Notes on the Yoga Industrial Complex

This article came across my blog feed a few days ago. I read it, found myself nodding in places, and also resonating with some points in the comments section. Then I chose to let it sit, and see if it interested me enough to return to. It did, so here we are.

In 2011-12, I completed a 200 hour yoga teacher training, following a good decade of yoga (and Zen) practice. I knew full well upon entering the program that there are too many "yoga teachers," and that the bulk of what passes for yoga in America these days is little more than a glorified exercise routine. However, after a year of witnessing from the inside, I came to the following conclusions:

1. The vast majority of yoga studios are built on models that discourage (by design) the development of a community of practitioners. Individual students might become friends or even "practice buddies," but the only "practice communities" I've ever witnessed in studios (where folks actually study and practice in a group over a sustained period of time)are the temporary ones in yoga teacher training programs.

2. Nearly universally, yoga teachers fall under the category of freelancers who work a series of temporary gigs. (Yes, some of those gigs might last several years if a person's classes keep attracting enough students, but for many, this isn't the case.)

3. Yoga teacher training programs are often more about the greens than about developing great teachers. If you pay the fees and finish the classes, you're awarded a certificate. The depth of your practice, wisdom, and/or actual ability to teach is mostly secondary.

4. Yoga teaching is treated as a "career," which is by definition creating a few problematic frames: a) a transactional sensibility where an expectation of financial gain is present b) a "productivity" sensibility where an expectation is present (amongst students and teachers) that certain goals will be met in short periods of time. (Such as students will learn x number of yoga postures in a given class or series of class, and have some level of achieved performance. Note: this kind of stuff is often not explicit or stated, but more an underlying, sometimes unconscious expectation.)

5. A "successful" yoga teacher under current standards is one that tends to have full classes, and/or classes with enough devoted students that they are both making some income, and also maintaining their "value" to the studio.

6. There's a lot of what I would call "Rugged Individualism" spirituality offered in yoga studios. There's not really a collective anything going on, even though numerous folks enter and exit the doors of a studio in a given day, week, month, year. There's rarely any talk or consideration of how systemic -isms (racism, sexism, classism, etc) impact any given person or group of people's spiritual lives and/or understanding of what it all means (or could mean.)

I offer this as a set of insights I have had since teacher training, which made me feel sympathetic to Jessica's situation in the post I linked to, even though I also agree with comments in the comments section pointing out entitlement and privilege in her words. More than anything, though, I think it's important to recognize that her situation didn't happen in a vacuum. There are numerous collective circumstances that have come together to make it both very difficult for yoga teachers to sustain their teaching (even if they "day jobs"), and also much more likely that whatever is offered as "yoga" will be a mere fraction of what yoga is as a spiritual discipline.

Yoga Standards

There has been a lot of online kerfuffling (yes, I made that word up), over the seemingly sudden departure of three senior Anusara yoga teachers from the ranks of the Anusara certified. Now, I know very little about Anusara, so I don't really have anything to say about the merit or lack of merit of what these folks are teaching. Nor do I really have any interest in trying to unearth some seedy details that might lead us all to some sort of scandal.

It seems to me only natural that after a certain amount of time and practice, some students will evolve beyond the forms and methods they were given by their teachers. This tends to be encouraged in Zen circles. In fact, most of the old Zen koans are, in part, demonstrations of transcending the roles of student/teacher, and of moving beyond one's training. Entire new schools of practice have developed precisely because someone stepped beyond the bounds, and illuminated spiritual life in a different manner. Hell, Anusara itself is founder John Friend's offering of a different direction, which manifested from the years of practice and teaching he has done.

So instead, this post will focus on the broader issues raised in this comment by John Friend from the following interview, which seems to be making the rounds:

There is a licensing of the Anusara yoga name for teachers who met a certain level of standard in their teaching. The essential reason for any licensing of a tradename is to help maintain integrity and quality control in the marketplace. Anyone taking a class from a certified Anusara yoga teacher anywhere in the world can expect a certain high standard. Because of licensing the name of Anusara over the last 14 years, it has greatly helped to give students confidence in the name on a global level.

The near obsession these days with "standards" is deeply troubling to me. While there have always been teachers and groups who have broken off and formed their own variations on the theme, this focus on standardization, uniform curriculum, and the rest - in part driven by groups like Yoga Alliance, but in greater part driven by what I view as a trend in education towards a focus on maximizing results and measurable outputs above all else. I'm near the end of a 230 hour yoga teacher training program which has been a good experience in many respects, but leaves me seriously questioning whether this kind of model develops anything remotely close to excellent teachers. In some ways, when I look around at my fellow students, I see some people who already are gifted and have honed themselves enough through practice to offer something to others. Others seem barely able to do their own personal practice, let alone teach. And still others simply don't have the skills to teach, even if they might be wise in other ways. Yet, in the end, anyone who finishes will have that certificate and be regarded in higher esteem by the general public, regardless of their abilities and understanding.

Honestly, even if Anusara training is more rigorous than the average teacher training program, I really don't see these kinds of issues disappearing. Simply put, the more teachers and teaching candidates you have around, the harder it is to maintain quality control and integrity. And within a capitalist framework, where there's both implicit and explicit pressure to "produce" - in order to stay afloat financially, but also as a means of demonstrating success - it's likely that methods designed to support quantity of teachers over quality of teachers will be employed. My own studio's teacher training program, which I feel is of fairly good quality, has expanded probably twofold in numbers of candidates over the past few years. And why? Because people really like what they hear from others, and the studio is attracted to the financial stability from all that money the training brings in.

This is all so much different, for the most part, from what it's like in Zen communities. Buddhist teachers tend to be steeped in years of practice before anyone calls them a teacher. Most of them have also spent years studying with the same teacher, or small number of teachers, usually within a larger community of practitioners, at least for some significant stretch of time. And while we have plenty of scandals and our share of mediocre teachers, there seems to be more checks and balances available to, at the very least, support and aid any given teacher's spiritual growth.

In other words, if someone is designated as a Zen teacher and has a connection with a specific teacher lineage, it's reasonable to assume that this person has been practicing for awhile. They have some experience to share, and perhaps some wisdom as well. This is true even for lay teachers and most novice priests in training. You can't just plunk down a few thousand dollars, say you've been practicing Zen for X number of months or years, and after several months or a few years, be suddenly deemed "certified" to teach.

Obviously, a fair amount of this issue in yoga is tied to the muddled nature of what is being marketed as "yoga" these days. Everything from busting a move in a gym to deep level tantric meditation practices can be found under the label yoga, and because of that, there are a plethora of teachers, coming from a plethora of teacher trainings. The whole standards push has been a response to this muddled environment, but to be honest, I think it offers more of a false sense of security and trust than anything else.

Which isn't to say the trainings are worthless - like I've said in other posts, I have learned a lot in my training program. But it's hard for me to imagine what it might be like had I done this 10 years ago, when I was an excited yoga newbie like a few of my classmates. Occasionally, people with little formal experience are just blessed with the ability to plunge in and then offer gifts to others. But for the vast majority, nothing beats experience and practice.

Feeding the "Me" Beast: Yoga and Body Harming

In an engaging post over at the ID project blog, yoga teacher J. Brown writes the following:

I remember a particular occasion when I was teaching one of my trademark power vinyasa classes. I was barking out my well prepared sequence and, instead of my usual attention to everyone’s alignment, I happened to be noticing the facial expressions of the people in my class.

They looked miserable. They were filled with struggle and strain, just doing their best to get through and not enjoying themselves much in the process. There was a distinct lack of joy.

Afterwards, several students came up to thank me and tell me how great the class was. It made me feel uncomfortable. Walking home, I kept thinking: “What am I doing?”

Fact is, I was proficient in the practice I was teaching but it was not really helping me feel well. I had a lot of chronic pain that I rarely admitted to, even to myself. I was convinced it meant “opening.” Shortly thereafter, I blew my knee out doing Baddhakonasana with a belt and an assist. For all my diligent studies and abilities, super yogi couldn’t walk.

Around that same time, a friend of mine attended a large yoga event in NYC with a venerable teacher, considered to be a living “master.” She was one of a very small percentage of the 600 participants to have the guru assist her in one of her poses, only to have her hamstring connector popped at his forceful hand. I remember seeing her several days later, she was still in considerable pain.

Experiences like this have often left me feeling horribly disenchanted with the yoga community. The issue of overly forceful assists aside, how can yoga teachers who espouse ahimsa not be held accountable for harm done under their auspices?

These are great examples of what happens when, in my opinion, achievement driven Americans are lead by more achievement driven Americans. Or teachers from other nations who go along with that achievement drive. As I have begun to do short bits of teaching yoga classes, and have had more extensive conversations with a few mentors and classmates, the issues around ahimsa (non-violence) to the body have become very bright for me. And I can't help but see the link between our consumer culture and the kinds of power yoga classes where people blow out knees, feel no joy, and are generally disconnected from their body, mind, and "spirit."

Instead of learning to incorporate the depth of yogic teachings and practices that undermine the desire to achieve, and to do things "perfectly," many teachers and studios choose (sometimes unconsciously) to run classes and programs that end up feeding the "me" beast. Obviously, some of this has to do with the plethora of poorly training teachers who barely had been practicing before they got the missionary yoga bug. And some of it is the insidiousness of capitalism worming its way too deeply into the decisions people make around structuring their classes and yoga organizations. But lately, I think this really stems back to that disconnect from the mind/body, from our buddha-nature if you will.

This disconnect or separation manifests individually and collectively, and thus for most of us, it takes both individual practice and collective practice to reconnect. Collective practice with the intention to reconnect, to see through the separation narratives that keep us from feeling the pulsing heart, the moving blood, the energy flowing through us moment after moment. It's not enough to just practice together, because if the majority of folks are just plugging into "disconnected narratives," then that's what will mostly be what comes out.

The body is a vehicle for enlightenment, but it also contains for us all the gunk we've collected over the years that runs counter to awakening. We often "move on" from the trauma of the past intellectually, only to discover months or years later a dull ache or nagging tension in the body that just won't go away. This is disconnect manifest on an individual level.

Entire communities can manifest this energetically, as J. Brown's class above demonstrated. Believing in a "no pain, no gain" kind of motto, class after class, he and his students chased after some elusive goal they thought could only be achieved by powering through and overriding every last signal their bodies were giving.

I've seen this in Zen communities as well, where students have "powered" themselves to sit endless hours of zazen, to the point where their minds are burned out from lack of sleep, and their bodies are riddled with chronic aches, pains, and injuries. In both Zen and yoga, there are teachings about building enough heat to burn through the mental blockages that keep us disconnected from our selves. And yet, I have come to believe that humans have struggled throughout history to find a balance between heat building and relaxing/nurturing. I frequently ponder the Buddha's breakdown after years of austere practices, and the simple, but very powerful return he made into what I would call balance. Just the simple acts of eating and drinking, of taking basic care of the body, that appear in the old Buddhist texts are reminders that racing towards enlightenment, or some other goal, isn't what this work is about.

It's fascinating to me to see that yoga's expression here in the U.S. has been so imbalanced towards the physical postures, and yet at the same time, there is such obvious disconnections between many practitioners and their own bodies. The right treatments are there, but it seems that the prescription too often has been written wrong, or illegible.

Ah, Classism and Yoga - Like Two Peas in a Pod

Continuing the discussion from the last post, there's another good commentary on issues with yoga teacher trainings on Linda's Yoga Journey. The thread following her post is really rich, and worth reading in full. However, one commenter in particular was fixated on the idea that potential teachers should travel to India, and that such travel and study would be better than a teacher training. In fact, I get the sense that this person might even see such travel as the mark of a "serious yoga student," regardless of one's goals around teaching. I guess as I read her comments, my "class privilege" radar went wildly off.

Below is the comment I left in response. There are other things I could say as well, including the whole Eat, Pray, Love phenomenon of well off men and women collecting spiritual experiences, but for now, I'll just leave it at what I wrote.

I think you’re correct that experiencing life and yoga in India could be of great benefit. But I have to say that you’re speaking from a place of privilege here. There are people who can neither afford teacher trainings, nor trips to India, but have all the experience and teacher-sense about them to be great teachers. In fact, I’d argue that much of the American yoga scene is quite classist, to the point where many working class and/or poor folks simply don’t feel welcome.

As someone who has often straddled the class line – having a middle class education, but barely making ends meet financially – I have often felt this rub. I have sat and listened to fellow yoga students talk about their weekend trips to NY or LA, the workshops they attend, the “special” trainings with so and so famous yoga teacher they’ve gotten to go to, the fancy yoga gear they're purchasing – and I think, this is so not my experience.

Perhaps someday I’ll teach. Perhaps someday I’ll go to India. I did scrape up enough money to take a teacher training, which I’m currently in (after over a decade of yoga practice), and have all the skepticism and questions that many have shared here about the goals and intentions of my fellow students and the studios running the trainings.

But at the end of the day, one of the major things I see when I look around is how fiercely middle and upper class yoga in America is. And how deeply capitalism has sunk it’s teeth into this powerful spiritual practice, and twisted it all over the place. And as far as I’m concerned, it’s a hell of a lot more important to me to keep learning, keep practicing, and to bring whatever I have learned to people who currently are shut out of yoga economically and socially, than it is for me to head off to India anytime soon.

Yoga Jobs?

This selection from the current blog post over at Skeptical Yoga delves into an issue heavy on my mind these days:

I've been pondering about yoga and capitalism. In the early days, students who really wanted to learn yoga had to go beg the teacher to teach them. The guru would make these bright-eyed hopeful students go through crazy difficult tests to confirm their determination for this practice. I guess when the (western) students have experienced the benefits of the practice, they want to share it with people back home. They knew such a disciplined practice wouldn't appeal to the masses, so they've modified and marketed yoga in a way that people would want to try it out. There is nothing wrong with that. I think anyone who has tried yoga has received benefits of relaxation, improved breathing, more limber body, and more. The thing is, when yoga turns into a business, rent and electricity costs money, and studio owners end up having to recruit more and more customers by whatever means they can to pay the bills as opposed to teaching it in the strict traditional form. People would only pay so much money for practice, so all these other things are born - clothing lines, jewelries, expensive mats and mat cleaners, and - teacher training! Initially meant to uphold the quality of yoga teachers, in a capitalist society this screams "career opportunity", and everyone jumps at it, because seriously, being a yoga teacher and make other people feel good feels 1000 times more meaningful than, say, a bank job where you count other people's cash all day, or a secretarial job where you do the most boring administrative paperwork stuff for the rest of your life. Most friends I know with traditional jobs often talk like they work in a prison, or just avoid talking about their work at all.

Regular readers know that I'm currently in a yoga teacher training program. Last night, I did some more practice teaching of a class I'm developing. Things are starting to feel a bit more organic for me in that department. I actually am moving a bit towards feeling competent about teaching people something about the wide ranging practices of yoga.

It was no accident that I waited over a decade to step into a program like this. All the years of practice and study I have done really seem like a vital part of the process. When I see people with little or no experience teaching classes or taking yoga teacher training programs, I really have to wonder. And the whole business about "career making" mentioned above hasn't sat too well with me lately, as I slide a bit closer to potentially running classes for income.

When I consider the "work lives" of some of the teachers in our training program, it makes me pause. Hoping from class to class, studio to studio, several days a week. Two hours here, two hours there. Now I'm teaching Ashtangha. Now I'm teaching a restorative class. Now I'm teaching ...

I guess what I find off about some of this is that the lifestyles full time yoga teachers sometimes cobble together really run against the grain of the messages they are trying to - or say they are trying to teach - in their classes.

Consider the picture of the yoga teacher rushing across town to get to the next class they have to teach. Having little time, they stuff a few granola bars or bagels down their throat while speeding along. Making it to the studio with less than 5 minutes to spare, they slip into a classroom full of students, sit down on a mat, and begin directing folks to breathe deeply and let go of all their worries. And then they run an entire class built around the theme of slowing down, paying deep attention, and being mindful. It's a bit odd if you ask me.

In Zen practice, we often talk about bringing the work off the cushion and into the rest of your life. The same lack of doing so isn't difficult to find amongst Zennies, however even with the increasing numbers of teachers, the bar is set a lot higher to teach, and fakers eventually get called out (although that doesn't often stop them from continuing to do what they are doing).

And yet, even if you add all the marginal and flat out phony Zen teachers up, it doesn't come close to the number of yoga teachers. They're like dandelions these days, popping up from almost any given crack in the ground.

I say this not because it's the most horrible thing in the world, but because it just makes me wonder what it means to be a "yoga teacher" these days. Having been a teacher in the past - English as a Second Language, as well as a short stint doing reading and math with 1st and 3rd graders - I felt the role deeply when in the classroom. It was tangible, even as the outer form shifted and changed. And the times I have taught yoga, I have also felt myself tapping into that role and it's energy. So I get it on that deeper level.

And yet, when I look around at the more relative world level - seeing endless yoga teachers doing seemingly endless things in a sometimes greatly mindless fashion, it just raises a lot of questions. Questions with no clear answers.

You might say I'm often one to be sitting with and raising such questions. It's an interesting gift I suppose.

A Buddhist Yoga

In the Bhaddekaratta Sutta, the Buddha taught, "Looking deeply at life as it is in the very here and now, the practitioner dwells in stability and freedom," a teaching that echoes Patanjali's definition of asana (yoga postures) as "stable and easeful". In both the Anapanasati Sutta (Awareness of Breathing) and the Satipatthana Sutta (Foundations of Mindfulness), the Buddha tells us to observe the breath and then extend our awareness out to include the whole body. He says that the practitioner should be aware of the movements and position of the body, "bending down, or standing, walking, sitting, or lying down."

--from Breath and the Body by Frank Jude Boccio

I found this quoted today on the blog Blue Lotus Seed, and thought, yes! There it is! An example of yoga teachings and Buddhist teachings brought together. Now, this is hardly novel, but often the link is made without specific reference points, in a sort of abstract way.

During yoga teacher training class last night, we were asked to speak a little about how we would run a yoga class, and what might be guiding the ways in which we are choosing to do so. I have been setting up practice class structures, with postures and meditation and whatnot, getting ready to do a bit of practice teaching. Anyway, when I started talking about how I was approaching teaching, it always came back to how to bring people into the present. How to help folks develop awareness and mindfulness. And how to plant the seeds that these practices are really gateways to liberation, not simply a way to feel good or be physically fit.

One rub I have had during this program is that many of my fellow students haven't spent much time with meditation, the yoga sutras, or other deeper aspects of the practice. It's harder for some of my classmates to view the physical postures as a form of moving meditation, which they can be if approached in certain ways. And so, what has happened is that there is a lot of energy around discussions of alignment, posture variations, health benefits of poses, and the like, and less around meditation, yoga philosophy, and mantra practices. It's not a lack of interest, nor is it a lack of attention given by the program - it's more about where the bulk of the students are at.

One of our instructors recently spoke of coming into yoga from the opposite end that most Americans seem to do. Like me and one other guy in my core class, she has had a long term meditation practice. And because of this, the way she approaches yoga classes is much different from the average yoga teacher. I have found that there are a few other instructors like her in our program, as well as a few more students in the larger group like me and the other "meditation-based" guy in my core group. But we're in the minority, a fairly small one I'd say.

So, it was interesting to speak about how I'd run a class to my classmates. How I would bookend any asana practice with meditations, or how I'd sacrifice excessive talk about alignment in favor of drawing students to stay with whatever they are experiencing in the pose they have come into. Or just the use of silence, of allowing people to be without too much teacher talk. Even the little bit of yoga teaching I did with my old ESL classes, I offered some silence to my students - in fact, I did that a lot even during the language class itself, developing activities that allowed for group silence at times, knowing how busy and chaotic many of my student's lives were.

As I told another classmate who spoke of having a fast flowing class with lots of music: "I love that kind of thing too, in small doses." My way isn't necessarily the better way. I have been in fast moving, intensely physical yoga classes with a teacher who had a deep sense of the whole of the practice and was able to convey that depth regardless of the outer form. Which was pretty amazing to me.

It all comes back to how best to point people in the direction of "stability and freedom." There isn't a single way, but certain approaches are much more likely to get people there than others.

Relational Yoga, Relational Zen

We are studying the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali in teacher training right now. As much as I have enjoyed studying poses, anatomy, adjustments, and the rest, the Sutras are the kind of juicy stuff that gets me going. In great part, I think, because I have never felt considered the physical practices apart from the spiritual teachings.

Patanjali reminds me a little bit of the famous Buddhist patriarch Bodhidharma. Both are almost larger than life figures. And both might have been credited with writings and discoveries that they, themselves, didn't actually make. In fact, so much of their actual lives remains a mystery, which probably only has added to the great esteem with which people have held them with in the centuries since their passing.

I was struck yesterday upon reading more closely the following:

“In daily life we see people around who are happier than we are, people who are less happy. Some may be doing praiseworthy things and others causing problems. Whatever may be our usual attitude toward such people and their actions, if we can be pleased with others who are happier than ourselves, compassionate toward those who are unhappy, joyful with those doing praiseworthy things, and remain undisturbed by the errors of others, our minds will be very tranquil.”

- Yoga Sutra 1.33, Translation by TKV Desikachar

This passage zeros in on the relational quality of yoga. And just as is the case with Buddhist teachings on our relationships with others, there is a strong emphasis on equanimity here - the kind most of us struggle to locate in our everyday lives.

Given my own predisposition to serving in the world, and to doing what I can to help right injustices, what I find so wonderful about a teaching like this is that it's a reminder that the most powerful place one can come from is built on a foundation of joy and equanimity.

In Buddhism, a similar teaching is found in the four divine abodes, where lovingkindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity are the foundations from which all that is good in life springs forth.

For me, the biggest challenge is to remain "undisturbed" by the errors of others, especially when those errors are greatly destructive, oppressive, and highly productive of misery. And yet, "undisturbed" doesn't mean untouched, or unfeeling. It's really a quality of not being flipped over by, troubled by, or excessively excited by something, all of which make it very difficult to have clear perceptions and to do intelligent, beneficial action.


*painting by Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851)

Midwest Tornadoes Hit Home

I'm on the bus last night, coming home from my yoga teacher training core class. It's fairly late, around 9:30 pm, and so some of the people getting on are clearly intoxicated, high, or just plain wound up. This includes a woman sitting in the back, loudly talking on her phone, first to her son, and later to her mother in law.

Felt myself getting irritated. There's no where to go inside of a bus; the intimacy of the space is palpable at times like this.

At one point, she turns to a guy sitting next to her and they start up a conversation. "I've been drinking. I just called my baby. How are you doing baby?" Everyone is "baby" to her apparently.

The tone of her voice swerves from strong to sweet to totally grief ridden and back again.

I'm sitting there thinking "I just want to be home. Have some peace and quiet."

Then she says it. "The tornado destroyed my apartment building!" There's no doubt everyone on that bus heard it. I certainly heard it. It ripped right through me.

As she told the story of being in a basement, listening to people screaming nearby, the tornado closing in on them, all of my thoughts about home and quiet took on a new meaning.

I began wishing the woman well, wondering how the son she spoke to on the phone was doing.

And then I noticed how she kept repeating the story. How the mind keeps going on the territory of trauma, as if in doing so, we can locate what's necessary to heal.

What had been just an irritatingly loud conversation suddenly became dharma.

It's right there under our nose, all the time.

Blogger's Technical Difficulties Mirror Life

So, Blogger, which hosts this blog, has been "sleeping" for about a day and a half. They've had some technical difficulties, which included the disappearance of a post I wrote on my relationship blog, and a few comments on my last post. Such is life I suppose.

Actually, it kind of fits with the last 24 hours for me. Last night, I got to stand in front of class and get deconstructed by my yoga classmates as I did forward folds. A weak spot in my yoga asana practice for sure, but mostly, it was a good opportunity to let go of being "skilled" and "good" at something and just be. In fact, I was probably more off in the demonstration than I normally am, which gave the others a chance to practice their observation skills.

This morning, I started off on my bicycle to go visit a friend from the same yoga training group and about halfway there, I got a flat. Fortunately, I had picked a place to meet on a bus line, so I parked the bike and hopped the bus.

Getting off the bus at the coffee shop I thought we were meeting at, I noticed the address wasn't right. I went in, pulled up the internet, and checked to make sure. Wrong coffee shop. The one I was going to was 8 blocks up the same road, so I left and started walking, getting to the correct destination with more than 20 minutes to spare.

All of this happened with only a minimal of frustration on the bus ride - it's a really slow bus. Mostly, I was just going along, watching things unfold without a need to create a story, especially a catastrophe story, around any of it.

Kind of nice not to go there. Sure made things a lot more easy to accept and even enjoy out of curiosity.

What's a Zen Teacher Anyway?

Daishin has a post up currently that addresses some of the same issues I have been thinking about recently. The subject of Zen teachers in general has been quite hot for obvious reasons, and has probably led more than a few people to consider for going working with a teacher and/or sangha all together. It's understandable, given all the bad news floating around, but might not be the best plan.

At the same time, I think Zen students struggle with the whole notion of a "teacher." What does it mean? Who fills that role? How fluid is it?

If you flip through The Book of Serenity, or any of the other koan collections, you'll find an awful lot of movement between the roles of teacher and student. One minute a teacher, the next a student, the following a teacher again. In principle, this is how life is calling us to be, and yet it's also the case, that we're quite good at designating certain people as teachers for the rest of their lives, often forgetting this fluid nature of things. The designation of someone as "a teacher" isn't the problem. The problems come when people forget the emptiness side and assume that whomever is the teacher is all-knowing and infallible.

Daishin's post brings up another angle on this discussion. Namely, who qualifies as a person able to fulfill the role as "teacher." Specifically here, Zen teacher. He writes:

From time to time the question arises with people coming to my house for meditation (Fernwood Zendo). Having heard about dharma transmission and lineages, they wonder whether I am “a real, you know, Zen Teacher.” Over hundreds of years, as zen moved from China to Japan to the West — bringing with it robes and statues, elaborate ceremonies and arcane language, acquiring occasional scandals and a predominately white middle-class membership — an unwritten code has laid claim to the word teacher.

Today there’s no seminary or university I know of where one can study to become a zen teacher, there’s no set curriculum on how and what to study, and there’s no formal examination or certifying authority. By custom, only certified teachers may certify other teachers: a “closed shop” meant to ensure quality.

Yet we’re all teachers — we teach our children, coworkers, and team mates. Life is a teacher — we learn from experience, by observation and trial-and-error.

Although it's true that we're all teachers, one of the challenges with those last two statements is that the majority of humans aren't very good at seeing what can be learned from a given "teacher." Time and time again, we miss the dharma being offered by the dramatic friend, disappearing lover, or overbearing co-worker. We're good at fixating on the noise, but not so good at sussing out the gold.

Daishin goes on to speak about his background, in conjunction with his role as leader of a meditation group.

For 25 years I taught others ‘how to teach’ in corporate and university settings, earned master’s and doctorate degrees, and wrote about teaching … but after 11 years of earnest study and practice, calling myself a meditation teacher is frowned upon. When I mentioned that I hosted two weekly meditation groups, offered daylong retreats, worked in end-of-life care, and helped others on their spiritual path, a “transmitted” teacher told me that host was right, since you’re not a teacher.

Is that what the Buddha had in mind?

I also have nearly a decade of Zen practice behind me, as well as over a decade of yoga practice. In addition, I have over a decade of teaching experience, working with both children and adults in various capacities. In one sense, who cares. In another sense, I'd like to think that I - and Daishin, and others with similar backgrounds - have figured out a bit of that gold sussing and might have something to offer others.

Being in a yoga teacher training program has kept all of this up for me as well. Unlike some of those in the training program I'm in, I waited a pretty long time before entering. It didn't feel right to me to practice yoga a few years and then take a training and claim myself as a teacher. Certainly, a few people are able to this remarkably well, but I'd also bet that when it comes to yoga teachers, you'll find an awful lot of these quick starters appearing at the local fitness center or corporate yoga center near you. They might be able to run a fine asana class, but how much wisdom is present in their words? How well can they read their students, and even share the role of teacher when a student is offering something that could move the whole class?

The history of Zen is filled with rascals and fools who were dismissed by the majority of people, but who actually were brimming with wisdom. For every polished looking monastic with all the credentials, you can find a wacky, drunken poet or wise grandmotherly figure lighting a match under a monk with Zen sickness. And I think both ends are needed - the formally sanctioned and the outsiders.

For those of you who are really hung up on one side or another - thinking either that Zen teachers are only those who are dharma transmitted or that everyone is a teacher - you might consider it this way. The classically trained Zen teacher with transmission and robes offers everyone an opportunity to have reverence for the form world. That the very formal-ness of their background symbolizes the value of forms. And on the other end, the rascals, fools, and outsiders offer and opportunity for all of us to have reverence for emptiness. That the very informal-ness of their background symbolizes the value of emptiness.

The photo above is of Phil Jackson, the coach of the LA Lakers basketball team. Often referred to as "Zen master" in the sporting world, there's no doubt that Zen has had some definite impact on this man's coaching and way of life. Perhaps you might dismiss his "Zen" as the sugary pop Zen so common in the "Western" world, and you may be right. But it also might be the case that this guy is one of those rascals, appearing in the odd location of basketball coach, offering whatever wisdom he can to guys who frequently struggle with their lives outside of the game. It might be stretch to call this guy a Zen teacher, but it's worth considering the ways in which people often compartmentalize teaching and learning, and how there are countless examples of people acting in the world that break across those rigid lines.

The Yoga of Non-Greed

Here are some notes I made for the presentation I gave last night at yoga teacher training on aparigraha, or non-greed and non-grasping. At the end are some questions you can contemplate and offer answers to - if you're so inclined - in the comments section. Enjoy!

Yoga Sutra II.39

aparigrahasthairye janmakathamta sambodhah

Translation adapted from T.K.V. Desikachar:

“One who is not greedy is secure. He has time to think deeply. Her understanding of herself is complete.”

There are two basic ways greed manifests.
1. Desire for that which you don’t have, or perceive you don’t have
2. Stinginess with what you do have, hording

Wants vs. Needs: This yama really zeros in on our muddy thinking around needs and wants. We frequently mistake want for need, and these mistakes are reinforced by our possession-addicted culture. What is it that you really need in life? And what do you actually own anyway?

Greed and the Material: Those of use that have a lot of “stuff” in our homes and apartments often struggle around taking care of it all. Having more might offer convenience and comfort in the short term, but in the long term, having too much often ends up draining your time and energy.

Greed and the Non-Material: The same can happen to those who don’t have a lot of material possessions, but who lust after ideas, knowledge, or experiences.
Excess time and energy might be spent on, for example, learning every possible variation of trikonasana and the history behind each variation, and then more time and energy spent on defending what you have learned. (Notice the first half of the example demonstrates desire for more, while the second demonstrates a form of stinginess.)

“The final yama in Patanjali's list is aparigraha, or nongreed. This is a very difficult one to practice, surrounded as we are with advertisements that attempt to whip up our desire for more. In some ways our society's economic system is based on greed … Greed is not just confined to material goods. We may hunger after enlightenment, difficult asanas, spiritual powers, or perfect bliss. One way to sidestep the trap of greed is to follow the advice of the sages: Be happy with what you have. This spirit of true renunciation will diminish the power of aparigraha.”

Article by Judith Lasater

Greed and Your Identity: One of the very tricky places where greed manifests is around identity. Think of all the effort you put into building yourself in certain ways, presenting yourself in certain ways, and also in trying to get rid of that which you don’t like or want about yourself. Now, certainly some of this effort is quite necessary for living a healthy, fully engaged life, but some of it is also based in greed. Holding on to certain accomplishments, skills, or personal qualities in order to impress others, fit in with a certain group, or demonstrate your worthiness is one way this happens. Another is in all the attempts to hide disliked or maladapted qualities, lack of skills or lack of accomplishments.

Ultimately, manifestations of greed are really demonstrations of a lack of faith in yourself, and in the divine of the universe. Fearing you won’t be provided for, or won’t be able to get what you do need in the present or future, you take excess or withhold too much.

“By the observance of aparigraha, the yogi makes his life as simple as possible and trains his mind not to feel the loss or the lack of anything. Then everything he really needs will come to him by itself at the proper time.” B.K.S. Iyengar in Light on Yoga

Questions:

What do you really need?

What are some things (objects or ideas/experiences) that you think you need, but actually don’t need?

Where in your yoga practice have you been letting something external define your happiness? Where in the rest of your life?

What can you do differently to practice aparigraha in these situations?

Embodied Attention

*Body(s) by Da Vinci (1452-1519)

Yoga teacher training has been an interesting mix of confirmation, ah ha moments, and "oh, my god, I have no idea" experiences. I have felt kind of dumb and boneheaded fairly often, something I didn't anticipate happening. So, I really enjoyed reading this story about another guy's experience with yoga teacher training. Neal Pollack writes about his preparation for, and expectations of the training before he goes. And then, less than two weeks before the training is supposed to start, he pulls a hamstring that impacts his practice the entire training. Almost everything he had expected was thrown off by the hamstring pull, but it seems to have offered him a window into something greater. He writes:

It occurred to me that all matter, thoughts, and emotions are united under some sort of unknowable eternal consciousness. That perception, I thought, is the essence of yoga. But I had also experienced that perception before, and in greater depth. Frankly, I was a little disappointed that I hadn’t encountered it more fully or more often at yoga school. I paid my money, I thought. I deserve pure consciousness.

But the truth is, I don’t “deserve” anything, and that was one of the most important lessons I eventually drew from yoga school. Just like you can’t depend on your body to always be able to do the asana you were capable of when you were 25, you also can’t depend on your brain to constantly exist in the divine realization of pure awareness. When I came home, things were much the same. My kid still howled when his socks were uncomfortable. My Boston terrier still peed in the back room. I still had financial problems. People still cut me off in traffic. And all that stuff still annoyed me.

But I also found myself walking through life with a much greater sense of calm. I had certainly heard about non-attachment, to both positive and negative experiences, but now, suddenly, I began to put it into action. If I felt myself getting angry, or jealous, or otherwise mentally troubled, I would observe my feelings, even cradle them, as a famous rinpoche once instructed, but not let them rule me. For the most part, without even trying, I found myself feeling kinder and friendlier and more generous. Subtly, slowly, and by very gradual degrees, yoga was changing my very nature.

One of the things I have noticed in myself is that from the increased focus on paying attention to bodies, my own and others, I'm much more attentive overall. Feeling my way into different alignments for poses. Watching others do the same. Offering adjustments. Being adjusted. Remembering to breathe. Seeing how I stop breathing. Feeling that stopping. Seeing others stopping and starting. All of this is leading to a more embodied attention, something that didn't seem to come as easily when I was focusing primarily on zazen. In fact, when I have been doing meditation, it feels more organic and less pressured - as if I'm responding to the rhythm of my life instead of an artificial schedule.

I'm also getting to face another layer of perfectionism, which resonates well with Neal's point about the ever-changing quality of body and mind. My mind was really cloudy during last week's core class, and I responded rather confused and irritatedly to the intense yoga teacher doing the class. This week, with a clearer mind and piles of energy, her intensity didn't bother me much, and I just enjoyed myself going with the flow of class. And both of these experiences are fine.

Learning occurs in different ways at different times. And some days, you're just in a fog. It's all part of the process...

Yogic Twisting

>Here's a short report from my class last night for yoga teacher training. I spent much of the day beforehand having a lot of intense energy moving around within me. Not exactly sure what was bringing this movement about, but there was no mistaking it. I'd see couples holding hands, and I'd want to cry. I read a blog post about someone who is struggling and wanted to cry. I saw a fat squirrel and laughed so hard people turned to look at me.

Heading in to class, I noticed that none of my core study classmates were there. A few familiar faces were in the room, but no one I had any real connection to. The teacher was one that I really enjoy taking classes from, so that was a relief.

The subject - adjusting twists. Sounds straight forward enough, right?

Well, we started in on some standing twists and I was immediately faced with what you might call "body dyslexia." Switching hands and feet while getting into poses for my partner to practice adjusting. Blanking out on the cues we were just taught. Thoughts of "looking idiotic" to my partner. Trying to take in her comments to me about my adjustments, while also paying attention to where I was standing, how I was breathing, and doing my best to let go of the inner chatter. It didn't help that she had walked right up to me before class, looking me in the eyes, and starting a conversation. What she attracted to me? What's she make of all this fumbling around?

At one point, she said that maybe her asking me to shift adjustments was mostly in her own head, and not necessarily about my adjustments. I responded "We're all learning here. I appreciate the specific feedback."

That was a moment of lucidity in an otherwise muddled class experience.

Near the end of class, her and I sat next to each other, looking out the window. It has been a beautiful spring day and we both commented on wanting to be outside.

Twisting poses are good for, amongst other things, wringing out all the junk - physically and emotionally. It's like ringing out the dirty dish water from a rag.
Leaving class, I kind of felt like that. Rung out. A little exhausted even.

Given all that, biking home with the sun setting and the cool breeze blowing on my right side seemed so appropriate.

Tantric Yoga Weekend (and a short comment on Japan)

First off, Japan is really devistated right now. Thousands dead. Many more homeless. I just read a report that said the earthquake even shortened the Earth's day length a tiny bit. But what concerns me most is the state of the damaged nuclear reactors. There has been a resurgence of hype over the glory of nuclear power to replace oil-based energy sources, coupled with a downplaying of the possible dangers, which are many. I'm pretty sure I have written something about nuclear power in the past, but for now, I'll just say, given where we are at in terms of containment and waste storage - it's absolutely idiotic to think nuclear power can be a global energy savior. I hope the folks working on the damaged reactors in Japan get it under control really soon, but some damage has probably already been done.

Meanwhile, I spent the weekend in a pressure cooker of a yoga workshop. Jim Bennitt is a Chicago based teacher of tantric vinyasa yoga. His classes were well rounded, but really challenging. In terms of asana or physical pose work, I'm used to Iyengar-based classes that focus on holding single poses, watching alignment closely, and learning to embody the pose to the point where your mind moves deeply inward. Kind of posed meditation you might say.

The same meditative movement inward is a desired outcome of vinyasa, but it's more through regular body movement and breath coordination and awareness that the same thing comes about. In the past, I did a short stint of Kundalini yoga, which has a fair amount of flow in it's asana work. But I don't recall doing the kinds of challenging poses and variations of those poses as we did this weekend.

I had a couple of periods where I got lost in worries that I wasn't much of a yogi, and similar such negative self talk. This morning, just having fears about doing headstand (which I ended up doing a modified version) spun me out for a good ten minutes. I fumbled up basic asanas like table pose that I had been doing all weekend, and was jittery in others enough that the teacher ended up doing multiple adjustments and then stood in my general area for part of the pose sequence.

I'm writing this in part as a reminder that beginners mind can be easily obscured when you've been doing something a long time. In fact, as soon as I settled into a triangle pose this morning, and forgot about the coming harder poses, and also whether I "looked good" doing any of it, everything seemed to flow just fine. My years of experience were mostly irrelevant, as was the fact that I didn't have much experience with this kind of fast paced, asana practice. I was just there, doing each movement, watching each breath, and letting it unfold as it would.

An experience like this, where you are with a large group for a period of time is also a great opportunity to witness comparing mind. During the pose sequences, a person could easily go from "wow, I'm so great at this!" to "I'm absolutely terrible!" in a matter of minutes. It happened to me a few times. Friday night, I had a few rounds of "I'm terrible at this," as I barely kept up with the pace. And this morning, I had another moment of I'm terrible in the beginning of practice, and then a moment of "I'm pretty good" as I held shoulderstand up tall and straight while others around me struggled. While sitting meditation yesterday, I was aware of the years of zazen practice behind me as several people around me had a hard time staying still. So, lots of comparing mind was had by me, and I can imagine plenty of others in there.

As with longer Zen practice, doing a more intense period of yoga, especially when it incorporates much more of the eight limbs than your average asana-heavy class, is really beneficial. In fact, it's easier to be more well rounded when you have more time. I have seen it in my own life, where either the yogic asana with a tiny bit of pranayama or the Zen zazen and sutra chanting dominate. It's been rare that both have been balanced expressions for me. Or, perhaps the balance is stretched out - one season more focused on one, another season the other.

Part of doing yoga teacher training is to try and develop more synergy between these two sets of practices (and two powerful, cousin spiritual traditions) in my life. It's been done before, so I know it's possible. And that's the direction I have been heading in for awhile now.

Notes from Yoga Teacher Training

I haven't written much about my experiences in the yoga teacher training. It's not always easy to put words to something you are in the middle of.

The past few days have been interesting. In a class on kriyas Tuesday evening, I had an incident when we were practicing bellows breathing. Basically, I couldn't do it. In fact, I was breathing really shallowly, and in a reversed fashion. The teacher was quite good that night. He saw what was happening, came over, and tried assisting me. I still couldn't shift the pattern.

Throughout the past month of training, I have noticed many evenings where I have shown up with shallow, challenged breathing. Some of it I link to the rush hour bus rides, which I wrote about recently. However, as feelings of embarrassment rose and fell during class Tuesday night, and then an awareness of some resistance to manipulating the breath (from all these years doing Zen meditation practices), I realized that this shallow, sometimes reversed breathing has been a common feature in my life for years.

Hardening the belly when stressed or upset is something many of us do, often unconsciously. And with this comes all sorts of warping to our natural breathing processes. I have seen all of this during meditation periods. And it especially started to become clearer when we studied the Ananpanasati Sutra last year. However, one of the reasons why I have always been a "dual practitioner" attracted to both yoga and Zen is that the obvious physicality of Yoga practices have helped inform my awareness in ways zazen rarely does.

So, I've been watching my breathing much closer the past few days, informed by that experience in the kriya class, and also the continued studies of anatomy. One of the things that Kevin, the teacher Tuesday night, told me (after class) was that in the Feldenkrais Method, one way they work with warped breathing patterns is to get people to do exactly what they are already doing. Repeating what you are doing with awareness, and perhaps exaggeration, allows you to see what's going on, and start to let go and shift it.

Funny thing is that later that night, as I was heading home on the bus, I noticed myself deliberately breathing deeply in a reversed fashion. In my mind, I thought I was "doing it right," but then, after a few minutes of this, I realized it was reversed. I have continued to experiment with all this ever since, noticing this morning, for example, how quickly my breathing became warped while biking. Makes me wonder if that is how I usually breathe while biking.

In Zen, we're always talking about paying attention to breathing while meditating. However, I think it's more challenging to really see what's going on with the breath during activity. You say you're paying attention to the breath while typing, or cleaning, or driving, but it's often a shallow attention, or only a close attention for a minute or two. And of course, there's also an underlying imperative in meditation traditions to witness what's happening, but not deliberately mess with it. Or the interventions are linguistic in form - such as riding a mantra or teaching phrase. I'm quite fond of such practices, but it's interesting to consider that interventions that go against the grain, like deliberately shifting or exaggerating the breath. Having been in Buddhist circles long enough, I know there are some of these practices around, but they are much more central a feature of yogic schools from what I've seen and experienced.

The breath is so rich. Who knew, right? Actually, I did already, but all of this just reaffirms that.

There's my dispatch from YTT land.

Buddha's Hesitation - Translating Practice into Life

We are in the home stretch of our two week intensive at the zen center. Today was an off day, followed by two half days of practice and group study this weekend. It's been a worthy challenge, different from full on meditation retreats, but in some ways harder. Working the rhythm of introspection followed by interaction with the regular activities and people of the day, followed by a return to introspection provides for an interesting ride.

I've been seeing today how I am guarding my time and energy, sometimes in healthy ways, and sometimes just avoidance. I slept in this morning (all the way until 7:30 lol!), and didn't rush to get out of bed, knowing I have been somewhat sleep deprived. Have run into a few old acquaintances this afternoon, and made efforts to not talk to them, one of which failed. And then I made an excuse about having "work to do" - a lie - in order to end the conversation quickly. Not a big deal, but I have noticed I don't always know how to make graceful exits without resorting to some line about being busy with something.

Next week, I will begin a 9 month yoga teacher training program. Perhaps you have seen the slight uptick in posts about yoga in recent weeks. That will probably continue. In fact, it will be interesting to see how studying the Buddhist precepts again (which started last month at the zen center and will go until May) will mix with studying sections of the Yoga Sutra, which is part of my teacher training. The flow between these two practices - yoga and Zen - have been informing much of what I have written on this blog, even if the Zen piece has had a stronger presence.

Speaking of flow, Katherine over at On the Precipice has a beautiful post about vulnerability that I think fits in here.

Last week I had an interview of sorts. There was a lot invested in the one half-hour I was allotted, and due to train delays, etc., I was running late. I arrived with a ton of nervous energy and was over-heated, hurriedly pulling off layers as I sat down across from this stranger. There was a smile on my face that didn’t go away well into the conversation. It was a smile that, though perhaps genuine on one level, was belying what was actually happening inside. And the person with whom I met was an incredibly perceptive person. And he turned the lens inward, and forced me to look at that disconnect. He challenged me in so many ways, (and I was uncomfortable in so many ways!). The visceral reality of the pain in my cheeks — because I could not get them to relax, try as I might — and the rawness that emerged in the middle of my chest were together perhaps one of the most intense felt experiences I’ve ever had. I did not want to make myself vulnerable because if I did, the tears were going to fall.

You know quite well, deep within you, that there is only a single magic, a single power, a single salvation…and that is called loving. Well, then, love your suffering. Do not resist it, do not flee from it. It is your aversion that hurts, nothing else.–Herman Hesse

Here I was relating. Here someone was giving me the incredible, unconditionally loving, gift of reflection. And boy, did it hurt. There was so much contraction! Fear. “Don’t want to look, don’t want to feel, don’t want to know.” Here I am, dedicating my life to the work of self-inquiry and meditation, and someone holds a really clear mirror up to me and I realize there’s a virtual fortress around my heart.

I felt a little bit of that "fortressing" myself upon seeing these two old acquaintances today. I also felt it while on a bus, when a man on cell phone yelled at a guy talking to himself, thinking the guy was butting in on his phone conversation. I looked directly at the phone guy, and almost said something about the fact that he was having a phone conversation in a bus - and that the guy wasn't talking to him anyway - but it just seemed futile. And maybe it was. But also I know my mind enough to know that sometimes things "being futile" is code for checking out on my part. I squirmed in my seat a little bit, and then shook my head, and looked out the window, all the while feeling a tension running through my neck and shoulders. Again, not a big deal, but paying attention to patterns of disconnection and avoidance are important, even if it's just little incidents that may or may not fit that appear.

Part of my response to Katherine's post was the following:

but the larger point i’ve been seeing is that regardless of form, whether long retreat, “practice intensive,” or just a daily sitting practice or sutra study – none of it necessarily leads to being a more open, vulnerable, and alive person. The threads often need to be deliberately teased out, so that the introspective insights are translated into awakened relationships based on love, vulnerability, and wisdom. i always remember the buddha’s hesitation to teach during the first days of his awakening. to me, that’s a story about vulnerability, about relationships, and about how we can make decisions that expand the field of insight, or which contract it in every moment.

Perhaps this view is controversial - I don't know. There are people with brilliant insights into the ways the world works, and yet are totally crappy at being human with other humans. I've seen a few of them come and go through my own life. Years and years of study and spiritual practice didn't seem to translate into the kind of openness and vulnerability that seems to naturally put others at ease. Whereas I have met others where the practice and study match the deep humanness exuded.

Which is why, going back to our practice intensive experiment, I'm interested in structures like it that allow for more of the ebb and flow between introspection and one's relationships and everyday activities. Because there's enough intensity from the form to conjure up some of your shit, and then you have to face it, work with it in the middle of your life with others. Which is what often happens to us anyway, right?

Maybe it's worth considering Buddha's hesitation towards becoming a teacher more closely again. Has there been a frequent imbalance in favor of the processes "before enlightment" and not enough focus on the processes that pushed Buddha beyond hesitation and into teaching? And then, by extension, what it was like for Buddha to work with others? What qualities he displayed, and what actions he took or didn't take?

There's a subtle shift here from what Buddha taught to how Buddha interacted with others as gleaned from the teachings we have available.

Anyway, this is where I am at on this Friday. May you all be well.