Silicon Valley Ashtangi

Making friends with change

Fri, 26 Oct 2012 18:21:07 -0400

Yesterday I had dinner with an old friend. We’d both been having interesting — challenging — weeks, really high highs and really low lows, including the sudden death of an acquaintance from college.

Life seems so absurd at times when it’s this kind of bizarre mix of extremes, inhumane in its randomness.

We ascribe rationality and meaning to events, but most times, it’s completely meaningless. Things just happen, sometimes for a reason, and often for no reason at all.

Good things happen to good people.

Good things happen to bad people.

Bad things happen to good people.

Bad things happen to bad people.

And yet, it’s not entirely random; sometimes there’s a pattern. But more often, there isn’t.

It’s the universe’ selective application of pattern that is so hard to understand, and that creates the cognitive dissonance that challenges good people to grow.

Our minds seek pattern — it is an evolutionary adaption that frees up calories and brain space for higher order thinking, like language and all the things that result from it.

The patterns, these forms, give our world structure. We need form, and we rely on pattern. We are comforted and enabled by patterns; we ‘get’ this.

And then — I find especially as we reach the age where people we looked up to start to age, or die, or people who are our peers disappear from our lives — we get to a point where the patterns we relied on suddenly seem like cruel lies.

—————

I was just a few minutes ago daydreaming about the time I went on a trip to the Galapagos Islands, as part of a summer biology class I took before my sophomore year of college.

We were some college students, some professors, and some alumni of all different ages, interests, backgrounds.

We visited each of the islands aboard two small yachts, afloat in the middle of the ocean at the earth’s equator where you see the constellations of both the northern and southern hemispheres. The stars were so thick that you couldn’t pick out the big dipper.

One afternoon, we were relaxing and swimming near our boat, which was still for the day. Some people were diving off the third-story sun deck of the yacht, a good 30 or more feet up from the water’s surface.

I’m not a strong swimmer, and I’m actually irrationally afraid of the water, especially the ocean.

I had refused the dive all day, but the social pressure was getting to an embarrassing point. The group around me couldn’t feel the phobia that gripped me inside; it probably seemed like I was just being shy.

I climbed my way up to the highest point on the yacht, and stared down at the water far below. I could feel an asthmatic tightening of my ribcage, an aversion from deep inside my intestines.

No no no NO NO NO… YES!

And in that moment where I traded analysis for recklessness, I threw myself over the edge.

This is letting go of the pattern. An instantaneous swap of ‘red’ for ‘green.’ Change didn’t require a gradual strengthening, though it can sometimes work that way too. For me then, it was just a moment, a choice not just to accept gravity, but actually *propel* myself in the direction I was being pulled in — leaping, not falling.

And then later, it will be a swap of ‘green’ for ‘red’ — change, the most magical and painful of life’s realities, is both continuous and instantaneous.

Run toward the darkness, and shine.

Tue, 16 Oct 2012 17:38:24 -0400

This is the inscription I want behind my eyes. Run toward the darkness, and shine.

—————

I’ve been living afraid of the dark places, the corners where unknown fears live and multiply. I run from the fear. Push it from me with gloved hands, swallow it so that I don’t have to taste it.

I have been waiting, waiting, waiting for The Savior to come and wither those mortal fears with brilliant color.

I have a good life. A pretty life. A life that gleams in the sun, all sparkly and clever and enviable. But oh when the dusk descends.

I don’t see stars. I don’t see anything, because my eyes are clenched tightly closed, afraid to behold loneliness, to gaze upon merciless infinity, to stare into personal impermanence.

—————

Lately, about fifty times a day, I have the sensation of diving. Not through air into sea, but through ocean into even deeper waters. It’s visceral and so completely real. I can feel my chest parting a hundred tons of water, my arms arcing upward and outward, my throat reaching forward into the current.

It visits me constantly, the ocean diving feeling. I think it is my courage unfreezing, breaking through a lifetime of protective ice.

—————

“I dont know why, but for some reason I see you with this Light beaming from your chest…,” someone said to me recently.

—————

Lately, I’m often on the verge of tears.

Not backed by sorrow, but propelled by an immense feeling of release whose origin is somewhere deep within my solar plexus.

I remember this feeling from the first time I really opened my spine while back-bending, letting all the mortal fears scurry forward like a living tapestry of blind rats.

Now those rats rush outward as a thousand beams of color — beautiful, girly, sparkling color — carried on a crest of unstoppable, salty tears.

—————

I’m going to Kohlapur in 13 days, and I’ll be in India for four months.

It’s not about India, really. What’s unfolding isn’t a story about that place, or about Goa, Mysore, yoga, meditation, samadhi, adventure, curiosity, chappathis, Holi, Guruji, or practice.

I’m leaning face first into a long fall, wind and water opposing the gravity of my body, light exploding from below.

"I love you, mom"

Sun, 13 May 2012 08:36:04 -0400

To speak your love to someone is to accept the inherent inadequacy of words.

Randomly occurred to me while composing a love letter to my mom today…

Preparing for yogamudra, before final seated meditation.

Tue, 01 May 2012 17:18:00 -0400

Preparing for yogamudra, before final seated meditation.

I am time, the destroyer of all

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 09:07:00 -0400

It’s tax season, birthday season and allergy season, and I’m 28-going-on-29.

“I don’t care about age” and neither do any of my 28-going-on-old friends, and yet here we are: privately facing the first real foreshadows of our mortality while publicly condescending toward commercial society and its superficial Botoxers, P90Xers, wantrepreneurs.

This time thing, it really doesn’t go backwards, does it?

“I am time, the destroyer of all.”

In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna, the human form of the god, is disguised as a chariot driver to the sweet and troubled Arjuna, who is facing the ugliest moment of his life on a battlefield against his own brothers.

After lots of talk of meditation and the right path, Krishna finally reveals himself to be the god of gods. It’s a beautiful vision, brilliant and unmatched “like a thousand suns,” but it’s also terrifying.

Arjuna finally sees that the very god he’s been yearning to understand, whome he loves, is also destruction itself — he achieves a visceral, not just intellectual, realization that inherent in every life is death and that is in fact written onto the face of every living thing - every living moment.

Thus, there’s no use in agonizing over the gray hairs, the birthdays, the missed milestones. All the guilty or stressful things we say to ourselves (about our appearance, our careers, our love lives) all seem pretty silly, if you think about the actual direction of time.

This vision also frees us to take action. Krishna says it as a way to unfreeze the warrior from his emotional and spiritual paralysis. Time has already killed these fighters from the moment they were born, he tells Arjuna, therefore fulfill your duty and do the most right thing you can do right now. There will always be consequences to every course of action.

Don’t worry, and don’t delay.

"We “grow sorrowful,” but we rarely describe ourselves as “growing joyful.” Imprinted in our language..."

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 08:36:49 -0400

“We “grow sorrowful,” but we rarely describe ourselves as “growing joyful.” Imprinted in our language is an instinct that suggests that happiness is a state, while grief is a process.”

- “Post-Prozac Nation: The Science of Treating Depression” from the New York Times

“Do you even go when it rains?” (standing outside of...

Tue, 13 Mar 2012 20:56:00 -0400

“Do you even go when it rains?”

(standing outside of our Mysore room this morning, a cold, wet week in San Francisco)

"Ahimsa paramo dharma."

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 09:50:00 -0500

“Ahimsa paramo dharma.”

- Ahimsa (non-violence) is the highest dharma.

What practicing feels like, most days

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 09:47:34 -0500

29 days out of 30 I feel like crap. But the one day you feel great, you’re not really working — that’s the day you coast. The 29 are the days you actually improve.

Sometimes getting at the heart of things just doesn’t feel good. Sometimes? Always. It involves uncovering lots of stuff that’s been buried, and possibly festering, for entire phases of your life.

The “flexible” people that can do every posture without breaking a sweat (a) probably need to get a new posture so they’re working again and (b) if not, aren’t really practicing — they’re just coasting. What’s the fun in that?

And yet, there’s a difference between feeling like crap during something you know to be beneficial, and feeling like crap in a dead-end job or an abusive relationship. Even those two things have something to teach us, but we probably shouldn’t stick it out for months and months waiting for that magical 30th day to prove our troubles.

As usual, no answers here, but I just thought I’d debunk the myth that everyone else is having a great time partying through their supta kurmasana while you suffer through minor agony each and every day.

*My teacher told me this one night at a party for our ashtanga community. He practices third series. His strong ujjayi and focused dristi have never given away the fact that he’s in agony in Chakorasana.

"The Great Yoga Divide" - gym routine vs. way of life

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:00:00 -0500

“In some places, participants think nothing about answering cell phones in the middle of postures, or taking a short break to chat with a friend.”

A recent post on the India Ink blog of the New York Times juxtaposes Indian yoga, the way yoga is viewed by Indian teachers and practitioners in India, and Western yoga, the “multi-billion dollar industry.”

Even in the serious KPAYI shala in Mysore, there was an “Indian” Mysore Ashtanga class. Instead of beginning practice at 4:30 am, alongside dozens of the most serious and dedicated Ashtangis in the world, it started some vague time in the afternoon. Saraswati could often be seen chatting and joking with her Indian students, many of whom seemed to spend as much time sitting in a relaxed slouch, propped by their arms (and not in lotus position) as they did doing actual postures.

The Western yogis haunting Mysore were lean, even gaunt, seekers on a path towards… something.

Shaila, the Indian auntie who invited visiting yoga students into her home for lunch and cooking classes, was also a longtime yogi — maybe one of the “casual students” that the NY Times references. She was stout, round, and embraced the practicality of everyday life.

From the Times’ blog post:

“Yoga is not just about asanas, it is a union of the body, mind and soul,” Delhi yoga teacher Nivedita Joshi told Times Crest, a Times of India publication, in an article also refuting the idea yoga can be dangerous. “It’s not an exercise, it’s a way of life,” she said.

In Sanskrit*, “Yoga” literally does mean “way,” “path,” “union” — a method, I’d assumed, towards some kind of enlightenment that I did not yet know.

But now, after traveling the path for awhile, I think maybe it’s more of a treadmill than a glorious Saturday hike in the hills leading to a vista.

You’re not walking to reach a destination, because there isn’t one (remember, there’s only one outcome to all of this); you’re traveling as a practice. An activity that’s ultimately pointless, on a results-based evaluation.

Will it make you fit? Maybe. Will it give you an opportunity to show off your body in form-fitting clothing for a few hours a day? That’s up to you.

However, today’s yoga practice is just one of many. Each moment of beauty, or humiliation, is just one dot on a long arc angling its way towards ultimate decay.

So I tell myself, Hold on tight while you let go.

*I am not a Sanskrit scholar, I just play one on this blog.

Don't be a tightass - how to improve your backbends and your workday

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 16:05:00 -0500

When you’re first starting to learn backbending, you have to use your gluteal muscle group (maximus and medius) to support your backbend.

If you’re like most people, your back and your psoas haven’t yet built the strength and flexibility to hold you in the arc position of a backbend without the supporting muscles of your hips and butt kicking into gear.

If you’re like me, and you’ve been a long-distance runner, a cyclist, and an all around tightass, then there’s a great deal of painful, frightening undoing that’s ahead.

In October, I had the honor of practicing with David Roche, an American Southerner, trained dancer, and a matter-of-fact senior Ashtanga teacher.

David gave me an adjustment during dropbacks (dropping back to a backbend from standing position) that consisted of this:

Standing in front of me, he reached between my legs, under my pubic bone and held my sacrum with his hand. Extending up and back with my arms reaching toward the ground, the only thing that supported me was his hand on my sacrum — that sacred spot where all of life’s pain goes to hibernate.

that rolling skating accident in 6th grade that made my tailbone throb for days
those thousands of miles of marathon training on the cemented highways behind Stanford campus
all the yearning and pressure of a performance-oriented modern life, compressed into one fist-sized, immovable joint

In the typical adjustment, the teacher holds the student by their hips, stabilizing the person from a nice, work-safe hand position on the body.

In David’s adjustment, his forearm was well into the “underpants zone” while his hand was firmly holding the “buttcrack zone.”

It happened quickly - suddenly there I was, balanced between standing and flying, some egregious percentage of my body weight resting on my open sacrum. The moment felt like unearthing a long-buried secret. In fact, it was not a relief. It was excruciating.

Trying very hard not to squeeze my gluteal muscles, in order to keep my inner thighs and crotch a safe half inch from this guru’s forearm (awareness of awkwardness really never leaves you; you’ll probably be trying to avoid AWK moments even on your deathbed) as I extended through the infinite space between my arms and the floor, I very carefully unclenched my butt.

It’s like unwrapping a tightly wound thousand-year egg. Is it good? Is it rotten? Is it a delicacy to be eaten on festival days?

It turns out, it’s both… er, all three. Unclenching the seat of pain is good, but painful, and will unleash all of the crap you were saving for a rainy day.

Your butt is walled garden around your pelvis, one of the two most complex joint groups in your body (the other is the shoulder girdle). It’s there to protect the sacro-iliac joint and the base of the spine, and it’s tight for a reason (refer to list above).

In life and in work, when someone complains a lot, acts angry or snappy, jealous or greedy, conniving and dishonest, they suck. It’s true, they do. But they’re also tight for a reason.

Luckily, you don’t have to be them. You can unclench your butt right now. It’ll clench back up again, trust me. That’s its MO — to protect that glowing nerve-center inside each of us.

At work, I practice unclenching, letting go (just for a minute or two!) of my tightass tendencies. Someone didn’t do their thing? Unclench, and the annoyance that was bubbling up is suddenly irrelevant. Someone said they were going to bat for you or pay you or save you and then didn’t? Unclench. It takes awhile, but they already did their crappy thing. Don’t quadruple it by walling it into the very center of your life.

After awhile, it gets much easier to unclench. The back starts to open, the psoas — the juicy tenderloin of the body — begins to lengthen. You start to get control of your backbend, instead of the other way around.

Do it consistently, every time someone acts out badly from their own tangled nerve-center, and you start to gain control of those situations, too, instead of the other way around.

I’m 28, I’ve been doing this for a little while, but really I have no idea where it leads. I think it will make me better to be around. I think it will put me more in control of my actions and reactions. I know it will make me less grouchy.

Now, reminding myself again — Don’t be a tightass! — and the experiment continues to unfold.

"I'm getting pretty good at yoga"

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 23:20:00 -0500

This is like someone saying, My apartment is really organized, and then one day their mom comes to visit, goes to grab some milk, and begins a compulsive, yet ultimately necessary, 8-hour process of scouring of the fridge instead of spending the day sightseeing. I guess it wasn’t that organized after all.

Maybe your fridge is totally cool (get it!); however, eating, and food storage, really don’t stop in your lifetime. You, or your mom, will always be in the middle of cleaning your fridge.

Maybe the rest of your apartment was in ship-shape. But you knew that fridge was quietly humming, harboring chaos behind blank, powder-coated steel.

The past month or two, I’d been feeling pretty good about my backbending practice. All those hours spent laying in extension over my giant athletic ball, daily stretching while envisioning myself doing the advanced backbending postures I’d seen my teacher do… soon, soon.

I was due to get SHOWN. My Ashtanga teacher Russell Case very calmly assisted my backbend today, helping me to lose my breath control and my comfortable, safe confidence. You know you are on the edge when you are counting microseconds until “it’s going to be over,” and you think you can only make it to ‘4.’

So. I guess I’m not quite there after all. Back to that ball.

Why practice? To achieve beautiful postures? To acquire ‘enlightenment’? To reach inner peace?

Why create? To make money? To express your talent to the world? To stick it to the kids from high school?

All that’s in front of us is an endless string of beginnings. There’s no relief upon one’s completion of the primary series, because that’s where the intermediate series starts. And there you go with a whole new set of humiliations and triumphs — in other words, sweat on, but don’t sweat it. It’s not the end of your startup when it gets acquired; it’s just the beginning of phase 2, with many, many (+many, many^10) of its own annoyances, but maybe you get more holidays off. A divorce may be just the beginning of a new marriage. And so on.

You can’t really “be good at yoga” because that implies some attainment.

It implies you’ve reached the point — the single, defined point — where you feel ok saying, “Whew! I’ve made it. I’ve finally reached ‘GOOD.’”

(By the way, it also means you’ve probably missed a spot.)

Good isn’t static — it’s fleeting. Just like bad. Just like flexible, stiff, rich, poor, inhale, exhale.

There are ten million visitors coming in to your house through a revolving door. The visitors are every condition known to humanity, every thought and feeling. As soon as one moment enters, another exits. As soon as one definition asserts itself, another fades. You can’t hold them hostage, because they’re just visitors. They don’t live with you and you don’t own them. Most of them probably aren’t even your friends.

Every second, every ‘attainment,’ is just one tiny dot on an arc that’s ultimately pointed toward decay.

With that in mind, don’t get your underpants in a bunch.

Instead, do your practice, “and all is coming…” (perhaps the most lovely fallacy of all.) More kool-aid please!

The billionaire at the bikeshop

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 21:18:00 -0500

I ran into a billionaire at my local bikeshop. This is why I love Silicon Valley — a hyper-mash of aggressive wealth acquisition and practical humbleness. Why don’t you just send Jeeves to the bikeshop?

To cure my recent sunny day angst, I decided to finally leave the house (/bed) and go for a walk. This was the last thing I wanted to do. I wanted to lay in bed, never get up again, and eat PopTarts, which would be magically within reach. It was 3 pm.

When my bed is magnetizing me with imaginary PopTart packets (blueberry, frosted) and it’s only the middle of the day on the weekend, I know it’s time to get out.

I walked from the Castro down 18th towards the Mission, because it’s downhill and because I could quit after 10 minutes and still not come home empty-handed because that’s where the Bi-Rite is.

I walked into a bike shop. I don’t need bike supplies, but the men working the counter seemed simultaneously angry and carefree — really, an open invitation.

The billionaire didn’t have to turn around. I know what the back of his head looks like, though I’m not sure why; I haven’t yet seen newspapers or magazine articles featuring the back of his head. It was just us and the angry-carefree bike shop guys, all four of us weighing the benefits of some titanium Japanese lock (billionaire and I bought the same one) and one of the new Chrome bags.

After 5 or so minutes of this (and many silent internal debates), I cut to the chase.

“Mr. ____? I’m a big fan of your company. My team and I run (product that they recognize) and I just want to thank you for making our business possible.”

A big smile. It looked genuine, but I guess I wouldn’t know anyway.

“We love your product. We use it every day. We made our own, but yours was better. Thank you. What’s your name again? Susan. Ok, very nice to meet you.”

The bike guys thought this was extremely boring, my meeting a celebrity whose name comes up every day in my post-startup*.

He pulled out a credit card for his purchase, which looked like it probably totaled $150. He was wearing a t-shirt. Disheveled hair. Listening earnestly to the man behind the counter who was wearing plugs in his earlobes and a backwards bike cap. The bike man teaching the billionaire, the billionaire making this bike boutique a possibility for its proprietors, and for me.

It was as beautiful as going to practice in the morning and seeing the middle-aged venture capitalist get through his Marichyasanas (just barely). Or the doctor-mother-volunteer-choir-member go for her backbends.

Somehow, even though this person is a (possibly evil) tycoon and I am an ant, we are sort of equal; we’re both just customers to the bike shop, users to the Japanese lock manufacturer, children or pets or rocks with legs to whatever god there may be.

I walked away, hiding a smile.

*Some teams still function a lot like skinny, caffeinated startups even after they’re acquired by the fatcats.

When pain makes you happier and more thoughts on hedonic adaptation

Sun, 08 Jan 2012 22:48:00 -0500

If you’ve never heard of hedonic adaptation, it’s the idea that we humans are highly emotionally adaptable. A person’s innate level of happiness is variable only in the short-term, but tends to bounce back to its natural level over time, whether that person wins the lottery or loses use of his or her limbs.

The best thing about the article above is the charts.

Of course, these charts are intended to show support of the basic concept of hedonic adaptation. You get married, you’re really happy for a little while, but then you go back to where you were before. You lose your job, you’re really unhappy for a while, and then you eventually make your way back to your set point. It’s like yo-yo dieting, but a good thing if you like where your natural set point tends to be.

My favorite takeaway from the charts is that some of the life events we expect to be devastating failures — like a divorce, which marks the failure of a marriage — actually lead people to more happiness in the mid- to long-term.

The other thing is a layoff. A layoff depresses you just briefly, after which you bounce back perhaps even higher than you were just before the event occurred.

This makes sense. A business situation that ultimately resulted in a layoff event was probably not a very satisfying or productive situation. A marriage that ultimately resulted in a divorce was probably not one filled with happiness. So, though the death knell itself strikes a terrible tone, it’s actually heralding a better future (probably).

This offers some perspective when pain enters our lives. It’s likely that it can only get better from here.

Now the other question is — how can we bounce back even higher? Isn’t the idea of an emotional ‘set point’ kind of defeatist?

First thought here is, how do we know what our true set point is, anyway? Is it how I felt in high school, during the height of my family’s dysfunction? I hope not, and things have certainly gotten better from there. Is it how I felt on last summer’s vacation to Maui, when I was doing my practice every day with my drishti (incorrectly!) on the ocean, and eating shave ice whenever I felt like it? Again, probably not.

Every phase of our lives include “confounding factors” that obscure the so-called set point. So, why even worry about it? Who cares what yours is supposed to be, why not try to create more Mauis and reduce the angst-makers?

It’s Sunday night. Here’s what I’m going to do this week to create more Mauis in my life, and take down the angst-makers one by one:

Do my practice each day without caring: (a) how far I get (time runs away from me) (b) whether I bind or not in XYZ posture (c) whether it made me happy or grumpy at the end. Sometimes, I’m just grouchy after a yoga practice, and I have no idea why. The more I stew on it, the grouchier I become. No more of that.

Give myself explicit permission to be happy for explicit periods of time. I am walking on Castro Street. From 19th Street to 15th Street, I am going to only feel happiness. Look at those funny people! Beautiful. Look at that nice storefront with the glitter and discoball. How cheerful. It’s 65 degrees out. How lucky. After I get to 15th Street, I can go ahead and be grouchy or unhappy again. Over time, the limit gets extended to 14th Street, which is extended to Duboce, Haight, Page, and so on. The happiness period gets longer and longer, and I flex my happiness muscle. No one runs a marathon on no training.

Get myself something beautiful (flowers? a sparkly thing? a new desktop image?) and savor it multiple times a day until it’s dull. A lot of times, we acquire beauty or pleasure, and then forget to consume it. Consume!! Drink in those flowers.

Take my good mood with me to work. Work doesn’t put us in a bad mood. We put on our bad mood in the morning, and then take it with us in our commuter mug to our desk. Last week, I started taking a good mood with me to work instead of the opposite and you know what? I really started liking my boss, my coworkers, my job, and even my customers, again.

Bad things have happened in the recent and distant past. They keep floating up to the surface because they’re buoyant like that, and plus oftentimes they’re just relevant to what’s going on right now. That’s ok. This week, I’m going to simply look away when they try to make eye contact. I have lots of practice from the many canvassers in my neighborhood that don’t see that I walk these same blocks every day.

Create order, reduce disorder - no shortcuts. Usually, best case scenario is I tend to stuff my clean laundry into an already-stuffed drawer, and that’s if it’s not just left out for days. This creates disorder, and disorder leads to stress. It’s meant as a shortcut, but ends up wasting double resources by sucking up mental energy and real time (when I can’t find things). This applies to so many things beyond laundry or housekeeping; how many shortcuts are you taking in your work, or in your relationships? How many shortcuts are you taking in your thoughts, not returning things to order but cycling through piles of barely hidden chaos? This is going to stop, and it starts with my laundry this week.

(Special thanks to my friend Kim for the article and the discussion.)

Breaking the rules as usual

Sun, 08 Jan 2012 20:57:00 -0500

Today’s Sunday, and the first moon day of 2012. Being the bad Ashtangi that I am, I didn’t take rest like you’re supposed to. Instead, in my living room, I did my sun salutations and my backbending practice. Very bad lady.

My life needed it not to be a moon day today — I needed some reason to get out of bed, to breathe, and to muster up some optimism for the day. Is it ok to break the rules and practice, then?

Over the years of my Mysore Ashtanga practice, I’ve learned to release some of my type A desire for achievement and “progress” and simply lay low instead — a sort of miraculous personal transformation.

When the rest of your life is patterned after achievement — right school, right job, right payout — it’s then that it’s the hardest to surrender your control.

And yet, you have to. No matter how much you acquire or do or create or invent, you’re going to end up losing control whether you like it or not. Every second is a tiny dot on a massive arc that’s ultimately pointing toward decay. Like, right now. And also now. One more exhale in the direction of irreversible decay.

Is it fatalistic? Not really. It’s just long-sighted. You can’t get your underpants in a bunch about every instance of every rule when it’s suddenly clear where we’re all headed anyway.

The guidelines are there for a reason. Ashtanga students should rest. Moon days, Saturdays, and ladies’ holidays are an important time for that.

But, rules are fluid, too. And rules are form-fitting, like a shirt that can look good on a variety of people — a little different each time, but still working.

During my trip to Mysore last year, one of my biggest surprises was how flexible Sharath and the assistants could be. And also how rigid. Both qualities embodied simultaneously.

So was it ok to practice on this moon day? I’m still not sure, but you know what, it already happened like six or seven hours ago. Will I practice on future moon days? Probably not. Will I be a perfect vegetarian? Probably not. Am I still a seeker, a student, and an Ashtangi? Yes, definitely.