THE YOGA CHRONICLES: CONFESSIONS OF A RELUCTANT YOGI

“ATTACHMENTS”

            “My opponent is a quiche-eating liberal and a political harlot who would lift his skirts for anyone with a dollar.” –Tom Barron, March, 1984

            It was one of those lines that was simply too good not to use.

If I do say so myself.

The line left nothing unsaid: I called him soft and a woman, which in East Texas was decidedly worse than calling him a whore.

I liked the idea of being a guy who could write and deliver such a line. I liked the idea that I knew it would make the headlines and lead the evening news. I liked the idea of being a boy wonder politician.

It was the age of Reagan and I was a candidate running for the District 6 legislative seat in the Democratic primary against a one-term incumbent named David Hudson, to be held the first Saturday in May, 1984.

What possessed me to run to be a member of the legislature is a toxic combination of dilettantism and youthful naiveté that makes me cringe to this good day. I have never given any real thought as to why I would have wanted to be party to the biennial money buyoff of the Texas legislature but there I was- all twenty three years and elevens months of me- walking around shaking hands and kissing babies.

After all, I did have an impressive resume of four years of frat house drinking and a five-month stint as a speechwriter for Bob Bullock under my belt so why wouldn’t anyone vote for me? (On the other hand, these same credentials had worked pretty well for George W. Bush.)

My monumental ego had not even considered the possibility of losing a political race in my own hometown, but things were getting a little desperate late in the campaign. The political traction I thought I would get never materialized as more moderate democrats began to flock to the republican primary, eroding what I had thought would be a strong political base.

This mass exodus from the party created a strong backlash by the democrats in the primary, with labor unions and teachers pulling even further to the left to protect their incumbent office holders.

The political center I had counted on had all but disappeared so I had to do something, even if it was perhaps the ultimate political Hail Mary. (I feel compelled to say it was absolutely the correct political move from a strategic standpoint; pushing him further to the left might cause voters to reconsider their support for a candidate who might not survive the general election.)

So that dark March morning, I stepped to the podium at the Women’s Building in Tyler, Texas and delivered possibly the most inflammatory political speech of mine or perhaps anyone else’s political career, the most memorable line of which is quoted above.

I take a certain solace in knowing that I had the stones to actually deliver that speech to my opponent’s face, rather than say it in an attack ad. On the other hand, that would have been more effectively politically.

My mother knew there was trouble in the wind when her nail lady looked up at the television at the beauty parlor and said,”Uh oh, Miz Barron, Tommy done did something.”

The teaser for the six o’clock news that evening had begun with, “It’s amazing the walls of the Women’s Building are still standing tonight….” The speech made the front page of the afternoon paper (yes, there used to be afternoon papers) and was ultimately picked up by the wire services. Friends took joy in forwarding me copies from as far away as Washington, D.C.

I’ll never know if the speech caused me to lose the election or if the fact I was a supremely underqualified dilettante had anything to do with it.

In the years since, I have come to realize this loss was a true gift of understanding and insight that one can only attain from being fully vested in something and failing. After the campaign, my friend “E-Street” Judy Cook Birdsong once said to me that I had something none of the rest of my friends had, foolishly thinking she meant understanding and insight.

But even before I had a chance to ask, she said, “political enemies.”

That was the greatest insight of all.

I had said something to hurt someone for my own personal gain.

And I hadn’t cared until long after I said it. At the time it was hard because it was inflammatory and required girding oneself to the very real possibility of a cuss fight and perhaps even a fist fight, neither of which are unheard of in Texas politics.

But as I grew older, I realized I said something to and about an adult, a grown man with both the dignity and political savvy to weather the storm even though I am certain his instincts were to kick my ass.

Even worse, I realized was a punk kid who said it to a man with a family who read and heard it.

Worse yet, I realized I was a punk kid who said it because I thought I wanted something that–in the end- I never really wanted at all.

I just liked the idea of it.

It wasn’t until last night when the true lesson of that experience became apparent. After our weekly Friday Night Happy Hour Restorative yoga class, I was headed into Matt’s in Lakewood for our weekly Friday Night Happy Hour Restorative drinking session when I was stopped by a friendly and vaguely familiar face.

David Hudson. The man who ruined my political career.

            Thirty years and six grandchildren later, his hair remains the color of straw and there is a hell of a lot of it. His face remains boyish despite his sixty-six years but there was a warmth to it, a warmth I had never seen and which I certainly did not deserve. We shook hands in earnest, perhaps for the first time.

For me, there was something transcendent in that moment, an ultimate understanding about that primary experience almost thirty years ago. It was a weight lifted off my shoulders, absolution for a childish comment made thirty years before.

We may have enemies in this life but they are our enemies and are part of our journey. They can be and should be cherished. I remember Muhammad Ali once saying of Joe Frazier, “I love Joe Frazier because he makes me work so damn hard.”

Enemies are the people in this life who shape us in ways in which we do not want to be shaped. Enemies make you decide if something is really worth it because they’re standing in your way.

They force us to decide if we really want something or if we just like the idea of it.

So maybe they are not enemies at all.

In retrospect, I owe David Hudson a great deal. Losing that election changed the direction of my life. It sent me to law school, after which I got a job where I met a beautiful and talented woman who challenges my pretenses and affectations every day and makes me decide what I really want.

She is the woman who took the picture.

In yoga, we talk about ridding ourselves of attachment. Not only did David reshape my journey thirty years ago by stripping me of my attachments, he let me off the hook last night.

Thank you, David.

And I’m sorry.

© (2013) Thomas C. Barron

"HOME- PART TWO: THE FIRST STEP"

“HOME-PART TWO: THE FIRST STEP”

I may not be able to sleep through the night without going to the bathroom, but I can still spin a basketball on all four fingers and the thumb of my right hand, dribble between my legs, and dot an “i” with a behind-the–back pass.

At seventeen, I was a gym rat who lived each day for the challenge of a street game of one–on-one: first player to eleven or fifteen by ones-“make it, take it”-wins and keeps the court. It wasn’t enough simply to win. It was more than even “dogging” someone, a phrase now long out of fashion but denoting the deliberate infliction of great personal humiliation on another.

Rather it was that glorious first step past the defender who had calculated incorrectly and bitten on my first feint, stumbling awkwardly into a dark and uncertain future, unable to even watch as I galloped past him to a glorious and heroic new world.

The layup at the end was pro forma, an anticlimax.

The work had already been done so the path was clear.

I’ve spent a lifetime trying to find a way to replicate that unbridled joy.

Trust me, they ain’t made that drug yet.

One–on-one basketball is the ultimate assertion of one’s will over another, much more so than the impersonal bombs lobbed at one another by tennis players. I have never once seen Roger Federer stick an elbow in Rafa Nadal’s ribs while he was going up to serve and then call him a bitch for complaining about it.

But more importantly, your own success is your own downfall in these wars. A good move can only be made once before it is anticipated, even ridiculed.

“Don’t bring that lame shit in here again, white boy.”

Or words to that effect.

So the chess game would begin, a pull-up here, a head fake there, and then a stutter-step dribble and crossover to the hoop.

This is always his first move. When he starts left, he always pulls up for the jumper. And don’t ever bite on his first pump fake. The boy has no left hand. He’s not going to do that again, he just did it. Or will he? Is he crossing me up?

I’ve been in games with guys who couldn’t spell “gymnasium” but were absolute chess masters, street geniuses who were three and four mental moves ahead of you at all times. Their impassive faces as they darted past my flailing arms told me I was unworthy of even a sneer.

That lack of scorn seared my irredeemable soul.

My unimaginative, predictable, provincial and unworthy soul.

You couldn’t be intimidated by anger or even violence. It wasn’t a foul unless it substantially altered a shot. And by substantially altering a shot I mean did you lose a finger? In fact, you simply never called a foul because it was a gauntlet finally laid down, a line in the sand to say you’ve been fouling me all day because you’re not good enough to guard me without fouling.

Street cred.

So I learned how to anticipate contact, take the blow and maintain my focus despite physical pain. In retrospect, it was the perfect training ground for married life.

Those lessons also served me well later as a trial lawyer, particularly evident in those moments when everything seemed to be in slow motion. I could see everything from what opposing counsel’s next question was going to be to what jurors were actually listening to what the judge was reading behind the bench to whether the court reporter’s fingers were getting tired.

You see, these were my homes before now, the places where I had to constantly prove myself worthy over and over again. If I won on the street, I played again, no matter how tired I was. If I won a trial, everybody wanted me to try the next one.

Until I lost. Then I sat on the sidelines as others played and wondered whether I had ever been worthy at all.

It took me months, if not years, to realize and accept that yoga was not a competitive enterprise, that getting all “medieval on its ass” was not going to bring me closer to the full expression of any yoga pose.

Mindlessly contorting my body into a pose without first doing the fundamental work was folly, a fool’s errand, and a guarantee of failure.

In those first classes, I thought only of the final product, forgetting entirely that was the work done that made the path clear. I fought the poses rather than surrendering to them, flinging myself into postures rather entering into them deliberately and mindfully. My breath was labored and through my mouth, not fueling my movements but reacting to them.

But in each class there would also be a mini-epiphany, a moment of clarity in which I adjusted deeper into a pose to a place without pain but not without challenge.

It might be knowing when to breathe as I flowed from one part of the pose to the next or to accept my short arms and long torso and adjust accordingly.

It might be actually listening without anticipation, a particularly galling occupational hazard which has caused more than one rift in my household.

Or it might simply involve starting at square one, taking a breath and getting a firm foundation beneath me, rooting into the earth and pulling up energy from it, with strong, engaged feet and legs, a solid core and my head properly aligned over my spine. 

(Okay, I know that’s some serious hippie shit -but it works.)

But most importantly-for the first time in my life-I actually accept my failures as a gift. Each such failure eliminates an obstacle, bringing clarity of mind and purpose, stripping away the negative reactions and leaving them in my wake like that poor defender descending into uncertainty and self-doubt as I went in for the layup.

I simply change my breathing, my posture, the alignment of my feet or my gaze.

I now have a checklist in my head for progress rather than wallow in a vast universe of self-doubt.

This is a great first step.

© (2013)

            NEXT TIME: “The ‘A’ Party List”

"HOME- PART ONE"

“HOME- PART ONE”

Even as a kid, I knew the paunchy, middle-aged guy talking to the va-va-voom blonde in her aerobic tights at the bar was interviewing mistresses. I would know this because he would have had on the standard issue uniform of the paunchy, middle-aged man on the make, a perfectly predictable exoskeleton of pressed dark jeans, white Brooks Brothers button-down, black Gucci loafers with no socks, blue blazer with gold buttons, and a boozy accretion of flesh around his jowls.

He would have drank scotch because that’s what rich guys drank. He would have a voice louder than Armageddon as he impressed her with his damnation of Washington, D.C., integration and The Enlightenment. He would have called her “darling’” or “sugar” or “honey child” and or something else equally cringe-worthy. For her part, she would have smiled just as long he kept buying cocktails or until his hands got too chummy with her backside.

My loyalties would have been with her. She might have even been a secretary at the law office where I worked as a runner in high school. She would have been pretty in a working girl’s way. She would have come to the big city out of some rural hamlet where she was the drum major and 4-H Club Sweetheart. She might have even finalized the divorce from the all-district quarterback she married straight out of high school.

Her venom would be reserved until the next morning, when she crucified him for the amusement of her female co-workers. In fact, stories about these men were often exchanged among the secretariat, humiliating stories of socio-sexual incompetence which no amount of money could ever wash away.

But more often than not, she married the prick, trading forty years of relative comfort for her soul. She became chattel and he went to bed every night wondering where the next richer guy was coming from.

These were my first lessons in micro-economic theory and sexual politics.

At sixteen, it was hard to tell the winners from the losers.

I had a ringside seat to it all as my father had not one but two bars in his office, a sprawling affair seemingly built for the purpose of entertaining “big wigs,” a phrase I accepted without ever analyzing its etymology or meaning. For me, “big wigs” meant only work for my father, jewelry and furs for my mother, and cars and a country club membership for my brothers and me.

By the time I was ten, I could make a whiskey sour (try putting that shit on your college app), placate a drunk (“No, Mr. So and So, he didn’t mean it like that.”), and lie to a wife (“No ma’am, I haven’t seen him all night. Dad says he’s still ‘on the road.’”).

I swear to God I’d live it all over again to see my father’s knowing glance of approval just one last time.

But now the paunchy, middle-aged guy at the bar was me and the blonde in the yoga pants next to me was my yoga teacher.

Some might have picked a scraggly–bearded Indian guru. Others would pick some New –Age swami who played backup sitar for Norah Jones’s daddy. Still others would have gone with Mr. Miyagi from the Karate Kid.

But not me, I picked a brassy, margarita -swilling 1940’s pinup, a lippy, twice–divorced blonde with pink streaks in her hair and enough ink to fill three arms and whose studio website boasted a “Happy Hour” yoga class. The most cynical of my friends might have guessed right away that I’d have chosen her to be my yoga teacher.

(I could hear it now: “Sure she’s your yoga teacher.”)

No one could have guessed that she would become my mentor, healer and friend, but ours is a relationship that transcends the petty tyrannies of sex, gender and age.

We first met as I limped into her studio two and a half years ago, it being the only one on the entire internet that with a “Happy Hour” yoga class.

I was greeted as if I had been expected, perhaps even late.

She asked what brought me and I told her I had a bum knee and went to bed most nights dreaming of killing people. I knew we had a winner when she told me to sign in, drop my shoes over there, grab a mat from the back and that she’d do what she could.

Throughout that class, she spoke primarily to me, the newbie, completely solicitous without even a hint of condescension or patronization. Even when she wasn’t speaking to me, she seemed to be speaking to me. Each cue to each pose resonated in my mind. She adjusted my stance, suggested subtle refinements to keep pressure off my knee, and told me what I would be feeling in certain poses and how that it was a natural reaction of the body. She drew me out, asking questions and eliciting responses, to which she listened without judgment.

I gradually began to lose my sense of self-consciousness and embarrassment, instead feeling for the first time that I might actually belong in a yoga class. The inability to touch my toes or stand on one leg all of a sudden became simply the starting point of my practice rather than an impediment to it. Rather than feeling like an outsider, I felt as if I belonged.

And then I had a most unlikely revelation.

As I grew older, I had noticed my father’s tendency during his office parties to gravitate not to the louder, more boisterous types-or even the “big wigs”-but rather to those who looked to be most uncomfortable in their surroundings, most often the shyest, plainest and quietest.

He would insist they sit next to him- the life of the party- and they would bask in his reflected glow, his bright eyes twinkling as he drew them out of themselves.

He seemingly ignored all others as if these strays were his entire world, asking questions of these lost pilgrims, hanging on their every word, making their life seem fascinating and part of an all-inclusive cosmic whole. And if he found their family was from New Harmony or Rusk or Alto, he would be utterly delighted and scream across the bar to someone of similar provenance that “these here are some of your people.” These people would leave buoyed by vague notion that my father had choreographed the entire party on the basis of this kinship.

He would dote on them, often berating me–the erstwhile bartender and waiter-that their drink was empty and apologize to them that it was hard to get good help. That was my cue to pop up and bring a fresh glass and napkin and make apologies for my gross dereliction of duty.

“Damn it, boy, you got to do better,” was his highest praise for me then, indicating that I had played my role well.

Thirty-seven years later, I came to realize that my father was my first yoga teacher.

I also came to realize that perhaps I needed more than simply my knee to heal.

I needed a bridge from that life to this one.

I needed someone who spoke my language.

This was it. This was home.

© (2013)

THE YOGA CHRONICLES: CONFESSIONS OF A RELUCTANT YOGI- "HAUTE, HOT OR NOT- PART TWO"

THE YOGA CHRONICLES: CONFESSIONS OF A RELUCTANT YOGI

“Haute, Hot or Not? Part Two”

            As a general rule, I try to avoid being stuck in a sauna with seventy-five sweaty people, yet here I found myself being steamed like organic broccoli in a “hot” yoga studio and paying for the privilege. One damn Groupon coupon and I had found my inbox positively littered with one of a kind offers to sweat my ass off while looking at the pale and hairy bare back of another fat guy, whose principle aim in class was to ogle the SMU coeds in front of him. (I must confess that as a young law student, when not attending Bible study, I preferred to ogle SMU coeds from the comfort of a bar stool somewhere on Greenville Avenue, but that’s really a travel trip more than anything else.)

            The place had all the quaintness and charm of a UPS store; in fact, both inhabited the same strip center near the SMU campus. I should have known there was trouble when I saw all the BMWs with sorority decals fighting for parking places. Here again, don’t get me wrong: I majored in sorority for three semesters at the University of Texas and for my sins, I ranched a Kappa Kappa Gamma of my very own (Kansas Omega ’07, the chapter which gave us Kate Spade. Check, please.). However, it has been my experience that sorority girls tend toward the highest possible level of exertion and maximizing calories burned.
            The aerobics instructor at the desk quickly immediately dismissed me as a Groupon customer and I was unceremoniously dispatched to the nearest neutral corner with a clipboard and pen, where I was to provide a complete medical history, seven forms of identification, two credit card numbers, a waiver of liability in the event of my untimely demise, and the name of my next of kin.

            As I waited for class to begin, I was obliged to read the literature regarding the foundations and founder of the studio. This style of yoga required strict adherence to the same set of postures done in the same sequence over the same time period in a room set at the same temperature and humidity, a temperature somewhere between sidewalk egg-frying and brick oven pizza.

            I should have also been alarmed that images of the founder revealed a distinct Jim Jones/cult leader kind of thing going on, down to the straw Panama hat, deplorable double knit shirt (with the contrasting ticking so popular in the Seventies among cult leaders) and heavy, military strongman -style shades. Earlier sepia –toned photographs of the founder showed a handsome, swarthy and exceedingly limber version wearing the dreaded “manties,” a foundation garment lying somewhere between its European cousin, the Speedo, and cheerleader bloomers.

            Henry David Thoreau once said beware of any endeavor that requires new clothes. He had just finished his first hot yoga class when he said it.

            Perhaps more disturbing were the photos of huge classes of disciples performing feats of remarkable flexibility in perfectly ordered rows, seemingly captured just so by the photographer so as reinforce the notion of freedom through surrender and acceptance, but instead giving the photo a Church of the Unification mass wedding quality.

            I got another air ball when I asked the aerobics instructor when Rev. Moon was showing up.

Diligently though I may have scoured his work, Thoreau appears to have said absolutely nothing whatsoever about being wary of endeavors that required liability waivers. As a man searching for enlightenment and the perfect martini, I can safely say that nothing engenders the aspiration for peace, harmony and contentment more than several minutes of legal disclaimers and warnings before a yoga class.

It was not until after the founder’s liability mantra was concluded that we were all admonished never to “break the seal,” meaning that we were to stay in the studio until all poses were completed so as not to disturb our fellow yogis path to enlightenment, as if a wisp of the cool air from the profane outside world would bring about the Yogi Apocalypse.

Maybe it’s just the lawyer in me but I seemed to be the only one to see the irony in essentially locking people in a heated room for an intense exercise regimen immediately after disclaiming all potential liability for bodily injury.

I made it through twenty -two poses before my water bottle was empty and I felt like Brando’s tee-shirt in “A Streetcar Named Desire.” Despite the aforesaid admonitions and the vague notion that one does not quit, I yanked my sopping wet mat off the carpet and was taking it to the shed when I was semi-accosted by the yoga Nazi guarding the door, who reminded me of my higher obligations to the class. In my funk, it worked for a couple of seconds.

But even in the haze of heat, exertion and dehydration, I fear the East Texas boy in me came out as my initial thoughts first ran toward his scrawny cult ass and the medium -sized mud hole I planned to stomp in it. But fortunately for both of us, I regained my senses soon enough to realize I didn’t give a rat’s ass what he thought and, as for the rest of the class, well, I had their seal right here.

A rare charm of hot yoga studios is the shower and if you break the seal, by God, you get it first. The first blast of cold water gave me perspective on at least one of the many things I had survived in my lifetime.

My two older brothers and their friends, during critical Longhorn or Cowboy games, would routinely sacrifice me to the football gods, a quasi- religious offering which involved me- during puberty- being dragged down a flight of stairs testicles first. My mother -a die hard Cowboy fan who remembers April 27, 1960 not as my birthday but as the day the Cowboys obtained their initial NFL charter- rarely intervened as the offering, more often than not, actually seemed to work

At 53, I have now also survived the following:

The Cold War.

Communism.

Leisure suits.

SAE pledgeship.

The bar exam.

Disco.

Two children.

            The Eighties.

Padded shoulders on men’s suits.

Whiskey.

Cigarettes.

My own self-doubt.

In all seriousness, I truly understand the manifest importance of repetitive postures as a path to meditative peace. In fact, one of my teachers at my studio, Lotus Yoga, is part of the Ashtanga tradition and I find comfort in its repetitive postures as well in the guided meditations at the conclusion. There is a harmony between the breath and movement in the beginning and a peaceful and receptive mind at the end. In fact, I’ve conjured up images of everything from Utopian visions of the afterlife to old Sports Illustrated swimsuit covers during these meditations.

Stripped to its core, yoga is to me a means of physical exertion which can lead to a peaceful mind. This journey is profoundly personal one. Once angry and aggressive, I am trying very hard to not be old and bitter and to find peace and harmony in an anomalous and disharmonious world.

I was not going to find it at the UPS store.

© (2013)

Next time: “Sure she’s your yoga teacher.”

"HAUTE, HOT OR NOT? PART ONE"

THE YOGA CHRONICLES: CONFESSIONS OF A RELUCTANT YOGI

“Haute, Hot or Not? Part One”

All things considered, I’d rather have been comparative-shopping proctologists than yoga studios, but like a limping, slightly chubby Diogenes hoisting a lamp filled with bacon grease, my bum knee and I sallied forth to discover whether this new endeavor held for me the unaffected joy of dribbling a basketball, the mystical allure of running, or the censorious discipline imposed by golf.

How utterly Freudian is that? Id, ego and super-ego.

While my instincts told me that instruction was a primary consideration in choosing a studio, the physical plant had to be a place in which I felt at home. I am a man whose tastes run to dive bars with convivial wait staffs, greasy spoons where real chicken–fried steak can be found, and funky old gyms where there are two or three dead spots on the hardwood and the game clock still rotates rather than digitizes.

In retrospect, I suppose I was expecting them all to involve variations on a general theme gleamed from my brief flirtation with the late Seventies/early Eighties Austin counter-culture: an Early Hippie aesthetic with eastern and Asian influences and perhaps a Navajo blanket thrown in for good measure, shaggy beatniks left over from Woodstock with dirty feet speaking in muted, measured tones while sitar music provided the soundtrack. It wouldn’t have been a stretch to find an in-house dealer on premises and I would all but guaranteed the lovely scent of curry would permeate the entire joint. I was expecting at least one Buddha statue to placidly preside over the whole operation.

So imagine my surprise when I found myself in a tony cave inside a mid-rise seconds away from Highland Park, where a security guard greeted you at the door to establish whether you were someone of importance or interest. I suppressed my initial inclination to ask how long the wait for a table was. Back in the day, my brother Ben would have hit him in the palm with a C-note and told him he wanted his whole group to jump the line past the velvet rope.

It was at this point I first noted the obvious and undeniable significance of incense and candle aroma to the practice of yoga. Don’t get me wrong-.I am all in favor of a fragrant yoga studio (we’ll discuss the quaint aromas of “hot yoga” in another installment)-but I was not prepared for the ground floor cosmetics counter at Neiman Marcus. Yet here were those same sleek women- whose designer fragrances were locked in a battle royal with pungent candles and burning sticks of incense- striding purposefully through a lobby where I too could buy–for a mere $1195.00- an imitation Navajo blanket of my very own. The whole place had a distinct high-end boutique feel, down to the black American Express cards and Prada handbags.

I had narrowly avoided the “Wellness Center” which greeted me as I emerged from the elevator, which is a good thing, being that I have no earthly idea what “wellness” is or why I would want it, much less pay to get it. After at nimble feint to my right, I found myself in a moody room lit by thirteen hundred candles issuing soothing aromatics into some fairly rarefied air where lacquered bamboo shelves were overburdened with books, CDs, the above-mentioned Navajo blankets, mats, mat holders, bolsters, blocks, straps, and, of course, candles and incense. There were Indian rugs on the floor, dark paneling on the walls and alas, two futons bookending the room, presumably for those who desired a nap after class.

Now we’re getting somewhere, I thought.

The first air ball came when I asked the waif at the front desk if she minded if I took a nap before class. The response came from the Voice of the New Age. There was no mistaking it.

“Ya know, like really, they don’t like people laying down on them,” she mewed, having looked up from Twitter just long enough to miss the joke. The fact that she did not take any personal responsibility whatsoever for the prohibition made me realize- for perhaps the millionth time in the last two decades -that we really ought to keep score during children’s soccer games.

If I seem overly cynical, it is because the yoga practice I have found is genuine, honest and true, a practice to which I am totally committed and which challenges me daily. It is also the result of a journey that began much earlier than I really knew. In fact, I now see its genesis in the dank gyms of my youth where I learned life’s harsh realities:

If you aren’t good enough, no one chooses you to play on their team.

If you don’t score, the other side gets the ball and keeps it until you keep them from scoring.

If you don’t win, you sit down again and watch others play.

There are monumental truths in a pickup basketball game. In fact, the minute I embraced those undeniable truths is when I became a much better basketball player. I was forced to accept and analyze my own shortcomings in order to overcome them. I learned to pass inside to the big men, play defense which would complement my teammates, and in general make myself part of a unified whole better than the sum of its parts. It was then I began getting picked over taller, faster and more athletic players.

I was also very often the only white player in the gym in a time and place where social change was occurring but racial scar tissue remained. Acceptance of one’s circumstances and surroundings was essential to not getting your ass kicked. But that experience was much more primal than simple self-preservation or even the grudging respect I ultimately earned.

I had deliberately insinuated myself into a place where I had to no choice but to adapt, accept and surrender, a place where my self–respect derived only from vigilance, discipline and finely patterned behavior. It was also a place where no one could protect me.

In short, it was my first lesson in humility.

That same humility is the foundation of any yoga practice and remains the biggest obstacle in my yoga practice and in my life.

So my new “gym” had to have some blood, sweat and tears to it, a place where I could build my own practice without pretense or distraction. I needed the exact opposite of institutionalization and commercialization. I needed a blank canvas if I were to shed my own pretenses, distractions and affectations.

This was not it.

Even worse, I never got my nap.

NEXT TIME: “Seal this.”

© (2013)

THE YOGA CHRONICLES: CONFESSIONS OF A RELUCTANT YOGI

 

            I was a cardiologist's wet dream: a fifty-one year- old white male, twenty-five pounds overweight, with a high stress job and in a torrid love affair with fried foods. To be fair, I was also a runner with five marathons under my ever-expanding belt, even though I now competed in the spectacularly unflatteringly- named "Rhino" division, having somehow leap-frogged the somewhat -less- insulting- but -still unflattering "Clydesdale" division altogether.

            But after over thirty years of relentless pounding, I was now face to face with the specter of my own running mortality. Plantar fasciitis gave rise to chronic runners knee, resulting in the only protracted injury-related layoff of my extraordinarily average running career. Joints ached under the additional strain of the extra bulk and it took two Advil, a knee brace and a back support truss just to get me out the door.

And then one day I just stopped.

            Over the years,  I willingly accepted the abuse of running as part of some battered, psychologically mutated protestant ideal that Texas boys of a certain era absorb on the bristly brown grass of August two –a–days. Please forgive me as I may have failed to grasp the gentle wisdom of my high school football coaches but I was too busy watching the heat rise off the ground like amoeba. Most all of it essentially carried the same general theme in any event: If it doesn’t hurt, it’s not doing you any good.

No pain, no gain.

You ain’t hurt, get back in there.

Water? You don’t need water. That’s why you have salt tablets.

But they didn’t tell me what happens when you quit.

In my junior year in college, I was sixty pounds overweight, smoked two packs of menthols a day, hadn’t eaten a fruit or vegetable other than a Frito in three years and polished off a bottle of rum before sundown most days.

But in late May of 1981, I had the Austin Flood Epiphany. On May 24, 1981, I rolled all the dope I had into a joint the size of a panatella, which I smoked during the worst flood in Austin history, not knowing until later whether or not I actually dreamed up the white Volkswagen micro bus floating down South Lamar carrying four old hippies and two cases of contraband Hawaiian shirts.

During the previous semester, I had lost one girlfriend, several critical GPA points for law school and in general touch with the bounds of propriety. On the other hand, I had rediscovered Taco Bell and marijuana.

It was when my roommate found me nude on the floor looking under tables, mattresses and stereo equipment that I had my very own personal moment of clarity.

He asked, innocently enough, what I was looking for.

To which I replied: April.

Whether it was an epiphany or whether I had simply run out of dope, I can’t be sure.

Armed only with the Socratic teachings of my high school football coaches, I unwittingly took my first steps to yoga. It was, to be sure, a circuitous route.

The next day, I quit drinking, dope and eating red meat. The Over and Under among my dearest friends was anywhere from six to fifty-seven hours. (For those of you keeping score at home: Drinking- 120 days. Grass- 180 days. Red meat- 18 months.)

I also found myself on the track at Memorial Stadium at 3 o’clock that next afternoon with the sun throwing daggers at Austin, Texas even though priests and nuns might be outside. The amoeba patterns emanating from the synthetic track, while different from those of my scorched high school football field, were somehow comforting. 

That day I made it almost a lap before I had to stop and retch.

I was twenty-one years old.

Every step on that track that summer was simply a step. I required of myself only one more step, not daring to think beyond that lest the attachment of performance poison the otherwise pure process. All I wanted was that calm feeling at the end of my run when my heart rate subsided and all I could feel were the toxins pouring out of my body. It was utter self-containment. That was enough. There was no thought or distraction- not even a sense of commitment.

In retrospect, even my running wardrobe seemed almost obstinately anachronistic: white tee shirt, gray gym shorts and brown suede (yes, I said suede) Adidas Samba soccer shoes- perhaps the worst possible thing a human being could put on the their feet in order to run. In the seminal age of polyester Dolphin running shorts and New Balance shoes, I needed only the act of running, not the accoutrement. As ever, I felt enough of the interloper as it was without trying to take on the airs (and thus the responsibilities) of a real runner.

Six months and sixty pounds flew by.

            Thirty years later, the idea of not running terrified me. What if I could never run again? It was far more than the fear of inactivity or the aging process- it was the fear that there would be no escape-  no sublime catharsis- for me against the monumental pressures and petty indignities of my daily existence. I feared I would grab an Uzi and start looking for a McDonald's inside of two weeks.

            Other than my rather unnatural fascination with thrift store shopping, running is the only remotely Zen-like experience of my day. There is just something about a loop around White Rock Lake late on an October afternoon with the crisp air, the smells of fall in my nose, the leaves crackling beneath my feet, and the sun sneaking below the tree line which somehow majestically transforms me into a larger, more worthy, human being.

            What would happen when that went away? What other passions would I be deprived of? And how quickly? The softball which was now my left knee simply appeared out of the void. It frightened me in a way I was not prepared to be frightened. Is this a sore knee which it swollen or is this a queen of-diamonds kind of tumor? Remember, you’re getting to that age, a little voice was telling me.

 

NEXT TIME: “OM. Really?!?“

(c) (2013)