Yoga Culture and the Biomedical Centric Narrative

Having just completed this long response to a Facebook thread about yoga, the use of pharmaceuticals by yoga teachers, alternative medicine, and the problematic nature of "New Agey" responses to health and wellness issues, I decided it was worthy of a blog post. The original post by a yoga teacher who was shocked to learn of two long time yoga teachers that used meds to treat their depression was, after an apparent fluffy of negative responses, taken down. It was replaced by this apology, while the original piece was responded to by several yoga bloggers, including Matthew Remski and Charlotte Bell. While I appreciate many of the points both Matthew and Charlotte offer, I was struck by what I'd label a biomedical centric quality to their responses. Something that I also found in the discussion that ensued on Matthew's FB page, and which I feel needs to be unpacked in detail to avoid falling into an all too easy "good and evil" binary. Below is my attempt to do a bit of that unpacking.

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I've been following this discussion for a few days now, trying to figure out if I should say anything or not. I didn't get to read the original post, so I don't know what kind of claims the author made about pharmaceutical medications or Western bio-medicine in general. One thing I do find curious is - in this depression saturated continent of ours, where medications is a commonplace solution - how the author was "shocked" or even "surprised" that some yoga teachers are using pharmaceuticals to address depression or similar challenges. I honestly don't get the wow factor there.

One tendency I have noticed whenever these discussions about medicine come up is that the power and demands of the biomedical point of view are not often made explicit. For example, there's rarely any direct dialogue about the societal position of biomedicine as orthodox and state sanctioned. And how that positioning allows proponents to dismiss anything else at will without any damage to their credibility or standing. Taking a stand in favor of pharmaceutical intervention has little of the social risk that taking a stand in favor of an energy medicine approach to anxiety or depression does, for example. Or that the same positioning means that the terms of engagement will default to biomedicine's unless deliberate effort is made to question and open space for differing worldviews.

Here, I see many appeals to "experts" and a need for "expertise" and "evidence," without naming the fact that behind this is a demand for whatever is being considered medicine to give deference to biomedicine's criteria for determining validity. That the definition of depression, for example, needs to fall in line with how biomedicine sees it, and/or that any treatments being offered must be backed by scientific "proof," or be explainable using the language and structures of biomedicine. And that anyone who offers some potential treatment option needs to demonstrate a certain level of "competency" - as biomedicine defines competency - or else they'll be lopped off as New Age flakes or charlatans.

Again, I didn't get to read the original post before the author took it down, so I don't know if she made a lot of universalized claims against drug therapies in particular, or solely in favor of alternative approaches. Personally, while I'm not a fan of pharmaceuticals, I think all options should be available for people to choose from. And I wouldn't offer anything with a blanket statement that "THIS IS IT." So, if the author of the original post was operating from that attitude, then I totally get why so many folks reacted so strongly against her post.

At the same time, what I have witnessed over and over again in these kinds of conversations is a tendency for everything to slide under the control of a biomedical narrative. That those who question biomedical interventions are suspect until they prove otherwise. And that "alternative" medical modalities are only valid if at least some of what they offer can be explained or demonstratable under the biomedicine framework.

Along these lines, I actually would argue that the plethora of ill informed yoga folks who knee jerk reject all forms of biomedicine and biomedical approaches, and offer yogic soundbytes and superficial elements of other medicine systems in response to issues like depression are actually a product of this same narrative of inquiry. It takes a lot of effort, strength and persistence to nurture and offer a medicine worldview that isn't biomedicine in this society. Far easier is the path of least resistance, where you know you don't resonate with the dominant model, but make little or no effort to learn and then practice a different one.

Finally, I'm guessing that to some degree or another, the hostility towards folks like the yoga teacher who wrote the original blog isn't really about medicine at all. But about expressed entitlement. Namely, that because person X was at some point anointed a teacher via teaching certificate or some other flimsy method of approval, that they feel "empowered" to "help others" with any problem or issue that arises. That said "yoga teacher" thinks they understand enough to do so, solely or mostly because they've finished some basic course of study, or read a book or whatever. To me, this sense of specialness - that being a yoga teacher means that you have some great level of wisdom and knowledge to "share" - is really the crux of many of the so called controversies in "yoga culture" today.

The Woo in "Western" Yoga and Buddhism

Carol Horton has a new post on her blog Think Body Electric concerning woo and yoga communities. It has a lot of thought provoking stuff in it, as she seeks to - in my opinion - come to a more balanced attitude about ideas and practices that might fall into the "New Agey" category.

I would like to take up the following comment, that comes after some discussion about abusive yoga gurus and manipulative, control based yoga communities that seem heavily reliant on woo. Carol writes:

I strongly believe that it would be helpful if the yoga community developed a much more active connection to relevant dimensions of Western psychology. This has already happened in the convert Buddhist community, where excellent work connecting meditation and psychotherapy has been going on for decades. In the yoga community, however, there’s much more of a default toward New Age thinking. Generally speaking, I think this is a problem.

When I first read this paragraph, I had a pretty strong reaction. Why? Because I believe the marriage of western psychology with Buddhist teachings in North America has been the penultimate double-edged sword. On the one hand, there have been books like Harvey Aronson's Buddhist Practice on Western Ground, which have offered practitioners a wonderful window into exploring the connections, as well as great differences, between psychological theories and Buddhist teachings. And certainly, for those coming from psychologically damaged backgrounds who have entered Buddhist communities or taken up Buddhist practices, having an emphasis on the psychological element of Buddha's teachings has often meant the difference between sanity and insanity. Probably even life and death for some folks.

However, there is another side of the coin. It's quite easy to find teachers, books, and entire Buddhists communities that have reduced the dharma to primarily or solely about the psychological and emotional dimensions of life. Amongst this subsection of Western convert Buddhists, teachings that are vast and subtle, and which contain layer and layer of pointers, get shunted into what amounts to a self-improvement project in Buddhist clothes. While everything in the dharma points to the extremely fluid and limited life span of emotional reactions, this is where the bulk of time is spent amongst these folks, fixating on every last tinge of anger, fear, and sadness, as if in doing so, perhaps one day they might become the "perfect" human animal, able to exude some peaceful calmness, not influenced by anything in their past (especially their childhoods) under all conditions.

Furthermore, because psychology and Western convert Buddhism have been so cozy, it is has attracted a lot of psychologists, including active therapists who have risen to the ranks of teachers. And unfortunately, this had led to some troubling blurring between spiritual practice and therapy, between Buddhist teacher and therapist. The exchanges between Brad Warner and Barry Magrid during a recent dharma talk at Ordinary Mind Zendo constitute a weird example of this dynamic in action. But on a more mundane level, you have all those students who struggle to not treat their interactions in the sangha with others, especially the head teacher, as a form of therapy.

All of this is to say that I think merging western psychology with any spiritual practice is best done with great care.

And when it comes to the North American yoga community and it's "woo problems," I'd argue that this more so due to the continual efforts to divorce the spiritual teachings and philosophy of yoga from the physical practices. As well as the failure to integrate meditation, and the other subtle practices, into the physical work (asanas) in such a manner that it brings people the foundational ground upon which to unfold their lives on. Too many people want to drink Yoga Lite - something heavy on body work, and less filling on everything else. And they'll defend that almost to the death if necessary, never mind that non-attachment is at the core of everything yoga.

In some ways, the sweaty, physical asana classes peppered with happy sounding phrases and self improvement cliches is the yoga community's version of the Western convert Buddhist self-improvement project. Both offer an opportunity for better health, less destructive thinking, and more grounded behavior. All nice benefits, and certainly not something to dismiss. But at the same time, neither of these approaches are focusing on the profoundly vast awakening teachings at the core of both Buddhism and yoga.

Reducing the woo in yoga communities comes when there is an increasing focus on the whole works of yogic practice and thought. It comes when teachers, students, studio owners and yogic writers stop offering placating sugars, and start offering holistic, well-balanced meals. That can include servings of intelligently considered psychology, but must be more than just using psychological theories as the missing "healthy vitamin" to an otherwise fast-food like practice diet.