Can you trust hot yoga?

Yoga is at least 5000 years old. It ain’t new, even though it’s all over the news.

Lately, the news about yoga is all bad. Yoga can wreck your body. Meditation can throw you into a psychotic episode and eventually get you thrown into a home for the meditatively insane.

The latest word on trusting yoga: DON'T.

After all, you're no expert; how do you know if your yoga teacher is going to fast forward you to enlightenment or send you to the emergency room in a speeding ambulance?

When it comes to your hot yoga practice, just who do you trust to take you out of your comfort zone?

Yoga is based on the Eastern tradition of trust in your teacher, the sacred connection between student and teacher.  Choosing a teacher was once serious business; once you choose a teacher – and the teacher accepts you as a student – the bond is unbreakable, from here to enlightenment.

But we're not talking about a lifelong commitment. We're talking about trusting your yoga teacher for the next hour and a half. You can do it.

It's mandatory, if you're going to be doing yoga

What about when yoga hurts?

Let’s admit it: for many of us, yoga has become the new aerobics. We leave out all the details we don't like,  and we just do the stuff that tickles us.

We like it when yoga gives us ripped abs. We don’t like it when yoga rips into our egos.

We love it when yoga alleviates back pain. We don’t appreciate when yoga refuses to hear the mind pain also known as "I can't because...."

We extol the virtues of yoga when it calms us long enough to help us stop yelling at our kids. We don’t like it when the yoga teacher treats us like children who need to get woken up.

When we get injured, we blame yoga. We chant the, “Hey, it’s not my fault,” mantra.

But why blame yoga? Especially if you insist on doing yoga your way. That's not yoga that's hurting you; it's something far more dangerous.

Your mind.

Paramahansa Yogananda, the author of  Autobiography of a Yogi, taught that in India, once you choose a teacher, a guru, you follow their rules. Period. I know; that can be a slippery slope for us unenlightened warriors.

I’m not saying it’s bad to question your teachers and or authority in general. But it’s not yoga.

Your mind may be screaming “ARE YOU KIDDING?” when you teacher tells you to balance on one wobbly leg.

But in yoga, you do the crazy thing to the best of your ability.  Get up, get down and do yoga. That’s what you came here for.

If you won't open your mind, at least open your eyes for a moment before lying down exhausted in Savasana; you may be moving your body,  but if you aren't moved by the words of your teacher, you're not doing yoga.

How to tell the difference between you and your yoga teacher, who these days, may look a lot like you? Here's the test:

If you are the student, you are not the teacher – not at this moment anyway.

You don't have to accept this teacher as your Guide Into Heaven; just trust her to be your yoga teacher for the next 60–90 minutes.

With one caveat.

Follow your yoga teacher’s instructions or just stand still.  If you can’t be an Eagle, you can stand perched on the Tree. Standing Savasana. Quiet and dignified. Respectful of the teacher; that's yoga.

But I urge you: take the risk. Trust someone. Trust your yoga teacher for a little while longer. Then see what yoga may give you.  If hot yoga improves your running time, makes you a better lover, allows you to count to 10 before you explode into Road Rage, it’s all good.

And if not....stay open. Do yoga.

Let me make one more appeal to your sense of reason. You reserved this space. You paid for this yoga class. You may have sprang for the yoga mat with the Om symbol etched in gold leaf, all so that you could do yoga.

So do yoga. Get your money’s worth.

And refrain from criticizing a practice you may not fully understand. Be open, be on your best behavior throughout the class.

If you're silently cursing your teacher for insisting you relax your knee rather than risk a pulled hamstring, meditate on this thought: you are a guest in the House of Yoga. You wouldn't don’t bring ham to a Passover seder. You don’t bring London Broil to Friday fish dinner at the parish house.

So don’t bring your “I know better,” into your yoga class. It's not kosher. And it's yoga. And you want to explore the benefits of yoga.

You see, to do that, you have to be doing yoga.

And don't worry; your reasonable doubts about headstand and hot yoga rooms will be there to greet you on the way out of yoga class. Feel free to ignore them completely or put them on, one at a time, along with your shoes.

Just don't be surprised if they don't fit so well anymore.

Comments

[JaneC]

Well said. Although 'un-learning' a way of being is a process that unfolds over time. Yet, I agree and will admit that as my yoga practice deepens, I understand this more and more. Our striving society and the mentality of Theodore Roosevelt's famous foreign policy words "Speak softly and carry a big stick" may be hard for some new to the wonders of yoga and the benefits of having a knowledgeable, caring, responsible, well-trained hot yoga teacher at Riverflow.