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March 21st was not just the day after spring equinox but also the International Day for Elimination of Racial Discrimination. It is unfortunate that gender and race is the reason for much disparity.
In essence we are all equal, yet we may have been discriminated against for being in a woman’s body, a certain kind of body (fat or disabled) or a person of a particular race.
Not everyone is connected to the spirit within, identifying mostly with matter, form or what is on the surface. The biases and conditioning that go with these perceptions direct one's actions unconsciously. This is unfortunate, as a world built on habitual superficiality will breed inequality.
The last few years and especially the last few months I have seen a surge in conversations around this topic where I am being invited to speak at many yoga studios about cultural appropriation. Social media has also contributed in a good way to create more awareness. I have always believed in an inclusive approach, yet it also requires humility from those who do not know to acknowledge ,they do not know.
The poem below was written over 18 years ago when I was travelling and teaching. In closed groups, across different countries, I did share what I thought, when I saw dissonance with how yoga was approached or when I saw unjust inequalities. However it is time for more widespread conversations now.
I know this poem may not be reflective of how many people feel or may not be indicative of their lived experience. However it can be accessed when we are willing to peel layer after layer of our trauma and programming to disidentify with that which confines and belittles us. Or, if we have been fed with a false sense of superiority that we identify with which makes us entitled, we can rise above that as well. We learn to empathise with those who are judged by something they cannot change or should not have to change.
A good starting point is to acknowledge the challenges, privileges and blessings of being in our specific body and not bypass it in the name of spirituality.
THE ETERNAL EMBRACE
There is a space
Where I am neither man nor woman
Young nor old
No colour, no race
Not even a face
All I feel is my heart bursting with love
Holding the divine and you
In a warm long embrace
Though I am from South India, this is how I felt about those I was sharing yogic principles with - across genders, social class, countries, races etc. The only thing I asked was the willingness and capacity for self awareness with those I taught. This represents Yoga and India’s true ethos of Vasudaiva Kutumbakam or the world is one family. However one needs to remember that not everyone thinks like this.
What Is Cultural Alignment?
I use the word cultural alignment, not just cultural appreciation, in my programs.
When we live in a culture, we imbibe a way of being. We feel and embody the essence of the land. We also see distortions and disconnection and we are happy to correct those aspects in us and fine tune our alignment. Not all that is passed off as culture is worth aligning with. Eg : Genital mutilation. However, we are going to explore alignment specific to yogic culture. Cultural appreciation is a starting point for cultural alignment.
What is Cultural Appreciation and Celebration?
Cultural Appreciation is when we share each others culture to appreciate and elevate. I always felt like a world citizen and cooked a lot of world cuisine at home, even in India. Many of my friends from other cultures love Indian food and like Indian attire etc.
Indian food , (a very limited part of it) has become very popular in the west and I love that. I love it when those visiting the south say '“Vanakkam” or “Namasthe” when they meet. Similarly I have an appreciation for the countries I have visited as well like Sweden, Dubai, Bangladesh, Hong kong, Srilanka during war times etc. My late twenties and thirties was spent on travelling and teaching to broaden my perspective. I went to a school where there were people from all religions. That was never an area of difference.
What Is Yogic Alignment?
In yoga, by aligning, we are connecting with an expansive, interconnected way of being. We have the capacity to download wisdom. Just as, by having a good connection with the internet, we can download information.
To live and teach yoga one needs to align with its principles. One starts to observe the many paradigm shifts required to access the collective wisdom inherent in the language of yoga. This goes beyond appreciation, though appreciation is a very good starting point.
With yogic alignment one will see that one grows into ease and effortless effort. Challenges can be seen for what they are and one has the willingness to take responsibility for one's life. However this does not come in a day and needs years of living a yoga life. Sometimes lifetimes, if vasanas, or tendencies, are very deep. This is not shameful, it only reminds us we have eternity to completely align. Yet we can always take steps in that direction.
What Is Cultural Appropriation?
When one takes things from another culture without understanding or respecting it, that would be cultural appropriation. This has many nuances. Though I am not religious I do understand the sentiments of Indians when they see a “Ganesha” as decoration in the bathroom. Some look at him as a god while I like to look at him as a beautiful symbol of being an obstacle to the obstacles.
In the yogic context appropriation is seen in chopping up yoga or divorcing it from important aspects that a colonial or colonised mindset does not fathom. By a colonial mindset I do not mean a white person. I simply mean an exploitative, commodifying mindset.
It is important to understand context in any cultural conversation, or else we can have whole conversations catching the wrong end of the stick, as seen in the cartoon above.
In yoga, appropriation can also be seen where things are added that do not fit with the ethos. This is to be avoided not because it is sacrilegious or profane but because it works against the ethos of harmony and unity, fundamental to yoga. Hence, a deeper understanding will make one see how ignorant that approach is, yet it is often tinged with the arrogance of claiming to be creative or new like booze yoga or burlesque yoga. These are extreme examples yet we can see subtler shades of it in many inappropriate pairings. In further articles, you will see the rationale for why it is not a good pairing. In some cases these pairings can be dangerous as well and it is my responsibility to educate, I have come to realise.
Who Can Culturally Appropriate Yoga?
Anyone with a limited or choppy understanding of yoga can appropriate it, irrespective of the colour of one’s skin. Just as women can also perpetuate patriarchy, anyone who looks like they are teaching yoga or is brown can also perpetuate a colonial interpretation of yoga. So appropriation is not dependent on the colour of one’s skin but the expansiveness of one's heart.
The Exercise Paradigm vs. The Yoga Paradigm
In my 400-hour Arkaya Teacher Training everyone receives a list of paradigm shifts required for the practice and especially for teaching yoga. For example, yoga is awareness focused while exercise is achievement focused. In yoga the achievement is a by-product of awareness. The benefit of this approach is that we are not attached and stressed out by a goal but can celebrate that we spent time reconnecting to the inner child, our unconscious, our soma, our energy, our mind, aligning it with the universal which allows us to connect more efficiently with others and the world. We also get our self worth by deepening our awareness, rather than by looking busy and puffed up because we are so busy. Drama does not drive us anymore.
There are many paradigm shifts that are required, however many practice yoga, like it is exercise without even understanding that their approach needs to change.
The foundations are Yama and Niyama where we need to cultivate the capacity for self observation, contemplation and executing our findings through restraint and cultivation. We become the experiment and the experimenter which is a fascinating way to live.
And, when one understands what is needed for a yoga life, we see that being mindful and having the capacity to slow down are actually more advanced than mindlessly speeding up. I rarely speak about this except to those in my teacher training. I do not aim to make anyone practice exercise yoga wrong, yet cannot dumb myself down to be agreeable, which I have done in the past
Yoga encourages mindfulness while modern life encourages mindlessness. This mindlessness is not a sattvic state of no-mind or transcending thought, but a thamasic state of giving over mind and being brain washed.
Indian, Indigenous & Yoga Paradigms vs. Colonial, Industrial Paradigms
Through self reflection we begin to see how much of the industrial ethos we have internalised which takes us away from a Yogic or Indian ethos. Profit and productivity dictate self worth rather than cultivating ease or respecting nature. Bigger is better, while with yoga less is more. We maximise, not due to a sense of lack but due to efficiency, contentment and the sensitisation, that happens due to refinement of senses. This translates to refinement of the arts.
We know what the colonial paradigm imposed. It overexploited countries and banned things that empowered the people of the land. Yoga was banned in British India just as drumming was banned in Africa and bagpipes banned in Scotland. Anything that gave one a sense of pride, elevation and belonging was taken away to make people subservient and concede to the superiority of the white race and a distorted interpretation of Christianity.
Apart from yoga, martial arts like Kalaripayattu in Kerala, Paika Akhada in Orissa, Thang ta in Manipur, Silambam and various other forms in Tamil Nadu and all over India were banned. Because some of the hata yogis had a warrior like practice, the British were threatened by their skill and agility as well and the rest of yoga discarded under pagan practices. Classical dance like Manipuri, Kathak and Bharathnatyam were also banned.
Weavers could weave cloth in India lighter than a feather and were famed for their muslin and hand looms. However they were brutally dealt with, so mass produced English clothes from exploited Indian cotton could be sold back. Tax levied on British machine made clothes was 2-4% and on the weavers was 70-80%. William Bolts writes in his book, “Considerations on Indian affairs,” that the obscene unfairness continued with harassing the weavers, beating them up and in some cases also chopping off their thumbs. Many were driven to poverty and starvation.
Not only did quality of life suffer but the Indian economy dropped. All the money stolen from India, which is $45 trillion from 1765 to 1938, was used towards other conquests around the world as well. This is a staggering sum. This was called the great loot, a word that is also an Indian word now in the English dictionary. One of our politicians, Sashi Tharoor, describes it well.
The grand theft happened, where the British tricked and fooled people when they first arrived into India as a trading outfit called East India company. From having 23% of the world economy, India’s share dropped to only 4% after the British rule.
Overexploitation, diverting resources elsewhere, turned India from a land of milk and honey to a land of poverty and extremes. The British East India company or the “Honourable East Indian company,'' as it was ironically called, also got the Chinese addicted to opium so they could gain from their addiction. They also called the Indians uncivilized and also took away their self esteem. This colonial ethos is what we need to be aware of and avoid when we take something that we do not fully understand, falsely painting something as savage for one’s own gain and profit.
The indigenous people of Canada and North America were sent to residential schools (right until 1996 in Canada) where they were stripped of their language and identity apart from being torn apart from their families. We still see remnants of this in the way some extreme Christian outfits interpret what yoga is.
You can read more about the great loot in the link below The Great Loot: How Britain stole $45 trillion from India | India Post News Paper
How the East India Company Became the World's Most Powerful Monopoly - HISTORY
Cultural Context Of Yoga - Everything Is Connected To Everything
A person immersed in the yogic culture will see that everything is connected to everything. The microcosm reflects the macrocosm. The elements within are reflective of the elements without. That is why Bhoomi Devi, or Mother Earth, is a goddess to be respected. How else will the earth element in us remain balanced? How can we pollute the air or water outside and then hope to have pure air and water within us? We are over 70% water. How can we kill off our neighbour for gain and not expect it to impact us? Nowadays we just ignore them or barely know them.
Understanding and feeling these interconnections is so very very basic and intrinsic to learning yoga. As we saw earlier, the colonial paradigm not only disregards this but goes to the other extreme of exploitation. So if you join my program expect to gently question a lot of your choices and see if they are aligned, else we are not learning yoga.
I was invited to be part of a seminar series at UBC organised by Adeesh Sathaye, in Vancouver. It was interesting to see the postures in the Hataabhyasapadhdhathi that Jason Birch and Jaqueline Hargreaves were researching. What a wonderful project they have taken on and wishing them the best in their research I am very thankful they are navigating Indian bureaucracy to preserve manuscripts :) . Jacqueline was sharing the beautiful synchrony with finding the slides of the missing parts of the manuscript at her friend and fellow researcher, Norman’s place in Calgary
This is a recent manuscript from the 18th century that they have compiled and translated. They reminded me of the Kalari forms like Ashtavadivu that depicted eight animals. First I thought they may be dynamic vinyasa but due to the lack of any breath instruction they were closer to the martial arts training. Akhil, a wonderful classical musician and yoga student, had messaged me to check if it was a jathi. What I saw in the seminar was not a simple conscious, repetitive movement, as with jathi, so we ruled it out early on, in order to see it could be influenced from martial forms like kalari, malkhamb, gusthi etc. There were other pointers in that direction as well.
If you would like to attend the upcoming seminar at UBC, or the Arkaya Community Class & Satsangh, every Saturday at 11 AM for free, kindly message infoarkaya@gmail.com.
April 14, 2021, 2-4PM online session organised by UBC
Vancouver Yoga Roundtable discussion, with Cheryl Joseph, Fiona Stang, Lucy St. John, Maitreyi Yogacharini, Zander Winther
All classical art forms in India are interlinked. Classical Indian music, classical Indian dance and yoga are linked through nada yoga, jathi and mudra respectively. So though the Hatabhyasapadhdhathi was from the Maharashtra region, it is still from the west coast of India and close enough to Kerala where there could be a connection. One must not forget that, like the Kalari warriors, some of the hata yogis and nath yogis also banded together to protect the country and fight against invaders.
This video will give you an idea of the Ashtavadivu, or the eight animal motions:
Kalaripayattu Ashta Vadivu - YouTube
Kalaripayattu training & techniques-Ashtavadivu or Animal postures-Kalari fight & basics - YouTube
Puthara Vandanam | Salutation to the Kalari and its presiding Deities - YouTube
Resources:
Kalaripayattu: The First Martial Art - YouTube
A video of a veteral kalaripayattu practitioner Sword Fighting Granny Kicks Ass - YouTube
It was interesting to hear how Bhodhidharma had taken this form to China in the 5th century where it became kung fu.
I have studied the basics of karate and later kalari when younger and cried when I saw senior students demonstrate or when I practiced kalari as I did not see how much richer, deeper and multidimensional the martial arts from my land was. I remember after each practice, I would be so emotional that I had not realised the depth of this beautiful martial art. I grew up with karate and kung fu movies and was sad that when I grew up there were no kalari movies.
However there was an instance when one of my dad’s cousins from Kerala visited Chennai and with just a simple move he cracked the wrist of a bully who viciously attacked him. My brother who witnessed this could not help but keep gushing to me and repeat each single action that defeated the bully, for a long long time. You must remember my brother and I grew up pretending we were snake in The Monkey’s Shadow and training for 36 Chambers of Shaolin (kung fu movies) as we had a VCR that our parents gave us access to ,when we were little. I could write a whole article on kalari and will stop now.
Here are a few inspiring demonstrations:
The Art of Handloom and Silambam - YouTube
Kalari Salutation.mov - YouTube
Kalarivandanam by Adina - YouTube
For detailed info:
Kalaripayattu | The Ancient Martial Artform of Kerala | Learn Kalari | Kerala Tourism - YouTube
Cultural Awareness And Appreciation: A Step Towards Reconciliation
For the last 23 years of teaching yoga my journey seems to be creating awareness and giving context for yoga. I had the blessing of having my grandfather as my first guru and hence the immersion started much before I started teaching. So it is my dharma or I am obliged to share this to remove misconceptions. In the next parts of the article we will further explore how harmony can be reestablished.
Profile of Author
Yogacharini Maitreyi
Yogacharini Maitreyi is an international master teacher, practical mystic and founder of Arkaya Awareness Centre and Arkaya Foundation. For the last 23 years she has been dedicated to living an evolutionary life and sharing holistic life principles in gentle ways. Through her guidance you will experience lightness, restfulness and a deeper connection to self moving to yoga or union.
Since 1997 in India, she has been given the titles: Yoga chemmal (expert), Yoga shiromani (gem), and Yoga acharini (guide). She was one of the youngest to be invited on the Advisory Board of the World Yoga Council, in Europe, in 2007. She has shared the deeper dimensions of yoga, self management and sattvic tantra worldwide. Maitreyi has trained over 60 corporations, spoken at many conferences and has over 100 published articles in India, Hong Kong, Sweden, Dubai, Srilanka, U.S.A. and Canada. She has been invited to share her wisdom at many international yoga, ayurveda and leadership summits.
A compassionate holistic coach, her sessions include online energy assessments to guide one into their own innate balance. She loves nature and ayurvedic food and now lives in Vancouver, Canada.
Link to Video on Arkaya Foundation, India - Empowering Youth:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_TinA9xfzs
Programs Maitreyi Facilitates
1) Weekly Online Arkaya Community Class & Satsangh - every Saturday from 11 AM - 1 PM PST on Zoom. These Saturday satsanghs are a beautiful blend of a mindful class, meditative, contemplative practices and sharing.
2) Arkaya Online Foundations for Life program. This 60-hour, self-paced program is the first segment of the 300-hour teacher training.
3) 300-hour Arkaya Self-awareness Teacher Training.
4) Short workshops as well as an invited Experiential Speaker and teacher
For more info and to access free learning materials and videos:
Email: infoarkaya@gmail.com
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