Life: Under Construction

Where is your prana going?!

My old meditation and Sanskrit teacher, Manorama, used to always tell us 'Know where your prana is going!' and then she would ask us 'Do you know where your prana is?'. Prana is literally translated as life force but it more broadly refers to energy: mental energy, emotional energy, physical energy and the energy of consciousness. She would always say that we should view prana as a scarce resource. We wake up in the morning with a certain amount of energy, a bucketful of prana as Manorama would say. We then go out into the world and we throw energy away like we have an infinite supply. We wouldn't throw money away like we do our prana, and yet our prana is just as valuable, if not more so.

What made me think of Manorama and her teachings on prana was yesterday, I opened up Typepad to write a blog entry about how horrible harem pants are. While harem pants have been around for awhile, the version they've metamorphasized into this season is especially heinous. Instead of just being baggy trousers that are tied at the ankle, this season's trendy version has them baggy and saggy around the hips and then they narrow around the knee and calf in a way that gives you a diaper-bottom. I saw someone wearing such a pair over the weekend and they looked BAD! I thought it would be a fun idea to share my feelings with the blogosphere in a bitchy entry but as I started to write I suddenly felt that this was not where I wanted to be putting my energy. I did not want to spend 15 or 20 minutes of my life being bitchy, filling my mind with negative thoughts that I was then going to put out into the world.

I am not saying that I will never say an unkind word again or that this blog will never feature a critical entry, but I do need continual reminders to be conscious of where I put my energy. Apart from the fact that you have a limited amount of prana and so should use it wisely, there is also the law of karma to deal with. If you direct your energy in a negative direction, some of that negative energy will stay with you, weighing you down. Alternatively, if you cultivate positive energy, that energy will stay with you and support you. After I closed my Typepad yesterday, having decided not to write about harem pants, I felt heavy and down. Contrast that to the meditation I did later that evening, just 10 minutes of sitting, trying to keep my consciousness focused on my breath and I felt lighter and happier.

Where is your prana going?!

The Egotism of Vegetarianism

It will be no surprise to anyone reading this that I have some time to kill at work. Yesterday I decided to meander my way through Yoga Journal's website. I found that since I had last been there, they had added a multimedia section that featured video interviews and videos of classes. With my the video on silent, I contentedly watched classes taught by Shiva Rea and Seane Corn, looking for inspiration for my own practice. Then I saw a link to a clip of Shiva Rea discussing food and yoga. I immediately sensed what this was about and had to watch the clip to confirm my suspicions. As I expected, the interviewer asked Shiva if she was a vegetarian. Shiva replied that she has been a vegetarian since she was in her teens, although while she was pregnant she need to get protein from 'different sources'.

For anyone not familiar with the yoga world, there exists the ideal that everyone should be a vegetarian. Vegetarianism is put up on a pedestal for several reasons. The first is ahimsa, a tenet of yoga that says yogis should try and do no harm. Obviously, killing animals causes harm and there are also arguments that raising meat for consumption causes a lot of pollution and in doing so, harms the earth. The other argument against eating meat is that it requires a lot of agni (heat or digestive energy) for you body to assimilate it and so it is an inefficient use of your body's energy.

While these are all valid reasons, I have always found it funny that in the world of yoga, where practictioners are supposed to be full of compassion and non-judgement, people can be very unaccepting of anyone that chooses to consume meat or meat products. I believe Shiva's response to the questions about her diet display the reticence of many people in the yoga world to admit that while there are many good reasons to not eat meat, there are also many reasons it can be beneficial.

While I have attempted to be a vegetarian a couple times in my life, after several months, I always return to meat because of my body's cry for iron. As a woman between the ages of 18 and 36, it is recommended that I consume 18mg of iron daily...do you have any idea how many cups of raisins I would have to consume daily to get my fill of iron? I'm sure some people would recommend taking iron supplements but those can cause severe cramping. So the choice comes down to whether you want to harm animals or harm yourself...I choose the latter. Perhaps this shows my lack of spiritual development but I figure, I have canine teeth for a reason....RARRRRRRRRRRR!

At the end of the day, to eat or not to eat meat is a personal decision that shouldn't be judged by other people. As soon as vegetarians pat themselves on the back for doing something so 'yogic' or being at one with the earth, it smacks of EGO and if there is one thing we can all agree on, it is that we engage in the practice of yoga to weaken the constraints of our egos, not build them up!

Hey! You're going to wrong way!!

I just went to Dlisted as part of my post lunch slump, and I saw this video. We will never know why the woman featured in the video is trying to go up a packed down escalator and the video doesn't even show whether she achieves her goal, but I think all of us can relate to that feeling of working SO hard to get 'there', wherever 'there' is for you and yet for every step we take, for every obstacle we may overcome, we don't seem to have progressed very far.

As I watched the clip, I wondered what are we 'supposed' to do in a situation like this? Should we surrender and let the escalator take us back down to the bottom so that we can wait until it's empty or we can go and find another route up? Or do we continue fighting our way to the top, taking two steps forward and one step back for every forward thrust we make? Obviously there is no right answer. If there was, we could all follow it and have perfect lives.

I think the only thing I can glean from this lady's struggle is the importance of appreciating our journey. By that I mean both valuing the road we take and the effort it entails but also I think it's important to recognize that life can be brutal and often times there is no way around it.

Materialism on the Yoga Mat

 I stopped teaching yoga over a year ago. Truth be told, in the time that I was a teacher I never had a very strong home yoga practice (i.e. practicing on my own). For a number of reasons I won't delve into here, after I left the teaching profession I felt the need to create distance between myself and the yoga world. I didn't go to a yoga class or step on my yoga mat for months. Since then every once and awhile I will create my own practice but it's been quite some time since I've even done that.

Anyway, long story short, yesterday I was emailing an old yoga friend and I realized that part of me missed the practice of yoga so last night I rolled out my mat. With a successful practice under my belt I woke up this morning looking forward to tonight's practice and with a desire to reconnect. Then the idea pops into my head that I can buy Yoga Journal on my lunch break as a way to jump start my yoga practice. 'Yes!' my mind says, 'buying a yoga magazine will help you to connect!'

I was about to walk into a newsagents when a voice inside my head said 'Is a magazine really going to help you find Yoga...that sense of union that the practice provides you with?!' No offense to YJ, but no. No magazine, no new download from I-tunes, no new yoga duds, nothing material will improve my practice. Everything I need for yoga is already inside of me, just as it is inside of everyone.

A friend was grilling me the other day on whether 'Power Yoga' was 'better' than Bikram. I tried to explain to this friend that there is no 'better' in yoga. It is all up to you. It's a personal journey to find what moves you, what tugs on your heart strings, what comforts you, what empowers you, what allows you to be you...this is yoga.

Perhaps this is why I do not currently have any desire to teach yoga: after being told what to do in the classes I attended and then telling others what to do in classes I taught, I've come to the conclusion that this is a personal path that you must navigate yourself. It's not up to me, or anyone else, to tell you what to do or what is right. In the years that I studied yoga I always adherred to guidelines other people had put in place, only now am I beginning to break free of those constraints.