Inappropriate? Yes AND No.
Originally published at Shockra. You can comment here or there.
Yogadork recently wrote about how Yoga Journal caught heat from the Universal Society of Hinduism’s Rajan Zed. Zed took great umbrage with their satirical “Ogden: Inappropriate Yoga Guy” web series. To be sure, Ogden is a caricature of all the worst you’ll find in modern yoga: a creepy adjustment giver, cocksure and grossly uninformed. He’s disgusting, oversexed and capable of producing peals of guilty, appalled laughter. Zed maintains that yoga is a “living fossil,” a serious discipline; I absolutely agree. Zed also claims that because it is a worshipful and serious practice, it shouldn’t be spoofed. I profoundly disagree.
My practice is serious. My commitment to study, growth and self-exploration, along with finding the intersection of classical texts and my everyday life has changed my life. I live with a degenerative joint disease, and therefore my practice is doubly important in my life. It’s not merely mitigating suffering from the constant anger and isolation I felt before yoga. The asana practice gives me an opportunity to shape my fate; to challenge myself in non-violent ways. I cry nearly every time I practice, because it is powerful, transformative work that makes me feel comfortable and powerful in my awkward and failing body. It’s given me back my life in every sense of the word.
That said, yoga lets me laugh. Yoga’s integrative approach means I don’t smile with just my mouth, or my eyes: if I dive deeply, my hands and feet are as expressive as eyebrows. If I’m doing it right, I can laugh at myself, and my light illumines the beautiful folks around me. Satire’s purpose is to expose human folly through humorous or derisive methods to facilitate a shift in thinking. A Modest Proposal was as scandalous as it was incisive; framing the plight of poverty-stricken Ireland to inspire sympathy for the cause and villify anyone who held similar views of the narrator. Satire of modern yoga like Ogden or Cracked’s various yoga spoofs don’t bother me: it’s people that’ve forgotten that lila is also an aspect of the Supreme that make me cranky. Playfulness and humor can shine a light on less appealing aspects of the yoga world far more deftly than angry denunciation.