Gokulam

By Audrey Girard, Edited by Daniel Nugent

           After spending five weeks in Gokulam (long enough to soak in the ambiance), I have a mixture of emotions overwhelming me. I can certainly see some beauty in all of this, I can always see beauty. I am meeting people from all around the world and drinking fresh coconut water each morning. I also rediscovered millet, a grain that my grandmother used to love! But what I see and feel is mostly making me sad, anxious, frustrated, cheated, corrupted and worried about the future of yoga in general and even more generally worried about the future of mankind (ok I am slightly exaggerating here). Why am I feeling like this?

I love yoga. It is one of my passions. I came to a yoga hub, Mysore, the city where one of my favourite styles of yoga was developed. I should be feeling great, ecstatic… but I am feeling cheated. I wanted to deepen my pranayama practice…and I am breathing bullshit.

I am trying to find the best way to draw a portrait of the situation of Gokulam, a neighbourhood of Mysore. I will first describe a normal day in Gokulam for a fictional character, let’s say Joe a yogi from Boston. This generalisation will serve in developing an understanding of the situation. Then, I will paint a picture of the socio economic reality as I see it.

A Normal Day in Gokulam

Joe wakes up at 5am.

He walks to the main shala and sleepily waits in line and hear the signal: “ONE MORE! ONE MORE!” Joe rolls his mat down on any available spot and starts his series of movements among 50 other fellow yogis.

After doing two hours of yoga asana practice, Joe has the entire day to himself. Feeling fit, fresh and slightly injured, he is very hungry.

He goes to eat breakfast in one of the many different café’s with very similar menus. He spends hours enjoying his food and chatting about yoga with his new yoga friends. He debates breathing, postures, counting and other matters of technique. He discusses the importance of his spiritual journey and the role of India and of the vedic tradition on his own path. He talks about reincarnation, but assures his audience that he is not religious. He talks about the need for charity but talks about Bitcoin and how he wished he had invested earlier. He talks about non-attachment[1] while texting on his new Iphone X. After a two hours breakfast, he is ready to do something else.

Luckily, there is a limitless offer of yoga related activities to do! He sees many posters/flyers posted on the door of his breakfast joint. He also receives advice from his new yoga friends that have been in town longer than him; they know the gig. Here is a non-exhaustive list of the multiple courses, workshops and services Joe has the option to engage in.

• AYURVEDIC YOGA MASSAGE
• THAI YOGA HEALING MASSAGE
• THAI YOGA HEALING MASSAGE
• LUCID DREAMING WORKSHOP
• CHANTING COURSE
• SANSKIT COURSE
• YOGA SUTRA COURSE
• PAST LIFE REGRESSION
• ASTROLOGIST APPOINTMENT
• PALM READER APPOINTMENT
• etc.

After his chanting course, Joe realises that it is 2pm. He is hungry again. This time, Joe feels like some quiet time. Instead of chatting during his late lunch that will also serve as dinner, he chooses to pick up one of the multiple philosophy books kindly put at everyone’s convenience in cafes.

Researching to justify the conversation he had previously with his new friends he spends hours (or a few minutes really) reading, cherry picking some new ideas, concepts, set of beliefs and making it his own. After being filled up with spiritual insights form the Gita, Joe is ready to have some early evening social time with his fellow yogi friends. He can insert new things in his conversations which lead to exchanges like “What? How can you really believe that you could NOT come back as a dog in your next life”?

Joe then goes shopping for the coolest mala in town. On his way to his Gokulam home, he stops to buy overpriced organic snacks for the next day.

Joe eats an early light dinner and goes to bed at 9pm.

He repeats the above, with slight variations in activities and food choices, for a month or longer.

End.

I See; I Hear

     Many people, like Joe, are coming to Mysore to practice yoga, Ashtanga yoga, a practice that has brought thus far so much goodness to their life.

I have seen a quest for the tools that could help dive deeper into the understanding of the self and of the world. Some people are seeking spirituality, or a connection with something greater than themselves. Some people are eager to learn more about the different aspect of yoga. Most are here to perfect their asana practice. Some are here to heal.

We all want to learn and heal; we are being offered a lot of express “knowledge” by ‘experts’. To demonstrate a point, I will recount a story that I recently heard[2]. The god Indra, in a quest to understand the self, seeks the answer from another divinity. Prajāpati, a senior God gives the answer: the self is the body. Although initially satisfied, Indra later comes back to Prajāpati who demands Indra wait in a condition of asceticism for 32 years before telling him another answer: the self is consciousness in dreams. Indra is again immediately satisfied before reflecting yet again and returning for another answer. And still again, after another 32 years is told the third answer: the self is consciousness in blissful dreamless sleep. Still unsatisfied, Indra comes back but this time he waits only 5 years to finally hear the actual answer!

In Gokulam, answers and concepts are thrown at us from all directions (grab a book, go to a philosophy class, etc). Far from having to wait 32 years to learn anything, we just pay money and receive all kinds of answer and knowledge. I fear that most don’t take the time to analyse and critique this knowledge; this knowledge tends to be taken for granted since it comes out of the mouth of a so called expert or guru. We have to remember to experience for ourselves and to think critically, no matter from whom we get answers. It takes time and effort to reflect about questions without obvious answer.

I hear that many have left their job, ended a relationship, or needed time away from the world they live in. This can place us in a more vulnerable position emotionally. In that mind-set, it might be easy to grasp on to new beliefs or to spiritual guides. What worries me is that I think that a lot of people are being taken advantage of while being in a vulnerable position.

I hear the voices of a lot of lost souls like Joe, coming from all around the world. How can we not be a little lost in this world? Reflecting about the meaning of it all (life, death and the in-between) is part of our human nature.

I hear tones of judgment. I hear from ashtanga practitioners talking in a café about their other fellow yogi friends: “They are JUST vyniasa flow people so, very little common ground”. I interpret the word JUST as being rather diminishing but it is JUST my interpretation.

I don’t hear much deep reflections about life and death, I hear regurgitated ideas from spiritual books, I hear disagreements on the way to count the postures in the Ashtanga series, I hear people complaining about their injured body parts.

I don’t hear a lot of independent thinking and critical inquiry. People seem very comfortable in the idea of yoga as it is presented in Gokulam. I guess it is very tempting to take it for granted; Mysore is the town where ashtanga yoga was born!

I see a lot of worshipping and feet kissing which I find disturbing. Some seems to be thinking that their spiritual journey is in the hand of their teacher, that their yoga practice depends on their guru.

I see tribalism. The first question I was asked, which became a natural first “making conversation” question is: Who are you practicing with? There is something I don’t like about the question, but mostly I dislike the fact that it is often the first question asked by a stranger. It immediately creates categories. I am being classified as practicing with Saraswathi, and I am being judge positively or negatively depending on the opinion of the person on that particular teacher. There is the “I practice with the best teacher in town syndrome”. It establishes a kind of hierarchy or tribalism amongst teachers and their students.

I see a lot of people spending a lot of money to learn a wide variety of dodgy things in a very dodgy way.

I don’t see a yoga practice that is respectful of the body. I don’t see a yoga practice that is about introspection, self-inquiry, and self-observance.

The Yoga Economy

Last year I undertook a study, motivated by the idea that the practice of yoga could be a tool for social and economic change. Having experienced changes in myself after practicing yoga for some time, I was wondering if those changes were occurring in other yoga practitioner’s life styles. For example, I found myself naturally adopting a vegetarian diet and I considerably decreased my purchase of clothing and consumer products in general. I started to make more ethical choices when buying food and clothes (free range, organic, fair tree, local etc.) I started to think more about the meaning of life and death. I started to be more introspective and deal with my emotions in a different way. The changes I saw in myself were mostly positive. I was naturally drawn to a more introspective and sustainable lifestyle.

I wondered if yoga had a similar effect on most practitioners. Since yoga is increasing in popularity worldwide, I thought wow, if this is the case; yoga could really be a tool for social and economic changes, towards a world where consumer capitalism and individualism are not at the center of our lived social experience. Towards a world centered on less materialistic values. However, the neighbourhood of Gokulam in Mysore, India, seems to demonstrate the exact opposite of my hopes for yoga in the West.

The yoga teaching itself

The neighbourhood of Gokulam is famous because of the Jois family. The yoga shala where Patthabi Jois was teaching Ashtanga yoga to only a few westerners in the 1970 is still the same. Only now, instead of teaching to 8-10 people, his daughter Saraswati teaches to over 100 people and his son, Sharath to about 400 people (as for November, December 2017). Practitioners from all around the world come to study with their teacher/guru, some come each year, and pay USD 500 per month. No discount. This is more expensive than yoga studios in Canada. As a student, I pay CAN 250 for three months for much better teaching.

 500 USD/Students/Month  X 400 Students =  200 000 USD/Month

 200 000 USD/Month X 2 Months= USD 400 000

Sharath is making nearly half a million US dollars by teaching yoga for two months in Mysore. Amongst the yoga community, it seems all very good and adequate…I did not hear many complaints.

The demand for yoga classes cannot be met by the Jois family alone. Many other locals have made teaching yoga their profession. Most are teaching Ashtanga yoga but there is also other style of yoga being taught. Some have developed their own style (pranavashya) some focus on teaching more specific aspects of asana like back bending. Although it is possible to find pranayama and meditation classes, the majority of yoga courses focus on the asana. This speaks to the fact that yoga is now very much a physical practice that blends in the body oriented culture of the west.

These classes are less costly than those offered by the Jois family, but the average price for lessons is still comparable to Canadian prices. Most teachers require a minimum enrolment time of 2 weeks for an approximate price of RS 6000 and places offering “drop in” classes charge RS 500  (~CAN 10) for one course. Those prices are less than what we pay in most places in the West but it is very expensive for Indian standard, considering you can have food for three days with RS 500.

Comparing currencies with the Purchasing Power Parity (PPP)[3] :

RS 500 = USD 40

RS 500 = CAD 50

That means that in Canada, CAN 50 buys the same “basket of good” (a yoga class) as RS 500 in India. In other words, paying RS 500 for a yoga class in India is something like paying CAN 50 for a yoga class in Canada. In India things differ wildly from area to area and these figures are standardised for the whole country so we have to take these calculations with a grain of salt. That said, RS 500 is still very expensive for a yoga class, especially for an Indian. For an Indian, the average median salary averaged across all the continent is a misery: USD 616 per year or RS 10,000 per year (adjusted for PPP). So we can say that Indians are paying 1/20 of the yearly salary on one yoga class. However, there are lots of very poor people in India which skew the Data. India has the lowest threshold of what is considered middle class in comparable countries $13,662 or RS 238, 357 (adjusted for PPP). For the Indian middle class, paying RS 500 for a yoga class accounts for 1/457 of their yearly income, compared to 1/3545 for a middle class Canadian.

This points out that the yoga market in India is targeting mainly westerners or Indian from the upper class. I hear that Indians pay a different price then westerners but I did not see any locals in my yoga classes. It seems that most of them can’t afford ashtanga yoga in Gokulam. Comparing currencies with PPP also points out that some Indians are getting rich, richer than others that are not engaging in the yoga teaching economy with Westerners.

The ancillary stuff

Along with the proliferation of yoga teachers, several cafes have opened to provide healthy food for all those yogis. Restaurants are offering western food and adapted Indian food (less spicy, vegan etc.) You can find yoga shops selling yoga related items on every street corner. This includes yoga mats, yoga mat rags, yoga clothes, malas and other jewellery etc. Corner shops (dépanneur) are selling a small range of organic food (European almond milk RS 320).

In Gokulam, there is a high demand from relatively wealthy people seeking something different, inner peace maybe. Since most people practice yoga early in the morning, they have plenty of free time in the after-noon. This seems to be seen as a great opportunity to teach them things! In addition to the teaching of yoga (asana, meditation, pranayama), there is a wide variety of courses offered. I attempted to group these courses in categories:

The yoga philosophy field:  Some “teachers” are offering Yoga Sutras class, Bagavagita class and Hatha yoga Pradripika class. We first went to a talk on the Bagavagita. The talk was directed by someone who was holding the book to his heart. He was feeeeling the book to his deepest while recounting how the text had affected him emotionally and psychologically throughout his life. Luckily that talk was free. A little while later, I went to a sutra class apparently led by a knowledgeable scholar. The experience was much better as we were reading the text and discussing it but still, we were not questioning metaphysical concepts (like reincarnation) but taking them as postulates, as the ultimate truth. The scholar knew the material very well but his material, the philosophy he was teaching, was also his religion and his world view. Most students seemed to drink in his knowledge without putting it in context. As if finally, they understood THE metaphysical universal truth. This one hour discussion was RS 400.

The Ayurveda field: Learn the basis of the ancient medicine of Ayurdeda…in 10 hours. Ayurvetic cooking classes, ayurvedic massage courses, etc.

The “healing” field: This includes reiki, pass life regression and adding the word healing in front of things; healing massage, healing yoga and so on.

The artistic field: chanting courses, music courses, etc.

Those workshops and courses are offered mostly by local but some westerners are taking advantage of the yoga high season to offer their own workshops (lucid dreaming, meditation, make your own mala, etc.) and other services like photography, massages and others. Who does not need a good massage after vigorously practicing asthanga 6 days a week?! My money is definitely going out fast on all the yoga related stuff, why not get a bit of cash in by offering my own New Agy material. Next year, I will come prepared: Vegan Pass life Mediation every Friday at 7pm, RS 600. This should partly pay my flat rent which is overpriced compared to the rest of town, and constantly increasing. I hear that the average price of a flat went from CAN 12 to CAN 30 in one year. Some cafés have doubled their prices overnight; the thali when from RS 100 to RS 200 at Depth in Green in one season! My question is: is it ok to come to India to practice yoga and meanwhile make money thanks to the established community of wealthy western yogis?

Moreover, I found that many courses offered within that yoga industry are not of good quality. I feel like anyone can teach anything to anyone and charge money. I feel that a lot of false, dodgy and dogmatic religious information is being said. Is this ethical in relation to people purchasing these goods and services? On the one hand, vulnerable people are potentially being taken advantage off. On the other hand, it can be seen as yoga tourists receiving ancillary entertainment. They probably don’t mind to spend the money and they probably enjoy the entertainment but maybe that at a deeper level, this wider offering of courses, goods and services distracts them from their initial quest…

Discussion

      It is clear that the industry of yoga has transformed the economy of Gokulam, a neighbourhood of Mysore India. This is not all that frustrating in itself. What is frustrating to me is that it is happening through a “yoga industry” an industry as evil as any, only with an added touch of hypocrisy.

The yoga industry in Gokulam seems to be producing a lot of haves and have nots. It is a two tiered economy with those in the yoga industry benefited disproportionately to those not. What we have to ask ourselves is: is it right for yogis to become super rich right next door to the super poor? Is a super capitalistic business model compatible with yoga philosophy? It seems to be contradicting the very “moral conducts” or yamas[4], at the foundation of yoga philosophy. It seems to me that particularly the second (satya) and the last (aparigraha) of the yamas are being violated.

Aparigraha refers to non-possessiveness, detachment from worldly material, non-grasping, non-greediness, non-attachment. “Non-acquisition, aparigraha is non-possession of more than what one needs for sustenance.” According to this principle, yogis are encouraged to practice renunciation of unnecessary possessions because material goods are a distraction for the mind. The yoga industry is certainly increasing participant’s economic capital. When does “necessity” become “excess”?  The line is fine and subject to interpretation.  When one lives in India and earns more than the Canadian upper class, that line must have been burst toward excessive accumulation.

One could be tempted to justify this accumulation of capital and the consequential inequalities with the concepts of Karma and Reincarnation. According to those ideas, good and bad consequences are generated by good and bad actions respectively. The good or bad Karma accumulated in one’s life is then transmitted into the next life. One way to use these principles to interpret a social situation is: one is born in a rich family and continues to grow a personal fortune because he or she has accumulated good Karma and thus merits this level of wealth while one is very poor because he or she has bad Karma and thus deserves the misery.

Although karma has been used this way by Brahmans to justify their social position, using Karma to justify inequalities is, according to the philosopher Peter Adamson and others, a reduced and inadequate way of understanding Karma. A better understanding of the concept of Karma is to think of it as a motivation for acting well in the world, for pursuing the good. In ancient India, average life expectancy was 30 years old and most people died before 5.  Death was omnipresent in ancient societies, and by believing that doing social good in this life would bring benefits in the next life, people were more likely to do that social good in the short time they had and that benefited everybody. The concept of Karma emerged in the socio-economic context of ancient India but is still present today. I don’t know how the role of Karma might have evolved over time, but it is clear that by using Karma to justify privilege we are missing the point of its social utility and we are engendering a world of entrenched inequality and social disharmony.

Yoga teachers need to be decently paid for their work. But what price should we pay for yoga? The fact that the Jois family, The Source, is charging a very high price appears to have given an incentive to other, venerated, Ashtanga teacher to do the same. For example in Goa, Rolf charges EUR 320 for 2, 3 and 4 week and EUR 215 for 1 week. Yoga teachers might think that because students are willing to pay a certain prince for yoga in Mysore, they must be willing to pay a high price elsewhere also. The Jois seems to be setting a market standard for ashtanga, a price that is, in my opinion, far too high for yoga, a spiritual practice having non-greed[5] as its rule of conduct (yamas).

Yoga is already not accessible to a huge part of the population (I showed in my research thesis that most yoga practitioner comes from the middle to upper class) but I fear that soon, most people won’t be able to afford yoga at all! My hope was that yoga should be made more and more accessible but it seems to be becoming more and more unavailable.

Conclusion

       While being in Gokulam, I had to confront my research thesis hypothesis and revisit my hopes for yoga. It was hard to do, because as you know, I love yoga! And I secretly believed that yoga could change the world for the better! I thought that this amazing practice could help us see and change the relationship we have with ourselves and with the environment…towards a kinder, healthier one.

But in Gokulam, right in my face, I saw the opposite of what I was hoping from yoga. I did not see yoga as a tool for shifting away from materialistic values, for consuming less and for consuming more sustainably. Instead, I saw yoga as an industry that grows the economy in a way that increases inequalities. I saw a lack of authenticity and a dangerous drift towards mysticism.

On an individual level, yoga as seen in Gokulam does not seem to be much more than an intense physical exercise with serious potential health hazards. It seems to be about pushing physical limits with strength, flexibility and body image being the way we compare ourselves with others. I feel like it has becomes all about increasing the ego. It seems to create an addiction to asana and an obsession with the body. It creates dependence to a teacher, to a guru (to something outside the self). In that sense, it takes you away from the deeper journey inward. It creates rigidity and dogma. It confuses the frontier between philosophy, beliefs and religion. It does not lay a good foundation for profound introspection (niyama) and for deep reflections about the Self and the world. It does not take one away from materialistic values but towards them, towards the body, appearance and consumption.

On a social level, practiced in this way yoga is not helping to create a different world; it is fully absorbed within a system that promotes individualism and capitalism. Sadly, I see a yoga that nourishes and gives birth to modes of behaviour and thought that are antithetical to its very philosophy. I fear that the practice of yoga is being transformed into the commodification of yoga. Yoga has been carved up, packaged and wrapped in plastic for easier purchase and consumption. Yoga has become a trend and thus a fad.

There seems to be a lot of confusion about what yoga is, what yoga means and how to practice yoga in a way that benefits the body, the mind and the world. I am afraid that yoga could bring much physical and mental harm. Focusing on achieving the perfect posture or striving to progress quickly in the ashtanga series stresses the body and the mind. It takes one away from the very purpose of yoga, and of life. It focuses on end goals and forgets about the important part; the process. It focuses on doing and not on being.

After this slightly traumatic experience in Mysore, I will try to come back to the essence of yoga, to the simple concepts and the simple movements…with BREATH.

Let’s unwrap yoga from its plastic shawl!

Annex 1: Photos of workshops announced on various walls

[1] Aparigraha is the last of the five yamas of Patanjali’s Eight Limbs of yoga. It is translated as non-possessiveness, non-grasping, non-greediness, non-attachment.

[2] In episode 5 of the history of philosophy without any gaps; India, By Peter Adamson

[3] PPP is one of the metric used by economists to compare economic productivity and standards of living between countries. It uses the market “basket of goods” approach to compare different countries’ currencies. PPP works by estimating what a basket of the same goods (in our case a yoga class) cost in different localities.

[4] The yamas are: Ahimsâ : non-violence, Satya : Truthfulness, Asteya : non-stealing, Brahmacarya : celibacy or mederation , Aparigraha : renunciation of [unnecessary] possessions, non-greed, non-attachment (Bryant, Edwin (2017). Yoga Sutras of Patanjali | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

[5] Aparigraha is the last of the five yamas of Patanjali’s Eight Limbs of yoga. It is translated as non-possessiveness, non-grasping, non-greediness, non-attachment.

[8] The five niyamas are : Shauce : purification. Samtocha : contentement. Tapas : discipline, asceticism. Svâdhyâya : self-study, introspection and study of scriptures. Îshvara pranidhâna : devotion, surrender.