Open Source Yoga

Open Source Yoga Teacher Training

2012-01-26T14:14:00.000-08:00

I never know who is going to be interested in yoga, and when students arrive for the first day of training they come in all shapes, sizes, ages and abilities. Looking out at them, even after 5 years of leading teacher training courses 6 - 8 times per year, I still can't guess which ones will embrace the practice of teaching completely. If there is a commonality shared by the students I've had that have become great teachers, it is their ability to concentrate. Whether this is innate or learned I don't know, but when I look out into a pair of steady, soft eyes it feels good - feels like home. And curiosity, too, is a common element- there are students who seek to know, and there are students who seek to...seek. They enjoy the process of learning, entirely apart from making final decisions. Maybe that is why they show up in my trainings - the attraction to inquiry I feel is mirrored by them.

In the courses I teach I try to make each day as practical as possible, to give the students tools they can use to teach effectively. Hatha yoga is in many ways a very practical practice. Learning how the body works, how the poses integrate and expand consciousness (because if the body is expanding, so's awareness). But often I feel that the physical yoga is also just a way to become present. Teaching the practice is a way to become aware of one's own presence amidst others.

Reviewing the course on the last day this round, the consensus was the student's needed more time and practice integrating physical adjustments to poses. Therapeutic adjustments based on Holistic Biomechanics is a wonderful way to help people feel the yoga, to make a connection. I'll be putting together some training for this very soon.

The revolution is within

2012-01-14T21:03:00.000-08:00

Seeing Charles Eisenstein speak 2 nights in a row in Port Moody and Vancouver felt like... a Deja Vu experience I've never had. I've seen old footage of Jidda Krishnamurti speaking, and the reaction of the audience to him. Listening to Charles, I was moved on an intellectual and emotional level, but both at once. This has never happened to me listening to anyone before. There was also a very strong positive reaction from the audience to the awareness that came through his words - we all felt it. I'm slightly too young to have been to Woodstock, but I imagine that movement must have felt, in a way, similar.

Jidda Krishnamurti spoke for years of an "inner revolution" of inquiry - of not taking things we've learned as absolute truths. I believe Jidda grew tired of trying to explain "how" to become more conscious. I fear that Charles may have the same challenge. It seems to me that awareness can be brought to a group through an individual's own strength in that regard, but cannot be left behind when he leaves. Charles speaks of a new world of interconnected individuals remembering their deepest connections, and the natural compassion resulting from that remembrance.

The shadow side of a community, or a tribe, or any group is that as it includes it must by nature exclude. Whether it is a group of sports fans, Ashtanga Vinyasa Yogis, or a group of concerned citizens, there rests, embedded in us, an "us and them" mentality of separation. If you are "in" then someone else must be "out" - separation again. Charles has left that behind, heart and mind. As I watched the crowd begin to "whoop' collectively at some of the observations Charles made, a soft alarm bell began to ring in my chest, and that alarm said something like "Each of us must find our own way, and meet further down the trail, where no words are necessary".

It was a blessing to hear Charles speak.

Inspiring Friends

2011-08-02T14:42:00.000-07:00

We meet every morning.

Our first interactions are slow, thoughtful.

Sometimes we stay on one topic for a while.

At other times, the conversation moves around;

laughing at the absurdity of it all.

And then there are times when there is a great focus

and a desire to understand, to break through an old resistance

or way of being. Sometimes an argument.

But we always meet the next morning, and give salutations.

Because we need every part of this, and no matter where I go anyway,

these inspiring friends are alway waiting to meet me again.

Unplugged, Unfettered, Uncomplicated

2011-07-10T11:58:00.000-07:00

This article is primarily about the practicalities of living full-time in a mobile home, unplugged, or “boon-docking” as it is called. For those of you who have found yourselves wondering from time to time, as you sign yet another rent cheque, if this is possible, let me assure you it is, you will not become any stranger than you already are, and the financial ramifications of living this way are profound. You will become a millionaire.

I’ve been living in an 18 foot Nissan motorhome for 6 months now, with my dog. My reasons were initially to save rent and have a home I could have my dog in - most apartments do not allow pets. At 18 feet, the motorhome can be parked in any regular parking stall. It has a full kitchen, hot water, shower, toilet, furnace, upper double bed, and a dinette. For years I had considered living this way and always wondered about staying clean, sleeping without being disturbed, and generally not looking like a weirdo. Finally circumstances made the choice easy and I bought my 1985 Nissan motorhome for $4,600. This is profound. I purchased my own home, which is also my car, outright, immediately. Many monthly housing payments come close to this figure when you add the mortgage, heating, maintenance fees or monthly repair costs, and that montly cost lasts 25 - 30 years, eventually paying 2 1/2 times the initial purchase price of the home. The argument that the price of the house increases, making the investment worthwhile falls apart when you consider the power of inflation. Every 40 years, one dollar is devalued to a nickel. The price of the house has increased yes, but so has the cost of everything else.

An average day in the motorhome includes getting up, listening to the birds outside and looking out at the rolling fields of the Hazlemere Valley, where I have found a quiet country road to park that is about 8 minutes from work. I turn on the furnace and make breakfast. The fridge stove, furnace and hot water run off a propane tank that needs refilling every two weeks at $18 dollars. Then I have a hot shower. The fresh water holding tanks become full every two days, at the same time the “grey water” or shower and sink water tank needs to be emptied. At just about every corner of a city block you will see an iron grate covering the city septic system. I dump the grey water which consists of organic soap, water and some organic food particles from the sink into the city septic. I don’t use the flush toilet, which would require adding chemicals to keep it from smelling and finding a “sani-dump” station to empty it. Instead I use a folding toilet seat and a plastic bag. It took about 2 days to become accustomed to that, but now that as well as the dog’s poop goes into a trash can. I would prefer to compost, but the space just isn’t there. Alternatively, I use the washroom at Starbucks if I go in to check my email. I fill the water tanks with the gas station water hose. The deep cycle battery that powers the fan to the furnace and the interior lights is charged by the Nissan charging system when I’m driving. I thought initally I would need to install an expensive solar system. As long as I drive a few minutes per day, I have enough battery charge to power everything I need.

A benefit that might not be immediately apparent is the lack of commuting to work. I simply find a quiet spot to park near where I’m working (I teach yoga trainings, so I’m in a different spot every month in B.C.) and park the motorhome on the street like everyone else and walk. I have never had a problem doing this. Gas is getting more and more expensive, the average Vancouverite spending 200 to 300 dollars a month in gas and up to two hours a day in the car not to mention vehicle depreciation. No commuting, no wasted time, no wasted gas. The Nissan gets 18 mpg, which is about the same as a modern SUV.

In the evenings I come home, take the dog for a frisbee toss or walk, make dinner, do some reading or watch a movie online (wi-fi is everywhere and if you don’t get a signal, you can get 3G access for about $40 per month) and go to bed. It is that simple. If I don’t like the view, I drive somewhere more enchanting. If the neighbours are too loud, I move. If I go out for drinks with friends, I don’t have to drive home - I am home.

Now for the really interesting part. The monthly savings on rent (about $1,200 for a place I’d like to live that would allow a dog) and gas (about another $300) totals $1,500 per month, or $18,000 per year. Invested conservativey at 8% return (Berkshire Hathaway is a solid investment firm and has done an average of 18% return over the last 30 years), when I retire in 20 years at 65 I will have:

$973,509

That’s right. Without even trying. Just investing what I would have spent anyway on rent and gas. If I lived this way for 30 years, I’d have

$2,383,353

"The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest" - Albert Einstein

So, the next question is what to do when you retire? Many people buy an expensive new motorhome, trying to replicate their living room in a vehicle out of habit, and stay in campgrounds. I’m just going to fly to Europe, buy a small used motorhome, and travel and live there just as I’m doing here. When I come “home” I will leave the motorhome with the mechanic I’ll pre-arranged rental with and split income from renting it out to tourists when I’m not using it. I may do the same thing in Hawaii. It’ll be nice to spend the coldest months of the year there. And I’m not waiting until I retire.

I often watch the older people in White Rock shopping at the thrift store, picking up little useless items and considering their value. This is a deeply embedded habit - shopping. Our ancestors would keep their senses keen by picking berries and roots. We’ve dulled our senses by picking out candy and looking for couches. Driving daily to a job you probably dislike so that you can pay for the car that takes you to the job, the couch you use to relax on to forget about your job, and the walls that surround the couch is a habit you can walk away from.

You don’t need to worry about money. You don’t need to stay at a job you dislike. For most of human history, we were nomadic hunters and gatherers. Notions of ownership of land have seeped into every aspect of our modern life, even relationships with others and “ownership” of a space in the sky called a condominium. You don’t need to spend 30 years of your life paying for a strange idea. You may appear strange to the majority of our culture. That is the only price you do have to pay.

Hatha Yoga

2011-07-06T18:11:00.001-07:00

The Sun and the moon.

The reflected light of the moon is like our more subtle, inward nature. The sun, like our outward actions. We contain both, and reconciling the two is a daily practice. When we do, it is like the two lenses of a telescope, or microscope. There are moments when the focus is just so, and in those moments we can see into the cosmos, or into our innermost nature clearly. And then, there is nothing so much as spacious peace - we recognize every star, every cell is just fine as it is, and we navigate on.

Asana - Form and action ( Outward form like the sun, internal action like the moon)

Tadasana

Standing crescent moon

Urdva hastasana - shoulders on back, expand

Sun Salutation

Peaceful salutation to the moon

Trikonasana

Ardha Chandrasana

Standing splits

Shalabasana

Cobra

Upward dog

Pinchamayurasana

Heart opener on block

Headstand prep, wall backbend inverted

Prasarita Padottanasana

Shoulders - peaceful shoulders on back like the moon, arms overhead like the arc of the sun

Anahatasana

Rajakapotasana (back leg bhekasana)

Urdhva Dhanurasana

Parsvottanasana

Ardha matsyendrasana

Sarvangasana

Janu sirsasana

Savasana

Seeking the source - theme and asana

2011-07-03T19:24:00.000-07:00

Seeking the source

I was filling my water tank on my r.v. wondering what I would teach today. Some of the water was spilling onto the pavement, and the surface tension of the water made it look like something living as it moved slowly toward the lowest spot nearby. Not in a straight line, but it would pause, fill itself and finally gain the momentum to move around some pebbles or obstructions.

If you looked at the water at one of these pauses, it would look like the water was not doing anything, lacking power or direction. But then, it would move again, around the obstruction. Moving to seek the lowest point, to eventually merge with the groundwater - it’s source.

Not all who wander are lost, as Tolkien said. And not all of our pauses are a waste of time. In the end, when we look back we see that our path, though it meaders, is often the most direct way around obstacles and toward the source of our lives.

Asana - long, slow holds with and emphasis on organic energy

Tadasana - rooting the pelvis

Down dog - wide legs, water hips

Lunges - lunge twists - build a boundary for the flow to increase

Prasarita - shoulders - longer holds

Trikonasana, A. Chandrasana - the coolness of the moon reflected in the water

Salutation to the sea

Parsvottanasana - head on block on wall - organic extension through head

Pavritta Trikonasana

Sirsasana - seek the source through the place where you speak the truth

Parsvakonasana/Pavritta Parsvakonasana

Cresent pose

Virasana

Setu Bandasana

Urdva - wall

Sarvangasana

Dandansana

Thread the needle/twist

Janu

Savasana

3 stages of life - Bob Marley

2011-06-23T08:58:00.000-07:00

The 3 stages of a man's life, as delineated by the great yogi Bob Marley:

Stage one 0-18 years. Separated from the womb, seeking re-connection. "No woman? No!!!....Cry!"

Stage two 19 - 45 years. Taking on the mantle of responsibility, a sturdy shoulder to lean on. "No woman, no cry".

Stage three 46 - 99. Finished with procreation, validation of that role no longer required, moving toward contemplation and silence. "No woman = no cry".

It's about your yoga..I'm afraid there's been some complications

2011-04-20T10:52:00.000-07:00

I'm going say it.

Yoga is too complicated. And I mean this sincerely. I teach this stuff for a living, and I've watched eyes glaze over as talk of tattvas and kleshas and the various states of samadhi are outlined by those of us who have not experienced a stable state of this experience. Therefore, I submit that all of us who talk about this stuff should speak from experience, period.

Why do we love yoga? It is because of the way it makes us feel. The way it makes me feel is difficult to put into words, but if I need a flow chart and a Sanskrit dictionary I'm already in trouble. Because yoga is an experience of assimilation, of digestion of our experiences. Hatha yoga balances opposites - inhale, exhale, determination, surrender. These states do not dissolve, oh no. The problems of life do not go away. Rather we may become more able to digest our experiences. They move through us, and as they do, we witness from a place of.... the best word I can come up with is - poignancy. Poignance is the state of holding two contrasting feelings at once, like bittersweet. A bittersweet experience is the full acceptance of life's ups and downs. We don't get better at feeling both ends of the spectrum by trying to manage them, by withdrawing or by utilizing complicated yoga inner technology. We get better at feeling by...feeling. Feeling what life brings. So instead of rationalization, or in any way attempting to mask our sometimes painful experience of life, how about simply saying "this too." I feel bad. Yes, I do. And there is no shame in that, I am not less spiritual or valuable because I feel like crap sometimes. But I can hold it, hold the experience, and when it shifts, it shifts.

Yoga and math

2011-02-23T13:39:00.000-08:00

I think I may be getting why it is so hard to explain yoga. Usually, we are involved in a process of addition - getting a new thing, taking a course, buying a book. We collect experiences too - going to warm climates, eating great food. These experiences "add" to our lives. But yoga is really a process of subtraction. Yoga practice has the tendency to "remove". Yoga removes stress, removes the disconnection between deeper parts of ourselves, removes some of the need for external validation. It removes muscular imbalance, and internal toxins. Meditation can remove thoughts. So, it's tough to introduce a subtraction way of thinking to an addition based culture as a "positive" benefit. Yup.

My heart is Canadian

2011-02-17T15:37:00.000-08:00

My heart is Canadian,
and so is my body
my muscles and bones
live in a socialist society,
communally.

No dictator, but strings
of tendons, tissues and
bones listening to one
another.

No celebrity muscle.
no part that needs
more attention because
it feels distant from the others.

Sometimes my Canadian body
gets sick. But have an internal
medicare system, and thanks
to Tommy Douglas, an external one too.

I move into postures in a Canadian way;
I go for a beer afterward because that too,
is union.

I try to teach yoga as a Canadian.
A melting pot of practices
no need to brand it. We are
in this together, aren’t we?

The fabric of sound

2010-10-21T16:34:00.001-07:00

Just gotta write this down before I forget it...I realized something about music and vibration today. When we create any vibration - emotion, sound, thought - If our universe is truly one fabric, then we forever change that fabric every time we create a vibration. If I play a note on my guitar, the silence afterward is different - literally feels different - than if I had not played a note. This little ripple in the space/time continuum may be small, but like a stone thrown in a still pond, it's ripples continue to move outward - an there is only one pond with no shore!

So now I have a really god reason to practice.

Yoga as a tool

2010-10-04T20:57:00.000-07:00

"Is Yoga a religion?" is a question I hear a lot. As teachers of yoga, our response is often to downplay, or to reinforce the idea that yoga is for everyone and won't get in the way of you and your religion. I'm not so sure we are being truthful as teachers when we say this. It is true yoga is a discipline and not a religion. However, as a tool yoga is so effective it's like using a titanium shovel with a homing device to dig for the truth. Religion generally puts belief first and practice second. This can lead to a real lack of inquiry. If you decide to start practicing yoga, get ready to start asking yourself some really interesting and possibly uncomfortable questions about what you hold to be true.

Communication Breakdown

2010-09-05T17:26:00.001-07:00

Hey, girl, stop what you're doin'!
Hey, girl, you'll drive me to ruin.
I don't know what it is that I like about you, but I like it a lot.
Won't let me hold you, Let me feel your lovin' charms.

Communication Breakdown, It's always the same,
I'm having a nervous breakdown, Drive me insane!

Robert Plant-

Robert Plant is a fabulous singer, but it has to be said his best mode of communication is probably not the written word. The hard sciences are often very particular about defining terms - knowing exactly what the definition of a word is. This is a really good idea. When you are being operated on, you want your doctor to say to the nurse “hand me the scalpel” not “hand me the thingy”. Same goes for pilots, nuclear warhead...guys, and anyone else in charge of something important.

A friend of mine asked me to prepare a talk on communication for an I.C.B.C. (that’s a government insurance corporation) conference. So, I thought I’d kill two birds with one stone by writing a blog about what I plan to say. By the way, killing two birds with one stone would be really, really hard. Even getting close to one bird with any sizable rock is tough (I just tried). Just carrying around a rock and looking for a bird raises some suspicion apparently.

There are probably a zillion ways one could approach the topic of effective communication, but I think for brevity’s sake we can whittle it down to a few basic principles. When we communicate, we do it through the vehicle of the 5 senses:

Sight
Sound
Touch
Smell
Taste

If you are a cook, you probably use all of these to communicate. But if you are interacting with another person on the street, you’ll probably just use:

Sight
Sound
Touch

Unless you are Robert Plant. Or you are really, really friendly.

Further whittling will reveal we use language more than any of the other faculties of communication. My friend Oscar asked me to prepare something about communication from a “Yogic perspective”. So I considered that. One could say that from a yogic perspective, we’d want our communication to be:

Effective
As concise as possible
Worth listening to

So that brings us to an interesting question - what is worth saying? We use language to interact, to get things - “pass the salt”, and to describe our inner state - happy, sad, poignant, furious and so on. But to do this we need a listener. Good listeners are a very well paid bunch of folks. This is so because the act of listening literally creates space for the speaker to fill. And not only that. When we are really listened to, it encourages us to give our best as a speaker, to craft our language to be as palatable as possible, and to say what we mean. Ahhh - to say what we mean!

There are at least 8,000 homophones and homonyms in the English language. New words are being created daily - some statistics say over 20,000 English words per year are being added to our language. Some of these are scientific or medical terms that we may never use, like Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanokoniosis - just hope you don’t get a lung infection in an African mine. All of this makes choosing the right words pretty tough. So how is it that we do it?

I think great speakers are great listeners. They never stop listening, even while they are speaking. They have honed their sensitivity to pick up non-verbal cues from their audience of one or a hundred. I have seen this ability in all the great speakers I’ve heard, and it is a function of awareness. This awareness is present when the internal babble of our minds is quiet enough to allow us the sensitivity to really regard another and receive who they are and what they might understand and have an interest in. Great musicians have the same ability. Rock musicians. They can even be seen flicking their hair away from their ears in what appears to be a sultry way, but which is actually a very methodical and sophisticated way of listening better.

Meditation is the groundwater of being

2010-08-16T14:36:00.001-07:00

I spend a lot of time intellectualizing when I'm not doing asana, which keeps me generally out of trouble. Meditation however, is something that did not come easily until rather recently. As teachers and practitioners of yoga, most of us have an inkling how important meditation must be. Very difficult to put into words, this experience, or possibly lack thereof - and that's too bad, because meditation is the groundwater of being. A source that nourishes life, hidden for most of us under varying layers of dust, earth, rock. It takes some drilling to get down to this essence, and it's not hard to understand why it seems initially like a lot of work with no reward. Dust flying everywhere, metaphoric drill-bits flying into pieces, with nothing to show but a sore back.

But once the layers that conceal this source of being have been worked through, something really marvelous happens. You touch the water, and it feels cool and somehow familiar. You can drink as much of it as you want and it only hydrates and nourishes. And then you realize this groundwater of being must be the same groundwater all who meditate have tapped into. And that is a very, very comforting thought.

How to avoid death

2010-07-23T05:56:00.001-07:00

How to completely avoid death

What does it mean to die? To die means not to change. We change from an embryo to a baby, baby to adolescent, adolescent to adult, adult to elderly, elderly to eventually moving beyond the body completely, to the unknown. We call this “life”. What we are afraid of is not death, it is unknown change. Every night when we fall asleep, we move into the unknown, where time is no longer linear and we dive deep into the unrestrained creative power of our source.

When our sense of self, when our fixed ideas and patterns of thinking become so standardized that we are no longer open to change, that is death. That is the real death before the physical body dissolves. When the mind becomes as stiff as our joints, our world becomes restricted as well. New things, new ideas that threaten our old patterns are viewed with suspicion and resistance. When the walls we choose to define our way of living can no longer be tunneled through by the power of curiosity, we inhabit a prison of our own design.

What is the cure for death? The punctuation mark at the end of the last sentence is the cure. The question mark began as a “Lightning flash, from left to right” in the early middle ages. With this simple symbol of lightning - a force that both illuminates and destroys - the foundations of our previously held beliefs can be changed, adapted, and when necessary, exploded. When we allow a current of curiosity and wonder to swirl within even the things we take for granted, the possibility of seeing them as new unfolds.

Our big fear is that what we have believed in, the foundations of our way of living and seeing the world may change completely. If that were to happen, our sense of authority and value would be threatened. So to avoid this threat, we retreat into the walls of our own beliefs, retreating to the known.

So, how to avoid death? To avoid death, create an opportunity to let your beliefs dissolve, even temporarily. We can do this daily by taking a seat, closing our eyes for a few minutes and resting in the source that lies behind all of our thoughts and beliefs.

127 keys to happiness - The first eleven

2010-07-21T07:43:00.000-07:00

127 Keys to happiness.

1 - Stop caring what people think. Most people are too busy caring what you think of them to worry about what you are doing.
2 - Remember, eventually, we die. You don’t want to get sick and die, so resolve to die when you are healthy.
3 - Take a few minutes every day to recognize you can be a jerk, just as much as anyone else.
4 - When you wake up, say to yourself “ I am still alive!” Say it out loud.
5 - To create more personal space on the bus, practice yogic breathing, eyes closed.
6 - Good and bad are relative terms. To a wolf, tackling a weak caribou is good. To the weak caribou, it is bad. To the herd of caribou, it is good, because the whole herd’s bloodline will get stronger, but they may not know that.
7 - In the middle of any argument, crawl on the floor for 25 seconds, get up, and continue.
8 - When you happen to be crawling on the floor, have an argument with yourself.
9 - Be someone who categorizes. Create 2 categories - 2 kinds of people - those that categorize, and those that don’t.
10 - Occasionally, take a shower with all of your clothes on.
11 - Don’t do something everyday that scares you. That is bad advice. Home dentistry scares me, and I’m not about to do it.

The initial motivation for belief

2010-06-19T11:55:00.000-07:00

When we look around at Systems Of Belief, there are many. Christianity, Buddhism, Tantra Yoga, Classical Yoga, Islam. Although quite different in method, all systems of belief must share one starting point. The initial motivation for belief comes from the feeling that things are unsatisfactory as they are. Belief systems will disagree on exactly what is unsatisfactory, but it comes down to one thing in the end. We die. We die, and we don't know what happens next, if anything. This is profoundly unsettling to us. We don't want to end, so we create a belief. Hold on. What is a belief? This is one description:

Existential claim - to claim belief in the existence of an entity or phenomenon with the implied need to justify its claim to existence. It is often used when the entity is not real, or its existence is in doubt. "He believes in witches and ghosts" or "many children believe in fairies" are typical examples.

O.K. So.... we have a "belief" when we don't know for sure. None of us would say "My belief system is that I have a head". The reason that sounds so silly is that we know we have a head. We don't have to affirm a belief in it. This is important.

So, now we have a "belief" that we go to heaven, we re-incarnate, we turn into a luminous being, and so on. If we knew this, we would not have to have a "belief". Would we? So, if we believe something happens after we die, do we individually create a belief in some sort of continuation after death, or do we adopt one that already exists? Which one did you adopt?

Coming back around to my initial point in writing this, it is my assertion that belief is motivated by the ego. It is our desire to continue in some form that creates the motivation to adopt a belief system. If is sounds true to you that our adoption of belief is ego-driven, then good luck transcending the ego through spiritual practice based on belief. Uh-oh.

So, if we want our spiritual lives - strike that - if we want our lives to be based in truth, we have to start from a place of truth, and that is knowing what is and what is not. If we could, for a change, get rid of the beliefs we have about things and simply observe reality and then have a chat about it, we'd be further ahead. There may very well be re-incarnation, or heaven, or luminosity, or myriad other potentials for our energy when this form ends. But we will never discover that by adopting a belief and psychologically crossing our fingers, in the hopes that the belief we adopted is the "right" one.

Yoga as therapy

2010-05-20T12:27:00.000-07:00

One thing seems to be a universal truth. The more we inquire, the more there is to know. Yoga therapy is an inquiry into wholeness, which really requires the full participation of the client to be effective - why? Without the energy of inquiry turned toward coming back to health, and the client's participation in that inquiry, Yoga therapy would be at the very least less effective. Our nature is wholeness. If the therapy client sees the yoga therapist as the originator of health, then the process starts to look like an intervention. Our western medical system is largely based on the the paradigm of intervention - thinking the body needs something else, something from outside, to heal. We have sleeping pills, viagra, cholesterol medication, anti-depressants and on and on. All of these interventions have side effects at least as dangerous as the condition they are apparently trying to alleviate. An example:

Common side effects of
SSRI antidepressants:

Nausea
Insomnia
Anxiety
Restlessness
Decreased sex drive
Dizziness
Weight gain or loss
Tremors
Sweating
Sleepiness
Fatigue
Dry mouth
Diarrhea
Constipation
Headaches

Antidepressant withdrawal symptoms:

Anxiety, agitation
Depression, mood swings
Flu-like symptoms
Irritability and aggression
Insomnia, nightmares
Nausea and vomiting
Dizziness, loss of coordination
Stomach cramping and pain
Electric shock sensations
Tremor, muscle spasms

Antidepressant warning signs:

Suicidal thoughts or attempts
New or worse depression
New or worse anxiety
Aggression and anger
Acting on dangerous impulses
New or worse irritability
Feeling agitated or restless
Difficulty sleeping
Extreme hyperactivity
Other unusual changes in behavior

These side effects pile up. If you have insomnia, take a pill. That pill may make you anxious - so take an antidepressant. The antidepressant may decrease your sex drive -so take viagra. Viagra may make you sleepless....
There's a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, a hole.

The model of intervention is based upon a belief that intervention is necessary. What is often not asked of the patient is "Why are you depressed/angry/sleepless/uninterested in sex?" The answer might not be immediately apparent to the client, but if a process of inquiry begins, and a desire to change the circumstances and behaviors contributing to condition is there, health is on it's way. Perhaps it is a change of occupation, adoption of practices that encourage mental and physical stability, or even something as simple as knowing that there is a deep intelligence in us that when revealed, opens a door to a world that looks radically different and beautiful but is in fact the one we have been living in all along.

Intellectual Property

2010-05-19T16:49:00.001-07:00

Intellectual Property

The concept of intellectual property goes back to at least 1888 with the founding of the Swiss Federal Office for Intellectual Property. Intellectual property rights are state-enforced monopolies regarding use and expression of ideas and information. To own something as subtle as the expression of an idea is a strange concept for some. There has always been criticism of the theory, none more to the point than that of Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States:

“Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property.”

Spoken like a true yogi.

David K. Levine, Professor of Economics at Washington University in St. Louis has studied the effects of intellectual property rights, and disputes the assertion that these rights encourage innovation. He cites some examples:

􏰀 Boulton and Watt’s steam engine patent most likely delayed
the Industrial Revolution by a couple of decades.

􏰀 Selten’s automobile patent set back automobile innovation in
the United States by roughly the same amount of time.

􏰀 The Wright Brothers’ airplane patent forced innovative work on
airplane technology out of the United States to France.

􏰀 The patent system of England and France forced the chemical
industry to move to Germany and Switzerland where chemical
patents did not exist or were much weaker.

􏰀 When Verdi gained copyright over his works he stopped
producing new works. More generally, there is no evidence
that the adoption of copyrights stimulated the creation of
classical music.

Anyone who has been in the process of creating ideas – a song, a joke, a poem or a sequence of yoga postures – will attest to the fact that there are two things at work to create something out of nothing. The first is the technical skill required to play the notes, get the timing right for the punch-line, type the words or perform the postures. This, the yogis call Smrti, meaning “that which is remembered”. But the second component is by far the more important – the idea itself. And this part is given more than created. It is as if the idea was already there in some form of collective storehouse, waiting to be received and manifested. Ideas can be manipulated by the mind and grasped by the ego, but they exist as potential in the Source of our being and like shruti, are divinely revealed.

Open Source Yoga

2010-05-18T12:01:00.000-07:00

Two Paths

Two yogic strategies emerged to deal with this situation of physical embodiment. If the ego and its inherent desire for worldly fulfillment and sense of separation is seen as problematic, and a barrier to our connection with Source, the appropriate strategy would be to separate our universal nature from our ego nature as soon as possible. This is the path of the sage Patanjali. He identifies the essential problem as one of too much identification with what he calls nature – the physical world, which even includes our thoughts and emotions. So for Patanjali, the path back to our true nature requires, to some extent, withdrawing from the world of distraction and disengaging our universal nature from the objects of the senses. This often becomes the path of the renunciate, or the monk.

The second option, as far as addressing the situation of our embodied nature, is best articulated in the Tantric path which brings us back, after quite a diversion, to where we left off. Tantra sees the entire manifest world including thought, emotion and memory not as a barrier to recognizing our true nature, but simply as what Source has created – one reality that includes everything. So Tantra does not see our embodiment as a problem, or as a situation to escape from. It views embodiment as an opportunity to become more conscious, and to see the signature of divinity in all things. The world is the place where we practise our yoga, and to which we may come again.

If we choose a more Tantric option – that God lives in us as us - we can engage in the world and have some real concern for the fate of the world, motivated by the very real possibility that we may be here again to experience the fruits of our actions. If on the other hand we believe the world is a place to escape from and that “Heaven” lies elsewhere, that belief is going to affect our actions in another way. We may be less apt to care about the mess we leave behind, and more concerned with how exactly we get into this “Heaven”.

Because of the limitations of language it is also difficult to transmit a spiritual experience in writing. Teachings that were meant to point toward a real experience of Source by using metaphor and poetry, sometimes became interpreted literally rather than mythically. A myth points to a deeper truth, and is meant to be interpreted, not proven to be true or false. Every culture on our planet from the First Peoples of North America, to the Mayans to Australian Aboriginal peoples has a mythology appropriate to their way of life, using stories, metaphor and images that appear in their daily lives. All myths from all cultures are true in that when interpreted, they tell us deeper truths about our human experience.

The Judeo-Christian mythology shares many of its stories with other cultures – virgin births being a common way to illustrate the awakening of universal consciousness, for example. But in the 4th century, at the First Council of Nicaea, Christian bishops created the first uniform Christian doctrine. They proclaimed, after a vote, that Jesus was to be seen as God’s most perfect creation, rather than made of the same substance as God. They proclaimed also that Jesus was to be seen as the literal son of God, not as a son of God. This view created much of the perceived separation between man and his essential nature we see in Western religions today. In this literalized mythology there is no way for a human to reach God, as God does not live within us, as us. Our original nature, they said, is not Source. We are born into sin, and will be forever separate from God. We may go to heaven when we die to live near God if we do the right things, but we are never part of Source itself, as we are God’s creation.

It is important to note here that this standardization of belief by the bishops at Nicaea was not a conspiracy. Rather, it was an attempt to harmonize some of the disparate beliefs present at the time and to bring order to an organization. The proceedings were well-documented by those present, most notably by Eusebius of Caesarea, who wrote a letter to the people of his Diocese explaining the decisions made by the bishops present at the Council.

This decision, based on a literal rather than a metaphoric interpretation of myth, has had some rather severe consequences. Our ego nature could not have been dealt a more severe blow than to be told we are not part of God. Our ego needs to survive in order for us to live, so it does what we all do when we are unfairly criticized – it defends itself.

For our ego to rebuild itself, it must find a way to again become valuable. If our belief is that we are forever separate from Source – Source being a blissful, conscious reality dependant on nothing – then our value must be only a relative value. If we do not see God in others or ourselves, our ego must adopt a new strategy, and that strategy is comparison. Unconditional love is only possible when we recognize our universal nature – when we become “transparent to transcendence”. Our individual qualities – physical beauty, size, intelligence and so on, will change as we change over this life. If our love for another or for ourselves is based only on our individual qualities, without a remembrance of our universal nature as part of God, our love may change when the individual qualities we see as valuable change or diminish.

A society that places value only on individual qualities is a society that loves conditionally. If our belief is that we are not innately valuable, but valuable only because of what we do, then we must do in order to be loved. It is not enough to simply be. It is clear that the focus of our society is on doing. In order to be loved in this context, we must be not just smart or beautiful or funny or resourceful, but smarter, more beautiful, funnier or more resourceful than others. We must compete and win in one of these events in order for the ego to repair itself.

Another symptom of a belief that we are separate from Source is the desire to own. Indigenous cultures living in harmony with their environment see themselves as belonging to the earth, not the earth belonging to them. This is not to say that territorial behaviour is not an aspect of many sentient beings. Territorial behaviour is motivated by the necessary desire for survival and does not extend past one’s own life cycle, and often not past one season. However, with our large brains and sense of separation we have decided that it is actually possible to own something that was here millions of years before we were born, is in fact the organism that allows us to live, and to own it in perpetuity. We wish to be able to pass parts of the earth on to our offspring, or to sell it - something we never created in the first place. It makes as much sense to claim that we also own the sun. From our sense of separation we cry “This is MINE!” in an attempt to own everything – to bring it all back. Perhaps instead we should whisper “I am yours”.