Archive for the ‘Yoga’ Category

In therapy you pay a trained Psychologist or M.D. to help alleviate psychological problems.

In yoga, you side-step the human condition altogether by tapping into the energy of the universe.

I dunno. It kind of sells itself…

Yoga is feminism’s answer to patriarchy.

If you disagree with me on this, you’re wrong. Not wrong because you have an opposing view, but wrong because your position on the issue is wrong. There’s a difference.

This is one reason so many drop-dead gorgeous women are packing yoga classes from coast to coast…and why certain male yoga instructors, including the revered yogi master – often from places like Cleveland – have improbable liaisons with women half their age and twice their I.Q.

There’s an angle for everything.

These guys offer an “enlightened” alternative to the baboons most women encounter in bars and nightclubs.

The popularity of yoga is really just a reaction to a food chain that appraises women at 35 the same way it did when they were 17.

Of course, at 17 they didn’t have a problem with it because there wasn’t much to criticize.

So it’s a kind of sanctuary for the disaffected.

In therapy you pay a trained Psychologist or M.D. to help alleviate psychological problems.

In yoga, you side-step the human condition altogether by joining forces with the universe; something that isn’t taught in medical school for some reason.

Yoga culture empowers women to express their sexuality under the pretext of spiritual awakening. They use the term, “awakening,” a lot because it sounds better than “fucking” in the context of higher human consciousness.

It’s also a way to buffer oneself from what is perceived to be constant, low-level patriarchal abuse.

Think packs of enlightened, confident, tuned in, empowered, intelligent and aware women with attitude and you get the sense that you’re in the middle of a war zone.

Yoga studios are places where women can express resentment without actually articulating it. These studios are often like psychological boot camps not unlike what one sees in groups like al-Qaida.

When a woman tells a man that she’s involved in “yoga,” the following message is conveyed:

“I’m enlightened, so don’t even think about fucking with me. I’m sexually open because that’s my right, but I only sleep with men who are on board with my message. I am smart, evolved, alert. I know all about shit you can’t even imagine. Fuck off if you dare walk in this class and stare at my ass just because I happen to be wearing paper-thin Lycra from Lululemon. I’m here to escape men like you. I’m here to escape judgment, superficiality, patriarchy. Of course, I do appreciate the attention, which I’ll deny under oath.”

The men who do join these classes accept the fact that they are perceived as emasculated members of an otherwise primitive gender afforded a second chance because of their efforts at maintaining cognition in the midst of what appears to be an all-out orgy.

With this in mind, I’m not sure which gender is the best adapted.

Disclaimer: I have nothing against yoga. In fact I see it as an effective way to strengthen and tone the body, improve flexibility and reduce stress. I also like Yoga chicks because they tend to be very sexy, open-minded and smart.

Have you ever noticed what happens to otherwise normal, middle-age men after they start attending a regular yoga class?

First, there’s the submission thing, which nobody talks about. This is where a man subconsciously agrees to surrender his masculinity to the woman he really wants to be.

This is not a criticism, mind you.

For him yoga is more about community; a place of shared ideals, values and core beliefs, which may include cross-dressing, for example.

Yoga is a very effective way to feminize men, and yoga women relish this opportunity. They congratulate him. Pat him on the back. And make him feel like one of the girls. They tell him how brave he is to face down the world of conformists and meat eaters. How he has taken a giant step forward in his personal evolution.

Over time he befriends these women, who he allows to divide him from a world in which he never felt accepted and/or embraced; an ignorant, harsh and unenlightened world of wars, brutality and injustice.

The initial sign of his dissension into madness is a precipitous loss of weight coupled with a make-over.

His once muscular features have softened into something more undulating and worm-like. One can’t help but think of reptiles that shed their skin in order to regenerate.

In his case, he’s degenerating, but shedding anyway.

He no longer wears his Nike cross-trainers, preferring instead to drift around silently in high, white socks as though he’s in some sort of secluded spa where it’s part of the dress code.

Eventually, he ditches the socks in favor of actual feet, which help get him more in touch with the earth; a place he seems to be destined to go back to way ahead of schedule.

In six short months, the man’ clothing has gone from shorts and a t-shirt to black cotton leggings and a mid-rift.

Now this new world man wanders around like a psychiatric patient in what appears to be a permanent hallucinatory state with some antisocial disorder thrown in. His dreamy demeanor gives the impression that he doesn’t exist at all, which is the point.

Like the millions and millions of regenerated souls that came before him; souls  that have tried and failed to achieve nothingness, he will succeed this time around…hopefully without getting thrown out of the club for not using his pass key, which he now considers meaningless, but which the club disagrees and then charges his Visa anyway.

So there you have it.

In the absence of introspection, older men become emotionally vulnerable. They’re sick of everything, and pissed off that their lives have been lived for people other than themselves, whoever that is. So now is the time to take back what’s rightfully theirs, which is where I was going with the cotton leggings and mid-rift thing.

1] Are you distressed about the condition of the world?

2] Do you want answers to complex questions that seem beyond the grasp of economists, politicians, scientists, military personnel, business leaders, Wall Street executives and the media?

3] Do you want a serene path to freedom from the ravages of Western civilization and its endless convention and design?

4] Does the bailout proposal on Capitol Hill sound like unenlightened nonsense designed to keep a superficial world afloat?

5] Is the acquisition of wealth preoccupying you more than you think it should?

6] Do you want your personal life to be more sensual and loving, rather than harsh and aggressive?

7] Do you want to live in an orgasmic dreamscape, wherein one of the enlightened touch your inner essence, unleashing energy that sets your nerves on fire and drives you to the brink of preternatural oblivion?

8] Do you yearn to be released from everything [excluding the orgasm], like unenlightened family members and so-called friends, who are nothing more than blind sycophants to an insensitive, cruel and aggressive world?

9] Are you tired of your attraction to all things physical, when the real beauty lies beneath the surface?

10] Are you ready to rest your life in the hands of a loving and enlightened leader [who just took your money, your house and your Rottweiler?]

……………………

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, the blessed Matagini Musafa Kundahlini is caught on tape by paparazzi from TMZ uttering the following to a male disciple:

Kundahlini: “I’m gonna yank the brain right outta that woman and replace it with a new one; but only after I’m finished paying off the house in Colorado with her inheritance…”

Disciple: “This is our time, master. Women today are upset with the meaninglessness of their lives. They seek sound footing amidst the chaos. Their dreams have been destroyed by the lie of feminism and now we must rebuild their faith in humanity and restore confidence in their dreams.” 

Kundahlini: “That was well stated, my disciple. But from now on, never say anything that sounds better than what I say. I’m taking that line and using it as my own. Are we clear?”

Disciple: “My apologies, master. I shall happily twist my body into a pretzel for the next 12 hours, without food or water, as penance for the offense.”

Kundahlini: “Don’t be an idiot. We have work to do. I have located three more depressed yoga students, with perfectly round behinds, who are ripe for spiritual guidance and support…and I’ll need some back-up.” 

…………………….

News Headline:

Yoga Master, Kundahlini, Caught at Wakovia Withdrawing Funds with Stolen Credit Cards

Kundahlini responds to the allegations:

“You people are fools. You have no idea what life is. You think you can arrest me? You are nothing. To me there IS NO YOU…only ME! I laugh in the face of your arrogance. I am what you have waited 2000 years for. I am nothing, while you are merely a physical body; limited and ignorant. This makes me better; because I have elevated myself to a dimension you are incapable of understanding without my guidance. Now, in exchange for your credit card numbers, I am willing to work with you, but a lot will hinge on how much you have in your respective accounts…”

A man who claims his ex-fiance was kidnapped and brainwashed by Kundahlini made the following comments to local media sources:

“When my fiancé started speaking in some weird language I think she made up, I considered calling the Catholic Church. But after she quit her job and transferred her life savings over to Kundahlini, I decided to take matters into my own hands and string him up to a tree in my backyard and let the pigs have at him. Of course, by that time, he was already in the hands of the authorities. And to be honest, the pigs wouldn’t have gotten much out of the deal anyway, given his size.
 
Hell, I feed more to my wife’s Chiwahwas…and they eat a lot.”     

………………….

The yoga movement’s growth can be traced to the burgeoning population of disaffected 30 to 50-something women who’ve been bounced out of the dating market.
 
It provides shelter, as well as group support and guidance for a fraction of the cost of traditional psychotherapy; and also keeps its members physically fit for its self-proclaimed Shamans.

This is the nature of adaptation. But as adaptation goes, you gotta hand it to those Yogis and their ability to sense opportunity.  

 

John Carpenter wrote and directed a 1988 film titled, “They Live,” about a drifter who finds a pair of sunglasses that enable him to witness an extra-terrestrial invasion of earth.

With this in mind, I started thinking about what appears to be a hostile, extra-terrestrial takeover of people who regularly participate in yoga, which employs a twisted New Age belief system that mirrors the alien vernacular in Carpenter’s classic. 

As I’ve always said, there’s nothing worse than pathological narcissism posing as humility, and given our culture’s obsession with self, is it not obvious that invaders from another planet would take full advantage of this predeliction?

Look, I’m not going to pull any punches here. Extra-terrestrials recruit people who are emotionally damaged, and then brainwash them at these studios, period.

They get them to buy yoga clothing from a growing string of outlets that distinguish them from earthlings. I assume the proceeds are then wire-transferred to another star system. Anyway, it’s commodified, like Nazi uniforms during World War II. Included in this ensemble is the ubiquitous yoga mat, the yoga-mat carrier, yoga-class ensembles and yoga rhetoric [that soothing syrupy "yoga-speak" that nobody understands, except of course, for the “enlightened” who really don’t understand it either, but adhere to its tenuous parameters anyway…and then expect you to do the same].

This mystical schlock appears to have the effect of dumbing-down their ability to think rationally. This would present an advantage to anyone interested in taking control of a planet without resistance.

It has become an adjunct to what was once a sweat-driven pursuit of a better body and calmer disposition. So you really do have to hand it to the aliens for focusing their attacks on the one thing human beings in Western culture seem incapable of living without: Self-love, self-worship and self-gratification.

I personally love those scented-candle shrines to self-worship; the bastions of love-oneself that support a vast array of alternative-this or alternative-that magical-thinking workshops and spa weekends.

This is brilliantly executed pandering to human frailty, you must admit.

But what seems like mental self-massage is the same thinking that blames psychotics for their illness because they didn’t “manifest” enough positive vibes. This mindset paves the way for devotees to sacrifice their children to alien mother ships for brain transplants, among other things.

The way it works is that yoga becomes the answer to everything [Google "Cults"]. 

“Power yoga”!

“Yoga for success!

“Yoga for Sex!”

And to keep their minions fit, they publish “YogaLife,” with 72-point headlines that scream:

“Burn fat faster!”

“4 ways to lose 5 pounds”

“Zen secrets to healthy relationships”

I’m not sure this is what the ancients had in mind when they created the discipline to help them endure boring, meditative lives of abstinence in the mountains, without Whole Foods markets and French champagne.

But what fascinates me the most about this movement are the deeply psychological manipulations that keep it afloat in the first place.

For example, how does one achieve enlightenment through yoga?

Perhaps the argument can be made that self-understanding is best achieved when one isn’t thinking about, say, a new pair of Chanel pumps. And this is particularly good for women with children who forget who they are from time to time and need an hour or so every other day to remember. So it’s kind of like psychotherapy for people who want to still feel connected and get a better body at the same time.     

The point is yoga is far less about inner peace than it is about outer hotness. And the culture itself is just a way-station for women who need a break from life without morphine.   

At the very least, it is simply misguided narcissism, which earns yoga – an ancient, honorable tradition – a bad name.

And this is what I mean when I say “hostile New Age takeover of yoga.”

Yoga and other Eastern disciplines are supposed to work from the inside out and not the other way around. 

But given today’s obsession with self, it’s no wonder that people like Whitney Houston unabashedly admit that yoga is all about her relationship with herself.

“I found the greatest love of all—Me!

Maybe these people should spend more time down at soup kitchens than candle-lit, self-love workshops that their alien commanders encourage; particularly when it comes time for their weekly performance reviews somewhere off in The Orion Nebula; the same place that yoga devotees eventually find themselves; at least from the perspective of other human beings who know something’s going on…but haven’t yet connected the dots to the culprit hovering just above the city.  

For any guy who’s sick of the pretension, arrogance and blatant transparency of many urban women, the yoga chick represents a kind of redemption. These women tend to be unpretentious, sensual, fit, self-aware, open-minded and secure. They are just as comfortable walking into a restaurant in yoga pants, halter tops and flats, as they are showing up anywhere whatsoever without a stitch of make-up; and all this after a two hour master class conducted in 110 degree heat.

With this in mind, thank god they’re also toxin- free.

What these women are essentially doing is telling the world to kiss off as they take the alternative high-ground. They cut right to the chase in their intolerance of bullshit; and believe me when I tell you they have a certain gift for reading people’s energy; whatever that means.

In short, yoga isn’t just a form of exercise. It’s a different way of approaching life, without benzodiazepines. So while it may not be particularly good for pharmaceutical companies, it’s great for places like Whole Foods where you can most often find them in the produce sections with those reusable shopping bags.

See these women are enlightened, and even if they lose you completely when they start talking about crystals, astrology and the virtues of tarot, count your blessings that you don’t have to listen to some endless drivel about the price of Prada bags, and how much you’ll have to spend for a new one.

But the best thing about this rapidly ascending culture group is that now enlightened, middle-age men [who’ve been down the road with retreads more times than they can count], now have a shot at actually dating women who remind them of people they dated back in college; as opposed to the creatures of today that often resemble laboratory experiments in human morphology.

And because these women are open to new ideas and lifestyle concepts; they are often open to dating men twice their age…and not for the same reasons other women date men twice their age.
Getting back to the “energy” thing, these women let their highly-attenuated emotions do most of the work. The brain is perceived to be a deceptive and overused organ that tends to run interference on clarity. So rather than running the numbers on some mental spreadsheet to see whether or not a man and woman should be together – they wait to see if the “energy” gels. If it does, you’re good to go, period.

And finally, yoga chicks have no problems embracing 5 star hotels; all without demanding the suite on the corner with the hot tub and butler service. So for middle-age guys who frequent places like these, it’s a win-win proposition on every front.

So with this said, Namaste [greeting or salutation on the Indian Subcontinent. Look, it’s a yoga term, so act like you know what the hell it means even if you don’t.]

 

I received the following email from a Houston yoga instructor in response to my last blog on, um, yoga.

I’m still working on the ”Co-Dependency” blog. 

“Dear Jay: 

1] You know Jay, I was thinking about the people on this planet in general. Lots of people say they “believe” in God. But they don’t really know what that means or what it really feels like to be connected to something so awesome and beautiful.

2] Often it is that they learned about God from their churches and bibles but have no direct experience with the creator’s energy, an argument an atheist would also use by saying there is no God because they believe in “science.” 

3]  I believe, religious or not, if you can’t feel the awesomeness of the experience of that connection to the universe and each living creature on this planet, a common and standard demonstrative assertion made by yogis and yoginis and other great mystics, prophets and saints, then it’s time to do something different.
 
4] Yoga inherently brings a person to freedom from “Self” and the often fear-based boundaries of institutionalism, or anything else that gets too organized where power struggles can arise. 

5] I have seen this even happen within the spiritual community when the guru has passed – lawsuits regarding what the guru really said or not, who gets this and who gets that. Human nature is often a greedy nature and only the few truly enlightened would not even think about such friction with their fellow human, or in other words, those behaviors are not contained anywhere in the fabric of their consciousness. 
6] I have met many who claim to be “spiritual leaders” but if you watch them, what they stand for, what they are motivated by, you will see they have little experience in life, which would have led them toward any molecule of enlightenment, yet teach that they are so. 

7] Experiencing God is different than believing in God. And those who have had the experiences are often feared, hated, projected upon – Jesus, Martin Luther King, Gandhi.  Ignorance, fear and greed are the greatest dis-ease of our world.

8] And how can we stop the madness? Do Yoga.

9] Why? Who cares. Breathe. Just do it. You’ll soon see.

10] We can either be sheep or shepherds!   And if it means that life is cut short to stand up for truth and our experiences which led us to this truth, so be it! To be a warrior does not mean to be a soldier and kill (or be killed) on a battlefield.  A warrior has courage, love in their hearts, and never backs down from evil tyranny. Warriors are fearless.  Love knows that there is nothing truly to fear, and they know where there is fear, love simply cannot be.”

After reading this text sixteen times; breaking the various – and meandering – themes down into numerical sections; and then highlighting phrases that seemed to connect the dots, I’m still confused…kind of like the guy who “believes in science,” but is confused by the concept of achieving a “direct experience with the creator’s energy.”

That’s because the argument is not intended to be deconstructed.The objective is to just feel it, and shut the hell up about the rest.
 
…as my mind travels back to memories of news stories about a jungle colony in Guyana run by a guy named Jim Jones.

As I see it, this obsession-through-commercialization of Yoga is another way to cope, while saving money on benzodiazepines. Distance runners will attest to the same benefits. A third approach might be Sierra Tucson for six weeks of rehab, but that’s another discussion.

The bottom line here is that there isn’t a single yoga participant at my health club who wouldn’t skip a full week of existential oblivion for a suite at the Ritz-Carlton in Maui.

In this case, the “self” becomes a good thing as oneness is achieved through indulgence in all things superficial.

If you don’t agree with me, you’re not enlightened.

        
 

Mercury’s in “Retrograde,” folks.

And for those of you who have no idea what the hell I’m talking about, “retrograde” refers to a phenomena wherein certain celestial bodies, like Mercury, appear to be moving backwards, but aren’t.

If you were enrolled in a yoga class, you would know this.

People like your next door neighbor are attending yoga classes in record numbers; not just to learn the exercises that strengthen and tone their bodies, but to zero in on certain mystical realities most of us aren’t aware of [but probably should be], if for no other reason than to find relaxation through a circuitous admixture of exercise endorphins and the teachings of obscure Central Asian ascetics, called yogis.

“Hey Helen, how’s the yoga class coming along?”

“Oh my God, Janie, it is so centering. You have to try it!”

“What does ‘centering’ mean?”

“Just try it and you’ll understand.”

“Is it better than spin as far as a good workout goes?”

“Spinning is just the tip of the iceberg. Yoga is a total physical and emotional experience.”

“Oh…Is it still an hour?”

“Yea, but that’s not the point.”

For you single guys, suffice to say that if you date a woman who does yoga, she’s enlightened, period.

And though many accuse devotees of yoga of playing with philosophy the way they test drive a new Mercedes Benz, or check out the Ritz-Carlton in Laguna Beach, yoga has become today’s Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor [SSRI]. In fact, it may also challenge the skyrocketing sales of Valium-class drugs as hoards of otherwise materialistic devotees indulge themselves in the fantasy that nothingness is a good thing; especially when your week’s calendar includes a series of 5-hour meetings from California to the coast of Massachusetts.

Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoir, Eat, Pray, Love (subtitle: One Woman’s Search for Everything across Italy, India and Indonesia), is one of the biggest hits of 2007, and continues to sell well. It has Oprah Winfrey’s seal of approval. Many critics loved it when it was first published in 2006.

The self-help memoir has inspired women readers to follow in Gilbert’s footsteps as they make pilgrimages abroad looking for good food, new boyfriends and personal gurus to make everything right again after divorce.

But phenomenal success is being followed by a perhaps inevitable backlash.

“The talk out there in the ether is that people have really latched on to this book as a touchstone or are viscerally turned off by it. It definitely evokes conflicting opinions,” says Thom Geier of Entertainment Weekly, which did a “Love it/Loathe it” feature on the book.

Maureen Callahan, who penned the Post piece, decried the book’s “Western fetishization of Eastern thought and culture” and wrote that “readers are using Eat, Pray, Love as a shortcut to finding a spiritual ‘truth’… as an excuse to have that extra glass of wine, and as a license to abandon all critical thinking.”

“Disastrous” and “cloying” are the words book critic/blogger (theoldhag.com) Lizzie Skurnick uses to describe the book. “Other people’s epiphanies are boring,” she says.

Claudia McEachern, 27, of Roswell, Ga., says she was excited about Eat, Pray, Love after seeing Gilbert on Oprah but became disillusioned. “All I could think was, ‘Please, get over yourself.’”

Gilbert, in an e-mail, responds to naysayers: “I understand people’s objections to anything that smacks of the New Age movement (the criticism being that this kind of loosey-goosey spiritual seeking is a just a free-for-all of well-heeled Westerners randomly shoplifting rituals and symbols from all the world’s more exotic religions). … Mine is just a simple old human story — of one person trying, with great rigor and discipline, to comprehend her personal relationship with divinity.”

But Gilbert is bowled over by the many readers who have embraced her. “I’d always seen my story as something quite specific that would only appeal to people exactly like me (Divorced mid-30s Professional Women Seeking Answers to Life). But apparently there’s a much wider percentage of the population seeking these same answers than I had ever imagined.”

With this in mind, if the following makes any sense to you whatsoever, yoga is definitely for you.

“Only a person who does not carry the previous moment to this moment, only that person is free from everything, and that quality will be felt everywhere. Within a few moments of meeting you, people will trust you to the extent that they would not even trust their parents, or husbands, or wives, simply because you don’t carry the burden of the past with you. If you carry the past with you, then you will also smell like anybody else. The whole world stinks with personalities. Everybody has his own strong smell or personality. These are the various stenches in the world, and they keep clashing all the time. When one does not carry this odor, one can cross over this existence. One not only passes through this world effortlessly, one will pass through the very process of life and death effortlessly. This person crosses the ocean of Samsara without any effort. What looks like a great effort for somebody else will be happening for this person without any effort. Everything just simply happens…”

Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev is a realised master, Yogi and a profound mystic of our times.

Whatever…