Yoga - the fashionable antidote to everything...Part I

Doesn't it look cool?  It makes Robert Downey Junior Fly, Adam Levine levitate, Sting last all night and Mr Brand fine and dandy. 

It is a massive part of my life.  And as during my time in India it has developed even further I thought I'd write a little blog post on it ......

Pt I

• Yoga - the pursuit of inner peace or just a sculpted body?
• Why India is not spiritual
• The Borat of Yoga
• My initial interest in yoga: Yoga Girls and a little stretch
• Why mum is always right

and coming soon......(Part 2 and Part 3)

• My yoga teacher training course: Yoga Girls
• Rishikesh, Gurus, Love and all that mumbo jumbo spiritual stuff
• The purpose of yoga?....."Go f@ck yourself"
• Yoga of the purpose
• The Tantra conversation  - The bad boy of Yoga
• How to do yoga without doing yoga 

In 2005 I signed up for an 8 week yoga course in between a prison and a halting site (where all the pikeys hang out in Ireland).  It was in a health club called Jackie Skelly close to my office.  I called it Jackie Skankie, based on the bare knuckle fights that took place in the changing room and the serious prospect of finding a dead body in the pool most days.  I  did alot of sport but wanted to try something new.  It was as simple as that.  Oh, and the fact that yoga had lots of pretty, slim girls, wearing skimpy clothes.

Like learning anything new it's down to the amount of practice and how good your teacher is. I got very lucky, my first teacher was a hot Scottish girl so that helped the shallow me stay in the class in a trance. Once I was hooked to yoga I had some of the most impressive teachers I've ever had.  Sibylle Dallmann (also hot ;) ) and Luke Jordan.  These guys had phenomenal agility, flexibly and balance all wrapped in aura of calm and I wanted some of that. To get teachers like this teaching in a hole like Parkwest was quite a treat, and for me is what made me continue my yoga quest.   I also became calmer, more flexible and was surprised in how much harder an hour on the yoga mat could be than an hour in a spinning class.  It was all yoga based on the mat but I always wondered about the origins and spiritual side of yoga.  Within the following years I went on yoga holidays, got lots of yogi buddies and even my mum said she thought yoga was one of the best things I'd ever started due to me becoming little Mr Calm. 

I got to the stage where I was doing yoga at least 4-5 times a week and I wanted to try the next step up so I decided to do yoga teacher training.  Not because I wanted to be a teacher, I wanted to deepen my knowledge of yoga.  I chose to do it in India as I'd been planning to travel to India for a while and it was after all the 'home of yoga'.  In the west yoga is basically gymnastics; it mainly involves moving dynamically around a mat and ending up with a sculpted body.  The most fashionable right now, Bikram (Hot Yoga), is so far from the original yoga that it's been removed from the US Yoga Federation.  It's more sport than yoga.  Yoga is about reaching inner peace through more than just the yoga mat and a handy byproduct is improved physical health.  Why do we need that?  If you want to it's pretty easy to get a sculpted body in today's world of gyms and protein shakes, however, if you want inner peace it's not so simple.  And boy do we need it.  Recent reports in the UK showed that 1 in 6 people are on anti-depressants.  So where does yoga come in?  Well, when I started I thought it was all about pushing yourself in poses, like this (not my photo):

However, I now think that the below is the hardest yoga pose.  Being able to switch off your monkey mind in savasana for +5 minutes is tougher than any physical pose (also not my photo).

Many tourists come to India for it's reputation as the spiritual capital of the world or a 'giant spa with cheap food'.  The oldest religious and spiritual texts are from India and although the 'west is best' culture has taken over there are still many remnants of this spiritual history.  For example Kumbh Mela, a Hindu pilgrimage where as recent as this year +100m hindus flocked to dip themselves in the sacred Ganges river including Sadhus who have been living ascetic lives in isolation for years.  And let's also not forget that the  most spiritual leader of recent history GandhiJi was Indian.

Kumbh Mela 2013 (not my pic - I wasn't there) 

However, I'm not so sure India is that spiritual any more.  Previously temples were stunning buildings carved out of stone for peaceful meditation.  Modern temples are gregarious buildings with a focus on the commercial aspect of religion.  

 

The Shiva temple in Bangalore even has a smoke machine to entertain punters. 

That doesn't mean people aren't going there to worship, or aren't getting their 'money' worth of blessings.  An issue here (said the fundraiser) is that religion is where most people donate their money to; in a country where 70% of the population doesn't have access to a toilet they still prefer to give their money a wishing well.  Indians are among the least altruistic people in the world (133 out of 144 in the world giving index in 2012......Oz is #1 and Ireland #2).  It's not because Indians are poor (the index takes that into account and in fact Pakistan, India's favourite neighbour with a similar GDP per capita is #85). That's not because Indian people don't care, it's because they are almost immune to poverty with it being on such a grand scale on their doorstep.   

Just as the average Indian will ask you within the first breath of questions whether you are married, most spiritual Indians will offer a solution.  Many priests will happily reduce the weight of your wallet in exchange for a promise of finding a partner, children and wealth.  The odd thing is according to the scriptures here, none of that is relevant.  True spirituality here is focused on losing attachment and finding inner peace. Aha, then came the dollar and it all changed.  Earning a living is part of 'Purusatha', one of the ancient vedic scriptures on which yoga is based but by positive means not by exploiting an opportunity.  Yoga is based on writings from the vedas the most ancient scripts on record.  Hinduism was also part of the vedas and it's easy to imagine the two intertwined (as my mum did when I first started yoga!) but the vedas are a big library of text and Yoga is not a religion.

Kumare is a hilarious film about an Indian born in America who decides to chance his arm as a fake guru (borat style) and it works.  So if you do come to India, bear in mind there are plenty of good gurus but also a lot of fakes.

Why do yoga teacher training in India?  I've lots of friends who learnt in the west and if you want to 'teach' in the west that is advised.  Yoga in India is quite different from how you'd expect.  Classes are quite aggressive, usually with a pot bellied teacher wearing a string vest shouting at you and pushing you through the asanas (postures).  I'm guessing yoga wasn't always like that, I think the west is best focus of physical  fitness has meant indians (obviously not the teachers.....!) like to focus on that leaving the calming nature of yoga behind.  That doesn't mean it's wrong.  I managed to find a yoga teacher training school in India where you learnt to teach westerners.  Result. 

Here's a taster of one of the trainee teachers who'd been practising yoga for a year.    We called her 'Yoga Girl'.

In my mind that's what YTT (Yoga Teacher Training) would be all about.  Developing my understanding of yoga whilst improving my own practice and hanging out with very bendy hot girls like this.  I wanted to be able to do the scorpion and hook up with a nice yoga lady.  I didn't realise that my ego would get in the way.  

This is pretty close to what I was like at YTT.....

To be continued......