Articles – Page 43 – Matthew Remski

November 12, 2014

WAWADIA Update #18: One Hundred Years of Yoga in One Big Apple Day

So we have the stonecutter, and the baby-whisperer. The values of the entire last century of modern postural yoga would seem to oscillate between these two icons. On one end of the mālā-string, a harsh discipline seeks to reconstruct the person into a worthy vehicle of devotion. On the other end, we’re encouraged to release every discipline and habit that has obscured the original ease and pleasure of movement. Modern yogis slide back and forth on that string, like beads, in constant dialogue between the desire for a new self and a primal memory.

November 11, 2014

WAWADIA /// My Left Hand: I Am That (draft excerpt)

At the age of 30, I went to a yoga class in Manhattan, trying to pull myself out of depression. It was at Alan Finger’s old place. The instructor was a woman my age who seemed charmed in a way that both irritated and attracted me. Like she had some pleasurable secret. Smiling, she said: “Today we’ll try to see if we can join the small self to the larger self.” The words jostled some memory of the Arjuna story, but they didn’t help my mood.

November 8, 2014

WAWADIA: Meeting Nancy Cochren (draft excerpt)

Year by year, hundreds of thousands of women around the world who are committed to modern postural yoga are also negotiating childbirth, effectively bringing two forms of spiritual practice into contact. The lived reality of these practices collides with the social narratives of how they are supposed to be in the world, throwing off stories of pain, bravery and learning like so many sparks.

November 4, 2014

WAWADIA: A Working Thesis

The body of modern yoga is a body of longing, possibility, and revelation. But it’s also a body of shame, confusion, and suffering. Injury can mark the place where these two bodies wrestle on the mat.