The Rise of Superman: 17 Flow Triggers is an interesting review of essential ‘flow triggers’ as the author Steven Kotler calls them in his book The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance. Anyone comfortable with the Zen(1) point of view will recognize them right off. Steven rephrases them in a religiously […]
Continue reading…yoga
Feeding the Worry Gene
Have you noticed how there is something always ‘wrong’. No matter how good things are, something will soon go awry. All this is obvious, I suppose. That is what makes the News, news. What is less obvious is how the perception and experience of good fortune and misfortune are complimentary, as chapter 58 puts it, […]
Continue reading…Breathe Into It
Words are the smoke; emotion is the fire. You can understand a volcano with words metaphorically, symbolically, abstractly, but you cannot know it through words. You can only know it emotionally, by essentially becoming it—a living breathing volcano. Is that actually possible? Rationally, of course not; experientially, I feel it is. This is where profound […]
Continue reading…Upping the Ante
Have you noticed the ever-present urge to continue ‘upping the ante’? Not only that, but isn’t the sky often the limit? We can’t help but aim for the next step up, and when we reach it, that level becomes our new bottom line. Most of us are content for a little while, but then we […]
Continue reading…Necessity, the Mother
Free will presumably makes us different from other animals. We have the unique ability to choose and act freely. (See Free Will: Fack or Wishful Thinking?) I’ve also heard for most of my life that necessity was the mother of invention. Now I have come to realize that necessity is the mother of all choice […]
Continue reading…Jack of All Trades, Master of None?
Is there any real difference between a generalist ‘jack of all trades’ and an accomplished master? After all, isn’t a ‘jack of all trades’ simply a master generalist? I’ve been doing several activities for many years now: yoga (50 years), tai chi (40 years), shakuhachi sui Zen (35 years), gardening (30 years) — plus, I […]
Continue reading…Sobering up!
Up until my early forties, I was drunk on thought bolstered with the certainty of belief. Fortunately, I found a way to help detoxify myself, although this is still an ongoing concern. Recovering alcoholics continue to confess, “I’m an alcoholic”, even as they strive to stay on the straight and narrow moment-to-moment, day after day. […]
Continue reading…He Who Conquers Self
The details of Buddha’s Four Noble Truths vary somewhat depending on the source. I recently dug up the source for the version that I long ago found to be most useful since it was the most succinct I’d seen. Nevertheless, I had a minor problem with how the Third Noble Truth was stated, and way […]
Continue reading…The Nutty Things We Do
While pulling myself into an odd yoga shape this morning, I thought, this is nuts! No normal animal on the planet would do this. In fact, no other animal does most of the things our species does. Working, resting, and engaging in the basic biological functions is all that we have in common with other […]
Continue reading…The Spirit of Yoga
2019 Postscript: This is a copy of the 2010 PRINCIPLES update for the yoga book I wrote in 1979. At that time, I was focused on the problems that arise out of a belief in free will. In 2017, I finally realized the natural roots of this belief and most everything else that haunted me […]
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