Photograph of Rebecca Buonopane, United states Yoga Federation.
Image courtesy: house of voga.com
“Yoga calms me down. It is a therapy session, a workout and meditation all at the same time.” -Jennifer Aniston.
“Yoga maintains youth, and it keeps the body full of vitality and immune to diseases, even at old age.” -Bikram Choudhury founder of Bikram Yoga.
What does the world understand as ‘Yoga’ today? Dominantly, sizably, as a system for exercise and fitness. The physical aspect of yoga has become so overpowering that an organisation called the International Yoga Asana Championship has been established, with the aim of taking ‘Yoga Sport’ to the Olympics. “I do not like this spirituality, enlightenment, out of the body type of thing. Yoga for me is through the body”, said the winner at the Yoga sport competition 2013.
The best of ‘Yogis’? What an irony.
Tara styles, founder of Strala Yoga, in New York, says, “Strala is an evolution, a new definition of Yoga, I mean who are we really answering to?” Innovation. Sure. Commendable, but where did the real heart of Yoga, its true intention vanish?
Larry Schultz, founder of Rocket Yoga, called it the rocket as “It gets one there faster”. Gets one where faster? The website does not explain, but rocket yoga has a large following in the United States and internationally too. There is Voga: vogue plus yoga, Rave yoga, boxing yoga and the likes.
“Yoga is not just an exercise, it is how skilfully you can communicate and act in any given situation.” -Sri Sri Ravi Shankar.
“When I meditate, Yoga somehow reminds me that my problems are not real.” -Bhanu Bhatnagar, Al Jazeera correspondent for the documentary “Who owns Yoga?”
“Yoga is 99% practise and 1% theory.” – N. Pattabhi Jois, a proponent of Vinyasa yoga in the western world, along with B.K.S. Iyengar .
It seems as if Yoga is just an appendage, a device to enhance one’s lifestyle. To make one more effective, competent, more empowered in practical life. A lofty ideal, sure, but very mistaken. Heartbreakingly oversimplified. Devalued into blasphemy.
“Yoga is the golden key that unlocks the door to peace, tranquility and joy.”- B. K. S. Iyengar.
“Yoga is an internal practice. The rest is just circus.”- Pattabhi Jois
Yes, that would capture, although just a glimpse of the true meaning of yoga. Yoga has undergone such a deep, foundational transformation over centuries, that the current version is unrecognizable from its original form. Modern yoga is the offspring of ‘Hatha’ yoga, which was formulated after the 1st century, even though Yoga had existed for centuries before that. Hath, which can be broken down as ‘ha’ – the sun and ‘th’-the moon is essentially physical; the yoga of balance, of harmony. If you were to consider the sun and the moon as the epitome of aspects of nature, then ‘hath’ is the harmonising of nature itself. The father of modern yoga is T. Krishnamacharya, whose students, Pattabhi jois, B. K. S. Iyengar were its stalwart proponents, instrumental in spreading it far and wide across the western world.
The origins of Yoga
Yoga had existed before the birth of its highly physical version and was mentioned in the Vedanta, the end of the Vedas, also called the Upanishads. The Upanishads are a treatise of practical, do-able philosophy, at least in comparison to the arcane Vedas themselves. Even though the Upanishads are a simpler commentary of the Vedas, they are still too difficult to understand, for all, scholars and laymen alike. Even though Yoga is older in practise, it was first formally organized and codified in the Patanjali Yoga sutras, which was written somewhere between the 4th- 1st century B.C. It has also received mention in the Moksha sutras of Mahabharata which can be dated back to 4BCE.
Image courtesy: www.artofliving.org
Patanjali mentions just a basic seated position as asana
The funny thing is that the earliest canons of the Yoga doctrine mention only a basic seated position or ‘asana’. As a matter of fact, Patanjali does not mention any ‘asana’ at all except for this basic one. For Patanjali, ‘asana’ was any bodily posture to make meditation comfortable. Yes, just that.
Goraksha Samhita, propounded by Goraksha Natha of the Nath Sampradaya, mentions 84 asanas, but explains only two. It was only with the birth of Hatha Yoga that the focus on the physical aspect of asanas increased. The Hatha Yoga Pradipika, considered as the manual of modern Hatha Yoga, was catalogued between 15CE to 17CE, much later than its first codification, and it mentions just 15 asanas.
The Yoga which has taken the world by a storm in the 20 and 21st centuries is called the ‘Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga’. Sadly, it is a misnomer in the sense that it is not Astanga which means eight limbed. In sanskrit, ‘ashta‘ is eight and ‘anga’ is limb. Eight limbed was actually a characteristic of the philosophy of yoga as described by Patanjali. If you read Patanjali’s Yoga sutras, which all of you can (I have, an English translation don’t worry), you will quickly understand that there are eight aspects to the theory or science of Yoga, physical asana being one of them. Patanjali presented Yoga as a progressive, organic theory, where all eight limbs together culminated in a clearly defined end goal. Asana or posture is just one of them, that too a less important external aspect. It does not have any groundbreaking bearing on Yoga’s true goal. It was just about preparing the body for meditation, to bring stability to hold meditative states. End of story.
A misnomer
Unfortunately, Hath yoga itself has undergone even more oversimplification to suit modern culture. The Yoga we know today has been created to suit the modern personality and lifestyle. In lives dictated by economic determinism, with upward social mobility as the main motivation, yoga serves to lessen stress, relieve hypertension and other such lifestyle ailments. Yoga has adapted itself to the modern personality, to take the forms of Voga (vogue plus yoga), Rocket yoga, Boxing yoga, Rave yoga etc, just like the latest mobile applications with their super short shelf lives. Ironically though, this post modern yoga is so popular that it has become a career of choice. There are yoga career fairs, and expos, with investors enthusiastic about its creative money making prospects. Of course, we must credit these enterprising people who have made Yoga popular this way. However, it has been distorted and oversimplified to such a ridiculous degree that it has no resemblance to its source.
Its true meaning has fallen away, its true purpose is unknown.
It has morphed irrevocably in its principles, its crux has altered beyond recognition.
It is hearbreaking, really.