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WAWADIA Update #17 /// Question: Is Injury-Free Yoga Possible?
[dropcap]O[/dropcap]n November 1st, I’ll be releasing a 52-page prospectus for a crowdfunding campaign to support the two years I think it’ll take to produce this book. In preparation for the campaign, I’ve fielded a lot of really good questions online, from my interview subjects, and in various public forums where I’ve presented preliminary findings from my research.
(I was at Yoga Morristown two weeks ago, hosted by Omni Kitts Ferrara. Then I gave a brief presentation to the entire faculty of Octopus Garden in Toronto last Wednesday. And the second WAWADIA night at 80 Gladstone, hosted by Diane Bruni, was on Friday night. Everywhere, the conversation is searching, lively, and runs late. I’ll be at Evolution Yoga in Cleveland this Saturday, hosted by Sandy Gross, and at Portland Union Yoga on Nov. 8th, hosted by Todd Vogt and Annie Adamson.)
The questions I’m getting have a lot of nuance, but here are the nuggets:
WTF is your end-game here?
Or:
Do you really think you can stop people from getting injured in asana classes? Continue reading “WAWADIA Update #17 /// Question: Is Injury-Free Yoga Possible?”
WAWADIA Update #16: Two Ways of Blocking the Yoga Injury Conversation
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]here’s no doubt that the focus I’ve chosen for this project, the data generated by the interviews, and the analysis I’ve applied to that data so far is triggering for many yoga people.
I can totally relate: the whole subject was triggering me for years before I began more formal research. I was too professionally invested in asana culture as a teacher, yoga therapist, and community organizer to let myself really hear and absorb the stories of injury and harm coming from colleagues. More intimately, I was also heavily identified with yoga asana as a key plot point in the story of my personal awakening. That hasn’t changed, but the story has certainly become more twisty. Continue reading “WAWADIA Update #16: Two Ways of Blocking the Yoga Injury Conversation”
WAWADIA update #15: Yoking the Injured Body and the NonInjured body
So the response to Update #14 has come fast and rich. You can read that piece in full here, or just roll with this nut graf, woven from Winnicott and Orbach:
Some people might be getting hurt in yoga because they are practicing in the bodies they fantasize about, instead of the bodies they actually have. Bodies they fantasize expressing a happiness that is not truly there. Bodies they fantasize as expansive when they actually feel like retreating, or expressive when they feel choked. What happens to the tissues when the mind presses them into the performance of a fictional suppleness and strength? Can the fantasized body push the real body, the inner body, too far, too fast?
Continue reading “WAWADIA update #15: Yoking the Injured Body and the NonInjured body”
Rob Ford, Emotional Whiplash, and the Suburban Medieval
A malignant fat tumour has suddenly transformed Rob Ford into an object of empathy. Even his fiercest opponents are turning blue with the mantra: We have our differences, but no one would wish this upon him. The endless repetition makes one wonder if the reciters are trying to force themselves to believe it.
So many folks want to do the right thing, and separate Rob Ford’s politics from Rob Ford’s health. To do it, they must bracket off their disdain for the man they know as a racist, abusive, rageoholic addict. Leashed by politeness and perhaps the reminder of their own mortal fears, they are jerked between loathing and pity, sustaining serious emotional whiplash.
But it’s not only the cognitive dissonance between “thug” and “cancer victim” that snaps their heads back and forth. It’s also the confusion between the white ambulance and the black Escalade, between hospital bed and campaign stump.
They hear Rob’s voice trembling with sickness, fear of chemotherapy, faith in family, faith in God. But then it also trembles with faith in the gullibility of Ward 2, faith that family and ideology are interchangeable, and, of course, faith in Doug Ford. Doug: all choked up, as anyone would be at a podium outside a hospital. Doug: who misses more than half his Council votes because he’s so very busy with side-deals, covering for his brother at pressers, and verbally abusing the parents of autistic children.
What are we to feel? Kind people, or people who want to appear kind, will bite their tongues to separate Rob Ford’s health crisis from his character. But the Fords actually want to drive these together. Cancer becomes a campaign opportunity, to show how a pious commitment to neoliberal hooliganism is the noblest way to confront death.
Loathing and pity, loathing and pity. Our poor necks!
The whiplashing doesn’t end there. The Fords, enabled by flip-floppy journos, have also yoinked the city backwards into a feudalism – let’s call it “suburban medieval” — in which the king’s body is the body of the people, and his bloodline spins a divinely-ordained web of power. Merit is irrelevant. Authority is a genetic birthright preserved in the heart, bowel, marrow and fat of the king, who shakes the fortunes of the realm with every wheezy breath.
Toronto columnists are reduced to divining the city’s future through cell cultures and sarcoma statistics. Doctors measure the Mayor’s urine, and pundits measure his resolve. The entire city is consumed with the interpretation of omens. Mundane issues, like how to really help drug addicts, are pushed aside for the solemn consideration of the king’s entrails.
Dr. Zane Cohen will not interpret omens. For him, there is no significance in cancer beyond the biochemical evidence, which only says as much as it can prove. In the cold light of Cohen’s parsimonious rationalism, some begin to comfort themselves with a moral story that, unlike most medieval tales, has a positive spin:
Rob Ford’s tumours will be vanquished by his fighting instinct, his unshakeable will, his ruthlessness. He’s not a quitter, and the tumour will prove his valour. He will stay stubborn. He will pray and accept prayers, feel the grace of God shine especially upon him. He will beat his sickness back, driven by his convictions. He’ll marginalize the hell out of that cancer.
In other words: his terribly wounded anti-social narcissism is now touted as his greatest strength, and we can now turn on a dime to pray that the worst of him produces the happiest outcome.
But if folks really want to get into this medieval thing, and indulge a mythical interpretation of the king’s cancer, they can at least be historically consistent.
Medieval doctors believed that anger corroded the liver. Sloth gathered at the waist. Vile humours choked the cynical heart. They believed a tumour colonizing the flesh was a divine retribution or a sign of demonic possession, requiring the patient to be cast, a scapegoat, beyond the city’s walls.
No doctor prior to Pasteur would have moralized virtue from Rob Ford’s mass. They would have seen it in much more obvious terms: not a stimulant to his combative spirit, but the plain result of it. They would have charted the cosmic harmony between his rage and his consumption.
They may even have gone so far as to predict the nature of the tumour from the behaviour of its host. They would have seen him clearly, standing utterly alone at court, defying all of the logic of the larger system to repeatedly vote no to the health of the body politic. And through his no, to somehow grow stronger. The medievals did not understand cancer, but they had a concise picture of the cancerous character.
Dr. Cohen won’t add fuel to either fantasy: that Rob Ford’s fighting spirit is a boon to his prognosis, or that his illness reflects a toxic heart. He’ll just do his grim job, paid for by all taxpayers, deaf to the clamour of beliefs, seeing the tumour as any other tumour, and the man as any other man.
I’m Happy for Rob Ford in His Time of Need
Benign or malignant? It’s impossible to know just yet. Perhaps it’s best to focus on the blessings of the present moment. Here are several unconflicted ways in which I can be happy for Rob Ford.
I’m really happy for Rob Ford that we live in a city and country with socialized medicine. With no apparent privilege given to his personal wealth and influence, he could journey from a nutritious breakfast to the emergency room to a CT scan to an ambulance to an elite care facility to receive an MRI and biopsy in a matter of hours, without having to worry about how he or his family will pay for it. I’m also relieved that if cancer patients of lesser means somehow got the impression he was jumping the queue, their general belief in Canadian fairness would soothe their concern.
I’m happy that Rob Ford has been cared for by well-trained physicians and support staff at Humber River Regional and Mount Sinai hospitals, some of whom are gay and/or people of colour and/or have real Jamaican accents. I imagine the nurses – many from parts of the world where there are few social services to speak of – are so friendly, they’ll let chums like Don Cherry show up after visiting hours with a double-double and the gift of a flashy tie.
I’m happy that Rob Ford got to spend time in emergency with alcoholics, drug addicts, people with HIV, homeless people who couldn’t find a bed in our shelter system, librarians, elites and other minorities, people who have been hit by cars while riding their bikes, victims of construction accidents, food poisoning and domestic violence. It can feel so reassuring to know you are part of a society in which everyone, no matter what their health, economic, or ethical challenges may be, is cared for with equal attention to evidence, transparency, and established protocol.
I’m glad for Rob Ford that some city councilors are working to improve public transit access to hospitals so that lower-wage employees can get to work more easily to serve people like him. I’m glad for Ford that some councilors are advocating for more bike lanes, to help those who cycle to work at the hospitals remain safe from the ominous SUVs that are sometimes driven by people who are drinking vodka straight from the bottle and making obscene gestures.
I’m really glad that if Renata Ford and the children were to be economically ruined by Rob Ford’s illness or death, many city councilors are fighting for more support and shelter services for the vulnerable and for abuse survivors, instead of brokering purely financial deals with condo developers, nightclub owners, and Jon Bon Jovi.
I’m really happy for Rob Ford that if he dies or remains incapacitated, and his children, for some reason, some day, need the help of a “hug-a-thug” programme, many councilors will have stood up for more programming for at-risk youth.
I’m really glad that Ford will, with no service-fee cost to him, be offered pain relief for his lower-left-quadrant abdominal mass and the therapies that will be used to treat it. The drugs he will be given may be similar to medications offered for free at drug treatment centres, which despite many strange objections have proven indispensible in relieving the chronic physical and emotional pain that addicts so often have to live with.
I’m glad for Rob Ford that he presides over a city so generous and kind-hearted that atheists stand shoulder to shoulder with agnostics and the faithful and nod solemnly as the Chinese-Canadian mayoral candidate whose parents “worked like dogs” offers prayers for his health and well-being.
I’m glad that Rob Ford has his loving brothers, especially Doug, who will not only carry his torch on the campaign trail, but advise him on how best to perform the part-time job of serving Etobicoke’s Ward 2 from his hospital bed. I’m glad that they’ll be happy to save the city yet more money by repurposing lawn signs and buttons and click-dragging copy from one website to another. I’m happy for Rob that, win or lose, family will always come first for the Fords, sustained by the passion for free markets. Doug will accept the mayoral baton from Rob, or not, with sympathetic eye-contact and an avuncular handshake. In sickness or in wealth (or both or neither), they will march with pride, arm in arm down union-paved roads in the annual Jesus in the City parade.
I’m also genuinely glad, and also quite moved, that Rob Ford enjoys the support of so many regular people who love him because he has learned to act at home among them. His years of service have exposed a tinderbox of alienation and rage that only he has been able to both mobilize and soothe. I also love him, in my own way, because without even trying he’s shown me something crucial about the necessity of empathy, and what happens when that empathy is hard to find.
To sum up: I’m so very glad that Rob Ford benefits from the kindnesses and services he has always voted against. I absolutely wish him an end to his pain and a speedy recovery, with the willing help of our tax dollars, because that’s what I would wish for everyone.
WAWADIA Update #10 /// “Lazy people can’t practice”: Thoughts On a Yoga Meme
[dropcap]Y[/dropcap]ou’ve probably seen this quote floating around.
Anyone can practice. Young man can practice. Old man can practice. Very old man can practice. Man who is sick, he can practice. Man who doesn’t have strength can practice. Except lazy people; lazy people can’t practice Ashtanga yoga. – Sri K. Pattabhi Jois
It sounds a lot like Jois might be citing Pancham Sinh’s 1914 translation of the Haṭhapradīpikā, 1.64:
Whether young, old or too old, sick or lean, one who discards laziness, gets success if he practises Yoga.
Continue reading “WAWADIA Update #10 /// “Lazy people can’t practice”: Thoughts On a Yoga Meme”
The Yoga Sutras and The Red Violin: a review of David Gordon White’s New Book
Canadian director François Girard’s 1998 film “The Red Violin” tells the fable of a miraculous instrument, crafted by one Nicolo Bussotti (a character modeled on Antonio Stradivari) that passes through the hands of several virtuosi over four centuries and three continents. Its rapturous tone beguiles generations of listeners. Several of its players die in ecstasy while playing it. Don McKellar’s chronologically labyrinthine plot sweeps the violin towards a fateful auction in the present day, concealing to the very end the source of the violin’s deadly mystique. Spoiler alert: We learn in the final minutes that the blessing and curse of the instrument is apparently soaked into the very grain of its soundboard. Bussotti had been crafting the violin for his unborn child. As he’s finishing the final sanding, he is summoned home to find that his wife has died in labour along with the baby. In abject grief, he bleeds her corpse to create a final vermillion varnish for the instrument, before going mad. The violin’s power is rooted in this single terrible, revelatory night: so say these storytellers, who in uncovering the mystery play the taut strings of our yearning for an essence we dream we could rescue from the vrittis of history. Continue reading “The Yoga Sutras and The Red Violin: a review of David Gordon White’s New Book”
Reevaluating “Constitution”: A Challenge to Popular Ayurveda
As the cosmic movement of air, sun and moon are difficult to know,
so is that of vāta, pitta, and kapha in the body.
Caraka Samhita VI 28:246
This post deconstructs what I feel are some common but avoidable problems with the practice of Ayurvedic constitutional typology. I realize that there are several forms of Ayurveda (including that represented by the modern BAMS syllabus) that do not necessarily foreground constitution in practice. My focus here is limited to the popular and global modes of practice supported by English language literature and often associated with modern global yoga culture. My intention is to clear a path for future research into what the old insights of typology might reasonably offer today. Because this piece is lengthy, I’ll begin with a redux of themes:
- While Ayurveda and contemporary science share a common empirical root in the systematic observation of natural patterns, Ayurveda no longer belongs to the discipline of “science” as it’s commonly understood today. It is now perhaps more properly understood as an interpersonal and intersubjective art form, ideal for any therapy and counseling that seeks to bridge categories of body and mind. Claiming that it does more than this makes Ayurveda vulnerable to the charge of pseudoscience.
- The popular and now global practice of Ayurvedic constitutional typology (prakṛti) is particularly vulnerable to pseudoscientific claims, cognitive fallacies, essentialism, unchecked transference and countertransference, and blindness to how bodies are assigned meanings through social construction. These flaws are often amplified or excused by romantic Orientalism.
- If they can first uncover and then reach beneath these flaws, modern Ayurvedic practitioners may be able to access layers of awareness rooted in the intimacy of their mirror neurology — a kind of “hardwired empathy.” Their task, if it is possible, would be to isolate this “first sense” of how another person feels themselves in the world towards therapeutic ends, before it is distorted by the sweep of cultural ideology, whether global-capitalist or antique-Orientalist.
- If it resists cultural ideology, the art of constitution can utilize the poetry of bodily states to initiate empowering dialogue about how different subjects experience the world organically, emotionally, and socially. In this way, a truly dynamic theory of “constitution” might take shape and be of benefit to a wide spectrum of healing disciplines.
- The most empirically honest and psychologically effective use of typology leaves the subject unlabeled and undetermined, and therefore able to construct for themselves a rich dialogue with their evolving body-mind patterning.
Continue reading “Reevaluating “Constitution”: A Challenge to Popular Ayurveda”
Changing, Fast and Slow /// notes on Sam Harris, meditation, spiritual impatience, and the rising sea
Just as the ocean has a gradual shelf, a gradual slope, a gradual inclination, with a sudden drop-off only after a long stretch, in the same way this Doctrine and Discipline (dhamma-vinaya) has a gradual training, a gradual performance, a gradual progression, with a penetration to gnosis only after a long stretch.
— Uposatha Sutta, 5.5
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[dropcap]I[/dropcap]’m looking forward to September’s release of Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion, by Sam Harris. When an “acerbic atheist” (to use the phrase of ABC’s Dan Harris in his mini pre-review) who has done so much to open up discourse on faith, reason, cognitive science and ethics comes out of the closet about his personal practice of meditation and proposes to evaluate his experience in terms of neuropsychology, it’s some good times. But a number of details from this recent dialogue with the same Dan Harris give me pause. (If he has modified these claims somewhere I haven’t come across, I ‘d be happy to know.)
20 Suggestions for Doing Yoga Philosophy Today
- It used to be that the unexamined life was not worth living. Now, the unexamined life is killing the planet. Staying mindful of our collective condition will keep things on point and our heads out of the stars.
- Yoga philosophy today is meeting a world of neoliberal values and catastrophic climate change. It needs teeth.
- Never assume that there will be agreement as to what “yoga” is, “philosophy” is, or what “yoga philosophy” is. Continue reading “20 Suggestions for Doing Yoga Philosophy Today”
