Facts and Fictions of Yoga Pt. 2 From “A Skeptic’s Journey Through the Yoga Experience”

There’s still the question of whether yoga is at root a religious practice. After all, one can’t totally dismiss its deep root in spiritualism. In the U.S., most yoga instructors, especially when its taught at a college, avoid like the plague, any mention of religion or spiritualism with yoga. This would open up a troubling can of worms. They would leave themselves wide open to the charge of trying to impose a new faith on students who just simply want to do yoga to lose weight, stay fit, relax, or relieve stress. Yoga instructors carefully confine their words to their students about yoga’s physical and calming benefits, a way to burn some calories, and beat back stress. That’s the safe approach.

Still, the common thread in the traditional forms of yoga such as siddha yoga, is a very explicit, and unabashed, tout of the spiritual purpose of yoga. It boldly notes the “strength and delight that come from the certainty of the divine presence within you.” Then there’s holy yoga which is even more explicit about God and spiritualism. It boasts that its goal is to promote “experiential worship . . . to deepen people’s connection to Christ.”  Some yoga practitiooners don’t shy away from talking about spiritualism and religion in the same breath as they run their students through the poses. Even when there is not an utterance about spiritualism in a yoga session, the constant reference to relaxing the mind, listening to your breath, and closing your eyes while in a pose, suggests that one is doing a pose for more than just physical fitness or to tone a muscle. One of the major figures in the U.S. renaissance of yoga is B.K.S. Iyengar. In his “Yoga Sutras of Patanjali,” he promises that yoga will bring enlightenment. Another major influential figure, K. Pattabhi Jois, in modern day yoga, tied the traditional sun salutation positions of yoga directly into Hindu texts, the Vedas.

The biggest fiction is that yoga is the magic pill to wipe away all one’s cares and worries. In line with that, that one can get a pleasing, sculpted body, or failing that get back in shape by being a devotee. I’ll take the stress relief part first. It’s a sure bet that if you are worried about bills, a sour relationship, an illness or pain, all the breathing, up dogs and down dogs, and chair poses in one session, won’t make those worries evaporate.

The real benefit of yoga is that with a little practice, concentration on the breathing and the poses, one can find momentary peace and calm. I emphasize “momentary,” because like taking a pain pill, it doesn’t last. You’ll have to keep taking the pill to get relief. Yoga is no different. If one can come out of a session with an immediate sense of relief then yoga has more than done its job.

The same rule applies in thinking that yoga will turn one into one of those sleek muscle toned guys seem in product ads doing those yoga poses, or more likely those slender, athletic looking young women constantly depicted in articles and yoga journals and magazines. It doesn’t work that way. It’s going to take time, patience, and most importantly, hard work to get even close to whatever fitness level one is trying to attain.

Again, I can’t tell you how many times in yoga classes, I have watched severely overweight students collapse after doing some of the most elementary of yoga poses, namely a stretch or a bend. I know that the student though well-intentioned in wanting to get into some reasonably facsimile of shape, likely won’t last through the entire usually 3-month course. They are a prime candidate to drop out. The better way is to set a realistic goal for attaining a step up on the fitness scale, take it slow and easy, and really enjoy doing the movements, no matter how minimal one’s effort may be.

That’s not to say that even the most unfit of yoga beginners may not see a modest change after a few sessions. It’s just not the norm. The fitness result will only come after months of regular practice and sticking to it. Yoga is not the instant fix that in this era of instant gratification many Americans expect and crave for.

My principal yoga instructor started the first class at the start of the semester with a yoga fitness test. As a warm-up, she walked the students through balancing poses, sit-up reps, wall stands, stretch extensions, and breath holding. The students took a precise measure of the inches and seconds they could stretch and hold their breath. In the last class at the end of the semester, we did the same tests. In almost every case, the changes were noticeable. We improved in all areas of fitness and flexibility. It didn’t happen in weeks. It took full three months to attain these results.

The interesting thing is that in surveys of those who take yoga, the vast majority do say that they’re in it to get fit, or in my case, to gain greater flexibility and muscular tone.

However, the yoga historians and scholars note that the fitness appeal of yoga was never part of the promise and vision of yoga. It was a spiritual practice in the beginning with the add on of meditation and a teaching of its philosophy, all designed to attain the heightened spiritual state of being. That was then, and there. This is the U.S. So, it’s no surprise, or a heresy, that one shouldn’t sweat through a yoga session and not expect to get a fitness reward from it. The yogi masters, I’m sure, wouldn’t kick someone out of one of their sessions if that is what motivates them to be there.

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