So it’s 8:30 pm and we just finished up a very long day. Started at 6:30 with a yoga practice. It’s super cold in the am so the body is super tight. It was a rough go and all about shoulders which is my issue. I got through it. At breakfast everyone was talking about how stiff they were that early in the morning and that made me feel a bit better. This 300 is about “theme” weaving, but there really wasn’t too much of a theme this morning. I think it was too early for the teacher too. And two hours later my shoulder felt great so it was a good practice. My knees are killing me though from the borrowed mat and sitting on the floor for 8 hours cross legged.
We has our first “educational” classes. One on the history of yoga and one on pranayama. I just gotta learn to sit there. I think we are in review mode, but I would encourage every 200 ryt at this point not to take 4 200s and a ton of other training before doing a 300. It’s possible I might know more about yoga history and pranayama than most. So…don’t speak unless spoken too. It was really just the history lesson and let’s face it the history of yoga is not clear, but having studied with Mark Whitwell I think my mind is militarized against Patabi and Iyengar. If you know Mark, then you know.
The coolest thing today was the Shamanic teachers came in and we had the most riveting conversation about the cross over of Shamanism and Yoga. In Kundalini I learned that the yoga teacher shows up as Shaman for the tribe. It was kind of like that. We learned about ceremony and intent and I think The most interesting part was one of the teachers was into magic and rituals while the other simply believed in Oneness. In Oneness you abandon all magic and ceremony because Oneness is beyond the material so to do ceremony within the material negates Oneness. (This is me talking not him…I’m on my own personal study of the Upanishads and Vedanta and that is really all it is about.) And they were working as a team. So interesting.
And did I mention one of our lead teachers is a physicists? Unexpected.
Oh!!! And I have until the 17th to decide to go to their farm for 2 nights of camping and ingest Mescaline which is some kind of cactus juice that is a psycho active substance and you go on a journey. I’ve never tried anything like that so it sounds fun, but I don’t want to throw up. They assured us that throwing up was part of the process of purging and you can just throw up in the forest and not in a compost toilet. Everyone else seems to be on board with this. Honestly, I’d like to just go camp for 2 nights to get away from the concert below. Today is Sunday and I found out that all these bass beats are actually something to do with the church in town. So basically, from what I can tell…. from 7 – 10 most nights and noon to (god I hope it ends) on Sundays is a huge religious service with music and the dude on a loudspeaker.
Can you imagine living in a small town and being forced to listen to that every night? Apparently they love it. So I am trying to have a new perspective. I’m listening to happy people rejoice to the song of god. Oh please stop. I just want to relax and listen to crickets. It feels like getting beat up every night and had I known in advance there is no way in hell I would have signed up. It really is that bad…. i know…I’ll stop complaining.
Anyway, back to the Mescaline. I’m just not sure. I’ve tried smoking pot, but I could never really get the smoke in my lungs properly so I’ve only been high a few times. Good fun. Once’s I tried “molly” and it made me super thirsty. I did enjoy the heightened senses of that experience, but also found it to be a form of spiritual defilement. In yoga we spent so much time meditating and then you can just take a drug and “bam.” Also it is really bad for you because it releases all your endorphins which you store up for months in one fell swoop and then you are depressed for weeks after and you don’t know why until you google. Oh…and finishing that floor in our Yoga Sanctuary in Mason…all that polyurethane. That was way better than meditation for having no thoughts.
What do you think? Should I do it? They said you don’t go crazy or anything. I mean how often do you get to drink a psychedelic substance probably illegal in the US and go on a spiritual journey with a Shaman. But what if I see something scary?
Emotions:
I’ve been doing dream yoga intensely every night and having some pretty profound dreams I wont’ share because they are super personal and I won’t know what they mean for a while. Deep stuff though.
Grief hit me hard today for the closing of Symmes studio. I don’t know if it was even grief. I’m just disappointed. And I’m not disappointed in me. I’m disappointed in the students, the teaching team, and yoga. And not everyone so don’t go there...But I did learn something from those Shamans tonight about ceremony. I create space. I’m good at it. My worship is to make a space beautiful and fill it up with humans and that is my ceremony. Symmes was always wonky. It’s been 4 yoga studios now. The energy was never correct and all of the problems of Elemental Om in the past 13 months have come from that space.
I am working on a new vision for EOM. I should say allowing for a new vision.
Anyhow…I’m going to try to take a shower if I can get in. A second group showed up and you can hardly get to use a bathroom. OH and I found the other compost toilet up top. It’s all beautifully stained and finished and doesn’t look like a plywood hut covered in pee. Okay. Goodnight.
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