In honor of women and yoga...

Love for our western roots and where we are going now.

Top row left to right: Indra Devi, Ana Forrest, Judith Hanson Lasater
Bottom row left to right: Angela Farmer, Geeta Iyengar with Dona Holleman, Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen

There are so many great female pioneers in yoga and embodiment. These are just a few of the great women who have been leading the way for all of us in the west for more than 40 years. I chose theses teachers to picture because they have been, and continue to be, personal for me. Each of them in their own way questioned the systems and brought new wisdom to the yoga dialogue.

THE EARLY YEARS
Over 45 years ago I decided to make yoga my life's work. As a serious and always curious practitioner, student, and teacher of yoga since the early 1980's, I have experienced the gift of being able to watch its development in the U.S. as it has grown from a nearly unknown novelty into a cultural phenomenon. The role of women continues to evolve.

The early years of western yoga—the 70s, 80s, and early 90s—were very much based on the traditional hierarchy of teacher on top and student below. Teachers held the truth. They had seen it directly. The teacher was smart and wise. Basically, the student was not. The most influential teachers were still overwhelmingly male.

Women, however were already quietly becoming the innovators. We began to explore and inquire. “This, okay…and what else might be true?” We were looking for a practice that included more of the inherent feminine. We were beginning to question some of the most basic premises.

The hierarchical form that I entered into in the early 80s felt fine to me at first. I believed it must be the right way. It was a pretty good match for the format and dynamics of our male dominated culture and I was well indoctrinated into accepting that. When it came to yoga, I was on board to win. I wanted to be the best in what was purported to be a noncompetitive endeavor. Never mind everyone at the top scrambled and maneuvered to stay there. Never mind they were almost all men.

Yoga teachings were great at explaining and rationalizing hierarchy in general. It was an actual map of pure and impure, better and worse, negative and positive. As a human and a woman steeped in our culture, I bought it. I accepted the structure of yoga as a kind of spiritual truth. Purity definitely sounded better than "impurity".

The promise: purity is the ultimate reality and that we can achieve it, experience it directly and no longer be “impure”, sullied by the trials of living a life in form. The idea sounded pretty good to a suffering and confused mind. The idea that we suffer due to our impurities made a compelling case for purification.

Yoga stated that if we were strong enough to take the philosophy totally to heart and practice with diligence we might be able to purify enough to become enlightened. Pure. Untainted by the difficulties of life-lived-in-form.

As the eighties became the nineties and the nineties progressed, nothing fundamentally changed. Women were beginning to teach more and more yoga classes. We women were eager to be the teachers! Finally, we were on top and…we liked it. However, even then the male teachers continued to be considered to be the "serious" leaders of yoga.

We bought into the hierarchical format because we were pretty happy with our new higher position. We liked having greater respect in the community. We enjoyed being considered to be smarter, wiser, and in some ways "above” our students. Very understandable given our histories!

Eventually, some of us began to realize that we had bought into a reality that was actually counter to what we found to be true for us. At some point many of us began to realize that the hierarchical structure in itself was flawed! Not even real. Not ultimate at all, but a structure that developed from a particular vantage point. We began to notice that we had accepted as truth, something that might not be true.

We began to inquire into the form and function of life itself with an eye toward deeper understanding of what it means to live in a body. What does it offer to the spiritual journey? We began to explore embodiment as part and parcel of the universal.

What is the nature of "this" we asked? Is it true that this messy life needs to be washed clean in order to see it for what it is—a complex and powerful manifestation of universal intelligence and creativity? Who are “we” in this?

ENTER EMBODIMENT
As women in yoga we have brought in active embodiment as the very means for increasing knowledge, wisdom, and clarity. We have turned our attention to nature; to our lives lived in form. We haven’t given up on the end goal of honing our ability to see clearly and to recognize “life-as-it-is”. We say what has been called impure may not be so. How could it be if everything arises from the same ultimate field of creative intelligence? Need the messy nature of our humanity and our lives really be obstacles to enlightenment? It doesn’t actually make sense.

We explore every aspect of body, mind, and nature within; love and all the rest, sorrow, pain, ecstasy, loss…dissolution. Nature is beautiful, disturbing, violent, peaceful, messy, and constantly changing. Just like us. The concept of purity just isn’t there in nature. Who defined what is pure? Do we even know? The subject is worth exploring.

Through embodied philosophy we learn to embrace the notion of community and equality; the circle rather than the raised platform. Mutuality of respect. The whole person, body, mind, and real life oriented inquiry.

The journey into cellular intelligence, the embodied blending of heart and mind in our tissues, in our movement, our thoughts and our feelings. Full acceptance of the rising and falling pulsing nature of life lived in form. We have and are continuing to turn the practice, literally on its head.

AND YET…IMPLICIT SELF BIAS IN YOGA
Let’s all simply pause here and check in. I would ask you to open to the possibility that the shifting of our place in the western yoga world has not penetrated nearly as far as it needs to go. Of course sexism is still very much alive and we have not solved that in any aspect of life.

I feel we all are still toiling inside with our own implicit self bias even in the field of yoga. We still clamber for our own status—within ourselves (in a business that we run!)—within a framework that we continue to feed—a framework that is good at obfuscating our own self biases, even to the point of calling our responses to our implicit bias “empowerment”.

Believe me, I know there are more female yoga teachers now. I know we are the studio owners and I know we promote, fill, and teach all those workshops and teacher training programs. But I would still ask all of us, myself included, “How do we perceive ourselves in these roles?” We have been working on accepting our bodies for well over 40 years now! Is that one done? Ask yourself. We have created so much outward support for the idea of self acceptance and yet…are we there? Hard inquiry to take, right?

Yes, being a woman in yoga is still firmly held in the legacy of its male hierarchical form and we have taken it into ourselves with little questioning. Assuming that in one generation the underlying values we were taught have fundamentally changed maybe just wishful thinking. I’m proposing that we still carry deep scars from all we have learned and absorbed through our living in a hierarchical system that doesn't fully acknowledge women's powerful and yes, spiritual gifts. Yoga is not immune. 

THE WORST PART OF IT
One of the most insidious scars we carry is the one that propels us to join into the same exact hierarchical game, in order to win it. Part of us is still consciously or not, driven by the the old paradigm of good, better, and best; a paradigm that doesn’t hold up when applied to nature. Part of us, understandably, still wants to be on top. That is the old game. That is the approach that needs to actually change! The only way it can actually change is for us to change.

We need to make active choices about how to proceed. What are we teaching? Let’s be diligent and continue to inquire into our own implicit self bias. Let’s be willing to dredge out the remaining vestiges of sexism that we embody. It begins with each one of us. We need to be clear. We need to clarify who we are in this and who we are not.

In other words, let’s not simply join the hierarchy and strive to rise up the ladder or generally put ourselves above or below others. It is possible to teach without being someone who is “above” the others.

TEACHING YOGA
Good teachers deserve respect. Respect is not about positioning oneself in relationship to another. We deserve our student’s respect when we honor and respect them. We offer what we know — whatever it is we teach — with full respect back to them. We don’t allow them to place us on a pedestal. It is not good for us and it certainly is not good for them.

Let’s replace the podium with the use of the circle. Let’s invite our students into real self-respect by embodying it ourselves. That means we the teachers need to be honest with ourselves; go deeper and be willing to own your own foibles.

Don’t share your whole sad story with your students! That is not the point. However, don’t hide it either. Your own process and journey into fearlessness and wisdom is what attracts them to you. The fact that you still practice and inquire, learn, and love is what they are looking for in themselves. Let them know it is also sometimes hard for you too, but it is not and should not be about sharing the specifics of your life. You give them the love and acceptance and they take it from there. It is about what you embody and what you have to offer.

We teach who we are. Let’s teach love. Let’s teach mutuality and respect.
Let’s own it in ourselves. Let’s explore and continue to nurture a different and yes…I will say more feminine paradigm of learning and growing together.

After all, we teach who we are.
Let’s support one another. 

Patty

I expect there are many of you for whom my assessment feels harsh and not inclusive of the great strides we are making. That’s fair and you may be right.

As a senior teacher with a full lifetime of teaching yoga for a living while raising four children, learning and studying constantly, and running successful yoga centers I feel it is my dharma, my duty, to tell what I see.

If it does not ring true for you, disregard it as the ramblings of a 72 year old woman who is completely out of touch. 🙏🏼