Summer's Horizons

A s you may have noticed, I've taken a bit of a vacation from this blog. Nothing formal...just a decision to write more slowly, take time out in the sun to recharge, or wander out and see the epic final chapter of the Harry Potter series. But I'll admit, as much as I'd like to siesta and keep it all quiet and sleepy, there are plenty of fascinating things percolating on the yoga horizon and for this blog. So this break of mine will be short.

For one, I'll be making a trip to Los Angeles in a week and a half, and I plan to bring back tidbits on yoga in LA and perhaps a few interview prospects. In fact, if any readers out there have suggestions of yoga studios to check out and yogis to speak with, fire away. All suggestions are welcome.

Two, Yoga Festival Toronto is coming up quickly - it runs August 19-21st at the National Ballet School; and this year's festival is shaping up to be quite exciting. In fact, a few nights ago festival directors Matthew and Scott (Remski and Petrie respectively - whom you may know as the authors of Yoga 2.0) threw a wonderful vegetarian feast for the faculty dinner in anticipation of the event. If the dinner was any indication, Matthew, Scott and the entire YOCOTO team have filled the programming with yogic inquiry, warmth and the lost art of hospitality....so it's well-worth travelling to Toronto from wherever you are to catch this festival. This year's guests are as diverse and interesting as ever - you can register and see the lineup here. Step up as scholars such as Dr. Frawley and Yogini Shambhavi deliver talks and instructors offer workshops on everything from the Yoga Birth Method to acroyoga. This year is also the first year the festival has offered yoga programming for children.

To boot, Shivers Up the Spine will be participating in one of Yoga Festival Toronto's keynote presentations in an interview with Mark Singleton, author of Yoga Body, The Origins of Modern Posture Practice.  The interview is built around the title, Beautiful Bodies, Broken Bodies: Yoga's Tricky Lineage and Physical History, and I hope the interview will address our very physical, modern practice as a hybrid of assumptions about the human body and the body of yogic tradition. In my mind's eye, I picture a 30-minute session of Singleton improvising around my interview questions, followed by audience members throwing their own unruly questions/thoughts into the mix...resulting in a public interview of sorts that will be transcribed to Shivers Up the Spine following the event. The interview happens on Saturday August 20th, 5:30-6:30 and I urge anyone in the hood to drop in on the festival at the National Ballet School and join the discussion! I will add a more detailed look at the interview content for the sidebar of this blog soon enough..

(Marla Meenakshi Joy & Ron Reid)

Also upcoming on this blog is a piece on Ron Reid and Marla Meenakshi Joy of Downward Dog Toronto, which I hardly want to say anything about save that the record shows that it was a delightful, funny and thought-provoking conversation...which means that the bulk of my work is already done. Don't you love yogis and their vivid journeys? I swear half the time i can't tell if i'm talking to a yogi or a flesh and blood magician...all the more so when you're talking with Ron Reid and Marla Joy. So stay on the look out for that one.


 T his way now the horizon is gathering some interesting weather patterns just round the bend of a reddish sky. No better time for a siesta...See you in a bit.

Great Times are Waiting, Shivers up the Spine 5 Days in NYC: Leslie Kaminoff, Tom Myers, Robert Mahon and IDP

I opened the window from my hotel room to a warm chinook blowing in to Manhattan's lower east side. Thank god the window actually opens, I thought. I could see the alley below, announcing a small market, and folks were in and out of the passageway all day long. I had planned to get a good amount of writing done; but there was no internet access at the hotel...or at least not an internet that could stay connected consistently. The front desk looked at me quizzically when I mentioned it; but I knew from his blank, rapid blinking, he was well aware of the problem.

One small room, with a window, and a squirrel that was eating the floorboards underneath me...a shared bathroom down the hall, and walls paper thin so that I could hear the writer rooming next to me talking about her next screenwriting project. It wasn't much; but it was New York City, and I was within spitting distance of everything I needed. So, apart from seeing bands at CMJ, I was going to make it my business to get out and do as much yoga as possible.


This is my recap of Yoga NYC; but it also gives you a bit of a taste of what's upcoming on Shivers Up the Spine heading into the cold season.

O n Thursday afternoon I met with Robert Mahon, whose photographs had formed the basis for the post, "Into the Slipstream; The Yoga of Chance in the Photography of Robert Mahon". We had lunch and chocolate in Chelsea; paid quick homage to the Chelsea hotel; spent hours lounging on the lawn chairs of the Episcopal Seminary Gardens in the warm sunlight of autumn. We never made it to MOMA; but for any of you out there curious about seeing more of Robert's work in the flesh, you can go to the AKA hotel Times Square; and on every single floor is one of a series of stunning photographs of New York City's most recognizable landmarks entitled, "The Liberty Series". Of these, the photos of Lady Liberty remain with me; her form under tender veils of reconstruction scaffolding, a vaulting iceberg in repair over black sheets of water. The images are striking enough to make you want to ride the elevator up and down all day. This is an excerpt from the Hotel's guide to the series:

AKA Times Square is pleased to present Liberty Series, a selection of 12 photographs by Robert Mahon, on display in the hallways facing the elevators and in the fitness center.  Printed in 2010 by the artist especially for AKA, the original photographs of the Statue of Liberty, World Trade Center, Ellis Island, and the New York Harbor were taken by the artist in 1983 and 1984.  Many of these archetypal images having the theme of arrival and departure are aerial photos taken from a helicopter flying close to the Statue of Liberty.

The Rubin Museum of Art, NYC presents: "Grain of Emptiness: Buddhist Inspired Contemporary Art"

David Byrne in discussions at The Rubin Museum of Art NYC

"poetry makes nothing happen..."

My late friend John used to quote his great-uncle W.H Auden; he, like Auden, I suspect, had a deep respect of the void.

 It wouldn't be the first time an artist considered his/her relationship with "nothing"; or cited "nothing" as the source of a more profound, unfathomable "nothing". Nor is this news to yogis; the stillness of the void has been the wellspring of asana, or seated practice, for thousands of years. As for whether art makes nothing happen, or nothing is the deep wellspring of all else; well, that's a topic that The Rubin Museum of Art in New York City is willing to take on.

Atta Kim, The New York Series, Times Square, 2005

The forthcoming exhibition entitled: Grain of Emptiness: Buddhist Inspired Contemporary Art, which begins November 5th 2010 and runs through April 11, 2011, features five contemporary artists -Sanford Biggers, Theaster Gates, Atta Kim, Wolfgang Laib, and Charmion von Wiegand- all inspired by the Buddhist notions of emptiness and impermanence and Buddhist ritual practice. These artists are from disparate backgrounds and explore a range of artistic mediums, but all have inherited the practice of incorporating Eastern religious beliefs into their works. The exhibition's paintings, photographs, videos, and installations will be complemented by performance art.

This is another opportunity for those of us a plane-ride away, to take a look at contemporary artists' musings on "nothing"; as well as, take in the other "nothingness" programming that the Rubin has arranged to complement the exhibit. Talk about Nothing, is a new series of dialogues being presented beginning in late October at the Rubin, that brings together personalities to discuss the void. Running between October 27th and January 29th, the Rubin presents talks with a diverse group of thinkers ranging from writer/musician Amit Chaudhuri, performance artist Laurie Anderson, to Tibetan lama Traleg Rinpoche.

The Red Book arrives at the Rubin, 2009

I stumbled across this exhibit while I was looking for events based on Carl Jung's richly illustrated, and posthumously published journal, The Red Book; which, I ecstatically received as a gift from my brother and sister-in-law, last Christmas. And as it turns out, the Rubin had presented a similar series of talks about Jung's undiscovered tome called "The Red Book Dialogues" last year. The picture up top is lifted from the Rubin Museum website; and features David Byrne in conversation with psychoanalyst Sherry Salman about the mysterious and wonderful Red Book.

Programming at the Rubin Museum is worth bookmarking.
Tickets for Talk about Nothing are now on sale to members at the Rubin Museum of Art website.
~

"Who" is the Final Destination? The Looking Glass and Sister Elaine MacInnes

It really depends on how you look at it. But you can see a wave forming before it actually comes up. I mean, you can see it underneath, before the surface rolls over.  There's an introduction, a pre-amble, a subtle shrinking almost in the opposite direction that happens a split second before the swell.  Something that hints at what's really going on.
Extraordinary people are wonderful to watch when they are doing extraordinary things. That's obvious. But extraordinary people at rest are also a revelation; because they look empty until something comes through them. And they appear aware of that fact...of that ground zero....Resting in some steady neutral...

Sister Elaine MacInnes, Yoga Festival Toronto 2010

Sister Elaine MacInnes is sitting in an S-shape. At eighty-something, she is curved gently over the clay colored metal chair in the mirrored room at the National Ballet. The light is peppered unevenly, glowing grey in the early evening, coming through the slender rectangle of a window on the far left corner. Sister MacInnes' chair is tilted to the right; and the floor, a smoke-blue, is covered is washy streaks left by toe shoes....like ice-skates, the geometric shapes, half-arcs, scratched into the reflective surface of its rubber.

And then with a few words everything about her unfolds, quite literally, as she opens her shape across the chair and leans into the small gathering at this weekends Yoga Festival Toronto.