Walking Tall
Paperback Yoga
by Edward Staskus
2y ago
By Ed Staskus “Waiting for an invitation to arrive, goin’ to a party where no one’s still alive.” Oingo Boingo   Barron Cannon laughed and made loop de loops at the side of his head with his index finger. “Agent Orange has a screw loose,” he said. “But, since he’s at the top, he can take his crazy visions and turn them into reality. He’s like a saint from the Dark Ages who ate a moldy loaf of rye and saw God. It makes you wonder, am I or they round the bend?” He made a fist, raised his thumb, extended two fingers parallel to each other, and blew on the fingers. “Where there’s s ..read more
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Painting the Town Red
Paperback Yoga
by Edward Staskus
2y ago
By Ed Staskus “Looking up at paradise, all souls bound just contrariwise, yo ho ho and a bottle of rum.” Dead Man’s Chest, a traditional sea shanty When yoga got on its feet in the 1960s and started rolling in the 1970s, many Americans thought it was a fad. It was part and parcel of the culture of California, after all. It was for hippies and health nuts and religious fanatics, said working stiffs and wise guys, wondering where the success in it was. In the 60s and 70s, however, it was anything but a fad. It was the real deal. It had its feet grounded in a 5000-year-old tradition. If it was a ..read more
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Crashing Into Paradise
Paperback Yoga
by Edward Staskus
2y ago
By Ed Staskus When we were kids my brother, sister, and I went to two resorts every summer, except they weren’t called resorts. One was two weeks with other Boy and Girl Scouts and the other one was two weeks with first-generation immigrant boys and girls like us at a Lithuanian Franciscan camp. They were called summer camps. It was how our parents packed up their troubles and sent them away. The scout camps were usually in the middle of a forest somewhere in the middle of nowhere. The Franciscan camp was in Wasaga Beach, on Canada’s Georgian Bay, in the wind and sunshine. The longest freshwa ..read more
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Sat Nam (One Hundred and Eight)
Paperback Yoga
by Edward Staskus
2y ago
By Ed Staskus “One sits and beats an old tin can, lard pail. One beats and beats for that which one believes.” Wallace Stevens Everyone has heard the words to thine own self be true, even if they’ve never read a word of Shakespeare. Not everyone has heard the words sat nam, which mean true self, even if they’ve done plenty of yoga. Shakespeare is remembered because he got human nature right. Yoga is practiced because it helps make human nature right. Real life often means caving in to peer pressure instructions tropes status groupthink. Even though trying to fit in can make you temporarily in ..read more
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Slam Dunk
Paperback Yoga
by Edward Staskus
2y ago
By Ed Staskus A commonplace of most yoga advice is the advice to let go of expectation, judgment, and competition when stepping on the mat. The importance placed on themes of tolerance, cceptance, and non-competition is round-the-clock, streamed from beginner classes to advanced asana practice. On the web sites of many studios, under headings like Yoga Etiquette, is the injunction: “Leave your ego at the door. The yoga mat has no space for your ego, competitiveness, or judgment.” The community class teacher at our local big box studio is fond of saying, “It’s your practice, not anyone else’s ..read more
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Soap Box Saviors
Paperback Yoga
by Edward Staskus
2y ago
By Ed Staskus “We don’t get fooled again.”  The Who The difference between policies and principles is the difference between Santa, saviors, and savasana, or what is known as corpse pose in yoga practice. Santa and our many saviors, ranging from Islam to Christianity, much like our Messiah-like political leaders, have a heavy hand. They lay down policy like train tracks. It’s my way or the highway. They enjoin the carrot and stick approach to order the reality they’ve carefully resolutely ruthlessly constructed. It’s often the kind of reality that even when you stop believing in it, it w ..read more
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Out On a Limb
Paperback Yoga
by Edward Staskus
2y ago
By Ed Staskus I found myself tagging along to yoga in the first place because my neighbor Vera had started taking classes. Vera told me she was stiffening up. She was dropping in to the neighborhood studio because her husband Frank had taken classes for a long time. “He said he went to yoga because he’s a counterculture kind of guy, even though yoga is a 5,000-year-old culture, and everybody does it nowadays, anyway,” said Vera. “Besides, his lower back hurt.” Yoga never fixed his back, but Vera said he still gets on his mat every day, although mostly at home now. I meant to start right ..read more
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Two’s a Crowd
Paperback Yoga
by Edward Staskus
2y ago
By Ed Staskus “It’s like having, you know, your phone has a charger, right? It’s like having a charger for your body and mind. That’s what meditation is.”  Jerry Seinfeld Meditation is not a huge undertaking. Anybody can do it anywhere they are, anytime they want, sitting somewhere familiar or even on the fly. It’s often thought that meditation is thinking about nothing. It’s not, since thinking is one thing and nothing is another thing. If you’re trying to think about nothing, you are still thinking, giving your best shot to making something out of nothing. But, trying to thin ..read more
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Lord of the Fishes
Paperback Yoga
by Edward Staskus
2y ago
By Ed Staskus The  North Rustico beach slivers itself at the mouth of the harbor of the town, on Prince Edward Island, Canada’s smallest province. The crescent shaped island is tucked into the shoulders of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, across the Northumberland Strait. On the far side of the Gulf of St. Lawrence is Newfoundland. Europe is the farther landfall across the Atlantic Ocean. North Rustico is on the north-central coast, on Route 6, between Cavendish and Rusticoville. Some of it can be seen from the deck of Pedro’s Eatery, where Route 6 dips and curves through the middle of tow ..read more
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Bad Boys of Yoga
Paperback Yoga
by Edward Staskus
2y ago
By Ed Staskus “Keep your breath to cool your porridge.”  Jane Austen There’s nothing new about scandals, be they political academic corporate celebrity religious personal financial. They are a dime a dozen. The reason they are so cheap is because there are so many of them. Crack open a newspaper, remote on a TV, open a browser, and there they are, today and every day. They take all shapes and sizes, not just nowadays, but way back when, too. Back when the Olympics were the Greek Olympics, an Athenian pentathlete bribed his opponents to secure victory. He was found out and both he and his ..read more
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