The absence of absolutes.
I’ve taught many people in many formats: a few themes tend to emerge. One is that people really desire absolutes.
You know: NOBODY should do headstand. EVERYONE benefits from stretching their calves. Tucking the tailbone is ALWAYS wrong. This one pose WILL cure your back pain. That pose WON’T help your back. That style of yoga is BAD. This style of yoga is GOOD.
Even though the yogis I know are smart adults, often well-educated and worldly, I see this desire to be told the RIGHT way to practice yoga, and the WRONG way to practice yoga. In their own life experiences, they have encountered the nuances of knowledge and the shades of grey of the human experience. But when it comes to yoga, all of that wisdom is hidden behind the desire for absolutes.
As I see it, the desire comes from a few places. Do any of these resonate with you?
People hate to waste their time, efforts and money. If you knew that yoga you were doing right now (or fitness class, or your new sneakers) would only marginally bring you progress or relief, would it be hard to commit to? We expect gains to be commensurate with (or even exceeding) the investment, every time. If not, what’s the point? Why muster the effort if only to have an experience without visible merit?
A yoga studio memory: I received a few emails, and a phone call from a prospective student. Eventually she wanted to meet in the studio, to see the room and to meet me in person. I did my best to answer her many questions, and to let her know she could just drop in once to try me on for size, but her last question really puzzled me. “What if,” she pleaded, “I don’t like it?”. I assured her that many people have tried yoga and hated it. You might guess that she never returned to take a class. In her perspective, why would you waste an hour and $18 if enjoyment or healing wasn’t guaranteed?
We live in a culture that is binary. In modern North American culture, we devised a world based on good/bad, right/wrong, man/woman. Any person or notion that challenges the binary is dismissed as defective. Why vote for a third party candidate? Why compromise? Why listen to another perspective? We’re so good at filing the world into discrete categories. Oh, it’s flow yoga? No thanks. It can’t possibly have merit, because I like something different. Oh, you use props? No thanks, that’s not real yoga.
A teaching memory: The style of yoga I have the most student experience in is not particularly popular, so many don’t know it by name. When I was a newer teacher, and was recruited to teach in studios that focused on vinyasa style, I really struggled to communicate what I taught. It seemed that yoga was either fast and flowing, or not meant to present any challenge. I love teaching challenging classes, they just don’t include sun salutes or movement-breath choreography. Students would ask what I taught, and I’d try to infer that the classes were physically zesty, but not flow. So, gentle yoga? No, not particularly. Puzzled faces (and small class sizes!). The idea that a whole other (and really, infinite other) category existed was never the assumption.
Life is scary and we want to control the outcome. Yoga makes us confront our vulnerabilities. Like, you’re genuinely afraid of headstand. Or, you truly can’t do pigeon pose without huge sensations. Maybe, you can’t sit calmly and breathe. Yoga brings us to experiences that are challenging, and urges us to see ourselves there. In yoga, it’s very easy to accept or reject a pose or practice, based on whether it’s pleasant or painful. We’d like to know that there’s inherent safety and validation in our experience, and there may not be. What if, we wonder, something terrible happens? This cynicism make an appearance in my student’s opinions quite a bit.
A teaching memory: A student tells me they are not going to do a headstand, or any other inversion. I won’t fight people on their boundaries, but I like to know why (it may be something I can help them with, it may not). The student launches into a list of reasons, all based on the infinitesimally tiny and remote chance that if they invert, they could have a brain aneurysm. I remind her that she doesn’t have to invert, ever, for any reason…and that she’s more likely to suffer this consequence by sneezing.
What’s the alternative to the desire for absolutes?
Most people would intellectually agree that we have little control over the world, that the unexpected is already on the way, and that nothing is certain except for death and taxes. But, we devise our little mental habits, and go searching for answers that aren’t there.
There’s a riff in modern yoga that the answer to all questions is: it depends. It’s a bit glib, but the fact is: headstands are great for some people, calf stretches are terrible for others. For some people, at some points in their lives, with the consideration of many factors, savasana is not a helpful pose. Pigeon pose might negatively affect your hip socket. Backbends might assist your depression, they might strain your back. Pranayama can soothe you, put you to sleep or aggravate you.
(And for those yoga teachers ready to pull out “It depends” as your next answer…perhaps replace it with the more honest: “I don’t know.”)
The alternative to chasing absolutes is yoga. Yoga (as defined by Patanjali in chapter 1, verse 3 of the Yoga Sutra) is seeing things as they truly are, including yourself. Yoga doesn’t elevate the good over the bad, it has no use for those categories (yoga is the binary-destroyer). In yoga, obsessing over good and bad is an avoidance technique. The pursuit of absolutes lets you avoid the skill of equanimity in any circumstance. It hones your ability to form an opinion, but detracts from your ability to remove yourself from your ego.
The absence of absolutes requires you to slow down, to pay attention, to be experimental and to be open to both a process and an outcome. It requires you to learn, to acquire experience, and to try again. It requires you to practice yoga.