The Authentic Yoga? by Andrew Moon
I am not sure that anyone really knows what Yoga is anymore. On the one hand, this
might be a problem. On the other, it is perhaps, in the unfathomability and conceptual
slipperiness that Yoga has, its greatest attribute. In my journey through the years
I have often wrestled with finding the ‘true’ Yoga, the ‘authentic’ Yoga; the ‘pure’
Yoga. It is only now, some years later that I am beginning to recognise both the
necessity and inherent futility of the search. And for this I am truly grateful.
Back in the beginning, all records are lost, if indeed anyone ever bothered to keep
them. We are paupers living on crumbs when it comes to the archaeology of Yoga. Sure,
we can claim certain traditions, practises and methods existed but even most of this
is supposition, extrapolation and good old guesswork. It is true also that we have
a modern inheritance which has slithered over the Indian Ocean and crept into the
Twenty First Century as if on the back of a leaky raft.
These days we have a most interesting situation. Something called ‘Yoga’ goes on
across our country. It manifests in church halls, gyms, studios, living rooms and
just about everywhere else there is a few feet of space and someone brave enough
to call themselves a Yoga teacher. What actually goes on in practise could not
be more diverse, contradictory or ungovernable if it tried to be. Trying to find
the authentic Yoga in this mess is a bit like trying to find the meaning of life
itself. It’s an OK thing to contemplate but you wouldn’t expect to get an answer.
Its assimilative properties are perhaps why Yoga has survived for so many centuries
and crossed so many oceans. Each time I teach Yoga class I feel I am starting from
scratch. Despite all the training, the tradition and the well-worn paths of practise,
Yoga for me recognises that I know nothing at all, that each moment is an arising
contingency of the whole. ‘Yoga’, in its sense of ‘to join’ or ‘to yoke’ invites
me to take part in this universal dance of rising and falling, ebb and flow, in a
way which is vibrant, creative and engaging. In my Yoga practise I might not know
quite what I’m doing or even why I’m doing it but I do know that I have entered a
portal, a space of becoming that connects me to the whole and ends my fragmentariness
if just for a few short moments.
I have no problem with established traditions and formulaic practises. For a long
time I sought their validatory and consistent qualities. I searched for my Guru
and craved authenticity. But all this gave me was a sense of wanting and a tendency
to not appreciate what I had within my own meandering practise. Only when I saw
Gurus everywhere and authenticity in the very being of my practise did I relax and
let myself go with the process. Yoga is…? Some questions should not be answered. Answers
close down the creative process. It seems that by just being alive on this wonderful
planet we have entered a process. Despite our best efforts to the contrary, it seems
we cannot capture or ‘fix’ things, either in space or time. Life is chaotic, fragmentary
and colossally elusive to pin down. Yoga doesn’t try to do this but instead offers
us a piggy back ride on the back of ‘process’. These days when I roll out my mat
I just ride on the wave of this process.
At the beginning of my own practise it wasn’t like this. At that time Yoga felt
like it might be a state to become, a destination to reach. Perhaps through its
auspices I would traverse the challenges and pitfalls of being all too human and
find on the other side something altogether tidier and more presentable. I would
smooth my rough edges and polish the lens of my perceptions until I got to the clear
seeing truth of things.
Well, something like that anyway. The point is that I expected the vehicle of Yoga
to take me somewhere specific. I hooked into the journey metaphor and expected to
get somewhere solid and final. Well, you would wouldn’t you?
The years that followed found me relentlessly pressing on. Sometimes against the
most remarkable odds, I’d persevere with this notion of journey. I met various teachers
and entered the spiritual marketplace. I read so many books my eyes hurt. I travelled
the world and got jetlag and mosquito bites from dusty ashrams. Throughout I continued
to valiantly struggle with my habits and my addictions not realising that self-perfection
was one of them.
It took three teacher trainings and a lot of grief before some pennies began to drop
their irresistible drop. It was all Yoga. I had to chew that one over for a while. I
don’t even know exactly where this mantra came from. I only know that it began to
dawn on me that there was no ‘Yoga’ as such, none anyway that could be defined by
form, chapter or verse. I have no idea what the ancient mystics and Yogis had in
mind. All I did realise is that I wasn’t in India anymore and my own cultural, social
and energetic landscape was rather different and relentlessly changing by the day. If
Yoga was going to be anything useful it had to engage with this total environment. It
had to show me a way of engaging with my world, inner and outer. And if my little
psychophysical structure was unique, idiosyncratic and quirky, then quite possibly
so was everyone else’s. Furthermore, I quite enjoyed being human and saw no reason
to change this into superhuman status. Above all, I’d be very lonely.
So Yoga became a way of process in a universe of process. Things were changing all
the time. There was precious little to hold on to. As I ventured away from my Yoga
books I heard whispers from modern science about how this was how the universe was
too. Everything was process and information. Time and space were relative at best,
imaginary even. These guys were speaking like yogis and there wasn’t a loin cloth
or a manual on Pranayama anywhere.
At last, things were coming together in true Yoga style. However, this coming together
was also process and in constant flux. There was nowhere to go because we were all
already here! Meanwhile back in my Yoga classes it started to make some sense. Having
put down aspiration I could actually see the people in front of me on their mats. And
in their struggles, conflicts, griefs and joys I could see a reflection of what I
suspected was going on in all those aforementioned gyms and church halls across our
land. People were coming to terms with their humanness in unique and really quite
imaginative ways and I loved them all for it. They were, in their own way, being
true, authentic and pure all at once. It was all rather beautiful. My search for
the real ‘Yoga’ was over.
I still don’t know the answer to the question; what is Yoga? If I ever find one
I think I’ll avert my eyes and walk on by. These days my lineage is the countless
numbers of people who have asked the question in response to those insistent enquiries
that life so relentlessly asks of us. Me? I’ve enjoyed it all; the tears and the
laughter; the epiphanies and the pulled muscles; the portals and the mosquito bites.
