I’ve always been the square peg in the round hole and that upsets people sometimes, even in the yoga world. The yoga world can be as politically correct as the non-yoga world when the first thing out of someone’s mouth is “you’re not yogic” or “you’re a hater” when someone questions yoga’s current status quo. Believe me; in my 7 years of writing this blog I’ve been called an unyogic hater more times than I can count.
So when I read Rachel Held Evans’ post, “Blessed Are the Uncool”, I said HALLELAJAH. I am not Christian and I don’t go to any church but I I think her post is perfectly applicable to the current yoga scene: “Jesus taught us that when we throw a banquet or a party, our invitation list should include ‘the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.’ So why do our church marketing teams target the young, the hip, the healthy, and the resourced?”
Look at any ad for any yoga class or any yoga product in any yoga magazine and you won’t see the likenesses of the women I taught tonight at the domestic violence shelter. They wouldn’t be considered hip, they all have aches and pains and scars and they certainly aren’t resourced. No one is marketing to them because they can’t afford the $100 yoga pants or the Swarovski crystal chakra pendants.
I’ve always loved Anne Cushman’s take on this in her Yoga Chic and the First Noble Truth written in 2003. Yes, 2003 — ask yourself if things have changed much. 2003 is almost ancient history in modern American yoga commentary.
“So lately, I’m looking for a different kind of image to inspire my practice. The book I’m shopping for would show pictures of all sorts of people doing yoga and meditating. There would be old people, fat people, scarred people, profusely hairy people, people with bad skin and big noses, people with thighs riddled with cellulite, people with droopy breasts and flabby thighs and faces etched with lines from hard living. There would be people with cerebral palsy, people gone bald from chemotherapy, people paralyzed by drive-by shootings, people who’d lost limbs in wars. Some people would do the poses perfectly. Others would do them clumsily, propped up on sandbags and bolsters, unable even to touch their fingertips to the floor.”
Evans writes, “…when the gospel story is accompanied by a fog machine and light show, I always get this creeped-out feeling like someone’s trying to sell me something. It’s as though we’re all compensating for the fact that Christianity’s not good enough to stand on its own so we’re adding snacks.”
Substitute “yoga” for “Christianity” and “weights” or “Pilates” or “pole dancing” for “snacks” and you’ll get what I’m driving at.
It is true that there are now more and more yoga classes for underserved populations, but the face of modern American yoga isn’t just the young, the hip, the healthy, and the resourced. Maybe if the marketing face wasn’t young, hip, healthy, and resourced, then yoga would truly finally become mainstream. For real.
“And Jesus was a sailor When he walked upon the water And he spent a long time watching From his lonely wooden tower And when he knew for certain Only drowning men could see him He said “All men will be sailors then Until the sea shall free them” But he himself was broken Long before the sky would open Forsaken, almost human He sank beneath your wisdom like a stone.”
The title is tongue-in-cheek. I wish all my blog readers — and haters, especially the haters — a joyFULL and metta filled New Year and indeed, the same for all of 2012.
Looking back over 2011 I learned a lot this year — learned a lot in a somewhat quiet way, not so much in the hit-ya-over-the-head type of way. And what I learned was yeah, it IS all about me. Really.
The year started off with a bang as I had decided to stop writing after writing this blog for 6 years. Then this Yoga B.I.T.C.H. returned, renewed and refreshed. I did my thing all year, teaching my students and going for a few trainings, and then I hit the wall. I almost quit teaching this year and then I got re-inspired. I collaborated on a new and (we think) powerful Therapeutic Yoga Training that has garnered a lot of interest so far — but not where I live. But I’m OK with that finally. Esalen has asked us to send our yoga resumes. Yeah, you bet your asana I want to teach at Esalen. I’ve finally decided to conduct a teacher training and I’m planning a Yoga & Spirituality Retreat in March of 2013 where the Therapeutic Yoga Training will be an option.
I also decided not to allow myself be ruled by the current yoga business paradigm because I am so much more than that. Two yoga teachers who trust my vision are on board and if it’s meant to be, it will be. I honestly don’t care what the local yoga studio does because frankly, that business model is tired and stale and the people I want to teach to aren’t those people anyway. To that end, I decided to start a non-profit corporation in spite people telling me not to do it. Henry Ford once said that if he had asked people what they wanted they would have said “faster horses.” Think about it. I stopped allowing people without vision into my life. But a praying mantis taught me my biggest lesson.
My biggest lesson was listen to my heart.
Of course I know that I’ve been doing that for years, listening to my heart and to my second brain, my gut. But somehow I had lost my way a bit this year, I can’t explain exactly how. Maybe it was by trusting people too much, by expecting to be treated as I treat people when I should have no expectations at all. Yes, trust is a positive thing, but not at the cost of denying yourself. My life lesson at this stage of my 57 years on this Earth is that I am not responsible for anyone’s happiness and no one is responsible for mine. The key is to let go of everyone, and I mean everyone, who do not have your best interests at heart, the ones who do not support you, the ones who can not make the least bit of effort to sustain a relationship. Get rid of the “iffy” people as I call them. Life is too short for peoples’ “bar talk.” That’s over and done with, and like anywhere else, the yoga world has lots of bar talk. My Kali Sister Svasti has some good advice about what she has learned in her 40 years on the planet.
While that lesson has been rolling around in my consciousness for quite some time, it took events of this year to solidify it. Intuitively and energetically I know that my yoga trainings early next year in India — one with A.G. Mohan, and my 6th time at Desikachar’s school — are the culmination of my beginning. A cycle has come to an end. The long beginning was my 10 years of a yoga teaching. I learned that you can’t seriously refer to yourself as a teacher unless you’ve taught for at least 10 years. Sorry if that offends anyone. On second thought, no, I’m not sorry. I’m being real.
I also know intuitively and energetically that I am going to give birth to something potent and profound. Don’t mistake my confidence for arrogance. I know this as sure as I knew for two years that I had to be at the Kumbh Mela in Haridwar last year. Spiritual adepts have been telling me this for years — that the years 2012-2014 are going to be a rebirth. But you have to die to be reborn. Dying never bothered me, it’s living that’s hard.
We’ll see what Varanasi has in store. I’ll be there at the end of my trip at the end of March. Varanasi is also referred to as Benares or Kashi, the city of cremations, a city of death and rebirth, a city that like Haridwar last year, I know in my bones I must be there at that time of my life. North of Varanasi is Sarnath where Buddha did the First Turning of the Wheel of Dharma on the Four Noble Truths. One city of endings, one of beginnings. Between trainings I’m spending my time in Varkala in the south, where there is a 2,000-year old Janardana Swami Temple, a temple to Vishnu that is referred to as “Benares of the South.” In Varanasi I’m staying near Assi Ghat, the same ghat where Krishnamacharya stayed when he studied in Varanasi in the early 20th century. My India trips are always filled with such serendipity.
I’m ready for a new beginning. I believe you either lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way. Those are your three choices in life and I don’t have time for vanilla or beige anymore. As Danielle LaPorte writes:
There was an article in the Chicago Tribune over the weekend about how blues clubs in Chicago are struggling. That is, not so much the blues clubs in the white, tourist areas of Chicago, but the clubs on the mostly black West and South sides: “The official Chicago blues scene — a magnet for tourists from around the globe — prospers downtown and on the North Side, catering to a predominantly white audience in a homogenized, unabashedly commercial setting. The unofficial scene — drawing mostly locals and a few foreign cognoscenti — barely flickers on the South and West sides, attracting a mostly black, older crowd to more homespun, decidedly less profitable locales.” [emphasis supplied.]
The more I read this article I couldn’t help but think that what I was reading was analagous in certain respects to the modern yoga scene, especially when I read this:
“So what happens when an indigenous music . . . gets repackaged for sale . . . ? An art form starts to die.”
Much has been written about how yoga changed when it came West. I was in a workshop with Paul Grilley when he said that in order for yoga to be palatable for Western tastes the spirituality had to be stripped out of it. Sure there are many teachers who teach a classical or as I call it, an old-school style of yoga, but how filled are those classes compared to the ones where the teacher dazzles you with a one-armed handstand, kicks your ass, and sends you home with a two minute savasana and no meditation? From my own experience when I taught at a studio my “modern” vinyasa flow class had a lot more students in it than my classical vinyasa krama class where I usually had three or four or none at all.
Naming themselves after a Muddy Waters song, the Rolling Stones visited the South side of Chicago, home of the urban blues, to pay homage to Chess Records. That was the rock and roll version of going to India to see where it all started, to experience the undiluted roots of their music.
Times and tastes naturally change in both music and yoga. Even vintage country music has faded away to the sanitized pop version of what it is now. As the article points out the nature and purpose of the newer blues clubs is different from the old clubs. At best, the newer clubs are filled; at worst, the bands serve up an endless repetition of songs like “Sweet Home Chicago” and “Hoochie Coochie Man.” In those clubs where blues music is watered down and branded, no one expects the music to develop to the next level.
The newer clubs give the people what they want in order to fill the place whether it’s selling T shirts or having the bands play the same old tired songs. Just like the clubs, yoga studios give their students what they think they want in order to keep drawing them in — yogalates, yoga with weights, whatever it takes.
In comparing yoga and art, one of my students said that art is always difficult to describe or explain, but you know it when you find it. Great art, like yoga, has soul. Yoga has morphed and changed since it has come to the West and while nothing can stay the same, I wonder, like the musicians wondered in the Tribune article, what is lost when the infrastructure of the yoga music is shattered.
As one of the musicians said in the article, there will always be the tourist clubs that sell the blues “brand” but “you can’t look to the clubs and the club owners to pursue blues as a culture. It is to them purely a commodity, nothing more than a bottle of whiskey, and how much money you can make off of it.”
Not an ideal way for preserving an art form, whether it’s music or yoga.
In Mahayana Buddhism there is the tradition of the “root guru”, someone from whom we receive the teachings directly. My root guru in Mahayana Buddhism is Gelek Rimpoche. I will always consider Srivatsa Ramaswami my root guru in vinyasa krama yoga.
I first met Ramaswamiji in 2003 or 2004 at the Chicago studio where I certified as a teacher. I was a very newbie teacher and he was teaching a weekend workshop, his first time in Chicago. The Friday night was the “Yoga of Sound” and it was advertised that over the weekend he would teach special vinyasa sequences that had not been taught in America. I was intrigued because even that early in my teaching I had started to research places to study yoga in India.
Ramaswamiji is considered a chant master in India and the Friday night Yoga of Sound was all about chanting. It was the first time I heard vedic chants sung in the traditional way and it cracked open my heart in a way that Krishna Das or Jai Uttal could never do, and still don’t. I drove home weeping all the way. I knew I had found my teacher and Ramaswamiji put me on the path to study at the Krishnamacharya Yoga Madiram. When I saw my name in the Acknowledgement of his book The Complete Book of Vinyasa Yoga I cried again because I did not even think he knew my name,
For me, Ramaswamiji is a true yogi, nothing more needs to be said. In 2011 he is much more well known than he was when I first met him when barely anyone knew the name of the student who studied the longest with Krishnamacharya. He now teaches a 200 hour teacher training at Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles and the video below is about the training. In the beginning you will hear his wonderful chanting and there is a short interview with him. The rest of the video consists of students giving their impressions of Ramaswami and the training.
I thought it interesting towards the end of the video when a student said that she had been doing yoga for a few years but had never done yoga that had such a complete emphasis on the breath. When a new student comes to me that is also usually the first thing they say to me after the first class, how emphasis on the breath totally changed their practice. I have studied in this lineage for a long time so comments like that always make me go hmmmmmmm…….because what exactly is being taught in teacher trainings nowadays? Is emphasis on the breath considered an “advanced” practice to be taught in a 300 hour training because if that is the case I have to wonder about that. Breathing is basic, from Class #1, as soon as you step on the mat. Every movement is initiated with an inhale or an exhale, mindfully, I don’t know any other way to teach. Conscious breathing IS pranayama. When I hear comments like that student’s it confirms my belief that yoga in American IS different compared to where I study in India.
Maybe I should try teaching my “Yoga of Krishnamacharya” workshop again. Years ago when I taught at a studio I offered it for yoga teachers and well-seasoned practitioners only. I was going to talk about the vinyasa krama method and offer a practice for shoulderstand. I thought at least teachers would be interested in learning about the Source Scholar of Yoga, the teacher of Iyengar, Jois, and Desikachar. No one signed up.
Just call me old-school.
“Asanas are yogic postures – stable and comfortable. Vinyasas are aesthetic breath oriented movements within those exquisite yoga poses.” — Srivatsa Ramaswami
“Asana will make the body light. Pranayama strengthens prana. Dharana purifies the intellect. Meditation purifies the mind.” — Sri T. Krishnamacharya
“Nowadays, the practice of yoga stops with just asanas. Very few even attempt dharana and dhyana [deeper meditation] with seriousness. There is a need to search once more and reestablish the practice and value of yoga in modern times.” — Sri T. Krishnamacharya (excerpt from “Krishnamacharya: His Life and Teachings” by A. G. Mohan)
This year has been on-again, off-again for me insofar as yoga. While I am always grateful for the small, group classes I teach out of my house, the private yoga biz, i.e,. one-on-one yoga/yoga therapy, sucks. The highlight this summer was helping one of the top-ranked college hurdlers in the country rehab from hip surgeries. Her mother found me online and the funny thing is she lives down the street from me. Small world. I worked with her twice a week and it was a joy. But a consistent income from that? A student increase in my small group classes? No. This is the first year I’ve spent more money on my yoga biz (such as trainings) than I brought in. Someone tell me again how popular and mainstream yoga is.
After 10 years of teaching I seriously considered quitting this year. “My yoga” is not popular because I am not mainstream, status quo. Because I have been burned by yoga studio owners and am tired of all the drama yoga studios generate — and I will add IN MY AREA, but from what I hear, it’s not that different in other parts of the country and sometimes even worse — I no longer teach weekly classes in studios. The style of yoga that I teach is not about kicking your ass and making you sweat, and if you bust out a handstand when I say “child’s pose”, I’m going to call you out. I love traveling to teach workshops but as for teaching weekly classes, no thanks. I suppose I would return to teaching classes depending on the studio AND the owner, but I have to say that even thinking about it brings up a physical sensation that is similar to PTSD. Seriously. That’s how badly I’ve been abused treated. Don’t even get me started about the “yoga community.”
I became certified in teaching Trauma Sensitive Yoga this year, a training that I consider one of the most influential that I’ve ever taken, but getting people such as counselors to even consider it has been like pulling teeth. As I was with eco-garden design with native plants (I am also a garden designer and a certified horticulturist) and thai yoga massage, I am once again ahead of my time.Then I decided to to finally conduct a teacher training and went through the Yoga Alliance rigamaroll. Instead of being energized about finally being annointed an EXPERIENCED REGISTERED YOGA TEACHER, I became even more depressed. Finally seeing all my training hours in 10 years — literally 1000 hours — written down in black and white made me think, “what the fuck am I doing? why bother?” All my training doesn’t mean shit to a tree, as Grace Slick sang, when it seems that all people care about is getting their ass kicked in a hot yoga class. It is a rare person in my area of far west suburban Chicago who is willing to pay for private yoga classes — and I live in an upper middle class area.
And please don’t tell me that I am “manifesting” this. If I hear one more person tell me to “let go of negativity”, “be open”, “throw it out to the Universe”, or any other New Age Secret clap-trap, I’m going NeNe Leakes on your asana.
The fact of the matter is that when one is passionate about yoga as a path of transformation and all you get are closed doors and little interest, it is very discouraging and frustrating. My private students understand my frustration and are extremely supportive. They know I need to go to India because it is there that I am renourished, it is there that real yoga renews me. Yeah, you read it: “real yoga” — and I don’t care if you don’t like the phrase because I am sick of the political correctness of modern yoga, yoga blogs included.
In all this mix, when I was at my lowest, once again someone whom I’ve never met lifts me up. A new blog reader — yoga student for 20 years, teacher for 5 — emailed me and told me her story of frustration and indeed, hate, of yoga as it is now taught. She told me that my writing here is an answer to a prayer and she wanted to express her gratitude. She told me how her yoga mojo vanished and she entered the dark night of the yoga soul….as what is happening with me now. She wrote:
“…living in the land of the yoga OBscene, southern california, made matters much worse. i began to loathe and even used the word hate in re: to yoga. i officially declared DIVORCE in june of this year. what had it become? where are “they” taking it? who are all these 200 hr YA stamped people who know nothing about, nor care less about, living the yoga?? a friend suggested i stop cursing the dark and light a candle. and lindasyoga.com arrived.”
Her email overwhelmed me. I started to cry. Maybe I am doing something right, I thought, if my writing about yoga can have such an effect. Aside from my regular weekly students, the support that I receive from those near is practically nil. Almost all the support in what I do comes from people whom I’ve never met, YOU, out there, globally. And that amazes me.
This August I finally met a long-time blog reader from Texas and we are collaborating on a yoga project that is going to rock the yoga world, IMO. I got an email from another reader with a yoga contact in Nova Scotia. I have another contact for yoga in Cuba.
So should I be depressed that hardly anyone gets me where I live? Don’t we all want validation, approval from our community, isn’t that human nature? After I read the above email to my husband, even he said that my home is OUT THERE, NOT HERE. I just reside here, but I live OUT THERE. As my friend in Texas reminded me, a prophet is never appreciated in their homeland. Not that I consider myself a prophet, but I get the analogy. A long ago private student told me that it’s hard being a pioneer because the pioneers get the arrows shot up the ass.
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. 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?
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.”
“A good Yoga teacher should follow Yoga as a sadhana or spiritual practice, not simply as an outer vocation. The aspiration for Self-realization and God-realization should be the foundation of wanting to be a true Yoga teacher.
Consider bringing in Ayurveda, pranayama, and mantra into what you present as Yoga. Learn the main yogic types of meditation. Learn at least some Sanskrit so that you can know what the original terminology of Yoga means. Try to study the deeper Yogic texts and do not just limit yourself to the Yoga Sutras, which is only one of many great Yoga classics. My favorite is the Yoga Vasishta.
Try to study the life and teachings of the great modern yogis like Ramakrishna, Vivekananda, Yogananda, or Ramana Maharshi.
Visit India and its ashrams and holy places to find out more about the spiritual background of Yoga. Do not be afraid of the devotional or Bhakti side of Yoga but try to understand its relevance.
But above all root your teachings in nature and in your own experience, as Yoga is something that is rooted ultimately in all of life. Learn the cosmic Yoga if you can, letting the Earth, mountains, wind, stars and waters be your teachers.” [emphasis supplied.]
This post raised some hackles when it was suggested that yoga teachers would benefit by studying in India. It was even suggested that going to India to study yoga smacked of elitism. So when I read this post by David Frawley I had to smile.
David Frawley is the Director of the American Institute of Vedic Studies. Frawley’s article is interesting because his compares yoga in the East and West, something I have also blogged about. Yes, yoga IS different in India (at least where I study), despite the mainstream commercialization of it here. I think Frawley’s article is very insightful and he hits the nail on the head when he says things like “some modern asana groups want to avoid the spiritual side of Yoga, or at least the Indian side of that spirituality. Some spiritual Yoga groups, meanwhile, have no asana component or teaching…” and…
“A true Yoga teacher in the classical sense would be one who could teach all eight limbs of Yoga with integrity, experience, devotion and insight. They would be able to develop programs at an individual basis and not simply be limited to group or public classes. That requires much more study and practice than most Yoga teacher’s training programs today.”
You can read the comments in the “Babies Teaching Babies” post from those of us who have gone to India to study. A comment was made that those who’ve been to India suggested that “those of us who haven’t gone to India aren’t teachers.” I disagree: “the experience of being in India changed my whole way of looking at Yoga; and “yes it is possible to teach without going. but I UNDERSTOOD a a hell of a lot better when I began immersing myself in the culture, I became a much better teacher after I started going.” I said that my practice and teaching totally changed after learning what I learned in India. Frankly, I learned things at the Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram that I never heard anyone talk about in any previous trainings (except the teacher who inspired me to go to India in the first place.)
I am actually a bit dismayed yet amused at the elitist charge (considering that back in the day I was on food stamps and marched in protest with the Farmworkers’ Union) and the defensiveness that speaks once again (as is so common lately in the yoga blogosphere) to the “us v. them” mentality. Perception is reality which is different for everyone. The non-dualism of advaita wisdom does not map to North American uber-dualism.
No one suggested that those who do not study in India are not yoga teachers. David Frawley does not suggest that either. But what he does is differentiate between someone who teaches asana and someone who teaches more than asana when he is asked what he believes makes a good yoga teacher. His advice for students who want to become teachers is: “To be a real Yoga teacher is a great achievement of the human spirit and requires great dedication and commitment of a life-time.”
Of course not every yoga teacher can go to India to study or even wants to go. India is not for everyone — I wrote about that here. There’s a lot fear involved when some people think of going to India. During my first trip an American yoga student had a mental meltdown 10 days into the month long intensive and had to be sent home.
But I can tell you that you will learn more about the spirituality of the Gita, or Sutras, or whatever your favorite spiritual yoga book is by feeling it wash over you in a temple as the priests chant rather than reading about it in a book. I guarantee it.
And just because someone goes to India to study, that does not automatically make them a better teacher — just like someone going to the best law school or medical school does not automatically make them a good lawyer or doctor. There are many other things involved in making a good teacher, it’s individual, it’s not just one thing. To teach ANYTHING well, one needs the aptitude to teach. “Good” teaching springs from knowledge and years of practice and experience, including life experience. Wisdom comes from life experience, not out of books. It’s been said that there’s a ton of knowledge out there now, but not a lot of wisdom. Same in the modern yoga world. Even after 10 years of teaching, I still consider myself a baby teacher. OK, maybe a toddler by now.
But those who DO decide to study in India will be rewarded beyond their wildest dreams. I can only speak about the school that I attend, I have no idea what happens in Pune (Iyengar yoga) or Mysore (Astanga yoga), but there is a reason that people keep returning to the heart of yoga to study. It IS different, and paraphrasing what Louis Armstrong said about jazz, “If you have to ask what India is, you’ll never know.”
In order to study in India, yes, it IS hard to find subs for your classes. It IS hard to be away from families for however long the study takes. And yes, there is no guarantee that your yoga job will be waiting for you when you return, given that in certain areas of the country (especially mine), yoga teachers are a dime a dozen and as soon as you leave, 12 more are waiting to take your gig, some who will teach for nothing. But as the saying goes, if it was easy, everyone would do it.
The bottom line is that if you want to do it, you’ll do it, without hesitation. You’ll save your money for a year or two years or whatever it takes, find your subs or even give up your classes, maybe even a family, and go. That’s how important it is to some people to travel to the heart of yoga. When I made my decision to go the first time I knew in my bones that nothing and no one would stop me. Is that elitism? Or commitment of a life-time? My students are glad when I go because they know they can not drink from an empty cup and what I bring back is not only for me, but for them.
The fact of the matter is that yoga teacher trainings in the United States are much more expensive than it is to go to India for a month to study with the senior teachers of Iyengar, Jois, or Desikachar.
“To be a real Yoga teacher is a great achievement of the human spirit and requires great dedication and commitment of a life-time.”
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.”
“‘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.
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
I’ve always been the square peg in the round hole and that upsets people sometimes, even in the yoga world. The yoga world can be as politically correct as the non-yoga world when the first thing out of someone’s mouth is “you’re not yogic” or “you’re a hater” when someone questions yoga’s current status quo. Believe me; in my 7 years of writing this blog I’ve been called an unyogic hater more times than I can count.
Linda's Yoga Journey 
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