Sattva: Finding Middle

The Samkhya school of classical yoga philosophy describes the universe and all its qualities using three main humors, called Gunas. These are Rajas, Tamas, Sattva. Rajas is generally building, full of fire, or energizing, while Tamas is generally grounding, calming, and inert. The skillful negotiation of the two brings us to the precious middle path, Sattva. If we went into a yoga class feeling sluggish and tired and came out feeling wired and spastic, we would not have served ourselves other than to experience the opposite end of miserable. Instead, we use the balance of steadiness and ease (in the yoga Sutras, Patanjali calls these sukum and sthirum) to bring us to the place where we feel both energized and calm. We are neither looking to be revved-up and wired nor to be too sluggish and sleepy, but rather to optimize the perfect balance, the Sattvic state. This is why savasana is so essential at the end of an energizing yoga practice. This is also why it sometimes helps to go on a gentle walk after a very relaxing practice. Middle feels like home. For those of us who love to bliss out on Rajas and train or play really hard, don't worry. Just remember that there is a time to sit and meditate too. Also, those of us who could indulge in Tamas and stay on our cozy meditation cushions all day long and then celebrate with a box of Hatch Family Chocolates, well, maybe you could try at least walking to the Avenues to get your chocolate. Most importantly, these principles remind us that balance is not only comfortable, but optimal. If you need to add more Tamas to your life, more ease, come to my Restore class at Sego Lily (see schedule on the left side of this email). If you could balance out some sluggishness by adding a little Rajas, come to my flow class on Tuesday morning. Yes, it's early but it feels great.

It's Time to Harvest

It's Harvest time. I think that this meant a lot more to our grandparents and great-grandparents, many of whom were raised on the farm or who were agrarian for much of their lives. Even if we aren't running our hands through the soil for our daily sustenance, I believe there are many forms of harvests in life. These Harvests equal understanding what you've cultivated, understanding what is, and learning to enjoy the present moment. Yoga teaches us that now is the time to feast on the banquet of what life is offering. We celebrate the life that causes us to grow. We celebrate understanding that we are all somewhere in our season of growing, of blossoming into our own potential. We make several harvests along the path to this potential. These harvests are not only harvests of years or experience, but also harvests of understanding and realization. Perhaps we have ripened in our career and its time to ask for a raise; perhaps its time to try a more advanced yoga practice, or commit to a consistent meditation practice. Or perhaps our harvest is realizing that things are perfect the way they are and we can learn to be still and appreciate that. I believe one of the richest harvests is simply being present with what is right now. These harvests come and go, and if we are not prepared to see them, if we are not present and mindful, the opportunity, the realization, will pass us by. Rainer Maria Rilke says in his poem, "Ripening Barberries," that unless we learn to harvest what is here and now, unless we come to realize this cornucopia of abundant being inside, we are lost in a world of seasonless stagnancy. Kinda harsh but very true. Here it is: Already the ripening barberries are red And the old asters hardly breathe in their beds. The man who is not rich now as summer goes Will wait and wait and never be himself. The man who cannot quietly close his eyes certain that there is vision after vision inside, simply waiting for nighttime to rise all around him in darkness-- it's all over for him, he's like an old man. Nothing else will come; no more days will open and everything that does happen will cheat him. Even you, my God. And you are like a stone that draws him daily deeper into the depths. We cannot wait for some other time to gather what we are searching for. We must find it, to whatever degree, now. We cannot base our life on contingencies. Unless we learn what abundance is present here and now, we can never hope to see it in the future. Yoga, meditation, breathwork are all ways of learning to open our eyes and see what is here. Every practice is a harvest. We practice until we find the harvest in every minute, where the regale of the world opens up to our understanding and we feast on our lives. See you in class.

Dark Feet and Dark Wings

I find something magical about being willing to step away from what is comfortable and stable into the darkness, into the unknown. It's these blind steps which strip all the haze that blocks my vision. And you know, I find that when I make those courageous steps, everything narrows, and for a breathtaking moment everything is dark. But it's amazing how what really matters suddenly starts to shine, like fireflies dancing against the pitch, leading me forward. I feel like for me, creating a relationship with the unknown is sometimes the price to grow in the ways I really need to grow. I have amazing presence in those moments when I can't see where I'm going but walk forward nonetheless. This relationship with the unknown empowers me with a simple yet crucial investigative vulnerability. It shakes me enough to really open my eyes. With my faculties honed, the sleepiness of mundane life shaken from my eyes, I feel alive, more present, more like myself than I have in years. Yes, the darkness can be scary. It can also be mystical and magical. Like Wendell Berry says in his poem To Know the Darkness: To go into the dark with a light is to know the light. To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight, and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings, and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings. I invite you to take a step into the darkness. You know that scary thing that sort of nags you, that you almost don't dare to consider because then you may have to confront it? I invite you to consider stepping toward that thing. Yep. And even thinking about it, it's already begun. Take that step. Rest assured, you will be challenged. But you too will create a relationship with the unknown and you will grow and bloom and discover new things about yourself that will most likely surprise and amaze you.

Pardon Me While I Slimp into Something More . . . Conscious

What if what we are fundamentally is what the poet Mary Oliver says we are in her poem conveniently also titled Poem, “pure light that shines where no one is”? She describes our essence as an “Airy and shapeless thing,/ it needs/ the metaphor and the body. . . to be understood/ to be more than pure light /that burns/ where no one is”. If that’s true, than this essence of being, this pure light, is shrouded with not only our fallible body, perfect in its imperfections, but also layers and layers of emotions, thoughts, memories, etc. like gossamer wrappings around a mummy. Yoga philosophy suggests that all these layers aren’t the real self, but merely the costume we wear to cover what is really real. And how does one substantiate that? Who knows. Come to know yourself and see for yourself, I suppose. Practice and listen and learn. And that our practice is to bit by bit learn to uncover the real version of Self. I suppose that all these other parts of us—body, emotions, thoughts, etc., — are all real enough ‘cuz they take form, right? I can see it and feel it, right? But when we really get down to it, anything that is changeable doesn’t qualify for the truest part of being that by definition can’t change. It always is. And here’s the tricky part, because even though these lesser parts of self, like body and emotions and what not, don’t equate Self with the capital “S” (read: pure light), they are the most easily accessible parts to see and experience, to pay attention to. And here’s the beautiful part, from these lesser “not real”, or at least not absolute parts, like body, and breath, and emotions, we experience a tangible realm in which to practice experiencing the Real part, the part aggrandized with all the capital letters. All these mummy wrappings, while not the whole deal, suggest at least at what’s underneath. So that’s good. For me, yoga is the dance between that pure light Self and the mummy wrapping outer self. It’s finding where those two realms meet and converse and then periodically looking under the wrappings to hint at what is real while still enjoying the wrappings. We unravel the mummy bandages, just enough to see clues of Self. With practice we might become so adept at this peeking that we begin to piece together a working knowledge of the underlying form our true radiance. So, first we mistake the wrappings to be the Self. Then we notice the Self under the wrappings and may even begin to loathe the dirty wrappings. Eventually we stop seeing the dirty wrappings when we start seeing the wrappings form as the expression of what’s underneath. Then something really magical happens and that’s when we look at someone else and see or sense the same brightness beneath their wrappings of pain, ego, cynicism, whatever, and understand that person with complete compassion, even if they neither see us or themselves in that same way. When we’ve seen ourselves and others from this deeper vantage point, we won’t/can’t go back to not seeing or knowing. Plus, we may suddenly start to notice other, once subtle, things that perhaps have been around us all the time. Only now we truly see them because we’ve learned how to pay attention. We may feel the breeze on our skin, smell the garden, or truly hear/feel the music because we sense this same aliveness in all of this as we did inside of ourselves. This is because or basic make up is the same basic make up of everything else. One of the oldest mantras is the world is The Gayatri mantra which states, “Everything in the heavens and in the earth and in between is arising from one effulgent source. If my thoughts, words and deeds reflected a complete understanding of this unity, I would be the peace I am seeking in this moment.” It’s just sometimes we forget. We forget our true nature. We forget our source. It’s nice to know that forgetting who we are is also very natural. Don’t beat yourself up about it because we all do it. The question is how do you set those practices up in your life to help yourself continuously remember? Yoga and meditation provides the practice to always work on remembering literally to re-member to come back together until we realize we are all part of the same big source of vital aliveness. We come to realize that this work is never ending that we will always have to work and continue to refine our ability to see. When we see a lifetime sentence of work sometimes that can be a bit daunting, but here’s the kicker: IT FEELS GOOD! It feels good to practice. It feels good to see. It feels good to experience the world with this kind of clarity, especially when balanced with the two tempering qualities of steadiness and ease. Why wouldn’t we want to undress this radiant being from its foreign and clunky costume? Oh, just cuz I’m ranting on about the subject, don’t be fooled into thinking that I’ve got this figured out. I don’t. I, like all of you, have some time or other just had a momentary glimpse at the light while in practice, meditation or during a trail-run. In her other poem, Bone, Mary Oliver says this: and what the soul is, also I believe I will never quite know. Though I play at the edges of knowing, truly I know our part is not knowing, but looking, and touching, and loving, which is the way I walked on, softly, through the pale-pink morning light. She says that we will never know. Not truly. But the degree to which we do know is the ability to simply practice of awareness which can happen while looking, touching, loving. This is the essence of our practice, the practice of every-day living. The conscious crooner Leonard Cohen so eloquently addresses this topic in only the best Leonard Cohen fashion possible. Quirky factoid: from a young age Leonard Cohen has always felt most comfortable wearing a suit. I’m talkin’ full-on jacket and tie 365 days a year. I think his dad was a tailor. In his song Going Home, recorded on his most recent album Old Ideas (at 78 years old?!), you get the sense that he understands his own imminent mortality as he drops these poetically poignant lines: I’d like to speak to Leonard he’s a sportsman and a shepherd. He’s a lazy bastard living in a suit. . . . He will speak these words of wisdom Like a sage, a man of vision Though he knows he's really nothing But the brief elaboration of a tube Going home Without my sorrow Going home Sometime tomorrow To where it's better Than before Going home Without my burden Going home Behind the curtain Going home Without the costume That I wore Leonard Cohen is talking about finally taking off that damned 3-piece suit but of course is simultaneously talking about shedding the small self, the old rags if you will—body, ego and all that—to see the radiant Self beneath. This shedding of the costume could be the enlightenment after a lifetime of lyrical contemplation (in this case set to iambic pentameter none the less!) or perhaps the radical change that happens when we die. After all, like he notes of himself, aren’t we all (physically, anyway) simply the brief elaboration of a tube? Check out this song. Leave it to L.C. to speak to the most sublime holy and eternal part in all of us directly and bluntly while his raspy voice poetically paints the perfect picture with his concise lyrics. Such clarity in vision can only be express with equally clear words, after all language is a philosophy, an art, and a practice in itself. So join me this week as we practice dancing between the realm of self and Self. Perhaps this will help us see ourselves and our world more clearly.

Learning to Be Lost

What should I do? Where should I go? I owe my heart to the current of change. Sometimes I feel like I’m stumbling through life like a blind man walking around a busy street, tripping off the bus, bumping, into the sidewalk, and piously and graciously, not without some self-deprecating humor, asking humbly for some kind soul to hold my arm and steer me to the other side of the river, over the bridge. Let me not be given the answer right away. Nor give me back my sight. At least not yet. Let me be blind, if only for a while, so that I may learn to feel my way, so that I may learn to know who I am and learn to trust that. Let me look to find my vision. What do I need to see? Who am I? Sometimes I feel like life should be something different than it is. You ever think that? Sometimes I feel that the events should have happened differently and that somewhere I made a wrong turn, not because I’m in a bad place but because I’m somewhere different than where I thought I’d be. The truth is this is where I am. The events in life have happened as they have and here I am, right here typing these words. I guess the question is what am I going to do with what I have here? As I look around what I have is opportunity. Possibilities. How can I invite my resources and creativity to help me discover my way? In this landscape I see friends and family who love me. I’m grateful for that. I see great business partners at a business I love doing work that I love. I feel blessed. So to find my way I close my eyes, like the blind man I suppose, and work on my inner-self first. I find myself on my yoga mat. I FIND myself on my yoga mat. My faith is trusting that everything else will grow out of that part of Self I discover there in yoga and meditation. Don’t force it. Just watch the windows and doors that open and walk through those that feel right. Back to what I’m supposed to do: learn how to feel. Learn how to trust that. Be lost. Ask directions. Ask permission. Risk a little. Keep my heart open and ask myself regularly how it feels. That’s what I should do. See you on the mat.

It's Getting Hot in Here

First, my blog is not allowing me to place paragraph breaks. I don't understand HTML language enough to put them in myself so you'll have to use your imagination for paragraph breaks. Sorry. I stepped into my first yoga class (late) more than a dozen years ago wearing tight jean shorts, sporting a Pilates mat, and thinking that we were going to mediate the entire time. 60 minutes later, (wait, 55 minutes later because I was late) I left a sweaty mess, humiliated by how inept I was at practically everything including Savasana, and wondered to myself, “What was that?” A dozen years later I’m still asking the same question. I suppose that it was this desire to understand yoga that kept me coming back to it. At first, I thought yoga came from Japan or Malaysia or something. I began attending yoga workshops and trainings to learn more and answer the mystery. What was this thing and why did I feel so great when I finished? When I attended a local teacher’s master class at the gym, I was floored by her ability to illustrate and guide me through yoga’s range and depth of fluid, dynamic postures. I was stunned by how physical it had been and left thinking, “Ah! This is yoga.” This began a careful and dedicated study with this teacher as I learned to be physical and fluid. A few months later I remember leaving a class taught by a different teacher and thinking, “I don’t know what that was, but it wasn’t yoga. They didn’t even do warrior III!” My myopic vision of yoga continued until a few years later when I decided to help my teacher open a yoga studio. While researching other studios in the area, I stumbled upon two of the most skilled teachers I believe I will ever know. They led me not only through dynamic, challenging poses with mindful physical alignment cues, but flushed out the practice with a beautiful and touching spiritual theme. I truly felt the connection between my body, mind, and spirit. Again I left thinking, “Oh, this is yoga.” I began an even more serious study of yoga, this time with the beauty of the poses embellished by yoga’s rich philosophy and spirituality. I felt like I was getting a handle on what yoga was. Years later, it was September, fantastic weather in Europe. Celeste, my former wife and fellow teacher, traveled with me on our train ride from Vienna to our destination Zagreb, the capital of Croatia. Along the five-hour train ride through Slovenia, the lush countryside slid past our windows as we daydreamed of how incredible it was that we had been invited to teach yoga for six weeks at Croatia’s premier yoga studio. Over the past several years, we’d learned so much about yoga and we were thrilled to share that with our new students in Croatia. We spent most of the train ride meticulously planning every detail of our first yoga class. Unlike the idyllic, endless miles of green fields of Slovenia, Croatia met us with endless miles of chaotic graffiti along the train tracks. We stepped off the train and Croatia greeted us with its split personality. One personality, I’ll call it Vlad: drab, cold, Eastern Bloc, squat buildings, looked like there was blow-out sale on mustard colored paint sometime in 50s. Vlad decide to paint whole country to look as dog vomit. Croatia’s other personality, I’ll call it Tomo: Mediterranean like its neighbors to the west, people out lounging on the streets under colorful concourses of umbrellas enjoying a lazy café culture, ordering ice cream, desserts, or beer. Tomo was boutique shops, designer jeans, and Euro-chic. Our host found us at the train station. She introduced herself then informed us that we would be teaching our first class in only a few hours, that everyone was very, very excited to meet us and that we should prepare for a large class. We were very nervous but relaxed a little remembering that we had already created a water-tight lesson during our five-hour train ride. The studio was situated on the second floor of a beautiful, old building with large windows facing into the buzz of the main square of Zagreb. And only a few hours after getting off the train, we found ourselves in the studio, packed to the brim with curious people, eager to see us, these new American teachers who would teach all the classes at the studio for the next 6 weeks. We were eager to show our host and students all the wonderfully mindful principles we’d learned in yoga and wanted to give them a preview of what kind of bliss they would be experiencing over the next several weeks. We began our session with a somber yet brief exposition of a philosophical theme followed by a long segment of skillful breathing techniques. Next, we set into tag-team teaching a steady yet conscious sequence of asanas. We moved through thoughtful sun salutations, some well-chosen, carefully aligned standing poses, deliberate tension relieving poses, a handful of hip-openers, and then eased slowly into a long mediation before finally resting in savasana. As I walked around the jam-packed room directing poses and making adjustments, I’m thinking to myself, “We are knocking them dead! This is some good shit! We will probably recognized by the president of Croatia and be granted automatic Croatian citizenship because of our awesome display of skillful yoga teaching.” We left the studio that night very excited about our next six weeks. The next day, our host asked us to come over to the studio. She sat us down and told us very soberly that the class we taught the previous night was the perfect example of how NOT to teach at that studio. She informed us that “the students were people who had been working very hard all day and the last thing they needed was to come to yoga class so that someone would tell them to breathe.” The word “Breathe,” hissed out of her mouth with a sneer as if the mere notion of breathing were ridiculous, outdated, and disdainful. Our host announced that she herself almost walked out on the class. Then she handed over a list of poses that she wanted us to teach in every class. This was hard to swallow because she wasn’t a yoga teacher, that’s why she hired us and flew us out to Croatia. She’d even hired a previous instructor to fly to Utah from her home in NYC to watch us teach and who gave us glowing reviews. Before she ended our curt meeting, she said, “Oh, and play these when you teach,” then she tossed us a few CDs of pop and R&B music. We were crushed. Devastated. We thought we had a handle on yoga and could share some of the magic of what we thought yoga was to these students. We felt that we had practiced yoga and trained and therefore had acquired some sort of keen insight into yoga, its capacity for mindfulness and dynamism and therefore had something to offer to our Croatian friends. That’s why they flew us over there, right? Not simply to hurl them through poses. One could buy a DVD for that. It was clear that they were not interested in yoga’s mindfulness, its breath and calming techniques, or its beautiful history or philosophy. They wanted raw physicality. As I looked around the studio I saw a room full of supermodels and athletes, all with seemingly perfect physical features and muscular, toned bodies. This physical ability made them overly confident in the ability to safely explore intense yoga poses. The studio was only a few months old and the practice of yoga was relatively new to all but one or two of these eager students. My plan was to use the next six weeks to slowly reveal and practice the principles of alignment, mindfulness, and breath to ease them into the deeper asanas so that they could build strength and physical integrity with the poses and avoid injuries. The studio owners had a different plan. Their plan was simple: Fast. Furious. Intense.

One night I found myself living out a surreal moment. I was teaching the advanced class scheduled on a Tuesday from 8:30-10 pm, advanced because some of these students had studied yoga for as much as four months and they were ready for intense and technical poses like Scorpion Handstand and drop backs (dropping into a backbend from a standing position). The class was steaming hot from breath and sweat and was bursting at the seams, packed with gorgeous, athletic, sweaty bodies wearing scant clothing, all of them cranking through poses. The lights were off and the room was bursting with strobes of colors from the Jumbotron-esque marquee flashing ads outside the window in the busy square. The place felt more like a dance club than a yoga studio. The hip-hop music was thumping so loud that I had to literally scream as loud as I could just to hear myself. The scene went something like this: Stereo: (boom, boom, boom) It’s gettin’ hot in here . . . Me: UUUUP DOG!!!! Stereo: (boom, boom, boom) Let’s take off all our clothes Me: DOOOOWN DOG!!! Me: (in regular speaking tones, completely inaudible under the music) How in the HELL did I get myself into this situation?! Months later, at home, I was bemoaning the atrocities of this experience to one of my teachers. I complained how appalling it was that they called what we did yoga. I was expecting to get a sympathetic pat on the back but instead my teacher thought for a moment then suggested that after a decade of civil war, perhaps fast and furious was exactly the kind of yoga that those people needed. I stood there for a moment . . .slack-jawed . . . as my brain almost hemorrhaged from the notion that yoga could be bigger than what I’d thought it was. Wait, it can still be yoga even with hip-hop music, scant-clad supermodels, and dance club lighting? It doesn’t have to be Sanskrit words, deft breathing techniques, and meticulous physical alignment cues? Lucky, my brain didn’t explode. I survived. And ever since, my definition of yoga has been growing larger and larger. As I continue to learn about what yoga is, I realize that yoga is everything I thought it was, but is exponentially much more than that. The discovery that yoga is so much bigger than “Calm Yoga Voice” instructing people into mindful poses has actually freed me to explore, practice, and present yoga with broader brushstrokes, sometimes moving playfully outside of the lines. So I suppose the karmic wheel made its full turn the day I decided to host my first GLOWGA workshop. GLOWGA is where I invite us all to paint ourselves in glow-in-the-dark paint, to turn off the lights and practice in complete and utter darkness, all the while cranking the music as we get down! and practice finding the light even in life’s darkest moments. It’s enlightening, spiritually moving, and gobs and gobs of fun. Apparently, my Croatian friends had quite a bit to teach me about the definition of yoga. Since then, my personal definition of yoga continues to grow. I’ve come to understand that yoga is bigger than any singular practice, any religion, any culture or ideals. Yoga is bigger than yoga. The more I learn about and practice yoga the more my definition of it needs to expand to fit all of its possibilities. My current working definition of yoga is: yo•ga noun \ˈyō-gə\ The process of learning who I am by the practice of listening. Anything smaller than this broad definition, in my mind, seems to diminish yoga’s full capacity. I’m sure I’ll have to distil this definition yet more but for the moment, it suffices. So, it seems to me that one could practice yoga while walking their dog, meditating, having a conversation with someone, making love, running, or doing anything. One teacher once told me, the asana is what we do and yoga is how we do it. I like that. I suppose yoga is an invitation into “how,” an invitation into the practice of deep listening and eventual understanding. I like that it’s a practice, that we don’t ever perform a yoga recital. I suppose that yoga’s culminating moment would be enlightenment or complete understanding, or something. Part of my practice is trying to figure out what that even means. And I think that’s enough. I think that it’s a form of deep understanding simply to know that the work, the practice, is the goal. In the mean time I will use all the tools I have. I’ll use mindfulness, deep breathing, and skillful physical alignment in poses. And sometimes, I’ll also use loud music, sweat, and anything else that catches my attention and moves my soul. That’s yoga, too. Scott Moore co-owns and teaches at Prana Yoga Trolley Square in Salt Lake city (www.pranayogaslc.com) and writes regular for his blog, scottsyogaforum.blogspot.com.

If it hasn't happened already, there will come a time when we stop trying to produce that infallible vision of ourselves and allow ourselves the radical permission to be exactly what and how we are. This permission revolves around the yogic principle of Satya or truth. To be honest with who and where we are, both our strengths and weaknesses, allows us a solid platform from which we can skillfully step to the next place. We stop trying to be everything that we're not and finally find how perfectly we belong to exactly where we are. With intention, direction, work, and most of all appreciation for our present situation, our dreams of where we want to end up will start to fill out. If we feel stuck, indecisive, depressed, or angry, our truth is to speak to that place. We can speak to all our situations with yoga, an embodiment of all our inner landscapes. What we want is within our reach. It's simply laced with a bit of irony: the key to fulfillment in the future is to be content now. If we're committed to the honesty of where we are and are content for what is, knowing things change, we create a bridge of present content moments which links us to contentment in our fulfilled future. Without present contentment, without appreciating the truth of where we are, we may find ourselves where we previously hoped for only to discover our habit of malcontent, and, disgruntlement, wishing we were back where we started or somewhere else. We're back in the viscous cycle of hoping for anything but what is true, what is here. Our main task as I see it is to understand where we are, where our love lies, and bravely organize our lives to focus on what matters most. I hope that this truth and brave path may lead you to yoga this week. Here is an offering I learned from my teacher that you may want to use in your meditations: By the power and truth of our simply practice, May we and all beings have happiness and the causes of happiness. May we and all beings be free from sorrow and any causes of sorrow. May we and all beings never be separated from that sacred happiness which is beyond sorrow. And may we and all beings live in equanimity, without too much attachment and too much aversion. And may we live recognizing and honoring the equality of all that lives. Sarva Mangalam (May the greatest goodness unfold) Scott