Within the greater than decade-long historical past of this weblog, I’ve by no means skilled extra blocks in my writing apply than I’ve within the final yr. Inspiration has been briefly provide. I query whether or not this meditation on phrases that after provoked fruitful inquiry in me and its readers has misplaced its relevance. The explanation I began this was so I may say no matter I needed about yoga with out censor and, frankly, I’m frightened by how inhibited I really feel to remain true to that.
This coincides with what appears to me an important fork within the street for the way forward for yoga in western tradition. Will the knowledge and instruments of our ancestors that enable us to extra readily hear the songs of nature, that harmonize our techniques and setting, be fully misplaced to a reductionist materialism that repurposed them as health regimes? Or will we as soon as once more acknowledge the animistic context through which we reside and embody the practices which might be our birthright?
Commercialization was only a symptom.
Many instances I’ve lamented and decried the rampant commercialization of yoga. A multi-billion greenback business of yoga-related merchandise, constructed on the attract of each a lithe physique and enlightened thoughts, appeared like the first impediment to genuine yoga transmission. Myself and others have struggled to seek out methods of mitigating the financial realities and limitations to creating a dwelling via yoga with integrity. But, underlying the appropriation of yoga for capitalistic ends is a a lot deeper wound within the collective psyche.
Is there any object in your life that’s so treasured to you that there isn’t any value you’d half with it for? Maybe it’s an object that carries no specific financial worth however represents or signifies one thing so significant and necessary to you that no amount of cash would ever be value it? We offered yoga to the mainstream by making it about energy, flexibility and stress discount. We altered the pedagogy to make it extra handy to eat. However, in doing so, we opened the door to a degree of compromise that renders the teachings void of their energy and roots.
Is Yoga sacred or not?
On a private degree, for a lot of, yoga is akin to prayer. However to not the market. In truth, to a level, the money-making potential of yoga is probably going tied to its secularization. For many who discovered yoga earlier than it turned well-liked, self-empowered spirituality was a welcome aid from experiences of organized faith in our youth. Nevertheless, in more moderen years, what has impressed many to apply yoga was rooted in a coercive exploitation of rampant physique dysmorphia greater than any unfolding of religious goal or route.
Regardless of business disregard for the spirituality of yoga, its historic practices usually have an unexplainable method of working in a human system. There are occasions when even probably the most cynical of reductionists cannot deny what they really feel of their hearts after respiration and transferring or chanting in live performance with others. Typically life itself presents us with ordeals that result in profound epiphanies. Relinquishing typical modes of pondering and being usually results in experiences which might be unexplainable by scientific or quantitative means. For these not solely entrenched in a materialist mindset, the magic of life, and due to this fact yoga, is just not some superstition however a matter of observable truth.
We devalue spirit at our personal peril.
Instructing folks the way to align their our bodies into positions and tailoring practices to emphasise the potential for bodily profit could have confirmed to be higher at producing wealth whereas providing some quantity of assist to folks, however this has additionally primarily neutered the potential for yoga to broaden our concepts of what’s potential. By partaking yoga within the context of scientific materialism that guidelines modernity, moderately than within the animism that our ancestors inhabited, now we have undermined the invaluable presents that yoga provides to humanity and the world.
One of many explanation why I’ve had such a tough time bringing myself to the ritual of this weblog is that I’ve grow to be disenchanted with the flexibility of written phrases to maneuver folks. For one, studying now not appears to command the eye required to speak nuance. Trustworthy and honest sentiments grow to be grossly misinterpreted or manipulated to serve preconceived agendas that not solely bely intent however are designed to disempower folks. Something that challenges predominant narratives is instantly being demonized.
Trying to speak about spirit, or something that can not be simply measured or named, feels dangerous once we are being so straight confronted by uncertainties. However it’s now apparent that prevailing worldviews are failing us terribly and we are able to now not depend on establishments which have devolved into forces of oppression greater than empowerment. If we actually imagine that yoga has a task to play then our greatest probability for therapeutic and alter is to acknowledge it as a way of understanding consciousness and spirit moderately than simply one other try to govern the fabric world.
