Yoga in the West: What's the cost of Adaptation and Innovation?

Let’s face the reality. The yoga we practice in the west is not the same yoga that emerged and evolved in India and surrounding countries through the height of the tantric era. Yoga in the west has become its own unique expression of the ancient practice. Absorbed by the cultural environment of capitalism, uninhibited innovation and appropriation, stress, materialism and entrepreneurial cavalier yoga has been contorted to fit any and all functional purpose that anyone creative enough could muster.

On one end this is amazing. On the foundation of a spiritual embodiment practice people have built a unique cultural movement around a hodge podge of fitness, collaged together spirituality, self-improvement, mindfulness and stress-reduction. Yoga asana practice and the accompanying yogic philosophy was used as a template and scaffolding that was gradually removed in the process almost in its entirety to aid in birthing a western, capitalist friendly spiritual embodiment practice of our own. And there is no doubt that this new creation is a living breathing, transforming beast of healing and transformation in our culturae that is changing and improving people’s lives all across the culture.

But some of the “innovation” that is happening is upsetting to purists and those of us who are sensitive to the west’s careless tendencies in cultural appropriation. This is well warranted. Yet on another level it seems to be an inevitable attempt within western culture to assimilate elements of a spiritual and personal development system that offers ideas and practices that they needed to fill a glaring gap within our own cultural development.

Yoga filled a gap in a culture rebelling from the grasp of orthodox religion that functioned on the shaky pillar of faith. Yoga was a bridge between Mysticism, Religion and the more self-referential, rational and pluralistic postmodern culture. In a culture quickly waking up from a modern rationalist to post-modern subjective, relativist and pluralist, there seemed to be a realization by many that religion in the form that it was being presented to us, did not cohere with our evolving worldview. Many who felt tricked, abused and traumatized by their religious backgrounds walked away from religion but yet needed something that filled that gap. 

In came psychedelics, the beatles and the onslaught of imported eastern spirituality. It was a breath of fresh air for many. The new spirituality was centered around self-exploration and practice vs. blind faith and adherence to dogma. But as the glamour wore off and our modern and postmodern tendencies kicked back on some of us stayed true and stuck with the traditions and many of us began dismantling and disassembling the traditions and practices within our relatable and acceptable contexts. 

Granted this is merited and an important process. We should analyze and examine things based in healthy skepticism before we pour our valuable energy and time into it. We needed to see what was truly valuable and useful and what aspects are the archaic remnants of a refuted worldview based in magical thinking. Blind faith and cultural artifacts that were not useful to us in the modern world were often discarded over time.

Yet inevitably in the process of breaking something like eastern mystic traditions down with our rational deductive process, we fail to understand the depth or relevance of certain practices. Be it a language barrier, laziness or confusion and simple misunderstanding, we threw a lot of the baby out with the bathwater. 

One example would be the guru and devotional practices. Yogic traditions place a high value on the role and function of the guru. Through the combination of abusive behaviors and questionable or confusing conduct on behalf of many eastern gurus, the west has understandingly been aversive to gurus at large. As a result many don’t engage in any sort of devotional practices along with their yoga or meditation.

We don’t prostrate (bow) to the teacher with a sense of reverence. We don’t visualize and pray or make offerings to our teachers. In the world of postmodern relativism and pluralism and self referencing, the guru is purely an internal, subjective object. The guru is “within”. This is an understandable approach and has many merits to it. And it’s ultimately true in many contexts. But there are also many unforeseen consequences to this approach as well. 

When we mistakingly believe that in all contexts we are equal to the guru, we fail to recognize that a teacher who may have practiced for 40- 50 years in a rigorous course of study and practice may be at an equal level of knowledge as us in their area of expertise. This is obviously absurd. It fails to recognize the value and experience that the teacher has to offer and can close us off to that wisdom due to our arrogance. The hidden danger in this sort of approach is a shadow side effect of what we were originally attempting to do: reify our self or ego. 

And this brings us to a very tricky and complex topic that we need to continue to explore and discuss collectively with the help of well experienced and skilled psychologists, meditators and people who are steeped in the direct experience of human relationships and development. When do we strengthen and hold the ego and when do we soften and let go of it?

One of the core teachings and wisdoms of the eastern traditions is the fallacy and pitfall of the ego. Eastern traditions specialize in warning us of the dangers of being trapped in ego reification and worship. Many eastern systems of yoga teach us that being identified and caught in a cycle of unconscious addiction to the impulses of the ego lead us into endless suffering. But from a practical perspective, those of us who’ve been practicing in these traditions for a long time may realize that it’s not that simple. We realize that many people actually need to develop a healthier sense of ego due to their developmental wounding and insufficiencies in attachment and healthy relating templates that has stunted the development of healthy adult ego attributes internally. This is something that will be an ongoing point of development in the synthesis of western knowledge in psychology and eastern mysticism wisdom. But I digress. 

Coming back to eastern yogic traditions, we need to understand the function and usefulness of these traditions on a deeper level. Devotional practices aren’t just archaic practices of feudal hierarchies, they also play the function of gradually helping the yoga practitioner release their rigid grasp on their unconscious ego sense that prevents from entering into more open and free somatic and psychic territories. Again, to emphasize that in some conditions this can be premature for some people without proper ego development. But that being said, devotional practices are one of those things that many have discarded from their practices of mindful meditation and yoga that may serve a crucial role in the process of reorganizing and liberating old latent conditioning in the body/mind. 

So how can we move forward on this strange tight rope we are traversing? I believe that it requires that we carefully examine our pre-existing biases in an honest and assertive manner. I think it’s important that we take the time to really look deeper into the beauty and function of these eastern traditions in what they truly have to offer. Sometimes we just need better translators that can help transition these systems into a more relatable context without compromising the value inherent in the systems. And sometimes it’s just growing pains.