How to become a Yogi
Always talk slowly, walk slowly; it shows that you live in the present — in the now. Take deep yogic breathes during conversational pauses; it helps the prana flow through the chakras and clears psychic blockages. Talk about how life is tough, but yoga keeps you grounded; and when you speak make sure your right hand clasps your heart. Use concrete examples from your own life, like that time when your Instacart delivery from Whole Food took three preposterous hours but instead of blowing a fuse, you practiced Ujjaiyi breathes and did a ten-minute headstands that cleared your head and brought you back into a state of mindfulness and gratitude.
Never get a tattoo of “OM”, it’s too pedestrian — you can do better. After a grueling two-hour level-three Vinyasa class you feel like a goddess, you are a goddess, and nothing shows it off better than a Hindu goddess tattoo. Go for Durga, she scores high in the coolness factor with her eight weapon carrying arms and her vehicle of choice — the Bengal tiger. But don’t go for Ganesh, the elephant god, he has become too commonplace ever since Yoga Tree adopted him as their mascot. He is everywhere: murals on studio walls, metal statues at the reception desk, or on Yoga Tree bumper stickers (sold for $5). Adventurous yogis often go for tattoos of lesser-known goddesses like Laxmi, Kali or lower-rung deities like Chamundeshwari and Yellamma; they don’t wait for tattoos of these goddesses to become popular through a Yoga Journal feature article, or an Instagram post by a celebrity-yogi.
Carefully strategize the location of your yoga-inspired body art. Make sure your tattoo can be flaunted in a revealing lululemon tank top, but can also be easily hidden by modest Indian apparel like the salwaar-kameez; cause when you finally embark on that dream-trip to India to find your spiritual self, you don’t want that experience to be marred by harassment from the angry local populace. Remember the Australian man, Keith, who expressed his love for India and Hinduism by spending a grueling thirty-five hours getting a massive Ganesha tattoo on his back and four hours getting a local goddess Yellamma’s tattoo on his shin. He was forced by the mobs and local police to write an apology for offending Hindu religious beliefs. in South India who riled up devotees in Belgaum for flaunting a . How primitive of those village idiots? How backward? How right-wing of them? Your belief system centered in liberal yoga: “spiritual, not religious”, but they don’t seem to get it. These Indians supposedly invented yoga but still seem to be stuck in old superstitions; perhaps in their pursuit of materialism they do not practice yoga in their daily life like you do. They will get there eventually, like you did: yoga is a journey.
Buy at least two yoga mats, preferably made by Manduka or Jade Inc. They are expensive but made of recycled material and as a yogi you cannot but care for the environment. Your second yoga mat should be thin and lightweight, a travel mat, so your practice is not interrupted by vacations. A travel mat helps when you need to take that memorable picture of doing an headstand against the backdrop of Macchu Picchu or the Grand Canyon. You know pictures like these get the most right swipes on Tinder.
As you continue your yogic journey, show that you are committed to the yogic way of life by enrolling in a Yoga teacher training. It is a long (600 hours) program and costs more than three thousand dollars, but it is worth it. Armed with this certificate you can now teach yoga; you can now truly make a difference in this world.
Once your teacher training is done, brainstorm on finding an appropriate Sanskrit name for yourself; it helps in the business of teaching yoga. Satchitananda, Shakti or Bhakti are the classics, but by no means exhaustive. Go to a local Indian book-store or the Ramakrishna Mission in Pac Heights and buy the ever-popular book “1001 Hindu names for your baby” for inspiration.
Find a Sanskrit mantra, record something from chants at a local Hindu temple, and make it your own. You can recite the mantra at the start of your class. It will become your signature, your trademark, an integral part of your branding. Your poor students might not be able pronounce those tongue-twisting words, but they will appreciate the unique experience. They will get an hint of that mystical, oriental, yogic experience that they paid $18 a class for.
If it’s too much work to find an appropriate Sanskrit mantra, you could start your class with a poem by Sufi mystic Rumi, or a Buddhist proverb to set the mood. It’s all the same anyways.
Create your own brand of yoga, it’s best if it has your own last name in it like Forrest Yoga, but there are other successful examples. Superstar yogis from the West have taken this ancient practice out of the stone-age and into dizzying heights that even the sage Patanjali wouldn’t have dreamt possible. Take for example Dina Amsterdam who “invented” Yin Yoga, a fusion of ancient Chinese medicine with Yoga. Dina’s classes teach asanas that balance your chi, and align your liver, kidney and heart meridians: how innovative, how unlike those fuddy-duddies who are still harping on chakras, nadis and the atman. But Dina is a giant in the community and frankly her achievements are intimidating. You might not be able to match Dina’s great exploit of appropriating two ancient cultures in one brush-stroke of pure genius; but you can start smaller. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Check out other (lesser) pioneering yogis; for example the geniuses who are pushing the yogic envelope with innovations like Ganja yoga and Orgasmic Meditation.
In your quest for yogic fame, know that the important thing is keep experimenting — see what sticks. Find your audience, your niche, your brand and your demographic. It’s like starting a business but more soulful.
Often world travellers like your self have the best ideas. Take another sabbatical: go to Africa or trek the Andes. Surely there must be some shamanic practices, or some ancient tribal ritual in the forests of Africa that no one has fused with yoga yet.
Don’t let obstacles turn you from the road to spirituality. Ignore those liberals who keep protesting that yoga is cultural appropriation. You know that is going too far. Of course you are a liberal, how can you not be, you do yoga after all. But you are wise. You know liberalism has limits; it cannot be scraping on privilege. The writer Marlon James might be pissed about it, but he’s no yogi. Also as Michelle Goldberg in her excellent and well researched article — a rebuttal to the controversy of the cancellation of yoga classes in University of Ottawa deeming it appropriation — in Slate says: Asana based yoga is a modern innovation that combined ancient Indian practices with British army calisthenics, and Scandinavian gymnastics. There you have it. Yoga belongs to the world, to western universalism. You knew it. Yoga belongs to you; to you and all of your fellow modern yogis.
As the poet Ezra Pound in his battle cry for modernism says, “Make it new.” Go courageously forth in your journey: go make yoga new.
