Burnout

Michael Crawford is luckier than most of us: he gets to do what he loves, and he does it to great acclaim. Known for an impeccable work ethic, Michael trained himself to do his own stunts in musicals like Billy and Barnum. His most famous role is the Phantom, the opera ghost of the musical, The Phantom of the Opera. He starred in over 1300 performaces, even when his voice was exhausted, as he knew people had bought tickets to see him as the Phantom, so he didn't want to let them down. Much later, he designed his own fat suit for the Antony Lloyd Webber musical The Woman in White, but was forced to stop after 3 months. The suit drained his body of fluids, making him ill. Then he found out that he contracted ME,an abbreviated term for what most call chronic fatigue syndrome. He moved to Auckland, New Zealand to recover his health. While convelesing, Mr. Crawford learned to garden, fish and enjoy life in the moment. Recently he has returned to acting in a theatrical rendition of The Wizard of Oz.

I came across an article about Michael Crawford's illness, and read some of the subsequent comments. Many theorized that he wasn't sick, but exhausted by his years of dedication to performance arts. Mr. Crawford has a reputation as a workaholic: he would do 8 shows a week, usually showing up three hours before each performance. He has been in show business for 50 years--really. So what happened to him? One called it burnout. The commenter noted that Mr. Crawford refused to marry again because his work had cost him his marriage. So perhaps nature was catching up to him.

I'm not going to discuss the prejudice against chronic fatigue syndrome. But the subject of burnout is all too near to my heart. What can you do when your job no longer makes you feel fulfilled? When you dread your work, when the mere thought of showing up makes you feel tired and irritable, you may be suffering from burnout. And it is the public based professions that suffer the most burnout, from social workers dealing with wayward kids to rock musicians. Dealing with the public is very hard, people are callous and indifferent to the superlative effort it takes to deal with strangers with various agendas day after day. Burnout can cause some of the same symptoms as chronic fatigue syndrome. But it isn't a medical category for disability.

We don't live in a society that encourages rest, just wasteful leisure activities. Sure, park yourself on the couch and download video games or recent movies. Watch your cable bill go sky-high as you relax with brain-numbing crud after a hard day at work. Make sure you have a few cold ones nearby to hasten the buzz as you forget the horror of your job. Then go text a few folks on FB to bitch and moan. Wait for the comment that scolds you for your lack of gratitude. After all, you have a job. Suck it up, cupcake. And so it continues.

A tired, angry populace will cease to contribute productive value. It may turn on itself. Some people only define themselves through their work. Achievement is everything, because someone told them on their walk through life that they aren't important unless they do something. So they do, do, do and blame everyone else who doesn't act the same. They often give birth to children who are required to thrive in their love of massive achievement. At some point, there is a reckoning, a dull questioning stare as they march to the slaughterhouse of crushed energy. Am I happy? What did I prove? What price did I pay for all this faceless approval? Then the vision fades and it is back to the treadmill of look at me, look at my kids, look at my friends, please, just look and admire. Don't you wish you were me?

In yoga, this would be called an inauthentic existence, one that is based on sensory perceptions instead of truth. More on that later.

I'm Alive

Really. But I haven't felt like writing anything on here. I'm developing a curriculum for community based learning in my classes. It is going fairly well, but God--so much work. My mellow has been consistently harshed by various negative folk. I need to recognize what is toxic and what is necessary. Everything is about perspective. But when a body is tired, it is easy to forget all that. Anyway, life goes on--I'm hanging in there, and I hope you all are doing the same.

Light and Love to all,

Susan

Love this image--enjoy.

Haiku Monday--Metallic Sound

Here are my two entries:

Begin with the breath:
lungs squirm down the rabbit hole-
hollow rasping snared.

Caged birdie flushing--
Beak flaps and taps rusted pipes-
Superbowl Shuffle.

I hope the images explain the author's intent. I wrote these with metallic noise in mind, not sound.

Haiku Monday: Here is my entry

Droplets of merit. Scour my skin like fresh napalm. Drawing my demise.

When Yoga Becomes Something Else

I found two articles online that deal with the darkness of the yogic scene. One pertains to injuries that yogis, often in excellent health, develop in their practice. Another takes on the Philadelphia yoga community through a look at the Dhyana Yoga studios. To me, the reaction to both articles show how yoga is often misinterpreted as a flawless system that works miracles in all who participate. When the gaps reveal themselves, we shift between blaming teachers who don't fit the yogic model to the very practice itself. Neither method is useful.

The first article correctly notes the prevalent slew of injuries spawned by teachers who push students too hard and the students who love them for such abuse. It also notes that people without body awareness should understand their anatomy before undertaking challenging poses like headstand along with deceptively simple postures like downward facing dog. (see illustrations) Teachers themselves now have endured hip replacements and spinal surgery directly related to their yoga practice. The article does not conclude that yoga itself is dangerous, but the suggestion is strong enough to make people think twice before they pull out a mat.

The second article may not mean much to those outside of Philly: the focus is on Dhyana D'Amato-Viterelli. She is a saavy businesswoman who helped make yoga a part of everyday Philadelphia with 5 studios in both the greater Philadelphia area and New Jersey. If one is part of the Philly yoga scene, chances are that he or she will have taken a class or a training at one of her studios. If not, said yogic scenester will know someone who has. The article brings out the controversial reactions to Dhyana: some credit her with creating an eclectic yoga business that tries to meet the needs of Philadephians interested in yoga. Others see her as a yoga rock star with a militaristic attitude toward anyone who differs with her vision. Reactions to Dhyana are almost as varied as the yoga styles so many of us practice.

The first article is far more critical to the discussion of yoga as a physical practice. Yoga Alliance programs require a certain amount of hours in studying anatomy. However, some of the anatomy instructors are not all very thorough, nor can they be. If you have to analyze the entire physical body in a 16 hour weekend seminar, chances are that you will miss something. Moreover, if you have students who decide that anatomy is too boring to study, you may end up with certified teachers who won't consult an anatomy book to see what 108 sun salutations may be doing to the kneecaps of a weekend warrior.

When yoga becomes the perfect posture as defined by an image or an image conscious instructor, then the student cannot learn why we need bodies in the first place. We live in our bodies in order to grasp higher truths of life: our journey begins as our bodies develop, and we can only access the lessons of this world while we live in flesh, not spirit. Look at the Yoga Sutras of Pantanjali: only 2 of the precepts even deal with asana (poses). If you want to be a pretzel, that is your choice, but the yoga student must know that flexibility in body does not always mean a fluid mind or an awareness of why we live in the time/space continuum. The body is our container: spirit lives within our crude matter. We care for our bodies by keeping them safe and healthy. Yoga isn't a vehicle for higher learning if we beat spirit's vessel into submission.

The second article points out all the mental baggage we bring to our practice. We are flawed beings, in search of unconditional love and communal wholeness. Our hurt often defines our outlook. Dhyana lost her mother when she was a baby. To any child, that blow is crippling, but to a baby acquiring cognizant skills, the absence can feel like an indictment on existence itself. If Dhyana seeks nurturing relationships through yoga, she is reaffirming that her adulthood has no choice but to make up for childhood loss. If Dhyana acts in ways that others deem nonspiritual, then maybe we need to look at the whole concept of spirituality. Is spirituality about what we look like to others in the ________ world (insert faith-based community audience.) Then we aren't any different from all those people getting injured in yoga practice who want to be the Yoga Journal model or think that the goal of yoga is the pose itself. We all are posers when we want others to pose for us.

Maybe people think Dhyana shouldn't enjoy the fruits of her labors. Does that mean that yoga teachers don't deserve compensation? What then, does that say about our sense of worth for services rendered? Our economy depends on exchange value. Our education is an investment. A successful yoga business means that people can earn a livelihood from yoga. Most actors would tell us that they simply want to be working actors. Sure, there is an imbalance between wealth  and profession. Should we increase the proportion by devaluing ourselves? Because that is exactly what we do when we compare a public figure with our idealized precepts in a celebrity culture gone rogue.

The bigger a person becomes in the mainstream, the greater the focus will be on his or her darkness as the spotlight grows. By sheer demographic volume, Dhyana Yoga is bait for discontent. I'm sure people get food poisoning at Whole Foods. But that doesn't mean you can't find good stuff there. Many Dhyana Yoga gratuates are superb yoga teachers who don't push people into asanas they can't handle. One is a Reiki healer who has developed a system called Reiki For Yoga Teachers. Others teach in various community outreach programs like Street Yoga, Traveling Yogis and World Yoga Project. They give back; they don't hide their knowledge or use their training to serve their ego. Many students credit Dhyana Yoga with giving them their start, then they took the initiative to do more. That is the mark of learning. Our teachers can only do so much. They are guides, but they are not the final word as we strive to become better in what we choose to do.

Negative representations of yoga continue to hurt and confuse people. Ego is the main culprit. We are arrogant enough to think we have dominion over the earth. Does that including the pretzeling of our bodies into misshapen lumps? Likewise, the cult of personality ends up sticking it to the beholder, more than the idol. We have to see people for what they are, not what we want them to be. We need to look for the common denominator: our own humanity. Dominion over the earth does not mean changing natural law. Maybe the best lesson we can learn from both articles is this: stop defining yoga through appearance and hearsay. Don't seek the image nor be the image. Be yourself with all your accepted limitations. Others will always disappoint; even our bodies will let us down through age, exhaustion and a refusal to be what we want them to be. Life goes on and so will our yoga practice. But do me a favor: ask your teacher if they know the difference between a ligament and a tendon. Then ask them if they know the three regions of the spine. If they cannot answer either question, find another teacher. Your body will thank you, and spirit will breathe a huge sigh of relief.

Charlie Chaplin: If Only...

This speech give me chills. And people still call him a "jew communist". God bless you, Charlie Chaplin--let's fight for a new world, a decent world.

The Loneliness of Achilles--Another View of a Greek Hero

This blog has been in a stage of continuous editing--a bit like our definition of heroes.

I think of Achilles as a hero caught between the honor he reveres and a world devoid of what he calls virtue. Achilles is the ultimate soldier: he fights for all ideals that represent warfare in the warrior’s imagination.  He believes that his glory on the battlefield will not only keep his name on everyone’s lips for posterity; he places his hopes in duty and sacrifice. Like Sarpedon and Glaucus, Achilles knows he fights for more than his country; he fights for his ancestors and his descendants. His father, Peleus, represents what is best in men. Zeus knows this, and grants him marriage to the goddess, Thetis, for his nobility. Achilles springs from the best that natural selection can offer: the heroic mortal with impeccable integrity and the bloodline of divinity. Such favorable traits should ensure that Achilles will be remembered as just, brave, mighty and benevolent, capable of great deeds and even greater understanding for life itself. What goes wrong?

When Agamemnon takes Briseis, he spits on all that Achilles represents. He fears the power that Achilles holds over his men. He recognizes that Achilles is the better fighter, the better man, and the warrior who represents authority. When Chryses, the priest of Apollo, calls for help, he refuses to turn to the commander of the Greek war operations—Agamemnon. Instead, he begs Achilles for safe passage into the Greek camps, one that Achilles grants because he knows that the priest’s words would save the dying Greek soldiers from an incurable plague sent by the wrathful Apollo. Agamemnon choose to steal the priest’s virginal daughter, Chryseis. Apollo works to save the Trojans at every step; as a god, he will not allow himself to be desecrated. He is waiting for any chance to hurt the Greeks. Agamemnon was greedy and ignorance. The Greek soldiers are paying for Agamemnon’s lust; the troops were betrayed by their commanding officer, and Achilles is determined to find justice for men who fight at his side—Agamemnon is notorious for sitting out the war. Agamemnon has no choice but to obey the wishes of the god, yet he showed the Greeks that he is petty and small-minded; he stole the prize of Achilles, the best warrior and the savior of the men from disease.

Once Achilles is betrayed, he no longer identifies himself with the Greeks. Prior to Agamemnon’s theft, he uses the pronoun we and us to show that he and the army are one:” Do you think we have some stockpile in reserve….The army will repay you three and four times over—when and if Zeus allows us to rip Troy down to its foundations.” (Iliad, pg. 5) But when Agamemnon tries to save face by taking the prize of Achilles, the proud warrior immediately disclaims any relationship to the Greek cause:

You shameless profiteering excuse for a commander!

How are you going to get any Greek Warrior

To follow you in battle again? You know,

I don’t have any quarrel with the Trojans,

They didn’t do anything to me to make me

Come over here and fight… (pg.6—bolding is my own)

This is not the idle boasting of hurt pride. Achilles had no obligation to the Greek cause, unlike all the rest of the commanding officers, from Agamemnon to Odysseus to Ajax to Diomedes. Greece fought Troy (their first reason as there is never one reason to fight a war) because Paris abducted Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world. All of the Greek princes who had vied for Helen’s hand, had sworn an unbinding oath to protect her if any one dares to steal her from the husband she chooses.  Achilles was the only officer who never asked for Helen in marriage, so he alone was under no obligation to be in Troy. It is through his rage, his sense of betrayal, and his eventual return that we find out why Achilles chose to join the Greeks in a ten year war that killed their finest soldiers, both in battle and during the voyage home.

Both The Iliad and The Odyssey explore characters who must come to grips with the world in which they live. Odysseus, the hero of the latter, has to make the choice to return home to his family or stay forever in a mentally altered state that brings him pleasure and blinds him to the pain the war wrought upon his psyche. Modern audiences are more comfortable with Odysseus because they can understand him: we live in an egocentric, alienated society epitomized by his actions. They relate to his conviction that he alone, decides the course of his men instead of consulting his troops.  Is it unethical to avoid rational perception through deceptive pleasure when it becomes nearly impossible to cope with objective reality? Odysseus spends ten years getting home because he is stupid enough to offend the one god he needs, Poseidon, the god of the sea. But he also cannot resist the lure of wine, endless sex and the promise of immortality when he is held captive by a jealous nymph who thinks she is in love with him. After Odysseus gets his fill of earthly delights, he realizes he has deserted the ones who needs him the most, and owns up to his weakness. Odysseus represents us at our worst, but he also shows us that we can change and better ourselves. This is why he is the modern hero.

  But he will not leave without making sure that he is remembered in awe.

My husband and I often disagree about the heroes in Homer’s epics. I used to think they were stupid fights, but now I realize that our perspectives shape our viewpoint of life. I always defend Achilles and denigrate Odysseus, who strikes me as a conniving opportunist, a manipulator, selfish and immoral. My husband sees Achilles as idealistic, naive, in love with his own death, and blind to the world. I counter that Odysseus is a politician; he speaks well in councils, while Achilles is out there doing everything the ruling powers tell him to do until they go too far.

He argues that Achilles wants to live somewhere that isn’t real; he belongs to an era much like our history books, filled with declarations that pass as facts, but serve as ideology to get us to believe that we are better than we are. I say: what is wrong with believing in good? The more we believe, the more we will strive to attain that excellence. Odysseus settles for an egocentric world and learns to use it to his advantage. My husband will then say: And what did it get Achilles, but death? I answer: We all die, but not all of us can die on our own terms. 

We don’t know how Odysseus died. This omission alone, suggests to me that Odysseus may have paid for his cunning at a later date through an unpleasant end. Maybe the destiny of his life was fulfilled when he decided to become a husband to his wife and a father to his son. I personally will always celebrate those who choose what’s right over what feels good. Give me Achilles, warts and all.

Gratitude Is Not a Synonym

I always get annoyed when mass media tells me what to do and what to feel. It's Thanksgiving, so our inner chips have programmed us to mouth platitudes of thankfulness to all who need to hear it. Well, maybe some of us are in the 1 percent. Maybe we are just loathsome pieces of indignant trash, but I don't see a lot of gratitude around here. It is more like relief.

Can you tell the difference? Try this: I am grateful that I have a job. (Many do not.)Why are you grateful? Here are some possible reasons:
1. I have insurance benefits. Oh, but wait? Aren't companies cutting benefits as they are just too costly? Aren't you paying more out of your check for higher copays and larger deductibles? What if you have two part time jobs? Sure, you have a job, but don't slip in the bathroom--no workman's comp for you. If you are disabled, you have to start hustling for that disability check, a guaranteed refusal the first time around. Meanwhile, everyone tells you that you are a deadbeat, sucking off the system. So you look for any job, anything that pays cash money. This leads to reason two:

2. I have security.  Really? Well, I'm damned. So job equals security. So does real estate, land and a spouse. With the housing market in the toilet and independent farmers crushed into dust, land takes on a different meaning. If I had land, I'd begin preparing for the collapse. My spouse would be in charge of getting shovels, building the fallout shelter, chopping wood, and maintaining the weapon supply. I would work on the Cookbook for the Apocalypse, starring spamloaf, featuring garbanzo casserole with a side of saltines. Now that is security.


3. I have a purpose. C'mon, no job can give you a purpose. You mean it takes time off of your hands. You have something to do. Now you don't have time to think about how it all is just one big scam, a way to lull you into a torpid stupor of flaccid brain waves that paint a straight line on the EKG. You have to search within for that sense of purpose.

So my point is this: don't get confused around this time of year. Wake up to the subliminal messages within the happy speak. Feel what you really feel, and do something about it. Gratitude gives us peace. Relief only means they haven't found us yet. We've all been brainwashed enough by the absurdity called the American Dream. We've been taught to care about this and dismiss that. Our relationships become commodities, not community. This holiday season is going to suck for a lot of people. Let's not make it worse by making them feel bad because they aren't like those Prozac addled families in all the ads. You have a right to your feelings. Be grateful that you can still feel them.

Halloween--Recession Style

Now dress up as a Wall Street banker or Michele Bachman or a homeless person or a Democrat with a spine--go scare somebody! Life isn't frightening enough these days.

Writing Essays In College

One of my students sent this to me. It's all too true. Was college this meaningless when I was an undergraduate? Sigh. Of course, this job market doesn't reward essay writing or college degrees. It's time I leave the profession and start my own business called Susan Notes: Reviews of Every Book You'll Get Stuck Reading for Dumbass Classes. Yep, that is recession proof.