Lines of Energy

Lines of Energy: "Every yoga posture is a combination of at least two lines of energy, each line radiating outward from your center; and depending on the shape of the posture...."

Yoga is good. I injured myself during meditation last year and got freaked out because of numbness in my leg. A nuerologist told me that it was almost certainly a lumbar spine problem, pinching the nerve. After doing yoga for a few months that problem has improved a lot.

And there's more. I feel better. In the past when I've gotten all screwed up to get in shape, I'd go to the gym and work intensely for a few weeks, and then get sick. The sickness would linger and I would either not go back to the gym at all, or I would go back without much enthusiasm. Finally I would cancel my membership.

This was always unfortunate because I *like* being in shape. I'm a happier person and more fun to be around. And yoga turns out to be a good way to get past that wierd fitness barrier.

That is not to say that I didn't get sick. Actually, I think I did. But it was the oddest experience I've ever had being sick. It was brief, intense, and while it kept me in bed for 24 hours I was not agitated at all. The body aches were just aches, and I got through them until one early morning I woke up in sweaty sheets feeling like a million bucks.

All is not a bed of roses. I have a natural resistance to claims of spirituality, or even claims that use spiritual language. Yoga folks tend to be rather hippy-ish and, in general, on average tend not to enjoy working with logic, math, science, or technology. The threshold for acceptance is much lower than in myself. It seems that if someone makes a statement that seems plausable, it is accepted without further probing or thought. Yogis tend to be a credulous group.

(As a specific example of this there was a period where some of the teachers and regular students were talking about some sun-gazing fellow who claimed to get all nutrition from the sun, not eating a bite. They were speaking as if this claim was true, rather than being skeptical and wondering why, if this technique works, is this man not teaching it to the starving of Africa to reduce their dependence on arable land.)

This credulity makes it very hard to communicate sometimes. Teachers talk about "lines of energy" and "chakras" and "bowing to the divine in you" and seem to think that these concepts are self-evident. To be completely frank, I believe that most yoga practitioners are mouthing the words of the wise without understanding that the words are mere shadows of an experience *they* have not had. This bothers me because words can get in the way of actual, inarticulatable experience. It also bothers me because it sounds like a subtle form of lie.

What motivation to lie is there? Collectively, there is a massive craving for meaning, for happiness, for a sense of spirituality percieved as missing from "Western Culture". This tendency to use unchecked language and exagerated credulity is a reaction to the spiritual wasteland that is the west. It is as if they see the world as a desert (but, romantically, it was once a paradise) and themselves as caretakers of tiny, precious oasis. And an oasis must have a particular look - it must have a vulgar sexuality and lushness to it, because that is what an oasis is to them in the imagination.

It angers and saddens me to see this. I can't get objective distance on it because my belief is too overpowering that this behavior strikes me as a harmful delusion just as poisinous as the delusion that the point of life is to make the most money.

The gold standard on whether a cultural artifact is harmful is how it affects the people who promote it. So what if people talk about these things? Does it do them harm? A feature of the yoga studio is that it is a social gathering. People talk. People date. People gossip about each other. Over all of this is a thin patina of constant smiles and, to my eyes, impossibly consistent good cheer. I find a plethora of smiles and very little communication at any depth. It is as if everyone wants to believe that yoga is the solution to every problem and that by coming to the studio and doing asana practice everything will be alright. And if we all keep repeating that mantra over and over it will be true. "Yoga is the panacea. Yoga is the panacea. Yoga is...."

I am grateful for Yoga asana practice. It has helped my body a *ton*, and so also the health of my mind as well. But I can neither blame nor credit yoga for every trial and tribulation of my life. Life is life. If I am busy connecting the dots between one experience and another all I get is a self-satisfied yet scientifically unsupported "Ah, so that's why that happened" without actually addressing reality as it is. But everyday yoga practictioners accept these stories as fact, and reenforce their believe with a constant drone of smiles.

I begin to appreciate more and more the common Buddhist prohibition of sharing specific spiritual experiences with fellow students. Of *course* there are lots of specific (and quite interesting) things going on in the mind and the body. But those facts are useless unless you actually discover them for yourself. The body is so complex that if one addresses an issue in ignorance then you might solve one problem but at the expense of creating many others.

What I'm really trying to say is, I like yoga, but could do without the gossiping, the superficial cheer, and the credulous reiteration of a spiritual language unqualifed as a shadow of reality.