Five Roses Tea

Last night in my yoga teacher training the topic was the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali. Before class I tried to read the book and got to page 12 in the introduction before I gave up and went back to reading Urban Mystic written by Darren Main, my instructor. It's much more readable, understandable, and I figured I'd wait until after the lecture. After all, I didn't expect the Yoga Sutra to be like a murder-mystery where if I heard the story before reading I would learn the secret identity of Patanjali.

As it would turn out, nobody really knows who Patanjali is anyway - there are rumors he was a poet but nobody knows.

But I digress, as usual, so this is what I learned last night:

There are four chapters in the Yoga Sutra. Not to be confused with the Kama Sutra because this isn't really about sex, except in the sense that yoga is about everything in life which means it's about sex also.

The Sutra is really about 12 pages of one line concepts, if you will, that make up everything there is to know about yoga except the poses. Yep, yoga is brain food first and body food second. The first chapter is wrapped around this one concept: all suffering originates at the level of the mind. Everything everyone suffers over starts first in the brain.

Now if you happen to be a 12-stepper or maybe a Landmarker or maybe even a follower of the Course in Miracles, you've heard this before. This follows my thought that there is one truth and a bunch of books and lectures written around this one truth. But think about it for a moment, as I did, being a past 12-stepper (Al-Anon fortunately, don't have any addictions to my name that I know of) and a past Landmarker (all the yoga psychology really sounds like Landmark dressed in plain clothes, by the way) and a dabbler in the Course in Miracles via Marianne Williamson.

So think for a moment - everything that causes you to suffer, including everyone that causes you to suffer is really just something you made up in your 8 pound brain. The good news is that although we have (meaning I) patterns of behavior that go back as long as we've been alive, and longer if you are in the reincarnation-believing group like me, we can break those patterns.

We can stop doing things that don't work once we realize they're just patterns. Or if we choose to do things that we know aren't in our highest good or nutrition or body care we can do them consciously.

This morning, you see, I had a dilemma. I was tired. My hipflexors were shouting at me in dull aches, my abs - all four groups of them - were chattering also. After five yoga classes this week and a couple hours of home practice, as well as sitting on the ground for two hours of lecture last night, I've really overdone yoga this week.

So my dilemma was whether to make coffee this morning. I have a Trader Joe's half-caf version, but coffee doesn't do my body good. It makes me awake for a bit but then it makes me crash worse than a Krispy Kreme donut. I like the taste, which is a problem. So I stared at the Kitchen Aid coffee pot thinking, I can make coffee, I can drink the coffee, but in no way can I pretend that the coffee is good for me.

What did I do? I looked for tea. I had exactly two bags of caffinated tea in my house, one of which was a lonely bag of Five Roses Tea from South Africa.

I'm such a nostalgic. I bought a box of Five Roses when I was in South Africa. It is such a yummy mild, full bodied tea in the English tradition. But when it came to drinking that final tea bag, I had to keep it. I was in Africa three and a half years ago, and yet I still have this tea bag!

This morning I enjoyed that lone bag of Five Roses. I'll pay a price for the dose of caffeine, but I'm walking into this cup eyes wide open, savoring the taste knowing later today I'll be sleepy. It's like I told my client a while back about Oreos. She said the office manager was considering stopping the supply of Oreos in their office kitchen because they're not good for us.

I looked at her and said, "I don't eat Oreos because they're good for me. I know they're not. If I wanted something good for me I'd eat that banana. I eat Oreos full knowing that it's for the taste."

That, is chapter one of the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali. And whoever Patanjali may be, you were one wise bloke.