Yoga for the Wounded Heart by Tatiana Forero Puerta

Author:Tatiana Forero Puerta
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781590565780
Publisher: Lantern Books

17

SURRENDERING AND FORGIVENESS

THE SHIFT FROM FEAR TO LOVE

Surrender and the Physical Body

I'm admittedly an junkie; I think many “yoga people” are. It's no mystery to me why, of all the different elements and types of yoga (bhakti—the yoga of devotion; karma—the yoga of selfless action; —yoga through studying texts and wisdom in order to distinguish the self from the non-self; japa—the yoga of repetition of names and mantra), it is and more specifically , the yoga of postures, that has exploded in the West. In my home of Manhattan, yoga studios are popping up like flowers rising out of the earth during an especially fruitful spring season. On the internet, I see advertisements for yoga teacher trainings almost daily: FULFILL YOUR DREAM. BECOME A YOGA TEACHER. As soon as the practice of postures went viral, its profit-making potential was revealed and everyone and their cousins are now yoga teachers.

Back in the days of my first training, you'd be hard-pressed to find a teacher who took you in without three to five years of practice under your belt. It was common to undergo a lengthy interview process before being accepted to a training program. At the completion of a program, new teachers were required to teach at least a year for free: to give back what they'd been given, to cultivate the craft, and to practice the art of teaching. That was a liberal approach! Not too many years prior, teachings of yoga were considered esoteric, and teachers were veterans who'd practiced for decades with the great masters, and were utterly committed to this practice not as something they did for fitness or fun, but as a complete way of life.

Today, it's not uncommon for me to step into a yoga teacher–training to teach philosophy and encounter people who've only been practicing yoga for a few weeks before they decided to become a “teacher.” The modern yoga landscape has changed drastically even in the last decade, and it will continue to transform as new teachers innovate new forms of yoga, and more and more people start their path in this practice of conscious movement.

I'm not pointing out the change in the yogic landscape to be dismissive. My aim is to bring light to an interesting dynamic: unlike the other forms of yoga—like the study of books, or feeding the poor, or chanting—, postures and physical movement, stuck to Western culture and we can't seem to get enough. The Western mind is body-centered, our culture revolves around the acquisition of material goods, and our focus is on the feel and appeal of our physical bodies. Beauty, health, and success are often measured through physical standards. No wonder we've become junkies!

Although wanting to look and feel good isn't necessarily negative (there's much to be said about the power of positive addiction), popular yoga culture may have lost sight of or perhaps never fully accessed the subtler layers of this amazing practice. The more I teach, and the more my own practice deepens, the more I'm convinced that we're not addicted to the postures themselves.

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