The Mind just doesn't "get" Yoga.

Yoga is in a realm beyond words.

For as crazy in love with yoga as I've been, there is a part of me that remains skeptical. Just this morning, I'm embarrassed to say, I had a moment of fear when I wondered, "How am I going to stand in front of those people and teach them yoga." I was in a moment of feeling lost and disconnected, and I was about a block away from the building where I teach my first class of the day. And thankfully, moments later the looks of warm greeting and expectation from the class caused the doubting me to vanish. I was a passionate teacher, and totally into it once I got started.

There is an aspect of yoga (probably the heart of it) that is beyond words. All we really have to offer one another to pass yoga on is technique. Our minds can grasp technique. But what happens when we practice is ultimately beyond ordinary communication. Poetry tries, but only when we see through the spaces that the ideas open up do we get a fantastic glimpse. So, it's not the words of the poetry or the angles of the arms and legs in a yoga pose, but it is where we go from those launch pads of language and form that is so fortifying and affirming.

So I really believe that yoga is beyond the grasp of the thinking mind. And I find it wonderful that I want to talk about it so much. Isn't it strange to want to speak the ineffable?

The transmission of techniques is important. In a recent posts I've talked about my inner conflict with the traditional teachings, and how I've embraced the marketplace of yoga (because that's what I know...). This is another angle: the importance of studying, using, preserving, living and teaching yoga technique. There is something very real and powerful in these techniques for practicing yoga.

It's important to honor the teachings we have because the mind doesn't get it. And when we think that we've "got it" you can be sure that we're in an inflated state, or stuck because yoga is a window into the unknown. If we think that we know the unknown I'm sure that we are really oversimplifying. Labels and definitions help put things into human hands, but there is something about yoga that is beyond what any one person can hold by himself or herself.

I've been extremely fortunate to have studied extensively with the best Ashtanga Yoga and Iyengar Yoga teachers in town. And the situations where I have been so humbly blessed with beautiful experiences have happened when teachers were honoring these techniques for practice that came from India.

The mind can shape the container that yoga goes into, but that's all. The imperfect process of our humanity becomes blessed with yoga, and escapes the container of ordinary mind.

Linda-Sama recently commented on a post, "there is a saying in India: dharma teachings are like a bowl of rice; you pick out the dirt and leave the rest to nourish you."

There are flaws in the teachings, but even so, we might also be nourished by their wisdom.

*simul-posted at Elephant Journal*

Traditional Spiritual Lineage is not right for Me because I'm Female.

Just as my female body contains a metaphor for creating new life, so also does my existence in the realm of spiritual pursuits require a creative act.

A benefit of yoga in the marketplace is that there are plenty of women leading the way; we are used to seeing images of beautiful women in advertisements so there is an ongoing potential for commercial success for svelte females in yoga.

But I recoil in shame when I consider what is coming across to consumers: perhaps that yoga cultivates commercially acceptable beauty, or that yoga is for physical fitness. Could it be that yoga is here to help us get laid? Come on... When commercial yoga panders to our insecurities, just like any other product for sale, doesn't that cheapen the potential? Or doesn't that cheapen our estimation of what we, as yoga teachers or yoga businesses offer?

As I read and study about traditional yoga I find myself filtering and editing as I read to try to include myself in texts that were written for male seekers. And I've done a pretty good job, having pushed through countless hours of reading about men in yoga. And I love men in yoga... But when it comes to conceptualizing a vision of my yoga path, the words that were intended for male seekers from earlier generations do not always hit home for me as a female yogi practicing and living in today's world.

And I've heard that there are a handful of obscure examples of traditional yoga that honor women. But, I really haven't seen any that I can identify with.

We don't even have a tradition here in the States, what we have is a marketplace, and what this requires of us as consumers is personal responsibility. Just like it's time for us to take responsibility for the oil we use, it's also time for us to take responsibility for the quality of our hearts and minds.

Maybe it's me. Maybe I struggle with being a female yogi who is not always sure where she really fits in. Maybe I should try to be thin and beautiful and perfect. Maybe you should buy into my yoga because you love my body.

This is what bothers me.

Yoga is about a union between consciousness and form, or the "inner" and "outer" worlds. If popular yoga is too focused on physical feminine beauty, are we ever going to break through to an authentic experience of spiritual depth? Are we ever going to pursue beyond our obsession with physical form and youthful beauty? Right now our "yoga" in most places seems to be right in line with commercial norms.

Yoga tradition intersects with the modern marketplace. And I think that we enter fantasyland when we try to ignore that. Even when someone has learned from a traditional source, what a teacher brings to his or her classes is what they know. It is always their account of that tradition or lineage, so teachers are actually creating as they are teaching.

But, our yoga does inspire questions such as mine, and perhaps that's enough for now. And maybe yoga has arrived in the marketplace at this time to remind us that we are more than consumers. We are human beings with hearts and spirituality, and we can be responsible for ensuring that our world can remain inhabitable and joyful, as well as profitable.

*simul-posted at Elephant Journal*

In Defense of Marketplace Yoga

In the society I live in, it might seem like there is no reason to defend marketplace yoga — the marketplace of yoga seems just fine, actually, but there are those among us who are concerned about what is actually getting translated into this marketplace. Are we just telling ourselves nice stories about yoga, or are we really "getting" the yoga?

I have my own experience of yoga education located in this very marketplace to offer up as an example:

In fact, the part I'll talk about now happened in the upscale Gold Coast neighborhood in Chicago. It was the year 2000 at an ashtanga yoga studio that has since closed: Priya Yoga that was at 1 East Oak Street, located above a pizza shop. When walking up the stairs to yoga, the nose was greeted with the smells of pizzas baking.

It was when I was pushing my way up the flights of stairs to Priya Yoga after work that a pungent voice of inner-judgment would often assault me: Who the hell do you think you are, doing this Gold Coast yoga?

But somehow I made it up those stairs, again and again through the barrage of insulting thoughts. It helped that the studio was warm and friendly, and it also helped me that the teachers and other people seemed to like my being there. I loved being there. I loved the yoga. It became like another home for me.

After one Friday-night ashtanga yoga class here my life would be changed invisibly yet indelibly. When this particular yoga class was over, I was on the way out when I stopped to thank the yoga teacher. I was looking into the eyes of this instructor, when what appeared like golden rain began falling down, yet somewhat suspended, like glinty-gold bits in a snow-globe slowly and lightly falling down toward me and all around me — shining bits of light. I had a sense that everything around me was permeated with love: my body, the teacher's body, the air between us and all around me, the other people, the desk behind the teacher, the walls, the carpet, the ceiling, the next room, the door, the hallway and stairs, absolutely everything seemed to be permeated with this love as integrated into the fabric of all things and non-things. Yeah, I was high after that yoga session. Was this experience a figment of my body chemistry? Was it somehow a delusion caused by dehydration, exhaustion or toxicity?

What scientifically happened to me is a little less important than what spiritually happened to me. I actually thought for the first time in my life that the fabric of our world might be good. I had felt it to be absolutely and irrefutably good from a song in my cells. Love had spoken from every particle I was aware of in that moment.

I think that our realizations in yoga are more about our dedication as individual practitioners than about the marketplace of yoga, but this economy does support the houses of yoga and teachers of yoga that create a situation where amazing and previously-unimaginable things can happen for people.

I am grateful that I have been able to have this and many other beautiful, meaningful, and life-enhancing yoga experiences — that I don't think are over by any means. But there was a money-based background that made it possible to experience the yoga that I have. So the marketplace is not separate from our yoga, it actually makes yoga more accessible than ever before because it is a part of our economy.

* also posted at Elephant Journal.