is the current yoga fad akin to the spiritualism of the 19th century?

core demo of middle-upper class white ladies, kind of lacking historical context, drawn from hinduism, fringy and without canonical text, adherents from all walks of life, money-making, bit judgy?

nah

if so, who is the madame blavatsky of yoga? are are wheatgrass shakes the laudenum enemas of our time?

http://www.lululemon.com/community/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/IMG_0026.jpg

http://trustearthpulse.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/fox_sisters_18521.jpg

https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/533678_461607697218041_2035907017_n.jpg

"follow bliss"

the idea of doing something simple and relaxing in a group is a winner. the specifics of yoga, not so much.

Did theosophy, anthroposophy, etc., have as many tangible payoffs as yoga? Not even getting into "health benefits" here although I suspect that medical literature will bear out that yoga is probably basically good for you...just that it feels good to do it, and yeah, is simple and relaxing and you can do it in a group. But basically its appeal can be understood on a pretty basic level, most of its practitioners will tell you they feel good after they do it. I guess the thread question has to do with associated mysticism and Deep Wisdom but that was never a big deal in the few yoga classes I went to back in the day, nor with most of the people I know who own a yoga mat. I'm sure it is for some people but the more it becomes a mass activity, I would expect the percentage of those people to shrink not to grow.

this book has yr answers & a lot of info on C19th indian nationalist thought:

http://i151.photobucket.com/albums/s156/pustakalaya/white_yogis.jpg

fringy? did terry bradshaw start this thread?

haha also what kind of weirdo chooses their gym activity on whether it 'lacks historical context'? BIT JUDGY. not sure how much you can use 'of our time' for something that's been pretty dully mainstream for twenty years.

Spiritualism Man Roll Call

Yeah, I've been kind of out of the loop on some stuff so I sorta figured the OP referred to some actual fad - has yoga been getting huge(r) of late than it has been for forever? It's been ubiquitous as an offering at the Y for ages, right? Is there a Drake/Bieber collabo celebrating it or something?

lol @ "lacking historical context" & "lacking canonical text," Patanjali might have something to say about that. lot of really dumb assumptions & defensive biases in that opening post imo.

THAT SAID, there's an aspect of yoga as it got adopted in the west that's kind of classically American. Yoga is about union with God. That is the point. You assume these postures that are a sort of way of directing your attention to God - all activity is supposed to be directed toward God. In Western yoga, this becomes more of a "have an intention for the highest good in your practice" kinda deal - the author/s of the Yoga Sutras were more concerned with practices that he/they believed would bring them to knowledge of Godhead. This is all post-Vivekananda stuff though, and there's a lot to say about that. But seriously - "core demo of middle-upper class white ladies" - can we occasionally give that a rest, maybe, idk

i kinda wish i could actually find a hippied out yoga class w/ some hairy motherfuckers tapping into the universe by stretching and listening to ash ra tempel. maybe their yoga mats are flying carpets like benny mardones. instead it's just some women unwinding at the y after work by hold fuck stances and listening to kt tunstall. which i'm not judging since i'm down the hall "lifting" weights and listening to fantasy football podcasts on my phone. historical context nowhere to be found. ain't that america, little pink houses, etc. THAT SAID the two things i can remember really taking to heart from this book on disaster preparation are 1) fire drills are essential and 2) yoga has a ridiculously beneficial effect on the heart and mind when it comes to dealing w/ stress and crisis situations.

did spiritualism get u ripped n sexy

http://wac.450f.edgecastcdn.net/80450F/popcrush.com/files/2012/04/StevenTyler.jpg?w=625&h=0&zc=1&s=0&a=t&q=89 + http://blogs.houstonpress.com/rocks/Aerosmith%20-%20Nine%20Lives%20mar2.jpg = http://ll-media.tmz.com/2012/01/02/0102-steven-tyler-pcn-1.jpg

why is this happening

yoga

i'm on a flying carpet...BENNY MARDONES

i kinda wish i could actually find a hippied out yoga class w/ some hairy motherfuckers tapping into the universe by stretching and listening to ash ra tempel.
kinda? totally. where are these people. 12 years ago or so we used to listen to david parsons in my yoga class, that wasn't so bad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9cbf4_eO28&feature=related

without canonical text

already stated, but this ^ is just dumb

dunno about 'current yoga fad' but

1) i just finished reading "murder in the yoga store" and it was pretty entertaining. my favorite parts were the dry descriptions of bethesda yoga lady life

2) my yoga practice (which had been more or less dormant for 10 years) has recently been reinvigorated by one thing: listening to whatever i want while i stretch. it's great!

ilx is so boring lately that this has become a suitable topic for discussion
yoga

There was an article recently that talked about how yoga as exercise is a very recent invention. The poses themselves are old, but traditionally a yogi would hold one pose for a very long length of time as a type of meditation. The idea of moving through a bunch of poses quickly as a form of exercise is apparently a 20th century invention.

I want so much to do "yoga" but I just end up stretching and exercising rather than meditating, breathing, concentrating on breathing and my mind is filled with thoughts, lots of thoughts.

i practice what i refer to as "yoga of the mind"

i am a master

how did i know that would be an actual thing

funny was just reading about Foucault concept of "biopower" and I'll be damned in yoga (which I sometimes practice) doesn't fit perfectly into a form of control/commodification of "mindfulness" or "self-care"--even that's gonna be regimented, programmed, even ritualized.

in that vein, dogen's description of meditation as "sitting uselessly doing nothing" is still the best and I recommend doing it as much as possible, even more than yoga.

i'm tryin

brother

trying to decide whether yoga studios or pet spas will be the first to go when the economy crashes again -- there are way too many of these atm where i live

There was an article recently that talked about how yoga as exercise is a very recent invention. The poses themselves are old, but traditionally a yogi would hold one pose for a very long length of time as a type of meditation. The idea of moving through a bunch of poses quickly as a form of exercise is apparently a 20th century invention.

― o. nate, Thursday, March 20, 2014 5:42 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Forms of exercise that are less than a century old are clearly inauthentic and therefore stupid to practice. I only do ancient exercise.

like battling and stuff

pillage

tilling of the field

?

you joke but I can easily see those things becoming forms of "exercise." like a "introduction to broadsword swinging" class.

WOODCHOPPIN

which my dad used to do

Fashion witches.

like a "introduction to broadsword swinging" class.

I personally know at least one person who teaches live steel but only nerds and LARPers train in it iirc. Also they all have arthritis in/by their late 20s so maybe not the new age yuppie fitness craze then.

Yeah there is definitely something to be said for hipsterization of New Age ideas, occult stuff being cherry-picked for album covers and promo videos, art shows full of pyramids and third eyes, vegan fascism, green snobbery, etc. Lots of 'spiritual' people who treat each other like props and don't do anything that doesn't directly benefit themselves. Self-styled gurus who can list off the colors of the chakras but damned if they can list a reason of living or taking care of your fellow man. Also, laughing at the Bible while completely missing that it points to the source of lots of occult knowledge and if you were really interested in magic you would be less of a narcissistic prick.

I'm sure lots of people were sick of this stuff in the 60's, and I'm sure this is why genuinely radical people hated hippies from the get-go.

It's funny to get into discussions w people who are enthralled with the meaning of whatever drug trips they can recall, yet laugh off any concepts of infinity or eternal life or God. They have already found God, and he is in drugs, and he lives where the sun don't shine.

ha yoga was just mentioned in this book on Foucault im reading (while, uh, checking ilx).

I'm sort of a believer in the whole California, esalen, new age hippie stuff--in that I tend to see what's good about it apart from the obvious bullshit. to borrow a foucaultian theme there's "authentic" yearning/resistance there alongside its co-option.

Recently a COSMICALLY AWARE individual, through sheer neglect, let an indoor cat out of a house. The cat's leg was torn to pieces and required a $500 operation. Said cosmic individual didn't contribute a dime, and despite being told multiple times to STAY ALERT, soon let the cat outside again. In the end he pulled the victim card, making the cat's owner apologize to him for (understandably) yelling at him, and suggested we keep the cat ON A LEASH. Real cosmic, dude.

that person needs a cosmic awareness awareness seminar

also who needs yoga studios when there are flat spaces all around us

but hardly any of those spaces have mats

Yoga itself is fine, i have no prob w it. There's plenty of routines on youtube. I do a neck/shoulder one a couple times a week cos I'm on the computer all the time, and stretching out your neck feels AMAZING when done properly.

xp - you place your own mat in the space, then you use it to stretch your body.

one of my favorite stretches is the one where i have my palm up and facing out, and i can feel all the little tendons and whatever stretch up to my neck. i don't remember the names of any of the poses either, i just do the ones i like/feel like i need. forward bends are all time favorite though.

http://www.cnyhealingarts.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/childspose.jpg

^This is a classic, feels extra good on sore shoulders.

On a side note, I think it's pretty cool we are the point where even southern baptist churches have yoga nights.

http://www.cnyhealingarts.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/childspose.jpg

That one is soooo key for lower back, you have to let yourself get deep into the breathing and stay in it for a minute.

this one is my current fave
https://yogainternational.com/assets/content/articles/Y162_5F.jpg

i guess this makes me a yoga bitch but i'm not really that "into" yoga and also i am not a bitch

minus that thing she has between her knees
what's that?

It's a block, to keep the legs angling straight from the hips instead of pressing the knees together. I'm not sure why but it probably changes what parts of the torso are engaged. My PT called those "bridges" and made me put a rubber ball between my knees.

Oh yeah that one is good for bringing fresh blood to the heart!

xpost

super into this one too (shoulder stand, iirc)
http://goodtoknow.media.ipcdigital.co.uk/111/000003a33/286e_orh100000w614/yoga-positions-shoulderstand.jpg

mine doesn't look like that though

I do bridges for hip strengthening.

frrrrresssssh bloooooooooood

I do that vertical shoulder stand but I have no idea if it's close to that, but it works for me. Better to not hurt yourself than do 'correct' poses.

Be careful with the shoulder stand, because as you can see from that picture, it can put your neck in a very bad position.

Yeah that is a lot of pressure to put above your neck, you are kind of toying w gravity.

that's true -- i never push it with that one (or any pose really) but it feels so good
you can also pretend you are synchronized swimming and do some leg moves if you want

So I started this thread a couple of years back at around (0,0) on the droll/troll chart, trying to glib it up and provoke a little inane chatter. Neener-neenering is a dumb way to begin a discussion, but I'm sort of glad the topic rolled back around.

Now, I'm sorta intersted in this whole dealie on account of my own socially conservative dad's Ayuvervedic fascination ca. '88. He got on the yoga tip around then, going to class each night with his guru and basically lived out the first half of the Arsenio Hall era on yogic discipline and dosa slathered in hand-mashed peanut butter with little slices of tofu perched daintily atop. My WASP pop's yoga, a second-wind Colorado commune-outreach type of schtick, was a relatively rigorous white American appropriation of what was then a kind of '70s hangover yoga tradition. It involved a lot of tanktops with yellow sweat-rings, guest lectures at the VFW from visiting Ramayana scholars, and church-basement sessions on proper lentil-burger forming technique. It was embarrassing, super stodgy, a white-crew-sock and sweat band the kind of cultural appropriation that would send E. Said spinning in circles. And then... what happened? Like a lot of yoga collectives (groups? pods?) my dad's crew dissipated, and I wasn't aware of yoga as a cultural force again until the mid-'00s, when suddenly this thing reappeared as a sexy-sport/lifestyle w/ very, very different significatory powers than it had when I'd last seen it. But maybe it's just /my exposure/ that was limited for a decade from the mid '90s?

When I spoke, in the thread's opening salvo , about this current yoga phase 'lacking historical context,' I was intending to speak to the mushroom-after-rainstorm proliferation of yoga studios and tea centers and whatnot that were then appearing in strip malls around my neighborhood. They lacked historical roots w/in the community; they just sort of sprung up from nowhere. The historical context of yoga is obv. beyond questioning. FWIW, I've noticed recently the whole yoga lifestyle/'balanced' yummy mommy signifier craze seems to have died down a little, at least in these parts. To my eyes. Quite a few 'for rent' signs in the studios, these days.

To answer the thread question, I'd say yes it probably is quite like it. In terms of WASPs grappling somewhat blindly onto an ancient tradition, that seems to have been a big thing back in the Spiritualist days as well. Many people were denounced as charlatans. Houdini himself was famously addicted to debunking spiritualists. Since there was a large market for swindlers it stands to reason there was great demand for 'Orientalist'/'Esoteric Buddhist' exorcized stuff. This is glamorized cultural appropriation, and it was a big fad among the well-to-do in turn of the century urbanized cities. 19th century aristocrats.

At any rate, yoga (the yoga as popularized in the west) is based on source material that is foundationally very strong and has zero learning curve. It provides benefits for anyone who uses it regardless of what they think of the tradition. Yoga is sort of a science and practicing it teaches you to be a scientist of your own body. Yoga is a tool - like a hammer or a hacksaw, it produces results. The yoga practitioner needs no equipment other than their own body. Tapping the table requires a tableset, a whole party of people, some candelabras, etc., etc. As long as you are doing the correct postures, have attentive breathing, and aren't robbing someone behind their back (which should be a given anyways) then yoga on!

Yoga is great because if you want to, you can dive in and start reading and come upon a vast tradition of poetic, philosophical, mythical, and scientific writings that are some of the oldest and greatest in the world, or you can just do it for an hour after work once a week.

I think fads like Punk Rock Yoga and stuff would totally make some ancient yogic master grin the biggest grin if he saw it from on a mountaintop in Tibet.

The 'without canonical text' thing is false, tho. The earliest written works for Hatha Yoga are around 1000 years old, and the spoken traditions are supposedly older than the universe itself.

i want to know what this book is about foucault that mentions yoga. been thinking i never got around to reading vol. 3 on care of the self & should have

i've gotten weird headachey feelings a few times the day after a class w/shoulder stand. i don't think my form is bad, i'm not pushing it or anything. wondering if i should just not do it at all any more, which i'm fine with.. but sometimes feel this weird peer pressure when other people are doing headstands and w/e

Yeah i don't do them very often.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0b/Swami_Vivekananda-1893-09-signed.jpg/225px-Swami_Vivekananda-1893-09-signed.jpg

This is "The first Hindu teacher to actively advocate and disseminate aspects of yoga to a western audience", Swami Vivekananda.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoga#Reception_in_the_West

It was a combination of him, New England Transcendentalists, and German Romanticism.

I think the psychedelic 60's was instrumental in creating the current situation. Not just the Beatles' guru but lots of teachers from India planted roots globally, which flowered in the small business climate of the 70s New Age Industry. Then in the 80s when everyone that had settled down w families you get weekend/after work yoga for the working parent. Since then it continues to flower, in lots of different fragments of the Yoga idea. Which is kind of part of the point of yoga, I bet.

i've gotten weird headachey feelings a few times the day after a class w/shoulder stand.

One of the common modifications is to lay a blanket, folded up a few times, on the ground and do the pose on it so that your shoulders and neck are cushioned -- that way, you aren't pinching nerves or blood vessels as badly as you might on a harder surface. Dunno if that'll help you or if you already do that, though, but just throwing that out there! Caveats are that I don't really know what I'm talking about.

but sometimes feel this weird peer pressure when other people are doing headstands and w/e

Absolutely, this mindset is something I don't think I'll ever fully be able to relinquish.

I relinquished it by only doing yoga solo in my basement to the musical accompaniment of my choice and let me tell you -- it has completely changed the way I feel about doing yoga.

re: using a blanket for modification, that's what i did last time, still had the weird head/neck pain the next day unfortunately. i worry about it too which doesn't help. i also wonder sometimes if everyone else in class has constant little aches and pains from practicing a lot

'spiritual' people who treat each other like props and don't do anything that doesn't directly benefit themselves
i could see how some of this could.. exacerbate tendencies to be over dramatic and self absorbed and take yourself too seriously.. like sometimes i hear pseudoscience advice about nutrition/medicine, 'spiritual' stuff that is just kind of vague platitudes.. teachers who try to convince you that being able to do a difficult arm balance or inversion (of which i can do none, oh well) is just a matter of whether you BELIEVE (as opposed to.. strength, practice, correct form). someone just recommended me a homeopathic remedy for one of these recent little aches and pains & i didn't want to be rude but..

I relinquished it by only doing yoga solo in my basement to the musical accompaniment of my choice and let me tell you -- it has completely changed the way I feel about doing yoga.

Mind kinda blown. That's awesome. Unfortunately, I don't like yoga enough to practice on my own, though I'm perfectly willing to pay to go to a studio!

re: using a blanket for modification, that's what i did last time, still had the weird head/neck pain the next day unfortunately. i worry about it too which doesn't help. i also wonder sometimes if everyone else in class has constant little aches and pains from practicing a lot

Dang! Have you asked the instructor for ideas? But yeah, this pose may be one to avoid -- and don't worry, I actually kind of admire people in class who know their bodies and which poses they opt out of. And yes, I do have a lingering yoga-caused injury that flares up if I do too much of it.

Yoga is great because if you want to, you can dive in and start reading and come upon a vast tradition of poetic, philosophical, mythical, and scientific writings that are some of the oldest and greatest in the world, or you can just do it for an hour after work once a week.

― ▴▲ ▴TH3CR()$BY$H()W▴▲ ▴ (Adam Bruneau), Thursday, March 20, 2014 11:25 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm. i've practiced yoga with some regularity for probably the past 12 years, i think was around 18 years old when i first started. i've never really dug too deep into the sprituality behind it and i don't feel like i totally need to in order to reap benefits. the intensity of my practice has evolved a lot, at its physical peak i was doing a two-hour ashtanga practice every morning but i had few responsibilities then, it was definitely a luxury to be able to do that in a mysore-style class. i don't have the time or the money to do that again but even a 30-45 minute practice is kind of a miracle for my physical and mental well-being. i just kind of view it as a way to open up my body and lungs and quiet my mind a little. just to get some space in my life.

and as a western "fad" i think it's going to be here for a while -- as others have said it has almost no learning curve, provides benefits regardless of the intensity with which you practice it, and you can practice in a class or do it at home on your own. and really it's been in the u.s. for a while now, half a century. even the studio-on-every-corner yoga explosion has been around for almost two decades.

also i've never really enjoyed it that much going to studio classes. i learned it one-on-one from my brother and have pretty much exclusively practiced on my own, except for that time i was going to ashtanga mysore-style classes (in which you essentially practice on your own in a group setting).

doing someone else's routine can be fun and push you to learn new poses and explore challenging ones but every time i've gone, i've always wanted to linger more in a given pose, or have gotten annoyed with a given sequence, or gotten super fucking irritated with the choice of music. i almost always prefer no music, unless i'm at home and i might but on something droney and spacious and open (like from this guy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zia_Mohiuddin_Dagar)

though i can totally get behind this:

I relinquished it by only doing yoga solo in my basement to the musical accompaniment of my choice and let me tell you -- it has completely changed the way I feel about doing yoga.

― we slowly invented brains (La Lechera), Friday, March 21, 2014 1:01 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Oh I need to do Flying Saucer Attack yoga sometime.