I’ve never really liked all the spiritual woo associated with yoga but always thought that at least the exercise aspect might be worthwhile. Searching for yoga teachers leads to all sorts of proprietary courses full of TradeMark this and TM that and studios/schools pushing 200 hour and 500 hour Teaching Certificate Training and/or membership in some sort of cult-like center based on the SuperSecret SuperSpiritual Principles ™ of Swami Supersereneonabigcushion.
I also see doctors claiming that yoga isn’t actually all that safe.
Yoga isn’t a single thing. It’s like asking “Are martial arts a scam?” It would depend on what specific claims are being made by the yoga proponents. It can be great exercise, strengthen muscles, promote flexibility, and aid recovery. I’m sure it also can be done poorly and cause injury.
It really depends. I’ve found that yoga is a great way to relax, although I don’t think most forms of yoga are very stringent from an exercising perspective. It’s more about flexibility and stretching and relaxation. It’s definitely possible to find yoga that isn’t religious.
In the woo department: I went to a college callout for a Sahaja(sp?) yoga class, and left pretty quickly when it turned out to be worshiping some Indian woman the whole time. There is a lot of crap out there, but it’s not ALL crap.
It is a wide area but some types do seem to carry higher risks than others, and of course there are teachers who are more dangerous than others as well. Also there has been modifications of yoga over the years as injury risks have been identified.
One problem is there is little formal tracking of injuries for yoga, let alone by yoga type. And of course almost any physical activity carries some risk of injury.
Not formal links, and of course there will be zillions of people disagreeing.
There’s a cultish aspect to yoga, and a scam aspect to the business. I think most people are really just interested in the flexibility, stretching, and relaxation. But there shouldn’t be any need at all for woo, and there shouldn’t be the effort to keep people in the yoga classes after they’ve learned the positions. But a common practice is to tell students that they haven’t achieved something and they have to continue in the classes. Others insist that you can’t do yoga at home yourself, that there is a magical quality to the instructor and group environment. But there are also some simple yoga groups that just do the positions. I have a feeling many people try yoga for a short time, realize the limits of what it is, and then move on.
It’s no different than aerobics. Of course you can do it at home and they sell DVDs just for that purpose. Many people like to have an instructor and workout in a group. If yoga is cultlike, then all exercise is cultlike.
It’s been years since I’ve done a yoga class (although I do yoga-based back exercises regularly) but as a data point: I know someone who broke her back in a bad car accident over 20 years ago and suffered chronic pain for years, until she found a good yoga instructor. She’s been doing yoga classes for almost ten years and claims it’s the only thing that eases the pain.
Also my mother will be 80 in July. She’s been doing yoga for about 40 years, is astonishingly healthy and does free headstands (how many 79-year-olds can do that) and other yoga positions every day. I should follow her example…
It’s not a scam, but sometimes the instructors can get a bit woo-y and tend to gravitate towards other woo-y stuff that they’ll promote in the class. So it’s not yoga that’s a scam, but whatever the instructor is ad-libing (like cleanses or other crap like that).
I think that the practice of yoga is linked to things like meditation, Buddhism, etc. So no more of a ‘scam’ then any other religion, exercise or style of relaxation. It is very holistic, and is focused on mind-body connections, which is not really how people in the western world think. It’s fantastic for building strength and flexibility, and I find it a great way to relax when I’m stressed. Very peaceful and it forces you to focus on your body and mind instead of external pressures.
If you’re searching for yoga and coming up with links to teaching certifications, I think you’re searching for the wrong thing (unless you’re interested in becoming a teacher).
I do Hot Yoga/Moksha/Bikram it’s generally a good workout and I have had a lot of improvement on my flexibility, however I don’t really buy into the woo-woo aspects. I like the relaxation, but don’t tell me to “breathe into my joints, literally”.
“There is no physical yoga and spiritual yoga. If it is exclusively physical, it won’t be yoga. Yoga is dealing with the entirety; it is a union.” – Prashant Iyengar, son of B.K.S Iyengar
Breathing into a particular body part is, of course, physically impossible. That doesn’t mean it can’t be helpful to imagine, though. That’s a very good visualization technique for relaxation that I’ve picked up through a variety of breath meditations.
You seem to be implying that there is ‘woo’ involved with his statement about yoga not being entirely physical. I’d like to point out that what many Yoga instructors and practitioners regard as ‘spiritual’ (“Empty your mind” , “Watch yourself breathe”, “Feel one with the universe” etc.) is really just an absence of external mental stress. As such, this ‘spiritual’ aspect does impact health and exercise effectiveness, and should not necessarily be considered hogwash.
As for the OP, Yoga is a bit like religion in the sense that it is one of our early attempts at dealing with the world. The Indian traditions that Yoga is part of, both physical and metaphysical, are based on empirical observation(in a somewhat, but not completely, scientific way) over many generations and thus have some utility. However, unless you’re built in the mould of Tolkien, you would expect modern science to come up with (in time) exercise protocols that provide greater benefit.
It appears to me that whatever yoga (calling all English teachers) might used to have been, it is now, at least in my section of the USA, a method for self-proclaimed Spiritual Leaders to suck people who are looking for a non-sweaty exercise program and who are susceptible to woo sucking them into whatever it is that you call the ‘lifestyle’ that such people suck people into … and I do suspect that this is not really a recent phenomenon.
Whether or not the actual exercise part of it is beneficial still remains to me a mystery, along with the idea that Ancient Wisdom can be TradeMark[ed].
I think you’re objecting not to “yoga” per se, but to the Americanization–ie commercialization and dumbing-down–of hatha yoga, the practice of physical postures, asanas.
Well, 'twas ever thus, right? Take a 64-bit phenomena and truncate it down to 2-bits for popular consumption. No surprise.
Nothing new. In the 1970s, there were two popular PBS hatha yoga programs–Richard Hittleman and Lilias Folan. I think Folan is still around.
Search the NY Times for “yoga”–many articles in the past year, addressing its commercial popularity in the USA.
I wonder if a “No Woo Yoga” could catch on? Yoga, IOW, transformed into a pure aerobic activity, no “stretch out your non-existent sit-bone,” no “lift your core” (without explaining how to do that), no “breathe through your bones,” no New Age muzak, just exercise and instruction. I know I’d sign up for that. Jesus, is most yoga instruction piss-poor or what?
