Pranidhi Varshney
I found yoga in the way most Americans do. I remember practicing with a video in my carpeted living room at home sometime in high school. Tae Bo was our other favorite exercise video, so my sister and I kept both in heavy rotation. If someone had told me then that yoga practice would be the cornerstone of my adult life and that teaching yoga would fulfill me in ways I dreamed of but never knew how to achieve, I would have raised an eyebrow and continued on with my uppercuts and high kicks.
This yoga video, “fat-burning yoga” I think it was, planted a small seed, which then led me to find a weekly yoga class at my gym during college. It was called “power yoga,” but it was actually the full primary series of Ashtanga yoga with a few modifications. Whether this was coincidence, serendipity, or my life’s calling beckoning me remains a mystery. Upon graduation, I found a local studio that offered Ashtanga and started taking a couple of classes a week. During this time of transition, the pressures of a sudden lack of community and constant professional uncertainty manifested themselves in disordered eating and body image. Yoga was part of my obsessive focus on diet and weight, along with spinning, running, and strict calorie restriction. As is the common theme, controlling my body became the stand-in for connection, purpose, and an empowered sense of where my life was headed.
Throughout this dark time, practicing yoga offered me glimpses of freedom. It allowed me to have an experience of my body outside of a scale or a mirror. Sensing that the path I was heading down was a destructive one, I consciously began to change my behaviors. Step-by-step, I cut out behaviors that I felt were no longer serving me. Eventually, one of my professional gigs took me on tour and this is when my life changed. While on tour, I had been practicing the primary series on my own a couple of times a week. During a break between cities, I signed up for a yoga retreat that happened to coincide perfectly with our vacation days. Again coincidence, serendipity, or my life’s calling beckoning to me, who knows. Though this retreat was not specific to Ashtanga, I came back with the realization that I needed to practice Ashtanga yoga every day. This was not a decision I made. It was a moment of clarity and intuition. Something given to me as a boon.
So began my daily practice under the lineage that now fills my life with connection, purpose, and empowerment—the very things I had been craving as a young adult. The moment I surrendered to daily practice was the moment I began to heal. My body changed in tangible ways. First it became rounder, then heavier, then stronger, then leaner, and all the while I became a witness. Of course, the process was not so easy. The demons that come up during surrender are fierce. But disciplined practice gave me the courage to acknowledge them without giving them the power to make my decisions.
Disciplined practice allows me to accept my body in all its states—tired, weak, alive, energetic, open, in pain, and more. It allows me a profound connection to my emotional truth. It serves as a mirror on days when I feel great and days when I feel drained. It allows me to view everything as a practice—relationships, work, family. It gives me a sense of connection to something larger than myself and connects me to a community of practitioners that spans space and time.
Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras say yogascittavrittinirodhah, or “yoga is the settling of the mind into silence.” 22 This is an elusive goal and asana-based yoga practices give us a tangible pathway to entering this stillness. Through persistent focus on breath and body, we invite our minds to quiet naturally. We become aware of thought and behavior patterns as they rise and fall. We learn how to confront and let go of insecurities that don’t serve us and find an inner strength that transcends circumstance. All this happens not through the intellect, but through a visceral experience of breath and body. The term mindful is often used to describe this conscious way of living, but that word doesn’t do our practice justice. Our practice allows us to live fully in and through our bodies—to be bodyful.
The Function of Asana
My story is not remarkable. Put simply, yoga changed my life. I share it candidly here not because of its uniqueness but because I feel that many modern yogis may have lost sight of their healing stories. We live in a time in which our relationships with our bodies have become increasingly fraught. Psychotherapist and social critic Susie Orbach says, “While we demand more rigour and have high expectations of what the fit, healthy and beautiful body can deliver for us, there is an increase in symptoms, from sexual dissatisfactions to eating problems, fear of ageing, body dysmorphia and addiction to cyber-disembodiment, which reveals how individuals struggle to make sense of the material source of their existence.”23 During a time when we need a practice that can help us integrate with our bodies, I fear that yoga may become just another expression of disorder. When practiced with correct intent, yoga gives us an inward, embodied experience of presence that is transformative. When practiced with ill intent, however, it can exacerbate existing imbalances and destroy the practitioner’s well-being.
To me, the goal of yoga practice is to bring the body to health, still the mind, and come into presence and connection. This is absolutely happening in many places. Dr. Bessel van der Kolk has been instrumental in researching the positive impact yoga can have on healing trauma,24 Matthew Sanford is revolutionizing our understanding of an awakened mind-body connection,25 local studios around the world are sharing this sacred practice with their communities, and with yoga’s increasing popularity, research is coming forth to showcase its many physical, mental, and energetic benefits.
Simultaneously, however, yoga in the public sphere seems to be a proliferation of ego-inflating behaviors. Selfies of barely clothed women and men doing fancy asana beside oceans, atop mountains, and on magazine covers dominate the public’s perception of what yoga is. Yoga practice is meant to weaken the causes of suffering, one of which is our identification with the ego, or that which we think separates us from others. Perhaps some of these yogis aim simply to inspire, but it’s difficult to imagine that the majority of them are not hoping to attract fame, followers, and, ultimately, bolster their own egos. Instead of practice being a space for intimate inquiry into one’s own insecurities, it becomes a space for using external validation to put a Band-Aid on the pain of those insecurities. Asana then becomes part of the disease instead of the medicine, and the practice of yoga gets reduced to nothing but pretty postures done by pretty people.
Teaching As Service
When teachers build their careers in this way, I find it particularly irresponsible. Teachers are in a position of power. Through consistent practice, they’ve cultivated certain abilities—physical and beyond—and they can choose how to employ these abilities. The Yoga Sutras warn us against overidentification with the fruits of our practice and caution us that true freedom can only be found when we relinquish our attachment to achievements. I wonder how many teachers are keeping this in mind when they proliferate an overly physical, outcome-based approach to asana. If we continue to practice and teach in this way, not only do we impede our own progress, we pass on this attachment to our students. In this way, a generation of practitioners is being born that has little connection to the heart of the practice.
Asana is a powerful tool—one we need now more than ever. It allows us an experience of our breath and our bodies that most of us have never had. It moves energy while strengthening and comforting us. It channels the eight limbs in an accessible way. The image-based culture that many teachers are buying into these days, though, is stripping asana of these benefits and becoming exclusionary instead of inviting to many students. To these teachers, I would ask: In what ways has yoga healed you? Do you remember the sparks of self-knowledge and self-love that happened on the mat and inspired you to keep coming back? Are your choices in alignment with the answers to these questions and do they invite others to dive deeply into yoga’s heart?
Teaching is not only a sacred extension of one’s practice but a profound service. In contemporary yoga culture, however, conventional models of success are being applied to what should be a service-based path. If fame and financial wealth are the goals, it’s no surprise that teachers feel pressured to build an image-heavy social media presence and rebrand a living, breathing, evolving practice as their own. If, however, the aim is to serve, then each action a teacher takes becomes a tool to promote inner transformation and profound contentment.
From Transformation to Action
When the time came to build my own shala, Yoga Shala West in Los Angeles, these were the ideals I wanted to promote. I wanted to create the conditions for a pure-hearted, diverse, and supportive community of yogis to emerge. Through intentional design and warm reception of that design, this is the community that’s emerging. At the shala, interdependence is built right into our fee structure. All of our monthly members contribute on a sliding scale. No one is turned away due to financial barriers and everyone is expected to contribute the amount that is right for them. New students are required to commit to two weeks of daily practice in order to develop discipline, and these two weeks are offered as a gift so that the student-teacher relationship can blossom without the influence of money. Our website features no images so that the experience of practice can speak for itself. Our promotional and educational videos feature a range of body types to counter the myth of the “ideal” yoga body. These and other simple design choices have attracted sincere, generous, loving students who are committed to the practice and to supporting each other.
These choices came about as a result of me asking myself strong questions during the design process. As we move forward in our journeys as teachers, studio owners, and leaders in the yoga space, we have a responsibility to ask ourselves such questions as: What can I do to keep the essence of yoga alive? How can I make this practice accessible to more people so that the circle of yoga continues to grow in richness? Am I maintaining authenticity and humility as I practice, teach, and promote?
I’ve designed my shala in response to these questions and others have found answers that are working for their chosen paths of service. Green Tree Yoga and Meditation in South Los Angeles offers all of its classes by donation, and it also offers teacher trainings on scholarship so that yogis can further serve their communities. Piedmont Yoga in Oakland recently gave up its home and transitioned to renting space from various locations so that it could continue to charge students an affordable rate and pay their teachers appropriately. Yoga thought leaders are writing articles and creating circles of sharing to deepen dialogue around these issues, and several yoga-based organizations such as Yoga Gives Back are harnessing the power of our growing community to raise resources for worthy causes. There is lots of good work being done, and there are many ways to share the fruits of yoga with more people. There is no one right answer, but we all can surely do something. As Vedic philosophy states, “One goal, many paths.” If our intent is pure, it can be manifested in many ways, all useful and true.
The Power of Authentic Community
In an increasingly polarized world, connection to one another is an essential element of our practice. Krishnamacharya urged his students to become householders and to bring yoga to other householders. Pattabhi Jois, one of Krishnamacharya’s students and the founder of Ashtanga yoga as we know it, urged his students to start families. I think they both knew intuitively that the world would need this practice and that keeping it locked up in a cave would be a great disservice. Desikachar, son and lifelong student of Krishnamacharya, says, “Yoga is not merely intellectual. It is about inner transformation. And as we will see as we go on, yoga is also relationship.” 26
As more and more people come into relationship with yoga, questions of how best to share this practice naturally arise. And as an Indian-American, I sometimes feel that others look to me as an authority on what is right and wrong in that sharing. What is appropriate and what is appropriation? What is community-building and what is exploitative? For me, it comes down to authenticity and purity of intent. Yoga belongs to all dedicated students who are living their truth. I don’t feel that I have any specific ownership of this practice because of my history or my brown skin, nor do I think that taking on a persona of “Indian-ness” is a prerequisite for taking practice. The modern-day conflation of yoga and Hinduism is a dangerous one. Desikachar himself says, “Yoga is not Hinduism.” 27 Devotion to a connectedness that goes beyond oneself is an essential element of yoga, but Hinduism certainly is not. By mistakenly lumping these two practices into one package, we dilute yoga’s essence and alienate new students who may be turned off by pseudo-spiritual trappings. It’s the responsibility of each yogi to find a genuine expression of this practice—simultaneously maintaining a connection to source and a connection within.
Deepening this connection within is what allows us to fully see and connect with others. This is the work we do each day, which a good teacher can help us with. Yoga opens the door to a self-intimacy that can lead to profound healing. As we continue this work, we often effortlessly open our hearts to others. Practicing in a room with fellow human beings, breathing and moving together, we tap into a connection beyond words. Our inner transformation becomes collective transformation, and we’re able to share growing reserves of love and compassion with our communities. If there is a goal to yoga practice, this must be it. To heal ourselves and be of service to others. For this to happen, we must stay rooted in authentic practice with correct intent. Only then can we come into a state of union.
Pranidhi Varshney is the founder of Yoga Shala West, a community-supported Ashtanga yoga shala in West Los Angeles. To support yoga practice on and off the mat, she writes regularly, has released an album of Sanskrit chanting, is a Yoga Gives Back ambassador, and sits on the advisory board of the Yoga and Body Image Coalition. Through all her work, she aims to build community and touch the heart. Author photo by Geeta Malik.
22. Alistair Shearer, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali (New York: Bell Tower, 1982), 90.
23. Susie Orbach, Bodies (New York: Picador, 2009), 32.
24. Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma (New York: Penguin, 2014).
25. Matthew Sanford, Waking: A Memoir of Trauma and Transcendence (New York: Rodale, 2006).
26. T.K.V. Desikachar and Hellfried Krusche, Freud and Yoga: Two Philosophies of Mind Compared, trans. Anne-Marie Hodges (New York: North Point Press, 2014), 23.
27. Ibid., 24.