Westernized Yoga can use a dose of Aparigraha

I got the strangest “job offer” from an acquaintance the other day. She said “I’m thinking of opening a yoga studio downtown. It will double as a smoothie stand, will you teach for me?” I asked her if she has ever done yoga before and she replied she had tried if a few times and it made her feel better, and that is what gave her the idea for the studio/bar/what-have-you.

I politely declined without an explanation, and suggested that she at least “acquaint” herself with the practice before her business venture. After reflecting on this job offer, it dawned on me that this is how Yoga is being propagated in the West. Corporate burn outs are going to a yoga class, they feel great afterwards, and it doesn’t take long before they are printing studio fliers.

Rewind a few years back. I used to be part of a mediation sangha that would meet weekly. Once in a blue moon, we would meditate in a tree house that could hold 20 people in the back of the verdant Manoa Valley. We had guest speaker Rev. Lekshe Tsomo, a buddhist nun who works with the Dalai Lama, run the group. We sat for an hour, then she gave her talk.

“The tree house is nice, isn’t it?” She inquired. “Don’t you want to own it?” Most agreed. “How come we can’t just enjoy it for this time, without having to want to own it?” A deep question indeed.

There is this strange phenomenon in Western yoga in that people to want to “own” yoga. That is, cash in on all that yoga has to offer. Just go to your local corporate chain yoga studio and drop in rates run as high as $25. People pay. The studios keep charging.

Teacher trainings are offered to students who just walk in the door without an iota of yoga experience, nonetheless teaching experience. “For $4,000, you can join our teacher training to deepen your practice.” People pay. The studios keep charging.

J. Brown just wrote a scathing piece on teacher trainings. In the comment section, a representative from Yoga Alliance gave an interesting statistic: 50%-75% of YTT (yoga teacher training) students do not intend to teach. If they are not intending to teach, why shell out 4 or 5 grand when you can just learn to “deepen your practice” in a classroom setting? Unless studios aren’t actually “teaching” instead of just doing a follow-the-teacher class with a killer playlist, very much like aerobics classes a decade ago with a savasana thrown in. Then it all makes sense.

This may sound like a crude comparison, but I felt like my friend’s job offer was akin to someone asking a devout priest if he would like to join a money making venture on teaching people how to pray. Of course any priest worth his salt would simply say: “just pray.”