Snap, Crackle, OUCH!

    So, about this whole yoga thing I mentioned a while back, before sad submarine stories and Supreme Court decisions came to the fore. Yoga thing? You were serious, Boss? What the hell are you talking about? You mean, Yogi. Yogi Berra...right? Not Yogi Berra, Sancho. Just Yoga! While some of you may find this difficult to believe, I have been thinking about doing yoga for a long time. I've always found it more than a little fascinating, and at the various gyms I have been a member of over the years, there have always seemed to be yoga classes going on. Not to mention that as I've gotten older, the realization I may not be as flexible as I once was is slowly dawning on me. As an avid golfer, that's not good. And to be perfectly honest, I'm pretty sure I haven't properly stretched (you know the kind of stretching I'm talking about - when you're sitting down on the gym floor and putting the palms of your hands flat on the soles of your feet...with your legs straight out on the floor - kind of stretching) since the second Reagan Administration. But even more than the stretching, I was always curious about the whole mind/body connection and how Yoga could help with that. I'm sure we could all use a little more connection between our mind and our body.

    But, and there's always a but...because I'm a dork, I started thinking to myself, "Where did Yoga come from, and what is it, really?" I mean, when I was younger, I had friends up in Boston talk about Yoga and sex like they were interchangeable! Can you imagine? Guys talking like that? As if everything is about sex? Unbelievable! I even had one of my golf buddies up there (and you know who you are) tell me that Yoga was just like those, what are they called, Kama Sutra positions for sex! Yep, these are my friends. But the more I learned about Yoga's history and purpose and what it could do for you both physically and spiritually, I figured, this is pretty cool! And after looking at some of the positions in various photographs, I said..."This is too easy. I mean, I played Twister! What's the big deal?" You're an idiot. So, take a little journey with me, kids.

    Did you know that Yoga can be traced back 10,000 years? That's approximately 8,000 B.C. for those of you up in Alaska! Now, because it was such a secretive practice in many obscure places across Northern India, and the early writings and sacred texts were transcribed on fragile palm leaves that were easily damaged, much of the early, early history of yoga has been argued about by people who know more about it than I. But what I do know is that Yoga started to become a very historical thing about 5,000 years ago. It was mentioned in the ancient sacred texts called the Rig Veda. This was a collection of scriptures, songs, mantras and rituals that the ancient Vedic priests, called Brahmans and Rishis (mystic seers) used. Now, the most renowned of these scriptures was the Bhagavad-Gita which was composed around 500 B.C. This is not to be confused with the classic Iron Butterfly song, "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida." Man, I'm good! And this is where the practice of Yoga really began to evolve into what we would recognize today. 

    And if I may digress for a minute, this is where it gets really fascinating for me. Oh please, no digressing. If you play with Yoga's timelines of founding and early development a little (and even the most knowledgable historians say they are fluid, at best), and add the lives of the poet Homer, he of The Iliad and The Odyssey, as well as The Yahwist, the woman I believe was the author of the oldest parts of Genesis, Exodus, and Deuteronomy, who gave us the original myths and stories of what we know as the Biblical creation, Adam and Eve, the Great Flood, Abraham, Jacob, Moses, etc., all the way up to King David (and you can add the founding of Taoism to that timeline mix, as well), you have some of the most brilliant literary minds in human history, all, possibly within the same century! How cool is that! Only the founding of Hinduism is older, going back millennia, and credited by scholars to be the oldest continuing religion on earth. But I digress...

    Anyway, to make a very long story short, the art of Yoga went through many changes down through the centuries. The Upanishads took the ideas of ritual sacrifice from the Vedas and internalized it, teaching the sacrifice of the ego through self-knowledge, action (karma yoga) and wisdom (jana yoga). This led to a more streamlined version of a "multi-limbed path" to enlightenment. Today, Yoga has morphed into an embracing of the physical body as the means to achieving enlightenment, using radical techniques to cleanse the body and mind to break the knots that bind us to our physical existence. This exploration of these physical-spiritual connections and body-centered practices led to the creation of what we primarily think of as yoga in the West: that is, Hatha Yoga. 

    Trust me dear reader, the above few paragraphs are just a synopsis of the extensive literature regarding Yoga. And all I wanted to do was get a few more yards off the tee, and have a little more self-knowledge! Which brings us back to...me! I actually went on YouTube and typed in the search bar "Yoga for Beginners." There must be 100 million hits just for those words alone! Isn't YouTube wonderful!! 

    On the first few pages for that "search" alone were videos for "Beginners," "Sore Back Beginner," "How to Meditate," "Yoga for Aliens," "Yoga for Hips," "Yoga for Neck," and even "Gentle Yoga." I'm not kidding. I wonder what the "Yoga for Mosh Pit" video looks like! And I had 99, 999,992 videos to go, if you don't count the Alien video, which I made up. Again, this was just under the search for "Yoga for Beginners!" I was afraid to type in "Yoga for Sex." I'd have been up all night! Well, maybe that was a poor choice of words, but you know what I mean! I stopped on the two videos that I thought would be great for me; "Men's Yoga for Beginners," and "Yoga for Flexibility." They also had a video titled, "15 min. Full Body Stretch." The woman (who has the approximate body fat of Calista Flockhart) is pictured sitting on a mat, with her leg stretched out perfectly straight on the mat, and her hands wrapped around her foot, as I had described above. AND, her forehead is on her knee! I passed on that one, assuming I would need six or seven more videos before I got to that one. So, here goes!

    Unfortunately, Peter can't finish this blog as he is currently attempting to crawl back to his couch, making guttural sounds that only Paleolithic Man would understand. We're pretty sure he'll be able to start typing again very soon.

write to Peter: magtour@icloud.com