November 2009 Archives

Sometimes it's hard to be thankful. Especially staring over a dead bird at your grandmother who quite possibly loves her Beefeater Martini more than she loves you. You have to get uber-yogic just to make it to the pumpkin pie. Smiling beatifically, almost as though you'd recently lobotomized yourself with a serving fork in your parents' powder room, you ask, "Can some one please pass the spinach casserole?" Only no one is listening because they're too busy discussing which hotels in Rome have the highest quality safety bars installed in the bathroom. You look around, at your cousins who are practically half your age and getting married--remember last year when you had a fiancé?--at your mother who is ladling sweet potatoes onto your thirty-five-year-old brother's plate and you say, unerringly, "Thank You, Krishna, for THIS moment ." As my dear friend and teacher Jen Guarnieri would say, It's all a dharma talk. 

Last night I decided reality television is the clarion call of the apocalypse. This worried me because I hadn't packed a getaway bag. Or rather, I had, but there was so much stuff in it I couldn't possibly schlep it all without an entourage. So I called my cousin Hannah Leah and asked her if she would take it: the break ups, the make ups, the crying jags and the make outs. Only she was going through a turbulent split herself and didn't really have the space or the time. My parents wanted to shoulder my burden--well, they'd caused it, hadn't they?--but I felt that at 40 (40!) I should have the moxy either to deal with it or split it between us, which ultimately left me with just a third. Still more than would fit in an overhead luggage rack but this, this I could manage. Thusly, I bequeathed my childhood, teens and twenties to my progenitors and took my thirties to the mat. Oy, vata day! 

In sixth grade there were three types of kids: the ones who excelled at dodge ball, the ones who somehow managed to be ambivalent about it and the ones who feared it. For the fraidy-cats, the very notion of standing there, exposed and panicked, while normally kind and decent beings hurled balls at your head seemed anathema to thinking existence. Whoever invented this game was clearly not an indoorsy, uncoordinated strategist--rather a sadistic savage who folded her/himself back into the pages of Lord of the Flies when s/he went to sleep at night. Simultaneously, it seemed there were also the kids who actually knew how to dodge the ball and have this strange thing called fun. Were they born with this knowledge or did their progenitors teach it to them? And what was so wrong with glee club?

In the cosmic universe, that is, the world beyond the physical, there are triguna--three qualities--that exist in a state of harmonious equilibrium. These qualities are Sattva (light, truth, purity), Rajas (activity, change) and Tamas (darkness, inertia). In the manifested universe, as in the actual day-to-day world with all its schleppiness, worry and wonder, these three qualities exist in every living thing in an ever-shifting state of imbalance. Thus the dodge ball conundrum: the ragasic maniacs chucking large, round objects at your innocent face, the sattvic beings who calmly played the game and the tamasic beings who sat on the sidelines reading or pretending to have their periods. Only here's the kicker: The ragasic kid throwing the ball was technically playing fair (sattvic) unless s/he wanted to hurt someone intentionally (tamasic). The Artful Dodger, ducking and running, manifested elements of Rajas while the non-player, practicing Ahimsa (non-violence), was quite possibly Sattva incarnate. It's all a matter of perspective.

On the mat, we experience a kaleidoscope of thought versus action in which the asana RE-present our predominant guna at that particular moment. True, some people tend towards the rajasic. Especially New Yorkers. They take every vinyasa. Others are more slow moving and tamasic, which is not necessarily a pejorative, because both Rajas and Tamas are simply outward expressions of imbalance in the ascension towards Truth. Think of handstand. Do you kick and fling your legs willy-nilly, do you sulk and refuse to come into the prep or do you calmly yet assertively attempt the shape regardless of the result or what the person next to you is doing? Maybe it's not a question of recognizing your dominant guna as much as RE-cognizing your experience of the manifested universe by playing the game with an open mind even if there are giant balls coming at you from every direction. Yes, there are things you can eat or not eat to balance your guna. It is a science after all. And yet, perhaps the whole science is simply the RE-cognition of the experience as you're experiencing it. With heart. Who knows? Maybe now I'd enjoy a good game of dodge ball if the opportunity arose. The truth hurts, but then slowly, so slowly, it doesn't.

Several days ago I was thinking about the Tridosha (the three bodily qualities) and how vata (air) I am. We're talkin' textbook. While my friend Fred is the ultimate pitta (fire) and his boyfriend Blake a definitive kapha (water and earth), I was obsessed with the fact that I have every possible vata attribute down to the "dry, voluminous hair." And I felt good. Or rather that I belonged to a special club of creative, friendly beings with dry skin. Then I realized I'd been cross-referencing the list of vata balance characteristics with the symptoms that occur as a result of vata imbalance. Like any good vata, I panicked. Then my Jewish nature kicked in and I called to make an appointment with a renowned Ayurvedic doctor. Only, this being vata season, AKA Fall, I couldn't get an appointment till January. Figures.

Frustrated, I called my friend Tovah, a wellness expert and fellow yoga teacher, who told me to eat less salad, more soups and rub myself with warm sesame oil.  This suggestion, however sound, led to smell like a veggie stir-fry for a number of days. If only Tovah had indicated raw sesame oil instead of toasted! If only I had taken her up on the soup! Clearly, it was time to get metaphysical. Only which direction-- east to Ayurveda, the sister science of yoga with her Five Elements, or west to Empedocles and his Four Humours? The latter certainly worked for Shakespeare. Then I thought of Hamlet, the indecision, the torment, the melancholia... True, being out of balance makes for interesting conflicts, thus theatre, novels and rock ballads, yet where are the solutions? Is the quest for perfect balance paradoxically causing greater imbalance? And how do we find the fulcrum if we already standing on it?

In the physical realm, IE the world as we know and perceive it, we are often encountering roadblocks to a quality of being we have deemed "balance." (Often, we provide our own roadblocks.) The seasons change, we feel out of whack. We move, someone leaves us or the weather shifts, we feel out of whack. Thus, the deep longing to smash ourselves back into balance like a cosmic whack-a-mole at the county unfair of the universe. It's all lila, I suppose. Only here's the dilemma: no matter how many times we slam, that deranged mole keeps popping up somewhere else. In fact, the very concept of motion is imbalance. The second you pick up your foot to take a step in any direction, the body reflexively counteracts this motion so you don't fall flat on your face.  If the physical body is able to rebound and move forward all day long, so too the mind-body and eventually, one hopes, the soul-body. You may or may not need the oil of five thousand non-toasted sesame seeds. Indeed you may not need anything at all. Because you already are. In balance.