No Frills Yoga

Back in April the NY Times had an article entitled A Yoga Manifesto . It was about a few yoga studios in NYC who are offering no frills classes on a donation basis or a reduced rate. The article stated that although yoga attendance has declined in the US, spending on yoga has almost doubled. The yoga studios featured in the article are opposing this trend by offering no frills classes and no "glorified" yoga teachers.

The teacher who was mainly interviewed for the article had been an assistant to Bikram Choudhury, and he quoted Mr. Choudhury's advice a few times... just go to class, do your practice and don't be concerned about the teacher, what the teacher was teaching and what you liked or didn't like about the class. At the studio featured in the article, Yoga to the People, there are no cool decorations, no showers, no incense, no chanting beforehand, and all the classes are the same. In the words of one of the students, “I like that you make the class what you want.” The class fees at the studios range from $5 to $10 or by donation.

Bikram Choudhury's philosophy about yoga is one of the reasons I added hot yoga classes to Yoga East's curriculum. Back in 1994, when I was still studying in the Iyengar system, I ran across Mr. Choudhury's book, Bikram's Beginning Yoga Class. His iconoclastic attitude about yoga was a breath of fresh air. Later on Bikram continued to generate debate about yoga, what it is and how it should be practiced, and even later about how yoga should be managed as a business. The second edition of his book, published in 2000, is still remarkable among yoga books because it uses real students as models - students who are all shapes, colors, ages, sizes and levels of ability. I like Bikram because he challenges us as both students and teachers of yoga.

Sometimes I think wishfully about changing Yoga East to the donation or flat rate fee business described in the article. It would make running the studio so much easier. In fact, we use this for some of our reduced-rate classes, charging $10 for some classes that have in the past been poorly attended. However, as an overall business and curriculum plan for Yoga East, I think it falls short as an approach to teaching yoga and running a studio - no assistance to students, no individualized attention, no props, no modifications, no special training needed for teachers... just leading people through a sequence. This weekend I gave a talk on Multiple Sclerosis and yoga at the MS Expo. At the end of my talk I asked the room of 50 or more people if they had questions and no one moved. Then I asked, "How many of you have been to a yoga class and had a bad experience?" Hands shot up all over the room, and several students shared how they had been to a class just like the one described in the article, and even though the class was described as a class for beginners, it left them behind - not knowing what to do or how to do it.

This kind of approach also fails to support some of our best teachers. Several Yoga East teachers have been excellent teachers but their classes did not have large attendance. We've had to "subsidize" their classes because they were not self-supporting. My intermediate class focusing on inversions will never be a class that's packed full to the brim. I continue to teach that class because that sequence, unlike any other, produces students who are incredibly strong and accomplished, but it will never be a popular class. When Darren Rhodes first visited Louisville he had not found another studio that taught the inversion sequences from Light on Yoga. He was impressed by the ability of our students to handle his intermediate class with aplomb, and I think much of that comes from our emphasis on teaching inversions, which cannot be taught in a large class.

I've seen many students come from other studios where Ashtanga Yoga is taught. I can tell right away who has come from a Mysore program and who has come from a studio where only led classes are taught. Individual attention and assistance from the teacher is crucial to develop an accomplished Ashtanga practice, no matter how much of the series the student is practicing. To have a student in class who needs help, and not to give that help is a fundamental departure from the yoga teaching tradition.

When Bikram said the students should "suck it up", I don't think he was giving permission to offer less teaching and less assistance. Actually, I feel certain that Bikram challenges teachers to be even more engaged in teaching. It's true that some students haven't yet learned that not everything has to be a certain way to have a great yoga experience. That experience doesn't depend on being in the right spot in the room, with just the right temperature, right teacher, right style of yoga, etc... in the true spirit of yoga, what ultimately is learned is how to develop samatvam, the ability to have evenness of mind in any situation.