Two Gurus

Wow, what a week. Over the the past week, there has been widespread rioting in my hometown and two of my gurus have passed on. Since the killing of Michael Brown and the rioting/looting that has followed has been widely covered in other areas and it increases my anxiety dramatically when I let myself obsess about it, I'll focus this post of the loss of my two gurus, neither of whom I ever met personally but both had major influences on my life. While from the outset, it would appear that they had almost nothing in common, these two men were both fierce individuals who greatly influenced their respective fields. RIP Jay Adams and Sri BKS Iyengar.

In my life, before yoga, there was skateboarding and Jay Adams is skateboarding.  As the tattoo on his chest indicates, Adams was 100% skateboarder.  As skateboarding has become so mainstream and dare I say accepted in today's world, it can be hard to believe that one small group of teenage boys, the Z-boys of Dogtown, were widely responsible for bringing skateboarding to the masses.  If it wasn't for Jay and the rest of the Z-Boys, skateboarding would probably still be limited to a very small group of surfers.  Additionally, what Jay Adams brought was the the determination to be himself and the attitude to go for it 100%. From whenever he started skating until the day he died he did not quit. As he famously said, "You didn't quit skateboarding because you got old, you got old because you quit skateboarding." Thanks to him, I continue to skate as much as I can. Yes, it has, to some extent, kept me from getting old.  Hopefully in whatever afterlife he finds himself in, Jay is continuing to rip up an empty pool.

Just as Adams personifies skateboarding, nobody better represents yoga than BKS Iyengar.  When I started practicing yoga, I took two classes a week at the Yoga Circle in Chicago.  The Yoga Circle was and is one of the Midwest's premier Iyengar yoga studio. Thanks to the excellent teachers there, notably Gabriel Halpern, Patrina Dobish, and Bob Wittinghill,  I received a vigorous introduction into Iyengar yoga.  Iyengar yoga can be very intense, demanding and difficult, just as I've been told Guruji could be.  In the end, though it is also very illuminating and ultimately very freeing.  From his humble beginnings 95 years ago, BKS Iyengar went on to change the world through yoga.  If you haven't read his book Light on Life, stop whatever you are doing and go find a copy. It's that good! I can go on and on about how he modernized yoga by introducing the use of props or was revolutionary in the field of yoga therapy by recommending specific practices for specific symptoms but his greatest impact can be simply summed up by saying that whatever "your yoga" is, it has been influenced in some way by Guruji.  For this I am and will remain forever grateful.  I hope that wherever he is, Guruji has achieved "ultimate freedom."
Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu

Phone Book Yoga

A middle-aged, type-a, man decided one day, after noticing the beginnings of a spare tire around his middle, decided that it was time to get in shape.  Before he could do that, he thought "I'll have to touch my toes."  To do this, he decided he must find a yoga teacher.   

After some research he located a teacher.  (This was in the pre-internet days of sometime last century before there was a yoga studio on every corner)  The man, having little knowledge or understanding of yoga etiquette, barged into the studio and demanded the teacher teach him how to touch his toes. 
"Not today, maybe tomorrow" replied the teacher.
Dismayed, the man left and returned the next day.
Again, "Not today, maybe tomorrow." 
This continued for several more days, until the teacher finally changed his story.
"OK, OK, I'll teach you.  But not today.  Come back tomorrow at 3:00 PM with a New York City Phonebook."
(Again this was sometime last century when people actually had paper phonebooks.)

The man returned to the studio the next day promptly at three o'clock with his phonebook.  After several minutes, the teacher appeared.  He grabbed the phonebook from the man and threw it down at his feet.  The teacher then pointed at the man's hands waving them towards the phonebook.  Getting the idea the man bent forward, straining to get his hands to touch the book.  As soon as he reached the book, the teacher yelled. "Enough for today, come back tomorrow."

The next day, the man returned.  The teacher took the book, ripped out a page and threw it at the student's feet.

"See you tomorrow," said the teacher as the man lifted his hands from the phonebook.



Yoga Sutras 1:14
"Practice becomes firmly grounded when well attended to for a long time, without break and in all earnestness." (Yoga Sutras of Patanjali translated by Sri Swami Satchidananda, pages 19-20)

What this means to me is that it is better to do something (even something seemingly small and inconsequential) regularly than to try and accomplish big things all at once.  Over time, you will acheve greater and more lasting results.


My sincerest apologies to whoever originated this story.   If I could remember where or from who I heard it, I would give full credit.

Rediscovering Light on Yoga (or the Grand Experiment)

Rediscovering Light on Yoga (or the grand experiment).

A few weeks ago, my mother-in-law, who introduced me to yoga, was cleaning out her library and gave me four large shopping bags full of yoga books.  Among the many treasures were second (or in some cases, third) copies of books I have long enjoyed or lent out to friends, students etc.  Of all the books, the one I found most intriguing was a 1968 second edition hardbound copy of Light on Yoga.  I have had a copy of this book for at least 10 years and have paged through it, from time to time but have never really read it.  Usually, I would pick it up, become either inspired or intimidated by the pictures of Iyengar doing the poses and put it down again, almost always with the thought that there are better yoga books.  Paging through it this time, however, I had a much different reaction to it than I had in the past.  Perhaps because it is an aged copy of the book, complete with someones old scribbles, some minor damage and yellowing of the pages, it struck me that this book was first published over forty years ago. Before there was Iyengar Yoga, before there were any yoga props, before there was a "yoga industry" and before there were any of the other thousands of books on yoga, there was Light on Yoga. In that context, it began to become more clear just how groundbreaking this book was (and continues to be.)

While all the text and photographs in my later edition of the book were included and mostly unchanged from the earlier edition, the older edition was arranged much differently and, consequently, had a much different feel.   This is largely due to the fact that all of the photographs are in one section of the book instead of inserted among the text.  As I understand it, this was changed after numerous complaints about having to flip to the back of the book to see what a particular pose looks like and then having to go back to the written instructions for doing the pose.   Having all the pictures together, however, had a greater impact on me and allowed me to better understand how Iyengar sequenced and presented the asanas in his teaching and his book.

I mention all of this as an introduction to my little experiment.   Having been, in no way inspired by other blogs or similar experiments, I was reviewing the courses in the appendix of the book, when the little voice in my head starting telling me "you should do this." 

Immediately, resistance: 
"I can't" 
"It's 300, repeat that, THREE HUNDRED weeks long." 

After bemusedly watching these voices go back and forth, I decided, "What the hell, why not give it a shot?"

Afterall, Iyengar does promise in the book on page 60:  "Continuous practice will change the outlook of the practiser.  He will discipline himself in food, sex, cleanliness and character and will become a new man."  (Don't you just love the old self-help language?)

So I am committing to begin a daily yoga practice, based on the course presented in Light on Yoga.  I probably will make some minor adjustments to the course along the way and cannot promise that I will keep it up for the whole 300 weeks.  I just can't promise anything that far in advance.....

I do not plan on blogging every week about each week's sequence (that's what the book is for) or my responses to specific poses etc...... but I will check in periodically about insights, challenges, and anything else that might reveal itself along the way.  Anyone who wants to join me in this adventure is free to contact me at kyle@one-heart-yoga.net.

This blog will document this process but will not be entirely dedicated to it as I am sure most of you would be more interested in other thoughts/ideas/topics etc.  More on that in future posts.....

Did it say 300 weeks, seriously?  That's almost six years..... (Noah'll be almost 14 before I finish this)

Shanti,
Kyle

Hello

What does it say about me that I just spent more time resetting my profile to find a random question that I liked enough to answer than thinking about what I'm actually going to blog about????  

I will try again tomorrow......

Goodnight.