A Funny Thing Happen On the Way To Nirvana

I attended the second annual Yoga Festival Toronto, a non-profit grassroots 3-day yoga urban retreat, which took place Friday August 21 - Sunday August 23. It was held in the beautiful National Ballet School (of Canada) on Jarvis. 7 dance studios were used to hold various yoga-related sessions. For the festival, they were named after the 7 chakras. In addition, there was a common area for eating vegan, ayurvedic lunch and dinner meals. A number of vendors and organizations were on hand to peddle their wares. Generally though, it was less commercial than the Yoga Expo that takes place every year at Exhibition Place.

For 3 days, a 3-hour morning asana class was followed by lunch, two 2-hour sessions in the afternoon, dinner, and a round-table discussion. Morning meditation was available for those who can come by 7 a.m. I did not attend any morning meditation although I did spend some quiet time up on the 6th floor veranda Friday morning.

My first asana was an Ujjayi Pulse class with Diane Bruni. This is typically an Ashangta class where the breath is synced with a live drummer keeping a 4 beat pattern: inhale-3-2-1, exhale-3-2-1. This can be challenging, especially as the session grows long or the postures increase in difficulty. Diane dialed down the intensity when it became obvious that a lot of the practitioners were not used to the speed of this style. The interesting thing was the foot placement that she taught. Something she decided to change only 3 months ago after a yoga retreat, after 20 years of practicing a different way. I guess it's never too late to try something new. Certainly, I found that it helped me more with my balance and postures.

Lunch was a revelation. Although yoga was originally reserved for men, it is now primarily practiced by women. As it turns out, the breakdown at YFT was 78% women. And apparently more than half of them are young, slender yoga teachers. With a fair proportion of them sporting short pixie haircuts. As you can tell, I kind of have a thing for that. Perhaps it was the vegan lunch, or perhaps for some other reasons, but I was feeling really good!

The first afternoon session was a lecture with Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad. They felt that both Western thinking (e.g., God) and Eastern thinking (e.g., karma, non-attachment) separated spirituality: selflessness, timelessness (The Here and Now), egolessness and so on from the world: self, ego, thought, etc. This not only creates an unattainable and incorrect hierarchy of values: the spiritual path, but is subject to authoritarian abuse: societal and religious. Their 3rd way is to embed the spiritual in the mundane, "I am a spirit" not "I have a spirit". This is an interesting perspective though I couldn't help but giggle at the thought that this was covered in an episode of Friends where Phoebe tries to do a selfless act without personal satisfaction (selfishness) to refute the cynical Joey.

A born-again Christian had a real problem with Joel and Diana. She felt that they were one more set of people "telling her what to do". Oddly, she did not see the irony of apparently giving her own religion a free pass when it comes to people telling her what to do. I wonder how she feels about the fact that Hatha Yoga (the physical postures) is but a first step to other yoga traditions that are definitely religious in nature.

The second afternoon session was a workshop with Scott Davis. He specializes in Yin and Yang yoga, incorporating TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) concepts into yoga practices. The main idea is that various yoga postures stimulate different meridian lines, leading to manipulation of various organ systems, which can be useful for increasing or decreasing energy or emotions associated with those systems. Also, as these systems are tied to the seasons, you can also adjust your practice to reflect the currently dominant system.

Dinner was intellectually stimulating but there was some downside. Some friends I ran into insisted that I eat with them, sequestered away into a corner. Thus, I was unable to meditate upon neither truth nor beauty. Ha!

The round-table concerns itself with yoga and relationships: self vs mentor, sex vs. celibacy, monogamy vs. non-monogamy, attachment vs. detachment. The faculty members had interesting insights, as they come from not only personal experience, but also study, thought, and scholarship. The contributions from the audience were less insightful as they draw primarily from personal experience: This is how I feel, this is what happened to me. The problem with personal experience is that, by its very definition (personal and subjective), any revelatory application to anyone else is purely accidental.