yoga is one of the world’s main transformative practices of the body and mind.

the body is simple. the mind, on the other hand, has many elements, but its main purpose is to establish pattern as early as possible in order to ensure survival. for example, if every day you forgot how to eat, speak, or sleep, your life would be destructively inefficient.

too much of a good thing, however, is bad. that’s why the first, most potent, and most lasting pattern that nearly all yoga practitioners create for themselves is:

i can’t do that.

I would love all yoga students to check that statement out when they notice it emerging in the mind. the underlying context, the mind’s real statement is:

this is a new thing i’m confronted with, and i don’t understand it. therefore, i am going to stop right here and revert to the pattern of thinking i already know, which creates less immediate stress on me.

(it’s kind of like being in college, when in the freshman eating hall you sit with your dorm mates, class mates, or friends from home. it’s scary to go eat with someone totally new–omg the potential gross digestion from all that stress of talking to someone you’ve never met before!)

the real essence of any yoga class–by definition of it being called a yoga class–is the attempt to evolve, whether that’s through “relaxation,” “working hard,” or “playing your edge.” however the mind defines these terms, these terms are by definition always changing.

i’m thinking of moving my monday 8 pm class to thursday nights at 8 pm. i’m wondering if the hatha 2 students think this is a good idea. let me know.

particularly as i observe my mind experiencing boundless’s imminent move, which may or may not be to 14th and T, i was struck this morning when reading a commentary by swami satchidananda, who writes a potent and clear translation of the yoga sutras:

How are we to know whether our thoughts are selfless or not? We have watch carefully the moment a thought-form arises in the mind. We become analysts. This itself is the Yoga practice–watching our own thoughts and analyzing them.

Can you run a business successfully and be selfless, I wonder? This is the question I visit and revisit often.

a few days ago i learned from a friend that an embryo’s heart starts beating at three weeks. though i’m not sure exactly (or scientifically) what happens from conception day up to day 21, i imagine that it’s a little like the intermission of the great 80’s game pacman, when they meet, and the two parts of the possibly-soon-to-be whole decide to merge. this newly merged entity then shimmies up to the uterine wall, attaches, with the wall forms the umbilical cord, and then, with a sigh, flips the switch to “on” and starts beating its heart.

my conclusion today, then, is that you actually can be half pregnant, for a short time.

i have decided to set a goal: to get rid of at least half of the plastic bags wadded together like petroleum bush in my house by the end of the year, which i estimate can happen if i remember, 90-100% of the time, to take the canvas bags to the grocery store.

I have a car, so i will place two canvas bags to live in the car permanently, which, additionally, should decrease the chances of accumulating new plastic bags, especially from places like Rite Aid.

the great bill moyers was interviewed on Npr’s fresh air today, and he recalled a conversation he’d had with joseph campbell, the popular scholar of mythology, said this:

if you want to change the world, you change the metaphor.

at boundless yoga, there is a small plant growing in the corner of our bathroom, which is a room with no windows. i worried about this plant when we first put it there a few months ago, wondering if it would get enough light to grow.

the plant has actually grown a lot in this corner, defying my expectations and mitigating my concern. using virtually no sunlight (save the bit that makes it in), it propels itself upward into a larger, sturdier plant by losing some, but not all, leaves on the lower part of the stem. this seems to give the plant a heightened abililty to create bigger, greener, and lusher leaves at the the top.

it’s quite beautiful.

yogis invented poses to keep the mind occupied on its way to establishing a “seat,” or the seated poses of meditation. many practitioners find that once they’ve been doing yoga a while, certain poses begin to look and feel like each other, to have a similar resonance (in the breath, emotions, or mind). this is the harmony found in a regular yoga practice.

what we also find when starting yoga asana is the there is just as much need to give in as there is to push back. when, for example, you are straining in a seated forward fold, it’s probably a good idea to give in to your resistance to the fact that you are where you are. when, on the other hand, you are feeing fatigued in a standing pose and just want to give up, in most cases it’s a good idea to push right back at the desire to stop.

this, the practice of hatha yoga: it is to define something and immediately consider the role of its opposite in your mind. this consideration can only be manifested through the bodily experience (not least because you are in a pose at that time!). as it is, we find that we are always on the razor’s edge of experience, standing gracefully and steadily on the line of our own consciousness.

i want to clarify the term hatha yoga. According to Wikipedia and other sources i’ve studied, hatha yoga is not as old as yoga “proper;” hatha yoga showed up in the 15th century, because a guy named Swami Swatmarama wanted to give practitioners (sadhakas) a clearer path to the “heights of raja yoga.” raja yoga is, simply, the yoga that emerges through behavior observances, body/breath practices, and several stages of meditation.

this brings me to something Einstein said:

insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

the issue with today’s hatha yoga, especially the part influenced by vinyasa yoga (a more modern version of hatha characterized by repetitive, faster-paced movements linked to the breath), is that it can be too rote.

hatha yoga, like yoga itself, is a living, breathing, ever-changing reflection of the mind that studies it. we can call this mind “your” mind, “my” mind, or even the “collective” mind. whatever the definition of mind, it’s important to know that expecting the same result from your yoga class (i always feel so good after class! my hamstrings are always so strethed!), is missing the point of “ha” (sun) and “ta” (moon), hatha.

practice, of course, is always and only up to the practitioner. and the breath, which underlies the practice no matter what its form, is never, ever the same. back to einstein’s statement, we could, then, conclude the breath is the sanest thing around.

yesterday, i was shaving in the shower. i forgot that i was doing it, actually, because this is a rote task i’ve done for more than 20 years. instead, i was doing what i usually do: analyzing not the job in front of me, but rather the past few days. I was re-experiencing conversations and experiences i’d had with friends, family, and business colleagues. i was somewhere else while my body–hand and leg–were there, experiencing the deed of wicking the hair away, down the drain, and off my leg.

at the moment i came back to being aware i was shaving without any real participation in the act, i felt the line between my eyebrows furrowed. it’s a line that acupuncture calls the “inner critic;” according to ayurveda, it lies right in between the liver and spleen lines. if you’re wrinkled there, which i was–straight down the middle–you are manifesting dis-ease of those organs, and probably of the stomach, too.

i know this, of course, and i’ve known it for years. and yet, razor in hand, i was aware of having forgotten, utterly and completely, to be present. instead, i chose to stay immersed in analyzing–criticizing–past events over which i now have no control, and which, in any event, having little or nothing to do with shaving in the shower.

for the rest of the shave, i changed my focus. i started noticing each strip of hair wicked away, feeling the weight and angle of the razor in my hand, and on the feeling of the water in the shower itself. staying focused like this had an effect opposite to what many of us might think: it relaxed the line between my eyebrows. i was aware of a calm contentment that also relaxed my upper abdomen/solar plexus area, where my stomach is.

the lesson in this information is to stay present. when you are aware of being as fully involved in any experience–shaving, crying, walking, sleeping, eating–all of your cells are also involved. at the very least, they are more occupied with the mind and body both assisting you in this task. this is a preferable state to the one in which the brain sends signals–typically ones of analysis, criticism, and discontent–to the body that have little to do with what is actually in front of you at that moment.

this is also why meditation is critical in today’s world.

last night, talking with a student after my therapeutic class at smith farm healing center, i remembered that for all my teachers, students tend often to be the sagest.

This student has studied with me for more than a year, and she is recovering from cancer. she is young. i’ve been away from the class for a few weeks, and i was sharing with her some recent events in my life, and my reaction to what felt like a big disappointment this past week. before i could wax any level of philosophical about the experience, she smiled, shook one hand into the air as if flicking away my words, and said, “you know, you just never know why things happen. it could be that this is for the best.”

a lot of people say this when you express disappointment. in general i resist the flicking-away-of-feeling-let-down, because i question why disappointment, among other emotions, is so hard to tolerate and accept. but last night, my student went on to clarify that our conversation reminded her of one she had with her doctor last year. the doctor, also a woman, was in reassurance mode, telling my student that–now that her treatments were over and the cancer was officially in remission–”you’ll have a better year next year, for sure.”

and my student, still with a smile (though by this time a wry one), said to me, “I told my doctor, ‘you know, this year hasn’t really been all that bad. i mean, i had cancer and all, but as i think of it, the year was pretty good!’”