Ashtanga: What Matters? On Sports, Dispassion, and Practice

Ashtanga: What Matters? On Sports, Dispassion, and Practice

[su_quote]”This practice, its different. It doesn’t ask you to *give up* anything. A house holder practice, and all that.” I laughed, and responded “except dinner.” — a dialouge with a good friend, on ashtanga yoga. also: bullshit 🙂 [/su_quote] Every Sunday afternoon in Mysore, Sharath holds a conference. It’s a little bit of Q&A time, a little bit of lecture, and a whole lot of Ashtanga Family Time. The Boss’s kids often interrupt. It’s generally very crowded. And, its always really nice. Sharath has done enough of these now that he sometimes finds a deeper question hiding inside the banal. Conference would be much shorter, some might say for the better, if the bit of Q & A were to be removed. But. every so often…

When is it Appropriate to Take Rest?

When is it Appropriate to Take Rest?

adapted from the DC Ashtanga Newsletter for April Ashtanga yoga is practiced six days a week. So, when is it okay to take a day off from yoga… and when should we reconsider canceling? Inertia is a funny thing. Objects at rest tend to stay at rest. Objects in motion, when in a straight path with nothing slowing them down, tend to stay in motion. With this little bit o’ physics, we can say that getting up and doing your practice can become its own perpetual motion machine, right? Yoga + Science = Win! (?) Not so fast. When is it appropriate to take off a day from practice?  Saturday. Maybe do an oil bath. We have a six day a week practice, right? Saturday is a great…

On New Moons and Nose Rings

On New Moons and Nose Rings

My first full day in India fell on a new moon. One of my favorite things about following a lunar cycle is the tiny bit of joy I get turning my iphone’s little green “alarm” switch from it’s perpetual “on” to it’s quiet white off. There is a visceral unraveling of inverted anticipation. Prone to waking up a few moments before my alarm, this very rarely happens on a moonday. My body just *knows* what the deal is. My loving partner Michael is generally pretty glad that we ashtangi’s take no practice on this day. Before he’s jealous he can’t stay in bed with me, he’s firstly tickled to not have to hear the synthed out buzzer. I cuddled with a travelpillow and cardigan and…

Bonsai and the Gita: The Living Art of Letting Go

Bonsai and the Gita: The Living Art of Letting Go

[quote style=”1″]be intent on action, not on the fruits of action. avoid attachment to the fruits. — (Bhagavad-Gita 2:47)[/quote] The walls shook, the windows shattered. Each and every family member was sliced by the implosive force of the atomic bomb. In the back of the Yamaki home was a garden full of exquisite trees. Not cloud piercing orchards full of fruit-bearing blossoms, but a collection of diminutive  trees and gardens of cool water-rubbed stone. Some gave a sense of whimsy, the kind of tree and knoll atop which a fairy might read her latest tome, whilst others would look right at home in a forest of their size dissonant kin. For an island so small to have a wall so tall was one of a…