Some of the most profound yogis I have ever met have never done a physical exercise or asana in their lives. On the other hand, some of the most accomplished yogi-acrobats know very little about metaphysics. Asanas and an understanding of our energy bodies, wherein true spirituality lies, often have nothing to do with each other out in Yoga-Land. Don't assume a teacher who can do full lotus while in handstand, all the while chanting in Sanskrit about this advanced position of adho mukha vrksasana, has a clue about how the universe works. Don't assume a chubby guy who can't lift his right foot has no clue on Life.

I've studied the physical exercises for ages, and yet some of the advanced positions were left out of my teachers' repertoires. It didn't matter in the least. There are countless other positions to master, there is lots to read and study, and Life itself throws loads of experiences to endure, grow and ride through, and learn from. I had no interest or calling to do the handstand. Until late last year. When on my own in a brand new city in a state I had never been to before, with nothing but me and the four walls of my makeshift studio, I thought let's do it.

It is so humbling to put yourself in a position, either on or off the mat, where you really aren't sure what you're doing. It also keeps teaching and instructing fresh. You remember what it was like not to be able to do some basic positions, you can empathize with your students more.

At the end of the eighth month of practicing, on a day of swimming and sunning, on the day of this Blue Moon, up I go. I've learned that to do the handstand means you have to do falling really well. You have to get to the point when you are comfortable in falling - legs akimbo, torso twisting - and when your mind has accepted that learning to fall is essential for the body to have the confidence to rise up through hands. 

What does Bill Cosby have in common with Bruno Iksil, the London trader who lost billions for JP Morgan? What could a disgraced American comedian possibly have in common with a Frenchman trading credit-default swaps in such large amounts that he was nicknamed the Whale? What does Cosby's cruelty have to do with Iksil's financial insanity?

Simple. Neither acted alone nor in unexpected ways within their social, professional circles. In other words, there is never just one cockroach in the house. It's something I saw time and again as a financial journalist amid one scandal and crisis after another: Beyond the scape-roach in the headlines, others were scuttling around in the background. So when you hear about some low-level employee stealing company funds, it's likely something similar is happening higher up. Whether it's a Goldman Sachs secretary embezzling or British TV star Jimmy Savile molesting children or billionaire financier Jeffery Epstein pimping out girls, other higher ups are likely involved.  No man is an island. The only way such crimes and horrors go undetected in the public eye for years and years is precisely because there is a network of people participating, sharing, and building walls of protection around each other.

The pattern is laid bare in New York Magazine's July 27, 2015 cover story in which 35 of 46 of the women abused by Cosby speak in their own words about their experiences. The article is a compilation of many accounts that had initially been relayed piecemeal (see "Rabbit Hole", Nov 25, 2014). It's the only way the 24-hour journalism world knows how to report: In clinical drip-feeds that inevitably lose not just our empathy but make it difficult to connect dots in any logical way. But New York Magazine restores both. We feel what these women went through on a canvas big enough to get a sense of the whole picture. We see the larger pattern, which is that Cosby got by with a lot of help from his friends. Hugh Hefner's fingerprints, for instance, are all over this. Again, it's never just one or two cockroaches in the mansion.

Several weeks earlier, over in London, Iksil was absolved of both fines and an industry ban, with UK regulators dropping his case altogether. Instead, Iksil's boss has been the one criminally charged in the US for securities fraud, of deliberately hiding hundreds of millions of dollars in losses. 'Management failings' at JP Morgan has cost its parent Chase bank nearly $1 billion in fines in the UK and US since 2013. Not exactly 'a tempest in a teapot' as JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon commented when some of the losses initially went public. The scary thing is that Dimon may have meant it, just like Cosby when he breezily answered questions in a deposition. When one of the plaintiff's lawyers told him he was making light of a very serious situation, he said: "That may very well be." Because that's just how stuff happens in Roach Motel.

"Scientists have made enormous gains in reducing deaths from coronary heart disease, the leading cause of heart attacks, but it is astonishing how much they still don't know." - "Mysteries of the Heart," editorial in The New York Times, July 4, 2015

My anatomy lessons went like this: my yoga teacher Heinz Grill would ask a student to demonstrate a pose, say the half-moon (photo), in front of the whole class. Then we would have to work out where the movement started and how it developed through the body. What muscles came into play and when? Where did the contractions start? What muscles helped lift the spine? Stretch the legs? Heinz is Austrian, most of his students German, so this discussion did not end in 20 minutes. We would spend hours and hours -- students taking turns in the pose, afternoons turning into evenings -- scrutinizing and trying to work out the kinesiology.

It was impossible. No one could explain a clear, linear line of movement from top to tail. At the end of each lesson, we were no further along in our understanding than when we started. But we knew what the body is not. It is not a machine. The body is not mechanical. It's not a question of levers, lifts and pulleys. There is a larger force at play within these bodies, an intelligence within. 'Intelligence' is a word usually used in context with the mind, rarely the body. We are a mind-centric society and  'being smart' in that logical, strategic way is almost an obsession. But the body, too, has its own intelligence and it is beyond the grasp of these logical minds of ours.

We lose sight of an obvious fact. Our bodies ultimately reside in the universe. They are immersed in the universe. And what is coursing through the universe? Neutrinos, spirit, energy, chi, prana. As these neutrinos or spirit penetrate our atoms and cells, a whole other set of instructions is let loose in the body. True, our bodies are gravity-bound on Earth and must follow physical laws, but this is not the complete picture, not the end-all, be-all. On the contrary, the physical takes second place against this invisible sea of chi. This is what that expression 'as above, so below' means.

Again, we have it backwards in society, with the emphasis solely on the mechanical, the physical. Even in the Spiritual Industrial Complex (SIC), so many yoga classes are purely body-bound. Look at the language of modern medicine, at how the heart alone is spoken of: valves, pumps, pressure, stents. Yet, for instance, what about the heart's rhythm? What about the delicate balancing act the heart must do to maintain a rhythm? Instead of willing the body to do our bidding, in this yoga we tap into ways that allow our bodies to actually release physical grips and become lighter, receptive.