“Never Can Say Goodbye”, Jackson 5

“No”, De La Soul f. Elizabeth “Yummy” Bingham, one of my favourite singers

“Heard Em Say”, Kanye West f. Adam Levine

“Bust A Move”, Young MC [I had this on cassingle]

“Listen”, Talib Kweli

“Funky Cold Medina”, Tone Loc

“Good Life”, Pete Rock & CL Smooth

“Virgo”, Doug E Fresh, NaS and Ludacris

“Paris, Tokyo”, Lupe Fiasco

“Give Love A Chance”, People Under The Stairs

“She Said”, Pharcyde

“All I Need”, Al Green

“Me Myself and I”, Beyonce

“He Think I Don’t Know”, Mary J. Blige

“Lady”, D’Angelo

“Wild and Peaceful”, Kool and the Gang

“On The Couch”, Prince

To add insult to immune injury, the stupid AC adaptor to my lovely lappy decided to bail [maybe because it is FILLED WITH EVELYN TEETH MARKS??!?!!/!??!!1!!  Who can say in these trying times?]  And if there was ever a time when it was appropriate to sit in bed and watch the entire Pixar movie catalogue on your laptop, this was that time.  It also stifled my blogulation a bit, for no good reason I must confess, since the desktop is not 4 paces from where the lappy is usually set up, but M and I are one of those highly digital couples where any time spent together involves at least 3 screens up and running [desktop with good graphics card to play .avis with no hiccups, the TV to show said .avis, and the lappy to settle any trivia or cast-related debates without having to get up ("Isn't that the guy from Rudy?")]  But it just wasn’t the same.  I love my lappy, so Godspeed to ol’ eBay as they send a replacement adaptor.

Okay, so night before last was the really ghastly one.  My nightmares involved pieces of space shuttles crashing into my ancestral home and neighbourhood, flaming wreckage everywhere; no doubt this was due in part to the most recent episode of “Fringe” with planes falling out of the sky in Scarsdale, so viewers beware.  It [the nightmare] still sent me scurrying to the Dream Dictionary in the morning.  Here’s what I got:

"Sweet dreams and flying machines, flying safely through the air"

To dream that a plane crashes, signifies that you have set overly high and unrealistic goals for yourself and are in danger of having it come crashing down. Alternatively, your lack of confidence, self-defeating attitude and self-doubt toward the goals you have set for yourself is represented by the crashing airplane; you do not believe in your ability to attain those goals.

…

WHICH ONE?

I was back to the grind yesterday morning anyway, after I realized my body might be improving but my heart was not benefitting from grogging around the apartment.  All the way to the studio I’m trying to think of a compelling theme and also trying to parse the Dream Dictionary koan.  WHICH ONE?  Is my intuition trying to tell me I’m barking up the wrong tree, trying to get certified, trying to teach for a career [or write more or sing more or whatever]?  If so, wouldn’t I be a bit of a chomer to totally ignore my own internal promptings and hammer on all the same?  Maybe they’re hiring at Starbucks.  Visions of my bank balance are dancing in my head at this point.  OR, was this dream a call to refocus on my goals…to hug in more, stronger, to practice more assertive mental hygiene and bust all these worries and Negativity Prayers?  It’s like trying to keep the hot stuff hot and the cold stuff cold:  how does it know?

I got to the studio physically shaky [you know how you feel better when you are still at home but as soon as you venture out you realize how you're not really better?  Yeah.] and not a little mentally confuzzled.   Gotta make some yoga out of this stuff.  Here we go…

I felt better almost as soon as I got started, and continued to improve all day with some good sweaty practice.  The more I taught, the more I saw my community, the more I held to what was the higher truth [that is, what I wanted to offer to people, instead of rolling around in my own mess] the more my heart cleared.  After my last evening class I got some lovely positive feedback from some regular yogis, basically to the effect that I was “giving so much”.  Let me be clear:  I get at least as much as I give.  I so appreciated what they said, but in all honesty my work is my healing; coming in to teach was by far the best therapy  my body and soul could have received.  I suppose this is what is referred to as “doing your dharma”, and it helped me come down on the side of the latter Dream Dictionary interpretation.

If you are troubled by whether or not it is appropriate to follow your dreams, whether they will serve the larger purpose as well as light your heart, consider that the sweetest dream will actually do both in equal measure.  When I am feeling tired or unwell or less-than, there is an enormous resource waiting for me in the form of getting reconnected to my intention and having the world rush up to support it.  And sometimes a flaming spaceship crashing into the neighbour’s roof is just too much farfalle the night before.

14:01 Now it’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again”. I wonder what the likelihood of covering my Big Rock Friday Playlists would be? Is is like an infinite-number-of-monkeys kind of scenario? Or is the NFL actually where I get most of my ideas for BRF? “Crazy Train” would be perfect…

14:20 Obama’s little fireside chat marred only by subtle media weirdness ["rockstar status"?]. He is a smooth operator! And I agree with him about the college playoffs. The stats thing is just so very weird. And the multiple bowls make me feel like I’m at the Ming Wo clearance sale.

14:23 Faith Hill’s only half-decent song is the Sunday Night Football song, but she did sing the anthem well; I am looking forward to Jennifer Hudson who can totally sing not only her own gonads off but the gonads of everyone around her.

19:15 Worst. Liveblogging. EVAR. I gave up hours ago, obviously. This is treacly but both teams played really well, and I’m simultaneously pleased and disappointed that the Steelers won, pleased because they’re awesome and disappointed because the Cardinals winning would have been a Lord Of The Rings-calibre win.

INTRO to “Brothers Gonna Work It Out”, Chemical Brothers

If there's anything made of more pure win than this video, I haven't seen it

“The Lesson”, The Roots

“Release Yo’ Delf [Prodigy Mix]“, Method Man

“Walk This Way“, Run DMC & Aerosmith

“Sabotage”, Beastie Boys

“B-Boy Stance”, k-os

“Jurass Finish First”, Jurassic 5

“Everything Is Everything”, Lauryn Hill

“All Falls Down”, Kanye West

“Freedom”, Jurassic 5

“All That You Are”, The Foreign Exchange

“Geto Heaven Part Two”, Common

“Respiration”, Black Star

“Sunshine”, Handsome Boy Modeling School feat. just about every indieish Manhattan musician in the early aughts

“The Healer”, Erykah Badu

“Stay With You”, John Legend

“All I Wanna Do”, Jamie Lidell

Seven Inquiries for a Darn Good Day

1.What’s actually going on?
Am I in the world, or fantasizing about black helicopters/faeries/living in the woods? Dreaming is great of course, particularly positive visualization, but am I prone to wishing for a deus ex machina to come and fix all of my problems…winning the lottery or similar? My reality-meter is most prone to breaking when it comes to people [e.g. crowds in the urban environment], so am I railing and storming against people who double-park or hit me in the eye with their umbrella-edges?

2.What have my previous experience and studies taught me?
I may mangle this quote; it’s something about how insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly but expecting different results each time. Without crossing the tissue-thin boundary into prejudice, self-knowledge is mirrored in our ability to see and acknowledge patterns in our world. Our brains aren’t in there just to keep our skulls from collapsing, even if we practice yoga.

3.Do I give myself permission to feel joy?
Many times I notice I haven’t even provided the option of being happy. It just never occurs to me. My reasoning can range from “I don’t deserve it” to “There’s too many other things going on”. Now, this doesn’t mean it’s just going to HAPPEN but make sure you’ve at least made it a possibility, ya dig?

4.Have I curtailed my inherent freedom in some way? Do I feel free to make change and shift and grow?
This is a toughie because I think it can tend towards victim-blaming or the most rank sort of privileged “Everything I have I got from pulling myself up by the bootstraps” nonsense. Just dreaming of food when you are in poverty is not enough to feed you; this world is relative [see #1] and we are in it, so our freedom is limited in some pretty crucial ways. That being said, my needs are certainly met and then some, so have I perhaps forgotten the RESPONSIBILITY that comes with freedom? Am I doing the work necessary to choose my intention mindfully?

5.Do I permit my experience to oscillate, to ebb and flow?
We’ve been watching old SuperBowls on ESPN Classic. The most amazing part of competitive sports, to me, is how the good players and the great coaches are able to process a loss. Some of them go squirrelly, it’s true [my God you can almost see Rex Grossman's mind coming apart in that SB against the Colts...it's a bit frightening] but the good ones have a healthy place for loss in their minds, a place that lets them go forward with [if anything] an increased zeal to win [viz. 1972 Dolphins]. I’m notorious for thinking that this time, this day where my energy is low, this class where I misspoke or screwed up my theme, represents a downward-plumetting slope from which it will be impossible to recover. You can’t win ‘em all, dude.

6.Do I put mental limits on the abundance and creative power of the world, and of myself? Is this world beautiful to me, even with its flaws? Am I beautiful to myself?
Another perilously Celestine-Prophecyish one like #4. Careful there, Warren Buffetts of the world: unlimited abundance may or may not take the form of market speculation or mutual funds. I did start to realize when I was learning about these concepts that my Dutch-Calvinist-Bible-Camp childhood revolted strongly at the idea that for everything good in your life you would have to pay with suffering of some sort. It was like I had a split in my mind that could’t do the math of abundance; I just did not understand where that opulence of spirit and health and love was going to come from. I am, on this matter, in progress.

Also, see #1. Over the years I’ve inexpertly ranted about our preference for exoticism and the vacation/tourist mentality that prevents us from seeing the immediate beauty that’s right in front of us. Then I go ahead and do the same exact thing. My advice to you and to myself today: Don’t wait to shell out a couple of grand before you look around you and sigh with pleasure. Even if your surroundings are somewhat seedy: I’ll tell ya, I miss Gandhi Roti at Queen and Bathurst something fierce. Now THAT’S beautiful. Practice not limiting your concept of what’s appealing to the senses. The strong correlation here to self-image is too much for this post, but you can see where I’m going with that…man, that is hard [and good] work…

7.Can I hold in my mind the paradox of the perfection and fullness of this moment, while simultaneously striving to be better and create more?
I’ve noticed this in the yoga community often: the idea that the reason why you undertake work is to correct/fix/adjust. It can be dressed up in the most flowery language and still, at the heart is this rotten nut of UR DOIN IT RONG. Admittedly, this is another paradox, but it’s so beneficial for our spirits. Do the work for the joy of doing the work. Do the work because it is our nature to grow. Nothing to correct, nothing wrong with you, no deep-seated flaws that have to be purified in the flames of doing stuff that’s weird or unpleasant or fancy. I am loving practicing in this way, even though it is tough for my brain to hold these two ideas at once. All in good time.

On that note, I’m off to class. Mmmm…yoga…

You ever see a picture of yourself where you're so young you seem like a stranger? Yeah.

Workshops are probably the most optimal way to experience the Anusara method; they are an opportunity to get into some of the sweet details and specifics of philosophy that we don’t always get a chance to explore in a public class. So please join me, either in the Comox Valley or in Burnaby, for one of these workshops in February…

Feb 13-15, Courtenay BC [for details contact netsirktreblig AT hotmail]

Feb 27-Mar 1, Burnaby BC [please see the Yatra Yoga website for details and to enrol]

Both workshops will explore studentship, or adhikara, a process of bringing consciousness and balance to all aspects of the self, in order to elevate and transform us. For me, this discovery was the real mind-blower. Even after many years of practice, and some Anusara studies, I hadn’t really felt how all the pieces came together until we did this work in our Immersion. I make this inquiry into my adhikara daily, and I cannot overstate its importance in my life. If you’ve had questions about Anusara Yoga or just want to round out your practice, let’s hang out for a weekend.

This one ended up a) kinda jazzy and b) a lot of love songs and [Heh.] body related songs. Not intentional, just kinda happened. To address the vicious rumours that I have created BHHF to refer to Teh Buttocks more often, it’s TOTALLY TRUE: Take the tops of the thighs back. Take the inner groins back and apart. Balance this opening with the tailbone rooting down. The beatings will continue until morale improves

“Call My Name”, Prince

“Ready or Not”, Fugees

“Flute Loop”, Beastie Boys

“Around The Way Girl”, LL Cool J [I loved this song when I was a tween. I had a Vuarnet bath towel and the Rosie-Perez-esque black Lycra-blend sundress with the sunflowers all over it and the flip-top Dwayne Wayne sunglasses, o rly]

Shout out to high school French class

“Just A Friend”, Biz Markie

“Ms Fat Booty”, Mos Def

“Happy Valentine’s Day”, André 3000

“Superstar”, Lupe Fiasco

“Compromise”, Shad [Coming to Vancouver on Feb. 21!!!1!!oneone!!]

“They Say”, Common feat. John Legend

“Happiness”, Dead Prez

“Namaste”, Beastie Boys

“Letter from Yokosuka”, Nujabes

“Alright”, D’Angelo

“Take Your Time”, Al Green feat. Corinne Bailey Rae

“How Long Has This Been Going On”, Brad Mehldau

†I realize the plural of anecdote is not data, and any representative of Vancouver’s rock radio stations is welcome to set me straight on this point, but M reports having never heard either Bad Brains or Living Colour on CFOX or Rock 101, at least not since this whole telecommunications-buyout juggernaut. Contrast that with an abundance of Beastie Boys or Average White Band [who don't even play rock IMHO]. <sings> One of these things is not like the other, one of these things just isn’t the same…sigh.

I have been plagued in recent years with a bit of a disconnect, one that has partially given rise to Big Fridays and one that I’m constantly trying to clear up and see with greater focus exactly where the split is: the disconnect between my tastes aesthetically which are passionate and sometimes straight-up vulgar and colourful and wild, [and FIRMLY in a North American framing viz. jazz, hip-hop, Southern fried rock, graffiti and similar] and my discipline which is yoga…

Number one with a bullet

…associated, among other things, with white pajamas and chanting and mantra and silence and stillness and quiet and the total opposite of everything above. And I don’t think I’m the only person that feels that way. I have always disliked having to become other than myself on the mat, and I’m so intensely grateful that I’ve found a style of yoga that encourages me to become MORE myself both on and off. Of course I love silent practice and deep meditation; I’ve actually even made my peace with kirtan which I never thought I would enjoy, thanks in part to excellent musicians like Shantala. I’m not all idiotic lyrics and drastic gestures. I just wish there was more room for the fire, colour and sound in our cultural perception of yoga.

Because then maybe artists would feel more comfortable embarking on a practice without fearing that they will lose their fire, colour and sound; and artists need yoga in a big way, since navigating the internal storms without some kind of stabilizing guide or influence has led to many tragic ends.

The problem is often when artists discover their practice, they do end up a bit: washed-out. Perhaps the calming comfort of the practice itself ends up dulling the edges a little bit. Okay, I’m just going to come out and say it: I’m thinking of Sting here. With all due respect for a musical elder statesman, I much prefer his earlier work to his post-yoga work. So I have some choices here:

1. I can pretend the shift in his sound is unrelated to his spiritual discipline which seems disingenuous [see the comment on the "Fragile" YouTube link where someone is intending to add this song to a disc to play during esthetics treatments...oh, man.]

2. I can refute my own tastes and make it a personal practice to see the merit in his later work, which seems forced and unnecessary

3. I can start to examine what specifically it is about this practice that makes it hard to fuse with the belly-fire of creative work, and then teach to that so that as many people who need the practice as possible are brought on board.

Well, that wasn’t much of a choice; I’ve obviously gone with #3, but I did wonder about the first two for a while when I was still singing regularly. Almost weekly I am asked whether or not I chant or lead kirtan and I say that I haven’t studied it, which is true, but it’s also true that I haven’t studied it because frankly when the iPod comes on I’m going for Wu-Tang. Is that terrible?

My friend and teacher Christine has always been honest about not enjoying the words “dispassion” or “non-attachment” that crop up so regularly in our little subculture; if I understand her correctly, she believes [and I agree] that it is our passion for growth and our hunger to be reunited with the divine that brings us on the mat or on the meditation cushion and we should in fact be attached, violently so, to this vision of our own light. I have had many vibrant, creative friends express to me that they feel a bit ambivalent about pursuing yoga because they are under the impression that it will reduce that passion, that attachment, that leads them to create.

Quite honestly, I don’t know what I’d do without this practice to help me live. Even just day to day, the most prosaic decisions about my lifestyle, health and emotional well-being are informed and cultivated through yoga. I see my life and the world through a yogic lens, and that seems to be much more suited to my biochemistry than seeing it through what might otherwise be termed my “artistic temperament”. Actually, “artistic temperament” is a nice way of putting it; “crazy as a mud-bug” is likely more accurate. I refuse to believe I am the only artist who has found solace in yoga. I feel it has saved my life.

Unfortunately my creative output has, as feared, been dwindling to a trickle over the years. This blog represents a triumph of my will over my tendencies [muscle energy hugging to the midline, if you like] since left to my own devices I would just save these up for epic rants and inflict them on friends and family. It is a matter of some speculation as to whether this trickling creative output is a function of my practice or completely unrelated and just a somewhat discouraging coincidence.

Maybe I am still just as creative as I ever was except my medium has shifted, and my teaching receives that energy more than singing. Yet we are taught that shakti is unlimited in its capacity to grow and produce; it’s not like it runs out like an RRSP or the oil sands or something.

Anyway, this is my call to myself and to all of my many artist/yogi friends: Show your audiences and viewers and readers how yoga is EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE of bland neutrality or artifice, in the hopes that we can save more lives and generate more beauty for years to come.