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PERSONAL JOURNEYS (CONTINUED)
T.E. Do you have a least favorite yin yoga pose?
S. I don’t have anything that I’m like, “Oh, I hate doing this.” But there’s defi-
nitely lots of them that I’m challenged by! [laughter] You know what I’ve been
having a challenge with? It’s very simply just sitting and touching my toes, like
the sitting forward fold [caterpillar pose]. My ego is like, “I want to be able to
touch my toes easier,” but I just haven’t developed that flexibility yet.T.E. Can you share any last “yinspiration”?
S. There’s these two little rhymes that I like to be mindful of myself and share
with the brothers because we get all “yanged” up. First is “Men need yin,”
and second is “Be strong, qigong.” [laughter] Also, I have little Zen story that
I really, really love.
It's about this farmer who lost his horse and his neighbor came over and
said, "You've lost your horse, man, sorry about the bad news." And the farmer
just says, "Who knows what's good or bad?" A couple of days later, that horse
comes back, and it's followed by 13 other horses. In that time, if an animal is on
your land, now you're the rightful owner. So, the neighbor sees all the horses
and comes over to give him congratulations of good luck, and the farmer says,
"Who knows what’s good or bad?" A couple days later, the farmer's oldest
son was riding one of the new horses and falls off and breaks his leg. And the
neighbor, he's on top of everybody's business, he comes over and says, "Oh
man, what luck, those damn horses! Your son broke his leg, that's messed up."
And you know, the farmer remains calm and replies, "Who knows what's good
or bad?" Sure enough, the king of the whole province wanted to expand his
territory militarily, and he was drafting young men to go to war. And so, he
stopped at the farmer's house looking for his oldest son. Of course, just so
happened that his oldest son had a broken leg, so he didn't have to go to war.
And you know, the moral of the story is, who knows what's good or bad? We
have to let things unfold, stay centered, and attend to them as they happen
without judgment.