Telos Journal Edition Three October 2013 | Page 13

and nutrients, your body will not express itself deftly and with gumption in impromptu
situations if you monotonously overwork your routine or neglect certain body parts. Your
body and mind were built and are developing to perform assorted acts. One should
ask oneself: Have I forgotten what it is to exist, to take on the freshness of new and
immediate challenges?
A well-known yoga instructor in Bali takes a popular stance on the matter. She says, the
green of her eyes brilliantly illuminated by her leafy surroundings: “Repetition is
important and discipline is essential. I have a life that is discipline and do rituals. Rituals
encourage and punctuate life so that you can stay centered and focused,” Somewhat
conversely, Lao Tzu says that “ceremony fusses but finds no response; then it tries to
enforce itself with rolled-up sleeves.” After the Tao, ceremony is the last approach a
man resorts to according to Tzu.
The fussing that repetition, ritual, and ceremony personify is initially positive if it simply
gets one on foot, or is the only thing that will keep one there, but if exercise is truly
about inward deepening, then it is imperative that yogis eventually find their own
original marks of expression beyond ritual—physical, mental, and moral.
Once the fire is indeed ablaze, the rubbing of sticks is an obsolete fixation.
Proposition Eight: Exercise is a symbiotic relationship with one’s environment.
Your environment is a living organism that hosts a montage of gymnastic possibilities.
Besides climbing the local mountain or cycling nearby hills, one can, especially those of
us who are professionally sedentary or physically enervated, utilize the things that are
spatially available in close proximity to get fitter. The beams that hold up your house
can be used to stretch and align your back (pull-ups are also an excellent way to tone
your core, back, and arms). Simply occupy your space. Walk into your garden and
become inspired by the perpetually operative microcosmic workings there.
Knowing your spatial surroundings is key to physical fulfillment and dietary success.
Planting a garden, for example, which may sacrifice some of your gardens flowery
aestheticism, will gain you better control of your health, in general. You will sun yourself,
connect with the earth, stretch your muscles, and lubricate your joints in soft activity,
while teaching you about time and life’s eternal recurrence.
To yogis and those who work-out in doors the environment should be good but has a
subordinate significance. An attractive feature of yoga is that you can do it anywhere.
When you’re traveling within and practicing pratyahara, sense withdrawing, the outer
space is supposedly not important. Alternatively, Taoism seeks to enhance your sensory
capacity and build intimacy with your body and its relationship to your environment.