Yoga is not what it seems

Charles Weidman --Photo by Barbara Morgan (1944). Gift of Mr. and Mrs. David C. Ruttenberg, 1987 

I admit that I've had it out for yoga for years. It is not the fact that people are getting to know themselves by practicing something physical with discipline, that part I find beautiful. My problem has always been that yoga seemed so "in the box" when compared to dance and martial arts. To put it bluntly, if your "downward dog" doesn't eventually scamper around the room and chase its tail, what is the point?

Years ago I had a dance teacher who trained with one of the early moderns,

Charles Weidman. Incidentally, his stuff rocked. Anyway she said to the class one day, "You know at some point during the late 70's people started saying that the way I start my class is like yoga. It wasn't until years later that I took a yoga class and saw what they meant. I wonder where those early modern dancers learned it?" Hmmm....

I was at a party a couple of years ago and spoke with a woman who made a lot of dough in the first internet explosion. She has been a Zen practitioner for 30 years and has practiced yoga for the last 20. She told me that when she first started practicing yoga, the meditation component was entirely Vippassina oriented. Meaning that it was a process of examining and transcending the body. Now yoga classes are almost all Zen (what she referred to as the "Insight" tradition) oriented meditation, meaning they see the precision of the posture as the method and the result, non-conceptual, non-transcendent, emptiness without a goal.

She wasn't really taking sides as to which type of meditation goes better with yoga, and neither am I, she was just saying it is an unacknowledged innovation.

Well, maybe this article from Yoga Journal will shed some light, as the yoga crew are fond of saying. The article is partly a review of The Yoga Tradition of the Mysore Palace by N. E. Sjoman, as this quote shows:

Modern hatha yoga draws on British gymnastics? The yoga of Iyengar, Pattabhi Jois, and Krishnamacharya influenced by a potpourri that included Indian wrestlers? These are claims guaranteed to send a frisson of horror up the limber spine of any yoga fundamentalist. But according to Sjoman, his book is meant not to debunk yoga, but to pay tribute to it as a dynamic, growing, and ever-changing art.

Here is a quick quote from an Amazon review:

The core of the book is a translation of a text from the 1800s from the private library of the Mysore palace which is the only textual documentation of an extended asana practice - asanas being the yoga positions that form the core of yoga practice today.

I haven't read the book but it purportedly explains that the standing and inverted posses in yoga come from western gymnastics and the ubiquitous "sun salutations" come from Indian wrestling!

Is it true? I don't know, but you gotta love this stuff.

Oh, and just in case anybody is wondering (or listening) all that health stuff about how this or that posture is good for this or that organ, this or that problem...that all happened in the last ten years! --Intelligent people combining personal experience with wishful thinking and a little (Martha Steward inspired) "distressing" the surface to give it that antique feel!

Check out this wonderful list of all the things people are doing with Yoga these days over at Jen's Reviews. 18 Amazing Benefits of Yoga, According to Science.

Eating Bitter

Well, now that it is spring I will give some simple nutritional advise.

Eat one umeboshi pulm a day. Umeboshi is a special preserved plum from Japan that is really sour, squish up your face sour. It is prepared with shiso leafs (sesame). The sourness will be a jolt to your system, which feels great coming out of winter into spring. Think of it as breaking up the ice and letting the rivers flow. Umiboshi will create a lot of saliva and invigorate your digestion. It literally makes me want to squirm and jump.

I have a real appetite for umeboshi, but I didn't know that until I was in my twenties in Japan. At first I just ate them when I sat down to breakfast because everyone else was eating one. It was like a "I can survive this!" challenge.  Over time I felt my body start to gently crave umiboshi.

Americans are so used to eating by taste, they will often claim not to know what appetite is, outside of "I'm starving." Appetite is sensitivity to your internal organs.  Sensitivity of what each part of your system needs. The muscles crave blood like thirsty vampires. Organs which have a role in producing blood all extract different types of gu qi (nutrition) from food. These organs communicate what foods they need in order to produce quality blood through appetite.

All internal martial arts improve appetite sensitivity,...if you are paying attention.

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Bitter melon was in my local farmer's market this fall and winter. I'm not sure if it was there during the summer when Chinese traditionally eat the bitterest foods. Americans only eat bitter with sweet in the form of burnt things. That ruins the effect.

Bitter foods like grapefruit and bitter melon are really good for improving the function of the liver, which is in charge of blood distribution throughout the body. The heart's job is really easy if the liver is working optimally, so bitter foods are considered especially good for the heart.

Alcohol and sugar go right to the heart and brain, so the liver doesn't get a workout. Alcoholics often have really healthy hearts when they die of liver disease. Here is an article about Bitter melon and the seemingly endless modern experiment to completely ignore the role of appetite in health.

and here too. 

note: My current favorite way to prepare raw bitter melon is to slice it very thinly, sprinkle it with salt and leave it for 4 to 6 hours covered in the fridge.   (A single portion raw is a one inch chunk.)

Down With Health!

I'm really starting to hate qigong.


A member of my extended family who is a famous lawyer once said to me that she couldn't understand people who do things for their health when they aren't having any health problems.

I'm sick of hearing people ask, "What is this good for?" The operative this being some exercise or even some entire internal martial art.

But I'm even more sick of the answers other teachers give. "This is good for lowering blood pressure," "This one is helpful for diabetes symptoms," "Do this everyday and you'll never get migraines," "This is proven to help with balance problems as you age."

This is all just as lazy as the infantile martial arts extremists who say you should practice so that if by a stroke of bad luck you happen to get attacked, you will be thoroughly trained to defend yourself against all odds.

Listen world! If you want to have a long life, your best shot is having friends of different ages in different walks of life. Be part of a complex active social network.

If you want to be healthy, take a walk everyday.

The reasons for studying internal martial arts are: truth and beauty. Study because you want to explore the truth about how your body works, how it feels, how it changes, and how it operates in diverse situations. Study because you want to experience the truth about the stuff you are made of, about the situation of your birth.

The discovery of beauty requires perception, sentience, introspection, and re-creation. The discovery of beauty comes from making mistakes, from getting it wrong, from mis-seeing things and then changing your way of knowing.


Please, trust me. If you know your body inside out from deep daily experience and exploration you will have tools for healing and transformation that are beyond what most other people can comprehend. It's like an extra bonus that comes with the territory.

Qigong was invented as a distinct category during the Communist era to answer the inane question, "What is this good for?"

Bones

There is a Chinese expression that goes, "You know it so well it is written on your bones." First I should explain where this expression comes from.

In Daoism the quest for immortality is extremely varied and so quite difficult to define; however, a significant factor in immortality is that other people recognize you have become an immortal at the time of your death or sometime after your death. The so called "highest" way to demonstrate becoming an immortal at the moment of death is to "Rise up in broad daylight with your dogs and chicken." Zhang Daoling (the founder of Religious Daoism) did this, as did his wife, his 3 sons and their wives.

Dao Hongjing and Ge Hong, the two most famous alchemists, became immortals simply by hiring a carriage (you know, a taxi) taking a trip out into the wilderness and then "Sending the Carriage Back Empty." There are hundreds of unique (loosely) documented ways of demonstrating the transition to being an immortal. Often when Chinese people died they were put into big ceramic jars in a squatting position. Then, after their skin and organs had fully decomposed their bones were transfered to a smaller jar. It turns out that some immortals were recognized during this transfer of bones because Daoist sacred texts (like the Daodejing for instance) were written on their bones!

You can tell an enormous amount about how someone lived by studying their bones. The shape, density, places of wear, and chemical composition of a persons bones tell a real story. This is the premise of the wonderful Fox T.V. show Bones where a forensic anthropologist and an FBI agent team up to solve crimes by looking at bones. Since my sister is an Archaeologist I sometimes call her up after watching the show to find out if what they did on the show could really happen. Often it can! My sister says she can often tell what kinds of work a person did, or what kind of weapons a person used by looking at their bones.

This got me thinking. It must be possible to tell what kind of martial arts a person was doing by looking at their bones. I want to know if there are people with Taijiquan type bones or Shaolin type bones a thousand years ago. This could be done, and eventually it could be done so well that we could see the entire history of martial arts by region over 3 thousand years!!!

So little is known about our physiology. It is hard to put a percentage on, but if we know more than 10% of what there is to know about physiology I would be surprised. Here is some very cool new research about bones, here too.

...(N)ew research shows that bones release a protein called osteocalcin involved in controlling sugar and fat absorption, thus acting like a hormone....

"Because osteocalcin is secreted by one organ and acts on others, it fits the definition of a hormone, making bones part of the endocrine system..."

What do you have written on your bones?

Master Cat

A long time ago Tiger was awkward and clumsy. Lacking skill he found a great gongfu master and begged him to accept him as a student. This is how he came to study with Master Cat.

Tiger studied and practiced Master Cat's lessons with great diligence until one day, after many years, he believed he was more powerful and more skillful than Master Cat.

Tiger said to Master Cat, "Thank you Shifu, you have taught me all your greatest secrets and now my gongfu is superior to yours, now I'm going to eat you!"

In the time it took Tiger to say these words, Master Cat had scaled a tree and walked out on a branch, "Oh," said Master Cat, "There was one thing I forgot to teach you."

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I like this story for its cuteness and because it plays on what we think we know about natural ability. Did the tiger really learn all his gongfu from a cat? It makes sense to me.

But the story also takes for granted the paranoid old master. I have felt that fear of giving away gongfu secrets lurking there in even the most open and generous masters.

Even as we can feel Daoist inspiration surging through the internal martial arts, nudging us to let go of fear as a driving force in our quest for power--the lingering mythic fear of the Mongols, the Qing Dynasty, the Taiping Rebellion, the Boxer Rebellion, WWII, the Purges, the Great Leap, the Re-education camps....haunts our movements and our practice.

Self Defense (Not)!

Of course, self-defense is not a traditional Chinese idea, village defense perhaps, crop defense probably, and family defense sure thing-- but the idea that I might need to learn self-defense to dispatch bullies or muggers, not so likely.

After all, when I was ten years old I knew what every Chinese merchant also knew; if you want to deal with bandits you're better off having a large number of armed guards, or even better, getting the government or an army to protect the roads or even hunt the bandits down with overwhelming force of numbers.

I knew that bullies who resist trickery, slight of hand, and psychic intimidation, can be dealt with by enlisting the overwhelming force of a bigger friend, a tougher friend, a group of friends, or just adults who wield punishments more severe and longer lasting than fisticuffs.

I did not begin studying martial arts because I wanted to be able to defend myself, quite to the contrary. I took up the arts because I had a huge amount of natural aggression. I'm talking about explosive aggression that by ten I had already learned I needed to tame. At ten I knew that to be accepted by the adult world I needed to suppress my own spontaneous desire to smash and bash!

No, I started studying martial arts so that I would have a place to explode, a place where it was safe to be aggressive because I would be in the company of people who could defend themselves from ME!

Hat tip: This came up because I was ranting over at formosaneijia

Link: Scientific American:  This kind of research is pure evil because if there is a genetic cause for my aggression and they find it, there will be a push to make sure people like me are not born in the first place!

Milking it

I was performing Wuhudao (five tiger sword), a classic Northern Shaolin form for some first graders the other day. We had a conversation I've had many times with many different groups of kids.

I perform, I bow, the kids clap, "Are there any questions?"

First kid, "Can that sword kill someone?"

Me, "As you can see if you look closely if isn't sharpened." I bring it over for the students to inspect.

Second kid, "Was it sharpened when you first got it?"

Me, "No, it is an authentically weighted practice sword, for training gongfu. It was never sharp."

Third kid, "Could that sword kill somebody?"

Me, "Hhhmmm"

First kid again, "But could that sword be used to kill someone?"

Me, " I think you guys are asking the wrong question."

Another kid, "Would that sword be able to kill someone?"

Me, "Of course this sword could be used to kill someone, but so could a glass of milk. A glass of milk in the wrong hands could become a deadly weapon."

First kid again, "I want to get a sword!"

Absent

I've been absent from my blogging duties far too much the last two weeks.  Here's why:
I'm working on some other writing for a book on Daoism and those deadlines are coming up.

I just went to LA for a Paulie Zink Monkey style gongfu workshop this weekend.   I drove a sporty yellow rent-a-car, met some nice people, experienced some great weather with pollution enhanced sunsets, and did a lot of monkey style.  I'm been walking on my fists, rolling, jumping, hopping, grabbing, kicking and shreeking in the lowest of the low, low stances.  These stances are what they call "under the table."

Throughout the workshop I was a bad student.  I tried to stay consistent with my theories of not stretching or building muscle.  (Hey, monkeys don't do that stuff!) The results are good so far, no pain, but I've been tired.  I have that "so tired" feeling it is as if each individual cell in my body is uniquely tired.

My half-wife has been moving her acupuncture business to a bigger, brighter, better location.  Everyday is a new exciting drama.  I've been helping with everything I can.  She in exchange has been keeping a journal of every time I say something about how my body hurts.  This came about after she told me I was becoming like a hypochondriac because I report the tiniest little change or weirdness in my body.  I protested that I hardly ever complain, so she decided to keep a record of my complaints.  Now I just come home and say, "Get your book out!"

Two weekends ago I did a George Xu workshop in the middle of a rain and windstorm.  It was outdoors under a small outdoor sheltered area in front of an elementary school.  We had to make sure people were being pushed into the wall because if they were pushed the other way they would have fallen out into the rain and down a bunch of stairs.  I really prefer the warm weather practice, but it wouldn't be gongfu if preferences mattered.

Next week I'm planning on doing a Body Mind Centering workshop on ligaments.
Oh, and I have a full teaching schedule... but don't worry, blogging is my fate.

The Quest for Power (Part 3)

In the two previous posts, I wrote that the quest for power is born when our survival feels threatened and arises from qi deficiency which creates conflicting emotions. I also wrote about how the quest for power begets sacrifice.

In the Chinese martial arts we have the expression "Ox power" to describe simple muscular strength. Generally speaking, the first stage of martial training is to get rid of ox power and replace it with "muscle tendon lengthening power" and (depending on the focus of the school) fighting technique.

This process can be generalized for all pursuits of power. All power is preliminary. Give up a low position in the government in order to take on a higher one. If your climb up the corporate ladder is obstructed it may be time to start your own company.
We don't get new power without letting go of old ideas about power. Following this observation to its logical conclusion or extreme, letting go of all ideas of power will open up the biggest possibilities. All the Daoist classics say in one way or another, if you want strength cultivate weakness.

The quest for power is a natural out growth of fear. Fear can arise with or without apparent cause. The brilliance of Daoist thought in this regard is the recognition that there are physiological processes which bring about the experience of fear and the feeling that our survival is threatened.

Daoist practices often explore power from the point of view of what is being sacrificed. Instead of seeking to harness fear for the accumulation of power, these practices teach our bodies how fear arises and how it takes hold. These practices do not eliminate fear. They simply teach our bodies that there is an option to let go of fear when it does arise.

For instance, the Daoist Calendar can be understood as a tool for observing and resolving the fear that arises from not being able to control or predict the future.

Obviously there is no 'One Right Way' of dealing with the fear of not knowing what is coming next! The term "Orthodox Daoism" Zhengyidao- literally means: The One True Way; however, what the term really refers to is an orthodox set of experiments that have been tried and tested over many years. Just because they are orthodox, doesn't mean they will work for you, but the only way to know for sure is to test them yourself.

Internal martial arts clearly have some Daoist origins. It is fair to say they are Daoist inspired to the extent that they treat power as a physiological experiment which over time exchanges power for casual potency and transforms fear into naturalness (ziran). That being said, Martial Arts are not Orthodox Daoist practices because they contain so many potencial pitfalls. Once you have accumulated power, it is often hard to give it up because it seems like you have a "leg up" on everyone around you.


What makes a specific approach to meditation or ritual Zhengyi (Orthodox) is that it has proven over the centuries to be a more direct route to simplicity.

Teaching 6 and 7 year olds is a process of getting them to give up screaming and crying for more sophisticated forms of power, like carefully chosen words. Of course they could learn to use their crying in increasingly more manipulative ways, or they could just keep developing their screaming power and it might someday become formidable. One of the nice things about teaching kids is that they haven't developed Ox Power yet, so I don't have to un-teach it. That step can be skipped.

Acquiring each new type of power requires letting go of the previous type of power that worked for you. The type of power we use is part of our story. It is wrapped up in our identity and our body image. In a sense, our Power Body, is our system for storing fear. Letting go of a big fear requires a big commitment, but letting go of a small fear can be more difficult because it isn't obvious what triggers it, how it is stored, or where it came from in the first place.

This is how it works: Bad choices can be overcome by new better choices. Old ghostly decisions, the ones you aren't even aware you made a commitment too, are much harder to change.

Where does the quest for power ultimately lead? Death. People often set up their deaths so that they will continue to accumulate power after they are dead. (The biggest part of Fengshui is not how to arrange your freaking living room! It is trying to limit the negative influences your ancestors have already put in motion!)

The idea behind using Eunuchs in the royal courts was that they wouldn't be constantly using their position to try and install their offspring into positions of power. The irony is that having no balls turned them into ego maniacs that wanted power just for themselves.

As far as accumulating power while we are still alive, the Chinese pinnacle of power has always been to become the emperor. The job of emperor is considered the most potent job there is. The traditional Chinese ideal is that the country is being well run when the emperor has nothing to do. Similarly in Chinese medicine, the heart only has a job when the other organs are out of whack. If the emperor or the heart is actively trying to accomplish something, everybody is in trouble.

The Quest for Power (Part 2)

The Orthodox Daoist take on the quest for power that I related in the previous post likely grew out of a context in which Shamanic and Trance-medium practices were the dominant form of religious expression.

Shaman and mediums use a long list of techniques to reach an altered state which takes them on a journey, or entices a deity to take over their body. Dancing frenetically or for a very long time, altered breathing patterns, chanting and singing, drinking or taking drugs, fasting or eating extreme foods, staying outdoors in bad weather; these are all used by Shaman and Mediums to enter altered states of consciousness, often to the point of passing out.

Shaman and Mediums come back from these performance "trips" with special knowledge, and often special powers which appear to be conferred on them through these experiences.

Orthodox Daoists came to view these practices as journeys toward death. These practices deplete qi, and tend to dramatically shorten life-span. The quest for this type of power entails giving up a part of yourself, a self-sacrifice in exchange for power.

Orthodox Daoists then began to see parallel characteristics in all quests for power. Power begets sacrifice.

A great deal of exercise is framed as a quest for power, they tell you to give up something now for a super body in the future. Push yourself through the difficulty and the pain, put your money down, and you will be rewarded with beauty, recovered youth, or superior abilities.

Often times, quests for power are remedies for the side effects of other quests for power. Working too hard at a job 60 hours a week? Try yoga! That back hurting from the long commute and the all the time in front of the computer? Join our fitness club and we'll not only fix your back, we'll even improve your sex life!

This happens to be the way people are, so the first covenant of Orthodox Daoism is to not get in the way of peoples pursuit of power unless it involves the direct taking of life (blood sacrifice).

Daoism does not reject the pursuit of power. The first line of the Daodejing, (sometimes translated "The Way of Power") suggests that we can have an experience which is unmediated by words, ideas, images, or metaphors. Like power, words are not rejected.

Recognition of the mechanism by which words define and limit our experience does not stop us from appreciating them. The mechanism by which we accumulate power is a fascinating part of human experience, even though it limits our experience and has a tendency to shorten our lives. We have the option of putting on those "power" shoes or going barefoot.