Oil bath

Taking an oil bath was recommended highly by Guruji, so this Saturday I decided to take a crack at it.  Let's define terms in the negative, first.  This does not mean I filled a vat, or a cauldron with a fire beneath it if you want to evoke fairy tales, with oil and sat in it.  Furthermore, the theories expressed in this blog are in keeping with Indian traditional medicine, know as Ayurveda, and, as I like to say while I'm teaching, have not been evaluated by the FDA.  In the Indian conception of the body the physical and the metaphysical are both superimposed and interchangeable.  So when one speaks of things such as heat, bandhas, or breath, in yoga one could be talking about physical or metaphysical or both at the same time.  Keep this in mind and bare with me, here.

The goal of an oil bath is to draw accrued heat out of the body built up from the week's asana practice.  The bath requires oil, preferably castor oil, and an equal mixture of soapnut powder and green herbal hairwash powder.  First, I poured a generous amount of oil into my hands and massaged it into my head and scalp (not the face, though) until my hair was quite saturated.  After five or so minutes, I rubbed, more like slathered, oil over the rest of my body.  I made sure to get extra oil into my troublesome joints, which are the shoulders, knees, and lately, my ankles.  I sat, naked and slathered in oil on the bathroom floor for about ten more minutes, letting the oil do its thing.  Phase two was to dump scalding hot water over my body, thus opening pores and letting oil get in that much more.  Phase three is the rinsing process.  I got the powder mixture, which I had made into a molasses-like paste by adding water, and slathered that over my body.  The powder's ability to absorb the oil was like magic.  I rinsed and everything came right out, like it had never been there.  I did a final wash with soap and shampoo for good measure.

Now, my impression of the whole process was not that the oil drew the heat out of my body, per se.  In fact, the opposite.  With all more pores sealed up with thick viscous oil the heat built up, at first.  But when the oil was rinsed off I felt a very powerful release, like water exploding finally out of a hose that had been kinked up for minutes.  The rest of the day I felt deliciously languid.  This is something of which I could definitely make a habit.

Conference report

This Sunday in conference Sharath discussed the oft-neglected drishti.  As Sharath explained it, in Ashtanga yoga we stand on a tripod to reach up towards a purer mental state.  One leg is asana, the other is breath, and the the third is drishti, which is focus of the eyes.  To each asana is assigned a drishti, some examples of which are the tip of the nose or the feet.  When we fix our eyes on one thing, hopefully the mind will follow, creating a state known as ekagarata, or single-pointed concentration.  Sharath said that it sometimes (probably often, for him) happens when he practices that he loses all sense of his body, time, and place. Now, here's the thing:  this transcendent state can be achieved doing other stuff besides asana practice.  We've all heard of runners' high.   One of my students who danced all her life has told me she's felt it dancing.  A colleague's boyfriend mentioned that he got there through the repeated practice it took to master a 360 degree dunk.  So, then, what's the difference? Here we have three activities (asana practice, sport, and dance) which offer the same set of circumstances, yielding similar results: an improved physical body, achievement of goals, when well-executed they are beautiful to look at, and, in rare lucky cases, a state of mental transcendence.  The difference between  hatha yoga practice and sport and dance is one of prioritization.  In sport and dance the mental transcendence is a pleasant by-product while the emphasis is on achievement either of victory, or mastery of a skill necessary to victory, or on cultivating perfection of technique or execution of a given choreography.  Hatha yoga practice is the inverse: the acquisition of technique; of victory, if you will, over a given asana is a pleasant by-product of the search for the state of mental transcendence.  Like all pleasure, the pleasure experienced in the respective by-products can be a pitfall, though.  The athlete chasing mental transcendence exclusively will lose.  The dancer doing likewise will fail.  The hatha yoga practitioner who only chases victory over asana will never attain yoga.

no guts, no navy cross

for a guy named after that aspect of god which is the destroyer who dances in flames, shiva is remarkably cool and deliberate.  he's a figure in the mysore scene who changes currency, rents scooters, finds apartments, and probably hooks people up with weed.  his business card lists "hard to find items" among the services he provides.  there was a kerfuffle with the place i had lined up and i had to scramble to find a place when i got here.  shiva, cool as a cucumber, hooked me up.  i told him what i wanted: cheap, to myself, a little out of the way.  within 15 minutes i was looking at a place that i took.  it's a room in a two-bedroom flat upstairs from the house of one mr. sharada, a gentleman who runs a silver shop out of his home.  my room is quite small, and it has its own bathroom.  the bathroom has a western toilet, but no showerhead.  instead there is a spigot coming out of the wall with a bucket underneath.  to bathe i fill the bucket up with hot water, pour some over myself, soap and shampoo up, and then rinse by pouring the bucket over myself.  it's actually quite nice.  the bucket also serves as a my washing machine.  after practice i put my clothes in the bucket with some laundry detergent and hot water and leave them there for an hour or so.  then i dump the water and refill it again to rinse.  the whole flat was coated with a serious patina of dust that i'm still working to get cleared up.  pretty serious ant problem, plus the first time i looked in the toilet bowl there was floating the corpse of a most impressive cockroach.  when i flushed a salamander was propelled out from the inner rim.  i fished him out and threw him onto a tree outside.  ahimsa for salamanders, but fuck the ants.  them i kill wholesale with bug spray.

so why so spartan?  i mean, i am paying about 185 bucks for six weeks of rent but i could afford a little more  and get housecleaning, laundry and wi-fi somewhere else.  i feel like roughing it some is part of the experience.  nowadays one can come here and live in comfort and connectedness with back home such that it could be like never having left home.  but then why leave home?  to me, coming here, leaving home is part of the sacrifice that helps growth.  i think of the pioneers who came here back in the day, who barely could use a telephone.  granted, here i am blogging, talking to my wife on the phone, and, come to think of it, going to see batman today but i guess despite all that i'm trying to get some of the original flavor of the place.  one must pick one's battles and know one's limitations and all that.  so my battle is with not necessarily the most comfortable or clean living conditions.  it is my third day here and so far i am happy.  i'm very much looking forward to getting practice underway.

i am the god of hell fire! and i bring you...

The tattoo across the middle of my back is a fragment from the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Heraclitus.  It has been translated as "all things are consumed by fire, and fire, exhausted, falls back into things. The crops are sold for money to buy food."  Pretty cryptic, I know.  It is akin to the mantra "Om purnamida..." which states: "This is perfect, that is perfect.  Add perfect to perfect and you get perfect.  Take perfect from perfect and perfect remains."  Confused?  Good.  Now, back to the fire stuff.  Another way to think of the Heraclitus fragment is that it shows that existence is in a constant state of flux.  Matter manifests.  It gets destroyed and consumed by fire (or some other agent of decay). When the fire burns itself out, the ashes of new, changed matter remain.  I'm thinking of all this because while driving home tonight and listening to npr I heard a forest ranger from New Mexico speak about the fires raging out in the  western mountains.  The ranger's take on it was this: humans have become too adept, ironically, at suppressing these forest fires.  After so many years of control, the forests have been amassing so much fuel that now a fire has broken out that we might not be able to put out.  In forests, fire is necessary to a healthy eco-system.  If purifies and re-starts the system.  Unfortunately most of us have grown up with Smokey the Bear telling us "Only you can prevent forest fires."  In our personal lives many of us avoid pain and destruction at any cost.  But if you're not careful, the cost can be too great.  Some destruction, some pain, is necessary for the overall good.  Stoke your own fire.  Destroy yourself, and in so doing purify and strengthen yourself every day.  Don't let yourself get so backed up that a fire flares out that you can't control.  Practice, already. 

heat in india

i have a masochistic streak.  one of the ways it's manifested itself is in my decision to go native this time around and wear long sleeves, like the locals do.  this way i can both show respect to local customs, and suffer in the process.  now as the spring is turning into summer here i've come to fear the sun.  how absurd! i, who have always claimed seasonal affective disorder and my eternal love of heat, i am afraid of the sun.  at 12 degrees north, the sun's beams are like needles and razors somehow combined.

making this heat even less pleasant is the fact that i'm now sick.  i can no longer deny it.  without getting too detailed, let it suffice to say that the symptoms are for the most part gastrointestinal, with some coughing thrown in as an extra "fuck you."  it's a bummer, but getting sick like this is part of the india experience.  i got violently ill my first trip, and i thought i was going to escape unscathed this time.  as whitney sang, "it's not right, but it's okay."  at least i'll get that much skinnier in my last week here, which is all i ever really wanted anyway. 

at the orphanage

the main room of the orphanage is like a kindergarten classroom.  the walls are adorned with informational posters: animals, numbers, letters, all in hindi, kannada, and english.  there are pictures of historical and religious figures: gandhiji, sai baba, jesus, swami vivekananda, arjuna in his chariot with krishna, and the trininty of ganesh, lakshmi, and saraswati.  the floor is a dusty terrazzo.  there are different activities for different days.  monday, wednesday, and friday are for the playground or dancing (the hands-down favorite).  tuesday and thursday are for english, which i must confess, is quite hard.  none of the volunteers are esl instructors per se, and the younger kids barely speak english at all.

when we march the children to the playground the reaction from the locals is a mixed bag.  some of the adults look at us with quiet contempt.  as if, owing to the law of karma, these kids had their situation coming to them, so fuck'em.  others give us dull, vacant stares.  others, mostly the children, are another matter.  from them we get radiant welcoming smiles and sincere greetings.  the smiles are familiar.  they trigger the association, whether warrated or not, one makes with india and spirtituality.  when we get to the playground the kids split up, with the older boys going off to play cricket and the rest going batshit running all over the place randomly.  in this regard they are like children anywhere.  the playground is dusty, with rickety rusted monkey bars, prickly weeds, and some well-placed huge piles of cow shit.

it was in my second week in mysore that i started volunteering at this orphanage.  the place is a few miles out from the shala, in a scuzzy part of town.  i'm not sure what the stories are for all of the kids, of which there are about thirty, but the sign on the building says it's orphans and for rehabilitating kids who have been forced into labor.  one of the children, a boy named shivappa, had acid (acid!) thrown on his face, leaving half of it horrifically scarred.  he is maybe five years old.  the rest are mostly aged five to eleven years old, with a few four year-olds and some teens and preteens. i see the amazing elasticity of the human spirit when i'm here.  whatever it is they went through, the children have love, openness, and warmth which is utterly humbling.

i'm happy i came that first day, happy i continue to come, and will return when i return to mysore.

first adjustment

my first adjustment from sharath goes something like this--  after coming up from my third drop-back backbend he is there.  i don't know where he was in the room before, he just materializes.  his hands come to my sacrum and he supports me as i drop back three more times, only with these drop backs my hands don't go to the floor.  the fourth time, as i am bent back i pause, take my hands over my head, and let them dangle towards the floor.  while continuing to support my sacrum with one hand he takes my right wrist with his other hand and pulls it down to my right ankle.  "don't touch," he says.  he means don't touch the floor.  as in, "don't let go of your ankle and support yourself with your hand which is down there close to the floor."  these two words, by the way, account for perhaps the seventh and eight syllables that he has uttered to me directly in the week and half i've been here.  he doesn't talk much.  so, taking the cue not to touch the floor, i instead shift my weight into my right foot and straighten my right leg some.  my grip on my ankle remains strong.  sharath repeats the process with my left hand, only without any more verbal instruction.  i am now standing on my feet, bent over backwards, holding both ankles with each hand.  sharath then reaches down and cinches each hand up a little higher, so i am grabbing my calves.  after five breaths (not necessarily my deepest breaths, i can assure you) i pop back up.  then i sit and sharath pushes my back down as i fold forward to neutralize my spine.

sharath has goldilocks hands.  the amount of strength he uses to move my body is perfect-- not too strong, not too weak.  i think of a passage from chuang tzu:

“A good cook changes his knife once a year — because he cuts. A mediocre cook changes his knife once a month — because he hacks. I’ve had this knife of mine for nineteen years and I’ve cut up thousands of oxen with it, and yet the blade is as good as though it had just come from the grindstone. There are spaces between the joints, and the blade of the knife has really no thickness. If you insert what has no thickness into such spaces, then there’s plenty of room — more than enough for the blade to play about it. That’s why after nineteen years the blade of my knife is still as good as when it first came from the grindstone.
“However, whenever I come to a complicated place, I size up the difficulties, tell myself to watch out and be careful, keep my eyes on what I’m doing, work very slowly, and move the knife with the greatest subtlety, until — flop! the whole thing comes apart like a clod of earth crumbling to the ground. I stand there holding the knife and look all around me, completely satisfied and reluctant to move on, and then I wipe off the knife and put it away.”

i'm not sure if sharath would appreciate me comparing him to the dexterous butcher, but to me it fits.  one can feel the experience in his hands, his perfect efficiency.