Yes! I would LOVE to understand how he sees things. My brain probably couldn’t handle it.
I friend that works with special needs kids was telling me how we see a garden. We see the flowers, or veggies, and foilage. They see 15 species of plants, 30 subspecies of insects, every shade of color, texture and etc… that is a lot of info to process.
So cool. My studio has a few different offerings including one called Shack Flow, but it’s really hard. On one of the balance poses the instructor was encouraging me “You can do this, you’re really strong.”
Needless to say, my arm was quivering like jelly, beads of sweat rolling down my face.
The flow yoga is, I think, Vinyasa. My favorite part of any class is savasana, lol. Except when I start snoring.
Needless to say, I am usually the most jacked person in the room and it’s humbling to be quivering and shaking holding poses.
@EmilyQ, I keep thinking about simplicity, people seeking a less cluttered life. We’re bombarded with email, texts, junk mail, and constant information.
Meditation is a kind of mental decluttering. With nondualism, everything is one, a part of the whole. We can think about physical clutter as symbolic. So, for someone to be really sorted, you’d expect them to appreciate beauty in form and function, but be less attached to things, have a less cluttered life at least. Be less attached to things that have no form, function, or beauty.
The Japanese aesthetic of Wabi-Sabi, from Wikipedia. Emphasis mine.
In traditional Japanese aesthetics, wabi-sabi (侘寂) is a world view centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of beauty that is “imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete”. It is a concept derived from the Buddhist teaching of the three marks of existence (三法印 sanbōin), specifically impermanence (無常 mujō), suffering (苦 ku) and emptiness or absence of self-nature (空 kū).
Characteristics of the wabi-sabi aesthetic include asymmetry, roughness, simplicity, economy, austerity, modesty, intimacy, and appreciation of the ingenious integrity of natural objects and processes.
Maybe it’s also part of the natural aging process for people to begin to really prefer higher quality things, craftsmanship. I get a lot more satisfaction from owning one really beautiful thing that is tailored perfectly, or from one handmade thing that has soul. So much of what we own is mass produced, so handmade or unique things become special. Also, I really like natural materials like leather, wood, rocks, seashells, wool or linen. Simple things where the form or texture. I think more of us feel a connection to the natural world, or at least long for more of that. I’d choose time outside in a beautiful place over the mall every time. Maybe it’s part of just being middle-aged where we’ve already accumulated things.
My wife and I are opposites in this regard, and it is endlessly frustrating.
I much prefer one very high quality item or experience, and she just likes LOTS! Lots of stuff. Cheap, crappy mass produced garbage. Doesn’t matter how cheap or crappy as long as there’s a lot of it.
We butt heads about this pretty regularly.
Politics, religion, money, family, sex… and NOT owning kitchen towels that are only for the holidays! Gotta agree on the important stuff. Lol.
I think it’s pretty common to have one of you be a collector/ hoarder even, or one person has a WAY higher tolerance for chaos and mess. With household decorative stuff, I’m a bit masculine/ minimalist. I have all my Christmas decorations in one plastic bin in the garage. When our kids were little we frequently had people ask us how we managed to NOT have a house full of plastic stuff. We really tried to be minimalists about toys. I had to really adjust to having kids trains, Playmobile, or later their art or sewing projects up all the time. My tolerance for chaos had to adjust upward quite a bit.
Seriously, that would be really hard, @SkyzykS. These habits are often a part of the family culture we were raised in, our ideas about what is the normal way to spend money, or the normal amount of stuff we should own. I won’t get into class differences with money, but I just read Hillbilly Elegy and he talks about some of this.
I know some couples set aside money each moth that is your whatever fund, so say you each have $50 per month that is for whatever you want - Starbucks, manicures - and the other person can’t complain about it. That still wouldn’t fix the problem of stuff from Target cluttering the house, but it might slow it down. I will say, you’re in the primary years for stuff to multiply. Little kid’s birthday parties alone will fill your house with plastic stuff. Entropy is real.
It does get pretty dicey.
They do. What makes it worse is that she see’s value in things that are basically give away items. I think that happy meal toys are meant to last the time it takes to eat a happy meal. She thinks they’re freakin heirlooms that should be treasured for generations.
Then the personal stuff starts when she says that I don’t understand sentimental value, and I call her family a bunch of dumbfuck hillbillies from dirtfarm Ala.
This might be an addiction, just saying.
Sure. I have given that some thought. She was raised by an alcoholic and a co-dependent, and falls in very much on the co-dependent side of things (married me) and has several of the “filling the void” behaviors.
I introduced her to al-anon when we met, which she participated in for years. Things were generally different through those years but she did still have some tendency to collect/hoard when she got around her family. I’ve encouraged her to go back, but she has formed too many resentments and too much pride to try.
Did I not respond to this? I must have had to get ready for work.
Anyway, ME TOO. Not the collecting stupid stuff, I’m the suffering spouse. It’s a constant battle. Wait until she gets older and her family starts dying and each of THEIR possessions becomes a precious heirloom to her!
Oh, haha, just looked at the date stamp on your post - the week I went to a training and decided to open a private practice. So that’s why I didn’t respond, I was sucked into a vortex of unending work.
But ME TOO.
You da Man Emily!
Its probably too late for me to be one of your first clients, huh?
Is it tractors? A guy I used to work for collects tractors.
Way tougher but to crack than happy meal toys.
I start Kundalini Yoga Teacher Training on Saturday. It’s ten months of training, one weekend a month. Most are just Saturday and Sunday, but there are three Fridays as well. However, it’s 9-7 on Saturday, and 4AM to 7PM on Sundays.
I just finished a ten month training on breath work and am now, technically, a breath work facilitator. I decided I wanted some more spirituality in my life and figured Kundalini was a good way to get it. I don’t actually plan on teaching classes - maybe once in a while, but not a career change - but I wanted to deepen my own practice.
I figured this thread would be a decent place to log the journey. If anyone objects to that, I’ll start a new thread (I started this one BTW).
I’m pretty nervous about it and I think that is a good thing. There are twenty of us (nineteen women and me) in the class, so it should be a decent way to add some socialization to my life - I’m pretty isolated since I moved out of my family home.
My rudimentary understanding of Kundalini: It’s based on a lot of Sikh spiritualism, incorporates movement, music, mantras, and meditation to achieve union of mind, body, and spirit (yoga means union). It’s considered the yoga of recovery.
Recovery can be defined as many things. Most people think of recovery as recovering from addiction, but there is a lot more to it than that. In my particular case, recovery is from a fucked up child hood - probably no different than many other’s experiences, it just affected me more.
So, off we go.
Do you get to wear a knife? Any religion than mandates being armed is okay in my book.
Okay @dt79, here’s the chakra chit based on my very limited understanding from five months of Kundalini Yoga Teacher Training.
I kind of think it’s more of a metaphor, but these wacky fucks in white seem to believe it.
Chakras are energy centers, like energy meridians in acupuncture There are seven (or eight) of them - root, sacral, navel, heart, throat, third eye, and crown. The eighth is infinity.
Seven chakras, though, like seven churches in Revelations. Metaphor.
The first is the root chakra, basically your ass, it’s red, and deals with safety, security, money.
The second is your sacrum, basically your Johnson, or va jay jay, and it is orange, dealing with procreation.
The third is your navel, actually about three fingers below your belly button, and it’s yellow, deals with power and control.
These are your lower chakras that deal with earthly existence, are associated with Earth, Water, and Air.
Then, there is the heart chakra, it’s green, and associated with balance.
Throat chakra, blue, third eye, indigo, and crown, violet. These upper chakras are about self actualization, oneness.
Three above, three below, pivoting on the heart chakra - balance.
The science and technology of yoga, lol, is about opening these chakras and allowing the flow from the root to the crown. Chakras are energy centers that circulate clockwise. If they are blocked, you get stuck in that chakra and that controls your life.
Interestingly enough, Maslow wrote about a hierarchy of needs in education - you need to feel safe and secure first (root chakra) before you can become self actualized (crown chakra).
So, metaphor or science, I think there is something to this.
Yoganandaji Paramahansa writes about this in Autobiography of a Yogi, a great book. He talks about the parallel nature of Hinduism and Christianity, and references a book, T_he Science of Religion_, that documents the commonalities.
I’m sure Yin and Yang address balance, it is balance, but I’m not up to speed on that bent.
Hope this helps, would love to discuss.
You really won’t like my answer lol.
When selectively interpreted with selected texts and exerpts, you can derive some valuable meaning, but, just like The Communist Manifesto, viewing all this as a whole leads to really shitty outcomes.
This may be of interest to you.
Chakra is very similar to qi. They are pribably variations of the same thing.
In the spirit of all things Woo Woo, qi can also be used like this:
In Taichi:
In acupuncture, when one is able to open the rendu meridian, one becomes Keanu Reeves.
This usually happens:
The thread bump reminded me that I wanted to talk about my salt cave self-hypnosis experience, but reading the above I’m embarrassed that all I have to say is that my stomach kept growling really loudly - REALLY loudly - and I felt like I was having some sort of spastic fit of hyperactivity. Self-hypnosis fail.
I’m reading about your journey with interest, @The_Myth.
Well, he has a lawn tractor, a real tractor, and an excavator along with a commercial dump and every other tool and machine, so yes, but no, that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about weird crap. For example, I wanted to throw away a broken popsicle stick sled Christmas ornament last year, and got “What are you doing?? Amanda made that!” Um, Amanda, his niece, is an adult with children old enough to make their OWN popsicle stick ornaments in Sunday School.
It’s an uphill climb, I can tell you that.
Too early in the morning for getting philosophical, maybe later bro.
I always love your responses, you’re one of my favorite posters.
Agreed. I have a mentor/teacher/guru and he told me, take what works for you.
The Bagua link was informative - I skimmed it, will read it later. Kundalini is heavily influenced by Sikh Dharma, at least in the west, and Sikhism is really about one god, unity, oneness. Your god is my god, we’re all a part of the universe. Kind of like the Borg in that Star Trek TNG episode but less evil.
Prepare to be assimilated.
Chakras, qi, chi, energy, all the same shit arrived at by different cultures, makes me think there might be something to it.
Think you may know I studied Kempo karate for a while, love the documentary known as The Matrix (I’m taking the red pill), and think you’re way smarter than I.
Also realize I am way more into the woo woo shit than you, which is ironic (New York white boy into Eastern Philosophy, as opposed to you, Eastern yellow boy into reality), so it’s a good mix. I’m upper chakras, you’re lower chakras, let’s meet at the heart.