Cutting the Crap from Yoga

[Majin Gojira]

In order to maintain at least some degree of flexibility and health, I've taken to doing Yoga and generally found the experience enjoyable until quite recently as the main Yoga...I guess the term would be Studio, was bought out by a larger chain of Yoga Studios.

Before, I could easily cut most of the religious/spiritual trappings from my stretching/body contorting fun. Not to say that I didn't enjoy an occasional forray into meditation/Crazy Brain Crosswiring, but mostly I used such incidents to nap.

That and chanting "Ohm" en mass just sounds nifty if you get enough people to do it.

However, since the changeover, the obvious spiritualism has become far more subtle and slightly insideous. Furthermore, the nature of the stretches and some of the advice given during the streches has been highly counter intuitive (in one case, a full reversal of the breath's used during one of the stretches that ran counter to how lungs expand).

I'm considering at the very least avoiding that teacher in classes, but I want to double check and make sure my crap-detectors are fully functional in regards to psuedo-spiritualism often outside the original context and the practices that has no practicle benifit.

[Darth Wong]

Yoga is a lot like martial arts in that respect. Some of it is valuable, some of it is crap, some of it is crap bolstered by pseudo-spiritual bullshit.

[Count Chocula]

Has your instructor changed? It may be that he/she is differently skilled than you are used to having, possibly inferior to your prior instructor, and more "into" the mysticism than the exercise.

It's been a long time since I've been to a yoga class, but I still remember the stretching exercises and the concommitant urging (from my instructor anyway) to focus on the exercise, breathing, body position, muscle tension, etc. and otherwise clear your head.

Oddly enough for California, my instructor never had the class say "Ommm" or do any metaphysical visualizations.

If you don't like the changes in that studio, you can probably find another studio that does a better job.

[Edi]

I actually started astanga yoga two weeks ago. I'd promised the GF I'd try it, so I did. I like the exercise part of it and the teaching at the studio I go to is not religious in nature. You can take it in that direction if you want, but the spirituality side of it is very light there. I filter that out as a matter of course, because there's so much bullshit in it. On the physical side, it does help a lot, now I just need to get time for attending practice regularly to get the benefit out of it. Will be significant, as I'm generally about as flexible as a concrete pillar.

[Majin Gojira]

Has your instructor changed?

Very much so.

Oddly enough for California, my instructor never had the class say "Ommm" or do any metaphysical visualizations.

That's unexpected.

If you don't like the changes in that studio, you can probably find another studio that does a better job.

I still have some classes I've payed for--so I'm at the very least switching class times (and hopefuly instructors).

[Marcus Aurelius]

When I firsts read the article I thought it said "Cutting the Crap from Yoda", but then I realized it shouldn't be in this forum.

And I suppose it's too late to cut the crap from Yoda now, unless Lucas decides to do a "Now without Oriental pseudophilosophy" Edition.