The popularity of yoga in North America has been inflating like a housing bubble for decades. We may now be on the verge of seeing what happens when it pops. With thousands of teachers registering through the self-governed yoga alliance every year, offering classes in yoga studios, fitness centres, community organizations, corporate environments, schools and just about anywhere else you can think of the media has taken notice, and the attention isn’t all positive. The practice purports a spiritual aspect at odds with the cults of celebrity, fashion, and corporate greed we’ve managed to thrust upon it. We’ve been walking around like our shit don’t stink so the potential to take the hippies down a notch is very appealing to some.
If you haven’t been keeping up here’s the skinny: William Broad wrote an article in the New York Times entitled How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body to promote his book The Science of Yoga. Many yoga practitioners went with their guts and posted their offence, attacking the journalist on his expertise, but without really speaking to the points he made except to say “my yoga isn’t like that” and essentially throw the yoga of others under the bus.
Next was completely a completely unrelated and harsher blow- Anusara Yoga and it’s founder John Friend, became the subject of an anonymous post accusing Friend of everything from sexual impropriety to drug running to illegally cheating Anusara teachers out of pension benefits. When much turned out to be true we began to see a wave of resignations, a shift in leadership and a call to dissolve Anusara altogether. The blog Yoga Dork has been covering this intently, here’s a link to a running timeline, though it’s certainly not exhaustive.
William Broad, seeing further opportunity to promote himself, followed up with another sensationalist piece suggesting yogis should not be surprised at the scandal- yoga makes people horny because it’s connected to Tantra. It looks like a poorly researched and a flimsy attempt to keep his name in the papers, but has also become another something to mess with the heads of the yoga community.
So what’s the fuss? Yoga has never had to deal with much in the way of criticism, the most you had really read about it was in Women’s magazines that would provide a sequence alongside an interview with an actor or model singing the praises of the practice. Criticism has been coming for a long time, and only by acknowledging the valid points can yoga dismiss the false allegations.The community is blind to a number of hypocrisies that it must settle within itself, and soon.
When one group of white people takes exercise in India and claims it theirs that’s cultural appropriation. The demographics of yoga in Canada and the US is largely urban, largely white, largely female (though most of the masters are men). Walk around spouting Shanti Namaste and you’ll make most people roll their eyes. Dress the part and they’ll be waiting for your White Album. Is it wrong? I dunno, but it’s something to think about, just as how our views on the Sutras and other yoga texts are influenced by our relative affluence in the world.
In Yoga Body, Mark Singleton approaches the development of yoga as we know it as a historian, and claims that the 4000 year old practice is probably only a little more than 100 years old, developed under the British occupation of India, and deeply connected to the west’s fascination at the time with all things oriental. It’s a neat read that many people claim is untrue, that the ancient practice is detailed in a document called Yoga Korunta passed down through gurus from the sage Vamana Rishi. Its last known whereabouts was in the hands of Sri T. Krishnamacharya who passed it to Pattabi Jois- the man who popularized Ashtanga Yoga in India and North America. Unfortunately, it’s existence cannot be confirmed, as it was apparently eaten by ants while in storage. This is certainly a possible fate for the document, however, we can’t ignore the fact that it is the equivalent of the stone tablets purported to be handled by Moses. It’s the yoga version of scripture accepted on faith, and when used as evidence against historians studying primary sources, it is the equivalent of throwing down the bible to prove carbon dating is wrong.
North American yogis sure love telling other North American yogis that they’re doing it wrong. Everyone who is really into yoga enjoys their esoteric belief that they are the ones who “get it” because of time spent in Mysore, or studying with a master teacher, or reading nothing but the Bhagavad Gita over and over for a year. And while the explosion of yoga in North America is generally seen as a good thing, there is a disdain for expressions that feel Americanized.
One of these Americanizations is the commodification of practice. Most studios operate around the twenty-buck a class mark, or around $100 per month if you want unlimited classes. This is out of reach for a lot of the population. Many students wear uniform by a clothing company that charges $95 dollars for sweat pants that enhance a practitioner’s derriere, made in factories in countries that traditionally pay workers very little. An A-list of celebrity instructors has been firmly established and the masters have started to get proprietary, Bikram Choudhury trademarked his series of postures taking what was once essentially free, and turning it into something to sue over.
Teacher trainings vary widely in their requirements. Certification by the self governing body The Yoga Alliance is broken down only by a requirement of study hours in each subject. Assignments and assessments are left up to each particular school, many of which only require that you pay your tuition and show up for your 200 hours.
The only wonder about Yoga showing up on the radar of media organizations is why it has taken so long. In a way it’s a good thing, because after the initial reaction and feeling of being attacked goes away, the outsider viewpoint might challenge the insular community to examine issues that go against the essence of the practice.
