The Yoga "Wars"

Now that I'm a teacher training graduate (Jai Love Skool!), I'm ready to respond to this.

A friend sent it to me just as I was beginning my program. I bristled at first, I'll admit, before getting past the headline.

I can dig the writer's objection to the California situation. I was a "body only" yogini for many years, and now that I am more steeped in the other seven limbs besides just asana, I'm pretty attuned to how frightening it is that the meaning beyond the body is so easily obscured.

However.

Yoga is for everyone. It's not static - it's Now. It's all about getting yourself into the present. To keep practicing it the way Krishnamacharya and all his light-filled students practiced it would be to keep it in the past - and that misses the entire point.

We bring our awareness to the breath to bring our careless minds and willful bodies into the Now. We don't look ahead or behind. We mimic so many aspects of the human life cycle in the sequence of our poses (a very powerful symbol, for me) because each moment is precious. We are born and reborn with every breath. 

I guess that's my point. You can't have "yoga wars." In its true form, yoga won't allow it. Yoga is for everyone, and it meets you where you are.