Right so...hi! My name is Emma and I've been living and teaching ashtanga yoga here in Taipei for the last 5 months. It's been an an interesting journey so far! I've run into people I met in India and Thailand. I've gotten back in touch with people I haven't heard from in years! My yoga practice is changing daily in a way that is completely new to me. I'm learning...everyday I'm learning. Especially from my students. The relationship the people here have with the teacher is so different from the west. The teacher is revered so everything you say is taken as gospel...it's a bit disconcerting but it makes me much more present in my classes!
The company I work for offers all different styles of yoga so along with that when workshops are offered the teachers are invited to attend for free. Fantastic! Well, sometimes fantastic, sometimes not so fantastic. Now I'm an ashtangi but I also feel that yoga is yoga and I really don't agree with style bashing. If one style works for you but another doesn't that's fine. There is no need to bash the other style. So today, the teachers were invited to do a "teacher training" in restorative yoga. Sure why not? I'm open to learning something new. But it ended up being the most painful 4 hours of my life! (slight exageration...) This woman and her boyfriend talked a lot about resonant fields and electro magnetic fields and then had us roll around on the floor making differents sounds to release the fluids of the body....we were told not to use OM as it is "so tired"...hmmm. This lady started as an ashtangi, moved to Iyengar, then kundalini, and so on. But all of them are "crap" and this new style is the "only way". Seems to me she's searching for something and I really hope for her sake she finds it. But to call what she is doing now "yoga" is misleading. It reminded me of something I did in university in movement classes and improv classes for acting. And I think it has it's place and is valid. But I also disagree that it is yoga...it does not represent any of the 8 limbs. She had us sit in a circle at the beginning of the class and asked us to introduce ourselves and tell her why we taught yoga saying it was to create a safe space. But she then criticised everyone's answer! I was like hey sister! I thought this was supposed to be safe? She then told us that all the other traditional forms of yoga were controlling hierarchys and that what they were doing was the only true form based in the science of quantam physics and biology. We have a chiropractor on our teaching staff and he ended up walking out half way thru saying it was all bull$%#*! I was determined to stay until the end but as the 4 hour came to a close and the talking continued I couldn't take anymore. I had to leave! This woman had gotten me so angry! So maybe she was pushing my buttons. Maybe there is a lesson here for me to learn....that just because someone calls something "yoga" does not make it so, so then yoga is not simply yoga. Krishnamacharya says (to paraphrase) "I don't care how you come to yoga just as long as you come to it." So whether you start in an asana class, or studying the philosophies, or thru meditation you begin your journey, all of it is valid. So to belittle another style or individual to make yourself or the style you practice seem more valid I think misses the point completely. I don't think I will be using this "teacher training" any time soon!