one of the core principles of earlier feminism: the giving to people who are ‘different’ from, or other than, the dominant/mainstream/establishment the opportunity to live wholly and authentically, bringing the depth and value of their unique gifts to a healthier, wholler, more balanced society. More generally, sometimes, in reacting against the imbalance, the ism becomes ‘anti’ ‘the other’. As soon as an ideology is ‘against’ the other, is anti, is negating, I would say that it reduces vastly its capacity to bring deeper healing and sustainable balance. It risks becoming another type of tyrant. As one of my Indian teachers says, “the crusader gets crusaded.” If we are ‘fighting for peace’, we have to take especial care not to lose our attunement to the ways of peacefulness. We get good at what we practice. Fighting and campaiging we can become ‘good’ at protesting and resisting. Well and good. Sometimes this is exactly what is needed. But there is a danger: that we become entrenched in the ways of the ‘opponent’ or protestor, and that we divert, leak and squander energy that needs to be harnessed for positive, constructive growth.

There is a risk of becoming ‘revolutionaries’ in the most tragic sense of the word. If in railing against the system, we fight it at its own game, and we take on its divisive language, tactics and practices, we take on that which we profess we want to change. There is a very real risk that we can become alternative versions of that which we were so convinced was wrong.

The challenge then is to come out of this ‘revolutionary heritage’, out of the pattern of ‘fighting against’ and overthrowing what we deem to be corrupt, only to replace the corrupt tyranny with another, similar one with a different name, of a different flavour.
The challenge is to be an ‘evolutionary’.
What do I mean?
To be a warrior courageous enough to resist the temptations of retributive stances, punishing policies and reactionary ways. To learn from the past without being burdened or trapped by it. To heal and make whole our inheritance, by drawing out the gifts we can learn from its excesses, its stumblings, its imbalances. By moving forwards in new ways: with new language, with tactics of reconciliation and inclusion, that resist the incendiary, condemnatory, extreme polarities; with practices that promote deep listening, deep witnessing, and genuine consideration of views that we would perhaps reflexively reject or recoil from.

This challenge asks us to bring forth the effort to work together in a more consensual way. It asks us to acknowledge the interwoven complexity and nuance of life. It asks us to abandon the ‘blame game’ and the type of language that can so often put people on the defensive. It requires us to actively remember that we will have a much better chance of fostering a ‘better world’ when we make the patient and courageous effort to embody and share what we really seek, rather than attack what we seek to be rid of.

If we can muster the patience and presence to get past our habits of triggering and inflammatory words, and of allowing ouselves to be easily triggered and inflamed, surely we can access an arena of more fertile and vitalising discourse. If we can inhabit a space of honest discourse more calmly, really, there is so much common ground for us to explore and expand together.

So, all that said, when it comes to travel, I would say that pretty much like anything else it cannot be reduced to a one-size-fits-all policy, to black and white dos and don’ts. I do not think that one-size-fits-all blanket black and white policies can ever bring the sustainable peace, wholeness and harmony that I think is our deeper longing and true potential.
What I can do, if you are interested, is invite you to travel with me into the grey. I can share something about why I value travel so much and how I think travel, even sometimes air travel, can actually be part of a solution: encouraging the type of global perspective and collaborative vision and efforts that the challenges we face require. I’ll continue that in the next article Traveling into the Grey, Part 2.


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Weightlessness with Almog Loven - A Recommendation

11/27/2019

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What I’ve got from Weightlessness with Almog Loven
 
I have now had the privilege of attending two Weightlessness weekend programs with Almog Loven in London, 2018 and 2019. Both times, I organised/re-arranged work and international travel commitments so as to be able to attend. Both times it was more than worth it. 
In 2018, I signed up for the course as soon as I saw the video which was posted with the announcement. (link at the foot of this post) I had a very strong sense that the program would be something I would enjoy and gain a lot from. My instinct was accurate. Nonetheless, I had not imagined just how nourishing and enriching the program would be.
 
What did I get from studying with Almog? Affirmation of:
- Be yourself, trust yourself, accept yourself, love yourself. There are infinite ways to do this, always available. You are enough already.
- Whatever you have to do, do it as far as possible in such a way that you allow every cell of your body, every pore of your skin, to smile.
- Meet what arises with a smile. You’ll be able to meet if more fully, more skilfully, and you’ll be able to navigate/inhabit the situation more joyfully.
- As a facilitator: once you’ve developed your toolkit and you know it works, once you’ve thoroughly tested it in the arena of your own life and teaching: then get out of the way and allow yourself to be a conduit for the tools to serve their greater purpose and help us access more of our underlying wholeness and joy.
 
Both occasions from the Weightlessness weekend, I feel like I received a huge dose of deep nourishment, so affirmative and resonant that it supports me to move more fluidly and efficiently in all the interactions of my life and in my relationship to myself and others months after the program.
Over the years, I have attended some great ‘movement’ programs with really solid, scalable methodology, with safe, inclusive instruction and a great ethos. Almog’s work stands out because it works at the level, I would say, of more of the whole human being. It really does invite us deeper into the recognition that we are enough, and that we have such depths of resources to help and support each other.
For me, this type of work is a way of waging peace. Inviting people to experience how we have such rich resources within is a way to dissolve some of our fears, to peel away some of the weight of our limiting conditionings.

From my perspective, the energy that Almog embodies and shares is a key element here. I would say that Almog is able to graciously offer this invitation because he clearly works from a place of lively presence. He is not forcing an agenda or a particular flow or structure to the sessions. Rather, I witnessed a skillful and courageous facilitator ready to meet the group as we are. From this place of honest presence, Almog invites us into the lived, visceral experience of our own ‘enoughness’. Without forcing anything, the work invites us to experience deeper layers and unfoldings of ‘weightlessness’. For example, at an immediate, physical level, we experience how we can allow functional, beautiful movement with minimum effort and maximum nourishment. At a more holistic level, we gain lived experiences of how we can give, receive, invite and allow support.

Both years, I was hugely impressed by how Almog guided us through the weekend, building a stronger and stronger container in which it was easy for us to dive deeper as a mutually supportive group.
The first year I learnt some new elements that continue to enrich my movement practice. The second year, the movement was not dissimilar, drawing from the same palette, though not the same. What was the same was the spirit of the work. I would describe it as the same river. It has just flown on, gathering greater, nourishing force.
There are some types of workshop programs that one can return to and feel like you didn’t get much compared to the first or last time. This can be the case when the teacher’s work is mainly about sharing nuts and bolts techniques.
However, when the work is about deeper principles which impact all aspects of our life, it can be the other way: each return is an opportunity for deepening. This was my experience my second time with Almog and Weightlessness. The first was easily one of my all-time favourite workshop experiences as a participant. The second one topped it.

I carry with gratitude the gifts that have come to me from my work with Almog. I hope to study with him again and wish that more and more people can experience his great work. To me, it feels like Almog’s work is part of a new paradigm, beyond compartmentalisations and narrow labels. This is not a dance workshop. This is not a movement training. For me, this is about how we relate to ourselves, to others, and to the environment. To my mind, Weightlessness extends a beautiful and highly effective invitation: to skilfully peel away the burdens of our conditioned ideas so we can inhabit our here and now with deepening awareness of the true weight and real light of our conscious human presence.

Link to Weightlessness trailer video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K51B-Qwqg-o

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The Yoga Method - Some Notes to Self - September 2019

9/5/2019

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The yoga method: Some notes to self September 2019

Cutivate the medi-state as best you can.
Whenever you come away from the centre, patiently, kindly, invite yourself back to the centre.
Pay close, honest attention to what draws you away from the centre and what helps you stay centred.
Take full responsibility for your experience.
Recognise that how you meet life affects your experience.

Do what you are doing with all of yourself.
Make the action its own reward.
All the time.

Practice joyfulness.
Practice gratitude.
Practice presence and celebration.

Questions for inquiry:
From Captain Bill Whorton from Acharn Cha: ‘Where am I in this?’
From Erich Schiffmann: ‘What’s the truth here really?’
From my own practice/investigation:
- ‘Where am I acting from?’
- ‘What is my motivation?’
- ‘Why am I doing what I am doing?’


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Practical Bhakti

9/4/2019

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Bhakti yoga is the yoga of devotion. It is associated with practices of singing, dancing, with selfless service, with the dedication of one’s actions to that which one considers the highest, with the consecration of everything we do.

The word bhakti is from the root bhaj, which means to ‘approach with reverence’.

Bhakti plays a central and foundational role in the yoga method.

Bhakti, together with jñāna and karma, form the three principal mārga-s, or ‘ways’ of cultivating and revealing yoga.

Sometimes, people misperceive this and think that one can choose a path: the karma path for the active, socially minded; the way of jñāna for the person of inquiring, intellectual, reflective and meditative persuasion; and bhakti for those of devotional proclivity. Or: karma for the active-pragmatic, jñāna for the intellectual, bhakti for the emotional.

However, these three ways can also be seen as the interwoven, mutually supportive and enabling foundations of the ‘one true way’ of yoga, that is, the all-inclusive way that invites the whole human being into oneness.

I would say that we will be hard pressed to come to any degree of realisation without a good degree of bhakti.

For example, I have a friend, Bill, a former US Marine Captain. In Vietnam, Bill experienced all manner of horror, and it had a deep effect on his life. Decades later, Bill told me that it was the study of philosophy that saved him and helped him to continue a sustaining inquiry into meaning and reality in the wake of the soul shaking, life changing experiences he lived during the Vietnam war: the horrors and privations, and the extraordinary love and comradeship he had experienced on the exacting field of examination that is the high-stakes arena of battle.

When I met Bill, we were both teaching English at the same university in Thailand. At that point, Bill had already been translating Confucius with one of his Chinese colleagues for more than twenty years, and had been translating Japanese Zen texts and Thai Buddhist texts with colleagues from those departments for years, all while tutoring students in some of the Greek and Latin classics. In the more recent years though, Bill had got to the language and the text that had long fascinated him, with its most celebrated philosophical treatise delivered in poetry of jaw-dropping beauty and perennial acuity - on the battlefield. Bill had started studying Sanskrit with another senior faculty member from the Sanskrit department. After some formative years to gain some familiarity with the grammatical foundations, Bill’s Sanskrit master had granted that they begin work on the Bhagavad Gītā. Bill was thrilled.

Often when he was working on this text, Bill would comment to me on the soul-shaking beauty of the verses, on the potency of Kṛṣṇa’s teachings, and on the unmistakable ‘rasa’ or flavour of the battlefield that the opening chapter evokes, and how that brings a man into the present moment like nothing else.

As Bill was advancing through the text, he got to the twelfth chapter, devoted to bhakti yoga, the yoga of devotion, in which Kṛṣṇa also describes the devotee who is dear to him. When I called in on Bill in his office, he straightaway commented on the beauty of the verses, but then went on to say:
‘But I have a problem James… ‘
Now Bill knows that I like to sing ‘kīrtan’, that I enjoy some of the practices that are immediately associated with bhakti yoga…
‘I just don’t have a bhakti bone in my body.’
This did not land very convincingly with me. I knew the tenor of Bill’s days. He would rise at 4 o’clock (‘Well I was a Marine, what other time is there to get up?’) and go for his morning walk, during which he will do 100 push ups (‘I’m a Marine, I learnt certain habits’).
And after this start to the morning, Bill will spend most of his day studying wisdom texts, otherwise teaching language, as a means to facilitate more effective communication, in other words as a means to facilitate more penetrating and revealing inquiry, to peel away, as Bill would put it, his highly practised and refined capacity to delude himself; in his ex-Marine’s lexicon: his inestimable capacity to mindf*** himself.
So I said to Bill,
‘How can you say that? How do you spend your days if not soaked in devotion? Is your whole day not devoted to your search for truth, to come out of the mindf***? If you were not dripping in bhakti, I don’t see how you would possibly be able to do what you do every day.’
And Bill said.
‘You know what James, I went to see one of my monk friends the other day, and he said the exact same thing.’

Now Bill himself had pointed out to me, earlier in his work with the Gītā, how he knew first hand the difference between habits and discipline. He owned quite openly that the getting up at 4 o’clock, the walk with the hundred push-ups, and the always carrying his wallet in a waterproof plastic wrapping (‘A Marine is prepared’) were not so much ‘discipline’, just well-established habits, known in Saṃskṛt as ‘saṃskāra-s’: ways of operating that are well-formed, well-made, well-established. (Just as Saṃskṛt refers to the language that is well-structured, well-codified, well-arranged, well-ordered, well-made, so saṃskāra - another form of the same word - refers to a habit that is well-made, well-established. Well-formed.)
However, Bill had also owned that the commitment to keep exploring, to keep inquiring, to not settle, but to keep fathoming the depths of one’s almost - as one keeps looking - unbelievable capacity for self-delusion, for willful blindness, for tricky, refined, polished mind-f***ing, well, that takes real discipline. That requires courage and commitment. Other things that Bill learnt from his years of service.

The fact is that real practice, on any particular personal path requires courage, heartfulness, requires devotion to the cause. It is so easy to settle into the ways of denial, delusion, of wilful blinkeredness. A practitioner needs qualities of a warrior. But a warrior needs love to stay true to the cause when the real duress comes.

From the outside, Bill’s path might have seemed like one of jñāna, of the intellect. He was spending time at his desk, in searching conversation and applied effort with other ’students’ who were also Professors. He was thinking, reflecting, re-formulating. However, how could he have continued his efforts without devotion, without bhakti? For Bill, his inquiry into Truth was his ‘Highest’ and it was to this that he was dedicating his efforts. His ‘Highest’ or ‘God’ might have taken a different ‘form’ from that which people more typically think of, but his devotion to it was real and sincere, illustrated irrefutably by the way he dedicated the currency of his life force.

Sometimes people think that one can just do karma yoga. ‘What’s the point of this meditation and study (jñāna), of this singing and dancing (bhakti) when there are people hungry? When there are bridges and schools to be built? But again, how can one work effectively, efficiently without inquiry and attention (jñāna) and without dedication, commitment and devotion (bhakti)?

As so often in modern times, I feel that people often reduce the meaning of terms, wanting the security of compartmentalisation and of easy ‘tick-box’ assigning of big concepts to convenient and non-threatening little boxes. This is particularly problematic when it comes to yoga. Because yoga is about coming out of all limitations, freeing ourselves from all limiting beliefs and ideas.
Consequently, genuine yoga practice demands that we go into the unknown. Yoga practice can only begin, or proceed, when we own that we do not know. The delusion and self-deception of ‘I know’ will block it. The slavish ‘believing’ of ideas, theories, systems - scientific or otherwise - will block real practice. The way of yoga is to wilfully step into the unknown, honestly, with our awareness and our discernment as our companions. Whether we are of the intellectual (jñāna) or practical persuasion, this is impossible without bhakti, without heartfulness, and courage. Only with bhakti can we approach our activity and our inquiry with the attitude of reverent presence that will most empower it.

There can be no practice without bhakti. It is the enabler of karma and jñāna.

Similarly, there can be no practice without karma, the action that enables bhakti and jñāna; and there can be no practice without jñāna, the attentive inquiry that enables and checks that our karma and bhakti are actually inviting a deepening of yoga.

The way of yoga is the way of the whole human being. Yoga includes.
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Prāṇa and Prāṇāyāma - An anecdote and some reflections

3/6/2019

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I heard an interesting story from one of my Sanskṛt teachers, let’s call him the Professor. This teacher is a resident of Mysore, a seat of traditional Sanskṛt learning, and also in recent times a place where at certain times of the year concentrations of foreign yoga students come to study and practice at schools in the city. Some of these students are keen to explore teachings of yoga as they are encoded in Sanskṛt texts. And some have found their way to Mysore-resident Sanskritists who can help them gain closer access to the teachings enshrined in the glorious poetry of the Bhagavad Gītā, or the ultra pared down Yoga Sūtra for example.

One such student who had found his way to my teacher was particularly interested in prāṇa, and in prāṇāyāma. This term prāṇāyāma, like āsana, is intrinsic both to the classical, holistic path of Patañjalian yoga: what we might call the yoga of the whole human being; and to haṭha yoga: which we might consider the Tantric technology which seeks to harness and harmonise the potential and energy (prāṇa) of the human bodily vehicle so it can most effectively and efficiently help us move towards yoga, integration and the ultimate aim of life.

This student was already teaching prāṇāyāma. He had studied it with various Indian teachers, and knew that prāṇāyāma was not merely breath control, or breathing exercises, but the refinement and extension of the very life force itself. He knew that prāṇa is not mere breath, though breath is one of the mechanisms through which prāṇa, the vital force, the sap of life, moves and circulates in us. He also knew from his experience that some of the breathing excercises that are included under the banner of ‘prāṇāyāma practice’ had certainly helped him refine his understanding of his own life energy. This had also caused him to feel that he was in a sense extending his life. Even if these practices were not going to postpone his death, they were already helping him live each day more richly and fully, with greater appreciation for the amazing opportunity of being alive as a human being, with greater relish for the myriad, subtle flavours of life experience. 

However, this student also had an inkling that these prāṇāyāma practices could actually extend his physical lifespan, perhaps even dramatically. He had heard stories of ṛṣi-s, yogic seers, who had mastered prāṇa and were as if immortal. So when he heard of this great Sanskritist dwelling in Mysore, who had a real problem saying no when someone asked to study with him, he thought he should approach him. If this Sanskrit teacher was as great as people whispered, if his knowledge of the Sanskrit tradition was as mind-bogglingly vast as rumoured, then surely he would know of passages that spoke of the secrets of prāṇa, perhaps he would even be able to decode them for him.

This student was no newcomer to India either. He had been coming and studying with Indian teachers for over a decade. He knew they operated differently from teachers in some other places. He knew for example, that rather than avertising their knowledge or expertise, the real pukka pundits often shrouded the depth of their learning. He knew this was especially the case around esoteric matters and all the more so if the subject in question could at all be seen to be personal, as prāṇa, the question of our life force and how we relate to it, undeniably is.
So, the student chose to approach the matter ‘from the side’ as it were, a tactic he had found could bear rich fruit when interacting with some of his previous Indian teachers. He arranged to meet the Professor, and asked him if he might help him read Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtra in the original Sanskrit.

So far, the rumours proved true. The Indian Sanskrit expert could not say no. Even though he clearly had all manner of demands on his time and expertise: people asking him to translate books into Sanskrit from the local language Kannada, from Sanskrit into English, to write editorials and educational stories for Sanskrit magazines and newspapers, to write textbooks for university courses, he agreed to read Patañjali with this foreign seeker.
They began to meet three times a week. The foreign student was thrilled. The text began to take on new significance as the Professor unpacked it, and on days when he was feeling ‘higher energy’, when his prāṇa was circulating with greater efficiency, he would illustrate the teachings with all manner of compelling and often colourful story. The student also found that he could influence the pace with which they moved through the text by how much curiosity he showed in certain words and concepts presented in the Sūtra-s. Of course, what he was most interested in was asking the Professor about prāṇa, and prāṇāyāma, which Patañjali mentions some eighty sūtra-s into his work.

As they approached this section, the student felt his excitement mount. He felt that he had now won, as far as was possible in the circumstances, the confidence of the Professor, and that he would be able to draw from him any secret knowledge of prāṇa.

When they reached the relevant section of the text, the student was quite direct. He asked his teacher what he knew of the mysteries of prāṇa. The student had heard of yogic masters of prāṇāyāma who lived for centuries, millennia even, who breathed just a single breath of Himālayan air a day, who could burn up and digest mountains of rice and dal, and just as easily live hale and hearty for years without any physical food at all. Did the professor know of any such yogis?

‘Well, I don’t know, but I can tell you a story’. For the student, the professor’s stories were almost always his favourite part of their classes together, and he leaned slightly forward as if to be able to more deeply absorb whatever riches the Professor was about to share.

‘So it is said that there are these Himālayan yogi-s who live for ages, who know the secrets of prāṇa. One time, such a yogi visited Mysore. He was to give a talk, on the wisdom of yoga. Now being an ancient Himālayan yogi he knew no modern Indian language, and spoke only the language of mountain ṛṣi-s. However, he had a young assistant with him, who knew the ṛṣis’ tongue and translated his speech into Sanskrit, which I then translated into our local Kannada. After his speech, he asked if there were any questions. One man in the audience piped up immediately:
“Er, well, sir, that is all very interesting and I’m sure we are all very grateful for the master sharing his insights, but what I want to know is… is he really one thousand two hundred and seventy three years old?”
I translated the question, putting it to the young assistant in Sanskrit. And do you know what he said?
The assistant didn’t even put the question to his master, he just said:
“I don’t know, I’ve only been with him for the last three hundred and forty-two years so I couldn’t say.”
Which brought the student to laughter, as it did to some in the audience that day.
And hopefully it made you laugh too, and perhaps also raise a question: why do some yogi-s want to live so long? What is the point of extending the life force like this?
 
In the Indian system, there are said to be four ‘aims of life’ (puruṣārthāḥ): artha, kāma, dharma, mokṣa.
Artha means ‘the means’, it refers to the material needs of life, food, shelter, how we make a living. Kāma in this context refers to pleasures and how we enjoy ourselves. It is said in the Indian tradition that it is our duty to enjoy this gift of a human birth, for when we truly enjoy, in a deep sense, we can learn more quickly. Dharma is the action which sustains and supports the wellbeing of the whole, it is sometimes rendered as duty, the law, righteousness. Mokṣa is the ultimate aim of life, liberation.

Another of my Sanskrit teacher’s gurus has said on this topic: ‘Do not focus on mokṣa; instead, focus on making your artha and your kāma dharma, then mokṣa will come by itself.’
But who is able to do this? It seems perhaps easier to meet masters of prāṇāyāma who have lived for centuries than people who have become truly free from conditionings and limiting ideas, or who know how to live always in dharma.
And this is one reason why some yogi-s place such emphasis on prāṇāyāma. This gift of a human life is so precious that we need to cherish it. They say in the Indian tradition that a body without a soul is a corpse, but a soul without a body is stuck. When the soul comes into embodiment, it can journey towards its deep longing: the return to wholeness, to freedom from limitation and conditioning, to remembering its essence. The body may be the vehicle for the soul, and the soul may be the underlying animating force of the body, but this bodily vehicle needs prāṇa to run. And so, Yoga, the practical school of Indian Philosophy encourages us to respect and cherish prāṇa, to develop and deepen our relationship with our life force and our understanding of how we can work with it skillfully. A long, healthy lifespan gives us more time to research the mystery of life, fathom the depths of who we really are and come perhaps to self-realisation. Āyurveda then, the Indian Art and Science of a long, healthy lifespan is a foundation and companion for Yoga.

From a certain perspective, any practice, observance or technique that helps us extend the life force, invite the breath into easier and more efficient patterns, that improves our digestive and assimilative capacities, that bolsters and sustains our energy can be considered a type of prāṇāyāma. Any technique that helps prāṇa circulate more efficiently, that encourages true balance and holistic health can be considered prāṇāyama and a type of yoga practice.

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Pain and Yoga - Note to Self

9/26/2018

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      Pain and Yoga - Note to Self
by James Boag www.jamesboagyoga.com
 
Pain is inevitable. Pain is an intrinsic and very necessary part of the human experience. Pain helps protect us. It can be our friend. Yes, pain and suffering can beat us down, if we let them, but by working with them skilfully, we can be less pained by the trials of life, and transform difficulty into opportunity.
 
Life is suffering. So have said the masters of many traditions.
Patañjali is very clear about this: all is pain to the wise. Life is change, and we humans know it, but still we get attached to things being a certain way. Deep down, even as we are savouring things we find pleasurable, we know that they will not last. So even that which brings pleasure carries the germ of pain…(Yoga Sūtra II.15)
In the Bhagavad Gītā, Kṛṣṇa also makes it very clear: the experience of pleasure and pain is inevitable. (II.14)
At first glance, this can seem rather bleak and even depressing. However, yoga is the practical school of Indian Philosophy. Patañjali goes on, right away, to make clear that we can avoid the pain that has yet to come. Kṛṣṇa goes on to remind us that we know that these pairs of opposites: pleasure, pain, heat, cold and all the rest; come and go. Our challenge as a human being is to be steady amidst it all. If you can find this steadiness, Kṛṣṇa tells us, you can reveal the deathless essence that underlies all the comings and goings, you can penetrate through your fears and savour this life, here and now, fully.
 
Well, that sounds alright, so how to go about it?
 
First let us not delude ourselves, pain is inevitable, part of the game. However, this doesn’t mean we are helpless and hopeless when faced with it. Yoga reminds us, when something is inevitable, don’t get upset about it, that’s a poor choice. Instead, be with it as steadily as you can, so you can respond to it as skilfully as possible.
Early in the Gītā, Kṛṣṇa distils the way of practising yoga in the world:
Sukhaduḥkhe same kṛtvā lābhālābhau jayājayau
Tato yuddhāya yujyasva naivam pāpamavāpyate (II.38)
 
Which I might translate as:
Practising evenness (yoga) in gain and loss, in triumph and defeat, in pleasure and pain: this is the way to act in the challenging world and not be tainted and bound by your actions.
 
In other words, pain and suffering are inevitable. Life is constant change and we cannot, will not, always get what we want. However, we do not have to be so pained by this reality! We can choose to suffer less in the face of life’s inevitable ups and downs.
How? By practising yogāsana. By this I don’t mean just going to yogāsana classes or dropping into a favourite yoga posture when pain starts to manifest. No, I mean by cultivating the attitude of yoga: balanced, skilful, pragmatic, open and responsive. I mean by drawing on all our resources, and so resisting falling into the easy but often counter-productive and self-sabotaging familiar patterns of our habitual reactions.
 
Mitigating pain with Yogāsana
- The posture with which we meet the world
- The attitude we adopt in the face of change
 
One of the Sanskṛt words for pain is duḥkham, literally: difficult space. Its opposite, sukham - agreeable space. 
In the Indian system, the kham, or space, we exist in is recognised as containing sound, movement and vibration. Sukham then can be understood as a space in which there is a good vibration; duḥkham, or pain, one in which the vibrations are somehow dissonant.
Yogāsana is defined classically as the state of awareness that is at once sthira - steady, and sukham - easy. In other words, the seat, platform or foundation state of yoga is when the field of our awareness is a place of sustainable good vibrations: a field of robust, resonant harmony that makes us less susceptible to being thrown up and cast down by the inevitable ups and downs of life.
 
So how to practice this?
 
Kṛṣṇa in the Gītā (II.47) makes this clear:
You are the sovereign of your actions.
Your experience is your responsibiliity.
You have no control over the outcomes of your actions.
However, you do know that certain types of action can be relied upon to bring painful results.
So, pay attention, notice how your attitude and actions affect your experience and do not be the cause of unnecessary pain. Perhaps you have been so unwittingly, blindly. And perhaps as you notice that you have been a major cause and contributor to your own suffering, this recognition itself is tortuous. But it’s also instructive, and it’s empowering. So take the opportunity it affords you, accept the gift it offers, and reform yourself: dig in, for the painful work of overhauling your habits, examining your belief structures and limiting ideas. And remember, it is worth it. And really, there is no alternative. The way out of self-sabotage is not avoidance. The way out is really the way through. As Kṛṣṇa goes on to say, don’t think that not acting, staying in your tent, or retreating from the arena is even an option. No, yoga is the path of the hero.
 
Yoga: the path of the hero - the way of the heroine
 
You are a human being, so you are going to experience hardship and suffering. But as a human, with your miraculous gifts of awareness, you can refresh your perspective, reset your ways of looking and recast your suffering into a means for useful growth. Yes, you do experience being torn and fragmented, yet you can muster your will, your insight and your diverse capacities to weave greater harmony into your life and expand its tapestry to include and reconcile more of who you really are.
But this requires heroism, known in Sanskrit as vīrya - the quality of a vīra. This word vīra is very beautiful, and of great significance in yoga. Vīra denotes both human being and hero/heroine. It means then, the human being who has the courage, persistence and fortitude to wrestle with all (including the painful, difficult parts) that it means to be human, and do so in a way that is merciful, pragmatic and wise.
So, practice vīrāsana - the posture/attitude/way of being that allows you to be fully who you are: to face and integrate all your shades, the whole spectrum of who you are.
And, practice how you want to feel.
Everything is training.
We get good at what we do a lot. So, when you take recourse to yoga technique, make very sure that you are not inviting unnecessary pain and suffering. Make sure that you are actually inviting what you really want to feel. When we take recourse to yoga techniques, we are practising for the rest of the day, for the rest of our life. So make sure you are setting yourself up to move through life in a graceful way, that will make you less susceptible to being ravaged by the vicissitudes of fortune. When you practice yogāsana, do not practice straining and struggling! Rather, practice that beautiful, balanced ‘posture’ that marries alertness and relaxedness. Practice the attitude that allows harmonious connection and communication between all parts of you. Practice reinforcing the ways of whole system integration and spacious awareness. Practice the heroic work of re-attuning your system to meet the reality of today as skilfully as you can.
Pain is inevitable. But you can work, with steady presence, to reduce the self-inflicted blows, and let the ups and downs of life teach you about the space of the centre and the vastness of the awareness you really are.

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Picking up Good Vibrations – Sanskrit and Yoga Part One by James Boag

8/2/2018

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Picking up Good Vibrations – Sanskrit and Yoga Part One by James Boag
Yoga is a state of balance, of integration. It could be described as that state in which the seeming pairs of opposites that characterise our experience of existence: such as up and down, light and dark, heating and cooling; meet, and are brought into such reconciliation, such intimacy, that they are able to draw out each other’s mutually supportive and complementary potential. Another way of saying this is that yoga is that state in which we are inhabiting a field of awareness characterised by sustained and sustainable ‘good vibrations’.
Yogāsana, the ‘seat’ of yogic awareness is defined classically in Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtra as that state in which there is at once sthira - steadiness, and sukha - easefulness. However, it is significant to note the essential denotative meaning of sukham. The word ‘kham’ denotes the space, the ākāśa in which we exist. The prefix su means good. Space is recognised in the Indian system as being the element that corresponds to sound. The ancient Indian ṛṣi-s, or seers - the research scientists of the yoga tradition saw, as relatively recently physicists also have, that essentially life is vibration; the ‘space’ in which we exist is not empty, but contains movement, vibration, sound. So if we want to harmonise the field of our experience, sound, which is penetrative and pervasive, is a great place to start. This is one of the reasons that sound-based practices are so treasured and so prevalent in the Indian tradition: because they work - powerfully - and are often able to reach the parts that other techniques are not able to so easily.
From a certain perspective, we could even say that all yoga techniques are ‘sound-based techniques’, in that they seek to cultivate a harmonious vibration in the field of our being, a cohesive frequency through the realms of our experience. In yogāsana, we use the innate technologies of our bodily vehicles to cultivate harmony, letting ha - the contractile, heating capacities, and ṭha - the relaxing, cooling capacities, work together to foster yoga - balance and harmony - sustainable good vibrations.
There are also many explicit ways to cultivate yoga through sound using our expressive, linguistic capacities. In the Indian system, the language in which yoga teachings are encoded, and which can readily be used to foster this harmony, is Sanskrit, or Saṃskṛta.
Literally, saṃskṛta means ‘well done’, ‘well made’. Kṛta is a past participle of the verb kṛ - to do/make. Sam as a prefix means ‘well/good/thoroughly’. And the Saṃskṛta language is without doubt very well put together. Its grammar is extraordinarily versatile and robust, its ancient literature amazing in its breadth and depth. This of course includes many of the great works of the Indian yoga tradition such as the ultra-distilled Yoga Sūtra, the glorious poetry of the Bhagavad Gītā, and the majestic epics Rāmāyaṇa and Mahābhārata. The body of Sanskrit literature is certainly very ‘well made’, with brilliant works on almost all aspects of human life.
Another of the reasons that Saṃskṛta is so called is because of the way that its sounds span the whole range of our vocal apparatus. There are five basic ‘positions’ of articulation:
-the guttural sounds formed in the base of the throat,
-the palatal sounds originating higher in the throat at the threshold to the palate,
-the cerebral sounds for which the tongue curls up to the rear part of the hard palate,
-the dental sounds in which the tongue comes to the teeth,
-and the labial sounds made on the lips.
In Sanskṛt, the vowel sounds are considered to be the ‘power’ or śakti of the language, because a consonant needs a vowel to be heard. If we say the consonant sound ‘ka’ for example, we can only hear it because of the vowel, in this instance ‘a’. When we make a sound in our voice box, the vibrations travel in all directions, including up into our brain. With Saṃskṛt sounds or phonemes, the different places of articulation in the vocal apparatus means that the sounds travel upwards into the milky ocean of our brain in specific ways, activating both hemispheres of our brain and facilitating a more balanced, yogic state of awareness. From there, the vibrations can then travel down the spine: the principal river, or Gaṅgā, of the field of our being. As this harmonious vibration travels fluidly through our spines, it can then flow on easily through all the tributaries of the field of our being.
When we recite Saṃskṛt with accurate pronunciation then, it can feel great because it is effecting a harmonising and cleansing influence through the whole field of our awareness. In traditional Saṃskṛt education, everything begins from voicing the sounds, from pronouncing the words clearly and correctly. One lovely thing about Saṃskṛt is that once we know the points of articulation and the basic rules of pronunciation: for example, that there are long as well as short vowels, and that the long vowels are voiced for twice as long as the short ones and are usually stressed; we can start to really enjoy the resonance of the beautiful Saṃskṛt words. Further, as we do voice them with clear resonance, we can also start to appreciate their energetic import.
Please watch the accompanying video on youtube for an introductory guide to pronouncing the sounds of Saṃskṛt. Use the following link, or enter the ‘jamesboagyoga channel’ and look for videos with the title ‘Sounds of Sanskrit’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmdVDiP1keI
 
 

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