i was standing in line today at citibank, and i noticed that without irony, cyndi lauper’s money changes everything had been chosen to play through the speakers for customers waiting in line.

So I was talking to a friend and yoga student the other day, and he mentioned yoga journal’s latest issue, which of course includes many pages of earnest yogis doing great poses. my friend mentioned a few particular pages that dismayed him because the poses were not part of a normal editorial section. these poses were paid for by chrysler.

this car-sponsored spread of yoga poses teaches us something about poses, to be sure, but to my friend’s point in a letter he wrote to the editors of this fast-changing magazine, it may teach us more about the necessity of something else: a dialog between the people who consider themselves students (surely we’re more than “enthusiasts?”) of this deeply internal practice, and the western media channeling millions of dollars to advertise its benefits.

what do you think? go buy a yoga journal and give aimmedia.com, its owner, more money and attention, so that we can talk sincerely about whether it’s ok for yoga journal to take money from a huge car company when it didn’t need to. to be sure, wholefoods and vegetarian times are two great entities benefiting from yoga journal’s rise, so a rising tide lifts all ships? or all cars?

january 22

Dear [yoga journal] Editors,

I just bought the February 2008 issue of Yoga Journal — my first in a while. I was really looking forward to reading it. But picking up the magazine and opening it was like bumping into a friend one hasn’t seen in a long time and having your breath taken away by how far along their cancer is — your magazine is simply being overrun, inch by inch, with ever more inappropriate advertising.

I’m sure you get lots of letters like mine, and have many answers to my objection — where do you draw the line; it’s all in the name of getting the good word out about yoga; and so on. I’m sure it’s very easy to dismiss letters like mine, and very hard to turn down Chrysler.

But please, somewhere in the back of your minds, at least register that one reader has given up on you. I know we’re all caught up in the ugly contradictions of capitalism; I know none of our hands is clean. Still, even so, when I see that your editorial staff has decided to produce an “article” in the YJ house style that is actually an ad for automobiles — automobiles! — I’m unable to read the rest of the magazine. I hope your hard-working writers will
accept my apologies.

Yours,

i found this blog post on the wall street journal today describing several methods scientists could potentially use to control the climate. why not install huge solar mirrors to divert solar radiation, some are asking? please, yes, let’s spend money to send thousands of crop-dusting airplanes to blanket the arctic with engineed “particles,” others say.

the salient issue in any yoga or meditation class always comes back to control: what is in your sphere of influence, and what is not. one of the practices of raja yoga (the yoga we do in studios, the yoga of the mind) is to consider all possibilities. maybe crop-dusting planes in the artic is actually the answer. perhaps the long view is that this practice will save the earth.

i’ll be honest, though: it’s when i get to this level of justification–save the earth–that i have to stop and ask myself what we’re really considering here. what are we doing, and what are we reacting to?

the sudden hype over global climate change is obviously justified; only the diehards at this point are calling the rest of us chicken littles. but the question is: what are we trying to change and why? does anyone seriously think that a 4.5 billion year old rock won’t balance itself out, even if that means destroying everything on the planet that we–its squatters, effectively–call life?

crop-dusting the arctic is like taping the sprained ankle of a basketball player and telling him to get back on the court. as any fan has watched, this star might still be able to play and, position depending, will block, defend, and/or shoot for the rest of the game. but playing will in fact make that ankle worse, which in turn will lengthen the icing, xrays, and rehab when the game is over.

it isn’t even that our short-term, scientific solutions won’t help–the player with the sprained ankle might win the game. it’s rather that these scientific forays, and indeed the money and resources backing them, run the risk of diverting the attention from the real issue, which is where we actually are now. as a collective group of 5 billion people, and certainly the billions before us, we have created this.

the questions, then, are: what human practices have directly caused this problem? how do we stop them? how do we all accept responsibility for the fact that “developing” to this point has necessarily been derived of selfish, greedy, short-sighted, and in fact quite brilliant behavior and decisions? most important, is it possible for us to let go of the hubris of control, and to recognize that the 100 years we’re here, and any decision we make during that time, is not really going to impact the 4.5 billion more years this rock might keep spinning around the sun?

the point i’m making is that looking outward and upward is not always the place to go. the weather problems we are experiencing, and will continue to “suffer through,” are nothing more than a slap from earth, like any of our moms disciplining us as children because we reached for too many cookies at once. mom had a point: eat too many cookies, and you’ll get sick.

“CAM,” or Complementary and Alternative Modalities, is a healthcare movement trying to get your attention. Lobbyists and other interested parties are right now encouraging the submission of comments to the FDA regarding a “guidance” that the FDA will use, effectively, to make herbs, vitamins, and minerals “medicine.” from what i can tell on first glance, this means that our access to these earth-based (as in, naturally occurring) materials will be significantly restricted (and drive the price higher). a full copy of the proposal from the FDA is here.

i don’t understand the issue completely, but several of the emails i’ve received in the last 24 hours point to this site as an important read if you are interested in whether or not pharmaceutical companies exert a strong level of control over the FDA.

there’s also a lot on this site, including the option to send your signature on a petition to stop the FDA. to comment to the FDA directly, go here.

if you know anything more about this issue and care to explain it on this site, i am very interested. i will do more reading and post the same.

i find it most difficult to practice yoga in relationships and moving vehicles. this is perhaps because at these times, i feel the least stable.

over the weekend, i flew home to visit my family. when the flight landed in louisville, i experienced an immediate sense of relief–not necessarily because i would be seeing family, but specifically because as soon as we landed we were at the gate. as soon as we left the gate we were at the bag check. and as soon as i got my bag, i was on my way home.

it occurred to me during this process that organizing society is not a small task. comparing the project of organizing a “louisville” versus organizing a “dc metropolitan area” is almost unfair. but here it is:

the reason my (literally grounding) experience in louisville felt so good was because it was uncomplicated, quiet, and quick. landing at any airport in dc, i can feel the tension increasing, not just among the people on the plane, but also in the airport employees, people picking people up, cab drivers, etc. i nearly always find myself tense when i land in DC, or as i fly out of it.

of course i am, to some degree, projecting this tension. however, i wonder exactly how we do it over here on the east coast. i drove a lot in louisville, and i caught myself anxiously looking in the rear view mirror if i was going too slow, or wasn’t sure where to turn, because i have grown used to the impatience of drivers around me, and often of myself, in this time-stretched city. sure enough, in my home town, no one seemed to care so much if i was impeding their progress forward.

my reaction to this experience was a little bit of sadness, and longing for an experience that does not include so much compression, confusion, and impatience. perhaps the anger is differently placed in the smaller of these two cities, and by definition, i guess, there is less of it. but damn, the beltway and its road rage are deep. i’m not sure there are many other places like it in the world.

i will work on this for myself. but i wonder how we all, as a community of people who barely know each other, could cooperate differently in this huge metropolitan area so that things didn’t feel so tense.

veternarians consider pigs as intelligent as dogs. dogs are considered as intelligent as the average two-year-old child.

from the new york times today.

i think of this as another description for my job.

there was a nice quote sold on blank note cards a few years ago; i’ve seen it around a lot, so you may have also already seen it. it was an all white, sqare card that read:

peace.

it does not mean to be in a place

where there is no noise, trouble

or hard work. it means to be in

the midst of those things and still

be calm in your heart

.

the author is unknown. i personally would choose the word “still” over “calm,” but i enjoy her/his word choice. from dictionary.com, this etymology of the word:

[Origin: 1350–1400; (n., adj.) ME calm(e) < It calma (n.), calmo (adj.) < LL cauma summer heat (with l perh. from L calére to be hot) < Gk kaûma (s. kaumat-) burning heat; akin to kaíein to burn (see caustic); (v.) ME calmen < It calmare, deriv. of the n.]

so the sensation of calm points to the sensation of burning. if we were to take this unknown author’s description, peace, then, is equivalent to the sensation of burning in the heart.

i observed this sensation last night thumbing through a catalog. sometimes it’s a comfort not to fight the grain, not to be so individual as to refuse to allow yourself the pleasure of receiving the efforts of people you’ll never know–these people, who are working day in and out to assess which daybed, rug, or wall hanging you’ll buy. of course we’re discussing money, so perhaps these supply-side people don’t care. on the other hand, as i (also) learned from a car commercial recently: “you’re our top priority because you’re the one in the driver’s seat.”

this leads me to a commercial that aired late during the academy awards. the commercial was for safeway’s organics line. a couple, both aryan and smiling, were sitting on a couch with blue and yellow tshirts. the tshirts had small writing on the chest of each actor.

the tshirts listed definitions (in the format of miriam webster) of the character these actors represented. i saw the commercial twice but didn’t look closely at the definitions until i saw, the second time, “intermediate yoga” on the woman’s shirt–this, in addition to something about her being funnier than she realizes.

since i am in the business of peddling peace, specifically the peace found through the practice of yoga, i became very interested in safeway’s message. is there enough of a demographic of “intermediate” 30-something yoginis (married to and/or dating and/or snuggling with blonde dudes on couches in broad daylight) to warrant this label on international TV with the oft-cited “billion people watching”? and if this is the case, does this woman represent a demograhpic of white, organic-eating, fair-trade-coffee-drinking, intermediate yoga practitioners out there? more to the point, as much as we in the yoga world may appreciate such marketing, how do you feel about having this particular woman-character represent your attempts to eat, love, and practice discovering union inside your self?

this article caught my eye because it speaks to what we’re trying to teach in a yoga class. i wonder who would win if researchers pitted siesta and savasana (corpse pose) head-to-head.

in a joking way but half seriously at jpmorgan and merrill lynch, where i used to work, i lobbied for siesta rooms so that you could rest in the afternoon, at 3 pm, when you were falling asleep at your desk anyway.

alas, we just drank more coffee.

so we (boundless teachers and staff) are finalizing our agreement on boundless’s values. we’ve got the mission down (see right if you are reading this on the home page), but we have been debating and discussing the values. they will be up this week.

if you can vote or give me info on this piece; i think it’s an important thing to reflect on:

• honoring the body as our first home, and trusting it at all times

versus

• honoring the body as our first home, and keeping it safe at all times

because sometimes we need to feel a little unsafe in order to effect
change, right? surely a butterfly emerging from its cocoon doesn’t feel
totally SAFE, but i would suggest that it feels TRUST. when we are facing
our demons in meditation, or handstand, or in a deep backbend, playing the
edge of safety is, in effect, deepening your TRUST in the fact that it’s
all good.

the purpose of this bullet is to identify the importance of rooting into
the first chakra, or (in a combined first/second chakra) MOTHER EARTH. i
don’t think we feel SAFE in a hailstorm, but we have to TRUST that she’s
throwing ice down on us for a reason.

several people forwarded this new york times‘ article to me over the weekend titled, “the days of wine and yoga.” the article is about yoga-and-wine retreats planned to be held in sonoma county starting in 2007.

to her credit, the journalist explores two opposing views. “‘yoga can be very serious, sure, but why not have it be really fun?’” this, the question posed by the woman whose idea it is to launch an alcohol-assisted yoga practice. “yoga purists,” apparently, take the opposite view, which is to say that “‘drinking and [yoga] don’t go well together.”‘

i’m not sure how these two views are opposite each other, because the basic problem with calling sober-yoga serious, and wine-yoga fun, is to say that drinking makes yoga more fun. or less serious.

Seriously? another proponent of wine-and-yoga asked where we draw the line: is it at “‘tylenol? refined sugar? caffeine?”’ though this question is exactly where we could stay for a while, this woman’s question also misses the point.

the point is that yoga is about purifying the body. we practice hatha yoga, and indeed all forms of yoga, to cleanse the body’s meridian (or, in sanskrit, nadi) pathways in order to give it more opportunity to absorb and utilize prana, or chi. we breathe through a pose, a yoga class, a meditation, in an effort to stay mindful of how the body operates, as a channel, in space and time.

no matter what country, vineyard, or social custom wine is associated with, it is a toxin. the body recognizes alcohol of any kind as poison. furthermore, wine does not “relax” the body; it temporarily deadens it. wine is a beautiful, delicious, and seductive poison, but a poison it is.

another downside of drinking wine (and don’t get me wrong: we just served wine at our holiday party) is lack of proper sleep. anyone who has suffered from insomnia knows that even one glass of wine up to four hours before bed can disrupt sleep.

like yoga, sleep is designed to help the body clean and heal. therefore, the yoga teacher leading these sonoma retreats, rosemary garrison, is simply wrong when she says, “‘have a glass of wine, enjoy your night, get a good night’s sleep and come to a really cleansing, vigorous practice the next morning [at the wine-and-yoga retreat].’” it’s unlikely that, since the practitioners are at a winery that has many selections of palate-stimulating wines, anyone will drink just one glass.

it isn’t that we drink wine and do yoga, or that that we take tylenol for whatever pain we have, it’s the intention to combine the two. one is a cleansing practice designed to help the person discover her/his union with the higher self; the other is a thousands-year-old invention designed a) to achieve the effect we still desire today, and/or b) to drink in place of fetid water that otherwise killed people.

one last thing. i decided that i really couldn’t comment on a wine-and-yoga practice unless i had a direct experience doing it. so, in preparation for my practice last night, i had a glass of wine. it was a nice glass of red wine.

What I noticed in my practice was how tired I was. I stayed in poses longer, without being as interested as i usually am. I found my mind wandering, particularly to topics, and relationships, that currently leave me feeling sad. I also didn’t have much focus: I usually start my practice with some idea of what my body is wanting, and in this case I couldn’t quite get to it. So I wound up relying on poses I normally do when I can’t think of anything else. in short, for me, it was a less mindful practice than normal.

from thisislondon.co.uk.

there is a fundamental flaw in the job drug companies have to sell us drugs.

publicly-traded drug companies are necessarily beholden to their stockholders, who have loaned a certain sum of money to the company with the expectation that they will get more money back at a later date.

because the first (and many would suggest only) job of a company is to make money, drug companies have to make money selling drugs. A big way a publicly-traded company increases its value and pays off its debt is by developing an economy of scale, i.e., the lipitor market, the celebrex market.

this means any drug company can’t make a drug that is only right for me. rather, that company has to know that the millions of dollars it spends on R&D, thus taking money away from the bottom line that gets paid out to stockholders, will be recovered and a profit made.

So it is in pfizer’s, and its shareholders’ interest, to sell you lipitor and celebrex. Whether you actually need these drugs is not, necessarily, a concern of Pfizer because the more lipitor Pfizer sells, the happier its employees (year-end bonuses), and the more gratified the stockholders (increased stock price, more money in junior’s college fund). It is only natural that the leaders of this company would want more money than employees, and, possibly, shareholders, because they are the ones steering the ship, paying the bills on time, and keeping their own little corner of the free market churning.

the answers to this issue are not easy, but we have to talk about them. to start, several ideas come to my mind:

1) you are the only person who will ever know what you need. Knowing what you need, including exactly what you need to heal (it could be relearning the breath, it could be celebrex), is power.

you need to work with trained people whose single intention is to help you, to determine what you need to heal, because you cannot do it alone. to this end, pfizer (eg) can be viewed as a helper, but not, i would argue, an advisor in any way.

2) The relationship that you, as a consumer, have with a publicly-traded drug company is inherently disempowering. Desire for more money in the free market is arguably insatiable, and the expectation of pfizer’s stockholders for more money is driving that company’s efforts to sell you drugs. From a yogic point of view, it is important to have this information when you make a decision to take any prescribed drug.

3) There was a time when individual communities, small ones all over the globe, had local healers who worked in service of healing the ailments of that community. At this time people were not living past 40 years of age. It is clear we will never go back to that time, but we all could stand an increase in community-based healers to balance the “power” of free-market drug peddling, which is our reality today.