I find myself in a weird space right now.  I really want to defend Obama from the crazy, racist, tea-baggers, but I also want to hold him accountable for living up to the promises he made.   I know-I know, Mandy Shitlipz couldn’t pull off her 8th grade campaign promise to put vending machines in the locker rooms so why would I believe a president of the most divided nation in the world be able to live up to his words?  Because he said he would!  And I (apparently naively) believe that politicians have every intention of executing on their crazy ideas.  That’s exactly why assholes like these keep me up at night.

Regardless of what my Glenn Beck loving sister-in-law might tell you, I’m not a Socialist.  If we’re being honest here, I’m mostly an apathetic Democrat, who believes that there’s no shame in helping folks get a fair shake.  Somehow, of late, that has become a cowardly, un-American thing to admit.  And yet, it used to be a defining theme of the party.   I believe in the interdependence of all beings.  And it doesn’t take too much work to see this at work.   Poison the ocean, get mercury poisoning.   Deny undocumented workers health care and you just might find a healthy spread of Hepatitis on your Filet-O-Fish.   A few of my conservative friends on Facebook were quick to post a recent editorial by George Will, on how the Earth doesn’t give a shit what we do, that it will repair itself as it has done for millions of years.   But the article completely misses the point of what “Socialist-Environmentalist-Commies” like myself are really concerned about.   It’s not the planet that will ultimately pay the price, but the lifeforms that inhabit it. We are co-inhabitants of this world.  And it is in our best interest not to be wasteful.  Our mindless use of resources, has a direct relationship on the lives (whether they be plant or animal) around us.

We all commend the Manager of those 33 miners who was quick to ration tuna portions to a spoonful for each miner, every other day, to keep them live.  And yet, above ground, we’re convinced that it is our God given right to devour any resource we bump uglies with.   We, at the top of the food chain, are the managers of our world.   We can nuke a country and make it uninhabitable for two hundred years, or we can grow bizarre hybrid fruits in our own backyards.   We’re the boss, sure.  But doesn’t some responsibility come with the title?  What if we committed ourselves to using only those resources we need to live life comfortably?  I know my own decision to go vegetarian had more to do with the realization that I could eat like a fucking king without animal meat, as much as it was about living up to my belief that all beings are of equal value.

Fuck NASCAR Dads & Soccer Moms, let’s track the voting patterns of the folks who return their carts to the store after grocery shopping!   I think this little act says a lot about a person.  How mindful they are, how conscious they are of the effect they have on others lives.  Sure, one cart isn’t a lot of work for someone to handle, but a parking lot of 100 carts on a hot day is a real bummer for an employee who can’t possibly make a living wage.  Collective mindlessness can have huge effects on the world in which we inhabit.   And as much as Obama has failed to execute on his promises, so too have we failed to live up to our part of the bargain.  I don’t give a shit if you eat meat, or want to get rid of big government, all I want is for folks to realize that their actions are having a direct effect on the world around them.

“I’m like, dude, you mean yoga?”  Crickets…

“No, dude, this is INSANITY and it’s insane!   They sent this guy away for two years to make a workout without weights, just using the weight of his own body.  Isn’t that amazing?”

“I was like, two years!  Guy should’ve taken one vinyasa/hatha class and he could have shot the video the next day.”  What exactly did the guy do for two years?

The husband lays a calming hand on wife’s forearm, as if to tell her he’s going to speak for the both of them, because clearly I wasn’t getting the point and they were growing frustrated with me.   “Doug, dude, this isn’t yoga.  This is muscle confusion.”

“Oh, dude, okay,” I said.   “Muscle confusion, totally, I get it.” and then we left the whole conversation alone the rest of the night.

I stopped by my neighbors’ house a few days later to borrow a tool for my bicycle.  The front door was wide open, but there was no one to be found. So I headed into their backyard and found the couple in front of a TV in their outdoor bonus room, sweating like they were in one of those Reggie Ray sauna parties.   And guess what they were doing?  “I’m like dude that’s Vasisthasana!”

“Does that mean muscle confusion?” The wife asked.  “No, it means side plank.” I said.  “It’s a yoga move.  Dudes, you are fucking doing yoga, (granted without any of the interesting parts), but don’t let anyone tell you different!”  “Shoot,” says the Husband.  “Do you think people are going to think we voted for Obama?”  Crickets….

My Sunday Church Yoga Teacher (she gets a little more spiritual Sundays than in her other classes) began class last weekend by commenting on how she was nearly knocked over by the gales. How she saw sixty foot palms bending, but not breaking. She decided it would be a good day to work on our roots, so that we may stay strong and firm and planted in our lives on the days when the wind threatens to topple us.  The cynic and the skeptic in me, the writer who hates unintentional cheesiness in me, the kid who escaped the Church “messages” at 19 and never looked back — that person somehow always gets transposed by this lovely woman and her Sunday messages.

Anyway — back in the day, I raced bikes. I was tall for a bike racer at 6’4″.  At that time, I weighed in at a svelte 165 pounds. 7% body fat. My grandmothers were worried sick despite the fact that I was eating 6,000 calories a day at times (undiagnosed Celiac disease may have helped).  Still, as thin as I was, I had a hard time competing in the mountains. The guys I was racing were short, and had legs like sequoias.  Climbing is all about strength to weight ratio.  My long legs were like pistons. Built for high turnover and raw speed. I was born to be a sprinter, I guess, but nonetheless chose to ride with the tiny billy goats who could squat 500 lbs and fly up mountains like Lance Freaking Armstrong.

One winter, I endeavored to improve, and took up weight training. Let it be known that I HATE the gym.  I don’t like working out unless it will help me achieve some other goal. Hill climbing power. Basketball rebounding strength.  Three more inches on my volleyball jump. I need to be doing something with a specific end goal. I saw pumping iron as a means to an end, but never having an end to itself. I spent one winter wailing on my legs and core. It worked. I improved in the hills.  But ultimately, life called, and I decided to move on from a sport that was taking 40 hours a week of my time, lots of money in gear and food, and had begun to feel like a job. I’ll never forget the way my legs felt, though, after an intense morning workout squatting and dead lifting, followed by a cold, winter night ride of 30 miles in sleet on the bike. Burnt. Shredded. Ruined.

So — roots. We worked our roots on Sunday and it was plain hard. In addition to long holds in the standing poses, we did some squats, balances, straps (me no likey straps), and everything she could think of to strengthen our lower halves. I felt good afterward. I have the determination of a starved pit bull. I once popped a hamstring going first to third and still beat the throw.  Finished a 60 mile bike ride after wiping out in the rain at 50 MPH, breaking my handle bar, suffering a concussion, and tearing off my right nipple.  I’d have been a great Marine if I could deal with authority at all, which I can’t. But there’s no getting me into Child’s Pose, not yet anyway. I prefer down dog, thank you very much. GRRR!  So I worked it, baby. My savasana was swimmy and delusional, and I walked out dehydrated and on a severe endorphin high.

Did I mention I’ve started running again?  So yeah, I ran (or tried to) the day after our roots work. It was windy, but I didn’t blow over. That said, my legs felt as heavy as that drum thing they just dropped to stop the oil spill. As dead as they ever were from cycling, marathoning, or lifting weights. My feet were scuffing the ground for two miles.

I continue to be surprised by yoga. Colin Cowherd, a radio talk show host on ESPN, recently said that yoga is just stretching with fancy names.  All I know is, I would routinely spend hundreds of miles a week in the hills pushing my anaerobic threshold to 188 beats per minute, and I rarely felt so dead — and yet totally alive — as I did the day after I went to Church to work on my roots.

They’re running deeper, yogis, every time I get into triangle pose — just a little bit deeper.

Namaste

I’m coming to terms with the fact that nothing, not yoga, meditation (or medical marijuana) is going to make me someone other than the person I’ve always been.   Those pessimistic thoughts are going to continue to surface in my mind, but what’s changing is my willingness to take those thoughts personal, to allow those thoughts to take dominion over me.  As Jack Kornfield puts it (and Noah Levine likes to repeat) “my mind is not my fault.”  I’m just a sensitive fucking dude, what can I say.  I was raised by a neurotic Jewish mother, who feared every tree I climbed was going to be the death of me, and so too has my brain been conditioned to meet every outdoor and athletic activity as if it were a life or death situation.   I’m not Travis Pastrana, I wasn’t raised to be fearless, I was raised to be afraid.   Which to many might sound pitiful or sad, but I look at this realization as liberating!   For years I just figured something was wrong with me, that I was a depressive and I’d never be happy like “regular” people.   But now that I’m aware that I’ve been conditioned to look at every situation as cause for concern, I can easily recalibrate, and greet those alarmist voices in my head with the same compassionate and attentive smile you might your grandmother when she tells you not to leave the house without a sweater (in July) or make sure you lock the car door so you don’t fall out onto the freeway.  More than fancy inversions that earn me fist bumps from my teacher, I’m grateful to yoga for allowing me to be comfortable in my own skin.

It wasn’t the best class ever, because frankly, though she’s my favorite, I don’t think my teacher found a good a rhythm that night. She’s relatively new, and I think she wanted to try out some things on us — including chair shoulder stands, from which I toppled like a giant sequoia cut off at the roots. TIMBER!  My cousin-in-law was duly embarrassed. Whose second practice was this, anyway? My teacher was horrified, using all of her 95 pounds (89 of which are muscle, the remaining six may be chest implants) to help me up. But I was fine, got into the inversion and held it for a while, then truly enjoyed the quick transition to savasana, letting my calves rest on the chair — all tingly, warm and rejuvenated — smiling as I remembered watching the two gigantic, tough-talking MMA fighters in the front row repeatedly fall out of Warrior 1 before we got inverted. HA!

My guest’s conclusion was this — “very relaxing, but I couldn’t do it all the time. Maybe after doing something a little more exerting.” Right. Okay. Sure. She used to flip, and pommel, and parallel, and balance beam. But it only got worse last night when I teased her for putting on the comfy pants she wore to yoga without having washed them. She said — “Why not? I didn’t sweat. Did you?”  Yeah, I did, actually. Like a stuck Texas pig on hot asphalt in the middle of July. My wife asked her, “are you sore at all?” “No. Not really,” she responded. Well good for you, Nadia Comaneci. My sides were aching from extended side angle pose, like I’d  just barely survived being drawn and quartered. My wife looked at me sympathetically. I felt old. “Well at least my sweaty heels touch the mat in Down Dog, kiddo. How ’bout that, huh?”  Yeah, I said that, because yeah, I noticed.

My conclusions are this — no more ex-gymnast/surfers as Yoga guests, and MMA fighters may look tough, but I can take them in Warrior 1 any day. Soaked with sweat and aching all over as I may be.

Namaste.

Ingredients

1 yellow or red onion,  1 bell pepper (I like red, what can I say?!), 5 garlic cloves, olive oil, kosher salt, cracked pepper, jalapeno (optional), 2 carrots, 1 celery stock, 1 package Yves Meatless Ground, 3 cans of beans (cannellini, red Beans and black beans), 1 can of diced tomatoes, Chili Powder, dried cumin, and paprika

Instructions

Saute the onion and bell pepper in a few tablespoons of olive oil (this would also be the time to add a chopped jalapeno or serrano chili if you want to fire it up).   Add garlic, carrots, celery, salt and cracked pepper.   Add one package of Yves Meatless Ground and stir into the mix, along with the can of diced tomatoes.   If you don’t have time to soak your beans over night, add three cans of (drained) beans – white, red, and black.  Mix a 1/4 cup of Chili Powder (I use New Mexico, little smokier than Californian or Anaheim) 1/8 cup of Ground Cumin, and 2 tablespoons of Paprika.    Simmer for 20-30 minutes.

NOTE: for some reason it comes out a lot better if you sip some wine and listen to the Grateful Dead while making it.   I think I was listening to this show.

Stay tuned for next week’s Mountain Pose Minestroni recipe….haha!

I got to go to class on Sunday with one of my fave teachers, who always works a theme or lesson into the practice.  I’m a writer by trade, and am wary of “messages” — they often turn themes into theses.  But this teacher does a wonderful job, mostly because I believe the messages come from her heart, and because she truly meditates on them and cares that they matter.  This week, it was “Meet Yourself Where you Are.” She mentioned that she had read that in a Yoga Mag, and urged us not to engage our practice that day to improve or change something about ourselves, but to accept ourselves right where we were.

Huh?

I’m new to Yoga, but that threw me for a loop. My entire life, in every sporting endeavor, in every work or learning endeavor, I have never been satisfied to give only 100%. I’ve never been satisfied with who I am, what I’ve done, or what I can do. Athletes are trained early in life to give more than they think they can, and that it’s always, always possible to get better. Push. Work. Improve. I couldn’t figure that out. “Acceptance.” Does that mean complacency? Does that mean laziness? Does that mean half-assing? Or does that mean it’s okay to fail — not a word the yoga folks like much, I know. But Yoda said, “There is no try. Only do or do not.” And I like Yoda. He’s old, and wise, and green and seems like he knows what’s going down. Nike, who produced the iconic brand of my childhood –Air Jordans — tells me to Just Do It. My dad was a football coach — not the overbearing kind, but I learned by example, and have a bit of that coach mentality in me when I teach writing now. So, if it means shredding my hipflexors to stay in half moon until the teacher is done correcting another student and moves us on, I’m gonna do it. I’ve never known another way.

So this “acceptance” thing, this “meeting myself where I am” thing, that’s going to take some getting used to. My teacher always says we must be comfortable in our home. Well, my home has always been just a little too short, just a little too slow, just a little skinny, and now, just a little too heavy. My home has never been all I’ve wanted it to be — part due to programming, and in part due to my own expectations and default competitiveness.

There are many personal goals I am mindful of in my (sporadic of late) practice. All of them involve improving something about myself. Sure, I think knowing myself is just as important and will come naturally as I continue working on the mat, but I’m going to struggle with “Meeting myself where I am,” because I’m so rarely where I want to be, and I have a sense I never will be.  Can’t we always improve?  Isn’t that what Yoda and Michael Jordan were telling us? I know I’m missing this message, and I hope our readers can enlighten me.

Anyway, I played tuba in the marching band and we finished third in the state.  That was nice. The football team and cheerleaders even held a pep rally for us. Who’s ever heard of that?  Bizarro High School.  I was a also a lifeguard, became a decent volleyball player in college, and eventually got into cycling and bike racing.  But here’s the thing — I quit volleyball after college, and never really played again once we lost the club championship in the best game of my life. I quit bike racing the very day after I won my first race (the day after I had had an asthma attack).  I ran a marathon three years ago in memory of a baby we lost, then had the best run of my entire freaking life by myself one week later, only to summarily hung up my shoes.

So this year, for the reasons I cited in my first post, I took up yoga.  I wanted to work on my breathing, my back, and to become longer, leaner, and more flexible. I wanted focus and concentration and ease.  It was working — slowly but surely.  I even caught myself throat-breathing on a stressful business call.  Probably not a great interpersonal tactic, but it did let me know that my practice was taking.  And then, I got sick.  And then, we travelled.  And then, I got a ton of work (a good and rare thing in my business).  All of that to say I’ve been to one class, and practiced once with the iPhone program in the past two weeks.  As I tweeted, my iPhone practice was after a redeye flight, under puffy Florida clouds, nurtured by a fresh palm breeze  – it was great. Savasana like no other.  Despite that, I let it get away.

I’m not a lifestyler yet, and may never be.  Not vegetarian.  Not Hindu.  Don’t chant or meditate.  I believe I’m a spiritual person, but have come to reject anything that feels remotely organized.  That said, I do love the work on the mat, and where it takes my mind, body and breath.  I love my teachers and have made friends with a few classmates.  I don’t want this practice to fall the way of my previous endeavors.  Looking back at the pattern, I seem to have moved on when I had achieved some level of personal mastery.  Good news is, as we all know, mastery is not a word one often uses in the practice of Yoga. Let’s hope that challenge keeps me engaged.

That lasted about eight years until I forgot all about that goat and re-fell in love with In-N-Out, Dodger Dogs and Philippe’s French Dips.   It wasn’t until I became a father, sobered up (a bit), returned to my socially conscious baseline and read Michael Pollan that I started to question the morality of eating meat, and farming animals merely for our fast food consumption.   For awhile I made every attempt to be a mindful meat eater – refusing to buy corn fed beef, instead buying meat at the local farmer’s market, and taking a few seconds before eating to acknowledge the mixture of ground animal that had lost it’s life so I could have one those six dollar burgers, you know the kind Paris Hilton can’t seem to eat without dripping sauce on her concaved chest.    Then I started practicing yoga and meditation on a daily basis, devoting much of  my time away from work, kids, home, and my dogs to their practice, and to (ahimsa) non-violence.   That’s about when I realized, I just can’t eat meat with a clear conscience anymore.   That was until our damn neighbor delivered a meatloaf to our doorstep.

Actually our neighbor delivered a meal of meatloaf, mashed potatoes, carrots, green beans and a loaf of warm bread to our door the other night, as an act of generosity because we’ve been dealing with a sick family member and the wife and I have been making trips back and forth to the hospital.    She felt compassion for us and the complications our family has been experiencing.   My wife works for the sick family member and this has now doubled her work and stress load.  The manifestation of that compassion our neighbor felt for us was a hot prepared meal delivered to our doorstop (note: we live in one of those old neighborhoods where urban hipsters and great grandmothers live next one another in hundred year old Craftsman Homes).   And though we haven’t eaten meatloaf in a lot of years, I’ll tell you we devoured that meal.   It was delicious, everything I remembered from my childhood.   I’ll spare you the stomach aches that followed, apparently the body doesn’t like a pound of hot ground beef when it hasn’t had any in quite some time.   So today for lunch I opened the fridge to find half a meatloaf remaining, and again I felt the urge not to let it (or the animal who died for it) go to waste, and so here I am, writing to you about eating this meatloaf.   Actually, I’m eating a meatloaf sandwich on toasted sprouted wheat with Miracle Whip.   And it’s fucking delicious and I’m devouring it quicker than I can type.  But tonight I’ll still make the tofu stir fry I had planned, and tomorrow it’ll be back to eating soy nuggets and sweet potato fries before T-Ball with the boys.

So when is it okay to eat meat?   I say when your 92 year old neighbor delivers it to your doorstop.   And I can only speak for me, but I say you devour that meal with all your heart and being.   The animal that lost it’s life to create that meal deserves nothing less.

What’s most exciting, is that this is the first time away from the mat (or zafu) that I’ve been able to catch the rascal at work.   When I sit in the mornings, and especially at night the rascal has it’s way with me.   I begin by focusing on the breath and the next thing I know I’m thinking about what happened at work, did I forget to email my uncle back on Facebook?, and when will I have the balls to do forearm stand in the middle of the room and then…oh yeah, I’m suppose to be minding the breath here.   But to catch it before it goes astray?!  Well that feels about as exciting as catching lightening in a bottle.   No doubt a phenomena that occurs at about the same damn speed!