Saturday, August 18, 2012

My Authentic Self

It's no surprise to anyone who knows me: I fucking love yoga. I really do. I follow yoga blogs, I practice A LOT, and I'm generally curious about how bodies work. One of the things I'm no so into in yoga teachings, philosophy, etc. is the somewhat individualist conception of "enlightenment." There's lots of talk about uncovering the "authentic self" - that the superficial concerns of the world will melt away and the "true self," the unattached self, the observer, will arise from that and create liberation. This flies in the face of my other life as a sociologist who believes very firmly that the self is so embedded in the social; that the self, while they may have their tendencies, are inextricably linked to the broader social, cultural, environmental context that there can be no shattering and realization of authenticity. It rings hollow to me.

Instead, for me, yoga is about dealing with the world as it is. It gives me the tools to breathe through the frustration. Sometimes practicing is one of the most frustrating things I do. For instance, I've been working on dropping into a backbend from standing for YEARS and YEARS. I've (frustratingly) watched my yoga students surpass me in this very fundamental pose in Ashtanga. It's a pose that I just can't figure out. I might not ever figure it out. But I'm going to keep trying. I've learned long term patience. I've learned to be strategic. I've learned to confront my fears but all the while be pragmatic and safe - meaning that I want to do this thing for as long as I can so I need to make my interaction with it sustainable.

I take these lessons into my life. In that way, I get a lot from yoga. I use it to serve my life. What makes me suspicious is that people turn a mechanism for drawing lessons about life into life itself - giving everything over to the "spiritual" practice of yoga as if it's transcendent in and of itself. In some ways, I translate it as narcism masked as spirituality as the rhetoric claims that in the finding of the self, the world can change. I think yoga is a great way to make life more bearable in order to go out into a fucked up world and confront its realities without going completely mad. At least for me, it's done that. But I think many rigorous and transcendent outlets allow for that - playing music, dancing, singing, hiking, climbing, meditation - whatever ways people find to center themselves in the visceral.

It could be that I'm a soulless killjoy. But I am finding more and more this "authentic self" stuff gets to me. It fully confirms the individualist tendencies of Western societies - particularly as they play out in the United States - at a time where collective pursuits are more necessary than ever. While I am not suggesting that people are taking this philosophy to its most radical conclusions, complete and utter asceticism, most people don't, I worry that yoga *can* be another mechanism for putting one's head in the sand as justified through philosophical and spiritual texts. 

Maybe I'm conflating this quest for the authentic self with escape from the world. I think a sophisticated reader of these texts would argue that indeed, I am. But I'm not talking about the sophisticated reader. I'm talking about the ways in which something very complicated and nuanced turns into another marketing scheme (Lululemon cough cough) that sells (relatively affluent) people their liberation at 80 bucks a pop.



I'm glad nobody actually reads this blog. I'm sure this would be very offensive to lots of people. 

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