:: the waves of yoga :: 23
yoga has been a huge topic for me, and in a way it still is. i am doing my own style now, like most people do i guess. with an experience of almost 2 decades and having studied with some of the best teachers of each style that´s an interesting thing anyway.
yoga changed from 2020 on, everything around it changed, maybe even before that but then it started to affect me. prices were lifted, laptops moved in, many teachers withdrew, many students too. like with everything that vanishes, one wants to keep it, but no way, one has to let go. that took me a while, i kind of had to understand it first. i had a friend who had read a lot about the early western yoga, and talking to her made me realize that „my“ yoga had different spirits and roots, namely the hippies who i thought had been the first teachers in the west (which was obviously wrong). i found out that dancers and philosophers in europe had been into yoga and yoga philosophy already in the late 19th century (definitely no hippies), and indeed the oldest yoga studio in town was established about 100 years ago. there was yoga back then ? yes. all over europe, from budapest to paris, in berlin and vienna. wow. most of the studios were founded by dancers, like the one in vienna.
the yoga that i had found - or it had found me - had been inspired by the freedom and rebellion of the hippie movement and people who´d drop their normal lives for going into that adventure. individualists, explorers. the yoga of the 19th century probably wouldn´t have caught me, even though it´s good i think. but the yoga of today ? it made me run. many - who loved yoga before - said they felt disgusted by what yoga is about today, others called it „polluted“ or just unfree. so what has happened ? i know it was great when i started. all articles i found about it - there are many - said that yoga had surrendered to capitalism, an ideology of course not compatible with yoga at all, nor with the hippies. the entertainment yoga, the business yoga, you´ll find a lot of adaptions out there. others wrote that yoga has not been immune against abuse even before, showing a picture of eva braun doing her yoga asanas in the late 30s. yes, the n* were obsessed with yoga (again: only a part of it, that´s not the real yoga). how scary ! i am glad i had jumped into the hippie yoga, which felt totally liberated from all that. but the hippie yoga is now dead too, the freedom has gone. better walk barefoot in the woods.
so yes, yoga is dead. but yoga cannot die. one day people will search for it again. and they will find another great and interesting yoga. one has to be respectful to find, one has to have courage and be real. it is difficult to find. or be found.
„less is more“ joggers (c) 20
