Whats Wrong with Yoga

Reflections as I hear someone criticising certain aspects of yoga. The criticisms vary depending on the views the person is promoting or trying to refute, but they all seem to live in a particular paradigm of thought:
Some criticisms are a contradiction in themselves, such as stating that Yoga is religious and unchanging and on the other hand then saying that it has integrated many techniques from modern exercise practice. I think a lot of these criticisms revolve around westerners living in a Christian paradigm of there being a one right way, others from the scientific materialism which has similar exclusivist view [if one then not other]. But Yoga is not exclusivist and its not a religion. Yoga in practice and textual tradition promotes inclusivity and pragmatic use of knowledge. There will always be fundamentalists who somehow elect Donald Trump to be president, does that mean all Americans agree with the attitude of Trump? The traditional practice of Yoga is open-minded, and has accepted people of all castes and religions.  

As a person who studies Yoga Śāstra (the textual tradition), and is in a living tradition that traces itself back hundreds of years, I firmly believe that we have to be careful of fundamentalist religion and fundamentalist people from the pro and con sides of Yoga. Yoga teaches us to listen to our bodies and to be aware, it is not fundamentalist.

Yogi Ghamande's
 Yogasopāna Pūrvacatuṣka 

(Bombay: Janardan Mahadev
Gurjar, Niranayasagar Press, 1905)

There is a whole new conscious movement / somatic awareness Movement that is alive right now in the West. Yoga and yoga asana started being practiced by westerners in the late 1700’s when the British were colonizing India. Yoga began seeping into western culture and āsana practice reached its height in the 1990’s and early 2000’s. So many of the leaders of the somatically aware Movement have been exposed to Yoga and often inspired by Yoga. We have to remember that these somatic leaders were not inspired to explore the body, wake up their inner being, and discover these ways of movement while they were listening to a sermon in church or singing in the choir, nor being shaped into the movements of ballet. They were inspired by Yoga, a teaching that has promoted awakening the body for longer than our country or culture has existed (older than our reality). Yoga gave a validity to being in the body, to utilizing the body, to not trying to transcend the body and be in heaven. Yoga promoted the awareness that there is a spiritual element to conscious body movement- which allowed any other somatic practice to have room in western culture. Imagine trying to teach any somatic practice in eighteenth century Massachusetts, and see where one would end up. Yoga is a grandparent to most somatic practices we have.

There are a few elements that people don’t understand when they think that a newly created somatic technique is better than Yoga, or safer than Yoga, or something more than Yoga. We live in a society that lives by an exclusive principle. The country was founded by people who believe there was only one god and one saviour and others were wrong. There is a belief in self-determinism that you got yourself where you are, and a failure to acknowledge the predecessors who have made whatever you do to be possible. If you are Christian you can’t be Muslim. If you are Muslim then you can’t be Christian. One belief/practice excludes the other. Yoga is inclusive, you can be Christian and include Yoga, or be Muslim and include Yoga- including is allowed.

Yoga is from a background, where the past and those who came before us are held in high esteem. We remember them, and acknowledge that we may have never found what we have or been able to achieve what we have if but one element that was handed down was missed. In that, we share that our accomplishments belong to all those who came before us, and we are living their dreams and intentions forward into the future. In this way, anything created, belongs to those who came before and those who will come after.

In Western culture, techniques are trademarked marketed to make more money. The name and form is kept as distinct as possible to protect that trademark ownership. Yoga isn’t owned by anyone particular. Not a person, or a tradition or a country. Yoga is stewarded by the sincere practitioner who studies the Yoga science and in which the Yoga science lives within. And while the science of movement advances with all the new knowledge of modernity, Yoga eats it. Yoga subsumes it as mercury subsumes other metals into it. Yoga is an inclusive system that looks at the world pragmatically and integrates what creates balance (samatva) to the body, mind and spirit.

There was a statement that 'Yoga isn’t better because it has been around for thousands of years...' Well, its not about being better. Yoga specifically is against better than - less than dialogue [Gītā II.38]. Yoga promotes authenticity- “it is better to fail at your own way, then have success in someone else's way” [Gītā III.35]. Yoga will be around for thousands of years more, and all the various ‘new’ techniques will be integrated and will live on within the system of Yoga. It is adaptable, it is breathable, it has an infinite holding capacity.    

A very important point for anyone transmitting Yoga teachings: There is a big difference between a traditional Indian interpretation and a western academic philologist interpretation and I will exaggerate this with a particular verse to give an example. A traditional Yoga text, called the Gheruṇḍa Saṁhitā [II.1], says that there are 84,000 āsana described by the Śiva, and that there are as many postures as there are species of creatures in the world. The next verse says that it will teach the 32 most important.

1. The western philologist (and all the people that parrot) says that these Indians are always making up big stories, 84,000 is such an exaggeration. There are no texts that have that many āsana. They only ‘write’ about 32 postures, all the rest must be a modern invention. Those Indians needed us colonialists to come and teach them how to put those poses in a sequence as well, as no one in a few hundred years of doing hatha yoga would have been able to think that up. It's not really that old, or sacred, so we can just appropriate it as we like.

2. A more traditional interpretation understands that adding a 1,000 or 100,000 after a number means that there are so many variations or possibilities (similar to when we say something like ‘I have hundreds of them’ when we mean we have a lot of them). The number 1,000 is added to indicate that there are so many that we really can’t count. The 32 āsana are written about, and you will need a teacher to get them correct, and that teacher will help you make the pose work for you, and traditions always say never do it without a trained person or you might hurt yourself. And we are listing the 32 most important, but there are so many variations that you will never find the end of them. People will go off and create whole systems and give those systems names, and those are āsana too. But make sure you work with these 32- cause there is some weird stuff out there and we don’t want you going down the wrong road. If you are working with these 32 poses, you know the teacher has been trained and is not just making things up. And 84,000 means you are not limited. You are not stuck in a box. You are allowed to include other poses, with the intention that you are using the mindfulness and awareness that has been taught through these 32 shared here.  

The practical philosophy of Yoga doesn’t say you have to believe either of the above views, but as a Yoga teacher, be very careful limiting people’s experience with a philologist’s opinion as they have a tendency to change theories every so many decades as new theories become popular and a new line of inquiry or research brings new ‘evidence’ to focus. [here is one example on asana in medieval texts], [update a study of sequenced yoga in Tibet, Surya Namaskar]

There is a new term called Modern Postural Yoga (MPY). It comes from a belief that what we are practicing as yoga āsana is new (related to Danish Gymnastics) and made up because scholars can’t find it written in Indian books. Besides everything written above, there are two issues with this. The first is that if you look at classical Indian martial arts or Indian classical dance or Indian traditional wrestling, there are tons of routines that have many similarities to yoga practices. If you look an Indian child's gymnastics, they do lotus posture upside down on poles and flipping into scorpion poses and all kinds of exciting acrobatics. Did Indians really need to import putting poses in a sequence? I have a personal experience of learning in Sikkim of a four āśana series that is done to prepare for practicing certain bandhas. These movements ability to open certain parts of the body and series like Sūrya namaskar didn’t need an outside western force to evolve. And, (Indian science is always about AND/OR/Depending, not an only), any knowledge that benefits can be incorporated if it works within the holistic system. And on this point, we have to look at any sharing of ideas as a reciprocal relationship, as who knows how British, Dutch, Portugese, and French exercise benefited from 300 years of hanging out in India- do the British have 500 years of exercise tradition in textual format…no.

The second issue with becoming too fixated on the MPY theory is that the focus is on the poses (the material level) instead of the intention of the āsana- which is to make the body healthy, purify toxins physically and mentally, and bring a person into balance. The focus is on the external look and sequence of poses, and forgets the most important elements that yoga brings- the consciousness of the space, the holding of sacred space, the focus on breath, the correlation of breath and movement, the self-reflective attitude which yoga teaches put into the space because that IS how yoga has been transmitted. This sacredness is not written in books, it is taught, it is the culture of yoga that is assumed, it is implicit within the framework of the system of Yoga. The sacred space of conscious body-breath movement is the blessing that Yoga posture has given the West. To not respect that gift, is to not honour one’s own body and breath.

Above image from an Article about yoga postures carved into pillars from a 1500's temple.

The below picture with legs behind the head (and other headstands) are from Mahudi Gate in Dabhoi, Gujarat, around 1230 CE.

Below is a carving from pillars at Hampi built in the 1600's. James Mallinson mentioned that this pose is not mentioned in any ancient text. At minute 46:00, the head of the Hatha Yoga Project states that the large use of postures cannot all be blamed on western interaction.

Another image from pillars at Hampi built in the 1600's.

The most important thing from these images, is that no one can say that Yoga came from western Gymnastics. While poses might have been altered in modern times, it is clear that Yoga asana practice has a long tradition in India.