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.

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?

the most common thing we hear from guys contemplating yoga is their fear over being inflexible. they’re concerned that when they get into the class, they’ll feel stupid or strange or uncomfortable trying to touch their toes when surrounded by “bendy” chicks who might as well have the floor removed under their hands because they can reach further than gravity.

here’s the news flash: bendy people are inflexible also, to such a degree that many yoga teachers, “flexible” themselves, don’t notice that, for example, a willowy woman with joints that bend like gumby is actually holding tremendous blocks in her groin, between her shoulder blades and, often, in her neck. this happens because she is so “flexible” elsewhere.

think about it as a pulse within a closed system, like the give a bridge has with all that weight traveling over it. when one spot gives, another has to tighten or else the entire structure will collapse. so make no mistake: what appears to be flexibility is often a mask for painful tightness elsewhere.

most important for most western men out there: in many ways you’re starting from a better place if you feel tight everywhere.

a) unlike the flexi-ladies, you don’t have to unlearn the pattern of being too loose in one place, and too tight in another, and

b) you are basically starting from scratch.

everything will hurt so good (thanks john cougar), and the changes in your body will appear more wide-reaching, and more pleasurable, faster. it’s easier on the mind if it has only one place to focus on (even if that one place is the entire body), versus it having to figure out what’s tight, what’s loose, and how everything works together in a more appropriately executed yoga pose.

so i was at a restaurant/bar friday night and had an experience worth relating in a yoga context. the place was crowded and there were few places to sit, but it appeared otherwise in pockets across the bar. smokers leaving their posts to go outside for a few minutes created the appearance of vacant spots.

not yet having made the connection between vacant seats and smokers outside, my girl friends spotted a long table manned by four guys. the table was long enough to seat 8-10. i walked up to the table and asked if we could share the table, offering to sit at one end while they sat at the other. one of the guys (who were all straight) immediately said no, we actually have people here; they are just outside for a few minutes.

as we then stood nearby this relatively empty table and then watched the smoker-guys (no women) return, my friends and i reflected on how interesting it is that people go out to meet people–but when given the opportunity to do so, they often stick to what they know. we agreed that this felt like a dc, or perhaps more broadly, an east-coast phenomenon. in our respective hometowns, for example, we felt the men would have been friendlier in this case. as in, three small women sharing a long table with a bunch of guys could actually have been fun.

the ego-rejection part of this story is uninteresting to me, because rejection happens all the time (it always hurts, though, right? rejection, an act, has suffering, a feeling, on speed dial). what’s more interesting to me is how strong the feeling of separate-ness i feel, observe, and hear from other people in dc all the time. are we all so tired from our jobs, lonely from having moved so far away from home, anxious about being rejected ourselves, that we can’t just be friendly and offer up a little bit of space?

do we feel we have fought so hard for personal space that we find it difficult to share?

here are some solutions i’ve come up with: look everyone in the eye that i talk to now. listen and see more. in the wake of experiences like this bar-based one over the weekend (and to debunk the myth: yes, yoginis go to bars and drink sometimes), my intention is to examine how i respond to someone i don’t know, whether it’s on the metro, at boundless, at a parking spot i’m giving up. whatever. i just want to be nicer, and meet nicer people.

i was driving back from vacation in upstate new york last night and i thought it was a joke. i’d been on 15 north most of the time; it’s a road that takes you through neighborhoods, strip malls, and, the other half of the time, a pseudo-highway. i quite like it, because most of the time it feels homey.

it was late, around 11 pm, by the time i hit I-270. all of a sudden, as though a switch had been turned on, every car on the road was hurtling past me at 20 miles over the speed limit. i was already speeding — my self-justified, cop-friendly, nine-miles-an-hour-in-excess — so i, too, was one of these speeders. but as perhaps is the underlying debate on drunk yoga, it seemed a matter of degrees. we were all still going very fast, and as we all know high speeds in any car at any time are dangerous, but the shock of being passed by court-worthy speeders was an interesting experience.

at 11 pm at night, our bodies are designed to rest. having spent a week away from this city, to then be introduced to it at a time when the sun had been down for a good six hours, was a jolt.

it got me thinking: just how out of balance are we? when there is that much movement, so unremitting and close to you, how closed can you be from it? at this particular moment, i noticed my heart beat increase, my palms sweaty, and my brow slightly furrowed. perhaps because i practice yoga, perhaps because i’d been away, or perhaps because you just can if you want to because it’s really not that hard, i slowed everything down: my mind, my heart, my car.

it was in the moment i felt tremendous gratitude for the ability to recognize how i felt, and for the tools to get down off the ledge — one that shows up as though you’re in a video game — out of nowhere.

one of my intentions for the new year is to slow down and, in doing so, notice if i can actually be present in my body more often. i plan to do this because i think it is healthier, and though i’m not sure how long i will live, i want to do so well.

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.

this is what dr. nile gardner of the heritage foundation said this morning, speaking on the diane rehm show, at around 10:25 am.

in this context, he was criticizing kofi annan for too much pacifism during the past decade. specifically, he backed up his comments on the annan’s slow reaction to darfur.

i try to listen to information like this through the lens of a yogini (i love this article describing the word yogini. and this is a new book on the identity). to that end, my response is served up as yogically as possible, with a dash of feminism and a sprinkling of forgiveness.

many in the decades before us would have said that pacifism is the only way. though i wasn’t alive for it, the 60’s sounds like it was an encouraging time for peace-seekers. the teachings of the buddha, and gandhi, are rooted in non-violence. there have been voices, in other words, in the recent past that honor pacifism instead of criticize it.

to dr. gardiner’s point, these days we hear a lot about how violent things are. what i’m trying to work out is whether things are different or the same. one difference is that we have more access to the information (read: suffering) of people around the globe. and losing 3,000 people on 9/11 wasn’t a small experience. on the other hand, nick nolte says something to one of his reports in the thin red line about how nature is always warring with itself. car bombs in baghdad are of a piece, according to him, and obviously according to dr. gardiner.

so, here we find ourselves. if quantum physics is in fact a sound way to consider reality (this docu-drama does a great job explaining how), then when we meditate or do yoga, we are serving society by envisioning peace. watching the thin red line the other night, i wondered with the narrator what it is inside us that creates man-on-man violence–when there is so much beauty, and so much peace.

i posit, perhaps, that we need to know violence, really stare it in the face, before we can deeply know peace. and, as many wisdom teachers offer, to discover our true nature is to discover a reality beyond even the pedestrian definition of peace. rather, it is to know unadulterated bliss, that of true consciousness.

so i was driving to the studio today to meet a client, and i was wending with the car through side streets in order to avoid any major traffic lights. love that about dc.

suddenly, as i hit the gas and drove away from a four-way stop i had just paused at (one-thousand-one, one-thousand-two), a car came barreling down the street perpendicular to mine, the driver oblivious to the stop sign she was about to run. there i was, suddenly in her line of vision and right in the middle of the crossing. she slammed on her brakes, already through her stop sign she’d just run, inches from hitting my car.

the whole thing was lucky: having my barely-accelerating car hit by another one going 30+ miles an hour would probably have sucked. i am grateful for the fact that she looked up! so, in the mini-moments i spend processing — “oh my god, what is she doing? oh my god, she is going to hit me! oh my god! she is such an idiot for driving so fast and ignoring basic traffic rules!” — i find it fascinating that i arrived at the conclusion that she was an idiot.

just before the moment that her car’s nose stopped at my car’s side, i had thrown my hand up in the air as through to stop her with my special yogic superpowers. as i began to process my anger toward her, which arose from the fear i experienced at nearly being side-swiped, i used that upraised hand to gesture at her and mouth, “what are you doing?! that’s a stop sign!” i pointed to the stop sign, reminding her of what she’d obviously already figured out; my face was in a scowl, and i’m sure i looked as afraid and angry as i felt. her face scowled back, as though it was my fault the stop sign was there.

in all, the situation was great because neither of us was physically hurt, but sucky because we both drove away with no contact, pissed at the other. how many of us have forgotten about a stop sign or nearly side-swiped someone? all of us. how many of us have almost been hit, or almost hit someone? all of us. but there this woman and i were, looking all mean at each other in a moment that arose from mindlessness, fear, and therefore anger. i drove on, and she drove on, both of us feeling bad, not least because we’d put that energy out there.

my question is: how could i have processed my fear and anger, using my powers of observation and clarity, and actually forgiven her in that moment instead of shaking an angry fist at an unwitting stop sign, and giving her the frowny-face that, at that moment, i felt sure she deserved? surely there is a better way than the character assassination that inevitably follows commuter situations such as these.

so we’re going to restart the boundless book club with the bloody chamber, a book of fairy tales rewritten by brit angela carter. we’ll meet the first monday of december. email me directly to get more information and address.