Lots of good discussion here expressing some of the reasons why my future teacher training program will be 300 hours and include modules that are not usually taught in a standard 200 hour training (i.e., in my area.)
The Official Blessing
$95 bought that logo.
I don’t consider my posts about the Yoga Alliance as rants, although I am sure some would consider them as such. I consider them a public yoga education. I am reporting my own experience in order to help any newbie teachers make their own informed decisions.
I gave my reasons in this post as to why I renewed my registration with Yoga Alliance. $150 later I am now officially an E-RYT 200 — “EXPERIENCED REGISTERED YOGA TEACHER.” I know, I was such a hack before YA’s official blessing. I can now conduct a 200 hour yoga teacher training after YA’s approval of my curriculum, of course. After paying the requisite fees. Of course.
I decided to upload more teaching and training hours to the YA site, so I pulled out my four inch thick folder with my teaching and training records. I was amazed to finally see it all laid out in black and white, all the time and effort I’ve put into my yoga teaching since 2004 when I first registered with YA — over 2000 hours of teaching and almost 900 hours of advanced training. I did not even count each and every three hour workshop.
I thought what the hell, I will try to upgrade to E RYT 500 – 500 because one day I might want to conduct a 500 hour training. The upgrade is another $95. Piece of cake with all my hours, right? Wrong, wrong, and WRONG. This is the email I received from YA:
“In order to upgrade to an ERYT 500, one must first meet the criteria for an RYT 500, having graduated either from a YA registered advanced 300 or complete 500 hour program (please see standards below).
RYT 500-
A yoga teacher with a minimum of 500 hours of yoga teacher training, either:
o 500 hours from one school, or
o 200 hours plus 300 hours of advanced training from one school (training that requires participants to have a 200-Hour certification.
As you have not completed a YA registered training, but have spent many hours of in depth study with Sri Desikachar, I would recommend that you complete the “graduate of a non-registered school” application (attached) for your RYT 500 upgrade.”
Out of my 800+ hours of training, my three intensives at KYM plus private classes with Desikachar’s senior teachers total 300 hours of advanced training. Apparently the Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram is NOT a registered school with YA. AS IF that would stop me from studying there.
I am sure Sri Desikachar stays up at night wondering whether the school he started to honor his father, the Source Scholar of Yoga, the Grandfather of Modern Yoga, should be registered with the Yoga Alliance. Please. Really? The YA can’t cut KYM any slack? Let them “grandfather” in as a registered school? Seriously? By the way, someone who certifies you in “Goddess Yoga” IS an approved school of the YA. Right.
Here’s the kicker: in order for me to upgrade to a 500 level teacher, the “graduate of a non-registered school” application costs $150 together with the $95 to upgrade to E RYT 500. So another $245 over and above the $150 I already paid to renew and upgrade to E RYT 200.
Oh my Goddess, I am in the wrong business. I need to be in the certification game. And can someone tell me why YA is officially a non-profit organization? I said “no thanks.” I don’t want to pay another dime to YA especially considering all that dough is a lot of rupees in India which I will need starting in January. But eventually I will have to pay it if I ever want to conduct a 500 hour level training in the future. AS IF I could not do that RIGHT NOW.
Of course I can conduct teacher trainings without being “Yoga Alliance approved” but how realistic is that? With the current mentality of yoga in OMerika, would anyone sign up for my trainings? I doubt it, because even the most staunchly anti-YA teachers (Ganga White - a must read; Lex Gillan; and my teacher in Chicago, to name a few), ALL ended up registering their schools with YA. Because that is what people look for.
So here is my question, good readers: the curriculum being equal, if you had a choice of a non-YA approved 200 hour teacher training with someone like me, with all my hours, 5 times at KYM OR with someone who is YA approved but does not have the hours of training and teaching experience that I have, which would you pick?
And I will say this before anyone else does: yes, I know hours of training does not automatically make one a “good” teacher, the same way inexperience does not automatically make one a “bad” teacher. There are always variables.
Yoga in OMerika. Travel at your own risk.
photo credit: Diane Arbus
Yoga in OMerika. Things here always get curiouser and curiouser.
Over the years I have written a lot about yoga teacher trainings, babies teaching babies, and registering with the Yoga Alliance. As of today I am officially an RYT…again.
I did two teacher trainings in 2002 and 2003 and at that time my teacher was not Yoga Alliance approved. Suddha was one of the first yoga studios to open in Chicago in the mid-1980s. He brought astanga yoga to Chicago. He lived and studied with his guru Swami Narayanananda for years, studied with Pattabhi Jois three times, studied at an Iyengar institute, did his own teacher trainings, and he was never YA registered. He later grandfathered into the Yoga Alliance after I trained with him because he said that’s what people started looking for in teacher trainings. But he still thought YA was a bunch of horse manure.
I registered with the YA in 2004 just because. I started studying with Paul Grilley and Sarah Powers and Srivatsa Ramaswami in 2004 and in 2005 I started going to India and studying with Desikachar and his senior teachers at the Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram. After my first month long intensive at KYM, I returned to India exactly 6 months later and have been blessed to be able to return every year. Right now in 2011 I can say that I have over 1000 hours of training and about 2000 hours of teaching experience — but I stopped counting the exact number of hours years ago.
After my first few trips to India people started suggesting I should train teachers so one day I called YA and inquired as to whether I could apply for E-RYT 500 before being at the 500 level. I was told no, I had to be a 500 level for a certain amount of time. I said, yeah, but according to your own standards I am ALREADY an E-RYT 500, why should I pay FIRST for 500 level then pay AGAIN for E-RYT 500? Sorry, no go. That’s when I let my registration lapse.
I’ve gone back and forth on the YA registration for years. The only reason I started exploring registration again this year was because two studios where I teach workshops wanted to include my workshops into their YA registered teacher training programs. I guess technically they can’t if I’m not YA registered. This yoga iconoclast had never thought about that stuff before.
Then I had two conversations with teachers who train teachers. One said that I would not be compromising my personal yoga morals if I was YA registered, it’s only a formality — just renew and I can do my own thing like she does. I would still be a yoga outlaw, just one who’s registered with YA. She said if I was YA registered I could train teachers anywhere in the world, and isn’t that what I want to do, travel and teach?
Another teacher whom I met during the Erich Schiffmann weekend put it to me this way over dinner: she considers teacher training as a way of spreading yoga dharma, putting it out into the world. She told me she registered at only the E-RYT 200 level just to train teachers, she’s not interested in giving YA any more money merely for the privilege of having a higher designation. I recalled the words of a KYM teacher: teach what you learn here or else we are nothing more than thieves. Besides, she said, what’s wrong with the picture that “people with not even half your training are training teachers?” Babies teaching babies. She said if I was YA approved my TT program would draw more students than without it. She told me that where she lives the first thing people ask is whether her TT program is YA approved.
Valid arguments. So I called YA today and officially reinstated my registration at the 200 level. Now the studios can include my workshops into their TTs. I was told I could do teacher trainings at the E-RYT 200 level, after my TT program is approved, of course. I again asked about the 500 level telling the YA rep that I’ve studied in India five times, I have over 1000 hours, etc. Now here’s where it starts getting stupid. I mean, real stupid.
I can not register at the 500 hour level without having an “advanced training” 300 hour certificate from an approved yoga school. All my time with Desikachar and his senior teachers (including private classes), Paul Grilley and Sarah Powers (being one of the first certified yin yoga teachers in the Chicago area), Srivatsa Ramaswami, Mark Whitwell, my Mindfulness Yoga and Meditation Training at Spirit Rock, the Trauma Sensitive Yoga training, and every workshop I’ve taken since 2004 does not “officially” count. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking because I’m thinking the same thing.
No more piecing together trainings to add up to the required hours, no more being grandfathered in, and letters from people (like if Ramaswami wrote a letter saying I’ve studied with him since 2004) don’t count. “I’m in the wrong business,” my husband said. “I need to be in the certification racket.”
A yoga teacher friend called me not more than five minutes after posting my complaint on my Facebook page. “THAT SUCKS!”, was the first thing she said after I said hello. She said, “You of all people?!? Someone who has spent all that time not to mention money in your training?” Yup. I know. The irony is that with the right design software I could print up my own “official” certificate for that 500 hour designation and submit it because YA does not check credentials. But would I? Of course not. Yoga morals indeed.
Why does something that is supposed to be right feel so damn wrong?
From the original Karate Kid:
Daniel-san: Hey, what kind of belt do you have?
Mr. Miyagi: Canvas. JC Penney, $3.98. You like?
Daniel-san: No, I meant…
Mr. Miyagi: In Okinawa, belt mean no need rope to hold up pants.
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Addendum: Comment from Facebook:
“When are they going to go after the charlatans? We had a woman show up at our studio, recently released of her corporate duties due to cutbacks, very saleswomany and self-promotional, wanted to know how to open a yoga studio cuz she thought it was a good way to make money but had never done yoga, and didn’t have “time” to do a full training. In the wink of an eye she had opened a studio, was promoting herself as an E200RYT (don’t even know how that is possible after a weekend workshop training) and get this: was offering teacher trainings at $3000/per. Checked her out on the Alliance and she was there, E200RYT. BULLSHIT is all I can say. I don’t think they check anything. It’s not worth a damn thing and its too bad that it seems to set the industry standard.”
…you know you’ve always wanted to say it.
Mary Elizabeth wrote in the previous post that she “can’t help but think that the emphasis on asanas has contorted not only many bodies, but also our minds, and has encouraged narcissism on and off the mat.”
A yoga instructor in this article states:
“‘Anybody who doesn’t believe it’s a sport should come take a yoga class,’ said yoga instructor Robyn Riconosciuto, who attended the championships to support some of her students who were competing, ‘There’s balance, grace and athleticism. I think they deserve recognition for the strength they have.’”
You know what type of yoga championship I’d like to see? One where people are sitting in meditation:
without twitching and picking their feet after two minutes..
not looking for a wall to support themselves after one minute;
not picking the lint off their yoga pants…
not picking at their cuticles…
not jumping when someone coughs, a door is slammed, or a lawnmower starts up….
not looking around to see what other people are doing.
THAT would be a true yoga championship!
Do you have any other true tests?
“It is about being here, present, being the real you, and choosing to offer up that soft vulnerable you instead of some fake mock-up to the world with every breath and every movement. It’s about taking the harder path through troubled country that leads to honesty and true connection between souls on a basis of honesty and integrity that comes from the kernel of your being and not some idea of what Patanjali wants you to do or your guru wants you to do or what the crowd wants you to do, or even worse what you think they want you to do. It’s about questioning every concept in your mind and even when you use such limited restricted tools as concepts doing so with awareness that they present a map and not the territory.”
And people thought I was snarky when I wrote about Tara Stiles. Not quite.
You can read Scott’s entire catharsis here.
I “met” Scott via the India travel website Indiamike when I was planning my first trip in 2005. The Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram used to do their month long intensives twice a year back then, calling it “Universal Yet Personal.” Scott attended the one before mine and he gave me the telephone number of the rickshaw driver he used, Suresh, whom I still use to this day.
Namaste and love and lite, y’all.
John Friend and Anusara Yoga have never been my cup of chai but to each their own. If you get high on the love and lite and kula, knock yourself out. But I do have to say that I agree with what Friend says in this video.
In my area of far west suburban Chicago, yoga teachers are a dime a dozen. When I was certified as a teacher almost ten years ago there were basically four studios in Chicago that had TT programs. Now almost every yoga studio that I know of in the suburbs and Chicago have their own TT program. The most searched for phrase here is “how much does a yoga teacher make” or something similar (the second most searched for term, which used to be #1, is “naked yoga” but that’s another post.) My teacher training was not Yoga Alliance registered and neither was my teacher, but he eventually chose to grandfather into the YA because that’s what people looking for TT programs wanted, whether he was a “Yoga Alliance Registered” school. However, he still thinks the YA is meaningless and so do I. I let my membership lapse.
To make any money a studio must continually offer workshops or have TT programs. A studio owner can’t make a living (i.e., support yourself) on only offering group classes (this is in my geographic area, your mileage may vary.)
If I had a dollar for every time someone over the years has told me I should do my own teacher training, I could buy a ticket to India. I go back and forth on that question and I will admit that one of my reasons for considering it is money. I made $250 in May teaching privately, not exactly what I call a living. But ultimately using money as the primary reason to conduct my own TT never feels right to me.
So with all the TT programs out there, I have to ask: what are the intentions? Is offering a TT program a studio owner’s dharma? Friend mentions the word “dharma” more than a few times in this interview and I think that needs to be considered by student, teacher, and teacher trainer.
Like John Friend, I also was a student for 7 years before I did my first teacher training. Now people who’ve practiced for less than 6 months want to be a teacher. Why? Because it seems cool and hip and fun? And what type of practice do you have? Do you even meditate? And yes, I believe every yoga teacher should have a sitting practice of some type. In fact, if I had my own TT program every participant would be required to do a 3 day silent retreat with me before getting the piece of paper. That would separate the wheat from the chaff real quick.
When I finished my first 200 hours of training, I felt like I knew nothing. I felt like an ant at the bottom of the yoga hill. Even after 15+ years of yoga, 5 trips to India to study with Desikachar and his senior teachers, and 1000+ hours of training (and next year with AG Mohan), I have crawled only slightly up that yoga hill. I am student first, teacher second. Yet, there are people half my age conducting yoga teacher trainings in my area whom I know for a fact do not have the training I have. It confuses me. The teacher with whom I trained has encouraged me to do my own teacher training, telling me “there are people doing it who don’t know half of what you know. do it.”
Back in the day in the old school way, you went out to teach when your teacher said you were ready to teach. That is how the teacher who certified me started teaching — he studied and lived with his guru for 8 years and then was told “go teach.” I am not saying it has to be like that now, it would not be realistic here. But now anyone who has had a weekend training or even just an online teacher training (believe it or not) can get hired as a “yoga teacher.”
Does this scare anyone else or is it just me?
I can understand someone wanting to do a teacher training to deepen their practice. Not everyone who does a TT wants to teach. Or should. Friend says that not everyone is right to teach. What is the person’s aptitude for teaching? Is there a deeper calling to teach yoga, is it your dharma? Or is just something that sounds nice to do because you lost your job? As for me, I was encouraged to teach by the teacher of my beginner’s yoga class that I took for a few years. I also truly feel that teaching is my dharma — but that would require a lengthy discussion of my astrological natal chart so I won’t go there. 
A 200 hour training is merely the beginning and frankly, I have to ask what is being taught in all these trainings. I ask this question because I was shocked at the quality of questions coming from people in my last training in India (all westerners.) After the first days, I felt that the training was “dumbed down” because of these questions. Many of the participants said they were teachers, but I know that my own students would not ask the types of questions that people were asking. Their questions made me grateful (again) for my original trainings but then, that was almost 10 years ago and times have changed.
So are recent (i.e., within the last 10 years) yoga teacher trainings now merely diploma mills in the rush to get yoga teachers on the market? Quantity over quality?
“The reason why yoga is presently skewed towards ekanga (or ardhanga without the breathing component) and not ashtanga is because by and large teachers do not teach the other angas. When I was in school I heard a quotation which runs something like this: “If a pupil has not learnt, the teacher has not taught”. Yoga is a rich subject. Considering its popularity there is no reason why practitioners should not endeavor to go beyond asana practice while still having a very firm asana base. “ — Srivatsa Ramaswami, writing about what he has learned from teaching his 200 hour TT programs
A letter from Sri.K. Pattabhi Jois to Yoga Journal, Nov. 1995
“It is unfortunate that students who have not yet matured in their own practice have changed the method and have cut out teh [sic] essence of an ancient lineage to accommodate their own limitations.”
“Spiritual Madness and Compassionate Presence” — healing of mental suffering through the philosophy and practice of Yoga
“One of my patients had severe post-traumatic stress disorder. His experience of isolation and helplessness sent shockwaves through his day-to-day life. He had flashbacks and significant difficulty relating to others.
We began his treatment with daily pranayama. We added meditation on both the destructive and creative aspects of the mother goddess Kali. Finally, he began to meditate on his own eternal nature: “I am that I am” (Hum So). Slowly but surely, this healed his illness…”
I worked with a private student today and after 10 years of teaching I am still amazed at how transformative the breath is. She is a relative newbie to yoga and in her classes at various venues from health clubs to studios, teachers have told her to “focus on the breath” but apparently no one has ever TAUGHT her how.
I could see how tight her belly and shoulders were. We did conscious breathwork just like Mark Whitwell or Ramaswami or my teachers at the Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram teach. A light bulb went off over her head. Her entire body visibly relaxed and she left my house looking lighter and brighter. In a word, transformed.
She’s returning for more instruction on the breath and wants to work with me in the vinyasa krama method:
“By integrating the functions of mind, body, and breath…a practitioner will experience the real joy of yoga practice. . .Vinyasa krama yoga strictly follows the most complete definition of classical yoga.” – Srivatsa Ramaswami, The Complete Book of Vinyasa Yoga
Breath + yoga = healing.
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| original art Karin Bartimole |
“When you are truly genuine, there will invariably be people who do not accept you. And in that case, you must be your own badass self, without apology.”
(Katie Goodman)
“Yoga is not for people who are interested in staying the same.”
(David Life)
My decision to stop writing this blog came to me in India. I returned from India just last Thursday and my final blog post brewed in the back of my mind ever since the last Tara Stiles “rebel” story in the New York Times came out. Here I was in India and people emailed me telling me that I was quoted in the New York Times. I appreciated their attention (I think), but my first thoughts were Holy Shiva, I can’t get away from the bullshit that is now part of modern yoga (yes, bullshit, and if you don’t like that word, get over it) even though I am thousands of miles away. I thought it must be a slow news day for the New York Times when the writer had to dig up a story that yoga bloggers wrote about last summer.
Does the phrase “been there, done that” have any meaning?
But actually my decision to stop writing has been almost 6 months in the making ever since an article was written about me by the current yoga editor of elephant journal that seemingly pitted me against Tara Stiles, my yoga vs. her yoga.
While the writer thought the story complimentary, I felt blindsided and betrayed. He did not feel it necessary to ask my permission or even to ask my opinion before he wrote about me. While he apologized to me months later for writing the story, it did not matter at that point. Intention is everything and you can’t unring a bell. To me his story brought to light what this modern yoga scene has become: us v. them. The rightous v. the unrightous. The purists v. the modernists. Old v. young. Thick v. skinny. The Lulus v. The WalMarts.
Back in the day when I got into yoga (and no, not the prehistoric days although it sure as hell feels like it sometimes), yoga was just yoga. No one gave a shit what you wore or how your yoga was labeled.
As one reader wrote on my Facebook wall, “on the psychological/spiritual side, perception is reality, which is different for everyone…the non-dualism of advaita wisdom does not map to North American uber-dualism.”
I got over his offense almost as soon as it happened, but it set the wheels in motion to euthanize this blog.
I have always written about what my real yoga is. I really don’t know how often I can repeat this before people understand it: I don’t care what your yoga is, I know what mine is, but one thing that I know is that if something isn’t changing for you off the mat or off the cushion, then it’s not yoga. That’s Yoga Sutras 101.
No bullshit, basic shit. Like compost for your garden, yoga is the compost for the garden of your mind/body/spirit.
And no apologies to those who hate the phrase “real yoga.” I’m tired of that judgment, too. It dawned on me the other day that even in the yoga world, political correctness abounds. Certain things are not supposed to be said for fear of offending. Anyone who criticizes or questions the yoga status quo is called a “hater” or “judgmental” in the yoga blogosphere.
Bullshit.
As a reminder after that last expletive, I heard Jack Kornfield say that anyone who thinks those on the spiritual path are not allowed to become angry or upset anymore, well, those people have a kindergarten view of spirituality. I bow to Jack Kornfield.
Yes, I am sensitive about the topic of “real yoga.” Over the five years of writing this blog I’ve caught flak about being outspoken and that has made me misunderstood at best and unpopular at worst. I’ve been described as being passionate in my defense of yoga in the face of commercialism, exploitation, and misunderstanding. If the body cult of modern Americanized yoga is right, then I’d rather be wrong.
So I am moving on. I am not this body, I am not my thoughts, and I am certainly not this blog. When I started writing there weren’t that many yoga blogs, I guess I was one of the first ones that people noticed. Now, just like there are hundreds of yoga teaching programs, there are hundreds of yoga blogs. I don’t need to write anymore because it’s all already being said on a daily basis. And actually, what is being said has already been said over and over again, there is nothing new under the sun — I learned that at a supposed “meditation retreat” in India.
So I am moving inward. I feel a closing in instead of expansion, but not a contraction in a negative way. There is a Kabbalistic concept called Tzimtzum which means Divine Contraction. The thinking is that if God is infinite, he would have to draw in and so make a void into which creation can come. According to Wikipedia, “Tzimtzum…is a term used in the kabbalistic teaching of Isaac Luria, explaining his concept that God began the process of creation by “contracting” his infinite light in order to allow for a “conceptual space” in which a finite and seemingly independent world could exist. This contraction, forming an “empty space” in which creation could begin, is known as the Tzimtzum.”
I have had more than a few experiences in India that some call “shakti blasts” and they are impossible to explain unless you have felt them. But they have always changed me. Change brings out either the best or the worst out in a person. I feel that my experiences have brought out the best in me although others may not agree. But as the jyotish told me, those others should never be my concern. Standing in my own truth is my only power.
So I am contracting in order to allow a new creation. I have been told by more than a few spiritual adepts and most recently by the jyotish in India that I am destined for great things, things I will not write about because they would be misread as being egotisical and indeed, impossible. But I know my path as surely as I know my own name. Changes have already begun by my signing up for a training in teaching yoga to trauma survivors. I am also applying for a Masters in Transpersonal Psychology program. The next time I return to India it will not be as a student.
My past has marked me and it made me a beautiful palimpsest. I jumped into the Ganges on a most auspicious day and washed myself clean so that I can be used again. You either dance with life or burn and become bitter. There isn’t any other choice. Change is inevitable and unavoidable. It’s just life.
And real yoga is always about life.
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| Hindu blessing of cow, Rameswaram beach, 2006 |
Getting on the yoga merry-go-round again of the old debate on “who owns yoga?” and whether yoga springs from Hinduism.
There’s lots of stuff going on in the world but it must be a slow news day when the New York Times publishes another article with a dramatic title on the Hindu group that is stirring up the debate over yoga’s soul.
Then there was the USA Today article, “Take Back Yoga Campaign: Back Where?”
Lisa Miller in Newsweek asked whether yoga’s Hindu roots matter. I thought her article was a breath of fresh prana in this debate, but I still think she is mistaken about some things.
And after the debate burned through the yoga blogosphere and Facebook this week, Deepak Chopra finally weighed in on the yoga yada yada in HuffPo.
I thought his article was a bit amusing, since in Miller’s article he claims to have “sanitized” Hinduism in order to make it more palatable: “The reason I sanitized it is there’s a lot of junk in [Hinduism],” explains Deepak Chopra, the New Age guru….“We’ve got to evolve to a secular spirituality that still addresses our deepest longings … Most religion is culture and mythology. Read any religious text, and there’s a lot of nonsense there. Yet the religious experience is beautiful.” But in his HuffPo article he states that “the nobility of Indian spirituality elevates Hinduism to a unique place in the world.”
Uh, which part of that nobility did he sanitize? OK, whatever…Deepak is a zillionaire guru and I’m not. He must know what he’s talking about because he’s written a ton of books. And is a zillionaire guru. Did I mention that already?
STOP THE PRESSES! I’ve always wanted to say that….
One would think Chopra would be the last word on this but no, I don’t think so…gather ’round, kiddies, and I’ll tell y’all a story. I will preface this by saying that I’m not a yoga scholar and have never written a book. I have no fancy advanced college degrees (yet.) I’m a yoga student first and then a teacher but I’ve been around the yoga block a few times and have taken a workshop or two. My only claim to yoga fame is studying four times (soon to be five) at the Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram, Desikachar’s school in Chennai, India — two intensives and private classes. That’s all. Like Tao Porchon-Lynch, “I don’t tell you these things from ego, but because it’s what I know.” Be advised that I pulled out my notes from KYM. And I take damn good notes.
But I want to say to the Hindu American Foundation referenced in the NY Times article that I feel your pain. I understand why they are verklempt. As Lisa Miller wrote in Newsweek, “You can’t stop people from using and transforming yoga. But you have to honor and credit the source….know where yoga came from and respect those origins.” I’m getting very tired of yoga articles written in terms of “fighting” and “owning”, but I don’t blame Indians one bit for wanting reverence and respect paid to an art and science that originated in India. Don’t get me started on OM tattoos on feet but I digress.
But yoga doesn’t come from Hinduism and Hindus don’t own yoga.
Yoga is much older. What I learned at KYM was that yoga was part of the six systems of philosophy in India called the saddarsanas, darsana meaning “to see”:
1. Nyaya — logic; using analysis to look a problem;
2. Vaisesika — evolution; what is the evolution of something to discover its reality. EX: a desk comes from wood which came from a tree which came from a seed.
3. Mimamsa — rituals and rites (doing something in order to get something.) EX: animal and human sacrifice; fire rituals.
4. Sankyha — closely related to yoga; our problems arise because of “seer” and what is seen; there is confusion between the “I” and the rest of the world. “Sankyha” means knowledge of Self through right discrimination. (See the Samkyha Karika of Isvara Krsna.)
5. Vedanta — school of philosophy that interpreted the Upanishads (advaita vedanta is a subset of this philosophy.)
6. Yoga — school of philosophy that holds that the mind is the problem; focus the mind and we solve our problems.
The above information is from my Yoga Philosophy class notes, 2005. The next line I wrote was: “Hinduism actually rejects yoga.” As a legal assistant for 20 years I sat in many a lawyer’s office and wrote their words verbatim to transcribe into letters and legal documents.
So no, I did not make that up and I suppose those words shock some of you. When long-held beliefs are challenged it can be quite painful. Let me try to explain the yoga and Hinduism connection (or non-connection as the case may be) in part 2 after I finish reading the scholarly essay “Brahmanism, Buddhism and Hinduism: An Essay on Their Origins and Interactions” by Lal Mani Joshi of the Department of Religious Studies, Punjabi University, 1970.
This essay was sent to me by a long-time reader and is an essay that Stephen Cope of Kripalu used for his book on the Sutra-s. When I did the Mindfulness Yoga and Meditation Training at Spirit Rock in California, Stephen Cope used many of the points in the essay in his talk to us on the history of yoga.
The gist of the essay is that many of the things Westerners and contemporary Indian Hindus think of as “classically Hindu” actually come from the shramanical tradition generally (the sramanas being the ancient yogis, the ascetics who lived in the Vedic era which is pre-Hinduism) and Buddhism specifically and were incorporated very late in Indian history.
Stay tuned.
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