Category: Philosophy

Lurking Dangers of Online Images

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Dear Readers,

A confession. No. A lamentation.

Recently my beloved Community Yoga, (West Lafayette, Indiana) was sued for copyright infringement based on a re-posted Hungryphil blog post.

I am mortified and confused. In all my work, I aim to always attribute images and honor the work of writers, artists, and designers. I quickly learned that “free downloads” and filtered public domain images are not so, attribution and plagiarism are not same, and the copyright/fair use issues are very gray.  The image I had used was a comic cartoon of a yogi doing a handstand, sideways (funny and creative work, thank you artist whom I don’t know and have inadvertently offended). Ironically the post was about the dangers of ego-focus. It had the website and the image id number ON the image. I wrongly assumed the on-image attribution would operate as an advertisement. A very unintentional misunderstanding of “free downloads” and fair use. Confessedly, I’m ignorant of the shades of copyright gray not malicious. What makes my mistake worth $660 for a third party who simply re-posted?

The system, or rather the single letter received over mail is based on guilt, shaming and punishing rather than creative protection and public education. How is the calculation made that one can be sued for an indeterminate amount between $660 and $150K for an $11 image? How much of the $660 would the artist get? Once I have a clear view of the rules regarding online image use on personal blogs, I’ll be sure to post it. So far I haven’t found an easy list to follow and would be grateful for recommendations.

It doesn’t help that the law firm suing Community Yoga has an unsavory online reputation for copyright infringement related “extortion.”

This makes me hesitant to use ANY online imagery. So, from now on I’ll be posting random potentially unrelated images of things, myself and my family.

Community Yoga did not make a penny from the image I posted. Yes, I should pay for my unintentional mistake, like I would a traffic ticket. In this case, the passenger is getting the ticket and the fine is random.

Part of me wants to sulk quietly in fear of being sued myself. If I’m quiet maybe they won’t hit me with a lawsuit too. But, I believe it is important to share and warn of the dangers. In a moment of unaware image use, I opened myself and those who would support me up to legalized blackmail by online ambulence chasers.

Let this be a gentle warning to you, my dear blog reading and writing friends. Protect yourselves and your friends. I’ll try my best to do better.

Sincerely,

Hungryphil

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wobblyogi Wednesday: Raisins and Meditation

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Eating meditatively takes us beyond focused sensations of the tongue. Eating becomes an expansive experience of smells, textures, coordinated movements mediated by the body and received by the mind. What would it be like to “taste” everything for the first time?  Here is an excerpt from Full Catastrophe Living that explains the practice of mindful eating:

The first introduction to the meditation practice in MBSR always comes as a surprise to our patients. More often than not, people come with the idea that meditation means doing something unusual, something mystical and out of the ordinary, or, at the very least, something relaxing. To relieve them of these expectations right off the bat, we give everybody three raisins and we eat them one at a time, paying attention to what we are actually doing and experiencing from moment to moment. You might wish to try it yourself after you see how we go about it.

First we bring our attention to seeing one of the raisins, observing it carefully as if we had never seen one before. We feel its texture between our fingers and notice its colors and surfaces. We are also aware of any thoughts we might be having about raisins or food in general. We note any thoughts and feelings of liking or disliking raisins if they come up while we are looking at it. We then smell it for a while, and finally, with awareness, we bring it to our lips, being aware of the arm moving the hand to position it correctly, and of salivating as the mind and body anticipate eating. The process continues as we take it into our mouth and chew it slowly, experiencing the actual taste of one raisin. And when we feel ready to swallow, we watch the impulse to swallow as it comes up, so that even that is experienced consciously. We even imagine, or “sense,” that now our bodies are one raisin heavier. Then we do it again with another raisin, this time without any verbal guidance, in other words, in silence. And then with the third. The response to this exercise is invariably positive, even among the people who don’t like raisins. People report that it is satisfying to eat this way for a change, that they actually experienced what a raisin tasted like for the first time that they could remember, and that even one raisin could be satisfying. Often someone makes the connection that if we ate like that all the time, we would eat less and have more pleasant and satisfying experiences of food. Some people usually comment that they caught themselves automatically moving to eat the other raisins before finishing the one that was in their mouth, and recognized in that moment that this is the way they normally eat.

Kabat-Zinn, Jon. Full Catastrophe Living (Revised Edition): Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness (pp. 15-16). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

 

 

Reading YOGA RISING

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Yoga Rising is a collection of yoga stories about authentic practice beyond superficial projections of perfect yoga poses and bodies in media. The stories are compiled by Sociologist and Women’s Studies Professor, Melanie Klein and return us to shared struggles toward authenticity and self-study (svadyaya).

I was particularly drawn to Indian-American yoga teacher Lakshmi Nair’s story, “Whose Yoga is it Anyway?: An Indian-American’s Adventures in YogaLand.”

I can easily relate to her concerns about romanticizing and reducing Indian culture and the origins of yoga….

While romanticization of our culture might seem preferable to outright bigotry and ignorance, I feel a lump in my throat chakra when I hear white folks singing the praises of Rama, a Hindu God who is said to be an avatar of Vishnu, one of the trinity of Hindu patriarchal deities and is the hero of the epic Ramayana. Do I bring up that Desi (South Asian) feminists revile Rama for his treatment of his wife Sita (though She Herself is an avatar of the Goddess Lakshmi) and risk getting flooded with those pitying looks that I get when I wear a bindi (the mark worn traditionally by Hindu women on the third eye chakra point) … hip on white women, but a marker of patriarchal oppression on me? Do I bring up the Dravidian nationalist theory that the Ramayana is a narrative of Aryan colonization of the Dravidian South in which the Dravidians are rendered as monkeys and demons?

Like her, I hope yoga in the U.S. and everywhere can be inclusive and open to a diversity of experience. For more about her Satya Yoga Collective: Yoga for people of color, look up: https://www.satyayogacollective.com

Like her, I believe in yoga as a form of social action:

We cannot strive to liberate ourselves alone. To truly free ourselves from suffering, we must work tirelessly to end the suffering of every being on the planet, because we are all One. That is our dharma. Yoga IS social justice.

Klein, Melanie C.. Yoga Rising: 30 Empowering Stories from Yoga Renegades for Every Body (p. 161). Llewellyn Worldwide, LTD. Kindle Edition.

Happy reading!

Wobblyogi

Socks and Defiant Fragility

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I thought back to med school, when a patient had told me that she always wore her most expensive socks to the doctor’s office, so that when she was in a patient’s gown and shoeless, the doctor would see the socks and know she was a person of substance, to be treated with respect.

Kalanithi, Paul. When Breath Becomes Air (p. 187). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

This story makes me think about the socks I will wear to my next checkup. It is an apt representation of the struggle to maintain our identity, respectability, and humanity when being medically or otherwise analyzed and assessed.  If I were to choose a pair of socks to carry the burden of expressing my personality, which would it be? My colorful Frida Kahlo socks, dignified black socks, sporty pink lined ankle socks, lace-rimmed boot socks? What makes me, me? and how can I protect and show that I am more than my faulty body, thoughts or feelings? I love this patient’s resistance to being reduced to a medical chart and her insistence on presenting herself as a “person of substance” despite being sick, weak or broken. To know that I am fragile and substantive, or rather because I am fragile, I have meaning. The patient seems to say, “I wear socks as an expression of my defiant fragility. I confront my own exposure to the threat of meaninglessness with the best socks I have.” I find myself inspired by this small act of resistance.

In my training as a hospice volunteer, protecting a sense of choice for patients is paramount. Choice gives them/us, humanity. Choice gives them/us, personality. Choice makes the difference between suffering or confronting death. Hospice gives them/us, socks.

A while back when I was having a difficult time, my good friend K. gave me these socks, with the note “walk in love.” I think this will be my socks when defiant fragility is called for. It is good to have good friends.

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Right now, What is important to you?

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My very wise for her years niece, Farah recommended I read this book by Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air, an account of his last days as a neurosurgeon, cancer patient, husband, son, father, writer and more.  The urgent search for meaning is palpable in his words and reminds us that an awareness of death makes us also aware of life. And, more importantly, what makes life worth living for each of us. Right now, what is important to you? Getting your garage clean, cooking dinner for your family, finishing a book, knitting a sweater, holding your loved ones hands, hugging your kids, paying the bills? An awareness of inevitable and unpredictable death limits abstraction and makes our search for meaning concrete, real and EMBODIED. How can I make meaning with the body, the life, the heart beat, the energy I have today?

Here is how Paul explains the struggle of meaning constrained by time:

The tricky part of illness is that, as you go through it, your values are constantly changing. You try to figure out what matters to you, and then you keep figuring it out. It felt like someone had taken away my credit card and I was having to learn how to budget. You may decide you want to spend your time working as a neurosurgeon, but two months later, you may feel differently. Two months after that, you may want to learn to play the saxophone or devote yourself to the church. Death may be a one-time event, but living with terminal illness is a process.

Kalanithi, Paul. When Breath Becomes Air (pp. 160-161). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

The terminally ill in body, intensely aware in mind show us the depth of human courage and reminds us what it means to be “fully alive.” Buddhist practices of death mediation or the yoga pose savasana (corpse pose) aim to invoke this mindful struggle for embodied, personal meaning that the terminally ill acutely suffer.

From the epilogue written by his wife, Lucy:

Relying on his own strength and the support of his family and community, Paul faced each stage of his illness with grace—not with bravado or a misguided faith that he would “overcome” or “beat” cancer but with an authenticity that allowed him to grieve the loss of the future he had planned and forge a new one. He cried on the day he was diagnosed. He cried while looking at a drawing we kept on the bathroom mirror that said, “I want to spend all the rest of my days here with you.” He cried on his last day in the operating room. He let himself be open and vulnerable, let himself be comforted. Even while terminally ill, Paul was fully alive; despite physical collapse, he remained vigorous, open, full of hope not for an unlikely cure but for days that were full of purpose and meaning.

Kalanithi, Paul. When Breath Becomes Air (pp. 219-220). Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

Thank you for the recommendation, Farah.

Wishing you days full of purpose and meaning,

Hungryphil

Non-Judgemental Judgement?

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The practices of yoga and social work both encourage maintaining an attitude of non-judgemental judgment. This requirement feels like Kant’s demand for an “disinterested interest” in the judgments of beauty. Suffering, care, and beauty all depend on our ability to notice what is happening without forcing theoretical preconceptions. Practicing this attitude of noticing without prejudice (i.e. pre-judgment) about how a pose or human well-being or a painting ought to look, is difficult. One suggestion, according to Prof. Ogden Rogers, is to go with the defense, to run with a running a man instead of trying to stop him. To stay “with” before trying to change..in yoga terms…stay with your breath, notice what is happening for you, stay with the discomfort…………stay with…stay with….stay with…….

Going With the Defense

Whatever a client brings to you, accept it as a gift. There are thoughts, feelings, and behavior, seen and unseen, and whatever emerges is something to be tracked, followed, and used to help the relationship. Never stop a running man. Run with him and wave others off who might stop him. Slowly slow your pace, travel to a place where the running no longer serves a purpose, and perhaps sitting and talking will emerge. Some wise workers call this “exhausting the resistance” or “going with the defense.”6 I like to think of it as simply unwrapping a gift and using it.

 

Rogers, Ogden W.. Beginnings, Middles, & Ends: Sideways Stories on the Art & Soul of Social Work (p. 40). White Hat Communications. Kindle Edition.

In the Middle of a Middle

We need nonjudgmental judges. We need those who can enter respectfully into the middle of our private muddles and echo the outside of our public rule. We need those who can understand the craziness that keeps us sane, and yet interpret the taboos that glue us together. We need advocates of the infinite diversities individuality provokes…and speak it to the Leviathan, and make it understand.

Rogers, Ogden W.. Beginnings, Middles, & Ends: Sideways Stories on the Art & Soul of Social Work (p. 83). White Hat Communications. Kindle Edition.

 

Cooking With Essential Oils and the Blondeyogi

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Thank you, blonde yogi, for cooking with me! We tried Beef Stew with Rose Mary Oil, DoTerra Winter White Chocolate with Cinnamon and Clove oil, and Toast with Wild Orange Butter.

Here is what I learned from the experience:

  1. Oils are easiest to incorporate in beverages, hot or cold. The Winter White Hot Chocolate was a delicious concoction of almond milk, spices, and white chocolate. So soothing. Here is the recipe.
  2. Oils are also perfect additions to flavored oils and butter. Our buttered toast with two drops of Wild Orange Oil and a touch of honey was my favorite.
  3. The taste of the stew with Rosemary oil was perhaps the most subtle. I like the idea of a collection of essential oils as both part of a medicine cabinet and a flavor pantry. Reach for whatever you have.

The experience was a change in perspective about how I use essential oils beyond the yoga mat and take the practice into the kitchen. I can see myself including bergamot, peppermint, ginger, lemon, cloves, cinnamon etc in my teas and adding oils like rosemary, thyme, oregano to olive oil or butter for dipping warm bread. Maybe I need to move my oils closer to the kitchen. Hmmmmm……

What are your favorite ways to use essential oils in your recipes?

More hungryphil-wobblyogi experiments to come! OnGuard Pancakes, next. Join me blondeyogi.

Wishing you good eating, moving, breathing and Happy Thanksgiving for readers in the U.S.,

Hungryphil

P.S. I was not the only one who liked the buttered toast the best! Thank you, Blonde Yogi Junior for taste testing with us!

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Meditative Monday: Lessons from a Labyrinth

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At first glance, this patch of grass looks like a creative mowing project. Like anything, how you approach it makes it either a frustrating walk in circles going nowhere or a transformative inner journey of self-awareness. For most of us, it may be both.

I crossed paths with this labyrinth courtesy of a recent Community Yoga Retreat. This was my first time. If you have never meditatively walked along a labyrinth let me try to describe my first experience.

We, about 16 of us, were asked to walk slowly in silent meditation through the labyrinth. As we walk in we were to consider all the things we are grateful for, after we reach the center indicated by a bowl of floating flowers and as we walk out of the labyrinth, we were to mindfully shed all the things we want to be free of.  This walk, warned the retreat center director could last 45 minutes.  Simple enough. Right?

I was the last to enter the labyrinth. I watched as everyone entered the labyrinth and walk slowly along the curves. My feet were bare. I could feel the cool grass below my feet. As I first entered the walk, I noticed my arms shivering and tingling. Maybe I was just cold, maybe I was feeling something. I don’t know. I felt calm and quiet. I also felt like I was walking with many others, in front and behind me (there was no one behind me). The labyrinth felt full. The first few moments of reverie soon dissolved into…why is it so hard to step slowly? is this ground uneven? Am I making the right turns? am I walking too closely behind? am I going to fast? oh, there’s a branch, gosh I’m cold….you get the point. It was a flood of how long is this going to take and am I lost? I can’t be if I can look up and step out at any time. My mind was playing weird games.

As I felt like I was spinning in circles becoming myself a labyrinth of confusion, I decided to enjoy the experience, to find a way to savor each step, each thought of gratitude, to send love to my friends walking with me. Magically, the craziness eased. I began to notice the journey, my unsteady steps, my worries, my fellow walkers, the sun, the warmth, the shadows, the trees. I began to move in and out of the labyrinth to find my horizon, feeling both lost and located at the same time. By the time I reached the bowl of floating flowers at the center, it felt like a long-delayed accomplishment. Joy and relief. Walking out of the circle as I allowed self-doubt drip down my fingertips I began to feel lighter. When I crossed paths with another, I felt a rise of self-judgment, am I going the right direction? Should we be crossing paths? Again, I reminded myself, it doesn’t matter, just walk, breathe and enjoy this morning.

Like life, there were rough patches, beautiful views, isolation, company, obstructive twigs, comforting sunshine, confusion, and clarity, ground and sky, turns and curves, crazy mind, calm mind, grateful heart, irritated heart. Maybe we are always in a labyrinth, either imprisoned and trapped or liberated and exploring.

There was a sense of relief after completing what felt like a long journey. As I stepped out, following a lady in front of me, also named Lisa, she said “Thanks for keeping me company.” I returned my gratitude for her company as well.

It was a trip, best, shared.

Last to exit, I joined the others, some resumed their conversations, some sat quietly, some shared their confusion about the labyrinth. We all survived and learned something about ourselves. I learned that I can make walking in circles bearable and even enjoyable, if I want. Maybe I can make anything bearable…….almost, with fellow walkers.

Happy Monday, everyone. Happy walking the week.

Wobblyogi

 

 

 

OOO Poem – Six Inches by Jeff Comer

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Object oriented ontology generously posits an agency, a qualified equal existence of all things. This poem shifts and shares the culpability of an accident across time, space and a multiplicity of things in action. It reminds me of Graham Harman’s example of the emperor choking on a pebble. So many things together make each moment of existence possible. My brain hurts with fascination (and often gratitude). Acorn agency and roadside accidents.

 

One minute I’m meandering down
a country road on a magnificent fall day,
lost in thought, radio playing,
and the next minute I feel my wheels

on the loose gravel of the shoulder,
there’s a deafening bang and I’m
climbing out of what’s left of my car.
The cop who came to investigate

was pretty sure I’d been speeding
but settled for lecturing me about how lucky
I was to walk away from such a crash,
that I’d be dead if my car had hit the tree

just six inches further to the left.
Anyone could see that what he said was true,
but it also struck me as I stood there
watching his car flash red and blue

that it was equally true the accident
would not have happened at all
if a raging storm some sixty years ago
hadn’t blown an acorn six inches closer

to the road than where it would’ve landed
on a day as sunny and calm as the one
we were in. It was a point I thought deserved
serious exploration—though perhaps

not just then, I decided, with a hundred birds
singing their tiny hearts out overhead
and the sky raining down yellow leaves,
and definitely not with the cop.

“Six Inches” by Jeff Coomer from A Potentially Quite Remarkable Thursday. © Last Leaf Press, 2015.

From the Writer’s Almanac https://writersalmanac.org/page/2/

 

 

Wobblyogi Wednesday: True Yoga

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Dear Yoga Friends,

Meet my favorite book of the week!

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The book introduces Pantanjali’s yoga sutras without being pedantic or self-righteous AND offers practical strategies and contexts for application.  The author, Jennie Lee, is creative in presenting the philosophy as well as corresponding affirmations and self-inquiring questions to journal.

Finally a book that presents yoga as SO much more than asana!

Here is an excerpt emphasizing the willing and rational devotion to kindness, happiness and peace. As such, yoga becomes the practice of choosing to not to suffer particularly when we acknowledge pain.

To be truly happy is to be successful at life and, like anything worth accomplishing, these practices require dedication. We must choose a peaceful response in times of conflict. We must choose a grateful thought when we feel negative and down. We must choose to tell the truth even when it is not convenient. These are not always easy choices, but if we are ready to claim true happiness and security that can sustain us through all the ups and downs of life, then these choices become a small price for the serenity, power, and wisdom they bring.

Lee, Jennie. True Yoga: Practicing With the Yoga Sutras for Happiness & Spiritual Fulfillment (Kindle Locations 132-136). Llewellyn Worldwide, LTD.. Kindle Edition.

This may even make the list of my favorite yoga books for all time.

Hope you enjoy it too.

Wishing you happy self-discovery,

the Wobblyogi