J. Brown Yoga Thoughts

We've all heard about the amazing things that yoga can do for us, but try explaining exactly what it is and how it works and you quickly find yourself on shaky ground. There is an innate something at the heart of the matter that simply cannot be measured, only felt. As unsatisfying as this may be, the highly subjective perception of our own experience is the only real basis for any understanding, and the very thing that makes yoga so vital.

A lot of people in the yoga world are feeling confused. Changing social tides and startling revelations are calling into question the foundations on which many a career have been built. Deep vacuums have been created with the passing of primary teachers, previously held secrets are being exposed, and the emergence of a neo-orthodoxy is attempting to lay claim to what was once considered an open-source transmission. Those who continue to feel a calling are rightly searching their souls for clarity as the always precarious mix of business and wisdom tradition becomes ever more blurred.

A lot of people who go to yoga classes are not really interested in yoga. At least, not in the sense of being seriously committed and willing to take on a radical inquiry into the nature of being, and having the courage to manifest what is discovered in attitudes and actions. Most folks just want a good workout that will tone their bodies and make them feel less stressed, without being all too clear about what that might actually mean or entail. The trappings of mainstream yoga have led to an obfuscation of not only the greater challenge for individuals but the potential rewards for our communities and planet at large.

I recognize that I was born into privilege. Being male, white and American comes with a set of assumptions and implicit biases that are deeply ingrained in me and the mores of our fathers. As a progressive-minded person who wants to be an example of attitudes and actions that foster a more just and humane society, I am willing to have my unconscious behaviors laid bare so that I might learn new ways of communicating and interacting with people and the world. But in order for this to occur, my hope must be met with more than mere outrage.

Something has happened to the way I see myself in relationship to time, and the amount of life that is being spent behind a screen. For a while, I had a handle on my use of technology and my digital life seemed empowering and mind-expanding. But, of late, things seem to devolve easily into a grey zone of succumbing to the more manipulative aspects of our systems and the mentalities that govern them.

Pop culture continues to enjoy a glossy-eyed love affair with yoga. But many long-time practitioners and professionals are discovering that, somewhere along their journey over the last decade or so, either yoga or they have changed. As once die-hard yogis attempt to discern what, if anything, of their practice has stood up against the test of time, their relationship to yoga needs to be allowed to evolve or they'll likely feel compelled to part ways.

It's official. I will be closing my yoga center down at the end of this year. The hipster pond that I once helped homestead a decade ago has come to a boil quicker than I could have foreseen, and the only sensible thing to do is come up with an exit plan. Contrary to the common meme though, I don't think the 'studio model' is disappearing. I always knew that my time for an ending would come. I have witnessed the pattern enough to predict that an operation like mine can only keep pace with the rents for so long before getting priced out. What is surprising is how fast it happens and how hard it is to accept when the numbers turn against you. It's easy to place blame somewhere. With myself for not running the business better. Or with the NYC real estate market for acting so seemingly against its own interests and humanity. Or with a larger economic system that is based on a grow-or-die model which precludes a healthy stasis for community-supported businesses.

I grew up in the eighties. My folks moved from NY to Los Angeles and settled into the comfort of a big house, two-car garage, and three kids. We were never in want for money. My dad made millions as the vice president of a huge construction firm. I was raised to believe that there was no limit to what I could attain. The milieu of my childhood is best exemplified by a t-shirt that hung in my dad's closet, and would sometimes be bandied around for laughs, it read: "He who dies with the most toys wins." In the nineties, I moved from LA to NY for college and rejected the era of my upbringing as representing a glorification of the superficial. I was one of the x-generation slackers who grew up alongside the corporatization of America, whose only defense against the takeover of everyday life was feigned apathy. On some level, I felt despair over something I could not explain but, being young and without a sense of consequence, I still believed that I was entitled to more.

The novelty of yoga has been worn down to almost nothing by a multi-billion dollar industry that cares little for its tenets, like the crumbling shreds of a shoddily made pvc mat from China. But from out of the ashes of craven images and advertising schemes, a new discipline is emerging.

In the last twenty years, yoga in the west has gone from a guru-driven model to a market-driven model. Decisions still often come from atop a pyramid. But now, the directives are based more on aggregated data than on the presumed authority of an ancient wisdom. One small manifestation of this turn can be found in the way that yoga classes have gotten progressively shorter. As yoga teachers are newly questioning old models for what and how they teach, industry mores also deserve examination.

Coming of age in the yoga profession means facing changing realities and shifting priorities. The majority of yoga teachers start out in the profession at an early time in their lives. But as the viability of old models wanes and independent players have less impact in the face of up-scaled operations, long-term prospects for careers in yoga are less apparent. For those whose passion cannot be deterred by the odds, their faith and trust in practice will likely be tested.

For many, it is has become important to distinguish between "asana," or the performing of postures, and yoga. Both those who are inclined towards yoga as a fitness regimen, and those who embrace it as more than just exercise, find it necessary to clarify the intent and purpose behind their practice. This compartmentalisation, while convenient and often useful, brings with it a dilemma, the resolution to which determines what is actually possible with yoga.

When circumstances, ruled by forces beyond the will of one individual, overshadow our personal experience of life, unconscious resentment and fear run deep. The coercive fuel of capitalism has conditioned and resigned us to manipulation that both obfuscates truth and reveals the inhumanity of entrenched power. Despite hopelessness, perhaps a kernel of our sacrificed fortitude and imagination can be redeemed.