Yoga Is Annoying — But You Gotta Do It!
In my last piece, I wrote about devices being invented to help people improve their posture without getting off the internet. I had no argument with this lifestyle. Some people need to be online without interruption, like the saints who felt an unbroken connection to God.
The problem is not the screen. It’s the way we do it. We either slouch in front of a computer or stoop over a handheld device. Then we fixate for countless hours, as our body slowly deteriorates.
Consider the passage at the beginning of Chapter 5 of George Eliot’s Middlemarch:
“Hard students are commonly troubled with gowts, catarrhs, rheums, cachexia, bradypepsia, bad eyes, stone, and collick, crudities, oppilations, vertigo, winds, consumptions, and all such diseases as come by over-much sitting: they are most part lean, dry, ill-colored … and all through immoderate pains and extraordinary studies. If you will not believe the truth of this, look upon great Tostatus and Thomas Aquainas’ works; and tell me whether those men took pains.” — Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, P. I, s. 2.
This book was first published in 1621, and back then these health problems were reserved for students. Today most people are literate, and everyone has a device. Computers and devices are moving society toward an ergonomic collapse.
Inventions in technology, like AR Glasses, will allow us to go online without needing to peck with our thumbs or crouch forward in a bad chair.
But these inventions can not fix the physical damage already done. To stave off the maladies that attend a chronically sloven posture, people are going to need some work.
People will need to do Yoga.
Everyone groans. Yoga is not for me. Yoga is for old people who care about their lives. It’s for crazy people who obsess about health food. It’s for people who are falling apart while going through a mid-life crisis, divorce, unemployment, sudden onset of depression, emptiness, and disease. One doesn’t start doing yoga because one wants to. One does it because one feels like shit.
Ok fine. But, why just yoga? Isn’t there anything else? Anything but yoga.
Here is a quick take on a few other ideas:
Chiropracters can make adjustments that mend and reposition the spine and neck. But if the muscle memory is strong, there is a setback and resumption of the former posture.
Strength training can shore up the body. But it makes people stiff. Then it’s harder to learn and move into good alignment, because the range of flexibility is limited.
Pilates can stabilize the core muscles around proper alignment. It is as good as doing yoga. But I don’t do it, so I don’t know anything about it.
Yoga is a technique and a tool. It works on the mind and the body. (Stay with me.) First it goes after the mind. If a guy isn’t ready to practice — if he is tense and distracted — he will have trouble fitting himself into the poses and sustaining the right alignment. The begining of class gets the person’s mind ready to relax, focus, and center.
This is why people chant, lift their arms up and down, fold their hands in anjali mudra, do child’s pose and sun salutations. It blows away disconcerting thoughts and irelevant memories. Bring yourself into the present moment.
Yoga teacher Jason Crandall said it takes about 15 minutes of steady-paced movement at the start of class before students begin to drop things that happened earlier that day, slow down their thoughts, and connect with their breath.
Once that happens, then it starts to work. When one is focused, one can identify the misalignment. One can correct the imbalance. It is a process of repetition and correction. The muscle memory will shift a little at first and more over time. The adjustments stay put longer. Whenever one reverts to old habits — like stooping and slouching — the self correcting programs kick in. One can restore their posture.
When the self adjustments start kicking in,Bikram used to say, “the operation is a big success. The patient is dead.”
The new person is loving life. It’s like when Alexa is happy. The A.I. got the hang of it, and it (she) can anticipate the choices that work.
When one props up the spine and neck, one feels good, and one shimmers with feeling. Like lather, rinse, and repeat a positive feedback loop is initiated. Identify the misalignment, reset the proper form, and continue to hold the posture. When it slumps, repeat step one. Over and over until you drop dead.
Fix the body, adopt a virtual assistant, and free yourself from the shackles of internet servitude. After all, what is our purpose? The human body is not supposed to be a piece of furniture for using the internet.
