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"Yoga is fucking judgmental"
Sorry it really isn't. Yoga is its true sense is an individual practice for improving one's mental, physical, spiritual state of being. Perhaps if you are a practitioner of Yoga, you might be interested in learning more about its origins and history [1].
Bikram Yoga which the author took classes for is a commercial take on yoga, much like Dance Yoga, Jillian Michaels Meltdown Yoga; or something I could copyright tomorrow called "Dance Dance Yoga Revolution". From my understanding Bikram Yoga is a fitness product to make money for its founder, which he has ensured by "copyrighting" his system of poses and by suing numerous studios and former students, etc. Maybe this is why the author's experience with yoga was of being judged and why he calls anyone with an opposing view a "hippie". The practice of saying "namaste" at the end of the session sounds like something you'd do to add a flavor of east meets west to make this practice cool/hip because in the context described in the article, it doesn't add much to the state of the individual aside from this cool "namaste moment."
"Choudhury holds a copyright for the 26 poses which constitute Bikram yoga under the same theory which allows choreographic sequences to be copyrighted. In September, 2011, Choudhury filed an infringement suit against his former student, Greg Gumucio, founder of a competing chain of hot yoga studios."
Disclaimer: I haven't ever taken a Bikram Yoga class, but I've been practicing Yoga on and off since high school.
Thanks for posting this. Yoga if done correctly should not make you tired. It should leave you in euphoric and blissful state devoid of almost all negative emotions. This then puts in the right state to do meditation. It took me years to get this right. And you can't commercialize something that takes that long and is slow and gradual.
Plain and simple: If X makes you tired or judgmental or angry ..., X is not yoga.
I am not making this up. Google Scholar this.
Also, yoga teachers are not supposed to do it for money. Read up on how Gurukuls worked.
Yoga removed from its spiritual context is just a kitschy low grade thing that may hurt you while taking your money.
"Also, yoga teachers are not supposed to do it for money. Read up on how Gurukuls worked."
Yeah I suppose you'll want to practice guruseva instead -- work for your instructor, such as cleaning his restroom, cooking, or going to the street begging for money on his behalf. No thanks, as much a traditionalist that I can be wrt yoga, some things are better the modern/western way.
"Yoga removed from its spiritual context is just a kitschy low grade thing"
No, yoga can be an awesome practice removed from any religion/spirituality. There's support from that even in traditional practices and texts. And if you get all dogmatic about this, I think you're doing it wrong unless you're practicing yoga associated with some form of Hinduism (most mantras are Vedantic chants, etc.). Get off my atheistic yoga mat :))
But I agree with the general stupidity of many commercial yogas. For one thing, heated rooms are a no-no, yoga has a purist approach as a biological and self-sufficient practice so it doesn't use any artificial support: no weights, stands, Pilates balls, etc., the ONLY thing you need is your own body (not just for the physical exercises / asanas, but all practices including meditation).
> Yeah I suppose you'll want to practice guruseva instead -- work for your instructor, such as cleaning his restroom, cooking, or going to the street begging for money on his behalf. No thanks, as much a traditionalist that I can be wrt yoga, some things are better the modern/western way.
Why do you assume that? I learnt yoga for free without doing any of that. If you can't find a reasonable person to teach you, all the source material is available for free. There are some benefits to doing those kind of activities. People nowadays are too egotistic. Those things are a nice way of curbing that.
Yoga was developed for spiritual reasons. That can't be denied. There have been people trying to remove its spiritual dimension through the ages. That can't be denied too. You can always use a church for just shelter. That does not make false that it was built for another purpose.
You have a finite life span. Do you want to use yoga to get a better body to increase your chances of finding a mate (or something equally trivial) or do you want to transcend finiteness? I thought all this was drivel too, till I got terribly fat and sick and was forced to do yoga.
The caution about being dogmatic applies to you too. Approach yoga with an open mindset while not thinking that the founders were complete morons when it came to spirituality. An analogy: just a few decades back almost everyone in the mainstream thought yoga had nil benefits. Nobody is stopping you from doing yoga on your atheistic mat. Don't belittle us by assuming so :)
"Yoga removed from its spiritual context is just a kitschy low grade thing that may hurt you while taking your money."
As I yoga professor and a software developer I can say your definition is perfect.
yeah and swimming correctly doesn't make you tired either. but until you actually reach that point, you have to go through many many hours of painful practice.
Thinks don't magically happen. You have to work for them.
EDIT: That said, my girlfriend who was indian, disliked bikram yoga a lot, because of some of the aforementioned issues
Things have to be difficult only if you want them to be difficult. I had the bliss from yoga classes since probably second or this class. Physically tired, mentally relaxed.
ok, so given the fact that a lot of the difficulty results from being different levels of flexible, and coming from different fitness level backgrounds, and having different levels of experience when it comes to gathering your thoughts.
Are you sure you want to imply that everyone starting a sport has the same physical fitness, stretchiness and mental attributes when starting out any sport/yoga?
You start off by saying that only hard work can bring about bliss, and when confronted with a different experience you pigeonhole it into asserting that bliss must befall every single person regardless of their circumstances. Step aside from the false dichotomy - it's not the case that yoga can either bring about bliss quickly to everyone or no one. It may bring to some and not to others. Will it work for a particular person? The easiest way to find out is to try. There is no point in guessing. Sign up for 8-class introductory course, by the end of it you will have a pretty good idea whether it works for you. It worked for me, and it worked for other people I know, so it works for some people. It's not going to be a waste of time.
If you're worried about prerequisite fitness level, I can guarantee you that I had the worst stretching and the least endurance of the entire group - it's fairly obvious in class. One thing I had more that others is discipline - I think I was one of the few to attend all eight classes.
Swimming does not make you blissful like yoga does. This is like explaining vision to a person who was born blind.
replace yoga by any other sport taken seriously(ie. competitively or almost competitively), any instrument or basically anything humans learn in general, and the only thing that changes is the temperature(although that also highly depends on where in the world you do it)
I've been doing martial arts for 18 years and i could say exactly the same.
What is more fascinating in my opinion is that what you're describing is a tiny bit of what is known as sports psychology, which in turn is very close to what is observed in military combat psychology, which in turn is very closely related to entrepreneurship in general.
my point is that while i think that it's good that you wrote down your experience, and the emotional connection to it, what you're describing is in no way specific to yoga.
Why is Yoga Judgmental? Does Yoga have a voice or life of its own? Not sure I understand that comment.
I like the parallelism to start-ups and agree that Yoga is practice. I do Pranayama every single day, and it is form of Yoga. And yes it is a practice. But judgmental - don't get that...
Damn, I thought yoga was supposed to help you calm down and chill out.
I did really like the author's parallelisms to entrepreneurship, though.
Yes, it is.
I'm a serial entrepreneur who became a Yoga professor last year I can say that the author is totally equivocated in some points. He is judging something that isn't Yoga.
There are very different styles in Yoga. Bikram is probably one extreme where everything is regimented, and there is only way correct way. There are also Yoga styles that are more kin to jazz improvisation and anything in between. May be there is a startup analogy somewhere there as well :)
Bikram Yoga has its roots or inheritance in Yoga with respect to the "asanas" or poses but I would say that's about it.