Celibacy and Divine Chewing

Brahmacarya is the sun which the rest of the yamas orbit around

“If we even occasionally experience our immersion within a universe that is a vast, multidimentional living organism, that experience will naturally foster a profoundly ethical posture toward the totality of life.” – Duane Elgin

The Yamas and Niyamas are the 10 ethical principles of yoga which were outlined by Patanjali about 2000 years ago in the Yoga Sutras. The word “ethics” tends to make my eyes glaze over. So for a long time I just ignored them – I spent many years recovering from the firey torture of 10 other set-in-stone rules – no desire to replace them with a more exotic version, thank you very much.

But as my yoga journey continued I began to realize the importance of the yamas and niyamas in my own life – not as roadblocking rules, but as fluid streams of consciousness that permeate the universe and lead me to balance. When I ride those streams I am privy to new levels of awareness. I began to realize that the yamas and niyamas are woven into the very fabric of consciousness. Understanding and abiding in them became more about relating to them as internal barometers and less about adhering to externally imposed dictates.

Some of it is really obvious. Ahimsa (pronounced ah-heeng-sah) for example, the first of the yamas, means non-harming. In general, not harming others – in any way, actions, words or even thoughts – creates a sense of inner peace. So what I began to understand is that the yamas and niyamas, are not only ethical guidelines, they are in effect, a very powerful mental health strategy.

The ethics of yoga are split into two categories because the first five (the yamas) have to do with our relationship to other people or the path of social integration, and the second five (the niyamas) have to do with our relationship with ourselves, or the path of personal integration.

The yamas include the principles of ahimsa (non-harming), satya (honesty), asteya (non-stealing) and aparigraha (non-hoarding) and have to do with how we relate to the external world. The most controversial is Brahmacarya. In India Brahmacarya is typically translated as “celibacy.” In the west it started to emerge with more watered-down translations such as “continence,” “abstinence,” or “self-control.”

But if you break down the Sanskrit, the literal translation of brahmacarya is “to walk while you are chewing on the Divine.” In other words to ruminate upon the Divine in everything and everyone you encounter, in every situation, in every moment, in every breath.

If we translate it this way, brahmacarya becomes the sun of the yamas and the rest of them orbit around it in a strikingly beautiful concordance.

The literal meaning of brahmacarya is much more relevant to the yamas, because they have to do with our relationship to the external world. Sexuality is a pretty personal thing, if you think it’s important enough to include in ethical principles, you’d at least want to put it in the category of the niyamas, maybe under tapas (the burning effort – hmm, that sounds about right).

But trying not to have sex with everyone you encounter is not really in the same category as non-harming and being honest with them (unless you are in need of some serious therapy).

Approaching every situation and person in a spirit of non-harming, honesty, non-stealing and non-hoarding makes sense if every situation and person is an opportunity to see everything as an encounter with the Divine.

Patanjali wrote in the Yoga Sutras, “To those who are established in Brahmacarya, great strength (virya) is available.” (2.38) Yeah, if you are having a lot of sex you might not have much energy for other pursuits. But I think he meant something much subtler. If you know where your energy is truly coming from (hint: it’s not your fourth cup of coffee), you can do anything, anything is possible. You’ll have tons of energy.

Without applying the literal translation of brahmacarya, the whole system of the yamas disintegrates.

More to come on the niyama star system…

So How is the Subtle Yoga Training Different?

Here’s a letter I received today

Kaoverii,
I have talked to you before about the possibility of completing teacher training with you (which would be amazing for me!) Timewise, though, Stephanie Keach has an opening this summer that works for me. I don’t know her at all. How would you characterize her style compared to yours(if I may be so bold as to ask?)
Thank you so much,
L

And here’s my response:

I realize it is difficult to find the right program to fit your needs in all ways. And I only offer my program currently as a 10 or 11 month extended training.

Actually there are a few different teacher trainings in Asheville, not to mention all over the country! But I think it would be inappropriate for me to analyze other programs.

I do think my program is unique in many key ways. I think the whole purpose of doing yoga is transformation. And I don’t just use the word “transformation,” because it’s catchy, I actually provide a clear and effective process for it – my whole program centers around it.

I focus on helping students open to subtle understandings that form a bridge between mundane and spiritual knowledge. This includes a strong emphasis on epistemology – understanding how we know about ourselves, the world, and about yoga and how that knowledge can help expand us.

I conduct the training over a longer period in order to allow the cultivation of a personal practice — and this centers around developing a strong, daily meditation practice. Asanas and other practices serve to support this intention and to help facilitate personal growth and transformation. The shorter term program has some limits in the sense that there is less time for integration – however I will be teaching a 3 week training in Copenhagen in August – so if you feel like coming to Denmark…;->

Additionally my program is carefully, progressively designed – the knowledge builds on itself and results in a broad and deep understanding of the yoga tradition, history and practice. I delineate a solid rationale and techniques for using yoga to help balance the neuro-endocine system and through it, the mind, in order to facilitate personal transformation. So the teaching always revolves around this central understanding and purpose.

Another point is that the program emphasizes the group process. I keep the group small – generally 12-15. This facilitates the solid development of satsaunga (spiritual company).

I also have a therapist on staff to help during our monthly group processing sessions. And we periodically take on seva/service projects together (like helping out at the community gardens in one of the projects or visiting a nursing home).

The service projects serve both as karma yoga and also as a wonderful way for the group to experience their collective power. I actually spent a lot of time on the phone convincing Yoga Alliance that our projects are “real” yoga. When they finally did understand my rationale, I set a precedent for yoga trainings all over the country to begin to teach karma yoga or seva as part of an authentic yoga training. These sessions continually prove to be some of the most powerful personal experiences for students in the program (and certainly highlights!).

I hope this is helpful!

Knowing Something About Yoga

What do you need when you come to yoga?

A mat is a good idea. But then there’s also the mind. I’m not suggesting that you need to tote along a particular mindset, but I do think you at least need to know that you didn’t show up without one, that one is hitchhiking along in your mat bag.

So, if you’re a yoga student or a yoga teacher, looking at the contents of your mat bag might help you get more out of your practice. If you can stop and look at your worldview and your thinking architecture and also what you want from your life and your practice, you’ll get more out of yoga.

I like to do this with my students through a questioning process:

Why do you want to do yoga?
How do you know about yoga?
What are the underlying assumptions you make about it?
What is your thinking about yoga and where does it come from?
Is it useful? How?
What are other ways that other people think about yoga? Are these useful for you?
Why or why not?

This process can help students see the fullness of yoga and make decisions about why to do it from a clearer understanding of themselves and their needs. My students frequently come to me and say things like,

“Hey Kaoverii, what do you think about Jiivamukti yoga?”

“What do you think about Anusara yoga?”

My answer is always the same, “Why do you want to do yoga?” All styles are valid, they all have their purposes and their special flare. But the more important question is why do you want to do yoga? If you are clear on that question, you can fairly evaluate any yoga style for yourself.

Most people are not used to examining their worldviews – so when I teach about epistemology, I try to keep the process as simple as possible and allow for lots of time for integrating (using some movement). And yet this is really the most important foundational piece in determining why you should do or teach yoga, or why you should do anything really.

In the west, yoga has mostly been relegated to the realm of fitness and secondarily to the realm of therapeutics because of our western scientific mindsets – we can fit it in to those paradigms without having to examine the  paradigms themselves and their inherent problems. And yet yoga has the capacity to create a geometrical progression of our minds and beings if we are able to think about it and use it differently — if we are able to think about ourselves differently.

Thinking differently is also foundational for any problem solving –

“You can’t solve a problem with the same thinking that created it.”

So the idea is to examine our thinking paradigms in order to use yoga, not just as an Rx for a myriad of issues, but as a holistic transformational process. I begin my Subtle Yoga Teacher Training and Personal Transformation program with a whole weekend exploring this topic to help ground students in the why of yoga and the why of personal transformation.

If you dive underneath all of the benefits of yoga and look at how you look at it, it can help you contextualize your personal needs and the thinking and needs of your students. Then you can understand your drives and motives better – and get a whole lot more of what you need out of your practice.

How I Found Out What Fasting is Really All About

Fasting and Oreo Hallucinations

In November of 1994 I was cold, thirsty and several miles from something safe to drink. I dipped my green plastic water bottle into what, I convinced myself, was a very clean looking Himalayan stream. Dropped in a couple of iodine tablets and half waited for them to dissolve. Then I drank the koolaid.

Later that day I found a guest house and passed out under my sleeping bag in a small cold room. In the middle of the night, I woke up with horrible stomach cramps and stumbled to the outhouse, which, incidentally, sat perched over a very clean looking Himalayan stream ;-> After some wonderful diarrhea and a little exciting vomiting I emerged and promptly passed out a little too close to the edge of a cliff. I remember, as I came to, noticing that the stars were startlingly vivid.

For the next three or four days I ate very little, slept a lot and got to know the outhouse quite well. Finally I felt strong enough to continue my trek. And after a few days I got out of the mountains and continued my travels around south Asia, but the mountains never really got out of me. I had diarrhea every day for almost a year after that.

When I returned to the states I had numerous tests, saw lots of doctors and natural healers and did what I could to get the Giardia out of my body. I got a lot better and gained the knowledge of how to maintain a decent level of health – but even after all these years, my digestive system has never fully recovered.

So three weekends ago I decided to try something I hadn’t – long fasting. I attended a yoga detox retreat taught by a yogi who probably weighs about as much as I did in seventh grade. But he claims to have tons of energy, sleep 4 hours a night and rarely get sick. And did I mention he could eat? I saw some serious putting away – mostly salad, fruit and vegetables but still, quite an appetite for a really skinny guy. Now I’m not interested in regular long term fasting or reviving long dead disordered eating patterns – but I thought a cleansing fast might help –  I’ve tried just about everything else.

Day one we fasted on juice and broth. Pretty easy, I’ve been doing one day fasts for years so, no biggie. Day two was optional, lots of people broke their fasts, but I, along with a few others, decided since I was feeling okay that I’d keep going. I had more juice and broth. The detox guru said that if you feel hungry, try drinking a big glass of salted lemon water – then you’ll know if what you are feeling is real hunger or what he called “demon hunger” – acidity welling up in your digestive tract as you go through your detox process. If you’re not hungry after the lemon water, then you’re being haunted by your “demons” – keep fasting until you are really hungry.

Day three – I was back home now, out of the security of a fasting community and people to make fresh juice for me. I cooked for my family, taught a yoga class, went to Earthfare and bought a kale, spinach, cucumber, wheatgrass, and parsley juice (yeah, it was just as nasty as it sounds). Then I went home and worked. I got pretty hungry, but the lemon water helped. In the evening I had more juice and went to bed early.

Day four is when the Oreo hallucinations began. Was that an Oreo on my desk? On the dash board? I don’t think I’ve actually eaten an Oreo since the early nineties. There they were haunting me. I Facebooked my dilemma. My friend Sam encouraged me to try juicing some. I settled for more kale broth.

That evening I quelled the demon hunger with several glasses of salted lemon water. The hunger kept subsiding. But the acidity was becoming more and more uncomfortable. I taught a yoga class, or rather floated around the room in a haze trying to remember if which side we were on.

The morning of the fifth day I woke up dizzy, drank a big glass of water with apple cider vinegar (I was out of lemons at this point), dragged myself to the bathroom and promptly vomited. Then I collapsed on the couch to enjoy some soft moaning. That felt good. I was planning on a 7 or 8 day fast and wondering what the heck to do now. I had to take my son and his friend to school but that wasn’t happening any time soon. They played with Starwars Legos and gave me funny looks between light saber battles. I cancelled my clients.

I began to recall details of lying in the small cold room in Nepal sick with Giardia and what I was going through then – a failing relationship, gnawing insecurities, deep longing to find some personal meaning. My nausea then was in many ways a rejection of my life – an inability to “stomach” it or assimilate it. Then I went back further to high school and my not atypical teenage self-loathing and bulimia, diet pills that made my head tingle, iceberg lettuce salad with non-fat Italian dressing and fake bacon bits, followed by three chocolate chip cookie lunches. Lots of hungry afternoons. Fear – not having the guts to grow up.

I quit dwelling on the past long enough to call my friend Cindy – she’s a wonderful yogini and nutritionist. I told her my dilemma. Wisely advising the obvious she said, “Probably at this point, you should break your fast.” Kindness and the permission to not be a perfect yogi. What a relief. Her compassion pushed me from melancholy to gratitude.

She recommended spirulina and advised that I tune in to what my body was telling me it needed. After fasting for more than four days I had become pretty good at convincing my body that it really didn’t need to tell me anything, so that was a challenge. The only thing that sounded bearable was almond milk.

So I warmed some up and added a little spirulina. I had to dilute it with water because it seemed so rich. I slowly sipped a cup, and felt like I was returning from the ethers to the planet I belonged on. I was able to release more toxins from the proper orifice. Then I started to feel very clear and awake.

I took my son and his friend to school which is at a church that happens to have a beautiful white stone labyrinth on the premises. I hadn’t sat for meditation that morning so instead of racing home to work, I decided to meditate under the tree next to the labyrinth.

I closed my eyes and began my practice. My senses felt acute.  I noticed the birds singing but it sounded more like they were chanting mantras all around me. The labyrinth began to glow in my mind’s eye and I imagined I was walking it with my spiritual teacher while karmas untangled. Then we sat at the center in meditation and the labyrinth turned into the cosmos – white light emanating from the middle out into the dancing periphery. I was flooded with ecstasy.

Then came relief, gratitude and tears for this beautiful world that I get to live in, for the abundance of healthy food I have access to, for the people who love and support me, for being gifted with a chronic health issue that gave rise to this spiritual, emotional and physical healing process.

Perhaps I was gifted with a tiny sliver of insight into why the Buddha fasted, why Jesus fasted, why Native Americans fast, why great saints have always fasted and recommended fasting. Fasting is not only about cleansing the body, and it certainly is not confined to the realm of penance – what it does hold is the possibility of blasting open the heart. After his long fast the Buddha ate sweet rice and touched the earth. Fasting opened him to enlightenment, to the beauty of this world, and to the simplicity and rightness of the human experience.

For me fasting opened up my perspective to witness the welcoming arms of mother-love vibrating through my experiences, the support and embrace of the world, the nurturing of food and relationships, to my never invalid or pointless reasons for being here.

When I was in high school I denied myself food out of self-loathing. This time I did it out of hope for healing – the result was a deep experience of  acceptance, clarity and love. Om shanti.

The Gulf Disaster: 5 Yogic Things You Can Do Right Now to Help

What’s a yogi to do when you hear about dead dolphins washing up on shore in Louisiana, tar balls assaulting Key West and oil soon to be snaking its way up the East Coast?

Despair and paralysis aren’t terribly helpful at this point.

Our actions right now need to be deliberate and potent. We have the choice to make this event the pivotal shift in human consciousness towards real sustainability – it’s an opportunity for tremendous change.

Yogic teachings guide towards the right course of action in any situation. Yoga practices can strengthen our third chakra – the abode of will and resolve – and fire that strength up into our hearts so that we can act with compassion in order to make a difference out there where it’s so desperately needed right now.

An effective response necessitates that we raise our vibration to meet the challenge, that we thoughtfully and lovingly respond to this crisis from our highest part of ourselves.

So here are 5 yogic things you can do right now to help:

1. Raise Your Vibration: Sadhana
Sadhana means “to make an effort through practice.” If you’re a meditator, meditate more, if you’re a kirtan enthusiast, don’t stop singing, if you get your groove on by praying, keep it up, if you touch bliss in your asana practice, do more.

Whatever it is that makes you respond from the highest part of your being – maintain and strengthen that practice in order to raise your vibration. The people, animals and plants of the gulf need you to keep practicing so that you can respond to their need from a centered place.

Any obstacle can be overcome when we approach it from the highest part of ourselves – and we get to that part of ourselves through practice. Patanjali wrote Vishoka Va Jyotishmati – “Stabilize the mind by focusing on that which is peaceful and on the Light within.” With a stable, concentrated mind, your actions will be powerful and meaningful– and they’ll make a difference.

2. Take a Pro-active Intention: Bhavana
Hoping and praying for the best, for the highest good for all beings can go a long way. The idea of Bhavana is to then act on that intention. Whatever you decide to do, do it with the idea that your actions line up with your intention and your intention is for the highest good.

Cynicism, skepticism, doubt and depression are serious liabilities in the face of urgency. We are being called to raise ourselves up out of the muck of our individual vrittis (emotional tendencies) and harness all our capacities to swiftly and efficiently address the problem at hand.

3. Apply Critical Thinking: Viveka
One of the best bhavanas is the intention to think differently.Viveka is the practice of expanding your mind so that you can approach challenges with a keen intellect and clear insight. Einstein said, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”

We need to be thinking in ways that address the whole web of issues at hand – economic, social, environmental, corporate, political and individual. Then we need to figure out not only how we are going to clean up the mess – but also plan how to prevent manmade environmental disasters from  happening again, and use the impetus of the disaster to change how we live and use energy.

One way to apply Viveka is to talk to people you wouldn’t usually talk to. You could call this transdisciplinary, systems thinking. What are your skills? Identify them and then communicate with others who have completely different perspectives and skill sets. What could a marine biologist, a minister, a truck driver, a social networking junkie, an engineer, a retired math teacher, a city council person, a grandmother and an 8 year old soccer player come up with together? Talk to the people who look at the world entirely differently than you do, network, form alliances and small groups. Some amazing solutions will begin to emerge for a wide range of social challenges.

4. Be Humble, Ask the Right Questions and Offer Your Service: Pranipatena, Pariprashena, Sevaya
In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna said, “Know by your humility, by asking the right questions, and by your service; Wise ones who see reality will give you knowledge.” This is one of the many formulas given in the Gita for taking right action and I think it speaks for itself -  ask lots of questions and listen with an open mind. Offer yourself and your skills in the spirit of selfless service – and the best part about service is that you are the main benefactor.

Krishna is also the dude who admonishes us not to be attached to the outcomes of our actions. Do the right thing, just do the right thing and don’t worry about the results. It’s the doing that matters.

5. Do the Right Thing: Karma and Dharma
Karma literally means “taking action” and here by dharma I mean something like “social justice.” If you apply the above principles, you can take firm and clear action. There is nothing wrong with channeling the motivational force of anger and disgust into doing the right thing. In fact, it has been an essential component of the strategies of all great people who’ve changed the world from Buddha to Jesus to Gandhi and Martin Luther King. But all of them refined, honed and strengthened their fire with spiritual practice.

Do something and do it in the spirit of the highest good. Not because BP, Haliburton and Transocean are evil corporate pigs we should despise, but because the world is fundamentally a beautiful place full of love and we should preserve and celebrate consciousness whenever and wherever we can. Sometimes that requires telling people that they are doing something wrong and stopping them from continuing to do it. Petitions, letters to Congress, showing up at rallies, Facebook pages, there are endless ways. Know your skills and apply them.

It’s always better to take some action than to do nothing.  Here’s a list of things US News and World Report recommended for helping out in the gulf.

And if you still can’t think of anything to do here’s a sixth idea:

Shave Your Head (I don’t know the Sanskrit word for this, but I’m sure there is one) – Hair absorbs oil and they want to use it on the beaches to help clean up the spill. Your whole family including the dog and cat can contribe. It would be a true and simple gift of yourself – as an added bonus, your friends might think you’ve become a Buddhist monk.

Thinking About Thinking About Yoga

I’ve been thinking a lot about how we think about yoga in the west and here’s what I think: When you take the tools of a system out of its thinking structure and plop them into your own, the results are going to be distorted at best.

The west views reality from a materialistic, reductionist perspective. And I don’t mean that we spend too much time shopping and making sauces – although that might be true. What I’m saying is that the way we think about health and science limits the way we think about yoga.

Think about our medical system. Just about everything is a specialty – if you have a heart problem you go to a cardiologist – break a bone, an orthopedist. Our thinking is from the ground up. The body is built out of various components, like a car. So if you want to fix it, you just fix the broken part. The body is material and that’s what matters. The mind is an epiphenomenon of the body. And consciousness is something that (we admit somewhat reluctantly) arises from the brain.

Don’t get me wrong, there are some benefits to those thinking structures – but the problem is, I’m not a car. Once I tried talking to a dermatologist about how I thought a skin rash I had might be related to my digestive problems, perhaps an overgrowth of bacteria in my small intestine and he looked at me like I was from Venus and said, “Try not to over-think this.”

As westerners we are mostly unconscious adherents to a scientific, reductionist paradigm. It’s not that we’ve bought into it, it’s just part of how we’re taught to think. It’s the western way. And so as yoga teachers, it’s pretty natural for us to think this way too. Yoga is good for your health – so if you need stretch-ier hamstrings, it can do that for you. Need to lose weight? We got your hot yoga class over here. Need to balance your thyroid – no problem, shoulderstand is the ticket

Look at how we level yoga classes in this country. Typically it’s Beginners, and then Level 1, 2, 3, and 4. As you get closer to level 4, your foot gets further behind your head, most likely while you’re inverted and twisted. This structuring is completely western. The harder your asanas get, the more advanced you are at yoga.

The logical conclusion to this thinking is that the contortionists in Cirque du Soleil are all basking in the bliss of their enlightenment. (And they very well may be, but I would suggest their extreme yoga poses have little to do with it).

Yoga teachers love to say things like, “Go at your own pace.” And “This isn’t about anyone else in the room, it’s only about you in this moment.” But then there are 40 other hot sweaty western-minded bodies in the room trying to achieve enlightenment through their bodies – cause that’s how we know how to think.

This yoga stuff is great, it makes me feel great, I love the non-competitiveness of it  – well, at least how the teachers talk about non-competitiveness. It’s a bit of a mixed message really, to talk about non-competitiveness and then ask everyone to do scorpion in the middle of the room. The thing is, unless we are willing to shift our thinking structures, we’re going to do yoga pretty much the same way we did aerobics with in the eighties – maybe with a little mindfulness sprinkled on top – but we haven’t radically changed the way we think.

The great sage Ashtavakra had severe scoliosis. (His name means, “Bent in eight places”). He probably couldn’t have done ashtavakrasana (that’s the one where you wrap your legs around your upper arms and balance on your hands while you look up and smile for the camera). Ashtabakra wrote a sublime expose on spirituality. But regardless of his yogic accomplishments, in the west, we’d have to send him to the Beginner’s class.

According to yogic thinking structures, the less you have to do to calm your mind, the more advanced you are. More advanced practitioners need to do a less intense physical practice because they don’t need much to settle their minds for meditation.

The body is the basis of our health and our thinking in the west, but yoga comes out of a thinking structure that stands ours on its head.

According to the Upanishads, sacred Vedantic texts, we are ultimately pure soul or consciousness. The first part of our self that emanates from the soul is the Bliss layer (anandamaya kosha). In other words, bliss is the largest part of the structure of who we are.

That means bliss isn’t something that you get by doing a backbend on your knees and elbows, rather it’s something to understand and experience as the foundational structure of your being.

And you get there by meditating, whether or not you can do side crow in full lotus is rather irrelevant. From the Bliss layer emanates the Witness layer, from the witness comes the mind, from the mind comes the energy body and finally, from all of that comes your physical body.

So if you have a digestive complaint, you might use asanas, herbs, diet, massage etc. – which will help you from the layer of the physical body, but if you really want to heal, you look up into who you are in a more expanded sense. Where is your breathing disturbed? Where is the mind disturbed? You come from bliss and ultimately you are pure Soul, so whatever ails you can be remedied from a return to the Source of who you are – from meditating on the infinite within. From a yogic perspective, if you want to heal, it is useful to look up.

One of my husband’s favorite sayings is, “All thinking models are wrong, but at least some are useful.” Trying to get Oneness out of Yoga while living with a western mindset is kind of like trying to breathe on Pandora.

But you see all this unspoken materialistic thinking around yoga like the harder the poses, the more advanced your practice or the more Lululemons you own and popular classes you attend, the better yogi you are. And for teachers, the  more students you have, the more popular you are, the more enlightened you have become. Yikes.

It’s unspoken because we vaguely and rather ashamedly understand that yoga is really not about that. But how do we change our thinking structure to accomodate the idea that the more you’ve expanded your bliss consciousness the closer you are to Oneness? How do you rewire neuro-patterning laid down in your infancy?

Our materialistic thinking has helped create things like life savings surgery and perhaps even more lifesaving iphones. But it also directly created the global crisis we’re in – environmental, financial, social and ethical. Part of the problem is that materialism and reductionism necessitate that we narrow our perspective. We specialize. But life isn’t specialized. It is a big interconnected system. If we want to heal ourselves and our planet, we need a broader perspective.

Yoga was developed by people who sat and expanded their minds to the edges of the universe and beyond. And that’s what it can offer us if we’re willing to look at our practice differently – as an opportunity to see things differently, to think about things with a  more expanded perspective. And that is ultimately what will help us change the way we do things – personally and collectively.

I love to eat, and occasionally not to eat

Time for Fasting

Spring makes me think about cleansing. I’ve been foraging for dandelion leaves in the yard over the past few weeks. And here in Appalachia we have wild plants called “ramps” and “creases” that the mountain folks have been using for generations for internal spring cleaning.

According to Chinese medicine, this is the best time of year to fast. Whoo-hoo! Exciting to consider isn’t it? Currently, my twhirl box is full of tweets from yogis waxing poetic about their passion for chocolate. Now, I love food as much as the next yogi out there, but I also love fasting. It makes me feel clean, clear-headed, powerful and ready to take on anything. But it can also be hard, and takes a bit of discipline and preparation. And fasting works much better if you’ve got a fasting buddy or two around to help you keep your hands off the Green and Blacks.

I remember the first time I fasted, many moons ago, it was freakin’ scary. “How can I not eat, for a whole day! What if I pass out and no one is there? What if I get nauseous and throw up bile? I could die.

But I quickly learned that it doesn’t have to be that way. There are lots of options for fasting, and there are ways to prepare for a fast. Getting through a fast makes you feel really strong and confident. It also helps you empathize with the large numbers of hungry people on this planet.

The Krishna devotees in India have created a whole system of fasting that seems to work very well – I like to call it Moon Fasting because you fast according to the phases of the moon.

It’s all very weirdly scientific and complicated (like many wonderful things that have come out of that culture) – and, although I have a constitutional aversion to anything that smells faintly of math, I will attempt an explanation.

Ahem…

The moon circles around the earth, sometimes closer, sometimes farther. Ekadashi which means “11” is the Sanskrit word for when the moon is closest and also when it is farthest from the earth – it also means something like “a great day to fast.”

Ekadashi is both 11 lunar days after the new moon and 11 lunar days after the full moon. Please don’t ask me to explain what a lunar day is, I already have a headache. It has to do with the moon going around the earth elliptically so that sometimes it’s closer and sometimes it’s farther. These farthest and closest days of the moon create high and low tides respectively.

So the theory is, when the tides are high or low, and the moon is near or far, we tend to get a little loony. By fasting on these days, you can help to counteract the effects of the moon, feel more balanced, be able to meditate better, and generally, stay out of trouble.

Ekadashi is typically observed from sunrise to sunrise. Westerners start the day at midnight, but in India it starts with sunrise. I usually start fasting the night before though, because I found that if I get up early and eat breakfast before sunrise, it actually makes it harder to fast.

Now, I know that there’s research that says that the moon doesn’t affect us – but have you ever talked to an emergency room nurse? There is plenty of anecdotal evidence out there. And even if the lunacy theory is unscientific, fasting twice a month is a great way to stay cleaned out and give your digestive system a regular rest.

And here’s the deeper meaning: Upavasya. That’s the Sanskrit word for fasting and it literally means, “being close to the Supreme.” So the spirit of fasting is actually to take some time for inner reflection. Take the time that you would use to cook and eat and instead devote it to meditation, prayer or other intuitional practice.

I’ve been to ashrams where they have an Ekadashi collection jar – you put in the money that you would’ve used to buy food for that day and it goes to help feed the hungry. Nice idea – because then it takes fasting out of the realm of some kind of experiment in willpower or worse, masochism, and makes it an opportunity for seva.

So here are some ways of fasting that I’ve experimented with over the last 20 years or so that seem to work well.

1. Dry fasting – This is the traditional way believe it or not. Yep, for one day, no food or water. Warning: Only for the hardcore. It’s intense, but also completely mind blowing – your senses become acute, your mind sharp and your will, steely. Only do this kind of fasting if you are very healthy.
2. Lemon/Apple Cider Vinegar water fasting – This is a great way to fast if you are healthy but also a little nervous about the idea or have never fasted before. Water should be room temperature or hotter. Don’t overdo the lemon or ACV, a teaspoon or so in a large glass is plenty. A pinch of high quality salt is nice too for electrolyte balance and also because it helps you to eliminate.
3. Juice fasting – no, you should not fast on grape juice! Try kale, collards, parsley, cabbage. Fruit juice can be really counterproductive, but adding a little green apple or a little carrot can help it go down and give you a little energy if you’re really dragging.
4. Steamed veggie fasting – Stick mostly to green veggies like kale, broccoli, cabbage. Mung bean sprouts are also great.
5. Miso soup fasting – Again, stick mostly to green veggies. Go easy on the miso, the soup shouldn’t be over salted.
6. Kichiri fasting – This is a great way to fast if you’ve never fasted before – and actually it’s a great way to cleanse for a week or two each spring. Mung beans are highly digestible and also very detoxifying. Cook 1 part rice (mixed brown and white is great, but either will do. Organic is of course preferable, Basmati is wonderful) with 1 part mung bean dal (you can get it at Asian stores, but regular mung beans that you get at the health food store work too). Rinse it well, then cook it for an hour or two with a little high quality salt. Add some spices like curry powder, ginger, turmeric, etc. towards the end. Then add some green veggies. I like it really soupy myself, but some prefer it more like stew.

Breaking the Fast

If you are fasting with some food, breaking the fast the next morning won’t be much of a problem. But it can get harder depending on how extreme your fast was. A good way to break any fast is, after brushing your teeth and optimally scrapping your tongue, drink one to two large glasses of filtered water with a small amount of lemon juice, or apple cider vinegar. Add a pinch of salt. It’s better if the water is slightly warm. In the best of all possible worlds, you then make a visit to the bathroom and do what needs to be done. If you are unsuccessful in that endeavor, wait a bit and then drink a little more water and try again.

Allot a bit of time after drinking to allow for cleansing. I like to meditate if I can before eating. But sometimes I need a little food first. I prefer to break my fasts on vegetable soup with a good amount of ginger, sweet potatoes for energy and some sprouted mung beans for protein. But some folks like bananas – the idea is that the chunks of banana act like a sponge to soak up any toxins and then help eliminate them. A warm, simple breakfast can be a good way to break a fast. Best not to get into the chocolate donuts right away.

When not to fast:

1. Don’t fast if you’re pregnant or nursing or have a serious health condition. That includes diabetes, hypoglycemia, fibromyalgia or anything that has sapped your energy. You also shouldn’t fast if your immune system is compromised or you get sick easily, if you have any heart conditions, serious digestive issues like ulcers, nutitional deficiencies, or if it’s really cold. Fasting is also not for children.
2. Don’t fast if you have an eating disorder. Be very clear about whether fasting sounds great to you because it gives you an opportunity not to eat, and if it does, stop immediately. Fasting is about cleansing and deepening your practice and it should be avoided by people who have food issues.

Fast with a friend, partner, or buddy. My husband and I fast together and it makes the whole experience a whole lot more pleasant, especially when I’m making macaroni and cheese for my son for dinner.

Here’s a link for the ekadashi dates – but I have heard that those are the dates for India so they might be a day earlier in the States. Please consult your local Jyotisha rishis on this one.

If you’d like to use this article in your newsletter or blog, feel free, just include this with it:

Kaoverii Weber, MA, RYT500 took her first yoga course from her hippy social studies teacher when she was in sixth grade and has been hooked ever since. She began sharing yoga with others in 1995. Kaoverii began training yoga teachers in 2003 and teaches workshops around the southeast, California and in Europe. She is committed to creating opportunities for each student to discover and pursue his or her path to self-realization. Kaoverii’s book, Healing Self-Massage is a great compliment to yoga practice and offers help for a variety of ailments including stress, neck and back pain, insomnia and anxiety. She has published articles for the International Association of Yoga Therapist’s journal, Yoga Therapy in Practice as well as various health related publications, and has been featured in Redbook, BodySense, Women’s World, and Natural Health magazine and Lifetime TV’s on-line magazine. Visit her website at www.subtleyoga.com

The Freedom to Fly

(This is an excerpt from the intro to a book I’m writing on reclaiming the power of the third chakra.)

The pictures were gruesome: parts of dead birds, mostly seagulls, lying like pieces of a child’s puzzle ready to be assembled. Their bodies are in various stages of decomposition. Some are just bones, some still have feathers, beaks, feet and heads. They all have their stomachs exposed. And there is another common detail: they are filled with garbage. Blue Bic lighters, bright red disposable pens, yards of fishing line, orange plastic caps, clear plastic bags, bits of white plastic.

I opened the magazine in November, became quickly fascinated and even more rapidly queasy. I put it back down near my desk and tried not to touch it. I was at once drawn to look and disgusted. Even touching the magazine made me feel sick and dirty. Like I’d have to wash my hands if I picked it up again.

These birds have become mini garbage dumps for our excessive lifestyle. But it was the photographs that so clearly elucidated the metaphor: Birds are one of the symbols of the heart chakra – the place where we come into our humanity and soar. They (and we) are meant to fly, to be free, not to die from swallowing too much garbage. How is the garbage we are swallowing, literally and figuratively, keeping us from flying? How can we change, not just our eating habits, but our relationship to the natural world, the way that we think, what we consume, individually and collectively – and set ourselves free?

Avatar and Yoga – Gotta put in my two cents

At my husband’s 50th birthday party, his friend gave him a gift certificate to the movies and told him with deep seriousness, “You have to use this to see Avatar. As soon as you can.” Brett smiled and thanked him – then we mostly forgot about it.

Probably just a lot of hype, we’ll get to it when we do. So on Saturday night we finally did – and our three hour stay at the Carmike near Target evaporated in a swirl of magic. I’ve been drifting in a pixie dust afterglow ever since. You probably already have an opinion about Avatar – it’s been out for 2 and a half months – but I can’t help it, gotta say my piece!

One of my yoga students scoffed in disgust when the movie first came out. “They go watch a movie like Avatar,” he said of people in general, “Then they just go back and keep doing what they’re doing – nothing changes!”

What? A tough marine is depicted in a movie as converting into a tree hugging dirt worshipper and nothing has changed? Okay, let’s break this down – before Avatar, the biggest grossing movie was Titanic – made by the same guy.  So about 13 years ago, James Cameron and all the people he influences with his work are caught up in a soppy love/disaster story and that’s what captures the generic attention. Not so interesting really to us yoga types. Now the same guy shifts his awareness into a visionary, futuristic, gorgeous mythic epic (I’ll have to put the Hollywood blow-up-shit part out in the parking lot), which is essentially about the elevation of consciousness. He comes out with the highest grossing movie ever, and nothing has changed? BTW, us yoga types have perked up a bit.

Consciousness is shifting. This is one of the most inspiring things I’ve ever witnessed in the mainstream. People responded to this movie not only because of the effects or the 3D glasses, but because something is shifting within us. We are ready to move forward – in fact, we don’t have a choice. Our minds must expand if we are to evolve, if we are to survive. People responded to Barack Obama because he promised us “Change you can Believe in.” Regardless of the lukewarm delivery of that promise, regardless of whether most teenage boys just enjoyed the shoot-’em-up violence of Avatar, and regardless of the wars and environmental devastation we are mired in – something much larger than our own little craniums can fathom, is shifting.

This is the change that is on the lid of every third eye out there – consciously or not, Consciousness is changing. Avatar is monumental because it is the aesthetic expression,  as always, out in front of rational discourse, of the shift that we are undergoing.

And if consciousness shifts, then actions will necessarily follow. I’m not saying the Age of Aquarius is upon us and we should all get out our love beads and start dancing in Golden Gate Park. I’m not saying it’s all good and getting better. I’m not saying stop trying to transform yourself and the world. We have to keep supporting this shift in every way that we can. But if the mass consciousness is welcoming this kind of entertainment, we can be sure there will be a response.

The title of the movie is in Sanskrit. The avatars are Krishna blue. I’m thinking Mahabharata here, not Second life. Everything on Pandora is connected by what Sigourney calls a neural network. Psycho-neuroimmunology depicted macrocosmically. Pandora has almost what Teilhard called a noosphere – a bio-active atmosphere of consciousness. We are not alone in our quest to make things better. It doesn’t have to do simply with how many petitions you sign or protests you attend or letters you write or checks you send to Haiti – that’s all important, but there is a support, there is an Avatar – there is a force that is helping us.

A guy with stunningly long dreads at the checkout at Earthfare told me yesterday that the movie has been slammed as un-american all over the media. Hmm, now if they had taken out the real bad guy, the corporatist who pushes the bulldozer at Jake, then I could see why the powers that be might get their knickers in a twist – but he gets off without even a slap on the wrist. What planet is he going to exploit next – maybe that’s where the sequel is going? I thought they might make a slave out of him or at least send him to Pandora rehab and make him wear a loin cloth.

Here’s the other thing – because there is contention and polarization around this movie, you can be certain it matters. Those who say it’s un-american are doing this consciousness shift a great service. And if they keep pushing, the momentum will continue to grow. The question is what exactly is un-american about cooperation, sustainability, intuition, interconnectedness and the fight to maintain those principles? The military, I want to reiterate, is not the problem, it’s the guy who controls them.

The sky seems bluer today and I am enjoying the smell of my tea more than usual. There is a reality that waits patiently for us to take notice. Madhuvidya, is what I would call the essence of Avatar, the sweet secret knowledge that everything in every moment is an opportunity for swimming in ecstasy.

What about those Sun Salutations?

this is my letter to the editor at YJ, we’ll see if they publish it.

Dear Editor,

I appreciate the historical perspective of sun salutations Kelly McGonigal presents in her article “Shine on Me” in the March edition of Yoga Journal. And while it is nice to consider the origins of various yoga practices, I think a fuller picture might have been presented. The article doesn’t mention Swami Sivananda – and yet he taught his own version of surya namaskar. Should we assume that he first went to Mysore to study with Krishnamacharya and learn British gymnastic exercises? And what about the mantras that Swami Satyananda (Bihar School) attributes to the practice in Asana Pranayama Mudra Bandha? Did Sivananda or Satyananda introduce these mantras or are they part of a more ancient practice? Are they are as relevant to this practice as the Savitur Rg? Then there are the Tibetan Buddhists. Sitting under the famous tree in Bodhagaya, one can witness practitioners engaging in very athletic prostrations that look a bit, surprise, like sun salutations! While the teachings of Sri Krishnamacharya are certainly admirable, clearly they are not the whole picture. Research into practices originating from a wider range of traditions would be greatly appreciated.

Kristine Kaoverii Weber

Asheville, NC