Photo borrowed from the ether

I was recently turned on to J.J. Abrams’ talk at TED.com about the appeal of mystery. He is of course the creative genius behind such enormously popular projects as Alias, Lost and the movie, Cloverfield. If you have 18 minutes to spare, you’ll thank yourself for following this link and checking it out.

My favorite moment is when Abrams busts out the Mystery Box, an intriguing little item from his childhood that has somehow remained unopened to this day, and declares, “Mystery is the catalyst for imagination.” His basic premise is that the unopened box, the Mystery Box, is a symbol for human potential, and that the result of potentiality is spontaneous, creative expression. He relates this in a very entertaining way to his work in TV and film, and I find that it relates also to my work in integral fitness coaching and flow recovery.

I sometimes refer to this work as flow un-covery, because what we do is not so much finding something outside ourselves as it is uncovering the Truth within ourselves. One of my mentors, the original flow coach, Scott Sonnon, remarks in his book, Prasara Yoga: Flow Beyond Thought, that flow is our natural state, our Essential Nature. It is what remains once we “burn away the slag that is our fears.” (p. 59)

So where do these fears come from? And what do they accomplish?

They are actually a natural byproduct of being human. You see, the human condition is to be simultaneously God and a worm, a dirty, fleshy pile of squirming Divinity. As Kierkegaard points out, “we are a synthesis of the soulish and the bodily.” Our apparent mortality shakes us to the core because we can see our Divine Nature. We know we are made in the Image of God, yet we are doomed to die and return to dust. Everything around us will one day fall away and there is nothing we can do about it. This is the fundamental human anxiety, and in the face of this crippling fear, our natural reaction is often to limit our possibilities, to break the world down into increasingly smaller, more manageable pieces until there is no longer any room to maneuver. We long for a “sure thing,” for something we can count on, and this often leads us to grab onto things we really don’t like, things we know are harmful or counterproductive.

If our True Nature, however, is Creative Spirit and Limitless Possibility, the more we strip away these fears, the more we expand the boundaries of our own Mystery Box, the more we uncover our natural flow. By opening ourselves to the Great Mystery of Unbound Flow, we encourage creativity and spontaneity. Since our entire lives are built around the ego-game, this is often experienced as what Ernest Becker calls in his book, The Denial of Death, a “difficult and excruciatingly painful, all-or-nothing process of psychological rebirth,” but it is essential to finding true happiness.

Even in the face of this, I encourage you not to lose heart. My upcoming book, The Brickhouse Bodymind Blueprint, is a comprehensive manual of practical strategies for expanding and exploring your Mystery Box, physically, emotionally and spiritually. My humble hope is that it can make this journey less difficult for you. Working on this project has opened up a whole new world of possibilities in my own life, even as it has taken my attention away from this blog. With any luck, it should be ready for print by the end of the year, so if you want to be among the first to be alerted to its availability, subscribe to the blog either via e-mail or rss reader.

In the mean time, if you live in the Little Rock area and are interested in expanding the possibilities available to you, I can help. Check out my training page or e-mail me today at Philip at BrickhouseBodymind dot com so we can set up your FREE initial consultation. As a certified Prasara Yoga Instructor and Fitness Trainer, I will work with you to develop a sustainable, effective program for weight loss, muscle gain, and general physical flow recovery. As an experienced student of life, I can also offer advice for dealing with stress, improving personal relationships, and getting in touch with your True Self.

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Photo borrowed from The Doc Whisperer

Editor’s Note – The audio quality on this recording leaves a bit to be desired. We recorded it with a simple voice recorder, and as a consequence the mp3 compression is a bit distracting. It’s not that bad if you listen through external PC speakers or something similar, but for those listening through earbuds or headphones, I apologize. Being a production guy, I should have planned ahead a bit more, but rest assured that future installments will sound better.

I mentioned a while back there was some exciting new content coming toward the end of summer. Well, I am proud to present a new series of audio recordings called Do This Now. At the bottom of this post is the first installment in a series of conversations between my longtime friend and yoga teacher Matt Krepps and I about the nature of happiness. In my experience contentment, happiness, and equanimity are all synonymous with the experience of enlightenment. When we talk about enlightenment, however, the conversation tends to get bogged down in concepts like nonduality, the True Self, and Maya, none of which has any real context in Western society. This usually leads to confusion and frustration, ultimately turning people off to the idea of enlightenment altogether.

Still, I believe some understanding or felt-connection with these concepts is necessary for true happiness to be embodied. In my continuing effort to bring a new vocabulary to enlightenment and to find correlations to Eastern concepts within Western constructs, I have initiated this series of dialogues with my friend and teacher.

What can we learn about happiness and the human predicament from the Biblical story of Adam and Eve, their temptation and eventual ejection from the Garden of Eden? Are there modern teachings we are already familiar with in the Western world that echo more ancient teachings from the East? Can we hope to transcend the endless coulda-shoulda-woulda game without giving up the passionate pursuit of work, family, and fun we love so much in this life?

For the answers to these questions and a host of others, hit play below or click here to download to your computer. Part I runs about an hour in length, so get comfy. As always, your comments are encouraged. And if you like what you hear, don’t forget to subscribe to the blog either by rss or e-mail, so you won’t miss the next installment of this informative audio series.

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Here is my mantra for personal development - Let your intuition guide you through the various universal stages of development that progress from the simpler to the more complex based upon conditions of individual circumstances. I know … I know … It’s way too long to be a mantra, but stick with me here and you won’t be disappointed.

This statement reflects the findings of many developmental psychologists. It reflects the integral theory of Ken Wilber and others. It is also a reflection of the first five of the 10 principles or rules of Scott Sonnon’s Intu-Flow system of pain-free movement. That so many have come to this illumination in such a variety of fields gives testament to its truth.

In the interest of gaining a better understanding, let’s break it down to its constituent parts.

1. Let your intuition guide you - Each of our bodies knows what it needs to be healthy; indeed, only the sickest of us mentally does not know the voice of our conscience; and nary can a few of us deny the existence of some Mysterious Other watching our thoughts and feelings as we pace around this anxious Earth. Learn to listen to and honor your intuition. Trust your gut. We all know the folly of second-guessing ourselves. This is the genetic residue of generations of intuition guiding us properly into our uncertain futures.
2. Through the various universal stages of development - It is proven, physically, psychologically, and spiritually, that development happens in stages or waves, and that no one skips a stage along the way. Think about it. You must learn to support your own head as a baby before you can crawl, before you can walk, before you can run. You must learn the difference between your own body and those around you before you can conceptualize other things, before you can associate words with them, before you can make sentences of those words.
3. That progress from the simpler to the more complex - The stages discussed previously are specific and incremental. They deal with the simplest skills first before advancing to the more complex. This is evident in any training, be it athletic, academic, or mystical.
4. Based upon conditions of individual circumstances - This is the nurture part of the “nature v. nurture” equation. And we all know it’s not really “nature v. nurture” but “nature + nurture,” so while nature represents intuition, nurture represents individual circumstances. We each have our own battles to fight, our own advantages and disadvantages to live with. These will help determine how our development progresses. This is also the part that reminds us not to impose some arbitrary standard on our practice that may be beyond our bodymind’s capacity.

So let’s put it together one more time – Let your intuition guide you through the various universal stages of development from the simpler to the more complex based upon conditions of individual circumstances.

Make sense? It might be helpful now to look at a few variations on these universal stages of development.

Perhaps the simplest articulation of this universal stage-aspect of development can be found in Lawrence Kohlberg’s three stages of moral development: preconventional, conventional and postconventional. Kohlberg himself was an American psychologist greatly influenced by the work of Jean Piaget, the great Swiss philosopher and developmental theorist. Piaget highlighted four stages of cognitive development, and Kohlberg actually divides his three general stages into six more specific ones, but for our purposes, we will look quickly at preconventional, conventional and postconventional.

According to Kohlberg’s moral framework, in the preconventional stage, we make decisions based largely on selfish intentions. Whether it is to avoid some punishment or to garner some specific personal gain, we are “looking out for number one,” as the saying goes. As we enter the conventional stage, we begin to see things in terms of rules and roles. We are conforming to and reinforcing the social order of our given culture. As complexity increases and we enter the postconventional stage, we begin to think in terms of universal principles, of what is right or wrong in terms of all people all over the world.

We could also call these stages egocentric, ethnocentric and worldcentric. In this example they refer specifically to moral development, but if we look a little closer, we see that they apply across the board to any skill (be it cognitive, moral, artistic, athletic, etc.) and that they are independent of scale (meaning they apply to the individual as well as the collective). So let’s look at one more example of these universal stages of development.

The following stages are a brief amalgamation of Sprial Dynamics - a set of value stages posited by Clare Graves and Don Beck - Ken Wilber’s spectrum of worldview development, and also Jean Gebser’s stages of cognitive development.  Again, these stages are independent of scale.  As we shall see, they apply to the entire history of our race, as well as to the development of the individual human.  The colors of each stage name correspond to the concentric stage circles in the integral fitness flow chart shown below.

1. Archaic - Think survival instincts here. At the dawn of our species, probably no more than a bone’s throw temporally from the landscape that opens Stanley Kubrick’s classic, 2001: A Space Odyssey, the world was dominated by day to day survival needs. The average person valued just what he or she needed to insure another day. The world was seen as a mishmash of circumstances that either helped or hindered survival. This was the way the majority of our species saw the world 100,000 years ago and how children process life up to about 18 months of age.
2. Magic - Think shamanism and cave paintings here. About 50,000 years ago we begin to see rituals taking form, tribes coming together, and nature has such power that all things from trees to rocks to stars have personalities that must be appeased for life to stay in balance. The child often sees the world this way from about the first year to the third. There is great reverence paid to the chief, to parents, to ancestors, and to the apparent spirits in the natural world.
3. Egoic - Think powerful empires, survival of the fittest, and might makes right here. About 10,000 years ago the first truly egocentric way of thinking developed. The world is seen as a collection of “have’s” and “have-not’s,” and those who have seek at all costs to have more. In the child we see this stage between about three years old and six years old. Bully’s run amok. Oligarchs rule with an iron fist. The world is a treasure-chest of resources for the strongest to plunder.
4. Mythic - Think rules, roles, and divine retribution here. Out of the egoic stage arises the need for some semblance of order, some sense of morality – that if you do the right thing in the world, you will be rewarded later. We see this in the many established religions that began about 5,000 years ago, and children tend to enter this stage about 7 or 8 years of age. The world looks more and more fair. If you follow the rules of your social upbringing, you will be accepted and rewarded. The chaos and uncertainty of the egoic world is tempered somewhat by a legal system, by police, and by a moral and ethical code.
5. Rational - Think the Enlightenment and the scientific revolution here. From the strictly religious, rule/role mentality unfolds a need to see things for what they are. When religion dictates the world is flat even though we so obviously see that it’s round, we adjust our perspective from strict adherence to socio-religious rules and roles to a more rational approach. This can be seen collectively about 300 years ago, and individually as the child reaches 10 years of age. The world at this stage is understood as a collection of processes that can be measured and documented empirically as a function of the scientific method.
6. Transrational - Think Green, New Age, Politically Correct, and beyond here. From the cold, intellectual attitude of the rational world comes quite naturally the need to regain some sort of transcendent meaning. This meaning is more worldcentric, however, than the ethnocentric religion of the mythic worldview. Life is seen as an interconnected web within which we each depend on each other for survival. This is when the awareness of the nonzero-sum game and its importance assert themselves. At a collective level we’ve actualized this stage and those beyond it for about the last 50 years, and in the individual this orientation comes to the fore about the time we reach college, from about 17 to 21 years of age, if at all.

As you progress in complexity from one stage to the next, you not only go beyond the previous stage, but you assimilate that stage. In terms of worldviews (as in the example above), you become able to see the world from more perspectives as you move along the spectrum. Your world opens up and more becomes possible.  Likewise, when you develop a skill like, say playing the violin, as you progress in development, you are able to play more and more complex pieces until you can pick the thing up and play with anyone anywhere in the world.

If you take this knowledge and apply it to the Big Three (body, mind and spirit) of your bodymind organism, you have just what you need to insure your personal development will be complete and balanced. This type of modeling can get as complicated as you want to make it, and there are many ways to present this integral framework, but I have put together a simple integral fitness flow chart below that illustrates how one might keep tabs on his own personal development (click on the picture for a larger view).

As you can see, it’s reasonably easy to isolate lines/skills to be developed with each aspect of your being. As you progress along these lines from stage to the next, you will have access to more freedom of movement as broader potentials are actualized. If we look at personal development in terms of uncovering innate flow, or opening up to more of the flow experience along any given line, we find that to be bound to the center of the chart at any point is to restrict personal development.  Unbound flow is to approach the outer circle the ever larger, more encompassing stage of development.

This is the basic structure of an integral transformative practice or an integral life practice. I have listed the lines I try to focus on and shown the manner in which I use the Big Three to organize those lines. This is by no means an exhaustive (or for that matter particularly accurate) exploration of an integral life practice. It is only a simplified version of what will be presented in my upcoming book, The Brickhouse Bodymind Blueprint, which is itself a simplification of other more exhaustive ILP/ITP models.

The value of making an integral fitness graph like this of your own is so you can look into the various areas of your life and see where you are already very skilled and also where you may need to shore things up, where your flow might be hindered. It isn’t always cut and dry as to what stage your are at with any given line of development, and there is always the possibility of pathology along the way.  Even so, this sort of chart can be a way of monitoring the balance of your development in order to insure you have access to the greatest amount of freedom across the entire spectrum of your being – body, mind, and spirit.

If you liked this article, please comment below and let us know what you think. Also, please subscribe to my blog via e-mail or rss so you don’t miss another informative mind-body-spirit fitness article.

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photo credit: CraigGrocott

Well, I’m back. It’s been a couple weeks since the last post. Went on vacay, been working hard on the book as well. I shall continue that work, but I managed to see Chris Nolan’s The Dark Knight finally, and the following commentary came out. Hope y’all enjoy!

I must say first that it really was a nice piece of work. Fast-paced, well-written, masterfully edited, and nicely acted. The highlight for me, as for many others, was Heath Ledger’s portrayal of the Joker. I expected it to be a bit eerie and stinging given Ledger’s tragic demise, but beyond that, something about the character of the Joker captivated me more in this rendition than, say, in Tim Burton’s version.

It’s nothing against Jack Nicholson’s performance, which I still think holds up at least as well as Ledger’s. The difference is in the way the character is written in each script. There is a marked difference between the way Burton’s writers present the Joker and the way the Nolan brothers write the character in The Dark Knight. There’s something more mysterious, and more meaningful, about the character in this more recent incantation. I try not to be a moralizer, finding deep meaning in every line of dialogue where there clearly is none. However, I just couldn’t shake the feeling that the Joker was really trying to tell us something important, that his apparently senseless acts of violence somehow made sense.

Could the Joker’s mission somehow be helpful to those of us in the audience? Is there something right about this maniac’s demented point of view? He’s sick, to be sure. Certainly violent … even malevolent, but what is the impetus of his behavior? Without a detailed family history, or the ability to sit this fictional character on a head-shrinker’s couch and listen in, it’s all conjecture. However, regardless of what trauma made him who he is, he gives us at least one clue as to what drives him in the following line of dialogue:

“Do I really look like a guy with a plan? You know what I am? I’m a dog chasing cars. I wouldn’t know what to do with one if I caught it! You know, I just, do things. The mob has plans, the cops have plans, Gordon’s got plans. You know, they’re schemers. Schemers trying to control their worlds. I’m not a schemer. I try to show the schemers how, pathetic, their attempts to control things really are.”

I definitely fall into the category of schemer. I do have a plan. I like having a plan. I’m writing a book, maintaining a website, training in the hopes of refining certain skills. However, all the time I am acutely aware of the fact, in reality I have no control over any of it. This is the lesson to be learned from the Joker as written in the Nolan brothers’ script.

In truth, we’re all schemers to one degree or another. The great scheme of the human animal of course is to outrun Death, and Death is always there, despite our most exhaustive efforts, to play the role of the Joker, to turn our pathetic scheme on its delicate little head. I suppose I should be saddened by this; I should probably kick and scream and RAGE against the dying of the proverbial light. But for some reason that doesn’t seem like the thing to do. I feel unimpressed, even if mildly amused, when my own plans come out the way I’d like. Accordingly, I’m not too affected when they go to shit. Too much time reading guys like Maharaj, I guess:

“Once you know that death happens to the body and not to you, you just watch your body falling off like a discarded garment … the body will survive as long as it is needed. It is not important that it should live long.” - from I Am That

And he’s not just talking about the death of the body. He’s talking about the loss of a favorite trinket, the failure to reach a goal in an allotted time, and the general collapse of any of our “pathetic schemes.” Sure, the Joker lacks any kind of common moral compass, and that makes him scary as hell; but he may be the only sane one in the whole movie thanks to his apparent lack of attachment to outcomes. His very recklessness alludes to a certain amount of freedom to act that most of us completely lack.

The majority of us are often stunned in moments of crisis while our minds run round and round the problem trying to assuage the incessant fear that we’re not going to succeed at our scheme of outrunning Death, that we won’t be able to avoid pain and loss. The reality is of course that we can’t do either, and the Nolan brothers’ Joker reminds us that if we could accept that reality, we would gain a certain fearlessness that few have experienced.

I realize it can be debated how genuine the Joker’s lack of attachment is. It appears at certain times that he is actually a schemer himself, as much as he’d hate to admit it, and it disappoints him to find that people don’t necessarily respond to his elaborately staged threats with the hysteria he would hope. Even so, he carries on, apparently unperturbed. And here’s where we could learn still more from the character. I’ve always loved the old Buddhist simile that each moment is like a drop of dew rolling off the leaf of a lotus plant. Like the line from the Rolling Stones song, No Expectations, “Love is like the music, it’s here, it’s there, it’s gone.” The trouble is, many of us have a hard time letting it go.

This is perfectly natural, of course. It’s been ingrained in us from the start, and it’s truly astounding we can sit here and discuss any other possibility. The forces that reinforce the scheme are enormous, so no one should feel bad when he or she gets caught up in it.

In his ability to rudely awaken us from the dream, the Joker reminds me of the character Biff in Back to the Future. Besides the fact he’s a total asshole and a bully, he’s always hitting Michael J. Fox’s dad in the forehead, exclaiming, “Hello! McFly! Is there anybody in there?!” And after you get over the impulse to just smack the guy square in the jaw (which, by the way, McFly does get to do at the end of the flick), you stop and think, you shake your head a bit and clear the cobwebs. This is what the Joker does. He rips you out of your comfort zone and slaps you in the face with the truth that life is not about tying up loose ends and making your bed so perfectly you can bounce a quarter off it. No, life is a dirty mess, and dreaming up ways to make it clean is a futile effort.

I don’t mean to paint a hopeless picture here. If you’ll think a bit back to your childhood, you might remember how much fun it can be to play in the mud. Again, this is the message I got from the Joker’s character. Just think about how many times you’ve not done something for fear that the whole scheme might blow up in your face or make you a little uncomfortable. Now think about the times you took the leap anyway and it worked out. How many missed opportunities can you count?

The Joker says a little later in the same scene quoted off the top of this article, “Introduce a little anarchy. Upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. I’m an agent of chaos. Oh and you know the thing about chaos, it’s fair.” I’m really not wanting to broach the whole chaos vs. order debate here, but I think we all try to impose far too much order on things in an effort to scheme our way into being what we think we’re supposed to be that we forget the exhilaration and pleasure of chaos and improvisation.

Revel in it!

As always, if you have any thoughts, please comment below and subscribe to the feed via rss reader or e-mail if you like what you see. Peace!

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Well, it has been a while since the first blueprint came out, but as promised this is a series of documents, so here’s the second one. It’s called “Biotensegrity and Musculoskeletal Traction in Hatha Yoga Posture Practice.” It represents an amalgam of ideas I’ve been mulling over for a while now, but only really came to fruition after reading Scott Sonnon’s blog post, Biotensegrity = Circular Strength Training. As is my modus operandi, I began digging through the search engines to find out as much as I could about the subject, and what I found validated much of what I already felt to be true of the value of hatha yoga posture practice.

Biotensegrity is a subject that has recently come of age, which observes the principles of tensegrity structures at work in living, biological systems. This dynamic dictates that certain conditions be present for living systems such as the human body to function efficiently. In this blueprint, I discuss the principles of tensegrity structures, how those principles apply to the human body, and then how the practice of hatha yoga asanas can help bring equilibrium to such a system.

This blueprint will, like the first one, be freely available to anyone who drops by. I encourage folks who enjoy these essays to subscribe to my e-mail feed, or via rss. This insures two things - 1) that you’ll be among the first to know when the next blueprint comes out, and 2) once these documents become available to subscribers only, you’ll already be on board.

Get it here - BrickhouseBodymind Blueprint 002 - Biotensegrity and Musculoskeletal Traction in Hatha Yoga Posture Practice.

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Alright, first things first - yoga is not all mirrored rooms packed with sweaty Gumbies stretching and oming. In truth everything you do can be yoga practice … if you approach it with the right intentions. Yoga is all about getting to the point, cutting through the fluff, and seeing things for what they are. At the root of any yoga practice is that inalienable human right to pursue happiness - happiness in the form a life lived free from the blame and guilt that arise from the pesky human ego.

Think about it. Most of our lives are spent running ourselves ragged trying desperately to calm our neurotic egos, satisfy the often unrealistic expectations of others, and convince ourselves we have things under control. This business of always trying to stay one step ahead of the curve, separates us tragically from the absolutely stunning beauty of the moment.

These ego games we use to define what’s mine and what’s yours are useful in many ways, but they fall short of providing us true joy and lasting happiness. We know there is something else, something beyond the roles we’ve learned to play in our everyday lives. Sites like this one, integralnaked.org, zenhabits.net, and many others are a testament to this realization. It is this pursuit of genuine happiness that underlies all authentic yoga practice. It is nothing more than a great cosmic sigh of relief, which erupts naturally as we embrace and explore that Something Else.

So how exactly do we turn every practice into this graceful sigh of relief? Well, I believe we can learn a bit here from the father of yoga himself, Patanjali. His Yogasutras lay out an eight-limbed path (Ashtanga Yoga) to what we might call enlightenment, and enlightenment’s really just a fancy word for peace - everlasting, joyous, ecstatic peace. This peace can only be found through the cultivation of proper perspective. One could also say enlightenment itself is nothing more than proper perspective.

Patanjali’s yoga is framed and informed by the first two limbs, called yama and niyama. These are basically attitudes or orientations that naturally set the stage for yoga practice. They are each comprised of 5 principles. These 10 principles together lay the foundation upon which yoga builds its house. Without them, all we have is some exotic stretching, odd chanting, and weird breathing techniques. I assure you, if you take these principles to heart and begin to infuse them with your daily activities, you will soon start to see the yoga coming out in everything you do.

Yama - to regulate or harmonize

Regulataaaaaz … mount up!

In the cultivation of yama, we begin to see things as they are. The result of the ego running rampant is that shit gets all out of whack. Things seem important when they really aren’t. We get “caught up” when we really shouldn’t. The 5 orientations of yama help us regulate the BS and reign in the ego that would otherwise have us frazzled in an attempt to pin things down we have no business pinning down. This in turn harmonizes the world. When we aren’t blowing things out of proportion, there is less dissonance, more equanimity.

1. Sensitivity generates love. (ahimsa) - The more sensitive we are to what is happening around us and inside our hearts, bodies and minds, the more we understand and intuit the impacts of our thoughts and actions. This can come from many sources, such as “placing the shoe on the other foot,” meditation techniques like tonglen and vipassana, and even just taking a deep breath. If we take the time to get out of the knee-jerk reactions of our egos, we become sensitive not only to the state of our surroundings but also to the impact we have on those surroundings. This leads quite naturally to a sense of compassion for others, to a peaceful attitude, and to a deeper sense of harmony.
2. Honesty leads to fulfillment. (satya) - What happens when you tell an untruth? What a tangled web … right? Lying, whether to ourselves or to others, only ends up in disappointment. The reason for this is fairly obvious: the lie itself was never true to begin with, so when it comes time to rely on the lie, it cannot be fulfilled. It’s like the sub-prime mortgage lenders who sold loans they knew people wouldn’t be able to afford. When it came time to cash the checks, they came back unfulfilled. Thus, being honest with ourselves and others, is the only responsible thing to do. It’s not always easy, but with sensitivity in place, honesty becomes a way of life.
3. Openness elicits abundance. (asteya) - Why does it always feel like we’re holding ourselves back? Maybe it’s just me, but I tend to sabotage myself at times. It’s this whole business of me being my own worst critic. It’s the self-fulfilling prophecy. I beat myself up too much. As a result, I might back away from a situation in which if I would just stick my neck out, good things would surely happen. I am reminded of a quote - one that until very recently I would have attributed to the German poet Johann Goethe. It reads, “Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.” So openness is not being overwhelmed by yet-unrealized potentials. It is also about not having a sense of entitlement, or of taking what is yours prematurely. Openness is the process of putting yourself out there and taking the plunge, regardless of whether or not you might fall flat on your face.
4. Focus confers vitality. (brahmacharya) - When we are focused, we have energy. Think about a beam of light - it has more heat when it is concentrated, less when it is diffused. When we are more singular in our purpose, we are more efficient and more likely to accomplish our goals. Yoga is really about singularity in the end anyway. The word itself means to yoke, to eliminate the distance between the seer and the seen, effectively narrowing our concentration to a single intense laser beam of life.
5. Generosity leads to selflessness. (aparigah) - Finally, we must be generous in regards to the feedback we receive on our journey. This is really an issue of avoiding self-judgment. If honesty reveals less-than-desirable truths, or if openness leads to conventional failure, you must understand that this is part of the game. I am reminded here of something my mentor, Godfrey Devereux said - “love is the state in which you can live without blame or guilt.” This is generosity. This is checking your ego at the door, this is understanding that there is more out there than the role(s) you have been taught to play as Johnny, Mary, Mark, or Susan. Through generosity, public service, random acts of kindness, and the like, we learn to give of ourselves, which is the core of Karmic Yoga.

Niyama - to regulate or harmonize deeply

Once we are seeing things as they are, thanks to the yamas, orientation becomes direction. So, in the implementation of the yamas, we are gazing toward the goal, but with the niyamas, we begin to walk toward that goal. The understanding gained through a sensitive, honest, open, focused, and generous approach becomes a way of life. The 5 attitude adjustments of yama in turn bear themselves out as the qualities of niyama.

1. Commitment gives detachment, independence, integrity, joy, presence, freedom, and self-knowledge. (shoucha) - Commitment is purity of action. I can’t help but think about this silly reality TV show I am watching these days, So You Think You Can Dance. The judges are always talking about what commitment these dancers have to the choreography. Even if their technique has flaws in it, they somehow don’t care, so long as the commitment is there. This means that the movements are pure, that they come straight from the source. When there is absolute commitment, there is no second-guessing, there is no need for validation from others, there is only the unadulterated freedom of the moment.
2. Equanimity generates peace of mind. (santaoh) - Equanimity is the big sigh of relief. It is the cosmic contentment. Within equanimity there is no fear, there is no need for more, there is only what is. This always reminds me of watching the show Dharma and Greg, and how she always used to say, “The universe will give you what you need.” As much as that might seem like glossing things over, that is equanimity. That is the powerful contentment contained in the phrase, “Que sera, sera.” You have relinquished your stake in the outcome, and thusly, you’re able to move through life unhindered by any bumps in the road.
3. Passion purifies the bodymind. (tapa) - Okay, I know you must be wondering, how does passion function alongside equanimity? How can you be content, yet still passionately pursue that which lies in front of you? Equanimity is merely having no stake in the outcome. Passion is the endurance to maintain the course in the face of any outcome, whether it meets expectations or not. The expectations are not the point when it comes to being passionate. True passion exists for the sheer joy of being, not for the expectation of some specific reward.
4. Self-awareness reveals the infinite within. (swadhyaya) - The uniqueness of human beings lies in our self-awareness. Yet so few of us are aware of our True Self. It is an enormously difficult task to maintain this awareness while at the same time participating in culture and working a day job and putting food on the table for our families. Virtually everything on television, in the news, and at our workplaces reinforces and encourages the neuroses of our small selves - our egos - while to be truly self-aware is to understand and be intimate with a deeper Self, with a voice that lies underneath our personalities.
5. Selflessness gives the highest realization. (eshwar pranidhan) - Finally, we are ready for complete dedication. All these principles move eventually toward a complete surrender to the flow of existence that leaves no room for holding back. This is the whole notion of “going with the flow,” only in HD. This is going with the flow while not giving a damn that we have no control over it. Moreover, this is total revelry in having no control, not wanting control, not being connected personally to one outcome or another, just being completely dedicated to flowing with it, to going with it, to being just who it is we are in any given moment. This is the point at which every practice becomes yoga practice.

Hope you enjoyed yourselves.

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photo credit: weegeebored

I’ve decided to start a new feature here at BrickhouseBodymind.com. It’s called, “Your NPR Driveway Moment of the Week.” I find myself stuck in my car at all sorts of places, rapt by some story on NPR. We have a running joke at our house about the fact at least once a day I start a conversation with, “I was listening to NPR today, and …” So anyway, this is my way of sharing these great stories with you, and hopefully spurring some conversation in the process.

What is your life worth?

Did you know the EPA values your life at $6.9 million?  It’s kind of a creepy thing to imagine, isn’t it - some number crunchers in some sterile building in Washington, DC putting a monetary value on your life.  Who are they to say what my life is worth?

Still, $6.9 million is a lot.  I’ll be lucky to make that much money in my entire lifetime.  So what makes me worth so much?  Productivity?  Tax revenue?  Home ownership?  My sexy smile?  Nope … we’re talking cost benefit analyses … and basically what I’m willing to pay to reduce my risk of death.

This story on last Friday’s All Things Considered is all about risk.  The first interesting thing about this is the correlation between risk and compensation.  Think about The Deadliest Catch here and you’ll get the idea.  We expect to be paid more for greater risk, and this implies some monetary value to life.  The second interesting point is that the statistical value of a life is down 11% from 5 years ago.  Yikes!  This could be saying we’re more accepting of risk now than we used to be. I’m not sure if that’s true, but the whole thing seems a bit icky to me. Then again, most of what goes on in Washington these days seems icky to me.

David Byrne is a badass!

Have you ever heard of anyone playing a building?  Well, leave it to Talking Heads great David Byrne to make it happen.  Check out the story here.  He refuses to play this thing concert-style, because he doesn’t want there to be any airs about it.  Shear populist genius!

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Photo courtesy of
Becca Davis

This is the first lecture-based installment of BrickhouseBodymind TV. The idea came out of a brief discussion on the RMAX Forums about the differences between vinyasa and prasara flow. Do they differ? If so, how do they differ, and how can they be integrated into a single practice?

The first pitfall is to think of prasara yoga as a type or brand of yoga. It is not. It is simply one of the software programs that comes with the Hatha Yoga 2008 package. I am grateful to Scott Sonnon for re-introducing this piece of the puzzle. The other two pieces of software are vinyasa and asana. To find out how they work together to integrate the hardware of the human body - breath, structure and movement - check out the video below.

One final note - I’m trying out a new video player to see if I can deliver a better quality video than YouTube. If this copy doesn’t work for you, you can view the crappy YouTube version here.

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Binary Half

This is a lengthy response to a comment from one of my readers, Duff. His comment was to my recent post about creating a new vocabulary of enlightenment, and my response simply became too long to post as another comment. Here is the original comment:

Flow is certainly related to enlightenment, but I’m not sure that it is equivalent to it. Flow as defined by MC Flow is a high-energy state where the exterior demands of the environment perfectly match the abilities of the person in it. I wrestle with how to integrate this understanding with low-energy states where there are little-to-no exterior demands at all, for example when sitting in meditation.
There is also a conception of equanimity regardless of state that I find an important piece of the puzzle. Since all states, including flow states and other spiritual experiences are temporary (subject to impermanence), they cannot be the ultimate aim, for all temporary experience has an unsatisfactoriness to it. In addition, one can develop craving for such states and aversion to “ordinary” states such as doing one’s taxes, or going to work in the morning. I think you are seeing this when you talk about not being interested in ascendancy or transcendency.
But then what is enlightenment? A spiritual attitude of equanimity with all things? And the dialogue goes on….

First, thanks for your thoughtful comment, Duff. Do keep them coming. As for my response, I’m not really familiar with MC Flow, though I sampled a bit of her music and found is quite compelling. My understanding of flow comes from another MC – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (try saying that 5 times fast!), and my own experience. Flow, from Mihaly’s book, is “the state in which people are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that people will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.” That seems to apply to a large number of low-energy experiences. I can’t help but think of many a yogi expensing the high cost of isolation for the sheer sake of meditation.

MC Flow’s definition does correspond with Mihaly’s in that they both assert the demands of the activity must match the abilities of the practitioner. Flow activities challenge our current abilities without frustrating our intellect, they provide goals, and offer immediate feedback. Through this loop, we continue to “get better” at the activity. Often, as you suggest, we might stray into compulsion, or craving for such states or activities. We might dislike other activities. This is the nature of things, and only proper perspective can help us with this.

Getting back to the flow experience, I must say that I have many experiences of flow while engaged in low-energy activities. I find myself lost in total bliss while reading, while editing a great video project, and while writing. Those are all based on external stimuli, of course, but I feel the loss of temporal understanding associated with flow and absolute enjoyment while practicing yoga and meditation as well, both of which are largely based on the internal landscape.

In Mihaly’s book, he talks about mastery. The nature of the flow experience is to feel challenged by an experience and persevere in it, basking in a pure enjoyment. What happens is that not only do you become physically more able to perform the activity (whether you’re becoming more comfortable sitting in meditation for long periods or better at saving a few steps for overtime in a basketball game), but you’re also pushing your consciousness to a higher level. This means that we move from a place of psychic entropy to increasing order or complexity. In Mihaly’s words, “ optimal experiences add up to a sense of mastery – or perhaps better, a sense of participation in determining the content of life – that comes as close to what is usually meant by happiness as anything else we can conceivably imagine.”

This brings me to your point about my not being interested about ascendency or transcendency. You are certainly right in that I tend toward the pagan or Dionysian, but I certainly have my moments of austerity as well. I love to watch my breath. My yoga is something I look forward to at least as much as my wine. Either way, though, I’m interested in “participation” as Mihaly said. I’m interested in engagement, whether it’s engagement in stillness or in whirling like a dervish, it’s still engagement. When we’re engaged (as in the flow of optimal experience described in Mihaly’s book), the ego is transcended (whether we’re into transcendency or not). The ego is constantly checking the clock, looking for ways to avoid its own death, and make itself out to be more than it is. When we’re engaged in the flow, none of that matters.

So, is flow enlightenment? Maybe. But like you say, Duff, the flow experience in and of itself is transitory. So I’m more inclined to see enlightenment in terms of proper perspective, or even “equanimity with all things.” I certainly think equanimity is important, but equanimity only comes through cultivation of proper perspective, through a deep understanding of context.

At the same time, I hesitate to take passion out of the equation here. I feel that’s an integral part of engagement – and enlightenment. One of the Niyamas (the second limb of Patanjali’s yogasutras), is Tapas, and while it is often translated as discipline, others interpret it as passion. Either way, the results are focus and dedication, which I think anyone would agree are important on the path to spiritual peace, equanimity, enlightenment, what have you.

And on goes the conversation. Thanks again, Duff, for your thoughtful comment. We’d love to hear other thoughts on this subject from any of y’all. The more the merrier. Also, please subscribe to my blog via e-mail or rss so you don’t miss another informative mind-body-spirit fitness article.

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I recently came across Arthur DeVany’s blog, where he actively discusses his Evolutionary Fitness protocol. Art’s a 70 year-old guy who is in fantastic shape, weighing about 200 pounds at about 10% bodyfat. He’s really a picture of what any of us would want to look and feel like at his age. He’s been active for a very long time and is extremely smart. Over the years, his philosophy toward physical fitness has come to be informed greatly by the evolutionary heritage of the human species.

Now, I believe one of the greatest advantages of living in the 21st Century is our awareness of our own evolution. The baby-boomers are really the first generation to have wide-spread knowledge of the history of human development going back 40,000 years and beyond. The advantages this has to understanding your own personal development are huge, so when I stumbled upon Art’s work, I ate it up.

Keep in mind, I’m not a geneticist or evolutionary biologist, but I have done a fair bit of homework for this article. Even so, I welcome corrections from those who might have a more informed perspective on this subject. My general pattern when I come across an intriguing body of work is to consume as much of it as I can, digest it over a period of time, and spit it back out on this blog. Doing this helps me learn more about the particular system and internalize the core concepts, while making it my own at the same time. This article is my analysis of Art DeVany’s Evolutionary Fitness essay.

The basic premise of his paradigm is that the human genome evolved to thrive in a prehistoric landscape. The conditions of that landscape included the constant, unpredictable threat from predators, an abundant, yet often difficult to acquire food supply, and the need to travel most distances on foot. Obviously, the conditions of today are dramatically different. In the interim, human beings have come a long way in terms of cognitive and emotional development, but in terms of the various physiological potentialities the human genome can express, not much has changed in 40,000 years.

To understand what Art is getting at, it is imperative one understands what is known in genetics as the genotype-phenotype distinction. Basically, the genotype is an organism’s full hereditary information. It is a set of potentialities that will express themselves through morphology, development and behavior based upon the organism’s interaction with its environment. This ultimate expression of genotype is known as phenotype - the actual observed properties of the organism.

Since the early days of human beings, agriculture and industry have radically changed food production, availability and composition; technology has radically changed our lifestyles. While some of this change is clearly positive, DeVany’s point is that healthy gene expression in the human species is still largely triggered by conditions prevalent in the prehistoric landscape we spent millennia adapting to. How it works is basically the human genome (input), which is like the genetic blueprint for the human being, contains a string of potentialities that express themselves in different ways under different conditions. The collection of these expressions is the phenotype (output), the individual human being.

The fact that there is such variance in output belies the adaptive nature of these living systems. Your body therefore will always adapt to changing conditions and demands. But here’s the rub – your body doesn’t seem to care much if those adaptations are helpful or not. This is why if you overload your body with high-glycemic carbohydrates, it will develop insulin resistance and lead to diabetes. That’s obviously not a desirable adaptation, but your body’s just doing what it’s designed to do – express its genotype based on prompts present in its environment. The problem is, the human genome adapted to thrive in a prehistoric landscape, and it consequently “relies on low-glycemic foods, low levels of insulin, high levels of activity, and correct body composition to properly express” itself in a healthy phenotype.

What to do about this? Well, DeVany maintains, since our species is essentially a hunter-gatherer genotype developed 40,000 years ago, healthy adaptations will come naturally if you mimic or approximate the conditions of the prehistoric landscape. This does not mean taking a trip to Jurassic Park, or following Chris McCandless into the wild. Below are some quotes from DeVany that caught my eye, followed by some suggestions I put together based on his work that should help you get more out of your human body.

Quotes from Arthur DeVany Interviews

• If you give up the idea of the old Soviet command and control that I have to determine this outcome or I’m a failure, if you realize the world is random and you can’t control any outcome, then the whole notion of failure goes away and you realize that every experience is just feedback, not failure. That dramatically effects your perception of how to proceed. If you give up, that’s a failure. It’s not possible.
• Understand that you can’t determine any outcome. Once you realize that the world is sort of a random process, even if you make the best decisions, the outcome may change simply because some random event in the world occurs.
• spend a lot of time on your feet (I always teach class on my feet and when on the telephone) this is something humans always did until very recently; there are no elevators; bound a bit going up stairs; run more as in playing catch, but not as in JOGGING (a dreadful practice and I never saw a jogger who had a good body); be playful and take pleasure in play (I spend hours with my grandson running and throwing things); throw things now and then (an essential skill for a Paleolithic ancestor).
• Get up early and out in the sun; morning sun on your face brigthens the whole day. Eat a large breakfast (me: four egg whites with fresh spices, half a cantelope, and a ham steak with coffee). Eat dinner well before bed time and go to bed on an empty stomach. Work out fast, but carefully. Lastly, take a good brand of antioxidants that contain glutathione. I have done so for the past close to 20 years and believe it has slowed my aging by quite a lot.

Evolutionary Fitness Tips

1. Eat for texture and color. Texture means fiber, which is essential for digestion and waste elimination. Diversity in color means diversity in nutritional content. Getting plenty of texture in your daily meals and consuming foods of at least three or four different colors daily will take you a long toward expressing your healthy genetic heritage.
2. Play a lot. Sport is great for the mind and great for the body. Learning different sports encourages the body’s natural adaptive capabilities and challenges your neuromuscular connections. Things like playing catch, playing tennis, soccer, basketball, racquetball, or volleyball require short, urgent bursts of energy output mixed with periods of recovery. This mimics the demands of the hunter-gatherer-runner-from-things-that-might-you genotype that underlies the human species.
3. Explore intermittent fasting. All animals intuitively know the value of the occasional fast. Fasting gives your body a rest from the constant task of digestion and has been shown to have many benefits. Our ancestors were quite used to food being scarce at some times and abundant at others. For on this, visit TheIFLife blog, or check out Dr. Fuhrman’s book, Fasting and Eating for Health.
4. Embrace whole foods. Stay to the perimeters of the grocery store as much as possible. Our ancestors never saw a TV dinner, hydrogenated vegetable oil, enriched bleached flour, or high-fructose corn syrup; and the only fast food they knew about were the animals that got away. Our modern bodies, while probably a bit better at processing this stuff, still have little use for it.
5. Embrace raw foods. My diet is roughly 60% raw. Cooking foods generally depletes nutritional value. I don’t think you have to go crazy on this one, but try to find ways you can institute more raw in your diet. I usually start with fruit in the morning, have a big raw salad at lunch, then have a tasty cooked meal in the evening.
6. Work for workout efficiency. You don’t need to spend an hour a day in the gym to get results. Focus on multi-joint exercises and lift heavy (and safely) in order to recruit all muscle fiber types to get the most bang for your buck. When you’re not lifting, play sport, run fast and hard, or take a long hike. Mix it up, keep it fun, and stay out of the gym as much as you can.
7. Take the scenic route. There are no elevators, people. Take the stairs if at all possible. Also, walk as much as you can. If there was one activity we are perfectly designed to do, it’s walking. I work on a hospital campus that is quite large. I could take the shuttle bus over to the parking lot in the mornings and after work, but I choose to walk. If more people did the same, they would see changes in their bodies.
8. Soak in the rays. Don’t be afraid of the sun, folks. I know this flies in the face of every Men’s Health article and everything on the NIH website, but get out in the sun. And don’t slather on SPF 30 every 15 minutes. Look, be smart about, no one wants to look like a lobster and feel like a burn victim, but sun exposure is great natural source of Vitamin D, and by golly, it just makes me feel good.
9. Do the wave. Properly timing your workouts based their intensity level is paramount to making sure you recover properly and keep hold of your gains. If you’re unsure about how to do this, I suggest finding a CST Instructor near you for some advice.
10. Buy local. Our ancestors had to find food close by to travel to where they could find more of it. We would all benefit from doing more of this. You get fresher produce and meat products by buying locally. It’s not as much of a strain on the environment in terms of pollution, oil consumption and the like. Plus, you’re putting money directly into the hands of those who are producing the food.

Links to Futher Reading

• Environmental Effects on Gene Expression Phenotype Have Regional Biases in the Human Genome
• Twins
• Metabolic Pathways and Gene Expression
• The Genotype and the Phenotype and How to Measure Divergence
• The Mapping Fallicy
• An Interview with Art DeVany
• Another Interview with Art DeVany

If you liked this article, please comment below and let us know what you think. Also, please subscribe to my blog via e-mail or rss so you don’t miss another informative mind-body-spirit fitness article.

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