our-yoga

"Reality is a Question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems--but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems more and more incredible. Suppose yourself in a large cinema, sitting at first in the back row, and gradually moving up, row by row, until your nose is almost pressed against the screen. Gradually the stars' faces dissolve into dancing grain; tiny details assume grotesque proportions; the illusion dissolves--or rather, it becomes clear that the illusion itself is reality..."

Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children

I guess I seem to be blogging more now that it's summer; as you might have noticed, this is my second blog post today. I don't have any particular reason for quoting Rushdie here; it just so happens that I am reading Midnight's Children right now, and this particular passage jumps out at me. Midnight is the second Rushdie novel that I have read thus far, the first being The Satanic Verses. I have to say that although both novels are written in that distinctive self-referential voice that is Rushdie's, Midnight is very different in character from The Satanic Verses. I don't really know how to capture this difference in a couple of sentences, and I don't feel like writing a long post right now on what this difference really is, either, so I'll leave it at this. Maybe I'll write more about this when I finish Midnight. We'll see.

In the meantime, let me tell you an interesting true yoga story that recently happened to me. I had a spontaneous lotus teaching moment yesterday afternoon. I was about to leave my office when I started chatting with a colleague who occupies the office across from mine. We started talking about possible summer plans, and what we each had been up to lately. He told me that he had recently taken up meditation, and had injured his ankle while meditating. This is roughly how the conversation unfolded from this point:

Colleague: "Yeah, you don't believe it is possible to injure yourself while meditating, do you?" [Chuckles]

Nobel: "Actually, I do. Were you trying to get into the lotus posture, by any chance?"

Colleague: [Nods his head, smiles sheepishly, and then was suddenly surprised] "How did you know that?" [Note to reader: Many people at work do not know that I practice yoga (I generally adhere to the doctrine of the separation of yoga and work).]  

I then explained to my colleague that I have been practicing yoga for a few years, and know of many incidents of people who have injured their knees and ankles trying to crank themselves into the lotus posture (I did not mention that I had also suffered a knee injury before; I figured that might be too much information at that moment.).

And then the teacher in me took over: I went on to explain to my colleague how, in order to do lotus productively and safely, one must first work on opening the external hip rotators, so that the work of the posture comes from the hips, and not from the knees or ankles. I also mentioned how it took me about six months from the time I first started yoga to get to the point where I was just able to barely do a loose lotus.

"You can do lotus?" My colleague asked (I think he sounded impressed, but I cannot be sure). I said yes, and then proceeded to show him (on the floor of his office, no less) a bunch of preparatory poses (pigeon, double pigeon, etc.) that he can work on in order to get his hips to open enough to be able to do lotus safely. And then, on the spur of the moment, I added, "And once you feel your hips open enough (which could take a few weeks or even months), you can then try half lotus." So saying, I brought my right foot into my left hip crease. "And then, " I continued, "you can work yourself into full lotus." So saying, I brought the left foot onto my right thigh. And I found myself sitting in lotus in jeans on the floor of his office. Which might already be rather unusual, in and of itself. What's even more interesting is that this is the first time since my knee injury a couple of years ago that I have spontaneously gotten into a full lotus outside of my yoga practice, while wearing street clothes. To be sure, my lotus wasn't very deep: I didn't feel that I was warm enough to attempt the usual deep lotus that I do during practice, so I kept the lotus loose. But even so, I am grateful for how much my knee has healed to permit me to do even this.

Anyway, I got out of lotus after a few breaths, and got back on my feet. My colleague thanked me for the hip-opening tips, and I went on my way.

Well.... I hope you like this little story. More later.

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I just read Angela Jamison's latest post on the Ashtanga Yoga Ann Arbor blog, where she discusses in engaging detail that million-dollar Ashtanga question: How do you know when you are ready (or not ready) to teach Ashtanga? I encourage you to read her very intensely thoughtful and utterly honest post in its entirety, but here's an excerpt that really speaks to me:

"For ashtanga teachers, transitioning from sadhana to seva (from self-focused practice, to service) can be weird. It can stunt one’s growth dramatically if done without sufficient (1) preparation as a student, and (2) support from teachers and community. When this transition is made because the student puts herself in the teaching role, and not because her own teachers identify her as sufficiently skilled and prepared to teach, the challenges just mentioned are multiplied.

(Subtext: do not get in to ashtanga teaching unless you full-on cannot avoid it. Resist!! Don’t give yourself over to it unless you basically have to do it in order for your own practice to grow, and unless you have tons of support.)

Given these challenges, most teachers need active, invested mentors to whom they are accountable. (I do.) They need a (1) clear method and (2) a sense of history to keep from getting confused. They need to have strong equanimity and mental clarity, so they can (1) stand outside today’s “yoga” market and culture hype and (2) influence that culture positively.

Teachers need to be able to identify, and resist, the ego’s urge to use teaching to feed root chakra needs: money, sex, power, and attention.

(Subtext: yoga BS, and yoga scandals, happen when teachers don’t have all the support they need. Or when they fail to realize that they actually do have sufficient money, sex, power and attention – and thus they constantly grasp after more and more of the same. This happens when we don’t have anyone to call us on our, well, crap.)"

Reading Angela's words above and reflecting on my life of mostly self-practice over the last few years, I can appreciate that what has happened to me over the last few years is really no accident. If you read this blog regularly, you will know that over the last few years, I have, on several occasions, entertained the notion of teaching or "sharing" the practice with others, and although I have made a few limited ventures in this area, none of these ventures have led to anything big or long-lasting.

Reflecting on Angela's words above, I can see that the "failures" of my forays into teaching Ashtanga thus far are actually not bad things at all, from a big picture point of view. While there is probably nothing inherently wrong with sharing my limited knowledge of the practice with others, it is still nevertheless true that I was never in a position where I "full-on cannot avoid" teaching; I was never in a position where I had to teach in order for my practice to grow. As they say, everything happens (or does not happen) for a reason: I am quite convinced that in not teaching Ashtanga over the last few years, I was in fact protected from the vicissitudes of today's yoga scene; a scene which, as many of you know, is more often than not driven by the forces of the free market than by people who genuinely know what they are doing. Angela speaks quite bluntly about this pitfall of the contemporary American yoga scene when she writes:

"The majority of yoga teachers are exploited. Exploiting them is easy because they’re inexperienced as practitioners and poorly trained as teachers. But exploitation, inexperience and poor training don’t help anyone – not really.

...here’s the thing. Trying to pretend you know what yoga is when your practice is not fully developed is a formula for arrested development. Thrusting a person into this job for matters of convenience is not cool. It’s the reason western yoga is full of elementary-level instruction trying to pass itself off as something more by adding special effects. 

(Subtext: when you meet someone who wants you to teach regardless of whether you’re ready, and for matters of their own convenience, is that your teacher? Do you deserve better?)"

These are definitely sobering words for this "fake-it-till-you-make-it" capitalistic culture that we live in, in which it seems that virtually everybody wants to be seen as an expert of one kind or another, whether or not they actually really know what they are doing or saying.

On a slightly different but related note, at her LA workshop last weekend, Kino also briefly addressed this question of when one is ready to teach Ashtanga. During one of the sessions at her workshop last weekend, she related this humorous story of a very physically-talented student she met during her workshop in Taiwan. Apparently, this student, who had a background in martial arts, was doing Ashtanga for the very first time in his life (apparently, he had accompanied a friend to the workshop and was taking the workshop along with the friend to keep the friend company). Seeing that he seemed to be quite physically able, Kino asked him if he could try jumping through with straight legs. After hearing her description, this student effortlessly accomplished a straight-legged jump-through on his very first attempt ever; an accomplishment which took Kino herself many years to achieve.

Anyway, the point of Kino's story is this: You know you are ready to teach Ashtanga yoga when you can look at people who are more advanced in the practice than you are (or who can effortlessly do things that took you a long time and a lot of effort to accomplish), and genuinely rejoice and be happy at their abilities, without being envious of them or even being resentful of their achievements.

Well, all I can say is this: Using Kino's yardstick, I know for sure that I am definitely not ready to teach Ashtanga. If it's okay with you, I'm not going to go into the details here. But I think you get where I'm coming from...           

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After talking so much politics on this blog over the last week, including endorsing Obama and bashing Romney (gosh, am I glad Obama won; one can only imagine how vulnerable a Chinese yoga blogger who is not even a permanent resident of this country would be in the face of a conservative censorship-happy administration...), I just haven't been able to get my mind off politics. Politics, it turns out, is not something my brain can just turn on or off like a light switch. So, in the last 36 hours since Obama won re-election, I have found myself trolling the internet for all kinds of news related to the election... Oh, and by the way, this just in: Obama has won Florida! Not that he needed the state to win, but it still feels good, especially because I lived in Florida for 8 years when I went to grad school at the U of F.

Anyway, let me see if I can steer the conversation towards something more yoga-related. Well, let's start with this: Over the last few days, I have been thinking quite a bit about Matthew Remski's recent Elephant Journal article, in which he points out that much of the yoga community is in a state of malaise when it comes to taking a stand on any significant political issue. Remski points out that when it comes to politics, many yoga people either adopt:

(1) An "etheric-dissociative posture" ("Be fully in the present moment, achieve a collective leap of consciousness, and worry not about who takes the White House or how rape is defined. Because when you are truly in the present, all of these problems are only illusions....");

or

(2) A "flaccid polite posture" ("It is totally okay whoever you vote for or whatever policies you champion, so long as you vote, and do it in a mindful/yogic way.").

From my on-and-off yoga teaching experiences over the years, I have had some experience with (2), so I'll say a few things about this (which is not to say that I don't find (1) problematic, but I try as much as possible on this blog to speak only about things that I have experience with).

I have noticed over the years that many yoga studio owners tend to adopt the flaccid polite posture towards students and clients. Which, I guess, is understandable, if we look at things from a purely business point of view: In most things in business, it is usually prudent to adopt a lowest-common-denominator stance, especially when it comes to sensitive issues like politics. You don't want to alienate or possibly even offend potential customers and lose business. So you adopt the lowest-common-denominator position, one that cannot possibly offend anybody ("It's good to do your civic duty and vote, no matter who you vote for", etc.). In so doing, you also create a culture of niceness within your business ("Be nice to everyone. Don't talk about politics, religion, or sex, because talking about these things often upset people, and make you look less 'nice'--not to mention lose customers.'").

Most of the time, this lowest-common-denominator culture of niceness works just fine. Customers/students come to classes at the studio and get their yoga fix. You get to teach yoga and make a living and pay your bills. Everybody is happy. But there are a couple of problems with applying this lowest-common-denominator-culture of niceness to running a yoga business:

(A) There are certain political positions and policies that one simply cannot support while claiming to be truly yogic at the same time. For example, it is impossible to "mindfully" redefine rape without violating Ahimsa, or "yogically" claim that climate change is a hoax without violating Satya. Well, maybe you could in the good old days before Superstorm Sandy turned the streets of New York City into a scene from some B-grade sci-fi movie...

But I digress. What I'm trying to say is this: As the recent elections have hopefully shown, there are certain political positions and policies that no amount of mindful-yogic-sugar-coating can or should make palatable to any yoga practitioner worth his or her yogic salt. Faced with somebody who spouts such, uh, nonsense (got to call a spade a spade, you know...), a studio owner or teacher has to either speak up and risk offending the customer/student, or continue to be "nice" and risk being truly unyogic.

I haven't done any surveys in this area, so I have no hard data as to how most teachers and studio owners "on the ground" actually respond to such situations. But I get the sense that many teachers and studio owners faced with such situations toe the niceness line, smile, and just "act yogic". After all, the reality is that we all live in a capitalistic society. Money is king, and it is even more king to yoga studios, who need the revenue flow from students to survive. And we all know how competitive and cutthroat the yoga business can be, beneath the facade of niceness.    
 
But perhaps somebody could respond to all this by saying, "Look, what do you, a crazy yoga blogger who's only taught yoga on-and-off, know about the business of yoga? People need to pay bills, and yoga studio owners and teachers are people who are just doing their best to make a decent living. Why don't you cut them some slack? As for those people who want to redefine rape or continue to believe climate change is a hoax, well, that's their problem. You can't change everybody's mind; to each his (or her) own."

Well, fair enough. If this whole niceness thing were merely a matter of individual conscience and nothing more, I would be quite happy to leave things at this. But in fact, this lowest-common-denominator culture of niceness is really only the tip of the iceberg. I think that, in many yoga studios, this culture masks an underlying toxic environment, one which lurks just beneath the surface of niceness, waiting to ensnare the unsuspecting and naive student or even teacher.

(B) What do I mean by toxic environment? To illustrate, let me share a personal story. First, a little background story is in order. At this studio I used to teach at, there was a student, an older gentleman who seems to me to be a man of independent means: I never actually asked him upfront what he did for a living, but he owned some land, and he always talked about working on his land and then coming to as many yoga classes at the studio as he pleases. And he only eats organic and never drinks anything that is in a plastic container. All of which led me, rightly or wrongly, to conclude that he had enough wealth set aside somewhere to not have to worry about the sorts of things (going to work, etc.) that most of us ordinary folk worry about.

This gentleman also had a rather interesting disdain for higher education: Over the course of a few conversations I had with him, I learned that he believes that all higher education is basically a waste of time and money, and that people would be better off and would learn much more just by living on the land and learning "organically" from living on the land.

Which is all well and good, so far. His views and lifestyle are probably not in the mainstream, but hey, it takes all kinds, right? What is not so well and good is that he has this rather annoying tendency to make his views and values known to others in a way that is... annoying. I can't think of another word to describe his behavior, so I'll just describe some examples of his actual behavior towards me. First, he has this annoying tendency to pick on the fact that I, a PhD student at the time, was in higher education, a field which he considers to be a total waste of time and money. And he tends to pick on this fact in public settings within the studio environment, in which I cannot call him out without appearing snarky and "not nice". For example, he once came to my class. While waiting with a whole bunch of other students for my class to start, he started chatting with the student on the mat next to him, who happened, as luck would have it, to be a fairly attractive middle-aged brunette... oh, did I tell you that he also has this tendency to chat up and "prey on" attractive women between 3 to 30 years younger than him when he comes to classes? Think Ogden the Inappropriate Yoga Guy, but add twenty or thirty years to his age.

Anyway, at some point during their conversation, he remarked to the brunette, in a voice loud enough for the entire studio to hear, "Oh, do you know that Nobel is a PhD student and has been a student all his life? Which means he's never had to make a living in the 'real' world..."

Boy, did that hurt. And, as I said, I couldn't think of a way in that moment to call him out on his inappropriate remarks without disrupting the atmosphere of yogic niceness that was supposed to prevail in the yoga class environment (not that it hadn't already been polluted by his remark). And the rest of the class was apparently too "yogic" and "nice" to dare to say anything to contradict him. So I had to grit my teeth (and in the process, make my already tightly-gripped bandhas even more tightly-gripped) and just try to continue the class as if nothing had happened.

A few more such incidents happened between him and me during my tenure at that studio. Finally, one day, I just couldn't stomach it any longer. After class, I walked up to him and told him that I didn't find any of his remarks about me funny at all. And then I said to him, "Look, if you are so yogic and mindful and all that, why can't you be mindful of what comes out of your mouth?" (A little background info: He also claims to be an avid practitioner of mindfulness meditation.) That one remark pretty much killed the relationship between us (not that it was all that healthy in the first place). For the rest of my time at that studio, there was always this strained air around us whenever we came within three feet of each other. But well, what needs to be said, needs to be said. What to do?


So what is the moral of my personal story? On one level, the answer is: Not much. In every environment in which there is human interaction, people are bound to download their neuroses on one another. So there is a sense in which every "normal" human environment is toxic, or at least has the potential to be.

But on another level, I think this says something about yoga studios and the culture of "yogic" niceness that is found in many such places. I think it is safe to say that if somebody had made such inappropriate remarks in any other everyday environment--say, in the office, or in a coffeeshop--it would be considered normal for the person at the receiving end of these remarks (in this case, me) to get upset and directly call the offender out on such unacceptable behavior. Furthermore, in many workplaces, there are procedures in place for workers to seek redress for such offenses: I'm not sure where exactly this would fit, but I'm quite sure that these remarks can be made to qualify as harassment of some kind or other if they were uttered in a conventional workplace setting... which also suggests that the yoga industry is woefully behind the corporate world in having mechanisms in place to protect its workers/teachers; or maybe being "yogic" and "nice" is supposed to be protection enough?

In any case, what I'm getting at is this: Could it be that the culture of niceness in many yoga studios may ironically be making the environments at these studios less yogic, by giving people who would otherwise be called out for their inappropriate behavior a screen to hide behind? In other words, could the yoga culture of niceness be a breeding ground for unyogic toxic behavior?

Well, you may want to think about investing in a reliable gas mask before you make your next trip to your favorite yoga studio...              

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Deborah from The Beauty of Everyday Things recently wrote an interesting post on her blog, in which she ponders and examines the relationship between yoga blogging, yoga teaching (for those of us who teach yoga), and "real" life.

It's a very intriguing topic, especially for those of us who have to manage and balance the tensions between our roles as yoga teachers, yoga bloggers, and "real" people. I was going to leave a comment on her blog, but then I decided I have too much to say about this topic to justify hogging her comment thread, so I decided to write about it here on my own blog. Deborah writes:

"Another interesting thing about writing a yoga blog, as a yoga teacher, is that you start wondering at a certain point if things are too personal to share.  If you should present yourself in a more professional way.  I have friends who have gone on to open up studios and they have to think about their image.  So far I’ve always kept it down to earth here, sort of.  I mean, I do get a bit flighty once in a while, but overall I’m not trying to impress anybody.  

Oh the ways in which we fool ourselves.  In many ways it’s all about attention, isn’t it?

But once you set yourself up as a purveyor of yogic wisdom, it could get a bit harder to admit that you yelled at your kids in the supermarket or ate a hostess twinkie or something..."

Very interesting. Let me start by stating the obvious. In the above passage, Deborah identifies two sources of tension: 

(1) The tension between the yoga teacher role and the yoga blogger role; and 

(2) The tension between the yoga blogger/purveyor-of-yoga-wisdom role and our roles as "real" people with "real" lives. 

I'll talk about each of these two tensions in turn. Let's start with (1). Why might we feel that there is a tension between our roles as yoga bloggers and as yoga teachers? Perhaps in an ideal world, such a tension wouldn't (or shouldn't) exist: Whatever yoga stuff you talk about on your blog is also the yoga stuff that you teach and practice off-line. You know, talk the yoga talk and walk the yoga walk. 

But things are often a bit more complicated in the actual world. I know quite a few yoga bloggers who are also teachers, and who keep their teaching and blogging lives separate: They do not tell their students and, in many cases, their fellow yoga teachers as well, about the existence of their blogs. They are, in effect, having a sort of double yoga identity: the identity of yoga teacher, and the identity of yoga blogger. 

I don't mean to talk about this double identity in a negative or judgmental kind of way. In fact, during my brief stint as a yoga teacher last year, I also did not tell any of my students or fellow teachers about this blog. My reason for not doing so is this: I feel that this blog is a sort of experimental space in which I am free to think, speculate and express my opinions on anything I happen to think of in yoga. Some of these thoughts and opinions may be motivated by things that actually happened during my classes. They can range from fairly innocuous things (such as how best to teach mula bandha to beginners) to things that might be very sensitive in nature (such as teachers trashing other teachers or students, and what I should do about it). And many of these things may be too sensitive for the directly affected parties to read about, even if these parties are not named. For instance, here's a real-life incident which happened some time ago at a workshop I attended at this particular studio. Just before the workshop began, I overheard two teachers at the studio trashing Kino; I was basically sitting next to them as they did their trashing, so I couldn't not hear it even if I had wanted to. 

A few days after the incident, I wrote a post on this blog, in which I expressed my feelings about this trash-talking of somebody whom I highly regard. Besides Kino, I did not name any other names in my post. And I thought that was that. A couple of weeks later, to my, uh, surprise, one of the trash-talking teachers left an anonymous comment on my post, in which she called me out on my trashing her trashing of Kino (there should be a term for this... meta-trashing? Hahaha...) Which was really bizarre and weird... I mean, I didn't even tell either of these teachers about the existence of this blog. Yet she somehow found it, and was sufficiently offended by the anonymous reference to her to actually comment anonymously on my post!

Ah... the dangers of yoga blogging; definitely not something for the faint of heart :-) I hope I'm not boring  you with this long-drawn-out story. I guess what I'm trying to say is that, given my personal experiences, I can totally understand why bloggers who are also teachers might want to keep their blogging and teaching lives separate. Yoga blogging--at least, yoga blogging that is "real" and "authentic"--is by its very nature intimate and gritty in a way that yoga teaching will never be; at least not in this country, where students usually expect teachers to project a veneer of authority, and most teachers must project some such veneer in order to maintain healthy boundaries between their students and themselves. "Real" yoga blogging, almost by definition, involves shedding and removing these boundaries; indeed, what good is yoga blogging if your blog cannot serve as a "safe" space for your to freely express yourself and bounce ideas off your readers? 

So perhaps such a separation of yoga blogging and yoga teaching is inevitable for most blogger-teachers, because, at least for most of us, the yoga of blogging is not the same yoga as the yoga of teaching. But there is a part of me that can't help feeling that such a separation is artificial, contrived, and ultimately unsustainable in the long run. Even if nobody ever finds out about your other identity, the psychic toll from maintaining this double identity must take its toll on you at some point. 

I don't really have this problem right now, since I only practice on my own and blog about my practice, and about anything that happens to strike my fancy on any given day. But I can see how this can be a persistent issue for many of you out there. Any thoughts on this?           



I guess I'll also say a few things about (2), even though this post is already becoming way longer than I intended it  to be. Ideally, there should not be any tension between my role as a yoga blogger and my role as a real person living a real life (whatever that means)... I mean, I actually don't see myself as a purveyor of yogic wisdom. I'm just me, doing whatever practice I am doing now, and living whatever life I am living. And my blog is here simply for me to record whatever aspects of my practice and real life that I feel like recording. If you read it and like it, great. If you read it and don't like it and decide you don't ever want to read my blog anywhere... well, it is what it is. Simple, right?

But as with (1), things are also often more complicated in the actual world. How to explain this? Well, let me start by observing that in many people (including yours truly), the act of writing words in a public medium like the internet brings about a certain subtle, almost magical transformation in them. There is this almost subconscious desire on the part of the writer to want his words to present a certain part of himself, a part of himself that is more rational, more polished, and therefore, by default, more... enlightened, if you will. For many people, it is almost impossible to publicly express their own views in writing without at the same time making an almost subconscious effort to make their views more presentable and coherent and nice-sounding to any listener, potential or actual. In other words, writing and blogging is, for many people, an expression of what Nietzsche would call the will to power; in writing and publishing stuff, one expresses a will to present a better and more polished version of the everyday chaos of his nitty-gritty reality. And in so doing, one also represents oneself as being better or more "enlightened" than he might be in "real" life... Actually, I'm probably doing this right now, with my name-dropping of Nietzsche and shit...

Anyway, to cut a long story short, it is in this way that what started out for many people as a more or less innocent attempt to simply record the "real" aspects of one's practice and life on a blog subtly transforms itself over time into an attempt at appearing more polished and enlightened, and thus into an attempt at being a purveyor of yogic wisdom. Wow, that was a very long sentence. Do I make sense? I hope I do... 

But maybe not everybody goes down this slippery slope of going from a "real" blogger to being a purveyor of yogic wisdom. Maybe there is a way to prevent this slippage? I try my best to prevent myself from thus slipping, but I'm not sure if I'm always successful. Any thoughts about any of this?

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I just read this recent post by Shanna Small, titled "Ode to the Unauthorized, Uncertified Hometown Ashtanga Teacher". In a refreshingly straightforward and candid voice that makes me smile at many points, Shanna tells us why she believes that there is a place in the Ashtanga world for Ashtanga teachers who are neither authorized nor certified by KPJAYI. Shanna writes:

"Technically, you are not supposed to teach without the blessing of the Jois family. There are many good reasons for that which I will not go into for this blog. However, Have you seen the authorized/certified teacher list? None of those people live in Nutbush Tennessee,Elba Alabama or Charlotte North Carolina. If you are fortunate enough to have the money, time and babysitters available to travel, that is awesome. However, the average person does not.   

This brings us to the old argument that got many people kicked out of Sunday School . Is it possible for a person to be a Christian & know Jesus if they are never exposed to Christianity & can these people get into heaven? I am not saying that Ashtanga is the way to heaven, but if it is, & we all sit around and wait for a certified/authorized teacher to bless us with their presence, most of the world would wind up in the fiery pit."

What is the moral of Shanna's story thus far? Well, one conclusion we can draw from Shanna's story might be that if you happen to live in Nutbush Tennesse, Elba Alabama or Charlotte North Carolina (or Moorhead, Minnesota, for that matter), you would do well to get your ass ASAP to Mysore to study at the KPJAYI, so that the lack of authorized/certified teachers in these places will soon be rectified!

But I suspect I'm missing the point here (and deliberately so :-)). Shanna's point, as you can see, is that since there are only so many authorized and certified teachers around (and they tend to congregate in large urban centers, for some reason), people who live in smaller cities will not benefit from their presence and instruction. Rather than have all these people wait to do Ashtanga in their next lifetimes (and burn in some fiery pit in the meantime :-)), it would be far better for teachers who are not (yet?) authorized or certified to step up to the plate, so to speak, and offer the gift of Ashtanga to all these people who would otherwise never encounter it. Shanna expresses this point very eloquently when she writes:

"How are people to learn about Ashtanga and experience its benefits if they don't have access to it? Unauthorized teachers exist because there is a hole. There are areas where people want it and there is no one to teach it. It is not about fame, glory and money. Those who come in it for that quickly drop off because the dedication needed to practice Ashtanga doesn't appeal to the average yoga student. Those teachers who venture out to teach traditional Ashtanga are in it for love. 

I am a hometown yogi teaching without the Jois family blessing.  Like many, I fell in love with the practice & it changed me. People came to me wanting to know what I was doing different in my life. When I told them Ashtanga,they wanted to learn it so I taught them thus lighting the fire for many. Without the  hometown Ashtanga teacher, Ashtanga would not have spread the way it did & many people would never have realized its benefits."

But some people might say, "Look, I don't live close to a shala or to an authorized or certified teacher. But I already have my own Ashtanga home practice, and I love practicing at home; it does wonders for me. Why should I care about whether people around me do or do not do Ashtanga, so long as I myself do it and keep the flame alive?" Shanna has some, uh, not-so-nice things to say about these people (do "these people" include me, I wonder?):

"It is always funny to see the Ashtanga snobs come out of their caves when the authorized/certified teachers come into town. What they don't realize is that without the hometown teachers, these people wouldn't be here. There wouldn't be a demand. The hometown teachers created the buzz and lit the candle that drew the workshop attendees to the light. These are the creators and change makers.

But what impact does the Ashtanga snob have on the world? The person who refuses to share their practices or energy with others because of righteousness and superiority? They say they make this choice because they are true to the tradition, but how does their behavior actually help the tradition?"

Hmm... these are very strong and thoughtful words here. As you might know if you have been reading this blog for a while, I tried to make a foray into teaching Ashtanga for a while last year, but things didn't quite work out (see this post). Shanna's words here give me more food for thought in this area. Personally, I don't feel ready or in a good position to teach Ashtanga right now, mainly because of things in my personal and work life. But perhaps, from the viewpoint of Ashtanga, teaching others isn't just something that one chooses to do at one's leisure; perhaps, as Shanna points out here, there is a bigger reason and bigger purpose to be served by teaching others and leading them to the light of Ashtanga yoga. Well, I can't say much more now, because with many important matters (like this one), there comes a point where words become superfluous, even meaningless; you either do it or don't do it, that's all. But I'll keep all this in mind.    

But let's move to some less weighty matters for now. Exactly two years ago on this day, I wrote my first post on this blog: Which means that Yoga in the Dragon's Den is now two years old! Happy Birthday, Yoga in the Dragon's Den! Many thanks to all of you for reading this blog and keeping it alive with your presence :-)

But this also means that this blog might be entering a difficult period of its existence: The Terrible Twos! So this may be a good time and place to issue a warning:

Well, there isn't that much more I can say right now. We'll just have to wait and see what terrible things come out of this blog in the coming year...  

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A very interesting thing happened to me after practice this morning. After savasana, I got up from my Mysore rug, and was floating around the house in my post-practice lightness/glow. I really love that post-practice almost-unbearable lightness of being. For me, this almost-unbearable lightness typically lasts for about 20 to 30 minutes. After I take a shower, the lightness mellows somewhat, to be replaced by a feeling of contentment. And then I step into the hustle and bustle of the "real" world. And then the dust--both physical and mental--of the "real" world settles over this feeling of lightness-contentment, and the rest of the day becomes a battle to retain and remember this feeling as much as I can.

But I digress. As I was saying, after practice this morning, I was moving around in my post-practice lightness/glow. While I was enveloped in this glow, my fiancee came up to me, and asked me what my plans were. I replied that I was going to take a shower, and then go downstairs to the coffeeshop to have an espresso (I have my own special interpretation of Sharath's famous "No Coffee, No Prana" dictum: For me, this means that if you practice and then drink coffee, the ability of the caffeine to circulate prana throughout the system is greatly enhanced. But I understand that many Ashtangis--and probably Sharath himself too--differ. But it's okay. Whatever works for you :-)...).

And then my fiancee said, "How about vacuuming the house?" I smiled sheepishly, hemmed and hawed a little, and then... I agreed! Now this may not strike you as anything out of the ordinary or even interesting. After all, Saucha (cleanliness) is one of the niyamas. So cleaning the house ought to be something that comes naturally to an Ashtangi, right? Well, yes, probably. Except that I have always disliked cleaning, and basically try to get away with cleaning as little as possible. Which means I probably don't score very high in the Saucha department... actually, here's an idea: Maybe this is something that Yoga Teacher Training Programs out there can implement. You know, have the teacher trainees live in some kind of residential setting for a certain period of time, and have the trainer rate each trainee on how he or she performs in each of the yamas and niyamas. But then how would you assess somebody's performance in Brahmacharya? Maybe have a fairly attractive fellow trainee of the opposite sex (or same sex, if the trainee is homosexual) parade naked in front of the trainee who is being assessed, and see how well he or she holds up under temptation? But then the stakes are probably too high here; who would want to volunteer himself or herself to be the "temptation"? And this is probably sexual harassment, anyway; the studio or yoga school holding the training will probably get their pants sued off (talk about Brahmacharya...) and be forced to shut down.

But I didn't mean to go on this tangent about Brahmacharya. Can't seem to keep my thoughts straight today. As I was saying, I've always disliked cleaning, and probably don't score high in the saucha department. But my fiancee picked the right time to ask me to clean; if she had asked me later in the day, I probably would have found some excuse or other and put it off indefinitely. But, as things stood, she asked me when I was in that post-practice blissed-out state, when the reading on my Asshole-meter is at its daily lowest. What Asshole-meter? You may be thinking. Well, some years ago, at a workshop in Florida, David Williams said something along these lines, "Everyday, you get on your mat and do whatever practice you can do. And then you go into savasana. When you come out of savasana, you are in this blissed-out state. Today, you may be able to stay in this state for 10 minutes after savasana. And then you go back to being the asshole you are. Maybe tomorrow you will be able to stay in this state for 11 minutes before lapsing back into being an asshole. And so and so forth."

These weren't the exact words that Williams used. But I think they are pretty close; I'm very sure he actually used the word "asshole." The idea is that, over a period of time (10 years, 20 years, maybe one lifetime, or even two) of consistent practice, the amount of time in the day when you are blissed out will slowly equal and maybe even surpass the amount of time you are an asshole. Finally, you will get to the state when your "asshole time" is very short, even negligible to the point of being, for all intents and purposes, non-existent. And maybe this is when you will finally achieve Self-realization. I don't know for sure, but I think this is the idea.

But all this is just me. Maybe none of this really applies to you. Perhaps you love cleaning and score very high in the Saucha department. If so, more power to you, and please ignore everything I've said above. But maybe you will still find all this entertaining, in some way, in which case you would still have gotten something good out of reading all this. :-)

In other news: Several Ashtanga bloggers have written a few wonderful posts on how to start an Ashtanga practice (at home or at a shala): Check out these posts by Grimmly, Maya Lassiter, and New York Yogini. Maybe I will also write a post about this in the next couple of days: I'm too blogged out right now, and also have a few other things to get done today.

Speaking of home practice... As you will know if you read this blog regularly, I practice mostly at home. Sometime last year, a studio near my home started a once-a-week Mysore program on Saturdays. For a while, it was quite well-attended. I also attended whenever I could (see this post). But since the beginning of the summer, the owners of the studio have suspended the Mysore program due to personal things going on in their lives. And as far as I can see, there are no plans to restart the program.

None of this really affects me; I still happily do my daily home practice. But in some corner of my mind, I feel this urge to do something to get some semblance of the Ashtanga flame burning again in my part of the world. And recently, a friend also remarked to me half in jest, "What good is having a beautiful practice if you don't do anything with it?" Hmm... are you supposed to do anything with a beautiful practice? But maybe he has a point. And besides, as I mentioned, I do feel this urge to contribute in some tangible way to spreading the Ashtanga practice, beyond blogging about it.

But due to my present circumstances, actually starting an official Mysore program myself is not feasible. I live in an apartment, which means opening my house is not an option, as there simply isn't enough space. My finances are limited now, which makes renting a space unfeasible. And besides, I am also trying to devote more time to getting more research done, with the aim of eventually landing that thing called a tenure-track position. All of which makes taking extra time out beyond my daily practice to teach not a very viable option.

I have toyed with some ideas here and there. For instance, I have thought about going out to a park nearby on some mornings to do my practice, and maybe, in this way, attracting interest in the practice in an organic fashion and teaching whoever wants to learn it. But I wonder if people will just look at me and think I'm some kind of a Chinese Yogic Freakshow ("Welcome! Welcome to the one and only Chinese Yoga Freakshow in the Upper Midwest! Featuring the One and Only Ashtanga Fundamentalist in these parts..."), and then just walk on. Then again, maybe this is what David Swenson and his brother Doug had to contend with in their early yoga days, when they practiced in a park in Texas...

Anyway, I'm just thinking aloud here. If you have any thoughts and/or suggestions, I'll love to hear them.

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I just read Bindy's latest post, in which she commented on this recent article on MindBodyGreen titled "I Love Yoga... But It Didn't Help Me Love My Body." I haven't been following much news or yoga trivia online lately; I've been focusing on and blogging mainly about my own personal life and practice. But I think this article brings up a couple of issues that are worth thinking about.

As you can probably tell from the title, the author of the article, "a high-energy former collegiate athlete", relates her own story about how yoga hasn't helped her to overcome her body image issues, despite whatever other good things it may have done for her. I don't feel like I should argue with her experience. After all, when all is said and done, yoga is probably like everything else under the sun: It works for some people in some ways, it works for others in other ways, and it simply doesn't do anything at all for others. And I probably have body image issues of my own too, so I won't comment on what she has to say about body image issues either.

What I do want to comment on is this rather innocuous thing she said somewhere in the middle of the article:

'As a yoga teacher and a soccer coach – two positions in which I want to be a positive role model – I often end up feeling like a failure if I look in the mirror and think, “Eh.”'

What's with this need to be a "positive role model" in yoga? I mean, sure, if you are looking at being a yoga teacher on a purely professional level, then being a yoga teacher is, in this way, very much like being a high school math teacher or a gym teacher. A math teacher teaches math, a yoga teacher teaches yoga. Just as a high school math teacher would want to model certain behaviors or attitudes that her students would hopefully emulate, a yoga teacher as a professional would probably also want to model certain behaviors or attitudes that her students would emulate. On a purely technical physical level, these might include things like proper alignment in asana, proper breathing, etc. And on a slightly less physical level, these would also include things like having a love for the practice. And perhaps there are also things that the teacher should not model, such as showing favoritism to particular students, fraternalizing with particular students, or having inappropriate sexual relations with students.    

And the list of things that one should role model or not role model as a professional yoga teacher goes on and on. I suspect that one can probably write an entire book on all these things, if one cares to do so.

Now is it just me, or are you starting to feel that talking about all these things to model or not to model as a professional yoga teacher is getting a bit exhausting? If, like me, you are also starting to feel a bit exhausted from thinking in this way, but don't know why you are feeling this way, please allow me to enlighten you (I know, I'm being very immodest today. Please bear with me...). Well, here's why this way of thinking is so exhausting: Being a yoga teacher is more than just being a "professional". It is true that on a purely practical everyday level, yoga teachers, like anybody else who tries to make a living teaching something, need to be held accountable for their actions and practices in the classroom. Hence there need to be standards governing yoga teaching as a profession, standards which tell teachers what they should or should not do or model, and which protect students and teachers alike.

But ultimately, being a yoga teacher is more than just a profession. It is ultimately a... I don't have a name for what I am trying to describe here. Well, let me put it this way: When was the last time you heard somebody say that she wants to be a yoga teacher so that she can be a positive role model as a yoga teacher? Doesn't this just sound... weird? I mean, in the universe in which I live, people decide to be yoga teachers because they have personally felt the power of the practice within their own lives, and they feel a strong desire or calling to share this powerful thing with others. It just so happens that the way to go about doing this is to become a yoga teacher, and to accept all the responsibilities and roles that come with being in this position. It is only when the individual decides to take this step of sharing her practice with others that all these considerations of adhering to certain professional standards and being a role model comes into play. Not the other way around: People don't want to become role models, and then decide to become yoga teachers because being a yoga teacher fits this mold of being a role model. Or at least they shouldn't: I dare say that anybody who thinks in this way--who puts becoming a role model before being somebody who simply loves the practice and wants to share it with others--is setting herself up for occupational burnout. How can she not, when she is preoccupied all the time about what she should or should not do, or what she should or should not role model? And this seems to be what is going on with the author of this article. And maybe, just maybe, it could also be aggravating her body image issues ("Am I looking as fit and healthy as I should be? Am I as slim and lithe as I should be? Do I look like I care too much about being fit and healthy and slim and lithe? Oh no! What should I do?! What should I think?!...").

To use a very cliched phrase: Where's the love? Where's the heart that burns for the practice in any of this? But maybe I simply live in a very different universe from the one everybody else seems to be inhabiting. Does this mean I'm crazy? Or maybe everybody else is...         

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Literally. During the finishing backbends this morning, I tried to follow Kino's instructions in her recent video as closely as possible in order to grab my ankles in Chakrabandhasana (see this post). First, I grabbed my left ankle while keeping the right hand firmly grounded in the mat. Then I grabbed my right ankle while keeping the left hand firmly grounded in the mat. Finally, I walked both my hands towards the ankles and grabbed them. I succeeded in grabbing both ankles for one (maybe two) breaths, before I felt something pull my entire body forward... Next thing I knew, I found myself on my knees, like a samurai waiting to be beheaded.

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I was just reading this recent article that the NYT wrote about Eddie Stern and his Broome street shala/temple. It made me think of my last visit to NYC, in December 2009. I was visiting in the city for a few days, and I would go to Eddie's shala to do my practice first thing every morning. By the time I got there every morning (between 6 to 6:30 a.m.), there were already many other Ashtangis who were there and way into their practices. The energy in the room was intense yet relaxed at the same time. Everybody was super-focused on their individual practices, yet, at the same time, because everybody knew what exactly they had to do (and knew that Eddie and his capable assistant were watching over them), there was this feeling of being able to give oneself over completely to the practice. Good times those were, as Yoda might say (I seem to be in a Yoda state of mind these past couple of days :-)).

I also watched the video interview with Eddie that is embedded in the article. Good stuff. There were a few things Eddie said that really resonated with me:

(1) "I don't even now feel qualified to teach yoga. I'm doing my practicing and exploring."

Well, if somebody like Eddie Stern can say that, then I don't feel so bad about my lack of success thus far in the yoga business, being the neophyte that I am :-) But seriously, what's the hurry? I honestly feel very privileged and fortunate to be able to do my own practice at my own pace without having the responsibility of teaching others. And there's a lot to learn yet. If this sounds a little selfish, well, maybe it is. But being selfish is not a crime.

(2) "I look around on the streets, and I look at people in their 60s and 70s and 80s, and I think to myself, 'How do I want to be when I get to be that age?'"

This really hit the nail on the head for me. Actually, it was this thought that really got me into yoga back in grad school. I stumbled upon yoga in grad school when I went into a power yoga class in the campus gym more or less by accident (for the not-so-glorious details of this story, see this post).

Soon after I started yoga, I found myself looking at many of my professors and asking myself, "Is this what I want to be like in 20 or 30 years?" I looked at their physical conditions (which, frankly speaking, left much to be desired), and compared their physical conditions with those of senior teachers like David Swenson or Richard Freeman. And it seemed pretty obvious, at least to me, who I would rather be like 20 or 30 years down the road.

Now, before you start accusing me of being ageist or physical-condition-ist (or whatever "ist" there is out there in this very politically correct society in which we live; honestly, political correctness can be so stifling at times. But this is something for another post...), let me bring your attention to something else that Eddie says in the video:

(3) "Yoga is both physical and spiritual... [People say] 'I want to be super fit, I want to wear great clothes, I want to be beautiful and forever young.' Okay, fine, let those things be there. But infuse those things with some deeper purpose: You want to have a fit body, so you can do good work in the world."

This, again, hits the nail on the head for me. This was also one of those things about yoga that really attracted me to it when I first started practicing. At that time, I had started noticing (at least in the part of this country that I lived in) that many people (especially so-called intellectual types) have a very curious two-fold attitude towards the physical body and physical wellness. On the one hand, they seem to be more or less resigned to the fact that, because they are so dedicated to their professional careers or whatever it is that they are doing for a living, their bodies are bound to break down before their time, and there's nothing they can do about it. On the other hand, they also seem to regard with suspicion anybody who is fit or healthy or has a nice body: It's almost as if they think that if you have the time to be fit and have a nice body, you must not be working hard enough in your professional career. Or maybe all this is just my perception of people's attitudes from listening to the way many so-called intellectual types speak rather disdainfully of anything physical. You may disagree with my observation here.

At any rate, at least for me, yoga offered a way to resolve this false dilemma: You owe it to yourself to become strong and healthy if you want to be "successful" and do good in the world, both for yourself and others. I think B.K.S Iyengar said pretty much the same thing somewhere in Light on Yoga; to paraphrase, I think he said that asana functions to develop a strong and healthy body that you can then dedicate to the service of God.  

(4) When asked by the interviewer, "Have you ever had any kind of serious injury?" Eddie nonchalantly replied, "Serious? No, no..." And then went on to add, "I once had a rib popped out of place for three years, but I survived." 

Three years?! Whoa... that's some courage and faith in the practice. I mean, if you were to tell anybody on the street that yoga might give you an injury that's going to take three years to heal, I can bet almost anything that that person would probably gasp in horror, and then say, "Well... why do yoga, then?" Of course, there's also the possibility that that person might be William J. Broad; in which case, you will have another one of those wrecking-your-body articles coming (picture this upcoming NYT article: "Ashtanga can pop your ribs like popcorn").

Anyway, I would love to be able to ask Eddie how he managed to find the strength and the courage to continue practicing through something like this for three years. I'm not saying this to glorify injury. But the fact of the matter is that despite their best efforts, many Ashtangis will face pain or injury at some point in their practice careers. So rather than pretend that pain and injury is this bogeyman that one can avoid if one were "careful" enough or "evolved" enough, it might be more productive to talk about what to do when (notice I said "when", not "if") one does face pain or injury. And it seems that Eddie might have some useful insights to offer in this area.

Oh, and speaking of pain and injury, my SI joint is feeling quite a bit better (see previous post). It turns out that paying more attention to rotating the thighs inward during upward dog helps a lot. Who knew?  

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Earlier today, I received an email from the owner of the yoga studio at which I have been teaching Ashtanga for a couple of months (wow, it's been a couple of months already? Time flies when one is having fun, doesn't it? :-)) The email was sent to the few of us who teach yoga classes at the studio. She informs us that starting December 31st, she will no longer be leasing the studio, because the class numbers thus far have not been enough to support the cost of leasing the space. Since she did not specify any further plans to relocate/find a new place to house the studio, I take the email to be a euphemistic way of saying that she is closing down the studio. So starting from December 31st, I will once again no longer officially be a yoga teacher, and will be devoting more time to my practice and self-healing. Which is good for me personally.

Nevertheless, as I was contemplating this development earlier today, I couldn't help noticing how there always seems to be a certain disconnect between yoga as a personal practice of self-realization/self-care, and yoga as a business. For the last couple of months, there have never been more than three people showing up for my class on any one evening. In fact, most of the time, it's one or two individuals. But these one or two individuals show up almost every week; which means that the practice (or at least the way I teach it) speaks to them enough to get them to keep coming back. In my opinion, I feel that this is a success. When I first taught yoga years ago in grad school, I was constantly preoccupied with how many people showed up for my classes. But since I became an Ashtangi, I had decided that if I were ever to teach again, I would try to stick as closely to the Ashtanga method as possible, no matter how many or how few people show up. Thus, I feel that if I can get even one person to appreciate the method and make it a part of his or her life, I would have succeeded. And I have.

But of course, things do not work this way from a business point of view. From a business point of view, there are real financial concerns to address. From such a point of view, a yoga studio is worth running only if its operations can generate enough revenue to cover the overhead costs. And the main way for a yoga studio to generate said revenue is through students (unless, of course, the studio chooses to do something lucrative in addition to its regular classes; something like, say, a Yoga Alliance sanctioned Teacher Training. But let's not go there now, okay? :-)). Anyway, what all this means is that if a yoga class does not bring in enough students, it is not a success, from a business point of view.

Some of you seasoned teachers who are reading this are probably thinking: Duh! All this is so obvious! How can we survive and pay the bills if we don't have enough students?! What planet do you live on, Nobel? (Answer: Maybe I'm from Mars. My skin seems to be turning redder by the second as I write this...) And of course, I totally anticipate and understand this reaction on your part. All I can say is: Gosh, I'm glad I don't teach yoga for a living. I'm glad it's "only" a practice for me. To all of you yoga teachers out there, you have my most sincere respect. I take my hat off to you.

 

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