It’s been a busy week, physical & emotional practice-wise, & I am Wicked sore. (That’s an official Bostonianism for ya. Having lived here almost six months, we were granted dispensation to use Wicked without irony by the city government.
Did 30 minutes of back releases & now the blog post & then going off to cavort in Epsom Salts.
The link between blogging & yoga is something that doesn’t seem to cause a whole lot of examination these days. I missed the nascent & even pubescent days of blogging. Now, we all blog about everything. Got an interest? Pet peeve? Obsession? Blog about it. There’s an academic/spiritual/obscene/all-of-the-above (yahooooo!!!) blog for you & if there isn’t one out there, start one!
But I really do think of blogging as a part of my yoga practice, right up there with asana, pranayama, neti, seva, blah blah blah.
(That was just a warm-up. I am about to quote the Sutras, in Sanskrit, to illustrate my point. Really, mostly to demonstrate that I can, in fact, do something other than curse & neurose.
Patanjali, Section II on Practice, Verse 1: Tapah svadhyayesvara pranidhanani kriya yogah.
According to the translation I own, (not being a Sanskrit scholar, quoting really is just for show
, ” Accepting pain as help for purification, study of spiritual books, and surrender to the Supreme Being constitute Yoga in practice.”
(Thank you Sri Swami Satchidananda. BTW, I like your beard.
Acccording to my interpretation of this (different thing than quoting or translation, please note), blogging fits kinda like this.
1) Tapas — a form of discipline or burning out to create purification. Writing is a part of daily discipline. Somedays good/bad/ indifferent but always a form of creating space, clearing out the pus & puke to which flesh is heir. And, also, sometimes a form of self-mortification along the lines of public flagellation (so many possible bad typos with those two words… pause to think about it…
2) Svadhaya — study. Can be looked at in different circumstances as study of Self or Self-Studying-Spiritual-Stuff. Swami definitely leans to the latter, but he is a Swami, not a mere navel-gazing mortal.
In this case, blogging I feel works as both. The self-study (narcissism is the Freudian vs. Sanskrit term
is obvious. The self-studying-spiritual-stuff is partly I think from trying to encapsulate & interpret/think out loud & put out there the spiritual bits absorbed along the way. Like reading back your study notes. And it’s also from reading other people’s blogs. Seriously. I don’t presume my ramblings are anywhere up there, but I do know that I’ve learned much from others in the cybershala. How can the study of another human’s heartfelt soulsearching self-practice be anything other than sacred?
4) And the Surrender to the Supreme Being… that must mean the Internet. Or WordPress. Obviously.
The other level of Sanskrit I can throw out there in relation to blogging is Sangha. The creation of community.
On the Forrest level — here’s my personal Sanskrit-to-Forrest translation. (Note that it is much shorter & uses plain Anglo-Saxon.
Blogging: A commitment to investigate, articulate & communicate your process opens you up to yourself, others & the mysteries of the earth. Asking your Spirit “What the Fuck?” is a tool to use on & off the mat.
But that’s just based on my perspective/motivations for participation in this phenomenom. I’d be very interested to hear from others in some form (email, post, comment, energetic transmission
on how their blog fits with their yoga practice overall.