Just noticed: blues for a yoga master

This one’s a personal post, a philosophical one (maybe), and a very belated eulogy for a friend. It’s about illness, infrastructure, Cartesian dualism, yoga, and one of today’s buzziest of buzzwords: mindfulness.

The flesh is weak
Some of this is the result of notes made during a string of recent illnesses. Nothing major, just a run of bad luck in the germ department, an unfortunate side effect, as it were, of spending time among the teeming undergrad masses. I don’t have my physician-slash-kindergarten teacher immunity built up yet. Sometimes, my immune system just gets hacked.

That metaphor is important here, in fact. Getting sick is like a system crash, like losing the wifi signal, like driving a car that suddenly sputters and stalls — suddenly you become acutely aware of the formerly invisible or ignored infrastructure. When the wifi goes, we finally notice that wire stretching from the roof of the house to the pole in the back yard as we question its viability. We’re made newly aware of “our increasing dependence on it for the practices of everyday life” (Dourish & Bell, 2011). Bodily malfunctions are analogous to the studies of Dourish & Bell, Susan Leigh Star, and others who examine infrastructure systems; they make us aware of the embodiment we usually take for granted. We become aware — conscious, now, in the moment — of the fleshy, fluid-filled infrastructure systems that we are similarly dependent on for our everyday practice.

That’s a good thing, or it can provide important lessons. We often live prejudiced toward mind over body. Much of society remains built on that original idea that the two are separate, that mind will prevail over body. It’s the promise of all religions, as well as futurists like Ray Kurzweil and others: fear not your mortal flesh, soon you’ll be uploading your mind into neural networks for silicon immortality (which is just a different embodiment with its own, as yet untested effects on the mind)! But when our body winds up affected by something else bodily — for good, in the case of having a great day or drinking a great glass of wine, or for ill, in the case of illness or injury — we’re reminded just how much mind depends on body. As body suffers, so does mind. Feverish several weeks ago, I could not focus, couldn’t read, stopped making sense (complete with jerky Talking Heads movements). It’s not as if my body can suffer alone while my mind continues thriving, unchanged; vice versa, too: a poor state of mind negatively affects the body (i.e., my nervous stomach before teaching or traveling).

The infrastructure scholars I mentioned above think along similar lines. Star sought to apply ethnography to infrastructure as a means of surfacing silent or marginalized voices. Her work allowed objects some measure of subjectivity in order to highlight another perspective in the human-computer interaction (HCI) relationship — in examining the I, the H always gets a voice (the human, the acting agent, thus reason: mind), rarely the C (the allegedly inert body). Dourish & Bell bind practices to the infrastructures, connecting the points where elements of practice are inextricably dependent on elements of infrastructure. Either way, infrastructure is presented as a fundamentally relational concept, taking on a life worth examining when it transitions from being inert tech stuff and becomes/facilitates a set of human practices.

Frankly, this all sounds like yoga to me.

But the spirit is willing
So it’s at this point in this rambling dialectic that I turn to an old soul — a departed soul — from whom I once learned a lot about the symbiotic and inextricable union of mind and body. His name was Richard Stathem. He was a math teacher, he was a yoga instructor, he was a groovy sumbitch. And I was recently deeply saddened to hear that he’s dead.

Again, I’d thought of Richard while I was ill. For each round of under-the-weatherness, the chief prescription I received from doctors was simple: rest. Well, not so simple when trying to accomplish it. Not so simple when my to-do list software begins piling up with unchecked tasks and my worker-bee instincts frown at my sick-bed sloth. Resting thus became a task in and of itself. I began to hear Richard’s voice in my head. He would speak softly during yoga sessions, calmly advising, gently instructing. One of the things he said most often was, “Not just rest, but conscious rest.”

My body sought rest, so I rested with greater awareness of how that was or wasn’t happening. In yoga, in meditation, in T’ai Chi, whatever — often the greatest challenge is calming the mind, letting go of its reins, freeing the expectation of constant running thought-stuff. I laid in bed, in my sick-asana, practicing rest. I was tender and achy, so when I moved I did so with care, with greater awareness of moving. Awareness, mindfulness, living in the present, whatever you want to call it. I was practicing yoga, and I thought: is this good self-help-book advice — live each day as if you were feverish?

I thought Richard would chuckle at that. He had a great laugh — two of them, really, alternating between a Cowardly Lion snuff-nuff sound and a throaty belly guffaw. I was privileged to know him and be his yoga student for nearly a decade. Curious about the practice, I signed up for an intro yoga class at Tulsa Community College back in the mid-’90s, and Richard was the teacher. From the beginning, he made it so easy, and it would take a while before I understood why that was.

Richard — lithe, fit, not tall, a humble smirk underneath his signature trim mustache — was cool, but humble. He loved rock and roll, and he had a huge vinyl collection. He taught math part-time at TCC, and supplemented with the yoga classes. And he didn’t charge for those; instead, he simply left a black leather satchel on a table near the entrance to the room, and participants could place in it whatever money they wanted or could. I never contributed enough for what I got out of it.

After the TCC course, he mentioned that he conducted weekly yoga sessions at the Episcopal church near my house. For the rest of my days in Tulsa, I’d go there once or twice a week, sometimes regularly, sometimes intermittently. It was a large room, a chapel. Richard sat on the chancel, usually cross-legged and meditating as people gathered. Then he’d lead us through 90 minutes of yoga. It wasn’t a class, really, it was just a yoga meeting. He’d step out and give people pointers or assist with certain positions, but he was never instructing. Not directly. He simply narrated the rhythm of the movements, reminded us to breathe, and guided us from one asana to the next, almost always in the same order. Toward the end, he’d read from something semi-inspirational or at least thought-provoking — on a spectrum from the Tao te Ching to Henry David Thoreau — but in a let-your-thoughts-go kind of way.

Praxis was his axis
It was so easy and effortless — and after a while I finally understood it: He wasn’t teaching, he never was. Richard didn’t see yoga as a particular practice, a thing you do — that is, a task separate from the body that you begin and end for an intellectual purpose. Richard lived yoga. Yoga was life to him, moving through the day, through the street, stretching through work and play and grooving to his records. There was no outside for him. He was always in an asana – yogasana, lecturasana, drivingasana, groceryasana. That’s why it was so easy to flow with him, because he didn’t start something. You just fell into his rhythm. Richard was just there, living, and those of us lucky enough to encounter him just sidled up and joined in.

It was perfect and invigorating and so very beneficial, and I haven’t found it since. One of the first things I did after moving to Chicago was shop for a yoga studio. They were all awful — the three or four I sampled, each on high recommendation or the result of careful online evaluation, were intense, performative, power-yoga kind of places. It was about exercise, strength, showing off. They all sought quantifiable, evident results. It turned my soul. I fell out of practice.

Apparently Richard died of cancer, age 66. No obit in the Tulsa World. Tragic, perhaps, but no doubt he wouldn’t care. Whatever he experienced at the end of this life, I trust his mindfulness served him well. His main mantra in yoga sessions was — in a slow, sonorous tone — saying, “Just notice … just this.” Whatever experience you were having, that’s what he’d say: just notice, just this. Fortunately, he wrote a book about his practice, and the title (yes!) is Just Notice … Just This.

I’ll close this mess of a post with a piece Richard wrote in response to the September 11, 2001, attacks. It’s a typically mindful, realistic outlook on a terrible situation — made hopeful by Richard’s inherent faculty for noticing what was in front of him, what was happening in the moment, and the inevitable trajectory of all things toward their opposite. He employs an experience with Yellowstone National Park, the place he loved most on this earth, as the lens through which he sees some light.

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The World Trade Center
and the Purple Flowers of Yellowstone

by Richard Stathem

One day in 1989 I was sitting in a waiting room somewhere reading a magazine article about Yellowstone National Park. The reason I remember it was 1989 is because it was the year after the incredible, devastating fire in Yellowstone … a fire that charred and destroyed over 30% of the vegetation and wildlife in that massive Park. There were four pages in the article that I particularly remembered, because they were four pages consisting entirely of photographs … one full-page photograph per page … and each of the four pictures was really one picture - a north, south, east, west view, all taken from the same spot. All four pictures featured essentially nothing but charred black wood, with a sprinkling of gray ash, against a deep blue sky. Blue and black and gray … that’s all that comprised each picture. And all that interrupted flat black against flat blue was the periodic jutting spiked remains of a tree trunk … scattered about, looking like all that was left in some horrible war zone. One view showed a valley, going all the way to the horizon … black and gray extending all the way to blue. Another view showed a huge Rocky Mountain foothill in the near distance. It was solid black. And the larger hills and mountains behind that one ... all black ... against a blue, cloudless sky. Each photo was shot with a very wide-angle lens … a fisheye … that gave the viewer the feeling of standing in the very spot the photographer had stood. At the bottom of each picture one could see the ground right there … or lift the gaze up and see all the way to the cloudless blue. They were all four the simplest, most uncomplicated, least interesting … and most depressing photos I had ever seen. I have loved Yellowstone since forever, and to see these pictures gave me the feeling of topping the first peak on a hell-bent roller-coaster. They made me feel sick.

The viewer’s eyes were naturally drawn to the distance in each photo, because that accentuated the massive breadth of it all. However, if the viewer took a moment to look closely at the whole picture … to look down, to the bottom of each photo, to where both viewer and photographer were "standing", there was something to be seen that was stunning and impressive … and hopeful. It was something that, in fact, filled each of the pictures … the width and the breadth, all the way to the horizon … yet was invisible except by looking directly down at the very spot in which one was standing. For scattered about, between the myriad black charcoal and gray ash that extended infinitely in all directions, were little, tiny purple flowers that were just beginning to make their way to the surface of the carnage … to face the sun and the elements … to start the life cycle anew. They had the stems of a mere thread and a flower the size of a little finger nail. But they were a start … they were a beginning. They could only be seen from the right perspective; yet seen or not, they were there.

Each photograph, when viewed from one perspective, showed a glimpse of what the end of the world must look like. And each photo, when viewed from another perspective, showed what the beginning of the world must look like! The beginning of Life! Each photograph blended yin and yang into perfect Tao, when seen clearly … as most pictures do, when we are able to break free from the emotional noose around our heart.

On September 13, 2001 I thought of that day in 1989, sitting in a waiting room, and looking at those photographs. September 13, 2001 was two days after the incomprehensible horror of the destruction in New York City and Washington, D.C. It was a Thursday, and each Thursday evening, as I have for the past twenty years or so, I lead a yoga class. And since yoga is, above all else, a Philosophy of Being, and since I always seek to try and relay and relate a meaningful perspective on the philosophy of yoga in the class, I was struggling that day with what to say … and how to say it. I knew that two days after those horrible events most people’s minds were still going to be focused on those tragic events, and understandably trying to stretch to make some kind of connection between the beautiful and simple philosophy of the Yoga of Being … with the incredible destruction and hatred that all of the world had just witnessed. Is yoga philosophy just pie-in-the-sky fantasy? Did the sickening images on tv reveal true reality? What good is some nice, sweet, rosy philosophy … in the face of the worst terrorist act of all time?

Then, as with the photographs of charred Yellowstone, I began to "look down" … to look here … to bring my focus from the horrible images of crumbling 110-story office towers on September 11th, to the events that had followed on the heels of that horror, and brought us all the way to September 13th … two days later. I began to realize that that afternoon’s news stories had been filled with accounts of people, not just here in the United States, but the world over reaching out helping hands and a comforting embrace. Love … love … was pouring in with the same ferocious force with which those massive towers had crumbled to the ground just two days before. The very acts that were intended to buckle knees and break will were, instead, opening hearts. And once open … the pure love that knows no bounds was pouring out … filling New York … filling Washington D.C. … filling the world! Pure love was taking root in the charred remains of The World Trade Center as surely as the little purple flowers had taken root in the charred remains of Yellowstone National Park. The little purple flowers soon became more … and next came the pine tree seedlings. And it all began anew. That’s what the charred remains of Yellowstone came to. And we all know what the blossoming of love comes to.

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