Yoga in the West vs Hindu Purists

Check this forum for suggestions on Yin Yoga flows, sequences and postures, as well as HOW to practice Yin Yoga.
Post Reply
Shikibu
Posts: 11
Joined: Sat Dec 18, 2010 5:37 am
Location: Montreal, Canada

Yoga in the West vs Hindu Purists

Post by Shikibu »

Looking through some posts on knees I came across a brief exchange on Iyengar folks being dogmatic and unable to think outside the box.

I too was a bit prejudiced when I saw the term "yin" attached to "yoga", and I understand those Hindus who complain that westerners have appropriated and adapted yoga to western needs, forgetting or undermining the Hindu origins. So Mr. Iyengar, being a purist and a Hindu, may not accept the amalgamation of Taoist and Hindu terms or energetic concepts when Hindu tradition is perfectly adequate, with a history dating (like Taoism) at least 5000 years. I don't think it's fair to judge Mr. Iyengar as incapable of thinking outside the box; after all, he is as far as I know, a master whereas most of us are students. We should respect Mr. Iyengar's knowledge and the Hindu origins of Yoga, understanding both to the best of our ability. To me it is all too typically arrogant and western to assume the master is trapped in his box. Why must we insist that other cultures assume our way of seeing the world? Westerners have been doing this since 1492, and we all know how much suffering has been imposed while "opening up" other cultures to our way of thinking. And we continue.

I'm open to fusing Taoist and Hindu thought because I'm not Hindu or Taoist. I'm a secular westerner, who, like millions of other westerners, am capable of appropriating Eastern religious concepts for my spiritual needs. After all, as a result of the Enlightenment and the flourishing of scientific inquiry, the traditional concept of a transcendent God was questioned and eventually discarded for all intents and purposes. Thus, we have gradually lost a connection with the transcendent yet somehow somewhere we miss that connection. This is not true of other cultures, which have retained a connection with transcendence, with tradition, and with the community. In comparison with the eastern cultures, the west is nihilistic in the extreme. So it is very easy and even necessary for many westerners, feeling a void where transcendence should be, to take a bit from Taoism, mix it with Hindu concepts and develop a very delightful (for us) combination into a practice called Yin Yoga.

But for the Hindus, who have (or at least until recently in urban areas "had") a very strong connection with tradition, it must pain them to see westerners appropriate a small aspect of Hindu culture, tweak it, adapt it, and fuse it with other cultural concepts. And it must pain them even more to realise how little we understand when we imply they are closed minded.

Consider this: we can be so "open minded" that we're in reality "closed". Insisting that others accept whatever we accept is closed minded. Judging others as being incapable of thinking outside the box, is itself thinking within a box. Even if the box is open, it's still a box.
Who are you without you?
-Martin Buber
Post Reply