Sun Square Moon writings on yoga and writing

Reviews for Inez Baranay

Sun Square Moon

Inez is a writer. She is a yogini. She has traveled the world telling her stories and her story here, in sun square moon, her natal horoscope, is about her art and her yoga, it is about awareness, about creativity, and about her journey through those worlds. It's a story with a disarming honesty. She does not even avoid sex, dreams, drugs, retail therapy and money. She has indulged. But the theme of the book is practice, body and self. She is not brain dead. She scotches the rumour that yoga produces an empty head and a flaccid sex life. She brings her awareness from yoga to writing and takes it the other way as well. Ultimately there are no differences. This is one of the few books on yoga that is not trivia.

Norman Sjoman, author of Yoga Touchstone and The Yoga Tradition of the Mysore Palace. http://www.blacklotusbooks.com/links/gate.htm

With The Tiger

Inez Baranay is very correct and vivid in her portrayal of India's flavours of vadai, coffee and the music season. She exposes the experiences India offers foreigners seeking 'nirvana'.

Deccan Herald

The Edge of Bali

Baranay writes evocatively of the Bali landscape, raising serious questions within vivid description. New myths jostle with the old.

The Sydney Morning Herald

Sheila Power: an entertainment

A rattling good read that defies that defies pigeon-holing into any one genre.

Sydney Star Observer

Pagan

Pagan is brilliantly written. As well as being very readable, it offers a highly intelligent analysis of the themes of Australia's 20th century cultural history.

The Advertiser

Between Careers

Like good sex Between Careers gets better and better.

The Sydney Morning Herald

Rascal Rain: a year in Papua New Guinea

Her experiences have resulted in a highly readable account of a world left behind by the 6 o'clock news.

Cleo

All titles by Inez Baranay will be available as ebooks by the end of 2011.

For full reviews and more please visit

http://www.inezbaranay.com

Sun Square Moon: Writings on Yoga and Writing

Inez Baranay

Smashwords Edition

Copyright Inez Baranay 2011

First published by Writers Workshop Kolkata in 2007

Discover other titles by Inez Baranay:

http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/inezb

To buy a beautiful hard copy edition of Sun Square Moon, with hand-woven sari cover and calligraphy, please enter Baranay or Sun Square Moon in the search box at

http://www.writersworkshopindia.com/

Cover design by Daniel Stephensen: http://springstreetworkshop.com

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this free ebook. Although this is a free book, it remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied and distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy at Smashwords.com, where they can also discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support.

With his kind permission this book is dedicated to

Yogacharya B.K.S. Iyengar

our beloved Guruji

and to

Kay Parry

my long-time teacher

and

students of yoga

Contents

01 Introduction: Practice, Body and Self

02 Tadasana: One

03 Reluctance

04 Balance and creativity

05 Asana and the spiritual

06 Writing about the body

07 The yoga commodity

08 Four ways to be right

09 Tadasana: Two

10 The enemy of dreams: writing/dreams/yoga

11 Yoga and writing: one: stages

12 Tadasana: Three

13 Yoga and writing: two: practice

14 Paralipsis: drugs, money and sex

15 Tadasana: Four

16 Tradition and Authority

17 Tadasana: Five

Bibliography

Acknowledgments

Afterword to ebook edition

1. Introduction: Practice, body and self

The writer needs a body to perform writing. The body is a text upon which yoga writes. The body is a text written by thought, experience, genetics, culture, performance, fashion, personality. The body is the self, the self is an illusion, the personality is one of its illusions. The writer creates a body of work, writings written by a person whose idea of a cohesive self is demonstrably illusory, whose conscious mind plays only a small part in what she herself does.

As I began to write about the process of writing - observing my own methods and approaches, the influences on my practice, the origins and history of writing a novel, the ways these matters can be written of, I would find myself thinking of all this while doing yoga. Well, strictly speaking, yoga requires the total absorption of mind in the pose, so I should say I was thinking of all this while attempting to do yoga.

For a long time I had thought of yoga and writing as two entirely different practices, belonging to two entirely different selves. I am used to considering my self to be a divided self. My natal horoscope shows sun square moon. Think of the sun as the outward self, the moon as the hidden self. The ninety-degree angle between them suggests tension or conflict. That's my self, always wanting also the opposite of what I want. To write or do yoga, to live the life of a writer or of a yoga practitioner: this at times has seemed to be an essential conflict.

But writing and yoga emerge as related practices. Yoga, a text written on herself, has a discipline that a writer might employ to inquire into writing practice, a language that a writer might employ to inquire into the writing of texts written by her self.

Once people know you have practiced Iyengar yoga since 1981, taught yoga since 1993, they usually make assumptions. That you're especially fond of crystals, dolphins, natural fibres, Indian handicrafts and angels. That you're vegetarian, that you're vegan, that you go on fasts, that you'd always say no to a beer or an eccie. That you don't swear, aspire to celibacy, and like a story to have a moral. That you read self-help books, and read them for self help. That you believe you create your own reality and that this means everyone chooses the conditions of their lives. That you think western medicine, science and technology are wrong-headed disasters. That you believe in re-incarnation, and might have an idea who you used to be. That you think a display of a figurine of the Buddha, of Tara, of a Shiva Nataraj is an indication of something spiritual. That the word 'spiritual' refers to a real and good quality that some people have and some places have and some objects have and some practices have, and the rest have less of it or none. That chanting is spiritual. That tribal people are more spiritual than others. That eastern religions are more spiritual than others. That you go to India because it is spiritual. That you really need to use the word 'spiritual'.

So yoga is seen as a homogenous sub-culture, part of an anti-intellectual New Ageism. Its aim of inner stillness makes writers anxious that it produces an empty head, from which writing cannot emerge.

There are assumptions made about writers, too, and their own sub-culture. Once people know you are a writer they might assume you can't resist alcohol and adultery. That you must have Inspiration to work. That you base your writing on your life, your narrator on yourself, your characters on your friends. That you live in a garret and suffer for your art; that you must have another job, a 'real' job. That you earn a fortune, frequent television talk-shows and meet celebrities. Or hunger for that.

Still, writing has been part of our larger culture – certainly in the West – far longer and more visibly than yoga