Sunday, January 25, 2015

Stoic Yoga

Ruth St. Denis and Denishawn dancers in Yoga meditation.


"It shows a lack of natural talent to spend time on what concerns the body, as in exercising a great deal, eating a great deal, drinking a great deal, moving one's bowels a great deal or copulating a great deal. Instead you must do these things in passing, but turn your whole attention toward your faculty of judgment." -Epictetus, Enchiridion 41


There are two things to take from this passage. The first is that Epictetus assumes that we will take physical exercise, eat, drink (wine, presumably), use the toilette and enjoy physical love. The second is that he sees these things as mere incidentals, not goals in and of themselves. For him the needs of the body should be met, but not dwelt upon.

I'm pretty good about not dwelling on these things, but I'm not very good at meeting them.

I want to set up some simple systems to care for my body without requiring obsessive amounts of time and effort. I want to be a good steward of it, but I don't want to build it into my life's work. I don't want my body to be a monument to my will.

So what have I done to further this goal?


1. Green smoothies to up my fruit and veg consumption

2. Walk three miles three times per week

3. Body weight and fitness band exercises twice per week

4. Calorie limitation using myfitnesspal.com

I'm getting to the point that these things are becoming habit. I don't have to think about them too much. I believe that this is in keeping with Epictetus's teaching.

There's one thing left to deal with: pain.

There is a very realistic older man where I work, a man who tells the truth all the time. He doesn't volunteer it freely; he's pretty self contained. If you ask him a question, though, you'll get a straight answer.

Once I asked him what it's like to be an older man.

"I'm in constant pain," he said. I thought he was talking about psychological pain. He may have had regrets or failures of character. I said as much.

"No, I mean physical pain. The older I get the more everything hurts."

There is some truth to it. What we cannot change we must accept, right, fellow Stoics? But what if we CAN change it?

I try to do a simple yoga routine at least once per week. Notice that I say "try." What I really ought to do is to commit to doing it twice per week. I've noticed that when I do yoga my joint pain decreases and my back pain sometimes dissappears.

So I have a goal: I will do yoga twice per week. This seems moderate, and I know that it will produce real results, a claim which seems to be  backed up by science.

Here is a sequence I've been using, and it seems to work pretty well:





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Public domain image courtesy of the New York Public Library

1 comment:

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