Tag: Mark Whitwell

teacher trainings: then and now

by Linda (Valdez) Karl
desikachar kripalu
L TO R: Leslie Kaminoff, Navtej Johar, Mirka Scalco Kraftsow, Gary Kraftsow, R. Sriram, Mark Whitwell, Richard Miller, Larry Payne  ©2018 Metta Yoga: Mind-Body Education

I’ve returned from Kripalu from the Desikachar tribute weekend put together by Leslie Kaminoff and Lydia Mann that I wrote about here.  Leslie entitled it “Celebrating T.K.V. Desikachar: We Are the Lineage” and in the photo above are the presenters who took part.

There were three yoga sessions daily by each presenter, each one presenting an aspect of what they learned in the Krishnamacharya Yoga tradition.  Each night the presenters talked about how they came to the Krishnamarcharya Yoga tradition, what inspired them about it, and how they interacted with Desikachar.

Each one learned different things from Desikachar but the consistent thread was learning one-on-one with him and relationship.  Desikachar always taught that Yoga IS relationship.  Each of them went to India with different agendas, each one wanted to learn something different from the other so Desikachar taught to the individual according to their interests.

None of them went through a typical yoga teacher training with him as one does now, like a 200 or 500 hour training.  Listening to their stories it reminded me how differently they were taught then by Desikachar as opposed to now where people chase the pieces of paper that declares them a “yoga teacher.”

Does studying a mere 200 or 500 hours make you a yoga teacher?  In the 1970s and 1980s you would study with a teacher like Desikachar who would one day tell you “OK, now you’re ready, go out and bring what you learned into the world.”  Nowadays, who would be willing to study with a master teacher until they were told, in the master teacher’s opinion, that they were ready to teach?  What if that took two or three years instead of less than one year?  Be honest.

Each of the above presenters wanted to learn different things — Kraftsow was into religious studies while Kaminoff was not.  Johar went to Chennai to learn dance at the famous Kalakshetra dance school and met a man on a bus who said “you should go see my yoga teacher” and told him to go to the Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram.  Kraftsow learned something that Payne did not learn that was different from Miller’s training and so it went with each one.  Same same but different as we say in India.

Which brings us back to yoga teacher trainings as they are currently taught and what makes a good teacher.

I’ve never studied with Rod Stryker but he said this:

“Above all else: never, never stop being a student; study with the best, most notably, those who truly embody what they teach. Only then can you become a teacher of distinction. Only when you grow to understand and feel a legitimate link to the vision of yoga as seen by the tradition of yoga, and relate to it as something that breathes with sublime life and wisdom––and has long before you took your first breath––will you truly thrive as student and only then can you become a great teacher.”

My first teacher training in 2002 was not even 200 hours and my teacher did not belong to Yoga Alliance, he grandfathered into it.  He also did not go through a typical teacher training.  He was living with his Indian guru who told him, “You’re ready, go to Chicago and teach,” so he came and opened one of the first yoga studios in Chicago, if not THE first one in 1984.

I went back in 2003 to do Suddha’s course again where he taught it a bit differently.  I ended up meeting Srivatsa Ramaswami shortly thereafter who introduced me to the Krishnamacharya tradition and the rest is history.  None of the intensives or private one-on-one classes I took at KYM from 2005-2015 were “teacher trainings.”  I do not have one piece of paper from KYM that says I am a “certified yoga teacher” in the lineage, yet I’ve been told that with all my trainings since 2002 I have a PhD in Yoga.  I once received an email from KYM referring to me as a “senior teacher” in the Krishnamacharya Yoga tradition.  Cough, cough.  Yeah, that and $3 will buy me a Starbucks.

So where are the students who want to study with a lineage holder in the Krishnamacharya Yoga tradition AKA me?  Crickets.

After teaching for 17 years I finally have a mentee whom I adore because she said she wanted to study with a teacher from a lineage.  Lineage was important to her.  She drives from Indianapolis (about 4 hours) once a month for a weekend and I teach in the old school way as Desikachar taught each of the presenters mentioned above:  she comes with what she wants to learn, asks questions, and I answer them.  Simple.

She leaves and then until we see each other again, she allows what I’ve taught to resonate with her.  She recently told me:

“I have been processing a lot about being a modern yoga teacher — what is authentic and truthful to the practice and what resonates as authentic and truthful to me (in my understanding of that truth)?
What I am finding is that the Krishnamacharya lineage, as I am learning through you, has strong resonance.  I am looking forward to continuing under your mentorship.  I am also rediscovering and reengaging my practice on a very basic level.  I’m getting to my mat and simply making shapes and witnessing my body respond. …
I am feeling more relaxed about my learning journey.  It’s a lifetime.  … I am letting what I learned settle and integrate.  There is no need to hurry the process.  I was seeking to obtain some definition of who I am/what I do.  It does not matter.  The label is the suffering and has often been my suffering.  I do not fit the mold.  It’s okay.  I am enough.”
That’s REAL YOGA.

Who wants some?

meet me at Kripalu

by Linda (Valdez) Karl
IMG_0150
T.K.V. Desikachar chanting, September 2005 ©METTA YOGA 2018

For those who have studied in the Krishnamacharya/Desikachar Yoga tradition or for those who are wondering about it, June 2018 will give you a good opportunity to experience what that tradition is all about and you don’t have to go to India.

Leslie Kaminoff has put together a weekend in tribute to T.K.V. Desikachar at Kripalu, June 21-24.  Presenters include Leslie, Navtej Johar, Gary Kraftsow, Mirka Kraftsow, Richard Miller, Larry Payne, R. Sriram, and Mark Whitwell.  You can see all the teachers’  information and register on the Kripalu website.  My flight tix are bought and I am registered but I can tell you that most of the private rooms with private baths are gone.  The site is also very buggy and gets hung up (no matter what browser I used) so it is best to call to register.

For the last three years I haven’t done any major yoga things so I’m excited to attend as I’ve never been to Kripalu.  If you go and want to share the cost of a car from the Albany airport to Kripalu, contact me.

If you are not familiar with the Krishnamacharya/Desikachar Yoga tradition this is a heartfelt piece written by Gary Kraftsow.  Yes, there are still teachers who have never heard of Krishnamacharya or Desikachar.  I met a Canadian yoga teacher during my trip to India last year who had no idea who they were.

This part of Gary’s piece rings so true for me:

“From the beginning, he emphasized what his father had told him: “The teaching is for the student, not the teacher.” He taught me that I was not teaching students to do yoga techniques correctly, but that I was teaching them how to use yoga techniques to help them understand and transform themselves. My job, he told me, was to see the student’s needs and interests, meet them where they were, and provide appropriate and accessible tools to help them move from where they were to where they wanted to go. He said that my real goal with students should be to inspire and empower them to deepen their own understanding of yoga and to commit to a personal practice.”

  I have recently started mentoring a young yoga teacher and we did not talk about one asana for the entire weekend.  We talked about personal transformation because she wanted to know how to incorporate that idea into her classes, how to move beyond the physical practice.

While I studied directly with Desikachar in only my first two trainings at KYM, every teacher there who studied with him and were teaching us always imparted that as teachers we are teaching students “how to use yoga techniques to help them understand and transform themselves.”  I remember how nervous I was to chant a few lines of the Gayatri Mantra for Sir (as we called him) during my second visit.  He said “Good” when I finished and that was all I needed to hear.  🙂

Every year for 10 yrs, from 2005-2015,  I was immersed in the idea of YOGA AS TRANSFORMATION via the trainings and the personal one-on-one classes I took with Desikachar’s senior teachers.  At the same time from 2012-2014 I also studied with Ganesh Mohan, son of A.G. Mohan, in his yoga therapy program.  I’ve always said that “Yoga cooks us” so I was definitely getting cooked!  😀    I am so very grateful to Srivatsa Ramaswami for introducing me to the tradition in 2004 on his first visit to Chicago.

While I will never be a well-known teacher like Leslie Kaminoff, Mark Whitwell, Gary Kraftsow, Erich Schiffmann or other famous students of Desikachar, sharing the wisdom to thousands of students a year as they do, I am glad I can impart my small pieces of Krishnamacharya Yoga tradition in my tiny yoga space in suburban Chicago, one student at a time — Yoga as it is meant to be taught, in my opinion.  My mentee has already started taking it out into her yoga world in Indianapolis and that does my heart good.

I am sure this will be great weekend.

Mark Whitwell on Kausthub Desikachar

by Linda (Valdez) Karl

 “I wish to make clear that the sexual scandal around Kausthub has no implication, at all, on Krishnamacharya’s life work and dedication to Hatha Yoga. Although lineage held in family is a historic way of preserving teachings, the lineage is not dependent on this arrangement. Krishnamacharya himself communicated to me, all who represent their teachers work with a clear heart and honest intention are lineage holders.”  (Mark Whitwell, from his Facebook page.)

Part 1:

Part 2:

Mark is a former student of Krishnamacharya and Desikachar, so I am glad that he weighs in on the matter and I agree with what he says.  One of the things Mark speaks to is the cultural (patriarchy) aspect of this and as I said in my own first post , there are various layers to the situation and that is one of them.

In an ongoing discussion of the Kausthub mess, a friend and I cyber-chatted about one of  the latest writings about it in the yoga blogosphere and he gave me permission to quote him.   We have a bit different perspective on the matter having both studied at the Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram.  Many commenting on this in the yoga blogosphere have not.

“Lots of people are viewing this issue from their misconceptions about India and yoga.  If guru culture (whatever the hell that means) has burned them (or they have never experienced a guru and essentially see them from a strictly xenophobic, American individualism is the highest virtue point of view), they’ll bitch and moan about it.  If large Westernized organizations (whatever the hell that means) have burned them, they’ll bitch and moan about that.

So many comments on blogs have centered on how “organizations” should behave.  It’s bullshit.  Americans are so quick to absolve individuals of responsibility by talking about a “culture” that enables.  Some cultures enable and even promote either good behaviors or bad, useful ones or detrimental ones… usually some mix of all.

But this shit could’ve been staved off easily if people at an individual level had done the right thing.  They all acted in their own self interest… or mostly in their self interest (some acted in the interest of their teacher/friend/colleague).

Nobody acted in the best interest of the student.  And here’s the really awful part because as teachers we are always supposed to act in the best interest of the student.  You don’t give techniques to students just because you know them or are eager to teach them… or even because the student is begging for them.  You give them to a student only if it is in the best interest of the student (and this takes appropriateness into account).

It’s a much uglier thing to come to terms with.  But I can’t imagine that anyone who had taken this situation, regardless of what point of view they were looking at it from, and sat with it in meditation or even just considering it with some common sense to determine the right action would’ve come to any different conclusion than that it had to stop.

And yet it didn’t.”

moving into joy

by Linda (Valdez) Karl
soakin' in the shakti

JOY: ETYMOLOGY:
Middle English joie, from Old French, from Latin gaudia, pl. of gaudium, joy, from gaudre, to rejoice…

Erich Schiffmann told us that it took him 12 years to write his book, Yoga: The Spirit and Practice of Moving into Stillness.  It took us only 10 hours to move into joy in Yellow Springs, Ohio.

Erich’s book was one of the first yoga books I bought when I started my yoga journey and I had not looked at it for quite some time.  His Moving Into Stillness workshop was this past weekend (his11th in Yellow Springs), so I pulled it off the closet shelf to remember to take it with me for his autograph.  I wasn’t looking forward to a 6 hour ride to Ohio by myself so I thought reading some of it again would re-energize me for the trip — I ended up reading some excerpts to my class last week and I was right…I was rarin’ to go to Ohio and finally practice with Erich.

I must say that after all these years of yoga-ing, I have never attended such a joy-filled yoga weekend, and that’s saying a lot.  My long time readers know with whom and where I study yoga but this weekend was very different.  I’ve been to many trainings that are heavy on technique and philosophy but there hasn’t been a lot of pure unadulterated joy.

I recalled the trainings and sits I’ve done with Buddhist teachers and I can’t say there has been very much joy involved in those teachings either.  While I am grateful for the buddhadharma in my life and it has liberated me more than I can explain, there is so much emphasis on suffering.  Yes, I get it: life is suffering, pain is optional.  In Buddhist meditation retreats, there is usually a lot of crying in the small discussion groups that one is always a part of — those tears are those of fear and grief and pain.  I’ve never heard the word “joy” uttered in those situations and I almost feel guilty for embodying joy.  But as for this weekend, it has been a very long time since I cried soul tears of joy in a yoga class — unless it’s my own solo practice at home.

Erich’s Freedom Style Yoga is described as “an intuitive approach to life and yoga that can be summarized as, ‘Do not decide in advance about what to do or not do.  Instead, listen inwardly for guidance and trust into what you find yourself Knowing.’  This is not an inherently strenuous practice, but it is advanced. It requires that you be brave enough to follow your deepest impulses about what feels right and what doesn’t.”

Erich’s classes consisted of: him talking, meditation, a guided asana practice, a free form (“freedom style”) asana practice set to cool music (everyone from Alicia Keys to Pattabhi Jois chanting OM SHANTI), then savasana or more meditation, your choice.  Choice!…instead of rules and “shoulds” and enough technicalities to choke a sacred cow.

Erich studied with both Iyengar and Desikachar and said that over time he morphed into his “freedom style” yoga.  I loved that because the same has happened with me over the years for my own personal practice.  I told Erich that I think I channeled him without ever having practiced with him or watching a video.  Erich said that at first  he did not know how to teach Freedom Style in classes, that when he asked people to do their own thing they were stuck and didn’t know how to do something that felt so natural to him.  That was my first blown away moment during the weekend because as I later told Erich, the same thing happened to me.  Once in a workshop I invited people (who were not beginners) to do their own yoga and everyone stood there and stared at me.

Erich does not throw out alignment rules but he believes that where your yoga training should culminate is where you flower into YOUR OWN YOGA.  All the techniques and rules of yoga should lead you to YOUR YOGA.  He compared learning yoga to learning music.  Just like a beginning musician learns the rules of music and the notes and then creates their own song, so should we learn the notes of yoga to create our own practice.  Make your yoga as simple as possible but that is easier said than done.

I laughed when Erich said that “advanced poses are overrated” and that we should be happy where we are in yoga, wherever we are at a certain point in time.  He believes that yoga is about “being in your own space” and that we “need to get as strong as we need to be to be able to SIT.”  Because yoga is not some type of “exotic P.E.” — yoga is and always was a spiritual discipline and some of the greatest yogis had little asana practice.  For Erich, Yoga is an “inquiry into truth and the nature of life.”

Don’t decide in advance what you THINK you’re supposed to do.  Listen inwardly for what to do and then dare to do what your most inner impulses tell you to do in yoga.  Your practice should open you up to a willingness to trust yourself and to the realization that the Totality — the “Big Mind” as opposed to our “Small Mind” — is us.  This is similar to what Mark Whitwell (another student of Desikachar — any wonder why I naturally connect with certain teachers?) speaks about, Yoga as the connection to the Nurturing Source, the Infinite.  In yoga we learn to settle into ourselves in order to let go of our conditioning and to become the REAL YOU.  We should dare to give expression to what is bubbling up inside us and again, this involves letting go of our biases and conditioning.

Erich emphasized again and again how we should think less and listen more.  I recalled how I was chastised here for telling people to “shut up and do your practice.”  That’s just another way of saying “Silent mind it”, as Erich calls it.  Pause, ask God, Jesus, Buddha, or whomever your favorite Awakened One is for guidance, and then listen.  Our deepest impulses, our intuition, our gut feelings…all of those are our connection with the Big Mind, the Totality, the Nurturing Source, the Infinite.  Meditating is like clearing the mist or cleaning a foggy mirror, but we need to be clear that we indeed want a clearer perspective.  Because if we have an unclear perspective it will be harder to interpret things as they come into our consciousness and we will respond to life inappropriately.

I loved it when Erich told us to just take moments each day to be still, to sit, to silent mind it.  You don’t have to sit in lotus to think less and listen more.  Stop the chatter, stop the analyzing.  Just stop and engage in the old-fashioned advice of taking a minute to smell the roses.  I thought about all the people I see who are walking in nature and playing with their smart phones.  STOP!  I was struck at the age range of the students — I would say most were 40+, even 50+, and I thought that the students who need to hear this yoga wisdom were the 20 and 30 somethings starting out in yoga.

Erich’s guided asana practice was not what some would call “advanced” with fancy pretzel poses.  The emphasis was on working the spine and hips and I think the only standing pose we did was triangle.  The difference was that the poses were repeated with various changes, going deeper each time.  Just the way I like it, wringing it out.

It was in the free style practice where I blossomed.  Erich played three or four songs and it was our own practice.  Some sat, some took savasana, and I have no idea what those closest to me were doing, my intuition guided my movements.  It was the perfect combination of movement and music that caused the soul tears of joy to flow.  It has been a very long time that someone else’s class affected me like that: I was free to be me.  When I sat after the practice my body literally vibrated from crown chakra to my feet, each day I felt like one huge glowing ball of prana.  Interestingly enough, I developed a bad headache and nausea the first day which I attributed to experiencing a tremendous detox.  I needed that practice.

Erich left us with the four sentences that he repeats daily.  He said that when we wake up, before we get out of bed we should say these to ourselves in order to facilitate the connection with Big Mind:

  • “Today I will make no decisions by myself” (this recognizes our limitations.)
  • “I will make no decisions today because it is no longer intelligent to do so.”
  • “I will make decisions in silent counsel with the Infinite.”
  • “I will do what You have me do.”  In other words: THY WILL BE DONE…because THY will is OUR will when we listen deeply.

Erich’s teaching resonated with me in a profoundly potent way because it was a validation of my own core yoga values.  I have to say that the only other teaching I have felt that way about is Mark Whitwell’s: “The ancient wisdom of yoga teaches that Life is already given to you, you are completely loved, you are here now. It teaches that we are not separate, cannot be separate from nature, which sustains us in a vast interdependence with everything. The universe comes perfectly, and is awesome in its integration and infinite existence. This union is our natural state, this union is Yoga.”

I have studied with excellent technical teachers and those who can recite yoga philosophy chapter and verse, but there are few who touch the heart and the core of your Consciousness, the precious few who leave you weeping those soul tears of joy.

yoga miscellaneous: healing

by Linda (Valdez) Karl

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.

what is tantra?

by Linda (Valdez) Karl

“Tantra” is a word that gets thrown around a lot in yoga circles. It’s a word that many American yogis have become familiar with via Sting who claims that he can get it on for hours because of tantric sex (see the comments that follow in YogaDork’s post.)

I don’t think there is anyone who has done as great a disservice to tantric yoga as Sting because of his comments. The whole sex thang is about 1% of what tantric yoga is about. Once Sting and tantra were on Oprah you knew it was going to be all downhill after that. IMO, if this culture’s attitude about sex wasn’t so f*cked up in the first place (pun intended), there wouldn’t be all the giggle-snorts with the mere mention of the word “tantra.” (“Oh yeah, you mean THE SEX!!” slobber, slobber…)

Then there is John Friend who is sometimes referred to as “Tantra Lite.” In the NY Times article about him that is burning up the yoga blogosphere it states:

“Friend’s “dharma talks” — short sermons — are based largely on simplified tantric principles (not, he stresses, the ones relating to tantric sex): students learn that they are divine beings, that goodness always lies within, that by opening to God’s will — opening to grace, Friend calls it — ‘you actually become vastly more powerful than the limited person that you usually identify with.'”

What I don’t understand is when people talk about Anusara yoga’s concepts such as “opening to grace”, etc.. I have heard more than a few yoga teachers say that they never heard those concepts before in their trainings and I really have to question that.

Isn’t all yoga about “opening to grace”? Isn’t all yoga about moving beyond our limitations? Isn’t all yoga about opening the heart, surrendering, giving it up to something greater outside ourselves? At least for me it is and always has been. John Friend isn’t the first teacher to talk about such things, he did not invent these concepts, he merely repackaged them for mass consumption.

When I hear a yoga teacher say that they’ve never heard such things before it makes me even more thankful for my non-Anusara inspired teachers and how they taught and what they taught me. I’ve been blessed to have the teachers I’ve had.

Mark Whitwell says, “asana is hatha yoga, the non dual tantra of direct intimacy with Reality that is nothing but nurturing.”

All yoga is nurturing. No one specific brand, no trademarks, just do YOUR YOGA.

So what is tantra? In his book Tantric Yoga and the Wisdom Goddesses, David Frawley writes that “Tantra can best be defined as an energetic approach to the spiritual path, using various techniques including mantra, ritual, pranayama, and meditation. It contains a devotional approach emphasizing the worship of the Goddess and her Lord, Shiva. It contains a way of knowledge, directing us to Self-realization and the realization of the Absolute. As such it is a complex yet integral system for the development of consciousness which has something for all those who are seeking the truth.”

In my training “tantra” was never separate from hatha yoga. The word is a combination of “tanoti” and “trayati”. Tanoti means “to expand, to stretch, to extend” and trayati means “to liberate or free”. Therefore tantra (tan+tra) means to expand one’s experience and awareness of everything, to extend the frontiers of apprehension beyond the material, thereby attaining spiritual knowledge and liberation.

Isn’t that YOGA, no matter what brand name it is?

I learned that “tantra” means “to weave.” Through weaving in certain breath and meditation techniques, we train up our system to become more sensitive to the subtle forces of prana or the vital life force. Through learning to control the prana in yoga you learn to control the mind.

Isn’t that YOGA, no matter who trademarked it?

Taking a deep breath….SO……

What inspired this post was a Facebook discussion that followed the above photo. It is a photo I took at the Kumbh Mela of a baba whose arm has atrophied from his austerity, his extreme tapas. My caption to the photo was “no Tantra Lite at the Mela!” because the sadhus I met at the Mela were the real deal, the down and dirty tantric yogis.

Taking part in the Facebook discussion are Carol, blisschick, and Baba Rampuri, who’s about as real of a yogi deal as you can get.

Talk amongst yourselves and leave a comment if you are inspired…..

##########

“blisschick: and the point of that would be…[i.e., the frozen arm]

Carol: Would actually really like it if someone could explain to me: What is this form of Tantra about, and what if any relationship does it have to anything that we call Tantra in this country?

L-S: these sadhus are devotees of Shiva and the upraised arm is a form of mortification or austerity, it’s tapas. it’s a way of showing extreme detachment from the body, transcending the body. other sadhus might stand day and night,… even while sleeping, or they sit in one place and stay sitting there, till they die.

Baba Rampuri: Wonderful photo! It is Naga Baba Amar Bharti Ji in this photo, he is a Naga Sannyasi, and a very close friend for many years. He is an “Urdhvabahu” meaning “raised arm”, but this is a description not a sect. One of the main things distinguishing traditional yoga from American yoga is austerities, “tapas.” It is a powerful means of obtaining knowledge and power. In one way, it’s an extreme form of focusing will power, almost like saying, “Nothing is going to stop me in my quest! Not pain, not discomfort, not the attraction of the world, not even death! I don’t need food, water, nor even air!” When I make disciples, and some of you know that we have 5 gurus, I always choose Amar Bharti Ji to join me as one of the five.

L-S: Carol, what is tantra in this country? In America, hasn’t the phrase been mutilated, people taking a sensationalist approach encompassing only thinking about “sacred sexuality,” with little reference to its true practice as a path to enlightenment? for me, hatha yoga IS tantra yoga because there is philosophy, meditation, and mantra and other practices. don’t forget there is also Buddhist tantra in the Mahayana tradition.

of course American yogis aren’t going to perform austerities like the Urdhabahu baba (who blessed me with his other hand!), or cover their bodies with ash and sit in cremation grounds to try to transcend their worldly attachment to life.

Baba Rampuri: Carol, these days Tantra means anything you want it to. In the West, it’s normally a marketing tag for something to do with new age sexuality, or at best, new age psychology. In India, at it’s worst, it is thought of as black magic. Yoga, as practiced in the West, has nothing whatsoever to do with Tantra as it is practiced in its high and low forms in India. At it’s best, Tantra is the teaching that Shiva gives to Parvati regarding knowledge and immortality. The practice of this involves the connection of Sacred Speech with Knowledge and the corresponding withdrawal from the illusory perception of the world.

Carol: thank you so much, Linda-Sama & Baba Rampuri! I feel so fortunate to wake up & find so many answers to my question. If you are interested, here is a link to a Yoga Journal article that I think captures how I commonly hear Tantra described in the American yoga community: http://www.yogajournal.com/wisdom/2240.

blisschick: It seems very much to me like a denial of the GIFT of this life. If transcending the body were meant to be a spiritual goal, why are we given bodies at all to begin with? (I know these statements will simply be perceived as me not getting it but I find this bothersome. I choose YES and this seems like a giant NO.)

Baba Rampuri: Christine, you are right, if it is his purpose to transcend his body, which it is not. He is pushing the envelope. He is using an extreme practice to get quick results. He is using his body in a way to acquire knowledge.

L-S: thanks for the clarification….I used the wrong word in “transcending”…yes, we have these bodies to use as vehicles for enlightenment (as the Buddha also taught about the “fathom-long body”), but these austerities (to me) show a non-attachment to the body, i.e., “non-attachment” being different from “transcending.”

Carol, I scanned the YJ article and will read it more deeply later…but as for tantra in the US…I have heard people say that they never heard of the tantric concepts or even the word tantra before they studied with John Friend.

I find that a bit hard to believe. I don’t know about anyone else, but I became familiar with tantric concepts from India from my teachers early in my yoga training. so I agree with Baba when he says that it seems that “tantra” can mean almost anything in American yoga. I also think many of the concepts have to be distilled in a different way for westerners. I mean, I’ve been to studios where the mere picture of Durga or Shiva on the wall makes people uncomfortable…how are they going to handle tantric ideas if a teacher talks about them?

blisschick, to me, tantric yoga is about “sacred body-fearless mind”. Buddha taught that the path to enlightenment is in this body, watching body/breath, watching the feelings/felt senses, watching those mind objects that are our thoughts, and embodying the dharma, the ultimate truth of reality which is impermanence. those are the four foundations of mindfulness, and that is how we can use our body, use the physical asana practice to realize deep truths.”