Showing posts with label American political culture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label American political culture. Show all posts

Saturday, June 1, 2013

Yoga Train Wreck in Encinitas: Or, What's Up with the Jois Foundation??

Please bear with me for a few caveats and disclaimers before I begin my rant. 

1. Although I don't practice Ashtanga, I'm attracted to the culture it generates insofar as I know it. I tend to connect intellectually with Ashtangis more than any other identifiable group of practitioners. I feel that the method attracts a relatively high percentage of smart, independently-minded people. From my outsider's perspective, it seems that the Ashtanga community has an exceptionally interesting, serious, engaged culture. I like that. 

2. I'm strongly in favor of making yoga more available in institutions such as schools, hospitals, and prisons, as well as in underserved and socially marginalized communities. As a teacher, I find yoga outreach . I'm an unashamed booster of the not particularly popular notion of . 

Soooooo . . . you'd think I'd not only be super-supportive of the fact that the Jois Foundation gave a $500,000 grant to the Encinitas schools to fund a district-wide yoga program, but also stand staunchly by them as the maddening lawsuit that grant generated drags on. And this would be true, except for the fact that . . .

3. I believe strongly not only in the values of multiculturalism, but in the need to actively engage them in practice if we're to have any hope at all of healing some of the divisions in our frighteningly polarized society.

Although multiculturalism is rightfully associated with left-of-center political values, I've always believed that it's got to be applied evenly across the board. And when it comes to the current lawsuit over the constitutionality of teaching yoga in public schools, that means treating the conservative Christians involved with equal consideration and respect, whether one agrees with them or not.

And that's why - despite being being strongly opposed to the conservative Christian political agenda - I'm nonetheless moved to say that I think the plaintiffs in Encinitas have raised some legitimate questions about the Jois Foundation grant. 

In fact, the more that I read through the Jois Yoga website, and search in vain for some sort of statement they may have made about the many important issues raised in this case, the more frustrated I feel. At this point, I'm simply wondering: 

What the hell is up with the Jois Foundation??
 

"Inherently Religious"? 

Let me explain. The Encinitas lawsuit boils down to an argument over whether yoga is "inherently religious" or not. Framed in such broad terms, it's easy to refute the claim that it is. After all, how could anyone seriously think that the practice that produced this video qualifies as having religious stature? 

But this litigation is much more tricky than that. Because the case was not, of course, filed to judge  "yoga" in the abstract: it was filed against the Encinitas program in particular. But now that it's up and running, there's a (most likely calculated) slipperiness between the attack on "yoga" writ large and the specific program in Encinitas.

And that slipperiness bodes ill both for the reputation of yoga in more religiously conservative communities (which, after all, is a good bit of the U.S.) as well as its status in publicly funded institutions such as schools, hospitals, prisons and so on. 

When I first researched the Encinitas case I was not surprised to learn that the plaintiffs were associated with a conservative Christian activist group and represented by a conservative Christian legal advocacy group. and have a good understanding of how its interlinked network of right-wing think tanks, foundations, law firms, and activist groups operates - and how powerful it is. 

Though expected, this discovery revved up my righteous indignation. I'm profoundly dismayed and certainly somewhat alarmed to see yoga dragged into the juggernaut of litigious culture wars that's been churning on now for decades.


Yoga teacher Jennifer Brown demonstrating Lotus at the Encinitas trial

Still, ever the obsessive researcher, I started looking for information on the Jois Foundation online. I expected to find material explaining precisely how and why the Foundation's grant-making program differed from Jois Yoga's overall commitment to Ashtanga. After all, I understood the argument being made in court was that the Encinitas program doesn't represent Ashtanga per se. Instead, it's an exercise-oriented program developed under the authority of the school district to support children's health and well-being. 

I believe this to be the case. I certainly don't think that the Encinitas program is really designed to indoctrinate kids into Hinduism. On many levels, I find that claim completely absurd. 

But.

The fact of the matter is that if you read the Jois Yoga website, it's full of what can only be described as religiously-inflected spiritual language. And of course, that would be fine, except for the fact that there's virtually nothing on the Jois Foundation side of fence to balance it out. 


"Our Website is Underway"

While the plaintiffs are being ridiculed in court and across the internet as irrational fanatics who refuse to accept the obvious fact that yoga is exercise, the Jois Yoga website describes the Ashtanga method as “an ancient system that can lead to liberation and greater awareness of our spiritual potential.”
  
While I'd quibble with the "ancient system" claim, that's fine as far as it goes within its appropriate context. But it does raise some legitimate questions regarding precisely how this understanding of yoga is being translated into a program that's appropriate for children from diverse backgrounds attending a public school.

These questions intensify dramatically once you start perusing the "Philosophy" page of the website, which presents a series of "Conference Notes with Sharath Jois" from 2011-12. These notes not only contains a lot of religious-sounding language, but buttress some of the plaintiff’s more seemingly outlandish claims as well.

For example, many commentators have derided the plaintiffs as idiots for charging that Sun Salutations could be in any way connected to worshiping a “sun god.” Yet, the Jois Yoga website explains that Ashtanga founder Pattahbi Jois taught Sun Salutations “for two reasons”:

To pray to the sun god each morning would insure good health . . . Also, the Sūrya Namaskāra is used in our practice . . . to create heat in the body and help us do other postures.
Now, this is the first time in 15 years of practice that I’ve ever heard of “praying to the sun god” in any context connected with yoga. Regardless of this statement, I don't believe that 99.9% of American yoga practitioners have any clue that such a linkage has ever been made - and if they did, they'd either dismiss it as fanciful metaphor, or disapprove. Nonetheless, the fact that it’s stated on the Jois Yoga website is obviously relevant to the Encinitas case.



Again, this wouldn't be so bad if there was robust and compelling information available explaining precisely how the Foundation's grant-making program differentiates itself in terms of both philosophy and practice. Unfortunately, I've looked a good bit for such information, and as far as I can tell, it isn't there. 

Instead, there is a single web page on the Jois Yoga site that only explains the Foundation's program very briefly and vaguely: 
Our Health and Wellness Program for Children . . . uses the techniques of yoga, meditation, and proper nutrition to create a positive lifestyle change.
There's a bit more, but not much. Most of the font on the page is too small and hard to read. One sentence stands out in bolded caps at the bottom, however:

OUR WEBSITE IS UNDERWAY.

Whaaaaaaatttt??? The Jois Foundation has given over half a million in funding to the Encinitas school district, produced a , sparked a lawsuit that could have a seriously negative impact on the evolution of yoga in American society and . . . their website is underway??


AARRRRRGGGGH

To be sure, the fact that the Jois Foundation funded the Encinitas program isn’t by itself enough to discredit it. The EUSD insists that it had complete control over the curriculum, and no interest in or knowledge of yoga as anything other than exercise. To bar the program simply because of the beliefs of its funders would be discriminatory. That said, one really has to wonder just what the Jois Foundation was thinking when it launched this initiative without more adequately addressing the obvious legal, educational, cultural, and religious issues involved. 

Our website is underway?! How about a robust website that explains the philosophy behind the yoga in public schools grant-making program in depth? How about some appropriately useful resources, such as a study of best practices in that field? How about consultations with experts who have been successfully implementing yoga in schools programs for years? How about a resource page of studies assessing the positive benefits of yoga for kids? How about a stated commitment to respecting the diverse religious commitments of a multicultural society, along with a detailed account of why yoga is well-suited to being adapted to all faith traditions - and none? 

If the Jois Foundation were a strapped, struggling effort of politically naive, but well-meaning yoga aficionados who had no way of putting all that together, that would be one thing. But that's not the case. Jois Yoga has a lot of money. If they didn't, you can bet that the National Center for Law and Policy wouldn't have bothered to take on the case. 

Contemplative Sciences Center website: uvacontemplation.org

What's even more galling to me is that beyond their financial resources, Jois Yoga is already connected with an academic research center, the Contemplative Sciences Center at the University of Virginia. This Center was established in 2012 thanks to a $12 million grant from "billionaire alum Paul Tudor Jones and his wife Sonia," the same couple that funded and created Jois Yoga.

The mission of the Center sounds wonderfully multidisciplinary and innovative: 
to foster dynamic partnerships of unusual depth and breadth towards exploring the transformative impact of contemplation in a variety of social sectors. Binding together the humanities and sciences, we are pursuing serious programs of learning, research, and engagement across the liberal arts, sciences, health sciences, medicine and nursing, education, architecture, business research, policy making, contemplative practice, and more.
A quick glance through the website confirms that there's a lot of interesting work going on there. Yet . . . when you search "Encinitas" on the site, nothing comes up. Search "yoga" and six listings come up. Further fueling my frustration with the entire situation is the fact that one of them is titled, "Gurus on Grounds" ("Please join an extraordinary opportunity for contemplative experience and learning under expert guidance as world-renowned master teachers Sharath and Saraswathi Jois teach Ashtanga Yoga practice to a large public gathering.") Arrrrgghhhh.


What. The.

On the one hand, I really do feel rather churlish complaining about the Tudor Jones charitable work. After all, they've contributed millions of dollars to visionary endeavors I strongly support, such as furthering contemplative studies and bringing yoga into the public schools. Such public-minded use of private wealth is all too rare today, and (political concerns about the destructively unequal distribution of wealth in the U.S. aside), I certainly appreciate it.  

On the other hand, I feel enormously frustrated that with all these resources, the Encinitas case seems to have been handled in an embarrassingly inept and potentially destructive way. The level of disconnect between the reality of the culture wars on the ground in American society and the lofty vision of expanding the reach of yoga and contemplative practices in the U.S. strikes me as stunning - not to mention discouraging. 

Threading through the Encinitas case is a vagueness about the relationship between Ashtanga yoga (as understood and promulgated by Jois Yoga) and American yoga as a much bigger, and highly diversified phenomenon. The Jois Foundation has simply not, as far as I can see, drawn a bright line between their school-based yoga programs and their commitment to the Ashtanga method. 


This fuzziness raises legitimate concerns among conservative Christian parents who are sincerely concerned about the spiritual development of their children. Honestly, I were a conservative Christian who knew nothing about yoga other than what was happening in Encinitas, it would be entirely possible to read the Jois Yoga website and freak out about a possible “Hindu invasion.”

Potentially, some of these unnecessary concerns could have been alleviated with better program development and implementation procedures. For starters, a clear and thorough separation between the Ashtanga and school-based methods needed to be made internally, and stated publicly. Then, community outreach and parent-teacher conversations could have built bridges between the yoga program and worried parents. 

Of course, some of the opposition would never have been won over regardless. I wouldn't expect the Encinitas parent on the staff of truthXchange (a very strange-sounding conservative Christian activist group committed to combating the supposedly rising tide of global paganism) to accept yoga (in schools or otherwise) as OK no matter what. 

In my experience, however, most conservative-leaning Christians who are not hardcore activists are very open to accepting yoga if they felt that their concerns are heard and addressed. Given yoga is not inherently religious, and is in fact intended to be open to supporting all faith traditions (or none), this is not difficult to do. 

If we keep steamrolling forward as we have been, however, we'll never have the chance to find out. The lack of clarity about the Jois Foundation's grant-making program has provided a prime opportunity for zealous conservative Christian activists to reframe the understanding of yoga in schools, both culturally, politically, and legally. And with some smart, seasoned, and committed leadership in place, they know how to leverage the opening that Encinitas has provided. 


It wasn't an accident that the first lawsuit to challenge yoga in the public schools didn't involve on of the many school yoga nonprofits run by experienced educators who understand the school system from the inside out. No, this case was selected for solid political reasons. And it frustrates me no end that the side I'm backing seems to be ignoring the mountains of evidence showing that we have a problem here, Houston. Instead, they keep insisting over and over that anyone with any intelligence understands that "yoga is exercise." 

Sigh. 

Hopefully the judge will render a smart, incisive, balanced, and original position that reframes the many important issues involved in this case in more constructive ways. Because right now, I'm not liking the direction it's going, at all.



Please also check out my recent post on Yoga U Online: "Yoga on Trial: Encinitas and the Need for a New Paradigm."

Thursday, February 28, 2013

The Real Trojan Horse in Encinitas Isn't Hinduism - It's Christian Extremism



In my previous post on the recently filed lawsuit to prohibit yoga classes in the Encinitas public schools, I promised this one would elaborate a reasonable counter-position. I'm sorry to report, however, that this project - which I still want to do! - is being put off once again. Because once I started digging a little deeper into what's behind this National Center for Law and Policy lawsuit, I got hit by a stunning avalanche of information.

Before launching into what I discovered about the backstory behind the Encinitas case, however, I want to just note that it's remarkably ironic that the expert witness for the prosecution, Dr. Candy Gunther Brown, closed her 36-page brief with a dark warning that:
A pattern that I have observed in my long-term research on yoga, meditation, and other forms of CAM is that participation in spiritually-premised practices—even when marketed as “secular” and stripped of religious language—leads practitioners to change their religious views.

Because this process often occurs gradually, individuals may not even recognize that it is taking place or consciously choose to change their religious beliefs
.
In other words: don't imagine for a split second that you can justify yoga in schools on the grounds that it's good for kids' health! No, pretty much every form of complementary and alternative medicine, or "CAM," is a veritable Trojan Horse, sneaking in spiritually damaging views that undermine Americans' religious beliefs - whether they know it or not!


Talk about a slippery slope argument! How, I wondered, did she get from critiquing the Jois Foundation in particular to this sweeping denunciation of everything connected with yoga, meditation, and alternative medicine in general? It seemed odd. 

A little more research, however, revealed a right-wing religious culture that would very much support such assertions. Which suggests that if you thought this case was simply a matter of few religiously conservative parents with some legit worries about their kids taking yoga classes in school - it's time to think again.

Of course, some parents no doubt do feel deeply concerned about their kids taking yoga, and that should be respected - up to a point. Because legally, politically, and culturally, that's really not even the tip of the iceberg.


Litigating Against "the Lie"

Here's how NPR described Encinitas parents Mary Eady's involvement in the yoga controversy: 
Encinitas Superintendent Tim Baird says yoga is just one element of the district's physical education curriculum . . . But when Mary Eady visited one of the yoga classes at her son's school last year, she saw much more than a fitness program.
"They were being taught to thank the sun for their lives and the warmth that it brought, the life that it brought to the earth and they were told to do that right before they did their sun salutation exercises," she says.

Those looked like religious teachings to her, so she opted to keep her son out of the classes. The more Eady reads about the Jois Foundation and its founders' beliefs in the spiritual benefits of Ashtanga yoga, the more she's convinced that the poses and meditation can't be separated from their Hindu roots . . .

Eady is part of a group of parents working with Dean Broyles, president and chief counsel of the Escondido-based National Center for Law and Policy.
 OK, so Ms. Eady grew concerned and took action. Fair enough, right? Well - it's not really that simple. 

Yesterday, Alternet posted an excellent piece of investigative journalism,  explaining among other things that "Mary Eady, one of the parents organizing against Encinitas’ yoga program . . . works at a Christian organization called truthxchange." 

And what, you may ask, is truthxchange?

I checked it out. As it turns out, Ms. Eady is one of four staff members of this group, which describes itself as an activist "ministry" organization. 

The site goes on to explain that the group was formed in 2003 under the name, "Christian Witness to a Pagan Planet," or CWiPP. Later, it "changed its name to truthXchange" and instituted "a new emphasis on reaching college and university students." 

http://truthxchange.com/books/

Here's how truthxchange describes its current "Vision":
Our Purpose: For God’s glory, truthXchange exists to equip the Christian community in general and its leaders in particular to recognize and effectively respond to the rising tide of neopaganism.
Our Passion: truthXchange desires to be a global communication center that broadcasts a gospel-driven worldview response to pagan spirituality as well as recruiting, equipping, and mobilizing a network of fearless Christian leaders.
 Our Plans: To train a new generation of scholars and leaders to understand and inform the Church of the challenge of global paganism . . . To engage in “antithesis” apologetics, or, as the apostle Paul says, to clarify the Truth by understanding and explaining the Lie.
Want to learn more about truthxchange's crusade for "the Truth" and against "the Lie"? Check out their 8-minute video, "Only Two Religions," which is posted both on their website and . In it, you can hear Executive Director Peter Jones explain their philosophy of "One-ism and Two-ism," which, as you might expect, boils down to an insistence that their understanding of Christianity is the one true religion, and everything else is horribly wrong.



"Spreading the Gospel by Transforming the Legal System"

NPR reported simply that "Eady is part of a group of parents working with Dean Broyles," President of the NCLP. But let's learn a little more about Mr. Broyles and the organization he leads. 

According to its website, the NCLP is a non-profit "legal defense organization which focuses on the protection and promotion of religious freedom, the sanctity of life, traditional marriage, parental rights, and other civil liberties." They proudly assert a position of militant Christian nationalism:
Our nations’ founders believed that our rights and liberties are not manufactured by men, but are established by our Creator . . . 'It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. Galatians 5:1.'
But even though it is a natural right, freedom does not just “happen” by default. Throughout recorded history, liberty must be esteemed, fought for, established, and guarded if is to survive and flourish.
Today is no different. Indeed, the enemies of freedom have multiplied, and with them, we have clearly witnessed a mounting number of assaults on faith, family and freedom. Our attorneys stand ready, willing, and able to defend freedom against its enemies . . . We are motivated in our endeavors by our faith to keep the doors open for the spread of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.


Now, let's learn a little more about the lead attorney in the Encinitas case.

As explained on the NCLP website, Mr. Boyles "clerked for several years at the National Legal Foundation, a religious liberty non-profit organization." After graduating from law school, "he was invited to become an affiliate attorney of the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), from which Dean has received extensive training in pro-family, pro-life and pro-religious liberty matters at ADF’s outstanding National Litigation Academies (NLA)":
Because of Dean’s pro-bono work, he was invited to receive special training at ADF’s advanced NLA. Dean is proud to be an ADF affiliate attorney and member of ADF’s honor guard.
And what, you may wonder, is the ADF?
  
Recently renamed the Alliance Defending Freedom, the ADF website describes the organization as "a servant ministry building an alliance to keep the door open for the spread of the Gospel by transforming the legal system and advocating for religious liberty, the sanctity of life, and marriage and family":
Recognizing the need for a strong, coordinated legal defense against growing attacks on religious freedom, more than 30 prominent Christian leaders launched Alliance Defending Freedom in 1994. Over the past 18 years, this unique legal ministry has brought together thousands of Christian attorneys and like-minded organizations that work tirelessly to advocate for the right of people to freely live out their faith in America and around the world.
Thanks be to God, Alliance Defending Freedom and its allies have won 8 out of every 10 cases litigated to conclusion, including 38 precedent-setting victories at the U.S. Supreme Court and hundreds more in the lower courts.

Right-Wing Watch explains that the ADF "sees itself as a counter to the ACLU." They are well-financed, highly networked, strongly anti-gay and anti-abortion, and quite powerful. 
Unique to the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) is their collective of high-powered founders, including wealthy right-wing organizations such as Dobson's Focus on the Family and D. James Kennedy's Coral Ridge Ministries.

The ADF embodies the beliefs of its founders, harnessing the efforts of a cadre of right-wing groups with hundreds of millions of dollars at their disposal. All of these groups are influential members of the Right; they are pro-life and anti-gay, and their ultimate goal is to see the law and U.S. government enshrined with conservative Christian principles.


The relationship between ADF and it's founders is one of mutual self-interest; ADF has access to the resources and networking of large organizations, who in turn are equipped with an endless supply of readily-available lawyers.
ADF's strength goes beyond their budget due to their influence with well-funded religious-right groups.

Two issues common to each of ADF's founders are their work against the right to abortion, and against the civil rights/liberties of gays and lesbians. They are particularly persistent in attacking attempts by homosexuals to have families, establish domestic partnerships or civil unions, or to be protected from discrimination in employment or housing.
On its website, the ADF lists its official "Allies" as including 13 legal groups, 10 advocacy organizations, 8 "educational" institiutions, and 8 "ministries." Many of these organizations are extremely powerful in their own right. Considered as a tight network of right-wing activists with deep pockets and literally missionary zeal, the forces lined up against the Jois Foundation's yoga program are formidable indeed. 

In this context, the Jois grant of $550,000 to fund the yoga program in the Encinitas school, while huge in the yoga world, seems laughably small. True, it was big enough to put them into the NCLP/ADF/truthxchange crosshairs. I wonder if they realize, however, just how many soldiers are contained in that battleship of a conservative Christian Trojan Horse. 

Note: My next post will (hopefully) deliver on my pro-yoga in public schools argument as promised.


Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Yoga Teachers with Guns

One of my blogosphere friends, a yoga teacher who lives in Nashville, had told me that in her world, it's not uncommon for yoga teachers to pack heat. I, living in my bluest-of-blue-state bubble of an uber-liberal neighborhood in solidly Democratic Chicago, was stunned. Yoga teachers with guns?!

 I wanted to do a red state-blue state blog post dialog with her on how weird this may - or may not - seem, depending on your political and cultural sensibilities. But the subject didn't interest her. Yeah, yoga teachers with guns. Lots of conservatives around here. So what's new? Not inspiring.

Now I find that CBS produced a little human interest news segment on (female) yoga teachers and moms who like to shoot:



I find this fascinating.There is so much that's so important packed into this subject, it's hard to know where to start. But I'll just mention a few:

Feminism. Bracketing the yoga teacher part for the moment, is this whole trend of women toting guns empowering to women? A recent book, Chicks with Guns, reports that 15-20 million American women own their own firearms. And they love them. "When you get outside of the blue-state cities," explains author Lindsay McCrum, "everybody has a gun.” Shit. Really?

For those of us who associate guns more with criminals, right-wingers, and survivalists than hunters and skeet shooters, that seems pretty scary. But of course, the counter-argument is that guns enable women to protect themselves, and are therefore empowering. One conservative blog on "The Changing Demographics of Gun Ownership" made precisely this point, posting these provocative photos:


    Politics and Culture. Statistics show that American gun ownership is disproportionately concentrated among conservative, white, non-urban men (although, as these recent stories about the growing popularity of guns among other demographic groups such as women show, this may be changing). Here's a table reporting on a 2005 Gallup poll:

      As Gallup explains, the stereotype of a gun owner being "a white male, most likely Republican, living in a rural area of the South" is essentially true. "While many Americans who don't fit that demographic profile do own guns, the likelihood of owning a gun is higher among people with these demographic characteristics."

      So, as someone who's really not into white male dominated, conservative Southern politics, guns carry a lot of negative political and cultural associations - and the data show that these are well-founded.

      Buddhists & Yogis with Guns. While it's impossible to say how prevalent it is, it's certainly likely that just as the number of women owning guns is rising, so is the acceptance of gun ownership in the  American (convert) Buddhists and yoga communities. When researching this post, I came across the following picture from a blog post on "Buddhists with Guns":


      The blogger, Justin Whitaker, notes that "Well, for the record, that’s a yoga instructor (sister), mechanic (brother), and Buddhist scholar (me)":
      Growing up in rural Montana – about 10 miles north of Helena, the capital city, neighbors had horses, dirt road, cactus in the back yard – we were introduced to guns fairly early in life. I think I skipped the “you’ll shoot your eye out!” bb-gun that many friends were getting and moved on to a pump-action single shot pellet-gun around the age of 8.
      So . . . urban blue-stater that I am, I get that. I understand that guns are not necessarily evil. I think that it can be fun to shoot, say, beer cans (which I've done, and enjoyed). And while I personally would never want to hunt, I'm completely OK with people who hunt for food (as opposed to sport. I definitely have ethical problems with that).

      I can also imagine living in circumstances where carrying a gun for self-defense might feel justified - e.g., impoverished rural areas where you're worried about being jumped by meth addicts and know that law enforcement or even other people are likely to be far away. 

      BUT -

      That said, in the bigger picture, I'm not happy about the whole women-with-guns, yoga-teachers-with-guns, Buddhist-scholars-with-guns sensibility at all. Really, I think it's just another unfolding of the dismaying logic of:
      1. Yoga and meditation have become much more mainstream.
      2. The mainstream has become much more right-wing.
      3. Therefore, more people involved with yoga, meditation, mindfulness, Buddhism, etc. are folding those practices into conservative-to-right wing politics. (Witness, of course, the recent Ayn Rand promo by Lululemon.)
       
      Some will say that yoga, meditation, etc. have their own cultural logic in which guns have nothing to do with right-wing politics. For example, when posted on the CBS piece referenced above, her one commentator sanguinely suggested that yoga teachers who love to shoot guns is "no different then practicing aikido (a Japanese martial art) or Kyudo (zen archery)."

      Um, well, sure - in some cases, that may be true. (It's also true, however, that we don't necessarily want to replicate many of the politics historically connected with, for example, Zen.) But considered as a broad cultural movement, it's not. Instead, what it means is that American yoga is starting to be "rebranded" as something that's no longer associated with cultural liberalism. (If you read the comments on yoga blogs that attract more conservative types, you'll see that there's many out there who're eager to push it in a more right-wing direction.)

      Which is why I think that those who'd like to see yoga and meditation as vehicles for realizing a different type of cultural and political sensibility in North America need to step up and speak out. Many, of course, are. (Witness Seane Corn's and Michael Stone's engagement with the Occupy movement.) But there needs to be more.

      I think that when it comes to feminism, politics, culture, yoga, and Buddhism, in the final analysis the most important point is that we desperately need inspiring alternatives to the dominant (and growing) view that it's just great to embrace guns as a means of empowerment. The more that people like women and yoga teachers, who've traditionally been more committed to creating other alternatives, instead shift to celebrating the power of the gun, the more impoverished our culture will be, and the more dangerous our world will become.

      Saturday, October 1, 2011

      Occupy Wall Street: Then & Now

      PREAMBLE AND DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES OF THE KNIGHTS OF LABOR OF AMERICA, 1886

      The alarming development and aggressiveness of great capitalists and corporations, unless checked, will inevitably lead to the pauperization and hopeless degradation of the toiling masses.

      It is imperative, if we desire to enjoy the full blessings of life, that a check be placed upon unjust accumulation, and the power for evil of aggregated wealth.

      . . . Therefore we have formed the Order of Knights of Labor, for the purpose of organizing and directing the power of the industrial masses, not as a political party, for it is more . . . we declare to the world that are our aims are:
      1. To make individual and moral worth, not wealth, the true standard of individual and National greatness.
      2. To secure to the workers the full enjoyment of the wealth they create, sufficient leisure in which to develop their intellectual, moral, and social faculties: all of the benefits, recreation and pleasures of association; in a word, to enable them to share in the gains and honors of advancing civilization . . .
      In order to secure these results, we demand at the hands of the State:

      • The recognition, by incorporation, of trades' unions, orders and such other associations as may be organized by the working masses to improve their condition and protect their rights . . .
      • The prohibition by law of the employment of children under 15 years of age in workshops, mines and factories . . . 
      • To secure for both sexes equal pay for equal work.
      • To shorten the hours of labor by a general refusal to work for more than eight hours.
      If you believe in organization, you are earnestly invited to join with us in securing these objects. All information on the subject of organization should be sent to the General Secretary-Treasurer of the Order, who will have an Organizer visit you and assist in furthering the good work.

      (full text here)


      DECLARATION OF THE OCCUPATION
      OF NEW YORK CITY 
      NYC General Assembly, September 29, 2011

      As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.

      As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.


      • They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.
      • They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.
      • They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.
      • They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.
      • They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless animals, and actively hide these practices.
      • They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions . . . 

      To the people of the world,

      We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.

      Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.

      To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.

      Join us and make your voices heard!

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      Wednesday, August 10, 2011

      Politics, Spirituality, and Postmodern Malaise


      I was at a dinner party the other night with a group of people I don’t know very well. It was a nice evening, if for me a bit socially foreign, as this wasn’t my usual, more culturally sympathico crew. We quaffed icy margaritas in luminous blue “bird bath” cocktail glasses, ate a lovely meal, had a bit of wine. As the night wore on, the talk turned a bit silly. Some of the women started competing to tell the funniest story about the all-American crapola food their mothers had fed them back in the day – “TV” dinners, plastic-wrapped “treats,” and water-reconstituted “mashed potatoes” straight out of the box!

      This was all quite funny. It also deepened my feelings of alienation a bit, however (a character flaw, I’m prone to that). After all, my mom had experienced a health food conversion back when I was eight and banned all white bread and the like from the house (which I protested at the time, but have of course since come to appreciate). So I had no stories to share.

      The women’s talk then shifted to what they feed their kids now. While the boxed mashed potatoes have been ditched, the tradition of questionable “food” lives on in new forms. “Let’s face it, I don’t even want to know where my meat comes from!,” one vivacious blonde laughed.

      “Yeah, I just like it to appear on the shelf in neat little plastic-wrapped chunks on white Styrofoam trays,” a witty brunette chortled. “I mean, that’s just how Mother Nature makes it, right?”

      Ironic laughter. But I found it hard to laugh, because I was thinking: Should I launch a little speech about how it’s good to think about these things, even if it’s unpleasant? I could appeal to their maternal interests by pitching it as important for the kids’ health . . . Should I tell them that I avoid eating much meat and that if I do buy it, it’s only organic – and that I’ve even trekked out to a small, family-owned farm in Wisconsin to meet said cows “in person”?

      Um, no. I didn’t. I stayed silent. Too worried about being the fish out of water, bursting the fun bubble, seeming stuffy, sounding self-righteous, rocking the boat. Wanting to be polite. Wanting to fit in. Wanting to avoid airing unpleasant facts that might make others uncomfortable – and me even more alienated.

      I felt kinda bad about it. I do care about food politics – a lot. (Note: If you don’t know the issues at stake, watch “Food, Inc.” and keep going from there. There’s tons of information readily available about the horrors of industrial food and mass-market meat production.) But I let it go. The moment passed. Life went on.

      Yesterday, however, I read this fiery post critiquing the stunning degree of political apathy among American yoga practitioners and started thinking about it again. Because I feel that a lot of what’s going on in the yoga community today parallels my little dinner party incident. Whether we admit it or not, we often don’t want to know the disturbing details of the larger political, economic, social, and environmental realities our lives are enmeshed in. And even when we do know, we often don’t want to take a stand because we don’t want to inflict this unpleasantness on others (or make it more uncomfortable for ourselves).

      Spiritual Apathy

      In fact, I’d say that these dynamics are so powerful that a whole set of “spiritual” beliefs has grown up to legitimate them. Functionally, these ideas keep many of us from having to confront the disquieting fact that we don’t want to know and don’t want to take a stand.

      Here, I’m thinking about beliefs like “thinking positive thoughts produces positive outcomes” – not just in particular circumstances, but all the time, no matter what. One of my (now ex-) yoga teachers, for example, once lectured me on how small-minded I was because I didn’t believe that “sending healing thoughts and breath” out to the BP oil spill would be sufficient to stop the flow! If that sort of belief doesn’t (unconsciously) function to rationalize political ignorance and disengagement, I don’t know what does.

      Then, there’s a lot of spiritual beliefs floating around like “everything is perfect as it is right now,” “everything happens for a reason,” and “The Universe always gives you just what you need right now.” Now, these could (and in my mind, should) be interpreted as inspirational calls for a depth of radical acceptance of what is that’s exceedingly difficult to realize, precisely because it entails an eyes-wide-open embrace of both the joy and pain, beauty and tragedy, sublimity and horrors of life.

      Really taking it all in like that, however, is fucking hard. And it poses a challenge that’s utterly absent in the way that these ideas tend to manifest in yoga circles, where there’s an implicit insistence that being properly “spiritual” means staying locked inside some pastel-colored bubble where everything looks beautiful and right and good – PERIOD. No unpleasant issues raised; no difficult questions asked.

      Confronting Crisis


      That’s not reality. Just read The New York Times (not perfect, but one of the only decent newspapers left) and it’ll become clear pretty fast that our world is in crisis. If you’re still reading this post, you most likely know the litany all-too-well already: global warming, environmental destruction, economic recession, double-digit unemployment, growing inequality, dysfunctional government, Wall Street criminality, family breakdown, human trafficking, irrational demagogues, cultural decadence, obesity epidemic, reactionary backlash. The list goes on – and on – and on.

      And when you start taking it all in, it’s deeply frightening. Because really, what we’re looking at are numerous trends that point toward the destruction of life as we know it – both socially and, even worse, environmentally.

      Plus, most of us who aren’t right-wing reactionaries feel like there’s no existing political movement to join that seems like it might be effective in addressing these problems. Some of us (like me, for example) invested a lot of hope in the 2008 election and are now feeling disappointed and bereft.

      Then there’s that horrible feeling of postmodern malaise – that the problems confronting us are too big, too amorphous, too complex, too embedded, and too interwoven to provide us with any solid points of leverage for positive change.

      Seeing this, is it really any wonder that we’re attracted to ideas that sugarcoat the situation for us?

      Moving Forward

      No, I think that it’s perfectly natural – and to some degree, even healthy and necessary. Because nothing’s gained by overwhelming people with so much bad news that they become despondent, dispirited, and depressed. Or, for that matter, get angry, resentful, and possibly violent (because if this isn’t happening in the yoga community, it sure is elsewhere).

      I myself stopped reading the newspaper for awhile because I just couldn’t take it anymore. Day after day after day of bad news. What’s the point in knowing this stuff, anyway? What good does it do? Because if you’re not politically powerful (and maybe even if you are), what can you do? And if the answer realistically appears to be “nothing,” why bother with anything?

      These are, I think, legitimate questions. I certainly struggle with them. My conclusion at this point, though, is that it’s important to be as politically informed and engaged as we can be without sacrificing whatever practices we (hopefully) have to cultivate inner strength, compassion, equanimity, and other good stuff in our everyday lives.

      Ideally, for those of us who experience yoga and meditation as spiritual practices (or have other, equivalent commitments), there’s reciprocity between the individual and the collective here. That is, the more that we build our internal strength, the more that we’re able to take in – and appropriately respond to – the social and environmental crises we face. And, conversely, tackling the challenge of that sort of difficult learning and engagement increases our spiritual strength.

      I would love nothing more than to see contemporary practices of yoga and meditation (as well as progressive-minded spirituality, religion, and/or ethical humanism more generally) start cultivating more conscious commitments to engaging with our current crises in newly creative ways. The old models aren’t working. We want – and need – some compelling new paradigms. But nothing’s emerged yet.

      Practicing Freedom


      So the practice, I think, is to do what we can. It may be as tiny as finding the right way to raise issues about the politics of food at a dinner party. (Next time . . . ) It may be cultivating the inner strength necessary simply to learn about something that you know is important, but find disturbing. It could be as big as challenging damaging politics-as-usual at work – or at the ballot box – or in the streets.

      I don’t know what’s coming; none of us do. I do, however, believe that the more people who’re working to be positively engaged with politics and society and to be spiritually centered, the more hope there is for our collective future.

      Even though it’s difficult, the more that we do this work, the more that we’re liberated from the pervasive post-modern fear and malaise that’s eating away at us all (whether we recognize it or not).

      And come what may, we can be comforted by the fact that even having a taste of such freedom is beautiful, nourishing, life affirming, and good.

      Friday, April 15, 2011

      Yoga in an Age of Anxiety: Sowing Seeds of Transformative Possibility & Magic


      To live in the U.S. today is to live in a culture that’s soaked in anxiety to the point of saturation. What with rampant unemployment, debt, economic instability, social dysfunction, and trash culture, not to mention war, global warming, and the threat of terrorism, millions of Americans have become used to slogging through what’s come to feel like an endless swamp of stress and uncertainty.

      There’s a lot of ambient fear. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and feel it pressing in on me like some cold ghostly presence. I find myself wondering if the world as I know it will remain functional long enough for my children to grow up and live “normal” lives. I feel sucked in toward dark fantasies of terrorist attacks triggering right-wing reaction, the imposition of martial law, and the end of American democracy. Or that the next time Wall Street overheats the meltdown won’t be contained and our complex web of interdependent socio-economic relations will crack wide open into anarchy. Or that the ice caps will melt and the oceans rise and beautiful San Francisco will go under along with our hopes of a wiser, more just and more sustainable society.

      Most days, these amorphous anxieties stay subterranean. I keep them at bay. I don’t keep up with the news the way I used to. Like most people, I’m absorbed in the busy details of my everyday life. But sometimes at night, in that semi-conscious zone between waking and sleeping, my guard is down and a surge of toxic anxiety breaks through to the surface.

      Generally I don’t speak of it. It feels almost unspeakable.

      But my guess is that this experience of an amorphous, yet palpably powerful sense of anxiety and fear is widely shared. (And of course, millions are dealing with much more immediate fears like, can I afford to get sick without becoming homeless?) It feels unspeakable because it’s too scary, too much of a downer. It’s too negative. We don’t want to acknowledge it. To verbalize it feels rude. Maybe unlucky. Maybe even somehow wrong, as naming the anxiety and fear that’s collectively weighing on us could have the nasty unintended consequence of intensifying the burden of whoever hears it voiced.

      Understandably, we don’t want that to happen. So we maintain the silence.

      Acknowledging the Elephant in the Room

      But I think that we do need to speak. Or at least I feel that I do. In part, simply to acknowledge the truth of what I feel. But also – more ambitiously – in the hope that by voicing my thoughts I can play my bit part in helping to nurture whatever seeds of a better future have been and are being planted.

      Which is, for me, where yoga comes into it. Not that I’m naïve enough to think that yoga will save the world. But I do believe that between the number of people practicing and the transformative possibilities it offers, there’s some real potential leverage there to work with. And given that such leverage is in exceedingly short supply in America today, it’s important, I think, to become fully cognizant of whatever possibilities for positive change we do have.

      Artist Billie Grace Lynn captured my feeling that we’re living under a pressing weight of social problems that we sense but don’t speak of. And that we need to learn to see these issues in a new way that enables us to work with them flexibly and creatively, while remaining grounded in a felt experience of the sacred mysteries of life.

      Her viscerally arresting sculpture, “White Elephants,” consists of several enormous elephant figures made of shells of translucent white ripstop nylon. Whether standing or lying down on the floor, the elephants maintain a sense of towering yet translucent immensity thanks to internal fans that keep them fully inflated, but constantly shimmering with light and movement. Commenting on the conceptual significance of the work, she writes:
      Elephants carry vast meanings on their backs. In particular, white elephants have been considered sacred since ancient times in Asia . . . Possessing a White Elephant conferred great prestige on a family but also a huge burden. Keeping a white elephant was very expensive since it had to be provided with special food and accommodations and could not be used for labor. The gift of a white elephant was considered both a blessing and a curse and it bankrupted many recipients, some deliberately.
      Another literary elephant is the English idiom, “the elephant in the room” which means an obvious truth that is not spoken or is ignored usually because it is taboo or embarrassing.
      Ganesh, the elephant god, whose effigy is found at the entrances of homes, businesses, and temples throughout India exemplifies the contradictions and connections between the known and the unknown. Ganesh marks the transitional space between the sacred and profane. He is a protector and destroyer, and the creator and remover of obstacles.
      At this point, the White Elephant is an apt metaphor for our contemporary condition; too expensive to sustain, too precious to surrender, and in a state of rapid change.
      May this ancient symbol of transformation remind us to respect each other, to remember the past, and to protect the future. The elephant is able to move silently in spite of its great mass, perhaps we too will learn to step more carefully.

      Yoga and Contemporary Culture

      Om Zia Drum (artist: Casey Jones)
      Interpreted through the lens of yoga and contemporary culture, I find this incredibly evocative. To be sure, the analogies aren’t exact. But in some ways, I feel that yoga is like the White Elephant – cherished and even sacred, yet also at times exacting a cost.

      After all, yoga similarly requires “special food and accommodations” – e.g., a way better than normal diet (ideally locally sourced and organic), open time and space (both usually quite difficult to come by), and, perhaps, expensive classes and retreats (at least for those who can afford them).

      And that’s just on the concrete, material level.

      Shifting to the level of life choices and experiences more broadly, yoga also offers a paradoxical combination of dual movements. On the one hand, it’s popular because it enables us to cope with the anxieties and fears that are so pervasive today. Scientific studies confirm that yes, yoga does indeed calm the nervous system. To a significant extent (much more, I believe, than is usually acknowledged), yoga is widely valued because it helps us get by in a stressful society with more of our health and sanity intact.

      Yet when we get deeper into it, this popular paradigm of yoga-as-coping-mechanism starts to shift into reverse gear. I’ve known quite a few people who decided that they needed to quit their jobs – or make some other, equally wrenching life change – due to the truths that they discovered for themselves in their practice. Paradoxically, they may have started practicing in order to cope with the pressures of work. But after a certain point, they realized that what they really needed wasn’t simply to cope. What they really needed was to change. And significant life change, as any psychologist will tell you, is incredibly stress inducing.

      But not all stress is necessarily bad. Just like a really good stretch is one that takes you beyond your comfort zone, the stress of breaking free of unhealthy patterns is a good thing. It may be a relationship that needs to end, an addiction that needs to be broken, or a risk that calls out to be taken. There are countless examples. But it’s that White Elephant thing again: A cherished practice can exact a cost. Positive change isn’t necessarily easy.

      Billie Grace also speaks of Ganesh. The elephant god symbolizes the “contradictions and connections between the known and the unknown . . . the transitional space between the sacred and profane.” How do we negotiate that space? How do we live those contradictions? Yoga as the White Elephant is a practice to ride as we learn to accept the uncertainly of the future in the immediacy of the present moment.

      And then we come to society:
      At this point, the White Elephant is an apt metaphor for our contemporary condition; too expensive to sustain, too precious to surrender, and in a state of rapid change.
      I love the fact that she doesn’t come out hating. One reason that I haven’t wanted to speak of our sea of societal fear and anxiety is that I haven’t known how to do so without being negative. And more negativity just adds to the sense of oppression. Of being weighted down and unable to breath freely.

      But we do have better alternatives. Perhaps the work to be done is to make them even more widely visible and available. And to speak of them in a way that shatters the silence surrounding the elephants of this age of anxiety in our collective room.

      Transformative Possibility and Everyday Magic

      During the last 15 years, as yoga’s boomed in popularity in the U.S. and worldwide, it’s been largely understood as a highly individual pursuit. This is, of course, right in line with dominant trends in our culture, which has become more and more inundated by a rising tide of individualism, consumerism, and market-based competition. The public is out; the private is in. The social is ignored, devalued, or trashed. The individual is championed, but under enormous pressure to sink or swim on his or her own.

      It wasn’t always this way. Bracketing the question of the pre-modern roots of yoga for the moment, it can be said with certainty that some of its most important modern-era teachers were strong advocates of social engagement, committed to reform and in some cases, revolution. Swami Vivekananda, who first introduced yoga to the American public in the 1890s, was an outspoken critic of chauvinistic Christian missionaries and caste-championing Hindu priests alike. Sri Aurobindo, founder of the highly influential school of Integral Yoga, was a revolutionary dedicated to ending British colonial rule over India. And even as recently as the early ‘90s, Yoga Journal’s mission statement invited readers “to join us in bringing to our troubled world a life-affirming vision of harmony and wholeness.”

      I would love to see this tradition of social engagement reinvigorated in the yoga community today. Happily, there are signs that this may be happening. Just in recent weeks on Elephant Journal (an oh so fittingly named reference for this post!), there’s been socially relevant work that:
      Certainly, more examples could be given. But the main point is that there is already good work being done to expand the many benefits of yoga beyond its current focus on the individual to include a larger social ethic and vision. And this, I believe, is a desperately needed medicine in this age of rampant anxiety and fear.

      Lakota Medicine Wheel
      While it’s impossible to boil down the many possibilities for positive change that yoga offers on a societal level to a simple set that everyone might agree on, I’d like to suggest several that I believe are particularly relevant to the project of planting and nurturing positive seeds of change in today’s Age of Anxiety: 

      1) A democratic commitment to making yoga available to all. While dedicated yogis might have to restrain themselves from breaking out into brawls over questions ranging from the authority of the Yoga Sutras to the legitimacy of lululemon, one principle that everyone seems to agree on is that yoga should be available to all. This commitment to universal accessibility embodies a deeply democratic ethos that naturally supports even such politically controversial programs as teaching yoga to prisoners. Given what UC Berkeley political philosophy Professor Wendy Brown has aptly identified as the strong “de-democratizing” tendencies in contemporary American culture, this basic democratic commitment is a vitally important ethos to assert and build on. 

      2) A universal commitment to yoga as a practice of holistic mind-body-spirit health and healing. Again, while practitioners may disagree strongly over issues of “what is yoga,” most endorse an understanding of it as an integrated mind-body-spirit practice that promotes health and healing. Given rampant levels of poor physical and mental health in U.S. society, this is a valuable commitment that – if progressively extended to reach more and more people who need it – could hugely improve quality of life on both the individual and societal levels. Further, the belief that something that we can loosely describe as “spiritual health” is the natural birthright of all people represents an incredibly important ethic in a society that’s increasingly willing to write off social “losers” as collateral damage in a winner-take-all society. 

      3) Access to a felt sense of the sacred in everyday life. This is where the magic comes in. Yoga practitioners may practice every religion from Wicca to Hinduism to Christianity – or they may be very definitive about practicing none. We can and do have disagreements over all the big questions: whether the soul exists, where spirit and matter are dual or non-dual, whether we are reincarnated or go to heaven or simply cease to exist after death. But I think that one fundamental commonality that most serious practitioners share is a sense that their practice puts them in touch with something that could be loosely described as the sacred. Yoga pours an ineffable magic back into our experience of the world in a culture that’s increasingly stripped of meaning. This sense of connection to something larger than ourselves and more mysterious than we can rationally comprehend is probably the best medicine that we can offer our f-ed up society.

      So my prayer for today is this: May we acknowledge the elephants in the room that we’ve become habituated to ignore. May we connect to our hearts, strengthen our spirits, engage our minds, and speak our truths with grace. May we work some crazy White Elephant magic to create positive individual and social change. And may we learn to practice the vexing paradox of becoming fully engaged with life while relinquishing our desire to reap the fruits of our actions.

      Cross-posted on Elephant Journal
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