The Yoke

Everyone is into Yoga these days. That’s good! But in America it has become merely another system of exercise or weight-control. There is very little knowledge or study of the Yogic philosophies behind the stretching and relaxation routines. Americans think they know who they are and couldn’t care less about where all this Yoga stuff comes from. They go to their mega-churches on Sunday and sit like sheep listening to the Christian Rock and to the charismatic preacher telling them that they are Good People if only they will make sure they are here every Sunday, checkbook open, and don’t forget to work hard all week—God likes it when you are successful and the Church really likes it! Americans are the world’s cockiest people—they think they know who they are, they are convinced that they are right most of the time, they are incurably optimistic about Life and totally convinced the American Way of—--is the best thing going. They go through their busy days running to the office, zooming to lunch with the gang, checking email, gossiping about sports or the latest styles, picking up the kids, going to the game. What a Life! And so democratic! Why can’t the whole world be like this? Americans do not know a thing about Death. They never look under the lid to see what makes them tick. Do you really think that you are the being depicted on your driver’s license? What does the word “I” mean that you use 100 times a day? What do you really mean by that? These are not just questions for young college kids to ponder about before they enter the “real world” and have no more time for such foolishness. These are questions at the root of much of the unhappiness, stress, and sickness we see all around us in modern society.

The Sanskrit word “Yoga”, meaning “link”, comes from the same Indo-European root as our word “yoke”. “Yoke” has a somewhat negative sub-meaning, perhaps because of millennia of guilt for the way we have treated draft animals, but Yoga is the link between the physical body and the spiritual body, a system of training for both the physical and spiritual sides of us to enable us to strengthen that link. Yoga is the oldest known systematic method of dealing with the true meaning of “Self” or "I".

There is another Sanskrit word prana which means life force and is an important concept in the study of Yoga. This is a concept that is almost universal among ancient tribal systems of belief as well as among Eastern religions. It is significantly lacking in Western religions which have chosen to give the power of life and death to God and have reduced the human spirit and its life force to serfs in the Glorious Kingdom. Pray from the heart but once and thou shalt be saved, no matter how much of a sloppy, double-dealing lazy bastard you are most of the time.

Life force, prana, chi, Ki, 気, Power (a la Carlos Castaneda)--no matter what the name, it is what keeps us alive. It is completely amoral, used for good as well as bad actions. Everyone has at least a little bit, healthy happy people have more, the person on their deathbed is being rapidly drained of it. All around you there are people indulging themselves and wasting their prana by chewing gum, smoking, twisting their mouths, pacing restlessly, cradling coffee cups, constantly putting snacks in their mouth, indulging in nervous habits and useless actions. Much of this is caused by unconscious fear, anxiety, or anger that has no other way to get expressed. Some people around you however practice self-control, not necessarily because they are devotees of Eastern cults but because they were brought up that way or learned on their own (自悟自証). These people work with a minimum of effort, waste little time, are focussed and ready to get to the point, and are rarely ill. People who are leaking their life force are worn-out looking and don’t know why, tire easily, sick often, and seem as buffeted about by life as a dead leaf in the winter wind.

The study of Yoga as well as some Eastern religions teaches how to conserve or improve your life force. The first lesson is usually how to conserve what you already have by not letting it leak out all over the place. It is taught that the major causes of energy drain are 1) nervous habits, 2) association with negative persons, 3) misuse of your senses, and 4) idle meaningless talk. Let’s look at these:

• Nervous habits include foot tapping, finger crunching, mouth twisting, hair flicking, teeth clamping, compulsive snacking, tobacco use, coffee need, and other addictions (let’s take up the physiological side of these some other time).
• Negative persons—we are taught as good Christian Americans that everyone has a good side and the right thing to do is to be nice, not avoid people, engage them in conversation, try to be their friend. This is not always good for you. Read Carlos Castaneda for the paranoid, gothic version about evil wizards out to steal your life force around every corner. That’s the other extreme; the truth is there is no benefit for you to let your chi get drained by constantly being around people who bring you down. Disappear.
• Misuse of your senses, what does that mean? The worst thing we do these days in that realm is overindulgence in electronic media. Americans can’t seem to get through their day unless they bombard themselves with radio, TV, I-pod, constant stimulation. There is absolutely NO WAY to get through to any kind of inner peace while you are watching television. Worse, the drama and passionate attachment depicted in movies and even “reality shows” pulls your chi into an imaginary karma and exhausts you. You get involved in the problems of fictional characters and have no energy left for the real problems of yourself and those in your world. This ties directly into:
• Idle chatter—many of us are afraid of silence. If we cannot be chatting away with others, we will keep our mind-talk going full tilt in an imaginary conversation with ourselves. We never stop talking, inside our out. For some the only way to shut off this chatter is to fill the senses with TV or radio, but that doesn’t solve the problem, as above.

All this is just the tip of the iceberg of the Yogic Philosophies. There is much, much more. If Americans would only start by taking 5 minutes a day for some deep, silent breathing, some solitary non-thought, muscles relaxed, no Behaviors, we would all be much better prepared for the challenges life puts in front of us, to say nothing of death. If we could just go through our day without banging into our environment at every turn, without breaking knobs off things from twisting too hard (interesting thought—have electronic manufacturers gone exclusively to pressure activated switches because we were breaking too many knobs and sliders?) Like the knife of Cook Ting, we would slip through our day, following the effortless way, the open sinews, following the Dao of our life, then the sharp edge of our energy would never dull.

Maybe then we would be ready for the first yoga position.