Yoga for Children

Tall as a house
Small as a mouse
Wide as a gate
Thin as a rake

Be a cobbler
Stand on your head
Be a warrior
Lie down dead

Tapping into Inspiration

No thinking allowed
No thinking aloud
Nothing aloud
Nothing allowed.

Mind the gap
Mind the space
Mind the spaces
Mind the spaces in between.

In between the gaps
The moving spaces
Moving in the spaces
The spaces between the gaps.

Now thinking allowed
Mine the gaps
Move the spaces
Move the mind.


When the ocean swells
And space expands
What is my intention
And how do I feel.

Conflict softens
Boundaries stretch
The mind opens
Receiving inspiration.

The mat in the mandala
Focusing energy
Why do we do this
In the moving spaces?

Yoga Anatomy

Leslie Kaminoff

Human Kinetics

ISBN-13:978-0-7360-6278-7

Library

---

Yoga Anatomy	Leslie Kaminoff	Human Kinetics	ISBN-13:978-0-7360-6278-7

The Mathematical Universe

Inspired by: "Reality by Numbers", Max Tegmark, New Scientist, 15 Sept 2007, p38.

The holy grail of theoretical physics is a theory of everything - a complete description of the universe. Max Tegmark argues that our Universe is not just described by mathematics - it is mathematics.

The foundation of his argument is the pre-supposition that there exists a universe independent of human experience. For such a description to be self-consistent it must also be well formed for non-human entities (ranging across all scales from sub-atomic particles, to animals, to universes).

Physical theories comprise two components: mathematical equations defining relationships, and descriptions of how those equations relate to our observations, intuitions and concepts. The physicist in me wants to rationalise the abstract mathematics with human conceptual meaning, but in principle the evolution of the universe could be calculated from the equations without the need for human conceptual interpretation.

Is it possible to find an objective description of the universe that does not rely on human concepts? If so such a description would be completely abstract with no meaning. The only properties of the entities described would be those defined in the relationships between them.

And mathematics is precisely this: sets of abstract entities with relationships between them. Mathematics is the formal study of structures that can be defined in a purely abstract way. Max Tegmark pre-supposes that humans don't invent mathematical structures, we discover them, and invent only the notation for describing them.

Here is the crux of Tegmark's argument: if you believe in an objective universe, independent of the human mind, then to be consistent you must also believe in the mathematical universe hypothesis: that the objective universe is a mathematical structure.

The theory of everything then must be purely abstract, objective and mathematical. Physics has reached the point in its development where across all scales, from particles to universes, all objective measurements ever made are consistent with a few pages of equations that involve 32 unexplained numerical constants.

Amusingly inconsistent with his thesis, Tegmark takes a sidestep to ask: What does this mean? Despite the searing rigour of his argument he cannot resist the human temptation to ask: Why?

First he distinguishes the dissociated observer studying the structure from outside, like a bird hovering overhead, from the associated observer living in the structure, like a frog living in the pond. The associated frog feels the passing of time in the pond moment by moment. The dissociated bird above observes the entire evolution of the universe unfolding below like a movie .

Then he asks: How do we relate the two perspectives? The abstract mathematical structure of the movie exists outside the snapshot of the individual frame. How can an observer be purely mathematical? The complex structure of the observer stores and processes information in a way that gives rise to the sensation of self-awareness.

How do we test the mathematical universe hypothesis? It predicts that further mathematical regularities remain to be discovered in nature, and it predicts the existence of parallel universes.

Woodstock

I came upon a child of god
He was walking along the road
And I asked him, where are you going
And this he told me
Im going on down to yasgurs farm
Im going to join in a rock n roll band
Im going to camp out on the land
Im going to try an get my soul free
We are stardust
We are golden
And weve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

Then can I walk beside you
I have come here to lose the smog
And I feel to be a cog in something turning
Well maybe it is just the time of year
Or maybe its the time of man
I dont know who l am
But you know life is for learning
We are stardust
We are golden
And weve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

By the time we got to woodstock
We were half a million strong
And everywhere there was song and celebration
And I dreamed I saw the bombers
Riding shotgun in the sky
And they were turning into butterflies
Above our nation
We are stardust
Billion year old carbon
We are golden
Caught in the devils bargain
And weve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden


Joni Mitchell

Trikonasana

The physiological,
The cosmic,
The spiritual.

We seek the union
Of mind, body,
And universe.

Trikonasana;
A living
Platonic Solid.



Discipline the body,
Still the mind,
Receive inspiration.

The story is retold
In may incarnations
And metaphors.

"We are stardust We are golden
And we've got to get ourselves
Back to the garden."

Reason and desire;
Motivation locked in a dynamic state of
Balance and stillness.


Breathe... Listen... Wait.


Open the body,
Open the mind,
Receive inspiration.