Saturday, January 22, 2011

Slim Calm Sexy Yoga Round II: What I’ve Learned & Where I Hope I’m Going

I know, I know. Most everyone who even caught a whiff of the acrid smoke generated by the fire that burst out over the launch of Tara Stiles' last summer doesn’t want to go anywhere near that topic again. Even if you weren’t singed by the sparks or upset by the flame throwing, you probably ended up feeling burned out by the experience. As a participant-observer in this strange new culture of contemporary yoga, I know that I certainly arrived at a feeling of: Let’s just give it a REST.



But as I’m wont to do, I kept on thinking about it. And today’s New York Times story about Ms. Stiles’ skyrocketing popularity has made me want to share a bit about where that’s taken me.

Because my perspective on the whole commercialization-of-yoga debate has been shifting. And since the SCS debacle was the most recent epicenter of it, it’s a good (if dicey) topic to revisit in the course of rethinking the whole thing.

So: At first, I found the and burn-bra-fat-and-become-a-size-00 marketing that I discovered in conjunction with the SCS launch horrifying. Yes, really. That’s not too strong a word. As an oldster babe in the new cultural woods that had been busily growing up around yoga while I was off practicing in my little subcultural bubble, I had really had no idea that such things were happening. So, it came as a bit of a shock.

And my gut reaction was pretty negative. This isn’t yoga! This is BAD! But then I started to realize that this is a new wave. And that maybe it’s counterproductive to fight the tide. And that maybe I should listen more closely to people who were saying that it was lifting them up and helping them. And that maybe I could learn something valuable by wading through the internal wave of discomfort and reactivity that the whole thing was generating in me.

Just to be clear, this doesn’t mean that I now buy into the view that thinking critically about what’s happening in yoga culture is “judgmental” and “un-yogic.” I still see this as a good thing, at least for those of us who are so moved.

But at some point in the midst of the whole SCS tirade, I read a blog that kinda clicked on a new light bulb for me. Someone had written about how all of this controversy about yoga being too commercial had started making her feel bad about her practice. But then finally she decided that hell, she really loved doing her vinyasa flow to blasting pop music in her Lululemon outfit – and what’s wrong with that? 

And I had to stop and ask myself, really, given all of the shit going on in the world, given how many people are overweight and not exercising at all and stressed to the max, do I really want to put my energy into taking a stand against something that’s making people feel happier and healthier? It just doesn’t seem right: kinda churlish and ungenerous, really. 




But I don’t want to just “shut up and do my practice” as one friend suggested, either. Because I still think that there’s important issues at stake in this discussion. I still believe that there’s something compelling about the critiques that were made last summer (and in other iterations in the ongoing commercialization of yoga debate before then).

But I also feel that this needs to be better balanced with the equally compelling value of respecting other people’s experiences and examining the deeper nature of our own reactions.

For me, I think that a lot of my reactivity had to do with the fact that I felt like I had something personal to lose by yoga becoming a more and more shamelessly commercialized pursuit. I remember well that during the Bush II years – the politics of which I detested with heart-felt passion – I used to say that "yoga is one of the few things that I still like happening in America today.”

I felt heartsick that so much of what I loved about my country was being trashed and lost. And yoga was the one thing that I loved that was, in contrast, flourishing and growing.

So to see it seemingly swept up into the mainstream pop-cultural tide felt alarming. I wanted my subcultural refuge to remain protected, uncontaminated.

But what about all the other people out there who don’t share my alienated political-cultural views? Don’t I want yoga to be accessible to them too?

And what about the people who are just not for whatever reason ready to deal with the deeper dimensions of yoga – but who could really use some new sense of connection with their bodies, some stress relief, some physical health benefits – and maybe just some fun?

Like the lady asked, what’s so bad about that?

Milky Way over Owachomo Natural Rock Bridge in Utah
Wally Pacholka/Astropics.com

Well, nothing, I think – as long as bridges to the deeper experiences of yoga continue to be strong, visible, and accessible to as many people as possible as well.

It would, I believe, be a tragic loss if “yoga lite” eclipsed the other, deeper potentialities of the practice.

And I think that we we're fooling ourselves if we believe that these bridges will appear automatically, regardless of whatever we as contemporary practitioners may do to build, destroy, or obscure them.

But how to help keep them strong, visible, and accessible? It seems to me that past denunciations of “fitness yoga” have done more to build walls than bridges.

So now, I’m looking for ways to communicate about the deeper dimensions of yoga that feel more like invitations. Like opportunities. Like sightings of bridges to rich and exciting, if mysterious and often challenging places.

I know that passions run deep on questions of what yoga is, and what it could or should be. And I’m not naïve enough to think that there’s not always going to be a danger that if we discuss them, the fires they create may run out of control.

But I’m also hopeful that it’s possible to harness our passions in a way that creates a fire of collective inquiry that illuminates and maybe even warms us.

Either way though, as yoga practitioners, I don’t think that we should be afraid of playing with fire.

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Yoga and Hinduism Redux: Kaleidoscopes of Time, History, and Consciousness


Given the breakneck pace of our 24/7 yoga news cycle, the “Yoga and Hinduism Debate” launched by the New York Times last November already seems oh-so-2010. But my mind keeps circling back to it. The question of how best to understand the relationship between yoga and Hinduism intrigues me. And once my interest is hooked, I have the sort of mind that wants to dig dig dig until I strike something that seems like at least an initial layer of conceptual bedrock.

At first, I thought that I'd hit a good position pretty quickly. Confronted with the Hindu American Foundation’s (HAF) demand to “Take Back Yoga” by “acknowledging its Hindu roots,” my first instinct was to put it in the conceptual boxes that I’m familiar with: i.e., those of American identity politics. Yes, I reasoned, it’s true that the yoga world is full of Hindu symbolism, with images of Shiva, Ganesha, and other deities adorning everything from altars to t-shirts. Yet in years of taking classes, going to workshops, and reading Yoga Journal, I’d never heard any sustained discussions of Hinduism (until, of course, this recent outbreak of debate). And, being aware of the history of anti-Hindu and anti-Asian prejudice in this country, I figured that the HAF just wanted the same sort of cultural acknowledgement that other minority groups have demanded. And that seemed perfectly legitimate to me.

And to some extent it still does. But much less so. Because this case is really not analogous that of, say, African Americans, whose fight to get some cultural respect was nothing sort of revolutionary only a few short decades ago. Back in the 1960s-70s, while what it meant to be African American was fiercely contested, there wasn’t much ambiguity identifying who this group was. On the contrary, given the “one drop rule,” the dominant culture was nothing if not Draconian in policing the boundaries of Black group identity.

Defining the boundaries of “yoga” and “Hinduism,” however – well, that’s quite a different story. Even leaving aside the vexing question of “what is yoga” (and we know how crazy-making that is) the seemingly simple question of “what is Hinduism?” is enough to keep your head spinning for days (if not weeks and perhaps years).

Kaleidoscope by Feeding the Fish

But that’s OK. In fact, in a way it’s better than OK, because it offers a great opportunity for learning on many levels. Trying to pinpoint a robust definition of Hinduism involves tangling with highly contested questions of history, politics, religion, and spirituality – all of which (just to complicate things further) are bound up with competing constructions of individual and group identity.

Such complexity is daunting. Which is one reason many people prefer to stay away from the Hinduism issue altogether: you never know when you’re going to unwittingly stumble onto some ideological minefield you didn’t know existed. Nonetheless, I believe that it’s worthwhile to engage with the yoga and Hinduism question – without, however, necessarily needing to resolve it.

This may seem pointless to some: Why pose a question unless you can answer it? Well, because much of our best learning comes through an ongoing engagement with big questions, rather than a rush to prescribe simple answers. As the Buddhists teach us, the fluidity of the self is a hard, but liberating truth to embrace. And so it is with the question of the relationship between yoga and Hinduism: maybe what we need to do right now is not answer it – or at least not too quickly or definitively. We North American yoga practitioners may benefit more by continuing to sift through it again and again in order to come to more finely grained understandings of its many nuances and complexities.

British India (pre-1947)

The Origins Debate: Was Hinduism Invented, Accreted, or Revealed?

Among scholars, there’s ongoing debate over whether “Hinduism” – understood as a singular, shared, coherent religious identity – really existed prior to the British colonization of India. Some argue that it was “invented” in the struggle to unify the modern Indian state and kick out the British. But others insist that different Indic religious sects shared a common meta-identity as “Hindus” long before the Brits arrived.

Richard King (author of ) writes that it doesn’t make sense “to project the notion of ‘Hinduism’ as it is commonly understood into pre-colonial Indian history”:
Before the unification begun under imperial rule and consolidated by the Independence of 1947 it makes no sense to talk of an Indian ‘nation,’ nor of a religion called ‘Hinduism’ which night be taken to represent the belief system of the Hindu people. Today of course, the situation differs insofar as one can now point to a loosely defined cultural entity which might be labeled ‘Hinduism,’ or, as some prefer, “Neo-Hinduism’ . . .
Prior to 1947, King argues, Indian religious and spiritual traditions were simply too diverse to be bundled into the common identity of “Hinduism.” After India was consolidated as an independent nation, however, its culture correspondingly shifted to produce a more unified, if “loosely defined” religious identity.

(It’s worth noting that from this perspective, even accepting the category of “religion” itself meant shifting into a much more Westernized conceptual paradigm. Arguably, the term “religion” is too bound up with the entwined traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam to do justice to the very different set of spiritual ideas and practices that later became lumped together as “Hinduism.”)

Others disagree. Citing poems, songs, and other folk referents dating back to 1400, Versus Lorenz argues that a common Hindu identity developed in India well before the British arrived:
Whatever the reason for the scholarly acceptance of the idea that there was no religious Hindu self-identity before 1800, the evidence against this view in vernacular Hindu literature is clear and abundant. The bulk of this evidence takes the form of texts composed by the popular religious poet-singers of North India, most of them members of non-Brahmin castes. This literature does precisely what Sanskrit literature refuses to do: it establishes a Hindu religious identity through a process of mutual self-definition with a contrasting Muslim Other . . . Without the Muslim (or some other non-Hindu), Hindus can only be Vaishnavas, Saivas, Smartas or the like.
“During the centuries of rule by dynasties of Muslim sultans and emperors,” he insists, “Hindus developed a consciousness of a shared religious identity based on the loose family resemblance among the variegated beliefs and practices of Hindus, whatever their sect, caste, chosen deity, or theological school”:
From the point of view of a modern observer, one can see the family resemblance taking a recognizably Hindu shape in the early Puranas, roughly around the period 300-600 C.E. Although the religion of these Puranas displays many continuities with the earlier Vedic religion, its principal features and emphases particularly its greatly expanded mythology of the gods Vishnu, Siva and Devi, I think, justify marking this religion off as something new, as the beginning of medieval and modern Hinduism.
The writer Pankaj Mishra, author of presents yet another, historically intermediate position. “Hinduism,” he writes, “is largely a fiction, formulated in the 18th and 19th centuries out of a multiplicity of sub-continental religions, and enthusiastically endorsed by Indian modernizers.”

Nonsense, Lorenz counters: “Hinduism wasn't invented by anyone, European or Indian.” Rather, it grew organically through the course of (pre-colonial) Indian history.
Eternal Religion versus Historical Consciousness

Despite their differences, these positions share a secular, historical orientation. Others have quite different perspectives based on other forms of reasoning.

The Hindu Blog, for example, offers a series of essays on the history of Hinduism that begins by rejecting the concept of historical consciousness itself:
If you ask about the origin of Hinduism to a person who has perceived the essence of Hinduism, the answer will be a simple smile. This is because Hinduism has no history, it believes in the present. This might be hard for a common man to digest because we live in a world which gives so much importance to history . . .
The great sages who gave us the Upanishads, Vedas and other Holy Scriptures, never talked about the history of their clan or kingdom. This is because history is of no use to mankind.
Such a perspective insists on the unchanging centrality of eternal truths. The “great thoughts found in Upanishads are eternal and have practical use in everyday life . . . So for a Hindu, religion is ‘Sanatana Dharma’ – the eternal religion.” Still, if we insist on trying to date Hinduism, this can be done:
The earliest evidence of Hinduism is found in the Indus Valley civilization (3300–1700 BC) . . . (but) it would be right to say the earliest seed of Hinduism was laid hundreds of years before Indus valley civilization flourished.
Of course, historically minded scholars and writers like King, Lorenz, and Mishra would counter that while the earlier forms of Indian spiritual and religious practice do indeed date back that far, it doesn’t make sense to retroactively lump these incredibly diverse traditions into the homogenizing category of “Hinduism.” These many distinct religious, spiritual, shamanistic, and yes, yogic traditions, they would argue, only developed some sense of unity under the umbrella of “Hinduism” much, much later.

Hindu Deities

330 Million Gods

Perhaps it’s only appropriate that a religion that says that Brahman (or God) is so complex that its Spirit is expressed through 330,000,000 different gods should not be easily defined. “Certainly, Mishra writes, “most Hindus themselves felt little need for precise self-descriptions”:
Long after their encounter with the monotheistic religions of Islam and Christianity, they continued to define themselves through their overlapping allegiances to family, caste, linguistic group, region, and devotional sect . . . Their rituals and deities varied greatly, defined often by caste and geography; and they were also flexible: new goddesses continue to enrich the pantheon even today. There is an AIDS goddess which apparently both causes and eradicates the disease. At any given time, both snakes and the ultimate reality of the universe were worshipped in the same region, sometimes by the same person. Religion very rarely demanded, as it did with many Muslims or Christians, adherence to a set of theological ideas prescribed by a single prophet, book, or ecclesiastical authority.
Personally, I find this openness and fluidity refreshing – even liberating. There is, I think, something very profound in the belief that God has more manifestations than we can name. In my experience, religions that insist on unwavering faith in a fixed set of beliefs breed fear, self-righteousness, and division rather than spiritual growth.

(Of course, Mishra goes on to say that contemporary Hindu nationalism is moving in precisely that direction, abandoning the traditional inclusivity and tolerance of Hinduism in favor of religious fundamentalism and right-wing politics. This form of Hinduism – or at least the spectre of it – is also at play in the current “Yoga and Hinduism debate.” Some, for example, see the HAF campaign to “Take Back Yoga” as an offshore component of an Indian nationalist agenda – a charge which they strongly deny.)

While I’m no longer inclined to take the HAF’s charge that Westerners are “delinking yoga from its Hindu roots” quite so much at face value, I remain grateful to them to galvanizing what I think is a fascinating, informative debate. If we keep digging into it, it’s not long before we’re confronted with some really deep questions regarding how to think about religion, spirituality, history, politics, and identity.

At the moment, the one that interests me the most is this question of historical consciousness – which applies just as much to yoga as it does to Hinduism. As we learn more about modern yoga history, a parallel debate is starting to emerge. Does yoga have an unchanging, eternal essence – just like the Hindu Blog claims for Hinduism, or the Sanatana Dharma? If so, how do we account for the fact that we have so much evidence showing that the ideas and practices that constitute “yoga” as we know it today didn’t coalesce until the early 20th century?

How do we square the compelling evidence of radical evolution with the felt experience of a seemingly timeless practice?


The Ouroboros: A serpent biting its tail – a symbol of eternity.

Image from the Horapollo Hieroglyphics (1556), where it is said to signify the universe. In the Renaissance, the symbol came to mean eternity.
The serpent that holds its tail in its mouth . . . is customarily taken for the course of a year, for time, for age, for immortality . . . St Cyril gives this reason: that it stretches out, and curls back again and again, and that represents the passage and revolution of the days and years . . . But one might be able to give another reason that the serpent catches its tail: whether one considers the past or the present or the future, all these times are uncertain to us. For we cannot see the past or conceive of its spirit given that it has no beginning; likewise more of the future, because it is not yet, and the end of things is unknown . . .



Old Sages by the Figure of the Snake
Encircled thus) did oft expression make
Of Annual-Revolutions; and of things,
Which wheele about in everlasting-rings;
There ending, where they first of all begun . . .
These Roundells, help to shew the Mystery
of that immense and blest Eternitie,
From whence the CREATURE sprung, and into whom
It shall again, with full perfection come . . .





Emblem from George Wither's A Collection of Emblemes, Ancient and Moderne (London, 1635). This plate was engraved by Crispin de Passe and son, and was first used in Gabriel Rollenhagen's Nucleus emblematum selectissimorum, quae Itali vulgo impresas vocant (Arnhem and Utrecht, 1611). The Greek running around the picture (aionion kai proskairon) means something like "timeless, and timely."


References:
  • Richard King, “Orientalism and the Modern Myth of ‘Hinduism,’” Numen, Vol. 46, No. 2 (1999), pp. 146-185. 
  • David N. Lorenzen, “Who Invented Hinduism?,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 41, No. 4 (Oct., 1999), pp. 630-659. 
  • Pankaj Mishra, “Who Invented Hinduism?” Axess Magazine (12/9/20) [PDF available at Prana Journal: http://pranajournal.com/history/understanding-invention-hindu/]  
  • Ouroboros image & text I:   http://bestiarium.net/bilder.html 
  • Ouroboros image & text II: http://www.mun.ca/alciato/wither.html

Monday, January 3, 2011

Cultural Pathologies of the Body: When Porn Stars are Post-Feminist Icons, Yoga Must Embody Rebellion


Well, you know, when you’ve got some spare time and are poking around on the Net, one thing leads to another. This post is a product of that process, clicking on links on the Web (and in my mind) connecting Buddhism, “post-postmodernism,” feminism, porn, and – ultimately – yoga.

OK, so here goes. Let’s start with the Buddhism.

Right now, I’m reading Stephen Batchelor’s Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist – a brilliant, fascinating book that came out last spring and is very – and I mean very – controversial in Buddhist circles. Knowing this, but not fully understanding why it triggers such strong feelings, I went online to read some reviews and blogs about it. (There’s plenty out there.)

And thus I stumbled upon the blogazine Beams and Struts, “An Integral Inquiry into the Post-Postmodern Age.” Hmmmm, interesting, I thought, . . . is that like Integral Yoga – or are they devotees of Ken Wilbur – or it is just more generally dedicated to Integral Psychology – and WTF do they mean by “post-postmodern”?

Hooked, I started exploring the site (which, BTW, is largely written by Canadians – why, I wonder, is so much of the writing that I’m interested in these days coming out of Canada??). One title grabbed my attention: “Pop Culture, Porn Stars and the Mis-Guided Revolution: A Window into the Rebellion of Postmodern Young Women.”

OK, moving on from Stephen Batchelor for the moment – what’s this??

As someone who grew up in the shadow of 1970s feminism, was a young adult during the feminist anti-porn crusade of the 1980s (and even taught a bit of Catharine MacKinnon during the mid-90s), and then watched from a distant disconnect as a new generation of 20-something women starting making a name for themselves as provocative “pro-sex feminists,” this looked like a new iteration of an ongoing debate that at this point, I pretty much know nothing about.


Porn Star as (Post-) Feminist Role Model?

My intuition was right. This post opened my eyes to an entirely unprecedented phase in the controversies that have been swirling around issues of women’s empowerment and sex all my life.

But, sadly to say, it’s not a pretty sight . . . except perhaps on the most hollow, soulless, and superficial level, where all the old tropes of the beautiful young female body are being hammered without mercy. But underneath that façade, well . . . I may have morphed into an old fuddy-duddy, but it feels nothing short of tragic to me.

Author Vanessa Fisher starts outs explaining the context of feminism today:
Six centuries after Joan of Arc was burned alive at the stake at the age of nineteen for standing up for her cause, and only 60 years after Freidan wrote her groundbreaking book, The Feminine Mystique . . . we find ourselves at an interesting, and somewhat confusing, juncture in women’s history. The young women of my generation now live in what is often deemed a “post-feminist” world, where freedom of access and unprecedented options are increasingly at our fingertips . . . We have also grown up in a media-saturated postmodern consumer culture where nearly all spiritual depth has been stripped away in favor of superficial and easy to swallow sound bites, and where the role and importance of the individual consumer—including all our personal desires for freedom and fulfillment—have been raised to an all new altar of the sacred. Within this climate, where words like morality, duty, higher purpose and obligation have become largely outdated relics of the past, the young women of my generation find themselves birthing a whole new image of what it means to be an empowered, rebellious and fearless female at the beginning of the 21st century, and she is truly unlike anything we’ve seen in recorded history.
So far, so good. All this is familiar and makes sense to me. But then comes the kicker. “There is perhaps no young woman who embodies the many diverse and often contradictory values of postmodern female empowerment more potently and starkly,” Ms. Fisher continues, “than the 22-year-old porn-star, actress, model and rising starlet, Sasha Grey.”

Who the hell is Sasha Grey? Certainly, I’ve never heard of her.

As if anticipating my reaction, Vanessa’s next sentence is: “For those of you who haven’t yet heard of Sasha Grey, let me suggest that you soon will”:
I first came across Sasha a little over six months ago, while doing research for an article I was writing about the effects of hardcore pornography on teen viewers. As soon as one enters into the underground world of adult films, it is nearly impossible not to stumble upon Sasha Grey, as she has become a fast rising star with an increasingly wide fan base ever since she entered the pornography industry at the tender age of eighteen. Before turning 21, Sasha . . . had received several major AVN awards, including best female performer of the year, best three-way sex scene and best oral sex scene. In 2009, Rolling Stone magazine wrote a feature article on Sasha and distinguished with the honor of being “The Dirtiest Girl in the World,” because of her willingness to do things on screen that would make most of us (and even most pornstars) cringe, including licking toilet seats, drinking her own urine and asking male co-stars to punch her in the stomach.
Despite such degradation, Sasha has successfully carved out a niche in which her primary cultural image is that of an intelligent, empowered woman – even an “artist.” As Jennifer’s post (which deserves to be read in its entirety) goes on to explain:
Sasha is definitely no ordinary pornstar. At 22 years old, she is one of the most successful and wealthy women in the United States, and she is still in the infancy of her career. She is also no porno bimbo, nor an innocent young victim of the malevolent pornography industry; rather, Sasha is well-known for her sharp intelligence, her love of her job and her deep passion for art and existential philosophy.
What’s the evidence for this? Well, Sasha may not have a Ph.D. in philosophy (or even a college degree), but she does have some real cred in the business-and-brains department. Among other things, she starred in “The Girlfriend Experience,” a recent film by acclaimed director Steven Soderbergh; appeared in the HBO series, Entourage; modeled in mainstream fashion mags; was featured in an ad campaign for American Apparel; and appeared in music videos by the Smashing Pumpkins and The Roots. 


What’s Happening with Young Women Today??

While this brief introduction to Sasha Grey was arresting, what really shocked me about this post was not the fact that she was becoming rich and famous by combining pornography with self-styled abuse – while I find this sad and disturbing, it doesn’t surprise me that there’s a market for it. No, what shocked me – and really got me thinking – was the author’s claim that Ms. Grey represents a new icon of female empowerment, one with allure even for someone as evidently educated, talented, and thoughtful as herself.

“Sasha stirred a mixture of intense and confusing emotion within me and I often found myself vacillating between flagrant disgust and idolizing admiration,” Ms. Fisher admits.
There was something about Sasha that spoke to something very deep within me. She was in fact a blatantly stark and unapologetic reflection of the very voice of rebellion that I knew so well within myself, even though I had no desire to be a pornstar. More generally, she was the extreme and honest expression of an archetype that has become increasingly pervasive within my generation as a whole.
Wow. I mean, I grew up in the decadent 1970s, and remember the hedonistic feel of the pre-AIDs, post-60s era of “Looking for Mr. Goodbar” singles bars, gay bathhouses, and “wife swapping.” But I really don’t think that women of my generation could have possibly seen someone like Sasha Grey as “the embodiment of a new ‘fearless female’ archetype” (the contemporary equivalent of Joan of Arc?) that Ms. Fisher believes “is arising with force in my generation.”

How can a porn star – particularly one who seeks out degradation and abuse – embody a new “fearless female archetype”? While critical of the fact that there is “no drive behind her rebellion and her uninhibited freedom of expression that really serves anything other than her own personal freedom and self-aggrandizement,” Ms. Fisher believes that this is perversely part of Sasha’s cultural resonance:
I don’t wish to paint Sasha as morally reprehensible, because I actually appreciate her blunt transparency. I simply find Sasha an intriguing example of the wider impulse of rebellion that seems to be pervasive in my generation and embodied in cultural trends like Girls Gone Wild and Hookup culture, as well as exhibited to differing degrees in some of the major female icons of my generation, such as Lady Gaga, Paris Hilton, Lindsey Lohan and Kaci Battaglia. Sasha Grey represents the extreme embodiment of our postmodern impulse to create ever-increasing freedom of self-expression for all.
Now, I don’t know to what degree Vanessa’s sense of Sasha’s cultural significance is right on – I’m too old, too out of touch with popular culture (who’s Kaci Battaglia, anyway?), and the mother of sons, not daughters. Plus (no doubt like many of you reading this), I live in a non-mainstream cultural bubble – hell, we don’t even have cable. So I really can’t judge the extent to which this analysis of what I guess could be clunkily called the cultural climate of post-post-feminism is accurate.

I do know smart and insightful cultural analysis when I see it, however. And this post is clearly that. It’s also clear from the comments that Vanessa’s analysis resonated with a lot of readers. “I have also been intrigued by what I have seen of Sasha Grey,” SarahO wrote, “and can relate to feeling a mixture things, repulsion and attraction, envy even.”

Envy even?! Interesting. And to me, alarming: Certainly, I feel none of those emotions myself. Rather, I feel a deep sense of concern about the type of world that our daughters and our sons (as we’re all in this together) are inheriting today.

It seems that we in the older generation have done a pretty lousy job of working through the issues that second-wave feminism created if intelligent young women today find themselves lionizing someone like Sasha Grey.
And What About Yoga?

So how does any of this relate to yoga? Well, beyond the fact that for me, pretty much everything in life relates to yoga (☺), there are, I think, some very important lessons to be learned here in terms of the relationship between contemporary culture and our experience of our bodies.

A nice bridge is provided by the movie “The Girlfriend Experience,” in which Sasha Grey plays a high-end “escort” working the glitzier side of Manhattan in late 2008, a lush setting permeated by the menacing sense that the global financial system is starting to crumble. Her character, Chelsea (sometimes called Christine), is a likable, but emotionally frozen character. She’s a beautiful, smart, savvy entrepreneur whose business is selling a desirable body along with a simulacra of human connection (i.e., the “girlfriend experience”).

Chelsea’s boyfriend is a personal trainer – a handsome, buff guy who also services clients in a way that’s intimate on a bodily level, but vacant in terms of authentic emotional connection. One scene has him coaching a woman through a suitably strenuous segment of a Sun Salutation. He stands over her as she’s in plank position, and talks her through a very slow, very intense Chatarunga. Her entire body quivers with effort as he bends over her in a close and sensual, yet psychically distant way.

Here, yoga is used to build the perfect bod. It’s part of the whole gym racket – which is part of the larger competitive hustle – to sculpt a body that’s got value in the marketplace. Just as Chelsea (like Sasha Grey in real life) uses her body to sell herself and get ahead, the gym culture (or at least this symbolic portrayal of it) enables us all to turn our bodies into the best commodities they can be.

Certainly, there’s not the slightest whiff of an integrated body-mind-spirit practice here. Nor would this trainer be qualified to teach yoga that way even if he wanted. We can only teach what we know, and if all we know is the mainstream culture of the body, then that’s what we’ll transmit when we teach yoga.

And because yoga is such an effective means of developing a beautiful body, it’s only natural that it will be used in this way. This is a pitfall that any serious practitioner needs to be keenly aware of.

Yet taught as an integrated mind-body-spirit practice, yoga opens up an entirely different way of connecting to our bodies. And at this time, in this culture, that's incredibly important.

Because the paradigm that “The Girlfriend Experience” represents – and that Sasha Grey has taken to an attention-grabbing new extreme in real life – is beyond unhealthy. I’m tempted to say that it’s soulless, but that’s not quite right, and carries too much baggage. But I do believe that relating to our bodies as “things” in an overwhelmingly materialistic, market-driven culture produces profound alienation from our deeper, authentic selves – as well as from that ineffable, but powerful sense of what’s most inspiring and precious about the human spirit.


Now, just to be clear, I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with gym yoga – I’ve had amazing classes in gyms that inspired me to take my practice to a deeper level. It doesn’t matter if yoga is practiced in a gym, studio, or at home – the same pitfalls and opportunities apply.

We can practice in a way that helps to cure the cultural sickness that almost all of us are infected with to some degree – that is, the divorce between body, mind, and spirit that keeps us in a state of psychic fragmentation, alienated from our animating spirits and our true selves. And, if we are teachers, we can give others the opportunity to do the same.

Or we can - whether deliberately or unwittingly - buy into the same old same old and alienation of the spirit.

In a culture in which a 22-year-old porn star can be regarded as a cutting-edge icon of feminine empowerment, we need to make the most out of whatever tools that we have to imbue ourselves and our children with alternative models of value, beauty, and yes, rebellion.

In a society that’s increasingly devoid of values beyond successful competition in the market, perhaps insisting on the importance of something as ineffable as an integrated human being – synergistically connecting body, mind, and spirit – makes for the most important rebellion of all.
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