Emancipation

After a lovely warm, quiet teachers’ practice yesterday, I got to thinkin’, I did. There are so many qualities of yoga that we can either ramp up or dial down: contemplative, enthusiastic, sweaty and rockin’, disciplined, et cetera ad infinitum as far as I can tell. That is, I have yet to truly discover the limit of “what is yoga” in terms of the essential quality of a class.

Yet we keep thinking that we can expect a quality out of our teachers or styles that will remain consistent, and I suppose we’re right to do so, since we’re smart and busy people and we deserve to spend our time and our energy in a way that actually rewards our intention [to contemplate, to get sweaty, &c.] It’s a short step from expectation to limitation, though. Or to put it another way, what you think you want out of your yoga can be a trap. And what you think a certain kind of yoga “should be” can also be a trap.

Students are always asking, “What is Anusara Yoga? What make it different from other kinds of yoga? Why should I go to that class as opposed to another style?” It’d be disingenuous of me at this point to pretend that I don’t want them to come to an Anusara class, or that I don’t care what style they practice. Of course I care. I didn’t shift my teaching and my training in this direction randomly; I chose it based on its merits and its pragmatic results both in my personal practice and the manifestation I saw in our community. So I get this question and I’m somewhat nonplussed even though it’s like the simplest, most reasonable question to ask. I think, Should I try to “sell” it since I believe in it so deeply? Or should I tell the truth, which is that the style is defined only by our limited beliefs about it?

Every time I think I “know” what Anusara Yoga is about, I am called upon to redefine it, since my “knowledge” places limitations on it. If I think it is rowdy and encouraging, I feel overwhelmed by needing to sustain a rowdy, encouraging energy in class and then I get tired and bummed out and my students get Teh Crazy Eyes [tm]. If I think it is disciplined and contemplative, we all get glassy-eyed and serene and do 27 forward folds and nobody ever comes back, LOL. If I think it is technical and biomechanical we dork out on Shin Loop for a week and everybody gets that narrow little line in their foreheads. If I think it is expansive and expressive and poetic, the boundaries tend to warp and wane until who even knows what the hell I’m talking about and none of that makes any sense and Jesus, Sjanie, keep it together. So here’s my new theory:

There is no style of class that cannot be encompassed by this method. There is no physical action that is not included in the Universal Principles of Alignment. There is no technique or device that cannot be employed by an Anusara Yoga teacher that, if consciously chosen to serve the students, is not part of the method. [NOTE:  This does not include reasons like, "Because I think it would be cool", "Because it's what I did last week", "Because it would make *me* feel good" and "Because it's the only thing I could think of"]  If you want to teach Osho-style free movement and primal scream therapy, and you can cogently explain why you are choosing this and why it serves the students, knock yourself out. I think this comes back to what I know is MY tendency in teaching, which previously was not choosing techniques or devices that served the students but choosing techniques that either gratified me as a teacher/performer [the Sjanie Show] because we all want to be loved, or not really choosing techniques because I lacked the skills or awareness to diversify what I was doing. There weren’t enough tools in the toolbox, in other words. I had only one voice in teaching, so it was a buffet with only one dish [mashed potatoes in this instance...I love mashed potatoes but that's not much of a buffet].

Now that I have more tools, I can choose with more integrity. And I see both in my own mind and also in the inquiries of the new teachers in our community that there is a resistance to a PERCEIVED quality that Anusara should have: that we’re all chatty and motivational-speakerish, that we don’t teach pranayam [!?!? since when was everybody so interested in pranayam all of a sudden? Sheesh, don't let me stop you...sign up for some of the usually miserably attended pranayam/meditation workshops], that we don’t “flow”, and so on…all legitimate critiques as the method is currently instructed with our limited vision but NONE of these critiques actually mandated by the method. I’ve never taken a training that says, “your class must look like this” or “feel like this”. In fact, every training I’ve had has expanded my vision of what is appropriate and possible to serve the student: Chris Chavez sitting beside a terminal cancer patient’s bedside breathing with them, or having us randomly jump up and down for 3 minutes before we start class, John talking about putting blankets on a fibromyalgia sufferer and coaching them through Savasana or using circular movements of the arms and legs to disperse excess vata energy. Just because we don’t often SEE these techniques used in a mixed-level public class does not mean they are not part of the method. It’s not all sidebodylonginnerbodybrightheadofthearmbonesback, although that is of course wicked awesome.

So when you feel like you’re all punk rock and too cool for Anusara, consider whether you are in fact rebelling against your own PERCEPTION of what the method is. Consider what is effective, what works, what generates the type of growth and expression that you intend, and then ask yourself whether anybody is actually stopping you from doing that in your class. It is a blank slate, upon which we shine our message and intention with as much clarity as we can muster. With that being said, the sweet silence of a simple unguided meditation is as much a part of Anusara as the wildest partner handstand. Let’s not forget how we came to the practice in the first place: diversity, freedom and joy.

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