Yoga, Sex and Magic

You know we're in the studio here. We just recorded an episode on yoga and the benefits of yoga, the risk of yoga, a lot of the science that we find in yoga, and in that episode we refer out to an additional episode which we're recording now, Yoga Sex Magic, because there is a there's a lot to be said about about sex and yoga, about the sensual side of yoga, the sexual benefits of yoga and its roots in mysticism

and UH central experience. And don't worry, we're not going to talk about stings sex life here, um, because he has often talked about tantra yoga right as being a part of his UH deal deal. Yeah, I was gonna say magic sauce, but that just doesn't sound right, Um, But we are going to talk about I guess some people would say it's yoga's dirty little secret, but the fact of the matter is is that it has its

roots in tantric yoga, which is associated with sexuality. As you say, and celebrating sexuality and uh, and a lot of mysticism too. Yeah. So let's uh, let's let's let's run back the clock here. Let's let's discuss ancient history. Um. So, hindu Hinduism is the oldest of the dominant world religions today and arguably the most difficult to summarize. Okay, the roots of Hinduism stretch back a good five thousand years

through the soil of human history. And that's the soil that's just right, with variations with with different important texts, poetic epics, sex diversions, uh, God's goddesses, religious rituals, it's just there. There is an entire rich culture there around Hinduism, and any attempts to summarize it or would be incomplete that it would be a podcast into itself. But it's very nature. What is it proposed to do. It aims to free the practitioner of Hinduism from something called the

wheel of sam Sara. And I feel like I've mentioned this before in terms of Buddhism, and of course there's a lot of crossover between Hinduism and Budism. Sam Sara is the endless cycle of death and rebirth that sees the human um consciousness or soul flow and rise and fall through varieties of tragic, doomed, and ephemeral lives. It's the idea that it's not the sort of vague Western idea of of reincarnation where it's like, oh, I'm not really gonna die. I'm gonna come back as a cat

or something that would be great. And I'm not saying don't find some comfort in that thought. But the idea of sam Sara is more that I'm going to continue to live lives that are ultimately going to be filled with pain in one way, shape or another, even though even the loftier, more pleasant life that I of are going to end in death and may end up shooting

me down to a lower level of existence. So I might be uh uh, and I'm borrowing more from the some of the Tibetan Buddhist ideas here, But I might live life as a demigod in the next life and everything it will be awesome, but I'll kind of be awful at the same time and earn myself a position in the lower hells in the life after that. So the idea is that you want to eventually rid yourself of this wheel. You know, it's kind of like, yeah,

it's kind of think of it this way. It's like the person who's in one bad relationship after the other and they desperately want to free themselves with that cycle and find a good relationship. That's kind of what we have here. And in that good relationship, that liberation from the wheel of sam sara is what Hindus call maksha, which means release or liberation. So this carnival ride sucks.

I want to get off of it. That's what That's what Hinduism that's ultimately trying to do UM and we might not do it in this lifetime or the next um, but we need a we need a game plan, right, so we get into something called trim Marga, which is the three path. So we have Karma marga the way of action, Jannana marga the way of knowledge, and Bakti marga the way of devotion. So this is where yoga

gets involved here. Yoga means discipline uh or regime or yoke, and it derives from the Sanskrit route for yoke yoke, which also means union, you know, And we talked about this in the other podcast. This union between mind and body. Yeah, you know, Jesus sent our example again, instead of a mind riding the body, this man riding the horse. It is the man horse, it is the body. Uh, the body mind union. And this is where that intermingling of

sexuality and spirituality happens as well. This is the same sort of yoke, and this is where we're really sort of driving the path toward tantra, right right. So within Hinduism, the word yoga is often used interchangeably with marga. It involves far more than just poses, and it includes meditation, fast, um, various asthetic practices, ethical behavior, you know, intense study in some cases, and and it's one of the six schools of Orthodox philosophy, and often just sort of a generic

term for spiritual discipline. So just culturally, when you look at yoga in the East versus yoga in the West, there's there there are a number of differences that arise. So let's talk a little about yoga in the path because they're really getting into the tantra thing. We have to again get into examples of of what is the the yogi of three years ago, like versus the yogi that you might find, Uh, you know in the San

Francisco Bay area. Well, I mean even like in the eighteen thirties, Broad William Jobrad, who wrote the Science of Yoga, brings up Rama Kashna and this was one of Hindu Hinduism's great modern saints. Um, there's this idea that he was always in such a constant state of ecstasy. And we say ecstasy, we are sort of making a little uh hat tip here to orgasm as well. Um, or at least a sense of transcendence. Um. Well lepique more does the French say um, which is a little deaf

right transcendence? And and again just to mention the body mind connection. And when we're talking about body and mind in a religious context, you can think of it, you know, body and spirit. And so something intense that happens in the body just by virtue of being intense has to have a connection to the spirit as well. So it would seem obvious then that an orgasm would be of

interest to someone seeking to understand the mind. And you think it's weird that we're saying orgasm when we were talking about religion or just even meditating or being in a state of ecstasy without some sort of you know slap and tickle involved. Well, we're going to talk more about that slap and tickle. Yeah, you know, we'll talk a little bit more about that later and connect at all.

But um, I did want to bring up Rama Krishna because apparently he was in such a constant state of bliss that he had assystance to tell him when to eat and breathe. So this is this is intense stuff. There is this intermingling of these two concepts of sexuality and mysticism or um spirituality, and in Hinduism is that this is not unusual. We usually think about our more western religions and how these are mutually exclusive things, but

this is not in some Eastern religions UM. And this is this idea too, that the spiritual energy UH lies dormant at the base of the spine until it was activated and channeled upward to the brain to produce enlightenment through the chakras, these various circles in the body through which the energy flows. Right, So the state of ecstasy turns out to be a state of enlightenment. So Yogi's and centuries passed. UH. We mentioned this a little bit

in the other podcast about yoga. But um, they might be poly men who would legitimately give you a little more insight into the spirit. Yeah, they might be mystic carneys who would bury themselves alive for money. They might contort their nude ashmerrored bodies in the street. They might smoke dope and kidnap children. They might run protection rackets and uh and some were capable of supposedly uniting the male and female aspects of the universe through sexual sensation.

So they really kind of ran the gambit from really holy to really uh skiez I mean it. I mean that That's one of the things that Broad really does a great job of pointing out is that yoga is especially historically so much broader than what you would encounter at the y m c A or the local yoga studio. It runs the gambit between like just total enlightenment and madness, between between physical health and debilitating or life threatening injury.

And uh and I mean it's just it's just there's there's a rich world there and uh and and and out of that also comes this uh this uh subject of tantric yoga in tantra. Yeah, and I wanted to bring up half a yoga, which we all if you practice yoga. Um, this is a branch of tantra yoga. And we'll talk a little bit more about tantra yoga in a second Um. But the tan tric agenda again

was reaching enlightenment as fast as you could. And William J. Broad brings up the fact that there's a fifteenth century book called half a Yoga Product car and it instructs and poses but also talks about stimulating genitals. Right again, in this this agenda to try to reach enlightenment, and one line from the book says, press the parent paraneum, that's an orogenous area between the genitals, known as the taint in some circles. Press the taint with the heel

of the foot. It opens the doors of liberation. So I mean these this is a specific text telling people, you know, how to proceed in this path enlightenment, which has to do with sexuality. Yeah. And if I remember correctly, hatha means violent and not in the sense that it is violent um yoga and that it's like you know, karate chaps and stuff, but more about the speed and the intensity of getting there. Right. This is a path to this enlightenment again, so tantra um sexy side of yoga,

but also the sexy roots of yoga. Um. It rises to prominence within Hindu traditions in medieval India. So this is around the fifth century UM Common era, but it's root mysterious roots may go back even even farther into the past, into the practices and traditions of the Indus civilization, which would have been thirty three hundred to undred BC.

So UM. The idea here is that the beliefs were present in this earlier culture than they go underground for thousands of years and then they evolve back up into into practice in eastern and southern India. And Tantra is based on the Sanskrit word meaning that which extends knowledge. And uh, it's the stated purpose of tantra isn't sexual bliss in and of itself or but rather spiritual bliss and enlightenment and ultimately uh moksha that we were talking

about early. Ultimately the idea is to uh find liberation from this endless wheel of suffering. And I'm here's the other thing about tantra is that it does not subscribe to the cast system. So and it was free then of the Brahmin priest that we're ruling over women's democratizing sexuality but also spirituality. So it had a lot of

people who were very interested in being a part of it. Um. The I guess you would say the problem mom or as William Jay Broad puts it, is that eventually the h it becomes so associated with with sex that's sort of overshadowed by this and and people begin to think of it as okay, well it's not just you know this spiritual awareness or enlightenment. But you know a lot of people are getting kind of randy here, yeah now, and and and you know, squirreling away from the path.

Yeah now, now, why are they getting randy? Or what is the stated reason? Well, historically you had right handed tantra and you had left handed tantra and uh, and that doesn't have anything to do with like right or left handed being bad or one being dirty. That has to do with like the position of God and goddess um in a typical iconography. But right handed guy tantra was more traditional and in terms of like worshiping the goddess, whereas left handed tantra involved the ritual use of taboo

items in Hinduism specifically these five ms. You had Masma which is eat uh, nazia no mean mazia, fish, mudra, parched grain which was seen as an aphrodisiac, h Maja which is wine, and then mathuna ritual sexual intercourse. So what you would have happened is you would have this this group of individuals and uh and generally these are people that already have some exposure to to yoga or do yoga principles. This is not just random people on

the street. They come into a sacred space in the presence of you know, some sort of a guru or an adept, and it will be in on on an auspicious to day. You know, that's something that lines up um, you know, numerologically important in m in the tradition. And you'll have male and female participants who were called tanto riquez ritually bathe, dress and generally you know, doll up and purify through uh meditation and reciting mantras, and then

they form into male and female couples. Then they they consume these various things ritually, have a little meat, a little fish, a little parched grain, a little wine, and then they will they will unite sexually say, and then it becomes a key party. Well, no, I mean, I mean that can certainly that can be the the charge. But it's not just like, all right, we're done with the We're done with the meat and the fish. Let's

let's get down to business. There's also a lot of the mantras continue and the meditative aspects um uh continue and U and the in fact, it's the pronunciation of the mantras. Uh supposedly turns the female partner into an embodiment of the goddess and the male becomes an embodiment of the gods. So on a mythic level, they're enacting the cosmological union of Shiva and shotkey of Deva and Devi and uh. It takes on this larger cosmic proportion.

And and again it involves you know, intense meditation, intricate yogurt postures, the visualization of these yantras, which are kind of like a mandala that represents divine female energy, kind of this um geometric design that you envision in your head um and the attempt to stay immobile and to facilitate mental processes in the prevention or delay of orgasm. Well, and and this is something we'll talk about a little bit to this delay of orgasm, which is also um

extending the Enlightenment period right this ecstasy. So this is when I brought up staying. I brought up this idea that you could do breathwork, you could do meditation in order to um, to stave off the inevitable yea, before you get that lapite mort um. And they're generally talking not about like imagine a race course with a start in the finish line, with the finish line being orgasm.

The idea is not to slam on the brakes before you get to the orgasm, but to slow things down to the point to where you're in a continuous, in a continuous state of the almost crossing the line. Yeah. Um. So here's the thing. In the West, tantra really becomes

synonymous with sexual debauchery. And this is where Broad in his book says Tantra reaches a natier with um, an alleged cannibal sect of Yogi's the a Gory who quote eate the flesh of human skulls, drank urine liquor from human souls, lived in cremation grounds and dunghills, and defiled all social social convention supposedly to court public disapproval as tests a humility. And none of those things are wrong

in and of themselves. But I mean now I mean that, I mean there are you could you know, drinking urine, drinking like or even drinking from human skulls. I mean that's you see, these things occur in various traditions. Well, the problem is is that India in nineteen twenties starts to realize that you know, they have a political agenda right there. They want to become independent, um, they want

to rise up. So they can't really have this whole light cannibalist yoga sect representing them because what's coming out of India, Um, you know, one of the exports we see is this idea of yoga. So it sort of gets this history of the sexuality particularly gets whitewashed because you have um Indian nationalists like Gunang we talked about.

This is someone who really started to try to research yoga in earnest in the nine twenties, and he began to distinguish half a yoga from tantra, sanitizing yoga's association with its roots. But the interesting thing here is that you end up engaging in the duality of oh, there's the good, there's the good yoga, and then there's the bad yoga. It's like the here's the here's the the

law abiding yoga, and here's the road yoga. But and actually, when we talk about the road yoga to we're talking about something called kundalini, So we talk about contra yoga tantra. This is one of the branches Kundalinia is practiced today. Although as far as I've never been to some sort of orgiastic class in it, I've just been We've talked about the metaphors of the snake and the energy cooling up through the spine. Yeah. Well, um, it's it's interesting

when you look into like why are they engaging? Why would a ton trick um yoga prented practitioner engage in the consumption of these five ms? And you know what does it all get down to. Aside from just this idea of well, let's use sexual sensation body sensation to to you know, channel the spirit. Um, it's this idea too that you have these things that are forbidden, their taboo, right, So there you're human, these temptations are going to be there.

These things are there in your life. So you can either run from them, um and try to deny them, or you can take them and try to do something spiritually beneficial with them. So that's that's part of it, taking these negatives or potential negatives and spinning them into a spiritual positive. So you're saying with within the Hindu tradition that that not one thing is entirely good or bad.

Everything everyone contains both. Yeah, because on one on one level again the direction of otherwise dangerous desires into acts of devotion. And then there's this idea too that it awakens participants to the non duality of the world. Okay, the idea, there's this important idea in Hinduism. The world is a single, indivisible reality uh known as Brahmin. And to see it uh and to see the world as anything else than that, to see it as anything that's

divided and composed of parts, is illusion. And you want to see through that illusion and see that a glimpse and understand experience the reality of Brahmen. So if you see the world as oh, eliminates good and wine is bad, uh, you know are not. No, sex is great and sex is bad. And destructive. Then you're you're seeing a divided vision of the world, and you're not going to sing brahmin or or even yoga yoke right, the union of union.

It's not about division. So I find that that very fascinating. No, I think it's a it's a wonderful context to talk about this. Um, we should take a break. When we get back, we're gonna get down to the science of sex and yoga, or as I like to call it, the yoga beast with two backs. Yes, so, UM going to pigeon post, listen to this message. And when we get back, look all right, we're back in. Come out of pigeons and go back into child's post. So let's

let's continue. We've we've covered a lot of ground already talking about the the roots of yoga, the basics of Hinduism, Uh, Tantra, the five ends, why you should do them, um, what spiritual good they can do in the long run. Yeah, I wanted to talk about Cundolini for a second, because

we talked about this. We're talking about tantra, its role in tantra, the idea of the snake coiling at the base of the spine, this energy that rises up um and and actually cundalini um is sanscrit for coiled or she who is coiled, and it really is a metaphor of rebirth because of it's the snake's ability to to shed its own skin, right, and it has a high

status in Hinduism. Um. But I wanted to mention that Swiss psychiatrist Carl Young was really intrigued by Kundalini and he wrote of a twenty five year old woman whose symptoms included a wave of physical turmoil that rose from her paraneum. Would you call it the taint to her uterus, to her bladder and then eventually to the crown of her head? Okay, this is classic Kundalini imagery right here.

And so he found it really curious that instead of her fearing um what was happening these physical manifestations, she actually really enjoyed it, and he came to understand it though in terms of of an induced psychotic state, he thought of it as a very destructive force. And in fact, if you ever pick up or thumb through his book called The Red Book, which is a bunch of illustrations by him but of his dreams, you'll see the snake in there as this sort of destroyer or this this

menacing um symbolism in his own dreams. But I wanted to bring that up because it's so close to what we've talked about before, and it's this idea of thinking off.

We've discussed this in the Female Orgasm podcast, but it was called the Orgasm Wars, and um, we talked about this woman named Barbara Correlli's who claimed to have trained herself to climax on demand, okay, without any sort of stimulation, and uh, she's been thinking herself off for a number of years and she actually demonstrated her ability to do this when she went into an m R I and then she came to climax several times while researchers at

Rutgers University studied her brain patterns and they saw, indeed that it was matching the types of brain patterns that you see in in orgasms people who actually have had sex with each other and undergo m R at the

same time. It seems a little awkward, but UM, so I bring this up because William Abroad also talks about thinking off, but he also talks about this idea that, um, the same thing is sometimes happening in yoga practitioners brains, particularly when they're meditating, and meditation and yoga of corpse go hand in hand. Yeah, And he he talks about the Anonda Margot sect which was studied by James C.

Corby UM. This is a sect of UM yoga practitioners and they underwent this this study at Stanford University, and he had a control group of nonpractitioners all meditate, and then he had the Anonda Market sect also meditating. And just so you know, Anonda Market totally hardcore. We're talking about three and a half hour long meditation sessions daily, very rigorous. So what happened is that they had the

both of the groups. They had them um relaxed for twenty minutes, and then they had them gives them attention to their breathing for twenty minutes, and then twenty minutes just for straight up meditation. So the cool thing about this is that the control group that they show all sorts of signs of classic relaxation, right for instance, their blood pressure drops. But our friends over here, the are yogis, are all sorts of crazy things are happening with them.

They're breathing really rapidly they begin to sweat. What they're seeing the researchers realized, is this autonomous arousal very much the same sort of thing that you would see with someone who was approaching an orgasm. In fact, one of the participants had a heartbeat of one and twenty beats per minute, which broad says is very similar to frenzy

the lovers. Yeah, so there is an idea that through UM, through meditation, but also through yoga like posts like cobra, in which your pelvic region is on the floor you place a lot of pressure there that this is stimulating certain hormones in the body and you begin to get

this benefit of UM. I guess you could say, I don't want to say I love cocktail of hormones surging through your body, but there there's direct evidence that this can actually increase, uh, your libido and there I mean, and there's certain poses to write that I have been shown to have a more of a link to to the to the sexual side of yoga. Right, Oh, yeah, definitely,

I mean cobra. As I said, bow pose is another one and without now Cobra for those that I don't know, this is one where it's like you're you're lying on your stomach and your hands to side here, and then you sort of the front of you, your your torso sort of rises up like a snake. Yeah, your hands on your side and they're pushing your your upper torso up and so you are putting a lot of pressure

in your pelvic region. But what they're also finding is that one of the hormones that is taking up quite a bit is testosterone and uh I and men and women. And in fact, in one study they saw a woman's testosterone go up by And this is incredible because heretofore they had decided that yoga was lowering men's testoster room level. And this was based on a study in which it

wasn't um yoga that was lowering the testosterone level. It was this vegetarian diet that the practitioners were at the same time, uh and they had a bunch of soy in their diet and that was lowering lowering the testosterone. So that's sort of a myth that broad bust here and says no, like this, testosterone can actually increase your

libido as well, for both men and women. So I also wanted to mention too that that broad says, there's a clinical study of more than one men and women whose self report their sex lives before and after they undertook yoga in the study, and across the board, they all reported increased arousal, better orgasms, and more overall satisfaction.

So one of the things I do want to point out that broad points out is that when they are conducting these um, these studies and this research, they are they're very aware of creating really good solid studies, UM at least now in trying to study this into earnest And what I mean by that is that they're they're looking at all the different ways in which people practice yoga in their habits, and just like any sort of study, you want to get a good rate of participation from

people who are healthy who um you know, are not you know, seven yoga practitioners, so that they sway the results. UM. So they're trying to get this idea, this baseline of like, Okay, if average Joe walks into yoga class, what does that mean in terms of average Joe's or average Jill's uh, sexual proclivity um down the road. And so this is really interesting data that's coming from this. And then he

does admit that there's not a ton of it. Again, there's not people who have said, oh hey, we can solve this whole viagra thing with just doing yoga, you know. I mean that's not the claim that he's saying, but he is pointing to a body of mounting evidence that yoga very well could be um a sort of nature is viagra. I also found it interesting in his book, William Dave Brod goes into the the sexual aspects of yoga by discussing various sex scandals that have arisen with

with yoga gurus. And the main ones who was talking about are are some of the earlier U S dudes who had large followings. Generally we're talking like guys in the fifties sixties, and uh, and suddenly there are all these charges that they have behaved inappropriately with the young women or even not so young women under their charge. Well, in Broad's point is like fifties sixties, I mean, okay, first of all, there's there's this whole other issue of

power structure and taking advantage of someone. But also like fifties sixties, these dudes aren't taking viagra. Like there's there's a certain vitality here that he's saying that plays into um, you know, practicing yoga. Yeah, and and you do see. I mean actually there there have been recent scandals involving yoga gurus as well, but uh, you can't look at it just as yoga is the sexualizing thing and it

just turns men into monsters. Well, there have been some female vous too that there have been charges against who say that they are um taking advantage of their position in order to to gain lovers and uh, sexual encounters. But I mean, but that's what people, that's what especially men do. I mean, it's it's like the President Clinton thing all over again. You put a man in a position of power and you put these impressionable young women in his charge, especially if you have a mystic aspect there,

which is a largely unavoidable in a in a yoga setting. Well, I think the problem is when your guru is saying that, you know, you should practice abstinence is not doing the same. So that's that's really what the issue is here. People will say, well, you know, that's that's horribly hypocritical of you.

But I mean even the maharishi John Lennon said that, um, the Rosemaries baby mia Faro that he had tried to molest her, and so they actually that was one of the reasons why they broke away from the maharishi because they were like, dude, you're full of it, and being full of it is is very again, very in touch with some of the roots of yoga, because, as we discussed in the other podcast, you go, you go back in time and look at the look at the roots of yoga, and you you find a lot of a

fair amount of deception of Charlatanism at times, I mean outrageous claims that that yoga can make you live forever, that can can defeat evil, and can cure diseases, things that simply aren't so within the confines of scientific reality.

What I think is interesting, though, is this this again when I say this mounting evidence, this data, that that yoga can inform a person's um sexual identity, even like there's there are some claims of neo tantrics that broad talks about, this idea that people may begin to have an alternative sexuality. We're off becomes the norm, so it becomes kind of like an a sexuality that is um that is inward looking. I mean, I mean it's just

mental masturbation really too. I mean that's that's really sort of taking it down to a notch that it probably doesn't deserve. But that's or maybe it does. But that's sort of what we're talking about here, a certain a sexuality like it's like more like a psycho masturbation really, like think of it in terms of like not psycho but psycho. Yeah. Yeah, So yeah, there you have it.

There's a nice little intro into the into the sexual magical paths of cannibalistic path Now, if you're if you're sitting there wondering, you're like, WHOA, I didn't turn into this episode that was going to have contra and you didn't give me a single um tip for tontric Sexum, We're not going to do that. We're not gonna do it.

But you are in luck because if you go to how Stuff Works and you type in tantra or tontric into the search bar, you will find a Discovery Health article written by the staff of Discovery Health that goes into some of the specific specifics of modern tantric recommendations, like they're not really telling you like how what order to eat your fish and meat and wine or any

of that. But but some some recommendations and I talk about the slap and tickle and one of them, at least the definition of some of the things they talk about are very sort of straightforward, kind of more you know, like they're some of the tips are based and like brings some eroticism into your into your sex life for a light of candle, look into her eyes, that kind of thing, and where you're kind of like that doesn't really seem all that mystical. That's just kind of I

mean to some people, that's new information now. But there there is one that I believe that's the discovery health. If I think if you put tantra in there, it will it actually talks about the mechanics of it and when we're talking about drawing out the ecstasy part of it, Yeah, and it gets into it gets into breathing, and it gets into this idea again yoga means yoke and union

and uh. And so when you you take these yoga, uh, these these yoga principles into the bedroom, you're you're dealing with situation of people coming together being aware of their their own breaths and in their own bodies and what they're doing uh, and then using that information to slow things down as they approach the precipice of of of orgasm. There, so that's out a little death, a little bit assances ectas to I know, just the in French fancy. Yeah. So so look that up if you want some more

information on that. Um, if you want to know more about the science of yoga, check and are And also if you want to hear more just about Julian eyes thoughts on yoga and or and and and I'll check out the other episode that we did call the Science of down Dog. Check out the book The Science of Yoga by William J. Broad It's excellent. We can't recommend

that highly enough. And if you want to know a little more about Hindu tradition, was a great book by Mark W. Muse that's m U. E. S. S. E. Called The Hindu Traditions a concise introduction and it's just a really good, like well laying out illustrated guide to generally what Hindu ritual consists of. It's a great book. I have a recommend that as well. So let's call the robot over here alright. Listener by the name of Peter writes and it says, Hello, Robert and Julie. Was

just listening to your podcast about life in microgravity. One thing that got me thinking, uh was the off topic comment about sour dough. How did we end up talking about sour dough? We talked. We talked about how people living off Earth would only visit us when they needed to come back and get genetic material, and that we would be like the sour dough bread in San Francisco that provides the mother dough for sour bread. Sour dough bread, okay,

at least well Peter goes on. He says, a sour dough mother can be simply created by mixing flour and water in a bowl and letting natural yeasts in the atmosphere start the fermentation. As this can take a while, most breadmasters keep the original pot alive by simply adding more flour and water to the bowl once they have removed enough for the current batch of bread. Enjoying listening to your podcast as I am having to lie flat with my eyes pointed at the floor to aid my

detached retina to recover, share and enjoy. Peter, who's in the Plymouth few K Yeah, I feel like I saw an article on some sort of service like if you can't um soup up your bread or feed it, someone will for you. I don't like the baby, said your mother. Yeah, mother, mother bread all right. We also heard from Zach Zack right soon and says, hi, I just finished listening to your Planetary Internet episode and had some thoughts on the

speed of light the legs, specifically in sci fi. In the majority of sci fi I have watched or red that deals with interstellar travel, uh, neglect's interstellar communications and that they are either not a major plot point or a magically instantaneous uh example Injur's game and uh and then he got it goes on to say, one series where this is addressed, however, is done in the Doom universe.

A large number of communications are carried out by actual physical messengers, writing on starships and delivering the message directly. These were the best examples of communications sci fi that I could think up with think of. Thanks for the great podcast. Um so so yeah, that's and I've forgotten about that detail from the Don universe. But they didn't have the means to actually send the data, but they had the means to send the ships. So they just

include an actual courier on board. We also heard from listener Jim Jim Wrightson and says, uh and he's referring to the zero G episode of micro Gravity and talking about movies with zero G in space. He says, Robert and Julie, you mentioned that two thousand and one was the only space movie that you knew of that maintains zero G. I thought of three More two thousand and ten,

a sequel to two thousand and one. It's kind of obvious now, I guess had zero G as well, but there are some scenes where it's not quite obvious whether you're in part of the ship that zero G or using rotational gravity. Apollo thirteen had zero G for a historical reasons. They voto set on the Vomit Comet and film several scenes in actual zero G. I heard the stars say that they spent a lot of time on the ends of the booms being moved around to simulate

visual zero G drift in close ups. They just swayed back and forth. So yeah, I kind of forgot about it. Paul of thirteens so historically based Mission to Mars maintain zero G as well. They even fluff out the female stars hairs that would happen in zero G, and I legit only forgot about that one. And then he goes on to say, I'm guessing studios avoid zero G because it has to be very expensive and complicated to film it convincingly. Assuming artificial gravity has got to solve a

lot of logistical problems. So so yeah, there's a there a few there that I've forgotten about. Yeah, that's just made me realize how surreal it must be to be

an actor. Sometimes like camer to deliver my lines. If I'm as sway back and forth, just very slightly in front of a green screen talking to a puppet that's not a puppet that will be added sat with c g I later, but right now is just a stick with the word alien written N. Yeah, that I have to in my mind imagine this monster with vagina dentata

coming at me. You know. I actually rewatched part of two thousand and one is Space outosey Um last week, and it's kind of heartbreaking because on one level, this is not this is a vision of the twenty century, but it's not the twenty century that actually happened, and it's it's beautiful and stunning and uh, and then the other side is we don't actually make movies like this century either, So I was kind of torn as too

as to which was sadder. Like the scenes with the monkeys and two thousand and one, those are the best best scenes I've seen in cinema that features monkeys, like and I'm counting real monkeys, Like it's better than than than any film with Clint Eastwood or you know, at anything, And it featured actual acting chumps, better than that, better than anything I've seen with c G I. Monkeys in the best monkey costumes ever employed in a motion picture. Like,

those scenes are just fabulous. They're perfect and and just and just the visual the nash of that film is just just wondrous. It is it is. I'm sorry, it is it is. You just brought up the Clint Eastwood and I'm imagining him in a truck going down in the highway with his friend. It should deduce is one of those suits. I mean, it's just I could go on and actually there was some really good Facebook discussion on this topic. Yeah, yeah, I brought it up on

Facebook yesterday. Anyway, if you haven't seen two thousand and one, do yourself a favor because it's great. Anyway, at this that point, we should probably move on and close out this podcast, I know, and I just want to say no mistake, no mistake. Yeah, um, but we do have to keep talking because yeah, I know. We also have to point out that, hey, you can get in touch with us. You can join you on Facebook conversations with this about um, how awesome two thousand and one is,

or what kind of yoga you prefer. Um, you can find us on Facebook we are stuff to blow your mind. You can find us on Twitter where we are blow the mind. And and definitely we would love to hear from any of you guys that are yoga practitioners. Uh, let us know what effect has had on your life. Um, if you are not a yoga practitioner and you're trying it out or or your your new Twitter you're interested in giving it a go, we'd love to hear from

you about that topic as well. Yeah, and also would love to know if anybody's ever had any like huge breakthroughs, revelations or even like some you know, sort of surreal thoughts and chevas knowing at the end when they're resting, because it's a great fertile time for for the mind. So I have chevasna visions um fairly regularly. I forget there's there's actually a term for it for those visions,

but I can't remember what they are. Yes, very cool stuff, so it kind of reminds me of lucid dreaming in a way. Um. You can also send us your thoughts via email and you can do that and blow the mind at Discovery dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff Works dot com. M