“the intent of this blog is to incrementally build a body of thought that works toward integrating various topics, yoga, fitness, and the arts – it’s a process…”
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the yoga loophole – “playing your edge”
related: “Playing my Edge with Photography, Variations”
related: Playing my Edge with Photography, Telling a Story in Pictures (adjustments)
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Site Areas
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Intro
i’ve begun to suspect, there’s not an endeavor involving people that doesn’t include or produce a loophole :
* purgatory
* mitigating circumstances
* instant replay
* time-out
* foul ball
* in a pinch
* on the other hand
* grace
* forgiveness
* illusion
* annulment
* we’re only human
and i can’t leave out :
* playing your edge
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some loopholes are more acceptable, for me, than others, like grace and forgiveness
illusion, in general, doesn’t hold enough for me as a loophole 😉
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Respectability of Playing Your Edge
playing your edge, one’s edge, my edge, is accepted, respectable
i sure like it 😉
* the mildly masked competitive spirit is thought to cut only the individual playing; no guilt or fault is assumed
* each person must identify their own edges, how hard how soft (think contemporary art vs a renoir), how firm how malleable
* a person has cultural permission to critique only themselves, and pullback or go-ahead with an effort on their say-so
it’s a great loophole!
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Playing Your Edge is Like…
playing your edge is like driving in the pitchest dark of a cooling night on an unlit coastal mountain roadway
only the speeding dashing curving streaks of white between the two lanes saying where the road is
crack the window to brush your cheek on ocean air
salty shrieks of seagulls floating effortlessly overhead
or close the car tight, grip the wheel, eyes printing the stripes in the road like landing lights dashed on as you stare at the unknown
or open all the windows and hear your song in the rush of air wrapping eddys round your heart, your eyes as moist as the night cooled air
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its your edge your call your car, your body
your lights upon the road
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all else is beyond your control, it’s a loophole….
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Playfulness of Playing Your Edge
loophole or not, playing your edge is a wonderful phrase
just having the word “play” in it (so universally understood) makes the phrase so attractive
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whether i am pushing tentatively, searching for the moment’s boundaries, or pressing determinedly, exploring more range of motion or motivation – i am playing!
i really like that – as a kid, i think i almost always liked playing [2]
only time i didn’t feel this way, was when i’d be really angry (more often as a teen) – hard to be playful angry….
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and of course, for me, the real gem of playing my edge, is finding that every part of me, has an edge, and can be playfully “played”
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Big Playground
real big!
yoga’s playground for playing your edge is HUGE!
– physical
– mental
– emotional
– spiritual
– combo’s
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all the playgrounds are like arenas of awareness –
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the physical playground is most commonly thought of it seems, with pose work the most obvious aspect
mentally, one’s edge is, for me, most frequently, the lines of reasons between wanting and not wanting to do a movement or pose
emotionally, my edge is more fluid, and can run the gamut from, happy to do a movement, to angry resistance – at times, in a flash flood that strands reason and awareness on a wedged wooden limb bobbing in a the torrent driving for direction or the boundaries of a soft earthen bank
i suppose it’s reasonable and can be argued, that there isn’t an edge to play in regard to spirituality, even one’s own parcel speck of it 😉
if i was thinking of fully realized beings, that may be true, but really, i have no idea…
so i’m referring more to folk like myself 😉
so…for me, my “edge” of experience with “spirituality” is, at best, a process of awareness
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Combo’s –
okay, now here’s where it gets tricky, yet interesting, for me…
say one edge-line, my physical, says it’s tired, needs to rest, didn’t i read my own article about recovery!
and my mental edge-line says, nope, need the cardio and bone compression, or i’m gonna feel more tired later than i do now, or what’s the use of getting all those certifications saying i learned something! so get going!
surprisingly, it’s often my emotional-edge, volatile aspect that it is, that referees –
come on guys! gotta do it, but let’s do it where we’ll be able to do it, and not get our feelings hurt, or our muscles, and not get big-headed about it! –
remember, you’re a young senior now!
there’s some nice things about getting older, so let’s go slow…
warm up…
hey, did you hear the joke about…yea, i know, don’t even know a good joke right now, ok, go ahead, you can smile 😉 yea! maybe little more range of motion there, easy…easy, come on! can’t even see that edge, don’t push it, nice, yea, that’s better, almost done…. [3]
combos are how most my edges are played out –
seems to be so many variables involved, i can only be ready to let awareness of each edge make itself known to me…
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my spiritual-edge, meanwhile, i imagine 😉 simply lets nature (my integrative process) catch up to whatever’s waiting for me, that which i can handle at that moment
it’s very definitely a process 😉
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i left out stuff like chakras, cause really, i have no idea…
though, i do tend to like pictorial representations of them
ray long at daily bandha has had a great chakra posture you have been able to get fairly easy from, but please check for current availability
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closest i’ve read recently that gives interesting, related viewpoints to my take on playing one’s edge, are from two online yoga sites :
an interview on magazine of yoga with a writer, “practices, alan heathcock” –
“Do not look beyond yourself for validation. Be brave enough to take yourself seriously.”
and a 1st person blog post by nancy alder at flying yogini –
“…teacher uses the same sequence (and language) every time she teaches. Yet despite the fact that I knew what was coming next, my body was in a totally different place than it was the last time I was there so it felt new.”
the ways each of us recognize, and deal with, our various individualized edges, is incredibly diverse –
yet here, in two remarkably differing experiences, related to us in words from two distinct worlds of life, we recognize, not only their commonality, but that same kernel of connectingness, to us…
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yoga’s loophole, playing your edge, allows us to both be ourselves, yet connect –
we are human, we are of one, we are both….
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Details
Favorite Bonus Playing My Edge – able to be playfully competitive
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Favorite Fringe Benefit – knowing there’s always a way, though finding it, sometimes, may take me awhile to find 😉
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Favorite Edges I Think Of Sometimes –
hemingway & fitzgerald
east – west
science – religion
left – right (political, brain hemispheres, and correct sides of the road in different countries)
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Random Questions
are right & left brain differences the ultimate incarnation and source of most our edges?
what does “can’t get a word in edge-wise” really mean?
is being “edgy” too much of a good thing?
is compassion recognition of an edge in desperate search of a fit?
does playing your edge, give you an edge?
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do you feel, think, or know you have an edge?
share it, live it, write it, paint it, put it to music, walk it! build it!
and yes, smile it 😉
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Playfulness, What’s It Good For…
for me, there’s an inherent sense of harmlessness in playfulness…
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namaste – con dios – god be with you
footnotes
[1] an interesting article on uncertainty (unknowns) is “the power of uncertainty“
a nice quote from it is, “The key to true creative problem solving is the ability to work in ambiguity….”
i apologize for not remembering where i saw the mention and link, but i keep thinking it was something from yoga lunchbox
[2] my only memories counter to that were, when i had time-conflicting playful-activities available at the same time
for example, i was about fourteen, deeply engrossed reading a fictional book, twingingly feeling an urge to pick up my trumpet and play with a few notes on repeat in my head 😉 when a friend showed up at the window (we all had our windows open back then in houston!) wanting to know if i wanted to join a game of baseball down the street
decisions, temptations, life 😉
[3] of course, this type conversation, is more commonly experienced as a back & forth exploratory-hunch of what’s best that moment for me – typically quite quick, hardly thought out at al, intuitive
when it does slow to this style of sorta hearing myself, it’s usually because of my studies or new info (like anatomy) that require an integration refinement – gotta internalize it 😉
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INTEGRATING YOGA FITNESS AND THE ARTS
Related articles
- Photography Plus, a Beginner’s View – eBook
- Playing my Edge with Photography, Telling a Story in Pictures (adjustments) (yoga-adan.com)
- “Playing my Edge with Photography, Variations” (yoga-adan.com)
- “Art and Yoga” – Original Arts & Yoga Poetry (yoga-adan.com)
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