Luminalogue

Inspiration from a 93-year Old Yoga Teacher

Tao Porchon-Lynch, a 93-year-old yoga teacher and dancer, shares a bit of her yoga philosophy (while graciously enduring the inept and silly commentary from her interviewers).   For more of her inspiring story, read Tao's recently published book, Reflections: The Yogic Journey of Life. 

Chronic Ecstasy

Image Source: giannakali, Beyond Meds

"Chronic ecstasy is a learnable skill." Rob Brezsny

Recently, a friend published this quote on FB.  Chronic ecstasy.  Chronic.  Ecstasy.  A strange juxtaposition.  Chronic, often associated with the less healthy form of constancy—as in chronic pain.  And ecstasy, often associated with the less healthy form of drug-induced high—as in rave culture drug of choice. 

My initial response was one of both affirmation and caution.  Yes, chronic ecstasy is indeed a learnable, even valuable, skill, and yet, chronic ecstasy without discerning engagement is simply self-indulgent escapism. 

This is especially true with regards to meditation.  If you’re a meditator, then you probably already know that ecstasy is a pleasant part of the territory.  At some point in a meditation practice, we usually experience some extraordinary states of bliss—natural highs beyond any drug-induced ecstasy. 

And if you’re not yet a meditator, you’re probably thinking, drug-free ecstasy?  Yes, please, I likes me some drug-free ecstasy.  After all, who doesn’t want some ecstasy? 

The trouble is that the drug-free ecstasy can be just as addictive as the drug-induced kind, leading to more escapist than enlightening meditation, causing us to seek out a particular euphoric experience instead of embracing the whole truth of what is.  It’s kind of like a meditative drug-induced stupor.  It can feel good, but we’re not really all there. 

After such ecstatic experiences, we often find ourselves mistakenly judging the quality of our meditation by how we feel during our practice.  We get attached to “achieving” ecstatic states, becoming disappointed when we don’t “achieve” particular ecstatic states during or beyond our meditation, as if ecstasy (or achievement) paves the path to enlightenment.

Yet, if we habitually seek out, or simply slip into ecstatic states readily and repeatedly without full awareness, our meditation practice begins to look more like blissing out than blissfully being with the truth of experience.  We begin to inhabit the murky territory of good sits as good trips.  In so doing, we mistake the transient effects (ecstasy, discomfort, restlessness, etc.), for the practice (sitting and being with what is, focusing attention on the breath, etc.), and the long-term results of practice (greater awareness, equanimity, contentment). 

Lacking discernment or more discriminating awareness, some meditators even conflate the repeated experience of ecstasy with enlightenment.  Unfortunately, as long as there is an “I” getting high, there’s only false en-lie-tenment rather than any genuine awakening.  Chronic ecstasy, thus, becomes merely the ignorance of bliss rather than the eternal bliss of being fully present and alive with the nature of who you really are and what is.

After all, just because you can access a light show in your mind doesn’t mean that you’re enlightened.  It just means that you’re enjoying some good trips along the way.  The purpose of meditation is to realize who you are and what is.   Genuine bliss arrives when we learn to be just as we are rather than as we think we should be. 

If you meditate merely to take the bliss-trip, you just end up in Lala Land, chronically ecstatic without a care or a clue.

 

  

 

A Cautionary Tale for Asana Enthusiasts

Photo Credit: Danielle Levitt for The New York Times, Members of the Broadway cast of “Godspell” do their flexible best. From left: Uzo Aduba (doing the wheel), George Salazar (extended-hand-to-big-toe pose) and Nick Blaemire (headstand).

 

In a recent article entitled How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body, which would have been more aptly titled, How Practicing Asanas without Self-Awareness Can Wreck Your Body, author, William Broad interviews long-standing yoga teacher, Glenn Black, about the potentially harmful aspects of ignorant asana practice.  Aside from perpetuating the common misconception that yoga is merely asana by consistently using the word "yoga" to refer to the popular, yet partial, asana practice within the integral tradition of yoga, the article is an informative, well-written, cautionary tale for current and aspiring asana enthusiasts.

Black, with laudable honesty and integrity, warns that the frequent lack of yogic attentiveness and deeper understanding within the often achievement-oriented culture of current exercise-based yoga practice may be more harmful than beneficial.

"According to Black, a number of factors have converged to heighten the risk of practicing yoga. The biggest is the demographic shift in those who study it. Indian practitioners of yoga typically squatted and sat cross-legged in daily life, and yoga poses, or asanas, were an outgrowth of these postures. Now urbanites who sit in chairs all day walk into a studio a couple of times a week and strain to twist themselves into ever-more-difficult postures despite their lack of flexibility and other physical problems. Many come to yoga as a gentle alternative to vigorous sports or for rehabilitation for injuries. But yoga’s exploding popularity — the number of Americans doing yoga has risen from about 4 million in 2001 to what some estimate to be as many as 20 million in 2011 — means that there is now an abundance of studios where many teachers lack the deeper training necessary to recognize when students are headed toward injury. “Today many schools of yoga are just about pushing people,” Black said. “You can’t believe what’s going on — teachers jumping on people, pushing and pulling and saying, ‘You should be able to do this by now.’ It has to do with their egos.”"

Yup.  I couldn't agree more.  Read the entire article for more of Black's perspective, and check out our offerings through Lumina Yoga for a more integral approach.

Sculpted Motion, Mirage

Amazing yoga-inspired art by Katie Grinnan, who captured a sequence of poses within a single sculpture by casting molds of her body at various stages of her asana practice.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Katie Grinnan, Mirage, 2011, Friendly plastic, enamel, and sand, 79 x 63 x 72 inches.  Photo Credit: Brennan & Griffin, New York. 

To learn more about Katie and this amazing sculpture, check out Brennan &  Griffin, where LA folks can see this wondrous work live.  You can also read more in a recent HuffPost article featuring her work.

Gratitude