Radical Acceptance
October 18, 2005 – 8:47 am
I should know by now not to eat beans before yoga practice. But I tempted fate and ate them yesterday, before class.
The gut rolled around as I clenched my buttocks and attempted to stifle the Bronx Cheer threatening to expel itself.
But practice being what it is, I forgot to continue to squeeze my butt checks.
Then I moved from down dog to child’s pose. As I layed my bum onto my heels a very proud air biscuit announced itself.
Not once. But twice I let Polly out of jail. “Free at last,” they shouted upon their release.
Mortification washed over me twice as I rose back up into down dog.
The teacher kept teaching. And I kept breathing.
Cheesy new agey mumbo jumbo never talks about the radical acceptance of farts. Not a good workshop topic: “Piffling in a Crowded, Hot Room While Aspiring to be One With the Breath.”
The left doesn’t talk about farts, either (I can’t speak about the right, though they seem uptight to me. Maybe they might benefit from letting it rip ever now and then….)
We are an uptight culture with twisted, distended guts. While we argue Marx and Queery Theory, we hold it all in. So farting, I think, in public, at least in the yoga room, suggests a greater degree of relaxtion and self-acceptance. If I can’t accept my animal nature, why bother trying to change the world?
Still I won’t be eating beans before class anymore (no really! I won’t…). I might think my farts indicate my evolved nature, I have to consider the lady next to me and the potential toxic nature of my matchlighters.
Ahimsa, after all, is a foundation of yoga. 
5 Responses to “Radical Acceptance”
The only thing this entry lacks is a scratch-n-sniff panel to bring us all into oneness with the poot.
It’s one of those humbling moments where we see how NOT in control we really are…and I am sure you gave the rest of your class a nice story into perpetuity, so you can definitely feel proud of that!
By Jennifer Gee on Oct 18, 2005
You know, I’m not sure how many of my classmates heard me.
I think farting sounds louder to me than to others…though the Divine Ms. H. claimed to have heard one of my gifts.
By Jay Sennett on Oct 19, 2005
I had surgery three years ago that removed part of my colon (called a Sigmoid Colonectomy, or something). I had to have it because my colon had ruptured from diverticulitis. When I asked the surgeon about it, he said that it was caused, in part, by holding in farts. I don’t do that now (otoh, I *do* try to excuse myself and find a non-crowded place to let them fly!).
By Denise on Oct 21, 2005
I live at 15882 Commonwealth in Seattle. Been up here before?
By Mike Flacklestein on Jun 14, 2006
Yes, I have been to Seattle, Mike.
But I’m not sure why you think I’d want to visit you?
What are U wearing?
By Jay on Jun 14, 2006