Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Practice report, and a little meditation on the not-so-silent silence of the blogosphere

This morning, I did full primary and second up to Pincha Mayurasana. No, there were no "porny" sensations in either kapotasana or yoganidrasana (see my previous post for more details).

Ever since I started blogging, I have noticed that certain things that I have read in blog posts or in bloggers' comments would pop up in my mind at various points in my daily practice. Very often, these things have nothing to do with the particular postures I was doing or the particular sensations I was experiencing at that particular point of time. They're just... mental flotsam that float up to the surface of consciousness, seemingly without my volition. In particular, I have noticed that they tend to pop up a lot during particularly challenging postures, especially kapotasana, especially at the moment when I first arch back. All these random passages that I remember from blog posts here and there tend to pop up in my consciousness at this moment. If you could look inside my head at this moment, you would probably see this kaleidoscope of words and thoughts and sounds :-)

I usually don't try to shut these thoughts up. I know from experience that it is far more productive to just acknowledge them and go on with the postures anyway. They usually tend to subside immediately after kapo.  Interesting, isn't it? It's like kapo is this magnet that draws up all these blog-voices from the depths of my sub-conscious and dumps them on the shore of consciousness for the waves of the rest of second series to wash away :-)

What's even more interesting is that even though the blogosphere is a largely silent medium, I tend to "hear" these various posts and comments as voices when they pop up. So, without being fully aware of it, I end up imagining how different bloggers sound like, even though I have never heard most of your voices. I think it is a human tendency to want to hear voices. So much so that we imagine voices where there are none. I sometimes think that if I were to live on a remote space station by myself somewhere in deep space, and the blogosphere were my only means of communication with the rest of the universe, I would be living in a silent world that is not quite so silent, because I would invent voices in my head for the blogs that I read. That would be such a poignant and at the same time intriguing scenario, wouldn't it?  

That said, I hope to hear all of your voices in person one day. So far, I have only heard the real-world voices of Cathrine, Christine, Claudia and Patrick :-)

5 comments:

  1. This is very interesting. I think there is so much that is said through a voice that is not necessarily in the words spoken.

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  2. such an interesting post Nobel! It's funny you bring up the "voices" in practice...hmmm that makes me sound a bit mental, but whatever. :)

    I catch the voices of all of my teachers flitting around in my brain while practicing...usually when I'm about to take the easy way out on something...arg!

    It's not so surprising to me then that the voices of the cybershala mates would come up from time to time, even if many are only "virtual voices".

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  3. @Brooks, yes, and perhaps we project certain assumptions/values onto the person in the way we "visualize" that person's voice in our heads.

    @Christine, maybe most of us are "mental" in this way :-). Yes, I often hear the voices of my teachers too.

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  4. You make up voices for the commenters? That's funny (and interesting) Nobel :) I have never thought of blogs and comments that way before.

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  5. @Yyogini, I make up voices for everyone. In fact, I have a voice of you in my head too :-)

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