yogaNexus - Karl Erb » Book & Film

‘Queen of the Sun’ a film about bees, crisis and hope

Karl — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 13:19:34 +0000

Update April 18, 2011
Queen of the Sun opened last weekend in the Bay Area and Nationwide, look for a showing near you, organize a house party, order the DVD… pass it on. Help the bees save us!

Taggart Siegel, an old yoga buddy, has a new film about the current bee collapse, beekeepers and the wonder of bees. The film is now doing film festivals. His previous film “The Real Dirt on Farmer John” was about food, farms and specifically the US family farm on to community farms, so bees were an natural next step in food and agriculture, sustainability. Organize a showing near you. We did house parties for his previous film, “The Real Dirt on Farmer John” and it was big fun. Web site below.

Interview with Taggart Siegel, Director of ‘Queen of The Sun’ and Co-Editor, Producer Jon Betz

Rudolf Steiner’s book mentioned by Taggart:

Brief “Queen of the Sun” Trailer

Queen of the Sun Website

Keep squeezing the belt! Resources for Pelvic Floor practice, or Mula Bandha (books, tips)

Karl — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 15:31:13 +0000

As you know, unused muscle loses tone and strength. The mind is powerful, however thinking about doing pelvic floor exercises, and nodding ‘I know, I know’ will not a strong pelvic core make. Consistent, daily practice, “with no gaps” as Friday the Tibetan girl says in “How Yoga Works” will make for a rewarding practice. The mind will find many reasons why “Today I cannot.” This is the deep practice, not believing or indulging those stories, but making choices, not floating along as though we have no choice. Challenging I know. Rich and rewarding beyond words, as the mind training affects how we see ourselves and the world. That is yoga.

The best book I know on pelvic floor AND exercises is by Blandine Calais-Germain, author of Anatomy of Movement. The book, “The Female Pelvis, Anatomy and Exercises,” goes deeply into details for women, but basic muscular anatomy of pelvis is similar enough that the exercises are good for men as well. See below for books for both men and women. I have kept wanting to bring images of the three layers of the pelvic floor to class, but I loaned this book some time ago, it never came back. So here it is. It will greatly help you in regular practice.

The most important thing is guidance from a teacher over time, and continued instruction as you make the practice yours, to refine and correct mistakes, which are part of learning. You must practice for the teacher to be able to offer more. Read “How Yoga Works” an earlier blog post. Many of you have been working with me for a long time, and have taken Leslie Howard’s classes, or worked with Suzanne Kemmerer. Thus the books are a great supplement to what you have learned to help you at home. If you are new to the practice, do not rely on the books alone. Look for their workshops, Leslie does not live in SF, but teaches at Piedmont Yoga and Yoga Tree, Yoga Loft for regular workshops. Doing these at least once is a must.

For Leslie Howard’s workshop schedule see: LeslieHowardYoga.com

More Books and Tips:
TIPS for Practice:
1. Be sure to keep breath freely moving, each moving coming from a freely moving exhale. Binding the breath will choke key energetic and anatomical centers. (See “How Yoga Works.”)
2. Be happy, inspired and grateful that you are doing the practice. State of mind is important. If you feel pressured, prideful, competitive, vain, insecure this too will choke the breath and cause harm internally.
3. Practice consistently, not too intensely. Change is gradual and best when consistent, rather than occasional bursts of over-exercising.
4. Work it into something you already do: an evening walk, horseback riding, your run, your seated meditation… if you have already a time of day where you set aside to unwind or exercise, add 5 or 10 minutes to that for the pelvic floor exercises… Don’t let it be “Oh where will I fit that in?!!”
5. Think about what is important to you and how you choose to spend time. If you are thinking “I don’t have the time!” Ask yourself about your wants and needs. What do you value more than health of mind, breath, organs overtime? Is that thing really worth foregoing self-awareness and self-care, or can you shift things? Write down your top ten wants and needs; needs being that without which you’d be dead or rather die (food, water, love…your subjective passions). Then note where you spend time.

Please share if you feel these exercises are felt in your body since you started, or what impact or benefit you have noticed, or any questions you have on the practice.

Stay in touch, share how it goes…
Warmly,
Karl.

Emerson, Vedanta & Serendipity (Karl’s musings, book, conference)

Karl — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 20:13:03 +0000

So I’m reading a book on Emerson by Richard G. Geldard I saw reviewed in an old issue of Parabola (a magazine on world mythology and spirituality I’ve been into since high school). I have always been a fan of Emerson since high school or earlier, and Thoreau, Whitman… I realize now much of Emerson was over my head til recently.

Though connecting American thinkers and native traditions to Vedanta is not new to me. I use excerpts from Thoreau, Kerouac, and Martin Luther King when I teach the Bhagavad Gita courses. Spending over six years immersed in Native American ceremony and politics while reading Thoreau, Emerson, Whitman and others threaded many things together for me in my 20′s way before I did the deep dive into Vedanta with Swami Dayananda Saraswati.

The book on Emerson I am reading is “God in Concord: Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Awakening to the Infinite” by Richard G. Geldard, 1999. It is exquisitely engaging and I see Vedanta all over Emerson’s spiritual evolution. I use a highlighter and a pen to mark key passages that parallel this or that verse from the Bhagavad Gita, the Yoga Sutras and key vedic srotas or verses like the on the nature of Wholeness ” Om Purnamidam…” Even discourse on the nature of time, the world of name and form, the wisdom and charge to pursue your own work – to the fullest in order to know yourself and the Divine… I mean I’m jumping out of my skull here.

The laws of the Mind and Laws of Nature are seen as representations of each other, and as divine manifest. His arguments “unite feeling, intellect, and devotion into a single vision of the growth of the mind.” Sounds very much like Swami Vivekananda’s quote I use every kirtan and philosophy class “Devotion (Bhakti) without Knowledge & Understanding (Jnana) is superstition, Knowledge (Jnana) without Devotion (Bhakti) is madness.” Only academic drive to publish, or misunderstandings in translation seek to separate these principles.

” ‘Other world? There is no other world; here or nowhere is the whole fact.’ (quoting Emerson)…The world of angels and supernatural powers, Emerson believed, could give us no support or aid in any of our speculations or longings, Emerson’s convictions centered instead on the concept of the cosmic One Mind, with that mind accessible to any and everyone, given the desire to know and the capacity to understand”
~ p52 God in Concord, Geldard

“Vedanta is not a matter of unverifiable belief or faith, but of understanding, of knowing. Jnana and Bhakti.” ~ Swami Dayananda Saraswati

This is but a taste of the overlapping principles, and yet nowhere in Geldard’s book does he cite any eastern influence on Emerson. Rather Geldard focuses on the upheaval Emerson’s lectures and writings were causing in the Christian communities of New England at the time (1820s, 1830s). So I start sketching out a talk or paper on Emerson and Vedanta, or Emerson and the Bhagavad Gita, and thinking how can I reach this fellow Geldard and pick his brain about what he may or may not know about the Vedantic connection. Thinking what a great discussion for next Yoga in Yosemite trip, to have this exploration in Nature is all the more key… or in Golden Gate Park, or even the Unitarian Universalist church or CIIS… I would just love to see these schools of thought and people all mixed up in exploration, devotion and inquiry.

And then on Facebook I see an advert for a conference sponsored by the Sri Auribindo folks, a key teacher in yoga and vedanta. A gathering entitled Manifesting the Spiritual Destiny of America: “From the ancient spiritual beginnings of our Native American heritage to the latest technological developments where consciousness and science meet on a cutting edge, this conference will explore various aspects of the American experience in relation to the Integral Yoga and the Future of Humanity.” The Facebook ad mentioned Emerson and Auribindo specifically. I laughed aloud.

See http://matagiri.org/events.htm for conference details, topics, scroll down.
See PDF Flyer Conference PDF Flyer and Registration.

And guess who is speaking? Richard Geldard.
And guess where it is held? a town in upstate NY called Pheonicia… (I have mentioned my Phoenix vision yes?)
Too much. I likely will not be able to go as will in last round of chemo, but am excited to see the dialog is out there, and will likely contact Geldard regardless.

book: strong recommend. Good Story, Yoga Sutras and Great Teachings – “How Yoga Works”

Karl — Mon, 31 May 2010 18:14:37 +0000

I am reading a wonderful book a friend brought to me when I was in the hospital. The book, “How Yoga Works” has inspired me greatly in practice and kept students in mind as well. This book is perhaps the best I have ever read on Yoga, due to its genuine accuracy and truth of teachings of yoga, and that it truly teaches yoga, not a writing ‘about’ yoga in an academic sense.

Consider it required reading for any who have studied with me for more than a year. If you read one yoga book this year or two, let it be this one. Few are as valuable.

One key reason for this is in the format of the story itself: a young Tibetan girl ends up teaching an Indian prison captain in 1100 as she crosses over the border into India. So the book is a dialog between teacher and student, a key form for all source texts that actually teach. She carries with her Patanjali’s sacred texts the Yoga Sutras, or ‘short book on yoga’ written on palm leaves as was the practice of the time. All key yoga shastra or sacred source texts that actually teach yoga are written in Question & Answer format: The Upanishads, the Bhagavad-Gita… See Frawley article I will post on how The Bhagavad Gita is source yoga shastra, whereas the Yoga Sutras, which came much later are not. Rather the Yoga Sutras are a summation, an expository, concise collecting of the body of knowledge in yoga shastra that preceded them. Thus this book does not simply offer a translation of the Yoga Sutras, as so many do, rather a teacher to unfold the meaning in a teacher student relationship, in dialog format, as all the yoga shastra do. Beautiful. Let me know if any of the things the young girl says to the captain sound familiar .

I strongly recommend it to keep your practice fruitful, to keep the feeling that you have a teacher with you, and for the simple joy of a compelling story.

“I was really proud of him, my first real student, because he did the one thing that every successful student of anything has to do: he took what I had taught him home and practiced it there on his own, modestly but very steadily, to the best of his personal capacity. I could not have asked for more.” ~ How Yoga Works, p. 93

Daily it inspires and uplifts me, and keeps my heart focused on being well to teach again. The title “How Yoga Works,” is an accurate but unfair title as it is a great engaging story; but it does indeed unfold how yoga works in all the rich and most subtle and powerful essences of the practice, way beyond asana or the postures. I see how she learned from her teacher, and how she learns from her students and smile as the path is so familiar. The sacred glory of the teacher student relationship is well depicted here, and I think of of each of you as I read. It keeps our classes fresh in my mind and close to my heart. Enjoy.