Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow

Long time, no update!  Here's what's been going on:

Finished my 200 hours yoga teach training close to five years ago.  Taught a couple of classes over the years, but it turns out I'm better at teaching meditation and pranayama than asana.

Hoping to start a 100 hour Mindful Yoga Therapy program in a few months, with the goal of adapting the MYT program for cardiac recovery.

Speaking of which, I am bizarrely seven years out of surgery.  How did that happen?  While discussing pathways of prana at a yoga workshop recently I asked how injuries and broken bones impact the flow of prana.  Everyone assumed I meant by sternum and various chest scarring; I honestly had briefly forgotten about all of that and was thinking of my repeatedly injured right foot (one break, one broken toe, two bad sprains, plantar fasciitis, Achilles tendonitis, and gout).  I seem to have passed the point where heart surgery is just a piece of my past rather than a defining point of my present.

On the gaming front, I've played a ton of Pathfinder and Fantasy Flight's Star Wars at the tabletop, and went through a great period of playing Far Cry 3 & 4, which may be the first time I've ever enjoyed playing a first person shooter.  Great stories, wrapped around mysticism and the wilderness, right up my alley. 

Along the theme of mysticism and the wilderness, I took a sharp reading turn into Occult Detectives, which got me into Simon Iff, John Taylor, Jules de Grandin, Doctor Taverner, and Doctor Owen Orient, among many others.  It's amazing how much yoga sneaks its way into these books, a good reminder that yoga has been finding it's way into western culture and imagination for centuries.

Finally, I'm moving on to a 300/500 yoga teacher training program in 2019.  

Kidnapped to Hollow Earth, Part 1

Fresh from their latest adventures, the heroes were relaxing on a ship heading home to fortune and glory when… wait what ship is this?  It’s a crashing ship!

 

Kidnapped onto a spaceship resembling a giant silver arrow, the heroes found themselves crashing in a strange jungle where the horizon curved upwards and the sun never sets

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There was no time for introductions!  The heroes stumbled immediately upon a group of saber-toothed tiger kittens, and slaughtered all but one for the feast.  They fought off the angry tiger mother, skinned her to make a sling, then set off towards the shining beacon in the distance, collecting the bounty of avocados found along the way.

They encountered Colonel Throckmorton, hunter from the Royal Society for the Continuation of Zoocryptological Extinction, and his lackey The Crossbow Kid (v1). 

Throckmorton explained that the Ghost-Who-Walks has been bringing monsters in from a mysterious portal, making the Hollow Earth his private hunting preserve.  Some of those monsters have escaped into the surface world, which is why the Royal Society for the Continuation of Zoocryptological Extinction has set a prize for the greatest hunters to kill the Ghost-Who-Walks and shut down the monster threat.  Throckmorton warned the heroes not to trust Flat Earth Fred, so as soon as the heroes recruited The Crossbow Kid (v1) they set off to find Flat Earth Fred.

After running into a group of lumberjacks from the now devastated Finland (where the Hollow Earth connects to the surface world), the Psychic Detective engaged in a massive drinking contest and collected enough booze to satisfy his needs for the rest of the expedition, or the next several hours, whichever came first.  The heroes were directed to the fortress laboratory of Flat Earth Fred, also from the Royal Society for the Continuation of Zoocryptological Extinction, convinced that if he could win the prize then his theories that the Earth was a flat disk, riding on the back of a turtle, and that the hollow earth was in the belly of the turtle, would at last bring harmony to the Earth.

The Lizard Shaman and the Sky Raptor thought this was nonsense and began smashing various pieces of technology while the Castaway, the Kung-Fu Wizard, the Adventurer, and the Psychic Detective learned more about the Hollow Earth from Flat Earth Fred.  The Ghost-Who-Walks makes his lair at the Pyramid on Ship-Trap Mountain.  He rarely hunts the Amazons who live in the Avocado Jungle of Death, but has continuously harassed the Dinosaur Knights who built their Stilt Castle across the Bamboo Forest in the Blasted Plains.  The Bear Tribe once lived on Ship-Trap Mountain, but have been chased off by the Ghost-Who-Walks and now make their home in nearby Ragged Mountain.

The Heroes don’t notice Jungle Boy run off with the last remaining sabertooth tiger kitten, but greeted the Genius Chimp just as the Dinosaur Knights ride up with The Crossbow Kid (v2) as their guide…

Fallout 4 Pacifist Run

Another Pacifist Run for another Fallout game?  Heck, I haven't even finished New Vegas yet...

Click here for more Om, Fallout Style.

Pacifist Gaming in Grand Theft Auto

I've done very little blogging of any type for the last year or so, but when I stumbled across an article from Vice on pacifist gaming, of all things, Grand Theft Auto, I had to place a link here.  I haven't played Grand Theft Auto since I tried to get GTA 3 to play on a computer that was not nearly up to processing demands of the game, but it's hard to imagine this working well.  My own pacifist gaming has taken a pause after I finished Alpha Protocol, and took what turned out to be a very long pause in Deus Ex.  Stupid job, always getting in the way of good gaming!

Mortal Kombat and Surviving the 30 Day Plank Challenge

Recently I stumbled across a Facebook post recommending a “30 Day Plank Challenge”, taking you from 20 seconds in plank to a full five minutes in one month’s time.  Seemed like a great idea to me, although I realized that there is probably no scientific validity behind this method or rate of improvement, and my fellow yoga teachers pointed out the terrible form of the woman on the post.  Regardless, I was up for a challenge and raring to go.

Timing your plank is tough, and at first this was the hardest part.  If you have a timer in front of you, you end up staring at the seconds go by, and then boy do they go by slowly.  As a yogi I wanted to spend the time exploring my breath, alignment, and searching for my bandhas, not staring at the clock.  I got into a habit at first of playing podcasts on tantra philosophy on my ipod, because it fit the mood and gave me an accurate time.  Eventually I hit on an ideal way to proceed- setting my Kindle up under my face and watching Mortal Kombat videos on YouTube, turning off the sound, and setting them up so the video ended at exactly my goal time.

Mortal Kombat and yoga?  I started to focus on my yoga practice at the same time that I started reading the Matt Fraction / Ed Brubaker / David Aja martial arts comic Immortal Iron Fist. I loved the idea of a superhero who solved problems with esoteric notions like meditation, chi, and alignment.  When the comic took a turn into a pan-dimensional martial arts tournament, it visually took on a look from the Mortal Kombat video game franchise.  Thus there are times when I picture a room full of yogis and it looks like a bunch of my friends in tadasana, and sometimes it looks a lot more like Kitana, Raiden, and Mileena.

There are some fascinating Mortal Kombat videos on YouTube, conveniently at or around the durations for the various stages in the 30 Day Plank Challenge.  When I was at 45 seconds it seemed unlikely that I was ever going to make a minute.  Today was my last day at 2:30.  Time to start picking longer videos.

Next Pacifist Gaming Challenge- New Vegas

I’m really getting into this pacifist gaming idea, and am looking for the next challenge.  Fallout: New Vegas seems to the next one on the list.  Just ordered it from Amazon.

Fallout is a long running, post-apocalyptic series that has a bizarre publication history.  It started close to 20 years ago as a remake of a game called Wasteland, produced by a company called Interplay.  The studio in Interplay that built the game, Black Isle, was eventually dissolved, and the developers split up and eventually formed a new company called Obsidian.  Obsidian found a niche in making intellectually superior sequels to games other companies put out, and occasionally generating their own intellectual property (like Alpha Protocol).  Fallout: New Vegas is an odd merging of these two.  Technically it is a sequel to Fallout 3, by Bethesda Games Studio, which acquired the license to Fallout.  However, all of the original producers and writers of Fallout 1 & 2 now work Obsidian, and they simply picked up their notes from their own cancelled Fallout 3 and merged them to Bethesda’s game engine.

Okay, enough gamer politics.  The cool thing is that one the best game developers/writers, Chris Avellone, worked on the game.  Avellone’s list of projects is a roll call of all of the cool, quirky role playing games of the last few decades; games like Fallout 1 & 2, Alpha Protocol, Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, Plansescape: Torment.  Avellone also writes game that let you look for alternatives to violence.  Take for example this screenshot of a pacifist run through New Vegas.

(More of that story in Gandhi is Not Dead, Seen in New Vegas)

So my next game is chosen, and my stack of shooters languish on a dusty shelf.  Stay tuned.

Pacifist Run- Alpha Protocol

Recently I’ve had an urge to go into my video gaming with an eye towards ahimsa, finding ways through games without leaving a trail of bodies behind me.  It’s one thing to play a game like Arkham Asylum without killing anyone- technically the game doesn’t let you kill opponents, and even when you knock a thug off of a cliff or tower Batman is able to tie them up so they swing helplessly rather than drop to their death.  Playing games where killing is not only possible but in many cases expected presents a whole different challenge.  This is certainly not possible in many games, but a few role-playing and action games / series do make this a possibility- for example Deus Ex, Dishonored, Fallout, and one of my favorites, the “espionage role-playing game” Alpha Protocol.

I ran through Alpha Protocol as a “technical pacifist”- certainly ready to crack a few heads, but trying at all times to avoid killing my opponents.  This is actually quite fun in Alpha Protocol.  The game gives you lots of ways to avoid needless bloodshed, from talking your way through or out of fights, to a wide range of non-lethal combat options.  There are a large number of end-mission “bosses” to be fought, and after questioning them you are always given the option of execute or (as I chose) spare.  The clever game design rewards you for consistent game play, and by consistently sneaking around, bypassing foes, and doing non-lethal takedowns you are given a number of perks that make your character even stronger.

Sometimes a headbutt is a useful negotiating tool.

My original plan was to play with a style that was very close to Emile Antoon Khadahji, aka The Man Who Never Missed from the Matador series, relying primarily on tranq darts to subdue opponents with occasional use of hand to hand combat.  By bumping up my pistol skill I could potentially slow time to take careful aim and merrily leave a slew of slumbering foes in my wake. 

The plan didn’t last particularly long, as there are by my count there are less than 200 tranq darts available in the game.  I found myself conserving my darts, and instead went for sneaking up behind my enemies and putting them in choke holds until they passed out.  Alpha Protocol lets you build an impressive ninja-style character, eventually allowing you to become invisible for 20 seconds (or more depending on perks) at a time.  One of the most fun parts of the game was opportunities to turn invisible right before entering a room full of enemies, then silently putting the Vulcan nerve pinch on a half dozen before you became visible again.  Unfortunately because the duration does occasionally run out, and there are long cooldown times for powers, I did get stuck in situations pretty regularly where I had to just start laying out punches, kicks, and headbutts.  Tactically not the best, but it was lots of fun and the animations on hand-to-hand combat were great.  Coming out of invisibility at unfortunate times also got me in the habit of tossing around flashbang grenades and “shock traps” (think area-of-effect tasers) as a backup strategy.

Skilled in the arts of Tai Kwan Leap.

I did carry an assault rifle with me, and used it primarily for taking out automated machine guns that are in some sections of the game.  I had to use it on human targets a couple times.  The first was against a particularly annoying foe (Sean Darcy) who isolates himself in a tower without doors, using a sniper rifle and an unlimited supply of grenades (which he tosses three at a time) to make life miserable.  Look up any in-depth reviews of Alpha Protocol and you’ll see this is the most hated part of the game.  I had to use my assault rifle and blast past all of the body armor my foe wore using armor piercing bullets, but eventually got to a place where some solid shots with tranq darts took him out.  I regretted using up all of those armor piercing bullets moments later when a Blackhawk helicopter with a rocket launcher showed up, and once again I had to resort to the assault rifle (and a few conveniently placed rocket launchers) to take it down- apparently with the pilot surviving the crash.  Both of these happened in the last 30 minutes of the game, an odd choice in a game that until then rewarded subtlety and stealth. 

So how did my pacifist run work?  Alpha Protocol keeps track in exacting detail the number of enemies defeated, weapons used, and impact of defeating these foes on the world around you.  I did have one foe killed during an early mission.  I was sneaking into an airfield and came under fire from a machine gunner in a guard tower.  More guards came running as I took cover behind a truck and threw shock traps at anyone in range.  The truck caught on fire, and as I jumped away it blew up, taking out one of the guards as collateral damage in the explosion.  Fatality total- 1 killed by collateral damage, leaving behind three orphans.  And the non-lethal style?  34 enemies knocked unconscious by stun traps, 36 by tranq darts, and 462 knocked out in hand-to-hand, racking up over $1 million in medical bills! 

However as the credits rolled to the sounds of newscasters describing the world my actions built I also learned that by sparing the life of a terrorist leader earlier in the game he later killed hundreds in a series of West Bank bombings.  Here Alpha Protocol throws in your face the conundrum of global politics.  Do you spare the lives of terrorists and show them mercy?  What happens if they turn around and go back to the warpath?  Ahimsa, you are a tricky fellow.