This sounds ridiculous — because it is. But I just enjoyed a bubble bath in which I played my Radiohead channel on my iPhone Pandora app (great app for traveling, by the way) as I read about today’s major stock market drops seen in the United States and across European powerhouses.
It’s quite the juxtaposition to read about financial markets tanking while out here in McCloud, Calif. — where you always have a view of Mt. Shasta, considered a deeply spiritual place by Native American cultures — with no real obligations except to feed your body, mind and spirit with Ashtanga yoga practices, discussion on yoga philosophy and hikes that take you past sweeping vistas and natural springs.
There are times when I go on vacation and completely disconnect — not even so much as sending a tweet. There are also vacations such as this one where I feel less taxed if I can touch base with the outside world now and then. As a former journalist, I feel pretty strongly that it takes an informed citizenry to foster a strong open government. I don’t want to pretend that terrible riots haven’t been taking place in London, and I don’t want to miss out on the broader discussion about the role social media played in the unfolding of the violence.
After an afternoon of hiking through beautiful expanses of wildflowers, it’s interesting to think about whether Ashtanga yoga brings heightened relevance to current events, or whether a retreat such as this one allows yogis like me to sidestep the realities of the world for a few blissful days.
You’ll be shocked — shocked! — (guess I didn’t leave my sarcasm in Michigan) to hear me say that I think a yoga practice that speaks to the traditional eight limbs of yoga is not at all a withdrawal from the world’s very real challenges. If anything, what yoga allows us to do is continually improve ourselves on the deepest level, and in that way, make an important contribution to the greater social good.
How does that work?
During our evening class tonight, the discussion eventually led to the question of what the sutras that guide the yogic system say about the causes of vrittis. The most accepted definition of yoga is that it is the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind. Those fluctuations of the mind — the vrittis — lead to a lot of problems. Lots and lots of problems.
What causes the fluctuations? A pretty long list of states, such as illness, stagnation, impatience, incorrect viewpoint, etc.
Tim Miller asked our group about people who are not at all connected to their body. If they are not in their own body, where are they?
Yep — they are solidly in their head.
Tim called it “Vritti-ville,” which made us laugh (yeah, yeah, yoga humor. Trust me, it’s funny if you do yoga. 
).
I know it can seem like a bit of hypocrisy to say that yoga is not about contorting the body when the series of Ashtanga get increasingly more challenging and does demand that the practitioner do postures worthy of Cirque du Soleil. But as Tim said tonight, “In Ashtanga yoga, we keep pushing the envelope of proprioception. The point is to cultivate the refinement of proprioceptive abilities.”
Proprioception is basically awareness of one’s own body — the ability to know what the parts of the body are doing without looking in a mirror.
Achieving these increasingly difficult yoga postures requires so much — including focus, practice, patience and not only a deep awareness of the breath, but ability to control the breath and the body’s energy locks. And as Tim reminded us tonight, thanks to the body-mind connection, we can indirectly control the mind by controlling the breath.
I often think about the corporate world when I think about the benefits of yoga. I’ve worked with people didn’t seem to have any idea how to read the signals of their own body, which led to them not being able to create a circuit-breaker for high stress levels. This, in turn, triggered desperate attempts to cope with that stress by being very reactive and lashing out at people around them. I think that if everyone in corporate America had to practice yoga and learn to read their body and connect to their breath, we could potentially create more compassionates cultures in our workplaces — and that would make a real difference in quality of life for millions of people.
I am not so idealistic that I think we would attain world peace if everyone simply started to practice yoga, nor do I think we could eliminate man-made calamities such as stock market crashes if yoga were more popular. But if everyone took it upon themselves to find something in their life to help them connect to their body in a meaningful and disciplined way — be it yoga, martial arts, sports training or dancing — we might have more balanced tendencies as a society.
Like everyone else, I have a long way to go to become a zen master. When I come to a retreat like this one, it is for selfish reasons. Absolutely. Out of that selfishness, however, I am hopefully a better person in general, and hopefully those around me also benefit by having a less reactive Rose on their hands.
By the way, I chose a bubble bath tonight that had eucalyptus and arnica in it to soothe my sore muscles. Don’t let the moniker “retreat” fool you — with Tim Miller, a retreat involves getting up at 6:30 a.m. for 2.5 hours of a physical (asana) and a breath (pranayama) practice, followed by an afternoon hike (some of which kick your asana, as you know if you read my post yesterday), and an evening class built around questions and discussions.
This retreat is work, and what you get out of it depends on what you invest in it. If you were considering coming to this second series retreat or the primary series retreat in 2012 or beyond, I can guarantee that you’ll get a far better rate of return on your dollar than any stock that exists out there.
In this series:
© YogaRose.net and Rose Tantraphol, 2011. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to YogaRose.net with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
)