Living on the Frontiers of your own Voice: Yoga and Writing with Author Bruce Black

(a child's christmas in wales, dylan thomas)

P ropped up against the brick of our fireplace at home is a vinyl release of A Child's Christmas in Wales read by Dylan Thomas. Anyone who has heard it read would likely remember the magic in its words and the author's lilting, choral delivery. What's in a human voice that tugs at the heartstrings? Why do children like to fall asleep to the sound of a voice reading a story?  And what exactly does the repetition of form tell us about sthiram, sukham, asanam...or stability, ease and yoga?

Author Bruce Black likes the warp and weft of words as much as he likes to trace the outlines of asanas on a yoga mat. Black began yoga five years ago when his knees could no longer stand the stress of running. A writer of fiction originally, Bruce Black turned his attention to the inner story of his yoga practice through journalling after a yoga teacher handed his whole class blank notepads. The exercise proved so fruitful that out of it emerged, Writing Yoga, a book that explores the nexus of yoga, writing and life.

(Bruce Black)

A graduate of Columbia University, where he received a BA in English literature, Bruce Black earned his MFA in writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. His stories have appeared in Cricket and Cobblestone magazines and other publications, and his blog, Wordswimmer, was named one of the Web's "Top 100 Creative Writing Blogs" by Online Education News and is included in Online Degrees Hub's list of "100 Great Blogs that Young Writers Should Read." You can also find him at Writing Yoga, the blog for keeping a yoga journal. He serves as a poetry judge for The Cybils: Children's and Young Adult Bloggers' Literary Awards and is the founder and editorial director of The Jewish Writing Project. He lives in Sarasota, Florida, where he teaches writing workshops for children and adults and spends most of his time, when he's not reading or writing in his journal, practicing Tree Pose.

I spoke with Bruce Black at length about how writing and yoga are symbiotic practices that can help locate personal obstacles to using one's authentic "voice".  As his book details, no one is exempt from the oppressive chatter of the self-defeating inner critic.  And in our interview he talks about how having the nerve to observe the workings of your inner critic is exactly what affords you some room to mitigate the inner saboteur's influence.

"The journal was slightly larger than my hand, with lined, cream-coloured pages (blank on the back), a black spiral binding, and a cover, both front and back, wrapped in cloth on which was reproduced a Japanese painting — Katsushika Hokusai's "The Great Wave Off Kanagawa" — depicting a tall blue ocean wave, frozen at its crest just before it falls back to earth. In the distance, beneath the curl of the wave's white crest, you could see a snow-covered mountain. And entering the picture from the right-hand side you could make out the prows of two wooden vessels, coming from no one knows where and whose destination is also a mystery. It was a beautiful gift, a hundred blank pages waiting for words (and pictures) to fill them..." -Bruce Black, Writing Yoga

(Katsushika Hokusai's "The Great Wave Off Kanagawa")

The Long Journey of a Blue Letter: Chanting and Yoga with Mekhala Desikachar of Krishnamacarya Yoga Mandiram

(One of several chanting cds featuring student and daughter of yoga master T.K.V Desikachar, granddaughter of yoga master of Sri Tirumalai Krishnamacarya)

  W hen i was young, I remember blue aerogramme letters coming to the house. They would come every three and a half weeks; and then a return letter with what looked like a hundred stamps would get mailed back in a bleached white envelope marked air mail, return address Canada. That's what it was like communicating with India. My family seemed ok with it; although there were grumblings about the postal system and letters never received. In my mind, you might as well have set sail yourself aboard a rickety ship every 4 weeks, charting your own course round the perimeter of the stormy and fickle Arabian seacoast...the journey for each single piece of mail seemed equally arduous and unpredictable.

And then came phase two of filial relations with the old country: the phone conversation. In the 1970's families in Kerala started getting home phones; and we would make calls from our home in Montreal to my grandparents in South India, where my parents would take turns yelling into the receiver, only to hear unintelligible echoes, some crackling, and more echoes in return.  My brother and I would even get invited to come and yell our broken communications over to aunts and uncles or cousins, signaling the tail-end of a chaotic cross-continental phone call.

So when I was reading the weekly sutra on the Krishnamacarya Yoga Mandiram (or KYM) website about a month ago, it occurred to me that I might as well take advantage of the sweep and scale of change that has overturned India, and interview someone from KYM who can speak to the state of yoga in the blizzard of modernity that is India today. And that's when I thought of Mekhala Desikachar, student and daughter of yoga master T.K.V Desikachar and the granddaughter of yoga master of Sri Tirumalai Krishnamacarya. Not only does she have access to an illustrious history, and the knowledge and background that it likely confers, but she is also part of a generation that grew up in the new India, a locus of hyperactive flux.

(D. Mekhala)

D. Mekhala has been on the faculty of the Krishnamacarya Yoga Mandiram in Chennai, India since the age of 13 teaching children and assisting main instructors. She started teaching private classes for children with health problems at the age of 15 and has been teaching individual adult classes for the last eight years, as well as assisting her father T.K.V Desikachar in many of his seminars worldwide. Like her father, she earned her degree in engineering, but her passion is Vedic chanting. Mekhala has recorded cd's on Vedic and yoga sutra chanting, including two with her father Desikachar.  She has been studying Vedic chanting for the last 27 years.

I was quite grateful that despite the demands on her time her new role as mother (her newborn son is primary concern these days), Mekhala generously accepted the invitation to an interview which we completed thanks to the flicker speed of email communication. Her succinct replies evoke her childhood memories of playing with her grandfather Krishnamacarya at age 99,  early yoga classes with her father Desikachar, and the significance of chanting in her own practice. Moreover, she contributes to a greater conversation about the shape of yoga in contemporary India with consideration and simplicity, as she details how, "the winds of yoga blow in from the west".

"In the Indian tradition, the idea of good health extends far beyond mere physical fitness, encompassing the mind and spirit as well...No matter how each of us defines wellbeing, what lies at the core of this concept is a healthy mind in a healthy body, empowered by an indomitable spirit. This may sound an ambitious proposition. Nevertheless, it must be possible for all our ancient texts speak about this harmonious integration of mind, body and spirit. How does one work towards what seems a challenging goal, given the pressures of life today?
Great masters have shown us the path – a path that is paved with the stepping stones of devotion, sincerity, commitment, detachment and surrender... Just listening to these chants can heal, for as TKV Desikachar (son and student of legendary yogi, T Krishnamacharya) says, "Chanting can open our hearts." (Excerpt from KYM Website)

"Chanting was so much part of my household. My father was teaching it to his students including my mother and then there were their own practices. There was so much that I think at one point I was chanting it all in my mind. I must have been 7 or 8 at that time" (Mekhala Desikachar)

Welcome to the Prism: Infinite Refractions, The Variety of Vedanta and Yoga in America with Philip Goldberg

(American Veda by Philip Goldberg)

R eading is a solitary thing. For the most part, nobody joins you in the process, save for the occasional elderly cat -i have one such- that takes delight in napping on top of the best paragraphs.  But reading is also part of a breathtaking human process of experimentation; of taking things in and radiating back out; and not unlike inhaling and exhaling, there's a circulation of energy. So I'm grateful when readers step off the page to tell you about what books they've loved, letting ivory towers crumble...sharing ideas. So when a Shivers up the Spine reader suggested I get out and read American Veda by meditation teacher and ordained interfaith minister, Philip Goldberg, I was on it.

(Bob Dylan)

American Veda is a celebration of the history, legacy and profound impact left by core teachings of Vedanta and yoga on the religious and ethical sensibilities of Americans. Specifically, it looks at the dark and forgotten closets and cupboards of the nation to find the staple stash of Hindu thought that has been re-created and served up as a side dish with dinner each night for more than a hundred years. And from Emerson to Bob Dylan to George Lucas, artists and storytellers have certainly been dipping into that back pantry for inspiration and serving it up with great and colourful variety to sometimes completely unsuspecting audiences.

("Avatar", by James Cameron)

Would American rock band The Doors have tested the limits of perception without the cultural backdrop and impact of meditation practices and its accompanying interest in altered states? Just how common have Sanskrit words become in America that the word karma is ubiquitous enough to be used in the titles of pop songs that span the last three decades? (Consider for a moment: "Instant Karma" by John Lennon to represent the 1970's, "Karma Chameleon" by Culture Club for classic 80's and more recently "Karma Police" by Radiohead...) Or what about the word avatar, and that once trendy, and highly contagious virtual reality site called Second Life with its population of avatar protagonists? Do I even need to mention director James Cameron and his epic blockbuster which pays repeat homage to the word avatar (or incarnation) and its Indo-European legacy?

(Philip Goldberg)

Philip Goldberg is a spiritual counselor, meditation teacher and ordained Interfaith Minister. The author or coauthor of 19 books, he lectures and leads workshops throughout the country. A novelist and screenwriter as well, he lives in Los Angeles, where he founded Spiritual Wellness and Healing Associates (SWAHA). He is Director of Outreach for SpiritualCitizens.net. and blogs regularly on the Huffington Post and Intent.com. And while there have been other books that look at the history of yoga in America, American Veda has a unique bent; and it's one that is shaped by its author's own life-changing experience with the persuasive power Vedanta and yoga, its varied expressions in popular culture, and his explicit interfaith mandate in writing the book. 

In our interview, Goldberg, a veteran interviewer himself (he completed several hundred interviews in the course of research for his book) offers his thoughts on why an interfaith perspective is crucial to understanding the variety of practices that have emerged out of the Vedanta and yoga contexts. Goldberg hones in on one of Vedanta's key messages "truth is one, its names are many",  and explores how its message has reshaped not only American popular culture, but also the sheer range of religious expression and practices available to the average American. Seemingly immune to doctrinal differences, the collision of practices such as postural yoga, meditation, and self-help circles has resulted in one hell of a mash up; from Christian yogis to Kirtan chanting rabbis, Americans have inhaled a happy puff of yogic smoke and exhaled an electric cocktail of hybrid spirituality. Truth may be one, but its forms are many, many, many....

(http://vagabondsister.blogspot.com/2010_09_01_archive.html)

Wishing Your Way out of Deadsville: Yoga, SXSW and that Geldof Thing

(http://stupidbrain.tumblr.com/)

(null8's photostream, flickr)

W e must be pretty high up there, stratospheric... I thought. The air looked vaporous and thin, and there were strange droplets of cloud slipping onto my wool jacket from inside the oval window of the jet plane. On the advice of one of the flight attendants, I had switched seats with a minor who was too young fly alongside the drippy emergency exit. And I couldn't help but wonder if Air Canada itself was melting, drop by drop, out of the perpetual sky like some Dali-esque portent, as the conversation that foreshadowed my week at SXSW in Austin wafted in and out from two seats behind me.

 -"This is the 13th time I've gone to Sxsw. Man, it's not anything like it used to be. It's grown to the point where it's just madness. I would really rather not go anymore. There's too much to see. I'm actually planning to go watch the game on Friday afternoon instead and skip the music."

- "Yeah, I might do the same."

What causes apathy, burnout or disinterest in a community?
And what does this really have to do with yoga? 

(Salvador Dali, NYC, 1951)

The SXSW music festival and conference is a longstanding tradition in Austin, Texas. It happens yearly. I'm sure it was started and continues to be run by folks that really struggled to give music a voice in the community. And, it's a festival that I've always loved attending. This year was no exception. But this year, I also saw something something different; something of a surreal premonition, or at the very least, like a millisecond flash, a blinking vision of what might happen to yoga in thirty years if we take the same train as other cultural industries.

And because I figure you can learn a lot about many things by examining a single thing, I'll tell you how this last week, many of us saw how one action creates a rippled reaction... how you can hear the ocean in a seashell, see three worlds in Krishna's infant mouth, and samasthitih in every single pose. So take it as you will, as cautionary tale or as a chance to plant new wishes; this is an examination of yoga through the lens of this year's SXSW music festival.
~

(Nele Azevedo, Melting Man, Berlin: Installation of 1,000 melting men done in collaboration with the WWF to highlight global warming)

 

(Bob Geldof, Keynote Address SXSW 2011)

Geoffrey Wiebe on Mirror Neurons and Beloved Yoga Teachers: Free, Life-Affirming and Dangerous

(Geoffrey Wiebe)

T he word vrtti is an interesting one. It rolls off the tongues of yogis fluently, and I always imagine that word has the power to invoke itself...to bring on a ringing in the ears, a deafening hum of unwanted frequencies oscillating like a funnel cloud.

 "O h the vrttis... It used to be that I couldn't sleep till five in the morning". 

Amused and shaking his head, Geoffrey Wiebe was rolling his pale eyes upwards as if he couldn't possibly describe the nature of the outgrown predicament. The winter light was brighter than usual, like a flash flood through the wide perimeter of the cafe window, and Geoff was all smiles as he unfurled his lithe arms along the rough hewn wood counter. O those vrttis: the rapid-fire neural activity, that vortex of gapless thought that leaves us exhausted and wide-eyed in the dead of night. He was answering my question: "So how has yoga changed you?"

Sitting with Geoff it's not hard to imagine that the scope of his intelligence and energy could invoke a burden. Ask Geoff a question and you'll get a hundred intricate and vastly different answers; each thought digressing gently, the path dotted with Vedic tales, Zen koans, dialogue from screenplays and quotable one-liners from indie bands. Creativity and agility are no issue. And if you've ever been in one of Geoff's yoga classes the same is true. Exacting and detailed as a teacher, his one-on-one approach with students is as gentle and reassuring as he is in a face-to-face conversation.

The only child of a professor (of the philosophy of science and religion) and a registered nurse, growing up on campus in England was rich with opportunity, and Geoffrey Wiebe was introduced to yoga at 5 by an upstairs neighbor- though interest soon faded in favour of sport. The next invitation came over 20 years later with the ashtanga practice, taught by Diane Bruni and Ron Reid, with whom he completed teacher training in 2001. Other teachers include Mathew Sweeney, Richard Freeman, Chuck Miller & Maty Ezraty, and Geoffrey continues his study at the Downward Dog, Toronto. A graduate of U of T, Geoffrey has studied and worked in theatre (Canada, the UK, Germany, and Italy), made a film, and competed as a cyclist and rock climber.

(Geoffrey Wiebe, Teaching at One Love Toronto 2011)

As if all of this isn't enough, Geoffrey also presented an intriguing paper at last year's Yoga Festival Toronto entitled, Our Rishis Have fMRIs. The paper generated a wave of interest at the festival sparking ongoing debate about establishing teacher training standards. Drawing heavily from ongoing research in the area of neuroscience, it examines the critical role of "mirror neurons" in the yogic learning environment.

 In our chat Geoff is outspoken about his experience studying with beloved teachers, the yoga of surfing, his views on "grace" in a practice and how a yoga practice can make you free, life-affirming and "dangerous". And you'll notice he asks as many questions as he answers. It really is amazing that he can sleep at night.

(Geoffrey Wiebe)

  

"Modern neuroscience has shown that learning alters physical brain anatomy (neural plasticity) and can do so throughout a lifespan.  We become our patterns and our patterns shape us; and we exist more as a wave than a thing.  The theraputics of yoga sits in the ability to hone and shape this patterning (samskara, literally stain in Sanskrit)  through directed effort...  From a bad back to bad choices, and the two are inextricably linked as is our mind & body".  (Geoffrey Wiebe, excerpt from "Our Rishis Have fMRIs")

This is No Time for Dull Instruments. Yogis and Philosophy with Shyam Ranganathan, PhD.

 

"The sign of a true yogi is thus not how flexible their bodies are, but rather how willing they are to be philosophical about personhood, and critical of their own prejudices, while being serious about living in the Natural world." (Shyam Ranganathan, author of Patanjali's Yoga Sutra)

D oes a Yogi need to be a philosopher? Is being able to debate philosophically important to your personal practice? According to York University professor and author of Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtra (Penguin Classics 2009), Dr. Shyam Ranganathan, yogis must, at the very least, be able to engage in a philosophical argument. Maybe you're thinking, "Wait a second, that sounds a bit intense. Can we not practice yoga a-la-carte, grabbing what we like as we shop"?
Well, not according to Shyam Ranganathan. And, he'll be the first to tell you that according to his reading of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, a yoga practice without philosophical agility is not yoga. It's something Ranganathan calls "pseudo-yoga".

(photo: http://puregoldphilosophy.xanga.com)

As contemporary yogis who practice an assorted grab-bag of practices, we likely have little daily interaction with philosophical debate vis a vis yoga. We know this makes the practice easier to integrate into a mainstream lifestyle; making it a practice that anyone, anywhere, can dip into without getting ponderous. But what if it's the philosophical questions that do the heavy lifting when it comes to finding out what you're made of??

So how are we to develop skills at argument? Well, I took a stab at it by asking Shyam a few questions; and his answers illustrate just how much careful consideration the process of philosophical inquiry requires. Time and attention knot together in these answers; and untangling each question takes the same delicate patience and eye for detail that you would reserve for untying a knot.

Shyam Ranganathan has an MA in philosophy, an MA in South Asian Studies from the University of Toronto, and a PhD in philosophy from York University. He is author of Ethics and the History of Indian Philosophy (Motilal Banarsidass 2008) as well as translator and commentator of Patañjali’s Yoga Sūtra (Penguin Classics 2009). He is the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s area editor for Indian Philosophy. He has written articles on Yoga, and taught yoga philosophy both in an academic environment and to students of yoga in the community. In addition to Indian Philosophy, his research focuses on ethics and the philosophy of language, with a special focus on the role of translation across cultures and languages. He teaches philosophy at York University.

The Cultural Circuitry of Yoga in America: An Interview with Author Stefanie Syman

(Ruth St. Denis and Denishawn dancers in Yoga Meditation, 1915)

"The group, Leary, Swain and the Vedanta devotees then sat cross-legged on Oriental rugs and chanted. When the acid hit, Leary saw shock and amazement on the "Holy folk", despite their years of practicing Bhakti and Raja yoga. He himself imagined, briefly, that he was Shiva". (from The Subtle Body, The Story of Yoga in America by Stefanie Syman)

(Ruth St. Denis)

I f you're American and you do yoga, you've probably wondered, at some point mid-way through a sonorous closing chant of "OM" how yoga even found its way to these shores. The Subtle Body: The Story of Yoga in America is Stefanie Syman's folio of American yoga memories; a book dedicated to uncovering the cultural circuitry of American yoga practice. Each snapshot is a peek at the complicated love affair of Americans with yoga. A tango of a relationship that runs hot and cold by turns,  
The Subtle Body: The Story of Yoga in America, tracks the historical development of yoga in American popular consciousness, its momentum, and its surprising staying power.

(3 pics clockwise: madonna, bks iyengar 89th birthday, marilyn monroe)

The book begins in New England where we see naive strains of Hindu thought germinating in the work of Transcendentalists Emerson and Thoreau, before it shifts to the first transatlantic visits of gurus such as Vivekananda. And the story doesn't stop there. It careens through the literary and spiritual histories of luminaries, and documents the spiritual shifts in a country's consciousness through their stories. Among those explored are: Margaret Woodrow Wilson, Indra Devi, Alan Watts, Aldous Huxley, Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Ruth St. Denis, Greta Garbo, BKS Iyengar, Bikram, Pattabhi Jois and Madonna.