👏🏼Yoga👏🏼is👏🏼full👏🏼of👏🏼bullshit.

I’ve been practicing yoga for a long time (since a teen) and the whole time my bullshit radar has pinged.

It’s something I struggle with - the practice has given me SO MUCH. And the industry is full of such absolute baloney sometimes it makes my skin crawl.

You read the books with the nice words by the gurus, then dig deeper and read of their gross manipulation of people and power. You look to the modern ‘gurus’ and find the same - almost universally. Nice words, shit behaviour.

I’m tired of teachers shagging their students. I’m tired of the asana fetish. I’m tired of people who have beautiful bodies and asana practices being lauded as gurus when their egos are not ready for that kind of adulation. I’m tired of celebrity culture. I’m tired of complicated practices and and language - it’s basically BS designed to confuse students into thinking it must be deep and special cos it’s YOGA. 

I’m tired of people not realising that just because someone can quote a text or recite a passage or share a meaningful sentiment that they have a) in any way embodied that teaching and b) are in any other way developed as a human organism.

Ken Wilber talks about lines of development. Someone might be physically incredible or spiritually developed and a mess in other areas of their life. We need to stop putting people on pedestals and start accepting their humanity.

I’m tired of people confusing their pain and their trauma with their capacity for spiritual experience. I’m tired of the bypassing. I’m tired of my own bypassing. I’m tired of not caring. I’m tired of caring. I’m tired of feeling like I’m not yogic enough or that it’s ‘wrong’ to practice in ANY way that makes me feel good.

I walk this line between throwing it all in and never talking about yoga again and feeling like teaching yoga is the only thing I’m meant to do with my life. And then I wonder what I’m even teaching if I find so much of it distasteful and abhorrent. 

I was interviewed recently and I recalled in that chat that my reason for teaching was to connect people through stillness to their wise intelligent body friend. I don’t know why I forget that so frequently and dabble in the bullshit but I guess that’s the adventurer in me.

You don’t need complicated practices to awaken your kundalini. It’s already awake, or you wouldn’t be here. Just learn to feel that force that connects you to all of life and keep your spine fluid. We all just need to get quiet enough to remember how powerful we are.

That’s been what I’ve learned and what I constantly forget and what I need to practice to remind myself of. It’s all within you. Fuck the rest of it, the lineages and the gurus, unless they truly truly really help you feel that sense of deep abiding space and connection.

I wish we as a community could wipe the slate clean. But we can’t. This is the mess we’re in. We can all go to therapy though!

And those of you who love and practice and share and study yoga can do your bit - remember your teachers are human. Do your own research. Question everything. Ask yourself how you contribute to the issues facing yoga today. Run everything you learn through your own lived experience. Is it true FOR YOU? Cultivate a strong filter for BS. Give nothing of your power away. Take nothing from your students. Act ethically. Stop glorifying asana. Work on your own shadow. Stay humble. 

Here’s to walking the unsteady but worthwhile path.

x Tahnee

A note: Matthew Remski does good work exposing the contradictions and compromised behaviour of the spiritual community. Highly recommend.