welcome to the first church of the final appropriation
When I opened my Bikram Yoga studio, I wanted to make it a safe and comfortable space for our clients. In my teacher training with Bikram Choudhury, he modeled a lot of behavior that I was intent on avoiding. Yoga Journal dubbed him the yoga community’s “bad boy,” and he reveled in the notoriety by frequently berating and abusing
I’m 61 years old and have done karaoke exactly twice. The first time was a smashing success. I sang the Ramone’s, “I Wanna Be Sedated,” at my 70 year old mother’s local hangout, to rousing applause.
The next time was about 10 years later at a tiny, empty, dive bar, in Key West. I was with a
Half Tortoise is primarily a relaxation posture. It is said to enhance longevity by slowing the breathing.
Start in a kneeling position, legs together, hips on the heels, sitting upright. Raise the arms overhead
In the Bikram Yoga posture sequence, all standing postures start in the Anatomical Position, which I call, Start Position. Basically, it's just standing upright, facing forward, with your feet together and arms resting naturally by your sides.
Some Western yoga traditions use the strict medical version of this posture, which has the arms turned outwards to face the palms forward,
This article is part of a series on the Bikram Yoga posture sequence. I will eventually add a Table of Contents linking to each of the postures.
After Standing Deep Breathing, the first posture in the Bikram Yoga series is a combined sequence of three individual postures: Lateral Half Moon; Half Moon Backbend; Hands to Feet Pose. This article is
with a nod of the head towards Sean Hayes
One day a student of Zen was walking through the trails behind the Avalon kitchen right over there when he came across a small, brightly painted copper colored rooster hutch. Inside the hutch was an ancient looking rooster looking out as if he was expecting visitors. There were two signs on
he came up on
an eagle on a sandbar
looking over his shoulder
bloody beak dripping
with dead cormorant
it lost the gaze
and flew up and away
leaving him to wonder
about the falling man / t
in the newspaper / h
or was it real life / e
fear is a lesson / f
she taught him well / a
bloody anus of
I don’t think about suicide
I mean, not really
I don’t dwell on suicide
“is it Tuesday?”
I have thought about suicide
I mean, who hasn’t?
I’ve thought about suicide once or twice
it’s only natural
I have thoughts about suicide
they are not mine
I’ve thought about suicide a few times
“I’ll
the beginning is not the beginning, this is how it starts but this is not the beginning, the beginning was before, the beginning was before that time, that time was a new beginning, that time was a death and a rebirth, the beginning was the beginning, then there was death, a death, the death, followed by a slow re-entry, a
i’m lucky that it happened so long ago. i was lucky before the internet. cameras existed including polaroid instants but they weren’t present at that time. the only images of my abuse are fading in the aging brains on which they’re stored. there were five of them — brains not pictures. three abusers one witness and one victim.