New Media Faculty Development Seminar

I had a great time teaching at the Castle this morning. Again, the level of studentship is so high. It is truly a delight to inherit this class of dedicated students. The level of studentship is different than the high level of studentship down in San Marcos. This class has definitely had more access to yoga on an ongoing basis and probably a more thorough grounding in Anusara than anything else. I think they are really ripe for Iyengar yoga and the precision and refinement that it offers. But the San Marcos group is just excited about yoga being in their town and they are simply eager to learn. Both groups are already interested in the subject and so that makes the teaching job very easy on one level and very challenging on the other in that I want to meet the interest and take the interest further. But there's a remarkable lack of resistance to the pedagogical process in both groups. Truly a delight.

In other pedagogical contexts, say intro to philosophy, or intro to yoga, a lot of the pedagogical work is just getting people interested in the subject. There are a variety of ways to do this, but demonstrating your own enthusiasm for said subject goes a long way toward instilling it in others.

A new student came to class today, new to me, not new to yoga and she raised for me and in class some good questions about studentship. Let's say you go to class and hear X (that your head should be in the palm of your hand in sirsasana, true to an extent, but not at the expense of collapsing the wrist which is what teacher Y was teaching on this particular tuesday morning You've got a take home message you leave with, which if you leave with a take home message at all, puts you way ahead of the curve, but it doesn't really tell you how to integrate the next take home message.

then you go to class and hear Y "shrug your shoulders in sarvangasana" and then come to class Z and hear "tuck your shoulders well underneath you." Those might seem like very different and in fact conflicting instructions. And to an extent they are, I don't think either of these pairs I've presented are ultimately irresolvable, but it takes a while to learn how to do that for yourself, particularly if you aren't committed to a parituclar method.

In fact, this very good student said just that "well it is confusing." You hear one thing here and another thing there." Or something to that effect.

That got me thinking about what the Sutras have to say on this score. The sutras list the five main vrittis, fluctuations that may or may not disturb our path to samadhi. The first one is actually pramana, correct knowledge. Now on the face of it correct knowledge would seem like something entirely conducive to samadahi, but here different presentations of "correct" knowledge are actually causing vrittis that are disturbing.

So how to know what correct knowledge really is. Patanjali again offers some guidlines. He says there are three types of knowledge we can trust. Authority, direct experience and inference. Authority could be a teacher or a text or even revelation I imagine. direct experience, what you yourself learn from practice and what you can logically infer from either of the above two cases.

So you have to make sure you are studying with a trusted authority, How do you know you are? Well here, I'm more of a Platonist than an aristotlean, I think there is a part of us that knows that because we have always already known all that we need to know we've just forgotten it.

But Study with people who teach from their own direct practice. Study with people who know more than you do. Study with people who study with people who know more than they do. Study with people who you trust to lead you on the path. Don't study with people because it is convenient for your schedule or because they are popular.

How does all this relate to sophrosune, the virtue of temperance or modesty or self-control? Well, we have to cultivate the quality of discernment in ourselves, through our own practice to be able to ascertain what is the case. This requires a certain level of humility and patience. Learning takes a long time. There can be flashes of insight along the way, but we have to be patient to learn what the overall practice has to teach us.

There's more to say as always, but it is time to hang out with my husband for the evening. Cheers.

I had a great time teaching in San Marcos last night. The level of engaged studentship down there is very high and it is really a delight to teach. Last night we took a trajectory through some backbending type poses with an eye toward doing sarvangasana,

it went something like this, Vajrasana, Tadasana, UH, UB, used strap on elbows to help get arms straight in UH. AM, paschima UB, used strap behind back to open chest and shoulders. AMS with strap. Vira I, front foot at wall, Vira I back foot at wall, used strap behind back to help get torso verticality and chest opening, Prasarita Padotassana I and II (with hands on hips) Salabasana variation with strap for hands to pull back, Chatushpadasana, Halasana, Sarvangasana, Savasana.

I showed Craig the staggered shoulderstand blanket set up and that seemed to help his neck. Overall, I kept my mind on sarvangasana and used that pose as a means for linking the other poses.

My plan for the castle today is similar, but I want to get to dropping over into setu bandha. So we are going to do a bit more behind the back arm work and look at parsva dhanurasana and ustrasana as well.

more on that later. blog time for the morning is up.

Last post, I mentioned ahimsa. Ahimsa is one of the five yama, the univeral ethics principles that guide our interactions with others. Today, one of the niyamas is on my mind, santosha, contentment. Niyamas, simply put, are principles that guide or interaction internally. Not that these are distinct realms, but I find it useful to think about ethics both as how I comport myself with respect to others and also in terms of what I do with respect to self-comportment.

For example, I like many people, have a inner samsakara that says, do more work harder, be better, a very future oriented outlook and it is a great deal of work for me to stay focused on the present moment and not get overwhelmed by all I think I have do to.

The niyama that addresses this tendency is santosha, contentment. Yesterday, I was listening to Patrica Walden's reading of Light on Life and in that book BKS remarks, that we should be content with even "a little progress." Of course, he also says we should strive to continual improve but to do it with contentment. Then, I was practicing Ardha Matysendrasana yesterday in a class and low and behold I could feel the inside of my pelvic bone with my back hand. Now I was not holding the inner thigh mind you, but I did get the other side of the pelvic bone which is clearly on the way to the thigh.

The day before that, I had spent 12 minutes trying various stages of that pose and M3 not really even going for the clasps but working on getting length and rotation with the rope wall. It was great because the notion of progress wasn't on my mind, it just happened, well, it did not just happen but I really was content with the small progress.

Then this morning the philosophy works quote of the day, is “If there are people at once rich and content, be assured that they are content because they know how to be so, not because they are rich.”

Charles Wagner
(1852 – 1918)
French reformed pastor

I like this quote because it gets at the heart of a mistake of the mind that we often make about contentment. We often think it has to do with what we have or don't have, but really it is a skill, something we either know how to do or don't know how to do. The good news about that, of course, is that like any skill, we can acquire it through practice.

I read Letter from Birmingham Jail every year for Martin Luther King day. As you no doubt know, MLK advocated non-violent means for social change. A lot of times in yoga circles, we think of non-violence as the primary ethical teaching of the Sutras, which in a sense it is, but we tend to have a rosy, cheerful view of non-violence,

like yoga should hurt, well, it should hurt in the long run, but sometimes you have to put up with a bit of temporary pain to gain overal liberation from pain. Some of MLK's remarks speak to the Tension or violence in non-violent action.

Just thought I'd share them here.

"Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.

I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood."


Yoga practice is the same sort of cauldron of transformation that enables us to stomp on our own demons of ignorance as a means of to reach those points of liberation within ourselves that King so eloquently alks about.

Well, here it is backward bending week again. that reminds me the preferred Iyengar terminology is backward extensions rather than backward bends. We must extend in order to bend.

My main goal for the week teaching wise is to work on shoulderstand (ranging from basic set up to dropping to the floor).

Last week in Castle Hill class, I realized there is not a uniform understanding of setting up for shoulderstand and I was not really teaching shoulderstand that day, so this week I'm teaching shoulderstand. Happily, it goes quite well with backward bending.

The overall sequence of the week will involve the belly down backward extensions, Ustrasana, sirsasana prep, chair dwi pada and Chatushpadasana, sarvangasana. and some M3 work.

Notes from the week. I had a great time teaching the inversion workshop. It was a good reminder in just being open to teaching who shows up. Sam, Jeff, and Nancy came. While I wished there were more people, I really loved the opportunity to show Sam a few tricks about her headstand and help her find a comfortable way to to sarvangasana, Both poses ended up being a lot about the ribs. Nancy is a beginning level student who spends a lot of time taking level 1 classes at the institute, while she is new to headstand, I was really impressed with her sarvangasana.

In Iyengar Land we teach sarvangasana before sirsasana and it was clear she is being taught it on a regular basis in those classes. It is part of what inspired me to make sure I'm teaching it from the ground up to my students.

Also, update on my resolutions. 15 days into the new year and all three resolutions are still in place. I am starting to feel a bit more extension in my twisting. I remain very aware of how much of the difficulty in twisting is tight ribcage and shoulders. I've been doing a lot of supine revolved triangle. Wow, does it ever illustrate the limitations in the ribs that I can kind of bypass when doing the pose standing, also, I found that my mediation cushion is an ideal Ardha M prop, it stays in one place much better than a folded blanket and give good support for the buttocks.

Happy MLK day by the way. MOre on MLK on the PHI 5312 blog later on today.

There's a lot to learn from the concave back stage.

Legs are key.

they are tiring. By Friday, I'm ready to backward bend with gusto.

vira I to vira III to urdhva Prasarita Eka Padasana.

MI and Malasana.

thus sayeth the aphoristic philosophizing yogini.

So, I'm sitting here getting ready for the first day of class tomorrow. I'm really excited about the Plato Seminar. In fact, thanks to the technology of Word Press and the class blog. I really feel like the class has already started.


Shannon Lee recently posted a picture of me teaching from Light on Yoga at the Castle.
I've made a commitment to teaching people how to unlock the wealth of knowledge in Light on Yoga. I was telling that to Devon's class today and Marianthi said, "that's good. It is a hard book to use."

It was one of those moments where my two lives coalesced into one. I have spent my life teaching people how to read difficult texts, how to make them accessible in their own lives. It really struck me how much I am doing the same thing in two very different contexts. Academia and real world, well as real word as the Austin yoga scene gets.. which may not be that real world. It is its own sort of rarefied plane of existence.

I was also pondering a loud to the class at 4:30 about the question of why it matters what light on yoga says. Why does it matter what Plato says? On some level, I'm completely satisfied with the answer that this is a very smart person doing what I'm interested in doing and I want to see how that person does it. But as Manouso said to me long ago, "you wouldn't be asked that question if yoga didn't have its hooks in you." So for me, the intrinsic interest is enough. I care in and of itself, but why care if you aren't hooked at that level.

I've come up with three metaphors that I will develop in future posts. It is like following a recipe. You don't have to follow it exactly but it gives you basic guidelines. It is like a piece of music. You can change it a bit, but at some point it stops being the song you love. It is like a postcard of the vacation destination you arrive at and a map to the destination all wrapped into one.

Plato's dialogues are the same way. Why care about them? They give us a picture of philosophy in action. Not one we have to follow exactly but it helpfully navigates the terrain of the journey for us.

1. As I was thinking about what to teach this morning in Focus on Form, several principles about forward bending crystallized in my mine. 1. Keep the groin soft. 2. Keep the legs strong. 3. Get length in the spine. 4. The concave back stage is important. 5. the arms have an important job to do with respect to points 3 and 4.

2. BKS Iyengar's remark that Vira III is a continuation of Vira I and Patricia's observation that Urdhva Prasarita Eka Padasana is a continuation of vira III. Follow that trajectory all the way through and you get to supta trivikonasana and hanumanasana. One can trace this trajectory even further back to something like ardha pavanmuktasana.

3. I really enjoyed teaching down in San Marcos last night. The class is quite mixed in terms of age range. About half the class is college age or in the first years out of college. The other half is my age or older. What they all seem to have in common is really liking living in San Marcos and that they are really enthusiastic about good yoga in their own town. I was also struck by how many of them do some sort of creative/active work with their hands, music, music theory, art, baking, home brewing and rope wall building. I am always struck by how classes develop their own personality and a lot of the job as a teacher, in my mind, is to facilitate and simply allow that development to occur. Once it does, there's an important sense in which the class teaches itself.

That's often why I'm a bit nervous at the start of the new semester. I don't know the class yet. It's particular dynamic is yet to be formed, yet to come into being, the component parts are there obviously, the texts, me, the students and the perspectives each of these components bring to the table, but exactly how all that will unfold remains to be seen. I'm actually not nervous about the upcoming Plato seminar. I'm mostly excited to dive into the new experience. It has been a year since I've taught a straight philosophy class and the Greeks are my favorite thing to teach.

4. I've been thinking a good bit about the essentiality of soul in the yogic context. What we are upto in yoga is what Patanjali discusses at the opening of the yoga sutra, "When yoga happens, the seer resides in /sees its true nature." Our true nature is perfect. Yoga is about getting rid of all the things that get in the way of our perception of that. Largely, yoga is a practice of perception, learning to see what truly is the case. By and large, I think this is what Plato was upto as well. Plato lived and wrote before there were clear boundaries between modes of human endeavors (what we might call academic disciplines today) but he was clearly interested in what made philosophy different than say, reciting Homeric epics. Philosophy is the practice that enables us to see what is, what truly is the case about ourselves and the world.

We won't get through all of this in any one of the four classes I'm teaching, but it lists a few basic trajectories through standing and seated forward bends (and a few twists and inversions) that I'll be working from this week.

Enjoy. Hope to see you in class.

Vajrasana

AMVira
AMS
Utt
Malasana Squatting and going foreward
Utt
AMS

Tadasana
UH
UB
Paschima UB
Padahastasana
Padagushtasana
Uttanasana

Ardha Utt
VIII
Urdhva Prasarita Ekapadasana

Dadandasana
Navasana
Ubbaya Padangusthasana
Urdhva Prasarita Padasana 30 60 90

M1
M3
BI


Maha Mudra Prep
JS
Ardha Baddapadmo paschimottanasana

AMS
AMVrk
PM
Sirsasana

Chair Dwi

Chatush
Sarvangasana I and II
Halasana

Maha Mudhra

Savasana

This post has four parts, 1. on my new side bar with yoga schedule and teaching yoga, 2. on writing philosophy, 3. on resolutions and practice, 4. a word about the Plato seminar blog.

1. I'm going to start putting my weekly teaching schedule up on the side bar of this blog. So if you want to know where to take yoga with me each week, check here.

I had a busy week teaching last week. I taught two private lessons, the San Marcos School of Yoga started back, I taught at Castle Hill, and I subbed three classes for Devon and did the Friday Practice. My life as a yoga teacher on my last week of vacation from Baylor.

I taught a few trajectories through the standing poses. One took a Gomukasana route, another a Parsva hasta padangustasana route, Standing Pose sequence I worked with most of the week. I posted the San Marcos Sequence last week, here’s the other two trajectories boiled into one sequence.


Tadasana
UH
UB
Gomukasana Arms
Garudasana
Full Gomukasana
AMS
Vrksasana
Utthita Hasta Padangushtasana
Parsva Utthita Hasta Padangushtasana
AMVrk
Sirsasana
Chair Dwi Pada
Sarvangasana
Maha Muhdra prep
Paschimottanasana

I’ve been working a lot with linkages between poses in teaching and it has led to some intriguing insights, for example, a Gomukasana arm and the balance we learn in Vrksasana eventually comes to fruition in Natarajasana. It is almost like the basic standing poses are seed, or bija mantras, that we repeat in various forms and levels of intensity as we progress in practice. We never leave them.

2. On writing Philosophy
I also spent some time working on a comparative paper on Epictetus, a stoic philosopher, and Patanjali, a Samkaya yogic philosopher. I wrote a draft of it in the past two weeks, the writing group has it now. I’ll work more on it this week, and incorporate the writing group suggestions and then we’ll see if it gets accepted at the Rochester conference. It is a good lesson in the perils of procrastination. I really should have given myself more time to get this together, but if it doesn't get into this venue, there are plenty of others. I'm excited about the project as it is another way I'm bringing my yoga and my philosophy lives into harmony.

Here’s the abstract for those who are interested.
Stoically Stilling the Fluctuations of the Mind: A Comparative Exploration of Epictetus and Patanjali.

In this paper, I will place the stoic philosopher Epictetus (55-135 ce)
in conversation with the yogic philosopher, Patanjali (~1-2 century ce). My purpose in doing so is to illuminate a few basic similarities in the philosophic advice that these thinkers offered their students and by extension, their contemporary readers. Despite the very different contexts in which these thinkers lived, both have useful advice about how to live and practice a philosophical life in our stress-filled contemporary world. Drawing upon elements of both these thinkers can help us in our own ongoing quest to know ourselves, our relations with others and our relation with the world most fully. This paper divides into four parts. First, I present some biographical information about the two thinkers and the historical context in which they taught. Second, I explore some resonate similarities in their written work. Third, I draw out salient differences in the overall goals of their philosophical practices. Finally, I consider ways we might incorporate both stoic and yogic practices in our own lives.


3. Resolutions and Practice. One week into the new year and all three of my resolutions are in tact. More twisting, more time with Jeff in the morning, and no using the phone while driving. Now that I am not part of the widespread public health problem of texting while driving it is amazing how often I see how prevalent it is. Jeff and I were almost hit by a cell phone driver who was going straight from a left turn only lane. On the other side of us was a person looking right down at her lap waiting for the light to change. Please stop everyone. I can not believe there is not the same sort of public safety awareness about it as there is for drinking and driving.

I myself feel much less stressed when driving because I am more focus. I am also aware that for me to make this one work for myself, I have to have zero tolerance about it. A cold turkey sort of quitting. Other new habits and resolutions work better for me with an easing in or easing out strategy. .

The twisting is going well also, I'm now at the stage where it feels good in the morning rather than the oh I really don't want to do that stage. Having the rope wall helps a lot. It adds a whole range of ways to do parivritta poses and standing marichyasana with the rope wall is great. Overall, the rope wall gives me tons more leverage in all the twists.

I was reminded of the idea of practice as a labratory, where we test and experiment with what we learn this weekend. I went to a lovely inversion class this weekend with Sharon Conroe who was in town to do a workshop with Peggy. She taught a sequence that Abijata taught in Pune this december, with frequent advice from BKS about where he really wanted the student attention. In a nutshell, it's all about the feet and the hands. Sharon said that, of course we trust our teachers and do what they say in practice, but it really isn't until we've verified what works for us in our own practice that we know it.

4. I'm excited about teaching the Plato seminar. Last I checked I have 8 students which in my mind is in the ideal range of 7-14 for a grad seminar. I'm experimenting with a class collaborative blog which you can check out at http://blogs.baylor.edu/phi531201s12/

We'll be doing a few dialogues that I worked with in A Philosophic Muse, but much of the course is geared toward helping me chart out the trajectory of part two of my narrative work, Socratic Epics.

That's it for now. I need to leave to teach.