a call to arms for all people practicing Asian health arts

[3bob]

sad but true which is what happened to me with English related studies

[vonkrankenhaus]

Re:

-----

"VK, I was very fortunate and found or was given contact with a true guru,  thus that is something which is not a maybe or of speculation for me..."

-----

 

This is a "yoga" guru?

 

What kind of "yoga"?

 

That's an issue in this thread - not so much "can anyone meet a guru", but "what is "authentic" Indian Yoga"?

 

So - what is "authentic" Indian Yoga?

 

 

 

-VonKrankenhaus

[gendao]

I want to also point out a few important things:

The practices of modern Assana based Yoga are deeply influenced by Danish exercises from the 1800s called "primitive exercise," and as such are not purely Indian in origin. There seems also to be some historical relationship with another program called Harmonial exercise, which was an American women's meditative stretching practice popular in the 1800s.

Much as is the case with empty handed martial arts practice in China, the genuine emergence of a well organized nationalist yogic exercise in India did not happen until the 20th century.

We need to make ourselves more and more aware of these things and do our best to present the history of our arts as multi cultural, rather than having one finalized and decided source which has never changed throughout human history.

It is true of modern yoga that it is not really older than the 1930s.

 

Krishnamacharya created a synthesis of yoga postures from theosophical society publications combined with british and indian military calisthenics. He had returned from tibet in search of "real yoga", probably encountering some tummo practitioners there. He taught Pattabhi Jois, Iyengar, etc.

 

So this "Indian Yoga" "tradition" is a kind of appropriation, as most modern yoga today has come from this.

 

That is what these people have found out who are protesting this cultural appropriation.

 

It is NOT an issue of modern canadians not liking "indian culture".

 

It is an issue wherein people now realize they are learning "fake" yoga that isn't really from any ancient tradition.

 

 

-VonKrankenhaus

Wow, this is quite fascinating, if true!

 

So, prior to the 20s, "yoga" in India was more focused just on pranayama ("qigong"), while postural asanas were sort of supplementary exercises. Then, such postural moves began to gain prominence, including from strong Western influence like Danish "Primitive Gymnastics" - as the intent basically shifted from "Eastern spiritcentric" awakening Kundalini more to "Western bodycentric" health & fitness. Keep in mind that India was under British rule during this entire period from 1858-1947 - so this is not as surprising at all in historical context.

Here was Warrior Pose; there was Downward Dog. On this page the standing balance Utthita Padangusthasana; on the next pages Headstand, Handstand, Supta Virasana, and more—everything you might expect to find in a manual of yoga asana. But this was no yoga book. It was a text describing an early 20th-century Danish system of dynamic exercise called Primitive Gymnastics.

In the 1920s, according to a survey taken by the Indian YMCA, Primitive Gymnastics was one of the most popular forms of exercise in the whole subcontinent

asana was rarely, if ever, the primary feature of the significant yoga traditions in India. Postures such as those we know today often figured among the auxiliary practices of yoga systems (particularly in hatha yoga), but they were not the dominant component. They were subordinate to other practices like Pranayama (expansion of the vital energy by means of breath), dharana (focus, or placement of the mental faculty), and nada (sound), and did not have health and fitness as their chief aim.

During his tenure as a yoga teacher under the great modernizer and physical culture enthusiast Krishnarajendra Wodeyar, the maharajah of Mysore, Krishnamacharya formulated a dynamic asana practice, intended mainly for India’s youth, that was very much in line with the physical culture zeitgeist. It was, like Kuvalayananda’s system, a marriage of hatha yoga, wrestling exercises, and modern Western gymnastic movement, and unlike anything seen before in the yoga tradition.

These experiments eventually grew into several contemporary styles of asana practice, most notably what is known today as Ashtanga vinyasa yoga. Although this style of practice represents only a short period of Krishnamacharya’s extensive teaching career (and doesn’t do justice to his enormous contribution to yoga therapy), it has been highly influential in the creation of American vinyasa, flow, and Power Yoga-based systems.

The philosophical and esoteric frameworks of premodern hatha yoga, and the status of asanas as “seats” for meditation and pranayama, have been sidelined in favor of systems that foreground gymnastic movement, health and fitness, and the spiritual concerns of the modern West.

So, asana yoga itself is already basically a syncretic offshoot of "traditional" yoga with strong Western influence...

 

But if you really wanted to practice more "traditional Indian" yoga...you'd be doing mostly pranayama and seeking Kundalini awakening, not just better health & fitness.

things I believed to be the core of yoga -- yama niyama ideals, body awareness, breath control, etcetera

Not that there's anything wrong with practicing asanas mostly for health & fitness, either..

 

But it is very fascinating how some techniques came full-circle cross-culturally around the world over a century with multiple layers of "cultural appropriation," lol! Sort of like hamburgers and ketchup!

Edited November 28, 2015 by gendao

[liminal_luke]

Years ago, I taught a weekly class in Hebrew pronunciation to adults who wanted to participate more fully in Shabbat services. I wanted them to be interested in the meaning of the words, but they quickly set me straight: no learning beyond the sound of the words was wanted or needed. Talk about your instant noodles.

 

Naturally, once you´ve had the good anything it´s hard to go back. And why should you? I don´t blame anyone for pointing out the difference. I´m just saying that some people arrive at the authentic by virtue of a bastardized, circuitous path. A few stumble on spiritual caviar from the get-go through extraordinary karma, luck, or destiny; most of us do not.

[Miffymog]

This is off-topic but...

 

Western society largely produces educators, particularly for early childhood, who are nurturing, touchy-feely people. This is not a bad thing but it has the unfortunate side-effect of most students' early exposure to math (beyond counting and number recognition, which often happens at home) coming from authority figures who don't understand math (too often not even at the grade-levels they are teaching), who don't like math, and who instill in their students the belief that math is hard and is of no value in "the real world" and is just something to be suffered through.

 

I had very good teachers at school – at a young age, they gave me mastery of the fraction, two numbers which have completely different conceptual meanings – which, at a higher level, led to an ability to understand/appreciate algebra and then penetrate calculus.

 

I then became a Maths teacher myself, even teaching Further Maths and training Oxbridge candidates for university entrance exams who were much more capable than me...

 

What was the purpose of Maths for me as a teacher for the vast majority of students (not the high fliers)? Simple – to give the students confidence in their abilities by getting them to do some thing they could not do before. How? Repeating the same procedure until they could repeat it them selves....

 

This is a different approach to the best students who I took a more Zen approach to. Put a problem on the board and wait for them to solve it. (If they had a solution, they only wanted to know if it was right, if not, they did not want to know why, as they wanted to work out why them selves).

 

Off topic - just a chat with Brian

[3bob]

VK, Suggest Patanjali,  btw, no one can prove anything to you, you must prove it for yourself.  (or just have for more concepts floating around)

[Brian]

<stage-whisper>

 

I was fortunate in this regard, too, Miffymog. My mother was a reading specialist (had me reading at 2 1/2) but she recognized an analytical bent in me at a very young age and made sure it was cultivated. My observations of and conversations with others made it apparent, though, that I was an odd bird (in lots of ways, actually).

[Taomeow]

I think every beginning math class should include multivariate vector calculus or the class shouldn't be allowed. Arithmetic is weak sauce and is an insult to real mathematics.

 

Nah, the beginner math class would do just fine with arithmetic if the teacher knows that 2+2=3 is wrong. 

[vonkrankenhaus]

Re:

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"VK, Suggest Patanjali,  btw, no one can prove anything to you, you must prove it for yourself.  (or just have for more concepts floating around)"

-----

 

Patanjali did not teach any of today's yogis and did not teach what we call "yoga" today.

 

Those sutras are philosophical writings, not descriptions of bodily practices as we think of today as "yoga".

 

So that's a total non-answer.

 

Got anything more real than just suggesting a 1600+yr old text that everyone is already familiar with?

 

Again, I'm not trying to be antagonistic - it's just that what you have written as answers to this is just so much running around and not any substantial answer.

 

 

 

-VonKrankenhaus

[Brian]

 

Nah, the beginner math class would do just fine with arithmetic if the teacher knows that 2+2=3 is wrong.

As I understand the OP, that situation would be along the lines of shutting down a beginner math class because some Greek students felt their ancestral culture wasn't being properly portrayed by the teacher's handling of Thale's theorem (with apologies to Babylon...)

[Taomeow]

As I understand the OP, that situation would be along the lines of shutting down a beginner math class because some Greek students felt their ancestral culture wasn't being properly portrayed by the teacher's handling of Thale's theorem (with apologies to Babylon...)

 

Well, like I said, I don't know the situation with yoga, but the situation with taiji is not like that.  It's the opposite.  It's people who are firmly convinced that 2+2 equals whatever they say it equals as long as it's not 4 (down with that overrated foreign cultural tradition!) who are the real problem here.  

 

Same with taoist studies, incidentally. 

[Brian]

Recently in Canada there has been a flurry of media accusations of cultural appropriation surrounding the Yoga world. A popular free class at an Ottowa university was recently cancelled because a student complained that Indian culture was being misrepresented in the class, which was aimed at helping disabled students find themselves in exercise.

 

This is an extremely important issue for any of us who study or teach Asian healing arts such as Daoism. It is important to recognize that the good that our arts do for the world is bigger than any small political movement or affiliation. It is very important right now for all of us to consider how to combat potential politicized attacks against all of our diverse communities, and how to present a good face in an impending culture war.

 

I want to also point out a few important things:

The practices of modern Assana based Yoga are deeply influenced by Danish exercises from the 1800s called "primitive exercise," and as such are not purely Indian in origin. There seems also to be some historical relationship with another program called Harmonial exercise, which was an American women's meditative stretching practice popular in the 1800s.

Much as is the case with empty handed martial arts practice in China, the genuine emergence of a well organized nationalist yogic exercise in India did not happen until the 20th century.

We need to make ourselves more and more aware of these things and do our best to present the history of our arts as multi cultural, rather than having one finalized and decided source which has never changed throughout human history.

 

Just some thoughts and I hope others will chime in.

^^^ Quoted to highlight the bolded section above.

[Bubbles]

The problem is not limited to the West anymore. 

 

Although not completely about what this thread is about but still related to what Taomeow says, you can watch these short videos of an interview of a great martial artist : Adam Hsu.

 

In the 3rd or 4th video, he talks about China having lost the meaning of what Kung Fu is really about.

 

The interview has not been completed put on youtube yet there are 9 parts announced  but only 4 are online.

 

 

 

Another point is: there is indeed a lot of differences between a tradition based practice been watered-down and this tradition being transmitted beginning with the basics before anything else, because it is the way of safety and martial efficiency (that you can only know after you've practiced them for years).

Basics that are true means you are learning something real so we can/should take our time before moving from simple calculus to set theory.

[Brian]

Notice also that not only was there no mention of the knowledge or skill of the instructor but the class was specifically aimed at disabled students.

 

Still smells like cultural hypersensitivity and political-correctness run amok to me.

[Taomeow]

Notice also that not only was there no mention of the knowledge or skill of the instructor but the class was specifically aimed at disabled students.

 

Still smells like cultural hypersensitivity and political-correctness run amok to me.

 

Actually could be anything, one would have to know all the circumstances...  preferably first hand.

 

Here's the real thing running scared from Western students' demands experienced first hand.  An authentic teacher (may all daoist deities bless him with countless blessings) developed some forms of his own, something he is qualified to do by his 40+ years of experience.  Any form he develops is his form, however -- when he teaches a traditional lineage style, he does not change anything, he reserves his creativity for what he truly is the author of.  There's a sharp line he draws between "my" and "traditional" -- even though "his" is completely derived from "traditional," it may be geared toward a particular audience, made simpler for the older and physically not fit, the busier, the space-cramped, etc., or, alternatively, more complex for the advanced -- but not in the least encroaching on the fundamentals of the tradition at that.  So, he developed a beautiful form for his medium to advanced level students -- a taiji fan application for one of the traditional empty-handed routines, a new way to "weaponize" it.  I was squealing with delight when he first demoed it.  The fan is so alive and exuberant, it adds a yang aspect to the practice, invigorates it -- and adds a new skill to your arsenal. 

 

Well, the class didn't last.  A student, who should not have joined a class of the level above her capabilities, immediately complained that the snapping, explosive sound with which the fans open and close hurts her ears, and marched out.  She has sensitive ears, see.  Instead of asking this student to just join a different class -- there's quite a few to choose from -- teacher canceled this practice, probably worrying that she's not the only one who might ask for the art to accommodate her personal sensitivities instead of the other way around.  Who needs trouble?...  Alas, there's always troublemakers of this kind waiting to assert themselves at someone's (everybody else's) expense.  I can't begin to tell you how beautiful this form is, and how joyous, uplifting the sound of a dozen martial fans exploding to life all at once is to my ears.  It's like those Chinese fireworks that are meant to scare away the demons at each festivity.  Yet her ears won the day.  May all taoist deities reward her with what she deserves for this.  

[3bob]

VK, as I said nobody can prove anything to you, and if you want an experts opinion to prove something to you then become your own expert.  (I'm not one)

 

Btw,  "yoga" of today means variations or various yoga's to everyone, there is no set "we".