Just did the new Gary Kraftsow Therapeutic DVD, Upper Back, Neck, and Shoulders. It's excellent. A forty-minute gentle to moderate practice of viniyoga that promotes greater mobility in the neck and strength in the shoulder girdle.
Viniyoga is not a young person's style: it's slow and repetitive. The connection of the breath to spinal movement gives it a profundity that grows on you, however. When I was first teaching, I learned a ton about coordinating breath and movement from The Heart of Yoga. This book describes the basics of the viniyoga style, and it also contains a complete translation of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.(Desikachar's translation is not my favorite, but it's a great one to have on hand as a contrast to other translators, since it's remarkably spare and practical -- none of the bhakti slant that you see in the Iyengar and Satchitananda.)
It's always amazing to me that one teacher, Krishnamacharya, inspired such different styles. This dude was the heavyweight champion of yoga. This is him at 99.
He had three main disciples:
Patabhi Jois (pronounced like Joyce), who founded astanga yoga, the vigorous, flowing style which led to the craze for power and vinyasa yoga in the health clubs of the US. Jois teaches out of Mysore, India. Astanga yogis are usually thin, Indie, and vegan. They think people who practice other styles of yoga are pussies.
BKS Iyengar, who teaches in Pune, India. Iyengar Yoga is the kind where they hold poses a long time, use a lot of props, and are obssessive about alignment. Iyengar yogis are usually accomplished, militaristic, and neurotic. They think people who practice other styles are hacks.
And TKV Desikachar of Chennai, Krishnamacharya's own son, who taught Gary Kraftsow (though they are rumored to hate each other now) and the famous philosopher Krishnamurti. Viniyoga is by far the least commercially successful style of the three, and I don't know enough to make a generalization about its adherents. I did see Desikachar chanting the Vedas in a church on the upper west side a few years ago. His family was chanting with him, and it was a good vibe.
Tensions run high among the three disciples, each claiming to represent the true teachings of the master. Perhaps some day there will be a cage fight to settle it once and for all.
Hanuman is the monkey king who fights for the god Rama in the great Indian epic the Ramayana. Hanuman was the son of Anjani, a heavenly nymph (apsara) who had been cursed to take form as a monkey-person (varana) until such time as she gave birth to an incarnation of Shiva. When she was meditating one day, the god of the wind, Vayu, placed some sacred food in her hands. When she ate the food, she became pregnant with Hanuman and thus was freed from her curse. Because Vayu brought Anjani the blessed food, Hanuman was often called "Son of the Wind."
Hanuman's characteristics are bravery, strength, and devotion to God. He recognizes the divinity of King Rama and Queen Sita, themselves manifestations of Vishnu and Lakshmi, and he follows them to the ends of the earth. When Sita is stolen from her husband by the demon Ravana, Hanuman leaps across the whole ocean to save her.
Here's a description from William Buck's poetic retelling of the Ramayana:
"It was the greatest leap ever taken. The speed of Hanuman's jump pulled blossoms and flowers into the air after him and they fell like little stars on the waving treetops. The animals on the beach had never seen such a thing; they cheered Hanuman, then the air burned from his passage, and red clouds flamed over the sky . . ."
Because of this great leap, the yoga pose of the full split is named after him, Hanumanasana.
There is a beautiful story about Hanuman that I tell my students sometimes. After the great war was over and Sita was safe, Sita gave Hanuman a necklace of priceless pearls as a reward for his heroism and devotion. In front of the assembled nobles, Hanuman pulled the necklace apart, holding each beautiful pearl up to his ear, shaking it, then throwing it to the ground in disgust.
"Hanuman, you stupid monkey!" Sita said. "What are you doing?"
"I wanted to see if the pearls were saying the name of Rama," Hanuman replied. "Only something which says the name of the Lord has meaning to me."
"A pearl is an inanimate object. It cannot speak," said Sita.
But Hanuman countered, "Everything that is saturated with the love of God speaks his name." And Hanuman pulled a handful of hair from his chest and held it to Sita's ears. Every hair on Hanuman's body was softly chanting "RAM."
He ripped his chest open. In his heart was an image of Rama and Sita.
Can someone please tell me where the Hip, Tranquil Chick lives? Because I would like to mug her.
Reasons why I, Sarah Deming, would like to mug the Hip Tranquil Chick:
-- to nourish my inner rage
-- to challenge myself daily
-- to practice my left hook to the liver, right hand to the solar plexus combination
-- to burn off the calories in that muffin i ate
-- to give the Hip, Tranquil Chick something to write about in her journal
-- to make some extra pocket money
This week's god is Shiva, the Hindu deity of destruction, transformation, and yoga. Shiva is brutal and beautiful. He wears a tiger skin, holds a trident, and has a cobra about his neck. His skin is smeared with ashes from the funeral pyre. He is the father of all ascetics, and as such has long, matted dreadlocks.
(Sometimes you see Shiva spelled Siva. There are many "s" sounds in Sanskrit and the word gets transliterated differently by different writers. Another confusing thing about Sanskrit is that the masculine ending is -a. In English, we are used to names ending with "a" being feminine, but the Sanskrit male names frequently end with "a" (Krishna, Shiva, Rama, Ganesha, etc.) The feminine ending is usually -i (Parvati, Lakshmi, Kali, etc.))
Unlike last week's goddess of the week, Freya, Shiva is still worshipped today. I worship him myself from time to time. Before I got into the ring in Madison Square Garden, I recited the Maha Mritunjaya Mantra:
Om Tryambakam Yajamahe
Sugandhim Pushtivardhanam
Urvarukamiva Bandhanan
Mrityor Mukshiya Maamritat
Swaha
I bow to the three-eyed one, Lord Shiva, fragrant, radiant and full of grace. As a ripe cucumber falls easily from its stem, may I be released from all my attachments, and may I achieve immortality.
I told myself, playing that game you play with yourself sometimes, "If I can get to the end of the mantra without anyone interrupting me, I will win the fight." I did, and I did.
Sometimes when I go to a party, I wish that Shiva would manifest for a moment and burn away some of the excess advertising executives. Last night, I was trapped in a conversation between two married couples in which couple A was aggressively teasing couple B because wife B had not taken husband B's name. A single woman nearby remarked, "In this day and age, I think it's normal not to take a man's name." The husband in couple A replied, "That's why you're still single."
I watched the single woman, who was a delightful person, blush bright red.
Another reason never to leave my apartment.
Shiva is often pictured dancing in a ring of flames, his foot stomping on a little dwarf who represents the ego. This is Shiva's great dance, which he will do at the end of the age. In this form he is called Nataraja, the lord of the dance. He is called by countless other names as well, Rudra, Shambhu, etc.
Shiva's consort is the beautiful Parvati. Their son is Ganesha. Ganesha was born while Shiva was away from home, and Parvati set the boy to guard the door to her bedchamber, telling him to bar all strangers from entering. When Shiva returned home, the boy would not allow him to enter his own wife's bedroom. Enraged, Shiva cut off the boy's head, killing him.
Parvati emerged from the room, weeping, and told Shiva he had killed his son. So Shiva took the first head he saw, an elephant's, and set it on the boy's shoulders. Ganesha came back to life, but ever after wore the head of the elephant.
Once a human ascetic became so fierce in his yogic practices that he ate only the bark of trees. He meditated and grew superhumanly powerful. He cut himself and saw that, as a result of his extreme austerity, sap flowed from his wound rather than blood. This made the holy man so happy that he began to dance. The dance shook the foundations of the world. The gods, in fear, sent Shiva down to earth, saying, "Calm him down, Shiva, or his dance will destroy the world."
Shiva stood calmly before the man, and asked him, "Why do you dance?"
The man said, "Look!" and pointed to the sap flowing from his wound.
Shiva regarded him through sleepy eyes. "That is nothing," Shiva said. He cut his own skin with a fingernail. White ashes flowed from the wound.
Three poems in praise of Shiva by Allama Prabhu, from the tenth century AD, tr AK Ramanujan
Some say
they saw It.
What is It,
the circular sun,
the circle of the stars?
The lord of Caves
lives in the town
of the moon mountain.
***
When the honey-bee came
I saw the smell of flowers
run.
O what miracles!
Where the heart went
I saw the brain
run.
When the god came
I saw the temple run.
***
Looking for your light,
I went out:
it was like the sudden dawn
of a million million suns,
a ganglion of lightnings
for my wonder.
O Lord of Caves,
if you are light,
there can be no metaphor.
***
And three by his contemporary, the woman saint Mahadeviyakka, who died in her twenties:
Make me go from house to house
with arms stretched for alms,
If I beg, make them give nothing.
If they give, make it fall to the ground.
If it falls, before I pick it up, make a dog take it,
O lord
white as jasmine.
***
Other men are thorn
under the smooth leaf.
I cannot touch them,
go near them, nor trust them,
nor speak to them confidences.
Mother,
because they all have thorns
in their chests,
I cannot take
any man in my arms but my lord
white as jasmine.
***
Why do I need this dummy
of a dying world?
illusion's chamberpot,
hasty passions' whorehouse,
this crackpot
and leaky basement?
Finger may squeeze the fig
to feel it, yet not choose
to eat it.
Take me, flaws and all,
O lord
white as jasmine.
