Hungry Ghost Yoga: My Contribution to the Yogic Arts

Hungry Ghost Yoga: My Contribution to the Yogic Arts

Last week in Whistler, British Columbia, Carolyn and I went to Wanderlust, a music and yoga festival that stages events all around the world. My daughter Lydia works for the company that puts on the festivals, which seem like excellent get-togethers for all those who do yoga.



I used to do hatha yoga but have not seriously practiced it in decades.

At Wanderlust, I was most intrigued by what, these days, can be called yoga: there were yoga classes that basically taught a kind of Bollywood dance, yoga classes that involved hanging in various positions from straps mounted to a kind of trapeze, and yoga classes designed to improve one’s sexual flexibility (these last two were actually different classes).

Basically, I’m not sure what “yoga” even means anymore.

I’m beginning to think, though, that "yoga" has now come to mean any kind of mindful movement, a callisthenic that does more than just empower the body, a kind of spiritual exercise.

So I decided to start a school of Hungry Ghost Yoga, which combines yoga and the only thing I know much about: food.

Over dinner one night, my son-in-law, Ben Grimes, who practices Zen Buddhism and was at Wanderlust, told me about the parable of the Hungry Ghosts. The Hungry Ghosts, the story goes, sit at a delicious-looking banquet with forks so long it’s impossible for an individual ghost to feed himself; the Hungry Ghosts are liberated when they learn that they will have to feed each other and be fed by one another.

My proposed Hungry Ghost Yoga sequence is divided into three steps, best done outside on a warm day:

1. Meditation on smells (sitting silently and trying to pick up all the smells that one can: this develops the sense of taste through meditation)
2. Abdominal exercises, including novasana (boat pose), setu bandha sarvangasana (bridge pose) and the Kobayashi Quiver, developed by Takeru Kobayashi to open up the stomach for consuming vast quantities of Nathan’s hot dogs.
3. Sitting at a table with plates, each holding three grains of rice and set with one three-foot long fork; participating yogis feed one another slowly and thoughtfully (for safety concerns, we may have to substitute a spoon for a fork…or maybe we should use chopsticks).

And there you have it, Hungry Ghost yoga, another million dollar idea, offered free of charge. Namaste!