Eloquently stated suncloud!

Namaste,

Uti

i'm laughing a little here. this is the reaction that i inevitably get when i voice this view. it's my opinion. i get the same reaction when i say that i think enslaving animals as house pets is not a very good vegetarian or vegan practice. if you've been here for a while perhaps you remember an old arguement about that very thing that absolutely exploded. animal keepers on one side vehemently defending the practice. not that i don't or won't have pets, i just don't claim to be a vegan when i do.
i'm not afraid of anything here, just observing our shallow western culture missing the point of something vast and encompassing. sure, there are people who honour the practice, just as there are people who come to great awareness through eating a raw diet. but living in a town of 10,000 that has no less than three dozen studios and a countless number of stores selling high end yoga wear i see the majority of yoga practitioners here doing it for entirely different reasons. one studio here (shanti) is generally referred to as "panty" yoga works. it's known as a great place to pick up girls. flexible girls too! whose outfits leave little to the imagination. come on, you have to get a bit of a laugh out of that.

"if we all believed that only the most spiritual among us should ever commit to a spiritual practice, we might never get anywhere!"
oh no, that's not what i meant at all! this IS a thread about exercise after all. i hardly ever see anyone post anything about yoga in a thread about spirituality, it's always, Always in threads about how to get in shape. that's my point about yoga, that's where i see the general consciousness about it to be. sad. personally, i do garden yoga, sweeping and mopping yoga, child play yoga. it's about every and anything but exercise to me. for that, i work out.

>i think enslaving animals as house pets is not a very good vegetarian or vegan practice.

Yes, you are right. I feel that slavery is the right word. It makes me uncomfortable that I decide when and what they eat, etc. But I am stuck. I made a committment to my creatures and I am stuck with them. I feel it is my duty to look after them, to love them, to take care of them, and to try to make them feel happy, healthy, and secure, till death do us part. They are too delicate for foraging and wildness. I have spoiled them for the real world.

After that, I am not sure that I have the intestinal fortitude to do it again with newer companion animals. But what to do with the ones who already exist, who need looking after?

Regarding exercise, I walk a lot on campus and I ride my bicycle to work. But, my body doesn't really kick b*tt unless I go to the gym. Weight-bearing exercise is so important, not only for bone health, not only to fight sarcopenia, not only for mental health, but also for peak attractiveness. I have some dumbells and a barbell and plates but I can't get a really good workout at home. I need the butt blaster, the abductor/adductor machine, and the lat pull downs.

I have pet rats, i love them ,they have 6 story cage and I play with them and take them fo rwalks, lately i feel really sad for them. But what can i do, if I let them loose, they just mouse around..they don't actually want to leave..

Hey uti, lighten up a bit. You're hurt by some things that coco wrote?!

I'll agree with both uti and with suncloud and say I don't see anything wrong with taking something from one culture and incorporating it into another. It's been going on for eternity and isn't going to stop anytime soon.

And certainly Americans (I'll just assume coco, that you're in the USA) aren't the only ones doing this. I live in South Korea right now, and I've lived in several other countries here in Asia; they assimilate and mutate various things from various countries. Just like people in every other country, since the beginning of time. And why not?



This way is not compatible with Zen practice. This way IS Zen practice. - Dr. Doug Graham

Nothing whatsoever should be attached to. - Buddha

Back to rosemary's question. I was in a stationery store today and saw a hula hoop - and thought of you!



This way is not compatible with Zen practice. This way IS Zen practice. - Dr. Doug Graham

Nothing whatsoever should be attached to. - Buddha

TroySantos Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Hey uti, lighten up a bit.

Okay Troy, these heady philosophical turns to a seemingly simple thread do get a bit heavy and melodramatic at times. On one level, I do laugh at our humanness, our propensity as a western society to seek pleasure and avoid pain at all costs. The lengths we go to do that are comical. I say "we" because I catch myself doing it too and laughter gets me a free pass out of jail.

> You're hurt by some
> things that coco wrote?!

No, not hurt in the sense I try not to take it personally. The pain I feel is empathetic, the pain of a viewpoint that is very limited and controlled. Why do I feel that? Because it is a mirror for myself; I recognize that place as a place I am moving away from. I'm not saying I have it handled either, but I am moving and working on it and having experiences that tell me there is a more loving and peaceful place to be.

The pain I feel is a viewpoint that says, "I know..." instead of "I don't know. How can I have a more expanded experience?"

> I'll agree with both uti and with suncloud and say
> I don't see anything wrong with taking something
> from one culture and incorporating it into
> another. It's been going on for eternity and isn't
> going to stop anytime soon.
>
> And certainly Americans (I'll just assume coco,
> that you're in the USA) aren't the only ones doing
> this. I live in South Korea right now, and I've
> lived in several other countries here in Asia;
> they assimilate and mutate various things from
> various countries. Just like people in every other
> country, since the beginning of time. And why not?

That is right on and a mark of our ability to adapt and change.

Finally, I'll just say that whatever form of exercise one chooses is fine with me. I see that the body is a gift from Mother and anything you do to take the best care of it that you know how honors the gift and is sacred.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts Troy.

Much Love From Uti

this deserves it's own thread in the OT forum as a pertenant vegan issue but it's here now so...

i know the keeping of animals is a difficult thing to reconcile yourself with when you become conscious of how animals are abused for food and fun. i'm not saying that i don't struggle with the same issues, i certainly do. we have had fish and rats and i think it's a great way for my son to observe animal nature and learn about them first hand but then i think, what is he learning? what an animal is like in captivity? i have enslaved this creature for our own pleasure and benefit when we should be focussing on letting go of needed to OWN everything and finding the peace within ourselves to accept the unknown and live in accordance to it. we need to rule everything from here at the top of the food chain. it's so sad.
but we have had pets and when we get settled we'll have another. fish again and perhaps a rescue dog or cat. there can certainly be a lot of love flowing between people and animals who adapt to live together. but, i choose to recgnize the inherent Wrongness of what i am doing when i follow that path of animal ownership. that's all i'm saying, i acknowledge what i am doing rather than excuse it by trying to make it noble.
same with yoga. by all means, do it. it's here, it's not going anywhere, it IS good for you. but, be honest and acknowledge where it comes from and how we have watered down something that used to be sacred for our own self-indulgant means with NO intention of giving it (on a grand scale, not talking the odd indivicual here and there) the respect it deserves.


today our exercise will be:
tromping through the two feet of Canadian Rocky Mountain snow in very heavy winter boots while carrying large and heavy bags of stuff. it's the most intense work out, heavy breathing, muscles working hard, balance and coordination challenged. oh yes, and while pregnant too
i expect to be exhausted by mid-afternoon. that's what cuddle naps are for.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/20/2007 05:54PM by coco.

CoCo> ..personally, since yoga is a religious practice i avoid using it for exercise. in this culture we treat it like yogaerobics, it's a shame.
..same with yoga. by all means, do it. it's here, it's not going anywhere, it IS good for you.
..i have enslaved this creature for our own pleasure and benefit when we should be focussing on letting go
..but, i choose to recognize the inherent Wrongness(of keeping pets).
..we have had fish and rats and i think it's a great way for my son to observe animal nature and learn about them first hand.
..but we have had pets and when we get settled we'll have another.

Ok Coco,whenever I do something wrong I will recognise the inherent Wrongness.. and hope the Judge lets me go.
Yoga is wrong??...gosh,what will people find issues with next?

well, if being defensive about it is how you need to deal with your feelings around the issue go for it. many paths to one destination after all.

Can you see the contradictions in your post?

absolutely, and that was part of my point. it takes a lot more time and thought than we generally give it to process what we do, our intention, how we feel about it and the actual ramifications. and again, there is no one answer. it is difficult, absolutely, but most people don't even try or worse, glamourize their choices with strange justifications. and many people resort to defensiveness and personalizing of the discussion rather than keeping it civil and looking into their own hearts and minds for a real answer.


we're off to slog through that snow! the sun is really bright today, which means that it will be very cold, and it snowed all night, all day yesterday, and all night last night on TOP of a lot of snow that was already there so we are in for a workout! should be fun!

uti, I'm really touched by your response. And thanks for being open and gracious. Nice.

Bryan, I did try to put my picture in my signature but it didn't work. (I followed your instructions in the Formatting post.) I thought I tried after that post, but apparently not. I registered with Photobucket but couldn't get the pictures uploaded. I've got one that I love, another that I like a lot, and a third that I like pretty well. I wanted to put the two in the Pictures of You thread, but got tired of trying to figure it all out. Another time.



This way is not compatible with Zen practice. This way IS Zen practice. - Dr. Doug Graham

Nothing whatsoever should be attached to. - Buddha

Troy,

You need to take the space out before the letters "img". When I was writing the examples, I had to put a space before the "img", otherwise the software would render the image, not the text that made of how to display an image.

So instead of [ TAG] (where img is the TAG), it ought to just be [TAG].

I just got some new hiking shoes with lime green stripes (haha), so, Im going hiking now! YAY!

Coco, you live in Canada!? It must be beautiful there, you lucky duck!

Troy, your image still won't work even if you follow Bryan's advice because the path points to there local harddisk rather than an image avaliable on the internet.

Cheers,
Ian.

coco,

i agree 100% with you that animal ownership is slavery.
yet i thank you for considering rescuing a dog or cat.
because of casual practice of dog and cat slavery
in america, 30 million dogs are put to sleep annually.

adopting a surrendered or abandoned dog will help
ameliorate this tragedy. in my opinion.

sorry i veered way off topic.

Power Yoga!

i do live in canada, in the rocky mountains at present and yes, it is so gorgeous here.
[i2.photobucket.com]

and there is a lot of snow.
[i2.photobucket.com]

fruitgirl, i would never purchase a dog, that's just crazy when there are so many abandoned animals. but i think sometimes that even that promotes the normalization of keeping house pets, supports the industry of pet products and teaches young people that "ownership" of another creature is ok. it's a tough decision to live with.

today's exercise was long and ezhausting but great. my favourite part was rummaging around at the second hand store looking for pants that will accomodate my growing middle, i found good stuff! that's still exercise right? hey, it's hard work trying on 15 pairs of pants in under 5 minutes, lemme tell ya!

My 2 cents:

Regarding pets: the thing that makes me the most sad is a bird in a cage. I mean, really! At least cats and dogs can kind of approximate natural behaviors such as running around or even hunting. But a BIRD in a CAGE? What the hell?

Yoga: Years ago I used to go to hatha classes (yoga classes focused on the physical), and though they were mostly physical, some of the styles hinted enough at another aspect, that I got a clue there was something else behind the hatha, even though it wasn't focused on. Then years later, "coincidentally" I happened upon a path of yoga with a spiritual focus, with hatha just being one aspect of it. Who knows if I ever would have come across this if it weren't for my previous exposure?

Love,
Uma

yes even fostering or adopting a rescue dog
promotes the ownership mentality. still it
makes me crazy thinking of all the dogs being
pts. so i foster and try my best to find loving
homes for them.

the dogs i have fostered have recieved blessings
from my lama of which i am very grateful.

im enjoying the yoga / spitituality aspect of this
thread. do you remember learning asana was created
solely to still the mind for meditation?

I enjoy pilates once a week, as well as (hatha?) yoga... that on top of walking my dog. I think I need to work out more often though.

yes, dogs are great, but you cant really take them anywhere except walks and even then it takes discipline and not just go out and in ..
i am all for pets..in real life they would not be allowed to live anywhere by humans..

My dog at least has a reasonable (fenced) backyard. She loves walks

Well I've heard the development of hatha did have to do with preparing for meditation. I figure it probably didn't originate from a market for Buns of Steel!

The people I practice hatha yoga with, place emphasis on doing types of practices which open the hips enough to sit for extended periods in lotus, which is a stable posture for meditation. Other styles of hatha I've done focused more on performance or flexibility and didn't really address this.

Love,
Uma

I'm loving how this thread has taken a kind of rambling path woven in and out and around the topic of exercise, religion/spirituality, pets, picture posting and whatever. Somehow it fits with winter as the season of integration and renewal.

Today was a day off from a long hatha yoga practice and it's veg out time.

I've been trying to do more walking now that I live in a great place for it. I live on an old farm next to the Eel River in N. California. It's a private little mile and a half long valley surrounded by redwood and fir covered mountains. Lots of wildlife: bears, mountain lions, deer, owls, salmon in the river, a huge variety of birds and small creatures. The world record black walnut tree is a few feet from the house. There are a couple of human neighbors here who are so reclusive we hardly feel their presence. When I say we, I'm referring to Uma, my amiga, fellow frugitarian, gardener, yogini. The farmer, our landlord, lives in town and shows up to work the orchard and soil, which is now certified organic or plays with his large collection of classic tractors.

My walks are part of the practice; both meditative and a place to shift my body alignment through conscious walking. We're kind of situated near one end of the valley so I can chose a flat walk or a walk with a pulse elevating hill climb to a scenic overlook above the river. Sometimes I never see a vehicle on the road or hear a human made sound. Sometimes it's misty and so still I can hear my heartbeat.

Troy, thanks for your thoughts. I hope you can get your pics uploaded to photobucket and will try again. I took a self portrait last week with the big walnut tree and will try to post it. We overused our satellite bandwidth allotment and they have us restricted for a few days, so I can't do a lot of up and downloading. One of the downsides to living in a remote place, but I'll gladly live with it.

Pet slavery. I've experienced it both ways. I've seen animal and human relationships I would characterize as master/slave and I've experienced animal relationships that were symbiotic; mutually beneficial. I read somewhere a long time ago that dogs and humans co-evolved, so it leaves me wondering sometimes who owns who? I haven't had a pet dog for about 25 years. My last one was a female Lab. When I got her as a pup we were together 24/7 for the first few years, which forged a strong bond. I took off on a cross country road trip photography expedition when she was 6 months old and we were never out of each others sight or sound for a couple of months. She never owned a leash or was tied up. I think she trained me as much as I trained her. Being a water dog, she always made it clear when it was time to stop the van for a swim, which was usually any time she smelled or spotted a body of water. When I moved to California permanently she decided to retire and became my retired parents companion. Her last self-appointed job was to be the newspaper fetcher for my dad after he had a heart attack and didn't feel like making the trip down to the end of the driveway. At least one of them had a good attitude about exercise in their old age.

My last pet was an indoor male Saimese cat who was with me for 18 years, first in San Francisco, then a few places in between here. He and I got into raw food together, although being a vegan wasn't feasible for him. His mostly raw diet put his state of health back in order after years of problems with commercial food and a close call with kidney disease. Making his food became part of the practice. He was in training last fall to become an indoor/outdoor cat when he disappeared. I was nearing the end of a 21 day water fast and searching for him was not feasible. I had to let him go and trust that whatever happened to him was Mom's will.

When my roommate and I moved to the farm a year ago we entered into a work exchange deal with a male/female pair of semi-wild farm cats who work as rodent control. They get extra food, protection from their predators and shelter in return for us never seeing a rodent around the house. We trapped them and had them neutered which put a stop to the unwanted kittens the previous tenant experienced. They're very affectionate lovers, always schmoozing, now that reproduction isn't an issue and like to follow us on walks around the farm and leave us non-vegan delicacies on the door mat when their wild food is abundant.

Fruitgirl, thanks for the reminder of the original purpose of hatha yoga. That is, to prepare the body for meditation, which allows one to experience thought without language, which allows one to progress through the levels to a unitive experience with god while in a human body. How easy it is to say this; experiencing it is something else far beyond language which requires committment, courage and patience. This is not a popular path in our western culture where we're taught to fear the unknown and uncontrollable, much less the unknowable and inconceivable.

I'd love to hear more about people's experiences with the spiritual relationship of their raw food diet. Perhaps we could start that as a new topic.

Love from Uti

coco Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
>
> just observing
> our shallow western culture missing the point of
> something vast and encompassing. sure, there are
> people who honour the practice, just as there are
> people who come to great awareness through eating
> a raw diet. but living in a town of 10,000 that
> has no less than three dozen studios and a
> countless number of stores selling high end yoga
> wear i see the majority of yoga practitioners here
> doing it for entirely different reasons. one
> studio here (shanti) is generally referred to as
> "panty" yoga works. it's known as a great place
> to pick up girls. flexible girls too! whose
> outfits leave little to the imagination. come on,
> you have to get a bit of a laugh out of that.
>

Hi coco,

It doesn't bother me in the least about you thinking that yoga is a religious practice...I was just wanting to know why you thought that. It is DEFINITELY a spiritual practice. And I agree completely about your comment on how the west has done a terrible job (for the most part) with yoga. People are always just seeing it for it's great health benefits, but those are the people that don't really "get it". I go to an amazing Yoga studio, and the owner and teachers will tell you that it is NOT about the exercise at their studio. They have done a terrific job of bringing the spiritual part of Yoga to their studio. I have been to Yoga classes at gym's, and those are usually pretty awful. Our culture is always trying to speed it up, and so much gets lost when that is done.

Kim

coco Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> i do live in canada, in the rocky mountains at
> present and yes, it is so gorgeous here.
> [i2.photobucket.com]
> kindergarten.jpg
>
> and there is a lot of snow.
> [i2.photobucket.com]
> xmoose003.jpg
>

Cute pictures! I love the snow. We just got fresh snow last night and have been out sledding and hiking all day. It's one of my favorite things to do. We just love being outside, and so does our daughter.

i find it interesting that even yoga classes i
attend where instructors have mentioned the true purpose
of asana is to prepare the mind for meditation,
even in those classes we have never practiced
meditation after asana. just a shivasana, which
i believe is to integrate the physical /mental
shifts and reenter the outer world.

there is one guy that offers a meditation class
at the Y here immediately after his yoga class.
although they are really 2 separate classes, its
the closest i've seen.

I sometimes do Gurmukh's yoga DVD. I ordered it over the internet. Before it came I decided that I didn't want to do only the physical part of it. I found that she has a book out so I ordered it. It's called The Eight Human Talents. I've only read the intro and the first chapter. The first chapter is the first human talent, which is acceptance. The eight talents correspond to the seven chakras and our aura. This acceptance chapter was good for me to read. I teach English to Korean kids and it's so often been difficult for me to accept what the kids are doing in class. So this chapter has been helpful to me.

I associate yoga with Hinduism. I practice Buddhism so don't get much into the teachings and practice of Hinduism though I understand that Buddhism and Hinduism have lots of similarities. And the little that I've read of this book by Gurmukh is completely consistent with my Buddhist practice. Having said this though, I don't know that her book is Hindu teaching.



This way is not compatible with Zen practice. This way IS Zen practice. - Dr. Doug Graham

Nothing whatsoever should be attached to. - Buddha