News from the anti-Slim, Calm, Sexy “Yoga” trenches

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American Yoga, anti-yoga yoga, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Depression, hypocritical, Land Down Under, meaningless gloop, minority voice, Mr. Men, oil and water, old fashioned mind-set, passive-aggressive, patronising, pseudo-yoga, PTSD, radical feminist, radical humanists, Roald Dhal, Samskaras, Slim Calm Sexy, Tara Stiles, trenches, Upanishads, Yoga, yoga puree, Yogis

This guy is hoping it's safe to come out of this low crouching position soon!

The ongoing discussion re: Tara Stiles’ Slim Calm Sexy “Yoga” and similar horrendous-yet-commercial “anti-yoga yoga” advertising, certainly has legs (no pun intended).

Like oil and water, seems there’s two main groups disagreeing with each other and the effects are still reverberating around the blogosphere.

I’ve been called a “radical feminist” for my opinions, although in this day and age I’ve no idea what is radical about anything I’ve said. In fact, as Linda put it (someone who was also labelled as such), perhaps we are “radical humanists” at the most. But our views on all of this are not extreme in any way.

It’s also been suggested that anyone who thinks Tara is selling out is just jealous of her success. Can you imagine that? Women who oppose yoga being used as a weapon against women’s self-esteem are being accused of things that suggest a very old fashioned mind-set, circa 1960s. And being accused by other women, no less!

Apparently, my anger and objections to the way Tara is using yoga can be boiled down to “extreme” ideas and oh… jealousy. How nice, because then you get to ignore me, right?

I shake my head in wonder, particularly because I expected more from some people. But perhaps they want to buy into the fame and glory associated with models-turned-yoga-teachers-who-don’t-know-yoga-from-a-hole-in-their… y’know. I’ve no idea! It does at least appear that some people’s heads are turned by even the slightest association with someone famous, even if they don’t actually know them personally!

But then, perhaps that’s just part of their samskaras in this life. Who’s to say?

I’ve even had to end my association with a couple of bloggers who quite frankly, have been incredibly judgey, patronising and hypocritical. Although if our ideas on yoga, human/women’s rights differ so much, then perhaps that’s for the best at this point in time.

Maybe that’s how I look to them, too. It’s possible! I’m okay with others disagreeing with me, but not with being called names and people getting all passive-aggressive about it. With me, if I don’t like something I’m gonna tell you to your face (and I have!).

So it’s been quite the ride, but then I think it just shows how important this issue is. Everyone’s personal issues (mine included) – or rather our samskaras – are flaring up like crazy!

There’s a “don’t pick on Tara, she’s not hurting anybodeee” attitude that belies the reality of what’s going on. (BTW “Lalanna”, folks who leave comments on my blog with a fake email address will NOT get published!).

But actually this isn’t about Tara personally (although please don’t get me started on the 20 hour “yoga teacher training” she offers!), so much as it is about a certain approach to yoga. Or “pseudo-yoga”, shall we call it? Or perhaps “yoga-flavoured movement to sell books and DVDs”?

There also seems to be a “peace, love and its all good no matter what” thing going on. Let’s all agree with everybody else! But in my opinion, that’s how you get something I like to call “yoga puree”, or meaningless gloop.

And if yoga puree is what people think is acceptable, why don’t we all just not bother with (expensive) yoga teacher training? Why not just read some Roald Dhal and Mr. Men and call ourselves yoga teachers? I’ll translate Charlie and the Chocolate Factory into a version of the Upanishads, shall I?

Or rather, I won’t.

Sad when a student says on the first day of my Mindful Yoga class, “I hope I survive this class!” I asked “why do you say that?” She said “I’m not flexible”, not this, not that. I said “What makes you think yoga is all about that?” She said “all the ads I see.”

So for those who think current ads for yoga have no affect on future students, look harder. She had not done yoga for 40 years – said [that] yoga 40 years ago was “about the mind”. I said, “In my class it still is”. She left feeling wonderful BTW..:)

And after class she said her hips no longer hurt.

~from Linda-Sama about a very recent student

Can you imagine? A mature-age woman who felt inadequate about going to a yoga class! Because of yoga ads.

It’s not like I’m saying it’s all the fault of people like Tara Stiles, but she sure isn’t helping the situation! She herself is caught up in her own samskaras. So she really can’t help it, I guess.

And this is what we need to be mindful of. We cannot be okay with calling everything and anything yoga! We cannot let yoga be over-run with a very narrow definition of acceptable physical appearance in the same way the fashion industry has! We cannot allow yoga to be co-opted by the fashion industry (any more than it already is) or other commercial pursuits!

I realise that those of us who are dissenting are apparently the minority voice. But then, that’s traditionally been the role of yogis anyway. And yoga has always been about freeing the mind of such shallow and limited points of view. So really, it makes sense.

It’s just rather sad.

Years ago, I remember listening to my Guru explain a bunch of stuff about “American Yoga”, and make clear definitions between what we were studying and ummm, other kinds of teachings. Not in an elitist way, however. Back then, I didn’t really get it. But now I do, and I also understand why he refuses to live in America and be a part of the yoga scene there. It’s just too KRAAAAAZY for him!

I also recall the yoga debate on Yoga Dork’s blog a while back. At the time, I didn’t understand why the Indian community was so angry about the western-world co-opting yoga the way it has. I’d like to apologise to those people now!

Perhaps I didn’t get it because I’ve only ever been trained in a relatively traditional way. I have an authentic Guru who’s given me an incredible knowledge base already. And all of the yoga I’ve studied, practice and teach is relatively traditional, too.

Also, here in Australia we simply don’t have the same sort of yoga scene that the US does.

In the Land Down Under, yoga is still just plain old (but super-wonderful) yoga. No bells. No whistles. No catchy slogans to manipulate people into signing up for yoga class or buying a book or DVD.

Just yoga.

And really, that’s all I’m interested in.

I’m not giving up my position in the trenches. I’ll still disagree with blatantly commercial and self-esteem harming advertising in the name of yoga. BUT, I won’t bother trying to convince those who are too deluded to see. Not any more, anyway.

And I’ll still be here writing about real yoga (I won’t be shutting up any time soon), along with topics like PTSD and depression. Because they’re all inter-related as human experiences, and we need to look for truth in each of them.

You can count on that. You can also count on me being fierce (as is my warrior nature) as I do so, and truthful. And I won’t give up, I promise!

~Svasti

Samskaras in samsara – part 2

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Asana, Asatoma Sat Gamaya, Ayurveda, bandha, Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, dance, Deepak Chopra, duality, Karma, Krishna, Limitations, martial arts, Meditation, metaphysical, mula, non-dual reality, pranayama, psychoanalysis, Reality, Samsara, samskara, self-loathing, Shanti Path, Slim Calm Sexy, Swami Niranjananda Sawaswati, Tara Stiles, Wake up, Yoga, yogic philosophy, Yogis

I didn’t take this photo, but I’ve driven past this statue of Arjuna in Bali. It’s magnificent!

[Read part 1 first]

Okay, so enough with the psychoanalysis of our western self-loathing mind-set for a moment.

How about we go beyond the physical, to the metaphysical for a bit? Yeah?

Okay, so let’s take a tiny peek at some of the subtleties of yogic philosophy.

Note #1: I’m going to do my best to explain these rather complex concepts to you as passed down from my wonderful teachers. Of course, my understanding is still limited and imperfect but hey… I’ll give it a go. Also, there’s only so much I can pack into a single blog post!

Note #2: This is another long post. Try to hang in there!!

Samsara is considered to be this world of duality – the place where the universe can experience its Self as Other than its Self. ‘Nuff said about that for now…

And samskaras are deeply embedded patterns of energy within collective energy forms that manifest as individual human beings. “Pattern” being the key word here – a pattern comes from actions being repeated over and over again. And of course, the more often a pattern is repeated, the harder it is to change it. Kinda like a train running on the only tracks it’s got.

Samskara is a very peculiar thing. It is the library within a DNA molecule, containing everything that we have imbibed. One DNA molecule contains the total information of all of the libraries in the world combined. Samskaras are like that too. Samskaras are the inputs of volumes and volumes of books which we carry within us and which have been accumulating over millions of years. When these samskaras come to the surface of the mind, they are very powerful.
~From Yoga Darshan, Swami Niranjananda Sawaswati

A samskara then, is a thought or activity that’s become part of how the world appears to us. It can define our preferences, personality, understanding of other people and things. And with those definitions come limitations – what is subjectively true and what is not. However, limitations aren’t actually “bad”, not in the least.

In fact, they are key to our ability to exist in as humans where we all appear as separate entities, cut off from source/the universe/god etc. So, samskaras can be considered to be both useful (i.e. they comprise and make possible our limited view of the world) and problematic (when we can’t discriminate between our limited view and a wider view).

Still with me?

Limitations are a naturally occurring construct of this world and universe. They are part of how we function, our identity, why we have certain opinions and emotions and ideas. Our samskaras interact with karma (another much-maligned and misunderstood yogic concept) and form a filter through which we view “reality”. As we know, reality at this level is different for everyone, and far from the non-dual view the rishis and wisdom masters speak of. Hence, our diversity of opinions!

However, one of the true goals of yoga and serious yogis is to free ourselves from the limitations of the dual world, while simultaneously existing in both the dual and the non-dual. In fact, we can’t exist in the non-dual without duality, because then it wouldn’t be a non-dual reality – for the non-dual to be truly non-dual, it also has to encompass duality (hope that makes sense!).

Asatoma Sat Gamaya
Lead me from the unreal to the Real

Tamasoma Jyotir Gamaya
Lead me from the darkness to the Light

~Brihadaranyaka Upanishad

And so we yogis work to free ourselves from limited views through an intimate understanding of, and connection to our mind and body. The path to achieving this can include: asana, pranayama, mula, bandha, meditation, martial arts, dance, Ayurveda and so on. Usually, more than one of these methods is required to develop our mind-body awareness. Ultimately this MUST include long and deep hours of meditation (as opposed to say, fifteen minutes a day).

Freeing ourselves from limited views does not mean however, denying our anger or any other emotion. We need to go fully into the experience of being a human being in order to understand and liberate ourselves from the suffering of samsara. Because, how can you possibly be free of what you don’t understand?

As such, suppressing emotions or decrying other people’s anger as “un-yogic” is doing little more than keeping you stuck on those same train tracks, going around and around and around… and the more circuits of the train track you make, the harder it is to change. Get it?

It is tricky, because on the one hand we are here on this planet that exists in duality, and so we play by the rules of this world where interactions with people, our emotional states and experiences DO matter. But then, as we learn to drop into non-duality more and more (it comes in flashes or waves), we begin to see how much none of it really matters in the end. And things start to change as we begin to increasingly experience non-duality as our actual reality.

It can be both incredibly liberating and stupendously confusing at the same time…

And yet. We MUST learn to see the real from the unreal. This for me, is what makes the false and harmful messages about body image (burn that bra fat, minimise those wider-than-desired hips) so completely alarming.

Because it is being condoned not just by Tara Stiles (who, as a yogi with connections to Deepak Chopra should bloody well know better), but by so many other people involved in yoga.

The outcry in return seems to be all “don’t hate on Tara”, “don’t hate on anything we want to define as yoga” and “you people who are complaining are just simply un-yogic”.

BUT all of the folks in that camp – including Tara – are missing the glaringly obvious point here:

Yoga is about liberation from samskaras and the human condition of suffering. NOT about playing into and re-enforcing those patterns for ourselves and others. NOT about continuing to make people think there is something wrong about their physical appearance that needs to be fixed – this is a mass personal and cultural samskara and one that’s deeply embedded!!

This isn’t a personal attack on Tara or anyone else, but as my own Guru would say: WHERE IS YOUR MIND??

My criticism comes from asking: what kind of yogi supports messages that invoke deep-seated insecurities and self-esteem issues of others? From generating and confirming samskaras as real instead of limited thinking that one can learn to revoke?

This is not good work. And it is not yogic in the least. In fact, those in the yoga community who buy into this, saying that it’s all okay, are demonstrating minds that are still deeply embedded in their own samskaras, whatever they might be. Some things are NOT okay, especially coming from yogis.

Seriously, anyone who thinks Tara Stiles’ “Slim Calm Sexy” yoga is an okay way to market yoga to the uninitiated masses is not engaging in enough discernment or discriminate thinking. And those uninitiated masses? They probably spend most of their time feeling deeply unhappy and thinking self-loathing thoughts anyway, and don’t NEED anyone else to point it out to them!

Even as Tara et all are claiming “it doesn’t matter how people come to yoga” – and I’ll admit that’s generally true – in some ways it actually DOES. Because by pressing the self-esteem/physical appearance buttons you’re embedding those samskaras just a little more deeply than before and messing with someone’s appreciation of what yoga is all about. Who knows how much extra work – conscious and sub-consciously – will be involved in undoing all of that?

Basically, the Tara Stiles school of yoga marketing is unhealthy and unethical.

And as another teacher I’ve studied with would put it… WAKE UP!!

Or as I’d put it… WAKE (THE FUCK) UP!!

This is not a popularity contest where we have to be friends with everyone and accept everything that’s said about yoga, simply because we don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.

SO WAKE UP!!

Remember, Krishna was a warrior and he worked very hard to make Arjuna fight a battle. It’s not always about having the most friends, but about cutting through the crap and seeing clearly.

Lead me from the unreal to the freaking real, already!

~Svasti