It’s Crossfire 2.0.

You do not make a pleasant bedfellow, Richard.

Cheri says you are all fooey. That doesn’t make me Engshu. Don’t try to fit me into your English shoe, either.

The trouble is, you’ve always looked down on me. Watch out! I’ll trip you up one day.

I’ve always worried about Xeno’s paradoxes since my father told me of Achilles and the Tortoise over fifty years ago. Much water has passed under the bridge since then.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeno's_paradoxes

It is very “non-you” to imagine that these have any significance today because of 19th Century developments in mathematics.

It is interesting, though, that Relativity recognises that all motion is relative, and so any object can be regarded as either in motion or at rest, the question being irrelevant. Since our concept of time is based purely on motion, what do we mean by “now”? My feeling is that
these questions do not submit themselves to mathematical analysis because motion and time are the same experience. This means that the ideas of motion, time, speed and space are tautologous with one another.

If two people meet, they meet. Their time-frame is irrelevant. Then what is a physical meeting? Do we meet on a website or not?

The depth and ingeniousness of mathematical thought invests it, perhaps, with a false authority. This is not to decry its achievements. Yet since it is based on observation, it is hardly surprising that it predicts observations. It is a language.

Language is what we do with our observations. Confined as it is, even itself, to what we observe, everything becomes one, unexplained lump.

Consciousness is the all-embracing, self-defining, unexplained observation.

What you see is what you get, pretzel or not.

I would respond properly but I am feeling rather … sluggish.

After following your blog for over a year, and reading your readers’ comments, I hear one clear horn blowing: your intention to provide dignity to all, even to those who disagree.

And so, I must disagree with your shivering slug image. A slug, yes. One-incher-yes, a shivering slug-no. I have never seen a shivering slug. A shivering Dachshund-yes, a shivering baby bird-yes, a shivering child-yes.

Just providing an opening for Mr. Crotchety, whom I miss.

Happy Thanksgiving to all.

The British Parliament is an adversarial system, and see what a mockery that has become!

incidentally, I noticed something interesting for the first time: The Google guys seem to have embedded code so that your videos, placed here under a Yoga post that mentions Ashtanga, display ads for Ashtanga yoga studios. At least from my computer. Hmmm.

Seriously: welcome to the Hannibal Blog and I love passionate engagement like yours. And you’re right, of course, that we all need to find our own yoga, which I whole-heartedly endorse.

There is something you omit in your rant, however: I’m free to give my considered opinion and others are free to come here and get it…. and equally free to ignore it and to debate it. I’m hardly in a position to ban anybody from Bikram studios, nor would I ever want to. They are fun! But so is disco, if you get my gist.

But I can tell you, openscarf, that I’ve tried pretty much every style and philosophy of yoga under the sun over the past decade. I’ve pretzeled myself in Thailand, I’ve sweated in Bikram studios in Hong Kong, I’ve OM’ed in Big Sur, I’ve Kundalini’ed God knows where. I’ve even picked up smatterings of Sanskrit while reading the Yoga Sutras, the Hatha Yoga Pradipika and the Bhagavad Gita, and given one of those words to my daughter as a name.

I’m not saying all that to show off (although you may be tempted to accuse me of that) but to prove to you that I have thought long and hard about this, and that I’ve made all the mistakes one can make. So now I feel it’s my turn to opine on my humble little blog. Shanti.

For the rest of you, they’re having a very interesting discussion about this post over here.

Why not let people find the practice that serves them? Why do you feel you need to tell people that their yoga isn’t as good as yours? How do you know how they have benefitted? You don’t. Why do you even care what path other people are on? You can’t choose other people’s paths, but apparently true yogis can be scornful of a path that differs from their own. Your judgements sound fundamentalist to me.

To degrade practioners who are slim and wear costumes they enjoy because they make less fit people feel uncomfortable is negative and judgemental as well. Most people lose their self conciousness after a few classes when they realize no one is looking at them, people are practicing their yoga and trying to focus on themselves.

I’m assuming that all the commenters are from the west. Most of us don’t have the luxury to practice on a mountain top in India. We practice in studios where we hopefully benefit from a skilled teacher and contribute to the group energy. We put up with crowded spaces, inexperienced teachers and our own human frailities because we’ve had good teachers and awesome days and we’d rather do yoga than not do yoga. We do the yoga practice that speaks to us. We practice at home and hope we’re doing it correctly and we try hard because we know what being in the posture can do for us. The bottom line is, we keep coming back to do our yoga.

Your yoga practice isn’t mine, it’s only yours. Enjoy and please, lose the judgement.

I urge you to read Bikram’s book, Bikram Yoga: The Guru Behind Hot Yoga Shows the Way to Radiant Health and Personal Fulfillment. You will gain some insight into the man. I was the first to criticize his approach until I read the book and began taking the classes. Some may say he is not a true Yogi. But what is a true Yogi? He may not be the true Yogi you have conjured up in your mind, but I’ll tell you this: He is authentic and honest.

Is it possible for a true Yogi to also be materialistic? Can a true Yogi love fast cars, motorcycles and money? Perhaps it’s time to look at our own internal judgements. Perhaps then we might see that “the greatest Yogi is the one who enjoys his or her Yoga practice the most……..”

One of my favorite artistic renditions of Parkour. Nothing insane, just fluid motion.

You may have noticed that both of these come from Parkour Generations. http://parkourgenerations.com is their website, and they’re a great organization with the objective of spreading the word of what parkour really is, and helping people to know how to train. You can find a couple more of their videos that show them training large classes if you would like some more ideas. The outdoor environment is the only place to truly practice it though; indoor training is for just that, training.

I think that this materialization of the aesthetic reduces creativity and risk taking, which is why you have Rocky V and Rambo X and Terminator III, etc. If the market liked it once, it will probably sell again.

Just to clarify: My little polemic was not directed at “Bikram” as a series of asanas in a hot studio or as a business. Instead it was directed at the, yes, “dangerous” and “dumb” tendency to introduce comparison and competition into Yoga.

Competitive yoga is an oxymoron (like military intelligence, some would say )

Now, the fact that you have got profound results from doing Bikram is …. great!! Clearly, you are “listening to your own voice”, so you are ahead of 90% of Western yogis.

There again, see how the squalid (but very human) dispute between Leibniz and Newton distracts from the truth of their discoveries. See how Beethoven compromised his spiritual insights and his vision of justice and freedom in extended litigation over his nephew Karl and in wrangles with his publishers over money.

I do not know if Bikram is properly described as a commercial enterprise but there is no reason to doubt that truths can be discovered through that medium, any more than Newton’s personal shortcomings are a reason to doubt his science or Beethoven’s a reason to ignore his music.

Andreas, which is the objection you have, to Bikram – as a business or as Yoga?
I can accept the business, but am unable to form a view of the Yoga.

I read with interest your tome on what is “good” yoga and what is “bad” yoga. Perhaps you over generalize. Perhaps everyone is not drawn to the same teacher. Perhaps that is why there are many teachers with varying approaches.

As a mid-50′s man, I have experienced profound results from my practice of Bikram yoga. Because it may not be the path for you, how can you so readily dismiss it as “dangerous”? A person needs to begin any practice while listening to their own voice in order to avoid injury. You said “……….. in fact. I have hurt myself.” Perhaps if you practiced in a properly heated space and received good instruction you might have avoided any harm to your body.

One last note. I would take your writing more seriously if you didn’t resort to what appears to be childish name calling. “Stupid….dumbest….” Come on. You can do better than that.

I finished my cleaning, e-mailed the manager the next day and asked to be taken off the list. Free yoga just wasn’t worth being fake. What’s interesting is that the faux yogis I ran into at the corporate gym gave off the same vibe as the stupid ones you describe. Must have the same ego problem.

GODEL’S MATHEMATICAL PROOF OF GOD’S EXISTENCE

Axiom 1. (Dichotomy) A property is positive if and only if its
negation is negative.
Axiom 2. (Closure) A property is positive if it necessarily
contains a positive property.
Theorem 1. A positive property is logically consistent (i.e.,
possibly it has some instance.)
Definition. Something is God-like if and only if it possesses all
positive properties.
Axiom 3. Being God-like is a positive property.
Axiom 4. Being a positive property is (logical, hence) necessary.
Definition A property P is the essence of x if and only if x has P
and P is necessarily minimal.
Theorem 2 If x is God-like, then being God-like is the essence of x.
Definition NE(x): x necessarily exists if it has an essential property.
Axiom 5. Being NE is God-like.
Theorem 3. Necessarily there is some x such that x is God-like.

[I wonder I ever doubted.]

You also made me look up Parkour, and spend a few minutes on YouTube to learn what it is. Naturally, what came up was the wild stuff, below. How, then, does an ordinary body like mine practice this sort of thing?

I’ve been practicing in the Art of Movement for about three years now, but the past year I have slacked off of my training simply because everyone wants to see me do this crazy stuff that they now associate with Parkour. It’s extremely discouraging, because I don’t wish to be associated with that non-sense. That’s not what it’s all about, it’s about getting from one point to another using your body alone and being in sync with your environment. When I train and someone asks me to do something wild, and I can’t, they look at me as someone why just ‘says’ they practice Parkour. If only they knew.

Thanks to your post, I’m going out today and training the right way. Thanks to your post, I have a newfound energy to not care what others think. It’s my form of being in tune with my body, forget the crowd, stay true to yourself. Thanks again for the post.

BTW, what do you mean by “spotllight”? I don’t see the post on wordpress.com

I have been practicing for 14 years and always felt the same way.

I am happy to see wordpress put this on spotlight. Would you mind if I like this post in the livejournal.com/~yoga community? I bet they would enjoy this information too.

It’s right up my alley (comparative mythology) and does inspire me. I feel a post coming…..

The description of Alexander meeting the gymnosophist in the Indus Valley is fantastic.

http://www.ted.com/talks/devdutt_pattanaik.html

which talks about the differences in outlook between East and West. Pattaniak’s comments could explain why the west has ‘corrupted’ the yoga concepts as you’ve described. In any event, hope this interesting video gives you some ideas for future posts!

My mother has been practicing yoga since the 60′s. She is now almost 80 and part of what you said, about image, struck me in the gut. Joan is not the beauty she once was and has lost so much, but she still gets out on that yoga mat, crawling there because she has no balance. Her story is here. For most who meet her, she is the most amazing person they know. Truly. Her story is here:http://cheriblocksabraw.com/2009/02/23/joan/