Category: Papo de Yoga

Reasons to meditate for 10 days in silence at the Vipassana retreat

Quitting everything and going to meditate seems like something a slacker would do. To go on a meditation retreat, we have to justify ourselves by saying it’s self-care, and we have to use words carefully so people don’t think you just dove into this because you were at your worst.

“All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly alone in a room*” I really like this phrase, supposedly said by the mathematician, Pascal.

I don’t agree that we will have all of humanity’s problems resolved. I don’t believe in world peace, complete happiness, let alone reversing global warming. However, I believe that, even doomed to defeat, we can indeed imagine these utopias and choose at least one or another unattainable collective goal to put into practice.

I don’t fight to win, I know I will lose. If I don’t fail in this system, it’s because I’ve adhered to it. – Padre Julio Lancellotti, o melhor que temos.

My most ancient personal-collective-utopian battle is meditation. Actually, last month I went to a silent retreat. I confess that I had a pretty shitty year, but that’s not why I went, this is something I’ve been doing for several years, in good times and bad times.

However, I think when Pascal said that phrase, he wasn’t exactly suggesting “to sit quietly and alone” sitting on the ground, meditating more than 5 hours a day, for 10 consecutive days, eating only 2 meals a day, without being able to read, write or even exercise. But that’s exactly what the retreat I went to at the end of the year proposes.

If you want to avoid falling into this trap, the name of the retreat is Vipassana. If you are precisely looking for this type of self-flagellation, the name of the retreat is Vipassana too. According to the nightly classes of the retreat, this is a meditation technique that Buddha himself practiced to enlighten himself, but who can guarantee? Indians love using this marketing technique of “it’s traditional”, “it’s ancient” to shove their ideologies down the world’s throat.

Let’s lower all this possible fiction behind what actually exists:

A free retreat, which has been happening exactly in the same model, for decades, in various countries around the world. And thousands, if not millions of people, have already participated in it.

cabem 8mil pessoas no maior centro de vipassana do mundo (pensa nessa galera toda em silêncio)

If you go to the Dhamma site, you can find dates to ~~submit to~~ live this experience. There is a center in Santana de Parnaíba, close to São Paulo, but the one I went to is in Miguel Pereira, in the interior of Rio de Janeiro. The rooms are comfortable, the food is tasty, and the shower is hot. The system is very organized and exactly the same, without adding or subtracting: absolute silence, a bit of fasting, and meditation for hours on end.

Despite the fugere urben and basic comforts, it doesn’t seem relaxing, right? In general, it’s not. But it’s worth it.

Facing responsibilities head on

I confess that I am unemployed, I pick up a freelance job here and there, but I no longer have time to manage, nor pair code reviews to do. However, I work in IT, the freelances pay well and I have some flexibility of time and money, but it didn’t seem bad at all to spend 10 days without having to cook, without spending anything and without looking at a screen.

The issue of cooking didn’t weigh so heavily, this year I prepared so many little lunches that I got used to it. I lost 7 kilos and gained 3 kilos of muscle! I also thought long-term in several other areas of life: I saved money, I challenged myself in my career, I was present in social circles even when I wanted to be crying in a corner, I didn’t take it out on food or alcohol… but of course, this mechanical self-care is just damage control, the problem is much deeper.

I did the whole damn thing, meditated, yet in 2023 I maintained a constant feeling of anguish and helplessness in the face of personal and global problems.

In the world, as you already know, end of the year with this global warming banging in our heads, environmental disasters here and there, another war broke out, inflation high up there, artificial intelligence expanding its skills more and more, an uncertain job market for most professions, extreme right-wing caricature political leaders taking power, Lula not delivering much…

On a personal level, I separated, changed houses and neighborhoods, my psychologist went on maternity leave, I renovated, an aunt died tragically, another loved one almost passed away but ended up in a rehabilitation clinic, my mother had cancer removed… besides that, after almost 10 years living away, I moved wall-to-wall with my blood relatives.

Even so, I didn’t run away from any trouble. Quite the contrary, I was patient and fulfilled my obligations, something that seems minimal, but we know it’s not. Maybe I made things a bit harder for myself with this “long-term thinking” attitude, but this year would have been sad anyway, it turned out I just embraced the hardship and maintained a boring and pondered life.

The size of my problems doesn’t matter, what really matters is the size of my butt. The size of my butt eases my problems – for times i embraced Bruna Rotta’s life philosophy to survive.

There are days, weeks, months, and years in life that are like this: made up of hard facts, decisions that require constant discipline. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s not morally superior to sustain constant euphoria, but I found it hard to support this against-our-culture position of always dancing, regardless of. In 2024 I’ll dance more.

Alex Castro

Why do I want to be so happy?

Of all the things I could wish for or seek, why exactly “be happy”? What does that say about me? What kind of person am I? In fact, what kind of people are we? (The theme of the Prisons Course for the month of November is the Happiness Prison. Our class, which was going to happen on Thursday, November 30, at 7 pm…

Read more

3 months ago · 9 likes · 1 comment · Alex Castro

Anyway, I paid the bills in advance, sent a message to some contacts so they wouldn’t think I blocked them, and headed to Vipassana in Miguel Pereira –

I went without expecting much.

Disconnect from the world

Even though I went without expectations of becoming happier, finding answers, or becoming another person after the retreat, in other words, without seeking a specific result, I went with the hope that during the retreat I could disconnect a bit from the world.

I spent the year fueled by caffeine and wanted to go to a place where I didn’t need fuel to exist, plan, solve, or direct anything. With this in mind, I went on a delivery to what Mr. Goenka – the man who spread the practice around the world – says is like a mind surgery. Still in his words:

“Vipassana is a science of mind and matterHow the mind is influencing the bodyAnd later, how the body is influencing the mind”

Vipassana is the science of mind and matter. How the mind influences the body and, later, how the body influences the mind. This little snippet of teaching I got from the song “Vipassana”, which has a wonderful lyrics:

I found this song when I came back from my first vipassana retreat, I was 19 and I just wanted more a place away from social pressures to think better about my life choices, kinda like Arnold says

“When you set aside time to be alone with your thoughts, you can discover who you want to be; not who your parents want you to be, not who your friends want you to be, and definitely not who some Instagram or TikTok scammer wants you to be.“

If in 2010, without a smartphone and tiktok, it was already hard to disconnect from the world, imagine today. There’s so much information, we have less and less space just to breathe – but maybe we increasingly forget that this is possible, or see any value in doing it.

Not seeking to be “a better person”

Having said that I didn’t get into a silence retreat to escape from some summons telegram, I also want to say that I didn’t go to enlighten myself.

My family is made up of esoteric, syncretic and mystic people.

One grandfather materialized crystals with the White Brotherhood of Archangel Michael, the other followed a macrobiotic diet since the 80s and my grandmother had yoga classes with De Rose when he didn’t have a sect yet, he just taught asanas in a garage.

My mother thinks reading Sonia Café’s little angel book is essential for day-to-day life and my father spends hours a week at Mahikari, purifying and passing positive light to people, a type of Reiki – my stepmother even went to Japan to do a higher seminar of this religion.

Thanks to all of them I am quite skeptical – and I will not dwell on this, as almost everything revolves around it. If you want to know more, lose the sparkle in your eyes, and then get it back, subscribe to this newsletter and stay longer.

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So I didn’t go to enlighten myself, find an answer, let alone become a better person.

If by any chance you feel inadequate all the time in pursuit of an unreachable better person, I want to remind you that it’s okay, you’re not missing anything.

You are probably just increasingly undermined by the excess of colonial-digital-capitalist stimuli and, when you want to get rid of it, you seek Eastern philosophies that preach such enlightenment, which is also unattainable and, within the context we are already living in, it is just the same kind of demand under a new guise.

Opening mental spaces

There’s no need to put a mystique into things for them to have some value.

Another good way to ~~justify~~ think about meditation or withdrawal into retreat comes in the form of scientific discourse, which is how I discovered Vipassana, through Sam Harris, a neuroscientist who at the time was somewhat a fugitive, lived in hiding, because he wrote (concise) books against the world’s major religions, such as Christianity, Islam, and American scientific academia.

Today, the handsome one overcame this phase, came back with us here in the ritualistic round dance of capital – get paid instead of getting mad – made a podcast that blew up and recently was in the hand-in-hand circle with his ~~hot~~ famous professional colleague, Huberman:

The interview topics are the same that he has been working on since he was persecuted, but he had a makeover in his speech. For example, he still talks about meditation, but no longer mentions that he sat in various vipassana retreats. If you want the correct scientific explanation about meditation-mind, watch the video. My lame summary is more or less this:

When we always do the same things, the neurons of those functions connect stronger and faster, the synapses of these things get stronger, our hormones start to be governed by an entire chain of the same stimuli.

It’s like re-educating my body and mind not to react to any thought, not to click a button whenever I want to research something, not to call someone whenever I want to talk to her and so many other little things, from the simplest to the most complex ones.

Being in isolation increases this self-training, to stay seated in a room, without being able to read, write or even watch anything, is to let the body naturally regulate the hormones related to stress and reeducate the brain to function in a different way.

Going to a retreat weakens the brain’s synapses. Staying silent, with closed eyes, for hours and days on end, is to drastically reduce the dopaminergic stimuli in the brain. A vipassana retreat is like a dopamine reset.

Perhaps by sitting in Vipassana I would throw out the bathwater with the baby inside, that is, I would also return with my good habits weakened, but I thought it would be worth it.

And, to tell the truth, I am somewhat lazy.

I wanted a bit of fugere urben yes, to see the mountains of Miguel Pereira again, I missed it. The Fran Lebowitzes of life will disagree with me, but getting out of the city chaos is always a blessing.

This is the view – image taken from Google Maps – to untouched mountains that are not a forest reserve, just a farm, really. (hello agrarian reform)

And that’s where all my criticism to Mr. Goenka begins.

Chat to another post.

30 de December de 2023
Hit the gym or practice yoga?
Yoga is a practice that has captivated people for centuries, and although many believe its origins date back to ancient India, its evolution over time is a story of exchange and invention. While we honor the traditions of the past, we also celebrate the dynamic evolution of yoga as a living practice that continues to inspire and transform lives.

Some of the developments in yoga occurred in the last century as a result of ongoing cultural exchanges, reflections of the onset of globalization. By the end of the century, scholars from all over the world joined the quest to discover the origins of this global phenomenon — whether through linguistics, history, archaeology, anthropology, sociology, among other areas of knowledge.

What they have discovered so far is that the tradition of hatha yoga initially had only meditation poses, cleansing practices, celibacy to obtain supernatural powers, and static physical postures, which were performed for hours and considered forms of austerity (“tapas”).

A historical account of the practice of “tapas” comes from the legendary Alexander the Great (356 BC — 323 BC), who encountered yogi ascetics on his travels. Alexander and his caravan were surprised to see men motionless under the scorching sun, apparently possessing superhuman powers to withstand the hot ground under their bare feet.

His encounter with the yogis was a cultural shock; he had never witnessed such a demonstration of mental and physical discipline. Here is an excerpt from his accounts:

“[…] Another was on one leg, with a three-cubit-long piece of wood raised in both hands; when one leg was tired, he changed the support to the other, and so continued all day” — Roots of Yoga, Mallinson and Singleton (2017: 88)

From then on, much has changed, and it is interesting to note that hatha yoga texts were influenced by bodily practices from other places. Below I list some texts and the number of postures described in them:
- 12th century; Dattätreyayogasästra; 1 posture
- 13/14th century; Vivekamärtanda; 2 postures
- 13/14th century; Goraksasataka; 2 postures
- 15th century; Sivasamhità; 4 postures
- 15th century; Hathapradipikä; 15 postures
- 18th century; Hathapradipika-Siddhäntamuktävali; 96 postures
- 18th century; Gherandasamhitä; 32 postures
- 18th century; Jogapradipyaka; 84 postures
- 1966; Yogadipika by BKS Iyengar (“Light on Yoga”); 200 postures
Although the early texts had few postures, by this time in ancient India, there were already several sequences described, but in other contexts, such as in Jain scriptures, the Upanishads, the Mahabharata and Ramayana Epics, the Puranas, and the Pali Canon of the Theravada Buddhist tradition.

They are also in Tantric texts, for example, the Pasupatasutra prescribes dance as part of the worship of Pasupati, while the Nayasutra of the Nisväsatattvasamhita teaches the practitioner how to reproduce the forms of the alphabet letters with bodily postures.

All these strands may have influenced hatha yoga later on, but it is worth remembering that the exchange between India and other countries has always existed, and we can draw other parallels as well:

Note that the increase in postures occurred from the 15th century, which may be connected with the growing interest in male beauty after the Middle Ages. At this time, Michelangelo sculpted the statue of David, and many discoveries were made about anatomy, biomechanics, and muscle kinesiology, trends that may have come into contact with Indian lands.

The case of the Sun Salutation — Surya Namaskar

For decades, the Sun Salutation sequence has been practiced in yoga studios worldwide, with many assuming it to be a series of movements from ancient Hatha Yoga texts. However, the truth is that none of the texts, images, or sculptures discovered to date mention this sequence.

Despite its popularity, the origins of this practice are often neglected in yoga teacher training. Surya Namaskar A, B, or any other variation practiced in yoga studios was created less than 100 years ago by Indians looking for a “complete” physical exercise and was then incorporated into Hatha Yoga, its popularity boosted by both yoga gurus and bodybuilders.

I explain, during World War I and II, showing health and strength was a way to demonstrate national sovereignty. For example, the Germans used their gymnastic exercises not only to develop healthy bodies but also to promote morality and create “new Germans.”

In Europe, various texts on sports such as rowing, horseback riding, boxing, and swimming, as well as manuals on walking, climbing, and jumping, were published at this time. In this context, health and fitness magazines emerged, such as L’Athlète, which debuted in 1896, the same year as the first modern Olympic Games. In 1893, the first international bodybuilding exhibition also took place:

In India, various Western gymnastics like Ling, Sandow, and YMCA had a significant impact and were incorporated into the local culture of fights. This influence is evident in The Indian Encyclopedia of Bodybuilding (1950), a book that was translated into English and sold in other countries, and which included a description of Surya Namaskar as an exercise, along with a detailed history of the tradition.

This history of Surya was probably inspired by what was written in Yoga-Mimansa, the internationally famous book by Kuvalayananda (1920), where the author narrates that young Brahmins of the 18th century used to perform up to 1,200 sun salutations every morning. This information, however, has never been found in any other historical or religious account. Kuvalayananda probably used this story to promote his technique as more traditional and original than other manuals, a common marketing tactic at the time.

In reality, Surya Namaskar was created by a wealthy and powerful Rajah of Aundh, a region near Bombay. After trying other exercise manuals and not achieving the physical goals he hoped for (who hasn’t?), he created his sequence of postures from some movements he saw his father do when young and, with the help of guru Paramahansa Yogananda, adapted it as a form of gymnastics for the general public.

According to the book by Elliott Goldberg “The Path of Modern Yoga: The History of an Embodied Spiritual Practice,” Bhawanrao Shriniwasrao Pant Pratinidhi (1868–1951), also known as Bala Sahib, was an Indian political leader who popularized the practice of the Sun Salutation in the early 20th century and founded a school of yoga and gymnastics in Satara, India, where he taught the Sun Salutation as part of the curriculum.

Bhavanaro probably named his sequence Surya Namaskar due to its resemblance to the sun worship ritual in which Brahmin priests kneel and prostrate — a ritual that can still be seen today at the Sun Temple in Andhra Pradesh.

However, Bhavanaro and Yogananda’s sequence does not include the “Om” mantra, the “Gayatri” mantra, or any other prayer, which are usually part of the sun worship ritual. The sequence is purely physical and is not intended to be a spiritual practice, although it has been incorporated into the Hatha Yoga tradition as such.

There was a booklet — like other manuals of the time — that included illustrations and recommended practices in cycles, ranging from 25 to 50 cycles for children aged eight to twelve, 50 to 150 cycles for boys and girls aged twelve to sixteen, and 300 cycles for everyone over sixteen.

After becoming popular in some regions of India, this sequence was disseminated worldwide, both in the bodybuilding book and in Kuvalayananda’s book mentioned above, but generally inserted into mediums related to Yoga.

The practice navigated between these two worlds probably because the nationalist or anti-colonialist propaganda of the time suggested that God desired healthy bodies for the nation and emphasized the importance of developing physically, as well as mentally, morally, and spiritually strong Indian youth.

Thus, the practices were all performed in the same gyms (known as akharas), where practitioners shared various techniques. In these places, there were strong anti-colonialist movements, creating a paradox between accepting European and foreign techniques in general, but at the same time strengthening the nationalist movement. Therefore, sometimes everything was appropriated, adapted, and renamed as a “purely Indian” practice — sometimes placed under the umbrella of yoga.

It is also interesting to note that this holistic view (body, mind, consciousness, and religiosity being interconnected) already comes from Indian culture, and it is possible to find in medieval hatha yoga texts descriptions of various things called “yoga” and the reproduction of these same concepts compiled later, centuries later, in other texts, also as yoga.

In more modern cases, there are texts reporting, for example, the practices of Iyer, a world-renowned Indian bodybuilder, who incorporated religious pujas and hatha yoga cleansing practices into his gym training routine. Similarly, Bhavanaro himself performed Surya Namaskar daily between 3 and 4 in the morning, chanting Vedic and bija mantras.

K.V. Iyer combined bodybuilding in the style of Sando with yoga postures. 1930. Otley Coulter Collection

The fusion of yoga and bodybuilding is perhaps best exemplified by the Bishnu Charan Ghosh Cup, an annual yoga competition held in Los Angeles. The event is named after Bishnu Charan Ghosh, a famous Bengali bodybuilder and founder of the Calcutta College of Physical Education (1923), now known as Ghosh’s Yoga College.

Ghosh was none other than the younger brother of Paramahamsa Yogananda, author of the iconic “Autobiography of a Yogi” and co-author of the Surya Namaskar sequence with Bhavanaro, as mentioned earlier.

After just a few decades, the relationship between yoga and bodybuilding seems to have been forgotten, with many online videos portraying the two practices as total conflicting opposites. However, a closer examination of history reveals that these two disciplines would be very different if they had never crossed paths.

As we have seen, the wave of bodybuilding influenced the creation of the Surya Namaskar sequence, which was later incorporated into the repertoire of Hatha Yoga and is now practiced as a meditation in sync with breathing.

Another example of the ongoing exchange between yoga and bodybuilding is the stomach vacuum, a cleansing technique described in medieval yoga texts known as “nauli,” which was incorporated by bodybuilders and is still practiced today.

If you are interested in studying other connections like these, the online study platform Yogic Studies offers university-level courses to explore yoga, Indology, and South Asian studies. The platform is a unique place where scholars from around the world offer modules in their areas of expertise. It’s an opportunity to explore the rich history and culture of yoga, its relationship with other disciplines, and historical moments.

Click here to get 7 free days on the platform .

*Curious fact: fascists and Nazis loved yoga (or what was disseminated as yoga).

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19 de February de 2023