I Studied Yoga For 20 Years. 99% Of It Was Fake. — Transcript

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1. 0:0099%. That's how much of modern yoga has nothing to do with
2. 0:06the actual yoga tradition.
3. 0:08If you've practiced yoga for years and felt that something was missing,
4. 0:13this video might tell you what it was.
5. 0:15Let me describe the yoga most people know.
6. 0:19You walk into a studio.
7. 0:21There's a teacher in the front. There's a sequence of poses.
8. 0:25Your breath is mentioned quite often.
9. 0:27There might be a little dharma talk at the end or some om chanting before the class.
10. 0:34The poses might have Sanskrit names.
11. 0:38The teacher will tell you the practice is 5,000 years old, came
12. 0:42from sages in the Himalayas, that this is the real ancient thing.
13. 0:47That story is mostly
14. 0:49invented.
15. 0:51Not by your teacher, by the system your teacher trained in.
16. 0:55And the system itself is much younger than it claims to be.
17. 0:59I'll give you one example.
18. 1:01The most iconic sequence in modern yoga, sun salutation, Surya Namaskar.
19. 1:08Most people will tell you that it's ancient.
20. 1:11And actually many parts of it are ancient.
21. 1:14But the Surya Namaskar you know was invented in 1928 by Bhavanrao Pant
22. 1:21Pratinidhi, the Maharaja of Aundh.
23. 1:24He was a strong man into traditional Indian wrestling, and he wanted a fitness
24. 1:31regimen for soldiers and schoolchildren.
25. 1:34He took elements from wrestling exercises, Indian gymnastics, and
26. 1:39a few yoga postures and assembled them into a flowing sequence.
27. 1:44He published a book about it in 1928 and called
28. 1:47Surya Namaskar.
29. 1:48A few decades later, a yoga teacher named Krishnamacharya, and we'll come
30. 1:53back to him, absorbed this into what he was teaching at the Mysore Palace.
31. 1:57It's a fitness sequence from a Maharaja's palace, less than 100 years old.
32. 2:03Almost everyone who teaches this thinks it's ancient.
33. 2:07That's the structure of modern yoga, and once you see it in one place,
34. 2:11you start seeing it everywhere.
35. 2:14So when did this break happen?
36. 2:17The line is somewhere between 1800 and 1850.
37. 2:21The yoga we know today is a modern invention, built in dialogue
38. 2:26with British colonialism, Indian nationalism, early Western psychology,
39. 2:31and also Victorian fitness culture.
40. 2:35The pivotal moment most historians point to is 1893, when Swami
41. 2:40Vivekananda speaks at the World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago.
42. 2:45He's an unknown Indian monk.
43. 2:47He talks about non-dualism, Vedanta,
44. 2:51Not really yoga as we know it today.
45. 2:53And he changes the conversation.
46. 2:56People love what he's saying.
47. 2:58and then he goes back to India and starts a movement.
48. 3:02But the real architect of what most people now call yoga is one man.
49. 3:09Tirumalai Krishnamacharya, born in 1888.
50. 3:13His students were Pattabhi Jois, who created Ashtanga Yoga, B.K.S.
51. 3:20Iyengar, who created Iyengar Yoga, Indra Devi, who brought yoga to
52. 3:25Hollywood and to Soviet Russia, T.K.V. Desikachar, who developed Viniyoga.
53. 3:33If you are doing modern postural yoga, your line most likely
54. 3:36goes back to Krishnamacharya.
55. 3:39And here's what my teacher said about Krishnamacharya.
56. 3:42And what every careful yoga historian I've read confirms from outside the lineage.
57. 3:48Krishnamacharya is a remarkable figure.
58. 3:51He's also a model example of what happens in modern yoga.
59. 3:56He changed his teaching almost yearly.
60. 4:00If you look at his four major students, they each teach completely different
61. 4:05yoga, different poses, different sequences, different philosophy.
62. 4:09He himself claimed parts of his lineage came from visions and dreams.
63. 4:14That's not how tradition works.
64. 4:17That's how a brilliant individual works.
65. 4:20What came out of his Mysore Palace is genuinely innovative,
66. 4:25and that's the right word.
67. 4:27He invented a practice that shouldn't be called ancient.
68. 4:31Some pieces of it are, most of it isn't.
69. 4:34Yoga of course, existed before all this.
70. 4:38There were classical texts.
71. 4:40There were lineages of Naga ascetics,
72. 4:43tantric schools, devotional Vaishnava yoga, real things,
73. 4:48living traditions in some cases.
74. 4:51But here's what most people find surprising.
75. 4:54In those classical texts, asana, what modern people call the
76. 4:58postures, gets very little attention, maybe just a few sentences.
77. 5:04They are not the center of practice.
78. 5:07In reality, asana was very often just sitting, but also what comes to sequences,
79. 5:13it was closer to Indian medicine, the pelvis, the palate, the breath.
80. 5:18The prana system adjusted carefully with very specific
81. 5:23intent.
82. 5:23Not gymnastics, not stretching, not fitness.
83. 5:28In the 1800s, and much more in 1900s, when this began to interface with
84. 5:34British medicine and Western physical education, that meaning got lost.
85. 5:39The outer shape pretty much survived, but the intent
86. 5:44didn't.
87. 5:45That's the break.
88. 5:46Outer form preserved, inner purpose erased.
89. 5:51If you want the academic version of all of this, you can read Mark
90. 5:55Singleton's Yoga Body or Elliott Goldberg's Path of Modern Yoga.
91. 6:01Both are real research by serious scholars.
92. 6:05They reach the same conclusions I'm telling you.
93. 6:08The difference is I spent my youth in India looking for real
94. 6:13authentic traditional teachers.
95. 6:15So here I'm sharing their perspective.
96. 6:18Now, let's talk about the
97. 6:201%.
98. 6:25criteria.
99. 6:26First, and most importantly, a metaphysical understanding of what a
100. 6:32human being is and what reality is.
101. 6:35Not you are pure light or everything is one, but I'm
102. 6:40talking about actual cosmology.
103. 6:42Classical texts worked out over centuries, agreed with, refined, transmitted.
104. 6:50The second is initiation, diksha.
105. 6:54Years of training, not a weekend ceremony or a
106. 6:57yoga alliance certificate.
107. 7:00Third, parampara, living lineage.
108. 7:04A teacher whose teacher had a teacher, whose teacher had a teacher.
109. 7:09Mouth to ear for at least hundreds of years.
110. 7:13Most modern yoga has none of these.
111. 7:16The lineage I studied and I'm telling you this because the question
112. 7:20always comes up, is a tantric line.
113. 7:24That line is very similar to what people these days call Kashmir Shaivism
114. 7:30So let's take a Shaiva text to set the stage.
115. 7:33Paratrishika Vivarana, Abhinavagupta's commentary on
116. 7:38a fragment of ancient tantra.
117. 7:40Thorough work that very few understand.
118. 7:44It's an excellent example of how yogis see a human being and
119. 7:49what's the point of all of this.
120. 7:51In that text, the entire goal of yoga is summarized in nine Sanskrit words.
121. 7:58The goddess is speaking to Bhairava, who is Shiva in his fierce form, asking:
122. 8:06How can a finite mind realize it's identical to infinite consciousness
123. 8:12while remaining inside a human body?
124. 8:16The rest of the text is Shiva's answer.
125. 8:19So that's the question yoga was built to answer.
126. 8:23I can guarantee Shiva's answer has nothing to do with flexibility or stress relief.
127. 8:30The answer in the classical text is that yes, there is a method.
128. 8:36There is a path, and it's been carried mouth to ear for thousands of years.
129. 8:44There's actually a distinction in the tradition.
130. 8:46B.K.S. Iyengar, who I just placed inside modern yoga, pointed it out.
131. 8:51He said, "Most yoga students aren't yogis. They are bhogis." Yoga means to unite.
132. 8:59Bhoga means to enjoy.
133. 9:01A bhogi is someone who comes to yoga for benefits, flexibility,
134. 9:07calm and cleaner mind, better sleep.
135. 9:10And I'm not criticizing here.
136. 9:12Those are real things.
137. 9:13They are worth having.
138. 9:15But a yogi is someone whose practice is aimed at something else entirely.
139. 9:22At the question I just told you about, at becoming what they actually already are.
140. 9:28Most modern yoga is bhoga.
141. 9:31There's nothing wrong with that.
142. 9:33Iyengar's point, and also mine, is don't confuse the two.
143. 9:38Don't tell yourself you're doing yoga when you're doing bhoga.
144. 9:42Practice is better when you can name what you are actually doing.
145. 9:46Where are you aiming?
146. 9:48the next obvious question is, what does the yogic path actually teach?
147. 9:53What's inside the text I just mentioned?
148. 9:56What does the Paratrishika Vivarana actually say about how
149. 10:01a human realizes they were always Shiva while still in the body?
150. 10:06So here's the teaching in nutshell before I leave it.
151. 10:10The path doesn't add anything to you.
152. 10:14It doesn't take you somewhere new.
153. 10:16It doesn't add muscles or make you more beautiful.
154. 10:21The cosmos, according to yogic tradition, is sound, vibration of consciousness.
155. 10:28And you are that sound noticing itself, currently in the form of a finite human.
156. 10:34But it doesn't help knowing that.
157. 10:36You have to recognize that.
158. 10:38We are not creating a new state.
159. 10:41Rather, we are recognizing what was always there, what is right now here.
160. 10:48The body is the technology.
161. 10:50Asana, pranayama, mantra.
162. 10:53They're all actual instruments that let recognition become stable.
163. 11:00The body is the temple, not the obstacle.
164. 11:04It's a continuous noticing that gets more and more obvious
165. 11:09until it can't be unnoticed.
166. 11:12While you're walking, while you're in traffic, being the absolute
167. 11:17fully, while in a body fully.
168. 11:21So that's the headline.
169. 11:23I'll be making a deeper video that walks through the actual path and the practice.
170. 11:27So see you in the next one.