A friend recently shared a photo with me on Twitter of a young woman performing a very elaborate yoga posture, she was doing a headstand while in full lotus. As if this wasn’t enough, she was also doing this whilst only balancing on her head with her arms not touching the ground!
Over the years I have attended many classes and workshops and, as part of the wider yoga community, I have come into contact with many teachers of different yoga traditions. One of the things that I have noticed in the modern world of yoga is that it is very fixated on asana, the physical postures. It seems to me that the implicit aim or goal of a lot of modern yoga classes is one of physical gymnastics which, enjoyable as this may be, kind of misses the point. Perhaps it is helpful to be reminded that in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra of the eight limbs of training, asana is only one limb – there are actually another seven that explore ethics, meditation, etc. Patanjali places a lot more emphasis on using the body as a vehicle to support and explore meditative states of consciousness than he does in mastering an impressive back bend.
This over-emphasis and obsession on physical yoga postures can be seen regularly on social media. The majority of the photos shared by yoga teachers on Facebook and Twitter are showing mastery of elaborate yoga poses. I feel there is a danger in this, as it gives a strong message that the attainment of physical asana is the goal of a yoga practice.
Like a lot of yoga practitioners, I enjoy a physical yoga practice and the benefits that it gives, so my comments are not an attack on yoga asana, but a call for balance and an awareness of the wider context in which it is held.
The modern hatha yoga tradition as we know it originated in ancient India and was heavily influenced by Hindu Brahmanism. There was also a cross-fertilisation of ideas occurring over hundreds of years between Hindu thought and Buddhism. The problem I feel is that the modern yoga we may come across has been removed from the context that supported it. The original goal of yoga is a far cry from what we find in most yoga studios today. I would go as far as to say that what passes for yoga in most gyms and yoga studios is a physical gymnastic body routine, with a liberal sprinkling of vague new-age ideas or a dash of Hinduism.
I often give an example to my students that if you are in a busy supermarket after a day at work and you are feeling stressed and overwhelmed, being able to balance on your head is not much help!. But if you are able to work with your mind and connect to a quality of spacious, open awareness and relax, then you are going to be more able to respond creatively to the challenges that life offers us.
“In recent times the practice of asana or hatha yoga has become synonymous with the practice of Yoga. This is unfortunate. The perfection of asana was never meant as the goal of Yoga, nor will standing on our head for an hour signal some major achievement on our spiritual path. This misconception is understandable given our obsession with form and our desire to have some kind of concrete evidence of attainment.”
Donna Farhi – yoga teacher