EP105 Shell Games Keep the Myth Alive

I've had a particularly hard time bringing myself to write. That's unusual. Two other articles on various topics have already been penned but both feel so entirely inadequate to the moment that I can't bring myself to publish either. Looking for insights into humanity through an examination of what is happening in the yoga industry has its limitations, and my usual sort of musings seem a trifling contribution given the larger shifts taking place. In the face of profound uncertainty, the impulse to withdraw is hard to resist, but might just as well hold the key to a new direction. When uncertainty starts to transmute into anxiety, I reflexively start rummaging through every old pattern that has ever worked for me at one time or another. I hear the voice of a directing teacher from my freshman year of college saying: "Turn your liabilities into assets." But leveraging a creeping sense of impending doom with the last ounce of idealism that I can muster feels more like an act of desperation than certitude. Nonetheless, I maintain that risking hope still remains my best option.    

anything organic. Often, my whole family sat around watching tv with individual fold-out trays in front of us, eating Chun King frozen Chinese hors d'oeuvres that were heated in a microwave oven and served in the plastic container we bought them in. Back then, convenience and economy were valued over nutrition, and unhealthy patterns of eating were developed that I reckon with now in my later years. Mass production and scaling of yoga look to be on a similar course as food was during my childhood. Despite the extraordinary growth of yoga as an industry, newer generations of practitioners, who have only come to know yoga in the internet age, often have less access to substantive teachings on yoga than I did when I came into the fold. There is simply no way to be exposed to the depth of a contemplative practice while scrolling through Instagram feeds. Chances are that the demise of meaningful yoga will lead to a greater sense of crisis before a larger realignment might occur.   

Nothing exemplifies the false narratives perpetuated by the yoga industrial complex more than a recent Yoga Journal headline that read: "How to Make $5 Classes Sustainable." These stories, often well-intentioned, are the product of outdated modes of thinking that turn earnest people into unwitting hypocrites. Challenging the status quo by returning to an earlier stage in the evolution of yoga transmission, but with new eyes, might be the best way to break free of our current extractive paradigm.  

Generally speaking, when someone sets out to learn a new skill there is a natural human impulse to want to get it right. Being able to do a yoga pose in a certain way often becomes an extrapolated question of safety. Doing it right means safety. Doing it wrong means injury. Unfortunately, anyone who has engaged in a deep inquiry of yoga knows that looking for rights and wrongs to follow when it comes to practice is not only an unhelpful context, but is the primary obstacle to understanding the role of engaging poses as a means towards health and well-being.    

There is a convenient irony to the way the yoga-related industry effectively exploits the weaknesses in people that yoga purports to help. As teachers come clean with themselves on what they are actually doing, and make choices truer to their evolving understanding of yoga, they often find their class sizes begin to wane. Fostering the beneficial purpose of yoga teachings in our society will require us to better navigate the uncomfortable trade-offs between successful business promotion and the false expectations it perpetuates.    

We've all heard about the amazing things that yoga can do for us, but try explaining exactly what it is and how it works and you quickly find yourself on shaky ground. There is an innate something at the heart of the matter that simply cannot be measured, only felt. As unsatisfying as this may be, the highly subjective perception of our own experience is the only real basis for any understanding, and the very thing that makes yoga so vital.    

Radical transformation is the provenance of yoga. The promise of bringing about change in oneself through will and determination, being able to derive truth and purpose by observing our own experience rather than succumbing to societal conditioning or the influence of outside authorities, is inherently revolutionary. The compartmentalization and standardization of practice techniques, and the parsing of yogic experience through a scientific lens, has created the perception that yoga can be neutered of its subversive underpinnings. Yet, truly authentic expressions always seem to retain a spark of the unknown that refuses to be ordered.    

A lot of people in the yoga world are feeling confused. Changing social tides and startling revelations are calling into question the foundations on which many a career have been built. Deep vacuums have been created with the passing of primary teachers, previously held secrets are being exposed, and the emergence of a neo-orthodoxy is attempting to lay claim to what was once considered an open-source transmission. Those who continue to feel a calling are rightly searching their souls for clarity as the always precarious mix of business and wisdom tradition becomes ever more blurred.    

The algorithms and operating systems that are governing our experiences, intended to expand our reach and connect us to the broader world, have borne unforeseen and adverse repercussions. This is particularly true for yoga teachers and center owners looking to cohere the intimacy and connection they feel through yoga with the realities of making it a profession. Only if we can abandon the flawed models that are suffocating the better parts of our humanity, might such a balance be struck.