Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Yoga & Capitalism: Where to Draw the Line?


Although last Tuesday's Yoga on the Great Lawn event in NYC was sadly rained out, it's nonetheless produced a fascinating - and I think really valuable - discussion in the print media and blogosphere concerning the relationship between yoga and corporate capitalism in America.

For those who missed it, this was designed to be a Guinness Book of World Records-worthy largest-yoga-class-in-the-world-ever event. And even though it had to be canceled after 10 minutes due to a rain storm, it met this goal, with 9,000 of the 13,000 people who had signed up attending.

The brief opening/closing ceremony was led by Elena Brower, a NYC-based Anusara teacher with a large and devoted following. Elena gracefully made the best out of a difficult situation, leading the class through a VERY brief practice before wrapping it up and promising to meet again soon.

Later, however, she caught some flak for her breezy dismissal of critics who objected to the heavy corporate sponsorship of the event, telling the New York Times that "the notion that capitalism and yoga are in conflict is old think."

Well, wait a minute. You don't have to be a "yoga traditionalist" - or even a never-say-die-Marxist - to feel that the issues involved merit more in-depth discussion than that.

While I don't want to pick on Ms. Brower - undoubtedly she has more sophisticated reasons for her decisions regarding corporate sponsorship than came across here - her "old think" quote does encapsulate a stick-your-head-in-the-sand, "it's all good" mentality that I find all-too-common in the yoga community.

While it may seem mean to further rain on the parade of the Great Lawn event, some important questions have been raised about the nature of its corporate sponsorship: 
  • Adidas, who sponsors Elena Brower as a product "Ambassador" and outfitted several other high-profile teachers at the event, is under fire for using kangaroo leather in their shoes. Not only is the kangaroo industry reportedly inhumane, but the leather's considered unnecessary to make their product.
  • All 9,000 Great Lawn attendees were apparently offered free "Jet Blue" sponsored yoga mats, SmartWater bottles, and goodie bags. At this point, I think almost everyone knows that plastic water bottles in particular are bad for our health and horrible for the environment.
And the biggest issue: what kind of culture is being created when the world's largest yoga gathering seems to be about nothing more than feeling good and having a nice time?  posted a penetrating critique on his Facebook page that deserves to be quoted in full:

It was exciting that 9,000 people gathered in Central Park to practice yoga and I have been waiting for an event like this for some time. But it my opinion the event was sadly squandered. All the media was there, CNN, the NY Times, everybody – the cameras were pointing. For the first time in history the world put the microphone at the mouth of the larger yoga community in America. But what was the message given? We are celebrating the Solstice. We want more people to practice yoga. That’s it? We have nothing more to say to the world but that in 2010? With the oil gusher reminding us all that solar power is desperately needed, 9,000 people doing salutations to the sun could have brought the world an unforgettable visual and call to invest in a nonpolluting technology. And with hurricane season kicking up in the Gulf, we could have bought attention back to the people of Haiti. Let us come together again in mass. Soon. But next time let’s show what we stand for. And yes we can do it without corporate sponsors. Martin Luther King did.

In truth, I'm too jaded to hope that a yoga equivalent to the March on Washington will happen anytime soon. I believe that corporate underwriting will continue - and I'm comfortable with that up to a point. The views that it will help bring more people to yoga, that it's part of our society, and that it's not always necessarily such a bad thing all make sense to me. 

BUT. Some lines do need to be drawn. The plastic water bottles, the kangaroos - when concrete objections to particular corporate practices come up, they deserve to be taken VERY seriously. If the yoga community is to be involved with corporate America - and I agree, it's a done deal, like it or not - the ethical dimensions of each exchange need to be carefully considered.

"Om"-ing to heal the oil spill just doesn't cut it when you're simultaneously distributing thousands of plastic water bottles whose production eats up 47 million gallons of oil a year.


Friday, June 18, 2010

And Now for Something Completely Different: Reading Robert Love’s The Great Oom as a Yoga Insider

Robert Love’s The Great Oom: The Improbable Birth of Yoga in America recounts the funny, freaky, fascinating tale of Pierre Bernard – a.k.a., the “Omnipotent Oom,” a taunting label slapped on him by the “yellow press” (the equivalent of today’s rabid talk radio) of the day. If you’re a yoga enthusiast or history buff, buy this book – and if you’re not, consider reading it anyway, because you may find yourself happily sucked in to a really interesting story.

Bernard was born in the small town of Leon, Iowa in 1876. Through some strange synchronicity, as a young teen he connected with one Sylvais Hamati, who was one of the less than 800 Indian immigrants who came to the U.S. during 1820-1900. And not only that: Hamati was probably the only one of these 800 (there’s no way of knowing) who also happened to be a full-fledged Tantrik Yogi.

Bernard studied Tantrik Yoga with Hamati up to 3 hours a day for 18 years. He was, to say the least, totally into it: by 1898, when only 21 years old, Bernard had developed enough mind-body control to perform public demonstrations in which he would go into a deep, death-like yogic trance. Then, he would have doctors stick huge steel surgical needles through his earlobes, cheek, and tongue. After that, they would sew his lips together with thread.

ICK. Pretty stomach turning, really. But also amazing. The towel around Bernard’s, Love writes, would “turn dark with blood.” He would stay in his trance. The thread and needles would be removed from his head. Then, he would stop the bleeding, come out of his trance, and be perfectly fine.

Weird. But when you stop to think about it, frigging amazing. Yogis today certainly aren’t doing anything like that (not that we would necessarily want to . . . ). But. Still. Love also reports that Bernard could “slice his finger deeply with knife or razor” until blood “spurted” – and then, without any external intervention, stop the blood and heal the wound instantly.

Let’s pause for a moment here to note something that you won’t find in your regular book review: that is that Love, who’s a very accomplished journalist, for the most part writes about Bernard/”Oom” in a highly detached and ironic way. Which makes for an entertaining and often quite humorous read. But it’s a very, very different perspective from that of a dedicated yoga practitioner.

This means that some really juicy stuff – such as the deeper medical and cultural implications of understanding yoga as a mind-body practice that might empower one to spontaneously heal deep flesh wounds – is completely ignored. Love writes about Bernard’s demonstration of this “Kali Mudra,” or yogic death trance, like it’s a carnival sideshow – just some sort of freaky joke. (Interestingly, it’s in a sense an updated version of how Hatha yoga was often viewed during the late 19th century, when it was commonly portrayed as either an evil Indian occult art or a form of contortionist sideshow entertainment.) The fact that the ability to spontaneously heal like that is weird, mind-blowing, and inexplicable from the perspective of mainstream science – not to mention our cultural understanding of reality – is completely lost because Love is so good at writing the story as spoof.

More serious minded practitioners may be put off by Love’s often mocking tone. In the end, he does seem to genuinely admire Bernard’s personal audacity and counter-cultural influence. But he also has a really, really good time making fun of the weirder aspects of “Oom” and his followers – who, as the story moves on, may sound discomfortingly like a contemporary cynic’s view of yoga devotees today (e.g., dilettante women who find “life boring, with too much time and money” on their hands).

But this needn’t be a barrier to reading, enjoying, and learning from the book in one’s own way. For me, this meant reading with something of a dual consciousness: enjoying the book on its own terms, while also recognizing that this is very much an outsider’s view of yoga. So as I read, I would also reinterpret Love’s story – which has never been told before and is truly interesting and valuable – from a practitioner’s perspective, looking for interesting subplots and untold stories embedded in this prodigiously researched work.

In a forthcoming post, I’ll talk about one such subplot that, while certainly in the book, can be interestingly reinterpreted from more of an insider perspective: that is, the shift from a fascination with the occult and “sex magick” to a dedication to using yoga as a path to holistic health and the spirituality of everyday life.

Illustrations: Book cover link to Amazon.com; Oom in Kali Mudra death trance; 1935 map of Oom's Clarkstown Country Club in Nyack, NY, from the Nyack News & Views.

For more information on the Great (a.k.a., Omnipotent) Oom, check out this website: http://omnipotentoom.com/ - "where the philosopher can dance and the fool may wear a thinking cap" (love that quote! - a motto of Oom's Clarkstown Country Club).

Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Pep Talk for (Physically) Inflexible Yogis (& for those who think about doing yoga but don’t feel flexible enough for it)


OK. It may not matter to anyone else but me. But I’m going to begin with my own personal bombshell drop: I’ve been practicing yoga for years (more than I care to mention in this context) and still can’t do the splits. Or stick my foot behind my head. And, with my tight shoulders, an advanced pose like Eka Pada Viparita Dandasana (a.k.a., “Vip”)? – yeah, right, well, I’m thinking, maybe in my next life, if I’m lucky.

True, I know, for most of the population, just touching your toes would be a tremendous coup. But it’s hard not to measure yourself against your peer group – which, in my case, includes a lot of friends popping effortlessly into Vip. So, even though my beginning yoga students may think that I’m really flexible, I know that I’m really not – at least, not on the terms that matter to my often noisy ego.

But, hey, it’s just another opportunity to learn, right? So: here’s my Top 10 “Reasons Why it’s OK to be an Inflexible Yogi (or Aspiring Yoga Student)” – (drum roll, please):

1. Let’s start with the concrete, mundane, but very important fact that, on the whole, naturally inflexible bodies are less likely to get injured in yoga practice. Why? Our muscles and joints are more stable – much as we’d like to, we simply can’t throw our bodies into radical poses. That reduces the likelihood of having our muscles rip and tear, or joints thrown out of alignment.

2. The astute reader may have noticed the reference to “naturally inflexible” bodies. Pause for a moment and let that sink in. There is a natural, biologically determined range of flexibility. It’s not just that you are less dedicated – or less enlightened. 

The benefit here: if you’re naturally inflexible you have a vested interest in embracing this aspect of human diversity – sort of a biological multicultural cred booster . . .

3. Hmmm, nonetheless, 10 reasons is going to be hard. But here’s another: once we inflexible types do get in the habit of yoga, our bodies tighten up again so fast that we want to keep practicing every day! I skipped yesterday and can feel it in my body right now as I type – stiffness, contraction – and I want to get back to my mat simply to feel more physically open again. 

4. For those who get to the point of becoming yoga teachers, being physically inflexible may make it easier to connect with the many students coming in with similar issues – we know what it’s like to struggle with feeling inadequate because you can’t do some move that others around you can easily do.

5. Traditionally, Hatha yoga was always a bit suspect in the larger cannon of Indian yogic practices, as it too easily produces a preoccupation with the body that can knock you off your spiritual path. Well, we naturally inflexible types have a hard time being too proud about our bodies, at least in the context of the gung-ho yoga community, which is full of people doing really cool stuff that we can’t do. So, a bit of a built-in insurance policy against at least some of the temptations of the flesh . . . 

6. Help with Satya, or truth telling. As in, well all that’s fine enough, but really, I still wish that I could do a mad Vip.

7. More help with Satya: that’s so true that it’s hard for me to keep coming up with reasons about why it’s OK to be an inflexible yogi.

8. OK, only three more. Here’s an important one: as you get more advanced in yoga – on the internal experiential level, as opposed to the what-cool-poses-can-you-do level – it’s more and more all about using asana to process your emotions, access your subconscious, and connect with Spirit. You start to realize that really, how flexible you are doesn’t matter – at all. Being naturally inflexible gives you an added incentive to embrace that realization ☺.

9. I think of someone amazing like Matthew Sanford, an inspiring yoga teacher with paralysis due to a tragic car accident. I think of the untold millions of people struggling with basic survival issues every day. I get out of my egotistical box and am humbled to see how worrying about something as trivial as whether or not I can do Vip is a luxury that most people will never be able to afford.

10. Yoga is not gymnastics. The measure of a good practice has no correlation to the measure of your physical flexibility. There’s much bigger fish to fry. Anything that can help me keep coming back to the deeper dimensions of the practice is, really and truly, a blessing. Even when it’s something as ultimately trivial as physical flexibility, yoga enables me to learn how my limitations can become my teachers, and through that process, eventually if paradoxically evolve into strengths.

Note: Above image, the mantra of Avalokiteshvara, OM MANI PADME HUM, in Tibetan script on the petals of a lotus with the seed syllable HRI in the center, created by Christopher Fynn, 2008. 

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Yoga on My Mind (Or, A Brief History of How I Unexpectedly Came to Find Myself Blogging About Yoga)

It’s a funny thing for someone who’s gotten so into yoga, but I’ve always loved to live in my head.

On second thought (ha ha - pun intended), let me amend that. After years and years of yoga, I’m actually no longer at all interested in living “in” my head – that is, using my brain in a way that feels cut off from my body.

I am, however, very interested in more consciously merging my mind and my body. Thinking and feeling. Meditating and moving. Harnessing the thinking part of my brain to its intuitive capacities. Using that integrated awareness to explore my being and the world around me.

To me, this absolutely does not mean “turning off” my brain. Instead, I want to learn to better fine-tune the frequencies of my mind just as I’ve learned adjust the position of my feet, legs, hips, spine, shoulders, arms, neck, and head in asana practice.

Right now, my interest in bringing my mind more fully and deliberately into yoga feels like coming full circle.

*********

Growing up, I loved losing myself in my imagination: reading, writing, drawing, daydreaming, making up complicated games with cards or stuffed animals. There were infinite worlds that could be explored in my head. And they were reliably fascinating, inviting, magical.

The “real” world was often much less welcoming. Growing up in a family that required emotional suppression turned my natural tendency to enjoy using my mind into an engine for building a brain-centered fortress, creating an internal realm that was rich, interesting, and safely distant from the much more disturbing one “outside.”

Growing up to pursue a Ph.D. and academic career was, on the whole, affirming. It allowed me to turn something that I was good at and felt comfortable with – studying, reading, writing, thinking – into a way to find a place in the adult world and make a living. While I certainly had my dissatisfactions, it was a job track that fit me better than most.

Soon after becoming an assistant professor, I started my first weekly yoga class. Despite having a solid routine of running and working out at the gym, I felt some deep internal voice calling me to yoga. I didn’t know why or think about it much. But once I started listening – even just a little bit – a seed was planted that would continue to grow.

Life went on, taking me through multiple moves, career changes, and children. In an on-again, off-again way, I kept coming back to yoga, taking whatever classes fit in to my working mom schedule. I studied Iyengar, learned the Ashtanga primary series, did lots of Vinyasa Flow classes, and eventually developed a home practice.

For me, it was Forrest Yoga that took my practice to the next level. Not too long after deciding to focus on that method (the first time I had ever made that sort of commitment), I started having what I could only think of as “weird experiences”: vivid emotional flashbacks in hip openers, psychological breakthroughs in inversions, exploring my inner being as if I were travelling through outer space in Savasana.

Although I had had profound experiences doing yoga before, this level of intensity was new. And I loved it. Talk about connecting to a rich, fascinating, mysterious, magical, internal world – Eureka. I had found it.

My brain-based fortress – which over time had become more and more narrowly concentrated on building up work-related analytic skills – started breaking down. Pretty quickly, I developed an entirely new receptivity to the language of “spirituality” – a terminology that I had previously found, to say the least, off-putting.

But I really couldn’t think of any other words other than those associated with spirituality that touched on the new levels of experience I was accessing through yoga.

This was a huge shift for me. In the academic world that I was a part of, religion is (with some exceptions) held in low esteem – and spirituality is not even worth mentioning. Because in a culture hyper-dedicated to science, rationality, and “the life of the mind,” it seems way, way too flaky and New Age-y.

Nonetheless, with the help of my yoga teachers and a radically ecumenical church I had become involved with, I opened up to letting this new dimension of experience become a more and more important part of my life.

*********

After a work trajectory that I had committed to unexpectedly imploded, I found myself wondering what to do next.

What I really wanted to do was to write a book on American yoga. I had written one book and really wanted do another. But it didn’t seem very practical. Nonetheless, after much angst-ridden soul searching, I decided to try it anyway.

The fact that yoga was so dramatically reorienting my understanding of myself – not to mention reality in general – made me want to understand it better. I decided to take a teacher training with Ana Forrest to deepen my practice, while at the same time moving forward with my own research and writing agenda.

Time went on. Shockingly (at least to me – no one else seemed to find it so), I found myself teaching yoga, writing a book proposal, and finding an agent. Which brings us more or less to the present moment, in which I find myself experimenting with writing this blog – yet another activity that I never, ever imagined that I would pursue.

So, coming full circle: while yoga broke me out of living in my head, it also inspired me to start using my mind in new ways.

One involves writing this book about American yoga, which blends my background as a professor who wrote and taught about American history and culture with my ongoing involvement with yoga. Another, and really much more important way is becoming more knowledgeable about how my mind works, and more skillful at shifting mental gears and states of consciousness both on and off the mat.

Both connect me once again to that infinite fascination and richness that can be accessed through my mind – but this time, I hope, in a way that’s newly integrated with the rest of my being, as well as the world around me.
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