Yoga... and the taming of Jill's mind.

 Hinduism recongises four classes of yoga or methods of self-transformation: the yoga of action (Karma), the yoga of devotion (bhakti), the yoga of knowledge (jnana), and the yoga of meditation (raja yoga). Yoga teaches about the taming of the mind through meditation. I need to learn this skill so this morning I took my first yoga class in India.

Restless man’s mind is,

So strongly shaken

In the grip of the senses:

Gross and grown hard

With stubborn desire

For what is worldly.

How shall he tame it?

Truly, I think

The wind is no wilder……

I have always had an active imagination. If you ever saw the movie “A Christmas Story”, the lead character is a boy named Ralpie. Well,  Ralphie and I have a lot in common in that we are both prone to momentary lapses in concentration, where at any moment in a day something random and interesting thought or experience will spark our imagination and we are off… recreating a story or fantasy of our own making within or without the parameters of the possible or impossible but with dramatic flare . As I stare off into space.. lost in my world of impossible fantasy the crazy images flow. God forbid this happens when I am being briefed by my lawyer or negotiating a deal or operating large machinery. 

These moments are something I have never learned to tame and my children have fondly and lovingly renamed this active imagination as adult ADD…. God bless them.

There I am this morning in the middle of yoga… stilling my mind, trying my very hardest to “focus”...breathe!  When out of the corner of my eye I see it.   BUG! BIG $%#@$%@## BUG!! OMG! It is truly Godzilla’s demonic mutant spawn…Godzilla mated with Alien and this is their child and it’s coming nearer to me… closer. I just know if I am distracted from it for even a second it will stealthy sneak up on me and then when I am low to the ground say in downward dog position it will unnaturally propel itself into my eardrum where it will then proceed to lay millions of eggs. I will fall asleep tonight and then somewhere in the night the eggs will start to hatch and feed on my brain. When the strongest of these larvae reach the cerebral cortex the larvae will take control of it, use me as its weapon of  mass distruction and I will never know what mayhem ensued. Next time I am going through the airport Homeland Security will arrest me and while being scanned by the newest invasive exray equipment they will discover in my brain a whole microscopic civilization living symbiotically inside me.

Because of this I now know that I should never do yoga again…. For the protection of all mankind. It is my duty.