The problem of using yoga to solve problems

or

"Confessions of a Modern Yogi"

-- YogaMat (Lead director: YogaWaves) - 28 Jan 2010

Another decade has come and gone and the "noughties" had a particular interest in Yoga didn't they ? Some statements I have seen suggest that there are now: "one million people regularly doing Yoga in the UK".

If we are willing to accept this statement at face value for just one moment, it follows then: fifty one million adults are not doing Yoga in the UK, and a similar conclusion might also hold up for most other countries.

We have " this yoga" and " that yoga", "yoga for this" and "yoga for that". All are accessible, palatable and any might well offer us some extra, special sustenance and spice, over the "plain vanillas" that are the psychotherapies, stretch routines, complementary health practices and physical fitness regimes.

But with the advent of "Yoga with adjectives", the "stay at home Yoga" DVD, Yoga franchises and even Yoga video games, why is it that yoga is being either ignored, or rejected by so many ?

"I Started Out With Nothin And I Still Got Most Of It Left"

We do have a tendency only to look at things from our own point of view, and as young children we start with little more than just that. It feels quite natural for us to accept different mentors for each stage in the early stages of our development, and our first "yoga teachers", (which of course are none other than our parents and carers) do have a vital role to play in our formative experience of the world.

As we grow through school, college, perhaps university and towards adult independence we enter a world of work and more complex relationships. We might take up an interest in vocational or professional training, find a study class to go to, sign up to social networking sites and are certain to form varying degrees of association with all manner of organisations. This tentative social interest rewards us with, (amongst many other options) organisations comprising yoga teachers, fitness studios, sports training providers, self improvement programmes, meditation classes and informational websites about yoga, all of which have grown exponentially in number over the last decade.

As we mature we begin to understand the deeper significance and importance of adopting a broader perspective, we become more interested and more open to how our peers approach their yoga.

But the problem with this is that it can all too often result in nothing more edifying than the adoption of a victimised mindset, that is one primarily concerned with absorbing and then assimilating the ideas, customs, mannerisms, values and beliefs, (in the case of a Guru or teacher) of some one else and, (in the case of a school, tradition or religion) some thing else. This, inevitably leads us to a more fragmented and incoherent undestanding of the predicaments we face as human beings, living in this world at this time.

On closer inspection, in adapting to a modern, occidental paradigm, yoga and its people have been trying to evade "capture" by the array of legally constituted organisations in existence since the very beginning, and these organisations are quite separate from their stakeholders in every meaningful sense.

We deal with these organisations directly, in league with individuals with similar interests in the pursuit of a "union" we all seek through yoga, but also we develop ever more sophisticated and divergent behaviours and ideological sub-plots, (we become radicalised) in a parallel pursuit of the "freedom" we expect from yoga !

This polarisation effect is counter-intuitive to what we think we are doing when we go to a yoga class or become a yoga "teacher". Sooner or later we start to experience quite surprising and unpredictable feelings such as doubt, inadequacy, guilt, shame, or anger because we feel that we have been responsible for allowing our yoga to be regulated, moderated, compromised and diluted over time.

But this is simply another mistake we make, and I will show next how the sorts of feelings and attitudes we might encounter are the result of a harmful, political process surrounding yoga, and one which we have been given little or no choice over, and one which we have had very little or no influence.

Yogic power is not the power of Yoga

Organisations are incentivised to only deal effectively with, and try and control anything that might have similar powers to them from the outset, so these are other yoga organisations, academic institutions, media companies and any other organised aspect of modern culture, such as the fast growing, social networking websites.

This is what all constituted groups of every kind are set up to do, (from small, informal committees to larger companies and even charities) - and we then tend to make the mistake of measuring their importance in terms of how well they manage to capture this power.

So, we have many Yoga teachers, all being encouraged by various organisations to deliver a corporatised yoga that, fundamentally is about creating a split, rather than a union. Corporatised yoga can be regarded much like any other form of yoga, it will have pros and cons but we need to appreciate that corporatised yoga is phony yoga, both in its conception and in its implementation. This is not to say that individual practitioners with particular skills are not perfectly capable of offering something of incidental value, (eg. therapeutic benefits) to participants, despite their political affiliations with such corporates.

The actual quality of the method in attaining skills, knowledge and techniques or the quality of delivery of them to the participant, or "end user" (which is where so much of the antagonism plays itself out between differing providers) is actually not relevant at all to yoga, which is a surprising revelation to most people, especially those responsible for training provision.

We need look closely at the issue of constituted authority, and simply observe its effects on yoga and its people. In time, it becomes obvious that we must all, individually undertake a wholehearted commitment to investigate fully any approach that presents itself as offering, "more of the truth", as this "truth" leads to passivity, desensitisation and is a flight to nothingness.

Passivity, desensitisation and the flight to nothingness

Even the most well-meaning of Gurus, Yoga teachers, and organisations produce negative externalities for themselves, their students and the wider community if they try to meet the demand for a "Formula 1 vehicle" from enthusiastic and impressionable seekers. Ordinary people are having to make the choice between being seduced into "joining the fold" or being repelled, and most will end up moving away to the "next best thing that comes along", due to an over-zealous and naïve attitude to the practice.

Despite increasing efforts to make yoga more accessible through corporatisation, the very basic and common misapprehension of the vastness that is yoga explains how any one approach will largely fail to live up to the expectations of the majority of ordinary people.

This would be fine, if the high level of contrivance necessary to make yoga fit into a corporate framework in the first place were not to create many more new social and political problems in the process. Corporatisation leads us then to an even more unsatisfactory state of affairs for all, "the people on the ground".

Yogis today have to navigate through an almost impenetrable amalgam of cognitive errors. The bias of religious, faith-based approaches and more secular modes of Yoga has been left mostly un-diagnosed by their proponents since early conception, and as we have seen, there are many incentives for them to simply to continue to become more efficient at doing more of the same.

At the highly influential, socio-political level, Yoga groups and individual "Yoga Moguls", with higher levels of interest in creating ties with government, qualifications standards bodies and the media direct resources in an attempt to gain the outcomes they prefer, while everyone else has only a tiny stake in specific outcomes, and so they tend to ignore them.

There has already been some success at "capturing" influence with the staff of the regulatory agencies, so that the preferred outcomes of these special interest groups are implemented ahead of their "competitors".

There are dangerous stockpiles of resources that are directed towards achieving specific outcomes, for example in promoting branded sets of, "Yogic principles", "Yoga teacher training qualifications", and (in the UK) National Occupational Standards for "Yoga Therapy" and many more besides.

Yoga - "two oh one oh" (2010)

At the start of this new decade then, the yoga we are most likely to become aquainted with is one based on the the well-travelled, "pyramid" (or perhaps Stupa) shaped schemas of philosophical, religious, artistic and scientific endeavour, typified by harsh, social stratification by the holders of the "secret knowledge", gilded with lofty allusions to a timeless, esoteric, "higher" knowledge that is made available only to an Aryan, trained and attained elite.

These schemas are founded on relics of the teachings and teachers of the past, and the hierarchical social groups of the past. Even the most effective traditions offer, (at best) a partial, sprawling and poorly documented record of (significantly and almost exclusively) the male genders struggle to understand the universe over the last few thousand years.

It is really no surprise then that many more practitioners of the female orientation find the various forms of bodywork under the popular Hatha yoga disciplines more appealing and effective.

You may come across explicit and prominent references to "Yogic principles" in what are referred to as canonical texts, ( ahem, there is a danger here too, see this topic: YogaIs), whilst other schools and studios swiftly proceed to ignore them altogether, choosing to emphasise the more therapeutic aspects of yogic breathing and postures since "all the other stuff" does not fit so conveniently into the concept of a modern, business marketing plan that the providers stakeholders rely on for their return on investment.

All these systems, ("teachings") are propagated to willing devotees so that they might understand the practice more fully and become more effective, eventually perhaps teaching their own students, so that they can be teachers themselves. Guided through a process of refining their more obvious habitual sufferings in their daily life, (eg. taking drugs, eating too much, stealing, worry and stress), many still find themselves without the necessary tools to deal with the more subtle ethical conflicts that take their place, brought on by these poorly conceived and partially implemented forms of practice.

A good example of such a conflict is in the variance in the personal interpretation of Ahimsa, ( non-violence), widely upheld as being one of the most important guiding principles in yoga. Is it ?

• How do we justify manipulating ourselves, (let alone our "students") in pursuit of a specific outcome, such as a straight spine, or improved concentration ? Isn't this nihilistic, narcissistic - violent even ?
• Intervention: In mitigating some assumed hazard of locking the knee for example, if this were also to present us with a different problem - such as traumatic memory from the thigh muscle - would this not be a form of (violent), Exorcism ?
• Could we learn something new from not trying to moderate our Tree pose quite so rigidly and instead allow ourselves at least the possibility of falling over once in a while ? Is this to be dismissed as "poor application", or can we offer a new, humourous classification for it - an "involuntary shoulder stand", for example ?

Please be under no illusion, ever since the first practitioners emerged from the forest or desert plains or wherever and "brought yoga to the people", the classic, student - teacher - training organisation - authority loop took yoga out of the realm of self-development and onto the political playing field. If you become involved with any form of Groupthink activity you will find that, before too long it has led you, (albeit indirectly) into a highly complex and distasteful political field of reactance, inhabited by teachers and groups of every persuasion.

All these Yoga organisations have a vested interest in resisting change and neglecting their shortcomings, while the very same provide resources that are promoted as being of particular benefit for professional Yoga "teachers", and so there is a very real quandary for anyone considering embarking on a personal journey through Yoga today.

How to solve the more complex problems like proprietory claims about yoga, state regulation and political in-fighting

At the bottom of this topic there is an attachment entitled, The Dueling Loops of the Political Powerplace. A summary is also available from http://www.thwink.org/sustain/articles/005/DuelingLoops_Paper.htm.

Although it deals with activism relating to "environmental sustainability", the parallels with, (and its particular relevance to) yoga, and its people is quite startling:-

...rhetoric, half truths, glittering generalities, the sin of omission, biased framing,
and other types of deception to appeal to the greatest number of people possible...
 
The transformation of society... requires three steps: The first is the profound
realization we must make the change, because if we dont our descendants
are doomed. The second is finding the proper practices... The third step is adopting
those practices.

Society has faltered on the third step... for strange and mysterious reasons society
doesn't want to take the final step and adopt these practices, which is the change
resistance or social side of the problem.

Therefore the social side of the problem is the crux. 

Is it possible for leaders and organisations operating within the yoga community to work together to produce better outcomes for everyone, freeing us all in the process ?

To me, this is the only way that the ongoing, negative impact on yoga and its people that I have expounded here can be mitigated. By carefully dismantling the deeply held favouritisms that have built up in our own hearts and minds we can then all look forward to a safer and much more enjoyable experience together - a.k.a. "yoga".

The type of action we have seen in recent years, such as commercial outsourcing, links with Sport England, the Charity Commission, OFQUAL, Skills Active and anomalies like The British Council for Yoga Therapy and The Yoga Show are much less significant than the more complex problems we are now all facing, which is:-

• keeping yoga out of exclusive, "party political" domains
• keeping yoga at the heart of the community of practitioners
• keeping yoga at the front of everyones mind

"If problem solvers would focus their efforts on why so much change
resistance is occurring they might find, as this analysis has, that all
they've been doing is engaging in "more of the truth". Pushing on
this point fails because it is no more than a heavy handed, naive
attempt to make the race to the top dominant through the application
of brute force. It does not consider that the race to the bottom is
inherently stronger and has a more powerful special interest group
behind it. Thus conventional approaches have no hope of succeeding,
unless the laws of physics change or a "wakeup call catastrophe"
occurs in time."

"Fortunately there is at least one way out..."

The Dueling Loops of the Political Powerplace

What I am proposing is a community-wide initiative that will help everyone detect the subtle deceptions that are underpinned by allusive propaganda and party political moralising at the earliest opportunity, (I am assuming that most of us would agree that this would be a good thing ?) and I am also proposing that the method we use to tackle the problems we all face as Yoga practitioners is a social one.

In conclusion, (a case for "Open Source Yoga")

The problem seems to be that yoga is continually being held back by a disparate number of leading teachers, organisations and celebrities whose approach succumbs to bamboozlement and degenerates into something I call the "gold watch mentality".

The "gold watch mentality" is that of a serious, attained practitioner, endowed with an engaging and charismatic personality that tends to develop their own meta-principles for yoga (extreme orthodoxy).

The "gold watch mentality" is also that of a serious, attained practitioner with a more "degenerate" personality that will generally prefer to retreat from the world to lead a quiet, easy life, possibly thinking they have yoga "sussed out" also.

I do not know of a more difficult problem than this to overcome.

I conclude that what is needed is for people to undertake action, in order to remedy our political ills:-

Two very simple things you can do to be active in making the "yoga world" a better place for everyone:-

• Challenge any form of state regulation or corporatised interference with yoga
• Challenge any claim to proprietory knowledge or techniques for yoga

Solving the problems regarding the dissemination of yoga from where we are all at now would especially benefit from a more social process, as we are all in dire need of a solution to what is a political problem, and it is a problem affecting millions of people to a greater or lesser extent every single day.

One even simpler thing you can do, (even if the incentive here is just one of the "lowest common denominator" - that is, simply having to avoid doing either of the "Two very simple things"):-

• Give your support to and offer your own shared, "open space" - we need facilities for safe, self-moderating and self-analytical discussion

This "even simpler thing" will encourage and foster a longer term, more sustainable solution, and will work, whether or not we subscribe to a more religious or a secular type of yoga.

Comments

• 20 years ago when my name was becoming commonly known in the yoga circles especially around Ickwell Bury and Howard Kent, (The British Wheel of Yoga) sent a message through one of the many BWY teachers who attended to ask if I would be interested in teaching in BWY. There was never sufficient honesty to approach as you and I might have done with a simple letter, or a personal phone call. This made my immediately suspicious of the whole outfit and from then only more evidence of the same sort of untruthfulness persisted. There has never been any doubt in my mind that BWY fully intended to mislead people to believe that BWY was the organising and accrediting body for yoga. Now to be aware of the consequences of such actions required one to be conscious, superconscious you might say. If one is that conscious then one would not with to mislead anyone. What I have always found having taught many hundreds of BWY teachers at Ickwell Bury was the remarkable lack of consciousness of the vast majority. This is how it is in my view and I have never let it bother me. Now what they are seeing is that the game is up and they require to modify their way of doing things, but this does not mean they are more conscious, so I feel we have to press them to make written and binding agreements which are enshrined in law. We have to make them sign up - all those involved in the management of the organisation need to SIGN - and have the documents put into glass cases for all to see!! Perhaps not quite literally - this is the only way such an organisation could be held to account. I would not trust them as far... etc. -- WikiGuest - 04 Feb 2010 - 14:12
• Someone said to me, a long time ago that they believed EVERYTHING to be political. That thought has stayed with me. For me it seemed to be a necessary step to join with others to create a voice would actually be heard against the tide of self -appointed authority and regulation. I believe that the members of the Independent Yoga Network and other organisations are working sincerely from this perspective. As someone who makes a modest living from teaching Yoga, it became necessary for me to hold membership and insurance with such a body in order to practice in certain regulated environments. A choice - certainly - and one which was very deeply considered. I made a very conscious ( and political) choice about which organisation to be affiliated with because of my personal resistance to regulation. Yup - ironic! We all create our own lines in the sand.

Let's keep up the dialogue. -- JudeMurray - 05 Feb 2010 - 14:12