There's only so much yoga I can take. And by that I mean, I have only a limited tolerance for the endless hippie spirituality that often accompanies the yogic experience in the States. In India, it's both better and worse. Worse because it's more prevalent, but better because it draws from local religious tradition, specifically Hinduism, and therefore feels more authentic. Still, as I discussed in a previous blog, yoga does not have to be religious. When I first heard this -- and that realization alone made the yoga course worthwhile -- I was quite relieved because I love yoga but have no interest in religion.
Unfortunately, the fact that yoga can be employed to purely secular ends sometimes get lost, particuarly in a class taught by a lesser teacher. Part of the curriculum is an "Application of Yoga" class which quickly proved to be my least favorite. The teacher, who is a very fine person, is so filled with faith for yoga therapy that unfortunately he cannot be objective about it, and as a result his class has very little substance. This sharply contrasts with the Yoga Philosophy teacher, who is also religious but presents the material in a nuanced, intellectual way that allows for multiple interpretations, including the notion that yogic philosophy can be a secular healing tool used to quiet the mind and diminish and/or eliminate human suffering. I went for a consultation at the Mandiram in order to begin a pranayama practice (pranayama is controlled breathing and is considered the natural evolution from an asana practice). Pranayama fascinates me but I know very little about it and I've only studied it sporadically. As fate would have it, I was assigned the Application of Yoga teacher for the follow-up session and despite my eagerness to develop a pranayama practice, it didn't take much contemplation before I decided to cancel. (I took it as a sign that neither the asana nor the pranayama at KYM is for me, although I've enjoyed the yogic philosophy greatly.)
In the last two weeks, the Application of Yoga teacher has subjected us to a parade of case studies in which he has claimed that yoga therapy has cured diabetes, Parkinson's, asthma, bipolar disorder, high blood pressure, allergies, depression, you name it. The intense faith of his students/ patients matches his own, and what could have been an informative exploration of yoga therapy has instead morphed into an exercise in proselytization. There are only so many ways to deliver the same message and the class has become a drone. The patients have without exception been very kind and pleasant people but I feel the religious angle is being shoved down our throats and today I slowly got angry during class and I briefly considered leaving the room when it dragged over schedule. The class has become excruciating and it has nothing to do with what I want from yoga.
Fortunately, last night we once again heard from Desikachar's son, who told us that yoga therapy does not cure disease but rather changes the person's experience of the disease. If a person's experience of the disease improves, the disease itself may also improve. This is a mind-centered approach, not a disease-centered approach. Desikachar himself in last Saturday's lecture once again emphasized the point that yoga is a healing practice, not a spiritual practice (although he later qualified this somewhat to say that yoga is not necessarily a spiritual practice).
Ultimately, I predict that this lesson of tolerance will the aspect of the Krishnamacharya Mandiram that will stick with me. As you may have gleaned from the previous blog and guest blogger, I can't stand the warm and fuzzy meditation class. This is not because I think it's a bad class or that I think the instructor doesn't know what she's doing because I think she does and I also think she's an exceptional person. But the "let's draw love and peace into our hearts" approach does not work for me at all and I'm done with trying. I'm sick of it and after nearly four weeks it's really starting to piss me off.
Today in meditation class she told us to close our eyes and visualize something that makes us happy and focus on that image. I've discovered that visualization doesn't work for me on a basic, elemental level because I'm better at focusing on sound rather than images (this may be why I like the Vedic Chanting class, but I'm getting sick of that shit, too, it's burning grooves into my brain and I can't get those damn chants out of my head). But I solved this problem by focusing on a song and running it through my head. Specifically, I meditated on "Concubine" by Converge from the metalcore masterpiece Jane Doe. It's an explosive burst of rage and aggression that moves through multiple tempo shifts and hyperspeed riffing and blast beat drumming in under two minutes. It's heavy as fuck and it makes me very happy. I had trouble summoning the bridge that leads into the fiery opening vocal but aside from that, it was easily the best meditation experience I've ever had. The sounds morphed into shapes in my head but the images were secondary to the sounds that created them. Unfortunately, after a few minutes of silence in which I was free to soak up and focus on the hate and anger internally, the meditation teacher fucked it up by chanting in Sanskrit and punching a hole in my concentration (yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, I should think of her chanting as just another distraction that I need to put aside to be able to meditate, whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger, blah, blah, blah, fuck you). I still managed to keep my mental thread going on but the competing (external) sound dampened the experience. Still, when I opened my eyes at the end of class, I actually felt pretty chill. Not a bad start.
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