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my two cents: what does it mean for gentrifiers to fight gentrification? hmmm. i'm on board of course, because who wants highrises and a private waterfront not available to the public, not to mention the environmental damage it will cause? but as a wise person once said of the gentrification/displacement relationship, we are part of a broken system. it behooves us greatly to fight the displacement through working with tenants rights groups and through multi-income residential zoning policies. there's nothing wrong with bringing amenities to neighborhoods, the problem lies much more in displacement and segregation. please feel free to chime in on this one. i'd also love to hear what you think about white people teaching yoga (elaborated on below in the comments).
posted by Antlers at 4/27/2005 06:20:00 PM
10 Comments:
I'm with you on the gentrification/displacement stuff, who cares if the person teaching yoga is white? If he/she knows what they're doing, then so be it. What, only people of Indian/Hindu descent can teach it?
i guess i should clarify and contextualize on that one a bit. the question relates more to cultural appropriation through commodification and the resulting racism, discrimination and exoticization of people of color that comes from the effects of these practices of cultural appropriation. I'm on the fence on this one, honestly. There's this book called Everything but the Burden. I think that phrase represents the relationship between Americans looking toward what they see as exotic cultures for spiritual fulfillment while ignoring the investments they have in the destruction of the actual livelihoods and environs of people on the ground in the places from which the spiritual/cultural practice originates. For instance, there are companies with American investors in India investing in massive dams which displace millions of people. So it's like we want the spiritual rewards from said culture but don't feel the responsibility to work to stop the destruction of that culture. I think people assume that white people or Americans learning yoga will result in some kind of cultural understanding, but I feel that the element of commodification makes this sort of cultural exchange impossible and actually results in exoticization through packaging of the people and practices from the culture being taught about. Now, the problem with this argument is that yoga is probably good for people, it's impossible to pin the blame on any person or to speak for all of india. All I can say is it feels audacious and I think perhaps there's a responsibility that lies with the American bearers of Indian culture. Anyway, I'm on the fence, but it does indeed make me antsy, especially when Eddie Bauer makes yoga mats.
looks like you pissed off a sensitive anonymous person of Indian or Hindu descent.
And yes, only they can teach it and have it feel even remotely authentic. I know when ever my 45 year old pasty white yogi tells me to flex my ass with the warming light of my expanding chakra, i notice he shifts his shit in them baggy jammies. and then he shifts them again. and again. and then he makes me call him jo-bingi.
I have no idea what it means, but i tear up inside when i say it.
i had a black kung fu teacher once - dead fucking serious by the by, that said "bitch!" wayyyyyy too much.
you think that shit was authentic?
relax anonymous, and feel the ever expanding warmth of having shit for a sense of humor fill the room around you.
Dude, I was just asking for clarification. It has nothing to do with having or not having a sense of humor. Was A'yen trying to be funny when she posted it? I just wanted clarification. I think A'yen's answer made it clear, so there's no need to be a white knight. Chill.
yeah a'yen's answer was really good. i kind of took my time writing my post and by the time it got up she had written a thesis on your comment.
mine was just a joke.
and what, you wanted clarification on if only people of Indian/Hindu descent could teach yoga?
and yeah, I'm pretty sure the way she phrased that last line on the post was meant to be funny. its a condensed example of an overall situation, you thought she was genuine with it? that would be kind of off subject wouldnt it?
so lets all chill for a sec, breathe... and once again let the healing light of the expanding chackra into your being. now hear the chackra begin to giggle and snicker at how off subject your first post was, and how you got up on a high horse after someone made a little ittle joke.
I dont want to have a fight on her blog, which is usually much more well reasoned and sensitive than say... mine.
so if you want to continue this enlightened discussion, please run your little legs over to my blog and we can chat about how little it takes to get you upset.
this fucking blog shit is priceless.
just a lil' bit of yoga history and perhaps a few additonal comments:
In 1893, when Swami Vivekananda, revered Indian priest and mystic, chose to introduce yoga to the United States in Chicago during the Columbian Exposition World's Fair it was a choice made to expand yoga, a non-culture specific spiritual technology, into a part of the world thought to need its benefits. As is widely known about hindu, tibetan and other yoga-practicing cultures, there is a belief in reincarnation. Many mystics of the time felt that advanced spirits were reincarnating in other parts of the world than what we americanos call the far east; among those places was America.
Vivekananda was among the first missionaries chosen to introduce yoga practices to the western world, although many teachers would follow over the next century. To clarify, by "chosen" I mean that in his advanced metaphysical understanding he would realize that it was his wordly duty to bring the teachings over seas. Another famous yogi who would follow a similar path, perhaps with more broad reaching success than Vivekananda, was Swami Paramahansa Yogananda (author of the widely read "Autobiography of a Yogi").
Another more recent missionary was a man named Siri Singh Sahib Yogi Bahjan (head of the Sikh religion for the western hemisphere; in case you dont know, sikhs are the one's wearing turbans). Recently passing away this october, Yogiji (as he is often refered to) was a Sikh from the Pubjab region of norther india. Widely respected master of both hatha and kundalini yoga practices, he purported that he had attained mastery in a previous lifetime but had committed a grave egotistical error in denying a student of his teachings. For this he had returned to the physical body and was to spend a long lifetime teaching anyone and everyone who would make themselves available to him.
Yogiji was, in many ways a radical yoga master. When he arrived in North America in 68 or 69 he came on a mission, not to garner disciples (the traditional maner of transmitting yogic knowledge is via the guru/disciple relationship), but rather to create teachers. According to yogic and most astrologies, our planet is passing from the Piscean Age to the Aquarian Age (remember that song, "this is the dawning of the age of aquarius!....etc etc). Whereas the Piscean Age was characterized by technological and intellectual advancements and the empowerment of the individual, the Aquarian Age is supposed to bring advancements in communication, collaboration and the like. Yogiji decided that we live in a cultural and technological present where the teachings of yoga are needed to stabilize the psychological, emotional, social, physical displacements that arise from living highly technologize, mediatized mobilized lifestyles. I am a student of yogi bhajan's teachings as well as a soon-to-be certified teacher of kundalini yoga.
The word yoga means "union", specifically refering to union with god, the infinite, the true creative wisdom, one's penultimate creative potential or whichever word you use to describe that lofty spiritual goal. There are many paths towards mastery other than yoga including matial arts, spiritual/religious devotion, selfless service and so on. Yoga as we know it was created out of the practices of the ancient vedic tribes and filtered and reformed through generations upon generations of teachers. Along the way there was plenty of philosophical splintering among teachers and practitioners, however, the essential philosophical and practical foundations of yoga have remained in tact. Among them being that yoga is non-denominational, non-religious (although it is widely practiced amonger certain religious cultures), and supra-cultural. Yogis would, in fact, deny the validity of the questions of whether or not white people should be able to teach yoga simply b/c yoga does not belong to any people or culture. It is a pratical guide toward's transforming the physical body, the metaphysical bodies, the mind, and the spirit and chanelling that energy into a devotion toward discovering your highest truth (whatever that may mean to you).
Yogi Bhajan, committed to creating teachers, rather than students, often spoke about what it means to be a teacher (and his definition is not an easy status of character to measure up to). He often refered to what is called "the Golden Chain of Teachers and Teachings". This is exactly what it sounds like. But to explain anyway in this already looooooooong winded post, he is refering to the multi-milenial tradition of students teaching the teachings to their students "exactly" as they were taught to them. This pedagogical imperative would prevent impurities from taining the teachings which were created by highly evolved masters of the mind and body. Resultantly, Yoga, when practiced correctly is very precise and methodical.
In january I will be a licensed Kundalini Yoga Instructor (recognized by the International Kundalini Yoga Teachers Association, an organization created by Yogi Bhajan to maintain a high standard among kundalini yoga teachers from his tradition). I haven't the slightest bit of guilt for carrying and passing such a beautiful tradition. Culturally, I am Jewish, but for whatever reason, I am more turned on by the yogic vocabulary and structure of life. I take my practice and the teachings very seriously and I hope that as a teacher I can manifest a sense of respect and devotion toward the teachings among my students as my teachers have inspired within me.
During college I pursued a very anthropological course of study, hoping to understand what cultured culture (if you will), what the baseline of "humanity" is, and how this knowledge might be used to aid in creating and preserving social justice. One thing Ive noticed is that in the history of human self-study, relatively little has been determined as fact, except that humans are inherently flexible beings. We carry with us this highly maleable sense of self and community called Culture. Culture is never straight and narrow. Its a big beautiful mess. We all rub on and off each other, share experiences and ideas, affect one another, grow together and apart in a millionbillion ways, without any particular protocol for doing so. Blah blah blah, whats your point Jordan? My point is, you cannot protect a culture from spreading, from changing, from mixing with other cultures. Its part of the model. To change, exchange and grow IS culture.
The mystics of India understood many things about western culture, including the drive of commerce (India, afterall was thoroughly colonized by the brits), and yet they understood among them a necesity for spreading certain aspects of their culture to the west, including Yoga. Yogi Bhajan often remarked that commerce and its culture (money) is not inherently evil. Indeed it must be mastered (Yogiji himself could have also been understood as a master of commerce, having created over a dozen financially successful corporations in his lifetime). We have achieved our own masteries in the west that the eastern cultures have not been nearly as successful in (creating infrastructure, organized education, sanitary living, and a number of other solutions to modern living). The union, or yoga (wink wink), of eastern and western cultures is inevitable, and will hopefully grow into a generally happy and stable marriage of values and traditions.
Boyyoboy can I write and write and write. Shouts to Ayen for emailing me about this post. Hope I didnt bore y'all to death, perhaps just to near life. As we say in Kundalini Yoga:
Ek Ong Kar Sat Nam Kartar Purkh Nirbo Nirvair Akal Murat Ajoonee Saibhung Gur Prasad Jap Aad Sach Jugaad Sach Habee Sach Nanak Hosee Bhee Sach
(trans. The Creater and the Creation are all One. This knowledge is our greatest truth, our true identity. The doer of everything. Beyond fear. Beyond revenge. Image of the Infinite. Uborn. Self-illumined, complete in the Self. This is the Guru's gift and grace. Meditate! Primal truth, true through all time. True at this instant. O Nanak, forever true.)
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yo anonymous. who are you? do i know you?
i was just going to say that i live in bushwick (next williamsburg), but am going to be dumpster-diving for free food for Grub on sunday instead of going to the cool (hipster?) rock show. . . what does that make me? confused? misled? ahead of the curve? or shamelessly behind? or just dirty and missing out on friday night? guess i know where Critical Mass should/will be ending up on friday.
you've always been more into rooting about in garbage than chilling with the cool kids. you're completely ahead of the curve. i'm just scared of rats. maybe i'll have to antler up you and conquer the world by staying home or something.
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