Chakra

So yesterday I had an interesting experience. I went to Yoga at Yoga to the People--this Yoga place on St. Mark's Place in the Village that is completely donation based. When you go, you pay what you have-you aren't constricted by feeling like you have to pay the suggested $5 donation. It's like what the Metropolitan Museum of Art would be like if the docents didn't glare at you when you handed over a penny.
The picture I have posted is of the studio from their website, where people are resting in "Child's Pose."

Don't be fooled, I just learned that term yesterday. As the teacher said, people "Fake it in here all the time..." I took that to mean that there are plenty of young twenty-something's looking for enlightenment that pretend to connect with the Divine during Yoga.

In that book I keep coming back to, "Eat Pray, Love," Elizabeth Gilbert's time at the Ashram in India is full of Yoga and meditation. She is, however, the opposite of a pretender. She acknowledges the struggle that occurs when she is trying to gain control over her mind and spirit. There is a noisy voice in her head that interrupts her path to God, and she wishes she could ignore it. I had that experience yesterday. B seemed able to close his eyes and think inside himself, but I was paying attention to the strangest things--the breathing of the guy in back of me, whether it was sanitary to put your head on a rented Yoga mat, how much the teacher looked like Mel Gibson in Beverly Hills Cop. I wasn't able to find my breath, and just concentrate on that. Maybe it will get better. Maybe soon someone will see me walking down the street in leggings with a Yoga mat swung over my shoulder and be intimidated just like i was.

Speaking of enlightenment...

I feel so bad about the Dalai Lama. I know maybe I shouldn't have feelings about it one way or another because I am not Tibetan, nor have I met him, or been enlightened by his prose, but the way he is angrily pointing his finger at the invisible Chinese officials on Cnn.com is making me sad.

Perhaps this is showing me what B and I learned last night on the National Geographic Channel--the difference between man and Ape is not a matter of capability, as much as it is a matter of mind and spirit. Sure, there are differences that make these complexities possible, but deep down the Dalai Lama is just as upset as the angry Tibetans, though he is "completely committed to nonviolence." I feel bad because I used to be ignorant about so many things, and now i am struggling for enlightenment within myself, but also am struggling to make sense of this world we are in.


That's the picture that I was talking about -- you can even feel his anger through the photograph. I wish I could hug him and tell him that the Chinese will give in to International pressure because of the success or failure of the Olympics hanging in the balance, however there is no real international pressure to speak of.
Read more about Tibet: obviously, Wikipedia.