Posts Tagged ‘yoga and politics’
the yang and the yin of it.
kim on 2:55 pm December 16th, 2008 / Be the first to comment! »
i heard here three or four times today a quote by an unidentified woman, telling the NPR Reporter that for the downwardly spiraling economy,
there are no silver bullets here…The best the Fed can do is throw pillows down to soften the landing.”
right round baby right round
kim on 4:14 pm December 2nd, 2008 / Be the first to comment! »
lately i’ve been thinking about karma, which evolved from a Sanskrit word whose pronunciation matches that of caerimonia, or ceremony, ritual.
On this side of the dateline, we tend to define karma as the apostle Paul did: “Man reaps what he sows.” “What goes around, comes around.”
I’ve always had trouble with the term “karma yoga” as defining good acts, because then you aren’t you still attached to getting only goodness in return? it seems to me you can do anything and still be practicing karma yoga. What if you’re ok with doing something neutral or negative, and with being prepared to experience that same thing some point in the future?
Asking for negative acts to come back to you might even been like saying “bring it” to the universe.
Lately, I am examining karma by being aware of an emotional state I am uncomfortable with, for example, depression, sorrow, anger, or frustration. I drive almost every day, and I often feel “cut off” by someone rushing to their job, home, a bar, their dying grandmother. My heart jumps as the other driver speeds past me and into my lane, my breathing changes, and at least 50% of the time, I find myself reacting in anger. this anger comes from the fear of experiencing an accident.
as i experience this sensation, i imagine that i have done that exact thing to someone before. when i wedge in this stop sign on the road of my own reaction, a mental shift occurs:
1) My negative emotion changes or goes away.
2) I see immediately the universe’s answer to a previous demand from me entitled, “bring it”.
9 times out of 10, i can recall an instance in which i have acted toward someone in exact the way that i am currently uncomfortable with.
navel gazing
kim on 6:38 pm November 25th, 2008 / 1 Comment »
so i thought today of an interpretation of this.
the energetic bodies of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd chakras live in and alongside the tailbone and legs; abdomen; and solar plexus, respectively. their physical properties are those of earth, water, and fire–or earth, oceans/waters, and the sun.
think of using your inner eye and looking down at your own sun, water, and earth–as from the sky–and determining how your own inner planet is doing at that moment. how hot the sun, how turbulent or calm and rhythmic the waters, how stable the ground.
(there are many) analyst(s)
kim on 10:48 am November 14th, 2008 / 2 Comments »
particularly as i observe my mind experiencing boundless’s imminent move, which may or may not be to 14th and T, i was struck this morning when reading a commentary by swami satchidananda, who writes a potent and clear translation of the yoga sutras:
How are we to know whether our thoughts are selfless or not? We have watch carefully the moment a thought-form arises in the mind. We become analysts. This itself is the Yoga practice–watching our own thoughts and analyzing them.
Can you run a business successfully and be selfless, I wonder? This is the question I visit and revisit often.
bag it
kim on 3:49 pm November 6th, 2008 / 2 Comments »
i have decided to set a goal: to get rid of at least half of the plastic bags wadded together like petroleum bush in my house by the end of the year, which i estimate can happen if i remember, 90-100% of the time, to take the canvas bags to the grocery store.
I have a car, so i will place two canvas bags to live in the car permanently, which, additionally, should decrease the chances of accumulating new plastic bags, especially from places like Rite Aid.
hello, truth!
kim on 7:25 pm November 5th, 2008 / Be the first to comment! »
the great bill moyers was interviewed on Npr’s fresh air today, and he recalled a conversation he’d had with joseph campbell, the popular scholar of mythology, said this:
if you want to change the world, you change the metaphor.
growth
kim on 7:19 pm November 5th, 2008 / Be the first to comment! »
at boundless yoga, there is a small plant growing in the corner of our bathroom, which is a room with no windows. i worried about this plant when we first put it there a few months ago, wondering if it would get enough light to grow.
the plant has actually grown a lot in this corner, defying my expectations and mitigating my concern. using virtually no sunlight (save the bit that makes it in), it propels itself upward into a larger, sturdier plant by losing some, but not all, leaves on the lower part of the stem. this seems to give the plant a heightened abililty to create bigger, greener, and lusher leaves at the the top.
it’s quite beautiful.
the weather is, in fact, going to get worse.
kim on 12:14 pm April 26th, 2007 / 9 Comments »
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.
the FDA and CAM
kim on 3:07 pm April 25th, 2007 / Be the first to comment! »
“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.
what is it with the east coast
kim on 9:18 am March 26th, 2007 / 1 Comment »
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.
