I feel like the sheer amount of bullshit surrounding these drugs leaves me with a duty to take heavy doses of psychedelics and proudly learn nothing but "boy that was fun"
Agreed on the bullshit. I think this might have something to do with me growing up in a certain hippy town on the California coast, but I couldn't get through this article without a lot of eye-rolling. OK, let's just put the whole drug thing aside and call it a hobby. You can have a hobby without having a pseudospiritual and vaguely appropriative justification for it.
Bodybuilders have a term that they use to describe the mythos that has evolved in their subculture regarding steroids and supplements: Broscience. This is the yuppie drug-dabbler equivalent.
Offtopic, but unfortunately broscience has extended beyond pharmaceuticals to training practice. This kind of thinking dominates the crossfit world with terms like "muscle confusion" and "failure". It's sad because I got into crossfit ten years ago because it was fun, something different every day kept me coming back. I didn't want to be a Navy SEAL, just to keep active, but the almost religious adherence to the training philosophy -- and the injuries sustained by several people I knew -- drove me away. Now I find myself sedentary and looking for something similar, but less pseudo-scientific.
I would actually argue that yoga is now sufficiently commercialized as to bear little resemblance to anything "ancient" or "mystical". I can buy a book, get some videos or take a class and hear nothing spiritual at all. (Side note: Mark Lauren, in his fairly good _You Are Your Own Gym_ covers yoga a bit). This isn't to say there's not lots of people selling the "spiritual enlightenment" line.
I think all exercise programs tend to have a something to sell, because otherwise how do you make money? It's an interesting balancing act, however. Your doctor can tell you "get more exercise", but that's a pretty abstract concept that requires planning, commitment and is by definition kind of uncomfortable. So a whole industry has grown up around branding exercise. It works, too. Some of it is better than others, but people, myself included, buy it. We might buy it because we're gullible, we might buy it because it's easier than coming up with our own plan or more interesting when executing it.
But the number of books that grace the shelves with words like "warrior", "ultimate", "prescription", "philosophy", "enlightenment", "Spartan", "SEAL", etc, etc, etc. is pretty staggering. But frankly, whatever works. Insurance companies often incentivize gym memberships, but rarely do they pay for you to regularly see a trainer, so whatever is safe that gets people exercising. I complain, but it's not even in the same league of problematic as unregulated administration of pharmaceuticals by spiritual leaders.
In practice, Yoga is pretty woo free for the most part. I was also concerned to try it because of the woo but my friends all said I'd like it.
I took some classes and not a single instructor treated the class as anything but an exercise class with some meditation at the end. I even took an "alternative" yoga class with weights.
It can be done easily in your home (if you have some space) and you can do great full body workouts. I was pretty much out of shape when I've started it two years ago and now I feel great.
Maybe this is something for you. Altough some people around Pavel (and Strongfirst) can come off a little bit cult-ish, but I don't think that it is too bad.
I have a few around. When I lifted competitively (15 years ago?) we had a few Pavel guys in the community. Nice guys but... weird.
My biggest issue with kettlebells is that my basement ceiling is low so swinging them is probably out and I've only got 7 months or so of outdoor training. I'll check it out, however, can't hurt to ask.
swinging shouldn't be a problem if you are doing the russian swing (maximum shoulder height).
For the more advanced exercises military press, snatch and clean and jerk you need a room where you can stand up with your hands straight above your head.
I am training outside the whole year, but it doesn't get extremely cold here in winter -5° to -10° Celsius is pretty much the minimum. But I am under a roof and so it works for me (but I have to store the Kettlebells indoor so the handles are warm).
We used to have a local ping pong group that met regularly and I had a few friends who did it. Then they lost their venue for being to loud and boisterous. Apparently there were a few people who were intense about ping pong.
Have you tried interval training? I've had the best return on effort with that out of everything I've tried (jogging, traditional gym work, cycling). It's light on broscience and seems to be supported by all the 'real' scientific testing. It only takes 10-15 minutes per day and it's completely self-guided (I use a timer app on my phone to keep track of intervals.)
Like HIIT? A bit. I did the NYTimes 7 minute workout for a bit to try and break out of a rut. It was pretty good, but I fell off that wagon too, partially lack of variety, I think. It reminded me a bit of basic training. I think there's got to be a market for guided training like that. They were often used for punishment, but I liked grass drills.
Yeah, there is a lot of bullshit around psychedelics, and it's totally possible to take them and just have fun, but if you're interested in the way the mind works and how we piece together reality from our perceptions, there is a lot to work with there. I think where people go wrong is in thinking that drug experiences show you some truth that's hidden from you in normal life. It really just shows you how ill equipped your brain is to understand reality, or how ill-conceived the idea of 'reality' really is.
I think the idea of seeing some hidden truth, comes simply from seeing the world from some other perspective. I guess the problem people have with that is that people who take drugs talk like their epiphanies are only obtainable by doing drugs (and thus unique and rare). When instead drugs are more tools to find out things you personally didn't know.
That's a valid reason. So is "I wanna knock some of the BS in my head loose".
I may be close minded, but "To receive the essence of Grandmother's wisdom and understand the psychic vibrations, not within us, but beside us, as I'm guided by the Jaguar riding the Anaconda, who is really the glory beyond our lesser selves, being to us a more perfect realm as Grandmother wishes it through the greater understanding of our abundant vision..." doesn't really sound like a reason.
Not that I'd stop someone from doing it for that reason, but I fail to see how it's the least bit useful and it seems ripe for exploitation.
There's a lot of bullshit - and most people are drawn in by pseudoscience nonsense. I was interested in seeing what people were talking about and the perspective change (also Sam Harris, lots of historical people, Huxley, What the Dormouse Said, everything I'd read etc.)
I tried it basically with as most preparation as you could possibly have and it wasn't enough. There's more detail in my posting history, but I'd suggest caution.
