For about $15 or $20, anybody can sign up for a yoga class, and spend 60-90 minutes bending, twisting, and sometimes chanting.
Some like it; some don’t. For some, it’s exercise. For others, the exercise is a prelude to meditation, and perhaps even part of a voyage of self-discovery or a spiritual search. I’ve practiced yoga for 10 years, and I’m pretty sure I figured this out after my first few classes. It’s not that complicated.
For the New York Times, however, yoga seems to be something of an occult art, riddled with danger and badly contaminated by greed and corruption, more about fashion and fads than fitness.
On Sunday, July 25th, the Times carried no fewer than three articles on yoga–one in the Sunday Book Review, one in the Sunday magazine, and another in the metro section.
The most egregious of them was the piece in the book review, by Pankaj Mishra, entitled “Posing as Fitness.” That was supposed to be a play on words, I guess–in yoga, the various “asanas” or positions are referred to as poses. But its literal meaning seems to be that yoga only “poses” as a form of fitness-but isn’t one. Before we’ve started the piece, we can see where this is headed.
Mishra starts with an anecdote about Sting (not sure why this Brit is relevant to the history of yoga in America), who claimed yoga had enabled him to have sex with his wife for eight hours at a time. If that sounds like a criticism of yoga, or of the pop stars who’ve embraced it–it isn’t. It was a joke. Sting’s joke, which Mishra briefly pretended to take seriously to make yoga look silly.
Then he goes on to quote “one of the first of many indefatigable charlatans who popularized yoga” in the United States. (He never identifies the others.) This character, named Bernard, apparently promoted yoga–nearly a hundred years ago–as a way to increase sexual prowess and to “make better bargains.” As if yoga could make Donald Trumps of us all. And as if it were snake oil. All of this is by inuendo, of course; Mishra cites no evidence, pro or con, on the physical or other possible benefits of, or harm from, yoga.
He continues for more than half of the review to elaborate on Bernard’s extravagances, including bilking the rich. Is this early 20th century faker really the central figure in the history of yoga in America?
Mishra’s encapsulated history then moves to “fiercely entrepreneurial Indian gurus” who showed up in America “just in time for the counterculture” and who were later “outed as lecherous frauds and crooks.”
He concludes, coming around to sex again, by saying that for many practitioners, deeper orgasms may be more feasible than spiritual transcendence.
I have no idea what Mishra is trying to say about yoga’s history, but he clearly hates yoga, thinks the people who practice it are victims of fraud and lecherous gurus, and does–or doesn’t–believe it has something to do with titanic sexual accomplishments. I can’t tell.
In the Sunday magazine, Mimi Swartz profiles a contemporary yoga entrepreneur, John Friend, the developer of what he calls Anusara yoga. “Many people still picture yogis as serene guys who live in respectable deprivation in places like Mysore or Pune, India, and wait for disciples to find them. Not Friend,” Swartz writes. How many people picture yogis that way? Did Swartz interview any? I picture yogis as people walking down the street in New York City with yoga mats sticking out of their backpacks. But you can see the straw man Swartz is trying to knock down: How can an entrepreneur like Friend be a real yogi, if yogis are supposed to be starving in Mysore?
She compares Friend to a “magnetic evangelical megachurch minister” with a “feel-good message.” Swartz, apparently unable to find somebody to say that Friend has watered down yoga for personal gain–which must be what she believes–instead writes this: “Friend’s detractors — and there are at least as many as admirers — claim that he has watered down and commercialized a hallowed tradition for his own gain.” Quotes, anyone? If there are so many detractors, why doesn’t she quote a few of them here?
The third piece, in the metro section, was by Lizette Alvarez, who does a monthly column on yoga for the Times. This piece is about how dangerous yoga can be in causing injuries. The title is “When Yoga Hurts.”
Ready for the list of injuries? One woman says her thumbs were adjusted by her yoga teacher, and she’s “still recovering from the strain.” Another “injured her rotator cuff.” And in a separate incident, she did something from which “her hamstring suffered the consequences.”
C’mon, if you’re going to do a story on yoga injuries, can’t you at least find a broken bone? Alvarez writes that yoga can lead to “strained backs,” “pulled knees” (what the heck is a pulled knee?), and “aching wrists.” Compare those to, say, bicycle injuries, which can include not only broken bones, but concussion and death. Or soccer injuries. Or football.
I recognize that I’m probably making too much out of these molehills. But the Times, whenever it encounters yoga, seems ready to pounce on the entrepreneur-charlatan, or the spiritually inclined numbskull, or the 20-something fashion victim.
Lighten up, Times. It’s exercise. Some people like it, some don’t. Some add a spiritual dimension, some don’t. Why does it frighten you so?
– Paul Raeburn
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