THE 'PROPER' MOOD FOR YOGA

Miss Manner's column on contemporary manners and etiquette by Judith Martin, has the title: GOOD YOGA TEACHER BEGINS EACH CLASS BENT OUT OF SHAPE! The 'bent out of shape' part does NOT refer to the poses, postures and asanas that turn people into pretzels and contortionists but to the attitude of the 'teacher of yoga'....the writer describes the modos and attitudes that the yoga teacher seems to be displaying and which turn people off by her describing the things that have 'gone wrong with her'etc. before class...apparently then teaching, in the words of the writer to Miss Manners, ' a wonderful class'.... This basic attitude demonstrates that many of today's trendy yoga instructors and certified practitioners,even afer years of assuming the obligatory postures of Hatha and other yogas, have yet to quell the mind and the emotions and only subdue the body....mastery of the body should, as many think and feel, relax the body and eventually the mind but thei takes time.... The writer of the letter seems to want to help the yoga instructor get out of the doldrums and negative state she has 'posed herself' into....claiming that the teacher is in financial difficulties(which seem, if real,to be of her own doing)....and is overly concerned with appearances, wanting people to think well of her(the instructor)...... Self-centered yoga instructors of all persuasions often do care more for 'perfect' postures or 'appearances' and will often go to great lengths to do so, by 'standing on their heads' or 'bending over backwards' to both please students and bring in cash and other 'sacrifices'.. Miss Manners shows the correct attitude for dealing with this, perhaps gained from her devotions to manners and proper behavior, a sort of yoga in itself....helping people has become a sort of, as Miss Manners astutely notes, 'A NATIONAL PASTIME' along with other similar recreations of a national character.... But I seriously doubt that this yoga instructor will ever be able to 'get into the proper mood for yoga' if she has not early on in her career learned how this is done....usually self-taught persons or DVD trainees fall into this group...