Why the Real Meaning of Yoga has been Misunderstood by the Western World
And what does it really mean?
An article I recently read in a Yoga journal made me reflect on the real meaning and purpose of yoga.
Yoga has become mainstream in the Western world, and is more often than not, used as a type of exercise, rather than a spiritual ritual most people do as part of their weekly training routine. In some types of yoga created in the Western world, the goal is to sweat and perform in order to attain a certain idea of visual perfection in terms of body shape and poses.
I remember the first time I tried Bikram yoga in my neighborhood. The room was packed, everybody was wearing tight and sexy clothes, and carrying a full bottle of water on the side, handy for this hot and humid class.
I can still remember vividly the energy of the teacher when she entered the class. She was wearing a sexy yoga outfit and her energy felt somehow military as if I had joined a class where my physical endurance was to be tested during extreme conditions.
Right from the start, she warned us to never come out of the class, even if we felt uncomfortable. After a few minutes of non-stop quick yoga poses in extreme heat, I started to feel dizzy….but I couldn’t get out. It was so humid that I could barely breathe. I decided to lie down and drink water while waiting desperately for the class to end.
There I was, asked not to listen to my body’s needs and signals during a yoga class. When the class was finally over, I got out of as fast as I could. I had a strong feeling that something was wrong with the idea of giving the name yoga to this class. Although it was a few years ago, I can still remember how I felt dizzy for a long time that night, and unbalanced many days afterward, having probably suffered from dehydration during the class.
From performance to spiritual growth
According to Sri Aurobindo, an Indian philosopher, yogi and poet, ‘Yoga is not a physical experience, but rather an inner spiritual experience’.
For him, ‘the human is today at an imperfect state of its own evolution as a species. He is a being of transition. Men live mainly in a superficial state of mental awareness. Inside, exists an inner being with infinite possibilities to which man must awaken. Only through the active practice of mindfulness through meditation and yoga, will he then become a newly evolved species’.
Sri Aurobindo experienced yoga for the first time through the exclusion of all thoughts, in complete silence. In that particular state, he explained that there is no existence of reality or irreality, nor of any notion, because every concept is totally absent in an absolute state of inner peace and calm. He experienced what he called a spiritually substantial conscience of calm and silence, and then the conscience of another supreme unique reality, where things only exist through shapes which are not substantial, neither real nor concrete.
‘Everything came to my conscience through a pure state of conscience and not through mental awareness. (Letters on Yoga, Sri Aurobindo)
‘Once the mental awareness has reached a certain point, it can no longer go in circles. A reversal of conscience must happen, and the mental conscience will then be transformed into a superior state of being’.
The only way to reach that state of being or conscience, according to Sri Aurobindo, is through the ancient discipline of psychological yoga. When yoga was first thought as a philosophy, people isolated themselves to reach this specific state of consciousness — Sri Aurobindo himself stayed in his room for 24 years.
In some types of yoga popularized in the Western world, competition, performance, and perfectionism are encouraged. These principles are quite opposed to the idea of union promoted by the original yogic philosophy.
From Marketing to Union
In the Western world, yoga has become mainly marketed as a trend and a lifestyle to follow rather than about an inner voyage to self-discovery and self-mastery. Whether it is about wearing certain types of clothes, having a certain type of haircut, listening to a piece of particular music and eating a certain type of food, the original idea of yoga has been capitalized and adapted to the mainstream values of the Western World, i.e. a trend of performance, perfectionism, and efficiency.
I recently discovered an organization called Daana, founded by Baskhar Goswani. Through his organization, Baskhar wishes to bring back to life the original concept of yoga. In his promotional video, he explains how in the East, yoga used to be experienced as teachings accessible to all. A teacher would share their knowledge with students, while students would contribute whatever they could according to their means. The purpose was to educate and share wisdom with all, something that Daana wishes to bring back with its organization.
Yoga used to be about sharing and educating, whereas it has now become about spending hundreds or thousands of dollars in trendy clothes and fancy classes and retreats, in exchange for the promise of reaching an inner peace of mind.
What if everybody could benefit from these teachings again? This is what Daana is trying to do with its organization, where a center offers the location for free and where a teacher offers their time, in exchange for an anonymous donation, according to each person means.
But what is yoga really about?
Yoga is about 5,000 years old, originating in the Indus Valley Civilization in India. It is a philosophy which promotes the idea of taking charge of our one’s health, an inner medicine, as well as physical practices which aim at helping us reach a state of inner balance and awareness.
According to The Oxford Companion to the Body by the Oxford University Press:
The word ‘yoga’ refers primarily to an ancient Hindu spiritual tradition intended to overcome the narrow sense of individual selfhood, though its usage ranges from the very general to the specific and highly technical. The word is probably derived from the Sanskrit root yuj , which implies a yoke or harness, invoking the notion that when the ox and the cart are connected via the yoke, the resulting complex is greater than the sum of its parts. In its most general sense, yoga involves harnessing or integrating the forces of embodiment
The Dictionary of World Religions by the Oxford University Press also explains how there are various types of yoga:
Hindus have advocated various kinds of yoga. For example, Aurobindo advocated a form of Tantric yoga, calling it Integral Yoga, Rāmakrishna practised bhakti yoga, and Ramana Mahaṛshi the yoga of knowing the identity of the self and God. Many of the new religions encourage the practice of some kind of yoga. For example, the Vedānta Society practises jñāna yoga, ISCKON/Hare Krishna ( International Society …), bhakti yoga, and the 3HO ( Healthy, Happy, Holy Organization ) a form of Tantric yoga.
From Union to Polarity
Today, there seems to be a collision between two opposed ideas of yoga: one where yoga is a trend promoting a certain ‘spiritual’ lifestyle’, and on the other side, one where people on the path of awakening are trying to bring yoga back to its original philosophy and purpose.
When awakening spiritually, one comes to the realization that everything and everyone is interconnected, that we are merely a union of particles and energy, a union of souls, where all of life is about a union, i.e. yoga.
Not only can yoga help free our soul on an individual basis, but it can also help us to realize that healing must happen globally in interconnectedness, just like in some countries, trauma is healed in a communal way rather than being pathologized as a breakdown or a mental health issue.
By coming to this realization, yoga can help us evolve individually so that we change the way we act together.
