Chicken in a Box

There is an exercise done in many art classes with a live model who will change poses about every 45 seconds, and the students complete what are called "impression drawings" or "gesture drawings" from these very quick moments. The idea is to capture the "essence" of the model, the energy of the posture. By moving in such quick succession of 45-second intervals, the analytic mind doesn't really have time to kick in and judge, criticize, or even question; you only have enough time for acceptance. 

This can be a useful exercise in traveling, too. And while I've done my fair share and maybe more of analyzing and comparing, questioning and perhaps more judging than I would have liked, I've also truly enjoyed and reveled in the wonderful strangeness and fleeting moments of simple being. So for this post, I'm drawing a few impressions from my time in China.

__________

On the flight from Guangzhou to Kunming, I am reading China's newspaper written in English, when the flight attendant rolls by and asks me, "Chicken or pork?" and I am glad that I let go of my exclusively vegetarian ways a few months back because I am getting the feeling that that would not fly here.

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zai jensuo (at the Clinic)

I am sitting behind Dr. Huang Pu's desk in an office that is about 4ft x 6ft; there is a patient sitting in a chair adjacent to me, with her wrists exposed on a pillow on his desk. The girl's boyfriend and mother are standing behind her, and behind them are about 10 other people waiting to be seen by the doctor. They are sitting, leaning against the wall, on their phones, and walking in and out of the office. They are peering over the current patient's shoulder, and looking somewhat curiously at Andreas, Liu Jin (our teacher/translator) and I. Patients wander in and out of the offices, interrupting with questions, and dropping their history books as a form of waiting their turn. As it becomes clear that these people are not part of the patient's family, but other patients waiting to be treated, we are perplexed for a moment or two, and then chuckle to ourselves at the thought of the closed doors of doctors' offices in the West. There isn't even a door to close in any of the herbal doctors' offices at the clinic in Kunming.

__________

In another doctor's office, a mother brings in her 5 month old daughter looking for an herbal prescription after returning from the hospital where the baby received intravenous antibiotics (I cringe at how often this happens). When the baby gets anxious enough to begin crying, mom flips open her Smartphone and plays a cartoon on the screen which captures the baby's attention so completely and quickly that I swear the tear stopped mid-roll down her cheek. It's a strange juxtaposition of this old traditional medicine and this new-fangled technology. And then the next patient walks in.

__________

I get caught in a little language trip at the clinic when I realize that the doctor is speaking in Chinese, Liu Jin translates into English and Andreas is taking notes in German.

__________

We take a quick tour around the pharmacy at the clinic. But this is not at all reminiscent of Walgreens. Yes, there is a counter where patients bring their prescriptions, and there are pharmacists who go behind the counter and bring out the medicine requested, but the similarities end there. The prescriptions are a hand written recipe, specifically for the individual patient- a list of herbs and their amounts in grams to be measured and combined by the pharmacist, wrapped up in brown paper and given to the patient with instructions on how to boil the remedy, for how long, and how much and how often to drink it. There are three walls of drawers behind the pharmacy counter inside of which contain everything from chrysanthemum to donkey skin, turtle shell, scorpion, sandalwood and almond. I tasted the donkey skin. It tasted like donkey skin.

-> I am reminded of a passage in Ballentine's Radical Healing, in which he gives a homeopathic remedy to a woman with breathing problems and control issues. When she is pleased at how well it works, she asks him if she can give the remedy to her son, who also has asthma. He responds by saying, "The remedy isn't for asthma... it's for YOU."

__________

When the doctor asks the patient how their appetite is, they measure in bowls of rice. Andreas, who is from Italy, turns to me and says, "In Italy, they would be measuring in pizzas." I think... how do we measure appetite in the U.S.? In Big-Macs, or calories, in grams of fat or carbs or protein? Is that even a measure of appetite, or is it a measure of self control, or self worth?

__________

A woman walks into Dr. Yang's office, sits down, and even though it's not her turn, she says she doesn't want to wait. He asks her what her symptoms are. She pulls up her sleeve, places her wrist on the pillow on his desk, and says, "Feel my pulse, and you tell me what's wrong."

__________

Sitting in the waiting area of the clinic, there is a man across the hallway with a 2ft x 2ft x 1ft box at his feet. There are small squares cut out of the sides. And a rooster's beak pokes out.

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"Wei?" and Yin-Yang Theory

I am on a massage table, face down in the little hole of the table, staring at the floor, thinking, "how in the world did all of this tension get into my body?!" At the moment when I think the massage therapist's fingers have turned into big, strong needles, I hear a vibration from his pant pocket, and the force behind those needles lessens, he pulls one hand away, and, with his phone to his ear, says, "wei?" all the while, the other hand still digging into my muscles. I am reminded of the number of times in India when my yoga instructors answered their phones during asana class, and then I am reminded of the scolding I received in the States from the owner of the yoga studio I was teaching at at the time who received a complaint from one of my students about my texting during the final relaxation portion of the asana class.

Oh, Perspective, you're so funny.
When the student who was so frustrated by the little button-pushing sounds from my phone approached me with his complaint, I tried my best to gracefully accept the criticism, apologize for the disruption it had caused in his relaxation time, and recognize my responsibility for creating the safe space to practice. Then as politely as I could I tried to articulate that the purpose of both the asana and relaxation/meditation practice is, in essence, a kind of rehearsal, cultivating the equanimity to face the challenges and distractions in the real world. Your practice is nothing if it does not help to keep you grounded and equanimous in the face of less than ideal circumstances. (This is not to excuse my rudeness in neglecting that responsibility of creating a peaceful setting for practice- though it was kind of setting the stage for the rehearsal...). I once participated in a Summer Solstice celebration in Times Square, New York, where yoga asana classes were being held throughout the day. 300 -600 yoga mats spread out in the middle of Times Square, attempting to find that inner peace and equanimity amidst all of the horn-honking, neon advertisements several stories high and the general chaos of a city. mantra, so to speak, of the event was, "anyone can find enlightenment at the top of a mountain, can you do it in the middle of Times Square?"

This is the kind of practical, or applied spirituality that really draws me in- it's a kind of challenge that expects you to remain in this world, active in a meaningful way in the chaos of interpersonal relationships, business, politics, and conflict. This kind of practice inherently places value on the physical world of form, as opposed to the ascetic renunciation of all things material, this is a practice that expects one to continue to engage in the material world, despite how challenging it might be. 

But from my experience, this perspective on yoga IS much more of a Western twist on the ancient tradition.

I've now been to six Tai-chi classes at the old zoo in Kunming with Yang laoshi (teacher). Initially, and to a great extent the class still consists much of me watching Mr. Yang and trying my best to reproduce his movements. However, every now and then, when I'm practicing the form, Yang laoshi will stop me in a particular sequence of movements, place his hands on my arms or ask me to place my hands on his arms and tell me to push while he pushes against my force. This force-to force is not exactly "against," though, it's more like redirecting my force and he and I usually end up moving in a circular motion where I am then in a position that allows Yang laoshi to either bend my arm behind my back, chop his hand into my neck or simply push me away to the side (all quite gently). Given the fact that my Chinese language skills are still super minimal, these "push-hand" experiences, as they are called, allow Yang laoshi and I to communicate in a meaningful way with very little spoken language- in fact, our bodies are communicating more directly than our minds. After being punched in the stomach or pushed to the side in push-hand, I have a much more concrete sense in my body of the applicability of these movements; WHY I'm supposed to move my arms in a figure-eight, or WHY my hips should move this way in relation to my shoulders: BECAUSE if I'm being attacked, this is the most efficient way to use my energy either in avoiding a punch, or in executing a counterattack. This energetic/spiritual movement practice is (arguably more than yoga asana is) grounded in physical reality.

The practice mostly stems from Taoism, as does Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and acupuncture; a lineage that is fairly evident in the circular and continuous motions of the Tai-chi form and in the diagnostic and treatment "protocols" (though that's not the best word for it, since it will vary according to each TCM/acupuncture practitioner and each patient). The best way I can articulate the applied Taoism is the phrase, "the dual within the non-dual," which I had heard and read prior to this experience in China, but it only really made intuitive sense to me then (as in, I had a mental inclination toward understanding the phrase) but I can now FEEL the meaning expressed within my body. When practicing the push-hand technique with Yang laoshi or the other students, the need to relax ("fansom," in Chinese) is emphasized greatly. Yang laoshi demonstrates regularly that when a body is tense, it is impossible to move in the fluid way required for the efficiency and circuitousness of the motions- in other words, unless you relax, you're going to be punched in the stomach. This is only sort of counter-intuitive. When you're faced with a situation where you may be attacked, the body's evolved response is the engagement of the autonomic nervous system- Fight or Flight (in this case, but this system is also responsible for the Feast or F**k drives, which, for this reason, can seem just as overwhelming as Fight or Flight), but practicing Tai-chi teaches the body that the best way to handle such a situation (in many cases) is by relaxing that instinct and deliberately responding as opposed to reacting (a distinction made in Buddhist practice as well as some schools of clinical psychology).

Yin-Yang theory (not YAYng, but sort of a cross between young and yawn) is a really beautiful example of how to think about this dual-whithin-the-non-dual-thing. We all know the symbol, right? 

So lets break it down, shall we? Black and white, from the perspective of the color spectrum represent the opposition of fullness and emptiness as black is the absorption of all wavelengths and white is the absence of absorption. However, you could also flip it by saying that black is the absence of reflection white is the reflection of all wavelengths. This is how Lao Tzu, the earliest Taoist sage got away with saying:
   "To be bent is to become straight.
    To be empty is to be full.
    To be worn out is to be renewed.
    To have little is to possess."
(the word "shunyata" expresses the same basic concept in the Buddhist tradition. I think it's a Sanskrit word, but I honestly can't remember. See David L. Loy's "Money, Sex, War, Karma")

This is directly at odds with the cornerstone of most the Western philosophy with Aristotle on one of it's highest pedestals. One of Aristotle's most basic rules about the nature of the universe declares, "the same thing cannot at one and the same time be and not be, or admit any other similar pair of opposites," in other words, A cannot be Not-A. Tai-chi practice flies in the face of Aristotle's "rule." The one allows the other to come into being because they are relative to each other. This is also displayed in the yin-yang symbol with the curved line separating the black and the white. The fact that it is not a straight or rigid division imparts the idea that the two are constantly in flux: always relating to, creating and consuming the other (relaxing when under attack IS the strength needed to defend or counter-attack).

Another principle of yin-yang theory is the lack of absoluteness. You cannot say that anything is absolutely yin or absolutely yang because neither one exist without the other. Something is only yin in relation to something yang. Furthermore, something that would be considered yin also has yang qualities within it. This is seen in the symbol as the little dot of white in the black section and the black dot in the white section. Within the one is the seed of the other (and within the seed of the other is the one, ad infinitum). Again using the same example: the act of relaxing, which would be considered of more yin essence, gives rise to the quick motion of evading a punch or throwing one, an action of more yang essence. Though even the yang movement of evading a punch has the aspect of self protection, which is a more yin property. Get the idea?

Now, to be fair, many of these same principles are found in yogic theory as well. The difference is in the way the principles are applied, but I certainly don't have enough experience with the Tai-chi practice to make a clearcut distinction. And so the journey keeps on keepin' on.

More soon on acupuncture and other Chinese things!

Within Community Without

"I know that you are there, and I am very happy."
--

One of the major themes I've been exploring this fall is the role of community in relation to healing. One of the first ways I engaged with this topic was through language, but community is more than communication (though that is a big part of it). A sangha is a community of people practicing together (yoga, meditation, mindfulness, nonviolent communication, anything). In Buddhism, it is said that one must take refuge in the sangha. Especially in the fast paced, tunnel-vision world in which most of us live, to feel a part of a community of like-minded individuals sharing your journey, is a true blessing. Your community; the net into which you are woven is your context, your support structure and the space within which you exchange energy (lighting torches and healing). Sitting in a cybercafe in Delhi, listening to the honking horns and the anklets of begging women, I am particularly grateful for my community, though they may not be physically present with me here.

As part of my ILC proposal, I've been trying to engage with "superficial sanghas," or internet based communities of mindfulness, healing, and alternative/revolutionary educational paradigms. However, due to my unpredictable internet access, as well as the slowness of getting the online community I had proposed to develop up and running, I have been feeling a bit of a lack of support/engagement with the work I've been doing. I've been missing the conversations and stimuli that result from an academic community and though I've had the support for my practice, I've been connecting the academic mind to the embodied mind alone- which is a tiresome process. When I approached my TESC sponsor about this issue of community, she said this, "What if this is an opportunity for you to go inwards and have your communty be the silent voices we don't normally have the opportunity to hear? What if this is a chance to write from the meditative mind?"
Well, let me tell you a story:

I've been practicing a mindfullness mantra from one of Thich Naht Hanh's books. Thay says that the ability to be fully present in the moment and recognize another is a miracle. Whether the other is a flower, the moon, or a lover is irrelevant; the key is bring your whole Self into the present moment and simultaneously, recognize your shared energy with another. The mantra is, "I know that you are here, and I am very happy." I found this mantra particularly helpful during the yogasana classes with yogiji in Bhagsu, when I found myself bubbling with anger, or frustration; I would reel myself back to my Self and find something, a bird, a bug, a cloud, the other student, anything, and recognize my shared energy with that being. Sometimes I tried to do it with yogiji, if I was feeling particularly ambitious. I found myself practicing the mantra at night along with my prayers for my family and friends, and when I was feeling homesick, I practiced with the moon.
One morning, as I sat in the small Shiva Temple (it became a sanctuary in the true sense of the word) outside of the yoga hall, I closed my eyes and practiced the mantra outloud. As I did so, I began to lose the sense of who exactly I was. Let me rephrase. I couldn't quite tell if I (Sophie) was recognizing that Shiva was there, or if Shiva was recognizing that I was there. Let me try to explain. I lost a bit of the sense of being separate from Shiva, and I couldn't tell who was saying the mantra. This was cool. So I continued with declarations: "I am Shiva, I am Shakti, I am Yin, and I am Yang, I am my mother and my father, I am my sister, and I am my lover. I am my grandparents and their grandparents. I am my children and my children's children. I am Shiva. I am Shakti. I an Yin. I am Yang. I am this body." (that last one, just to bring me back down...)

And just the icing on the cake:
After talking with my sister over Thanksgiving (which I completely forgot about), I started to feel a bit homesick for my family. I posted on facebook that I missed my community from home, and I got this response from one of my favorite high school teachers, "We miss you too. But know that there are a lot of people on this side of the world enjoying your travels vicariously ... So you actually have lots of people from home with you all the time ... You just can't see them."

Oh, hey, community- there you are... within me. Right.

:-D

Please Excuse Me While I Have a Conversation with my Piriformis

"The human being is a continuum- there are no tangible frontiers between the... body, mind, and soul."
--

My first yogasana teacher, Denise, used to say, "you may come to yoga class for the yoga-booty, but you come back for something else." There are, undoubtedly, physical benefits from the practice of yogasana, and pranyama (breath control), but what has been glossed over in the States, is the fundamental principles and original intention of these practices. Yoga is, at its core, preparation for meditation; a means for paving the way for introspection and spiritual connection. It is an assumption in the yogic tradition that physical health will be attained along the way to spiritual elevation- they are different stops along the same path, but stopping at the physical benefits is cutting yourself short of the possibility of greater awareness.

--
In his book, Light on Life, B.K.S. Iyengar talks about developing "body intelligence," the capacity for sensitivity, for being aware of both the internal processes of the body and the mind. Every pore of the skin, and every cell in the body becomes an eye looking inward, a way to see yourself as you truly are. Developing this kind of inner awareness is quite contrary to our habitual way of being. People move numbly through the world, going "from bed to car to desk to car to couch to bed, but there is no awareness in their movement, no intelligence. There is no action. Action is movement with intelligence." Learning to live in this way, to be in the world and move with intelligence, we create the momentum of energy for transformation; and not just to transform your body into a stronger, or a leaner body, but to transform your mind from chaos to peace, and to transform our world from destruction and carelessness to deliberate and creative change for the better. This is how yoga can change your mind, and change the world. It is unfortunate that the larger context of a yoga practice (beyond the asanas and the breathing) has been largely ignored in the US and the physical form has taken undue importance. Yoga emphasizes the value of balance, "if you say you are your body, you are wrong. If you say you are not your body, you are also wrong. The truth is that although body is born, lives and dies, you cannot catch a glimpse of the divine except through the body." Both Buddhism and Yogic philosophy have a precept of non-attachment at their core. So we must honor the body, respect it, nourish it and listen to it (limits, and flaws and all), but not become so overly indulgent in the senses, and remain connected to the larger context of which we are a part (community, universe, spirit) so as to create a small distance from the dramas of our everyday lives that threaten to sweep us away and off the path of transformation and radical healing.

Using all the inner eyes of the cells and pores of the skin, we begin to develop a deeply accurate sense of where the body is in space even with the eyes closed (close your eyes and touch your nose with one finger, see how accurate you are). We use the internal sense of self to guide us (connected to the intrinsic muscles of the spine), not only physically, but also through the decisions we make in daily life (do you go for second helpings of the delicious meal you just ate despite being satisfyingly full, or do you respect your body?) Instead of looking at the person next to you in the hatha yoga class to see what the pose "is supposed to look like," you can develop a sense of how to move in your body, into your expression of the pose. You work to deepen the posture to push your limits, and expand your mind's horizons, not to make the pose or the body more beautiful. Though, those are nice perks. I hesitate to call someone a yogi if they do not recognize the importance of this internal looking.
--

I remember a conversation with my father (an electrical engineer, firmly grounded in the Newtonian physical reality) where he challenged me with the question, "if you pass a flame from one torch to the next, is the first flame present in the 100th?" I stood my ground with a positive response, despite his pessimistic statistics claiming that there is only one in such-and-such a chance that any particle from the first flame will be found in the last. I couldn't argue with him in his language of Newtonian physics and math and resorted, unproductively, to my language of energy. The conversation ended with both of us significantly frustrated with the others' lack of insight.
I came across, recently, some writing by Tich Naht Hanh, a fairly well known Vietnamese Buddhist monk and author, and he used a similar metaphor to make the point that without the first flame, none of the other torches would be lit. In Ayurveda, the principle element of fire is responsible for our thoughts (think of the electrical impulses from one neuron to the  next, if you have trouble with thinking of the nature elements inside the body). If you think of lighting a torch as illuminating the mind, and passing the flame as transmitting knowledge, the way a good teacher does, you see how without your teacher's first teacher's first teacher, you could not have the flame of knowledge present in your mind. Take a breath, I know this seems convoluted, but it is actually quite simple. You are inseparable from the net of people around you, your environment, and your past. You are the culmination of all of your experiences, everyone you've known, loved and hated, and all of their experiences. I find that the best teachers, of yoga or otherwise, are the ones who recognize the importance of their context, but these are also the teachers who refuse to call themselves teachers because they have the humility and humbleness to know that their knowledge is only as good as all of their teachers and their teachers' teachers.

So, despite his best efforts to convince me to call him Swamiji, I am now off to China. Maybe I will have better luck in finding a "master," but for the meantime, I will humbly go forth, my Yoga Teacher certification in my back pocket; to continue to learn from my body, a student at heart.

What's Your Dosha, Baby?

Yoga is considered to be the science of self-realization. Ayurveda is the ancient science, translated from Sanskrit as "life-knowledge," the science of life, or self-healing. Yoga is the tradition of ancient yogis for purifying the  body and preparing the mind for meditation. Ayurveda is said to have been the knowledge of the gods and was passed down orally until the time came on Earth when negativity dominated, crimes abounded and health was nearly nowhere to be found. Many rishis, or sages, prayed to and/or approached (depending on the account you hear or read) Lord Indra for help in relieving the suffering on Earth. This was when the knowledge was recorded in text form. The two sciences of self-healing and self-realization are dependent upon each other. How can you  heal something you don't know, and how can you truly realize yourself or your potential without the knowledge to heal yourself?

I've reached the half-way point in my month-long intensive course of Ayurvedic Nutrition and Cooking, which means I get to cook lunch with the Ayurvedic doctor/my teacher. The other day, we made paranthae- usually a breakfast or lunch dish, prepared with a flour dough rolled into patties into which you place spoonfulls of a variety of fillings (anywhere from potato to chillies, to vegetables, depending on.. a number of things that I'll talk about in a minute). You then roll the patties about a quarter inch thick and place it o the hot taba (or whatever pan you've got) either with a lot of oil, little oil, or no oil, and lightly fry or cook each side until it becomes delicious.

"Paranthae is Ayurveda food?" he asked, surprised, and maybe a bit pleased with himself that he cooks Ayurveda-approved food for his children's breakfast without even knowing it. I smiled and responded that according to the Dr., the importance is not so much on the food itself as the preparation of the food, and the specific herbs and spices used (according to... a number of things that I'll talk about in a minute!) So much for the idea of "you are what you eat," apparently, you are HOW you eat.

Ayurvedic philosophy holds that everything in this world is made up of varying combinations of the "5 Big Elements," ether, air, fire, water, and earth. The actual ratio of your make-up is termed your "prakriti," literally your "nature." Each of the elements has its own characteristics and responsibilities in the form they take in our bodies and minds. For example, earth element is characteristically hard, dry, immobile and strong. the earth energy in the body is therefore responsible for the strength and firmness of the body and can be found in bone and connective tissue. In the mind, earth energy gives a person mental strength, courage and groundedness.

Based on the relationships between the 5 Big Elements, there are three basic elemental combinations that form what are called the "dosha," of a person: Vata, Pitta, Kapha. The dosha is generally how we refer to one's prakriti. There are hundreds of tests on the internet and in various books of more or less reliability in determining your dosha (and it's interesting to have a good friend do the test for you, and see the differences!) It should also be noted that we rarely find someone who is ruled solely by one dosha; we generally find ourselves to be a combination of two doshas with one being more dominant. For example, I have a Pittak-Kaphaj prakriti with Pitta being predominant. The principles of Ayurveda state that a person is treated with specific consideration to the individual's nature, using herbs as needed, and relying on food as medicine. Food is said to be capable of changing the body's inner atmosphere and collecting cosmic energies inside the body. Ayurveda also states that the psychology of a person is considered just as important as the physiology and pathology of an individual or disease process.

When preparing food or medicine, one must take the person's doshic dominance into primary consideration; but that is by no means the only factor. Ayurvedic nutrition places great emphasis on the season, the way in which something is eaten, temperature, as well as the internal effect; proper preparation relies heavily on the idea of balance. When cooking lunch with the Dr., I am always asking questions about the qualities of a food (heavy, light, hot, cold, oily, dry, smooth, sweet, sour, etc. etc.) in relation to my prakriti: "But, Dr.-ji, yogurt is a heavy food and I have low digestive fire- is that alright for me to eat? - But, Dr.-ji, ginger and garlic increase Pitta, and I want to decrease my Pitta, should I eat that?" Her responses always point back to the idea of balance: "yes, yogurt is heavy, but the vegetables are light and dry and will balance in combination. - yes, ginger and garlic increase Pitta, but they also decrease Vata, and the lentils are Vata in nature, and they will balance in combination."

Oh, yeah. The whole story.

Whenever I ask a question during the Ayurveda class about whether something is "good," or "bad," I am given a long explanation describing the conditions and circumstances in which the thing is good, and in which the thing is bad. When I asked what a good remedy for a headache might be, Dr.-ji responded with a spitfire of questions about the origin of the headache. Her responses to my questions like the ones above, reinforce the notion that these qualities and elements coexist, are ever-changing, and are always interacting. Nothing exists in isolation and nothing is so pure as western science might wish it was.
Especially us.

The Cow Dung Conversation

Sitting in an apartment in Mussoorie with a bunch of ferengi (a Hindi word that refers to the white tourists, with a similar connotation to the Spanish word gringo) doctors, lawyers and Fulbright scholars ("American ambassadors") who are discussing the impossibility of using cow dung as an antiseptic. I am the youngest person in the room, and the only one arguing with them.

There is some ambivalence from one of the Fulbright scholar ladies, who credits the long time tradition of using cow dung as a medicinal as some proof, however weak, that it works, at least for Hindus. The others are more embedded in their western mindset and are more critical of the practice, claiming that any medicinal benefit would be offset by the negative effects. When asked, the British doctor in the room said yes, she would indeed try to prevent someone from using the dung as a medicinal, and when asked if it was possible for there to be any antiseptic qualities to it, she corroborated their already-held doubtful belief. I piped in by saying that even using the word "antiseptic" is approaching the issue from a framework that doesn't fit- using the western medicine terminology to evaluate traditional medicine is basically invalidating the practices from the outset because you are essentially holding the traditional medicine to the standards of western medicine, thereby placing western medicine on a higher plane. I said, if you really want to evaluate the traditional medicine, you have to do so within its own context. Furthermore, I said, we have been raised within the framework of western medicine and therefore hold certain beliefs about infection and cleanliness that are most likely not shared in this culture. Those beliefs affect whether or not we respond with confidence or fear to a particular medication or remedy, and thereby affect its effectiveness. If one grows up hearing and learning and knowing that cows are sacred, then one's physiological response to the sight of a cow, or its dung is going to be inherently different than mine, or the British doctor's.
Later, when talking with a Punjabi man about the conversation, he responded somewhat excitedly, and asked if these fullbright "kids" knew anything about the preparation of the dung before use; clearly the whole story needs to be taken into account. Before the dung is used on the body, it is first burned for fire or fuel for cooking, and the ashes are then made into a paste with ghee and applied externally, but not on open wounds. I smiled. Okay, so the burning would cleanse the dung of whatever negative or harmful qualities that are present in dung; yes the full story is important.


Here, in Bhagsu, I went walking with another yoga student and Bhima to a waterful a couple of hours away. When we arrived, we sat down on a rock to look at the scenery. The rock was nearly covered with cow dung, and the other student and I sat down on the small portion of the rock that was somewhat clean, while Bhima sat on the dried dung. The other student urged Bhima not to sit there because it is dirty. He, knowing that she is not a vegetarian, said, "if you don't like it's shit, how can you like it's meat?" He continued, "this is good for food too- you put it in the soil, and it makes good vegetables."


Good point.


It's an interesting issue of invisibility that extends from food and animals to medicine and waste as well. There is not infrastructure to collect and handle waste. The garbage produced is thrown into rivers, ditches, the side of the road, etc. and burned, usually. To some extent, we have the same problem in the US. Sure, we recycle, but the trash we accumulate, which is MUCH more than here in Bhagsu, we also throw in the Earth- we just throw some dirt on top of it, and make it invisible. We do the same with our food- hiding the animal carcasses and slaughters behind steel walls, accessible only to those with government permits. In fact, one man, Joel Salatin, a biodynamic farmer in Connecticut, has been slaughtering his chickens in the open air every Saturday and invites his costumers to come to see the slaughter before they purchase their chickens. The government continually tries to shut down his operations, and I believe he's been jailed at least once. He recounts his stories in a number of books, including "Everything I Want to Do is Illegal," and he was highlighted in Michael Pollen's "Omnivore's Dilema." This is just one poignant example of the invisibility of the whole system, or whole story in the US. This seems, at least, more honest, however unappealing to the senses.


In medicine, we also have a tendency to prefer to view the superficial aspects of disease, as opposed to the whole story- covering up symptoms with pain-relievers and harsh medicines that operate on the molecular level, and thus have effects on higher levels that are almost always unintended, and negative "side-effects," (I have a hard time with this term- just because it was not what the drug intended to do, it is still an effect, and may even be more prominent than the original disease the drug was meant to alleviate. It is, simply, an effect.) Holistic systems of healing have a tendency to bring out the disease; make it more prominent, in order to treat it from it's root cause. The tendency in the States to keep our diseases or sufferings secret (i.e. the taboos of speaking about cancer, sexual diseases, eating disorders, depression or mania etc.) is also a reflection of this invisibility issue. Community based healing, like community acupuncture, public yoga classes, energy healing circles, and plant medicine (bringing us back into our context in the natural world) are essentially opposed to the idea of keeping our suffering a secret (see http://whalesandberries.blogspot.com/2011/05/remedy.html for my thoughts on community based acupuncture). 


So, I am here with open eyes, open mind, open heart, and a closed nose.


Moo.

Sugar, Sugar, Sugar, & a Grain of Salt

India is famous for its tea (chai), I'm sure you know, the most common being "masala chai," "mixed tea." Usually the mix is some combination of black tea, cardamon, and ginger with milk and sugar. Lots of sugar. (if you're rich, your masala might also include anise, and cinnamon- mmmmh) Tea starts the day, and ends every meal, tea breaks are as common as cigarette breaks, and if you want black tea or tea without sugar, you have to say so. Saying "only a little bit of sugar, please," does not work- it's all or nothing.

Festival time means "meethayee," sweets. Diwali was this week: a sort of combination of Christmas (gift-giving), Chanukah (festival of lights), Fourth of July (fireworks), and the New Year (..new year). Everyone gives everyone sweets. A few weeks ago was another festival in Mussoorie where the town builds a huge statue of a demon and then burns it down (see video)- again, sweets were everywhere. Neighbors, friends, and families all buy little boxes full of various sweets of varying shapes, sizes and colors (really, from brown to pink). The funny thing is, there's not a whole lot of variety in flavor- at least not that I can tell. Texture, yes, flavor, eh, not so much. They all pretty much just taste like... sugar. Somehow though, whenever someone presents me with a box of sweets to choose from, I always feel like maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to distinguish. I am getting better- the milky ones, from the coconutty ones, to the buttery ones. But still, overwhelmingly the predominant flavor is the fear of cavities.

So. My daily "routine" begins, of course, with a cup of chai that makes me glad for my toothbrush. Here's the rough breakdown these days:

6:30 wake up

6:40 get out of bed

6:43 gather all of the toilet paper I anticipate needing for the day, and stuff it in my bag. Change clothes, lock the door to my room.

6:50 bathroom, brush teeth, wash face.

7-8am Meditation wrapped in my shawl/blanket in the yoga hall with Shivamji. Chai (1).

8-10am Yoga Asana class with Shivamji on the roof of the yoga hall. Sun salutations with the sun on your skin= priceless.

10ish Chai (2).

10:15ish Breakfast in the sun, view of mountains, listen to puja (prayer) from inside the yoga hall.

10:30-12 Class, and chai (3). 3-4x/week is Mantra class with Sunilji (of the priest class; he does the pujas daily) 2x/week is Ayurveda class.

12-2pm Yoga Asana class with Raviji.

2:10 chai (4).

2:15/2:30-3ish lunch.

**For the last two weeks, I have had free time from 3 until puja and dinner, which is when I would read, write, or go for walks with the other student here and Bhima- or Sunil- or Ravi-ji, however, beginning on the first of November, I will have the time from 3-5pm as an intensive Ayurvedic Cooking and Nutrition course 5x/week.

6/7ish Puja with Sunilji in the yoga hall- sometimes I go to listen to the prayers, as Sunilji has a beautiful voice, but sometimes I read in my room instead.

6:30/7:30 help cook dinner. I can now make a pretty decent batch of chapati and I could probably whip up some dahl if I needed to :)

7:30/8ish eat dinner, watch Bollywood movies.

8:30ish chai (5).

9ish quick bucket shower, and go back to my room: reading, writing, sleeping.

Pretty sweet, no?

Well, yes. But as my own yoga practice has taught me, balance is key. So naturally, some things are... a bit bitter.

First off, I'd like to admit that I entered into this experience with some preconceived notions and expectations. Both from my upbringing and from my spiritual studies and my personal practice, I've gathered for myself a personal code of conduct, and perhaps it is unfair to hold others to that same value system. After all, a whole lot of my experience here is about attempting to view things from within their own context (i.e. language, place, story). However, I do believe that fundamentally, we are all human, made of the same stuff, and we have an incredible capacity to connect across wide barriers (language, place, story). At some point, the relativistic fallacy makes it more, rather than less difficult to connect to others- there is a certain level of behavior that is reasonable to expect from people, no?

Now, let me backtrack for a moment. The yogic lineage has traditionally been passed down from master (guru) to student. With the western notion of "every man for himself" and the "rags to riches" story imbedded in our mindset, it has since taken a different form in the western world. We (or, rather, I) operate on the basic principle that (for the most part) every person, regardless of age, place, sex, gender, race, religion, can practice yoga, can become a better person, can "enlighten" themselves (or should be able to). This butts heads directly with the historic yogic tradition, but it is a difference I can make peace with. What I have a hard time with, is ego.

Every morning during meditation, about 40 minutes into the supposed hour allotted for silence, Yogiji begins a schpiel about higher forms of meditation that his guru has shown him in high trance states that cannot be taught. He continues about how wonderful his guru is, often repeating stories he told me a few days ago, and recounting his own experiences in trance meditation. He always reminds us how much hard work is required for these experiences, how important it is to have a master, and how these meditation techniques cannot be taught. And how important it is to have a master. Also, it is very important to have a master, and these things cannot be taught.

Okay. Yes, I understand that my meditation practice is weak, and I will most likely not reach those states for some time, if at all, and I understand that to have a good teacher is important- that is why I am in a teacher training program, but I also recognize an undertone of ego- a desire for me to call him "guruji" and of...showing off (really?) how wonderful his meditation is. Here is where I have trouble: I am here to learn to be a better teacher; I am interested in healing, and in pedagogy, and it doesn't seem like these 20-30 minute rants are serving those purposes. In fact, if I hold him to the standard I hold myself to, as a teacher - that I can "know" everything in the world, but if I cannot IMPART that information, then it is useless- to tell me that you cannot teach me certain meditation states only tells me that you are not a very good teacher. Now, I recognize that there are different ways of knowing, and for that matter, different ways of teaching (as in his guru coming to him in dreams etc.), and I understand and appreciate that these meditation experiences must be accessed on a different plane. You tell me one time, two times: no problem. Every morning? Problem.

Now, just to bang the nail on the head, let me tell you a story.

Two days ago, Yogiji's friend, Swami Gagnanda came to visit. He brought a few students from Indonesia with him, and he was teaching the afternoon class. Among the students from Indonesia, was a child of 6. The first thing he says is that to practice yoga, you must have two mats, not one, overlapped perpendicular to each other so as to create a cross. In response to the mildly bemused looks on our faces he says, "its okay, most people don't know this." As I said before, I am of the belief that everyone should have access to the benefits of yoga, so to lay down any "prerequisites," so to speak, for the practice, slightly ticks me off, but I exhale.

The second asana he teaches is a movement of the trunk, from a seated position, in 360 degrees- moving the spine in all directions. From my asana teacher perspective, we were not warmed up enough for this movement. From my asana student perspective, he did not teach the movement. Rather, he demonstrated, fairly quickly, and then said, "do it." As we made our first attempts, he commented, "move as if you have no spine." I felt my jaw tighten as my mind screamed, "I DO have a spine!" Then, exasperated and unsatisfied with our spine-full movements, he beckoned the child forward, held his ankles and put him into full lotus posture. My stomach dropped. Then he held the boys head, and bent him forward, to the side, twisted him, rounded his spine back, and came around the same way on the other side. First of all, I am pitying the child, who does not speak English, or Hindi, and is this Swami's puppet for the moment. I am appalled at the "teaching" style of demonstration in the absence of explanation (would an art teacher show a student the Mona Lisa, and say, "do it."?), and furthermore, demonstration on a child- if you cannot do the asana yourself, with the precision or slowness required properly demonstrate or explain it, then you shouldn't be teaching it. Lastly, I am actually enraged that this pedagogy expects my body, a 20 year old female body, or the body of the 42 year old man behind me to be able to mimic the body of a 6 year old boy. And for the first time in my life, I walk out of a yoga class.

Yogiji's behavior is a lesson for me, that we are indeed, all human- complete with bodies, egos, faults, and emotions. Swami's behavior is a lesson in... how not to teach, I suppose. And even though the yoga tradition began in India, the main focus is much more on meditation, rather than asana. Culture in the States is highly preoccupied with bodies, and so it makes sense that the western focus of yoga is on asana. It is for this reason that David Frawley has said in his book, "Yoga & Ayurveda," that some of the best asana teachers and the greatest development of asana is in the West.

So after walking out of Swami's class, ranting to myself for 4 or 5 minutes in my room, and doing my own asana practice, I sit in meditation, and decide that I need to take everything with a grain of salt.

"Not a Girl... Not Yet a Woman"

You could mine salt in my armpit hair, and I've only been here for three weeks. Feminism looks different here.

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Two Critical Questions

"A Natural Language"

I spent about an hour and a half in a sort of language exchange lesson with Bhimaji today. Bhima is a phenomenal cook and a wonderfully sweet and sincere human being. We got a white board, and got to it. He had all kinds of questions about future and past tense, and in trying to explain, using English words he knew and Hindi words I know, I was more able to recognize how difficult my mother tongue is. I had all kinds of questions about passive and active moods in Hindi. You can say "to heal," in both a passive and an active sense. One would refer to a doctor "curing" a patient (the verb karna), the other would refer to a person simply "getting better," (the verb hauna). Active is intervention. Passive, he explained is like... natural.
-----
In the book entitled, "Practical Spirituality," a Q+A session with Marshal Rosenberg, founder of Nonviolent Communication, NVC, he says, "I think it's a natural language. Do that which contributes to life."

NVC is a process of learning to communicate with each other and to deal with difficult situations by focusing on two critical questions:
1) What is alive in us?
2) What can we do to make life more wonderful?

According to Rosenberg, question number one relies on three levels of literacy:
1) Observations (what is or is not making life more wonderful for you right now- no evaluation or judgement)
2) Feelings (what is really alive in you right now?)
3) Needs (the cause of your feelings, and the basis for a request for something to make life more wonderful)

The process by which Rosenberg explains how to develop these literacies sounds a lot like Ayurveda:
"Ayurveda places much emphasis on understanding the ego and its inherent biases, so that our judgements remain balanced and our actions are for the greater good, which is ultimately our own good as well. Dissolving the ego (evaluation) cures all psychological diseases and many physical diseases as well." (my parenthetical) -From Yoga and Ayurveda, by David Frawley.
-----

"Shabash, larki!" he said. I felt my breath skip, and I consciously exhaled. I am not a girl. A few asanas later, he says, again, "well done, girl." This time, I say, with a smile on my face, but sternness in my voice, "Larki nehi hun, mei mehila hun." He laughs, and asks, knowingly, if I am married. My answer does not surprise him, and he says again, "then you are larki (girl)." Exhale again. I am remembering Marshal Rosenberg's writing about NVC, and I ask Raviji, "so what if I were never to get married?" He answers then, that I would become a bardi larki, a "big girl." I think of all of my experiences, and all of the stories I've been told and which I live out daily that deal with coming-of-age, womanhood, and maturity. I have "become" a woman at least three times. My conversation with Raviji continued in this playful but clearly meaningful way. He conceded to referring to me as a young woman, or a lady, but in English only. There is no Hindi equivalent, he told me; if I were to call a lady my age or older who is not married by the Hindi word for woman, she would be angry with me. In the story told in Hindi, a girl becomes a woman through the process of marriage only. (more feminist musings coming in another post)

This interaction occurred only a few hours after a rather heated exchange between another yoga student and Yogiji, during which I quietly and continuously adjusted my own breathing, and relaxed my facial muscles as I felt the tension physically. I reflected on their terse exchange relating to NVC and considering the fact that they were arguing (for lack of a better word) in English, which is a second or third language for the both of them. There were two cultures, two language roots, and two perspectives clashing, though they are all implicated in each other. I wondered how much could be attributed to the language inequality for the both of them (having had both of their minds shaped in two different cultures and two different languages, but communicating in another), and how much of their dispute was value-based (moral stance).(Not to mention that their disagreement was about time and privacy- both of which are social constructs that vary widely across culture and are framed differently in each language.) More than that, however, I was curious how each of them could use knowledge of NVC and understanding of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (that language shapes thoughts), in addition to a meditative approach of simply listening, dropping ego-attachment to stories, results etc., and a calm mind to make their perspectives better understood and actually come to a solution, which they weren't truly able to do.

I thought of the yogic precepts of honesty (satya), and non-harming (asteya). How can we be honest with one another in a situation when that possibly means pain for another? In my first class on Ayurveda, Dr. Amrita told me that one of the basic principles of Ayurveda is that one should never have pain. This made me a bit apprehensive. Recognizing that I come from a western background with the notion of "no-pain-no-gain" deeply imbedded in my history, but also having a sense of balance, I probed her further. She conceded that, yes, in some circumstances, a treatment may be unpleasant, uncomfortable, and even painful in order to achieve a higher state of painlessness or vitality. Most of our first discussion was grounded in the physical realm, but she did mention that another basic principle in Ayurveda is taking the psychology (mentality, emotionality etc.) of the person into account with EQUAL weight as their physical body. You get no oil from the olive without crushing it, or more appropriately for India; you get no butter without churning the milk. Sometimes you have to endure a bit of friction, a bit of pain, in order to come to a better place.

The question is: how much is necessary? I think NVC is a good foundation upon which to build conversations that push our cultural, lingual, and storied (not a typo; storied, as in we create stories and live them out as reality, but they may or may not be universal and so are prone to create what we know as culture shock) buttons. We need to keep the breath steady, the focus simple (2 critical questions, 3 basic literacies), and our energy present with one another. Another basic principle in Ayurveda is that all of nature, including ourselves, is composed of the elements; fire, earth, air, space, and water. Imbalances in our elemental composition may be expressed both physically and emotionally or mentally. In the heated exchange between Yogiji and the other student, the student's overabundant fire was being expressed verbally, which may be healthier for her than for it to manifest as indigestion, for example. However, the fire that was expressed was not done so in a nonviolent way, and perhaps put more stress on the community, or on the relationship between the two of them. The same can be said for the way Yogiji responded in the situation. So while one manifestation of elemental imbalance may be initially healthier for the individual, it may not be the best for the community or for relationships, which would ultimately end up creating more imbalance in all of the individuals in the community. I would like to put some of my eggs in the NVC basket as a possible middle ground.

Often since I've been here, I wonder what in the world are all of these yogis and gurujis are doing, just sitting around in their temples, on their cushions, in trance states, and concerned more with purusa (or spirit), as opposed to really contributing to this, our natural world or prakrti. (and to be fair, many are helping local people with family issues, and many are teaching western foreigners like me...)

B.K.S. Iyengar (yogi superstar) says in his book, Light on Life, "the demonstration of one's spiritual achievement lies in none other than how one walks among and interacts with one's fellow human beings," and while I take a bit of a small and semantic issue with the word "achievement," the statement sounds comfortingly similar to Ronsenberg's sentiment of, "I trust a spirituality that leads people to go forward and transform the world, that doesn't just sit there with this beautiful image of radiating energy. I want to see that energy reflected in the person's actions as they go out and make things happen. It's something you do, a practical spirituality."


So, just to tie it all together: spirit is both natural (hauna), and active (karna).

On the Side of a Train in Jalandhar

On the side of a wall of what I expect is a restaurant: Fish Fried Breakfast
On the side of a bus, indicating the company name: New Tantra
The name of the toll when crossing the Punjab/Himachal border: Shiva toll

Oh, India.

Updates:

-I own three salwaar kameez suits.
-I can now use present, present and past continuous, and completed past tenses in Hindi, albeit the last two with a bit of difficulty and usually my verb agrees with the subject when it should agree with the object, and vice versa, but people understand for the most part. Mostly I just ask questions. More often than not, I do not understand the answer.
-My vocabulary is extremely limited, but that is changing quickly.
-My last day in Mussoorie, after my classes, and after lunch, I shared a taxi with two other gents from the language school who were heading to Rishikesh They agreed to drop me off at the Dehradun train station where I would board an overnight train to Jalandhar. In typical Indian fashion, two taxis showed up for the job; one of which was requested, the other drove all the way from Rishikesh but had been told not to come. He was sent back.
-On my overnight train, my ask, in my best Hindi, what time the train will reach Jalandhar, so that I can set my phone alarm to wake me up 15 minutes prior. I am told three different times, each about an hour apart. I wake up every hour, and find someone awake to ask where Jalandhar is: kay aahgay ya kay peechay? ahead or behind?
-I get off the train at 5:45 am. My connecting train is at 1pm. Chai time.
-An excerpt from journal:
"Literally just spent7 hours at the train station in Jalandhar, the last two of which were spent with this Indian woman, her daughter, and her daughter's friend. At first, it was very nice, I tried practicing my Hindi, they asked me questions, and were very friendly. Then they suggested (or requested, rather) that I come with them. I said no, my train is coming, I need to say (or some approximation thereof in Hindi; I made sure to use "nahee" a bunch so as to reinforce my stance of "no"). They continued to insist, and I held my ground. Then they dropped it, fairly abruptly, and said it was time for lunch. They offered me some parantha, and I declined. Again, they insisted, and what with me not knowing the customs, I did not want to be rude, and accepted one. At this point, the mother was on the phone and I could understand enough of what she was saying to know she was telling someone about me. This freaked me out a bit, and it occurred to me that if I ate their food, I might be obligated to go with them. I stopped eating, said I was full. Seemingly suddenly, the whole scene of myself, and these women is a spectacle at the train station. There is a group of Indians surrounding me, and I can't understand anything. This makes me nervous and I begin to pick at my nails (a nervous habit I've kicked previously several times, but it reoccurs in situations like this) and I begin to bleed around my cuticle (not uncommon for me). Now, ALL of the women are distressed, wagging their fingers at me and repeating the phrase, "Achhaa nahee hay," "not good," over and over. I nod, and sit on my hands. Now, I not only want my train to arrive, I want them to leave me alone, and I am annoyed (as I am with anyone who addresses my nervous habit, particularly in a language I don't understand). Then train is late, and I am internally freaking out. I stand up, strap on my pack, and step a few feet away from the group, all of whom now know that I am an American student studying health, who is going to Pathankott and speaks very little Hindi. I remove myself until the rain comes, listening intently to the loudspeaker for my train number and any updates I can understand. I turn, and say "namaste," to the group when the train (finally) arrives. Now for those who are unfamiliar with India train protocol, every passenger's name is posted with their seat assignment on a paper outside of the car. My name is not on the list. I get on anyway, figuring that it's got to stop at Pathankott, and it's definitely better than the train station. Well, one point for me, because the first person the train that I ask about Pathankott, tells me that it does indeed stop there, and he is, in fact, getting off at that stop. No one asks for my ticket. So while I still haven't figured out how Indians know when their stop is coming up, other than just being familiar with the routes or looking out the window for a sign that may or may not be there indicating the station stop, I do know that I will not miss my stop at Pathankott: Chakki Bank."
It is at this point that I am settled on my top bunk and studying my Hindi notes, when I realize that my phone has died. I wonder how I will contact Shivam when I arrrive in Bhagsu, because he is supposed to take me to take me to my accommodations at the yoga school. I decide to deal with it later, and trust that it will be just fine. Meanwhile, I overhear the fellow on the bunk across from mine on his cell phone, speaking in English, and telling his friend about a white girl studying Hindi on the train. I laugh because he is using the pronouns he and she interchangeably. I do not take offense. I put my notes away and we begin talking, in Hindi. He asks me if I feel bold, traveling alone. Bold? Thoree thoree, a little bit, I tell him. Mostly, I just want a warm place to sleep tonight.
During my three hour and $30USD taxi trip, the very sweet driver let me borrow his phone to call Shivam. My phone turned on just long enough for me to jot down his number, Shivam answered, and agreed to meet me in town in an hour. A very steep hike up the stairs on the side of the mountain later, I am laying on the floor of the yoga hall, which is decked out with pictures of Shivam's Babaji, full of burning incense, and Sunil is playing the harmonious and chanting. The harmonioum is definitely in my top 5 favorite instruments. I am informed that dinner is ready, and I retrieve my daal (lentils), chawal (rice), and chapati (like pita, but better), and in the absence of utensils, I am in heaven, and I sleep like a baby.

A more structured and reflective post coming soon.

Om Namah Shivaya

" एशिया के बहुत अलग है "

"Asia is very different," she tells me.

Every day at 3pm, I meet with Roni. Roni is an Indian woman who was trained at the language school, but works independently as a conversation partner to help students practice their Hindi. She is very cool.

Yesterday, in my "ali-baba pants," tee shirt, and sweatshirt (zipped up half way), Roni told me she had to tell me something अंग्रेज़ी में (in english). Apparently, I was "getting a lot of eyes from bad men." She proceeded to tell me a number of stories of Western women in horrible situations. "Ladies aren't friends with men," she spelled it out for me, and if a woman "invites problems" (referring specifically to the way Western women dress), then the men "can't control themselves."

(me, 2008, "ali-baba pants")

I've heard this argument before. It's a strange mixture of blaming the victim and debasing the perpetrator. If a man has no choice but to behave amorally when faced with temptation then the woman should have known not to put herself in the role of temptation. But there's something else going on here. Roni was not coming from a blame-the-victim mentality, she was not, explicitly or in her subtext, arguing that the women "deserved," or "asked for it." She displayed a definite sense of pity for women who expected men to have self-control. As if western women expect too much from men, and it's too bad that in some cases, we learn the hard way that modesty is best.

I watch the women in Mussoorie. Nearly all of the adult women dress traditionally either in saris or salwar kameez. Many younger ladies and girls wear western कपड़े (clothing), although many teenagers also wear salwaar kameez. The foreign tourists wear a funny conglomeration of the two, and I am honestly a bit wary of cultural appropriation- though I'm not sure how that functions when I am embedded both in the context of this culture, but retain a mostly western mindset. Clearly I am in a gray area.

(salwar kameez)

I see a lady, about my age, riding on the back of a motorbike. She is wearing jeans and straddles the bike. Taking a physical manifestation of metaphor, this is a much more active position- facing forward, and exposing the front of her body to the world. This position says, "I am here, I have opinions, and I can execute my own decisions." Women in saris and even salwaar kameez (even though it's basically a pant suit), do not straddle. They sit side-saddle. This position is passive, it says, "I am along for the ride."

But there are also women like Roni, who dress in traditional, and more modest clothing, but recognize that that, too, is a kind of power. Deciding to cover my shoulders, my chest, my ankles, is the knowledge that, "this is my body, and I can exert some degree of self-protection by dressing in this way. Men, they are fickle and cannot control themselves, and so, I control myself."

When walking the paths with Roni, we pass by a few men and she adjusts her scarf around her neck and shoulders so that it hangs just so over her chest. She does this when a certain air of, "yeah, i know you like it, but you can't have it," and we keep walking.

And even with my trepidation of presenting myself as a tourist who just thought "those dress-things are SO PRETTY!" and wearing tie-dye and brightly colored kameezes, which would only serve to attract more attention to myself instead of the intended effect of avoiding "getting a lot of eyes from bad men," Roni insisted that I find myself a couple of suits. And despite my holding tightly onto the belief that men are not so lowly or weak, and I can dress in whatever way I feel comfortable and appropriate, I also feel less comfortable and certainly less appropriate in my typical fashion. I am the girl whose every outfit involves a tank-top, regardless of whether. That, however, will not fly here. (Plus... those dress-things really बहुत सुंदर हैं, are very pretty.)

"Asia is very different."

When Your Native Tongue is Their Second Language... And They Have Better Grammar Than You Do

A brief introduction to my thoughts on language.


Language is the "map" we have created over millennia to make sense of our surrounding world. It is the raw experience, disciplined. Just as our environment is constantly changing, our language evolves and adapts to continue to guide us. This is evident to any 10th grader reading Hamlet, or anyone who remembers when "neato!" was an acceptable affirmation.

Every individual, and every culture (from the super localized, to the global) creates a story (using language) to make meaning of our experiences. We have hundreds of stories; some we use in certain situations, and others in other situations; some we use all of the time, to the point that we aren't even aware of them being stories, and others we only use occasionally. Our individual lives, our social values, spiritual beliefs, and healing modalities cannot be separated from each other because they comprise that whole Self-identifying story. Think of identity as a fabric woven in a thread of your particular language. The thread being composed, in turn of each smaller thread of beliefs, values, history, etc. twisted around each other.

When we learn a new language (and I mean, really learn a language- not just from a book, but in its own context and from it's native speakers), we not only enter into the stories told in that language, we also engage in a process or writing a new story. We bring our own values, beliefs, fears, histories= STORIES- into the picture: a "mezcla," if you will (I don't know the Hindi word, yet). In his book, Narrative Medicine, Lewis Mehl-Madrona discusses the implications of 20th century quantum physicist, David Bohm's theory of "implicate order," and states,

"each individual consciousness unfolds the universe for itself... any high level of consciousness is a social process... [that depends] on language, which is social. The word, which is outside of the individual, evokes the meaning that is inside each person."

(Hindi HW, Day 1)

(Hindi Textbook, and flashcards, Day 2)

"Some of our maps have left out the roads to more desirable places than those we may have imagined." -from Narrative Medicine

So to even think that I could set up these discrete boundaries on this blog to separate my posts on "language," from my posts on, "community," from my posts on "healing," is glaring at me straight in my eyes like the monkeys on the street threatening and menacing. But more than that it's a challenge. Academia, the Western epistemology (or story) thrives on and demands categorized information and despises overlap- at least traditionally. Interdisciplinary is coming up and coming into it's own- slowly, but steadily.

Mehl-Madrona writes, "We will never be able to experience what ancient healing practices were really like. We are all stuck in our modernity with our prejudices, our romanticism about the past, our preferences about what we would like to believe and our skepticism and doubt that we have learned from Western society." There is something to be said for purity, as it were- keeping the traditions in tact- fencing off "untouched" communities, and keeping sacred what has always been, but we also live in this reality of globalization, and unescapable connectivity (whether it is "good," or "bad," is almost irrelevant, and the answer will be different based upon the perspective you take,) and perhaps a "mezcla" is precisely was is needed in our global community.

So then what am I to make of my experiences here? I was told once, by a professor from Orissa, India, who teaches dance and literature at my college, "When you've spent a week in India, you can write a book about it; when you've spent a month there, you can write an article; and after a year, you can say nothing."

I will do my best to continually reinforce the neural network connecting English and Hindi, somatic and intellectual knowledge, and my individual experiences to my broader community. Thank you, dhnyavaad and hugs to all of you who support me!

Example: Community Life

This is a test.