Government Regulation of Yoga Teacher Training

I want to take a moment to respond to a recent blog post by Darla Magee in the popular yoga blog YogaDork. (Go ahead, read it – It’s short and I’ll wait.) While I often enjoy the light-hearted and occasionally silly posts, this one somewhat irritated me.  It concerns a new initiative by the Texas government to regulate Yoga Teacher Trainings in that state, under the jurisdiction of the Texas Workforce Commission which regulates post-secondary education (post high school, specifically vocational education).  I should note that this government organization specifically exempts dance, physical fitness and martial arts training from their purview, as these are non-vocational – in other words, they are not intending to train you to perform a job.  While clearly teacher trainings can prepare you for working as a teacher trainer, this is not the only reason people undertake them.  Furthermore, not only do many people who go through a training never teach professionally, a significant portion of the training hours usually covers philosophy, spiritual practices, and classic texts which are rarely taught, if ever, in a standard yoga class.

            Magee’s main argument in support of such regulation is that there are yoga teachers out there right now who clearly do not know what they’re doing.  She seems to believe that government regulation will fix this problem, and not only that – she seems to believe that it will help spread yoga to more people.  She writes: “Imagine getting the Federal Government to bring yoga to the military! Imagine getting your health insurance to pay for your classes! Imagine government money and student loans for teacher training! For all of these reasons and so many more, the state’s acknowledgment of yoga opens many doors toward making yoga mainstream, accessible, and affordable to all.”

            Without getting too deeply into the debate about what “yoga” is anyway (is it a spiritual practice and therefore protected from government interference under the Constitution, or is it just Zumba with Indian spice?) I want to point out why Ms. Magee’s view is superficial, economically naïve, and ultimately detrimental to the diversity and spread of yoga. 

            Who really thinks that state bureaucrats are even remotely qualified to regulate yoga?  (Let alone TEXAS state bureaucrats!)  How will they define yoga?  How will they regulate the curriculum?  How can they possibly be in the place to offer any guidance on this ancient tradition? With the abundance of styles, points of emphasis, how is it possible to really regulate such a thing effectively?  Consider meditation alone – is it part of the yoga practice?  If so, how much time should be allocated to it in a 200 hour training?  More importantly, how can a bureaucratic committee, which may not even include a single person with meditation or yoga experience possibly make such a distinction.  It may be fairly argued that the regulations can be kept fluid, much like the Yoga Alliance’s standards, but if that’s the case I don’t see the point of regulation.  After all, the Yoga Alliance has become the de facto industry standard unless laws are passed to make the teaching of yoga illegal without having graduated from a state certified training.  This leads to further complications caused by varying state standards, not to mention the potential embarrassment of the visiting authentic Indian yogis, whose only training may have been at the feet of their (unlicensed) guru, when they are fined for teaching yoga without being “qualified.”  The bag of worms is deep indeed.

            A perhaps more important question is why the State is getting involved anyway?  Have you heard of a spat of recent yoga accidents?  I haven’t.  Sure, there are bad teachers out there, even a few who may be dangerously negligent. But knee-jerk regulation is not the way to go.  Bad teachers, like bad anything else, will soon find themselves moving on to another line of work.  A few bad apples should not require that the government should inspect every apple tree.  Are state bureaucrats such passionate yogis themselves that they really care about making sure that yoga is properly taught?  Clearly not.  But if you look at what regulation of yoga schools actually means, the motivation becomes clear:  it allows the state to charge licensing fees to yoga studios who offer teacher training programs. 

 

            I have to assume that the financial factor is what Ms. Magee meant when she said she was “bowing out and taking my money with me once I got a look at the real motives of those who are most loudly protesting”.  Clearly this writer was absolutely disgusted with the fact that studio owners might protest that their bottom line was adversely affected by the regulation.  Oh, those greedy yoga studios, always out to make a buck! As the owner of a small yoga studio in a small town, let me tell you that a teacher training program is financially a godsend, and in many cases is the difference between subsistence living and being able to pay off the debts incurred by opening the studio to begin with, not to mention the possibility of expansion.  And by expansion I don’t mean lavish new facilities, but the addition of classes, and yes, the hiring of yoga teachers other than the owners.  When New York tried to regulate training programs (and thankfully backed down), what it meant for my small business was that we would not be able to afford licensing (in New York, the proposed application fee was $5,000), and therefore we would not be able to afford to offer a program. I ask Ms. Magee – is it bad to want to be able to pay one’s bills, to make a living doing what one loves, to want to share yoga at the deeper level of a teacher training, and to do so independently?   I can also say that, as a business owner, if I can’t support my family through my business, I can’t hire other yoga teachers either.  That cuts down on the diversity of voices in the community, as well as the ability of individual yoga teachers to support themselves.  Sure, there’s gyms, but any experienced yogi can tell you the differences between a yoga class held at a gym, where philosophy and spirituality is often discouraged by the owners, and a class at a dedicated studio space which offers a different level of freedom to teachers. 

            The costs of regulation on small businesses might also mean that only the largest, big-name studios would be able to afford to train yogis.  Perhaps this is what Magee wants when she writes about wanting yoga to enter the mainstream.  But to me, this means the further branding of yoga, and the consolidation of yoga under certain companies and/or teachers.  As the largest studios are in the cities, it also means that one would have to be near a major city to complete a training.  Of course, the market will eventually adjust, and with the further concentration of revenue in the large studios, franchises offering training (under the same license as the main studio) might appear in small towns.  I would predict that this will make it harder for small businesses like mine, and may even drive up the cost of yoga in some areas. 

            Magee’s main argument in support of regulation is that it is equivalent to the state “recognizing” yoga, as if such a thing is needed.  She wants insurance companies to cover yoga, and student loans for trainings, etc.  A noble goal, certainly, but one which state governments do not have the power (or the interest) to enact.  New York State regulates Massage Therapy more strictly than just about any other state, and there are national standards as well.  Yet most insurance carriers still do not cover massage therapy.  Certainly, massage therapy is “recognized” by the government, and is possibly more accepted by physicians than yoga, but its recognition has done little to change the private sector, although it clearly generates revenue for the state.  This directly affects the cost of training, as the school must pay licensing fees on top of other expenses.  Different standards by state also means that tuition fluctuates wildly.  In Texas, for instance, the price of the 500 hr massage therapy training averages around $5000, while in New York, with its 1000 hr training can be over $20,000.  Ultimately, regulation does not make this practice more accessible, nor does it bring yoga into the light of mainstream awareness – yoga is already mainstream!  What it does do is streamline yoga, reducing diversity and intellectual (and spiritual) freedom by transferring control from the teachers and representatives of the tradition, who have an important stake in the discipline, to the state, which ultimately only cares about yoga for its potential revenue.  Yes, I'm aware that the state is only regulating trainings, not classes, but for a yoga teacher, what experience is more formative than a teacher training?

            I recognize that the Yoga Alliance often seems to have its head up its ass.  Regardless, they have successfully set the standard for 200 and 500 hr trainings, and I believe they are doing good thereby.  Yet even within Yoga Alliance certified trainings there is a tremendous variance of quality.  My studio’s training far exceeds  the minimum standards of the Yoga Alliance in terms of hours, as well as the rigor of the program.  I’ve also heard horror stories of some really, really bad teacher training programs which happen to be certified.  This is clearly a case of “buyer beware.”  Do your research before you throw down your hard-earned cash for a training – I did, and got exactly what I was looking for. 

            Regulation, in order to represent the diversity inherent in the yoga tradition, would substantially be no different than the Yoga Alliance, with the same flaws and problems.  The only difference would be the level of expense and its subsequent impact on small businesses, studio-contracted yoga teachers, and potential teachers looking for an affordable training.  Whatever qualitative problems may exist among yoga teachers, state regulation is clearly not the answer.

Books, Bibliophiles and Sacred Scripture

Books and Western Civilization go hand-in-hand.  Ever since Julius Caesar (maybe) invented the codex, aka the book as we know it, we as a civilization have been in love.  This is not to say that books were not important elsewhere (that would just be silly), but I would argue that books have taken on an out-sized role in European culture that has shaped our thought in subtle ways.  I want to use India as my counter-example, as it’s the non-Western region I know the most about, and because of certain similarities of thought.  I would love to hear from anyone who knows something about the Arabic or East Asian traditions on this topic.

            You may be familiar with the idea of an oral tradition and its importance in transferring culture.  When I think of oral tradition in the West, I think of Homer, whose works were recited often only in part by traveling bards, creating varied stories that changed over time.  The philosophers of old, too, relied primarily on oral teachings, such as the lectures of the Athenian Academy, or of those numerous philosophers who didn’t do much writing, but did a lot of influential teaching.  Socrates is the clearest example of this.  Those works which were committed to the page often had an oral quality, from Plato’s dialogues, the speeches of Epictetus (written down by a loyal student who made a big deal about trying to preserve his rhetorical style) and numerous others.

            Thinking of Indian culture, we can see very similar documents.  The Bhagavad Gita is meant to be sung, the Upanishads are often in dialogue form, and the entire Sutra tradition (including Patanjali’s famous work) is structured for maximum ease of memorization.  Traditional Indian teaching relies heavily on memorization of texts, key points, and even grammatical rules, even to this day.  This is Swami’s style, and I struggle with it, and he knows that I have no intention of methodically memorizing texts.  It is however extremely impressive when he rattles off quote after quote in perfect Sanskrit. 

            While in India oral culture has been essentially unbroken, European oral culture essentially died out during the Dark Ages, as barbarians wrecked the Roman Empire, and learned men wilted from lack of patronage and cloistered themselves in monasteries.  Here the book became increasingly important, and as Europe slowly picked itself up and began to rediscover its heritage, the cultural transmission was entirely through the medium of the book.  The Greeks and Romans  were reintroduced to the West by trade with the Arabic world through Spain, as well by the flight of scholars from (and the pillage of) Constantinople, the last vestige of Rome.  These and other rediscovered books contained secrets and mysteries that it seemed no man knew, and they, rather than other men, became the symbol of knowledge.  This plays out in myths through the such icons as the cursed book, the Grimoire, Lovecraft’s Necronomicon, and movies like the underrated “9^th Gate”.  These represent the power of the book to unleash strange and powerful ideas that have the potential to upset the preconceptions of the reader or even the very order of the world.  The stark division between the literate and illiterate in medieval Europe must have exacerbated this.  In largely illiterate societies, writing has often been associated with magic.  In ancient Egypt writing very nearly was magic, and the history of talismans shows the power that strange images and scribbles had upon the imagination.  Consulting books and gleaning strange knowledge by merely glancing at obscure and mysterious symbols must have seemed akin to divination at some level, and indeed, there is even a sub-field of divination – bibliomancy – based on this idea. 

            A natural result of this is the desire to write a great book one’s self.  We hear about the quest for the “Great American Novel” or more previously a single unified Metaphysics, such as was attempted by Spinoza, Descartes, and others.  An interesting effect of the myth of the book is that, with the printing press, this tradition flooded our culture with books, new and old.  I leave it to the historians of science to determine the impact of this on the European scientific revolution, but we can assume a major influence.  An increasingly literate culture, with ever-increasing access to information clearly paved the way for the modern age.  As an aside, consider the fact that more new books were printed last year than existed in the Great Library of Alexandria by its final year.

            There is also a question of authority to consider.  It is the habit of every culture to mythologize and give sacred meaning to the past.  Anything that is old becomes hallowed eventually, whether as museum pieces or immutable and infallible authorities of traditional culture.  The Guru in India certainly fills this role.  The guru is the repository of (often memorized, and thereby monopolized) knowledge passed down from hallowed antiquity, and therefore he is worshiped nearly (or actually) as a god.  In Europe, it is often the book that is so exalted.  The literal adherence to the authority of the Bible, considered literally as "the word of God" even today, speaks to this, but it is not the only example, even if it is the most important.  For centuries, the works of Aristotle and Plato, not to mention the more esoteric Corpus Hermeticum, were considered almost infallible in the same way as the Indian guru.  The academic tradition (now on the decline, for better or worse) of education by the “Great Books” is another, if later, manifestation of the same instinct.

            Strangely, it was the Tea Party movement that inspired this post.  I was reading some ridiculous op-ed piece on Fox News (I like to keep tabs on ‘The Enemy’) and I was struck by the sheer fetishism demonstrated towards the U.S. Constitution.  The founders, because they’re long dead, are hallowed into Saints, and their main document is near worshiped by the modern conservative movement.  Despite the fact that it’s needed to be amended 27 times, it is considered almost infallible to the “strict constitutionalist” type. 

            You can probably guess my feelings on all this. While I myself am something of a bibliophile (I have a library that I’m proud of and a bookshelf of antique or rare books), I clearly don’t approve of traditions of infallibility regarding any text, ancient or modern.  But I’m not really trying to make an argument against such silliness here, which would likely just be me preaching to the choir.  Instead, I want to pose some questions.  Conservatism, narrow-mindedness, and literalist interpretations appear all over the world, in as many different forms as there are cultures (or people).  That said, how much of an influence has the European book tradition had on the particular manifestation of conservatism that we see in this country today?  Has our bibliophile cultural inheritance had a part to play in emphasizing the infallibility of texts such as the Bible of the U.S. Constitution? 

           

Thinking about Caturanga Dandasana

I've been terrible about keeping up with this blog lately, which I hope to remedy soon.  The reason is that I've been in 'research mode' looking into one of my favorite subjects, Renaissance and Medieval occultism, and in particular the 'angelic conversations' of Dr. John Dee and Edward Kelley.  This stuff fascinates me in a way little else can, and I hope to write a bit about this topic in the future.  For now, I have but a short post to sustain you.

As many of you have no doubt heard me complain, Sanskrit is a difficult language, and it is a constant struggle for me to learn it.  It doesn't help that the traditional way of studying the language is about as exciting as Ben Stein's voice, or that the study materials produced in India are inconsistent, full of errors, and in general a massive pain in the ass.  Part of my homework is "working up" new verbs that I come across in a notebook intended for that purpose.  The idea is to write out its numerous forms and conjugations for study and later reference.  Are you on the edge of your seat yet?

Anyway, while working up some verbs today, I came across a verb that relates to an asana that we might call "the bane of the beginners", चतुरण्ग दण्डासन or caturaṇga daṇḍāsana.  That strange half push-up which forms such an important part of the 'vinyasa', despite its Sanskrit name has been shown to likely be derived not from some ancient text, but from 19th century Indian gymnastics, and was an innovation brought into the yoga world by the great Krishnamacharya (teacher of B.K.S. Iyengar, Pattabhi Jois, among others), mostly as a way to get his young male students to work off their excess energy so they could sit for meditation.  Often called simply "caturaṇga", the full name caturaṇga daṇḍāsana means "4-legged stick or staff pose" wherein caturaṇga means 4-legged and daṇḍāsana means staff pose.  This comes from daṇḍa, meaning staff. 

Now the verb I mentioned earlier is दण्ड् or daṇḍ, meaning to punish.  दण्ड or daṇḍa is one of the noun forms of this verb, and is usually translated as stick.  Perhaps you see where I'm going with this.  This particular word for stick implies punishment, much like the connotations of the word "switch" in terms of a flexible branch used to discipline children.  I've heard stories from relatives of being made by their fathers to "go outside and fetch a switch" which is essentially the same as being made to aid and abet in one's own whipping.  Daṇḍa can essentially be translated as "the instrument of punishment."

Many are the struggles students have had to endure regarding this pose, whether due to an initial lack of upper body or core strength, a lack of bodily awareness, or in my case, just the horrors of relearning the pose correctly in teacher training (who knew the shoulder blades were supposed to squeeze together!?!).  It makes some people feel inadequate and others angry; its a pose few can claim to 'like'.  Towards that end, I'd like to offer a new translation for caturaṇga daṇḍāsana:

"Four-Legged Punishment Pose."

And certainly most serious yogis have had to pass through the stage of regarding it so.  But I also offer you hope, O ye who wouldst master the Mysteries of the Vinyasa, for by struggle (tapas) is the dross removed from the gold, and even the soul freed from its bondage in matter.  For if thou earnestly strengtheneth thy core, and if thou art mindful of  the working of thy thighs, nay even the deep muscles of the pelvic bowl as thou descendeth from Plank pose, and if thou tuckest thy tail bone, then shalt thou not only pass through the mysteries of the perfect caturaṇga daṇḍāsana, but thou shalt find much strength and sensitivity that thou mayest take unto all other asanas.  And so, by thy skill, thou shalt ascend even unto ūrdhva ḍhanurāsana, yea, even unto thy Upward Facing Dog.