Finding yoga’s roots
Sonja Bjelland sporting a tree pose among palms Photo by Dug Begley
Before you take a tree pose, a lot of teachers will have you envision roots coming out of the bottom of your foot. The mental trick helps you feel balanced and stable as you pull your non-rooted foot off the ground.
Lately, the issue of yoga’s roots has turned into a bit of a deal.
A few years ago drama came to the yoga world as personalities attempted to trademark their styles of yoga. India fought back and said no one owns yoga.
Now the NYT science writer behind the kerfuffle over yoga and injuries has pinned an opinion piece that yoga started as a sex cult so why should we be shocked when yoga leaders stray.
I really disagree with William Broad’s take on this. The issue isn’t yoga’s history or science, it’s about a man taking advantage of women from his position of power. Yoga’s roots as a sex cult or not doesn’t make that excusable.
Banks of the river Ganges in Rishikesh, India. Considered the home of yoga By Sonja Bjelland
Also can’t say I’m a fan of him using a “sex sells” approach to selling his new book, “The Science of Yoga: The Risks and the Rewards.”
The comments this got when the NYT put it on their India Ink blog are just exceptional. They range from some accusing the column of being Calvinist and Christian ideologies frowning upon Eastern traditions to questioning the point.
Yoga as a philosophy and meditation practice does go back some 5,000 years making it hard to pinpoint specifics. Indian culture also tends toward accepted history vs. facts making it more difficult for researchers to nail down what we in the West view as the “truth.”
But is it even from India.
Chicago yoga teacher Asar Hapi started studying poses off of Egyptian hieroglyphics some 30 years ago.
“We essentially developed the system from our primary research by deciphering the hieroglyphs and other symbols of ancient Egypt and seeing the connection with yoga. We started the movement now known as Kemetic yoga,” Yiser Ra Hotep, a student of Hapi’s, said in an article in Bermuda’s The Royal Gazette article about his yoga workshop this weekend.
But really, who cares. Yes it’s important to know where you came from. I’ve spoken to enough Eastern religion experts to know that yoga teachers spread a lot of myths and that could be improved. But can we not accept yoga as it is today as a dynamic activity. That there isn’t “one” yoga and we can all practice how we need to.
