Comments on: 58. The science and politics of yoga – Ariana Rabinovitch

By: Sandra Razieli

Sandra Razieli — Sat, 02 Jun 2018 04:30:23 +0000

I very much enjoyed listening to this podcast. I just submitted a thoughtful comment and was given the message “email address error,” when I went back to the page my comment was gone. I thought you’d want to know.

In short – I wrote that I think that there are more voices like yours on the horizon so thanks for taking the lead. When I first started studying yoga I asked a lot of questions about many of the things that are in your myth book. I was often shamed because of my critical thinking and I didn’t know what next steps to take. I think that these critical voices have been around for a while but they were by people who were not part of a system or left a system. As individuals, their voices were much quieter than those of the group. I think this is starting to change.
And I like your discussion on guru culture/postmodern culture as well as the reality of career prospects for yoga teachers.

By: Amy

Amy — Tue, 08 May 2018 12:28:10 +0000

Great to hear that there are like-minded yoga teachers out there, I can’t believe some of the claims yoga teachers make, and some of the things they say, for example “notice how calm you are feeling” (um, I’m not!!). Years ago on a yoga retreat I was advised to do a juice cleanse to relieve symptoms I had which were subsequently diagnosed as ulcerative colitis! These are lovely, well-intentioned people, but saying unhelpful stuff – and I’ve caught myself b*llsh*tting too on occasions – parroting stuff that I was taught. I am frequently looking for further teacher training to help me continue to undo some of the stuff I was taught on my YTT. Training in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction with Bangor University has been very helpful. I find the world of yoga anatomy / yoga alignment teaching very confusing and contradictory – just bought a copy of “Exposing yoga myths”, looking forward to reading it! Thanks both.