The Legend of Bagger Vance

I really loved The Legend of Bagger Vance.  I have read in more than one book that most people don’t realize that when they seek happiness, they are actually seeking that one thing that makes them forget about everything else.  That was a really confusing statement, so I’ll explain.  In the movie, Bagger Vance keeps encouraging Junuh to forget about everything else but the course and to find his natural swing.  He tells Junuh to watch Bobby Jones and the way he waits for the swing to come.  Jones doesn’t force the right swing or try to whack the ball into the hole, he’s patient and works with the course rather than against it.  When Junuh finally does this, all of the crowd disappears, including Bagger, and it’s just him and the course.  In middle school I was really bad at shooting free throws, so my coach suggested I visualize the ball going in before shooting.  I asked him how that would help, and he said he’d read somewhere that it worked.  It sounded like total weird voodoo crap to me, so I refused to do it.  Then, my senior year of high school, I read The Peaceful Warrior.  The book is based on a gymnast who breaks his leg, and has to learn how to properly train his mind and body in order heal.  He discovers that while he is doing gymnastics, he forgets about everything else.  He experiences a sort of silence that his mentor recognizes as total focus, and explains that our minds enjoy nothing more than our entire mind and body experiencing the single moment we are in.  We each have at least one thing that allows us to do this naturally, and The Peaceful Warrior argues that every individual spends his life subconsciously searching for it.  Junuh’s focus, and therefore sense of peace, comes from golf.  It was really cool for me to see how this film pulled together all of the different experiences I had with this idea and gave it a visual representation. 

The Effect of Class

This class in its entirety has been really awesome for me.  The asana practice has stuck with me even more than I thought it would, and it turns out stretching is even more beneficial than I would have ever thought.  I feel bad I put my body through not stretching when I was really active in high school.  Even cooler though is how much I have learned from the philosophies associated with the physical activity.  Never would I have guessed that this class would make me question my normal workout regime and the mentality I have going into it.  I also never would have guessed that Hinduism could have so many allusions and similarities to Christian philosophy.  In fact, I wish more Christians did not fear learning about other religions because there is so much we can learn about our own ideology by looking at it through other philosophies.  When I took my yoga mat back to my apartment, it made me happy to see how malleable it has gotten since the first day of class, and all I could think was how I really didn’t want to find it in my trunk three months from now and realize I hadn’t used it all.  I also want to keep learning about Hinduism and the philosophy behind it. I truly feel like learning about the religion has really opened my mind both academically and spiritually, and has really given me a desire to learn more about both myself and my faith through yoga. 

How the Lotus Helped the Grasshopper

I did yoga for the first time out of class this week.  I took the GRE this morning, so on Friday of last week I decided that I really need to crack down on my internet use in order to better study on top of getting everything else done.  It sort of worked.  I successfully dropped Facebook for the week, but was unable to stay off YouTube past the first couple of days (which was sort of disconcerting and is making me reevaluate how much time I spend on the internet).  I found that I had more time than I was expecting by simply giving up that one site, and the hardest part was I really had made a habit out of going straight to Facebook as soon as I had any extra time.  So, I started coming up with different things I could do (how pathetic does that sound?)  Then I remember Tyler’s blog about her considering doing yoga for thirty minutes instead of taking a nap, and I got on the floor and attempted to do the few stretches I felt comfortable enough doing on my own.  I did two stretches, then three, then four, and before I knew it I had done enough stretches to take up thirty minutes.  I wasn’t trying to do it for half an hour.  It just sort of happened, and it surprised me because I honestly didn’t think I would be able to remember that many.  I’m sure I did them all in the completely wrong order, but it felt really good to realize just how much the stretches have become engrained in me.  

Yoga from the Inside Out: Part 4

I met this elderly woman this summer named Lu.  She’s one of those people you meet and think to yourself, “I thought you people only existed in the movies.”  She and her husband are in their late 70s, the head cheerleader who married the captain of the football team.  Lu is simultaneously the epitome and the antithesis of what you would expect.  She is beautiful and giddy, and yet stubborn and passionate as hell, unafraid to call you out in a moments notice.  After meeting her for the first time, she hugged me and said, “I already love you more than I should.”  I’ve always thought that sentiment was the best example of who she is as well as what her and I have in common.  After reading Christina’s chapter on gurus, I realized that is exactly what Lu is to me.  In the later years of her life Lu decided to take her faith more seriously.  She learned how to read and write in Greek all on her own, and began translating the New Testament from its original language.  Now, she is a source of a wealth of knowledge whenever I feel like I’m reading the Bible but not exactly getting anything from it.  Lu encourages me daily, and roots for my faith and my studies constantly.  I really liked how Christina explained that everyone’s path is their own, and that it really is okay if your particular spiritual path does not lead you to pursue a relationship with a guru.  My relationship with Lu is not traditional.  I don’t sit and soak up all of her words as truth, and I don’t think she would want me to.  Her and I disagree on many topics, but the point is she allows me argue.  Lu knows that I grasp concepts best when I write about them and then discuss them with someone.  Most of the time when we’re debating, my ideas are not fully formed, and thus my opinions are weak.  Lu allows me to babble back and forth with myself until I finally get across my ideas or, more often, realize that I don’t actually believe a word I am saying and have to start from scratch.  She never treats me like I’m ignorant for disagreeing with her or for having half-baked sentiments about my faith, which always amazes me since she is so concrete in hers.  Lu is there to keep me moving.  She knows that any sort of stirring in me, even if it is struggle, is better than apathy towards my faith.  She knows that with every disagreement we have I am led to think more deeply about my faith, and that is progress to her.  Lu does very much what Christina suggests we all do for ourselves, and something I struggle doing for myself.  She accepts me where I am at.  She doesn’t expect anything from me.  She just cares, and she wants me to grow in all areas of my life.  Although, I’m sure she’d have a heart attack if I told her she’s my guru haha. 

Yoga from the Inside Out: Part 3

I am not a pessimist (one of my five strengths on the Strengths Finders Test was actually Positivity), but I struggle with the idea of humans being intrinsically good.  I’ll accept that some of it is probably due to my upbringing in Christianity.  I was raised with the Lutheran doctrine that we are under “bondage to sin.”  So, yes.  The idea that we are born with original sin is engrained in me; however, my experience with the reality of humanity and what we are capable of has never really been a great counter argument to the theory.  Are there good people in the world?  Yes, of course, but when people are given the opportunity and the freedom to turn against one another, most of the time they do.  Again, I’m not trying to be excessively severe, but take even social media as a small example.  How many times over the past year alone has their been story after story about a teen suicide due to bullying, both in person and over the internet.  When people have a sense of anonymity, and therefore perceive a lack of real responsibility for their actions, it’s like their morals (and rhetoric I might add) deteriorate back to a primal state.  Only after celebrities step in to say something do people take a stand, and in those instances I would say that people’s willingness to stand alongside them are an aftereffect of groupthink, not an actual activation of any sort of moral compass.  There are very few people who are sincere and can maintain their sense of integrity once it is tested.  I’ve witnessed it.  I believe that people have no hope of being good if they are not encouraged to be so and find that goodness within them, but I disagree that it’s our natural state of being.  I just don’t see how it can be when we are capable of destroying each other the way we do, often not realizing what we have done until years later.  Believe me, I would love to be proven wrong, but after the amount of ignorant, and worse, complacent within their ignorance, people I have met in my short years, it would take a lot to convince me otherwise.  What I do believe is that most people desire to be good.  Most people believe that they are good.  But few will act to better themselves, and even fewer will hardly fight to remain good under pressure.  We are creatures of community, and good is defined by the communities we associate with.  If the community says go to church, we go to church.  If the community says Jews are a disease that needs eradicating, then we eradicate them.  I know the Holocaust is an exhausted example of what human beings are capable of, but what it demonstrates to me more so than a certain depth of depravity is how easily swayed our morality is.  I don’t doubt that there were truly good people that went along with creating such a tragedy, but if at our most basic core we are naturally good, how on earth are we capable of straying so far from the good itself, and even believe it to be the true good?  Is it possible to look at the reality of human kind and truly accept that we are intrinsically good?    

Yoga from the Inside Out: Part 2

Christina’s description of the body as the way to reach the Divine is totally contrary to my upbringing, and by that I don’t mean that my parents looked at me and said, “the body is bad.”  It was more like taboo.  There was an overwhelming sensation within my church and my home that the physical side of life, whether it be the functions of the body, physical desires, or physique in general were subjects that God disapproved of and therefore meant to be handled privately.  Now, all of that might be exaggerated since it’s being translated from the memory of an adolescent, but nevertheless it was certainly how I felt growing up.   The idea that the body itself can actually be used to worship God is a new one for me, but it makes complete sense.  I especially loved when Christina was quoting John Friend about how asana specifically can be used to deepen our spiritual understanding and he said, “Without the limitation me might not have a good contrast and so the understanding of the Universal might not be as deep...through that limitation, that contrast, one can really appreciate freedom.”  I have always related this idea to suffering in general.  I know a lot of people ask, “if there is a god, why is there suffering,” and they hate the answer so that we might better understand God’s grace, but that has always been the response that made any sense to me at all.  In fact, I would go so far as to say it’s not just so that we might understand grace better, but so we might be able to understand grace at all.  Taking this concept and relating it back to the limitations of our bodies informing us of freedom is one I had never thought of before, and was somewhat of a revelation for me when I read it.  That statement alone changes the way I view the body simply by giving it a new and deeper purpose.  Another purpose of yoga I hadn’t given much thought to was its ability to train the mind to “live in the moment.”  After thinking about it some, I realized that I really don’t think about anything but the poses while we’re in class.  It’s probably the only class I can say my mind doesn’t wander in, even with the classes I really love and am passionate about.  Christina named a lot of reasons for practicing this skill that I did not realized applied, such as when our mind wanders is when we most often allow ourselves to be self-critical.  I had always loved that the ability to live in the moment would allow me to not waste or take for granted the fleeting time we are given in life, but I never thought of it as a way to better myself.  That learning to be present would could actually help my self-image.  By learning to be aware of when I am bringing myself down or comparing myself to others, I can recognize it and put a stop to it, enabling me to be more confident in who I am both emotionally and physically.

Creating the Habit

Practice this week got me thinking about how exactly to start a new habit.  It’s really hard to change, especially if in order to change, you don’t just have to start new habits, you have to break old ones as well.  People love to say that change is easy, but the fact is it’s not.  Most of us have a really hard time changing, even if it is for the better.  I have always wondered why that is, and have come up with every reason from we are all just too stubborn to wondering if there’s a biological connection.  I read a story somewhere about how a guy discovered if he just kept his guitar outside of his closet, he was more likely to play it because the thought of “I’d have to do all the work just to get it out” didn’t occur to him anymore.  What struck me as odd is, walking to the closet and pulling out the guitar would have taken him maybe five seconds, so what makes it seem like so much work?  Doing yoga daily might take thirty minutes out of my day, and I say that’s too much, but really, what else would I be doing with that time?  I’m the least productive person with my free time anyways, so why do I always kid myself when it comes to creating a good habit?  What is so hard about simply getting started?  From everyone I have talked to about it, it seems like the common dilemma, and that no one has quite figured it out.  

Yoga from the Inside Out: Part 1

I have really related to Christina’s story, although in different ways.  Growing up I was always in competitive sports, often more than one at a time.  When I ten years old, I started waking up with my dad very early in the morning to workout, both by running long distances with him as well as lift weights.  Unlike Christina, I never felt pressure as far as my body weight goes (when I got older, I felt pressure to stay in sports, but I’ll get to that later).  The only part of my body I didn’t like was the fact that I had so many scars on my legs from soccer.  However, in high school that changed.  I have the ability to gain not just define, but very prominent muscles in a way that most girls can’t.  I never noticed it growing up because it’s the way I always was, which perhaps why no one in my elementary or middle schools ever commented on it because we had all grown up together, and that was the body type I had always had.  However, when I went to a new high school where no one knew me, it became the only thing anyone knew about me.  At first, it just made me feel extremely self-conscious.  It didn’t help that I had to continue to lift weights since I was in sports, and being athletic was the only way I had ever defined myself.  My junior year something happened that took my self-consciousness to self-loathing.  Because I played girls’ basketball and had the physique that I did, people started to assume I was gay.  Now, I won’t get into how humiliating it is when the guy you have a crush on asks you your opinion on a girl’s rack, or the frustration of the paradox where, the more you deny something, the less people believe you.  What pertains more to Christina’s story is I began to feel masculine.  I began to absolutely hate the way I looked, and the fact that I felt like I couldn’t do anything about it.  People defined me by my athleticism, and to be honest that’s how I defined myself as well.  I didn’t know any other world or way of being.  When I got to college, I vowed to never lift weights again.  For a while it worked it worked tremendously.  I shed the muscles fairly quickly, but maintained my skinny physique, and as a result I was getting attention from boys that I wasn’t used to.  Once again, I’ll be honest and say, I liked it.  I liked it a lot.  I felt feminine again, and the attention was a sort of vindication that all those people in high school were wrong to judge and make assumptions about me.  What’s interesting now is, I’m experiencing the reverse.  I never really had good eating habits since I was always burning way more calories than I could consume, and those habits didn’t change much despite the fact that I stopped working out.  I recently discovered that I’ve gained close to twenty pounds since I shed the muscle, and just yesterday I tried on some winter clothes that fit well just last Christmas, but now expose those places that were once slimmer.  It was devastating, more so than I was expecting.  It made me realize how much I had come to rely on my body image and that attention I had come to enjoy, and I was ashamed.  What’s even more embarrassing is, while I was having feelings of shame, I was also trying to figure out if I could lose the love handles before I go home for Christmas.  It was a very strange experience.  One I hadn’t had before, and am still trying to figure out what to do with before that kind of thinking becomes a habit.  Since I share Christina’s upbringing in the fitness world, I also share her mindset of self-criticism and “no pain, no gain”.  Her words of encouragement to abandon that kind of thinking is extremely foreign and yet encouraging to me, and I’m excited to hear the rest of her story since it’s so similar to my own. 

A New Kind of Routine

I really liked practice this week.  The more we do, even though I don’t get much better, I improve just enough to make me wonder what would happen if I really kept up the practice.  I can’t really imagine myself being super flexible, simply because I’ve never experienced the feeling, but how cool would it be if that actually happened?!  With every class that seems less and less impossible.  I think it was when we were practicing the groin stretches where you try to touch you head to the ground when Dr. Schultz suggested if some of us practiced everyday, we would be able to do the full stretch in just a few short weeks.  Obviously, I was not included in that group; however, it got me really thinking about how much progress I could make in two weeks.  Trying to do a lot of different yoga poses daily seems daunting, but if I just picked one or two to focus on and really make a commitment to spend 10 minutes with every day, I think the results would be impressive.  Any sort of exercise is such a mind game.  You begin to think about how much work it is and how much time it will take to get done, and then you let your mind wander.  You say to yourself, “then I have to shower, and I have to figure out when to eat, and I’d have to change clothes” etc. etc. etc.  Eventually, you come up with enough excuses to not even try.  Two stretches.  Ten minutes.  I can do that. 

Divine Atheist?

Chapter 16 got me thinking some because I partially disagree with it, or more the translator’s assessment of it.  Maybe I have no right to, since he clearly knows more about the Gita than I do, but I can’t help but disagree with his explanation of what the ultimate form of “demonic” is.  Easwaran explains that the best way to think of the form of demonic attributes is atheism, but when I read Krishna’s descriptions, I did not think that was the best way to describe it.  For one, just because someone’s an atheist does not mean they are indulging in sinful desires or are self-consumed.  Two, it seems to me that what makes Krishna more angry than lack of faith, is pseudo-faith, or when people falsely present themselves as lovers of god.  I can’t speak for other religions, but I know that within Christianity, there is a lot of this false faith happening.  We chastise atheists for living their lives without Christ, saying that even good deeds mean nothing if they are not done for God, but then many of us turn around in hypocrisy and become consumed with pride or generosity that is aimed at an esteemed reputation rather than serving the poor.  It seems to me that the latter would disturb Krishna much more than an atheist who, while not doing it for any god, may still lead a life closer to Krishna’s divine attributes.  Here I have a question though.  Does the atheist still accrue good karma through their actions despite the fact that it is not done with the ultimate goal of serving and being devoted to Krishna?

Practice Makes Perfect

I could really tell I had missed a week of stretching during class on Thursday.  Especially while doing downward facing dog, I felt like I was tighter than usual.  It was a good reminder that if I don’t keep my stretches up, I’ll lose everything I have learned and all the flexibility I have gained really quickly.  On the other hand, I know that some of the stretches are getting engrained in my head and body.  I thought it was funny that Cameron mentioned randomly finding herself doing a yoga pose in front of her friends because I also did that this week.  While standing outside my classroom, I had unconsciously grabbed my forearms behind my back (I can’t remember the Sanskrit name).  One of my friends commented, asking me why I was standing like a pretzel.  I laughed, but then I got to teach her a real yoga pose, which was pretty cool.  It made me feel like I really was learning the poses and not just reenacting them in class.  I get self-conscious sometimes about trying to do the poses on my own because I am afraid that I’m doing them completely wrong or might do the wrong set of stretches together, but after teaching my friend one of the poses, I realized that I know them better than I thought.  It was a nice encouragement to continue practicing and learning new poses; like my efforts really aren’t going to waste.  Who knows, maybe I’ll teach my own yoga class one day. 

Omnipresent

I struggle with the idea of Krishna being all things.  To me at least, Krishna describes himself very much like how I have always thought of God, an omnipresent, all powerful being who’s very nature we will never be able to understand.  I have gained what I think is a sufficient, although not perfect, answer to why God created evil.  However, I am trying to figure out how Krishna could possibly be evil itself.  He describes himself as a demon at one point in the chapter, but how could he simultaneously be good and evil?  Maybe I am only taking into account my Christian ideology where evil is the absence of God, the ultimate form of good, and so by that definition it is impossible for good and evil to coincide in God.  I thought that to be inhabited by both sides of morality was what defined human beings, not gods.  I am curious is maybe Hinduism has a different definition of good and evil than other religions, or maybe just a different definition of the source of both that would allow Krishna to be both.  Krishna’s last words to Arjuna in chapter 11 are my favorite so far, “But what use is it to you to know all this, Arjuna?”  I literally laughed out loud at that question because it made me compare my own desperate endeavors to figure out just what the nature of God is and how it pertains to me.  Krishna’s encouragement after the question, to just remember the simplicity that he supports everything,  was still cool to me even though I don’t fully understand it because I do believe God is that powerful, and it’s awe-inspiring to think of him in that way. 

Success!

I cannot express how excited I was when I was able to get up in the headstand by myself on Tuesday.  The biggest obstacle for me with the headstands and shoulder stands is fear because of an incident that happened when I was a kid.  I was quite the little daredevil as a child, and one day during gym in fourth grade, one of my friends asked me to do a handstand.  Never having tried before, I figured, it can’t be that hard.  Miraculously, I was able to get up on my first try and actually held the pose for a moment or two before my arms caved in and my face went crashing into the floor.  I ended up having to go to the nurse for busting open my lip pretty badly, but what scared me more was what happened after my head hit the floor.  In a sort of freak reaction, I attempted to turn my fall into a flip, but instead of saving my face from distortion, I ended up falling strangely on my neck and pinching a nerve.  For those who have never done this before, it’s a very strange and unnerving sensation.  At first it burns and then settles into an eerie sort of numbness, a kind that is different from when your foot simply falls asleep.  Being nine, I overreacted and thought I was going to be paralyzed, and although now I view that as kind of funny, I still cringe at the thought of doing any sort of movement that involves my neck.  

For this reason getting up in the headstand was a really cool moment for me.  It was a step towards conquering a fear I have towards my body as well as a step towards strengthening my neck and back. 

Learning Selflessness

In one of my previous blogs, I noted how stress takes a physical toll on me as opposed to a mental or emotional one. It’s been a pretty hectic semester for me. Alongside 18 hours of school, I am also trying to take the GRE and apply for grad school, apply for internships for New York next semester, directing the music videos for Uproar, and working on more than one of my fellow FDM majors films on the weekends. Needless to say I’ve been pretty busy. Last week, I realized that I was having trouble taking deep breathes. This is a symptom I’ve had before when I was subconsciously overwhelmed. When I realized what was happening, I got frustrated. I have always liked being busy because it keeps me focused and helps me refrain from sitting around watching movies all day, so I didn’t understand why this semester in particular I would be experiencing stress related symptoms. Then, I read this line in the Gita, “The awakened sages call a person wise when all his undertakings are free from anxiety about results.”

I’m not stressed because I’m busy. I’m stressed because I’m afraid of failing. I have more obligations, decisions about my future, and people relying on me than I have ever experienced before. I’m afraid that I won’t get into grad school, and that I will be the first person to ever not get an internship in the New York program. I am afraid that one of my videos will receive poor reviews from my cohorts in the film program. Most importantly, I fear the shame and embarrassment that I know I should experience should any of these events actually occur.

I love that Krishna does not encourage Arjuna to stop working, but rather to change his purpose for doing this work. If my purpose is to be selfless, whether or not I achieve or don’t achieve any of these things will no longer matter, and I will be able to breathe again because the source of the stress will dwindle away as I learn to actually live out this sentiment.

"Waking" Part 4

I must admit that while I have learned that just because I did not grow up with a certain concept does not make it untrue, the whole energy flow language is still a hard one for me to grasp.  When I first heard it, I figured that “energy” was simply synonymous with the electrical current that runs throughout our body via our nervous system, and that perhaps different cultures had just come up with a different series of names for this system.  Then, in one of my Biology classes my sophomore year, the girl next to me began explaining to me that her father was a doctor in China and just how differently medicine is practiced there.  She spoke of how each of the kidneys is a filter of our energy, and how it was important to keep that energy balanced.  I was utterly confused.  Obviously, the tests had been run, the results were in, and then printed right there in front of me telling me that the kidneys purpose was to filter our blood.  It made sense to me that different cultures could come up with different religions and ways of viewing the world, but science?  

I stared at the picture in my textbook of the different parts of the kidney.  Clearly, this thing had been studied by quite a few people for quite some time, and yet here I was getting information that a Chinese medical student, possibly at this very moment, was learning a very different function for the very same organ I was staring at.  My brilliant conclusion: it just wasn’t possible.  I couldn’t understand where this so called energy would be coming from, and even if it was actually there, how could Chinese doctors possibly examine it and figure out which of our body parts control it.

Needless to say I’m that I am reading Matt’s book today instead of three years ago.  Now, I have both felt and witnessed this energy firsthand, and although I still don’t quite understand what it is or where it comes from, I recognize its reality.  

I am still awestruck by Matt’s use of this energy to both connect with his own body and even more so with the fact that he can help other people connect with muscles and tendons that he cannot even feel.  Finally, I am in love with the idea that this energy is what helped Matt reach wholeness.  Not just with his mind-body connection, but also with his emotional and social connection to the world as well.    

"Waking" Part 3 Body Memories

What struck me most about this section was the guilt that Matt’s body memories unleashed.  

The idea of body memories is interesting in its own regard.  I can’t say I have experienced one as powerful as Matt has, but I wanted to understand it.  So, I tried to come up with an experience I had that I thought might be somewhat similar.  

I played organized basketball for over half of my life.  It was hard when I came to Baylor because choosing to come here did not just meant choosing to not play the game anymore, it meant facing the fact that the sport had become my identity, and I was choosing to learn how to rebuild it.  

The first time I breathed the cold air of that first fall semester here at Baylor, I felt it.  A random rush of excitement and nostalgia for which I could not account.  I continued to walk to my class, and decided it was just because I was looking forward to the cold weather.  As I was walking, one of Baylor’s shuttles passed me, and I was struck with the smell of exhaust.  A powerful sensation overtook me.  I felt like I was back in high school, dressed in sweatpants to block the first biting winds of Texas winter while waiting by one of our ridiculously old buses to take me to my first game of the season.

This sensation still happens to me with every first cold day of the year. 

I realize this seems like a trifle example compared to Matt’s descriptions, but it helps me to grasp what exactly Matt is describing: the idea that our bodies live on without our conscious aid.  

I did not ask my body to bank a physical account of what I felt on those days, nor did Matt ask his body to record his.  However, the sensation is more real than any one-dimensional memory I have.  This realization holds the answer to why such sensations would awaken guilt in Matt.  Our bodies work hard towards life.  They desire more than anything to survive, and yet we fight against them.  We desert them, mistreat them, and most importantly, take them for granted.  I’ve read Grey’s Anatomy.  I know (although admittedly don’t completely understand) how complex the workings of a single cell are, let alone that of an entire human body.  I have a fully functioning, healthy, and active body, and yet I hardly ever pay any attention to it.  Despite that fact it keeps me alive on a daily basis.

Matt was distraught by the thought that all of those years his body desperately wanted to live as a whole unit, that it had even saved memories that would be used for his emotional healing as well, but he had given up on it.  He had silenced his body’s attempt to be healed.  What’s incredible to me is after all of those years of trauma and neglect, his body was ready and willing to work with him once again.  

Knowing Matt’s hard work and strong connection to the life his body brings him through his sensations brings me my own form or shame for never stopping to think just how amazing that is and how much I take for granted.    

Aparigraha

There was a sentence in the definition of aparigraha that caught my attention, “the collection or hoarding of things implies a lack of faith in God and in himself to provide for his future.”  

We have all discussed the idea of giving up social media and other things for the sake of limiting our daily distractions, but I have never thought of having an abundance of things as a lack of trust in God.  I always saw it from the point of view that, if I have these things, then God has blessed me with them in order to provide for me in some way, whether it be now or later.  

I do agree with the additional idea of not accepting favors from others that you have not worked for; however, that is due more to my pride and the feeling that one must work for  everything rather than the notion that it is wrong to accept gifts.  I believe that much is gained from working towards something, and that not working for what we receive can cultivate laziness, ungratefulness, and complacency.  Although, there are times I believe that the receiving of gifts is beneficial for both the giver and the receiver.  Giving, especially when one does not have much to give, can in fact encourage the kind of trust in God that aparigraha works towards.  

So, I suppose I would have to take this concept on by a case to case basis in order to agree with it.  I don’t think that people should keep beyond what they need, but I also believe see the blessing in what God gives us, whether it be through gifts or hard work. 

Control of the Toes

The reading of my chose memior somewhat spilled over into my practice this week.  There’s a section where Matt (a paraplegic for those not reading that book) ruminates on the idea that every time we choose to use the dishwasher instead of feel the warmth of the water on our hands or ride the elevator up instead of walking up one flight of stairs, we are encouraging a disconnection between our mind and body for the sake of convenience.  This made me feel somewhat guilty for my groans in class when any one particular muscle is throwing a fit at being stretched that day.  I have a feeling that Matt would suggest to allow myself to become fully aware of that pain, and what my mind and body are accomplishing through it.  Comparing my two legs after stretching one at a time on Tuesday really helped me make this idea tangible.  I could feel the difference between my two sets of muscles, and how one was more relaxed and supple than the other, which also means that I could feel my body’s progress as I work towards reusing muscles that haven’t been stretched in quite some time.  I sense this even more strongly with things I have never consciously tried to control before, like my toes and my breathing.  Looking back at the beginning of this class, I think it’s fair to say that my mind and my toes were almost completely disconnected, and given the amount of concentration it takes for me to completely open my chest and straighten my spine, I think the same can be said for the muscles that control my breathing.  I think it’s really cool that this practice is reconnecting me to my body, and it’s weird to think I didn’t have as much control over it as I thought I did.  

"Waking": Part 2

So, now I come to the point where Matt has divulged the dangers of the silence.  I must admit I’ve never read anything that so acutely describes what I have always viewed as indescribable to those who have not experienced it.  However, perhaps it is still that way for anyone who has not experienced it, and the only reason I understand it is because I have.  Nevertheless, I appreciate his attempt to give words to something I have always avoided. 

Matt’s analogy of the dark room was particularly powerful for me.  The sentence, “and the world might reveal itself once again, only darker” was one I loved because, while choosing the word “darker” gives the analogy a pessimistic connotation, I do not believe that was the way Matt intended his readers to interpret it.  

When one’s world it turned on it’s head, and the future is one of the unknown, darkness is the perfect metaphor.  We all know the feeling of aimlessly grasping the dark, desperately looking for a way to find some source of light, so that we might be able to make our way again.  That’s exactly what Matt was trying to do with his life.  It would be naive to view his situation as anything other than a struggle.  He had to find a way to start over, and, at least at first, was not given the tools to do so.  But more so than any of these explanations, I believe Matt used this analogy to convey the importance of the fact that his life would never be the same.  No matter how he learned to deal with the darkness, the room would always be dark from the day of his accident onward, and this is not necessarily a bad thing.  Nor is it a good thing.  It is just they way things are for him.  His accident imprinted on him a new way of life, a new way of viewing the world, and there was no return to the light for him.  What I love is his decision to embrace the darkness rather than fight it. 

“If I wanted to work with the darkness rather than against it...what if the darkness (the silence) is a fundamental part of us, of our consciousness.  How do we overcome an essential aspect of what we are” (128).

Matt’s choice to work with the darkness forces me to think about two things.  First, we choose who we will be after trauma, and this choice is vital to our survival.  The question of identity is one that we as humans innately struggle with, but what happens when the identity we have spent so much time building is stripped from us?  We are left with deciding where will go from that moment on since, as much as we try to prove otherwise, there is no turning back to the person we were before.  Therefore, there are two options: denial of this fact (or a turn to silence) or an acceptance of the fact that this new future must merge with the remnants of our old self to create a new, whole individual. 

Second, for those that have not tapped into silence through trauma and therefore might not even be aware of its existence, how is it that we learn to positively tap into it.  But this is an answer for which I am still waiting. 

"Waking": Part 1

I relate to Matt in a lot of ways I wasn’t expecting. The closest I’ve ever come to his physical pain is broken bones, and I have never lost a member of my immediate family.  However, when Matt talks about silence, about mentally separating oneself from their surroundings, I know exactly what he is talking about. 

While Matt’s experience of silence, at least so far, seems to be primarily separation from his physical body, my own experience was a separation more like his mother’s.  One of personal, emotional, and even relational silence.  Like Matt, this silence came about as a natural defense mechanism rather than a conscious decision.  The habit of turning inward had imposed itself upon my life before I could really realize what I was doing, never mind understanding why I was doing it.  Only looking back on it can I attempt to fully analyze the experience.  

What’s interesting is I first disagreed with Matt’s definition of silence as both extremely filling and extremely empty.  While going through it, I only realized the empty side of it, but there’s a definite fullness to it as well.  For one, there are fleeting feelings of wholeness of your individual self when you turn entirely inward.  There is also the fullness felt when you give yourself up to complete concentration, and there is the feeling of protection when the only person you are depending on is yourself.  Unfortunately, all of these pros have counterparts, at least with the kind of silence I have experienced.  

I have been told numerous times that we cannot grasp the fullness and entirety of God’s wholeness until we realize our own brokenness and devastation.  This, to me, is the best analogy of realizing your individual self through silence.  It is grasped for a second, only to come back to the reality of humanity’s constant state of depravity. 

Much like grasping this last concept, concentration is fleeting.  We all have at least one thing that causes this silence; the one activity in life that absorbs us, causing us to forget there is a world outside of that moment we are participating in.  For some it is reading, others sports, and so on.  Matt seems to be suggesting, although I have not gotten to this point somewhat purposefully, that this silence, this moment of disconnection (and therefore connection with your entire being), can be controlled, and thus extended.  This seems amazing once you really grasp what silence is; however, I have found that there is a certain danger to learning to fully disconnect and depend on oneself, even if it is through complete concentration.  

We have all taken Examined Life I, so we all know the five dimensions of a person: physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual, and social.  In order to live fully, we must develop all of these dimensions.  Perhaps my stumbling upon the phenomenon of silence instead of being taught it’s proper uses is the cause, but I found that the overuse of silence as a tool of escape lead to an atrophy of the emotional and social dimensions of my being.  I drew inward often, and while it lent me some peace and comfort in times of need, it cut me off from true emotional healing.  It also inhibited me from trusting others with my process of healing. 

All of this sounds rather pessimistic, but I don’t mean it to be.  I truly believe that something so powerful as silence as Matt describes it, can and should be used in an amazing way.  I am excited to keep reading and learn how. 

Tongue Twisted

So, this is really weird to actually type out, but the hardest thing for me during our yoga practice is keeping my tongue relaxed.  The first time I tried to do it I felt like I was going to choke, which is incredibly ironic since by relaxing my tongues I’m actually relaxing my throat and allowing my air in.  However, last class was the first time I was able to do it without it feeling completely foreign to me.  This was cool for a couple of reasons.  First, while it’s a rather small improvement, it’s still progress.  Second, it means I’m learning to relax and control the different muscles of my body.

I also struggle with biting my lip and tightening my face during the poses.  This is a bad habit I developed in high school through lifting weights for my different sports.  The coaches were always quick to push us as hard as muscles would allow, so to look relaxed was never a good thing.  Even more important is, by realizing I do this during yoga, I was able to noticed that I also do it when I’m thinking, especially when I disagree with what the teacher or student is telling me.  

I think everyone probably has some sort of physical reaction to things they don’t like to hear, but most of the time these reactions don’t do anything but antagonize the person they are talking with.  People are becoming more aware of the importance of nonverbal communication, but I would also add that if one is able to hold back the physical reaction during a dispute, one could more easily control the emotional response as well, enabling them to handle the situation more appropriately.  This is just a theory, and I’m sure it would take much more effort and practice than I am aware of; however, I think it’s a worthy goal to strive for.  

Intuition of Truth

When Friday was talking with Captain about how bad ways of understanding life become common acceptance, a lot of things ran through my mind.  The first, I'll admit, made me feel like the bad guy because my initial thought was, if she's arguing that people believe what they do blindly because that is simply what their parents and society has taught them, does she ever question her own beliefs?  After all, she was taught her lifestyle and worldly view by someone else.  It wasn't a stance that she came to on her own.  I wondered if, based on her own argument, that fact ever made her ask the question, "is what I believe really the truth?"  But how are we to answer such a question in an age when truth has now become subjective? 

I've often asked this question of myself when it came to my own faith in Christianity.  I've wondered if I simply believe what I do because it has been engrained into to my thought process since birth, and if the story is the same for one of my Muslim or Hindu friends.  If this proposition is correct, then what is the source of truth?  Can something as absolute as truth truely be subjective?  In some instances Friday seems to suggest that it is, such as when she tries to get the Captain to see that just because he deams the pen as a pen doesn't necessarily mean that is its function for everyone.  However, she adamantly proclaims her worldview as truth because there is something inside of her that tells her it is.  She uses that same intuition with the Captain when she asks him if he innately knows that drinking as he did was wrong.

I feel the same about my faith.  I read a book last year called "Blue Like Jazz" (which I highly recommend to anyone), and in it there's a chapter named "Penguin Sex".  Yep, penguin sex.  In it the author, Donald Miller, describes how mother penguins leave their eggs behind for months, and somehow, depsite being miles out in the ocean, they always come back in the week, if not the day, their baby hatches.  How is such a thing possible?  So far, it's not, scientifically speaking.  Miller describes the phenomenon as the mother penguin "just knowing", and that is enough explanation for him because it is how he now views his faith.  After years of struggling with his faith for academic reasons and questions of conditioning through his childhood, he now separates all of it and says he just knows.

Falty Seeds

I had a real problem with the whole seed thing.  I know we haven’t talked about karma yet in class, which means I’m basically arguing with a fictional character.  Despite this, I find a gaping hole in Friday’s explanation of why good or bad things happen to people.  Reading her defense was like a rollercoaster ride for me.  First, I disagreed, but was curiously as to where she was going with it.  Then, when she explained to the Captain how when the Sergeant lies for money, he isn’t really getting the money because of the lie but because of a previous good he has done.  I really liked that idea.  For one, it explains fairly well why good things happen to bad people.  I can except the idea that even bad people do good things at time, and that perhaps they deserves what they receive presently because of past actions.  I might also like it because it means that one day those bad people will be punished for what they are currently doing.  It was when Friday said that every bad event inflicted upon a person happens because they have done a similar action to someone else that she lost me.  There are just instances where that makes NO sense to me.

Let’s use the example given in the book.  The Sergeant’s little boy is burned to the point of deformity in at least one third of his body if not more, seemingly as a result to his father’s stupidity and drunken stupor.  If we were to follow Friday’s explanation, the little boy’s deformity is due to his own actions.  So I am to believe that this boy, who can’t be older than ten, somehow damaged another person through fire in his young life?  I know it’s just a story, but if this is really the true philosophy of yoga, and others really do believe this theory, I don’t see how they can justify certain circumstances

Stretching in More than One Direction

I am a very prideful person.  As much as I hate to admit it, I don’t like when I’m not good at something.  So, something this class has been teaching me is to laugh at myself.  No I can’t bend all the way forward or backward in any of the poses we do in class, but so what?  At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter all that much.  What matters is working towards being more flexible and less stressed, and let’s face it, me trying to do a shoulder stand is a pretty hilarious site, so why not enjoy it?  It’s a lesson I plan on taking with me outside this yoga class.  I think I take myself too seriously sometimes, even life to seriously at times.  Don’t get me wrong.  I know we only have this one life to live, and that it’s very important to remember that and make the most out of every day we’re blessed to have on this earth.  However, what’s the point of striving towards a goal if you’re not having fun along the way?  I’ve heard it said by more than one successful person that the journey to get to their dream was the actual adventure. 

Not to mention there’s something to be said about failure to achieve that goal or that dream the first time around.  Every time I can’t do a certain pose in class it humbles me, but it also gives me a new goal to reach and a desire to reach that goal.  I wouldn’t be able to get excited about or appreciate the ability to touch my toes if I was able to do it before.  It seems small, but big lessons can be learned from small things.

Wall Staring

I really connected with Friday's explanation of focus to the Captain, probably because that's something I really struggle with.  Yes, it's true I have ADD, but doesn't everyone these days? I feel like everyone says they do at least.  More than that though is my generational habit of multi-tasking that has insidiously crossed over into the way I think.  Even when I try not to, I am constantly bombarded by outside thoughts while I'm attempting to do something.  If I'm in class, I find myself thinking about my class after it or even the homework that's due the next day.  If I'm cleaning my room (which is a rare occurence, but we'll just use it for explanation's sake), then I'm thinking about emails I need to send or meetings I need to set up.  Even while I was reading this book, I was thinking about what would go in my blog for the day.  I can't remember the last time I gave all my attention to one particular thing.

When Friday told the Captain that those who are able to focus are not only better at their jobs, but they are also happier, I remembered in an article we read freshmen year during Examined Life there was an author encouraging the same concept.  He stated that there is no such thing as "mental exhaustion", that our minds are not capable of feeling physical fatigue.  However, we do fill it constantly and with pointless information, as Friday also points out.  The author suggested that if we as students would simply focus on the task at hand, it would relieve much of the exhaustion and stress we feel and enable us to improve in our studies. 

My question is, how is this accomplished, and is it even a realistic goal in today's world of multi-tasking?  Focusing on the wall might work for yoga, but it does not exactly help me when I need to be absorbed in my studies.

Stress Induced Inflexibility

So, as you all noticed in class on Tuesday, I am incredibly inflexible.  One reason for this is obvious, I don’t stretch enough, but there’s another issue contributing to it.

When I was younger I’d get random illnesses out of no where, and almost all of them were things you’re not supposed to get until you reach your sixties (like shingles for example).  The doctor’s response was always the same, “It must be stress induced.”

One night while driving home after hearing this very phrase my mom said, “You’re just like your dad.”  She continued on to explain that she could never tell when something was going wrong at work or at home because my dad was capable of acting, and in fact felt, completely normal.  The only way she could ever tell he was stressed was when he got nosebleeds.  

I don’t feel stress.  I don’t get overwhelmed, I don’t get emotionally agitated, and I can easily run myself into the ground because it takes much longer to realize I’m mentally exhausted.  This attribute within itself is a blessing because it allows me handle many situations that would otherwise have a negative effect on my schoolwork or relationships.  However, it comes with a cost. 

My dad went to a physical therapist last year because the pain in his back was so severe, he was convinced he had hurt it.  It turns out all that stress has to go somewhere, and for him, it’s in his back.  The therapist was baffled at the amount and size of the knots in his back, and removing them was so painful for my dad that he never went back because he knew they would just come back again anyway. 

More than anything else so far, this class has showed me that I’m headed in the same direction.  Because these stretches have made me pay attention to my body, I often catch myself clenching different muscles during class to the point where they shake like a rusty gear when I try to loosen them. 

My hope is that I can make yoga a habit that continues on even after this class is over, both so I have a way of keeping my physical body healthy and loose and to have a better outlet for the my stress. 

The Ultimate Goal

One of my favorite quotes of Tuesday’s reading was when the Captain asks Friday about the papers in the back of her book.  She tells him that those notes are more valuable even than the book itself, and is reminded of her ultimate mission to combine the notes and book into one compilation for others.  She says to herself, “to complete this task was one of the reasons I lived at all, and so it was worth even my life” (60). 

What an amazing statement that is, to proclaim to be so devoted, so passionate about something, that she would be willing to give up her life for it.  It made me stop and wonder just how many people in this world can say they have such a concrete purpose or mission in this life, and how blessed those people must be.  

What is really apparent through Friday’s actions, especially her lessons with the Captain, is that this goal did not just change her future plans, but changed her entire being.  It defines who she is and what she does.  For example, when she teaches the Captain to rely on compassion, it is because she has fully embraced this truth and lives by it. 

Having such a clear purpose like Friday does I believe gives a person clarity about everything else as far as what’s truly important to them, what decisions they need to be making, etc. Almost like that ultimate goal becomes a filter through which the person sees the rest of his or her life through.

Christian Readings Through Secular Insights

I really loved the reading today from "How Yoga Works."  One thought that Friday has really struck me.  Just as she is waking up for the first time in her cell she narrates, "I had learned a long time before that keeping [yoga exercises] up every day was more important than the problems that would always arise and try to stop them" (14).  I couldn't help but relate this thought process to my lack of a committment to read my Bible daily.

That sentence reminded me how many times I make excuses for myself of why it's alright that I skipped my devotional on any number of days.  I'll tell myself that I'm really too tired to get anything out of it anyways, or that what I need to do at that moment is more pressing than reading the Bible because I can read it at any time.  Imagine the shame and stupidity I felt after reading Friday's expression of her committment to her yoga excercises.  That feeling was only amplified as my reading continued, and I reached the section of the Captain's first complaints. 

He became defensive when Friday was quick to rebuke him for his lack of committment to his practice.  She brought up to amazing points that I think can be related back to anything we do in life. 

The first was her questioning of the captain's expectations for his healing.  If he wasn't willing to do the work, why on earth would he be disappointed with his results?  For my example of reading the Scriptures, I would never have the right to complain about not understanding certain aspects of my faith if I never do the work to discover the answers.  However, this question can be asked of anything we do.  My 16 year old brother often wonders why he isn't getting any stronger, but he doesn't lift weights more than once a week.

Her second point was to refrain from ever calling our "inability" to practice anything but what it is, laziness.  I know I try to dress mine up with phrases like, "I'm just working hard on other things." Simply put, all I have is a lack of true desire to better myself, and I'm just plain lazy because of it.  Those are two realizations that are hard to have thrown in your face, and I already admire Friday for putting them so bluntly to a man who could end her life if he wanted to.