tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56707250568805411352024-03-13T23:59:48.766-07:00shivers up the spineShivers up the Spine is an online journal about Yoga.priya thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17104604630551238443noreply@blogger.comBlogger4715tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5670725056880541135.post-83433494208004137762014-05-11T12:56:00.000-07:002014-05-11T12:56:12.646-07:00For Every Phase of the Moon: Toronto Yoga Educator Diane Bruni on Resilience and Reinvention<span class="dropcaps"></span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Diane Bruni, both photos: House of Bonas</span></td></tr>
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<span class="dropcaps">O </span>n Friday, April 13th, 2012, Toronto yoga educator Diane Bruni was diagnosed with an aggressive form of stage 3 breast cancer and the dark side of the moon so graphically tattooed on her left arm (always a focus of my curiosity and admiration to be honest) would be a reminder that life mirrors the moon and its half-lit cycles, forcing tides and bodies into unknown mutations, welcoming ebb and change on a cellular level... <br />
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No stranger to radical reinvention, (the kind that tests all existing assumptions about what it means to live and move) Diane Bruni’s powerful exploratory classes are well-known to anyone who has ever set foot in Toronto’s Downward Dog Yoga Centre, that iconic institution dedicated to ashtanga yoga that Diane co-founded with business partner, Ron Reid. Yet, despite being frequently identified as an ashtangi, Diane’s personal practice as of the past ten years has in fact been far less interested in those virtuosic performances of lithe physicality commonly associated with the syllabi of the Jois lineage, than they have been with those more subtle cues of movement efficacy: grace, fluidity, circularity and resilience. Resilience in particular forms a cornerstone of Diane’s practice. With that in mind, Diane opened <a href="http://www.80gladstone.com/" target="_blank">80 Gladstone </a>– carefully carving out a spot in Toronto from which to cultivate yoga not as its own segregated practice, but as part of a much larger matrix of movement practices that bridge the martial arts to dance and beyond.<br />
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Diane Bruni has been practicing yoga for 35 years, teaching students for 20 years, and training teachers for nearly two decades. The first Ashtanga yoga teacher in Canada, Bruni co-founded the <a href="http://www.downwarddog.com/" target="_blank">Downward Dog Yoga Centre</a>, and hosted an internationally aired television series called Breathing Space Yoga. Her new studio at <a href="http://www.80gladstone.com/" target="_blank">80 Gladstone</a> avenue in Toronto is a movement and yoga research lab where innovative new ways to practice yoga, move and heal are being born. The creative incubator has birthed a revolutionary form on body work called <a href="http://80gladstone.com/tensegrity-therapy/" target="_blank">Tensegrity Touch Therapy</a> that incorporates treatment done on a bed of balls, as well as a new yoga prop called the Body Braid, a thick elastic woven onto the body following the spiral lines. <br />
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In our conversation, Diane talks about her early years studying kundalini with Yogi Bhajan, with the BKS Iyengar/Scaravelli trained <a href="http://www.somatv.com/StretchAliveLisaSchwartz" target="_blank">Lisa Schwartz</a>, and later, her training with <a href="http://www.yogaworkshop.com/" target="_blank">Richard Freeman</a> and extraordinary partnership with Toronto’s <a href="http://www.downwarddog.com/web/index.php?Itemid=57" target="_blank">Ron Reid</a>. She also talks about how through her diverse explorations into dance and varied movement practices, she has tried to come to terms with the realities of her own body, not as an ideal embodiment of any classical practice, but as an instrument pliable enough to confront injury, illness and the changing realities of everyday life.<br />
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<span style="color: #660000;"><b>"When you're living and dealing with a diagnosis like cancer you question everything. You question the water you drink, you question the plastic bags that are carrying your food, everything. Everything feels like it could be a potential reason why I have cancer, why so many people have cancer. And I also believe that there's always an emotional component in any illness. It may not be the cause of it, but it's definitely an opportunity to confront and to deal with whatever emotional issues are underlying the surface of your existence that you're not dealing with and you're not processing, something that you'd suppressed.</b>" (Diane Bruni)</span></blockquote>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Diane Bruni, photo (bottom) House of Bonas</span></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #660000;"> "<b>What happened was I started questioning yoga, of course. I wondered what went wrong with me and my body. And I was really curious. I was always reading. And I was reading a book written by a physiotherapist and dancer. And the book was about anatomy and movement. And I was learning so much from this book about my body and how it moved. Not about yoga poses, not about yoga philosophy, but about my body and how it was designed move. Not designed to hold postures in a static position, but designed to move. And I said: What else is out there in the world of dance that might be interesting to me?” </b>(Diane Bruni)</span></blockquote>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yuan Sifu (Shaolin Monk) and Diane Bruni at 80 Gladstone, photo: Earl Beadle</td></tr>
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<b>Shivers Up the Spine: The Yoga Examiner</b><br />
<b>A Conversation with Diane Bruni at 80 Gladstone, January 2014.</b><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Diane Bruni, photo: House of Bonas</span></td></tr>
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> Was your encounter with Yogi Bhajan in 1978 your first contact with yoga?<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Yogi Bhajan, brought Kundalini to Toronto in the 70s</span></td></tr>
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<b>Diane Bruni:</b> <i>Yeah it was my very first. And it was initiated when I met a woman. I was working at the Toronto Zoo. I was 19 years old. I had a job there for two weeks.</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> You came to yoga through the zoo? That’s an odd one. What were you doing?<br />
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<b>Diane Bruni:</b> <i>In the gift shop. And I hated it as soon as I got my first paycheck. But I worked there for two weeks. And during that time this woman walked in and she came up to the counter. She was buying something and she was with a bunch of kids. And we made eye contact. And I knew something was up with this woman. Here's a white woman wearing a turban with a bunch of kids and they all had their hair tied up in little white buns on the top of their head. And I asked her. I said, “What's with the getup?” And she laughed, smiled just like that. She said, “Oh, well, we belong to a community called 3HO and we practice Kundalini Yoga every day. And I said, “What's that?” And she said, “Well, it's a type of yoga our teacher Yogi Bhajan brought over from India. We all live together in an ashram.”</i><br />
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<i>“Where?" I said... </i><br />
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<i>I thought she was going to say Tibet or something. She said, “On Palmerston Avenue downtown in Toronto.” And I just was really struck by this woman. I'd never met anyone like that before. And many months passed and I was walking on Harbord Street one day and I looked into a health food store, and there she was, the same woman!</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> Odd.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">White Tantra at Church of the Holy Trinity (Toronto, 2011)</span></td></tr>
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<b>Diane Bruni:</b> <i>Yeah. So I walk in. I recognized her right away. And I'm not sure if she recognized me or not. We started chatting and she said, “What are you doing tonight?” And I said, “Well, I'm going to a party.” And she handed me a flier. She said, “My teacher is in town this weekend. I think you should come.” And I said, “Oh, I've never done yoga before.” She said, “That's perfect. That's why you should come. This would be an amazing introduction for you.” And I made a phone call saying to my friends, “I can't come out to the party tonight. There's somewhere else I have to go.” They were really upset with me and I went anyways. I walked into the Holy Trinity Church. You know where that is? </i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> Yeah.<br />
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<b>Diane Bruni:</b> <i>Yeah. And they had come from all around. There were about 200 of them there. They were all dressed in their full attire. It's really an intense experience to be there watching this. So I sat at the side because I wasn't sure I was going to go in. And some man came to sit beside me and he said, “Are you going to be joining us tonight.” I said, “I don't know, I've never done this before.” He said, “Well, you came here. You're here now.” He said, “You might as well come in and sit with us and join us.” So I trusted him and off I went and got my spot. Did you know Yogi Bhajan?</i><br />
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<b> Priya Thomas:</b> I know of him...<br />
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<b>Diane Bruni:</b> <i>But have you ever seen the white tantra?</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas: </b><i>Yes.</i><br />
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<b>Diane Bruni:</b> <i>So that's what it was. That's what he was beginning that night in Toronto. And it was transformative. I walked out of that building and that experience that night and looked around like everything was, oh my god, brand new! And I actually had to stop and question whether or not I had taken any drugs before going in. I was in such an altered state that I had to remind myself that this was completely natural, that I hadn't taken anything.</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> You took a chance and showed up there. Why? <br />
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<b>Diane Bruni</b>: <i>I was looking for something. I knew I was at a point in my life where what I was doing wasn't working. I was doing drugs and hanging out with people who were partying all the time. And feeling really shitty. And I knew that I wasn't in a good place. And I hadn't been for many years since I ran away from home when I was 16. And I had just moved back home. And I was ready to make a shift in my life. I moved back home so that I could get my life back together again because I just went a little wild for a few years. And yeah, I went too far. And I was really lucky I had a home to go back to and get grounded again.</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> Shortly after that you met Lisa Schwartz?<br />
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<b>Diane Bruni:</b> <i>Well, I became very much a part of the Kundalini community after that experience. Then I went to Shiatsu school, and it was in that Shiatsu program that I met someone doing Iyengar yoga. So I went to check it out and it was completely different than Kundalini yoga. So I ended up connecting to the Iyengar community because I knew I needed to learn a few things. There was a lot of knowledge, a lot of research that had been done on the asanas and I wanted to tap into that. I could feel the effects of that knowledge in my body immediately. With Kundalini yoga, there's no attention to alignment, no understanding really about how the physical body is put together. It's all about the energy body. Iyengar yoga is much more about the physical body, which of course influences the energy body. So I knew it was really good for me, but I hated it. And I didn't like the teachers there. And one day I was there and I had heard people talking about Lisa Schwartz, that she was just in India with Iyengar for two years. So I looked her up in the phone book and finally one day I went to her house and she answered the door.</i><br />
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<i>I said, “I want to take yoga with you.” </i><br />
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<i>She said, “What does that mean, you want to take yoga with me?” </i><br />
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<i>I said, “I want to come practice with you. Do you teach?” </i><br />
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<i>“No.” </i><br />
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<i>And I said, “Do you practice?”</i><br />
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<i>“Of course!” </i><br />
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<i>I said, “Can I come and practice with you?” And she said, </i><br />
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<i>“Sure. I'm not going to teach you. I'm going to practice. You can do whatever. Follow me if you want or do your own thing.”</i><br />
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<i>And that's how I connected with Lisa. So I went over to her house that Sunday and it was just me and her.</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> That's pretty awesome.<br />
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<b>Diane Bruni:</b> <i>It was really awesome, amazing. I intuitively knew that here's a woman who's just come back from studying with the master. But she wasn't interested in teaching at the time. And she was just this crazy, wild woman. Not a typical yoga teacher/yogini. She was a very independent and unique woman. And just incredibly gifted and able to transmit what she had learned from Iyengar through her body, through her practice. It was very, very loose; we would practice in her living room. And it was intense keeping up with her. It was like three hours of strong Vinyasa practice because at the time Iyengar – this was 25 years ago, and Iyengar was younger and he was still teaching a very dynamic practice at that time. So when Lisa was with him he was teaching what looked more like ashtanga yoga than Iyengar yoga. What I learned from Lisa was sequences. She would have a back bending sequence, a forward bending twist sequence, inversion sequence, standing pose jump sequence.</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> Do you remember those now?<br />
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<b>Diane Bruni:</b> <i>Yeah, some of it. She used her living room as a big prop. Eventually she got ropes in her living room. She showed us the rope sequence that Iyengar taught. And then I got pregnant. So after my son was born I took a break for nine, ten months from going to classes. And when it was time to go back, someone had told me about Bikram, the first hot yoga class. And that's where I actually taught my first yoga class. And during that time I read an article about ashtanga yoga. And I ordered a video and then fast forward to studying Richard Freeman in Niagara Falls<b>, </b>nineteen years ago.</i><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Richard Freeman at 80 Gladstone wearing the 'body braid'</span></td></tr>
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> So what was it about ashtanga that drew you?<br />
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<b>Diane Bruni:</b> <i>It was combining so many elements of practice. The energetic component was there because of the internal focus. The breath work, the concentration and focus on the breathing was a huge draw for me. I was missing that because in Iyengar yoga there is very little attention paid to the breath. Whereas in Kundalini yoga it was all breath and energy work, but no physical practice really. So the ashtanga was like a combination of bringing the energetic intensity of the connection through the breath. And then physical practice of course was really interesting to me at the time because it was so challenging.</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> So at what point did Downward Dog come together? <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Diane Bruni, early days at Downward Dog</span></td></tr>
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<b>Diane Bruni:</b> <i>Like two and a half years of teaching ashtanga. That's where I met Ron. He came to my class. And we both wanted a place where we could both do just ashtanga classes. And he asked me if I would be a partner with him. And that's what happened. We went out and we looked for space and we found the first place we looked at, we took. [laughs] It was very easy once we had decided. It was very funny. And the first afternoon, we walked into a space, we looked around, we said, “This is perfect.” [laughs] This was our first studio. I Remember we went for coffee after and I said, “Amazing. It was so easy. I thought it was going to be a big ordeal.” [laughs].</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> Sounds like everything was conspiring to move in that direction...<br />
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<b>Diane Bruni:</b> <i>Yeah. It definitely felt like there was a greater plan that I was just going along for the ride. I was just in the flow.</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> You must be really proud of all that work you've put into that space. It’s an iconic institution in Toronto.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Sting practicing at Downward Dog Toronto, 2007</span></td></tr>
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<b>Diane Bruni:</b> <i>Yeah. Yeah. Thank you, Sting.</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> [laughs] Is that right? I don't actually know what Sting's history with that place is.<br />
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<b>Diane Bruni:</b> <i>Well, Sting came to Downward Dog before we opened. And then we opened the doors and we were swamped with people. Absolutely. I think it would have happened anyways eventually, but the media thing was huge. Sting came to do yoga at Downward Dog. We have pictures of him with like a towel on.</i><br />
<br />
<b>Priya Thomas:</b> Yeah, I've seen those when you walk in. <br />
<br />
<b>Diane Bruni:</b> <i>And the media was soaking it up because at that point yoga was new. Yoga was news. So everybody wrote about it and it was in all the papers. And so as soon as we opened, yeah, we were swamped right away.</i><br />
<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Diane Bruni (left), Ron Reid (right), early schedule from Downward Dog</span></td></tr>
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> And yet, I understand you have your concerns about the kind of type A personality that is often drawn to ashtanga. What is it that concerns you about that? <br />
<br />
<b>Diane Bruni:</b> <i>Well, the main concern I have nowadays and it's completely based on my own experience is that the ashtanga practice is really, really great for people at a certain age and with a certain body type. And it can be a really powerful beneficial transformative tool. It changes people. It changes their bodies. It changes their cellular structure. It changes the way we're put together. Once we've changed and the practice has fully manifested in your body, it's done all it can do. We get attached. And we can't let go. It's made you limber. It's made you flexible. It's made you strong. It's done all of those beautiful things that it does. And then it's time to move on. But we get attached and we keep doing the same thing. And then what happens is we create repetitive strain injuries in our body. That's what happens – and this is very, very common.</i><br />
<br />
<i>For the average person who starts ashtanga yoga, they're in decent condition but they've never done a lot of stretching. And they have an average body type, meaning they're not hypermobile and they're not flexible people. They're just normal people. They'll benefit from an ashtanga practice. My estimation is between five to ten years. Five is probably more average. Few people go ten. But five years for the average person is what it takes to get their bodies into this very flexible and limber strong place that's normal, still in the normal range. Am I making sense?</i><br />
<br />
<b>Priya Thomas:</b> Yeah.<br />
<br />
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<b>Diane Bruni:</b> <i>And then they want to start doing more and more extreme postures or these same postures over and over again. And what happens then is it begins to overstretch certain parts of the body. And when we overstretch any part of the body, we weaken it. Our body was basically made of collagen and those are the two main components in our connective tissue. And just like an elastic band. So when you go to yoga and you're really tight. You go to do your first forward bend it's like, “Oh! Oh!” And it pops right back. So a year goes back and that starts to feel better. And then two years go by, oh, you're going a little further. Cool. Three years. Oh yeah, this is fun! This is really good. Oh, this doesn't hurt anymore. Four years. Oh, I'm actually getting good at this. This is really great. Five years. I'm good. I'm a yoga teacher now. I'm working all the time. Oh, I want to start to get legs behind my head. Oh, now I'm five years older. Now I'm ten years older. And guess what? You can see what would happen, right? Just keep going. Keep going. And one day it's not popping back. And that's what happened to me. And that's what's happened to so many practitioners.</i><br />
<br />
<b>Priya Thomas:</b> Do you think there's a reluctance to talk about that?<br />
<br />
<b>Diane Bruni:</b> <i>Yeah.</i><br />
<br />
<b>Priya Thomas:</b> And why is that?<br />
<br />
<b>Diane Bruni:</b> <i>People will talk about it in their small little circles. But people aren't going public with it.</i><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Priya Thomas</b>: Why?<br />
<br />
<b>Diane Bruni:</b> <i>I'm not sure. Why haven't I?</i><br />
<br />
<b>Priya Thomas:</b> Is there a reluctance to call any attention to injuries for fear of perceived weakness? <br />
If pride or other considerations get in the way of admitting injury then there's a problem there, right?<br />
<br />
<b>Diane Bruni:</b> <i>Yeah. There's a problem. Part of it is pride. Part of it is not knowing what went wrong. I didn't know what went wrong. I didn't know. I kinda knew. I mean, I had another injury with my knee. It took me years to process what went wrong.</i><br />
<br />
<b>Priya Thomas</b>: That's interesting, because I read about you tearing your glutes very suddenly after many years of sustained practice, right?<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> connective tissue changes in aging tree <b></b><b></b>and human <b></b><b></b>optic nerves, www.iovs.org</span></td></tr>
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<b>Diane Bruni: </b><i>Yeah. I was at that point where it was just like one little thing. I wasn't doing anything when it happened and I could hear them tearing right off my bone, popping right off the bone. It was like, fuck. I was really messed up. Pretty severe pain for a few weeks.</i><br />
<br />
<b>Priya Thomas:</b> What do you recommend can be done for people who don't know what's happening to their bodies as they live with the practice?<br />
<br />
<b>Diane Bruni:</b> <i>Educate themselves. They need to do the research. And I think it's the responsibility of people like me to begin to be more vocal and be more public with what has happened to me, what I've learned, and how I believe we can turn this around. It doesn't mean that yoga isn't a really powerful practice. It's just how we need to adapt the practice. Once we're flexible, we don't need to keep pulling on our tendons to become flexible. We need to do other things at that point in our practice. We need to build in more resilience instead of more flexibility.</i><br />
<br />
<b>Priya Thomas:</b> Which brings me to the issue of the glutes... I know this is getting into the details. <br />
<br />
<b>Diane Bruni:</b> <i>I'm good with details. I like details. [laughs]</i><br />
<br />
<b>Priya Thomas:</b> What do you recommend regarding safe use of the glutes? Are you supposed to keep the glutes soft (as we so often hear in classes) or are you not? I want to hear your anatomical explanation for what you think is the best way to handle postures. <br />
<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Diane Bruni</span></td></tr>
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<b>Diane Bruni:</b> <i>First of all I don't even remember where where that instruction came from, to soften the glutes... And I've asked lots of other yoga teachers. No one can remember where it came from. Someone heard it from someone else and someone started regurgitating it. And what we told ourselves then was that too much tension in the glutes would put too much pressure on the SI joints. We bought it. I believed that. But it doesn’t make sense now in retrospect. And actually when I started ashtanga I had fully functioning glutes, normal glutes. When I started yoga, I was firing my glutes and back bending. It seemed to make sense. But I learned how to go into back bends without using my glutes. And what it requires is a tremendous amount of flexibility. It requires that your hip flexors, your quads, your psoas muscles, everything needs to be really, really open and super long and relaxed. So it takes virtually no effort from underneath to go into a back bend. If you're really flexible, you don't have to use your glutes. You don't have to use them to go into a back bend. You can use your ham strings instead of your glutes. And that's what we trained. People are being told to not use the most powerful muscle in their body in favour of what we thought were superior methods of achieving hip extension: namely, engaging the inner hamstrings, inner core muscles, and pelvic floor muscles. The result was The hip flexors on the front body that are being stretched in a back bend were being told to engage to provide the support and stability that should be coming from the glutes. It does not make any sense to engage your hamstrings and lower back muscles but then tell the glutes to go on holiday and disconnect. This is where the dysfunctional pattern begins. Cuttting off one member of the group, the extensors from the co-ordinated roles that they share. How I see it now is that turning off the glutes while doing hip extension weakens the glutes. So part of my rehab when I tore my glutes I went through quite a lengthy rehab program of strengthening my glutes. That's when the questioning began for me. </i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>That's when I realized I had blindly listened. I didn't question it because I wasn't having any issues and we couldn't really see the effects of our actions at the time. We were the guinea pigs. And it didn't work. The research showed that it's completely dysfunctional. So what's happening in the yoga world is there are all these people walking around with glutes that don't know how to do their job. And there's all kinds of problems. So the sports medicine doctor who sees a lot of yoga injuries in the city, he told me that the number one injury he sees coming into his office is hamstring tears.</i><br />
<br />
<b>Priya Thomas:</b> And that's from not firing the glutes?<br />
<br />
<b>Diane Bruni:</b> <i>Well, it's all the same thing. So the hamstring attaches right underneath the glute. It's a combination of so much stretching and not enough strengthening. This glute issue has been going on. I've been talking about it, not publicly, but within my circle and within the teacher training programs and the teachers of Downward Dog. When I first started talking about it like five years ago everyone thought I was nuts. Nobody was questioning it. The injuries were common, but people didn't understand what was causing the injuries. We were injuring ourselves blindly. It's not that there was a cover up, it's just there was ignorance. </i><br />
<br />
<b>Priya Thomas:</b> So was that partly why you moved on from ashtanga being your primary practice? Is ashtanga still your primary practice?<br />
<br />
<b>Diane Bruni:</b> <i>No. No. I haven't practiced ashtanga since I injured my knee. That was the injury before the glutes. I stopped doing the primary series then.</i><br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Priya Thomas:</b> And what happened with your knee? <br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Diane Bruni:</b> <i>I had a cyst in my knee. From practice. From friction in the joint. I was lucky that it wasn't a torn meniscus. That's what I thought it was.</i><br />
<br />
<b>Priya Thomas:</b> So it was brutally painful?<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Krishnamacarya sequences Yogasanagalu (1941)</span></td></tr>
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<b>Diane Bruni:</b> <i>It was waking me up in the middle of the night. After a year and a half of pain and being woken up I finally went to a doctor. He was just going to do an MRI but she started with an ultrasound and it showed a big cyst in my knee. And she said you should probably stop doing deep poses. I said, right, OK. There goes my whole entire practice. And that was when I started teaching classes that were really alternative at Downward Dog because I couldn't do the regular practice anymore. I couldn't bend my knees let alone do half lotus and all those other poses. Now that my knee is healed I can do those poses again, but if I do too many, forget it. Now I don't even bother doing them because I see there's really no benefit at all. But for years after the injury healed I would visit those poses sporadically because it was really hard for me to let go. </i><br />
<br />
<b>Priya Thomas:</b> Sounds familiar... The form trains you and then you get attached to the form.<br />
<br />
<b>Diane Bruni:</b> <i>You get attached to it. It's really intense. And there are a lot of people really attached to whatever they're doing. So the knee injury changed the way I practiced. I no longer did the primary series. I developed this whole new way of practicing, which included lots of hip openers because everyone says I got my knee injury because my hip wasn't open enough. So I spent the next five years opening my hips. And then what happened? I tore my glutes. Because my hips were so open they were so weak. I opened them so much. I stretched things out so much that I could sit very comfortably in Baddha Konasana. All those poses became available to me because I had weakened the joint structures that are designed to keep everything stable and together. So you do those poses obsessively every day for years, yeah, you're going to change your tissues. That's when I injured my glutes. So haven't really been doing ashtanga for probably 10 years.</i><br />
<br />
<b>Priya Thomas:</b> What did you move on to immediately after that?<br />
<br />
<b>Diane Bruni:</b> <i>In the old Vinyasa flow, you know, linking different postures together and always making it creative and different. And of course that was the trend that was taking place around us with the teachers who brought ashtanga to North America: <a href="http://www.jivamuktiyoga.com/" target="_blank">Sharon and David from Jivamukti</a>, <a href="http://www.chuckandmaty.com/" target="_blank">Chuck and Maty</a> from Yoga Works, the Hawaiian contingent, <a href="http://www.dannyparadise.com/" target="_blank">Danny Paradise</a> and <a href="http://www.ashtangayogi.com/" target="_blank">David Williams</a>, <a href="http://www.ashtanga.net/" target="_blank">David Swenson</a>. David Swenson's knees, by the way, were wrecked by ashtanga yoga. All of those people who were leading Mysore style classes out of their studios were not teaching ashtanga in their classes. They were teaching ashtanga vinyasa, like a strong strenuous practice based on ashtanga, but not ashtanga because ashtanga was injuring way too many people.</i><br />
<br />
<b>Priya Thomas:</b> So do you think ashtanga is not a life-long practice? <br />
<br />
<b>Diane Bruni:</b> <i>The primary series of ashtanga was designed for young adolescent boys. So the fact that I could do it up to the age of 40 is remarkable. And I was obsessed with it. But it was not designed for middle-aged women. And it's just not a practical practice once you get older. Maybe when you're young. It gets you to a certain level of flexibility depending on your body type. As soon as I got my first big injury we went from being a more strict ashtanga studio to now being like a Vinyasa studio. And then I realized why Sharon and David did what they did and why Chuck and Maty did what they did. Because the numbers were growing. People were coming. They were teaching beginners, and you can't teach the primary series to beginners. It's not practical. It doesn't work.</i><br />
<br />
<b>Priya Thomas: </b>I remember I talked to <a href="http://shiversupthespine.blogspot.ca/2011/02/geoffrey-wiebe-on-mirror-neurons-and.html" target="_blank">Geoff Wiebe</a> at the studio a few years ago and at that point he had mentioned, “You know Diane is really experimenting with <a href="http://www.axissyllabus.com/" target="_blank">Axis Syllabus</a>." So I guess you had started to experiment with other movement practices as well.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Axis syllabus at 80 Gladstone with Ruth Douthwright</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b>Diane Bruni:</b> <i>Yeah, what happened was I started questioning yoga, of course. I wondered what went wrong with me and my body. And I was really curious. I was always reading. And I was reading a book written by a physiotherapist and dancer. And the book was about anatomy and movement. And I was learning so much from this book about my body and how it moved. Not about yoga poses, not about yoga philosophy, but about my body and how it was designed move. Not designed to hold postures in a static position, but designed to move. And I said, “What else is out there in the world of dance that might be interesting to me?” So that was the first time I heard about Axis Syllabus. It was almost three and a half years ago. </i><br />
<br />
<i>And the principles they teach are very adaptable to every day life, such as walking and rolling. Really practical... I was tapping into a certain way of programming, making connections through my body and it was very exciting for my nervous system. And all it is, is learning how to move gracefully. What is graceful? When you see someone moving gracefully, what are the images or the feelings that come up for you? And that's what is interesting to me these days. Like why is some movement graceful and effortless and other movement is clunky and hard and muscular… </i><br />
<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Diane Bruni (left), Yuan Sifu (right) at 80 Gladstone, photo: Earl Beadle</span></td></tr>
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<br />
<b>Priya Thomas:</b> Interesting... So what does graceful movement bring to people? <br />
<br />
<b>Diane Bruni:</b> <i>To me it implies fluidity and nothing is abrupt and it's continuous. And there are smaller movements within the bigger movements. So there are smaller angulations, circling and spiraling pathways within the bigger movement. So if you just take a look at someone walking, someone walking gracefully is walking with really subtle rotations and their pelvis is doing a figure eight. The shoulder girdle is doing a figure eight. And there's an inherent fluidity in their movements. As opposed to someone not walking gracefully. They're clunking. They're pushing themselves or pulling themselves through space as opposed to finding the rebound from the ground and then taking the rebound from the ground and – I want to say transforming. </i><br />
<br />
<b>Priya Thomas:</b> Do you think there's a mechanical benefit to that kind of graceful moment?<br />
<br />
<b>Diane Bruni:</b> <i>I think the joints are a lot happier with graceful movement. I think when we learn to move, understanding how our joints are designed to move. Our joints are designed to move in these spiraling pathways. Right? And we don't do things in a straight line in our bodies. There is a rotation </i><br />
<i>and there's a spiral that happens. Simple as that. As simple as that. </i><br />
<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Diane Bruni</span></td></tr>
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> It wasn’t long after you started to deconstruct your yoga practice that you discovered a lump in your breast. What were your immediate feelings when you were diagnosed with breast cancer?<br />
<br />
<b>Diane Bruni:</b> <i>Oh, it's so hard to describe. Incredible fear. Fear. Fear of dying was the first and most intense feeling. Yeah, that was huge. It's a whole different kind of experience.</i><br />
<br />
<b>Priya Thomas:</b> In your blog entry about cancer you
mention that just prior to the diagnosis you had felt invincible. In
fact, you talk about having a screen saver that was a picture of you and
Marshall (Diane's son) – was it in the Rockies?<br />
<br />
<i> </i><b>Diane Bruni:</b> <i>Yeah. I was having the time of my life. I felt like, wow, life is too good right now. Every day I thought that my life is just – my kids are grown up. I'm not worried about them. My career is amazing. I don't have to worry about money. I'm doing exactly what I want to do. Yeah, I was so blessed and I felt so lucky.</i><br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="color: #660000;"><i><b> "My last radiation treatment happened to fall on December 31, 2012–
the year the world was supposed to end. And it felt like mine had, my
old world that is, the one where I thought I was in control, the one
where I felt invincible, the one where I took simple things like being
healthy for granted, and the one where I thought I had a say in my own
mortality. Leading up to my diagnosis, I felt like I was on top of the
world. The image on my screensaver was a photo I’d taken the previous
summer in the Rockies. My son and I are standing on the peak of a high
mountain and he’s looking over the edge into the abyss. When I was
diagnosed with cancer, I felt like I’d been thrown over the edge of a
mountaintop and thrust into a canoe. Then I was going down, down the
rapids, and holding on for dear life." (Diane Bruni)</b></i></span> </i></blockquote>
<br />
<b>Priya Thomas:</b> And so you were really shocked...<br />
<br />
<b>Diane Bruni:</b> <i>Totally shocked because I was feeling great.</i><br />
<br />
<b>Priya Thomas:</b> And yet, you kind of had a feeling that something was about to change, didn't you? <br />
<br />
<b>Diane Bruni:</b> <i>When I first found out the lump I realized I had been having feelings for the past I'm not sure how long. But I had this underlying feeling that something big in my life was about to happen and I didn't know what it was. And as soon as I found the little lump, I said, “Oh, fuck. This is it. This is it. I'm in for a rough ride right now.” And I knew when I found the lump that it was cancer. </i><br />
<br />
<b>Priya Thomas:</b> Did you speak to anybody about it?<br />
<br />
<b>Diane Bruni:</b> <i>I did. I spoke to Joy Dorsey, who's the manager at Downward Dog. I was with her when I found the lump. In fact, we were sleeping in the same bed because we were on a yoga retreat in Mexico and in the hotel room we had this king size bed and we slept together that night. It was very unusual. There we were on a retreat in between locations and we were sleeping together in a big king size bed when I rolled over one morning and my hand just brushed along my breast and I found a lump. Just like that.</i><br />
<br />
<b>Priya Thomas:</b> It was just by accident. <br />
<br />
<b>Diane Bruni:</b> <i>Yeah, exactly. I just rolled over. I did this and I went, “What?” And I remember Joy was waking up and I said, “Oh, Joy. I guess I just found a lump.” And she said, “Oh, it's nothing. It's probably a cyst or something.” I said, “Really? Yeah, OK.” But I knew. I knew. But I was preparing myself... We were at the end of the retreat in Mexico and I was now going into two weeks of Holiday. And I just thought I'm going to take this time to get ready.</i><br />
<br />
<b>Priya Thomas:</b> At that point, you had actually bought 80 Gladstone... So why, at that point, were you buying the space?<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bkM5rk1Ut4M/U2q-55zUr-I/AAAAAAAADoc/o8GF9usiItM/s1600/wounds.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bkM5rk1Ut4M/U2q-55zUr-I/AAAAAAAADoc/o8GF9usiItM/s1600/wounds.jpg" height="181" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Diane Bruni</span></td></tr>
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<b>Diane Bruni:</b><i> Two days before I left, before going down to Mexico, my husband and I bought this. </i><br />
<i>And since I started teaching yoga I always had this dream of teaching yoga in a home-like setting like Lisa Schwartz. Because the experience I had with Lisa in that setting was so transformative for me. So for the previous two years I had talked to a real estate agent and I told him what my dream was. And then when this one came on the market, as soon as I saw the listing I thought, OK, this looks like it could be the building I've been looking for. And we were just going to live here, rent it out, and hang onto it. So I was planning ahead. I was visualizing down the road. Then we bought the building, I went to teacher training in Mexico, my husband sold our other house when I was in Mexico, and days after he sold the house I found the lump. I came home. Went to the doctor. Found out it was cancer. And then I got an email from the hospital telling me that chemotheraphy treatment began on our moving day.</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> That's right. I read about that strange synchronicity in your blog.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-8jZvcMmnkd4/U2rJBnkDEkI/AAAAAAAADpI/XHAVk-kdF74/s1600/cancer_story_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-8jZvcMmnkd4/U2rJBnkDEkI/AAAAAAAADpI/XHAVk-kdF74/s1600/cancer_story_2.jpg" height="200" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Diane Bruni, radiation treatment</td></tr>
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<b>Diane Bruni:</b> <i>Yeah. It was May 18th. I couldn't believe it. It was like, OK. I got really upset and I was sitting there crying. “I don't know what to do. I don't know what I should do. OK, should I postpone the treatments? And my son said to me, “Mom, don't bother changing the day. You have to do this. Just go through it.”</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> Which brings to mind this amazing video you've got on your blog, which is of you doing this headstand in this room with these workers coming in, the chaos of a renovation all around you...<br />
<br />
<b>Diane Bruni:</b> <i>Right. They were lifting the layers and layers of the floor, yeah.</i><br />
<br />
<b>Priya Thomas: </b>And it made me think, it looked like you were actually trying to physically understand the synchronicity of these things coming together. And rather than try and fight against it...<br />
<br />
<b>Diane Bruni:</b> <i>I'm just going with it. That was the goal, to just, OK, whatever. My life was perfectly calm and everything was beautifully in order and smooth for so long and here I am in this incredibly intense chaotic state... all of a sudden. </i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> And then two months later your father was diagnosed with cancer too, right?<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-TJ0TZGGjd-A/U2rSlAqs2xI/AAAAAAAADqU/q1Ft7NUB-OI/s1600/renovation_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-TJ0TZGGjd-A/U2rSlAqs2xI/AAAAAAAADqU/q1Ft7NUB-OI/s1600/renovation_1.jpg" height="298" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Diane Bruni, mid-renovation</span></td></tr>
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<b>Diane Bruni:</b> <i>Yeah. It was just a terrifying time but I think we helped each other. He was really funny. One day we were talking and he says, “You know, Diane, I'm only doing these treatments to keep your mother quiet because I don't want her to get upset.” He said, “I don't believe there's anything wrong with me. And I think it's just a big business for the doctors.”And I said, “That's right, Dad. You're absolutely right. There's nothing wrong with you. But do it for Mom because otherwise she's going to get really nervous and upset.”</i><br />
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<i>And my father has not acknowledged that he has cancer. I don't even know if he knows what it means. He's 85 years old. And I talked to him the other day. He said, “I feel better than ever. I feel 20 years younger. Every day I walk for three and a half hours.” He just refused to acknowledge it. It's a really interesting approach. And he taught me a lot about not giving into the fear. Because I believe that's what happened to me when I first found out I had cancer, I got really scared. And that fear is overwhelming. I've never been so afraid of anything in my life.</i><br />
<br />
<b>Priya Thomas:</b> Did you have a lot of support from family?<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gFbPzKEu2kY/U2q_eNusK9I/AAAAAAAADok/Grqgdbo6Rjc/s1600/kids_dad.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gFbPzKEu2kY/U2q_eNusK9I/AAAAAAAADok/Grqgdbo6Rjc/s1600/kids_dad.jpg" height="201" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Diane's son Marshall (left), daughter Kathryn (right), father Pasquale (right)</span></td></tr>
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<b>Diane Bruni:</b> <i>Yeah, I had incredible support. Yeah. Three days after finding out that I had cancer I was meditating one day...out in my garden, sitting outside on the grass for the afternoon. And it was a beautiful, sunny day. And I asked myself, “What is going on? What do I need to say out loud that I haven't said? What am I not dealing with in my life right now?”</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> Are you in some way intimating that things left unsaid had something to do with the cancer? <br />
<br />
<b>Diane Bruni:</b> <i>I have no idea. I have no idea. When you're living and dealing with a diagnosis like cancer you question everything. You question the water you drink, you question the plastic bags that are carrying your food, everything. Everything feels like it could be a potential reason why I have cancer, why so many people have cancer. And I also believe that there's always an emotional component in any illness. It may not be the cause of it, but it's definitely an opportunity to confront and to deal with whatever emotional issues are underlying the surface of your existence that you're not dealing with and you're not processing, something that you'd suppressed.</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> And what were those things for you?<br />
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<b>Diane Bruni:</b> <i>The main thing was I was really unhappy at Downward Dog. See because my practice had become something that was looking less and less like ashtanga yoga, Ron had asked that I avoid practicing there during Mysore. And I was really unhappy because I was no longer practicing with my community. But I didn't acknowledge how much I missed practicing with my community. I had suppressed that.</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> In your blog you mention that you're not the type of person who likes to rock the boat. And I found that a little bit hard to believe...Is that true?<br />
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<b>Diane Bruni:</b> <i>When it comes to relationships that are meaningful to me. Relationships are important to me. It means a lot to me to not hurt other people that are important to me in my life. And yeah... On the other hand, there are times when you have no choice but to rock the boat. So I realized that this was one of those times in my life where I had no choice. But I needed to do what I needed to do, and that was create a new life for myself.</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> So in some ways the construction at 80 Gladstone, the cancer, the decision to leave Downward Dog were all renovations.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-lgTLUBZTXdA/U2rBXdltQII/AAAAAAAADow/3kUfyW1l5hk/s1600/diane_2-288x404.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-lgTLUBZTXdA/U2rBXdltQII/AAAAAAAADow/3kUfyW1l5hk/s1600/diane_2-288x404.jpg" height="320" width="228" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Diane Bruni</span></td></tr>
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<b>Diane Bruni:</b> <i>Were all renovations. Yeah. Redoing my whole life. I kind of knew that that things were all connected. And it was a really, really hard time, obviously. On so many levels, you know? Because leaving Downward Dog was a really difficult process. Yeah. I had invested a lot of my life there.</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> It was also inevitable that one of you, somebody would change. <br />
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<b> Diane Bruni:</b> <i>Yeah, and by the time I realized I had all this repressed emotion, I kind of lost it on Ron (Diane's business partner). Yeah. It all came out. It was really intense. Anyways, that was the beginning of a really, really hard year for Ron and I. But we got through it. We worked through it. It's amazing. We worked through it. And it's a huge relief.</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> Cancer was the catalyst for so many things.<br />
<br />
<b>Diane Bruni:</b> <i>Cancer gave me the courage to get it all off of my chest. Poor Ron. So my brother said to me one day, “Di, listen. I don't know why you're so mad at Ron. What did he do? He didn't do anything. You're the one that changed.” He said, “hey, whatever the religion is that Ron is attached to, you were a member of that religion too. You were in his shoes. You were in his shoes for all those years it worked for you. And now you've changed.” And he said, “You know what, Di? It's time for you to move on to another church.” And that's what I'm doing. I'm moving on. </i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> And you taught while undergoing treatment, didn't you?<br />
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<b>Diane Bruni:</b> <i>A little bit.</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> Because I did a class with you. I remember you looked as good as ever in my mind.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7PsnlIwN3Aw/U2rB9-l9lkI/AAAAAAAADo4/xCAxxlVvXI8/s1600/cancer_story_8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7PsnlIwN3Aw/U2rB9-l9lkI/AAAAAAAADo4/xCAxxlVvXI8/s1600/cancer_story_8.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Diane Bruni, Aylen Lake summer 2012</span></td></tr>
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<b>Diane Bruni:</b> <i>Really? I was coming into the city right before chemo treatments. Chemo treatments were every three weeks. And I was up at the cottage. And I would come down into the city, teach a class and then go for chemo the next day. So at the end three weeks you're feeling kind of better. And then you get hit with the chemo, then you get really sick for a week. And then start to feel a little bit better. And then you go in again and they hit you again with the chemo. So it's like this cycle. I was teaching at the high points of the high cycle. And I didn't want to run away and hide. </i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> Yeah, that reminds me of Pema Chodron's words about 'descent' that you cite in your own <a href="http://80gladstone.com/about-diane-bruni/" target="_blank">blog post</a> about cancer...<br />
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<span style="color: #660000;"><b>“Spiritual awakening is frequently described as a journey to the top of a mountain. We leave our attachments and our worldliness behind and slowly make our way to the top. At the peak we have transcended all pain. The only problem with this metaphor is that we leave all the others behind. In the process of discovering our true nature, the journey goes down, not up. Instead of transcending the suffering of all creatures, we move towards turbulence and doubt. We explore the reality and unpredictability of insecurity and pain and we try not to push it away. At our own pace without speed or aggression, we move down and down and down. With us move millions of others, our companions in awakening from fear. At the bottom we discover water, the healing water of compassion. Right down there in the thick of things we discover the love that will not die.” -Pema Chodron</b></span></blockquote>
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<b>Diane Bruni:</b> <i>You're actually falling down into a deep dark hole.</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> Do you still find it hard? Talking about the cancer? <br />
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<b>Diane Bruni:</b> <i>No. I'm less afraid. I'm less afraid. But I'm always aware of how my life has changed because of it. So much changes when you're confronting your death and wondering what it would be like. Well, what if the cancer came back? Well, what if I only had six months or a year to live? What if? And those questions become real when you've got cancer. Really real. So it's not just like speculating. And things change when you realize that; very, very, very few things that actually matter when you're in that state. And that the most important things are the love, the feeling of love that I have in my life and the people in my life that I love and love me. That was what kept me going through that whole entire year. It was my meditation.</i><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pHfIQ0x0V2o/U2rJzmMXNEI/AAAAAAAADpQ/FweTkCnDkb8/s1600/IMG_6546.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pHfIQ0x0V2o/U2rJzmMXNEI/AAAAAAAADpQ/FweTkCnDkb8/s1600/IMG_6546.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Diane Bruni at 80 Gladstone, photo: Earl Beadle</span></td></tr>
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> When did you get that tattoo?<br />
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<b>Diane Bruni:</b> <i>Oh. The moon. The moon. The dark side. The moon is reflecting the light coming from the sun, but we're only seeing one side of it and there's another side that we don't see. I got it a long time ago. I was 15.</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> Oh, wow. So that's way before yoga.<br />
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<b>Diane Bruni:</b> <i>Yeah, that's right... before yoga.</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> Interesting. Looks like something a yogi would get. that crescent moon... I’ve always wanted a tattoo but never could settle on an image. Last time I thought about it, the only thing I could think of was the one I’d seen on your arm. So I didn't do it. [laughs]<br />
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<b>Diane Bruni:</b> <i>Why not? You know what, that would be really cool!</i><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">http://p0urquoi.tumblr.com/post/34129762529/lunar-phases</span></td></tr>
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<span class="dropcaps">N </span>ow, call it synchronicity, but a few days following our interview, I had a curious opportunity to get re-acquainted with that primal fear of the dark, of all those things that are beyond comprehension, unknown and mutating, for which cancer seems but a convenient repository. So it was that I went in for my first mammogram, following which I was asked to go for an ultrasound. My mother had breast cancer in 1996 so I knew that a request for a repeat visit with the lovely elderly Pakistani technician (who incidentally sang me an old Hindi movie tune to keep me amused during my breast exam) was not necessarily good news. The findings, “probably benign” seemed inconclusive, and left me thinking about that moon only half visible... <br />
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But there are other fears that plague those of us that practice yoga regularly. There are, as Diane reminds, questions about how sustainable a physically demanding practice might be over the course of a lifetime. If, as the oft-quoted Krishnamacarya has observed, the seeds of yoga spring forth differently in each person, then are we leaving enough room for that practice to grow and take shape in as many different forms as possible? And ultimately, are we ready to abandon the design, just as one day we will be required to release these bodies? And as teachers, how can we teach working with the body as if it were a waxing and waning ecology? <br />
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So I may yet get that tattoo, though somehow it seems as if that inscription belongs most perfectly on Diane’s arm... as if a reminder (both to herself as well as those looking at her) that life is not what you thought it would be... only half of what you can see. And as you come across the moon lying in the gutter or the shadow (where it has reliably existed for a very long time) hopefully your practice will have prepared you not to flinch or look away, as you descend into the fertile darkness, into the place where love grows. <br />
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~<br />
• You can find out about 80 Gladstone, sign up for its wide array of movement classes and read its blog at <a href="http://www.80gladstone.com/">www.80gladstone.com</a><br />
• If you want to join the discussion about yoga related injuries, make a point of attending <a href="http://80gladstone.com/actually-asana-may-29-diane-bruni-mathew-remski/" target="_blank">WAWADIA</a> (What are We Actually Doing in Asana) at 80 Gladstone, hosted by Diane Bruni and <a href="http://matthewremski.com/" target="_blank">Matthew Remski</a> on Thursday May 29th. The intention is to raise awareness around yoga injuries, to voice concerns for community members in a safe space. The Participants will have an opportunity to share their personal stories. Runs from 6:30 - 9:30pm<br />
Participants should sign up in advance. Suggested donation: $10 <br />
Diane's Yoga Rebound class precedes the discussion from 4:30-6pm. Space is limited, please note that pre registration is necessary. You can sign up for WAWADIA and the Yoga Rebound class <a href="http://80gladstone.com/actually-asana-may-29-diane-bruni-mathew-remski/" target="_blank">here</a>. <br />
<br />priya thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17104604630551238443noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5670725056880541135.post-68615779753104102222014-01-22T19:45:00.002-08:002014-01-23T06:47:37.763-08:00Midwinter Bliss with Yogi, Surfer and Blissologist Eoin Finn<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Midwinter Whiteout, Toronto January 7, 2014, photo: <a href="http://www.onehundredmillion.tumblr.com/" target="_blank">100M</a></td></tr>
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<span class="dropcaps">I </span> don’t know where you live, but I live in a city. Cities can be confusing places in the wintertime; friends and strangers can get worked up in the holiday hustle. Remember the holidays not so long ago? During the holidays some buy more than they can afford, as if that little bit more would help manage, placate, enable the desires of their loved ones. Others can’t afford to get to a yoga class or find a second of peace over those holidays, those holy days that bring a flurry of gifts, exchanges, returns and ribbon. And so, at the cash register first-world fingers overreach and warp the seams of need until the celebrations of solstice and spice cake are nothing but a cosmopolitan habit, a low-level hum that spills out of the city’s safe neighbourhoods into the urban sprawl, onto the margins, overwhelming what common sense remains. Equanimity is hard, when it’s one for feast, another for famine...</div>
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I recently had a wonderful conversation with the much loved yoga teacher, self-confessed blissologist <a href="http://www.blissology.com/" target="_blank">Eoin Finn</a> who had a number of salient things to say about finding your bliss during this midwinter season that can bring together a confusing mix of want, wish and need. </div>
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<a href="http://www.blissology.com/" target="_blank">Eoin Finn</a>, (BA, EYRT 500 hrs) is a yogi, surfer and blissologist, who teaches his unique, transformative, alignment-based Blissology Yoga all over the world. He shares his passion that the nurturing mindset required to practice yoga with sukha as well as an intimate connection with nature is at the foundation to allow us to live our most meaningful life possible. Fusing his passion for athletics and yoga, Eoin has prepared over 100 Olympians as well as pro-athletes from around the world for high-level competition. Eoin is one of Canada’s most renowned teachers, was one of Lululemon’s first ambassadors, has a line of platinum selling yoga DVDs, teaches sold out workshops and YES (Yoga Ecology Surf) Retreats around the world and has been featured in InStyle Magazine, Reader’s Digest, Huffington Post, Elle, Flare, Yoga Journal, Vogue Australia, the Globe and Mail and Oprah Magazine. He has studied Eastern and Western philosophy in Canada and France and been a student of yoga, meditation since 1988. He counts among his teachers Ravi Ravindra, Nadia Toraman, David Swenson, David Williams, Pattabhi Jois, Nancy Gilgoff, Donna Holleman, Orit Sen Gupta and Gioia Irwin, Myofascial Alignment teacher Tom Myers and Body Mind Psychotherapist Susan Aposhyan. <br />
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In our conversation Eoin talks about the childhood he spent wishing he were a fish in the great Canadian waterways, his childhood studying yoga and his years praising the surf in the Mediterranean. But for anyone who has ever been in any of Eoin Finn’s ecstatic yoga classes, it’s probably hard to imagine Finn as anything but the irrepressible conflagration of near shamanic energy that he is... So you’ll be surprised to realize (as our conversation bears out) that Eoin was, at one point long ago, indebted to a self-definition that was well beyond his means. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Eoin Finn</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #990000;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>"When you’re being paid, you often think: Well, I can deal with not
being switched on... I got so much respect from my role as a
businessman. I had respect from my dad who was a lawyer. All of a sudden, he and I could talk business. His other passion was horse racing. I
don't know if you've ever watched thoroughbreds running around in a
circle every 20 minutes, but he spent most weekends at Woodbine
Racetrack. He owned horses and he loved horse racing. And I really
wanted to connect with him."</b> <b>(Eoin Finn)</b></span></span></blockquote>
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<b>Shivers up the Spine: The Yoga Examiner, A Conversation with Eoin Finn, </b><b>September 2013.</b><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> I know you’re a surfer. Did you grow up near the ocean? Where did you grow up?<br />
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<b>Eoin Finn:</b> Y<i>eah, right on. We're right into it, huh? [laughs] Awesome. Where did I grow up? I grew up in Haliburton, Ontario. When I grew up, I considered it the boonies. But now that I look back on my life I feel like it was such a fortunate thing because it's a small cottage town two and half hours north of Toronto. I grew up on a lake, surrounded by water and trees. Access to nature really saved me... and access to water. I wanted to be a fish my whole life. [laughs]</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> So it wasn't really much of a stretch when you started to surf and that kind of thing.<br />
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<b>Eoin Finn:</b> <i>No. I got into wind surfing first when I was a teenager. And that brought me to the greater oceans, the bigger body of water. I guess I graduated from the small lakes of Halliburton to the great lakes to the big oceans of the world.</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> And did you start practicing yoga in Canada as well?<br />
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<b>Eoin Finn:</b> <i>Yup, I did. Well, I had kind of two phases for yoga. One is kind of the more dabbling phase. That was in the late 80s. I'm talking physical yoga, meditation and philosophy had already been in my background. But it would have been the late 80s. Actually, right there on the lakes close to where I was describing were a lot of summer camps. And one of my friends was a yoga teacher and she knew a lot of the poses that I was quite curious of because my major in university was philosophy. And I was really into Eastern religions and meditation. So she showed me a lot of the basics right there by the water. And I probably never really looked back.</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> Do you remember some of those early classes? What did you get from them?<br />
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<b>Eoin Finn:</b> <i>It was really soulful. I was quite young at the time, but I think when I look back on it it's really the connection between body, mind, and soul. I kind of consider those different compartments. And to have one activity that connected all three of those places together was one of the first things that sticks out in my mind. And I definitely consider it a counterbalance to my kind of teenage adrenaline guy side. That definitely felt like it was the yin to my yang. So I definitely remember that being a large part of it.</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> Most people probably feel invincible in their teen years. Do you wonder why you were interested in yoga during your teens?<br />
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<b>Eoin Finn:</b> <i>Yeah, that's funny, I've always had those two sides. Even when I look at my university side, I had the fun loving. Actually, my mom could tell you more stories than I could.</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> Is she willing to do an interview? [laughs]<br />
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<b> Eoin Finn:</b> W<i>hen I first starting dating who I'm now married to, she would go on and on about my university wild times. And I'd feel like, “Mom, stop!” [laughs] And Insiya (Eoin’s wife Insiya Rasiwala Finn) was like, “I'm never having a kid with you!” [laughs] But it's too late for that now! I went to university in Halifax and then for the last two years in France in Nice. And I'd wake up every morning and meditate and do yoga, looking at the Mediterranean, so I definitely feel like I've always been kind of trying to keep balance and not kind of numb out my guy side or my fun side, but kind of balance it. </i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> Your classes certainly have a raw, free-spirited quality to them. I remember a Stones tune you played just following one class I attended... Somehow it made me remember your story about the dangers of playing ‘yogi.' You told a story about how you had played the part of yogi as if it were a script, doing yoga three hours a day, eating organic, doing all the right things etc, And then you wound up at a house party one night wondering where your mojo had gone. I believe your words were, “In my quest to become healthy I had become boring.” What did you mean by that?<br />
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<b>Eoin Finn:</b> <i>Yeah, I definitely went through that. I was doing a talk the other night in which I talked about that. The analogy I used was that I look at the heart chakra as one triangle going up and one triangle going down. And the one that's going up, I consider the heart, and the one going down are the “shoulds” of life. And I was saying, the word “should” starts with “sh.” Shoulds are about making you quiet. And the word “heart” starts with “hear.” And that takes a lot of courage sometimes to really honor or hear your truth. </i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> I suppose people in your classes might often presume to know what a proper twenty- first century 'yogic’ lifestyle ought to look like... There must also be, I suppose, a celebrity aspect to being a well known yoga instructor. It must come with its own set of circumstances, reactions... Do you consider yourself a guru? <br />
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<b>Eoin Finn:</b> <i>Well, I mean, I was just in Bali and the term “guru” means teacher. So if you consider guru to mean teacher, then sure, I'm a teacher. And mostly what I do is I share what I've learned from life with others in the most authentic way I can. So whatever label you want to put on that, if you want to call that a guru, then that's fine. But I never call myself a guru because it seems to have connotations, I think, of superiority. I don't consider myself superior to anyone. I've heard a lot of great definitions for the word guru. I remember a long time ago I read a book by another Vancouver yoga teacher named Jeffery Armstrong. And he was talking about “ru” meaning the mover and “gu” meaning darkness, so anything that takes your darkness away is a guru. And he was talking about the remover of “gu.” [laughs] Anyone that removes your “gu” so you can see more clearly is great. Right? You are your own authentic self. I don't know. In my mind I just feel like I'm just a guy from Haliburton, Ontario that loves moving my body a certain way and turning my whole organism into an antenna that picks up a signal of love.</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> Is that what happens for you? I remember at the end of the first class that I did with you – it seemed to me anyways – you were in tears. I think you were...You said you were picking up on the feeling in the room.<br />
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<b>Eoin Finn:</b> <i>Yeah.</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> What do you make of that? <br />
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<b>Eoin Finn:</b> <i>I think I've always had that side of me. And my original definition of what that experience was mysticism. Trying to understand this mystical experience really led me to get deeper into Joseph Campbell's work when I was a teenager. And he talks so much about yoga. That's what really peaked my curiosity about yoga. But yeah, I think I've always had some kind of antenna for something bigger. And this is something that I assume everyone has, but as I get older I realize that actually not everyone has it opened in the same way. So it's taken a little bit of time to realize that others are maybe not as clued in to that antenna to the same degree or maybe that their sensitivity is getting drowned out by other messages. And even with age as my own life becomes more about mortgages and how much I owe people, my antenna gets shut down. I have to work harder to keep it open. And that's what I'm sharing. It's how I keep my antenna open to something bigger, to this force of love. </i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> As a child, what was your vision of what you wanted to be when you grew up?<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sketches of life in the Hudson's Bay Company</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">, 1880</td></tr>
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<b>Eoin Finn:</b> <i>The very first thing I wanted to be when I grew up? The very first thing was – it sounds funny – but an Indian. I mean, that's the term we used. Whenever my grandmother asked me, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” all I could think about was I wanted to run around in a forest in a loincloth and hang out with the wolves and trap rabbits. I don't know.</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> (laughing) Right. I know you went to a boarding school for high school, is that right?<br />
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<b>Eoin Finn:</b> <i>Sure, I guess technically it would have been Anglican. I mean, for whatever difference that makes. As the religious part of it, well we had chapel I guess 15 minutes every morning. I wouldn't really consider it a religious school. It was more about traditions than it was about the actual content. but yeah, there were a ton of rules. And yeah, I had a lot of fun trying to navigate around them. [laughs] I think that as a teenager you only know fun and boring. You don't really know right or wrong. [laughs] It's just one big experience of “What's fun? Let's do that. And what's boring? Let's skip that!</i><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Eoin Finn, Heading an Army of Bliss</td></tr>
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> (laughing) Speaking of which, I think you went through a number of occupational choices before you finally decided to pursue yoga. <br />
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<b>Eoin Finn:</b> <i>Yeah. God, where do I start? I went to a boarding school and definitely there was a lot of pressure to be a success in the business world. But again, being inspired by my own heart and the message of Joseph Campbell, which was follow your bliss, I always knew my bliss was love and connection and mystical experience. And actually even way back then I wanted to try and somehow make it accessible for modern living. So to find language that would speak to the average person. So when I went through university my goal was to be the professor of the philosophy of love. Doctor Love. [laughs]</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> [laughing] Tell me you’re being tongue in cheek!<br />
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<b>Eoin Finn:</b> <i>Yes. Absolutely. Doctor Love. Yeah, I don't know. Absolutely tongue in cheek. Yeah. But it was one of these things where the people I went to school with and my teachers and even my dad were like, “You want to do what?!” But I was very clear on my path. And yeah, the interesting part is in the early 90s right after university I fell in love with a girl who was teaching English in Japan and that brought me there. And besides yoga and surfing, my other big love was martial arts.</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> I read about that.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Eoin Finn, early experiments with bliss</td></tr>
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<b>Eoin Finn:</b> <i>Yeah. So I was training karate in Japan, and one of my sparring partners, his dad was a developer in Osaka. And the short story is that he presented an opportunity to me and next thing I knew I went from kind of a free-spirit yogi, wind-surfer, philosophy-of-love-blissologist, to a businessman. It happened almost literally overnight. I had dreadlocks one day and was wearing a suit and tie the next kind of thing. And I would have been maybe 20, 21, whatever age you graduate from university. And so it was a really critical time in my life because it was the one time I stepped off my bliss path. I really did listen more to the “shoulds” and kind of silenced the message of my heart for a long time. And I think in total I did that business for two years, maybe two and a half years. And I did it from Vancouver. It wasn't horrible or anything. It was just that I had this deep feeling that this was not what I was really put on earth to do. I was not in harmony with my life calling, or my dharma or whatever.</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas: </b>What gave you that feeling?<br />
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<b>Eoin Finn: </b><i>First of all, it was just a feeling. I was continuously lit up when I thought about teaching the philosophy of love. I stayed awake at night talking to friends about ideas. I read a lot. I was enthused about life. I had a big conversation with my wife recently about enthusiasm because I use that word a lot. A lot of people translate it as excitement, but it's more than excitement. It's actually when you're enthused it means you're welcoming God within you. So whatever feeling enthusiasm was in my body, complete joy, complete waking up in the morning and going, “I can't wait to journal </i><br />
<i>about this! Or write about this! It was not about waking up in the morning, having a drink of coffee and going, “OK, what's come across the fax machine this morning that I've got to deal with?” But </i><br />
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<i>when you’re being paid you often think, “Well, I can deal with not being switched on.”</i><br />
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<i>But there were other things that made it easier to drown those voices. I got so much respect from this role as a businessman. I had respect from my dad who was a lawyer. All of a sudden he and I could talk business. His other passion was horse racing. I don't know if you've ever watched thoroughbreds running around in a circle every 20 minutes, but he spent most weekends at Woodbine Racetrack. He owned horses and he loved horse racing. And I really wanted to connect with him. And I was into surfing and wind surfing and he was into horse racing. So I'm like, “I'll go to the track and really spend some bonding time with Dad!” But I just couldn't. I just couldn't find it enjoyable. So later, when my dad and I had business to talk about, it was magical. All of a sudden I had this great relationship with my dad and his friends. And I had so much respect from that whole segment of society. And that more than anything was what I considered those years about. And it just took a long time before I had the courage to go, “I have to get back on to following the bliss path, no matter what it takes.”</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> It's interesting because the motives that were guiding you to even be a businessman were well-meaning enough... I mean, on some level you wanted to connect with your father. No one could fault you that...<br />
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<b>Eoin Finn:</b> <i>I keep thinking about it and go, you know, if I had stayed on that path I still could have brought love out into the world, used it to interact with my family when that eventually happened. I could have taken some of the profits that we were making in Japan and tried to work with poor people in Japan. But the love I always talk about I guess is – I guess it's more of a universal love that I wanted rather than a love that felt more like approval.</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> It also sounds like also you were surrounded by a certain kind of material comfort that made you uncomfortable.<br />
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<b>Eoin Finn:</b> <i>Absolutely. Yeah.</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> I remember reading that you decided at one point to pay tent instead of rent, which I thought was a really cheeky way of addressing overconsumption... camping in the great outdoors not owing anything to anyone and not taking more than your immediate need.<br />
Do you think there's something about yoga that goes hand in hand with letting go of creature comforts? Is there something monastic about that? To what extent can the ordinary person live like that?<br />
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<b>Eoin Finn: </b><i>That's a great question. And when I really think about it, that is probably the biggest question facing yoga. What is yoga now that it's in the modern era? To what degree to we balance out spirituality with materialism? Because they're definitely in tension, as they were 5,000 years ago. But I do believe you can have both. I think the universe is trying to tell me, “Do not make decisions based on trying to make money out of this.” Instead, any success I've ever had in life has always been where I actually go, “I am doing this to spread as much love and joy and awe as possible.” And then the success tends to come. So it comes down to motivation. I think you have to be really clear about your motivations. So let's say I'm in the yoga industry business, whatever you want to call it. And someone is opening a yoga studio. I would say, “You really have to be in the business of serving people, trying to make an impact in people's lives, and trying to bring more love into lives; more happiness, more joy.</i><br />
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<i>And as long as you stay focused on that mission, then you can let go of your fear of how the Excel spreadsheet is going to turn out, how your year end statement is going to turn out.” And that takes trust. And that takes a real critical and authentic look into your own heart and your own motivations. And that's really what we have to do both as modern yogis and mystics is to really answer that question, each one of us in our own hearts. So it's not that materialism is bad necessarily. But if that is your prime motivation, then I would say it's time to check in.</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> So in your own experience how did doing these physical yoga poses actually tune you in to your motivations?<br />
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<b>Eoin Finn:</b> <i>Well, let me speak to yoga first. (because surfing is maybe a little different). The clarity in yoga in the physical yoga practice happens in Savasana. I say it over and over again that as fun as the physical yoga practice is, it's remedial compared to Savasana, which is really what meditation used to be to the yogis, right? Given the pace of modern culture, if we can get people to meditate, that’s unbelievable. But at least if we can get people to practice Savasana, that is awesome. So in Savasana, physically that's when your body turns into an antenna.</i><br />
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<i>And I think that – this is my theory on it – a lot of it has to do with your nervous system. Because if you read the yoga texts, it's all about trying to increase the sattva, the calm and peaceful energy. And if you tell people in modern living, “OK, let's sit down and meditate,” half of them are going to fall asleep and the other half are just too wound up to. We're too rajasic or too tamasic. So to try and get to the sattva is too hard, but the physical yoga practice, the way it works it's magic because after the Savasana you are a manifestation of the sattvic energy.</i><br />
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<i>And when your body feels like that, relaxed and calm and open, then your mind follows. Because anyone who's worked with the body a long time knows that you're not just working with the body, you're working with the body mind; it's one unit. And so much of classical yoga is about meditation, which is too hard of a path for most people. It's too cerebral. So physically create that sattva in your </i><br />
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<i>own body will make your mind more sattvic.</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> Why do you think we do these fairly strenuous postures in modern studio classes? <br />
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<b>Eoin Finn:</b> <i>Sometimes I feel modern life means our bodies move less, while our minds might move more. But I think our body that's stuck at desks or in traffic or on an airplane, generally speaking. That’s why there is a need for both meditation and yoga... And as soon as you get your body involved in the process your awareness is not only happening from the neck up. I mean, you have to get your body involved in the process, your breath, how you're feeling. The physical yoga practice moves stuff through you. I mean, for me a lot of times if I just sit down when it's been a busy day and try to meditate, I don't have as much success as when I move my body and let feelings and emotions move through me. I feel like I can get to that empty mind, open state – whatever you want to call it – way more easily after moving the body with physical yoga.</i><br />
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<i>Physical yoga can turn your body into an antenna. You experience a physiological state of parasympathetic nervous system tone. Meaning, you're not in a stress response. And Hatha yoga definitely gets us there if you allow it. I'm saying that because I travel a lot and I see a lot of yoga studios that skip Savasana, especially now that yoga's become such a big business and we've got to get bums on mats.</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> I didn't realize that was happening.<br />
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<b>Eoin Finn:</b> <i>Oh, it's a trend. It's a trend. And the other trend I hate is do Savasana if you want to and half the people get out to leave and the other half of people try and lie there in a sattvic state, but it's a rajasic state in the room; you can't do it. So what I'm saying is a well practiced yoga class will have a lot of time for Savasana at the end. It will increase the sattvic energy. That will put you into a parasympathetic nervous system tone.</i><br />
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<i>About four or five years ago I was talking about this in Japan. I lived in Japan and I can speak decent Japanese, but I didn't learn the word for nervous system. So I asked the translator in the room, “What's the word for nervous system?” And she wrote down the word “Shinkeikei.” And of course, every word in Japanese has a symbol system for it. So I looked at the symbols behind it. I was like, “Oh my god, doesn't the first one mean 'God?'” She said, “Yeah.” And I said, “Doesn't this mean a path?” And they're like, “Yeah.” “Isn't the last one like a system?” And they answered, “Yeah.” And as a foreigner looking at those symbols, I was thinking, “Oh my god, nervous system in Japanese means 'god flow system!' And that's just it. How does physical yoga turn your body and mind and heart into an antenna? That's it. You're interfering with your god flow system, treating our nervous system for modern living.</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> What are the things that interfere with that system?<br />
<br />
<b>Eoin Finn:</b> <i>Stress. No doubt. Stress is the biggest inhibitor to feeling your heart. </i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> I guess you must see a lot of it in your travels.<br />
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<b>Eoin Finn:</b> <i>Oh, it's the disease of our age. Man, start living in Vancouver. It's not getting any cheaper. It's a rough place to make a go of it anymore with the price of real estate and raising a family. I feel stress. [laughs]</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> Yeah, of course.<br />
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<b>Eoin Finn:</b> <i>It's stressful bringing up a family with the price of life. And so what it does is it forces you to have to do probably more work than you would normally do. And it's completely doesn't allow you to have the time to get in touch with this other side of your self.</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> And does it bother you that yoga classes then can be so expensive? I mean, some people just can't afford to go and they wouldn't even think of it.<br />
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<b>Eoin Finn:</b> <i>Yeah. 100%. It 100% bothers me. I don't know if you know this, but I actually haven't taught yoga in Vancouver – I had to give up my daily classes. I mean, the reason why is only because I needed to live closer to the surf. I really miss that experience with the community that we had, but at one point I was offered equity partnership by a large yoga studio to become part of their studio. And there's no way I can possibly start charging people $18 for a yoga class. I just philosophically don't believe in it. I mean, I'd never ever changed my rates. And drop ins were actually always $10. </i><br />
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<i>But I actually don't believe in free yoga either. I don't think you need to give away yoga classes. Make them cheap, sure. But I just feel like people don't value free. I think it encourages people to go to one studio during the free week and then go to the next studio on the next week kind of thing.</i><br />
<i>And I don't know if that's necessarily healthy for the business side of things either. </i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>Anyhow, I completely said no because I don't think yoga should be $18. I had never raised my rates once. In fact, I never collected people's money the whole time when I was teaching yoga in Vancouver. It was an honor system. We had a pile of cash and then those class cards that people bought. People signed in, people punched their own class cards. And I had so many great experiences came from that. I mean, I had someone come up to me with $600 with an elastic band wrapped around it and said, “You know, I've been coming to class for the last three years and I didn't have a job. And I just got one. And you know what? I haven't been paying and here's $600.” [laughs] And people love these opportunities to be nice. But yeah, I think the major thing we've got to address in yoga is how it's becoming a kind of spa experience for middle class women.</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> Yeah, that is something... a whole kettle of fish that's tied in with the whole beauty industry, which has its own effects on the practice... Has it become easier over time now to talk with your family? Have you found a way to talk about things other than business? Have they come around?<br />
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<b>Eoin Finn:</b> <i>Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, my dad's dead, unfortunately. Because I really feel like I would have broken through and found that way of relating to him. And I think it is – well, having a baby would have definitely helped that process. I think he would love this little guy that we have. (Speaking of his young son Ananda, audible in the background)</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>But also I think a lot of it is just completely being comfortable with it, being yourself, right? I don't know how to describe it. It's almost like – well, like that idea of ‘coming out,’ but 'coming out' to be yourself. When I was young, I wondered how do I tip toe around this with my parents or with society, right? How do I behave, or be who I truly am, you know? But you see this happen with lots of people, somehow they reach a certain age or stage of life and they're like, “This is just me.” And so I think if my dad was around now – I would definitely be like, </i><br />
<i>“Dad, this is who I am. I love you, old guy. And I love making people feel inspired.” </i><br />
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<br />
<span class="dropcaps">A </span>s Eoin, aka Dr. Love makes clear, we
can max-out on more than credit. The process of bliss-making may be similar to repaying a kind of debt (some call it karma) that forces you to get off the main road. But Eoin is right, the stakes are high when you've
indebted yourself to a script where the horses don't run free, a racetrack of your own making. <br />
<br />
I met a musician on tour who had written a song about climbing a roof with an antenna in a lightning storm in the hopes of being a conduit, his entire body lit up against the sky like a neon sign. It didn’t stop there for him; in fact, he recommended I take part in his ritual practice of covering himself in yak butter and setting himself on fire. I suppose it was his savasana. And while this might seem outlandish, outlandish might be exactly what’s called for sometimes.<br />
<br />
Maybe for some, it’s an immediate
cleansing, a jolt of enlightenment; for others it’s just a daily ritual
of walking away, of a bit of nothing-doing, of visiting that outlandish island of savasana five minutes at a time.. <br />
<br />
Eoin, I think, would concur. He would tell you to visit savasana... he would probably tell you it's an island surrounded by electric oceans where people live without undue concern for what other people think, they don’t make decisions based solely on projected outcomes, they dare to do things and live their lives at the helm of the contrary... and as a matter of course, they occasionally find themselves isolated. But these people, like the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_Fathers" target="_blank">desert fathers</a>, like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikky%C5%AB" target="_blank">Ikkyu</a>, or like yogis (it is said) eventually find the keys to their own ignition. As Eoin Finn (I continue to guess) would say, they find their bliss.<br />
<br />
Was it a simple decision for Eoin to stop tip-toing around those he loved, to stop showing up in denial, and to give only that which was his, that which he could afford? I don’t know. But why should it be? Like many of us, antennas held to the sky, hands up in a salute to the sun, we hold out for a bit of bliss as if no one on earth had any other way left but — upward.<br />
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~<br />
• If you are not yet a member of the Bliss Army or have not yet attended a yoga class with Eoin Finn, make it a priority for 2014. Eoin's detailed website (<a href="http://www.blissology.com/">http://www.blissology.com</a>) provides up-to-the-minute information about his touring/teaching schedule.<br />
<br />
• Eoin has contributed several pieces recently on The Huffington Post. You can read Eoin's entry entitled, "How I Learned to Love the Chaos of Bombay" <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/eoin-finn/bombay_b_4588262.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000003" target="_blank">here</a>. <br />
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• Note to readers: The last line of this blog entry is paraphrased From Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s speech “A World Split Apart,” delivered at Harvard in 1978. That tract is available at <a href="http://harvardmagazine.com/2011/04/greatest-hits-solzhenitsyn" target="_blank">Harvardmagazine.com</a>.priya thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17104604630551238443noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5670725056880541135.post-36852599875591070152013-10-27T14:14:00.000-07:002014-02-15T18:09:10.585-08:00Lou Reed (1942-2013)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b><span class="firstword">"Life is like Sanskrit read to a pony</span>." </b> -Lou Reed (1942-2013)</blockquote>
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<span class="dropcaps">L </span>ou Reed, a man who needs no introduction, moved on today. I've since been thinking about his friends and family, especially those whose friendships with him may have been complicated, unresolved... When people finally go, you have no option but to make peace.<br />
Anyway, perhaps the yoga community does not know the extent to which Lou Reed was invested in his Tai Chi practice, incorporating it into his live shows, composing music for the practice. The following is excerpted from a piece done for The Examiner.com in which the writer interviewed Reed about his dedication to the martial art. I have to admit, I laughed out loud when I read that to the interviewer's ears, Reed's Tai Chi accompaniments "seemed
different and a bit odd."<br />
<br />
That's just as it should be.<br />
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~<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6Q6_R3lQydQ/Um2BgTARF6I/AAAAAAAADcg/-hl_GNNLXko/s1600/Lou+Reed+Attends+Tai+Chi+Session+Vivid+LIVE+5wLdlUzkk72l.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6Q6_R3lQydQ/Um2BgTARF6I/AAAAAAAADcg/-hl_GNNLXko/s320/Lou+Reed+Attends+Tai+Chi+Session+Vivid+LIVE+5wLdlUzkk72l.jpg" height="208" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">American musician Lou Reed attends a Tai Chi
session led by his personal teacher Master Ren Guan Yi at the Sydney
Opera House forecourt on June 7, 2010 in Sydney, Australia. Members of
the public were invited to take part in the free event as part of the
Lou Reed-curated Vivid LIVE festival.
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(June 6, 2010 - Source: Mark Metcalfe/Getty Images AsiaPac)
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"Lou has been studying martial arts since the 1980s. First he was studying <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eagle_Claw" target="_blank">Eagle Claw</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_%28Hao%29_style_tai_chi_chuan" target="_blank">Wu/Hao Style Tai Chi</a> with <a href="http://www.espytv.com/wutaichi.htm" target="_blank">Sifu Leung Shum</a>.
In 2002, after Sifu Leung retired, through word of mouth, he found
Master Ren Guangyi, who is a grand champion and most prominent disciple
of Grandmaster <a href="http://www.chenxiaowang.com/" target="_blank">Chen Xiaowang</a>, the 19<sup>th</sup> generation of Chen Family and a lineage holder of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chen_style_tai_chi_chuan" target="_blank">Chen Style Tai Chi</a>.
Chen Style is the origin of all modern Tai Chi styles. It is the most
revered and complete of all Tai Chi styles. Tai Chi’s philosophical and
medical roots dated back over 2,000 years and it was created by
legendary Chen Wangting (1600 – 1680) about 400 years ago in <a href="http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-16087-St-Louis-Tai-Chi-Examiner%7Ey2009m7d21-Jet-Li--Chenjiagou">Chen Village</a>
(Chenjiagou), Hernan, China. It encompasses spiritual enrichment, body
nurturing and martial arts applications. It is a healing art as well as a
powerful combat/self-defense martial art. Lou fell in love with it when
he saw Master Ren demonstrate it and has devoted himself to it since. <br />
<br />
But Lou’s Tai Chi accomplishments are beyond the form study... In April 2007, he completed <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson_River_Wind_Meditations" target="_blank">Hudson River Wind Meditations</a>, his first record of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambient_music" target="_blank">ambient</a> music
for Tai Chi and meditation. When I first listened to it, it seemed
different and a bit odd. Once I settled down and focused on my practice,
it has an amazing calming effect and is very spiritual. In July 2010,
Reed, Master Ren, guitarist <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarth_Calhoun" target="_blank">Sarth Calhoun</a> and director/producer Scott Richman released <i><a href="http://www.loureed.com/power/" target="_blank">Power and Serenity: The Art of Master Ren GuangYi</a> </i>- a 70-minute Chen Style Tai Chi instructional DVD featuring six new music tracks composed and performed by Reed and Calhoun. After eight years of study with Master Ren, Lou Reed's health shines.
Now he is energetic and healthy. His eyes radiate with brilliance. At
age 68, he is busier than ever with shows and exhibitions around the
world nonstop. He thinks that <b>every hospital and clinic should offer Tai Chi classes to fundamentally change people’s health</b>.<br />
<br />
According to him, Tai Chi has benefits in every conceivable way. He
thinks that is the best thing “you can do for yourself.” Why? Tai Chi
can cultivate and nourish the vital energy Qi which is essential for
life. To raise the awareness of Tai Chi, he has been passionately
promoting Tai Chi and Master Ren tirelessly since 2003. He has invited
Master Ren to perform on stage with his band. He even made personal
introduction to Master Ren and Tai Chi. They have been touring together
on more than 150 shows including a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hal_Willner" target="_blank">Hal Willner</a> produced Halloween performance-art extravaganza devoted to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Allan_Poe" target="_blank">Edgar Allan Poe</a>
(Los Angeles), the 2006 Winter Olympic Games Opening (Torino, Italy),
the David Letterman Show, Carnegie Hall (New York), and Vivid Live. He
also narrated Master Ren’s teaching video <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Chen-Taijiquan-Master-GuangYi-YMAA/dp/B000IOMZX8">Chen Taijiquan (Tai Chi) Lao Jia Yi Lu & Straight Sword.</a><br />
<br />
“Unfortunately, young people (in this country) do not understand Tai Chi,” Lou lamented.<br />
<br />
~<br />
The article can be read in full at:<br />
<a href="http://www.examiner.com/article/lou-reed-a-highly-celebrated-tai-chi-practitioner-and-promoter">http://www.examiner.com/article/lou-reed-a-highly-celebrated-tai-chi-practitioner-and-promoter</a><br />
<br />priya thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17104604630551238443noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5670725056880541135.post-40495439468872162002013-07-27T12:45:00.000-07:002013-07-27T14:03:37.997-07:00The Ties that Bind: A Conversation with Actor, Author and Yoga Instructor Amanda Erin Miller <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0988854309" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PuI0_3RL8iU/UfL2B7FFZGI/AAAAAAAADWQ/QSBVQoO-XM4/s400/cover-1.jpg" width="251" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>One Breath, Then Another</i>, by Amanda Erin Miller</td></tr>
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<span class="dropcaps">A </span>t the end of the last semester I found myself telling my dissertation advisor that I didn’t like any of my ideas, anything I had ever written or perhaps anything I would ever write. She, who has seen it all before, advised me to stop reading, to stop writing/rewriting, to just stop. Why would I though?? I had become effortlessly neurotic, a walking warning, a nutcase phd candidate...insomniac, firing on all cylinders and ready to snap. In the thick of it, I got a gift in the mail from writer, actor and yoga instructor <a href="http://www.onebreaththenanother.com/yoga.htm">Amanda Erin Miller</a>. I couldn’t have been more grateful. There’s a sense of amazement that accompanies every book that comes to the house addressed to Shivers Up the Spine: despite any and all difficulties, there are always other people willing to share their stories to the benefit of those of us wound up a hair too taut. I quickly glanced at the back of the paperback:<br />
<br />
<i><b>“From a young age, Amanda identified with her father, a heavy smoker with food issues who starved himself until he was skeletal. She, in turn, developed a severe case of anorexia that led to hospitalization. A year after she recovered, he died of lung cancer.</b>”</i><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Amanda Erin Miller</td></tr>
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Amanda Erin Miller is an actor, writer, yoga instructor and massage therapist, intrigued by the ways these practices inform each other. Amanda recently published her memoir <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0988854309"><i>One Breath, Then Another </i></a>about her quest for healing to avoid her father's self destructive path on her own Lucid River Press. She has adapted the book into an interactive solo show about studying yoga on an ashram in India, which will premiere as part of Theater For The New City's Dreamup Festival in NYC August 2013. Excerpts from One Breath, Then Another have been featured in Freerange Nonfiction, Underwired Magazine, Om Times, Love Your Rebellion, Runaway Parade and So Long: Short Memoirs of Loss and Remembrance, a memoir anthology. Her writing has also appeared in The Rumpus and UC Riverside's Cratelit. She hosts and books the monthly literary/ music series Lyrics, Lit & Liquor at The Parkside Lounge in NYC. Amanda earned her BFA in Acting from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and her MFA in Creative Writing from The New School.<br />
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Amanda’s book <i>One Breath, Then Another</i>, a memoir, is a moving retelling of her formative years that exposes the depth to which we bond with fathers, mothers, siblings, friends and lovers, and how relationships are manifest in very real physical patterns. Quite simply, people seem to get under our skins; we embody those we love, and those ties that bind are sometimes the same knots that require a lifetime of undoing.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Amanda Miller (left), her father David Miller (right)</td></tr>
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<i><span style="font-size: small;"><b>"Okay," he said and turned. I followed him down the hall and through the kitchen, where my mom was washing the dinner dishes. He held the front door open for me, and I stepped under his warm into the early evening twilight, planted my feet, and turned back to watch the door swing shut behind him. We began walking side by side in stiff silence, moving slowly due to the poor circulation in his leg. Neither of us looked at the other. Instead, I tried to see inside the windows of the houses we passed. I wondered what other families were like, what other fathers were like, what kinds of relationships they had with their daughters. I listened to my father's heavy breathing until it became the only sound in the world. I imagined the inside of his lungs; they probably looked like the smokers' lungs I saw in my health book at school, part inflamed, part black and shrivelled. As he dragged his leg along, I thought about his heart working so hard to pump fresh blood into his clogged arteries. I thought about his body straining to perform its basic functions. I considered what I'd done to my body and realized I was partially attempting to emulate him."</b> </span></i><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: small;">(Amanda Miller, from One Breath, Then Another</span></span></h4>
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<a name='more'></a><br />
<b>Shivers up the Spine: The Yoga Examiner, A Conversation with Amanda Erin Miller, </b><b>May 2013.</b><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><b>"He was fifty-three and had just been diagnosed with lung
cancer… Stage Four is the most difficult to treat, and a patient's
survival prognosis is typically eight months to a year. My father's
doctor predicted he had six months.</b></span><br />
<b><span style="font-size: small;">Cancer was the death ticket he'd
been waiting for. Maybe it was his chemical constitution. Maybe he never
got over being adopted. Maybe he never found his niche in life. So
heavy he could never quite lift himself up, couldn't release the tension
in his jaw, his shoulders, sit outside and enjoy the sun, couldn't
relax. Life seemed to fit him like a straitjacket. He wanted out."</span> </b>(Amanda Miller, from <i>One Breath, Then Another</i>) </blockquote>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">David Miller (left), Amanda Miller (right)</td></tr>
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> I just wanted to start by thanking you for doing this because I really enjoyed your book. I actually cried my way through parts of it. The book is a memoir, which is unusual in the first place. Do you want to talk a little bit about the purposes of writing a memoir? Why a memoir? What did it mean to you?<br />
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<b>Amanda Miller:</b> <i>Sure. Well, I just felt like I needed to write it all out. I felt like part of it was a way to get past it. But I know that there's a difference between a journal entry and a memoir for other people to read. I think we all have these difficult things that we go through and these things that we aren't comfortable sharing because we're ashamed or we don't want to be judged.<br />And I've always found that in connecting with people about those things is healing. And so I thought that maybe if I shared my personal experiences and was really honest about it, people could connect to that. And maybe feel less alone...</i><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">photo: Francesca Woodman</td></tr>
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> I think, for me, what made the book seem so candid is that you detail the difficult, sometimes violent relationship you’ve had with your own body... and the ways in which we can inflict violence on the body as an expression of deep longing or sadness. And I wondered how your relationship with expressing sadness through your body changed when you finally came around to exploring various types of physical practices, whether that was message therapy or yoga...Did it change?<br />
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<b>Amanda Miller:</b> <i>Oh, it definitely did. It definitely did. Because it made me feel more connected to my body and have more awareness of it. And see that the mind and the body are interconnected, as opposed to before where I felt like the body was kind of this thing hanging off of me. And also in massage and in yoga, things feel so good. It feels so good to get a massage and to practice yoga. And so it could feel good to be in my body, and that was new for me. </i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> There’s a curious inverse relationship in the book between your recovery and your father's relapse that seems to make your bond with him so very fragile and beautiful. I wondered if you might speak to how your father’s struggles shaped your experiences of your own body and bonding with other people.<br />
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<b>Amanda Miller:</b> <i>Yeah. Well, I think as I start to mature and become more aware of what he was actually doing to his body and the fact that I had in some way mirrored what he was doing. And then watching him literally become sick from what he had done to his body and die. It was very eye opening for me in the sense of, you know, this is an option. People do die from abusing their bodies. When you're really young, you don't really think about that at all. In adolescence, if you're self-destructive, you don't necessarily equate that with serious health problems that might one day kill you. And so I remember very strongly after he died feeling so driven to live and to really make the most of every day. And I still struggled, for sure, but I had an awareness that I didn't have before.</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> In the book you say that when your father finally did get cancer, that it was the death ticket he'd been waiting for. I think the wording was, “He couldn't release the tension in his jaw, his shoulders. Life fit him like a straight jacket. He wanted out.” I wonder, do you imagine that he might have benefited from something like yoga? <br />
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<b>Amanda Miller:</b> <i>No, I mean, I think maybe massage he would have benefited from...I don't know. I honestly can't imagine him doing yoga, but maybe he could have. Maybe something other than a Vinyasa class or something. [laughing] But if he could have done some Hatha where he was breathing and connecting to his body, sure... I actually am glad you asked that question because I never imagined him doing yoga before. </i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> When you teach your classes or when you put your hands on people, whether that's as a massage therapist or otherwise, do you remember your father?<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Francesca Woodman</td></tr>
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<b>Amanda Miller:</b> <i>Oh, absolutely that's connected. Yeah. Yeah. And when I was first working as a massage therapist, I mentioned in the book the spa I was working at had this cancer night for breast cancer survivors. And that very much made me think of my father. And the relief that I was giving them, it definitely made me think about the relief that he possibly could have gotten.</i><br />
<i>It also made me remember how connected the mind is to healing, and how the idea of these therapies with a mind body connection can improve quality of life and improve prognosis potentially. You know? My father had received a diagnosis and he checked out. </i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> At what point did you figure these bodily practices could help cope with the more difficult experiences of loss or self-inflicted violence? Was there a moment where you finally thought, “This is actually starting to help.” <br />
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<b>Amanda Miller:</b> <i>Certainly, when I started studying massage... Just the feeling of helping someone else through body-work was very powerful. And it just took me out of myself. Helping someone else made me feel better which was also interesting. And then taking up the yoga practice was very powerful. With yoga, it had like this effect of breaking me up, and then it triggered all these physical feelings of loss. I wrote about crying in savasana a lot, but feeling that it was fine to express that grief, and people being supportive of that in the room...or the yoga teacher coming and lifting up my head and pressing on my shoulders and being present with me. That was very healing. And it was sort of like grieving for my dad in a way that I hadn't experienced before. And that's when I was really heavily practicing yoga. Like every day of the week, pretty much. I mean, I found these practices to offer a quicker opportunity for transformation than talk therapy for instance. And it's hard to articulate exactly why that was because it's not language based. But just practicing yoga and breathing and feeling the sensations in the body and having that trigger emotions and being able to release emotions is healing.</i><br />
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<b>“To motivate myself, I spent my nights compulsively making collages of emaciated women in magazines, primarily from Vogue. Sometimes I cut out the whole woman in whatever skimpy outfit she was wearing, her collarbones like handlebars. Other times, I just cut out a part of the woman, say, the lips coated in vamp red lipstick. Or the eye: blue or green or brown with heavy streaks of colour above and below, like circus face paint. Sometimes, the whole head: powder-white skin and frizzy teased hair, hair like my mother’s. She brushed out her Jewish red hair until it was huge. My father always told her to straighten it, thin it. But Vogue’s women made hair like that sexy...I cut out legs, torsos, feet, arms, hands, noses, eyes, heads, lips, whole bodies, layering them on top of each other until I’d plastered a Picasso like arrangement across my entire ceiling... At night, I closed my eyes in bed and ran my hands along my bony protruberances. I placed my fingers on the jutting base of my sternum, then slowly dragged my hands outward, tracing each nearly unearthed rib. ” </b>(Amanda Miller, from <i>One Breath, Then Another</i>)</blockquote>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Francesca Woodman, Untitled Providence</td></tr>
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> So did you carry around, and do you suppose a lot of people carry around some measure of shame for their less-than-pretty emotions? <br />
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<b>Amanda Miller:</b> <i>Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And I think these body practices hold space for emotion. And I think it's about being present with emotion. If you're in a room with a yoga instructor who's going to be present with you while you feel that, or you're going to be around people who are going to support it, it helps...without even having to do anything but just being there. I think that that's powerful because I think sometimes emotions are also beyond language. And you can try to talk about it, but sometimes in trying to talk about it it's also frustrating because it's hard to find the exact words to explain it. And then also the words can lead a shame experience because when you're talking about it, it can make you sometimes feel worse. You know?</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> That's interesting.<br />
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<b>Amanda Miller:</b> <i>Yeah. I think it's connected to my father in a lot of ways. Because when I was struggling with my anorexia, he was very impatient with me. And I think that the reason he was like that was because he saw similar behavior in me. I think it made him angry to see it. I don't know, it's hard to... But you know what I'm trying to say.</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas</b>: Yeah, of course.<br />
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<b>Amanda Miller:</b> <i>Yeah. And he would say things to me like, “Oh, you're draining all the energy of the family by doing this. Stop doing this.” And I think that really built up a shame for having negative feelings or expressing negativity.</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> And I suppose finding performance and theatre gave you a similar space? I remember you talking about a certain kind of emotional intensity that you were able to express with the people that you met through theatrical work. I think you said it was in the 10th grade that you first started doing work with drama? Or was it the 7th grade? <br />
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<b>Amanda Miller:</b> <i>Well, I went to theater camp as a kid. But in 10th grade, I was discovering it as a more mature person and seeing how it was helpful for me. Because when you're performing, you're taking heightened emotions and expressing them. And there's no shame in doing that because you have the framework of performance. And so that was really great for me to be able to channel all these feelings into a frame that was acceptable socially. [laughs] And yeah, so I wonder if other performers... You're a performer, right? You're a dancer?</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> Yeah, yeah... But in the book you say: “I was completely engrossed in the imagined reality of the theater.” I was kind of taken with that idea of being engrossed in the imagined reality. I wondered, do you think the imagination you have (and the access that you have to it), has anything to do with the more difficult things you've been through?<br />
<b><br />Amanda Miller:</b> <i>Certainly. [laughs] Yeah, absolutely. Performing allows you to transform your own experiences into something else. And you draw, obviously, from your own experience. As much as an actor creates a role that's separate from them, it's still coming from them. So I just think that the difficult experiences add a lot of depth and complexity to whatever you're trying to portray because there's always many layers of what's going on...the behaviour behind the behaviour. </i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas</b>: Is that process similar to yoga? <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Francesca Woodman</td></tr>
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<b><br />Amanda Miller:</b> <i>I think with yoga, it's like being able to access – it's like the experience of being fully present with your experience and not judging it, ideally. And so I'm actually taking a massage class right now and we're talking about emotions and memory in the body. And how if you work with a certain part of your body that relates to a memory, that it can trigger an emotional release or an emotional reaction. And I think that that happens a lot in yoga. For me, the hips are always a juicy area. [laughs] And opening the chest. That's a big one for me because I have all my anxiety and depression. It's in my chest. So I've noticed that hips and chest, I think all of that stuff is still in there. And yoga is a practice, so it's like a daily practice of reconnecting with you and everything you've experienced and being OK with it. You know?</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> It must be nice to have a place you can actually put your finger on your body and say, “This is where it lives.” You know?<br />
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<b>Amanda Miller:</b> <i>Oh, yeah, absolutely.</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> Do you think of writing also as an embodied experience whereby you can tap into those same experiences? Is that part of the reason for this book? Do you think of writing as a cerebral activity or was book a physical practice for you?<br />
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<b>Amanda Miller:</b> <i>Interesting. Yeah. Well, I think it depends what you're writing. But for the purpose of this book, it was definitely a combination. Yeah, because certainly there was physical experience in the process of writing it because it was so personal and was so bodily. And I don't know for sure what other people feel when they feel emotions, but I know when I feel them they're very physical and visceral. And that was definitely happening. So I guess in that sense it was sort of like a lot of electricity in the body while writing.</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> Towards the end of your book you talk about a trip you took to India. <br />
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<b>Amanda Miller:</b> <i>Absolutely. OK, so the decision to go to India was one of the most intuitive decisions I've ever made. It was not really something I deliberated about. It was like, “I need to go.” And it was because of yoga, because yoga was really so powerful for me. Again, it's a hard thing to articulate. But it really helped me so much to release so much and to be kinder to myself. So anyways, so then I was like, “I need to go study yoga on an ashram in India. I really want to do that.” And initially I didn't think I wanted to teach yoga, but I found this thing that was a yoga teacher training and it was reasonably priced. And so I was like, “I'll go and I'll study yoga and then I don't have to teach.” [laughs] Which of course ultimately I decided I definitely wanted to teach.</i><br />
<i>And it was one of those things. The trick was like, “OK, I'm going to quit my job and I'm going to cash bonds from childhood. I'm going to use all the money I have to go and take this.” </i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas: </b>What was life like at the ashram?<br />
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<b> Amanda Miller:</b> <i>Well, it was honestly life changing. It was like totally terrifying at first. [laughs] Because I was all by myself and there was so much culture shock and it was really a process of breaking down everything, everything because there was nothing from my life there. There was no society. There was no electronics. There was no money exchange. It was really a slow paced situation and very basic living. Like, very basic. And it was a lot of time to be with myself.</i><br />
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<i>And it was very slow paced yoga. So it was very hard for my mind to kind of slow down and be OK. So at first there was so much anxiety in trying to transition. And it was like waking up at 5:00 am and it was this long day of yoga practice. Living a yogi lifestyle. But I did eventually transition and I did eventually find peace in the environment and be calmer in my mind. And by the end I really wanted to stay longer, but I guess that's how things go.</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> Do you find to think that in some ways the thing that broke you down was not having reminders of your life or the things that you associated most with yourself?<br />
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<b>Amanda Miller:</b> <i>Yeah.</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> And yet the book is all about trying to honor what you've been through, those memories, with some space. Right?<br />
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<b>Amanda Miller:</b> <i>Yeah, absolutely.</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas: </b>Well then it seems that there's a kind of tension, (I think we all experience this) between the voice that says, “OK, I need to remember my story” and the voice that equally knows that the more you tell yourself that story, the more true it becomes...as if your life story gets fossilized, constrained, defined by the plotline. My question is, can you speak a little bit to this idea of not having any reminders of your ‘story’ and how that might have freed you up?<br />
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<b>Amanda Miller:</b> <i>Absolutely. Well, that was part of why I wanted to go by myself. And not having reminders, it was like it was more letting go of everything that defined me. And being able to really become just like... [laughs] This is hard. It's sounds... Whatever. [laughs] But sort of just become a spirit without all of these definitions, which, I think, at least part of what you're trying to do in yoga. It's like kind of get rid of the self, at least temporarily, and just exist. And so I feel like it did accomplish that. It was sort of like shedding all this identity and all this past and everything that constituted daily living. And I think it was successful, ultimately.</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> At one point in the book there is a curious overlap between some of the bodily mortification practices at the ashram (vamana dhauti: vomiting done after meals or on an empty stomach practiced in ashrams to cleanse the digestive and respiratory tracts) and the things that you obviously experienced before you got there. I mean for years you would binge eat and then go and expel your food with the same practices. I’m guessing it would have been a trigger for you to have to do that as a ritual practice. And yet you describe it as powerfully cleansing. Why? <br />
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<b>Amanda Miller:</b> <i>Right. Yeah. It was interesting. I mean, this practice that was supposed to be a cleansing and healing practice was, at that point for me yes, associated with something that had been very self destructive. So it was powerful to do it and to think of in a new way. And the difference for sure was that with vaman you're doing it before you eat and you're drinking salt water. At first I was quite nervous about doing it, but I did feel kind of like it helped my anxiety. </i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> Did it also rewire your memory or your “story”?<br />
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<b>Amanda Miller: </b><i>Yeah. Yeah, it also was like, “I don't do that anymore and this is a different context. And this is for a different purpose.” And it didn't make me want to do that again. You know? Yeah.</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> In the book you mention your father was adopted. Perhaps related to his sorrow, your book really deals with your own issues with trying to find a community. I found there were continual recollections of Jewish summer camp experiences with that of the ashram. <br />
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<b>Amanda Miller:</b> <i>Oh, yeah, that's true. The times where I felt the most unhealthy or out of balance was when I was all alone. I didn't have a community. And both those experiences (camp and the ashram) are situations that exist separate from society and civilization. They’re located out in a natural setting. And you live with the same people and you don't leave. And you're there for a month at least. And both had rituals because the summer camp was a Jewish summer camp, so you have rituals for meals and for the Sabbath. And at the ashram you wake up and you meditate and you chant and practice yoga and don't talk during meals. So they both had these rituals and both had a spiritual intention behind them. And I think also the separateness from society enabled some very profound connections with the other people because it was really about being with people.</i><br />
<i>And so you feel really close knit with these people in a very short amount of time. And both of those situations made me feel very supported. And also I was able to express emotion in both of those environments with other people in deeper ways than I generally am in daily life.</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> And what about yourself now? Are you in a place where you feel like you're over the worst of it? Or is it a come and go situation? Like every day is a new thing...<br />
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<b>Amanda Miller:</b> <i>Well, certainly it's not as extreme as it was. Yes. I feel like I have much more awareness than I've ever had about how my system functions and my mind operates. So even when I have difficulty, I have better perspective. So I know it's not going to last forever and that – yeah, and that helps. But, you know. I'm a human and I'm by no means perfect. And I still have a lot of emotion and can be triggered and I can have anxiety and sadness. But I think the main thing is that I'm very driven to do what I want to do. And I feel like I've really empowered myself to pursue what I want to pursue. And I have a good support system. I have a really sweet partner. And so I think the main thing is that I have better perspective.</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> You mention at the end of your book that your dad was the one who encouraged you to write. <br />
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<b>Amanda Miller:</b> <i>Well, I've always written since I was little. I was always writing books and stapling </i><br />
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<i>them together and drawing illustrations for them. He just thought I was good at it and he really encouraged me to keep doing it. And he was an intellectual type. And he had read a lot and he just connected with the fact that I was writing. And he thought that I was good at it...he would tell me my writing was good and that I should keep doing it. [laughs]</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> That’s invaluable. What was your father like?<br />
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<b>Amanda Miller:</b> <i>Well... (long pause)</i><br />
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> He sounds like he was a complicated man...<br />
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<b>Amanda Miller:</b> <i>[laughing] Yeah, that was the first thing I was going to say. Yeah, he was complicated. But he was very intelligent. He was passionate about history and interested in politics. He was an intellectual. And he was very hard on himself. And sometimes quite hard on the people that he was closest to. But he really did love those he was closest to. And I have some of my most difficult memories with him and I have some of my most loving memories with him... </i><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Francesca Woodman</td></tr>
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<span class="dropcaps">P </span>erhaps it's not so unusual that we should learn many important things early on in life, only to spend as much time later trying to unlearn them. It brings to mind something one of my yoga teachers had said to me about one of my areas of ‘mastery.' I was busy explaining that I had turnout very deeply established in my hips from earlier training when he said: “Learn it and let it go.” It’s a strange rule of the universe that the things you trained for, even that yoga pose you are convinced you have ‘mastered’ will be your undoing. <br />
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The point being, the very things that we learned by becoming mirrors of those we love, in emulation or identification, the very things that helped us survive or cope must also, at some point, be uprooted. I don’t know why. It just seems that once you’ve learned something well enough to repeat it in your sleep, its utility diminishes: everything is useful until it’s become a habit. So we have no option but to admit it: Strategies of a sound practice must be based on change, motion, on transience… Maybe we do yoga so that our bodies can be thrown headlong into centrifugal force, the sharper curves, without losing dead-center. Or, maybe we do this practice of mindful postures (and its inevitable accumulations of habit) for much stranger reasons. Perhaps somewhere in us we know that beyond its promises of thermoregulation, biofeedback, and spinal alignment, yoga is a system ultimately designed to undo itself, to finally unravel completely. And then, possibly, hopefully, we might let go. <br />
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---<br />
• For more information about Amanda Erin Miller, please visit http://www.onebreaththenanother.com/ <br />
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• For those located in NYC, you can see Amanda in performance in <b><i>One Breath, Then Another: An Interactive Yoga Show</i></b> which will officially premiere as part of Theater For The New City's Dream Up Festival. 8/18 8pm, 8/21 6:30pm, 8/23 9pm, 8/25 2pm, 8/28 6:30pm. $12<br />
Tix available <a href="http://bit.ly/10vtqav">here </a><br />
<br />
<b><i>One Breath, Then Another: A Memoir</i></b> is available on Amazon in <a href="http://amzn.to/U8k1oH">print</a> and for <a href="http://amzn.to/145e7TL">Kindle </a><br />
www.onebreaththenanother.com priya thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17104604630551238443noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5670725056880541135.post-63956855599228133082013-05-17T22:50:00.000-07:002013-05-17T22:50:24.951-07:00In Perpetual Motion: A Conversation with Norman Sjoman PhD on Yoga, Art and a Personal Sense of Order<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Dark Rudra" original on canvas and paper, Norman Sjoman</td></tr>
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<span class="dropcaps">I </span>t happened the usual way things happen for me. I read something curious and then the thought of it grew, generating questions that then fractured and multiplied, interrupting my routines, populating my peripheral vision. I owe this particularly pleasant detour to Canadian painter, writer, yoga teacher and Sanskritist <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Sjoman" target="_blank">Norman Sjoman</a> who I’m told was living in Argentina at the time I managed to make contact with him. See, I was on a mission to sequester myself (very successful on the isolation end of things) with the books I needed to read for my final comprehensive exam when I re-read Sjoman’s lovely book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Yoga-Tradition-Mysore-Palace/dp/8170173396"><i>The Yoga Tradition of the Mysore Palace</i></a>, in which he wrote the following:<br />
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<i><b>"I feel that the only possible way of communicating any meaningful sense of justice is through one's personal sense of order, one's aesthetic." </b></i></blockquote>
So of course, this seemed an unusual pronouncement to make. I mean, not that the statement itself is hard to understand, but that Sjoman had decided to open his discussion of the hatha yoga traditions of the Mysore Palace with this note to his readers seemed out of the ordinary. What was his concern with the aesthetic? <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Norman Sjoman</td></tr>
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Norman Sjoman has published on art, art history and the techniques of yoga, and also lectured on these subjects as well as Sanskrit at universities in various countries. Born in Mission City, British Columbia, Sjoman has a BA Honours from the University of British Columbia, a Filosofie Kandidat from Stockholm University.<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"></span> He has a Vidyāvācaspati (PhD) from the Centre of Advanced Studies in Sanskrit at Pune University, a pandit degree from the Mysore Maharaja’s Mahapathasala and a Diploma from Alberta College of Art. Over a 14-year period in India he studied four different śāstras (traditional philosophical disciplines), in Sanskrit, with several individual pandits. From 1970-1976 Sjoman studied yoga under B.K.S. Iyengar. Sjoman has taught yoga in several countries and is accredited by yoga studios in Canada, the Netherlands and Japan. In 1982 he was awarded an honorary Doctorate in Yoga by the Nippon Yoga Gakkei. At present he resides mainly in Calgary, Canada, while making frequent visits to India, <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Harihara," original on canvas/paper, Norman Sjoman</td></tr>
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Europe, Mexico and South America. As a visual artist, Sjoman has illustrated his own books and books by others. He has prepared exhibition catalogues for various artists, including Druvinka, Shehan Madawela, Raghupati Bhatta, and R. Puttaraju. In 2006 Sjoman was invited to the first panel on yoga at the American Academy of Religion in Washington, DC, where he presented a paper entitled Summary of Research on Yoga. In 2006 he presented a monograph "The Yoga Tradition" at India's Lonavla Yoga Institute.<br />
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I like to think that like all detours from life’s main roads, this conversation (which is the result of a volley back and forth of questions emailed over great distances) gives you a sense of yoga’s tributaries and alleyways as Sjoman discusses art, poetry and the body in motion...all those things that make the busy pace of the main road that much more bearable. And so using something other than straight lines we build relationships that can sustain more than plans and ambitions: a personal sense of order, a treehouse, an āsana, a fable that happened one day in the backyard.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Rudra Rajata" original mixed media on canvas, Norman Sjoman </td></tr>
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<b>Priya Thomas in Conversation with Norman Sjoman, PhD </b><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Burnt Rudra" original mixed media on canvas/paper, Norman Sjoman<span style="font-size: x-small;"></span></td></tr>
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<i><span style="font-size: large;"><b> <span style="color: #990000;">"I feel that the only possible way of communicating any meaningful sense of justice is through one's personal sense of order, one's aesthetic." <span style="font-size: small;">- </span></span></b></span></i><span style="color: #990000;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-size: small;">Norman Sjoman</span></b></span></span></div>
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> Given your quote above, I'd like to talk about your perspective regarding the study of yoga as a discursive enterprise, as a psycho-physical practice and as an aesthetic… knowing full well that you would likely not separate these things. I think readers would be interested to hear your thoughts on the value importance of aesthetics as pertains to yoga, and to hear about your own journey with yoga.</div>
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<a href="http://www.blacklotusbooks.com/publications/books/DeadBirds/Dead_Birds.htm" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Cbf18aFMjfs/UZax77apbRI/AAAAAAAADPU/8-aJm9dtv2A/s320/Dead+Birds_large.jpg" width="226" /></a><b>Norman Sjoman:</b> <i>I will try to avoid cheap comments even though the glib answer is endemic to media. I have discussed āsana as a psycho physical practice in <a href="http://www.blacklotusbooks.com/publications/books/YogaTouchstone/yoga_touchstone.htm" target="_blank">Yoga Touchstone</a> and <a href="http://www.blacklotusbooks.com/publications/books/DeadBirds/Dead_Birds_large.htm" target="_blank">Dead Birds</a>. I will recapitulate some of that. First of all I have proposed dividing āsana into still and moving āsanas there. The idea of still and moving is a concept that dates from the Upaniṣads and describes the world. The word āsana itself means 'still' or 'position' (elaborated in Yoga Touchstone). The Indian term for movement is karma. It accounts for the physical and beyond the physical extending even further than our idea of subconscious (that determines the patterns in our body that limit or control our movement) into previous incarnations. The division of body and mind is artificial and stems from an orientation toward hyper objectivity as part of the metaphysic of scientific discourse and capitalism. We partially recognize this unity in our language with the word ‘emotion’ which literally means out of movement etymologically but we interpret that in terms of fight or flight.<br /><br />So when we consider yoga, we have to consider the whole psycho-physical apparatus. This has implications beyond the physical – our dreams, our deep sleep states, the dissolution of the body (as happens every night when we go to sleep). In short, the practice of yoga is in reality an exploration of consciousness and this has been indicated from some of the earliest records in Indian thought, particularly in the Upaniṣads and continues almost up to the present in Indian texts.</i></div>
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<i>To turn to art, these states of consciousness are not accessible to the dominating probes of objectivity (we could mention academics and politics here). Therefore, logically, in order to explore them we have to turn to something else – here, art. I think it is clear from the above that in āsana or movement, emotion is often a better means of access than anatomical abuse.</i></div>
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<i>Now, in ancient India there were two forms of truth – satya and ṛta. Satya more or less refers to a form of objective truth and ṛta was something like the truth of the whole moving cosmos. The two do not necessarily correspond and overlap. In the first pāda of the Yogasūtram that occurs after the ability to grasp object and subject (consciousness itself) and discriminate between them; there is the sūtra, ŗtambharā tatra prajñā, literally consciousness or knowledge at that point carries (or is) ŗta, the form of truth that is beyond or the core of objective truth if we accept the above explanations. I might add that ṛta has disappeared as a concept in later Sanskrit. Interestingly enough, this word (ṛta) is the etymological source of our word art. I have traced this in an article in my book Art: the Dark Side. It is usually traced back to Latin which gives an idea of entertainer or street artist. But traced all the way back, we get the sense that the artist is a seer that has access to a higher form of truth. From understanding this, we can extrapolate the attitude we would have to take on the ground.</i><br />
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<i>Regarding justice, Pablo Neruda said there is no justice in this world. The only justice to be found is in painting, in art where some kind of balance or order is necessary for it to be art and, I might add, there is nothing at stake any more. I think the similarities to yoga are obvious.</i></div>
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b><i> </i>It takes many years I presume of practice before one gets to the point of considering there to be “nothing at stake” anymore with either art or yoga. For many, this would seem like a place they wouldn’t want to exist either....<i><br /></i></div>
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<b>Norman Sjoman:</b> <i>Perhaps you have misunderstood my comment here. In the case of art, there is a certain confusion that has arisen with the dominance of economic considerations in our lives. Previously one’s life was not governed by financial destiny. One had one’s space on earth and food and living was not under the control of business excess. When you work outside the fantasy of finance, there is nothing at stake. Your art is for itself. Most artists, excluded from financial reward (which is realized by promotion), practice their art because they want to (that is, emotion, above or the fact that they have no choice). We speak of doctors and doctors. Healers are excluded in a similar way. Yoga has been especially prone to financial liquidation because of its popularity and a somewhat pathetic understanding that it is just about some particular configuration of the body. Indian disciplines demand a lifetime of devotion (translate hard work). There is nothing really at stake because the discipline is only about you if you are fortunate enough to understand that.</i></div>
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> I'm not sure I misunderstood your question about those for whom the notion of "nothing at stake" is anathema to their purpose in making art or doing yoga. I suppose I was in a way saying that for some, extrinsic motivators do seem to overshadow intrinsic ones. Wherever you look there's an artist or a yogi whose motivations are explicitly extrinsic. This, as you say, may pertain to economic considerations. But my point was that extrinsic motivators (i.e. those things that are at stake) continually appear in people's list of reasons for doing yoga or art. Is the intrinsic mode of being something that yoga can develop over what you call a "lifetime of devotion?" Or are artists (and yogis for that matter) necessarily those fish that swim upstream i.e. against the current? Didn't William Faulkner say, “You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore”? </div>
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<b>Norman Sjoman:</b> <i>I have to reread Faulkner. I have quoted him in <a href="http://www.blacklotusbooks.com/publications/books/DeadBirds/Dead_Birds.htm" target="_blank">Dead Birds</a> as well. Our initial impulse to action is often extrinsic. If we are fortunate, our actions though should transform us in the process. Indian Śāstras (traditional philosophical disciplines) all expect that transformation after which they say, the śāstra itself is meaningless.</i></div>
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> There is a fair amount of emphasis placed on Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtra in contemporary postural practice. What do you make of this text occupying a central position in the perception of a canon? <i><br /></i></div>
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<a href="http://www.blacklotusbooks.com/publications/yogasutracintamani.htm" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Nv1fU8_cRQc/UZa04kPA90I/AAAAAAAADPs/6QSRnR_90y0/s320/yogcint_lg.jpg" width="243" /></a><b>Norman Sjoman:</b><i> It looks now like my next book will be coming out, the 'Yogasūtraćintāmaṇi' which addresses this issue. This is a book about the much abused yoga sūtras. What I have done is, using the sūtras as a framework, drawn relevant statements from Indian scholars and yogins of a thousand years earlier - Upaniṣads, Buddhism and so on. These indicate a much older tradition than the yoga sūtras including the spiritual anatomy that is usually credited to the later śāktas. In addition to that I have gone ahead into the tantric and śaiva texts that were created in the thousand years following Patañjali and supply their comments and critiques as well. This enables us to see the yoga tradition as a tradition and place the yoga sutras within that rather than using them as the beginning and end of what is known as yoga. Taking the tradition as a whole enables us to understand this as a spiritual discipline directly relevant to ourselves rather than as some symbol system or mechanical system of authority. I could say more but I restrain myself. </i></div>
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> You spoke earlier about the word emotion and its etymological relationship to movement. How would you describe yoga's relationship to emotion?<i></i></div>
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<i><br /></i><b>Norman Sjoman: </b><i>Everyone who practices āsanas seriously has experienced the resolution of an emotional complex connected with a physical or anatomical release or access to movement and vice versa. I have spoke about that in detail in <a href="http://www.blacklotusbooks.com/publications/books/DeadBirds/Dead_Birds.htm" target="_blank">Dead Birds</a>. Indeed, ‘attitude’ is often ultimately more important in the accomplishment of movement than physical preparation. Physical preparation tends to remain in a part of consciousness that is limited by a certain anatomical logic that might give some mechanical access in movement. Anatomy can be considered an ocean but it has boundaries. Emotion gives access to possibilities. In Indian terms, that word can be covered by the word ‘heart’. That adds a different perspective.</i></div>
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<i><br /></i><b>Priya Thomas:</b> When did you first get interested in yoga?<i></i></div>
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<i><br /></i><b>Norman Sjoman:</b><i> I began trying to work with Yoga in Sweden from a book. I heard the word Sanskrit there as well and, when I heard it, I knew that I would study that and began to do so. I did not even know it was an Indian language then. I have felt that the two complement one another. After all, they are both about concentration.</i><b></b></div>
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<b><br />Priya Thomas:</b><i> </i>What book did you find that guided you to practice yoga in Sweden?</div>
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<b>Norman Sjoman:</b><i> The first book I found was one by Ghosh. I have never been able to find that book</i></div>
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<i> again. Then I took some classes with a young French boy who had been in a car accident and had <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-R4_4W6caM0k/UZa3puVXYeI/AAAAAAAADQA/GGn9DQVeeXs/s1600/Bharadvajasana-I-and-Bharadvajasana-II-Yoga-Pose-BKS-Iyengar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="221" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-R4_4W6caM0k/UZa3puVXYeI/AAAAAAAADQA/GGn9DQVeeXs/s320/Bharadvajasana-I-and-Bharadvajasana-II-Yoga-Pose-BKS-Iyengar.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">BKS<i> </i>Iyengar</td></tr>
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been severely injured. He had a Chinese physiotherapist who noticed that his movements were similar to yoga and worked with him with yoga. Then I found Iyengar’s book on </i><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">āsanas</span><style></style><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"></span>. I went to Pune to study Sanskrit and found that Iyengar was there. I went to him for years.</i><b> </b></div>
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> Describe your art practice. </div>
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<i><br /></i><b>Norman Sjoman:</b><i> I have always been interested in art even as a child. Now, I like to have a number of things in front of me. I dabble with them. With good fortune, one of them will take me and then I work on that exclusively until I am finished. Then I hang around and wait for something else to take me. </i></div>
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b> Why do you think there’s justice in art? Or in yoga?<b> </b></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Lhsg4zKge4w/UZa5VWq_SrI/AAAAAAAADQU/3wXW2P5pH3M/s1600/Language+mandala.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Lhsg4zKge4w/UZa5VWq_SrI/AAAAAAAADQU/3wXW2P5pH3M/s1600/Language+mandala.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Language Mandala," mixed media on canvas/paper, Norman Sjoman</td></tr>
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<b>Norman Sjoman:</b><i> Art requires a certain ‘balance’. That balance is a form of honesty. It’s easy to be tricked or attracted by an extraneous symbol – a flesh flash for example. Yoga, even at a physical level, begrudges absence of balance and alignment. How much more so with the mind? With the breath? With meditation? You can perceive a quiet mind directly.</i><b> </b></div>
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b><i> </i>Do you take movement to be a form of art? What constitutes art for you?<b> </b></div>
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<b>Norman Sjoman:</b><i> I am constrained by the way you put your question. I would consider that movement which rises to ‘art’ (ṛta above) is movement that is part of the space around you pervaded or even formed by your own consciousness. And there is movement that is a fragmentation of that and does not rise to that state. There is a long argument in Indian aesthetics about the conveyance of this state to the spectator and the state of mind of the participant. There are different opinions. It is generally accepted that there is a stimulation of emotions in the spectator that rise up until they transcend the ego fettered mind and become a direct temporary experience of transcendence. The proof of that in Indian thought is the statement we make ‘I was lost in the music and I did not know a thing’. It’s not uncommon. One cannot expect anything less of art. I hope that is revealed in the photographs in <a href="http://www.blacklotusbooks.com/publications/books/YogaTouchstone/yoga_touchstone.htm" target="_blank">Yoga Touchstone</a>.</i></div>
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<b>Priya Thomas:</b><i> </i>Can you describe the state of mind that arises in making/performing art? Is it akin to a kind of possession? Is it an experience of svarga (loosely translated, a temporary “heaven”)? Is it pratyakṣa (insight) – what is it?<i></i></div>
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<i><br /></i><b>Norman Sjoman:</b><i> What more is there to say than above? <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wallace_Stevens" target="_blank">Wallace Stevens</a> has spoken eloquently in this excerpt of “The Man with the Blue Guitar:”</i></div>
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<b>The Man With the Blue Guitar </b><i><b><br /></b></i></h4>
<b><i>I.</i></b><br />
<i>The man bent over his guitar, A shearsman of sorts. The day was green.</i><br />
<i>They said, “You have a blue guitar, You do not play things as they are.”</i><br />
<i>The man replied, “Things as they are Are changed upon the blue guitar.”</i><br />
<i>And they said then, “But play, you must, A tune beyond us, yet ourselves,</i><br />
<i>A tune upon the blue guitar Of things exactly as they are.”</i><br />
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<b><i>II</i></b><br />
<i>I cannot bring a world quite round, Although I patch it as I can.</i><br />
<i>I sing a hero’s head, large eye And bearded bronze, but not a man,</i><br />
<i>Although I patch him as I can And reach through him almost to man.</i><br />
<i>If to serenade almost to man Is to miss, by that, things as they are,</i><br />
<i>Say that it is the serenade Of a man that plays a blue guitar.</i><br />
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<b><i>III</i></b><br />
<i>Ah, but to play man number one, To drive the dagger in his heart,</i><br />
<i>To lay his brain upon the board And pick the acrid colors out,</i><br />
<i>To nail his thought across the door, Its wings spread wide to rain and snow,</i><br />
<i>To strike his living hi and ho, To tick it, tock it, turn it true,</i><br />
<i>To bang it from a savage blue, Jangling the metal of the strings…</i><br />
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<b><i>IV</i></b><br />
<i>So that’s life, then: things are they are? It picks its way on the blue guitar.</i><br />
<i>A million people on one string? And all their manner in the thing,</i><br />
<i>And all their manner, right and wrong, And all their manner, weak and strong?</i><br />
<i>And that’s life, then: things as they are, This buzzing of the blue guitar.</i><br />
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<b><i>V</i></b><br />
<i>Do not speak to us of the greatness of poetry, Of the torches wisping in the underground,</i><br />
<i>Of the structure of vaults upon a point of light. There are no shadows in our sun,</i><br />
<i>Day is desire and night is sleep. There are no shadows anywhere.</i><br />
<i>The earth, for us, is flat and bare. There are no shadows. Poetry</i><br />
<i>Exceeding music must take the place Of empty heaven and its hymns,</i><br />
<i>Ourselves in poetry must take their place, Even in the chattering of your guitar.</i><br />
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<b><i>VI</i></b><br />
<i>A tune beyond us as we are, Yet nothing changed by the blue guitar;</i><br />
<i>Ourselves in the tune as if in space, Yet nothing changed, except the place</i><br />
<i>Of things as they are and only the place As you play them, on the blue guitar,</i><br />
<i>Placed so, beyond the compass of change, Perceived in a final atmosphere;</i><br />
<i>For a moment final, in the way The thinking of art seems final when</i><br />
<i>The thinking of god is smoky dew. The tune is space. The blue guitar</i><br />
<i>Becomes the place of things as they are, A composing of senses of the guitar. </i></blockquote>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-q60UfYdJemk/UZa7MayyVnI/AAAAAAAADQk/Fgppm07VGuo/s1600/Rudra+whispers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-q60UfYdJemk/UZa7MayyVnI/AAAAAAAADQk/Fgppm07VGuo/s400/Rudra+whispers.jpg" width="301" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Rudra Whispers," original mixed media on canvas, Norman Sjoman</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3SD4fKgSrKU/UZa-hx5qkCI/AAAAAAAADQ0/J7nw0_Szhbc/s1600/Tree+of+life+.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3SD4fKgSrKU/UZa-hx5qkCI/AAAAAAAADQ0/J7nw0_Szhbc/s400/Tree+of+life+.jpg" width="301" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Tree of Life," original mixed media on canvas, Norman Sjoman</td></tr>
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<span class="dropcaps">T </span>he blue guitar refuses to compose “things as they are,” composing instead beyond them... not unlike an āsana, creating an aesthetic order both emotionally moving and utterly transformative. As Sjoman reminds us, the word emotion means out of movement. As any yogi hell bent on their physical postures knows, movement, so closely linked to order, is also linked to emotion... Who hasn’t had that moment in a yoga class when you could identify a physical location that had become the residence for a particularly stubborn memory? Those in seated meditation will tell you the same, pointing with kinetic precision to the locations of their emotional turbines and the eruptions of anxiety that are regularly diffused, carried by breath into the delicate passages of their wrists or the soles of the feet. </div>
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As summer approaches, even those who have no interest in yoga slip into circles around campfires, skip stones on oceans and circumambulate foreign cities, collaborating with other bodies as if these compositional forms of breath and movement, these poses, were hardwired into being... as if the movements of the night sky and its fireflies, or even the simulated flickering of the aurora borealis on my screensaver were but choreographic variations on a deeper theme, an infinitely flexible, more mutable order whose essence is perpetual motion.</div>
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<b>~</b></div>
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All of Norman Sjoman's books are available to purchase online through <a href="http://www.blacklotusbooks.com/publications/gate.htm" target="_blank">Black Lotus Books</a>.</div>
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priya thomashttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17104604630551238443noreply@blogger.com2