Girls in bikinis doing yoga. Who am I to judge?

Ah yoga, my love....

There I was, thoroughly encouraged and enticed to learn from a “master” visiting Hawai’I for the first time. How exciting! This is of a different style of yoga and I love to add dimensions to my practice as well as my teaching.

It might have been good except...   
he did not teach a single class all weekend!

To say I was disappointed is an understatement.

Time has passed and now I'm just discouraged about this group and their ways.

A closer look has revealed (pun intended) that this particular group no longer is allowed to use the word yoga to describe what they do or who they are. Their website has women and men showing as much skin as legally possible in challenging postures. It is beautiful, and...

That is the one thing I will agree with:
it is not yoga.

There was misinformation during the lectures in that weekend seminar, and never once was the breath cued or body alignment spoken about during the poses practice.

I am comfortable calling it a kind of acrobatics workout. It is pretty. The method of transitioning in between poses resembles something like a martial arts form. Calculated and strong.

I was made to feel "silly" that I would even think the visiting teacher would teach.
That’s okay, lesson learnt.
I will be asking different questions next time a seminar is presented to me.
One like, will the founder be teaching us?

As a long time teacher, I am not interested in spending money I do not have to learn from people that I felt were not of the caliber I am accustomed to. The highest of high caliber teachers are who I wish to spend my time with, regardless of how long they’ve been teaching. I can sense a person’s depth and understanding in an instant.

When the grand master type senseis would visit from Japan, even if they were in their 80s, they taught us all week long. It is their philosophy, their spirit, their method I am interested in, and that is why hundreds of karate-ka (karate practitioners) would show up from all over. It was worth every penny, every sore muscle, every bruise, every drop of sweat. I look back on those days fondly.

So here I sit with these thoughts of what is yoga?
What is the spirit of yoga?
And is there a “right” and “wrong” way to teach it?
These thoughts are nothing new, they just got magnified after last weekend’s seminar.

I spoke with my teacher this morning, and she and I concurred. A website featuring semi-nude people doing acrobatic poses is beautiful, and it is not something she and I are interested in the slightest when doing or teaching yoga.

During this weekend, if one did not do things at precisely the right moment in the way they wanted it one was “reprimanded”. In my classes and in classes I have enjoyed thoroughly, the teacher not only allows for students to be in whatever pose they need to longer and or take child’s pose to rest, I like to take it a step further and exclaim that if …”prana moves you, please flow/go with it and do whatever you wish in class.” I have seen and experienced this at Kripalu Yoga Center and have enjoyed the freedom to just be. It is not only liberating, it is honest, and it takes each student into account. Their needs are the primary focus.

After all, the ancient ones say yoga is 98% about the breath!
2% about everything else.
(Some such huge number. Hee, hee!)

I remember one time giving myself permission to just simply go into savasana (corpse pose) in the middle of a flowing class and in the middle of the classroom. I just had had enough for the day and lay down. The teacher kept teaching even whilst he lay a blankie over me and pulled on my legs to allow me to sink deeper onto my mat. It was the best thing I have ever done in a yoga class. I so get it …since that moment.

{I had been living and working at this massive yoga center and had had a day of much yoga and also of lots of work.)
So this listening to myself in a situation like that was an awakening! 

Well, yoga is my passion.

Life is my passion.

I want to encourage people to live and be who they are a all times. No putting on airs or masking their truths. And if that means you want to do something different from what the teacher is doing, so be it. It is your practice.

As usual, I will not edit this and simply post.
Comment at will.  :)

I hope all is well in your worlds.

Namaste