hairy krishna

Congratulations on making it through Thanksgiving and Black Friday!

‘Tis the season, all right … for wish lists, over-indulgence and retail stampedes. Do you join the herd, or curl up in balasana in the corner?

This time of year is particularly tempting for us stuff-lovin,’ Martha Stewart-adoring Americans. Left unchecked, we fall prey to wanting — no, needing — so much: the perfect gift, for yourself or a loved one (the latter, by the way, is no holier than the former); the harmonious, Walton-style family gathering; homemade cookies by the tin-full; the perfect snow; ma in her kerchief, you in your cap. In other words, traditions intact and expectations set higher than the star atop the tree (the one you spent an hour messing with so it would stand perfectly straight). Good luck being jolly.

Yogis call the antidote to greed aparigraha (non-grasping or non-possessiveness), and it is, like those other pesky yamas (ethical restraints), broad in context and multi-layered. We reach and grasp for the perfect handstand, a hundred-dollar hoodie, success, acceptance, comfort, even pain. Ideals and expectations of any kind, even the merriest, bring suffering, or dukha. What a way to end the year, huh?

To my Western brain, aparigraha is rooted in impermanence. I live in Ohio, where we say, “Don’t like the weather? Stick around, it’ll change.” Most often, of course, we grasp at pleasure. At least we Ohioans know to appreciate the sun without expecting it to stick around. “Like the weather? Don’t get used to it….”

It’s hard to not do your favorite pose every day, in the same way, for the same blissful sensation or feeling of victory. But there will, most likely, come a day when you can’t anymore. And then what? Someday (and this is almost guaranteed) you will not be able to fulfill your child’s every Christmas wish. And then what?

This is not to say that wanting is bad. Desire is different, and perhaps slipperier, than willful grasping. Want will always be there, bouncing around in the ‘monkey-mind,’ maybe even in the heart. It’s our job as grownups and spiritual warriors to step back, chill out and accept perceived imperfection — in the pose, in our families, in ourselves. Because if you step back far enough, you’ll stumble right into the moment … the “now” that neither judges nor expects, the you that’s not afraid of disappointment, failure, frustration or boredom.

So aparigraha doesn’t mean disconnection, or non-involvement, or neutrality; quite the opposite. To my humble understanding, it means softening and opening to what’s real and what’s next, whether you like it or not, without pining for something else.

Instead of filling the proverbial hole with stuff (suffering), embrace its emptiness.

You’ll never become the perfect husband, mother, teacher, yogi, domestic diva. Your family will not be who you want them to be. You, and they, are perfect now, if you’ll get out of your own way, put down the sparkly ribbon, drop the expectations and be still for a moment or so.

Presence, if you’ll pardon the bad pun, is your greatest gift to the world. This holiday season, please give generously.

Kathi is a vinyasa yoga teacher and co-owner of Practice Yoga in Dayton, Ohio, recovering journalist, wife and mother of two (not necessarily in that order).

‘Love After Love’ by Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

[ read Walcott's poem for President Obama here. ]

Too good not to share, from Karen Maezen Miller (Momma Zen) (click the photo)

Anyone know if the brilliant Ms. Barry is a yogini? The quote is from her funny, sad, silly, smart, very grown-up comic-strip book ‘One! Hundred! Demons!’

Check out Barry’s book(s); she’s amazing (you might know her from her strip, ‘Ernie Pook’s Comeeek’).

Would love to be writing, thinking, being, but feeling too painful/foggy to do anything but read. Which is not the worst thing, by far. BUT, surgery is Friday, and recovery should be quick. Hoping to be back to teaching early September! Just hope I can still carve out time to read, too.

Kitty Krishna and I seem to keep coming back to false identity and misperception; much more later, when thoughts are my friends again. In the meantime, discuss! Please! I need reading material! (OK, not really.)

Shanthi, K&K

Ta Prohm, Cambodia/Andy Valeri

“Everything flows and nothing abides,
everything gives way and nothing stays fixed.”
— Heraclitus

the clown in me honors the clown in you

Behold … ‘Corporate blessing from the Patron Saint of the Church of Transnational Fat.’ By my good friend Andy, from his recent travels in Thailand and Cambodia.

Oh, Leo! So happy to have stumbled upon this gem. Not sure if you ever knew anything about Sun Salutations, but you sure had a yoga brain. In another life, I’ll have time to examine yours closely.

How many layers of dirt, illusion, self-judgment and non-reality do you have to wash away? I’ve got a few, to be sure. It happened yet again to me today: A fellow mom relayed a story about one of Those Moms (you know, the ones who manage daily superhuman feats of selfless parenting on three hours of sleep, no caffeine and an 80 percent raw, vegan diet). Said Mom had a high-paying, full-time job, and somehow put in enough volunteer hours for school and her daughter’s dance program to qualify for sainthood. And she’s not just one of Those Moms, oh no. She’s one of Those Single Moms.

Instantly….Zap! Ow! Brutal sucker punch straight to the Organ of Guilt and Insufficiency, a little-mentioned but always-painful side effect of childbearing; a mysterious phenomenon that materializes as a mother’s firstborn takes its first breath. It has never been detected in the male of our species (or any species).

I know better. I’ve read all the God-help-me-I-don’t-know-how-to-be-a-mother books. I know that it’s OK that I suck at crafts and french braiding; that I spend as little time as possible at my kids’ schools, even though I only work part-time, and mostly from home; it’s fine that my kids are downstairs gorging on ice cream and Disney Channel.

Thank goodness my friend was there to help lessen the pain through her empathy; still, she works nights, rarely sleeps and still does more ‘good mom’ deeds than I do.

Mothering being the focus of my life, most of my fear, worry and self-loathing live in the aforementioned Organ of Guilt. But think of how many ways in which you judge, compare, doubt or reprimand yourself every single day: ‘His job / game / hair / brain is better;’ ‘I shoulda this, I coulda that.’ And when you take the time to look very closely, you might be surprised at how nit-picky you really are sometimes: ‘Why didn’t I make cassoulet for dinner?’ ‘What was I thinking when I put on these shoes?’ Hopefully you don’t talk to your spouse / partner / friends this way. How can you stand to live with yourself?

You’ve probably read the books, too. Or heard it from your shrink. Or your mom. Or Oprah. (The Gland of Grammar and Composition is a tad inflamed right now over those sentence fragments; see?). But it bears repeating: Give yourself a break. Let it go. Wash it away. Breathe it away.

It’s yet another practice that translates so nicely to yoga asana and back. If you take classes long enough, you’ll realize that the longer you compare yourself to the vision of vinyasa perfection next to you in class (talk about illusion), the less energy you have to devote to what’s happening on your own mat. You’ll be stuck, frustrated and uninspired.

Then, one day, when you’re too damn tired to look around the room, even though you’re tired, you’ll nail bakasana (crow pose), fly gloriously high (pull that belly in!) and land your bird lightly into chaturanga. Surprise! How long had it been there?

Now, go for that ‘gold’ at work, at home, in your head and in your heart.

Get busy cleaning now; the ego’s got plenty more layers of grime for you to work on.

‘Ever since you were a small child you noticed things. You might have gazed upon the fading intensity of an autumn leaf, one whose beauty and fragility brought tears to your eyes. You might have been enchanted by waves of cricket song that drew you tender moments of reverie.’ — From ‘The Gifted’ by Dayton artist/writer Patricia Kambitsch, Winner, National Novel Writing Month 2005

I’m feeling flu-like, possible side-effects of receiving crani0sacral & reiki therapy from the lovely and amazing Margaret Knapke, so for today, I’ll just implore you to visit Patricia Kambitsch’s slowlearning web site and take a few moments to browse. Some of Patricia’s multimedia paintings are on view at Practice Yoga (and in my dining room). My brilliant friend, a co-creator of the late Playthink studio and published author (‘Looks Like Howard’) also has been known to extract creativity and positivity from unsuspecting Daytonians (and Toronto-ians – ?) with her dance events and parties, workshops, arts advocacy and general authenticity.

Be still. The rain sounds lovely.

Funny things happen when not much is happening. Maybe I’ve been still enough, in my

hairy krishna is his spiritual name, fool

convalescence, for synchronicity to set in. I’m not talking coincidence, or deja vu, or running into someone you haven’t seen in years the day after you dreamt about them. I mean events, experiences connected through meaning. The Jungian stuff.

Since I can’t stand on my head or play with the kids much (or do dishes, dangit), I read, listen to podcasts and music, and watch movies. It’s kinda nice. With the exception of a fantastic book, Stephen Cope’s ‘Yoga and the Quest for the True Self,’ my selections have been (seemingly) random.

True to the title, Cope’s book chronicles his journey toward self-realization and the many intersections and commonalities between yoga, Eastern philosophies, modern psychotherapy (he’s a psychologist) and even some (gasp!) New Age ideology. Cutting to the chase: “The genius of yoga practice is that it cultivates the capacity to experience a close-range, moment-by-moment inspection of reality.” Buy the book now if you have any interest whatsoever….

Right about the time I was reading Chapter 5, “You Are Not Who You Appear to Be” and marveling anew over the myriad ways we create and suffer false identities, I clicked on the TV and caught a few minutes of ‘Fight Club.’ If you didn’t read the book or see the film, Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), who quoth today’s title, overdoses on Ikea and swaps chic seating for bruises, blood and broken bones. It’s a serious identity crisis … and gets more ridiculous, or deeper, depending on whom you ask. But there, amid the postmodern, psy-fi, cineplex indulgence,  is there a wee bit of Patanjali, whose ‘Yoga Sutras’ warns of the dangers of identifying ourselves with external attributes, sensations and pursuits?

Next up, that very same night, ‘Into the Wild,’ the beautiful true story of another lost soul, Christopher McCandless, who also creates an alter ego: Alexander Supertramp (the name of the dog of my friend quoted in HK Sutra #1. Hmm). After graduating with honors from Emory University, the Alex chucks it all — the money he doesn’t donate he burns — to escape the falseness and disappointment of career, clothes, cars and cul-de-sacs and live in (you guessed it) the wild. He quotes Tolstoy (to himself). He eats squirrels, lots of ‘em.

And somehow, when Alex talks to an apple, it seems like the most human thing he could do at that moment, because it is perfect — the moment and the apple. Clearly a guy who doesn’t need a job title or trendy furniture to feel real.

Seems to me these two were looking for stillness; one wanted it beat into him, the other wanted to soak it up from the open sky.

And lastly, a podcast, same day, from Baptiste yoga teacher Philip Urso’s ‘A Crash Course in Miracles,’ which maps non-dualism in the shape of a donut. I was downloading his asana classes (he’s great) when I found this. Urso says he considers presence, those rare moments when we’re tapping into our true identity, as the intersection of synchronicity and intuition. ACIM has a long history, and focuses heavily on issues of identity, reality and perception, from what little I’ve read/heard. More on that to come. I’d love to hear your experiences or thoughts about it — and anything else mentioned here, and anything you’d like to see here. Depending on whether I get any Seers, haha. Sorry.

Also driving the point home for me: The hair on my legs may require mowing soon, I’ve not blown my hair dry in 20 days (who’s counting?), my cuticles are atrocious and my facial pores are reacting angrily to one of my meds. I am not attached to my appearance; I feel really connected to my true, gruesome self. Can I please get up now?