The Reenchantment of Yoga — J. Brown Yoga

Within the greater than decade-long historical past of this weblog, I’ve by no means skilled extra blocks in my writing follow than I’ve within the final yr. Inspiration has been briefly provide. I query whether or not this meditation on phrases that when provoked fruitful inquiry in me and its readers has misplaced its relevance. The rationale I began this was so I might say no matter I needed about yoga with out censor and, frankly, I’m frightened by how inhibited I really feel to remain true to that.

This coincides with what appears to me an important fork within the highway for the way forward for yoga in western tradition. Will the knowledge and instruments of our ancestors that enable us to extra readily hear the songs of nature, that harmonize our methods and setting, be fully misplaced to a reductionist materialism that repurposed them as health regimes? Or will we as soon as once more acknowledge the animistic context wherein we reside and embody the practices which can be our birthright?

Commercialization was only a symptom.

Many instances I’ve lamented and decried the rampant commercialization of yoga. A multi-billion greenback trade of yoga-related merchandise, constructed on the attract of each a lithe physique and enlightened thoughts, appeared like the first impediment to genuine yoga transmission. Myself and others have struggled to search out methods of mitigating the financial realities and boundaries to creating a residing by means of yoga with integrity. But, underlying the appropriation of yoga for capitalistic ends is a a lot deeper wound within the collective psyche.

Is there any object in your life that’s so treasured to you that there isn’t any value you’d half with it for? Maybe it’s an object that carries no explicit financial worth however represents or signifies one thing so significant and essential to you that no amount of cash would ever be price it? We offered yoga to the mainstream by making it about energy, flexibility and stress discount. We altered the pedagogy to make it extra handy to eat. However, in doing so, we opened the door to a stage of compromise that renders the teachings void of their energy and roots.

Is Yoga sacred or not?

On a private stage, for a lot of, yoga is akin to prayer. However to not the market. In actual fact, to a level, the money-making potential of yoga is probably going tied to its secularization. For many who discovered yoga earlier than it turned fashionable, self-empowered spirituality was a welcome aid from experiences of organized faith in our youth. Nevertheless, in newer years, what has impressed many to follow yoga was rooted in a coercive exploitation of rampant physique dysmorphia greater than any unfolding of religious goal or course.

Regardless of trade disregard for the spirituality of yoga, its historical practices typically have an unexplainable means of working in a human system. There are occasions when even probably the most cynical of reductionists can’t deny what they really feel of their hearts after respiration and shifting or chanting in live performance with others. Typically life itself presents us with ordeals that result in profound epiphanies. Relinquishing standard modes of pondering and being typically results in experiences which can be unexplainable by scientific or quantitative means. For these not fully entrenched in a materialist mindset, the magic of life, and subsequently yoga, just isn’t some superstition however a matter of observable truth.

We devalue spirit at our personal peril.

Instructing folks methods to align their our bodies into positions and tailoring practices to emphasise the potential for bodily profit might have confirmed to be higher at producing wealth whereas providing some quantity of assist to folks, however this has additionally basically neutered the potential for yoga to broaden our concepts of what’s doable. By partaking yoga within the context of scientific materialism that guidelines modernity, reasonably than within the animism that our ancestors inhabited, we have now undermined the invaluable presents that yoga gives to humanity and the world.

One of many the reason why I’ve had such a tough time bringing myself to the ritual of this weblog is that I’ve turn out to be disenchanted with the flexibility of written phrases to maneuver folks. For one, studying not appears to command the eye required to speak nuance. Trustworthy and honest sentiments turn out to be grossly misinterpreted or manipulated to serve preconceived agendas that not solely bely intent however are designed to disempower folks. Something that challenges predominant narratives is quickly being demonized.

Making an attempt to speak about spirit, or something that can’t be simply measured or named, feels dangerous after we are being so instantly confronted by uncertainties. However it’s now apparent that prevailing worldviews are failing us terribly and we will not depend upon establishments which have devolved into forces of oppression greater than empowerment. If we really consider that yoga has a task to play then our greatest probability for therapeutic and alter is to acknowledge it as a way of understanding consciousness and spirit reasonably than simply one other try to govern the fabric world.