Americanized Yoga

Continued from page 3

• Introduction
• Yoginis in Bikinis?
• Asana Rules!
• East Meets West
• Everyday Yogis

East Meets West
But in the first decades of the 20th century, several pioneering Indians--working independently in different parts of their country--began delving into the practices of hatha yoga and introducing them to a lay audience. Sri Krishnamacharya in Mysore, Swami Sivananda in Rishikesh, Sri Yogendra in Bombay, and Swami Kuvalyananda in Lonavala were 20th-century visionaries who shared an openness to Western science and medicine in addition to their profound knowledge of traditional Indian philosophy, medicine, and spirituality--and, most of all, an interest in hatha yoga as a tool for health of body and mind, and as a vehicle for transmitting the teachings of yoga philosophy to a broad audience.

These pioneers resurrected obscure texts, sought out adepts in remote ashrams, and modified and modernized traditional practices to suit a broad audience. To the horror of their more conservative peers, they began teaching hatha yoga to the general public, including groups that had long been excluded from yogic practices, such as women and foreigners.

These first popularizers of yoga made only tiny inroads into Indian society. But their students included such luminaries as B.K.S. Iyengar,
K. Pattabhi Jois (founder of the popular Ashtanga Yoga system), Swami Satchidananda (of Woodstock fame), and Swami Vishnu-devananda (whose Sivananda Yoga ashrams now dot the globe). Those teachers caught the attention of the blossoming Western counterculture and went on to found yoga empires in the West. Most of the hatha yoga that is practiced in the West today was brought here by the students of those Indian pioneers.

It's not surprising that hatha yoga has become so popular in the West. We're a culture that's obsessed with the body--and paradoxically, sadly out of touch with it. Hatha yoga taps into our lust for physical perfection, but at the same time, it gives us a feeling of connection and peace with our bodies that we've yearned for, even if only unconsciously.

"I am concerned that we are getting very focused on sweat and perfection and muscle," says Lilias Folan, who helped spread the gospel of hatha yoga to a wide audience back in the '60s through her pioneering PBS show. "I respect that approach, but my concern is that we're getting away from the wonder and spirit of this great tradition."

At the same time, most senior yoga teachers feel that America's love affair with yoga goes deeper than just the poses. "People who come here don't only want to get into their bodies--they want to get into their bodies so they can get connected with the meaning and purpose of their lives," says Stephen Cope, scholar in residence at the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health and author of "Yoga and the Quest for the True Self."

"We attract two major categories of people," Cope continues. "One is the middle-aged 40- to 60-somethings dealing with disillusionment about what our culture holds up as the goals of life--money, status, achievement. The other is the younger 20-somethings looking for something solid to base their lives on."

That's not to say that most Americans come to yoga--or stick with it--out of a yearning for spiritual awakening. For most people, it starts simply as this: Yoga makes us feel good, and we like to feel good. And if it makes us look good, too, so much the better.

We may have become more fit, healthy, and calm, but we discover that mastering Lotus doesn't necessarily save our marriage. We notice that doing yoga doesn't mean that we won't ever get sick and die. We may even find that our yoga practice makes us more sensitive to our inner experiences.

And so we start looking to our yoga to give us something other than perfect bodies and charmed lives: an ability to meet whatever is true in our bodies--and our lives--with grace and awareness and compassion. If you look closely at the serious yoga practitioner--the person who does it on a regular basis for more than a year or so--you'll often find that asana has not become an end in itself but the medium through which he or she begins to explore other yogic teachings. The poses, used appropriately, can be paths that lead us deeper into the true Self--and that, after all, is what yoga has always been about.

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