Hell-Bent (42 page)

“Depicts a yoga largely practiced by warriors … or more metaphorically … when driving the horses on a holy chariot ‘upward through the barrier of the sun’ “:
White,
Sinister Yogis,
2009.

“When the wagoneering proto-Sanskrit invaders rolled into the Indus Valley, they confronted a civilization. …”:
Feurstein,
Yoga: The Technology of Ecstasy,
1989.

“The
yuj/yoga/yoke
conglomeration appears often in their writings in a wide variety of allusions. …”:
Whichler,
The Integrity of the Yoga Darsana,
1998; White,
Sinister Yogis,
2009.

“Translated into teachings or Upanishads that began to systematically address the major stargazing themes that make up man’s quest for knowledge …”:
Literally meaning to “sit down near” a teacher or guru, the two-hundred-plus Upanishads represent some of the most profound meditations on yogic thought recorded in text. They also do an excellent job capturing the waves of authenticity and uncertainty that have shaped yoga over the centuries. In fact, it is safe to say that if you look hard enough, you can find whatever guidance and insight you are looking for within one of the two-hundred-plus Upanishads and associated commentaries. The very oldest are contemporaneous with the Vedas, and indisputably offer ancient knowledge. Many others, however, cannot be dated. Several seem to have been composed in the twentieth century. Cosmologically, the Upanishads vary as well. Some advocate a dualist conception of the universe, others a unitary (aka nondual) framework.
Making things even more difficult is the fact that many of the primary texts are extremely sparse, open to wide interpretation. Much of our current understanding comes from commentaries written after the original text. This is not to undermine the value of these commentaries, simply to undermine the notion that there is one coherent yogic thread running through the centuries.

“Until, finally … a text known as the
Katha Upanishad
bursts forth with the first mention of yoga as a spiritual discipline. …”:
Singleton,
Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Postural Practice,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010; Whichler,
The Integrity of the Yoga Darsana,
New York: State University of New York Press, 1998

“In the
Katha Upanishad
…”:
The
Katha
tells the fable of Naciketas, a devout young boy impulsively given to Yama, Lord of Death, by his father during a Lear-like tantrum. When Naciketas arrives in the underworld, Yama—ostensibly his host—is absent. In response, the boy waits patiently. When Yama returns, he is so impressed with Naciketas’s patience and virtue, he grants the youth three wishes—the third of which Naciketas uses to ask about immortality and thereby unexpectedly extracts yoga from the gods.

“This they consider Yoga / The firm holding back of the senses …”:
Translation of the
Katha
primarily from
Eight Upanisads with the Commentary of Sankaracarya,
trans. Swami Gambhirananda, Calcutta: The Modern Press, 1957
;
supplemented by Eliade,
Yoga: Immortality and Freedom,
1958.

“As ethnographer Mircea Eliade points out …”:
Eliade,
Yoga: Immortality and Freedom,
1958.

“If consciousness, creativity, memory, emotion …”:
The problem of a conscious subjective experience (the “I” we use to describe the objective world or the soprano C we hear when vibrations of 1,046.5 hertz hit our tympanic membrane) has haunted neuroscience for as long as it has been studied. Somehow the raw cellular materials of our brain, the ion channels and chemio-electro circuits, produce the undeniable sensation of first-person experience. Adding to this intrigue, when mapping the brain, this sensation is not linked to any one specific area; instead it appears to occur throughout whenever sensations are experienced. When addressing the topic, neuroscientists have typically followed the lead of Nobel Prize winner Roger Sperry: first shrugging the shoulders at the magnitude of the task, then acknowledging the relative paucity of convincing theories, and finally positing a possible basis whereby the perception of “subjective unity may lie in the way brain process functions as a unity … the overall, holistic effect …” This concept of holistic emergence is common throughout our universe. To cite an example from neuroscientist David Eagleman: “When you put together a large number of pieces and parts, the whole can become something greater than the sum. None of the individual metal hunks of an airplane have the property of
flight,
but when they are attached together in the right way, the result takes to
the air.” Similarly the brain: the interplay of complex material forces that make up our neurons produces our conscious experience; it is an experience present in every part of the system, but located in none. This emergence of mind from complexity, at the very least, leaves the door open for other hyper-complex systems—such as the universe as a whole—to exhibit consciousness as well. Naturally, there is no way to see, understand, or validate this possibility one way or the other, making it entirely outside the realm of science. However, much like the Jamesian notion of pragmatic free will (“my first act of free will shall be to believe in free will”), there seems, to me, to be benefits for choosing it as an ontological outlook. Not only is it rational, materialistic, and compatible with logic and science (certainly including atheism), but viewing our lives as part of a larger consciousness might make humility, morality, and the good green living necessary for the continuation of the human species a little easier.

“In an early attempt to clarify this tangle, Patanjali …”:
A note here on the ubiquitous Patanjali and his
Yoga Sutras.
By 2011 C.E., the ability to pay occasional lip service to Patanjali has come to serve as the fundamental dividing line between purely athletic postural yoga, and more “serious” forms (i.e., those with spiritual aspirations and antiquity claims), an easy referent for the enthusiastic student who wants more than his gym class can provide: an anchor for every modern teacher, Indian or Indianan, to root their particular teachings. This emphasis overstates both Patanjali’s historical importance and his sutras’ relevance to modern yoga practice. Patanjali was neither innovator nor endpoint: he was a compiler foremost, a Diderot rather than Rousseu. As such, his
Sutras
represent a curated collection of the yogic ideas of his time period, immensely valuable to anyone seeking to explore the range of ideas that fall under yogic thought. However, the idea that Patanjali informs the specific postures taught in modern yoga studios is the type of deranged claim that belies the existence of libraries. The
Yoga Sutras
mention postures in exactly one line among 196 aphorisms. And that one line consists of only three words:
sthria
(“steadiness” or “focus”),
sukha
(“comfort” or “ease”), and
asana
(“postures”). That’s it. To claim that the
Yoga Sutras
can be used to determine whether one postural practice is more authentic than another makes as much sense as saying the New Testament specifies the types of Christmas gifts you should give. It would be laughable if it didn’t point to a deeper, more desperate insecurity: the need to cling to false roots in the face of the incredible recency of innovation.

“Approximately one thousand years later, a wholly different yoga emerges from the jungle. …”:
Eliade,
Yoga: Immortality and Freedom,
1958; White,
Sinister Yogis,
2009;
The Alchemical Body,
2007;
Kiss of the Yogini,
2003. Singleton,
Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Postural Practice
, 2010. Feurstein,
Yoga: The Technology of Ecstasy,
1989.

“Prior to the medieval rise of hatha yoga, standing contortive postures simply did not exist. … The asana practices described in pre-hatha yogic literature were meditative postures. …”:
Buhnemann,
Eighty-four Asanas in Yoga: A Survey of Traditions
, 2007; Singleton,
Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Postural Practice,
2010.

“Vyasa the sage says that perfection in the posture occurs ‘when efforts disappears. …’ ”:
Vyasa’s commentary on the
Yoga Sutras,
as quoted in Eliade,
Yoga: Immortality and Freedom
, 1958.

“Eliade the ethnographer says: ‘refusal to move, to let one be carried along. …’ ”:
Eliade,
Yoga: Immortality and Freedom
, 1958.

“Their early texts alternate between being refreshing and frightening in their vulgar specificity. …”:
See the
Siva Samhita,
trans., Rai Bahadur Srisa Chandra Vasu, Allahabad: Panini Press, 1914;
Gheranda Samhita,
trans., Rai Bahadur Srisa Chandra Vasu, Allahabad: Panini Press, 1914;
The Hathapradipika of Svatmarama,
edited by Swami Digambarji, Poona: Yashavant Mudranalaya, 1970.

“Drinking the middle third of your urine stream will, for instance, destroy diseases of the eyes, grant you clairvoyance …”:
When translated, references to
Amaroli mudra
can be found in
chapter 3
, verses 94–96 of the
Hatha Yoga Pradipika.
Several benefits touted within the
Pradipika
and many others expanded on in related commentaries.

“The Naths became outlawed people. … Labled as ‘Miscellaneous and Disreputable Vagrants,’ their traditional costume and outfits were banned. …”:
Singleton,
Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Postural Practice
, 2010.

“When yoga jumped to America, its different traditions were packaged together for export. …”:
This is obviously a great sweeping historical assertion of a much more nuanced process. I hope I do not too greatly overstate the case in the interest of simplicity. For centuries, yoga, like many things spiritual, was part of a larger cultural exchange between India and the world to its west. Certainly this exchange was not monolithic or neatly packaged for export. However, during the nineteenth century, just as this exchange was kicking into high gear, yoga as an idea was swept up by the great Brahmo reformation movement intent on modernizing and nationalizing Hinduism (and in the process bowdlerizing hatha). It is no understatement to say the vision of yoga offered by these reformers was simplified and trimmed of its “eccentricities” to appeal to a Westernized audience—and that it received a wildly popular reception that has cast a significant legacy. For more information, see De Michelis,
A History of Modern Yoga
, 2004; De Michelis, “Modern Yoga: History and Forms,”
Yoga in the Modern World
, 2008; Singleton,
Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Postural Practice
, 2010.

“Instead, its ‘queer breathing exercises’ and ‘gymnastics’ were neatly
snipped off. …”:
Both quotes from Swami Vivekananda describing hatha yogis to the
Memphis Commercial
1894 as quoted in Singleton. For further evidence of his hostility to toward the practice, see his follow-up remarks when pressed about the postures: “What have those things to do with religion? … Do they make a man purer? The Satan of your Bible is powerful, but differs from your God in not being pure.”

“Until I find a description by neuroscientist Richard Restak of a recovering stroke victim …”:
Richard M. Restak,
The Modular Brain,
New York: Touchstone Press, 1995.

“Her husband, an ex-marine, now paraplegic, out of his wheelchair on the floor balanced on the remainder of his legs …”:
“My husband lost his legs in the first Gulf War, and was
not
into yoga. Not before the war, not coming home. It wasn’t his style. He was a weights and calisthenics man. But he knew it meant a lot to me, and when I decided to become a teacher, he visited me during my training. … And when he came out to visit—this is when I was doing giant amounts of yoga—we sat outside and I would practice my teaching while he listened. One day in the middle of it, he cut me off, ‘Whatever it is you are doing, I want it.’ Now he comes to the advanced seminars, just gets out of his wheelchair and does the postures along with everyone else.”

Part III: The Living Curriculum

“Heartbreak opens … /For even breaking is opening …”:
Dee Rees,
Pariah,
New York: Sundial Pictures, 2011.

“Practitioners who are taught never to push themselves will only rarely push to the point of injury even in the most irregular alignment. …”:
Hence the modern vinaysa flow class at its most gymnastic, where the teacher calls out a posture with almost no description of alignment beyond feet, knees, hips, and hands and the students en masse bound into it. Although the basic forms students take are similar, the specificities are left to imagination, prior knowledge, or the position of the body directly in front of them.

“Everything in the sequence was within the normal range of motion. …”
Compare to how another major hatha guru of the twentieth century handled this potential contradiction: B. K. S. Iyengar also brought yoga postures to the masses and also did so with an unstinting dedication to maintaining the proper alignment. However, Iyengar decided that to spread yoga to the masses, he would use props (like the blocks, straps, and padded blankets ubiquitous in modern studios), which would help ease stiff bodies into alignments they otherwise couldn’t reach. Bikram decided that to spread the yoga to the masses, he would teach only very simple postures that stiff bodies could enter correctly without props. Thus, you have one guru teaching advanced postures with assistance from props and another guru teaching basic postures
with no assistance from props, and in between, a million arguments about authenticity.