Hi yoga. I know you’re enjoying unprecedented popularity, you’ve made it into people’s homes and safe places, you’re being streamed and downloaded and praised. But you don’t look like yourself anymore. Can we get you back on the tracks?
You started out as a spiritual practice with eight limbs, three of which involved attaining clearer and clearer states of consciousness. Last year you were the supposed reason for a $9 billion industry, and yet folks are as anxious, depressed, and disconnected as ever. What’s up?
Let’s look at how you work. The beginning of the practice is meant to be underpinned by the first two limbs, inner and outer moral observances. These alone are a life changing and continual practice, but I don’t think anyone in my teacher training knew about these before they decided to become teachers.
I think that alone could make an entire case for why you aren’t as effective as you used to be. But let’s go on. Asana, the third limb and what we call the physical practice, is how most people see you. 196 original sutras about you, and only 3 talk about asana. Somehow, this has become what folks think you are, and all it encompasses is a way to make meditation doable.
Then we get to breathwork – outside of an ashtanga class, many students don’t realize this is an essential part of you. It seems more like an added bonus the teacher sometimes brings in. If folks knew this is how energy gets moved and managed in the body while we shift through poses, I think they’d place more importance on it.
Finally, withdrawal from the senses – also thought of as the act of meditation, not to be confused with the states of meditation we can attain. Who even knows about this? You are such a powerhouse practice, and somehow you’ve gotten lumped in with jogging and swimming. Teachers in big cities need to have fitness certifications – for a practice that was never about fitness!
Yoga, get it together. People need you in your fullest form, your greatest good, your authentic self. In observance, in movement, in breath, and in focus, there you really are. People will like you as you are, I promise.
Heather Ralston 