Fictional negative Yelp reviews of yesterday’s yoga masters (humor)

Probably one of the most simultaneously amusing and irritating things for me are when people Yelp yoga studios and trash teachers who have been teaching for decades. People who walk in off the street with no prior yoga experience are suddenly an “expert” on what yoga should provide them. These social media parasites aren’t looking for classical teaching, enlightenment, or any type of discipline. They are just looking for a glorified workout. For lampoon purposes here are some “reviews” from the lens of fictional popular elite yelpers who went back and time and attended a class with the great masters of yesterday. (Disclaimer: these do not reflect the author’s views).

Ramanashram (Arunanchala, India)

 Becky “good hair” S.

OMG! I HAD THE MOST NEGATIVE EXPERIENCE OF MY YOGINI LIFE HERE! Just a little about me. I am an advanced yogini who just completed her 200 hour training at Core Fitness Powered Yoga™. Well I get to this ashram and give my donation, and the teacher, this creepy old man (Ramana Maharshi) is just sitting there in a loin cloth staring at me not saying a word…ewwww! Finally I ask him if we are going to do a vinyasa flow and he just keeps asking me “who am I?” I mean WTF!? Can’t you read? My name tag says “Becky.” They wouldn’t even refund my donation!

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Nisargadatta Maharaj (Mumbai, India)

 Biff B.

As I braved through the crowded streets of Mumbai, I finally made it to this teacher’s class. There are a bunch of people sitting in this guy’s apartment where he teaches and nobody is doing yoga postures. He didn’t even speak English! Good thing he had a translator. He saw I was new and made me come to the front of the room and introduce myself to him and asked me about my yoga practice. I told him I am an advanced teacher at Broga Flow© and I am here to get CE’s for my Yoga Alliance registry. He then blasted me on how my practice only supports my ego and that I am not really my body and if I want to make any progress, I have to imagine myself outside of my body to be greater than the universe. Talk about a total jerk! He didn’t even notice my chiseled six pack abs. Then he did the most unyogic thing I have ever seen in my life: he started smoking cigarettes! Definitely not for the fitness minded. After I told him this, he threw me out! This didn’t even count towards my Yoga Alliance CE hours 😦

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Papaji Satsang (Lucknow, India)

 Ashleigh F.

 I would give this place zero stars if Yelp would let me. First of all they don’t accept payment through mindbodyonline.com, so I had to pay in cash. The teacher is some fat old man who just keeps telling people to “keep quiet.” Then he takes people up one by one and tells them that they are “special” or something and then they start cracking up. I mean who can take this guy seriously?! But the real thing that made this a sub par experience is everyone was chanting to Shiva. I mean, talk about being insensitive to people with non-Hindu beliefs!

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Sadhu Yoga (Ujjain, India)

 Anne “RYT” T.

These guys don’t know anything about yoga. All they do is stand around for 20 years with their arm in the air saying “Ram, Ram, Ram…” Talk about boring! One guy just sits on a bed of nails. In my yoga teacher training, my teacher said never sit on anything that could hurt you, and here these guys are just waiting to be injured. Not to mention these guys aren’t wearing any clothes. I have been to a few coed naked yoga classes in NYC, but at least those students had the decency to get dressed before they went out again in public. Plus they were filthy all covered in ashes or something. My YTT told me you always have to be clean when teaching. One more note about this style, is it is only in Sanskrit. I mean c’mon! Don’t they realize all the paying customers speak English! No wonder they can’t afford a studio and have to practice outside…

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Disclaimer (again) these are not actual reviews and not actual people.

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.”