"by the book"

As much flak as Facebook gets, sometimes people write some very inspirational and thought-provoking messages.  One such "blog" on my FB page was titled "By the Book."

The phrase, by the book, itself means correctly and/or according to the rules. It is thought to have originally referred to the Bible and written records of this phrase date back to 1833. 
From Edgar Allan Poe's Murders in Rue Morgue in 1845, he writes, "To have a retentive memory, and to proceed by 'the book', are points commonly regarded as the sum total of good playing."

So here's the facebook blog with minor editing extractions made by me!

by the book….by poundcakedreams- Glenn Bastek

"I don’t read the newspaper cuz it gets my fingers all black and icky!  f the cliff notes are
boring can you imagine what the book was like?   Show me a movie, and I’ll show you
another book I don’t have to read!
 
So…today I  was going to make salsa…In the past I would get out the recipe and follow
along…but I’m finding…as I get Older..by the book…is sometimes just a crutch we
use. We all know that salsa has tomatoes, onion, garlic, cilantro and some type
of heat…plus salt, sugar and lime juice…why not just make the salsa on how we
feel it should come out..not the way a recipe tells us! "
 
[Hmmm- why not practice a yoga pose the way we feel it should come out rather than follow a
step by step guide? Just putting that out there for thought!]

"And perhaps  we should stop using that book for lots of things in our lives! There is a book
that says gay people are an abomination….how about let’s not use that book in reference to gay people and just act and live how we feel it should be! There is probably a book that tells us how to get a job that will make us rich( but not happy)…. let’s return that book, and actually find a job that makes us happy, and take it from there! There is also ….” probably” a book on how to sell a
house, how to negotiate, when to offer when to counter offer, what to counter, what percentage…I prefer to use the strategies I’ve learned while watching Million Dollar Listing on Bravo! I’ll let you know how it works out…but as most of my friends know…if I can avoid a book…I’m very happy!!! Now if I can only apply what I’ve learned from the Housewives…then I’d be a millionaire!!!"
 
I have a fabulous yoga book that is about  two inches thick and is only pictures. It shows pictures of poses and variations of poses and variations of variations of poses. The majority of the poses in
this book I will never be able to do in this lifetime!   I really don't care;  I just like looking at them and admiring the capabilities of the people who can.  If I were to teach yoga from that book,
no one would come back to my class because it would be unreasonable....I  wouldn't want to come back!   So, maybe I take one pose mixed with a lot of common sense and intuition and find a way to teach some aspect of that pose...so it's not so "by the book."


Henry David Thoreau  wrote, "Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.” 
 
And Ansel Adams stated, "There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs." 
 
Now of course, there are guidelines  for taking a good picture but no RULES! There are guidelines
for your poses (alignment, ahimsa and safety to name a few), but no RULES!

Your yoga practice cannot be "by the book";  it has to be "from the heart."  I  think that's what my Facebook friend was getting at!!!

Dalai Lama XIV said, “Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively.”