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10 Maythe yoga of sylvester graham

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Jessica’s fantastic comment a few posts back reminded me of my undergrad thesis on health reform. Sylvester Graham was an activist of the 1800s. He had many interesting beliefs (and followers, like Ralph Emerson and Upton Sinclair), some of which parallel those of yogis. He was generally severe, believing that such things as cold cereal and flannel clothing worn against the skin (specifically undergarments) excited the body and should be avoided. However, he was a great advocate of dance. He believed that  it was preferable that people meet to sing and dance rather than to eat and drink, lest “They should endure a miserable existence in moping melancholy, for want of proper exercise and relaxation….If I could have my wish, the Violin…should be played in every family in the civilized world” and that were singing and dancing practiced in theological seminaries, literary groups, and scientific circles, then “immense benefits…would result for society at large.” Exactly! He goes on:

The salutary influence of animating music, connected with exercise, is very great; in fact, it may almost be said to be medicinal, for it actually has the most healthful effect on all the vital functions of the body; and hence, dancing, when properly regulated, is one of the most salutary kinds of social enjoyment ever practised in civic life, and every enlightened philanthropist must regret to see it give place to any other kind of amusement. The religious prejudice against dancing is altogether ill founded; for it is entirely certain that this kind of social enjoyment is more favorable to good health, sound morality, and true religion than perhaps any other known in society.

—Graham, Sylvester. Lectures on the science of human life. New York: Fowler & Wells, 1858, p.39.

Perhaps I’m a bit off topic here, but I love to see the parallels between yoga and other health practices in American culture, historical or otherwise. Soon, a shift from art and yoga to a post on Namaste नमस्ते. What it means and why we say it.

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14 Apryoga, photography, and voice

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Katya Vinkovskaya in Eka Pada Urdhva Dhanurasana (photo credit to come)

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While thinking about this art and yoga thread, I came across a quote by photographer Leah Fasten, “I’m completely blown away by the parallels between yoga and photography. What makes yoga powerful and inspiring is exactly what makes a photography practice work.”

This is poignant, as I missed my post last week, drowning in photos. I’m archiving about 3,000 negatives and slides from 1988-2003, which I recently had scanned. And then I’ll tackle the 10,000 some images shot digitally since. Adding keywords to so many images is daunting, and I find myself meandering assbook (sorry, facebook) and elsewhere more than I’d like while waiting for images to import or catalogs to save. Nothing challenges my yoga (i.e. keeping my mind focused) quite as intensely as my need to escape rote activity. Most photographers will tell you that the processing and archiving process is not the meat of the practice. I’m one of them. But like parivrtta trikonasana, it has to be done.

This has been helped today by music, though at times I become too engrossed in the music to focus on the work. Last night I saw a lecture by my friend (Bij) on women singing Bellman (watch it. Really). She mentioned how a singer reveals her vulnerability—and personality—through sharing an authentic voice. Earlier that day, on a whim, I’d asked my yoga class to notice the quality of their voices as they hummed on an out breath. To notice what the voice revealed about their mood, energy level, and general state, and how it might change later in the class. I mentioned vulnerability, as it was fairly obvious that’s where I happened to be at the moment. And hours later, my Bij was saying the same thing about her art (about which, like dance, I am blissfully ignorant). It was beautiful.

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31 Maroff like a prom dress

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I was talking about dance titles in class recently, which brings to mind one of my favorites: Off Like a Prom Dress (which reminds me of a fantastic Aussie saying, “a gownless evening strap.”) My friend and fellow teacher, Jessica Dixon Majka, was in this performance last month (choreography by Kara Tatelbaum) at Dance New Amsterdam.

The connections between dance and yoga are seemingly more obvious than other forms of art, given that both are movement oriented, and there are many dancers in the yoga world. I know nothing about dance (or opera or theater or any of the performance arts, really) but I’ve always gone out of my way to see it. Not knowing is where my bliss comes. I’m not tempted to analyze or judge. I’m simply absorbed by the beauty of moving bodies in front of me. This absorption in the moment is yoga, and it is also art. It’s also, I imagine, where the performers need to be to pull off a powerful show. No more thought. Only the execution of what’s been learned and internalized.

While the physical practice of yoga might be easier for dancers, the relationship between body and mind might not be. Because dancers are trained to use their bodies as instruments, learning to be with the body rather than guide it can be difficult. Depending on training, a dancer might be inspired to move through the asanas easily, without connecting, in a way someone entirely unaware of his body might not. In this way, learning a different relationship of mind, breath, and body can be transformative. I wonder what effects this has when taken back into dance.

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24 Marart//a lot like yoga

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Brooklyn
by Erin Ann Koch

I ran into a student who’s not taking my class this semester. He explained that he didn’t enroll because he’s taking an acting class that’s a lot like yoga. I laughed.  Unfortunately, he said, it’s not having quite the same effect. But yet again, art becomes yoga. This was just after another student asked if he could announce, in class, this performance on campus next Monday. Of course. I always, always try to support students and friends in creative endeavors.

The more I think about it (yoga and art), the more the boundaries blur, which is not always a good thing when trying to pound something out.

I’ve been building a wordpress site using a theme for artists for my friend Erin, a painter, photographer, and yogi. She often talks about how meditation influences her art. Check it out: erinannkoch.com. She has a show in Cleveland this weekend, Ohioans. GO!

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09 Markirtan this saturday

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As promised, I’ve been thinking about the connections between yoga and art. I’ve been thinking about it on and off for years, as so many of my friends, students, and peers are artists of one kind or another. I think that, for me, it has something to do with fearlessness and honesty of expression, an honesty we can easily hide from ourselves without something to keep us awake and disciplined. When a filmmaker student asked me about art and yoga in 2007, I shared this quote, which I’d read years earlier and written down.

I’m not going to tackle the subject now, but I want to share an event in NYC this Saturday. My friend and teacher, Peter, is leading a kirtan at ISHTA yoga near Union Square. Kirtan is “a bhakti (devotional) yoga practice that uses musical chanting to alter the yogis’ energy. The repeated use of a mantra combined with the energy of a group is a powerful tool for transformation and for bringing an immediate sense of well-being.” Peter is a photographer and musician, and has written the music for Saturday’s event (March 13). Good Kirtan can be hard to come by, so try to make it if you’re interested!

I love it. I’m looking at wordpress themes for artists (trying to find a better way to display photo essays), totally unrelated to this topic, and I come across a theme in which the main example is for an artist who has “yoga teaching schedule” as one of his main links, next to his work, CV, and artist statement. Now, you might say, of course artists would be into yoga. They’re loopy that way. But I have far more business and law school students than artists. And, heavens, do they need their yoga.

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02 Marart and yoga

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A number of sketches have been pasted to the wall of a tunnel that leads from street to subway in upper manhattan. I love this one especially (cell phone snap). It nags me, gently and beautifully, to write down my thoughts about the connections between art and yoga.

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26 Febways of knowing

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To address Ben’s comment in the last post (5,000 years?), I want to say that to some extent, I agree. But there is a difference between the “kinds of consciousness one accesses by practicing yoga” and yoga. They are not the same thing. Calling something yoga before yoga existed seems questionable, but perhaps I am being picky.

I like Ben’s assertion: “anything that brings one closer to the full embodiment and expression of oneself to be “yoga,” but it’s also very time and place specific. What the “self” means in rural China and what it means in New York City are two very different things in 2010, much less 5,000 years ago. The idea of being one’s true self is not universal. It doesn’t even hold the same meaning for everyone right now, 2010, in NYC.

But this wasn’t what I was speaking to in the last post. I was objecting to teachers and others stating that yoga is 5,000 years old without explaining what they mean by yoga, so students don’t think that hanumanasana (for example) is 5,000 years old. Even worse—teachers not knowing themselves that hanumanasana isn’t likely 5,000 years old.

That said, we don’t know definitively that hanumanasana isn’t 5,000 years old. We just don’t know that it is any older than a hundred or so years, which makes 5,000 quite a number to throw out casually. I agree with what Ben is getting at, which, I think, is that the practice of yoga is in some way eternal, and that yoga existed before it was known as such. Edwin Bryant, a scholar of Yoga and Hinduism at Rutgers, believes that, “The origins of yoga are in primordial and mythic times.” In saying this, I’m switching gears and appealing to a less quantitative way of understanding, which we often neglect and devalue, but the practice of yoga helps us cultivate and respect. Though Vedism and Tantrism are both textual traditions, text is not the only source of knowledge or knowing. Just because we haven’t proved something scientifically (in whatever discipline) or textually does not mean it’s untrue.

So, while I doubt that the Primary Series was hip in ancient Pakistan, I do think that the roots of yoga have been around since we have. Thanks for the interesting comment, Ben.

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29 Jan5,000 years?

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I have to admit, I sometimes ask myself if I’m part of this world. The yoga world, I mean. On Tuesday, the New York Times wrote a piece on foodies and yoga, and it seems to be popular, given its rank on their most emailed list: “When Chocolate and Chakras Collide.”

My favorite part of the piece was  a comment from Sadie Nardini about judgment in the yoga world, about being “yogier than thou.” I love it. What do I think about sampling food on a yoga mat? To each her own. Is it yoga? Does it matter?

I′m not terribly troubled by what people choose to call yoga, as most of what is practiced now bears little resemblance to its history, and why should it? Traditions need to evolve to be relevant. I do have a pet peeve about the “5000-year-old practice” line (which appeared in that NYT article), stated as if yogis were hopping through sun salutations in 2990 b.c.e. They weren’t.

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I suppose I should say, I’m not terribly troubled by what people
choose to call yoga, as long as it isn’t this 5,000+ year old seal.

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The philosophy of yoga is fairly old and can be dated back to at least the mid-first century b.c.e. Some of the asansas (postures) can be definitively dated back to the 15th century, as described in the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, but most date back only a century or two. Years ago I read Joseph Alter’s Yoga in Modern India (recommended if you′re interested). He asserts that the sun salutations are adapted from Indian martial tradition in the late 1800s, when the Hindu masculinity movement was strong (I wax on about this in another post), and ever since it’s grated on me when people boast that yoga is 5,000 years old. The date of 5,000 b.c.e. comes from an ancient seal found in Mohenjo-daro with Shiva sitting in a seated position (wait, I thought Shiva was not quite Shiva until around 200 b.c.e?). All around, the argument is pretty weak. A picture of someone sitting = yoga? You can imagine the fun academics have pulling that apart. Many agree that not only is it not yoga, but not Shiva, or even necessarily male. It’s important to note as well that the seal was found in a series of seals with figures depicted in other less formal, less yogic-looking seats (see Doris Srinivasan, “The So-Called Proto-śiva Seal from Mohenjo-Daro: An Iconological Assessment,”Archives of Asian Art, Vol. 29, (1975/1976), pp. 47-58).

Looking around the web, I’m glad to see that others seek historical accuracy as well. Waylon Lewis at elephantjournal, Kate Churchill and Nick Rosen on yogadork, and Sadie Nardini at huffpo all have interesting posts about how old yoga might be. Hopefully, word will get out that we should be a bit more knowledgeable and, dare I say, humble, about our tradition’s beginnings.

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19 Janteaching in january

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I’m back! Australia was brilliant. We covered about 5881 miles (9465 km) of amazing land. Cannot wait to go back.

I’m teaching pre-session Vinyasa 2-3pm at CU starting Thurs, Jan 21st, which will then run through the semester. I’ll update the other Spring class info soon.

BTW, I was hardly online at all, which was fantastic, but I’m very behind on correspondence. If you’ve emailed, I’ll reply in the next week or two.

thanks & be well! ~Anastasia

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19 Novyoga in australia

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ausOooh, I’m off to summertime. Heading down under to investigate the yoga scene, which of what I’ve seen so far, is heavily ashtanga and iyengar based. I’ll be starting in  Perth, then driving and camping across the southern coast and Nullarbor to Adelaide, Melbourne, Canberra, and Sydney. I’ll be back in time for Spring semester, but will be missing you in the interim. If you have any advice on Australia, yoga or otherwise, send it my way.

I look forward to sharing my experiences in Aussie classes as well as taking my yoga practice on the road. I once heard a teacher say that yoga is like Chinese food, it adapts to the culture it enters. It should be an interesting trip.

Be well.  ~A

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