musing

I remembered an old martial arts teacher's ideal-dream idea of developing an apartment complex into a sort of fitness community. People would live in the apartments, and as part of their rent they would get their choice of general-personal training or fitness classes, and various martial arts (I think he very grudgingly conceded a need for a yogic aspect at some point). As a community - community building was something he was big on, something I looked up to him for - they would be able to support and maintain each other's practice, and enjoy having like-minded people around.

I definitely understand the like-minded people aspect being in yoga school now - I've never really found myself in a setting until now where mulitple people were actually having the same thoughts as me (at least in regards to a yoga/personal development side of things); individuals, yes (my roommate and a couple ex-girlfriends, say) but not a community before. Anyway, that's a tangent from what the original point of this musing was to be, that as much as he had something of a cool idea going, I'd maybe back it down to this: an analagous school for martial arts.

Right, I understand the Japanese arts have their own traditions and whatnot of almost purely physical training and specific ways of how things are done. But, interestingly, the yoga school I attend considers the idea of lineage just as important as the dojos I once attended did. And they still have classes that attend to the purely physical. But, in the actual school aspect, there's a more holistic approach - philosophy, language, anatomy, nutrition, etc. It would be amazing to see the effect of that applied to martial arts, in my mind - zen and Musashi instead of samadhi and the Bhagavad Gita, Japanese instead of Sanskrit, anatomy with a different focus...I'm not saying it would necessarily make the students better fighters, mind, but rather, I think certain students would find the discipline immensely more interesting and valuable, and be much, much more effective at the supposed non-physical aims of martial arts, which are usually brushed quickly by, if mentioned at all. Which, in the end, is a sad thing in the case of styles like aikido, where they should be focus, instead.

"Context is very important. Without context we can never really master yoga or any other art or science. For example, artists learn all the classic principles of their form before learning to improvise and find true creativity. Without training in the classical skills of their art as well as understanding how their art has developed, there is no ground on which artists can base their creativity. Most of the great masters have developed their mastery in this way: by first learning the context."

on Iyengar

I noticed a couple things in going to the first of several classes outside of yoga school proper. One is that it's I've come to appreciate previous teachers I've had immensely more, after running into a teacher who was just relentlessly negative and critical, both in phrasing ("don't," "struggle," etc) and in attitude.

Another was that it turned out to be a lot more valuable than I thought it would be to experience a different style of yoga. I assumed there would subtle or slight differences, but nope - where I'm used to vinyasa flow, with its reasoned sequencing and relaxing movement, the Iyengar yoga was disjointed and based on relatively few, static asanas. I'll acknowledge and perhaps even admire the point that in that manner one is able to really look at the minutae of a pose, but they seemed to focus on it so much to the point that it was ultimately more hindrance than benefit. The constant criticism and obsession with ideal form, regardless of injury (in the case of one poor woman grimacing at shoulder rotation) or the unique structure of an individual's body only exacerbated that hindrance. The idea that achieving conformity to some perfect idea of a pose would help the body achieve integration with the mind holds some shallow logic for me (in the sense of visualization, perhaps), but also seems intuitively wrong on several levels to me (ignoring the breath as bridge between body and mind, forcing which just brings resistance, etc).

-coincidentally, I just had happened to read these passages in one of my textbooks:
"Asana should not simply be an external form into which you fit your body, but should arise from within you. What you see in the mirror is the form. What you feel is the function of the posture. Unity, not uniformity, is the goal of yoga."

"Rigid adherence to the ideal form is simply habit or conditioning, whereas adaptation to insure function is an act of creativity."

- both from Yoga for Body, Breath and Mind, by A.G. Mohan

a few notes on posture

At class last night, we did a quick postural analysis of a partner; we first found our natural posture by jumping up and down a few times, and just stopping however we landed, without fixing anything. And I realized a couple of things -

One, that it actually became painful after a bit to maintain that incorrect posture, with one shoulder a little too high, my feet turned a bit wrong, my neck canted a bit too much to the side, etc. I started to feel the beginnings of kinks form in muscles, even, by the end of it. So it's interesting how much a lazy, uncorrected posture can affect us.

Two stemmed from our homework - our feet affect our posture enormously. The sole of the foot is in effect the beginning of the back, and the alignment of our feet reflects up our bodies, through our pelvis, all the way to our shoulders and neck. That isn't exactly a weakness, however; rather, it can be turned into a strength by achieving proper alignment in the feet (good arch, grounding through the front of the heel and bases of big and little toe), and through integrating an awareness of the feet into asanas. For example, in the soles being the first part of the back, if one begins one's forward bends by beginning the stretch in the feet, the overall stretch is augmented, and moreover the body is better integrated as a whole. Clever!

vulnerable

I caught myself altering some poses contrary to the teacher's instruction the other day, which is actually kind of a pet peeve of mine - when people just willfully do it out of some sense of competitiveness or irreverance. So, I examined my own motives.

Whenever she would tell us to clasp our hands, implying that we should lace our fingers together to, for example, pull our knee to our chest, I would rather layer my hands on the other, or in other cases where she intended we lace our fingers together, I would find a differnt way to clasp my hands or hook my fingers together. Long story short, I was doing that because in grappling, interlaced fingers are horribly vulnerable - sure, they might seem to provide a better grip, but all the opponent has to do is squeeze them together for a quick tap. Fingerbones don't like being crushed against other fingerbones.

In regards to the yoga, I realized that for me, to consciously decide to allow myself to lace my fingers together might be a sign of consciously choosing to allow myself to be vulnerable. And to me, that is a positive change to be made, and hopefully will help me develop further in my practice, in however subtle a manner.

fear

I had a sudden thought the other night, looking at a swimming pool (though that particular body of water was at a perfect temperature). Imagining a cold pool, however, even icy-seeming, I realized I might feel a certain fear at the sensation of the cold water, as if it was a kind of pain, and that would make me consider it unpleasant.

I realized, however, that if I could embrace the wonder of the sensation of the cold water, and perhaps embrace even more through that - the weightlessness inherent in being submerged, the sudden availability to acrobatic movement, the tough of a girlfriend's smooth skin - then that fear which I had initially, reflexively blanketed the idea of "cold water" with might be transformed entirely - as Phillip Moffitt wrote in an entirely unrelated article I just read, "admidst all suffering there is joy."

Tangentially, something similar occurred to me while watching a horror movie - perhaps that is something of the fascination for going to a movie to be scared...that possiblity of tranformation of the emotion.