Prior to last weekend, the only yoga conferences I’d attended were huge gatherings in gigantic conference hotels.

And while I’ve benefited from them, I’m not motivated to go to another anytime soon. To a large extent, that’s because I don’t like the disjuncture between my internal experience of yoga and the external experience of practicing in these gigantic hotel environments. While the resulting mixture of personally meaningful and generically corporate is interesting, I also find it kind of draining and dispiriting.

At this point in my practice, I’m interested in more integrated, intimate, and in-depth ways of connecting with other practitioners than such gigantic conferences can provide. Last summer, I had the good fortune to experience that in spades when I attended Yoga Festival Toronto. Last weekend, I discovered that the Being Yoga conference at the Omega Institute in upstate New York offers this as well.

The Omega Institute is a nonprofit and it shows: Being Yoga was suffused with a sense of being mission rather than market-driven. The conference setting, size, and program offerings combined to create an experience that felt spacious and intimate, diverse and integrated all at the same time. These elements enabled me to experience Being Yoga as a special time set aside for energizing repose, playful learning, and serious fun.

Nature and Intimacy

The Omega Institute is located about two hours north of NYC in the wooded, rolling hills of upstate New York. It’s very green—both naturally, with an abundance of trees and grasses, and in terms of the built environment, with an award-winning Center for Sustainable Living, organic and locally sourced food, and simple accommodations. The 195-acre campus has the feel of an old-time summer camp – which, in fact, it once was.

Courtesy of Omega Institute for Holistic Studies, Rhinebeck, NY. eOmega.org

While there is a gift shop at Omega, the conference had no huge, cavernous “yoga mart.” I liked this. While I’ll admit to having enjoyed browsing the wares at Yoga Journal conferences in the past, the relentless commercialization of yoga has since come to feel more wearisome than enjoyable. I’d rather spend my free time at a conference kayaking on a lake or walking in the woods than shopping for a souvenir t-shirt or cute yoga gear.

Combined with the spacious natural setting, the relatively small size of the Being Yoga conference (about 200-250 attendees) made it much easier for me to meet new people and feel a sense of connection with the entire group. I found the conference’s opening and closing ceremonies to be truly meaningful in part because they were both small enough to feel intimate, yet large enough to feel like I was part of something substantial.

Diversity and Multi-Dimensionality

The Being Yoga conference was notably diverse in terms of age. There were a lot of older practitioners—definitely more than I’ve seen at the yoga classes, workshops, and events I’ve gone to before. But there were also lots of younger people, and a good smattering of little kids running around. Overall, the collectivity felt easily intergenerational—a natural coming together of practitioners across the age spectrum.

That said, it’s also true that Being Yoga was dominated by the same white female demographic that you find everywhere in North American yoga. While there were a good number of men and people of color there, it wasn’t exceptionally diverse on either score.

Courtesy of Omega Institute for Holistic Studies, Rhinebeck, NY. eOmega.org

The program offerings, however, were more diverse than I’ve found elsewhere. I was really pleased that Sharon Salzburg, one of the most well-known meditation teachers in North America, played a leading role, teaching multiple classes and guiding much of the closing ceremony. I’ve come to believe that mindfulness is the critical component of a powerful yoga practice, and it was heartening to see so many practitioners connecting with one of our most accomplished meditation teachers.

I also liked the fact that the conference featured both big-name and relatively unknown yoga instructors. Interestingly, I found that the one class I didn’t like at all was taught by a yoga icon, while the one I found extraordinarily helpful was taught by someone I’d never heard of before. This made me feel that Omega was making good choices in terms of investing in lesser-known names and giving them a chance to reach more students.

One of the best things about the conference was the music, which was exceptionally awesome. At the opening ceremony, Masood Ali Khan and Sheela Bringi generated a powerful wave of focused attention and emotion. They also played live for three yoga classes (Sharon Gannon and David Life, Peter Sterios and Elena Brower. As luck would have it, I’d signed up for all of them.)

There was also super-celebratory and crazy-energizing dancing on Saturday night led by the vibrant Hemalayaa, who was on fire and dressed in red. (I had fun dancing with Roseanne Harvey, who thought it was pretty funny that I would Bollywood it up like I did.) Sean Johnson and the Wild Lotus Band led us up, down, around, and through so much with their music that night that I’d have to write another post to begin to describe it. I wasn’t surprised to hear that they were the only Kirtan band to ever play the New Orleans Jazz Festival—they expertly wove that Creole magic.

The Bigger Picture

In the end, what made me really love the Being Yoga conference was that I felt that it embodied something more purposeful than simply having a fun weekend.

Being Yoga is labeled as a “conference retreat,” and there was certainly a more serious retreat element threading through the dancing, relaxing, and fun. In both the opening and closing ceremonies, Omega’s yoga program director Traci Childress reminded us that “’being yoga’ means taking our practice off the mat and into the world to our families and communities.” Several speakers in the opening “Yoga Stories” presentation, which is designed to enable teachers to share more personal stories of learning and growth with the group, noted how fortunate we were in having the means to attend this event. We could be in Syria dodging bullets—or simply part of the substantial U.S. population struggling to find enough food to eat and a safe place to sleep.

Lake at the Omega Institute, Rhinebeck, NY

No guilt-mongering intended. But the question is clear: For those of us who have the gift of an established yoga practice—as well as the resources to do things like attend conferences, workshops, and retreats – what are we going to do with it? How do we take our practice beyond the confines of our time on our mat and make it something more expansive, meaningful, and relevant to a world in crisis?

There are no easy answers. But I do believe that there’s real value in coming together as a group through such substantial, yet intimate events as Being Yoga. We are social beings, and connecting with each other enables us to connect more strongly to our own individual vision and purpose.

Right now, there’s a growing cynicism about shallowness, commercialism, and self-indulgence in the North American yoga community. And it’s well founded. But that all seemed a parallel universe as we sang the Metta (Lovingkindness) Chant collectively at the closing. As tears streamed down my face, I felt utterly absorbed in the power of the moment. I sensed a collective heart opening. I trust that such experiences will help orient and guide me and others for some time to come.

 Originally posted on Elephant Journal.

Boys and girls, men and women are different—yoga service programs must be gender-responsive, as well as mindful of differences including culture and sexual orientation. ~ Mary Lynn Fitton, founder and director of the Art of Yoga Project, speaking at the Yoga Service Council (YSC) conference, May 2012

As soon as I heard Mary Lynn Fitton speak with such passionate conviction about the importance of teaching yoga in a gender-responsive way when working with traumatized and at-risk populations, I knew that I wanted to learn more.

After all, the question of how best to understand and address gender differences is one of the most vexing issues facing our society today. Yet it’s rare to hear someone speak about it in ways that are fresh and compelling.

Mary Lynn can do so because she brings such extensive knowledge and experience to the subject. After working for many years as a nurse practitioner serving low-income teen girls, she developed the Art of Yoga Project (AYP) to complement traditional health care with a holistic, healing, yoga-based practice. Today, AYP serves over 500 at-risk and exploited teen girls annually through programs in juvenile detention centers and aftercare treatment sites in three San Francisco Bay Area counties.

AYP’s Yoga and Creative Arts Curriculum, which includes asana, yoga philosophy, reflective writing, and creative arts, is designed to help girls coping with intergenerational abuse and neglect, mental health problems, gang involvement, lack of educational opportunity, and poverty. Many have been victims of sex trafficking.

The goal of the AYP program is to help them learn “self-awareness, self-respect, and self-control so that they can ultimately make better choices and be good to themselves and others.”

The Yoga and Creative Arts Curriculum is available nationwide, and is being used by 20 affiliate programs in 10 states.

When I first met Mary Lynn at a YSC workshop on teaching yoga to incarcerated teens and adults (which she co-presented with James Fox of the Prison Yoga Project), I was struck by her powerful, yet highly feminine presence. Her discussion of gender issues was particularly interesting to me because I’m usually skeptical of the talk of “the divine feminine” that I hear in yoga circles. Yet Mary Lynn personified something that made that term feel real and meaningful, rather than trite and clichéd.

I hope you enjoy this interview with her as much as I did.

AYP artwork

Carol: How did you first get into yoga?

Mary Lynn: I started yoga in my mid-20s, when I was really much more of an athlete, working hard on running and triathlons. On my mat, I found a connection to my deeper self that was very profound. I also started to gain awareness of my inner voice, which, I discovered, wasn’t kind at all. I finally realized that I had been using sports as a way of running away from my own body and my own issues.

This felt kind of tragic. I’d often weep through my practice. But over time, I learned to nurture myself, rather than always having to push so hard. Through yoga, I developed a truly healing relationship between my self and my body.

Carol: What made you want to teach yoga to at-risk teen girls?

Mary Lynn: In my work as a nurse practitioner, I saw many young women with anxiety, depression and eating disorders. Many had core feelings of low self-worth, and even self-loathing. They’d regularly do things that they’d later regret—for example, one-night stands that made them feel really bad afterward.

I felt that yoga could help them with the deeper issues they were struggling with—stuff that I couldn’t get into with my regular nursing practice. But it was the early 1990s, and at that time, yoga was still totally marginal.

I started teaching yoga in the inner city anyway. I wanted to make sure that the practice got to everyone who needed it most. Today, that’s in line with the mission of the Yoga Service Council: to make sure that yoga is equally available to all. (Note: Mary Lynn is one of the YSC’s founding members.)

Art of Yoga Project

Carol: What does the term “gender-responsive” mean?

Mary Lynn: The term “gender-responsive” comes out of work in the criminal justice system. As more and more girls and women started coming in, it became clear that existing programs and policies had been designed for men. And making them appropriate for women involved much more than just having the same thing for women only. There’s a well-known saying, “you can’t just paint it pink.” Gender responsiveness means comprehensively addressing the needs, issues, and concerns of a specific gender group.

Carol: A lot of people in the yoga community believe that yoga transcends gender. Does a commitment to teaching yoga in a gender-responsive manner contradict that?

Mary Lynn: I agree that ultimately, yoga is beyond gender. And in the best circumstances, in which you have a group of healthy individuals coming together and accepting difference, males and females can learn and practice together. Unity is definitely the spirit of yoga. But the reality is that many of our populations have been traumatized in ways that make gender-responsive yoga a necessity.

Male yoga teachers can easily trigger girls and women who have been sexually traumatized by men. For example, just hearing a male voice telling them to “relax” could be re-traumatizing, as that’s a command often issued by sexual predators. With same gender teachers, there’s less risk of that happening.

AYP class

Carol: Are same gender teachers always better? Are there exceptions?

Mary Lynn: Once in awhile, it’s great to have men come in and teach the teen girls. It shows them a nontraditional model—a man who meditates, for example. Our students are not used to men who are sensitive, kind and grounded. So it’s valuable to expose them to men who embody these qualities.

At the same time, however, it’s too much of a risk to have men develop an ongoing relationship with the girls through yoga. So we don’t have any one man come in to teach on a regular basis.

We’re completely in favor of having the girls feel positive about boys and men. But we also recognize that they need to learn how to draw positive males toward them. They need to learn what it’s like to be honored and supported in a male-female relationship. They need to develop skills, awareness, and an empowered sense of self so that they don’t end up repeating the same negative patterns that have harmed them in the past.

Carol: Do the same gender considerations apply when teaching younger children?

Mary Lynn: I teach yoga in elementary schools with boys and girls together. With young kids, it can work. But I think that it would be amazing to mandate separate classes for boys and girls. That way, boys wouldn’t be coming to classes dominated by females. They wouldn’t feel that “yoga is for girls.”

I also believe that it would be incredibly powerful to have men teaching boys. They would be able to speak to issues that matter to them in ways that females can’t.

Once kids get into the teen years, hormones are so central to everything they do that it’s better to separate by gender. It’s kinder. It’s less distracting. They’re too young to have their Brahmacharya figured out.

AYP artwork

Carol: That sounds like it would be true for teens in general. How is teaching yoga to at-risk, traumatized, and exploited youth different?

Mary Lynn: It’s important to understand that the ways in which trauma is experienced and processed in these populations is usually gendered. Generally speaking, boys are traumatized by someone that they don’t personally know very well. They’re dealing with gangs and street fighting. For girls, it’s quite different. Typically, they’re traumatized by someone they’re close to—often someone that they say “I love you” to a lot.

Teen boys and girls, like adult men and women, typically respond to trauma in different ways. There are underlying biological and psychosocial differences. Males tend to externalize their reactions, with anger, fighting, and so on. Females tend to internalize, and beat themselves up on the inside. This manifests as depression, self-mutilation (like cutting), and other mental health disorders.

Carol: That’s a very dichotomous presentation of gender difference. What about individuals who don’t identify with the traditional male/female binary, or are transgendered?

Mary Lynn: Gender responsive programs always need to be sensitive to sexual, cultural and gender differences. We train our staff to understand diversity and be inclusive. It’s always about being conscious, educated and respectful. One of the most important keys to this is learning how to really listen.

We have lots of lesbian and bi girls in our groups. We also had a transgendered girl recently. As this is more rare, we had a special staff training dedicated to how we could serve her best. We’re always committed to staying open and learning.

We have a lot to learn about these issues as a culture. This is all part of an ongoing evolutionary process. Especially when it comes to new forms of gender expression, we’re all learning more about each other.

Carol: Is teaching yoga from a gender-responsive perspective controversial in the yoga service field?

Mary Lynn: Those who have been doing this a long time are generally in agreement on this. My peers in the Yoga Service Council are pretty much aligned with me on these issues, based on their own experiences in the field.

But in the larger yoga community there’s lots of controversy, particularly over whether men should teach women. Right now, there’s lot of issues swirling around male teachers.

Carol: Do you think that teaching yoga in a gender-responsive way has any relevance to the mainstream yoga studio population?

Mary Lynn: We need to get real. It’s a distraction when we’re looking at each other’s bodies. Of course, it’s true that part of the practice can be working to stay focused when you’re feeling attracted to someone else. But why not also have gender-specific classes?

I think it would be amazing to have gender-responsive classes that allow men and women to explore their particular concerns and experiences. For women, being able to talk about their cycles and related issues would be meaningful. To offer childcare would be fantastic.

And what if men taught men, and there was real counsel? What if they came together in circle and talked about issues of strength, power, and control in the ways that are particular to men? What if they went on from there to teach boys how to be powerful, right-thinking men? What if boys had time, space, and leadership dedicated to helping them explore the crucial issue of: What does it mean to be a man?

It would also be good to bring male and female groups together and have unity, as well as times consciously dedicated to exploring male-female issues.

While some of this is going on now, it’s not enough. In particular, there’s not enough for men being offered.

Divine Feminine – Cathedral Series by Charlotte Backman

Carol: I hear a lot of talk in yoga circles about the “divine feminine.” Does that phrase mean anything to you?

Mary Lynn: I definitely think that girls and women need to connect to their divine feminine—just as boys and men need to connect with their divine masculine.

At AYP, we’re helping the teens we work with tap into the sacred feminine. Generally, they don’t like being female. They think it’s better to be male, as men run the gangs and have power. We want to help them connect to what’s good about being a girl—to honor their femininity, and cultivate femininity at its best.

The divine feminine is about being open, receptive, creative, and intuitive. It involves listening, wisdom, internal power, and unconditional love and acceptance. It means taking the lead in our culture in manifesting love, and teaching others how to love. In AYP, we practice loving the girls, and teaching them to love themselves.

It’s important to recognize that feminine energy also has its negative side. Females specialize in relational aggression, including manipulation, gossip and criticism of the masculine.

Actualizing the divine feminine should not exclude men or be negative toward men. It is important to take that responsibility. That’s not to say that we don’t talk about men—in AYP, we talk about men, sex and relationships a lot. But we do so in a way that respects the divine masculine too.

Carol: What’s most needed in the yoga world today in terms of gender-responsiveness?

Mary Lynn: I’d like to call men to step up and go into juvenile detention centers and work with at-risk boys. Teen boys need men to teach them. Right now, most yoga teachers are women. Male yoga teachers should be actively recruited. We need more men on the covers of yoga magazines. Correcting the gender imbalance in yoga could only help our culture.

We need more gay and lesbian yoga teachers. We have lesbian teachers at AYP, and it’s important to our program. But many gay male youth have also been sexually trafficked, and need help processing their trauma. Gay male teachers could play an important role in that regard.

We also need more professionals involved in yoga service. We need people who understand the world of public policy, fundraising, organizational development, and business. Our  Executive Director at AYP, Lisa Pedersen, used to be a Vice President at a large high-tech company. The two of us together are a great mix. In order to have sustainability, we need to have professional expertise supporting yoga service. Otherwise, we won’t be able to build organizations that last.

To learn more about the Art of Yoga Project, you can access their website by clicking here.

Originally posted on Elephant Journal.

Now Mark is hoping to work with his friend and colleague, Jim Mallinson, on an edited volume of historic Indian texts tracing the evolution of yoga from the ancient through pre-modern periods. While grounded in scholarship, the book, entitled Roots of Yoga: A Sourcebook from the Indian Traditions, will be written for a general audience. Intended to be a resource for the English-speaking yoga community, Roots of Yoga will provide a source of original yogic texts (about half previously untranslated) unlike anything available today.

In order to produce Roots of Yoga, Mark and Jim need funding to cover their work and travel expenses. Given that the book will be aimed at practitioners, they can’t get academic grants. So, they’ve trying to raise $50K via Kickstarter. You can link to the campaign, which runs from July 11th  – August 10th, by clicking here.

I feel strongly that the yoga community should do everything that we can to support this project. Mark and Jim are world-class scholars with years of experience studying and practicing yoga. They are fluent in the art of translating Sanskrit, specializing in yogic texts. Between them, they have a deep knowledge of the histories of both medieval and modern yoga, as well as of contemporary practice in both India and North America.

R. Schmidt, Fakire und Fakirtum im alten und modernen Indien (1908)

But: If they can’t raise the money, they can’t do the project.

So please take a moment and contribute to the Roots of Yoga Kickstarter campaign. Then spend a few more minutes asking all your yoga friends to do the same. Talk the project up at your local studio. Get it out there on Facebook, Twitter, or whatever your favorite social media platforms may be. If you care about yoga, I honestly believe this will prove to be an exceptionally valuable investment of your money and time.

_______________________________________________________

Mark Singleton

A week or so ago, I interviewed Jim and Mark via Skype to learn more about the project. Before getting into that conversation, however, here’s a bit more info on who these men are:

Mark Singleton holds a Ph.D in South Asian Religion from Cambridge University. In addition to the path-breaking Yoga Body, Mark published the first-ever edited volume on modern yoga, Yoga in the Modern World: Contemporary Perspectives (Jean Byrne, co-editor; Routledge 2008). Another co-edited (with Ellen Goldberg) book, Gurus of Modern Yoga, is in production with Oxford University Press. With Jim Mallinson, Mark is currently launching a five-year research project at Oxford University to edit and translate the five earliest texts to teach Hatha yoga.

Jim Mallinson

Jim Mallinson holds a Ph.D. from Oxford University, where he studied with the world’s leading scholar of Tantra, Professor Alexis Sanderson. In 2007, he published a critical, annotated translation of The Khecarividya of Adinatha, a 14^th century text detailing a traditional Hatha yoga technique called Khecarimudra. He has also translated many other Sanskrit texts, including the yoga classics, the Gheranda Samhita and Shiva Samhita, parts of which are available for free download on YogaVidya.com.

Jim is also a documentary filmmaker, producing “The Beginner’s Guide to Yoga” for British national television and an independent feature documenting his paragliding expedition to an ancient Hindu temple in the Himalayas (editorial note: how badass can you get?). Other creative work in process includes memoir of the eight years he spent studying with itinerant yogis and ascetics in India; a documentary on “The Original Yogis at the Kumbh Mela,” and a collaboration with photographer Cambridge Jones on an illustrated history of yoga.

Carol: The yoga tradition is vast and diverse. How will you draw the boundaries of “yoga” in your project?

Jim: There’s an ongoing debate over what yoga is and isn’t. Obviously, we have to delineate somewhere.

Yogi in Kukkuṭāsana (1510) c. Rob Linrothe

Mark: We’re planning to prioritize texts that explicitly identify themselves as being part of the yoga tradition. We’ll also include Tantric texts that have a yoga component, as well as Upanishadic texts that may not self-identify as “yoga,” but contain evident precursors to later practices.

Jim: Physical yoga practices weren’t really developed until the early medieval period. No text refers to “Hatha yoga” prior to the 13^th century Dattatreya Yoga Shastra. Still, we can look back and see where the physical practices came from with the benefit of hindsight.

For example, the Buddha mentions physical practices that would definitely qualify as Hatha yoga in the Pali Canon, but he didn’t call them that.

Carol: So, are you going to focus on the development of Hatha yoga in particular?

Jim: Yes – but not in the sense that the term has come to be understood in the modern period.

Beginning in the late 19^th century, the Theosophical Society and then Vivekananda posited a split between “Hatha” (physical) and “Raja” (mental) yoga, which is the framework that we’re familiar with today. I’d argue, however, that in the pre-modern era, this distinction between physical and mental yoga didn’t exist.

Mark: I agree. Hatha yoga was incorporated into lots of different yogic systems from 16^th century onwards. Today, people assume that there’s always been a divide between physical and mental yoga – but historically, that doesn’t hold.

Ascetic practicing various techniques of yoga and tapas (~1825)

Carol: As you know, the history of Hatha yoga has been whitewashed quite a bit, with practices that were disturbing to modern Western (and middle-class Indian) sensibilities erased out of the picture. How will you negotiate the cultural politics involved in representing the past? (Note: If you don’t get where this question is coming from, check out (for example) Sinister Yogis by David Gordon White.)

Mark: Yes, it’s true; that sort of sanitizing of history has gone on. Even in books about Iyengar yoga, all that stuff is cast to the side. But historically, it’s there and cannot be ignored.

Jim: It would be very disingenuous to ignore what’s discomforting to contemporary sensibilities – these practices are central to the tradition. To pretend they’re not there would be to misrepresent it.

Mark: We can’t stop people from being offended. I’m not sure how some of this stuff will be received. Some of the practices may be interesting and appealing for what practitioners might want to do in America today. Others are not. I don’t see that as a reason to hide any of it.

Yogirāj Jagannāth Dās, Haridwar Kumbh Melā, 2010 (photo: Jim Mallinson)

In our commentaries on the texts, we can also help people understand what they may see as strange by explaining how it fits into the system as a whole. True, the Christian right will take it as more evidence of the Satanic nature of yoga, which is of course nonsense. But there’s nothing that can be done about that.

Jim: I’ve spent a lot of time with ascetics in India who do these sorts of practices –  Basti, Khecarimudra , and so on. (Note: Khecarimudra involves progressively cutting the root of the tongue so that it’s able to be inserted up into the soft palate at the back of the throat; Basti includes squatting in water, drawing it in through the anus, and expelling it.) I think that we can make it clear that when they’re understood in their indigenous cultural context, they take on different meanings. For example, some of the yogis I know would see Basti in very much the same way that we see colonic cleansing.

Carol: How do you envision the structure of the book?

Mark: The book will be organized thematically, with sections on asana, pranayama, mudra, bindu, etc. Each will begin with a short introduction that provides historical context. We’ll also include notes to explain technical terms and other information that might useful to the general reader. We want make the book as user-friendly as possible.

Vivekamārtaṇḍa manuscript (1477)

Carol: Will the book include new, previously untranslated material? If so, have you already located it, or do you have more research to do?

Mark: While it remains to be determined, it’s probably going to be about half previously and half newly translated texts.

Jim: We’ve already identified the texts that we want to translate – if we had to identify them from scratch, the project would take at least 7 years. That said, we may, of course, discover something new.

Carol: If you already know what you want to translate, why do you need to go to India? Couldn’t you just get photocopies and do the translations at home?

Mark: (laughs) Yeah, that would be nice – but we do need to go to the libraries. There will be lots of material to go through, and getting our selections right requires going to India and looking at what’s available firsthand. It will definitely take a trip or two.

Jim: Plus, getting the materials out of the libraries is a complex, bureaucratic process – there’s loads of forms to fill out and so on. And, while many of the librarians are really helpful, there are always those that need to be goaded to stop drinking chai and get on with it.

Carol: How will Roots of Yoga build on Yoga Body?

Mark: While it’s sometimes misinterpreted, the thesis of Yoga Body is not that yoga as we know it is only 100 years old. Rather, it’s a cultural history of the modern period. But there’s always a history prior to the one in question.

I don’t think that we should make a hard distinction between traditional and modern yoga. While it’s true that enormous new influences came in during the modern age – the Theosophical Society, yoga being exported from India, and so on – those boundaries are not hard and fast.

As soon as I finished Yoga Body, I wanted to extend my research back to the immediate pre-colonial period. This project will allow me to do that and more besides. I think it will complement Yoga Body well.

Carol: As yoga scholars, what motivates you to connect to the world of yoga practice – particularly when the North American yoga community is often (at least in my opinion) pretty non-intellectual, and sometimes even anti-intellectual?

Mark: It seems to me that practitioners today have only been exposed to a small part of the spectrum as to what yoga is and has been. The texts that we’ll compile in Roots of Yoga will point to many new possibilities.

There could be great benefit in entering into a conversation with the past through a collection like this. Hopefully, it will enable a depth of connection with it that hasn’t previously been easily available.

Jim with his guru, Bālyogī Śrī Rām Bālak Dās, Haridwar Kumbh Melā, 2010

Jim: Unlike Mark, I’ve had very little contact with the world of contemporary Western practice. Mainly, I’ve hung out with traditional yogis and ascetics in India.

I’m fascinated, however, by how important the idea of “authenticity” seems to be in the yoga community today. And I think that it’s clear that there needs to be some better grounding in that regard. Some of these crazy controversies that flare up – like the recent claim that “yoga started as a sex cult” – show that there needs to be better, and more accessible information on the yoga tradition available.

Mark: This book will provide easy access to the sort of texts that I would have liked to have had when I first started practicing yoga. It will give practitioners a resource they can use to negotiate the field. It’ll enable them to get reliable answers as to what yoga has been historically by connecting them to original, primary texts.

Carol: Do you consider yourselves to be yoga practitioners?

Mark: Yes – I’ve practiced several schools of modern yoga. I started with Iyengar and Ashtanga, and later studied Satyananda, which is another modern tradition that’s more well-known in parts of Europe and Australia than the U.S. It’s also the method that’s represented in the largest teacher training school in northern India, and possibly in India as a whole.

So that combined with things that I’ve learned from various other places . . . whatever it means to be “a yoga practitioner” . . . yes, I do yoga of some sort.

Jim practicing Nauli on the beach in Kerala

Carol: To be clearer where I’m coming from with this question – it ties into the whole issue of authenticity, which, as you mentioned, is big in the yoga community. In practitioner circles, it’s very common to dismiss scholarly work (particularly when there’s disagreement with it!) on the grounds that scholars are not practitioners, and therefore don’t understand what they’re writing about in any meaningful way.

Mark: Yes, there is a strong discourse of bookish versus real knowledge. The very term “academic” is a term of abuse in certain practitioner circles.

I’m possibly prejudiced (and Jim is, too), but I believe that scholarship has enormous value in helping us understand what practice means – not just now, but what it has meant in the past. One fundamental way of pushing the boundaries of what the practice can be is through the process of serious inquiry provided by scholarship.

Carol: So, Jim: do you also consider yourself a yoga practitioner?

Jim: Yes. And I find it much easier to say I’m a “yoga practitioner” than to say I’m a “yogi.”

I spent most of my 20s wandering around India with yogis and ascetics, the sort that you’d see at the Kumbha Mela. Most of what they were practicing, I’d try. So, for example, I did the Khecarimudra practice, cutting my tongue away; I did Basti and all that – although it doesn’t actually float my boat that much. I learned asana, pranayama . . .

But now, I’ve got small children. And like many yogis in India, who tend to go through a period of intense practice for several years, and then rest on their laurels for awhile – I now just do a short practice everyday, and longer bouts periodically when I can.

Carol: You’re both English, and trained at the most elite universities in Britain. Do you consider yourself to be part of the lineage of British scholars that’s been studying yoga and related practices in India since the 18^th century?

Mark: To some extent. There has been a lot of Orientalist bashing, and much is well justified. But there’s also a tendency to extend Said’s diagnosis of the violent, dominating, colonial gaze to include the work of European scholars who were studying Indian religions and making translations of texts in significantly different ways. (Note: If this reference doesn’t make sense, you can read about Edward Said’s seminal critique of “Orientalism” here.)

To some extent throughout my career, I have looked to this early European scholarship on India. And while its often quite flawed, I don’t necessarily see it as representing an Orientalist gaze. There is enormous benefit in cross-cultural study and exchange. And I don’t believe that there’s necessarily a hard and fast separation between cultures. Historically, there has always been learning across regional boundaries. There has always been intercultural exchange.

Jim: I don’t see myself in a direct lineage from Oxford scholars of the past. I do, however, see myself as part of the tradition of study developed by my thesis supervisor, Professor Alexis Sanderson. His work revolutionized study of Tantra, really opening the field up. To a certain extent, I feel that that’s what I, along with several of his other students, are starting to do with yoga – Hatha yoga in particular.

Remember – Roots of Yoga can’t be published without YOUR help!
Contribute to the Kickstarter campaign by clicking here.

_______________________________________________________

Additional info on images:

Seven yogis under a banyan tree. Mughal, dated 1630-31, in the collection of the British Museum (1941,0712,0.5).

R. Schmidt (1908), Fakire und Fakirtum im alten und modernen Indien: Yoga-Lehre und Yoga-Praxis nach den indischen Originalquellen (Berlin: Hermann Barsdorf). The āsana on the left is guptāsana, the one on the right is paścimattānāsana.

Yogi in Kukkuṭāsana on the prākāra wall of the Mallikārjuna temple at Srisailam in Andhra Pradesh, c. 1510. The oldest known image of a yogi in a non-seated āsana. Copyright Rob Linrothe.

Ascetic practicing yoga and tapas: Andhra Pradesh, in the collection of the British Museum (2007, 3005.4).

The first folio of a manuscript of the Vivekamārtaṇḍa dated to 1477 CE and in the Baroda Oriental Institute Library. This text was expanded to become the Gorakṣasaṃhitā/śataka.

Jim with his guru, Bālyogī Śrī Rām Bālak Dās: photo credit – Chris Giri.

Originally posted on Think Body Electric.

 If you’ve been paying attention to the yoga news over the past two years, you’ve most likely heard some affirmative answers to this question. If so, such responses were probably based on a reading of Mark Singleton’s influential Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice (Oxford University Press, 2010).

As one yoga blogger bluntly concluded after studying the evidence presented in the book: “Basically, we’re all just making this shit up.”

But is the history of contemporary yoga really that simple?

I don’t think so. For that matter, neither does Mark Singleton himself. Happily, I recently had the opportunity to discuss these and other issues with him—as well as his friend and colleague, Jim Mallinson—in conjunction with learning about their new project, Roots of Yoga: A Sourcebook from the Indian Traditions.

Roots of Yoga will be an edited volume of historic Indian texts tracing the evolution of Hatha yoga from the ancient to pre-modern periods. It’ll contain a carefully made selection of original works (about half previously untranslated) that speak to the development of key practices including asana, pranayama and mudra, along with explanatory historical commentary written for a general audience. The end goal is to create a resource for the English-speaking yoga community unlike anything else available today.

To me, this project is particularly exciting because it bridges the worlds of scholarship and practice so beautifully.

Plus, I can’t imagine two people more qualified to do it than Mark and Jim. Both are accomplished scholars (with Ph.D.s from Cambridge and Oxford, respectively) with years of experience studying and practicing yoga. Not to mention, Roots of Yoga will be perfectly positioned to deepen and extend the history of modern yoga presented in Yoga Body, enabling us to see that while we may indeed be “making this shit up” in some ways, we may still nonetheless be linked to a complex, diverse and profound lineage in others.

I talked with Mark and Jim about their new project last week and found it fascinating. Here are some highlights from our conversation.

*Please note that if you’re interested in reading the longer version, you can access it on my blog, Think Body Electric, by clicking here.

Carol: How will Roots of Yoga build on Yoga Body?

Mark: While it’s sometimes misinterpreted, the thesis of Yoga Body is not that yoga as we know it is only 100 years old. Rather, it’s a cultural history of the modern period. But there’s always a history prior to the one in question.

I don’t think that we should make a hard distinction between traditional and modern yoga. While it’s true that enormous new influences came in during the modern age—the Theosophical Society, yoga being exported from India, and so on—those boundaries are not hard and fast.

As soon as I finished Yoga Body, I wanted to extend my research back to the immediate pre-colonial period. This project will allow me to do that and more besides. I think it will complement Yoga Body well.

Carol: As yoga scholars, what motivates you to connect to the world of yoga practice?

Mark: It seems to me that practitioners today have only been exposed to a small part of the spectrum as to what yoga is and has been. The texts that we’ll compile in Roots of Yoga will point to many new possibilities.

There could be great benefit in entering into a conversation with the past through a collection like this. Hopefully, it will enable a depth of connection with it that hasn’t previously been easily available.

Jim: Unlike Mark, I’ve had very little contact with the world of contemporary Western practice. Mainly, I’ve hung out with traditional yogis and ascetics in India.

I’m fascinated, however, by how important the idea of “authenticity” seems to be in the yoga community today. And I think that it’s clear that there needs to be some better grounding in that regard. Some of these crazy controversies that flare up—like the recent claim that “yoga started as a sex cult”—show that there needs to be better, and more accessible information on the yoga tradition available.

Mark: This book will provide easy access to the sort of texts that I would have liked to have had when I first started practicing yoga. It will give practitioners a resource they can use to negotiate the field. It’ll enable them to get reliable answers as to what yoga has been historically by connecting them to original, primary texts.

Jim with his guru, Bālyogī Śrī Rām Bālak Dās, Haridwar Kumbh Melā, 2010 (photo: Chris Giri)

Jim with his guru, Bālyogī Śrī Rām Bālak Dās, Haridwar Kumbh Melā, 2010 (photo: Chris Giri)

Carol: Do you consider yourselves to be yoga practitioners?

Mark: Yes, I’ve practiced several schools of modern yoga. I started with Iyengar and Ashtanga, and later studied Satyananda, which is another modern tradition that’s more well-known in parts of Europe and Australia than the U.S. It’s also the method that’s represented in the largest teacher training school in northern India, and possibly in India as a whole.

So that combined with things that I’ve learned from various other places . . . whatever it means to be “a yoga practitioner” . . . yes, I do yoga of some sort.

Jim: Yes. And I find it much easier to say I’m a “yoga practitioner” than to say I’m a “yogi.”

I spent most of my 20s wandering around India with yogis and ascetics, the sort that you’d see at the Kumbha Mela. Most of what they were practicing, I’d try. So, for example, I did the Khecarimudra practice, cutting my tongue away; I did Basti and all that—although it doesn’t actually float my boat that much. (Note: Khecarimudra involves progressively cutting the root of the tongue so that it’s able to be inserted up into the soft palate at the back of the throat; Basti includes squatting in water, drawing it in through the anus, and expelling it.) I learned asana, pranayama . . .

But now, I’ve got small children. And like many yogis in India, who tend to go through a period of intense practice for several years, and then rest on their laurels for awhile—I now just do a short practice everyday, and longer bouts periodically when I can.

Carol: You’re both English, and trained at the most elite universities in Britain. Do you consider yourself to be part of the lineage of British scholars that’s been studying yoga and related practices in India since the 18^th century?

Mark: To some extent. There has been a lot of Orientalist bashing, and much is well justified. But there’s also a tendency to extend Said’s diagnosis of the violent, dominating, colonial gaze to include the work of European scholars who were studying Indian religions and making translations of texts in significantly different ways. (Note: If this reference doesn’t make sense, you can read about Edward Said’s seminal critique of “Orientalism” here.

R. Schmidt, Fakire und Fakirtum im alten und modernen Indien (1908)

To some extent throughout my career, I have looked to this early European scholarship on India. And while its often quite flawed, I don’t necessarily see it as representing an Orientalist gaze. There is enormous benefit in cross-cultural study and exchange. And I don’t believe that there’s necessarily a hard and fast separation between cultures. Historically, there has always been learning across regional boundaries. There has always been intercultural exchange.

Jim: I don’t see myself in a direct lineage from Oxford scholars of the past. I do, however, see myself as part of the tradition of study developed by my thesis supervisor, Professor Alexis Sanderson. His work revolutionized study of Tantra, really opening the field up. To a certain extent, I feel that that’s what I, along with several of his other students, are starting to do with yoga – Hatha yoga in particular.

Important note: Mark and Jim won’t be able to write Roots of Yoga unless they raise the funds necessary to cover their work and travel expenses via their Kickstarter campaign, which will be running from July 9th-August 6^th, 2012. So please consider contributing, and encouraging others in your social networks to do so as well. You can access it by clicking here.

Additional information on images:

Featured Image:  Yogi in Kukkuṭāsana on the prākāra wall of the Mallikārjuna temple at Srisailam in Andhra Pradesh, c. 1510. The oldest known image of a yogi in a non-seated āsana. Copyright Rob Linrothe. 

R. Schmidt (1908), Fakire und Fakirtum im alten und modernen Indien: Yoga-Lehre und Yoga-Praxis nach den indischen Originalquellen (Berlin: Hermann Barsdorf). The āsana on the left is guptāsana, the one on the right is paścimattānāsana.

Originally published on Elephant Journal.

I met Terri a few weeks ago while attending the Yoga Service Council Conference at the Omega Institute in New York. As soon as she started telling me about how yoga saved her life and sparked a passion for teaching teens struggling with poverty and trauma, I knew that I wanted to learn more.

I interviewed her a week later, and am happy to share her story with you because it embodies the best of what contemporary yoga can be about: healing, transformation, creativity, connection and community.

Carol: Let’s start with your journey. How did you first get into yoga?

Terri: My story is pretty common. I think that everyone turns to yoga because they’re looking for something. Most often, they need to heal—whether from back pain or an emotional crisis.

I was at a place in my life where nothing was going well. I was completely disconnected from myself, my family, my purpose. I was spiraling downward. My life was unmanageable.

In all honesty, I’m not sure how much longer I would have been living and breathing on this earth if I hadn’t found yoga when I did.

Carol: What first really hooked into the practice, and why?

Terri: I had tried yoga once or twice back around 1999-2000. But at that point I was too drug addicted to do it. Plus, I got injured on my second day of class. Still, that was enough to give me some sense of spiritual connection to the practice.

I didn’t throw myself into yoga until a few years later. In 2003, I decided that I wanted to change my life, and would commit to whatever it might take to do so—getting clean, ending negative relationships and making an all-around life change.

The first year of my practice wasn’t pretty. I was a miserable person. I’d lie in bed and cry and cry…everyday. I didn’t love myself at all.

Yoga was the only thing that made me feel better. So I’d drag myself out of bed and go to class. Every day. I didn’t have any special method or teacher. I’d just go to whatever I could afford, which meant lots of donation-based classes.

Carol: When did you decide to teach yoga, and why?

Terri: I knew that I wanted to teach right away. I threw myself into a teacher training during that first year of intensive practice. Since I was still detoxing, though, a lot of it is a blur.

I also knew that I wanted to teach people like me. At that point, I didn’t feel that most of the studio population was like me at all. Now, I know that’s not really true, because we’re all one. But then, I felt like the mainstream yoga community could never understand my experience. I was drawn to teach those who were addicted or incarcerated.

I started in several locations throughout Miami in 2003. It grew organically from there. I taught everywhere, including regular yoga venues like studios, condos, and gyms in affluent South Beach. But I also made sure that I got over the bridge to teach in Miami, which is a different world. Sometimes I taught 25 classes a week.

In 2005, I started teaching kids in the Juvenile Hall on a regular basis. I also taught in a lot of low-income schools. I can only guess how many thousands of kids I served—I didn’t document any of it. Now that I’m running Yoga Gangsters, I wish that I had. But I had no clue that what I was doing was going to turn into an actual nonprofit.

Carol: How did Yoga Gangsters get started?

Terri: I felt called to study with Seane Corn due to her outreach work, and started with her before she founded Off the Mat (OTM). Then, I took the first OTM training back in 2005. Seane, Hala Khouri, and Suzanne Sterling (the co-founders of OTM)  were extremely encouraging, and have been mentoring me for years. They supported me in taking my work to the next level and making it legit.

Carol: So, did OTM teach you how to run a nonprofit?

Terri: Well, I still don’t really know what I’m doing. I’m a college dropout and an ex-crystal meth addict. But I do have an incredible work ethic. And I’m driven and passionate. But even now, Yoga Gangsters doesn’t have the foundation and structure that so many other organizations doing this kind of work have.

Really, we are straight yoga gangster—we’re from the street. We don’t have a lot of professional expertise to support us. But we do have street cred and many hours of direct service. We really connect with the people that we serve.

Carol: What age groups are you working with?

Terri: At this point, we’re teaching everyone, including adult staff, teachers, and social workers in the institutions we serve. Our focus is addressing crisis and trauma. We have a training program that teaches the basic relationship between yoga and trauma, and how the practice can help manage and heal it.

We encourage our teachers to work where they’re most comfortable, where they have empathy and understanding. Some work well with little kids, others with teens and young adults. Often, people work best with those who have suffered from the same sorts of traumas they’ve experienced. So, for example, if you’ve lived with domestic violence, you might feel called to work with battered women.

Carol: Do you think those who haven’t personally experienced such trauma can teach those who have effectively?

Terri: Yes. Everybody needs to find their own balance. For me, this means learning more professional skills, like how to write a grant and build a board of directors. For someone from a more privileged background, it might mean learning to stop seeing yourself as separate from those that you serve.

Yoga enables us to experience connection, to realize that we’re all one. To be of service, you can’t come with a hierarchical point of view, like “I’m educated and I’m going to save you.” All that does is perpetuate the inequality that’s such a problem in the world.

To really be of service, you need to level out the playing field. You need to realize that you’re not saving anyone—if anything, your service is saving you. But wherever we’re starting from, we can all find that middle ground through real connection.

photo: Generic Brand Productions

Carol: What’s it like to do this work? Can you tell me a good story that provides a living example?

Terri: Sure! Here’s one of my favorite stories that really shows what this work is like:

I was working with young ladies in the Juvenile Hall in Miami.

I’d go every week, but only see the girls three or four times before they’d get transferred to a different facility. It was an institutional, impersonal setting. The students would come in to class wearing orange jumpsuits and handcuffs.

One day we were doing headstand. That pose can be dangerous, and as usual, I made sure that everyone made an agreement about what needed to happen to keep it safe.

There was one girl who was quite large—maybe two and a half times bigger than me, and I’m not small. I could see in her eyes that she really wanted to go up into headstand. But when she started to try it, she got freaked out: “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t!”

I came up to her and said, “If you want me to help you, I can.” She tried again, but the same thing happened—as soon as she started going up, she got really scared and stopped.

I got down on my knees next to her and looked into her eyes. “You don’t have to do this,” I said. “But if you want to—I’ve got you. I will not let you fall.”

And the way she looked back at me—I knew that no one had ever said something like that to her before in her life. I can only imagine the traumas she’d survived to land in jail at age 14.

I got her in a bear hug to support her. And she kicked up into Headstand. She started screaming and kicking. She was wild. But I held on. And she went up and came back down, just fine.

As soon as her feet hit the ground, she stood up, threw her arms up in the air, and started running around the jail, waving, hooting “Woooooooooo! Wooooooooo!” And there was an incredible feeling of joy—real joy, right there in the jail.

It was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. After class, when I got back in my car, I had to sit and cry it out for 20 minutes.

And I have so many stories like that. Sometimes, I work with kids with bullets still lodged in their bodies.

And at first, they refuse to do any yoga at all. So I’ll just start practicing – maybe stand on my head for 10 minutes. And the kids will come up, crowd around, get curious…“What’s she doing?” Pretty soon, they’re trying it themselves. And they love it.

Carol: I watched a great video on your website where you were talking to kids about yoga as a mind-body-spirit practice. Do you bring in the spiritual dimensions of yoga a lot? If so, is that a problem?

Yes, I’m a preacher girl all the time! I’m always talking to my students about yoga philosophy—the importance of non-attachment, letting go, cultivating gratitude, and creating the life of your dreams. I also teach them about using mantras.

I haven’t had any problems with being accused of teaching religion or anything like that. If anyone asks whether yoga is a religion, I explain that it’s a mind-body science. Plus, I think that the fact that Yoga Gangsters is so grounded keeps us from having those problems—because I know that many other people do. For example, I play a lot of hip hop in my classes, like Jay-Z and Eminem. Sure, I’ll also bring the energy down with more meditative music toward the end of class. But overall, it’s a very familiar, earthy vibe.

Carol: Tell us a little about the organizational structure of Yoga Gangsters. How many teachers and staff do you have?

Terri: Our Executive Director, Marisol Tamez, is our only paid employee. Marisol took us through the process to become a 501c3 (a legally recognized nonprofit). She manages our programs and volunteers, and helps with everything. Jodi Weiner, our Executive Project Manager, volunteers her time and is also crucial to the success of our organization

I volunteer for Yoga Gangsters about 20 hours a week, more when we’re really focused on fundraising. I teach one outreach class every week at Booker T. Washington High School in Overton, which is one of the most under-served schools in one of the impoverished cities in America. I also teach a three-day, 12-hour volunteer training program four times a year. Otherwise, I own a yoga studio, teach classes and run a 200-hour, Yoga Alliance certified, teacher training program.

Yoga Gangsters has 135 trained volunteers. We run six-week programs at institutions that want yoga; if it works well, we’ll renew the contract for another six weeks. We do a lot of one-day functions as well. This allows volunteers to work regularly or occasionally, as they wish.

I’m not sure of the exact figures, but I’d guess that 75 percent of our volunteers are yoga teachers. Others are parents, school teachers, guidance counselors and others who have taken our training. It’s only 12 hours and $200—we want to make it accessible. What makes a good teacher is being grounded, focused, centered and completely authentic—wherever you come from and whatever your background is, that’s all you need to be.

Carol: What are your biggest challenges in doing this work?

Terri: It’s difficult work. It’s beautiful and it’s worth it—but if you ask anyone engaged in yoga service, they’ll tell you that most of us are underpaid and overworked. After all these years running Yoga Gangsters, we still have very little money. Our operating budget last year was $40,000.

Plus, we’re working with people and organizations that are severely under-resourced themselves. Every time I build a relationship with a set of kids, something happens—a school closes or a program shuts down. Every time I build a relationship with someone in power, they move on.

I’ve tried to quit this project several times. But I always come back to it. What keeps me going is actually working with the kids. Every time I go and teach, I’m re-energized. That part of the work is easy—and incredibly rewarding. Teaching these kids gives me a reason to be excited to get up every morning, no matter what.

Yoga Gangsters is proud to be a charity partner of Yoga Aid USA. You can support Yoga Gangsters by making a financial contribution, buying a cool T or hoodie, or (if you’re in the Miami area) volunteering to teach by clicking here. Terri Cooper is available to lead their 12-hour, three day teacher training workshop nationwide. For more information, you can e-mail her directly at terri@305yoga.com.

Originally posted on Elephant Journal.

If 2012 hasn’t brought the end of the world as many had feared, it has upset the equilibrium of the North American yoga community in ways no one expected.

Divisions fueled by tabloid-worthy scandals, sex-saturated commercialism, and charges of rampant asana-induced injuries have rocked the yoga world—and the year isn’t even half over yet.

Even as the forces fueling these troubles were escalating, however, a counter-movement has been quieting brewing. Across North America, men and women whose lives were transformed by yoga have been working to create new methods and organizations capable of sharing the practice with others who wouldn’t otherwise be able to access it. Last weekend, many of the leaders of this new movement came together for the first-ever Yoga Service Council (YSC) Conference at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York.

The primary purpose of the YSC Conference was to forge connections, and exchange ideas and information among practitioners committed to bringing yoga to under-served populations including abused women, prisoners, at-risk children and youth, veterans, cancer patients, and the homeless. Beyond these very pragmatic ends, however, was a more ambitious vision: one of harnessing yoga to a mindfulness revolution capable of transforming our dysfunctional society.

As such, the import of the YSC conference extends beyond those called to teach under-served communities. Many practitioners have become disillusioned with the excessively commercial, body-centric, individualistic, celebrity-driven culture that’s come to dominate contemporary yoga. There’s a growing hunger for greater meaning, authenticity and community. The Yoga Service Council represents the most important institutional vehicle capable of driving a new movement that speaks to these values forward. As such, it’s relevant to anyone who cares about the future of American yoga.

Authenticity and Connection

“What’s the single most important thing we need when we’re born?”

Dr. Gabor Mate

One of the Conference’s featured speakers, Dr. Gabor Maté, is a Hungarian-born doctor who works with addicts in Vancouver’s notorious Skid Row, described in one newspaper account as “15 square blocks of despair, squalid rooming houses and alleys populated by thousands of addicts, the homeless, the mentally ill and the drug dealers who prey on them.”

(Other speakers included Beryl Bender Birch, Sue Jones, B. K. Bose, Seane Corn and Kelly McGonigal; still other YSC leaders participated in several panel discussions.) Gaunt, weathered, and striking, Maté possessed a strangely magnetic presence.

A few in the audience called back answers to his question. What is the most important thing that we need? Food? No. Shelter? No. Love? Essentially, yes. But life being what it is, we’ll work with what developmental psychologists call “attachment”: that is, a sense of personal connection to at least one primary caregiver. Such interpersonal connection is vital: if babies are given adequate food and shelter, but left alone and disconnected, they will develop severe developmental dysfunction or even die.

“And what’s our second more important need?” This time, no one could guess. Maté’s anwer? “Authenticity.”

“Being seen for who we really are,” he explained, is not just a nice fluffy notion—it’s actually crucial to healthy human development. But what happens when parents are too stressed, depressed, blocked or otherwise unable to recognize their children’s authentic selves? Put differently, how do children respond when being authentic threatens their primary attachments?

Because attachment is primary for the child’s survival—after all, no baby can feed him or herself—the authentic self will be suppressed as necessary to maintain the attachment. Consequently, the child will develop compensatory and defensive structures that solidify into the “personality” that he or she presents to the world. As a physician, Maté believes that this suppression of authenticity creates endemic stress, which eventually manifests as illness or seeks outlets such as addiction. Conversely, connecting to the authentic self releases stress and supports wellness.

While Maté is by his own admission not much of a “yoga person,” his presentation nonetheless encapsulated a central theme informing the YSC conference, one that can be summed up in a simple equation:

Connection + Authenticity = Transformation.

More than Asana

“What’s the commonality that connects all the different methods of yoga we’re doing—the single most important element that makes it work?”

B. K. Bose

B. K. Bose, founder and Executive Director of the Niroga Institute, was another intense, captivating, and inspiring speaker. His presence conveyed a deep sense of urgency about the need to share the transformative power of yoga with the socially marginalized and dis-empowered. This urgency, however, was notably tempered by an equally deep commitment to maintaining the patience and trust necessary to pursue this work in a mindful and holistic way.

Tellingly, it only took a few moments for B.K., his fellow panelists, and the rest of the audience to come to agreement: the key method of yoga is connecting body and mind through breath. “The breath is the crown jewel of this practice,” Bose insisted. Why? Working the breath mindfully, and synching breath with movement, sparks a process of self-integration. And as we integrate our selves, we find authenticity. And as we connect to the truth of our being, we transform.

“We Are One”

Talk of transformation is common in the yoga community. Too often, however, “transformation” is taken to mean that life has magically shifted into a state where you can stay safe, shiny, happy and bubbly all the time. But that’s not real. It can’t be, because that’s not how life is.

Connecting to our authentic selves requires connecting to our own suffering. This, in turn, opens our hearts in ways that connect us to the suffering of others. This would be unbearable except for the fact that as our hearts open, they become bigger, fuller, and stronger. Transformation fueled by authentic connection creates the heart capacity necessary to hold the suffering of our selves and our world.

Seane Corn

The YSC Conference was filled with people doing this work. Some shared dramatic stories of how yoga saved them from depression, domestic violence, drug addiction, or prostitution, testifying that connecting to their authentic selves through yoga saved their lives. Others simply felt called to serve. But whatever the individual story, there was a shared sense that meaningful transformation is never simply “all about me.”

“I laugh when people tell me that they admire me for doing selfless service,” confessed Seane Corn, co-founder of Off the Mat and Into the World. “Because I never experience Seva, or yoga service work, as ‘selfless.’ On the contrary, the gifts that I receive through service are infinitely richer than anything that I could possibly give.”

Seane led an asana class filled with impromptu prayers. As we moved, breathed, and connected with our selves and each other, voices called out to include those that their hearts had broken open to love. From the shattered woman prostituting herself for drugs on the street corner, to those of us blessed to have the time and space to practice yoga together, to the “one percent” that we may protest against for misusing their societal power—“We Are One,” Seane reminded us.

The sun streamed in through the windows and the green beauty of the Omega campus was watered with joy and tears.

Broken Systems

“The U.S. can’t afford to keep having one in three adults under correctional supervision. The ‘prison-industrial complex’ will change, I believe, not for humanitarian reasons, but out of economic necessity.”

James Fox, founder and Director of the Prison Yoga Project, teaches yoga full-time at California’s San Quentin prison. Fox is straightforward in pointing out the profound dysfunction of some of our most important social institutions. “We’re wasting $63 billion a year on a broken prison system, $10 billion of that in California alone,” he reports. Sixty percent of released prisoners return within three years.

Mary Lynn Fitton

And because the system is dedicated to “retribution, not rehabilitation,” most of the men caught up in it wind up having their destructive patterns of violence, addiction and emotional disassociation reinforced, rather than addressed.

Meanwhile, the women generally stayed trapped in what Mary Lynn Fitton, founder and Director of the Art of Yoga Project, describes as “a cycle of victimization.” Endemic problems including childhood abuse, domestic violence, and sexual exploitation produce epidemics of anxiety, depression, prostitution, and addiction.

And given that 75 percent of women in prison are parents (two-thirds with children under 18), their skyrocketing rates of incarceration are immediately impacting the next generation, separating over a quarter-million children from their mothers.

Without intervention, these destructive cycles will continue to multiply exponentially—just as they have been doing for the past several decades. (Nationally, there are now nearly seven times as many women in prison as there were in 1980.) While yoga can’t save the world, it can serve as a crucial element of a larger “mindfulness revolution” that combines forces with other modalities of positive social engagement to heal our people and reshape our society.

A Mindfulness Revolution

“We saw that a lot of leading yoga teachers were unhappy about how shallowly commercial the field was becoming. But because they were so busy and isolated—rushing in and out to teach their workshops—they didn’t know what to do about it.” – Traci Childress, Omega Institute

The story of how the Yoga Service Council came to be is instructive. As Traci Childress, Yoga Program Coordinator at the Omega Institute, explained, the Institute recognized that more and more of the teachers they were bringing in felt disturbed by the current direction of American yoga. Omega leaders decided to respond by literally providing a core group of these teachers with time and space to connect—a free week together at Omega’s Rhinebeck campus.

Courtesy of Omega Institute for Holistic Studies, Rhinebeck, NY. eOmega.org

The first meeting occurred in 2009, and resulted in YSC’s formation. An annual retreat has occurred every year since. Last weekend’s inaugural YSC Conference was the direct result of this process of open-ended, but dedicated and creative connection.

What would happen if everyone who’d like to see American yoga move in a more socially engaged direction did the same? Being of service doesn’t necessarily mean teaching yoga in prison—or even teaching yoga at all.

There are as many meaningful ways to be of service as there are individuals. Finding what’s right for each of us, however, requires connecting to our authentic selves—and realizing that as we connect to our selves, we open up to the interconnectedness of the entire world.

A mindfulness revolution requires waking up to the beauty and pain of what is, and having the strength of heart and mind to embrace it all with compassion. Yoga is not the only tool that can help with this—but it is one important modality with huge, and still largely untapped potential. As our planet heats up, and streets around the world throb with protest, it’s time to step up our practice. Through connecting to our selves and each other authentically, we put our shoulders to the karmic wheel and contribute to the positive transformation of our troubled world.

The next Yoga Service Council Conference will be held at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York, June 7-9, 2013. To see last weekend’s program, click here. To join the Yoga Service Council, click here. To get on the Omega Institute’s e-mail list, click here.

Originally posted on Elephant Journal.