“Concentrate on your anja chakra, the third eye.”
“Feel your body filled with Prana”
“Om Namah Shivaya!”
If you are encountering the yoga scene for the first time it can sometimes seem pretty out there. While every sub-culture has it’s own quirks and idiosyncrasies, the fact that yoga’s ultimate goal is nothing less than total enlightenment, leads many yoga practitioners to start acting funny. The American illusion and comedy duo Penn & Teller had a very entertaining episode of their television show Bullshit! which highlighted this tendency in yoga circles. And more often than not, it is we yoga teachers who promote this attitude.
This is an easy trap to fall into. As representatives of the path to ultimate bliss, I see many yoga teachers trying to embody a samadhi-like state (the final stage of concentrated meditation in yoga), by speaking with a controlled, velvet yoga voice, for example. Even the use of sanskrit words (like samadhi) can bring a sense of esoteric mystery to a yoga class, turning your downward facing dog into a magical key that will unlock the universe. Add some chanting, bits of yoga philosophy, and revelations about which muscles are holding your pent up anxieties/sorrows and we have an atmosphere ripe to develop the next generation of new age yoga hippies. I’m not saying that chanting, philosophy, and teaching the mind-body connection is wrong (and I kinda like hippies!), but whenever a teacher talks about letting my soul fly during sun salutations (and other silly things said by yoga teachers) at the beginning of class, I want to say I’d rather focus on my forward bends.
Yoga is ultimately about experience, about truly feeling how the practice transforms you. Hearing about transformations before they happen is a little like listening to the punch line of a joke before the set up, I don’t get it. Neither will students, especially beginners. Or worse, many of us become attached to the mystique and/or get caught up being “in the know” of all things yoga. But where we are actually caught is in the ego. Our ego thrives on knowing things and loves to follow teachers who disseminate bits of wisdom. True wisdom, however, is not being able to quote from the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali or knowing that the gluteus maximus muscle originates at the inner upper ilium and inserts into the iliotibial band of the fascia lata, but lies in finding our way to lasting happiness. To do this, we need to rid ourselves of ego, not feed it.
There is a time and place for everything. Chanting om, learning some sanskrit, and studying anatomy all have their place and can be greatly helpful. But if I’m asked to connect to my mind in the middle of a flow practice while struggling to keep my balance, I often would rather start uttering profanities. Once my practice is steady and calm, I’m ready to explore what’s going on inside my head. The best teachers I have encountered rarely talk about peace of mind during class, but after the practice is over, they have created peace in my mind and body.
“Namaste.”
