Yoga Brain: When Self Improvement Becomes Self Absorption

I love yoga. It is an extremely healthy physical practice with potential for much more. Even some strains of the New Thought spirituality and mind-cure hokum often associated with it has a degree of therapeutic value. My quarrels with the general state of a lot of commercial yoga (not an indictment of all yoga everywhere by everyone) is more than the just usual complaint of crass consumerist (z)enlightenment perverting centuries of deep tradition. In reality, there has never been a unified, monolithic concept of a yoga practice or philosophy. So, fair enough if you want to re-imagine it within a capitalist framework, replete with all the gear, outfits, and memberships that entails. Enjoy the community and health benefits that come with that journey. Just don't pretend you connecting with some kind of pure and ancient spiritual tradition, and don't act like your deep breaths and toned lats are going to make you a better person. Self-improvement involves more than mastering an arm balance and saying "auuummmm."

Yoga as Retreat

What I see as the major failing of the modern yogic practice is its almost complete detachment from the outside world. This would be fine if it were simply a gym routine, which for many it is, but it also has this vague spiritualism attached to it that alludes to a much grander journey of self-development that promises to make the world a better place. If more people had some kind of meditative practice like yoga, many will argue, they too might be more "centered" and patient, engaging others with less anger, bitterness, and violence. Hard to quibble too much with that ideal. The problem is that this "centering" process often become stunted by the endlessly narcissistic "self-discovery" of the new age yoga cultist.They get so caught up in improving their practice and achieving self-acceptance (not inherently bad things), that they fail to look outside the microcosm of their own body and Instagram feeds.

Perpetual self-improvement is important to prevent mental, physical, and moral stagnation, but it cannot be done only in the safe space of a middle-class yoga retreat. It requires us to think and act in our daily lives with others and the environment in mind. A butterfly pinned in a museum case may indeed be beautiful, but it does not serve it's bigger role as a pollinator. Similarly, if your practice does not compel you to engage with the world in a positive way beyond the mat, you may be missing out on one of the best ways to improve your self. 

Alignments

Years ago, I became certified to teach yoga while I was traveling in Peru. One thing that appealed to me about the  strain of yoga I was taught was a very broad philosophy of alignment. We not only worked on perfecting our postures, but on seeing them as metaphors for congruence with larger systems as well: how we align our actions with our principles and our goals, how these goals and principles align with a healthy and just society, and how a healthy and just society can function in agreement with (not opposition to) the natural world.

When I came home to Cleveland, Ohio, I met a local yoga teacher who similarly inspired students to think of their practice as something to carry outside the classroom. It was presented as something that can fundamentally alter the way you engage with others, and change how you reflect on those engagements. You might push yourself physically, but there also exists other challenges for a practice billed as a panacea for self-improvement. It may be productive to also think about your lifestyle and how you treat others and the environment. Have you uncovered habits in the way you move, think, and behave that you can make more personally, socially, and ecologically healthy? This is important, especially if you want to ascribe any significance to your practice beyond physical health and the aesthetics of a contorted body.

To be clear, a basic physical practice is fine. That is a valid choice, and unlike some purists, I do see value in this path. In many ways, it is more honest. It also improves personal fitness and confidence, and even has a health interpersonal aspect to it that jogging alone does not have. However, most people who love yoga also celebrate its mind-body-soul connections. It is widely held to be something than just stretching and twisting. For this reason, it behooves everyone to ask whether they are achieving "mindfulness" with their practice, or just pursuing vanity and navel-gazing solipsism with a patina of appropriated Sanskrit.

In its loftier iterations, yoga invites practitioners to think of their connections to the sociopolitical and environmental frameworks within which they have constructed their identities and values. The "union" of the individual with larger concepts has the potential to lift people off first wrung of self-love, and to motivate adherents toward a more fruitful accounting of their overall human ecology. Compassion for the self is essential, but to simply end there is a veritable tragedy for personal development.

Questions for Yogis

What changes have come from the compassion, mindfulness, and empathy that you have learned? Where has your patience and training led you? Have you taken steps to lower your carbon footprint, challenged deep-rooted ideas about how our economy works, considered the implications of your diet and lifestyle, reduced waste and consumption, and/or fought for the sake of those with less privilege? My big disappointment with modern yoga is that it often lets people enjoying bourgeois benefits feel completely wonderful about doing nothing of use to others or the planet.

To be fair, many yoga practitioners do make big structural changes in their life, expanding their self-concept and pushing the frontiers of empathy. Furthermore, there is absolutely nothing wrong with being happy (or even surprised) with your physical progress and achievements along the way. Document them with as many pics of you on the beach doing vrschikasana as you like. It is undeniably impressive and beautiful. But if I were your yoga teacher, I might ask you to go home and scroll through your social media feeds while counting the proportion of your photos that are just yourself, maybe even taken by yourself. What does this say about you: your motivations, your focus, your life experience? Is it saying something you like? Has your practice made you more or less in tune with -- and concerned about -- the world around you? Are you bending over backwards for yourself, or for something bigger?