By Ed Staskus

Slightly less than 20% of everyone in yoga classes are men. That is sharply down from the 100% it was one hundred years ago. Since then the practice has been annexed by gals bending like pretzels. Even when they aren’t lithe and limber, they’ve fine-tuned in to the mental and physical health benefits of yoga.

The twist is that for thousands of years it was a men’s club. No women need apply. The idea of Daisy Dukes doing yoga was anathema. The prohibition was laughed out of the closet about fifty years ago. Now it’s a closet full of clothes with nothing to wear.

“I’ve been teaching yoga for over 25 years and I can’t believe how the number of men participating in yoga has not really increased,” says Yogi Aaron, director and master teacher at Blue Osa in Costa Rica.

When it comes to the practice nowadays, many men are like honey badgers. They just don’t care. Some of them have thought about it but never taken the first step. They don’t think it is intense hardcore challenging enough. The “no pain no gain” school of thought is still going strong. A few strong men, like Chuck Norris, do some yoga for flexibility and balance, even though they don’t need to, being Chuck Norris.

They don’t worry about anybody’s pantywaist deconstruction of the practice. They roll up their sleeves. They bust out the action pants.

The action movie star and martial artist never loses his balance in any posture. Balance loses to Chuck Norris. When he does inversions, he doesn’t go upside down. He tips the universe over. In honor of this feat the new 7th series in Ashtanga Yoga is called “Chuckitsa.” It cleanses every drop of lily liver from your body and soul.

“Many men have misconceptions about it,” says Gwen Saint Romain, a wellness instructor and registered yoga teacher at the Rex Wellness Center in Raleigh, N. Carolina.

“I think that one of the misconceptions is that it is always very gentle, meditative and mindful, that there aren’t physical benefits,” she says. “But it’s definitely not just meditating. Some yoga classes, like power yoga, are extremely rigorous, sweaty workouts. A lot of guys come to a yoga class for the first time because they are invited by a friend, a spouse or girlfriend. They find out quickly that yoga can be a very intense workout.”

Chuck Norris finds intense yoga classes right up his sleeve, although he doesn’t break out into a sweat about them, cool as a cucumber. “How many push-ups can you do in chaturanga?” he was asked. “All of them,” he said. He pulls his Action Pants on both legs at a time. The secret ingredient in Red Bull is Chuck Norris’s piss and vinegar.

The yoga entrepreneur Bikram Choudhury challenged him to 90 minutes of super-hot yoga in his LA-based “torture chamber.” He said it would make a man of him.

“I’ve got to tell you, partner, I once bet NASA a cold beer I could survive re-entry without a spacesuit,” Chuck told the Speedo-clad taskmaster.

“Nothing is impossible, believe me I know” said Bikram. “Girls hang all over me and thousands of people pay me thousands of dollars to tell them how to lock their knees, but that’s impossible.”

In respect for the ancient practice of yoga, an esteem he didn’t necessarily feel for the fitness guru, he let the comment slide.

When he pulled the space stunt a stark-naked Chuck Norris re-entered the earth’s atmosphere, streaking over 14 states, and reaching a temperature of 3000 degrees. He landed on his feet and ran two hundred miles to the nearest airport for a flight home. An embarrassed NASA was compelled to deliver a growler of ale to his front door.

When Bikram demanded he lock his knee in class, Chuck Norris stormed the big wig’s throne and put him in a headlock. He didn’t release Bikram until he had counted to infinity. The groupies in class got impatient, although Mrs. Bikram wasn’t even aware her husband hadn’t been home in a long time.

“From physique to mental health, yoga is one of the most beneficial practices in the world. Most Western yoga classes are dominated by women, but more and more men are starting to become interested in getting on the mat,” says Lanai Moliterno, a yoga instructor in Encinitas, California.

“A lot of men have jumped on board, have discovered the numerous benefits yoga can bring, physically, mentally, and spiritually. Enhanced strength? Injury prevention? Better sexual performance? Increased calm and focus? Who knew stretching and breathing could do all this?”

Chuck Norris agrees yoga is a steady hand to helping stay calm and focused, even though he has never not been calm and focused. When he goes target shooting, he always hits 11 out of 10 targets. With nine bullets. He always wins games of Connect Four in three moves. He wins every game of chess in only one move, a roundhouse kick to the face.

Although there was little confusion a hundred years ago about what and who yoga was for, the case for the practice today is a little more complex, especially in the mano a mano world.

“Years ago, just as Jay Cutler was ascending to the top of the bodybuilding world, he told me about a secret he’d recently begun to incorporate into his training,” says Steven Stiefel, an LA-based writer for health and fitness magazines.

“It was yoga! He credited his improved flexibility with his ability to train more efficiently and avoid injury. And then he won the Mr. Olympia title.

“Today, there are more yoga classes than ever, but a lot of people, men in particular, remain confused about what happens inside those classes and how they should feel about it. Is it stretching, meditation, some combination, or something else entirely? Could it be the secret to unlocking your tight hips and superhuman athletic potential, or will it just make you sprout a man bun and go all new age?”

You don’t want to get it wrong, unless you live in Brooklyn or San Francisco, in which case you’ll hit the nail on the head.

The only time Chuck Norris was ever wrong was when he thought he had made a mistake. His computer has no backspace button. He doesn’t make mistakes. Chuck Norris has done yoga and not gone new age or sprouted anything under his cowboy hat. He has cows in the back forty grilling his steaks for him.

Many weightlifters have added yoga to their fitness routine. There are several ways it can improve lifting, including increasing range of motion, reducing soreness, minimizing risk of injury, and fomenting correct posture.

Holding and releasing poses in yoga class relaxes tight muscles and encourages flexibility. Yoga draws oxygen into muscles. It flushes lactic acid. The practice enlivens balance and strengthens joints and smaller stabilizing muscles, helping prevent injury. Big men tend to be top-heavy. Core strengthening work, emphasis on the back, and chest and shoulder opener poses are instrumental at improving bearing and carriage.

There are many reasons why yoga might not be a good fit for many men, however. While it’s true their postures would probably improve, most men never have any trouble with back pain. What would they do with all the balance and flexibility they gained? Yoga sharpens focus, but men are fee-fi-fo focus fighters, anyway. Their heartrates and blood pressure are fine exactly where they are. It’s square enough yoga is a stress buster, but stress makes life more interesting. Busting out a mat is getting on the road to dullsville.

Nothing Chuck Norris does is ever dull. He can roundhouse kick his enemies yesterday. He sleeps with a night light because the dark is afraid of him. He can drive in Braille, and when he misspells a word, the Oxford English Dictionary changes the actual spelling of it.

Despite the best efforts of yoga promotors vendors marketers and merchandisers, there are still more gals than there are guys in classes. Studio owners and teachers say that the number of women to men is usually 80 to 20. Surveys by Yoga Journal have consistently found that the practice attracts far more womenfolk than menfolk.

Why don’t more men do yoga?

“My husband said he felt bored,” says Praneetha Akula, a Silver Spring, Maryland, resident who dragged her man to the studio.

Chuck Norris never gets bored, inside or outside a yoga studio. Getting bored is an insult to yourself. Chuck Norris’s head would explode if he ever insulted himself. Anybody else’s head, if they insulted him, would instantly explode just from the thought of it.

Maybe men shouldn’t bother doing yoga, unless they are like Chuck Norris, which is impossible. When he meditates, going inward, he finds a smaller tougher Chuck Norris inside himself.

“In a society that places people in convenient ticky-tacky boxes, it seems today’s yoga is clearly for women,” says Dr. Phil Maffetone, an endurance athlete, sports medicine clinician, and author of the “Big Book of Health and Fitness.”

Do real men do yoga?

“Knowing its potential value in health and fitness, various forms of yoga are something I have recommended over my career, to both men and women. But I don’t do it. Having tried various styles, there are more than 100 different types of yoga, I never enjoyed any of them,” he says.

“I get the same benefits of yoga, its scientific and perceived values, from other approaches, without the formality, the special clothes, or going anywhere. I wonder if men are turned off to things like chanting, Sanskrit terms for poses, cliché yoga music, and pretzel poses. Or, maybe men are too aggressive in their workout ethics to even try yoga, which might be the reason they are more often injured than women.”

On the other hand, maybe that’s exactly the reason more real men should get their get up and go butts down on the mat. Take a breath. Slow it down. Forget the finish line.

On top of that, it’s more manly than most men think. It was originally created designed practiced by men, taught by men, for men. It stayed that way for thousands of years. It was physically demanding enough in an age when everything was physically demanding. In the last half century women have crashed the party, which is all to the good.

Who wants to do yoga in a room full of dads, dudes, and varmints? Rooster Cogburn in tree pose would be a sight for sore eyes, but it would also be a sore sight.

Yoga makes everyone, women and men, better at what they do. If you’re flexible, it will help you build strength. If you’re strong as hell, it helps you find balance. Ethically, it grounds you in the Golden Rule. Mentally, it gives you a way to handle pressure and stress.

We can’t all be Chuck Norris. In fact, no one can be Chuck Norris. He once inhaled for 108 seconds – 108 million seconds. He has never read the Yoga Sutras. He stared them down until the Sutras squealed and told him everything he wanted to know. He would be the crazy best yoga teacher of all time. His classroom adjustments would never be forgotten by anyone, ever.

Since he could sail around the world in boat pose, if he ever wanted to, it wouldn’t hurt men to jump the Ship of Fools and join him on the USS Chuck Norris. But Chuck don’t care if you do, or not. Why should he? After all, when Chuck Norris does yoga, starting with sun salutations, the sun salutes him.

At the end of the day, yoga is about the self. Gird your loins and find some sunshine on the forward deck. Do your own warrior poses. Don’t worry about Chuck Norris. He’s the only man dead or alive who can divide by zero. He can take care of himself. Zero in on yourself.

Ed Staskus posts on 147 Stanley Street http://www.147stanleystreet.com and Made in Cleveland http://www.clevelandohiodaybook.com. To get the site’s monthly feature in your in-box click on “Follow.”

By Ed Staskus

Now matters more than anything. It is alive immediate distinct. If it wasn’t for now everything might happen at once.

Living in the now has been around for a long time, back when now was in the past, from about the time mirrors and cast iron were invented, up to the techno time of today. Everybody knew about it back then. “The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, worry about the future, or anticipate troubles, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly,” said Gautama Buddha more than 2500 years ago.

Nowadays the concept gets a lot of play. It has become a power phrase, meaning be aware of the moment, get out of your stream of thoughts, and make your life happen in the present. All you have to do is remember to do it amid the distractions of the modern age.

It used to be easier living in the now than it is now. Back when it was archaeological, much of life was spent in the slow lane, unlike now, when everyone is in the passing lane. Thousands of years ago everyone wasn’t always thinking about something that had happened, or might happen, or what they needed to do right now.

There wasn’t a whole lot happening, in any event.

They didn’t multi-task in the Stone Age. There was no need to disconnect because no one was connected. It was more of a single-task time. They didn’t drive fast here and there and everywhere. Ox carts and horse-drawn wagons were generally one-speed. They didn’t have to appreciate nature because there was so much of it. It was in your line of sight day and night. There was no need to take time out from the office for a nature walk.

Nonetheless, way back when, even Roman emperors, who had a lot to do, beating back barbarians and planning the next conquest, recognized the savvy of living in the now. “Man lives only in the present, in this fleeting instant,” said Marcus Aurelius. “All the rest of his life is either past and gone or not yet revealed.”

Even in our own age the wisdom of living in the now has been appreciated extolled recommended. “You must live in the present, find your eternity in each moment,” said Henry David Thoreau. “Fools look toward another land. There is no other land, there is no other life but this.”

In TV time Oprah Winfrey has passed sentence on the past and the future. “Living in the moment means letting go of the past and not waiting for the future,” she said. “It means living your life consciously, aware that each moment you breathe is a gift.”

When you’re killing time, time is quietly killing you. It’s time to get up stand up. It’s now or never.

The Now Generation is the Me Generation gone fast forward and spread far and wide. Before the 1960s gratification was often postponed in favor of the future. But in the blink of an eye self-sacrifice became self-fulfillment. In the 70s and 80s the immediacy of lived experience and self-gratification became the lifestyle choices of a generation.

When Nike unveiled its ‘Do It Now’ slogan in 1987 it hit a home run. Before the end of the century its business grew by more than 1000 percent. A stitch in time saves nine isn’t a rip in the space-time continuum. It’s getting 100 percent of it done now.

In the 21^st century we spend about half our time thinking about something other than what we are doing, according to a study conducted by Harvard University. The only exception is sex, when almost everyone has his and her mind on the job at hand. Very few men or women whip out their iPhones when they’re in the moment, since they’re having a ringing good time, anyway.

The benefits of living in the now are many, notwithstanding better sex. Those benefits include less worry-warting and over-thinking, fewer distractions and improved concentration, putting your focus where it counts, getting things done, and having a richer experience from a direct-felt comprehension of reality. Staying foursquare in the present helps you be more creative, more decisive, and more happy, too, since you’re not lamenting the over and done nor fretting about the future.

Yoga has been associated with living in the now for most of its history.

“There is so much power in the experience of the present moment that whole spiritual disciplines have been created solely to bring us into the now,” according to Kino MacGregor, an Ashtanga Yoga teacher and writer about the discipline. Some of yoga’s eight limbs, or precepts, can only be practiced in the moment. You have to root your consciousness in them to get anywhere.

Much of yoga practice is predicated on practicing with no judgment and no expectation. In other words, just do it. In so doing, the past and the future have nothing to do with it. Getting on a yoga mat means getting off the merry-go-round of attachment and goals.

The first thing Patanjali, the godfather of yoga, says in the Yoga Sutras is, “Now begins instruction on the practice.” He doesn’t say, never mind, we did that yesterday, or, we’ll get to that tomorrow. He says there’s no time like the right time, which is now.

“When life seems crazy and fast and full of distractions, I just remember that yoga is now,” explained Hayleigh Zachary, a Los Angeles-based teacher trainer.

It is often said yoga takes you right into the present, the only place where life exists. Don’t become attached to anything, just flow with it. The past can be depressing and the future an anxious place. Being in the now is being both in time and stepping out of time.

Sometimes we are self-absorbed and other times we are absorbed in what we are doing. When we are in mid-stream landing a big trout, steering a car through a hairpin turn, or extracting a wisdom tooth, we are absorbed in the now. There’s no thinking about checking the latest tweet about something-or-other.

Yoga used to be about spiritual realization. It has become becoming one with your body. In any case, in line with a new emphasis on living in the now it has become the pursuit of self-realization.

Athletes often describe themselves as being at their best when they are in the zone, playing in the now. “I treat every day like it’s my last day with a basketball,” said LeBron James, arguably the best basketball player of his age. “See the ball, hit the ball,” said Pete Rose, arguably the best baseball player of his age. “I never looked down the road,” said Jerry Rice, arguably the best football player of his age. “It was always about playing each and every game 100 percent.”

Being in the flow of the here-and-now means bringing a focused concentration to your game, dissociating yourself from distractions, ignoring the irrelevant. Being in the zone is like tunnel vision. Everything extraneous falls away, everything happens in slow motion, and everything you accomplish in the zone is effortless and purposeful.

You forget yourself and you become yourself, no matter that the phrase, which dates from the 1970s, came from the TV show “The Twilight Zone” and means, more-or-less, “out of this world.”

Although living in the now, savoring the experience, has its benefits, ignoring the past can have its costs. Remembering the past is a way of learning from it. It’s long been said, those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it. When you’re engulfed by the now, it’s hard to remember anything except right now. A life without past or future is like a tree without roots, a tree without buds in the spring. It’s like jumping off a skyscraper and on the way down to the sidewalk looking around with a happy smile, so far, so good.

But the past is disappearing fast and there ain’t no future in the trip down to the bottom of the manhole.  You need eyes in the back of your head as well as the front. You’ve got to keep your eye on the prize.

In 1876 the Republican Rutherford B. Hayes ran for President of the United States against the Democrat “Centennial Sam” Tilden. Samuel Tilden won the popular vote, but when the votes were re-counted in Florida, the election was cast into the hands of an electoral commission, and one Republican Supreme Court justice decided the contest. “Centennial Sam” went home. “Rutherfraud” B. Hayes went to the White House.

One hundred and twenty-four years later another Democrat won the popular vote, the election was thrown into doubt by hanging chads in Florida, and the ultimate decision of who would sleep in the East Wing came down to one Republican Supreme Court justice.

If the consciousness-raising Al Gore hadn’t been so absorbed in the now of the campaign, and had heeded his history lessons, he wouldn’t today be known as the man who for a few short weeks was the next President of the United States.

Politicians of all stripes believe in the tyranny of now. Rah, rah, rah, vote for me, take it or leave it, never mind what I said ten minutes ago. The bad old days are in the past. The future isn’t promised to anyone unless we make it happen today. That’s how they get elected. However, Donald Trump’s cynical 2016 campaign demonstrated the power of applying lessons from the dark past, even though those lessons were miserable and mercenary.

The only consolation is that he will almost surely twitter his mind away and his time will pass.

The problem with living in the now is that in nothing flat it’s gone. It’s always in motion. It barely exists. One now always leads to another. If yoga is a practice of consciousness, the issue with now is that you can never be fully conscious of it. You can’t concentrate on it, be conscious of it, because it is so fleeting. The stream of consciousness on a yoga mat is one thing but following the bouncing ball of now to nowhere is another thing.

In the 19^th century American cities suffered high rates of typhoid, cholera, and yellow fever. The epidemics were especially deadly to children. Many infectious diseases were the result of unmanaged waste and dirty water. In time people got tired of living in the now. They brought the future into the present so something could be done about the past.

Nowadays Americans rarely suffer from typhoid or cholera, and never think about what now was like a hundred years ago. We don’t have to worry about anyone on the mat next to us who might have yellow fever, because someone a hundred years ago was committed to making things better for us. They weren’t satisfied with now.

Another problem with living in the now is that when we make choices in the moment without considering how they will be remembered in the future we are playing with fire.

There is a reason Jerry Rice was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2010, why LeBron James will be inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, and why Pete Rose will never be inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. All team sports are bound by rules and regulations. They are the accretion of years and decades. The rules are not just the officiating on the playing field. Some of them make reference to the other side of the sidelines. When Pete Rose gambled on baseball during his playing days, he gambled on the pleasures of now over the set-in-stone proscriptions against gambling.

He came up snake eyes.

Jerry Rice and LeBron James have both described themselves as students of the game. They learned their lessons from the past so that they wouldn’t have any regrets. Pete Rose, on the other hand, flaunting the past, made sure he got nothing for something, forever tarnishing his legacy.

A confounding problem with living in the now is that now goes hand in hand with the past and the future. They are not three separate entities. The nature of time doesn’t work that way. When Alice asked the White Rabbit how long forever was, he said, “Sometimes, just one second.” When someone practices yoga in the now, they are practicing a five- thousand-year-old discipline. It’s not a pop-up. It’s not going to disappear when you roll up your mat, even if you disappear. It is likely yoga will be fashioning split seconds into forever five thousand years from now.

Anybody getting into a self-driving car twenty years from now, kicking back on the way to their yoga studio, on the bridge over the river of time, will be kicking back because somebody planted the seed of the self-driving car twenty years ago.

Time has long been thought of as a river, time passing by, never recovered. It might be better, however, to think of it as spacetime, in which the past, present, and future are materially identical. They all exist on a par with each other. We are spread out in the fabric of time. The past and the future are inaccessible because now, where you are now, is in a different part of spacetime.

“What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow,” said Buddha a long time ago. That’s one way of putting it. “The distinction between the past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion,” said Albert Einstein not so long ago. That’s another way of putting the same thing.

Forever is made up of everybody living in the now, even though now isn’t what it used to be. There’s a lot more of it. Don’t miss out on forever. Tomorrow’s yesterday is always today. Don’t run out of time. Be here now the Big Bang the whole ball of wax in the blink of an eye.

Ed Staskus posts stories on 147 Stanley Street http://www.147stanleystreet.com and Cleveland Ohio Daybook http://www.clevelandohiodaybook.com. To get the site’s monthly feature in your in-box click on “Follow.”

By Ed Staskus

Om can be whatever you want it to be, since it represents the past, present, and future. It is both a symbol and a sound. It is omega, omniscient, and omnipresent, all words that start with Om. It’s the same as omelet, all your eggs and veggies on one plate.

Nobody knows exactly how old Om is, although everyone agrees it is along in years. It’s the sound that was never new and never gets old. It is sustainable energy that thrives and survives.

It’s the sign next to the door that says “Inquire Within”.

“In the beginning was the Word.”

Except in the beginning was the vibration.

“If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency, and vibration,” said Nikola Tesla, best known for spearheading the design of today’s electrical supply systems.

String Theory, a kind of theory of everything, says matter is made of small wriggling bits of energy that look like strings. It’s the vibration of life. It’s what ties it all together.

“All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together,” said Max Planck, who discovered energy quanta and won the Nobel Prize for it in 1918.

We are all electromagnetic fields, our own little solar systems. Just like the Big Bang. The big paradox about the Big Bang has always been the chicken or the egg question. It’s the same with Om. Do we make vibrations when we chant, or do the vibrations of our chanting make us, or does it matter?

Someone once asked their yoga teacher how long it would take to gain enlightenment if they practiced Om faithfully.

“Ten years,” said the teacher.

“How about if I really work at it and double my efforts?”

“Twenty years.”

It might take ten minutes to chant Om 108 times. At that rate you’ve got the rest of your life. Or, at least, you’ve got right now.

Why chant Om 108 times? Because 1 represents one thing, zero represents nothing, and 8 represents infinity. It’s the whole ball of wax wrapped up in one package, bound up by a red string.

Om is like getting a big bright box with a bow on it for your birthday. You open the box and find out it is empty inside.

“Aha!” you say. “Just what I wanted.”

It’s got that old time religion, the hand on the plow. It’s got the flow, the vibe. There’s no lip-synching it. It doesn’t even have to do anything, just be in the room. When you’re chanting there’s suddenly more air in the air, like you’re at the seashore, back before the Machine Age, back before the air got sucked out of everything.

“We know that all things in the world are electric forces at their root,” said Swami Krishnananda.  “Every object is an electromagnetic field. Om is a vibration. The whole world is made of subtle vibrations. Everything in the world is made of energy. When we chant Om we are generating energy.”

Om is energy breath life. The basic building blocks of everything are strings particles atoms molecules. Prana is life sustaining life-force lifetrons. Om gets your lifetrons moving up and down your spine. When the energy gets to the top of your head, you get perception discernment awareness.

It puts you in the groove. It’s the sound that puts you in tune with the old, but that keeps you young. It’s the virgin spring and the end of time. When you chant Om 108 times you’re on the road back to the Big Bang and looking ahead to the Big Kablooey.

The distance between the earth and the sun is about 108 times the sun’s diameter. The diameter of the sun is about 108 times the earth’s diameter The distance between the earth and the moon is 108 times the moon’s diameter.

There are no coincidences, unless you believe every single moment is a coincidence. It is no coincidence Om is the Tibetan Hum, the Muslim Amin, and the Jewish Protestant Catholic Amen. Om is the seed mantra, long before there were forks in the road.

Om is a one-syllable word made up of three syllables. It’s the three-in-one lunchbox. It’s like the Holy Trinity, except you don’t have to worship it, just do it.

A-U-M. Aweooommm.

Awe, when it vibrates in your belly. Ooo, when it vibrates in your chest. Mmm when it vibrates in your mind. Say it loud and say it proud. There’s a fourth syllable, the sound of silence at the end, but that’s just merging into nothingness. It’s the sound of the universe.

The Om frequency has been likened to the sound of the sun as recorded by NASA several years ago. It took NASA 40 days and 40 nights to do it. 432 Hz is the sound of nature, of the earth, of everything. Let the sunshine in. It’s better than being lost in the dark, lost in space.

The rhythmic pronunciation of Om slows down the nervous system and focuses the mind on one thing, slowing down, getting meditative, concentrating energy in one place. Chanting Om means being fully present. Be here now is one of the eight limbs of yoga.

Meditation is not concentration, but concentration is meditation.

Om may have only one lyric, but it’s the chart-busting song of all time, the ‘Rock of Ages’ without the blood and judgment.

“If you give it good concentration, good energy, good heart and good performance, the song will play you,” said the Band’s Levon Helm.

Om gets best when the sound goes down, from out loud to an undertone to stillness to the void, as silent as a sunbeam.

You are what you think. That is the basic principle of existentialism. When you chant Om you find out who you are. Om is home sweet home. It’s getting back to where you came from. It’s the sign in the front yard that says you’re on the right track.

“If you lived here you’d be Om now,” is what the sign says.

Ed Staskus posts stories on 147 Stanley Street http://www.147stanleystreet.com and Cleveland Ohio Daybook http://www.clevelandohiodaybook.com. To get the site’s monthly feature in your in-box click on “Follow.”

By Ed Staskus

“Keep your hand on the plow, hold on, hold on.” Mahalia Jackson

Yoga is one of those things in this world that’s between the nothing that isn’t there and the nothing that is, except that somebody is always trying to make it into something. Although it’s true God made everything out of nothing, it’s also true the Big Bang will one day become the Big Crunch, when everything will collapse into a final singularity of nothing.

Hold on, it’s going to be a wild ride.

There’s a lot to like about the practice. There always has been. There will probably be a lot to like about it for a long time to come. It’s a practice with a get it done now point-of-view and a going going gone view of things, too. It is practical and spiritual, hands on about what is right in front of you, and tuned in to the bigger picture at the same time. It is getting physical and metaphysical, all on one plate, without blinking an eye.

There’s a boatload of tradition to it, but it isn’t necessary to know everything about it to practice it. Teachings and teachers are a big help, but past the point of breathing and meditation and concentration and staying on the good side of the Golden Rule, it is a practice accessible to everyone because it is within everyone.

Everybody knows it’s better to be considerate rather than merciless, generous rather than greedy, rock steady rather than raging. It’s only the wise guys, our politicos machine gunners bankers power brokers movers and shakers and parade makers, who don’t have the wisdom to see past their noses.

One of the reasons they are horse blinkered is because their noses have grown so long they can’t see around them anymore. It ain’t the yellow brick road anymore when it leads to Orange Julius in the Oval Office.

The practice of yoga doesn’t demand you sign on the dotted line. It doesn’t squeeze you into any forgone conclusions. It doesn’t ask for your loyalty. What you get out of it is what you put into it, not the other way around. There’s no Church of Yoga or Chamber of Commerce of Yoga or Supreme Court of Yoga. It’s a way of life anyone can practice in their backyard, at work, and out in the wide blue yonder.

It is lucid able-bodied eye-opening. It is living and breathing with your heart in the right place. What’s not to like?

The fly in the ointment is asana practice. If the other seven limbs of the eight limbs of yoga make all the sense in the world, why does what passes as yoga on the mat pass itself off as the by the book way to work out in order to sustain health and fitness so that our minds spirit energies stay strong and on track?

There’s always something sketchy about orthodoxy.

When did you start needing a fitness membership at a yoga studio in order to practice yoga?  Why are there so many yoga classes at Planet Fitness Gold’s Gym Anytime Fitness? Does anybody just make it up at home for themselves anymore, or not?

Where did the idea come from that performing an ordained sequence of physical postures will get you closer to equilibrium? It’s as though your doctor wrote you a prescription for the up dog side angle touch your toes pill as a catch-all remedy for what ails you.

Why does Yoga Journal spit out articles like ’38 Health Benefits of Yoga’ month after month?

If not a cure-all, yoga is often touted as the Swiss Army knife of fitness.

The idea behind today’s yoga exercise sequences seems to be that what makes “a true yogic practice unique is that its focus is on sustained feeling of freedom and wholeness,” according to Alanna Kaivalya, author of “Myths of the Asanas: The Stories at the Heart of the Yoga Tradition”.

In step with that definition, however, anybody with a million dollars in the bank is having a true yogic experience, because that much money in the bank is a no-brainer for feeling free and whole, no matter how you got the greenbacks or what you plan on doing with them.

The only problem with having a million dollars is that there are always a million guys trying to take it away from you. That’s where aparigraha comes in handy. It is one of the ten yamas and niyamas, the guidelines of the practice. It basically translates to non-greed, non-possessiveness, and invokes the frugal gene.

Since the rich are always complaining that being rich is harder than it looks, yoga might be a big help for them.

Yoga is like an old-time religion, even though it isn’t a religious practice. It is old-school. It’s got it’s hand on the gospel plow. But most of what is known as yoga today is largely about being led through a workout on a mat, with an emphasis on paying attention to your breath, and maybe a dollop of meditation to round things out. There’s no magic to it, but there is a healthy dose of hocus pocus involved.

For a long time, as yoga was booming in the modern world, the third limb of the practice was extolled for its timelessness. It was said the postures were thousands of years old. They had been burnished honed systematized to perfection. When Mark Singleton wrote “Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice” several years ago the genie was out of the bottle. It turns out almost everything being done on yoga mats had been invented in the past one hundred years-or-so.

A hundred years ago what is today taught and practiced on yoga mats far and wide was something else. It was Danish calisthenics British Army exercises YMCA strength work and Indian wrestling. It was a little bit of everything.

The “Hatha Yoga Pradipika” – written about six hundred years ago – enumerates fifteen physical postures. That’s all of them. Fifteen. The legendary text “Yoga Korunta” that Krishnamacharya and K. Pattabhi Jois based the Ashtanga Series on remains to this day legendary. In other words, undiscovered, unhistorical, and unverifiable, largely because ants supposedly ate the text. It was written on banana leaves.

Practicing the series, which is hard in the doing and fulfilling in the accomplishment, may land you on cloud nine, but the origin of the series is pie in the sky.

One of the only yoga sutras mentioning anything about asana practice simply says one of the most important aspects of it is that it should entail “appropriate effort.” There isn’t anything in any traditional yogic text that says headstand or handstand or standing in tree pose for five minutes is what you need to do to get fit.

All you need to do is show some gumption.

“Yoga practice is supposed to make us structurally stable, enable us to move with grace and ease, free us from physical suffering and enable us to withstand changing circumstances,” wrote Olga Kabel in ‘Traditional Goals of Asana Practice’.

Yoga exercise is part of the package, not the whole package, as it has been    misconstrued while being repackaged as a fitness regimen, another get fit quick commodity in the long line from Nautilus to jazzercise to spinning. It isn’t even clear that yoga is best for stability, best for enabling us to move with grace and ease, and best for alleviating suffering.

It is beyond doubt best for helping us adapt and deal with change, but that isn’t because of the exercise, but because of the rest of it. Yoga is 90% mental and the other half is physical.

“Traditionally, the practice of asana was always considered as an integral part of a holistic practice, never as an isolated fitness system,” said Gary Kraftstow, founder of the American Viniyoga Institute.

When it becomes a fitness system is when it starts selling monthly memberships.

“Many gyms that offer yoga emphasize the physical exercise without teaching the essential self-awareness that differentiates yoga from any exercise,” said David Surrenda, founding dean of the Graduate School of Holistic Studies at John F. Kennedy University.

“The result of an emphasis on exercise misinterprets what the real intention of yoga practice is. Yes, one can increase muscle mass and decrease waist size, but that’s not the real goal. Much of the yoga practiced today has actually become the antithesis of yoga as it is meant to be.”

Yoga might be whatever you want it to be in its post-modern guise. Whatever it was meant to be way back when is neither here nor now. Maybe that’s the beauty of the practice, shape-shifting to suit our intentions. You’ve got to stay on your toes to stay in the present, be in the moment, which is an integral part of the practice.

Nevertheless, even though lunges and twists and jump backs on the mat are good for you, so are riding a bike and lifting weights. In fact, yoga doesn’t even crack Harvard Medical School’s Top 5, which are walking, swimming, strength training, Tai chi, and kegel. The best fitness exercises are still basic hip and hamstring stretches, push-ups, sit-ups, squats, dumbbell rows and presses, and burpees.

As part of an overall fitness regimen, yoga exercise is by all accounts a Top 10. Everyone does push-ups and sit-ups on the mat without even realizing it. The burpee is a foundation of all vinyasa sequences. When it comes to flexibility, yoga is certainly Number 1 on the Hit Parade. Sometimes people say they aren’t flexible enough to do yoga, but that’s like saying you’re too dirty to take a bath.

Getting all the poses on the mat right is keeping your eye on the wrong prize.

Anyone who subscribes to the eight aspects of the practice is doing yoga, but no one who just does stuff on the mat is doing yoga. They are doing something, but it’s like soda pop to a scotch straight up. They are fooling themselves when they believe the bright shining proposition that they are achieving some greater good by doing what they’re told to do on the mat. Anyone will get fit if they spend enough time at a yoga studio, but they will get fit if they spend enough time walking around in circles, too.

Yoga is about mastering the modifications of your mind, not just the modifications of your body. When exercise is the be-all and end-all, it is a good thing in and of itself, but it’s not yoga. When exercise is linked to the breath, the breath to the mind, the mind to the spirit, in a kind of virtuous circle, it’s yoga whether you’re in a studio or walking the dog in the park.

Like K. Pattabhi Jois said, “Just do.”

Hatha yoga is what leads to physical health mental clarity and a cool as a cucumber spirit. When practiced alongside the yamas amd niyamas, the ten principles of daily life, it’s the second to none way of transforming yourself from the outside in and the inside out. There’s no monkey business to it.

The fitness aspect of yoga doesn’t have to be the dogma of what has come to be standardized in how-to books youtube videos and studios. It can be cobra and down dog and corpse pose. It can be power lifting. It can be archery. As long as your mind and spirit are one-pointed and your aim is true, whatever we do with gumption and purpose will gird us for where we want to go.

All anyone needs to do is keep their hand on the gospel plow.

Ed Staskus posts stories on 147 Stanley Street http://www.147stanleystreet.com and Cleveland Ohio Daybook http://www.clevelandohiodaybook.com. To get the site’s monthly feature in your in-box click on “Follow.”

By Ed Staskus

   For half a century, from 1916 to 1966, until Charles Whitman, an ex-Marine, shot and killed 16 people, wounding 31 others, shooting from the top of an observation deck at the University of Texas at Austin, there were just 25 public mass shootings in the United States in which four-or-more people were killed. The young ex-soldier redefined homegrown massacres. He brought to bear a Remington 700, a .35-caliber Remington, a M1 carbine, a Sears semi-automatic shotgun, a .357 Magnum, a Luger, and a .25-caliber pistol.

   During the rampage a police sharpshooter in a small plane circling the 27-story building was repeatedly driven back by return fire. The first person killed was the eight-month-old not-yet-born baby of an 18-year-old pregnant student when she was shot in the abdomen leaving the Student Union.

   Finally, two policemen stormed the observation deck, one firing his revolver, but missing, and the other killing Charles Whitman instantly with two blasts from his shotgun. The policeman with the revolver emptied his gun into the body at point-blank range, making dead sure. He ran to the parapet yelling, “I got him, I got him.” He was almost shot himself by police on the ground, who didn’t at first realize he wasn’t the shooter.

   It remains to this day one of the deadliest mass shootings in the United States.

My parents grew up in Lithuania. When they were still teenagers, they saw plenty of guns. Between 1940 and 1944 first the Russians invaded, then the Germans, then the Russians again. When they fled to Germany in 1944, they saw even more weapons during the furious last months of the collapse of the Third Reich. By the time they emigrated to Canada they had seen enough guns to last them a lifetime, more than most people ever see in a lifetime.

   During the Second World War the United States fabricated 2,679,840 machine guns and 11,750,000 infantry rifles. Twenty-nine other countries were a part of the deadliest war in history. Only God knows how many guns, and mortars and cannons and tanks, they manufactured, among other things, resulting in 70 to 85 million military and civilians done in for good.

   In the 1980s, the FBI defined mass shootings as four-or-more people, not including the mass murderer, being killed in a single incident, typically in a single location. Since 1966 there have been thousands of them. Before 1966 there was a mass shooting about once every 100 weeks, Today, there is a mass shooting about once every day.

   Between 1999 and 2013 there were 31 mass murders per year on average. In 2015 there were 220 days of mass shootings and only 145 with none. In the first ten months of 2018 there were 307 mass shootings, almost as many as there were days.

   It doesn’t bode well for the 2020s with the Grand Old Party still chock full of crazy people, the National Rifle Association still rampant with crazy people, and millions of crazy people still armed to the teeth. The NRA, with reasoning crooked as a corkscrew, has re-interpreted the 2nd Amendment, disappearing some of its language and all of the intent, to suit their agenda. They and their supporters equate success with goodness. It doesn’t matter that rightness ends where ammo begins. They are all in with Mao, who said, “Power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” Wayne LaPierre, the Grand Dragon of the NRA, says “We need national carry.”

   It would be like giving AK-47’s to monkeys.

   There are more guns than people in the United States. There are almost 400 million guns in the country. There are 12 million guns in Canada. There are 3 million guns in England. There are fewer than half-a-million guns in Japan. US citizens own 40% of all the guns in the world, more than the next 25 countries combined.

   When I grew up in Sudbury, Ontario, the only people who had guns were the police, hunters, and folks who lived on the outskirts. They kept shotguns near their back doors to fend off marauding bears. My parents didn’t have any guns. After the war my father never owned a gun.

“Guns kill people,” he said. He was a miner and saw things in black and white terms. If it looks like a volcano, blows its top like a volcano, it’s a volcano. He knew since he was a dynamite man a mile down, before he saw the light and started using his head instead of his hands.

   Yoga studios seem immune to gun violence. Whoever saw a security guard at the front door of a yoga studio? At least, not until two years ago, when a man walked into Hot Yoga in Tallahassee, Florida, and shot to death Nancy Van Versen, a faculty member at Florida State University, and Maura Binkley, a student at the same university.

   The young woman’s father said his daughter had planned on becoming a teacher. “She truly lived a life really devoted to peace, love, and caring for others,” said Jeff Binkley. She didn’t live long. She was 21 years old.

   It doesn’t take long to go packing in Florida. There is no waiting period to buy an assault rifle or anything else. In Iowa no one needs a license to sell guns online. If you plan on selling lemonade in Iowa, however, even if you’re a 7-year-old and your storefront is your front yard, you need a business permit. In Texas, if you want to sell guns, go right on ahead, partner. It is the most heavily armed state in the country.

   But, if you want to cut hair in Texas, you must, no if buts or maybes, log 1,500 hours at hairdressing school. Scissors don’t kill people, people do. It’s best to beware Texans bearing gifts.

   Buying a gun almost anywhere in the United States is easier than getting a license to drive, filling out your tax return, or talking to tech support. It’s harder to pay off student debt, which typically takes about 21 years, than it is to buy a gun, which typically takes about 10 minutes. Anyone can walk into a gun store, pass a background check in record time, and walk out with a persuader. In some states no one has to even do that. They can buy a gun from a private seller, no background check needed.

   In Lithuania there isn’t an arsenal in every basement. In order to own a gun an exam and license are required. They keep a lid on the bubbling stew, at least. The murder rate is 9 times higher in the United States than in Lithuania. You are 128 more times more likely to be involved in a gun related crime in the United States than Lithuania. The USA has gone gun crazy since the 1960s. It’s not just mass shootings, either. It’s one bullet at a time. In 2016, there were hardly any people murdered with a handgun in Japan, England, Canada. and Lithuania. All their coffins put together were a fraction of the 11,004 murdered in the USA.

   Mass shootings have happened at casinos, nightclubs, hotels, music festivals, libraries, factories, airports, shopping malls, courthouses, sorority houses, apartment buildings, Waffle Houses, backyard parties, Planned Parenthood clinics, movie theaters, churches, synagogues, the Empire State Building, nursing homes, baseball fields, grade schools, high schools, community colleges, and universities. In Dangerfield, Texas, a man walked into a church and killed 5 people and wounded 10 others after members of the congregation earlier declined to be character witnesses for him at a trial.

   Besides the mortally wounded at Hot Yoga, four others were shot and one of them, a young man who, among others, resisted the murderer, was pistol-whipped.

   “Several people inside fought back and tried to not only save themselves but other people,” said Police Chief Michael DeLeo. “It’s a testament to the courage of people who don’t just turn and run.” One of them who didn’t turn and run, even though unarmed, was shot nine times.

The killing spree broke out on a Friday night as the class was starting. Scott Beierle pretended to be a student, then pulled a semi-automatic handgun from his duffle bag and started blasting anybody female in sight without warning.

   When the gunfire momentarily stopped, Joshua Quick took action.

   “I don’t know if it jammed, or what,” he said. “So, I used that opportunity to hit him. I picked up the only thing nearby to hit him with, which was a vacuum cleaner, and I hit him on the head.” The shooter was staggered, but recovered his footing, pummeling Joshua on the forehead with his gun. The yoga student fell to the floor, bleeding bad, but got back up.

   “I jumped up as quickly as I could, ran back, and the next thing I know I’m grabbing a broom, you know, anything I can, and I hit him again.”

   “Thanks to him,” said Daniela Albalat, “I was able to rush out the door, slipping and bleeding.” She was shot in the upper legs. “I want to thank that guy from the bottom of my heart because he saved my life.”

   Joshua Quick did what the Dalai Lama would have done, except the Dali Lama would have gone heavy. He wouldn’t have used a broom. Arguably one of the most peaceable men on the planet, when asked by a child at the Educating Heart Summit in Oregon what he would do if someone came to his school with a gun, he replied without hesitation, “If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun.”

   Three minutes after the first 911 call, sirens were wailing, and police were showing up. The killer cleared the gun’s chamber, turned it on himself, and shot himself straight to hell.

   He lived in Deltona, Florida, about 250 miles from Tallahassee, and had no connection with the yoga studio or anyone he gunned down. He had been a substitute teacher at the Volusia County Schools, even though he had a master’s degree in public administration from Florida State University. He was arrested several times for groping women on the FSU campus. He was fired for unprofessional conduct, feeling up teenage students not being in his job description.

   The gunslinger was an amateur musician who posted his songs online. On “American Massacre” he sang, “If I cannot find a decent female to live with, I will find many indecent females to die with. I find that if I cannot make a living, then I will turn, I will make a killing.”

   Mass murderers are all different, except most of them are men. It’s a man’s world. They have their reasons for doing what they do, although none of them are good reasons, and many, if not all, mass murderers suffer from psychological problems. Mental health is not compatible with murdering people.

   Although they and their reasons are variable, the one constant among them is the fast fire weapons they deploy. None of them carries a cap and ball Colt. It would knock them off their feet, anyway. They bring the blessing and imprimatur of the NRA, the gun champions who have successfully lobbied one Congress after another for decades to limit research by the Centers for Disease Control into gun-related violence.

   A few days after a mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, in March 2018, House Speaker Paul Ryan said his ruling Grand Old Party planned on keeping restrictions on gun research in place. “We don’t just knee-jerk before we have all the facts and the data,” said the longtime opponent of gun control laws.

   So long as his kneecaps weren’t getting popped he wasn’t going to knee-jerk it.

   “We are saddened and angered by the senseless shooting at Hot Yoga Tallahassee,” said Tasha Eichenseher, speaking for Yoga Journal. “Studios are sacred places where we go for self-care and to feel safe.”

   After Sandy Hook and Tree of Life Synagogue and First Baptist Church, it is doubtful there are any safe places left. It is undoubtedly true there are no sacred places left. If even Fort Hood, the biggest active-duty and most secure army base in the United States, couldn’t prevent Nidal Hasan, an Army major, from going postal and fatally shooting 13 soldiers, while wounding more than 30 others, there might not be safe and sacred and secure anywhere.

   “You have a whole generation with this being more and more normal,” said Jeff Binkley. “That cannot happen.”

   When I was a kid in Sudbury our mom never bought us toy guns. “No,” she said whenever we asked. We stayed busy dodging the trains hauling ore and wailing on all sides of town. It wasn’t until we moved to the United States that I found out all kids had toy guns. After that there was no going back.

   In any event, so long as the politicians we elect to rule our state and national legislatures, and the politicians we elect to our state and national capital houses, are the same vote-stuffing wallet-stuffing puff ’n’ stuffers allied hand-in-hand with gun manufacturers and Second Amendment agitprops, no-nonsense gun-reform legislation and public-health funding are not going to happen.

   The gunrunners don’t give it a first thought. They don’t give it a second thought, either. The devil’s right hand is all right with them.

   The silk stockings perform to the grass roots who believe they need guns to make it in this world. Their faith is in the ruling class’s Punch and Judy show even though the second estate’s grass roots are fertilized at a thousand country clubs where a thousand lobbyists dine and drink. Their security guards carry sidearms, since they no more believe in responsible gun owners than they believe in the Constitution and aren’t taking any chances. No 2nd Amendment-toting mob is getting through their country club doors.

   Two-and-a-half centuries later we don’t live in 1780s buildings anymore, we don’t travel in 1780s horse and buggies anymore, and we don’t turn on the lights with 1780s whale oil anymore. We don’t read one-page pamphlets and the penny press anymore. We don’t use 1780s medicine, like arsenic and leeches, anymore. There is no reason why a 1780s amendment to the Constitution, written to enable a militia in a time of crisis, should enable everybody to buy whatever guns whenever and wherever they want for whatever reason.

   But that’s the world we have made and the world we live in. Carrie Lightfoot and Yosemite Sam guns a-blazing aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. Americans love their guns, guys gals and the movies. They don’t believe liberty gets handed to them unleaded. They believe it will get stripped away the wrong way around if they aren’t vigilant. It’s been said fences make for good neighbors. Locked and loaded makes for tried-and-true neighbors.

   It’s like the Lithuanian proverb says, “When you are in the devil’s wheel, you must learn how to spin.”

Ed Staskus posts on 147 Stanley Street http://www.147stanleystreet.com and Made in Cleveland http://www.clevelandohiodaybook.com. To get the site’s monthly feature in your in-box click on “Follow.”