The Autistic Yogi Reflects on Asana and Alignment

 I would not consider myself an alignment teacher. Its not that I don't believen alignment, I just don't believe there is any cookie cutter method that makes sense for all bodies when it comes to physically cueing our bodies to move into, stay in, and move out of a pose.
 Our bodies are beautifully complicated. And in that complication comes the beauty of why yoga tends to work so well when its not aggressively approached. Asana should be used as a tool to allow us as individuals to become more aware of our self and the space we take up.
  Asana as a practice should result in us being a little more awake about the impact we have on our evironment, both near and far. Asana as a practice should help the mind to be more stable and allow us to process through the fluctuations of the mind with increasing ease.
 Asana is a tool to learn about you. Asana should never be a cookie cutter shape that we attempt to stuff practitioners into.
 I find more important than most 'alignment' principles regularly cued in yoga is for teachers to become aware of compression and tension in joints and how that affects range of motion and how that translates into different postures.
  If the cue that your using as a teacher or practitioner is repeatedly not working than the cue has to change, not the body.  What works for one, may not work for another. All the variations of a posture are completely legal, but not all are going to benefit the individual, some variations may benefit one and seriously injure another.
  Above all exercise discernment when teaching and practicing, keep your student and yourself as safe as you possibly can.

  What cues have you struggled with?
  What cues have you really enjoyed?



Maitri

The Autistic Yogi Reflects on the difference between Science and Pseudoscience

Knowledge

  One of the major passions in my life is the love of discussion. I marvel at the complexity of sharing ideas through vocabulary and how different one persons meaning is from another. Which can totally change the perspective of meaning.  

  This definitely holds true to science. Saying the word 'theory' as a scientist versus someone who thinks science is rubbish.  The word here probably has 2 distinct meanings. One of the meanings encourages exploration and seeking, the other is biased and dismissive.

  Since finding the Baloney Detection Kit by Carl Sagan has helped to put a lot of ease on my mind when considering the points people discuss/argue/belief from.

  I find that from considering the list set out by Carl has really helped me be a lot more at ease in discussion.

Baloney Detection Kit 

 Carl Sagan - From the book 'Demon Haunted World'

1. Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of the facts.
2. Encourage substantive debate on the evidence by knowledgeable proponents of all points of view.
3. Arguments from authority carry little weight (in science there are no "authorities").
4. Spin more than one hypothesis - don't simply run with the first idea that caught your fancy.
5. Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it's yours.
6. Quantify, wherever possible.
7. If there is a chain of argument every link in the chain must work.
8. Occam's razor - if there are two hypotheses that explain the data equally well choose the simpler.
9. Ask whether the hypothesis can, at least in principle, be falsified (shown to be false by some unambiguous test). In other words, it is testable? Can others duplicate the experiment and get the same result?

Additional issues are:

1. Conduct control experiments - especially "double blind" experiments where the person taking measurements is not aware of the test and control subjects.
2. Check for confounding factors - separate the variables.
3. Common fallacies of logic and rhetoric
4. Ad hominem - attacking the arguer and not the argument.
5. Argument from "authority".
6. Argument from adverse consequences (putting pressure on the decision maker by pointing out dire consequences of an "unfavorable" decision).
7. Appeal to ignorance (absence of evidence is not evidence of absence).
8. Special pleading (typically referring to god's will).
9. Begging the question (assuming an answer in the way the question is phrased).
10. Observational selection (counting the hits and forgetting the misses).
11. Statistics of small numbers (such as drawing conclusions from inadequate sample sizes).
12. Misunderstanding the nature of statistics (President Eisenhower expressing astonishment and alarm on discovering that fully half of all Americans have below average intelligence!)
13. Inconsistency (e.g. military expenditures based on worst case scenarios but scientific projections on environmental dangers thriftily ignored because they are not "proved").
14. Non sequitur - "it does not follow" - the logic falls down.
15. Post hoc, ergo propter hoc - "it happened after so it was caused by" - confusion of cause and effect.
16. Meaningless question ("what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object?).
17. Excluded middle - considering only the two extremes in a range of possibilities (making the "other side" look worse than it really is).
18. Short-term v. long-term - a subset of excluded middle ("why pursue fundamental science when we have so huge a budget deficit?").
19. Slippery slope - a subset of excluded middle - unwarranted extrapolation of the effects (give an inch and they will take a mile).
20. Confusion of correlation and causation.
21. Caricaturing (or stereotyping) a position to make it easier to attack.
22. Suppressed evidence or half-truths.
23. Weasel words - for example, use of euphemisms for war such as "police action" to get around limitations on Presidential powers. "An important art of politicians is to find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the public"
24. (excerpted from The Planetary Society Australian Volunteer Coordinators Prepared by Michael Paine )