I’ve never done an extreme race, but I’m a pretty extreme dude. I knew that the Color Run is a fun, untimed race that might leave any sneakers I wear wrecked, so I made it my first barefoot run ever. Aside from some rocky points, I stayed light with my steps and got through it without any real pain. When the trail became too rocky I ran on the grass, but I learned during this race and in some of the reading I’ve done recently that our feet are made for any surface, and when we take the proper stride, a sharp rock is no big deal. Thanks to the powdered paint people for such a fun race.
Clean
“Look, look, he’s barefoot!”
Mid-Race
Humans weren’t meant to wear shoes…
A work of art
All of the comments I heard about going barefoot were annoying, but expected. It wasn’t really your typical race crowd, each quite focused on the race. Most walked, many stopped for pictures. So may wore costumes. I’m really tempted to go barefoot in a serious race, possibly one in Central Park with flat terrain.
For me, experiences inside the yoga world are conducive to the stigmas the outside world has about yoga. Places aren’t straight-male friendly, with tiny male changing rooms and tons of incredibly forward gay men. Yogis do have different personalities, displaying some things I share and some things I simply don’t. Plus, yoga is difficult and it is discouraging to see women half your size show more control over body weight and respiratory stamina than you can. But I’m an athlete. I practice yoga for many reasons, but mostly because I’m interested in heightening the overall performance of my body and mind together. I believe strongly that such aims are the cornerstones of fitness, so I make my yoga practice, as well as the calisthenics I practice, the running I practice and the sports I practice about mastery of skill, endurance, and triggered performance.
One thing I do love about the yoga world is Lululemon.
From the perspective of the average American, Lululemon is filled with nauseatingly-cheery salespeople (cutely called ‘educators’), incredibly overpriced but deliciously comfortable clothing, and like everything else in the yoga world, accommodates women and boxes in men-In the stores, on the website, naturally, without thinking of it. Why? The company still attracts an overwhelmingly female consumer, and companies go where the money will be spent in their field.
To me, Lululemon is a corporate embodiment of Conservative Fitness.
Last fall, Lululemon gave itself a chance to get conservative, and the world was outraged to find out that Lululemon’s goal-coaching, and inspirational quoting and educating was a quest to deliver the world from mediocrity to greatness. People threatened to boycott. Liberal hatred for Ayn Rand surfaced from every angle. You know what I did? I bought some more Lululemon. I joined their Research and Development program. I went to stores and had conversations with educators. What I found out was that this was my first encounter with organized conservative fitness.
One small example of the world misunderstanding Lululemon.
Those pushy educators, they’re doing two things:
First, they’re telling you what the product does, because any liberal-minded, superficial idiot can understand that a pair of pants will make your butt look better, but it takes a human being with real integrity to buy something because it is an effective tool for your task.
Second, they’re conversing with you to find out if you’re one of them. Basically, everyone in that store wants to know why you’ve walked in to see their product because if you’re like them, you can make this product an effective tool in your life.
In an Ayn Rand sort of way, they fully expect the John Galt of fitness to walk through those glass doors, round up the most selfish conservatives in fitness, and stop the fitness world.
And there isn’t one problem with that to me.
I though, am in the minority. Many think that a brand that is yoga-inspired should be a compassionate, liberal, accepting one. These people forget that before compassion, before release, before the liberal aspects of yoga are explored, the practice must happen conservatively. My in-class intention for a long time has simply been “control,” because I believe that yoga is about control over body and mind. To me, taking that control every time is what separates me from the individual trying to get into shape for all of the wrong reasons. At Lululemon, the focus seems to be control, turning weaknesses into strengths, and preparing yourself for success. The problem is that the average individual has no idea that fitness even can be about these things, much less that they should.
My idea is to expand Lululemon’s vision to become the first yoga-inspired organization to embrace and highlight the goal-oriented, fit, healthy American male and much as they do females with the same attributes. The idea is not to compete with the expansive Nike empire, but to give men a product and voice that helps those men with conservative fitness philosophies who would usually wear a Nike, Reebok, Adidas or Under Armour product made for a professional athlete, treat their Lulu with the same love and trust. It may mean more generous cuts in the shirts, and pants more suited for high-speed movements, or it may even more simply mean highlighting elite-looking, hot-bodied, success obsessed male ambassadors like the female ones to push their product. If you think I’m wrong, go take a look at the marketing of coconut water in the last year.
I wear and endorse Lululemon because more than any other athletic wear brand, they understand that their product, their philosophy, their personality, isn’t for everyone, and it isn’t so bad if that discourages those who don’t want to get it. Now its time to find some men who get it, some fitness conservatives who buy products because they improve tasks, who practice yoga because it will help them to build a position of control in their lives and in the world, and who compete at life because you play to win the game.
A mishap caused me to leave my mat at home, and it was another class where I went in thinking that I’d struggle, not because I was tired or it was warm outside, but because I didn’t have my mat. First, I’d like to tell you a little about my mat. I met her (yes, a mat this beautiful could only be female) at the Lincoln Square Lululemon in 2009 after ruining two cheap Nike mats with sweat and excessive cleanings, and there were too many instances of sliding into a full split during “triangle” pose. My mat, a black (really dark graphite) version of Lululemon’s “The Mat,” was an ephiphany. It’s non-slip, made to absorb individual drops of sweat and at least manage major moisture. It’s also extra-wide and extra-long, and feels more like a stage than a yoga mat. After buying it, I instantly gained more confidence in all of my yoga practices and it became a direct influence in my seeking more from yoga. For two years, I didn’t attend a class without using my mat.
That was until this class. I will admit, I was incredibly nervous about practicing without my mat, as if the Bikram Series would somehow be different. My mat became a part of my routine, and I’m all about routine. Also, all of the rented mats I’d ever used smelled like a sewer. But as a testament to the sort of business Bikram Yoga Harlem is, renting a mat isn’t such a burden. First, mat rental is $2, something I’d never noticed in my over two years of attending classes there. If you’ve ever been to a Bikram studio, you’ll know that mats, towels, and water, all Bikram necessities, can get very expensive and tedious. I’m a person who doesn’t like to involve monetary stress and yoga, and this studio has never made me feel that way. Second, it may have been the first clean rented mat I’ve ever used, and it took some of the anxiety of possibly getting sick trying the third part of “full locust” pose. Third, it managed the sweat just fine. For the past eighteen classes I’d been using all sorts of creative tactics to move my sweat-drenched towels from the room. I’ve folded my mat and carried it out like a huge bowl of water to the lobby, I’ve folded up my wet towels and tried to carry them out in my shirt the way a kid would carry water balloons (this got quite a chuckle one day from the savassana crowd when a river of sweat from those wet towels made it through my shirt and splashed mercilessly on my mat), and lately I’ve been leaving my mat in the room to get a dry towel just to carry my wet towels, which has been working well. With the rented mat though, the sweat went straight through the towels, the mat, and the carpet, and it actually wasn’t such a challenge to transport everything out of the room.
Without all of the mat-drama, the class was easy, and I’m beginning to think that the teacher, Erik Cummings is looking for a certain level of intensity from regular practitioners. In each of the classes he’s taught during my streak, he’s found a way to either give me one correction, or encourage me to progress in a posture. He is the reason I’ll attempt hands in prayer during “eagle” pose. He is the reason “wind removing” pose actually feels like a posture now. In every class I find a new way to perfect my practice, and that’s what I think it should be. In Adam Roper’s classes I get a good idea of the pace of the yoga, in Caroline Icaza’s classes I learn the perfect form of postures, and in Erik Cummings classes I find things I’m doing wrong or that I’m doing to little or too much of. It’s not to say that other teachers are bad and these are good, it’s that some teachers simply teach the class and some teachers help individuals at different levels and really help regulars at the studio. That sort of teaching makes being a regular very easy.
If we can eat pizza and sushi at a ballgame. If we can serve “French” fries with every one of our traditional meals. If we can celebrate English Puritans’ new life in a new world by eating like maniacs. If we can celebrate the birth of a Jewish carpenter we believe to be the son of God by showering each other with gifts. If we can celebrate that same carpenter’s death and resurrection by believing in an imaginary rabbit that hides colored eggs. If we can, be American, we can do yoga as a country.
It’s painfully true that most “American” customs have little roots here. My problem is that it doesn’t matter where our customs came from, whether one is discussing Christmas trees or Valentine’s candy, we only keep and practice the ones that have to do with indulgence. One nemesis of mine, caffeine, a highly addictive and controlling drug that currently has our country by the short hairs, is mostly consumed because it helps people do things they’d rather not do on little or no sleep and energy. So many people are dependent on it that these days, coffee brands have oil money, and energy drinks sell the way soda used to. We can harm our selves without regard, and that ability is what sets us apart from other countries.
God, send me another sign. That 'Cupid' thing you were telling me about went way over my head.
We’re also macho, which leads me to a custom that is all ours-gym vanity. Yeah, it seems that throughout history, people have strength-trained, used their body weight to be stronger and fitter, done all types of stretching and balance movements, but gyms as we know them are a new element in our lineage. They’re places that are much less about helping people lose weight than they are about making gym owners money and feeding this need for communal superficiality that so many Americans have. Basically, they’re expensive indoor beaches with mats and weights instead of sand and water. The gym is what’s created the backwards connection people have between weights and fitness. The gym is the reason personal training in our country doesn’t work. The gym is the reason that the fitness industry is one thousand parts vanity and one part health. And we love gyms, because we think that helping yourself look good is loving yourself.
Helping yourself be better is loving yourself. Yoga helps you be better. The three most beautiful things I’ve experienced in my life are newspapers, the World Series, and yoga. Still, yoga is the only one I can share. Yoga is the only thing I’ve ever done that I’ve seen it heal things internally. I had scoliosis before I started practicing yoga, and I was an inch shorter and sixty pounds heavier. My bench press and squat numbers were better then. Now I can carry groceries longer, or hold a heavy child all day, or do laundry without a car. I’m ‘country strong’ now, it’s all useful. God forbid someone ever wants to fight me, I’ve got the determination and strength to kill anything that comes at me. I’ll be focused on it too. I haven’t been one for any sort of intoxication since I started practicing yoga, so in any contest, chess, tennis, scrabble, I’m sharp. And cool. Yoga’s melted away my temper, so today, I’ll walk away from that fight, and I’ll never be the one to start one. I react less, and I’m proactive more, and all the while, my body just asks me for more yoga.
Maybe a new platform (or mat) will help Barack defeat the GOP in 2012
Not simply because I do it, or because its effective, or because it can make positive mental shifts for you, do I think that all of America should step onto a yoga mat. I really think it should be our principle form of exercise for three reasons:
First, anyone can do it. There is yoga for the young, old, sick, and healthy. There is yoga that helps you get better at sex and yoga that helps you fight addiction. There is yoga for beginners and the advanced. There is yoga that both beginners and advanced practitioners do together. There is yoga for people scared of yoga, and there are yoga competitions where people watch other people do yoga.
Second, we can’t truly identify its religious roots. We think it has Hindi roots and we know it contains so many elements of ancient Indian culture, but by now, we’ve stripped it of that. Those who maintain many old-world elements have already branded their yoga, some by branding the system of postures and some by labeling it with their name. Here, and everywhere else, we are free to explore yoga postures and yogic movements at our discretion and exercise gurus and companies have watered it down here. Accomplishing a yoga program every day takes a level of focus and dedication that’s missing in America. If we all treated yoga like a necessary daily activity we’d all understand that focus and dedication enough to apply it to other parts of our life.
Third, its not about looking good, and if you’re mind is on looking good as you do it, and not executing postures, you will fail (and probably fall). So mentally, its a healthier format of exercise than say, joining a gym just to worry for two hours about what you need to fix on your flabby body. Yoga fixes from the inside out, which is also the way the United States needs to be fixed.
