Yoga or Yoga-esque?

Okay, so I believe that Yoga improves many things in life but does that mean I have to be led by the effects, like better sex, rather than focus on the practice? And, by the way, what do I believe are the effects of Yoga?

When people begin Yoga, as I did years ago, it is their expectation that will dominate what the perceived effects are for a long time. That is, if they continue. Oh, and for most it means to practice postures, or asana, which is Yoga to most of us in the West.

Our perception of Yoga is pretty much set from outside influences like media, friends or authorities we listen to. Once we are convinced to try Yoga it is against that set of values that we judge 'Yoga Styles.' It's human. We simply try something based on what we think it will do and see if it does it.

Except that Yoga is vast and has no coordinating authority to say what it is and how it shall be taught. Oh, there are some guide books that have been written over the last two thousand years, but nothing everyone agrees on.

And so we have what we've seen in movie fiction for years: True believers and rebels. In Yoga, this is always going on. Yogis are notorious for not conforming - mostly because they tend to be mystics. And mystics are True-believers having found a direct and un-mediated connection with Life, the Universe and Everything!

The rebels today are practicing 'in the style of' yoga, hence yoga-esque. Being non True-believers, of written word or authorities, they are experimenting and finding new ways and variations on the established theme.

In point of fact, to most other humans on Earth they are doing the same things! From a distance, most non-yoga humans don't see much difference.

Indian philosophy talks about actions that appease the pleasure in the body/mind, bhogakala, and actions that appease the spiritual heart/soul, yogakala. The True-believers tend to get angry at Bhogi's because they believe they are missing a great opportunity to use their talents to reach Enlightenment. Bhogi's don't seem to mind looking good, feeling good, but not doing 'good' Yoga!!! But that seems to be the nature of rebel yoga practitioners.

Recently, it has come to light that Yoga as we know it today may really be physical yoga based on european exercise regimes. This would seem to throw a kink in those in the US especially who thought they were True-believers but now may be marginally self-aware rebels because the True True-believers are Vedantic or Raja Yogi's.

What a predicament you've gotten us into now. But this has been the way of Yoga for millennia and we, the practitioners of today, are not exempt from this quandary.

So what's the deal? The deal is to keep doing while awake. The deal is to observe how our expectations sort out our experiences into value groups and how that has an effect on our lives. The deal is to develop a sense of discrimination over time that will help us see all of this clearly. The deal is to do without judgement but with a clear mind and see where it takes us.

And that's all I got because that's all I expect... to see clearly.

Yoga-nomics: Recirculating Wealth

We are all interconnected in so many ways. Unfortunately, in cases like this, large corporations act as middle-men and take profit out of areas where they are needed. Trendiness has consequences. 
Buy local has a lot of impact in supporting your neighbors as well as recycling profits. Profits stay locally and growers then spend their money in local stores, banks and yoga studios.


Buying from Trader Joe's of Whole Foods takes the profits out of an area for good and only marginal income is recirculated in the form of very low wages to hourly employees. {i started calling it Whole Fools after the elitist Health Care statements of owner John Mackey were made.}


Trickle-down economist types have a lot of information about the wealth effects of all this, but the decimation of local economies is not their concern. Efficient markets usually mask the devastation of local economies and individual lives. Theirs is a view from 50,000 feet saying the weather is sunny while it's very different here on Earth.

Education: what direction does it take?

Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharishi

After Learning all scientific theories and becoming highly educated persons in the world, then if the people do not destroy their pride and ego through Self-Inquiry, there is no use of their illusionary achievements.

The uneducated people are better than them.

The pride of acquiring Education, the desire for appreciation and fame are subject matters for discouragement.

That Education is not at all education and real knowledge.

The Education which paves the way for searching the Truth, The education which inculcates obedience in them is the superior education. It will make them humble and honest people to behave with a sense of equality towards all in the World.

Sri Ramana Maharshi

If you've made it this far you must be fascinated by the above quote. Personally, I am mostly attracted by it. Overall, I am attracted to the direction it indicates.

I am very aware from personal experience of the pride, ego and desire that Sri Ramana introduces here. My education carried me through an MBA in a very conservative school that basically taught that greed was good. At the same time I was studying Zen Buddhism at the Rochester Zen Center, so was somewhat balanced, or confused, in turns.

So, I understand that Self-Inquiry can help destroy pride and ego.

It's the obedience that I always have a hard time with! I, for various reasons, have not trusted my teachers and superiors very much. So this comes with difficulty to me. I realized that I'm more an iconoclast: one who facilitates the destruction of religious symbols, or, by extension, established dogma or conventions.

This somehow works well with Self-Inquiry. The turn is that the symbols, dogma and conventions that get destroyed are the ones I've wrongly accepted and live by. No easy task that. However, by turning my attention inward, I have found a teacher over the years that I can trust. 

Quakers call it the 'still small voice' and in Yoga it's the inner Guru. 

The Obedience, I've discovered, is to this voice.

True face of Yoga in America

During a two week stay at Arsha Vidya Gurukulum (residential center for the study of Vedanta) I was surprised to hear the usage Yoga Shastra. It meant the science of yoga. In Raja Yoga, yoga is designed to calm the mind and make it receptive. It is an analgesic, not an end. 

The skill set for teachers of yoga in America today must keep pace with distractions that are always around, including mobile devices. The mind doesn't function differently today; it seeks out the novel and changeable as is its nature.

Yoga shastra is about finding the permanent among the impermanent in any age, in any place.

The major problem in calming students minds seems to be teachers who are themselves overly attached to Asana as a vehicle for teaching Yoga. Asana is meant to illuminate the changeable and cultivate the sense of the permanent through vichar, focused attention, and more importantly through developing Viveka, discerning awareness. The first, vichar, is a process where an individual differentiates the real from the unreal (impermanent). Viveka, called the crown-jewel of awareness, is a state of mind wherein one can operate without distraction.


It is in this state of mind that awareness of the beyond, Brahman, can be present. Brahma Vidya is what can be accessed when Yoga Shastra has done it's work.

"To be born as a (hu)man, to have longing for release (from bondage) and the association with great souls - these three are difficult to obtain."

The challenge we face is to overcome, through Yoga effort, the sanskaras. It is the process of illumination of our habitual patterns that is the goal of Yoga. To see clearly, past our likes and dislikes, in order to be prepared for the depth of our true nature.


As teachers of asana, we have our own sanskaras to contend with. And these show up in our teaching. Not only in our physical but in our conveying of values and concepts.


It takes great effort and time of practice to strip ourselves bare of habitual patterns. Until that time, we should be clear to define them. Otherwise we stand the chance that our students will replicate them.


Of course, this is beyond a 200 or 500 hour, or even two year, certification program. That's why today we have a system developing of propagating sanskaras. Where people are teaching their own habituated likes and dislikes (raga and dvesa) without proper insight.


This seems to be the true face of Yoga in America.
(for another rendition of this view by Ramesh Bjonnes click here)