remedies: sudden lower back pain

my brother was in disbelief:

you pulled your back in a yoga class? but you're always doing yoga. isn't yoga supposed to counter that kind of thing? 

good question. yeah, he's right, if you're engaged in yogum, more than just the asana class.

so, the whole 9 yards of yogum will get you to be aligned like oaks and pines in the hudson valley. but sitting around hour after hour behind a computer or in the trains and buses, and at friends houses is countering everything you work on during asana practice.

that and proper alignment. getting into an asana involves a great deal of humility, of listening to body, of aligning with the mathematics of the sun, moon, and planets. when off course, you're a comet off the galactic symphony, you are in the frequency of rick ross and meek mills and kid cuddi and ford and porseh, and mitsubishi and g.e. and boeing....you are in a deep pain. 

my pain was along my right thoraco lumbar fascia (this is the area superficially covering the lumbar region around the spine), latismus dorsi, external oblique, and continued to shoot down my gluteus medius and litobial tract. 

so here's the way i got out of this potentially month long out-for-the-count:

1. fought shaitan. satan whispered shivasanas, and i almost laid down for the rest of class. sometimes this is necessary. sometimes, you need a moment to rest. you just have to listen to body, really listen, and not the voice of giving up. 

2. went into restorative back asanas, including: child's pose, cobra, upward and downward dog. 

3. pressed into pressure points while in child's pose, forward fold, and camel. 

4. continued through asana practice that served the healing of my back. 30 minutes.

5. took a steaming shower, did a forward fold and pressed and slid into points of lower back and nerves that fall into my legs. 

6. oiled entire body, with greater application in area of pain.

7. shivasana on yoga mat. 

8. had a friend press and slide down the pressure points, along my external iliac vein and artery and the great saphonous vein, while I was in child's pose. 

9. continued to participate in normal activity. 

10. continued pressure and heat treatment later that day, before going to bed.

11. slept on floor. 

12. did pressure point treatment using roller next day.

13. prayer, mindful movement, posture, positive thinking and people.

remedies: tooth headache

my left gum, by my molars, has been jolted for months, leading to a climbing throb up my maxilla, zygomatic and temporal  bone. been having this associated headache like a who-smacked-me-with- brass-knuckles-on-the side-of-my-head.

sure, I need to go to the dentist. dentists are mad expensive. the expenses are madder than hatters having tea time every 15 seconds with a mouse, a falcon, an 11 year old blonde girl, and an uninvited queen whose looking for heads to chop...

here's what worked: 

1. blazing-bangladesh-summer-red-hot-shower till your face is in a volcanic cloud. 

2. gargle 3 times with steamy salt water (lots of salt). gargle for 33 seconds each. 

3. swish 3 times with the same. swish for 45 seconds each.

repeat the above every 20 minutes for first hour. 

then repeat once an hour for 3 hours. 

then repeat only after each meal, and before going to bed. 

avoid eating any solids during this time frame; have only peppermint, eucalyptus, thyme, taragon, oregano, or rosemary teas.

avoid foods with sugar, including most fruits. 

avoid all dried fruits and sticky foods.

remedies: bloating

balloons in my stomach like helium bags filled with sand and dynamite. what to do...?

gas trapped and without a quick way to get rid of it, i returned home after a whole day of being out and about - work, supermarket, cafe... 

soon as I got home, was tempted to eat again, not necessarily cause i was hungry, but out of habit, out of neglecting the stagnancy that left me heavy...even rationalized eating spicy foods to run it out...

thought about it. a pause...and this is the first step - pause….  here are the rest of the steps, all of them, the recipe to cure bloating: 

1. be in a place that feels like home, that, even if temporary, is a place you feel you may sleep and shower and feel some peace at. this step is essential for the body to release the toxicity of being in the movement of a fast paced city, and ingesting heaps of acidic air throughout the day...home is essential for a restful soul, of a body at ease and prepared for next steps....

2. avoid eating anything else. even if you are craving it. watch your body, observe whether the craving is really your body's, or your minds. 

3. take a steamy shower. if you have access to a steam room, that will work. 

4. make a ginger/peppermint tea. in the absence of this, boil water and squeeze a quarter of a lemon into it. drink it hot. drink it standing in samasthiti. pray before taking it in.

5. lay on your back with your knees folded and feet on the ground. 

6. take yogic breaths - deep inhalations/exhalations. the exhalations should be longer than the inhalations. 

7. get up to use the bathroom when you need to. otherwise remain in the position, and/or return to this position to retire to for a couple hours, or the night, if it's the end of the day. 

raw foodism: raw farina recipe

all praise is due for this opportunity to engage with food, with worship through food, with shepherding this mosque of body i reside in...with getting strong enough to leave when its time...

wasn't my intention to make the farina, but it made sense. the resistance of the blender i use led me to this. so all praise is due for this challenge that opened new opportunities and has allowed me to get deeper in patience...

ingredients: 

cauliflower

macoun/macintosh apple

sea salt

water

coconut oil

raw peanuts

raw honey/maple syrup

cinnamon 

recipe: 

soak a handful of raw nuts in water overnight.

soak a portion of a cauliflower overnight.

chop the flowers of the cauliflower.

place em in the blender with some water.

pour a couple tablespoons of coconut oil.

sprinkle sea salt. 

peel and chop apples; place in blender.

place soaked peanuts in blender.

sprinkle cinnamon. 

blend all.

add water as needed to give it thick soupy texture.

once blended, add honey. 

blend. 

set aside in a bowl and leave refrigerated overnight.

next morning, place bowl in sun, and leave for 1-2 hours. 

before you chow down, pause, center, descend into the

Air Land Liquid Atmosphere Heat (ALLAH), you emanate from. 

meditate on the common origin of you and the food you are about to eat.

meditate on all the hands that touched it - sun, soil, water, ants, bees, farmers, 

drivers, produce staff, preparers of your meal.

All praise is due... 

do what you have to

as tylenol won't zap everyone's headache or robitussin quell every cough, or prozac brighten every long dark day, not every piece of babylon perspective and wisdom will apply to everyone.

the other day, i was three stepping the less-grimy stairwell in grandcentral, transferring from the 7 to the 6. in the mid-curve, between staircases, there was a middle aged dred, strumming and singing about how: "there must be some kinda way outta here, said the joker to the thief..." 

dude behind me in a Peter Griffin tone, commented: "wow, this guys real good, he probably practices a lot." 

he was right, i thought, it was the ancient wisdom i'd heard repeatedly from my yoga teachers in india - practice, practice, practice. 

but then dude behind me qualifies his statement by saying: "oh yeah, he doesn't have to work, he has all the time in the world to practice. he gets his money for free and lives off the system. of course he's good..." dude went on to complain. i slowed down when i got to the black-gum pressed 4 5 6 platform full of bug-eyed tourists and tri-state workers, to check dude out. he had a caustic smirk on his face that matched with his suit and slain-animal leather. 

i hear the gavel all the time, a friend of mine, during a gathering over food and philosophy, when the topic of work came up, was saying how he just didn't get all these people begging on the trains. afterall, they are fully able-bodied. 

the 6, 8, 10, 11 o'clock news splays the images of the pathological drug dealer, in such and such projects, who shot a cop, who was heroically trying to fight crime. they don't tell you that pathological dude was unemployed for 2 years, that he dropped out of school because the teachings made him feel dumb, the kids, videos, ads made him feel like he just needed to keep up on kicks and jewels, that the only economics that was made available, that showed any interest, that didn't require a thousand resumes and no responses, that showed him any love was the drug economy, and that the previous arrest record that they (the media) keeps mentioning was for telling off a social worker who told his mom she was crazy.

the social workers and progressive lawyers might understand, talk about it with the people in their circles, but their circle is their circle, tightly surrounded by impenetrable class walls that don't allow for the human interaction to happen. the progressive caste might be secretly judging, as i heard some teachers do, about some of their students, about how: i understand that things are messed up, but by X talking the way he is, you know, not speaking in complete sentences, using incorrect language deliberately, he's only making it harder for himself. 

teacher really might not get it. it's alright. you really might not get it. get that. it's alright. 

but who knows, there is overlap, the lawyer might be from eighties l.e.s, scarfaced and all. she might be like the boricua prison guard sleeping with the brother serving 2 life sentences. she might've been barred by position, but soul diminished the inability to connect. 

it's easy to judge, especially when you're privileged. nothing wrong with people having privilege. good for you. but not everyone has it like that. and the more privilege you have, the more tint you might have on the lenses you see the world from. 

it's easy to judge whoever, wherever you are, dirt poor but finding an opp to hate at someone less than, at the dirty immigrants who are cooking that stinky food. the hate comes from within, from a deep disdain of self, from believing the fiction that has been constructed about you.

where-ever you are, you know what you gotta do. what You Really gotta Do. Do it. whether others approve or not doesn't matter. whether it fits the babylon advice of teachers and social workers, characters in movies or tv. whatever it is you gotta do to keep your head above water, to maintain as one of my homies used to say back in the day. Do it. nobody knows your story but You. 

finding yin and yang in music

we have arrived at a place, where everything is music, rumi says in his poem by the same name. suf inayat khan, an indian muslim who grew in popularity in the west - and whose books my pops had - extrapolated rumi's quranic interpretations to say that all life was music -  a direct retelling of ayats in the holy text.

all beings are in tune with music - the lions, bhandor's, elephants, bees, sparrows, oaks, redwoods, himalayas, andes, etc - and thus they are muslims (beings who subscribe to islam - submission to the 1ness) by default. all, except humans. as such, we need to let go/submit (islam), to tune in to the Frequency, to Harmonize.

if music is vibrations and vibrations are the fabric of life, what type of frequency is the music we r listening to tuning us into? if while or after listening to a song you want to hide under your blanket for days, or run out and get some gucci bags and matching shoes and shades, or want to smoke and drink and grow your hair long just to thrash it, or thrash someone against a broken glass pane, then you are tuned deeper into babylon - the world of ego, look at me, materialisms, schisms.

turn off your radio and listen to Music.

indigenous music - whether it be from the hopi nation or the zulu nation, bauls of bengal or qawwals of punjab, the oud of nubia and beirut or the conga's of ghana and brazil, the bomba y plena of puerto rico or the throat singing of the altai people - is prostrate to tuning into the larger Frequency.

beyond individual name-recognition, in indigenous/traditional, the music and it's players, are more deeply concerned with the process of tuning in, and so often times, you'll be listening to a song and you won't know who the singer or instrumentalist is. conceiving this could be baffling to the babylonian, whose world is ego and rationalizing ego, whether it be by way of academia, spiritual practices like yoga and meditation, or music. my name is...have you heard of this dude... she has the best line of... BABYLON!

in babylon long hair, dreds, burning incense, and talking a certain way makes you down with spirituality. even spirituality is a look, a commodity, and babylonian spiritualists are drawn to the look. but probably because they are looking for something deeper than the corporate babylon. then go Deeper. the spiritual babylon and corporate babylon have the same common denominator - babylon.

tune in. go deeper.

the last couple of days i've been listening to pipa music from the hunan people of china and dstgah music from iran. wow. all praise is due.

the medicine of situations

situations can humble u.

cryptic, right? situations - what do you mean?

u know. situations.

my boy called me up the other day, said, yo i got a situation... he didn't need to say more, i knew. i talked to my cousin shortly after, he told me everything was cool, except this situation he was in. my other cousin told me her man got into a situation. her voice trembled like port au prince, what can i do?

my amma brings it up every other week, calling me six times a day, a situation, some uncle i forgot about, you know the one who used to  come over when you were in high school and always ate like it was no body's business... she tells me about an aunty, a distant cousin, a childhood homie - dead, cancer, car accident, divorced, suicide, deported, locked up, mad. 

i listen, nod. word, i say. that's crazy. 

 it is crazy, mad. wonder how more of us aren't mad. wonder how we are just going about the day.  but we r, sometimes hardened, head down, hands balled in fists and beating our chest. sometimes we just get numb to it, like my boy Step. he tells me to do the same, forget them, look out for yourself, do for yourself. he lives it. forgets me sometimes, but it's cool. Step's doing Step.

 sometimes i forget this Gift. just move like i got metal balls chained to my ankles, my face scrunched up all nasty, kicking asphalt and feeling sorry for myself. but then a situation happens.

 it's wild how it takes a crazy situation to be a wakeup call, so-so tells me the other night, when we r on a late night call, both our voices in r.e.m. her homegirl got into a car accident, was strapped up in a hosptial in queens like a mummy.

 it's hard to take life for granted after a situation. especially after the situation happens to you. it can be crushing, but it can be much more. it's an opportunity, a rebirth.

 i'm rebirthing again, inside a warm womb, given another chance to embrace the Beauty by the Mystery, my head bowed down in submission to the Oneness. all praise is due.

the greatest dis ease of all: fear

broke the dis ease of fear this morning. walked out after my usual truncated morning rituals and decided to hit the park like a comet.

decided i'd say hi to everyone, like i've done before, as an exercise to overcome the norm of staying isolated bubbles that float past each other. the sister in front of the building said hi back. i smiled n kept it pushing.

but on my way there, the culture of fear gripped me by the throat. people concentrated on something other than the other people. eye contact was minimal to non-existant. i told myself i would say hi if people looked at me, so i ended up saying hi to almost no one. i knew i was defaulting on fear, on rationalizing my own fear by using excuses. excuse is the fat of fear.

    so when my Soul told me to align, i had to toss the fear. this 30 something was sitting on the park bench. his hat low and his goatee starched. he stared at me from half a block away. stayed grilling me. i looked away, found other things to stare at, just to avoid looking at him. caught myself again walking with my feet below ground, moving to the tune that moves babylon n its babylonian citizens - fear. so i snapped out of it. the lower i had to be let go. 

 'morning', i said.

 'ya, morning', he said back, continuing to look at me, curiously. i mistook his curiosity for a grill before. it was my own limited definitions that informed his gaze earlier, that rationalized my turn of head, that told me that we might have to get into a scuffle.

said morning to the jogger, walking off his jog. 'good morning' he said back. said 'morning' to the next ten people. only one of them said good morning back. said morning to another dozen, some looked away from me, some made a face, most pretended not to hear, all ignored me. 

it was a blessing. i was being responded to, but not dissed, not rejected. those words have a sense of attachment to them, suggest something more meaningful than what was/is. the fear of rejection keeps us from saying hi, from human interaction. 

sat on the rail overlooking the river, on the strip, two stories above rocks and shards of broken 40oz bottles in the east river. sat there cause i was afraid to. what if i fall? what if i break my legs and get paralyzed. realized my attachment to this physical self, this temporary shell. it's alright. this life will pass. take risks, even if you might fall and break a leg. 

walked through dirt, which i usually avoid, which i usually dodge like gazes. walked right off the main street, the clean asphalt, to walk on the dirt of the mound. felt good to get my feet dusty. got dirty. get dirty. 

embraced the dirt. peeled my shirt and went for a jog, which at first i was wont not to do. the excuse this time was that i didn't have the right gear. fear drives excuses makes us lazy. it's easy to not do, but your body mind and spirit suffer because of it. when you do...

 looking, feeling, like a million bucks!!!

 fear keeps us stiff like vata rust on cars. keeps us cracking in the changing world. fear keeps us tuned into the frequency of babylon, changing our clothes and looks and styles and phone constantly, to keep up. even change is suspect and can stifle when it is tuned into the wrong frequency. 

 the frequency of fear can keep us locked in our isolation, laziness, boxes; it can keep us changing clothes, shades, friends, just to be down.

     be down. get down with the sun, earth and planets. change accordingly. the sun's not afraid to Shine, why should you be? 

prescription for depression

the sheik of the naqshabandi order, in offering medicine to counter depression, pulled on his waist length snowy beard and prescribed the following (if u r free): visit someone in prison.

i'm chanting the 99 names of ALLAH. i am in the outside realm. the 'big yard' as my boy who did a 4 year bid once told me.

not in prison. not locked up like my cousin. not locked up like a friend who was recaptured again recently, after spending close to half of his 33 years behind bars. not locked up like the 2.5 million here. not upstate rotting, 5 8 12 hours from family, from home.

if i can't get a job with experience, a degree, n no record, what must it b like to have a record?

this past month, every single job i've applied for, asked if i had ever been arrested, for what, when, why. asked if i was telling the truth, n if i wasn't, their background check would tell 'em anyway. it asked this of my man after he got out the penentiary in january. he tried filling out job app after job app, enroll in program after program for the formerly incarcerated. nothing. rent due in a few weeks, in a few days. yesterday. eviction letter. what  to do?

talking to myself like my brothers homie who's been in n out of institution. she got mentally broken n was jesus christing like she were on a crucifix asking/praying the rest of us be forgiven.

i hope i'm forgiven for being silent. for moving with bars in front of my face. talking to myself n looking away from the steel-toed cops, like i did something wrong. been singing the song my dada whispered, that mos materialized in his song 'umi says': tomorrow may never come, for you n me, this life is not promised, tomorrow may never show up, for me n u this life is not promised. my umi says, shine your light on the world, shine your light for the world to see.

shine your Light, the inner one, the one beyond business cards and brand new levis n shell-top addidas. shine your Light beyond the mirror u correct your smile in, brush back your cheeks and adjust your hair in. shine beyond impressing me n him n her.

shine in your prostration to Work. work, afterall, as the prophet of islam reminds us, is worship. work to make your dream happen. make it happen while u r here in the big yard. snap out of your rut. u r in the outside realm if u r reading this. u r not in a 4x5 cell. do something. work like u mean it, n keep at it. work n be Quiet. Quietness, as the prophets remind us, is the surest sign.

once u do, once u get into the rhythm n work with Purpose, knowing that u have time n space in a way u would not in a cage, write someone in prison.

even if the system is unforgiving, u can b. 

alteratives: herbs that stream through

alteratives are herbs that clear stagnancy in the liquid/blood of the the body. for this reason they are known as blood purifiers. according to michael tierra, in the book, way of herbs, alteratives eliminate toxins and help to assimilate nutrients. according to rosalee de la foret of herb mentor, the effect of an alterative can be likened to a fresh cool brook. what the brook is clearing is a stagnant pond/swamp/build up of water, that is stagnant and hot. the alterative is cooling and runs to clear the heat and drain the damping. the damping term is how the issue alteratives clear, is addressed in tcm.

the stagnancy blood/liquid is real clear to any one who has been to the cities of india. you may be walking and suddenly be smacked with a whiff of nastiness that immediately pulls at your bowels and makes you want to vomit your guts out. you look around and wonder: where the hell is that stink coming from?

right below your feet, you notice the slanted slabs of concrete, at some points missing. as you hop over one, you see it: the source of stench: a damp, hot, stagnant pool of nastiness. this is the water the flows down the sinks and drains into the nonworking sewage system of india. when the monsoons come, this stagnant liquid is drained into the rivers and oceans - is that a good thing?

for us, walking, moving beings, the stagnancy gets secreted through our skin, excreted through our anus, drained through our thing things.

according to tierra, the kind of alterative we take will depend on the specific issue, whether it's one of assmiliating nutrients or draining blockage. in most cases i would imagine that it has to be both, as stagnancy, prevents vital nutrients from reaching their destination. 'hence red clover is used to treat cancer because of its effects on protein assimilation; echinacea is used to neutralize acid conditions in the blood associated with a stagnation of lymphatic fluids; cascara sagrada is used when a laxative is required..." (p.32). 

the animal on your side

sarah tells me that she absorbed some of my energy while doing a massage on me yesterday. my mind was heavy and she felt it. a few hours after, she felt lethargic, melancholy, grey like the rain today.

sarah does swedish massage. her love for massage is clearer than any word she could use to describe it. as much as my mind was racing, i couldn't help but be pleasantly surprised over and over by her seamless technique, subtle and extraordinary. her fingers gently threaded through my spine, reinforcing my rooting in the world beyond cities of clocks, banks, cops and robbers.

we may have had a transference of energy, my weight was lightened by her meditation and vice versa.

today she revealed the gravity that i gave her, that she dragged through her work day with. she told me to troubleshoot with me, to share the process of letting go. a reiki master that she has received treatment from uses an imaginary animal to let go.

the reiki master has a wolf by his feet. while the master is conducting the energy work, he is absorbing energy. and when the session is over, he lets the wolf take it and run and release it, where it does.

may sound weird, crazy, silly, but it made a lot of sense to me. we need techniques to balance, to tap into life beyond our limited scope of understanding. 

the medicine man's leaf

gurrukkal flips through a book on plant medicine as he describes “communist pacha” to me, one of the indigenous plants of the region. it is large and pointy like a castor leaf. part of it’s medicine, he explains to me, is that this plant concealed communists in hiding. it helped them temporarily win the battle against the landlords and big bosses in kerala, preventing them from taking over everything. Temporarily.

i get the sense that gurrukal and his family are communists. didi, gurrukal's sister, walks around the neighborhood helping the fisherman fill out government forms so they are not fined for fishing. gurrukal is always talking about and living about service to the community. it's what some of my yoga friends talk about as karma yoga, but just talk about, or do in the ashram, or in internal events. they don't come to the villages, the busthees, the hood, just like the yogi's who visit America n give talks on nonattachment on the upper west/eastside, park slope n dumbo.

as a believer in the yogi way, one who has looked for guidance n gurus, didi is the kind of yoga teacher i've been wondering about like Christians losing their religion, wondering about the possibility of the trinity, of the father, son n holy ghost. didi points at the handkerchief with the hammer and sickle on the dysfunctional lamppost, next to the green handkerchief with the islamic moon n star. she smiles like someone sharing a favorite dish that they are proud of.

as gurrukal and I study the medicinal values of the communist pacha, didi closes the door behind her, after the last of the fishermen or their kids and wives have walked in for the free yoga sessions didi hosts every morning.

i look behind gurrukal, who holds the communist pacha up like a flag and waves it at his boy anu, who cougars in, who flips through the fat book gurrukal's mother is reading - biography on subhash chandra bose - the revered bengali communist who led a guerilla movement against the british. 

there are no posters in gurrukal's neighborhood that warns them about helping the poor, as there r in nyc subways: if u want to help, give to valid charities. everyone here is poor. gurrukal's family isn't into charity, the way middle-class people in a capitalist system maybe. they don’t believe in making that daddy war-bucks n feeling guilty that they been getting fat – clothes, cars, drinks – the capitalist way of accumulation - and then giving to dirt-faced kids singing about the sun will come out tomorrow. 

for some reason in babylon, we see our ability to purchase a hundred jeans and have a beamer and throw all our phones n furniture out - cause there is newer, the latest, edgier stuff - as freedom. our 
guilt exists for a reason.

for many of the people i know, the sound of a community that is not Facebook, that is not a club or social networking sounds like a cross and garlic to a vampire. the belief, -ism, in community is so scary to us babylonians that community-ism (=communism) is worse than the f word, can land us in jail, is enough to dismiss someone in an argument on issues - s/he's a communist - really? Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah.

gurrukal, gets up to treat the patient who has stumbled off the bike holding his back. d places the communist pacha carefully on the ledge of the porch like a sacred ganesha statue. he continues on the topic with me, even as he is pressing marma points and sliding to arteries with his thumb on the hefty injured dude. d admits it. he's down with communism. 

studies with a medicine man ii

everyday there r bruised soldiers from the cold war of indian-poverty that limp into the porch of gurrukal family's place. the porch is the color of venus, the prettiest work of architecture on the strip of dismal houses along an allah-hu-akbar-ing arabian sea that threatens to spill over the short wall of rocks that sit like a buffer of meditative turtles.

i'm usually leaning back on a bamboo chair n meditating on the jewels dilu/d/gurrukal is dropping. half the time, i'm unsure exactly what he's saying through his bare english, as bankrupt as his finances. but i see him. he see's me too. his family and friends and even his wife often laugh at us, at how we r communicating. we laugh too. only after having engaged on a profound conversation on leaves, on nature, on medicine, on islam n hinduism, and forgetting to remember that we didn't speak the same language, hardly had a middle ground.

d loves nature. says nature provides everything we need. no need to go to the store, everything is back there, he says pointing to the forested area behind the house, before the river of plastic bags, plastic packages, plastic bottles, plastic sandals. i think of the plastic, the way it's strangling the Mother, the ancient ways. d doesn't notice. sees only the gold mine back there, the storehouse of medicine. he drops a recipe to the guy who has limped in with a leg blacker than the ebony of his skin. he has kidney failure, d tells me when i ask, when i stand inches away like a kid in a science lab watching the teacher dissect a frog. beads of sweat crawl down his balding head, onto his shiny button down.

gurrukal is having 4 conversations at once. usually is. his 2 year old daughter, who is unrestricted by gravity, is snipping the air with hedge clippers n yelling a question to him, his mother is telling him something about something from the ocean she is gazing out at. the patient n him r talking about nature, a continuation of the conversation he and i were having, the three 21 year old's with muhammad (s.a.w) beards, who have come in from the suddenly violent storm, holding onto various parts of the body, take note of the cipher and question him like he was socrates.

i realize that there is no equivalent to this in ny, to what he's doing, to the healing center on the porch of the village community, except maybe at the barbarshop. gurrukal is running an ad hoc clinic like a barbarshop. like. but, not exactly. there r young n old, women n men, hindus with four stripes across their head n women with hijabs. they r having chai with the family, politicking, talking health n sirens; they r sprawled over the humble furniture n mats on the ground, along the ledge of the porch that sears out towards the road like a beach-boardwalk.

the health clinics in ny, like the hospitals, like the police precint, feels humiliating, like cheese lines, like soup kitchens, like immigration, like u would be doing something wrong to be asking question, that u r wrong for just being there, like u better write down your questions in text-message speak cause you have 92 seconds when the god-doctor comes out to see you.

gurrukal has set up a people's health clinic, where people seem to be accidentally slipping in the sea and tripping on airless soccer balls n falling off their motor-bikes just to hang here.

studies with a medicine man

gurukkal is young, early 30's. he waited for me to sit on his motorcycle, to sit behind him and his wife and his two year old twin girls, who sit on the space before him, 1 grabbing on to the bike handles, the other on to her. he dodges the debris on the unfinished street he sometimes stays in; stays still in the wild wind caressing his thick black hair; tilts past auto-rickshaws, fishermen and time.

he skids into a narrow block where there are men n women sprawled on the street, politiking, hawking, vending. barely pausing, he scoops his daughters n hands them to an older woman, with lines like a banyan over her thin face. her thin arms stick out from an old once colorful sari.

"that's my mom," he says, looking back at me. i wave at her, as we fly off.

he has to drop his wife off in the city, leaves me at the bus stop on the way. gurrukal gently looks at me with depth - his black eyes in mine, mine in his. we never made a date to meet again, never fixed a price on studying with him. didn't even exchange info.

that was our first meeting. we mostly looked at each other the whole time, feeling each other out. i met with him another two times within the span of over a month before he nodded, before i knew that he would be the one i wanted to study under.

this past week i've been watching gurukkall at work, working with him, training in kalari-chikitsha. at night, sometimes, after 3 or 4 massages, after bandaging, repairing a dozen broken/fractured, bruised limbs, after picking up/dropping off/feeding his kids, he is teaching kalari, reviews moves with youngins, and then an hour later with an adult batch. i join in on occasion, if we don't have patients to do nadi-massage on. but we usually do, shortly after the kalari class, n these days we r tag-teaming. he does one part of our patient's body then nods at me. i move in using the strokes he's taught me, reminded of the mantra he's instilled in me when i am feeling tired, lazy, bothered - "remember that this is the work of divinity, that when u r working on them, u r working on yourself n that u should always give your best."

serenaded by the sound of the ocean that sits outside the largely fishermen hood of muslims n hindus on the fringes, i press into the veins of our patient n get Deeper in the work. all praise is due...

amma the homeless guru ii

the man whose car we were in, who drove feverishly through narrow paths in the back roads of thalessery, was a disciple of the ancient woman i sat next to, whose bare thighs brushed against mine. he had been with amma, committed to her specialness for the past 20 years, he explained to hrin, who sat on the passenger side and turned every so often to translate for his wife n i.

when we got there, to the man's newly constructed house, his entire family came out, one by one. first his smiley daughter and then his shy son, both old enough to be skeptical, young enough to be wide-eyed, curious and obedient. although the man left the door open, and although we all came out of the car, amma didn't. she just sat in there and looked about, first at the spaces between the once-village of coconut huts, now a pillar of development, where stone and marble replaced hay and mud.

the children came with chai and gilabi's, the wife of the man  and his sister came with prayers and sunken heads, the mother of the man sat next to amma in the car, seeking prayers and blessings wih hands interlaced in humility.

20 minutes later, after we watched amma through sip and munch, on the porcelain porch, amma remained seated, making a gesture here, emitting an indecipherable there.

we returned to the car and drove off.

hrin told us amma wanted to return home, but when we got to the intersection and turned towards the long journey back, she made some sounds and a gesture that the man understood to mean to drive in the opposite direction and we did, for miles, until we reached his guru, a 102 year old yogi, who sat still on the porch.

the yogi was as bright as the white flowing panjabi and beard he wore. his glasses were thick as lakes. he held his palms together steadily in namaste upon seeing his student, and we each took turns paying our respect to the living legend. his family trickled outside, watching us, offering chai and food and the restroom. amma looked at him but remained in the car. the yogi walked in a tremble over to where she sat, bowing down and touching the feet of amma.

who was this woman that a 102 year old living legend, a seer of the ancient mathematics of yoga, bowed down to? what was the medicine she offered, that made the people around her lower like mayans to the sun?

amma the homeless guru

homeless w/gas mask

yesterday morning, after pranayms n sun salutations in the ocean, i ran into my boy hrin. he was close behind me, on the beach, after completing his own meditation, facing the rising sun.  i hadn't seen him in a week, since i'd been getting to the beach earlier, before sunrise. but i had a late start n he was there with his wife. we chilled for a little bit, meditated on the ocean waves n the calm when his wife noted the time. they had to breeze to see amma, a special woman, they told me, an hour away. they invited me n i flew with them, through kannur, 3 on a bike, n onto a train to thalessery, 1 or 2 stops away.

we get there without rush, strolled over to a rickshaw n before we get to amma's place, while we r still on the road, we pause, n so does time, for a second. before hrin said a word, i knew it was here.

amma was a tree walking. lines of ancient were drawn over her radiant skin, high thick cheek bones. she looked over at us, withdrawn, wide-eyed and curious, like only a baby can. her grey-blue sari loosely sat over her thick cinnamon skin. amma looked like a crazed homeless woman, her hair in clumps and hanging like a deranged boquet of dried roses.

she reminded me of some of the homeless in new york, who walk without a clothes/image-consciousness, who talk to themselves out loud. except amma didn't speak. not much and not sensible when she did, atleast not to the people of kerala. amma was from some otherwhere in india. no one is sure just where. she didn't speak malyalam, but she arguable didn't speak a language known to most of us in the material world.

i watched her in awe, the lunatic with the crazed expression n hair n clothes. n then there was the sane n normal coming up to her on the street, stopping to bow down to her, touch her feet with their head.

who was this woman who new york would lock up, spit into a shelter, push into the subway tunnels, who might escape into a 2pm train, walking from car to car without a beggars bowl n just stare at you or through you or something or someone? who was this woman i would assume belonged to the tribe of bums i'd known as zombies on crack, who laughed to themselves and walked from car to car in the subway?

amma was without drugs, without any destination i could decipher, without a beggars bowl. she just walked and got into the car of the man who walked beside her. hrin asked the stranger if we could join him. he agreed, let us in. i sat next to the tree who bore through me with eyes like the dark shadows on the trunk of a banyan.

meditating past maya iii

mars from the blackcommentator.com

dr. shimji, my yoga therapist teacher here, said the difference between the two stages of meditation - dharana and dhyana - the two final stages before reaching samadhi – liberation – in the asthanga yoga path - is that dharana is the concentration on something, in the practice of meditation. dhyana is to harmonize with that something, so you become it.

in the yogi, sattvic, real-recognize-real realm, this may mean becoming one with family – past and present – with community, with the earth, the sun, the ocean, with life.

dhyana, from what i've seen, happens daily in the babylon realm, by way of becoming one with the material realm – sneakers, jeans, hats, coffee, cigarettes, club life, alcohol. dhyana in babylon can be a deep meditation on how great you are, how much better you are than others - the ego realm of getting acclaim, getting gassed by your title, your sense of racial/ethnic/national supremacy your exercise of power over others.

poison.

prayers for you.

prayers for me.

deep prayers.

this kind of material/ego/babylon-dhyana - becoming a dkny purse and converse sneakers - could only stem from fear and insecurity.

meditation is happening in babylon, but maybe the kind that maybe killing us softly. is it even possible to exist in such an image based reality and meditate through it?

even many gurus and yogis of india seem to be looking to the white west for recognition, for legitimation. they never seem to come to the hood when they travel. why?

the answer to getting deeper, to finding genuine Guidance may lie in the greatest guru we all have access to – mama earth.

as bruce lee advised, “become water. flow like the water.” afterall, “water don't have no enemies”, fela reminds us.

this past month i've had a chance to bow before the arabian sea, dim the lights and cameras that flash on my ny state of mind, wear shorts and a tanktop and just soak in waves, sunrises n sunsets. the strut i've developed over decades of block to block catwalking, dissipates into a swagger so deep, that only mars could see it.

meditating past maya ii

nyc subway shot -jamal shabazz - a brooklyn, ny phenomenon in photography

image dominates movement in new york, as soon as you step outside your building, you have an audience, people are posted on the block like pages of gq and details and vogue. depending on the block, it might mean the rudeboy approach, where one may be “gucci down to the sox,” as biggie smalls noted as a means of negating/compensating for the racial stigma of “black and ugly as ever.” in new york, race/class consciousness is in a tug of war with fashion-consciousness.

what was hot, dope, ill last week is tough, crack, popping this week and the styles and attention to them are as quick to change as the turn of subway turnstyles during rush hour. the cool trickles into social engagements where you may feel the need to be “arriving late, cause our clothes and our time gotta coordinate,” as ludacris put it.

my boy matt, from rhode island, once told me he never felt so much pressure to stay up on fashion as he had after moving to the rotten apple. his resent led to an animosity, which i've seen in other friends as well, who hated hipsters and willy burgh, where an entrance pass may mean being perpetually retro-fitted with a manicured unkempt beard, shaggy hair, and walking with a coffee, rolled up cigarette and an ipad.

nothing wrong with “looking feeling like a million bucks.” but if you are participating in something you don't want to participate in, that's not real to You, then it's a slippery slope of negative vibrations. 

you may hate shopping, or having to shop or feeling you have to shop or wearing the clothes you bought and not feeling fulfilled even though you spent hours picking them out to look just like kanye, justin timberake, jessica biel, megan fox. within a month you don't even like the clothes, the shoes, the books, the plates, the phones, the classes,the tickets you bought. even if you do, the markets already changed styles, and what you're wearing is so out that wearing it would be almost as bad as walking through the trains with shit smeared all over your dingy clothes, hair and face. 

in babylon, we meditate through self-image, where everything is a pricetag and most relationships contingent on the image of who you market yourself as – teacher, doctor, musician, actor, writer, market analyst, lawyer, life-coach, yoga-instructor, etc, etc - material/ego becomes our god, our point of meditation.

meditating past maya i

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james dean - an icon that revolutionized cool/hip in america

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"even james dean couldn't escape the allure, dying young leaving a good looking corpse" – jay z

a decade ago, on a monday night post club-crawl, my friend randa explained meditation to me. breathing in the east village skyline on the rooftop we sat on, she said “meditation is turning off the noise in your brain for a little bit and just focusing.” another friend added that, "meditation is a practice in concentration." my first yoga-guide, bullet, from cochin, india, said that meditation was the act of focusing on a single thing. meditation is being present, wrestling the wild beast of the mind that leaps like a monkey from tree to tree as goenka-ji of vipassana tells us.

for a while there, and when i say a while, i mean years, i didn't think i could meditate. i would sit and breathe and think about the 10 minutes i had remaining before work and whether i was going to talk to the boss and how flippant she was and peace to her and god help her and how i'm too old not be stacking paper and making big-things happen, so i don't have to work for that fat-bitch or anyone else, etc, etc. and thus, i thought, i had another failed attempt at meditating. 

recently, while here, while writing this post, i realized that i've not only been meditating, i've been doing it for a long time and so have many other people in my life, through their suffering from all kinds of babylon illnesses. 

my friends and i have been meditating on the allure of being an image, of fitting into the clothes and linguistics of a cool that doesn't seem aligned with the sun. but superficially, it sure does feel more gratifying to bling on the catwalk of subways and blocks, dates and friday nights. our meditation stems from the high of instant gratification, that like anitbiotics and raid and tylenol, kill that pain right away. and the sun and the rivers feels like ayurvedic medicine that is taking too long, and moving too slow. 

jay compares this allure, this meditation on material-living, to a blinding high: "and you could treat your nose and still won't come close/ the game is a lightbulb with eleventy-million volts, and i'm just a moth addicted to the floss, the doors lift from the floor and the tops come off..." 

narccissm has been a daily practice in meditation for many of my friends and i and it sure does feel good, for a second, like a cigarette and a drink. then there's your heart, lungs and the next day.