Yoga Commodification

So I like yoga a lot, that's pretty clear. And I certainly acknowledge that wanting to find peace etc will make me buy stuff from time to time. Yesterday friend sent me an article about the commodification of the true self that pointed out the sales aspect of yoga to me in a new way. Basically, instead of, say, lipstick or new clothes making you feel better and happier and more like the you you want to be, well, yoga and poses and meditation are the lipstick or clothes.

I guess the real commodity is the same as it's always been: anything that will help relieve you of your feelings of inadequacy. There is a catch-22 here, of course, in the sense that usually we have to be told by the manufacturer that we have some inadequacy, then we internalize that inadequacy as true to us, and then we commit to purchasing something regularly for the rest of time to help relieve that inadequacy. Hooray advertising!

So, yes, in one sense yoga is a commodity that plays upon human dissatisfaction, creating a culture of consumers with the promise of an improved self. There are lines of yoga clothing and lots of workshops and stuff to buy and oils and incense and beads and whatever. In another sense, well, aren't we all ever just trying to grow? And do new things and expand our minds and experiences? And we need to know about stuff and participate in the world and read the newspaper and some books and check out fliers and do all of that, too, right? How can you differentiate "buying in" to make yourself feel better from "growing as a person" to make yourself improve?

Holy Blog Post

I have been sucked sucked sucked sucked into my job. That is the darn truth. And I miss ye olde blog, I really do. I think what I miss is the time set aside to force me to put my thoughts into complete sentences. I think it has residual benefits in my world.

Yes, clear articulation of thoughts/feelings is something that requires practice, and I am feeling a little out of practice. I have verily stumbled over my words lately, having the idea and intention fully formed in my head, but lacking the actual terminology to translate thoughts/feelings into sentences. Yes indeedy, practice is useful.

Let's see, what have I been stumbling over verbally lately? Ah yes. Personnel issues. My job is, let me repeat, easy and fun, but oh lordy my gracious what to do about those employees? Talk about letting go of control, yep, learning a lot about that. Can't be every player on the team. And how about explaining stuff that you never thought you would ever have to explain to someone over 18, like Fibbing is Bad, and Apologizing for Blunders is Good. Do all young people come half-raised these days? Christ-y I feel old.

But anyway, I need to re-direct my energy away from too much work and back into me me me, because I am much more balanced when I get to nurture myself. Seriously, I really thrive when I don't have a job. Seems ridiculous to say out loud, but the best possible thing for me is not working. So far, at least. So anyway I'm still trying to move toward a yoga-tastic version of life, which includes a Regular Yoga gig, hooray! It starts on Thursdays in August in a church community room - I will post a link when it's mega-officially a go. And I started a Yoga Sutras discussion group on Monday nights, and it's been two weeks, and I'm loving that so far. I hope it keeps up! And I got myself a couple of subbing gigs, which is wonderful experience.

Speaking of yoga subbing gigs - can we talk about the general public for a minute? My first subbing class someone walked out after 20 minutes, but that's fine - you can't be everyone's teacher. My second subbing gig someone came to class with a shoulder injury that prevented her from lifting her arm over her head or putting any weight on it. Of course, I had prepared an elaborate shoulder-based class, sigh. So she probably had a sub-par experience, but my feeling is kind of that she should have stayed home. Would you go to typing class with a broken hand? Probably not. Boy, I can't wait to see more of the general yoga-going public. It's completely different from teaching friends. I'm ready though, to repel who I repel and attract who I attract. We'll see!

Headaches.

I get a lot of headaches. This feels particularly unfair when I get to thinking about how comparatively well-behaved I am with my vices. I'm a whole-grainer with a solid yoga habit who BARELY drinks anymore, and I try to get plenty of sleep, usually 9 hours. I should feel awesome every single freaking day. But I do not. I get a lot of headaches, like, at least one a week, and not infrequently two.

I guess I don't mind it that much, it's not so bad, but I could do without it. I throw 1,000 mg of ibuprofen at pretty much everything in my life, and it helps a little, but not always. Yesterday I had a particularly bad one, and 1,600 mg didn't help. So that's interesting. I get migraines, too, and that's a whole different ball of wax, and I have the most supremely excellent migraine medication that is sort of delightful to take - take one, get into bed, try to sleep, and in an hour wake up feeling all soft and light and comfy all over, and then try not to look forward to the next migraine. Well, it's not that good, but it's not bad, either.

Headaches just shut everything down. My mood, my energy, my strength; and there's usually some nausea and blurriness as a bonus prize. So lame.

Here's something else sort of annoying - you know what helped my headache a little bit yesterday? A donut. Someone brought them into work and I had one and I got a little chemical rush from the sugar dose and I really think it sped along the process. It sort of makes me nervous - what's that about? Sugar addiction? Something else chemical? Do I need to "detox" or have someone touch my vibrations and tell me to realign my planetary noodles or something?

Whatever. So I'm going to Germany today!! My parents got a cottage and invited us (me and the Huzband) to come stay with them, and we are going to do that. Maybe I'll have some feelings to blog out from abroad. That'll be fun. I am looking forward to turning 14 again as I sit in the back seat of the rental car while my parents navigate us around a foreign place, and then give up and pull over at the first luncheonette we see for lunch and beer. Thus ended many a school-shopping trip in my youth: "Forget it, this sucks, let's get lunch and go home." Ahh youth.

"Networking" and "Energy"

My thesis is pretty shaky here, folks, so bear with me - something about how personal energy and networking and friendship are all related. We'll see.

Yesterday I was talking with someone about how the term "networking" is kind of icky. It can suggest that other humans are available to you for your selfish interests and that you should schmooze them enough to get things you want. So my pal and I were agreeing that it feels yucky and why can't we just want to make friends, since friendship in all its degrees is the way that life opportunities arise, for the most part. It's pretty tough to be a successful jerk, in other words, since your peers will eventually ostracize you, and your reputation will blow. Unless you become the powerful jerk in charge somehow - hmm, well this is sort careening out of control already, but let's just stick with the premise that it's better for you life dreams and opportunities and basic connectedness to be likable and sociable and convivial etc. So then "networking" is this way of meeting other people who are into things that you like, and demonstrating to them that you are, in fact, likable and reasonable to work with and maybe funny and nice and punctual, and then you exist in their mind as someone who would be good to bring into the fold of whatever they are doing.

So why can't we just say we're going to go out and make friends? Since this model works for friendship, too - you meet people who are into stuff that you like, everybody sniffs each other out as being fun or game or whatever, and then you end up calling each other to go camping or something. And then you use your connections to people and your reputation to create more relationships, and find other opportunities, and to accumulate ever more and further ways of expanding your life and perspective etc.

So I was all about hating "networking" and loving "friendship" when I thought back to lawyering. Man, you ain't need to be friends with people for this stuff. You need to be reasonable to work with (reliable, friendly, responsive) and good at what you do, and it's important to be in contact with people and spread your good reputation around so that you can gain access to contexts that will let you do the work that you want to do. And this is important, too. It's different from friendship of course in that a company or something will dispose of you regardless of your awesomeness from time to time (but maybe it's not all that different - some friendships are good for one reason but not another, and one friend who goes camping with you might not be the friend you take bowling). But really friendship is still at work in business/law situations. I saw this a lot at my old job in the big firm - the presumption was that everyone was capable of doing the work. You can write, research, finish stuff on time, and it'll be usable etc. Even better if you are capable of being confident and an expert about whatever you just did. But really, the opportunities came to the likable people who made friends with other people or who were somehow charismatic and nice to be around and could joke on the phone, because it really helps your work efforts to cooperate with someone who has pleasant energy to offer, not just a pit of limp availability, even if they are highly capable and productive. I think it's the pleasant energy thing that I'm trying to get to here while thinking about networking vs. friendship.

And speaking of energy, I guess I'm really thinking about this stuff for yoga teaching. This past weekend at the yoga workshop we talked a lot about attracting the kinds of students you actually want, and what that's about and how that goes. Our teacher talked about having a field of energy that is bigger than the situation, and that having a broken energy attracts broken students and then you all end up in a vortext of craziness. Students who don't like you have something else going on, and it could be that you just aren't their teacher at this point in their life, or it could be that the student is toxic and you don't want their energy around anyway - having your own sense of command and presence and power in the room will deter this kind of student. I've been to classes with teachers who don't have a clearly authoritative and compassionate vibe, who are hesitant or feel vulnerable, and the students' vibe feels like an out-patient psych ward. I mean, you can tell that the vibe in the classroom is a down spiral, and it sure doesn't feed the teacher to attract draining clients. And the teacher should want to feel fed by teaching, not drained - isn't this interesting to consider? I hadn't really thought about it this way, but really, even though yoga is for everyone (even, and maybe especially, the crazies), I don't want to share my energetic space with draining or toxic people. This is going to be the next hurdle in my yoga teaching - right now I just teach a small group of my young, fit, emotionally well friends, and it really feeds me to do this. I have to broaden my reach a little bit here, you know, network and make friends, so that I can assert my energy field a little and see how it goes. I guess I just hadn't really thought about treating students as a kind of co-worker or friend before, but it really is the same thing - we all get our best work done with the kind of people who are responsive and inspiring to us, whether they friends, co-workers, students - we don't want desperate or confused or draining friends or co-workers or students. I mean, a bad friend will want a weak and desperate friend to use. A bad boss will want insecure and frightened employees to control. A dangerous teacher will want needy and broken students to manipulate. Yep, it's all the same, I guess, we're all auditioning for each other for reciprocal energy exchange all the time.

Yoga Energy Feelings Weekend

So this weekend I went to a three-day yoga thing hosted by a teacher that I really like. Her yoga thing is pretty slow-going, with a lot of holding of poses, some less typical takes on the poses (like doing bridge, for example, is really different and I really like it), and the room is pretty warm, like 80 to 85 degrees. The practice she offers is meant to bring up emotions, and for the most part, I say, well done. Nothing gets me pissed for no reason like holding a yoga pose forever. But that's the magic in it - I love the mind bending in her classes. There's also a lot of energetic semi-psychological talk in her class, about things like resentment and forgiveness, and accepting our lives the way they are, and cultivating patience for ourselves and others, and all that jazz.

So normally super touchy-feely isn't my thing, but I am pretty receptive to it in the yoga context. And even though this teacher does a lot of it, she is so completely practical and regular and crap-cutting that her way of talking about feelings and energy just sound like she is articulating reality, just without leaving out the magic like we usually do. I don't know, whatever, but I like her thing that she does and thought I could get some good perspective or new tools from her, and I think I did. Although this is not without caveats.

We practiced using our empathic skills and trying to translate it into actual yoga poses, and we practiced reading people and touching them intuitively to "run energy" for them in a give/receive way that benefits both people. Sound too fluffy yet? Yeah, maybe, but it really wasn't. The teacher even said at one point that she was trying to take the "woo woo" out of energy healing and empathic intuition etc. So we did some energy drawings of each other, which just involves a basic gestural mapping of the body and the impressions we get from someone by looking and feeling (not by thinking though, no no no). I had so much fun doing this! I wish I were smart about the computer, I'd put up the drawings I did, I'm sort of pleased with them. I'll see if I can figure it out. Anyway I loved doing it, it really felt relaxing and fun and creative and great. My pal Electrical Storm was there for the training too and she is a great illustrator and her drawings were rad. It was neat to see them. And we did fun theater-exercise type stuff like take turns teaching while people distracted you with noise or questions or a game of tag, or singing the instructions, or dancing while you talked. I love love love doing this stuff, even if it's just because it's fun. It didn't have to be extra deep for me to love it. I have a hang up about not getting to go to camp enough as a kid and I'm probably sort of working it out a little, but that's for another time.

Things got a little hairy at the end when we did energy readings of each other, having to say out loud what we saw and felt from someone and then put them into a yoga posture to adjust their energy field (I know, corny, but really, my resistance to corniness is coming down pretty fast). I had to do the reading on a student who was pretty imbalanced. I was actually nervous when I saw her at the training because I was sort of aware of her from the scene and her vibe is pretty stressful to be around, and I was concerned that negotiating her vibe was going to take up a fair amount of the weekend, and be distracting or something. It wasn't bad at all - and she read my energy at one point and was DEAD ON with all her "feelings" about my body and what I was working on. It was pretty rad. But anyway yes she's pretty hyper-juiced up and a little imbalanced, and estranged from her family and children, and a total devotee of this particularly strict type of yoga and was pretty vocal about it, and I just found her to be a little nutty and stressful, which I acknowledge as very much blended in with my own judgments about things, but that's also another story. So when I did her reading I was truthful up to a point, stating the panic and chaos I felt, and then held back a little because she was starting to cry and key-rice-st I'm not a therapist and I didn't want to provoke some kind of emotional event so I eased off, and our teacher called me out on it, which was pretty wild since I thought I had covered it up pretty well. Guess not! Anyway it was a little intense and maybe more than I was ready for - but it was also very immediate and natural and I enjoyed it. SO ANYWAY long story short if I become a full-blown crystal-rubber I'll try to be a grounded one. And that's what happened this weekend.

New Fantasy: The Job I Interviewed For; Also What's Up With Unwelcoming Spiritual Stuff?

Lordy but it is hard to want things you cannot actively get. It's out of my hands now whether or not I get the job I interviewed for, but I kind of really liked my volunteer day, and the people, and the whole thing, and I think I could do this job and be good at it and stay there for a long time. Wow, it's like dating! "I like you, do you like me, trust me we should definitely date, even if you aren't sure I am completely sure so let's do it." Sort of an insecure place to be, though. There's another person in the running who, by reliable accounts, the Big Boss prefers, so it's kind of a long shot at the moment.

But the best thing about this is that I feel like either outcome - getting the job or not getting the job - is completely fine. The versions of life that unfold in my head when I picture either outcome are both totally fine with me, and that's a nice thing to notice. Whatever happens is fine. I think this is a sign of maturity, maybe? Or is it immature to think that you are mature?

Anyway - tonight me and a yoga friend are going to the Yoga Sutras discussion group in Rhinebeck together and I am super pumped about it! I really like the discussion group and I am excited to have a playmate come with me. One of the things that I felt bummed about initially with the yoga training is that I was sort of isolated, having my own little experience, with no one to bounce my thoughts off of or hear about their experience. But now I get a full car ride there, a discussion group, and a car ride back to talk about yoga with another yoga person, and I'm pretty excited about it.

This reminds me of something I was talking about several posts ago, how everybody always seems to have their own little extra credit spiritual thing going on, and how it's kind of annoying sometimes. Well I think maybe it's because I feel excluded, first of all - probably no mystery there. I've noticed that no one wants to invite you to their spiritual events (except Xtians and the Buddha people, which is kind of nice). For instance, when I went to a singing event that entailed chanting to a guru considered to be a living deity a few weeks ago, we were chatting afterwards and someone asked if I was a "follower" and I said "nope," and someone else said "you're a free agent" and I laughed and said "or a lost sheep" and that got some laughs. But no one said anything even approaching something like "there are more things to learn about this, want a pamphlet?" I certainly get that people try not to be pushy or cultish about these things, but declining to extend a hand or branch or whatever, even when I'm sitting in the middle of an event about which I was clearly both interested and ignorant, just reeks of smugness.

We talked about this in yoga training last weekend with reference to students' needs, how they can tend toward guru-ification of their yoga teachers and put you in a role you don't want to be in or which at least takes more of you energy than you feel you can give. It makes sense to me to be cautious of boundaries, especially in a setting where you are representing yourself as an authority with respect to body-mind experience, for sure. People are in a lot of pain in their lives. Yoga might be the only place they hear the words "good job," or get touched in a nice way, or get to think about their peace of mind - as the yoga teacher you are facilitating this experience, and it can feel extremely intimate. I know this from my own feelings about some yoga teachers, and I can empathize with the idea that you don't want to end up being a guide for other people if you are working on your own path and that's enough for you. But I do remember the feeling of being really let down when I realized that the sacredness I felt in my relationship with one of my favorite yoga teachers only went one way, from me to her. Not that I didn't matter, but that certainly the feeling of connectedness was stronger on my end, which makes sense as the receiver of the experiences she created for her classes. Ha, this is also like insecure dating! "You don't even know how best of friends we will be when you let me latch on to your life, I totally get what you are saying all the time and we should really talk about everything together, you GET me!"

Maybe contentment is just a lonely path.

Know it All

Went to yoga this morning in Brooklyn with a teacher I liked a lot when I was living closer by. She talked about some inner-self stuff today, like letting go of the desire to control our lives or wish they could be different and just be open to how things really are and trust that when we are open and alert we will identify things we are truly drawn to. Something like that, I'm paraphrasing.

And she also gave us a little advice in the form of recommending that we try not to give people advice all the time; or maybe more like tell people how they should think and feel and act or even think to ourselves how we think they should be thinking and feeling and acting. I thought this was pretty good advice - I loooove to give my friends advice and I should probably just listen and sympathize more, so I decided to give it a try today. This has already not worked out. In fact, it took me about 5 minutes to go off track, and when I saw my friend this morning after yoga class, and we were chatting about how's-it-going, I proceeded to tell her what she should have said to her mom on the phone an hour ago, how should view her relationship with her boss, and what kind of business to open and in what location. Boy oh boy I sure do know a lot of things about a lot of things.

I guess I'm just noticing this tendency. Yoga teacher lady this morning said something like well What If we all directed our advice-giving energy back at ourselves and our own stuff instead of displacing or distracting ourselves by focusing on other people's lives and problems, wouldn't that be nice/change the world? Probably. I always slippery-slope these kinds of observations though - sure we should think about our own stuff and not tell other people what to do, but we also shouldn't just be self-absorbed and let people who need perspective or help or, yes, advice, just sort of flounder around. Is the difference just waiting to be asked? Nah, that's not it exactly. Anyway every piece of wisdom is flawed if I slippery-slope it to death - like the "control" thing the yoga teacher said this morning. Sure I could stop trying to wrestle my life into the shape I want it to be and let it all unfold organically, but that sounds like a great way to stay unemployed and unfocused, too.

It's all a balancing act blah blah blah.

I Never Do My Hip (the body part) Exercises

So my low back pain is the result of two main, big things in my life.

One: doing yoga with my ego instead of my bodily intelligence. I just want to do some of that stuff so bad even though it kind of hurts!! Or what I’ll do it convince myself that my discomfort is a “roll with it and you’ll make it better” kind of discomfort instead of a “back the hell off or you’ll make it worse” kind of discomfort. In this way I treat yoga as my personal forum for vanity and denial. Nice! Totally working on that, though. I went to yoga today and tried to back way off of the stuff that makes my back cranky but I didn’t hold back enough, and my back hurts now. Key-riced-all-my-tea.

Two: my low back pain is pretty much caused by my hip problems. I have a hip thing, and it’s been there for a while, and basically I ignore it until I can’t, and then I get some attention or make some life changes, and hopefully I get a little relief, and then I go back to ignoring it. Every time I talk to anyone about my hips – generally either the orthopedist, the physical therapist, or the chiropractor, I get the same exact advice in the form of exercises to do. These exercises are basically Pilates – lots of abdominal work and leg lifts. I have heard this exact advice probably seven times from seven professionals in the last ten years; I have even literally been told to “do Pilates.” These exercises are good for my hip because stuff is both too loose and too tight up in there and strengthening it is good for the rotation of my pelvic bowl which then helps align my sacrum blah blah blah blah blah blah. For some reason which is not clear to me, I basically never ever do these exercises. I figure that between lots of walking and lots of yoga I am in pretty good shape and these dinky lame-o exercises aren’t doing anything extra for me, and besides, those doctors just regurgitate whatever they had to memorize for a test once and they don’t know ME, they don’t understand MY experience (so why do I go? I foolishly want to hear something totally miraculous someday, that’s why). But at long last, I think I am finally capable of saying that I am wrong about this. Hopefully this means I will do the freakin’ exercises. (If you are a friend of mine who has heard me say that I should really do my hip exercises, I want you to know that I think I might mean it now, and I won’t say it again, because I’m pretty sure it’s utterly exasperating to hear me complain about it. Sorry about that.)

This forces me to confront something that I do not like to acknowledge: yoga is not my ally in all things. That’s what the latest professional told me recently, that certain parts of yoga are not necessarily my ally in my hip/back issues. I hate this information. I want so badly for yoga to be a complete system that I just need to stick to, with enough variety in my poses to hit all major parts of the body, and I’ll be perfectly comfortable and have zero pain. I feel like I could just figure out the right prescription of yoga poses and I’d be fine! Yoga yoga yoga! With that other stuff, it’s like there’s something that just feels so freakin’ pedestrian about doing my hip exercises, not holistic or magical at all. And it feels like I’m not doing “real” yoga when I just throw the hip exercises into my routine. Isn’t that ridiculous? How do I feel about Yogilates (I think this is a real thing with a trademark and everything)? I used to think it is the corruption and dilution of yoga, all this combining and brand-naming and multidisciplinary made-up nonsense. But I am also probably wrong about this too (all knowledge is broadening, not narrowing, I recall me saying that sometime - also I was recently publicly wondering about how strictly one needs to adhere to a discipline to consider oneself a follower, and deciding that I can take whatever I want from anything - why do I view yoga asana differently - mystery! at least I haven't claimed to be a really consistent person). It’s just that there’s already so much to know about yoga all by itself. But I have to do something else, too? Feels unfair.

Here’s some more embarrassing information. I did some hip exercises last night and they were hard. Clearly whatever I’m doing in yoga isn’t making me so rock solidly strong that I am too diesel for these hip exercises. And here’s something else: I like Pilates. I actually have a DVD that I don’t really look at, but anyway I took Pilates a couple days a week for about a year (this was a few years ago) and I really got a lot out of it physical-comfort-wise. Ugh, so, I know what to do for my hip and back, I know I can even enjoy it, and I know it actually does help me. So what’s my problem? I don’t know. I just feel like I have enough to think about without the stupid hip pain making my back hurt. I asked the chiropractor about going to get acupuncture, to see what she thought about it, and she said sure why not – but then she said that she’d also like to see me being a little more active in caring for my hips. So embarassing that I want a quick fix for a problem I’ve had for over ten years, I mean how stupid am I!? So it’s tough nuts time for me, time to do a little Pilates for my hip every day, bleh.

All Set with Art. Therefore, I am Useless to Humanity.

I've said it before and I'll say it again and probably again later, and again after that: I really, really, don’t like upsetting movies. Or shows. Or art. I don’t want to look at violence, rape scenes, gruesome injuries, humiliation, or anything else like this. I don’t understand watching movies like this. I am bringing this up because a few nights ago I watched the first half of The Cook The Thief His Wife and Her Lover (or something like that), which is supposed to be an Excellent Film. I’m not sure I know what an Excellent Film is. If upsetting = excellent then I guess this movie is great. It opens with a man being violently stripped naked and smeared in dog poop. He is later hosed off in a chair while he cries. Oh but the costumes are by Jean Paul Gautier!! Fabulous! The people’s outfits change colors with the rooms! Neat! There’s a whole poop-food-sex thing that is probably profound! Doesn’t the waste and decadence wonderfully juxtapose the filth and violence!? Romantic nudity surrounded by dead ducks! Bleh meh no who cares. (Helen Mirren is magical, though, that’s indisputable.)

Anyway man alive I’ve got enough to think about just trying to live in the world without “entertaining” myself with distressing imagery. You know that movie Kids? I saw the first 5 minutes and had to leave the room. I will never see Boys Don’t Cry, or The Sopranos, or the Godfather movies, or anything else like that. I’m still trying to purge my mind of other upsetting movies I’ve seen because they are supposedly Excellent Films. Deerhunter. Carrie. Pulp Fiction. It’s too much. No thanks.

So here is the problem with this problem: my inability to withstand even artistic portrayals of oppression and violence and subjugation doesn’t bode well for my ability to stand up against actual oppression and violence and subjugation. It actually sort of points out to me how little negativity I can handle, and how useless to the world this makes me. I don’t volunteer, I don’t give anyone free legal services (which I should probably do), I don’t have any statistics about Darfur ready to go for anyone who wants to listen, and I look away from the homeless on the street. I am like this because it is too upsetting, too hard to actively work against it. Plus, talk about taking a Dixie cup to the ocean – start bailing! Futile. I once gave some change to a man who knocked on my car window in Troy and he said “thank god there’s still good people in the world.” I hated him for saying that. And I put that hate right on top of my impatience and pity. You think giving you change makes me good? That NOT giving you change would be bad? Or do you think that I need to be congratulated in some way by you for my act of change-giving? I gave him change out of a desire to avoid him freaking out on my car and scaring me or attacking me. I gave him change out of a vague fear of his potential violence. I gave him change because I am a judgmental coward who does everything she can to shrink and hide from human suffering and just wants to protect herself from a desperate, and therefore in my mind, potentially volatile person. Also because I had change.

Sometimes in yoga a teacher will say how we’re doing the best thing we can do for the world by practicing yoga. That our effort, and dedication of our yoga practice to peace, and the very time spent doing yoga is helping the world on some vibrational level. Is this crap? I’m not sure. Sounds kind of like crap. I would love to believe this, though. I would definitely feel great if I believed that doing yoga is the best thing I can do for the world, even better than moving rubble in Haiti or canvassing for Greenpeace or protesting for equal rights. I don’t even write to my congressperson. No worries, you do yoga, keep up the good work! Call the Nobel committee! What I know is that I feel better when I do yoga. I feel less upset. I feel less bothered by my own petty grievances. But can I feel better about how horribly people suffer around the world because I do yoga? What does the teacher mean by this? That doing yoga is better than starting Planned Parenthood? Better than inoculating orphans?

I would like to be of service to actual causes, but this is only because I know it is The Right Thing to Do, and I would really like to Do the Right Thing. But it’s not because I really want to, and that’s because it’s too hard. How do I do this if I can’t handle the stress and negativity, if I can’t even look it in the face, if I can’t even look at its representation by artists?