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text:
Mow Cop dad died after battle with depression — (The Sentinel)
First Posted on Antidepaware.co.uk
The Sentinel
By sentinel reporter
A FATHER-OF-FOUR hanged himself after suffering from years of mental health problems.
David Vaughan, aged 53, was found dead at his Mow Cop home by his only daughter, Aimie.
He had left notes for her and his sons in his kitchen.
An inquest at North Staffordshire Coroner's Court yesterday heard Mr Vaughan's father had taken his own life in 1982, a few months after the death of Mr Vaughan's mother.
His son Wayne told the hearing that former welder Mr Vaughan had suffered a breakdown in 1999, following an 'incident' at work.
He said: "They had done something to him, a joke gone wrong. He couldn't go back to work after that.
"Until then we were a normal family, and then everything just blew up."
The inquest heard that the 'incident' may have sparked traumatic memories relating to Mr Vaughan's childhood. Following his breakdown he started drinking heavily and was subsequently prescribed medication for anxiety and depression.
Aimie Vaughan, of Mow Cop, said her father had been living in his High Street house for about seven months at the time of his death on April 26, having been forced to sell his long-term home because of financial worries.
In the week before his death Mr Vaughan had stopped drinking.
Miss Vaughan said: "He seemed as if he was on the mend that week. "I went to see him the night before. He seemed edgy. He avoided eye contact.
"I was trying to talk to him and he was almost looking through me."
On the day he died, Mr Vaughan had tried to call his daughter while she was at work. When she was able to ring him back there was no answer, and she became worried.
She left work early and went to his home, where she found his body.
A post-mortem examination found there was no alcohol in Mr Vaughan's system when he died. The cause of death was given as hanging.
Ian Smith, coroner for Stoke-on-Trent and North Staffordshire, recorded a verdict of suicide.
He said: "He had a medical history which included alcohol abuse and depression. He had left notes indicating an intention to take his own life.
"I'm satisfied there was no third party involvement."
If you feel you may want to take your own life or are concerned about someone who is, talk to the Samaritans on 08457 909090 or contact your GP.
Anyone concerned about similar issues can call the Staffordshire Mental Health Helpline on 0808 800 2234 or consult Staffordshire Mental Health Directory via stokementalhealth.info and use the 'I need HELP NOW' link.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


This panel covers how the up-and-coming music artist can develop their music as a source of income. Learn about how to get music featured on movies or shows, artist branding and management, and general legal advice to protect your music.
Silvia Rivera, Managing Director of Vocalo Radio, has spearheaded the development of the Urban Alternative (UA) - a new format for public radio that spotlights Hip Hop, R&B, Dance music with an emphasis on local music. The UA format is currently being tested in 5 markets. Silvia's career was launched by a youth-media training program that fueled her mission to use media and the arts as a catalyst for civic engagement. Silvia is a founding member and co-chair of the Latino Public Radio Consortium and serves on the board of the Chicago Foundation for Women.
Andrew Regalado, Founder of Activate Hype and Steady Repeat, is a Chicago-based multi-talented creative specializing in branding, digital marketing, and web design across various industries. When he isn't attending concerts and crafting music playlists, he is a brand consultant, content creator, graphic/web designer, social media marketer, and much more.
Andrew has consulted, curated, and revamped branding and marketing efforts for small businesses, startups, corporate clients, musicians, and even personal brands.
Melissa Chapman, Founder of Groove Garden, specializes in music supervision and licensing for film, advertising and other media. She has worked on campaigns for Target and Hershey, and cleared songs for Chicago's own "Signature Move," Sundance favorite "Beach Rats," as well as "Thirst Street," "The Fits," "Donald Cried" and more.
Mikhael Bortz, Founder/Managing Partner at Bortz Law Firm, is an entertainment, intellectual property, media and business attorney based out of Chicago and Miami. A former professional musician and songwriter, Mikhael specializes her legal practice in film, music, brand building and licensing, copyright and trademark, and social media. As the General Counsel for internationally renowned pop artist Romero Britto, Mikhael sat across the negotiating table from and closed deals with the likes of Coca-Cola, Disney, Mattel, FIFA, Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, Sandisk, and many others.
Jason Anthony Valcarcel, Co-Founder of Private Stock Studios, is an artist, record producer and entrepreneur who goes by the professional name "Fayze", an alias he earned from his time at Lane Technical High School. Born and raised in Chicago, Valcarcel worked as chief executive officer of independent record label Good Life Music Group and LPZ Studios before founding PVTSTK (Private Stock) in 2013. Private Stock has now grown into a creative agency that provides services such as recording, mixing and mastering, project management and more. Through his time spent as an artist manager, Jason has been able to successfully build relationships with artists like Vic Mensa, Rockie Fresh, Saba and many more.


Here the cultural influences came not by coasts but via mountain passes. Tibetan Buddhism thrives, and multilayered monasteries emerge from the forests or steep cliffs as vividly and poetically as the sun rises over golden Khangchendzonga. Weathered prayer flags on forest paths blow in the wind, the sound of monks chanting reverberates in meditation halls, and locals brings offerings and make merit, all in the shadow of the mighty Himalaya. This exploration takes in India's most sumptuous views. Discover himalya trip on by 4×4 and hiamlaya motorcycle tours.


For Year 6 children moving to Dinnington High School in September 2017 there will be different transition arrangements to last year. The children will no longer move to the High School early. They will stay at Dinnington Primary School until the summer holidays but will have 1 or possibly 2 days to visit the High School. One of these days will be Monday 10 July. On this day all children at Dinnington Primary School will spend the day with their new teacher for September. A booklet for Year 6 pupils providing further information has already been sent home with the children.


During September of our 2017 Guadalupe shark season we hosted Tabitha Lipkin from San Diego Fox 5 news. She wanted to capture the beauty of the Great White shark, showcase our exclusive expeditions and at the same time relay a conservation message to the public on just how important these animals are to the balance of our oceans.
Tabitha had dived with many species of shark prior the this trip but never before had she been cage diving with Great white sharks. Full of enthusiasm and passion for wildlife she was the perfect host to showcase our trips and the amazing wildlife. The trip could not have been better for her and Travis (her cameraman) who captured some fabulous footage making a great two piece segment for Fox 5 news.
September typically sees great weather and once again it didn't let us down. In fact, it was sweltering during our time at sea. Its during conditions like this that just reminds us all again how special and unique a place Guadalupe is to dive with Great Whites.…in the warmth! On top of the stunning weather, the sharks really came out to play. We saw over 20 animals during the 3 days at the island including some very active "players" on the baits!
When Tabitha was in the cage, sharks where coming close enough to be touched and the action was incredibly consistent. The size of the sharks, the clarity of the water and the closeness the animals where coming to the cage was a dream for cameraman Travis who was getting all the shots he needed and more! When Tabitha was out of the cage, the action from top side was just as good with sharks lunging on the surface baits over and over.
Both Jimi and Ryan of the SDX crew where interviewed for the piece. Giving the viewers a run down of what can be expected on the trips. They also covered how important these trips are for eco tourism, the protection of the Great white shark and the ongoing efforts to help keep the Island controlled. Overall it was a huge success and we waited eagerly to see the final piece once aired.
In November the two piece segment was aired on Fox 5 news San Diego and was a great success. The footage was brilliant, the interviews where insightful and Tabitha and her team really put together a short, exciting and educational message.
It was a pleasure having both Tabitha and Travis onboard what turned out to be a exceptional trip so early into our season. As well as making a great film, we all had so much fun diving and filming on the water and as ever, getting up so close to one of the most inspiring and fascinating wild animals on the planet…..the ever popular and star of the show – The Great White shark.


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text:
Q: Why I can't define a DOM element as a global variable? I'm working on a form and wanted to use Javascript to output the form input.
So I have following script:
<script>
function showName() {
  var box = document.getElementById("lorem").value;

  console.log(box);
}

showName();
</script> `

The code above works really well but I wanted the var box = document.getElementById("lorem").value; to be a global variable so that I can use it in other functions without re-declaring it.
So when I have this it doesn't output anything:
`
<script>
//Declared outside the function
var box = document.getElementById("lorem").value;

function showName() {
  console.log(box);
}

showName();
</script>

Please, what am I doing wrong?

A: You can use the same. it is not a problem. if you are still getting the null error, I would suggest to add the script at the end of the document or enclose it in a document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", function(event) { block like below

document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", function(event) {
var box = document.getElementById("lorem").value;
function showName() {

console.log(box);

     }
showName();
});
<input type="text" value="hai" id="lorem"/>

A: The value of box is the initial value of your lorem element when you declare it. What you probably want is this:
var box = document.getElementById('lorem');

function showName() {
    console.log(box.value); // <-- get the current value
}

// Outputs the current value, initially it will be empty
// of course, until you change your input and call the
// function again
showName();

Edit: the DOM needs to be loaded for this to work so make sure to put your script tags last in your <body>

A: You can either put the script all the way at the end before you close the <body> tag, or do as @jafarbtech suggested and add an event listener to wait for the DOM content to load.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Gills Rock, WI | Discover | Door County Visitor Bureau – Travel to Gills Rock to catch the Washington Island ferry across "Death's Door," check out the maritime museum, and find Gills Rock lodging and things to do.
On this day in Duluth in 1922, Margaret Mary "Maggie" McGillis-aka the "Queen of Park Point"-was born to John A. and Gertrude McGillis.
Iona (Scottish Gaelic: Sanndraigh) is a small community in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, located in Victoria County on Cape Breton Island. It is named.
The next largest community is Sydney Mines. It is located about 31 miles [49 km] to the northeast of Gillis Point East and has a population of 14,100 people.
Coach Ogilvie said the decision by NSSAF football to split into three divisions based on school population "has been beneficial for our program, and I think for Central Kings, West Kings, Avon View an.
News in Barra Glen To give readers insights into executive pay, the Post-Dispatch has compiled a list of CEOs and their pay. This list includes executives who were CEOs at the end of the 2015 fiscal year, and led compan.
Gillis Cove (Nova Scotia): Around the Neighborhood – The Neighborhood for gillis cove (province of Nova Scotia).. It is located about 49 miles [78 km] to the southwest of Gillis Cove and has a population of 4,500 people… Our distance measurements begin at a specific point in Gillis Cove.
Gillis Point East Birth & Baptism Records. nova scotia delayed births.. occupation and more. See All Census & Population Lists Records for Gillis Point East.
Government of Hatchet Lake In exchange for his guilty plea in the sexual assault case, the government halted an investigation into additional . handless corpse was found in a remote New jersey lake. camacho was seen talking t.


text:
Q: Copy Date to Clipboard onclick I might be making things overly complicated :p
But I can't get it to work.
I'm trying to copy "todays date"
to the clipboard
Date

Taken from an url reform script.

A: Got it:
Date


text:
Listen: Black Sabbath releases expectantly bleak new song 'God Is Dead?'
Katie Hasty 04.18.13 6 years ago
It's been a heavy week. So get heavy.
Black Sabbath have about nine minutes of heavy in their brand new song "God Is Dead?" which is as dark as a song called "God Is Dead?" should sound.
And speaking of things that should sound a certain way, this is actually pretty decent. For anyone's whose body sort of tenses up whenever Ozzy's opened his mouth recently, this is a good competent (and comped) take, and producer Rick Rubin didn't end up ironing out all the imperfections, either. That watery, churning doom metal ache is there, three of the four original members are there (with Rage's Brad Wilk filling Bill Ward's shoes), and there's a series of guitar riffs I don't hate.
And it's first a question, "is God dead?", then a statement "God is dead" and ends with its ultimate title. Deep, man. The annoying "I HEART RADIO" promo will only serve to keep your mind from HELL.
"God Is Dead?" is the first song to arrive from Sabbath's new reunion record, lucky number "13," out on June 11. It's their first as a band in 35 years. They're going to make some spot tour stops in the U.S., dates below the clip.
Aug. 4: Holmdel, NJ (PNC Bank Arts Center)
Aug. 14: Toronto (Air Canada Centre)
Aug. 24: Seattle (Gorge Amphiteatre)
Sept. 3: Los Angeles (Los Angeles Sports Arena)
TAGS13Black Sabbathbrad wilkGOD IS DEADRick Rubin


Yup, it certainly feels like summer 'vibes' are on their way….some absolutely stunning days here in North Devon's finest corner in the last few weeks, backed up by some incredible surf too!! You lucky people!
Next weekend we have a great big bash of a wedding night for a lovely couple who we now know well, and all of their friends celebrating their nuptials, and the following weekend; it's the Annual Real Ale & Seafood Festival over the Friday to Sunday of the 19/20/21st of May…see another post for more details on this great fun weekend!!
Lots of live music too, with a a band on Friday 6th, the a band Friday 19th, Saturday 20th on the Beer Fest weekend, and of course our brilliant Open Mic Night EVERY SUNDAY night!!
It's gonna be a good month. Hope we see you here!!


Marie Hallager Andersen and I are embarking on a year-long project exploring the space between creative expression and our respective yoga practices (I have been working with Iyengar and Marie has been working with Ashtanga Yoga ).
Our intention is to use this project as a preparation towards integrating different styles of yoga and other art forms in an interdisciplinary pedagogy. We wish to inhabit the edges of our respective disciplines of dance and theatre by using yoga as a shared point of reference and by employing tools from artistic areas we are less familiar with. We will do this by employing a task-based methodology and by sharing the process on this Blog.
The title of the posts plays with the well-known title of Stanislavski's book An Actor Prepares. Unlike Stanislavski's book though, we wish to both bring attention to the preparation of the trainer, rather than the performer, as well as emphasise the inter-subjective nature of the current project: we will prepare together on our own. (We are also aware of the images of athletic footwear invoked by the word trainer, but we do not wish to play with this, at least not now).
Furthermore and by making our process of preparation public, we wish to de-mystify the idea of the trainer as an expert and develop, do, and reflect upon a series of tasks the potential of which we do not know in advance.
So, this is how this is going to work: Each Monday one of us will give the other a task that will be shared on the Blog. The Monday after the person who received the task will publish her reflections on the given task and give a new task to the other. The next week we will alternate. You can find the rules we have set up for developing and doing the tasks below.
We invite you to follow us on this journey, do the tasks with us, and/or comment on our process.
Find a place where you can stand in front of a tree in a distance that allows you to hold the entire tree in your visual field. (A window on the first or second floor of a building would work well).
You can stand either with the feet hip width apart or feet together.
Allow the space where the base of the neck meets the base of the skull to open. Allow the neck to flow down and imagine the skull is floating up.
Allow the shoulders to melt away from the neck and imagine the neck free and the head going forwards and up.
Imagine that drops of honey drip from your coccyx. Let these drops drip perpendicularly down to the floor.
Keep the legs straight but make sure that your knees are not locked back.
Let the Achilles tendon lengthen and feel the back outer edge of the soles of the feet moving down to the floor.
Let the entire sole of the feet spread onto the floor. Observe where the weight tends to go and how it might oscillate.
Do all of the above keeping the tree in your visual field. Once you go through them, keep these actions/sensations going and bring your attention to the tree, how it is rooted down and how it shoots up.
Leave the spot and the position when you feel ready to.
Thanks for Task 3. It was enjoyable to expand a bit on Task 1. Here are my Task 3 reflections.
I feel the weight in my heals and it falls more prominently on my right foot. It feels more like tension rather than a softening. My body recognises that, standing with my eyes closed and my arms hanging down by my side, is really just an upright version of Savasana. I imagine the imprint my body makes on the surrounding air and the room I'm in. How much can I let go of the body in this upright position without collapsing on the floor? If Savasana is one of the most difficult postures to do how difficult is standing with your eyes closed?
I look at the flaming red feet I have drawn on the paper and I'm reminded of the importance of feet as my contact point with the earth. The earth that is 'fully alive' and that in its vitality supports my forward propulsion as I push my feet into the ground when I walk. The outline of the foot has become blurred as the vax from the crayon has spread across the drawing. I like the idea that perhaps my feet can become wider and spill outside the given outline of my foot to give me a sense of trust that the earth is supporting me. Perhaps I don't even end where the outline suggests?
I step onto the paper for the third time completely intuitively without wondering where my feet should be placed. I draw the first outline, then want to move, and make a new set of outlines. I repeat this a few times eventually stepping of the paper. Intrigued by the multiple footprints I grab a green crayon and start drawing on the outlines. It quickly becomes clear that I have lost track of the footprints. One line continues into another and soon I find myself circling the crayon around, following whatever trail it passes. The task you gave me, to pay attention to weight and mark the imprint in the outline, has been replaced by the movement of the crayon across the paper and the emphasis of the imprints' relationship to each other.
I move back from the drawing and notice a reverse choreography emerging in the imprints. It appears as if the final green print steps into the second red print, that finally settles into the first brown/black print.
My task for you for next week is linked to the dance class you take Tuesday evenings at Northern School of Contemporary Dance, so I hope you get a chance to go this week. If not, you should be able to carry this task out in a different context. I will leave this to you.
After your dance class (or as soon after as possible) sit down for 10 minutes (you can set a timer!) and do continuous writing, noting ideas, sensations, experiences, thoughts that come up from the class. It can be full sentences, words, images, accounts of exercises, whatever comes to mind; most importantly don't think too much about it and try not to stop writing during those 10 minutes.
Cut up the paper so the words and sentences are divided into separate slips of paper. Then mix them together. Take a fresh piece of paper and now randomly pick the words and sentences and place them (or glue them) onto the paper to form a new piece of writing. You can use as many of your cut up words and sentences as you like.
What comes out of this? How did you experience the process?
The reflection may simply be the new piece of writing and/or additional reflections on it.
Hope it makes sense. Enjoy the task!
Many thanks for Task 4. Here are my reflections. Below the images you can find Task 5.
Out of the studio, right into the corridor, down the stairs, left through the doors, across the car park, into the cab, the dance continues. Even though my body becomes immobile into the seat of the car, the beat of the drums still lingers. The speed of the car matches the inner rhythm. I dance vicariously.
Not this time. This time the cab is late, and the rhythm that is already working inside me becomes frustrated as I scan the empty road and pace up and down. Once inside the car, I am overwhelmed by a sensation similar to the one I have whilst executing a fast sequence: will I make it? Will I make it on time? In both cases, time feels too fast, while I become despairingly slow.
Reflections on the class can only be written a long time after it and as I ponder on the hasty car trip, I think that to dance is to tame time.
With the collages I tried to capture some of the shapes that the bodies make in the space, fleetingly as they move from one position to the next. I got inspired by Nathan Walker's talk at the University of Leeds on his recent book Condensations, where he talked about the way the arrangements of the words on the page of his book responded and reflected the landscape from which those words originally emerged and/or were written for.
There is nothing of the fleetingness of the dance in these collages, just words glued on paper. As I cut my reflections late into the night, I think that the breaking up of sentences, the shaking up of the words, their re-positioning is not dissimilar to dance, and yoga: how it can take the body apart and put it back together again. And in this taking apart and putting back together, meanings and experiences become re-arranged, weights shift, and new relations emerge. Yoga and dance as a practice of collage of the self?
Task 5 – A Word for a Place is inspired by Paul Auster's New York Trilogy, but I wonder if there is a whiff of the Situationists here too. I think it is a good one to do when one visits a new place, but perhaps it is also appropriate for a familiar one. I always had a sense that this is a task for a city, but maybe it can work just as well in the countryside.
Think of a word that captures the sense you have of the place (if the place is an unfamiliar one) and/or what the place means to you (if it is one you know well).
Following the paths, roads and grids that already exist in this place, write the word by walking. You can trace possible routes on a map, so you can see in advance how you might create the letters. Or you can trace your route on the map afterwards and see whether you managed to write the letters you thought you were writing. (You can also follow your changing position on the map of your phone as you walk but this will not record a permanent trail).
You can walk the word as many times as you wish and the walk can encompass as much of the actual area as you want/or are able cover. For example, you may wish to cover with one word the entire city or just one neighbourhood. You can take pictures along the way and/or audio-record sounds, memories, impressions.
Straight after you finish the walk, lie down in Savasana and note the sensations that emerge. What kind of imprints did the walk leave on the body and mind, if any?
Then do a sequence of yoga postures of your own choice that undo the imprints of the walk. Take the body apart and put it back together again.
In your reflections, you can comment on the whole task and/or use the material you have created during the actual doing. I hope you will enjoy it.
Thanks for Task 7, that really made my brain curl into funny shapes as a constraint satisfaction on writing. It was fun but not sure how successful I was sticking to your instructions! See my response to the task below and following that Task 8.
The mat was laid on, rested on by my body. Before getting to this passive state a long and active cycle took my body there. When yoga is done a sense of relief follows. As the chair immediately after supports my weight, my head is held up by the column of my spine and the blissful Savasana position reverberates inside me. Sun shine is mastered by the universe, leaving me feeling warm and light. The recuperating, recovering, readjusting rest, rolls me into the Friday feeling and it is said that this will mean the weekend is on the way.
Read out and record the two reflections I have made for the previous post: Task 7 To Stand and Be Supported. For the first 'To Stand' text make use of the spaciousness between words (in the way i wrote them) and read out accordingly. For the second 'Be supported' text ignore any full stops, commas and grammar when you read it out.
Make a gap between the two texts or record them separately.
What is the relationship between the experience of the words when you look at the text and record? How does this relate to hearing the sound of the text and how it feels to move with them?
many thanks for Task 8. Below you can find reflections to the task and instructions for Task 9.
I was sceptical to begin with about the whole business of opposing the physical relation to the floor to the meaning of the text. My first response was to work with the 'To Stand' text lying on the floor. But then I started thinking about planes and how I could explore surfaces that simply would not allow me to stand. I ended it up working with a tree in my neighbourhood I was a bit familiar with. Once I climbed the tree, I first listened to the 'To Stand' text while moving on the tree without standing. I then tried to hang from the branches of the tree for as long as I could while listening to the 'To Be Supported' text.
What I experienced often amounted to a sense of cognitive dissonance: the words alien – but spoken in my voice – simply did not match my pro-prioceptive reality. Yet, there were quick moments where a phrase or two would fit with my physical sensation perfectly. Amid the midst of dissonance, those flashes of resonance, well… stood out. In those moments, the physical reality deepened and there was almost a relief that the dissonance between physical sense and textual significance had finally stopped. (Quick search on the internet tells me that our tendency is to reduce cognitive dissonance, either by altering our beliefs or by tailoring reality to our needs. I wonder whether any word, apart from the exact opposite of what I was sensing, would have had the same effect of relief. Whether, in other words, I was prone to interpret my physical reality through the text, as long as the two were not entirely contradicting).
Images by visual anthropologist Vanja Celebicic.
This is inspired by Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), who apparently, from middle age onwards, stuck to the exact same routine on a daily basis. I think he did this so that he did not have to think about all the little choices we have to make throughout the day, and thus he could spend his time philosophising. Or maybe he did it so that he could observe the differences that appear once as much as possible of everything else remains the same.
Think what makes up your yoga routine: the postures, order, duration, pauses, use of props etc. You may not have one single routine that you follow every day, but the task is that you create one out of those things you tend to practise the most. Once you put the routine together, do it every day, preferably at the same time and the same place. Do the same routine even if your body asks for a different one. Try to find and stay in that space between what the routine prescribes and what your body needs. In other words, use the same routine as a form a background that is as flat and homogeneous as possible, so that you can get a better sense of the different body and self you encounter every day. I hope you enjoy it.
Thanks for Task 9. Here are my reflections. Below them you can find my Task 10.
After the first day of practicing I sat down to document the order of Asanas to make sure I'd remember the sequence for the following day. I looked over it swiftly before my practice on Day 2 and after practicing on Day 3 I started to add some thoughts.
Green mat, 'What are we doing?' Alan asks.
3 x Surya Namaskara A synchronised breath.
I was interested in trying out the obstruction that Alan had mentioned but then something caught my attention when I was recording my sensory experience in relation to the posture names. The Sanskrit language of yoga speaks to my senses in a completely different way to the language of English. When I read English, I take on board a meaning of a word or entire sentence through a 'mental' cognition. My knowledge of Sanskrit is mainly limited to posture (Asana) names. For that reason, the Sanskrit names of postures do not provide me with a sense of 'mental' understanding but give me pictures in my mind and often bodily sensations. I read 'Padanghustasana' and I feel my head hanging down and my fingers wrapped around my toes and my belly gently touching my thighs. I read 'Purvattanasana' and I see the transition from Paschimottanasana and feel my body stiffen and the stretch over my shoulders as it recalls the effort to lift my hips.
I'm blinded by big overhead lights 3 x Surya Namaskara A.
2 x Surya Namaskara B I try to hear my breath.
Parents looking at phones or minding smaller children.
Trikonasana A small boy. I smile at him.
A gust of air as Lisa runs past me.
Silence for a moment Padottanasana then more loud music echoing with the sound of feet running in the hall. The small boy in my vision again.
Lisa interrupts me with a big gym ball. I help her do backwards walkover over the ball.
Ardha Kapotasana A child is crying.
I ask Alan to take a few photos of me Purvattanasana.
Salamba Savangasana I look into the bright light again. A ball rolls behind.
I lay down Savasana Something flies over my head. I get up.
The juxtaposition of Sanskrit and English became an oscillation between a bodily and mental experience of the practice, of feeling and experiencing postures in Sanskrit through my body and perceiving the surroundings in English through my senses.
I take off my glasses. Blurred room.
A sweet smell of ice cream. Lisa shrieks with joy.
The door goes, my dad enters.
Trikonasana 'How did it go?' I ask.
Parvritta Trikonasana His account of events.
I gaze towards my fingertips and just see a blur.
Padottanasana My dad: 'That's very impressive Marie'.
Vrkasana Fridge door opens – a bottle is being opened. Footsteps: 'is it not beer o'clock?' Laughter. Alan and my dad both cheer.
The door to the entrance opens. Sound of shoes clicking on the floor. My mum. 'Hello', then to Lisa: 'Har du haft det godt i børnehaven?'.
My mum's contour above me. 'hvad spiser I i aften? Savasana 'det ved jeg ikke'. Eyes closed. She walks off. Loud TV noise of children's voices. I get up and walk over to Lisa to help her pour a glass of milk. My dad steps on my mat with his shoes. I pick up the mat.
Your task is going to be to seek out a text or a collection of words that have a similar effect on you as to what I describe in my reflections on Task 9: Find words that for one reason or other make you feel them physically rather than mentally. It might be to do with language or perhaps the text brings back a physical memory, perhaps it's simply their aesthetic appearance that brings on the bodily sensations. When you have found your words/text reenact the physical sensations that the words/text brought on. What is the relationship between the somatic and mental understanding of the words/text?
Thanks for this task. Please find my reflections below. I am interested in the subjectivity/objectivity of the body and habitual movement patterns we are exploring in our tasks at the moment so Task 11– Absent vs Present, will dig a bit further at this.
The first thing that comes to mind when reading the instructions for this task, is a scene in the film Fight Club (1999) where the main character discovers a series of articles written in the first person by Jack's (or Jill's) organs: I am Jack's colon. I wondered if instead of me talking about the body, the body could speak for itself? What would the body say if it was able to articulate what was going on as it was engaged in a particular action? I thought of everyday tasks that I do. You mentioned making a cup of tea or brushing your teeth but what would be even more day-to-day than that? What is the most essential activity my body is engaged with? Two things come to mind: walking and breathing.
How does walking speak to me in the first person? How do my legs speak to me when they begin the forward movement of walking? What would my diaphragm tell me if I gave it a voice?
I am a large muscle moving like a jellyfish in Marie's abdomen. I do one simple, continuous movement as I contract and release when I receive a nerve impulse from Marie's brain. I am Marie's diaphragm. In my contraction, I pull down which opens up her ribcage. This movement creates a vacuum inside her chest cavity which draws in her breath and fills her lungs with air. I by-pass Marie's awareness. Until the day she stops breathing I will have done this millions of times and 95% of the time without her being aware of how I supply her heart with oxygenated blood which keeps all her vital organs working. She tends to focus her attention on other muscles that contract and release to satisfy her needs to eat or move. I, on the other hand, move constantly and persistently, even as she sleeps.
By letting my body speak for itself I start to question my idea of 'myself'. If feels banal yet quite profound to take time to really allow parts of my body to have their own experience and to listen to what they have 'to say'. I'm surprised by the stream of ideas, sensations and thoughts that appear in my reflections from taking time to listen to organs and muscles. It makes me wonder if 'I' am simply made up of many different parts each with its own agency? I think about the body as an ecology of agencies where the body as an intricate system of neural networks, organs, blood supply and coordination together create what is me.
Doing task 10 made me think of Deborah Hay who talks about the body as made up of trillions of cells. In My Body, The Buddhist she asks if 'I' is the configuration of my body into fifty-three trillion cells at once?' (Deborah Hay, 2000, xiii). Task 11 aims to consider Drew Leder's 'absent' body and Deborah Hay's 'the body as present at a cellular level' simultaneously.
This task will also take you back to Task 9 – Do As You Normally Do and start with a yoga routine that you can repeat every day. Your task will be to become aware of the moments in your practice when you feel your body is 'absent'. When you do the practice notice what parts of your body are 'neglected' or not in your physical awareness. This may be a specific muscle or a large or small area of your body, inside you or on the surface. Now try to bring that muscle/area into the 'presence'. You may want to do this by talking out loud while you practice –as you suggested to me in task 11– or you may reflect on it after the practice. Allow the area/muscle to 'talk' for itself and perhaps invite different 'absent' areas that have come to your attention to 'speak to each other'. What will they say, how will they say it and in what way does this affect your yoga routine?
many thanks for the task. Below you can find the reflections for Task 11 and further down the description for Task 12.
Savasana with book under the head: A symphony of the intestines.
Once the mind quietens down a bit and the space in the neck opens, the body begins sounding. John Cage said that listening to a busy avenue never ceased to surprise him. I would say the same for my bowels: rumbles, growls and gurgles in all sorts of duration and pitch produce. A deep sense of gratitude emerges: 'thank you for letting me speak. This is the song I have been writing the whole day and now I can finally sing it'.
If I spend enough time in this position and bring my attention to the small of my back, it lets go. It says 'Fiiiiiinaly'.
Hamstrings and calf muscles give a big yawn whereas the shoulders make a 'hamphhhh'. 'You do realise we have been working all day long' – they say – 'and now you push us further'. But after the first complaint they grow quiet, especially when the armpits silence them with another yawn. 'Ahhh' the armpits say as they flatten and get a good perspective of the world.
I come to standing and this standing feels different from all the standing I've done during the day. The heels murmur to the floor 'I am smitten, I want to become one with you'. The front pelvic rim comes out from its hiding place and says 'Here I am'. The shoulders lose their grip on the neck and retreat without a sound. The neck says to the shoulders: 'I appreciate this. I would be really grateful if you stayed where you are. You don't need to wrap me and hold me. You stifle me, you know? I can stand by myself! I do not need your protection!'. It continues murmuring a bit more – sometimes in a language not fit for a blog post – but I can't blame the neck. The shoulders can be bullies sometimes. Once it lets off steam, the neck does what it knows best: it puts my head back in its place. 'Go on you can do all the talking now' the body tells me 'and I will withdraw back to absence'.
The above sequence is one I repeat more or less every day. It feels nice and as you can tell it does not ask a lot of the body, in that it is neither vigorous nor athletic. The task below comes from this place of comfort as well as a certain perplexity I keep grappling with.
Make a list with the postures you like and the ones you don't. What you like and what you don't like depends on whether the posture feels comfortable and you want to do it or whether the posture feels hard and you would rather avoid it. You can have a third category with postures that do not fall in any of these two categories. Once you have made the lists, next to each posture write the 'thing(s)' that define your predisposition.
This task touches on something that I have been wanting to address for some time in relation to our respective Yoga practices, yours being Iyengar and mine being Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga. I want to start by highlighting that I find these separations between different Asana systems tricky territory as they are founded in the same Eight Limbs (Ashtanga) yoga system and talking about them antagonistically feels wrong. I have also practiced yoga 'Iyengar style' and found it hugely beneficial and informative for my own practice. I think that what shapes by practice and teaching is precisely learning from other styles and disciplines. What seems to distinguish them is mainly different approaches to how to execute postures and the order in which they appear in a practice. With that caveat in place I will continue.
As you may be aware, the Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga system is built on set sequences. When I first began the practice, I wasn't really aware of this as I just followed the teacher. But when I started the self-practice system called Mysore I realised that the postures were set in an order that was practiced exactly the same every time to a particular breath count. Primary series starts with Surya Namaskara A continues to Surya Namaskara B which is followed by Padanshustasana, Trikonasana, Parsva Trikonasana etc etc. (See the image for full practice chart). In the beginning, you practice up to Navasana in the seated postures and then slowly as you get more proficient, more postures are added.
And now I come to address your Task: Because the series of postures are the same every time I am bound to do postures I don't like. I avoided postures like Supta Kurmasana and Marychasana D for a long time, I simply skipped them because I had decided 'I couldn't do them'. I needed the set practice (and a patient and insisting teacher) to confront me with my 'dislikes'. Beginning to do these postures was a painful experience both physically and mentally. I have tight hips and these two aforementioned postures are deep hip opening postures but doing them eventually started to break down my assumption that there were things in life I would never be able to do. I wrote a blog post about the challenges of the sequence in the Ashtanga Vinyasa practice in 2012.
My current practice is less orientated towards sticking to the exact sequence of postures (as a full practice is time consuming) but I think the psychology of having gone through the set sequences for years has primed me for being aware of confronting and engaging with postures I do not 'Like'. There are however still postures I dread or look forward to. There are postures I dislike and some I really like.
This deep back bend requires openness in the back and shoulders and a lot of control and strength. Part of me loves it because it so satisfying after I've done it but I find it difficult to breathe through the discomfort in my back and shoulders. I actually try and practice this posture most days as I feel it keeps my spine healthy and mobile.
Bringing both feet behind your head at the same time seems like an impossible thing to do, even unwise some might say. This is what this posture asks the practitioner to do. I struggled for many years to cross my ankles behind my neck. When my hips finally were open enough I one day sprained my sacroiliac joint which gave me pain and problems with all forward bends for a long time.
Due to a knee injury I have a difficult relationship with this posture. It is practiced on both left and right side. On the right side, I have made good friends with it because it's a deep twist and hip opener which is intense but satisfying. On the left side, this posture has caused me knee pain and possibly contributed to more damage to a meniscus tear.
This has been my number 1 mental and physical challenge for many years. It is an extreme back bend and shoulder opening. I lose my breath in this Asana and can only focus on pain. It sits like a looming posture waiting for me a third into intermediate series in the Ashtanga Yoga system. In all honesty, I haven't spent time on this posture for a long time.
This posture is agony on my stiff shoulders and I always get a cramp in my calf muscles. It just feels impossible to do.
I wasn't sure if I could classify this posture as a dislike as it is –for obvious reasons– a very pleasant and relaxing posture. I do find it very hard to give myself time to do it and stay in it for long enough to feel rested at the end of the practice. I suppose it feels hard because it is an act of kindness towards myself I rarely take time for!
This is my default yoga posture that is easy to do anywhere: I find myself doing it on train station platforms, airport lounges and when I pick up my daughter from nursery. It does so many things for me: stretches my hamstrings and calves, opens my shoulders and mostly it helps me connect with my breath and focus my attention.
In a similar way to Adho Mukha Svanasana this can be done almost anywhere and relieves a sore back and helps me relax my jaw. I will do this before going into a situation I'm nervous about.
This twist and lunge is a deep posture that squeezes my lungs and organs and wrings my spine. I always find myself doing a version of this posture when I do my practice. It leaves me feeling detoxed and refreshed.
If you find time after this take a moment to lie or sit on top of the sheet and do a short meditation/relaxation on your reflections.
Can you find any threads that run through the posts and that tie them together?
 Primary series is the name of the first sequence you learn when you begin the practice. For many practitioners, it is also the only sequence they will ever do as it is quite challenging.
Thanks for your task 14 –the dance of the skin.
In my previous post 'Two Trainers Prepare –for what?' I mention the tendency to plan a response to a task – rather than being spontaneous – as something I find challenging. As an improviser, I'm always interested in the immediate reaction to a given instruction and reading a task way ahead of carrying it out, can hinder the spontaneity. For that reason, it was ironic that I read your instructions for this task when you posted it mid-December, knowing I had three weeks to consider it before my reflections were due on the blog. I remember feeling terrified for how I could possibly solve it: "I don't have any hot water bottles" (we don't tend to use them much in Denmark as houses are very well insulated!) and "it's below freezing outside".
For this task I want you to work with the textures of sound or the sound of texture. How does sound feel? Work with three sounds that either please you or annoy you. Dance with them, walk with them, invite them into your yoga practice.
many thanks for Task 15. It is very relevant to work that I have been doing on movement sonification, so I really welcomed the opportunity to explore and reflect upon sound in relation to my engagement with yoga. After some thought, I decided to take literally your instructions to 'invite' sounds into my yoga practice. So I started thinking of ways to sonify my practice and I came up with the idea to use bells. There is a phrase in Greek that translates as 'people will hang bells on me'. It is a playful phrase referring to some sort of social sanction when someone is breaking the rules or behaves in an unconventional manner: when someone says 'people will hang bells on me', they mean that people will stop taking them seriously, they will laugh at them. And I really liked how this idea of hanging bells on my self made a yoga practice, which often takes itself too seriously, a bit ridiculous. So I hung bells on myself.
I chose two Christmas ornaments, made of cheap metal with one tongue each. Silver and guy. I attached them on various parts of my body using pegs and elastic bands. I am positive I looked ridiculous.
The bells were clear: when I am in a posture there is no sound. Or at least the bells are not sensitive enough to capture the micro-movements that take place. There is a lot of commotion before I go into a pose with the bells responding to every step and every movement of my limbs and then there is nothing. After a while, the racket becomes annoying – the silence equally loud. The bells tell me that when I do yoga, my body is quiet. I wonder if it is also mute.
The video you posted as a response to Task 13 worked slowly on me. I did not understand what the video was capturing, but after a couple of days, and as I was thinking how I was going to respond to Task 15, I found that I became more sensitive to textures. First to the textures I was stepping on and then – wild with joy – noticing that there are textures above me too. As David Abram observes: 'we are in the world'. Walking on a route I have been taking for years, I also observed that the texture of the surface was uneven. (All these years, I am sure my feet must have known this but kept it to themselves). And what hit me then was another thing I knew all along: that we practise yoga on even surfaces. The artificiality began to bother me. I started thinking that in this way yoga already sets us upon a futile search for a utopian place. A place with even surfaces that does not exist, unless you make one for practising yoga.
So your task is this: Do your yoga practice, any poses you choose, any time of the day, on uneven surfaces. Try to work with and against them. See how they affect your practice and what you might be doing in order to accommodate them. I hope you will enjoy the task.
Have a close look at this lithograph. Work with your own body as an uneven surface.
When you write your reflections write them in a reverse or uneven order of how you would normally structure your thoughts/argument. E.g start with evidence, continue with reasoning then summarise and conclude and then give introduction.
Good luck, I hope you enjoy!
many thanks for Task 17. Below you can find my reflections, jumbled as you asked, and then Task 18.
I am lying on the yoga mat. The room is dark and it is late. Outside the leftovers of the super blue blood moon still shine brightly. The back of my wrists are against the skirting board and my elbows are bent and facing the ceiling. I am about to go into Urdva Dhanurasana (bridge posture).
Secret No 1: I haven't done Urdva Dhanurasana for more than six years.
Thoughts are circling: Matisse, Iyengar, the effect of the moon on the waters, and a persistent whisper: 'you will get injured'. I note the irony between my predicament and the movement of celestial bodies. Quite literally I do Urdva Dhanurasana every blue moon. 'You will get injured'.
Secret No 2: I practise back bends so rarely, I can no longer remember the names of basic postures.
I have prepared somewhat by doing some thigh stretches and ______ (can't remember the name). I do remember how the posture should be done though, and how it should feel when it is done 'right'. 'You will get injured'.
Secret No 3: I tried Urdva Dhanurasana about two years ago. My shoulders were so stiff I couldn't lift up. I hovered over the mat for a few seconds, my elbows helplessly locked. I came done defeated. I have not tried to do the posture since.
When I first looked at Matisse's lithograph I saw an imperative. The acrobat was to all intents and purposes doing a bridge.
I do the preparatory posture, whose name I can't remember, and try to evaluate the likelihood of an injury.
The two acrobats side by side conveyed to me a sense of 'before' and 'after'. First was a body full of contours and mountains. After was a shape devoid of the exuberance of its surfaces, a body devoid of its unevenness.
I also remember to take a deep breath as I lift into Urdva Dhanurasana. To my surprise I notice my elbows straightening without a hitch, my thighs stretching, my feet remaining in parallel. I come down and wonder if I will manage to go to sleep. I lift three more times.
the ankles need to be in the same line with the knees.
the flesh of thighs needs to move towards the thigh bone and the thighs should stretch.
the buttock flesh needs to move away from the lower back and flatten towards the body (have chapatis buttocks, Silvia used to say, not rotis).
The armpits need to open.
And the most virtuosic detail of all: the lower back needs to be at a right angle to the sacrum.
I play with the idea that Matisse knew about Iyengar Yoga. Or maybe Iyengar saw the Acrobats?
I make a mental promise to you Marie: to practise Urdva Dhanurasana more often.
You need to find a space that somehow can contain you, a hole in the ground, the hollow of a tree, a corner between two walls. You need to be outside and alone, even if you are surrounded by other people. Place yourself in this place with your face looking in and away from the world. You can close your eyes. List out loud all the injuries you 've had. Stop when you can remember no more. Make sure you have some time afterwards to do your yoga practice. You can bring back to the blog any aspect of your experience of the task in any form.
Thanks for your task. You can find my rambling reflections in the audio file. Below I have also transcribed fragments that stood out as important from this voice recording. Some of them are amended to correct meaning and take thoughts further.
Getting annoyed is a good thing. It taps into a place of emotion and shaking up habits. It means change.
There is nowhere to hide. The importance of curves and irregularities. Things not being in line, not being predicable and as you'd expect. Otherwise there is nowhere to disrupt a flow. In my neighbourhood, houses and paths don't have irregularities. Lawns and hedges are neatly trimmed. I have to bend the task so that the instruction to crawl into a hole, fits the linearity of the place I'm in.
I look for a place to fit into something, a hole or a cavity. Or is there a way of doing this internally? Instead of me fitting into a hide-away, the hide-away fits into me?
I find myself in a hedge. On a tree, against a tree. The trunk spreads into many branches. If I can't talk my secret injuries away from the world but instead I have to speak into an open tree or a bush will the secrets not be kept secret? How does it affect how I speak and what I speak of if the tree doesn't hold onto the stories?
I realise all my injuries, aches and pains are on the right side of my body: my right ankle, my right knee, my right psoas muscle, even a sprained finger on my right hand as a result of a play fight with an ex-boyfriend in 2007. Through time, they have moved up my body, defying gravity.
You need to choose whether you're going to place your focus on the right or the left side of your body. Whichever side you choose must wear a weight of some sort – a sandbag around the arm or a brick on the foot. (Avoid hanging something from your shoulder though) Wear it as much as you can when you're around the house but also on the journeys you make during the day.
Now when you move let this 'weighted' side respond to your vertical orientation of the space you're in. Go to your yoga mat and practise Urdvha Dhanurasana with the weight on.
thank you for task 19. Below you can find an audio recording I did the first morning I took the weight off, after wearing it for two consecutive days, and then some written comments. Further down you can find instructions for Task 20.
You asked me to attach a weight on me and you gave me the opportunity to choose the side and part of the body where the weight would be attached.
I chose to work with a handful of coins, set in a plastic bag, which could be easily tied around my ankle. I chose to work with the left side. There is a big bad knot on the left side just under the left shoulder-blade, I think, as a result of scoliosis on the right side. This, I think, shortens the entire left side and the left leg. So I thought that a weight on the left ankle could nudge this side down.
Now that I write all this, I realise that I chose to approach the whole task as a corrective procedure. Attaching a weight somehow had to have a rationale, it had to make sense, it had to be 'good' for something. And I also realise that what the audio clip captures is my attempt to convince myself that there must be some benefit to this. And yet, the task was not set as an exercise of correcting anything. This is what I brought to it, in my attempt to make sense of its absurdity: the only way to make sense of the task was to somehow construe it as an orthopedic procedure. And although I am critical of such an approach, I now see how deeply ingrained it is: of doing and undoing stuff to the body in order to correct it, in order to make it better. Such approach is not limited to yoga, but it is exemplified by it.
I did not do Urdva Dhanurasana with the weight on. I barely practised yoga the days I was wearing it, I was too tired! Yet, I was convinced of the necessity of it, in order to undo all the tensions that were set up after carrying the weight the entire day. So there we are, I approached the task entirely through the orthoperformative approach that underpins yoga, and this created the need for doing yoga…I think I will continue doing for all my life, but I would like to start doing yoga for other reasons.
and find all the yoga postures that may be in there. Create a sequence of them, in the same way postures are sequenced in Ashtanga. Share the sequence, and anything else you would like, in the Blog.
Thanks very much for your task. See reflections below and your new Task 21.
I decided that rather than looking at the sculpture and finding postures 'in the sculpture' I would study it for a while, draw it from memory and then let go of connecting the shape of the sculpture with yoga postures. Could I allow the memory I have of the shape from looking at it and from drawing it, to emerge in my body during my practice. Could I feel and experience emergent forms?
I filmed myself doing a 30-min yoga practice on time lapse. I was interested in trying to embody the shape of the sculpture without trying to imitate its shape. What was the relationship between feeling that shape move through me, the texture of it in the way that the sculpture provides looking holes –windows that you can see through– as a way of framing the world? And what might that mean in my yoga practice?
I am trying to frame, trying to capture a fleeting moment of seeing the world from a different perspective. This happens literally when I change into a headstand or when I look under my arm tomorrow towards my finger or toes. Changing the perspective through the practice.
I didn't spend much time in each posture, so moving through the practice was a way of being emergent. There was never a sense of being static. It was always going somewhere else.
That was interesting, I was aware of how this was going to look on the film —What shapes would be visible on the film? Will my 'sensing of' the emergence of the shape be recognizable? Is that coming through in the recording?
I am very slow in my movement, also being self-conscious I am being filmed. I'm pushed up against the wall and have lost the volume of my body. I have no space to move my arms. My body against the wall looks flat and two-dimensional.
The time-lapse format of filming gives a sense of continuous movement and captures what happens between postures, the emergence of the postures. When I look back at the video I notice the wall behind me, contrast in colours and contours as well as recognising postures.
Movement is slow as I am aware and a bit self-conscious of filming myself. It looks really rushed on the film. Makes a strange discrepancy in timing between the feeling of the practice and the watching it.
Slow vs rushed. Time as emergent. Form as shapes always changing.
I want to invite you to see yoga postures in your everyday life around you. if you can, photograph them, or make a record of them by writing them down in details, explaining what you see. On the last day put them together into a sequence of yoga postures. When you practice them, imagine yourself as that person/statue/tree/building in the moment you recognised the posture. In your reflections you can share any part of the experience.
many thanks for task 21. In the following you can read about the process and below there is a link with some visual responses to the task. Then, there are the instructions to the next task.
Task 21 proved a lot more difficult than I expected. In a less known publication, The Art of Yoga (1984), Iyengar notes how he saw yoga postures in his surroundings, such as sculptures and iconography in temples and caves. He also talks about the postures figuratively, for example he refers to Virabhadrasana 2 (Warrior 2) as the Scales of Justice (Iyengar 1984:42). In a respect, he did something very similar to what we have been exploring: he saw the shapes of postures in both everyday and religious objects. So, I expected that I also would be able to recognise postures everywhere. To my surprise, I wasn't.
On Wednesday and Thursday all I could do was look bewitched at the snow. By Friday, I began wondering whether there are any caves in Leeds or whether I should go searching for a Hindu temple. I dismayed that the exercise was pointless, the snow had simply coated everything. I look more intensely: the trammelled snow, the pasta in my bowl, the soap in the sink, the chimneys, the cars, a piece of string.
Frustrated I cannot see anything remotely resembling a yoga posture. I try a different angle. Maybe I should not be looking for shapes after all; maybe I should be looking for sensations and movements that somehow resonate with the inner sensations generated by the practice of different postures. This does not yield any results either. I run out of time.
By Saturday morning, I begin to get worried. Armed with my phone, I go out determined to find these images no matter what.
Perhaps a more assertive attitude, a sharpened intentionality, or simply fear that come Monday I would still be empty handed, opens my perception a bit more.
I go back home and I practise these postures. But I do not so much think of this practice as an instantiation of the object I photographed. I am thinking more about the end result: how we, the object and I, can fit together in one frame. And here is a word I often feel when I work outside: I want to merge with my surroundings. An impossible thing in reality, I try to realise this longing by merging the images.
Yet, make no mistake: the images are also strategically superimposed to cover deficiencies in my practice. And this brought me to the next task and to a place I wish we had not reached.
There was often bewilderment and frustration, when I was taking yoga classes. My teacher's instruction to stretch more, to turn more, to do whatever more, felt absurd: but I am turning, stretching, pressing, lifting. And yet, there was more space, there was more movement. Since I stopped taking yoga classes, I work with a knowledge of how things feel and how they are supposed to feel. I do not know how they look. And I never wanted to.
I always thought that looking at the posture from the outside leads to an objectification of the body and to an attitude that focuses too much on technical perfection rather than kinesthetic intelligence. So, when I had to look at photos of my postures for Task 21, I did not like what I saw and I did not like that I did not like what I saw. The postures simply felt much better than how they looked. This not only hurt my ego; it also opened up a methodological question I thought I had answered. Long ago I had decided to trust the body, its impulses, its responses, its yearnings as a way to navigate reality. This project is part of this wider decision.
The photos were deeply unsettling, therefore, because they showed that things, and my body included, do not look the way I think. Actors have this problem often, but so I think everybody else. So here we are. In one of his most famous quotes, Wittgenstein argues that 'a main cause of philosophical disease is an unbalanced diet: one nourishes one's thinking with one kind of example'. So heeding Wittgenstein's advice, I am asking you to do something I would never have thought I would ask you to do.
Pick a series of postures. Practise them while you take stills or a video recording of them. Study the visual material and look for areas where the posture can be improved. Identify specific things you think can be worked on more in each posture and do the postures again. You can bring back any aspect of this process to the Blog.
Thanks for the Task, no need to apologise.
It feels somewhat ironic that you should present me with a task to study how my practice looks on a week where I cannot even touch my toes. It was a week that was marked by challenging circumstances: illness (flu, first my daughter, then me) very little sleep (due to the former), spraining my back (due to both) and travelling back and fro to Norway by car/ferry which made time limited. I spent the first four days thinking about the task as I was not able to practice. Saturday afternoon I mustered enough time and energy to test it but never got to the 'corrections' part. I therefore send an apology back to you – I simply have not been able to carry out the Task the way you asked me to.
I decide to stick to the Ashtanga sequence as a barometer for my practice and begin my Sun Salutations – I have my camera set up to take photos every 5 sec to capture the progression of my postures, alignment etc. As expected the practice is very difficult and painful but as is always the case when injured/sick I am hyper-aware of my body and the practice feels very fulfilling. My attention bounces between my back, my head and my joints, connecting me with sensation and the internal spaces in my body. It brings up images of joints and muscles working together, blood carrying oxygen around my body and nerve endings that are overstimulated. I realise I have no interest in the camera nor in the photos that will come out of it –perhaps because I know what they will show: a decrepit woman doing half-versions of postures in an Ashtanga sequence.
When I look back at the images, the postures are hardly recognisable. It makes me smile, as there is a direct relationship between how I feel in the practice and how it looks: pretty awful.
I was sad not to have completed your Task 22 and am happy to repeat again next week in its entirety if you feel that would be interesting.
Personally, I feel it is very useful to be made aware of how postures look. As you mention yourself, the function of a teacher is for her/him to see you from the outside and when practicing yoga on your own, the focus become inwards directed and some attention to the 'form' of postures is lost.
But is it an objectification of the body to look at it from the outside, like you mention? Does using vision always mean judging or objectifying? Is there a way of looking at the postures where seeing is merged with the kinaesthetic intelligence experienced in the body?
In other words, could the felt experience of the posture harmonise with a visual impression or simply add another dimension?
Your Task for this week is to start like Task 22: Practise postures and make a record of them on video/photos. Continue by studying the visual material but instead of looking for areas that can be improved, merge your 'seeing' with the felt sense in the body when you were doing the postures. Maybe your reflections can be a poetic rendition of what happens in this space between seeing and sensing.
Reflections Task 23 and Task 24 – Confirmation?
many thanks for Task 23. It really came as a breath of fresh air and opened up a possibility I had not previously considered. Below you can find my reflections and then the instructions for Task 24.
So the bottom line for my engagement with Task 23 is that I failed entirely. The task made a lot of sense to begin with. Before doing the task, I began thinking whether treating visual images of the body as a cause/source of its objectification is in and of itself a conditioned response and whether, as you rightly suggest, I can move away from it.
Pictures of me were taken while I was doing my practice and this time I was a bit more prepared for what I was about to see.
I looked at the pictures after my practice and I look at them again now. I try to quieten the 'discriminatory mind' (do you remember Task 2, Andrea Olsen?) and resist the ease with which it identifies shortcomings. Once this mode is switched off (I know. A totally mechanical metaphor, but how else can I talk about this?), I simply have no connection to the image. It could have been someone else's body, for all I know. Nothing stirs in me by looking at the photos, there is no memory, there is no response.
It happened by chance that during the week I watched a video of the dance class I take every week. Again, my first and predominant attitude was to spot deficiencies and corrections (what are my shoulders doing so close to my ears???), but there was nothing beyond this. I could not remember the sequence from which the movements came from, I could not remember doing these movements, and watching myself doing them brought nothing back, apart from criticism.
I do wonder if there is any point in trying or hoping to rehabilitate some kind of visual connection to my practice. It seems it has been completely taken over by the logic of orthoperformance. But I have no idea of how to go about this. Maybe another medium, say sketching, would be more expressive and allow for a better connection? Or maybe the time lapse between the actual practice and its encounter in photographs needs to be longer?
In addition to this wall, it seems, I came up against, there is also something else that happened and this might be potentially productive.
While I was doing my practice yesterday and before having the photos taken, I began to imagine the work of the camera. How the person who was about to take the pictures might zoom in on specific body parts, how they might take pictures from angles I could not possibly access without a camera. While I was playing with this, I also noticed that awareness of those body parts, on which I imagined the gaze of the camera, was greatly heightened. Imagine a camera over my toes and there! they come to life, they respond, they press, they lengthen, they become active in preparation for the photo that will be taken of them. The pose for a selfie!
So, I would like, if possible, to test this with you. You would need to have someone with you when you are doing your practice and ask them to take photos of you while you are practising. If you cannot find someone to do this, then you can just imagine the camera in the way I did. Notice what the presence of the camera, there and then, does to the practice. You can bring back to the blog any part of the process.
many thanks for Task 25. As the task necessitated the involvement of another person, below you can find my reflections and the reflections of my friend, Dimitris, who joined me in the last part of the task. Below these, you can find task 26.
Dimitris and I trained together in Iyengar Yoga for a couple of years in early 2000s and he has been following our project for some time. When I last spoke to him in summer 2017, he was eager to re-connect with his yoga practice. Dimitris has been living in a Christian Orthodox monastery for four years now. He is therefore aware of the Orthodox Church's position that condemned yoga as 'incompatible with the Christian Orthodox faith' (Savvidis in protothema.gr, 21/06/2015). In a comment he made on task 20, he invited us to: 'Do the next task as if you were living in a monastery where yoga is considered demonic and while you are doing it say the names of the poses loudly!!!!'. So when we connected on Sunday the 15th of April through WhatsApp, Dimitris and I shared a common practice, which proved very influential for us both, but were in diametrically opposite cultural contexts, at least in terms of yoga. My culture is one that has embraced yoga and turned into a staple of 'busy' western lifestyle. Dimitris's environment – to put it mildly – has remained immune to such influences. I practise in my bedroom overlooking the drive of a quiet northern English urban street; Dimitris practises in one of the storerooms of the monastery overlooking the Aegean sea.
Setu Badha Savargasana , supported.
Going against the convention we have followed so far, i.e. addressing our reflections to each other, Dimitris's reflections are addressed to me and my reflections are addressed to him. Both texts are below in italic.
I feel grateful for the chance you gave me to collaborate in this task.
The part of practicing together at the same time was a great motivation for me, because I haven't practised for very long and it was something I really needed to do, but I wouldn't do it by myself. So, the highlights of practising together definitely are this great motivation to practise. Secondly, it was really beneficial that I had to keep myself in a specific and well timed sequence because I usually have a very vague and chaotic way of practising. Thirdly, I felt it as a very nice personal communication with you in a such unique way. Fourthly I had a glimpse of being in a yoga class, an experience which I miss a lot!!!
On the part on practising the sequence by myself I focused a lot on how setu bandha savargasana supported adhomuka svanasana when done in this order. I am so amazed by the fact that setu bandha makes my body do such a better dog pose. So inspired from that I tried to bring the feeling of setu bandha in all the asanas of the sequence and indeed it was so successful!!!!!! I was very happy and amazed. I don't know if this effect happens due to my specific body needs or that it can be generalised…. It would be very interesting if you try as well and tell me.
In terms of the second part of the task, to imagine that someone observes, I chose to imagine to be observed by a friend who is an osteopath and I am planning to collaborate with her in order to apply osteopathic treatment on the body while doing asanas. Although throughout the practice I kept reminding myself that I am being observed, this didn't influence my practice, because I was very concentrated on the practice itself and on the fascinating investigations of how the setu bandha feeling influences the rest of the asanas.
Thank's again a lot for giving me this beautiful chance of distance training – practising. I have never imagined how nice it can be.
many thanks for agreeing to do this task with me. It felt as a way of (re)connecting with you and did take me back to the classes we used to attend together 15 years ago. I did not like the idea of starting with Setu Badha Savargasana, but I did enjoy having my practice hijacked/altered/influenced by you. The practice of the remaining postures had a more focused quality than usually. Every time I found I had slipped into a mechanical execution of the movements, I thought of you in two dimensions, simultaneously: one was the present we were sharing during the very moment of the practice. The other was the past. I would imagine that I was in a yoga class and you were somewhere nearby in the studio, totally absorbed in your doing.
Both of these helped me staying present. A particularly strong moment was in the end when I stood in Tadasana looking out to the familiar view of my window. There was both a sense of inhabiting my body – in that moment, in that position – as well as a sense of dispersing, extending into space and time, becoming relevant to someone else. I think what I am trying to say is that, after years of solitary practice, I felt in someone's company.
I have been thinking for some time the wider questions and legal battles that have emerged in relation to yoga copyright: who owns it, who can make a claim and eventually money out of it, who is its rightful proprietor? The radical differences between my and Dimitris's environs also makes me wonder about the cultural context in which the practice is situated, grows, and changes. Finally, I got inspired by the work of Polly Penrose, who created a series of photographs of her own yoga postures.
So your task is to create a set of 3-5 yoga postures that are new, i.e. not part of the existing syllabi, and relate to your everyday environment. You have to name the postures and practise them for a few days, before you bring back your reflections to the Blog. You do not have to do the postures naked, unless you want to!
Thanks for task 26, you can find my reflections below and your next task 27 – The 'rightness' of a posture.
I found it very moving to read your response to task 25. Your report of yours and Dimitris relationship to the yoga practice and how it resonates so differently on your respective cultural and environmental circumstances felt very true to the idea of the project: to creatively explore the potential of the yoga practice. And it made me excited for the many avenues of tasks and responses that remains to be discovered for the last part of the Two Trainers Prepare-journey.
First thing to say is that I was very excited to do this task, how wonderful to get license to practice yoga 'off the script'. The topic of ownership of the postures also addresses issues I've had in relation to my own yoga teaching syllabus: at what point does Trikonasana stop being Trikonasana when a student's general physique doesn't enable them to make the posture look remotely like my idea of what the shape should be? I will return to this question further down.
Polly Penrose's photographs are beautiful and to avoid replicating her idea and postures – and perhaps because I am afraid of doing postures and pictures a lot less interesting than hers – I decide to abandon my initial thought to photograph myself in 'non-syllabus-postures'. I am very interested, though, in your instruction to relate my own postures to my environment and wonder how I can think of environment not only as my physical surroundings but also more widely as my circumstances as a dance artist and a mother living in Denmark. Penrose uses furniture and yoga props as obstruction/facilitator for her images. My obstruction/facilitator is the perpetual presence of my four-year-old daughter. I want to embrace the reality of regularly being interrupted on the yoga mat by her, when she wishes to teach me her own postures. I am curious to find out what practicing yoga means to a child who takes part in and observes many asana practices but who is not restricted by the bounds of 'yoga postures'.
So here is what I did: As we were walking home from my daughter's kindergarten, I asked her to teach me some of 'her yoga'. She immediately started moving around and wiggling and jumping. I said: 'I was thinking more of those moves you do when we practice together on the yoga mat.' She stopped and looked at me with sincerity: 'this is yoga', she said.
For her, yoga is movement, not individual postures separate from each other. This brought my attention to the movement I do in between postures. The following days I spent some time practicing and dwelling on the transitions that are outside the syllabus of Ashtanga Yoga, the moves that link the 'formal postures'. One movement is the jump from Samastitihi (Tadasana) at the front of the mat to standing postures like Trikonasana or Parsvakonasana. In the short clip below you can see us practice this. I call it The Flip.
I return to the question posed above: at what point does a poorly execution of Trikonasana disassociate the posture with its name?
For your next task I want you to focus on variations and modifications of one posture of your choice and come up with as many different versions as you can. Using a search engine to find e.g. 'images of Utthita Trikonasana' is completely valid. You can write your reflections as a description of each variation or take photos of yourself practicing them to feed back to the blog. I am particularly curious to hear whether you, with an Iyengar background, have a set of criteria that determine the 'rightness' of a posture and, if so, what they are and when you know they have been achieved.


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German Artist Heinrich Wolff Archive of Signed Prints, an Original Self-Portrait and Ephemera
SKU: PR00291 Category: Prints
Description: We offer a group of 29 works by the German printmaker Heinrich Wolff. The collection represents over three decades of excellence in a variety of techniques, including: lithography, chine colle and dry point etching. The majority of the prints are pencil signed and monogrammed, only two are lacking signatures. Of particular interest to collectors will be an original signed self-portrait in mixed media, a large nude on dark brown japon paper and a manuscript receipt written by Wolff for artworks sold.
-18 figural or portrait prints, most are pencil signed.
There are some fascinating duplicate prints in different states that show Wolff's relentless visual curiosity; 3 prints of a "Professor Brade" and 2 Prints of Max Jaffe with a blindstamp that reads "Bernh. Teichert Konigsberg/Pr Kunstverlag".
-7 signed landscape prints.
-2 Signed self-portrait etchings made as tokens of appreciation for his birthday, from 1925 and 1935.
-1 original self-portrait in pencil and crayon, pencil signed and dated 1899.
-1 allegorical/fantasy print of 8 images, likely for postcards.
-1 manuscript receipt for work sold to Ed(?) Cohn, written by Wolff.
-Catalogue "Bilderhefte des Deutschen Ostens" with an essay by Agnes Miegel from the late 1920's.
The smallest plate dimension is 4 ¼" x 3 ¼" and the largest measures 11 ¾" x 18 ¼".
Item #PR00291.
Heinrich Wolff (1875-1940) was a popular German artist and printmaker. His studies took him to the State Academy of Arts and Crafts Wroclaw in 1891, the Academy of Arts in Berlin in 1893 and the Academy of Fine Arts Munich in 1900. He was a member of the Association for Original Etching and founded the first private school for graphic arts with the artist and inventor Ernst Neumann-Neander in 1901. Wolff met Elizabeth Zimmerman in Munich, already a popular artist herself, who became the subject of many of Wolff's works, and his wife. In 1902 Wolff was invited to teach at the Art Academy Konigsberg where he stayed until his retirement 1935. He died in 1940 in Munich.
Condition: The margins on many prints are torn and toned, but the images remain crisp and free from damage, some prints are in very good condition with no condition issues. Additional photos available upon request.
"The Venetian Ball" 16th Century Engraving by Johann Theodor de Bry
Alfred Bendiner Signed Lithograph Ether 1936
Jean Baier Limited Edition Serigraph Signed
Peter Von Halm Signed Etching of Haystacks


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French (CA)
How To Boost Your Internet Signal
A little over ten years ago the world was still struggling with exceptionally slow internet connection. As of 2010, roughly half of rural residents did not even have internet in their homes. An FCC report mentioned that 21% of people with dial-up did not even have broadband possibilities in their areas. Time travel back ten years before that and most of North America was waiting for the classic dial tone sound as their modems attempted to connect via telephone infrastructure. We could not watch videos, chat groups took an eternity to load, and we definitely could not play online games at a mobile casino whenever we pleased.
Thankfully, today we have the widespread luxury of a broadband internet connection in many forms. Considered any type of internet connection other than dial-up, broadband types include cable, DSL, fiber-optic, satellite, and mobile. Gamers tend to prefer cable, fiber-optic, and mobile broadband for optimal gaming experiences.
Due to the advancement of online connection technology, the gaming world saw its first online game debut in 1984. This game was an RPG (role playing game) called Islands of Kesmei. Although previously developed host-based games, like the Oregon Trail, were technically the grandfathers of online games, Islands of Kesmei was the first commercially-available online title.
Ten years later a Tetris variant, the first mobile game, would appear on the Hagenuk MT-2000 device, paving the way for the gaming apps we love today.
Taking Advantage of Today's Phones and Increasing the Internet Connection
Technology just does not slow down. With every passing year, competing tech companies unleash the latest in high-speed processors and rugged operating systems, making it easier for consumers to enjoy every app and amenity with lightning-fast immediacy.
Phone users find themselves wanting to constantly hack ways to increase speed and produce limitless downloading and navigation power. The following are common questions the public asks about current mobile devices and speed:
What can I do with my mobile device to increase performance?
Whether you use an Android or iPhone, the answers are similar.
For an Android, it is imperative that you know the limits of your phone. Do not buy a phone with marginal RAM if you're a big gamer, for example. Do your research and base your expectations off what you want, whether you want a great camera or see yourself constantly streaming Netflix.
You also want to make sure you are updating all your phone's OS firmware and apps when prompted. Make a point of cleaning up all unwanted apps, disabling unnecessary ones, and using your Task Killer to clear unused apps from your home screen. Installing a memory card also maximizes storage space and adds speed.
With an iPhone, a top speed-boosting tip is to check if the iOS is updated. Apple's current operating system for iPhone and iPad is iOS 12. Check this status by scanning the Settings > General > Software update. If you're experiencing an unusually slow connection, you could also try a restart. Just press and hold the Sleep button until the Power Off slider shows. Swipe it, power down, wait ten seconds, and reboot. This can often fix speed-zapping apps. As with Android, you can also delete unwanted or unused apps and see if that makes a difference.
Other iPhone options would be to clear your Safari browser's cookies and data to free up memory, delete some photos and messages, or turn down the graphics. Fancy graphics can clutter performance levels. Minimize them by going through Settings to Accessibility and switching "Reduce Motion" to "On."
What is the fastest processor and what mobile phone uses it?
Again, this depends on whether you prefer Android or iPhone.
Android's latest high-speed processor reveal has been Snapdragon 855. Reviewers have found that it yields better performance than the best phones of 2018. The top phone to bear this processor so far in 2019 is the Samsung Galaxy S10 Plus. It contains the Android Pie OS, 8/12 GB, and has three cameras, including a 12MP optically-zoomed telephoto and a 16MP ultra-wide lens. The 6.4" display is slick and gorgeous, and the battery is life the largest of any Samsung to date at 4,100mAh.
iPhone's processor darling of the moment is the A12 Bionic, purportedly faster than Snapdragon. The top phones to bear this processor are the iPhone XS and XS Max. The performance cores on these phones are 15% faster than the A11 and use 50% less power. Also known for best-in-class cameras, increased Face ID sensitivity, and exquisite screens, these are apparently the best iPhones to hit the market.
What are mobile networks and what is 5G?
Mobile network technology is what allows smartphones to connect to the internet quickly. Currently, we use 4G, which means "fourth generation." Launched in 2012, smartphone users are looking forward to the possibility of 5G network, which would run approximately 100 times faster than 4G. Some skeptics have been concerned about the health risks associated with increased radiation from 5G, but scientists state that these potential problems appear largely unfounded. Canada can look forward to access to 5G in 2020 and a whole new world of fast-paced mobile gameplay and user interface.
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