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On the Dangers of Modern Yoga


Sean Murphey
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Sean Murphey

Just read this article on renowned ashtanga teacher, Kino McGregor, and her recent Hip Injury. 

 

Highly recommended read on modern Yoga and it's focus on extreme poses/workshop culture coupled with the "instagram" effect. (i.e. hitting extreme poses just to get a photo.)

 

Reading this i couldn't help but compare it to the philosophy behind GB, as Coach's outlook is seemingly the complete opposite. Kino typically sites pain as a spiritual unfolding that one must push through. I believe many Yogi's think the same.

 

Having known multiple yoga-practioners suffer injuries, I would love to get everyone's opinion on Yoga, in it's current form, and what benefits/dangers are present in the practice. 

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Dorian Brown

I don't know a whole ton about yoga but I think like many eastern arts that are adapted by westerners the philosophy behind it is getting lost. Westerners focus on the progressions and reaching the next pose but in its original form yoga was more about the internal growth of the practitioner. Same thing has happened in martial arts. Martials arts are supposed to be about spiritual growth but now we are starting to see things like 720 jump kicks and other showy moves.

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Romulo Malta

Thank you for pointing to the article Sean, nice reading.

 

We can´t generalize the approach that many aficionados take and blame the whole discipline just because of that. So we can´t blame Yoga because of some practitioners in the same way we can´t blame all the injuries that happen in dance or gymnastics because of the bad approach or lack of it.

 

Yoga can be very beneficial both in stretch and some strength elements, though lacking a lot of pulling elements, so a Yogi would be a bit more complete (physically speaking) doing some climbing or chinning/pulling up.

 

Kino injury was probably more due to overwork and overstress. Besides working in advanced series basically every day, she would still have the constant pressure of teaching, demonstrating, filming, etc. and that can be very taxing. 

 

Now if you want to talk about the inner side of Yoga, I don´t know if this is the proper site, but obviously people are deviating a lot from the original purpose of Yoga and transforming it in show business.

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Sean Murphey

Romulo,

 

you seem like you know your stuff. Wasn't yoga in it's original form very, for lack of a better term, basic? It wasn't until the English got involved with it and added gymnastics that it came to be modern yoga.

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Romulo Malta

Yes, it seems there weren´t so many postures and mostly were to better strengthen the body for long sitting meditation, however there are some texts and recorded pictures other than Patanjali that show several poses prior to the British rule, though some people say yoga´s modern form was clearly influenced by European gymnastics and contornionism:
 
http://prescribingyoga.com/2011/03/truths-about-yoga/
 
This doesn´t diminish its value or make it more dangerous than any other gymnastics activity, that should be practiced progressively and within one´s level and capacity.
 
It´s good to see that authors that claim that theory are also not sure about it, like Mark Singleton who wrote "Yoga body" about its supposed origins :
 
 
"After Mark’s book came out, I got in touch with him, being a writer and journalist, was curious to study western-colonial influences on the yoga tradition. Funnily enough, even Mark singleton agrees that the postures illustrated by Genevieve Stebbins, ‘harmonial gymnastics’, European contortionists were actually adapted from yogic exercises and asanas which had infiltrated the West by then. NOT the other way around as posited by Singleton" (sic by Vik Zutshi)

 

Also:

 

http://www.academia.edu/1146607/A_Response_to_Mark_Singletons_Yoga_Body

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One of the difficulties with discussing what was/is yoga is that it has so many branches. I don't think anyone actually knows when the the actual origin of yoga was. It is doubtful that the physical practices were a major part of yoga until later, or they were already in existence and grafted on to the philosophical side.

 

Patanjali's yoga sutras contain little reference to asana, and no specifics. Patanjali wasn't concerned with doing poses, rather with meditation and self control.

 

I was personally very deeply involved with Ashtanga, and started on the 5th series before I retired from it. 

 

This happened for a number of reasons, a few listed below which I believe are germane to the GB community.

 

- A complete blind adherence to tradition which led to a complete lack of any common sense on how to properly progress people to more difficult asanas and a high injury rate most of which were clearly avoidable.

 

- I was finding it difficult to walk for extended periods of time due to hip issues

 

- Finally, being fortunate to meet Coach Sommer. Attending my 1st seminar in Arizona filled in the missing pieces I knew were there.

 

i finally saw a real system that was actually complete and balanced. Moreover it was proven as his athletes could actually demonstrate this. I also realised we in the yoga world had a lot of things wrong, often 180 degrees backwards and were so bound to tradition that we lost the ability to put our training in proper context. 

 

This inability to put training in context is IMO the largest problem we see in the adult training world and the reason we allow ourselves to be duped with an almost annual cycle of trends and fads.

 

Finally, just so I don't come off as anti yoga. I'm not, I still study and practice the philosophical side, and was fortunate to have a great teacher on that end. But even there, so much of it is being missed in western yoga, which is closer to a new age philosophy.

 

For example very few people know that the yoga philosophy is just one of 6 orthodox philosophies and that those philosophies, also contain the idea of human intellectual progression. 

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Sekoia Johnson

Good discussion going her.  Thanks for posting the article Sean.  I was up WAY too late devouring it :)  Don't really want to get into too much detail at the moment on my thoughts and opinions.  Just want to say a couple of things: yoga, just like anything, can be used to heal or to hurt depending on the intent, and very often we get confused about our own intent, both as students and as teachers.  I do hope ashtangis will come around and learn to open up to the rest of the movement community.  We're all branches on the same tree and we do nothing but hold ourselves back if we isolate ourselves. 

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Laine Rinehart

As an ashtanga practitioner I feel as though I benefit greatly from the inner awareness and discipline that the practice how to cultivate as well as many of the great friendships I've made through the ashtanga community. I wouldn't trade this for anything. One of the main tenants of the ashtanga method is the student/teacher relationship and I sincerely believe that when you find a teacher you can develop a sincere relationship with in this regard that many things become possible that once were not.

I came into an Ashtanga practice in my late twenties and developed my back flexibility outside of the traditional practice. In my opinion the expectation to develop the active flexibility to stand up and drop back from and to a backbend after the forward folds is almost ludicrous. I don't know if one was supposed to be awarded some spiritual awakening through the challenge of this before moving onto second series or if it was simply a way to manage the amount of people going to the Shala in Mysore. Despite this I do believe at some point that I did Have a mental block with this and one day during practice when I was expecting her to come and help me with my standing up from backbend said she simply said you already have everything you need to be able to do this and walked away. I was frustrated at first but low and behold after she said that I was able to do it. Overall anatomically most Ashtanga teachers I've met have been more knowledge when it comes to developing hamstring and hip flexibility but even then if you are expected to develop the hip rotation for leg behind the head within the traditional context it can be rather daunting. That said there are exceptions and the most knowledge people I've met who are teachers lay on the fringes of where the greater movement culture crosses roads with ashtanga.

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Sekoia Johnson

Hi Laine, nice to hear from you.  I agree with you that there is a lot to be gained from a regular yoga practice.  The linking of breath with movement, the focus and concentration, the knowledge you gain about yourself and your body.  I ran into a lot of problems with ashtanga and had to leave the whole thing behind.  I still practice the fundamental standing postures fairly regularly, and a good number of the primary and intermediate postures, though it is unstructured and way outside of what could be called a traditional  'ashtanga practice' .  Come to think of it I was always fringe when it came to ashtanga.....I did not live close enough to a  teacher to go to regular mysore so I practiced solo at home 99% of the time, among other things which I won't get into here.  I also agree that a lot of the best ashtanga teachers are able to be open about other movement, rehab and philosophy interests and influences that they have, that lie outside of tradition.

 

Though I see ashtanga as very problematic, Kino was the inspiration that got me seriously moving again after decades of inactivity and for that I will always be grateful.  

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