SIMON HUNT | SAMA FABIAN

Yoga tarts – a modern yoga phenomenon?

By Yogilea (Dr Lea brindle)

Are you a yoga Tart? Do you know anyone who may be? If you like you can try the short quiz below. It’s a bit of a laugh really, but we hope to raise awareness of some more serious issues about contemporary yoga practice.

Quiz: ARE YOU A YOGA TART?

Do you live and attend classes in or close to London or a big city? Y N

Is your main motivation to maintain your body and health? Y N

Do you think studio classes such as Body Balance & Pilates on a par with yoga? Y N

Do you often look around at other students during classes? Y N

Do you often look at yourself in the mirror during classes? Y N

Is this your primary aim to keep young & beautiful (be honest!)? Y N

Do you think the mental and spiritual aspects of yoga are not so important? Y N

Do you attend several classes a week/month? Y N

Is the time of your class as important as the teacher who it taking it? Y N

Do you have more than one main yoga teacher? Y N

Do you practice different yoga styles (e.g. Astanga, Iyengar, Sivananda, etc.)? Y N

If you answered yes to five or more than questions the chance is that you are (or are in danger of becoming) a yoga tart! Y N

A yoga tart flits about from one class to another, compares and contrasts, possibly gossips about teachers and probably has a low boredom threshold and even some, more deep-rooted commitment issues. They seem to know a little about a lot of yoga or possibly a lot about not very much! You sometimes notice them apparently “doing their own thing” in classes because they have an idea in their heads (from another teacher/class/situation) that they are clinging to so that they either do not hear or respond to the teacher’s direction (or the intuition of their own bodies).

You may have witnessed the blatant yoga flirt who moves frequently between teachers and styles, and who is so transparently promiscuous! At the root of this probably are boredom, commitment and difficulty maintaining a regular practice.

Then, you must have noticed the “serial monogamist” who is a faithful devotee of one teacher until some crisis occurs when they will switch to another teacher, once again committing totally until the next infatuation comes along! Of course, noticing these types (if you have) also puts you at risk of being a yoga flirt because, of course, you should have been so deep into your own personal practice that you didn’t notice what was going on around you!

At the root of the problem for these people is commitment, as in any relationship. Staying with a teacher or yoga style when the urge to move on is strong can be a great learning opportunity for personal growth.

Someone who is definitely not a yoga tart is likely to have practiced with the same teacher for several years going deeply into their practice and staying loyal to one yoga style. They would have been so deep in their practice that they possibly might find it difficult to relate to what we have been saying so far in this article.

What we are talking about essentially is the relationship between students and their yoga – and their yoga teachers in particular. Traditional yoga was taught on a one-to-one basis over a very long-term. Typically, practice developed very slowly with a student only moving on when their teacher (or guru) deemed them ready. A lot of such learning required the letting-go and surrendering of one’s ego to the guru. This required almost a blind acceptance of what their teacher told them and instructed them to do. Obviously, aspects of cultural Indian society played a large part with more deference to “elders” and those considered “wise.”

In the West, we almost have the opposite culture where youth is revered and we are taught to challenge established ways of doing things. Also, we seem to be addicted to change and variety where, in a consumer society, we quickly get bored with our toys (and sometimes our relationships) replacing them frequently. The same seems to apply to our yoga classes with variety and plenty of choice is generally seen as “a good thing.”

Also, although the recent commercialisation of yoga has resulted in a few up-market yoga centres mainly in large urban centres it has also, more insidiously, led to the rise of so-called “health clubs” where yoga is often just treated in the timetable as another exercise class. Members often feel that they need to get their money’s worth and, quite rightly, practice more than one class a week. The problem is that often a range of teachers is sought by these clubs in order to meet the demand for yoga (and not to be too reliant one any one teacher) and therefore, it is inevitable that students/members have up to two or three different teachers a week.

In our consumer society choice can be a good thing, of course, but people are not always equipped to deal with choice. It can even be curse sometimes!

You might have noticed in this article so far there is a flavour of a yoga tart being a “bad thing!” Of course, there could be benefits to having more than one teacher, flirting with other yoga styles, and so on. The table below outlines some benefits and risks associated with both of these positions.

Having Many Teachers

Benefits

Risks

Having One Teacher

Benefits

Risks

So how should the good yoga student proceed? How can we deal with the problems of choice and the need for variety that seems to be inherent in our modern society? Things are further complicated because what we want isn’t always what we need!

Find a teacher who inspires you, one who is growing and with whom you can grow too. They are likely to teach a wide range of Asanas from which you can develop a deep and broad practice as well as teaching pranayama, meditation as well as possible discussing diet, lifestyle and philosophy in classes. After you have developed a solid practice you can then move on at some stage and be in a better position to evaluate other teachers and different yoga styles and, perhaps more importantly what you need yourself: be careful to also factor-in what you may need not just what you think you want!

If, for example, you want a strong practice (e.g. Astanga style) consider whether a softer, more restorative practice might not suit you better and help balance out a possibly quite hectic lifestyle. Of course, you might not be ready for this and the next best thing may be a challenging practice to occupy the busy mind. If, for example, you crave variety and have lots of different classes and teachers try to stay with one style or teacher for a while longer than you are comfortable with in order to challenge yourself in this regard. If you get bored easily, say with the same class/teacher/ yoga style, the same thing might apply – stay a while longer and see what happens. Conversely, if you think you may be a little set in your ways, maybe it is time to try something different.

Once you have established your own yoga practice it is likely that you will remember your first teacher with affection. It is likely that they may have had a lasting impression that will stay with you for the rest of your life! If you are new to yoga, remember that there will usually be a very steep learning curve at the beginning and it will flatten off at some stage. That is when you will be challenged by your need for variety, dealing with routine, the ensuing boredom and so on.

These are all obstacles generated by the fluctuations of the mind that can prevent you developing a regular and possibly more routine practice. Being presented with these issues is really a gift and while developing your yoga practice you can learn as much from how you deal with them than you probably will from switching to a new teacher, style, etc. Ultimately, this is what yoga is all about ~ self learning and self-development.

Ultimately, no matter how many styles, teachers or classes you have in your repertoire, you can never be a yoga tart if you stay true to the spirit of yoga. A good yoga practitioner will always be respectful of their teacher(s) while also challenging the appropriateness of a posture (or whatever) for their body at that particular moment in time. Disregarding an instruction merely because it is boring, or you think you know a better posture or whatever is not only disrespectful but does not do your practice justice. It probably means you are too much in your head and not surrendering to the class (and your ego). It would be better to do your own practice and only attend classes if you value the teacher and the opportunity to explore new things, and learn to grow by surrendering your ego not giving-in to it.

The true yoga practitioner will come to every class with a “beginners’ mind” and treat every moment without either boredom or resistance to a new instruction.

Yogi Lea now lives and teaches yoga in Dorset after having taught extensively in the South West London and Surrey area for several years. He has trained with various world class teachers (was a bit of a yoga tart!) and has a British Wheel of Yoga diploma as well as being recognised by the Yoga Alliance and the Independent Yoga Network. For classes, workshops and yoga holidays please email Yogilea@yogasadhana.co.uk or visit www.yogasadhana.co.uk.

LEA BRINDLE | SAMA FABIAN

Interview with Simon Hunt

4th July 2009

Interviewers – Peter Yates & Stefan Cartwright

Simon, can you tell us something about your work with Yoga within the Mental Health Service?

I am Community Psychiatric Nurse (CPN). I teach a Yoga class on Tuesday afternoons at the local psychiatric hospital in Dudley. I take referrals from our Substance Misuse Team and the wider Mental Health Service. I also teach Yoga to individual clients in the community.

Can you give us a bit about your approach?

In each class we do sitting meditation, asanas and savasana. It feels as though I am relinquishing my role as a CPN. Before we enter the room, I become a Yoga teacher or perhaps just myself and the clients are just themselves. However this works, the clients seem to pick up on it. The mood in the class is very light and irreverent. There is some mickey taking on all sides. There is quite a buzz about it and I get the sense that they are really looking forward to it. On whatever level, maybe subconsciously, they are aware they are going to drop the role they have adopted during the past week.

As we move into the class and start sitting down, we let go of our roles, conversation drops off and we start to work with awareness. I give very light instructions: just that whatever is happening is fine and it’s all just part of the material – the richness of the moment. Of course, some of the material they are using is, away from the class, very dramatic stuff that they might often struggle to handle. Suddenly a Gestalt Switch goes on and it all just becomes very powerful stuff. I can see a sense of relief in their faces. I just give very gentle suggestions to be aware of their breath and their bodies and after about fifteen minutes of that, they’re ready. Then, we do some very gentle asanas still maintaining the awareness in the postures.

I have noticed that they seem eager to move into savasana. It is not that they are impatient to finish the asanas exactly, but it is as though they have been doing enough movement throughout the week and they are already primed and ready to drop into savasana. It seems to happen more quickly with mental health or drug misuse clients than with others. This can be seen when a member of staff or a student occasionally comes into the class and he or she seems to be more wary, perhaps because there is more to lose. We play around with that though – have fun with it. For a client to see that, it can be quite liberating. They might normally see themselves in a certain way – in a mental health role, but in the context of the class, it’s gone. It endorses them.

A person’s sense of anxiety is habituated over years and can feel very dense, but it is not as fixed as they often imagine. It can go just like that. That does happen although they might pick it up again half an hour or so later.

Clients are often amazed that they can relax so much after just one session and they often ask what happened. Because I want to empower them, I tell them that they did it or that they stopped doing whatever it was that they had been doing.

Could you tell us a little bit about the mental health conditions and the types of drug and alcohol problems you encounter?

It’s everything. Because I happen to be an alcohol CPN and I develop a therapeutic relationship with the people that I see, I recommend to them that they come to the Yoga or I do Yoga with them in their own home. They will make up a large proportion of the group, although I do take referrals from other CPNs. A lot of people will have also used other substances and that seems to be increasingly the case particularly with the under-thirty-five age-group.

There is no clear distinction between someone who uses alcohol, someone who uses a particular drug and someone who doesn’t use either. A lot of our clients have dual diagnosis. For example, they may have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and be using alcohol to cope. There is an argument as to which comes first, the addiction or the mental health problem. I feel that it scarcely matters which comes first. There is something very artificial about that anyway.

Do you treat people differently depending on their condition?

I remember a particular class, where there were clients from the Acute Wards who had Bipolar Disorder and were in an elevated state. I could have approached that situation by trying to dowse it but that would have been impossible, so we went higher and higher until we found their level. It was like hysteria but we worked with that and brought it down from there. It wasn’t that it was especially geared towards them, but because the other people in the class had been before and were comfortable with it and with me they weren’t fazed by it.

Whenever you have a new person in a class you have to focus on their needs but it needs to be done with subtlety. You have to treat everything as new but without making the new person feel as though they are being singled out.

I am also aware that a lot of people with mental health problems or addictions have experienced some form of abuse. I have always been aware of a physical boundary that I needed to respect. Over time though I have found that I don’t need to encroach in that way anyway and it just becomes part of how the class is.

Does the approach differ from that of a general class in the community at large?

That is a very important question. After a couple of years, I came to realise that you get the same people in both types of class. The problems in the mental health setting might be more apparent and more acute but the demarcation between a class in a mental health setting and a so-called general class is unreal.

In a sense a mental health class can feel more liberating because the fabrication of normality has been surrendered already. In a general class, the persona – the mask – is still there. With the mental health clients the mask is gone and you get a truer, purer Yoga.

It seems to me that you go to the situation of the ‘Yoga class’, both in mental health settings and in the community at large and you approach it with an openness and responsiveness to what you find in the moment and allow something to flow out of the meeting between you and the people who turn up. Would you say that I have got that right?

That is the certainly the case. I think if I had just done the Yoga class without being a CPN then I might not have noticed that happening. When I first started this I was more comfortable with being a Yoga teacher than a Psychiatric Nurse. Where that became most clear was when I going into someone’s house. In that situation, I would adopt a sense of ease, but it would be artificial whereas in the Yoga role, I have realised that it’s OK to be authentic. This fits in with the ethos of the Mental Health Service, which encourages authenticity.

I am always working with people’s preconceived ideas. There is a very macho working-class culture in the Black Country. But I am also working with ideas of my own. The most unlikely people: those with a history of violence or a prison history are practicing yoga and meditation, and why wouldn’t they? Just through doing Yoga with people, my preconceived ideas along with my inhibitions have fallen away.

So you gain confidence over time with the inherent alrightness of the situation. You can work directly with the reality of the moment and your confidence builds over time?

In my CPN role, for good reasons, I am discouraged from inappropriate disclosure. In yoga, I am aware that disclosures about your life are irrelevant. If I am genuine, the client will pick up that the Yoga is occurring and that I am OK. They may well feel that I am not as interested as they think I ought to be in their dramas but, in a non-aggressive way, I am deflating that.

So when you are in this situation, what happens to your identity as CPN or Yoga Teacher?

The identity has gone. I am not a CPN. I am a human being interacting with another human being and sharing that moment. All the paraphernalia and ostentation that provides me with the licence to be sitting with that person is dissolved and in that moment it is just two people. The rapport comes from the fact that no judgement is being made. The client’s role as the person with the addiction and my role as CPN are just not part of what’s happening in that moment.

What is the attitude of the mental health establishment towards what you are doing?

The attitude is excellent. My line manager, the Psychiatrist and the whole Substance Misuse Team are all positive about the Yoga. There have never been any difficulties there. Of course Yoga has been around for many years and it’s not seen as my toy or as anything unusual within psychiatry. It doesn’t contradict the NHS targets or the Prochaska and DiClemente Stages of Change Model that we use. Of course, it does have a depth that can’t be measured. When I come to write down what’s happened in the Yoga, it can seem prosaic and formularized. This is partly due to the pressures of time and targets. But it certainly doesn’t take anything away from what’s happening in the Yoga.

Do you find that your practice is at odds with your colleagues?

No, not at all. People who go in to psychiatry are pretty liberal and broad-minded anyway. For example, there are people in my team who practice Buddhism and Taoism.

What change would you like to see in the establishment regarding the patients with mental health and addiction problems?

It would be easy and obvious to say that I would like Yoga to be more a part of what we do. But that feels as though I am not saying anything at all. Of course, it does depend on what we take yoga to be.

The trend might be for it to become more accountable and measurable. I feel that what is measurable may have limited value in yoga at the same time it would be great for yoga to be given greater acknowledgement and recognised as an integral therapy within the NHS.

What would you do if you had the resources, in addition to your weekly class?

I would offer a Yoga class every weekday morning for all clients in the acute wards, which would continue after a client has been discharged. I would like for Yoga to be recognised in the same kind of way as Cognitive Therapy is. I want people to understand the enormity of Yoga not just to see it as a hobby or a coping strategy. I believe there is a window for this to unfold.

I am aware though that there is a danger that Yoga might be trivialised. People could turn it into their own thing and it would become crystallized. A particular body might be given the power to say what Yoga is or is not. It would be awful if someone were to come in to a class and say that your down-dog was incorrect, for example. There needs to be some kind of freedom.

If Yoga enters an institution and its importance is recognised – how can its freedom be maintained?

To justify my approach, I feel it should be empirically verifiable but, at the same time, I want to indicate the dangers of that. The power of Yoga in this context is that it debunks assumptions about a person’s role as mental health patient. That could seem dangerous to the system itself.

Apparently my approach is very down to earth. Because there is no flowery language, it is more palatable to people but also more powerful. If someone were to teach by chanting mantras (I don’t want to disparage that at all) it might not go down so well in Dudley. Also if someone were to encourage Kundalini to rise that might be bad for someone with schizophrenia. It needs to be non-threatening but, at the same time, to divest a person of their conceptual straight jacket.

Thanks for that Simon. It was illuminating and brilliant and hopefully stimulating to our readers, and I’m looking forward to seeing more work of this type in the context of mental suffering.

LEA BRINDLE | SIMON HUNT

The Yoga Sutra of Patañjali

Relevance of the Sutras to contemporary practice by Sama Fabian

If we agree on 200 BC as the approximate date for the compilation of the Yoga Sutra, we need to understand the context of the time.

This is a time when the ancient world questions its legacy and seeks to redefine itself, in terms of its cultural and spiritual identity, under a new paradigm. This time was for the East what the Renaissance would be for the West, a flowering of new ideas and visions, and to articulate them, a new language.

The Sanskrit of the Sutra is of a modern vein, more adapted to conceptualization and more pragmatically descriptive than metaphoric.

The elaboration of lists, as in list of hindrances, list of limbs, list of the different ways in which human psychology can access consciousness is also an important difference in this new turn of mind. Out of the ancient scriptures Patanjali’s Sutra is possibly the most accessible to our post-modern mentality.

It is essential for every serious Yoga Sadhaka to engage in a comprehensive study of the Sutra and realize its acute relevance to today’s practice.

We are in the depth of an evolutionary crisis, where our individual and collective consciousness is challenged to find new ways, new paradigms, to deepen our perception of Self and radiate a new consciousness into the world.

The dynamic psychology mapped out in Patanjali’s Sutra is an essential guide. It offers major land marks for a discerning sadhana and provides the ground for a deeper knowledge and potential embodiment. It also cautions us against the many delusions present on the path.

‘The central aim of knowledge is the recovery of the Self, of our true self-existence ‘ (Sri Aurobindo).

The map is not the journey and the Sutra can only be understood in the light of a sustained practice. The next question is how do we understand, what are the mechanisms of our mental comprehension and how do we know we are ready?

Sanskrit distinguishes several levels in the process of understanding: first there is a sense, a feel of what is being articulated, then comes a further apprehension of it, in knowledge: insight, then a full comprehension and the possession of its power, embodiment.

‘Awareness is to know, consciousness is to know and act’ (Sri Aurobindo).

In other words we are fully conscious only when our actions are supported by integrated knowledge, when knowing is to act. Skilfully.

Yoga can only be known by practice, and practice is relevant only if it resonates within the entirety of the life. Here Yoga is no longer something that we do but a state of consciousness that is sustained by an adapted, intelligent practice over a long period of time.

Our Yoga starts here, with the ability to adapt the practice to our evolving consciousness, to gain mental flexibility, to be ready to change our ways and withdraw the obstacles that obscure the Seer. We are a ‘process in formation’ not a fixed form, an ever moving bundle of relationships, a fluid entity growing towards its own revelation: an embodiment of spirit.

It is this evolving consciousness that Patañjali describes with a great sense of purpose. We are given a direction and a method, multiple choices to reflect on , ways to engage in self-observation and get to know who we really are. We are guided through the pitfalls of the mind’s delusions and the rustling vibrancy of free spirit. Yoga revealed is a path of freedom, a path of responsible empowerment and joyful contentment from which we can act in a spirit of service.

In the last chapter, Kaivalya Pada, Patañjali describes the state of Self-realization, the ultimate aim of the Vedantic path.

To uphold the great changes and transmutations that our modern world will surely witness, the individual must access a state where consciousness of the spiritual self prevails at all levels of the life, untainted.

This implies the vision, and the experience of finer perceptual fields where personal interests, egotistic motivations, fuelled by fear and doubt are overridden by an absolute and unshakable certainty. The practitioner, self realized, has harmonized her being around the unifying core of her soul, ready now to embody, in the material life the radiating beauty, unwavering strength and infinite compassion of Spirit.

The course ‘Embodying the Sutras’ is essentially practical, and guides the practitioner through the full spectrum of an integrated Yoga practice, with Patanjali’s Sutra as the textual backbone. Full practice includes pranayama, Mudra, chanting, asana, bandha, Vinyasa sequences, yoga Nidra and meditation.

SAMA FABIAN | LEA BRINDLE | SIMON HUNT