You're still in her house? I cannot fathom how difficult that must be. You need to break away as soon as you are able

Best of luck to you bro

I was up until Thanksgiving. Even as late as that week she was asking me to stay and take care of it (it's not the house she's living in), but now counts that as part of me taking and her giving and has told me to pick up my stuff and never speak to her again.

The progression has been disconcerting to say the least.

Now, I really do have to go.

Itt atak is living in her house but is not a taker

I'm sorry. Leaving is for the best though in the long run as difficult as it seems

Mac: enough

whenever anyone asks me why so and so broke up i almost always say because they both thought the other was putting more into the relationship than they were

sucks

not always true

Everyone be cool

I am sorry for aidsing up your well atak

you in a hetero way

Lolno

Sarcasm.

1/2

...this is a robbery

Yeah, in hindsight

Sorry about that Larry.

I'm back. I'm posting — I even got myself committed to werewolf game. So if there are questions, particularly about the last couple weeks, have at it. I'll write something up about the experience later on.

wrt to the trolling earlier: Often one reaction to these things is that the person being trolled needs to have thicker skin. I disagree that that's relevant. It may be that more tolerance of being hassled is appropriate and worthwhile in this or any other case, but imo that doesn't at all excuse trolling. Intentionally causing unhappiness, or acting with reckless disregard to whether that will be the result, is never good. (Whether it is justified by some ulterior end is a different question, but the answer is usually "no".)

Bottom line on Kripalu, first two weeks (recall that I go back for two more in January):

• I'm very glad I went.
• It was a very friendly, supportive environment, and I made a fair few friends, or at least situational friends; we'll see about the long term.
• I got quite deeply into the yoga, including having a fair number of minor meltdowns.
• I am learning a lot about yoga, though not always what the teachers wanted me to learn.
• I will have zero problem teaching it — I'm already more qualified than most of my classmates will ever be.
• I have major problems with a lot of what they purported to teach, and with the fact that imo they misrepresented just how much spiritual bull**** they were going to shovel onto us.

is yoga like golf or tennis in that, though it may not seem so to the uninitiated, men are >>>> women, just like in every other sport?

Good luck Atak. I don't think we've interacted much if at all, but I've been seeing so many of your posts that at this point I'm rooting for you.

Not really, not least because it's not really competitive in any well-defined sense. But looking at it more broadly, in the ways in which one could compete, men will be better at many of them but women will tend to excel in some also. For example, the typical female pelvic architecture allows for more range of motion, particularly on flexion but in other directions as well — so women will always tend to be better at forward bends and splits. I believe female spines also tend to be more flexible on extension (backbending) because of relatively smaller transverse processes. And with finer long bones, in general they will have greater rotation at the elbow, meaning they can more frequently get into "correct" hand position. (For example, I, with my typical mesomorphic male bone structure, literally cannot place my hands and elbows in the classic position in downward dog; most women can.)

Male strength will always win in the strength poses, which actually is a lot of them when you get into holding them for a long time. But the differences in isometric strength (holding poses) tend to be much less than they are in gross concentric strength.

I don't know which sex has inherently better balance.

Males' greater relative lung capacity will always enable "better" performance at many of the breathing techniques, but that doesn't necessarily translate into "better" ability to achieve the brain states that are desired — I don't know which sex is better at that.

One important aspect of yoga is increasing vagus nerve activity, which reduces the bodies physiological stress responses and is thus pretty good for you. In some ways, at least, women tend to do this better than men. An interesting result of that is that yoga actually tends to decrease metabolic rate, thus causing (in isolation) people to gain weight (very much contrary to proponents' claims, and not necessarily relevant because yoga also tends to decrease stress eating and increase other physical activity, so it washes out), and women show more of this effect than men. I don't know (yet — but I'm reading a book on the science of yoga right now that may tell me) whether this applies to other vagus nerve activity.

Women seem to get more of a change in sexual response than men do, but again I'm still reading about that.

They don't like you to know this, but yoga has been almost exclusively male for all but the last sixty years or so of its existence. It is now largely female, all over the world. An interesting phenomenon (which doesn't particularly bear on your question, I realize).

how far can i get along this path with home study using books & internet? how much better is it to attend classes run by some 3rd rate hack?

thanks for your helpful detailed responses.

Expanding more on the male/female question, with personal experience: In my Kripalu group there were 41 people, with me being one of just two men.

I was much better at some poses than most of those women will ever be, basically because I"ma guy and testosterone+HGH+male bone structure = strength. But several women in my class could do things that my bone structure would probably prevent me from doing regardless what I do or how many years I do it for, and that will be the case for many men. So it's much less unbalanced than most sports are, and in fact is very unusual in that regard. I do agree that in about 99% of sports women have zero chance to be competitive at the top (note that this even applies to mind sports), but with yoga that seems not to apply.

having a thick skin is handy

being untrollable is the internet's version of enlightenment


but yeah, people shouldn't be jerks

I'd like to know about this too

I'm interested in yoga but I'm not in a position to take any classes right now