i heart yoga part 1

Ok, so the consensus is that I write about yoga. That's the consensus of one (me) because I didn't hear from anyone. I guess as the writer it is my job to figure out what to write about.

Luckily, I started reading The Heart of Yoga by T.K.V. Desikachar recently, and it's giving me lots of things that I want to think and write about. Desikachar is the son and student of Krishnamacharya, who was both Pattabhi Jois and Iyengar's teacher. But enough name dropping. It's a great book, very simply and clearly written, and I think it may be the perfect book for a new yoga student to start with. It took me five years of practicing to pick it up, but you guys don't have to be as slow as me. (Oh, and, by the way, we sell it in the shop.)

Anyway, he lists a bunch of different definitions of yoga. I'm just going to talk about one, which is from Patanjali, who in the Yoga Sutras, famously writes "yoga chitta vritti nirodah." I've seen this spelled and translated a million different ways. I like Desikachar's translation, which is "yoga is the ability to direct the mind exclusively toward an object and sustain that direction without any distractions."

So how am I doing with my yoga? God, you know, the more I read about it, the more I see ways I can grow. That's the purpose of self-study, which is actually one of the niyamas, or "dos" in yoga. Study yourself, study the scriptures. It is also possible to use a spiritual practice as a whip. "I'm not good enough. I'm not good enough," becomes the mantra. What I'm doing here is self-study. One day I'll write a blog entry about the difference. It's sort of hard to articulate, and I think I confuse the two a lot. Right now I know by the way it feels. This is self study.

Anyway, back to the topic. I am so often distracted. The only times I can think of that I am consistently not distracted are when I am teaching yoga or when I'm writing. But all the other moments of my life are ripe with multi-tasking and a viciously short attention span. I constantly need to move on to the next thing. Now. And then the next thing. And the next thing, and then, oh wait! I was doing that original thing which is still incomplete, so back to task A.

Desikachar puts it this way: "yoga means acting in such a way that all of our attention is directed toward the activity in which we are currently engaged." This makes me think of my current decisions around getting rid of things. The pruning. Too much stuff is a distraction. That's why monks live in tiny rooms with cold floors and worn, hard mattresses. In the West. In the East, I guess they live in caves.

I'm not a monk, and I'm not interested in renouncing the material world. But getting rid of what I'm not using means I will have more opportunities to focus on what is present and useful in my life. Right now, as I've written about here, I'm considering letting go of the internet at my new house. That would be huge for me. The TV went away long ago, but the TV shows didn't. I'm laptop-addicted. I may have to just sit with myself. Maybe I won't let five years go by before I read another really important book. Maybe I'll write and reflect more. Maybe my yoga will get a little deeper.

It's amazing to me how yoga happens. How it unfolds. Practice and everything falls away. Everything. It's not immediate, but when I look back and I see how much simpler and fuller and happier my life is now compared to when I started doing yoga, I'm in awe. If you had told me then to quit smoking, quit drinking, quit eating meat and give away half of my possessions, I would have told you to go fuck yourself. Seriously. But giving up those things just became so obviously the correct action when the time was right. There was no gruelling decision to make. I didn't have to try. I just kept practicing. This shit works, man. It just does.

My new BFF Desikachar says, "we begin where we are and whatever happens happens." How lovely. I don't have to be perfect. You don't have to be perfect. We start practicing yoga while we are still smoking and drinking and sleeping around or whatever it is for us. We don't start practicing after we got all that figured out. It will never happen. I love yoga. Start where you are.