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Overview
In a cathartic journey from yoga-hate to yoga-love, I Hate Yoga explores why yoga has become so controversial in Western society, all the while growing in popularity. Social media, religion, a bad boy guru, yoga competitions and other unlikely bedmates are humorously and conscientiously exposed in this thoughtful look at the world of yoga today. You’ll find yourself shocked, tickled, and perhaps even transformed as author Paul McQuillan takes you through a maze of dissent and praise—ultimately enabling you to arrive at your own surprising and unlikely conclusion. You’ll want to put this book down, but only to go to yoga and begin your own love/hate relationship.
“It’s refreshing to read a book that not only unabashedly explores the problems with yoga today, but also offers up some clear solutions to those issues. The end result is that we all benefit—yogis and non-yogis alike—from a message of laugh-out-loud wisdom.” —Measha Brueggergosman, international opera star/avid yogi
“Even if you think you have no interest in yoga, you’re going to love this book, because it’s about the life journey that we’re all on! With wit and honesty and a refreshing lack of pretention, Paul McQuillan doesn’t just tell it like it is, he tells it like it could be. Take a deep breath, open to page 1, read. It could change your life. No kidding.” —Toronto Star
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781630474140 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Morgan James Publishing |
| Publication date: | 09/10/2019 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 180 |
| Sales rank: | 717,521 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
MY JOURNEY TO YOGA-HATE
"Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore!"
— Dorothy (Wizard of Oz)
I grew up in London, Ontario Canada with a lot of white people. If there was any kind of ethnic diversity in London it certainly escaped my upbringing. My growth progression was very linear:
Go to school with white people; play hockey with white people; go to Catholic church with other less-than-willing young white people; and finally, have sex for the first time at the age of sixteen — with a white person.
To enhance the white people formula even further, I'm Scottish. Most Scottish people are very white, and I'm no exception. My mother and father were born in Glasgow as were my three older siblings, but obviously feeling like I wasn't quite owning my whiteness, they raised me in London just to make sure I had the white thing down. I did. And I was good at it.
That is, until I decided to leave London at the age of eighteen for music theatre college. I went from wasp-London to a town called Oakville, just outside of Toronto, to learn how to further my potentially promising singing and acting abilities.
It was only then that my perspective changed dramatically.
It would have been like watching an old Charlie Chaplin film with no sound or color only to suddenly be thrown into an IMAX 3D movie of The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert!
Gay people. Black people. Asians. Hispanics. They were everywhere.
I was sure there were no gay people in London because no one mentioned anything. Now I lived close to a city where they had parades that answered all your questions — even the ones you didn't ask.
In music theatre college, you were gay unless someone told you otherwise.
All of this is to say that my upbringing was somewhat sheltered in good ol' London, so my early years did not prepare me to paint my world with a broad stroke of cultural insight or understanding.
I was gullible, green, and ridiculously impressionable.
But regardless of our whitewashed view of the world, racism was not instilled in me simply because I wasn't exposed to other cultures. I share the belief with many that racism is learned. Luckily, it wasn't on the family curriculum.
My parents were more focused on putting food on the table than issues. For two young (somewhat poor) adults in Glasgow in the 1950s, the focus was simple: Make enough money to feed your children. That theme stayed consistent well into my early years. So, anything resembling gender-bias or racism would have taken a backseat for my parents around the same time that Rosa Parks refused to take hers.
This admission will serve its purpose later, given my current fascination with the multicultural environment I currently enjoy in Toronto.
In college I was stripped of my cultural naiveté and, with it, most of my talent — at least for a while.
The culture changes were actually quite refreshing. My difficulties arose from being shocked into submission by the systematic decimation of my confidence, instinct, and natural ability by almost every instructor in the school. One new teacher did his best to steer me in the right direction, but ultimately fell prey to the peer-induced drama surrounding him as well.
Despite winning the award for "most promising first year student," I was drowning in a sea of insecurity, which was radiating toxically from the teachers around me — many failed or semi-successful actors or singers with personal agendas so aggressively Machiavellian, they would make Napoleon look like Richard Simmons.
Sadly, this energy was contagious, and there was no antidote.
It wasn't until I left college after three years that I rediscovered my gifts, embraced their uniqueness, and quickly landed a Broadway show called The Buddy Holly Story. It was my first big show, followed by many more and a thirty-year career in music theatre which would include two Dora Mavor Moore Award nominations (Toronto's Tony Awards, minus the hype) for Best Actor in a Musical.
But it's important to point out that I had to unlearn what I was taught at school — which in retrospect did more harm than good — and return to something that carried no motive or agenda: my instincts.
I had to embrace my essence as opposed to fight it. It certainly wasn't going to come to fruition through the projected angst of angry singing instructors or self-righteous drama dudes.
I had to feel safe. Only then could I thrive.
Later on, yoga would take a large role in maximizing this feeling of safety, propelling me into a world of confidence that I only could have dreamed of in college.
And then, sneakily and with less warning, yoga — with its own suspect devices — would also begin to strip me of the same joy it had doled out so generously.
But let's not go there yet. A little more of my story first ...
Confidence in my ability as a performer landed me many great roles throughout the years including a two-year stint as Corny Collins in the hit musical Hairspray, which, interestingly enough, told the story of a young girl in '60s Baltimore transcending a landscape of racism, discrimination, and segregation to unearth her natural talent to the world — a more dramatic telling of what might have gone on in my hometown of London if any black people actually lived there.
While Hairspray didn't parallel my upbringing at all, it may have resonated with me so deeply because of the guilt I felt for not knowing such adversity was taking place around me in other parts of the world while I grew up. I was making up for lost time and there was a lot to learn.
A necessary exposure (via music theatre) to life's remarkable complexities was finally putting a crack in my eggshell.
While touring the US with Hairspray, I became friends with a very special soul by the name of John Salvatore. John and I shared a connection right away. His infectiously joyous personality, mixed with an openly sardonic dark side for humor purposes, created the perfect social elixir. We became inseparable.
Which leads me to yoga.
In some circles, John is considered the golden boy teacher of hot yoga in the Western world. There are not enough superlatives to describe a class with John. He runs the gamut from professional to preposterous, all the while imparting energy and knowledge so powerful he could have an oil-rigger reciting Sanskrit while picking daisies. His popularity and influence are inarguable.
While flying on planes to different cities every week or two, I had become rundown. The remedy of choice by most cast members was to hit the bar at the start, middle, and end of each week in every new city to combat and, not surprisingly, exacerbate the original problem.
I turned to yoga.
John dragged me to class after class in city after city.
It worked. I felt lucid and invigorated.
I finished the tour, trained to become a teacher, and now own a yoga studio in Toronto, Canada.
I still act and sing, but sparingly. The rigors of owning a hot yoga business have me slipping on sweaty carpets more than walking on long red ones.
I also still practice and teach yoga regularly at the studio I own, but about a year ago, I was plagued with what I will call a "yoga virus" which led to my current (and I believe necessary) disenchantment with the word and all that surrounds it.
The only remedy for this potentially chronic yoga-hate would have to be through dissection. In the words of Robert Frost, "... the best way out is always through." The journey through would have to involve a long stare into the eyes of the dragon I once deemed a prince.
In talks with other yogis, I realized I was not the only one who was developing a peculiar hate for yoga's current identity.
The love affair had long been over.
I wanted to revive it and discerned that I could do so with a courageous exploration involving why yoga has started to suck so hard — that and musings on the influences surrounding yoga which may have helped it to start sucking so hard, all blended with perhaps the most therapeutic (in my view) approach of all: levity.
Oh, it's important to understand that there was a catalyst for my yoga-fury and that enabling comrade is revealed through this important disclosure: I primarily teach and practice only one form of yoga — Bikram.
CHAPTER 2BIKRAM YOGA AND THE GUY WITH THE SAME NAME
"Corruptio optimi pessima " —"Corruption of the best is the worst."
— David Hume
Bikram Choudhury brought his hot yoga series from his home country of India to the United States in the 1970s. He would eventually create a series of twenty-six set postures to be practiced in a heated room for ninety minutes. He felt that these postures, performed in the same order each and every time (two sets for each), were brilliantlysequenced and the result would be a working of the entire body — inside and out — with no stone left unturned.
His instincts and expertise were dead-on.
Upon his arrival to the US, he taught the yoga for free until (the story goes) Hollywood star Shirley MacLaine, then a good friend of Bikram's, encouraged him to charge people money. It was the only way to give it credibility and enable him to expand.
Bikram and his yoga started to create a buzz, and the business of Bikram Yoga began. He started training students to be teachers of his special yoga series and that, too, took off.
At the beginning, there were only three studios teaching the Bikram method. There are now close to seven hundred around the globe with approximately half located in North America. There are also thousands of yoga teachers who only teach this method of yoga.
And there are tens of thousands of testimonials that profess, with unwavering personal clarity, how Bikram Yoga saved their lives.
I don't disagree. I will explain with distinction later on how I feel it played a large role in giving me back mine.
The Bikram Yoga series is certainly the most accessible yoga I have experienced. The postures are not easy, but they are simple. They can be slightly modified to accommodate any age, shape, or level of fitness.
The degree of difficulty, mental and physical, can be partly attributed to the fact that the room is set at 42 degrees Celsius with 40 percent humidity, easily heating up tight bodies and making the postures more accessible to those who would consider themselves inflexible.
The heat is used to increase muscle elasticity and create a cardiovascular workout. In a Bikram Yoga class, your heart can often feel like it's pounding out of your chest, and you can lose a significant amount of water weight due to the amount of sweating created; both can be tempered by the individual by not working as hard or by taking breaks.
The yoga, through its own advertised machinations, has earned a reputation for being hardass — a workout for triple-A-type personalities with a strange penchant for suffering — but most would agree that the shit works. I have read, heard, seen, and felt the evidence.
I'll save tackling the unnecessary fear factor built up around this particular yoga series for later in the book. Now that you've got an idea of the yoga, let's take a current look at the wizard behind the curtain: Bikram, the man. It's been said, "A wise man can get more use from his enemies than a fool from his friends."
I'm not about to label myself as wise, because the pressure behind fulfilling such a self-proclaimed intimation is simply more than I want to take on, but there is something about this Baltasar Gracián quote that resonates with me when I feel out my experience with Bikram, the man.
It's really not so much that Bikram is now my enemy. That would be too strong a judgment for someone from whom I have greatly benefited. But presently, I have no issue with labeling him as a huge disappointment.
Bikram, the man, has bestowed upon me — and thousands of others — the gift of a great yoga series. That will never change and, in many respects, the gifts keep on coming. But like a kid upon discovering the myth of Santa Claus, each subsequent present holds less luster with the knowledge that the mysterious and wonderful gift-giver may have morphed into a man of little moral value, to the point of being a money-grabbing narcissist.
There is also a great deal of testimony from former students accusing Bikram of being a sexual predator.
And, quite possibly, a rapist.
Nothing has been proven in court and therefore remains legally unconfirmed.
But this much can be said: The yoga Bikram brought to Western society over forty years ago remains pure. The man may not.
While Mr. Choudhury likely emanated a more evolved state of being when he brought his yoga series to the Western world, he has since been accused of falling below moral ground with the grace of an elephant onto a daisy.
I trained with Bikram during a teacher-training program that could make a college hazing look like a day at the spa.
The details of this teacher-training come later, but part of the rigorous agenda included infamous nightly lectures by the man himself, which were often just late-night ramblings on nothing more than his sexual stamina and prowess.
While the yoga remains popular and continues to hold merit due to its touted healing properties, Bikram himself seems to have become less popular.
The allure of a bad boy can lose its sheen once the word "rape" comes into the picture.
At the time of writing this, Bikram is facing sexual assault accusations from five women, some claiming they were raped.
Yup. Not funny. Not cool. Not so Namaste.
Keeping in mind that these are accusations at this point — the Los Angeles County district attorney has declined to bring any criminal charges against Bikram and all of the current cases are in civil court — it has been well-documented through numerous student/peer accounts of poor Bikram behavior that Mr. Choudhury has, perhaps, gone a little off the "deep bend" and is currently carrying a full house of hubris.
In a Nightline interview in 2012, Bikram defends himself against all of his detractors, explaining to the interviewer, "I never lie. I never cheat. I never hurt another spirit. I am the most spiritual man you ever met in your life. But today, you are not old, educated, smart, intelligent, wise, experienced enough to understand who I am. Maybe one of these days if you practice Bikram Yoga, you will understand that."
Here's what I understand from that statement: Nothing.
Bikram claims in the interview that half a billion people have benefited from his yoga, and in another segment, commenting on his popularity, he puts this gem out there for consideration: "People sometimes who are famous and well known, that group of people (others) get jealous. People talk bad about Jesus also."
Yes. That's true. Wars have been fought over people dissing the Lord's son. After all, he's an epic religious rock star worshipped by over a billion people worldwide; Jesus, that is. Not Bikram.
Jesus's numbers are supported by data. Bikram's? Not so much.
But how does all this happen? From my perspective, there are at least two possibilities to ponder here. One: Bikram is a victim of Western society. His original intentions were pure, profound, and purposeful, but the call of Rolls Royces and gold watches was just too alluring, and he succumbed, ultimately carving out a very dark path led by capitalism and opportunism.
Two: He's always been this person, and Western society proved to be more impressionable than he is, falling prey to Bikram's original essence, and perhaps enabling the dark seduction of some unsuspecting victims along the way.
Whichever curtain you decide to go with doesn't really matter, and there might be a few more that you could draw.
The ultimate result is unsavory.
Greatness doesn't limit itself to lovely people. There are a few biographies out there that will back this statement. Actually, most will.
The point is that even something like yoga, which usually revels in a reputation as being squeaky clean with only healing intentions can also be infiltrated and dangerously tainted by the very teachers and students that lay claim to its divinity — and all social devices to achieve this bastardization are inevitably worn out.
Human beings have a history of prioritizing their own selfish interests at the expense of the big picture. Just Google "humans and the environment."
To use Winston Churchill's assessment of Americans and broaden it to include us all, "We can always be counted on to do the right thing ... once we've exhausted all other possibilities."
Yoga is not immune to the increasingly ugly imprint being left behind by human beings.
Bikram Choudhury is not the only (potentially) guilty party here, although, as of late, he's doing a great job of becoming the unchallenged poster boy. Fittingly, an article in Yoga Journal labeled him "Yoga's Bad Boy."
Gurus around the globe have tarnished the name of yoga by using it to transcend not adversity but common sense.
They hide behind yoga's good name and use it as a moral shield to justify indiscretions and behavior more suited to a teenage pop star than that of an enlightened master.
A man or woman of influence, charisma, and respected authority can very easily bring us under their spell using the shiny wand of trust.
When we want to trust and believe in someone, we simply will.
I did that with Bikram, but again, if I had listened to my instincts when first meeting Bikram, I would have easily surmised that something was amuck. Instead, the lure of this yoga-Medusa paralyzed my intuition, and I was loaded onto the Bikram bandwagon.
In my defense — and especially the defense of those who may have suffered or are suffering because of Bikram Choudhury — we fell in love with the yoga, not the man.
I now make a conscious and essential separation between the yoga and the man. I say all of this because I want you to do the same — regardless of what yoga you practice or decide to take up. It may be Ashtanga, Bikram, Moksha, Jivamukti, Yin, Power, Iyengar, Hot Hatha, et cetera. There are tens of styles and most are worthy of your exploration.
It doesn't matter which you choose as long as it resonates and works for you.
Explore the yoga on its own merits, but question everything, especially its "ambassador." I'm going to help you get the most out of a yoga practice in the second half of the book, but for now, let's continue our dive into the yoga darkness.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "I Hate Yoga"
by .
Copyright © 2015 PAUL MCQUILLAN.
Excerpted by permission of Morgan James Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Foreword,
Introduction,
PART 1: KILLING YOGA,
Chapter 1 My Journey to Yoga-Hate,
Chapter 2 Bikram Yoga and the Guy With the Same Name,
Chapter 3 Ass-Anas and Pocket Change,
Chapter 4 The Untaught Teacher,
Chapter 5 Guru Be Gone,
Chapter 6 Paging Doctor Does-Little,
Chapter 7 Good God, Yoga,
Chapter 8 Smoke And Mirrors,
Chapter 9 #Yoga—A Fear Of "Likes",
Chapter 10 Bourbon And Backbends,
Chapter 11 No Competition,
Chapter 12 My Yoga!,
PART 2: YOGA-PHOENIX RISING,
Chapter 13 Back to the Future,
Chapter 14 I Think, Therefore I'm Damned,
Chapter 15 Sex And The Pretty,
Chapter 16 It's A Quiet Thing,
Chapter 17 A Pinch Of Heaven, A Cup Of Hell,
Chapter 18 Color Me Yoga,
Chapter 19 "Take Two And Call Me With A Warning",
Chapter 20 Twisted Terror,
Chapter 21 Fashion A Feeling?,
Chapter 22 Yoga's Not Boring, You Are!,
Chapter 23 Balance, Moderation And Other Extremes,
Chapter 24 "I'm Sorry, I'm Just Not That Intuit-Ive.",
Chapter 25 Yoga's Funny and So Are You!,
Chapter 26 It's The Yoga, Stupid,
Chapter 27 Convicted Of Killing Time,
Chapter 28 Turning A Few Tricks,
Conclusion,
About The Author,
Acknowledgements,
Resources,
References,