TABBY CAT Gamespace

God has willed it so

So this is New Year's. Is it? In this New Year, you'll see Tabby without the gloves. Yeah, you know what that is. No more Mr. Prissy Cat.

For those of you who don't like the Tabbinic concept of the Inner Party, shove this up yer pipe:

But hey let's not be overly dark today. Let's balance that shit up above out with a list of the Most Iconic Hippie Anthems of all time. I'm not talking here about ordinary acid rock or Purple Haze I'm talking about songs with that special Higher Hippie Utopic Vision.

Below is my list of the all time greatest of those:

1. Share the Land

Maybe I'll be there to shake your hand
Maybe I'll be there to share the land
That they'll be givin' away
When we all live together

2. Dancing in the Moonlight

Everybody here is out of sight
They don't bark and they don't bite
They keep things loose they keep things light
Everybody was dancing in the moonlight

3. San Francisco (Flowers in their Hair)

For those who come to San Francisco
Summertime will be a love-in there
In the streets of San Francisco
Gentle people with flowers in their hair

4. Road to Shambala

Wash away my troubles, wash away my pain
With the rain in Shambala
Wash away my sorrow, wash away my shame
With the rain in Shambala

Feed your Head

I've always been able to do Ashtanga's Jump Back move pretty well. It seems to be hard for a lot of people, many use blocks or can't do it even with blocks. So a lot of people kind of bounce their weight off their toes as they go back. A 2-stage weight transfer in effect.

Well I never had those probems, I could always do a good Jump Back almost from the start.

But I had terrible problems with the inverse complement motion, the notorious Ashtanga Jump Through. This is even harder. But strange to me that I had so much trouble with it, given that I can do a fairly elegant version of the 1-legged Jump Through as the intro to Triang Mukha Eka Pada. Yet the 2-legged version has eluded me. Til now.

Because my bud Tiffany posted a great Jump Through teaching vid on her Yogini's Quest site! Just watching this vid gave my body the trick. So this morning I was able to do it, with just the barest zepher of a toe-brush whisper as I swing past. Fun.

Here is the direct vid.

And here is the same guy showing the Jump Back, if you are still having problems with that:

Oh, and by the way, any Tai Chi structure-geeks and posture-Nazis who may be reading this, when you can personally do these as shown in the vids, then and only then can you even begin to lecture me about anything physical/postural/structural all that physicalized pseudo-Tai Chi crap that ya'll so profitably espouse.

Not that this has anything to do with Tai Chi whatsoever. But that's my whole point about physicality - it's irrelevant! But for those of you who love to bleat about the physical structural postural tensegrity or whatever, well - step to the beat!

Having this degree of body control is the pre-requisite for you to even get in the door to take a number and sit in the rear of the room reading tattered back issues of Sports Illustrated til your ticket is called up to the counter and you might then get 5 mins to talk to me about anything physical. That's where the bar is set.

Limitless Undying Love

I've gotten rehooked on Ashtanga, as I said. Even after it injured me... I love it but it doesn't love me...*sob*

Albeit, I admit, I have to jerry rig some of the nastier stuff like my faked up pseudo version of Suptakurmasana for example, with knees a bit raised... Pseuptakurmasana...

But thing is, it's got me in a python grip. For example, I took a (psuedo) Moon Day yesterday, after like 9 straight days of Primary every morning, and I ended up feeling like shit the whole day. I did stagger over to the boxing gym but could barely wheeze my way to the end of my normal 5 rounds of speed rope warmup.

* * *

Interesting book: Fool's Gold: How Unrestrained Greed Corrupted a Dream, Shattered Global Markets, and Unleashed a Catastrophe by Gillian Tett. An excellent history of the recent derivatives debacle. Hammers the point home as if we need any convincing that the biggest baddest ass institutions in the world baptized essentially off-track betting as supposedly high tech financial innovation.

* * *

There are some really beautiful human hearts in this world. Kids, teens, seniors, lovely ladies and helpful guys, people with all kinds of artistic, social, intellectual, and spiritual gifts, or even just a soul-melting smile. And yet every one of those occupies an eco-niche that was species-scraped and ethnic-cleansed by some hard-ass forebears who just killed every single thing that didn't shoot them first. All that niceness is built directly on hidden bone and blood. And their lives are maintained only by the constant ongoing undying pressure of unrelenting violence and pain. There's the horror of it.

Higher marketing consciousness

This post is going to be a  loud-mouthed, foul-mouthed, ignorant, illogical, non-factual, total waste of your time. In short, it is going to display every defining characteristic of a TabbyCat Gamespace producton.

What has me going is yoga marketing. The incredible spread of yoga all over the west, and in particular its extreme popularity among stylish young women is beyond belief. It is the greatest triumph of marketing ever recorded in human history (next to Christianity).

How did yoga, which was a totally marginal, unrespectable, scuzzy sort of weirdo totally peripheral activity practiced by filthy old Indian fakirs in the bazzar ascend to become the emblem of stylish hip coolness among young Western women?

How in Hell did we get from this:

To this:

... in just a generation or two?

From all reports, average Indians hardly do yoga. You can be fooled because a large part of yoga exercises are ripped from the traditional wrestling practices, and those gyms are still active and filled with athletic young Indian guys. Those gyms are just like your average Brazilian Jujitsu gym in the States in terms of mentality and goals (kick ass ==> win trophy). 

But your average Indian has little use for yoga as far as I can tell. Not to even mention, Indian women in particular hardly go near the stuff, never have, probably never will. Maybe a thin veneer of Western influenced avant garde types in the cities but that's a reverse import thing.

grungy, weirdo, painful, scrawny, dirty, marginal =>

stylish, slender, clean, hip, trendy, bendy, cool.

????!

Yet there it is. Maybe they think it will make/keep them thin. But Yoga really doesn't do much for weight loss, any more than Tai Chi does. No, this is definitely some kind of mind op, pure and simple. Perception.

I say this not to bash Yoga at all. Far from it. For one thing, I've greatly enjoyed my toe dips into Ashtanga, not only the asana's but the whole pseudo-spiritual atmospherics of it. But really it is just contortionism, nothing much more. But this post is really written out of envy. See my main thing is actually Tai Chi. I have an interest in marketing true Tai Chi to the masses. But when I look at Yoga's marketing achievement I really have to grind my fact in the mud at the Indians' lotus feet.

Because although Tai Chi has indeed become popular in the West to some extent, it is way below Yoga in terms of interest, attendance, and image. Waaaaay below. It still has a bit of a musty dusty image as a droopy old guy thing, not like the Yogic aura described above at all. Yet why should that be? Though I don't particulary emphasize the outer performance aspect of Tai Chi, if we look objectively actually Tai Chi should be considered the more aesthetically cool practice. What's so attractive about sticking your butt way up in somebody's face? While Tai Chi's move on the other hands are graceful, lovely, naturally harmonic... and the power and pleasure that results from doing Tai Chi correctly (which almost nobody does don't even get me started) far exceeds anything that I have ever experienced or seen demonstrated in my admittedly few years of shallow Ashtangic parasitism.

We just need to get Madonna or somebody cool like that into Tai Chi and we'd be good to go. Of course that would probably trash the art even more thoroughly than it already has been. So maybe better just let things be.

Update notice: You be the judge

I have updated today's Ashtanga photo post (Felinic Yoga Foolery), for those who don't know much about yoga, how can you judge whether I'm doing it right or wrong? Where's the fricking quality control on the post? Eh? Hmmm?

Well, now you can be the judge! See updated post below.

Felinic yoga foolery

Don't you hate blog posts of people showing their lame yoga photos? Please can't we see your Bahamas vacation slide deck instead, pleeeeez.... Anyway, that's what this is today. Yoga photos! So, go away.

I'm relocating for the season pretty soon. Last Mysore with Tracy today. YAY Tracy! She rocks.

Actually, among my zillions of stupendously gifted teachers of everything under the sun, only three of them have sparked spontaneous, absolute, unconditional Bhakthi type of mindless heartfelt devotional feeling of Seeker (me) to Teacher (them), in me:

1. Benjamin Lo (Tai Chi)
2. Vladimir Vasiliev (Systema)
3. Tracy H. (Ashtanga)

Though they are all technically peerless and superb (in that same as all my other teachers), I don't represent their technical mastery as being the reason for the unexpected heartfire that they and only they have sparked. I don't look for it, it just happens. Nothing to say about it, just one of those human mysteries.

Anyway got a few snaps to show I'm still in the game(space).

Ashtanga Primary

Note: I have updated this post, to include comparison photos of a world-famous Master Yoga Teacher to the Stars (Madonna, Sting, etc.) for comparison. If you can find the Six Differences between Famous Yogameister's photo and Tabby's photo of each asana,  list them in triplicate on separate index cards, one for each asana, and mail to the address given in the earlier post on Scriptural Dieting. First Prize is one crate of bookstore return copies (coverless) of my classic commentary on, and extension of, the Patanjali Sutras: Cats Don't Do Yoga. Second Prize is two crates, and so on.]

First up to bat, Marichasana D. If you don't know yoga, this one is meaningless to you. If you do know yoga, you know its sometimes considered the nastiest, most advanced pose in the whole first Series. Described by one blogger as follows:

“der ultimativer Astanga-Knoten” - which shouldn't be too hard even for non-German speakers to understand

Here's me in process of binding Mari D. Photo shot before the full catch, but just so you know the next shot wasn't a cheat. These photos were ad hoc wildlife action photography, hence a few rough edges. Sorry my expression is a bit ... intense, in some of these. Not that there was any strain, mind you. It's just that... after all, um ... see, yoga = Enlightenment and High Spirituality. And that is the most serious of business.

Anyway here's me binding Mari D.

Now here's the actual animal:

Now Famous Yogameister doing the same. (Damn I wish they'd shot him from above as they did me, then that damn shoulder thing might not look so ... but wait I'm giving away hints for free.)

 

Here is me getting into Gaba Pindansana. Hands weren't yet at their final optimal position, but otherwise, well that's just me doing it anyway:

Here's the Man:

 

Here's Kukkutanasana (Rooster!) Hands should be further apart. Photo angle not front on as the Master's is, down below:

Here's the way it's done:

Bujapidasana, me:

Bujapidasana, he:

Would you like some Kurmasana with that? Was about to straighten knees when ...

Let's go with an understudy this time:

And below, Tolasana:

Et voila. He's got a tighter padamasana on this. Actually I can do tight padmasana too. Should have, for the shot:

OK, that's it. Fill out your entries and mail in pronto. You may make free use of the "hints" sprinkled above with the photos but - caveat lector, I might be trying to trick you!

There's more but you get the idea. Another few like these and you'd be pleading to see the Bahamas vacation slidedeck.

Hopefully in Tokyo I'll have chance to continue with Ken and/or Basia. But who knows? The only thing certain is the longer our physical bod lives, the sooner it will die.

So, uh, lay up your treasure in heaven.

Kick some ass out there

I was browsing. It was meaningless. Like everything. And I found some random guy on the net wrote as follows, referring to Gov. Palin of Alaska:

There is something about the term "hockey mom" that I love. Soccer mom just rubs me the wrong way.  One guy I know calls soccer "commie kickball."

Now I totally get this. I grok. I myself have absolutely no use for soccer or hockey any other team sport. But I totally understand what this (American) guy is saying. It's quite obvious that hockey as an idea should be more resonant in the mind of Americans (not necessarily as an actual practice, implementation brings up other issues, but American football is basically hockey sans sticks anyway).

For two reasons:

(a) Hockey is more violent than soccer
(b) Hockey requires a lot more offensive and defensive equipment and hardware than soccer

Et voilà.

He's correct though that soccer is commie kickball. While it takes a different schematic approach to mind control from hockey (see above two points), both have the same overall goal, to corral and dominate the individual, to suborn body, heart, mind, and soul to a higher collective order. It's all just good old Nazism, all the way down. Collective ego aggrandizement. Triumph of the Will.

Whether they are Lightsiders or Darksiders, Left Wing or Right Wing, Soccer Moms or Hockey Moms - all desire the same thing for you: their jackboot in your face.

When and where I was in grade school, the so-called "physical education" was all team sports, all the time. Absolutely a breeding ground for violent fascist dictatorship, under the guise of good ol Danl Boone frontier macho injun-killin - rugged individualism. Ahahaha! This human world offers such beautiful comedy on all channels 24/7 doesn't it.

What all kids should really be taught is probably just the Ashtanga yoga primary series. Though I haven't always been thrilled with yoga culture, I think the APS is probably the best overall physical basis you can give them. After that, let them do whatever they damn well please with their bodies.

Team sports aren't so much sublimated warfare (which might be alright I suppose) as they are just warfare by other means. War games.

What's up with that

I tend to admire Ramana Maharishi. God knows why. It is actually better not to admire anybody. But he is possibly a special case. He had a kind interest and attention to animals that is very rare in big shot spiritual leaders, for one thing. For another, he didn't talk so damn much as most of them do. He said his highest teaching was silence. When a fresh European visitor came to the ashram one day, he was met with only dead silence, at the feet of the master. Then after a few hours, Ramana suddenly began to talk, telling him to question the source ("who am I?") etc. Later the visitor questioned Ramana: Why wouldn't you talk? Ramana said: I always attempt the highest teaching first. If that is missed, then I have to try talking." The most gripping account of Ramana can be found in Paul Brunton's book A Search in Secret India. Now Ramana is a huge name in New Age circles, but was almost unknown in America back when I stumbled onto an original printing of that old book, about 30 years ago.

Anyway, this guy was the true master of what P. Jois (supposedly, cf. Matthew Sweeny book Ashtanga Yoga As It Is') said is the most difficult asana of all: shavasana (corpse pose). At age 16 without any formal training, Ramana used shavasana to spontaneously achieve total enlightenment and permanent liberation. Just like that.

So I try to get that from my own shavasana after every morning's Primary Series practice. I try to do as Ramana did, I figure that's the pose that will do the trick if any damn thing will. Like him, you just need to really impress yourself with the fact that your body will die, and be worm's meat or just burned up before it rots and bothers people with the smell. But try as I might, shavasana just gives me a great buzz, like radioactive beehive type of feeling, vibrational dissolution of physicality - but nothing more.

In WWII, when the Germans occupied various areas of Europe, they terrorized the local civilians. The had rules such as, for every single German occupier (soldier or civilian) wounded, 10 local people rounded up and shot. For a German killed, 20 local hostages executed. A price list. Then for aiding the Resistance (e.g. in occupied Greece), torture (cutting out genitals, tongue, eyes with welding torch, etc.) before execution. What's up with that? How does that square will all the nicey-nice little yoga and cutsie stuff we try to emphasize?

What if those kinds of occupiers had operated in Arunachala area, where Ramana lived?

I really wish I understood all these things. Not glib human answers which are a dime a dozen, I mean really understood the actual reality behind all this crazy shit.

Tabbic Yogic Metric Report

After two weeks rehabbing my Ashtanga Primary Series with Tracy, and three days earlier this week under the eagle eye of David who stopped into town for a cameo appearance, I have made the following reclamation of previously held territory (as of quitting Ashta last summer).

So as of today:

• Self-bind Mari B second side (first side already self-bind ok)
• Teacher-bind Mari C second (first side already self-bind ok)
• Teacher-bind Mari D first side (second side not yet in sight)
• Self-roll 360 in Gaba Pindasana (still need teacher-assist to Kukku)
• Teacher-bind both toe-holds in Baddha Padmasana
• Hair now grazing the mat in Prasarita Padottanasana D
• Teacher hand-bind in Supta K

So that's not horrible for only about 3 weeks back on the mat.

What's that? Oh, yes, it is ever so true, I do take a very shallow, performance-oriented approach to it. No, you are quite right, that's hardly very yogic really, is it? Why, the words YOGA SUTRA OF PATANJALI don't even appear in this post. Thank you for that original observation. Your input is very valuable to us. Please come again.

Nailed

Nailed, as of this morning:

Gaba Pindansana (start)

Gaba Pindasana (midway)

Kukkutasana

(No, that's not me in the pix. Does he look like an obnoxious striped alleycat? Jeeez.)

In other words, I already nailed my Tabbic Ashtanga Milstone for this week (above 3 poses/actions), in my first session up to the plate for the week  (Tracy Mysore). I should actually say, re-nailed, because I could do these last year with no big problem. But a year's' worth of rust had to be sand-blasted off me, which Tracy did very effectively last week. I should admit though that today was more like semi-re-nailed - because Tracy had to (a) hand-roll me once I was in the garba pose, I couldn't really move myself properly. Lost the body memory of it. It'll come back to me though; and (b) she had to give me a final big heave forward at the end of the garba rolling, to get me propped up into Rooster (third pic above). So I guess that is cheating. Still. I'm just saying.

But anyway, with those in the bag, I guess I need broader horizons, bigger fish to fry. And one bigger, toothsome fish would be to re-acquire my formerly gorgeous Mari D:

I don't think you can really feel it from the photo, but Mari D is a truly nasty hard case. I have read some articles calling it the most difficult pose in the entire Primary. I don't know about that though because last year I could bind into this one - unassisted on the first side at least, and assisted on the second side. But now I have totally lost it. Let that be a warning to anybody out there tempted to quit Ashtanga for a year!

So I guess that's my new Tabbic Ashtanga Milestone for now. I'll report when/if I ever re-acquire it. Don't hold yer breath.

Meanwhile I will try to swing past SF tomorrow for a round of training with my core teacher, Ben Lo. He's 82 you know. I'm not saying anything except - make hay while the sun shines -

(No I'm not talking about him, I'm talking about me! Who knows how much longer I can hang on in this physical-plane madness...)

Tybalt: What would you have with me?
Mercutio: Good King of Cats, only one of your nine lives!