Ok, it’s really not that hard to grock.

this video of a presentation from the recent TED conference is one of the most interesting things that i’ve seen in a long time, it’s well worth the 18m44sec that it takes to watch. the description of the video on the website is:

Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had an opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: One morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened — as she felt her brain functions slip away one by one, speech, movement, understanding — she studied and remembered every moment. This is a powerful story about how our brains define us and connect us to the world and to one another.

but what that description doesn’t get into is the insight that mrs taylor had about how the brain can bring about both happiness and suffering. as she lost the left half of her brain, the feelings she described are very similar to the feelings yogis and meditators describe when deep into their practice. in fact, she may have even experienced a bit of what pantalji describes as samathi. as a person with a scientific background, i found it especially interesting to hear these insights from a scientist.

“I believe that the more time we spend choosing to run the deep inner peace circuitry of our right hemispheres, the more peace we will project into the world, and the more peaceful our planet will be.”

it’s no secret that i find most yoga advertising boring to say the least. yoga ads generally have a photograph of the teacher doing some difficult pose and way more text than most people will bother to read. another problem that i find in thailand is the lack of bilingual advertising, it’s often in english only for some reason. i guess photos of difficult yoga poses might have been exciting twenty years ago when few people had seen them, but by now pretty much everyone has.

i created these two posters to promote our mysore classes within the studio. i tried to use things like design, colors and font-choice to create something that had a calming feeling but was also eye-catching. the background photograph was shot with a pinhole camera along a snowy road in vermont. in the english version, i used soft healing colors like green and blue along with the non-serrif font helvetica. i also made sure to use some pink as it is our corporate color and then added our logo along the bottom. when creating the thai version, i decided to just invert the colors (with some adjustments). they will be displayed side-by-side with no gap between so the color opposites should be rather obvious.

i’d love to hear comments from people on them (they are 10” square). let me know if you get the concept, think it’s lame or just too arty for a mysore program.

click the image to view a larger format version, especially if you want to read the text.

i’ve been a fan of the writer christopher isherwood ever since i first saw cabaret performed … actually even before that, i helped my friend bob prepare for a dinner theater performance of the show (he was great, herr shultz was great and the rest of the cast was just ok.) when i finally saw alan cumming perform the role of the mc on nyc’s studio 54 stage, i was really blown away.

when i read his autobiographical work, my guru and his disciple, i found yet another reason to be impressed with his work. in this book, isherwood talked about his spirtual development alongside his guru swami prabhavananda in los angeles, starting in the 1940s. what impressed me most about this book was the way that isherwood was about to talk about his struggles between a desire to lead a dedicated spiritual life and also to explore the the new freedom that gay men were experiencing in la at the time. there were points in the book where he would spends days meditating and chanting at the ashram, and then head out and have anonymous sex on the beach. he didn’t seem to look down on himself for any of this in the book, he merely explored it all as part of his spiritual development. he also wrote a lot about pressure from his agent and the literary world to write more along the lines of cabaret, but how he felt drawn to translate sanskrit texts into english and to write about the life of ramakrishna.

besides his beautiful writing, it’s the honestly of the book that impressed me the most. that even back in the 50s, he was able to talk about his sexuality and how he struggled with finding a spiritual path that he could follow at the same time.

the following five collages combine isherwood’s translations of the yoga sutras with photographs that i shot in india. i think i’ll do at least five more before the series is done, but in the meantime i would love comments on these. you can click each image to view a larger version on flickr or see them here on my main site.

anyone who has seen me in the last two years has probably heard me go on about the way yoga is taught in bangkok. after living and practicing yoga in california for 9 years, i was rather surprised at the corporate nature of yoga over here. back in the states, most studios are small operations which are run by people who are much more focused on yoga than on business. the studios often stay close to the teachings of a particular guru, and may or may do things like advertise properly and pay on time.

the place i work for now, had six locations in bangkok, two in the provinces and is building a multi-million dollar retreat center on an island down south. all of the yoga rooms are mirrored (so that hot yoga can be taught), marketing materials generally emphasize weight loss and they are kept in shape by a full staff of executives, administrators, front desk assistants and maids. there are huge shower rooms, towels and mats provided, etc. at the corporate-level there is no affiliation with any guru, really any form of yoga that is happening enough to make money will do.

that being said, i do get to teach ashtanga and don’t have to worry about paying my bills which in california is a very hard thing to do. i’m always paid on time and i’m pretty much left alone to teach what i want (i just have to put up with mirrors). i guess the fact that i’ve been here for two years is a testament to the fact that the pros outweigh the cons.

two weeks ago we celebrated the two year anniversary of one of our studios and in typical-bangkok-style did it up with a huge three day festival in the middle of the lat praw mall. loads of celebrities came and talked about how much they like practicing yoga, and i had to get up with three other teachers and do a synchronized performance of yoga poses done to music. i actually held off on posting about this for so long because i was (and still am) rather embarrassed about it, but i figure i’ll throw it up on the blog anyway. my practice has become this very personal thing and to get up and do a bunch of poses on a stage at a mall is nothing that i want to do. even more than that, i feel like it puts emphasis on the external aspects of the practice and away from the internal ones. i’ve written before that i don’t care about being a chinese contortionist anymore and that i’m much more interested in things like having proper breath and drishti in the asanas. i guess there is some aspect of a circus trick to it all, that we have to show off some fancy stuff to get people in the door and that if they turn into dedicated students then we can start teaching them deeper aspects of the practice. still tho, i’d rather not have to do it on a stage at a mall … photos are below.

ohh another good thing about work is that they are being supportive and flexible with me going back to college. i’m trying to get into ramkamheng to study a bachelor’s degree in thai and work is open to being flexible with my schedule around class times. ramkenheng has a lot of programs for people studying part time and hopefully i will get some transfer credit from drexel … i may very well be the only white person studying there and i’m sure i will be the only freshman who uses rogain already. more news to follow about this when i know it.