What does yoga have in common with historical geology?

As the semester here at NVCC winds down I once again find myself in the midst of evaluation season. Students are given (in my class anyway) their only multiple choice exam of the year where they get to speak to things like 'Is homework handed back in a timely manner?' and 'Is the instructor well prepared for class?' Typically, students go through this survey in under five minutes marking either 'average' or 'good' without really taking the time to think about the question. There is one question, however, that brings students pause. There is one question that students really do take the time to answer thoughtfully - the dreaded question 5: "Relates course material to real life situations if possible." For many instructors this question can be their undoing. If you're lucky, students will give you a 'Fair'. More often than not, your grade will be a resounding 'Poor'.

This being the case, every semester I try to do a better job of relating the course material to my students' lives. In a non-majors geology class in a culturally diverse place like Northern Virginia this can sometimes be a challenge. Usually I look for examples from my life that relate to the course and hope for the best, but recently I was reminded that I'm still adding to my experiential base. I had an experience which may not relate directly to many students in my class, but it was definately relatable to me. In an effort to stave off old age for as long as possible I started taking a yoga class. It's not the sweaty Hindu-aerobics that you sometimes get in the neighborhood Golds Gym, but actual no-nonsense Iyengar yoga. Last week, my instructor said something that really didn't mean too much to me at the time, but then suddenly, in the middle of talking about the Archean in my Historical Geology class, made a lot of sense to me.

"Your body is a record of all the things that you have done and that have happened to you."

What stands out in this statement is that it tells you what your body is specifically... not what it records, not what it remembers, but what it is. We are often lured into thinking that we are moving through space independently of time, all the while accumulate a record of impressionable events. This is a compelling, and I might admit, tempting way to think about our place in the universe as it lets us believe that we are separate from the processes that govern time and space, and therefore may inspire to control and tame them. We are lured into this thinking mostly, I think, by the modern crime drama where the forensic scientists are asking the question, "what happened to this person?" However, the practised yoga instructor will examine a body in asana and see not the person or the events, but rather the relationship between the two, and in doing so we are guided to make the yoga ours to learn from as we please. Likewise, we also observe an earth that appears as such because our lives are so short, and we are duped into thinking that it exists outside of its context rather than because of its context. As we are, so too is the earth a record of all the things that it has done and that have happened to it. The earth doesn't record events, the earth is the event in context.