Cognitive Yoga by Tony Chase

"I believe that an experience is not even possible without reflection..."

- C. G. Jung, MD, Terry Lecture, New Haven, 1937

Is it easy? Yes.

Is it difficult? Yes.

Is it social? Yes.

Is it solitary? Yes

Is it sweaty and gross? Yes.

Is it cleansing and purifying? Yes.

Do the muscles contract? Yes.

Do the muscles stretch? Yes.

Is it spiritual? Yes.

Is it sensual? Yes.

Is it austere? Yes.

Is it aesthetically rich? Yes.

It is hard to think of another human activity which is such a whorl of contradiction...well, there is marriage, of course. And raising the tormented teen. And gardening. Politics. Reading ancient philosophical texts in a frozen hut.

Perhaps yoga's effectiveness has to do with the fact that it is grounded in reality. We are at once the scientist and the lab rat, the experiment and the researcher. We take nothing for granted because it happens to us.

Yoga is absolutely grounded in reality. It is one with the rest of the real world: the one with hot summers and frozen winters, drought and flood, aging parents and premature babies, war and peace, boom and bust.

The practitioner is toned, but also tuned, The deeper the practice, the more satisfying this world seems to be.

Verge Yoga students and writer, Tony Chase, has studied at Brown and Yale and the University of Paris and has taught at the Univesity of Delaware and Haverford College. As a nature and adventure writer for Conde Nast Traveler he's visited five continents and the Arctic Ocean and his work has been translated into several foreign languages.