By Derek Beres
By now, the yoga community has exhausted its responses to science writer and longtime yoga practitioner William Broad’s NY Times article, “How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body,” which took a pointed view of 
the dangers of injury that can occur in an asana class. While it was unfortunate that the Times chose to showcase this unflattering snippet—the book it was adapted from discusses the “rewards” much more than the “risks”—it did remind us that injury is always a danger. What wasn’t discussed in the ensuing blogs and articles is the unyielding usage of the term “ego.” The word often seemed to justify whatever bad habits or tendencies the particular commenter thought it should, which seems unfair, both to the reader and the term itself.
Noted yoga scholar Georg Feuerstein defines ego in religious or spiritual contexts as referring “to the psychological principle of individuation, whereby a person experiences himself or herself as an individual apart from all other beings.” Two camps effectively split from this definition. One, advaita vedanta, rebelled against the ego, believing it should be dismantled, and resulted in rigorous asceticism. The other celebrated the union with all existence, embracing the ego—hence, tantra. While no theory in yoga is ever simply black and white, how the ego was utilized or discarded was a personal decision based on what path you were willing to walk. In many ways, the same holds true today.
Yoga is not whatever you want it to be. There are principles, beginning with the yamas and niyamas, that have to be abided by. These “restraints and observances” have caused their own internal debates, such as whether or not ahimsa means one must eschew animal products. It is generally agreed that the ego, in Sanskrit known as ahamkara, or the “I maker,” is something to be transcended. What that means remains in practical terms is open for debate. The yoga we practice today is nothing like what was occurring in India just over two millennia ago. There’s nothing wrong with that. We just need to define the terms in a way that’s going to make sense for this generation of yogis.
Broad’s article focused on a reclusive teacher named Glenn Black, who himself received the brunt of online attacks for his usage of the word. In the article, he is quoted as saying, “Today many schools of yoga are just about pushing people. You can’t believe what’s going on—teachers jumping on people, pushing and pulling and saying, ‘You should be able to do this by now.’ It has to do with their egos.”
Jill Miller, creator of the Studio City-based therapeutic Yoga Tune-Up classes, has studied closely with Black for more than two decades. While she made a conscious decision to focus on anatomy and proprioception (“a body’s sense of itself”), due to the “thicket of complexity when dealing with philosophy, psychology and spiritual platforms” in regards to yoga, she did mention “unchecked ego” in a Gaiam blog. This was to pay homage to her teacher while expressing the point that every yogi needs to understand his practice from within his own body.
“Anatomy sometimes seems to be outside of teachers instead of inside of them, where it should be,” she told me. “We need to know our bodies from the inside out so that we’re practicing from there, and not from an aesthetic point of view. The unchecked ego comment is about when you’re practicing from an aesthetic point of view instead of navigating your own tissues from inside of your own topography.” 
Santa Monica yoga teacher Kathryn Budig, known for her strong classes focused on inversions and arm balancing, notes that, “Ego is a funny beast, because it slithers up in such a seductive outfit but always ends up biting you in the ass. I see it happen in class all the time—students pushing themselves beyond their limits to achieve an ‘advanced’ pose to appease their ego and be seen as a star of sorts. The problem is, going beyond your body’s limitations always comes back to get you—usually in the form of a nasty injury.”
Both teachers reference yoga on the mat as a training ground for what happens off of it. Finding that sweet spot between being challenged and overdoing it takes time, restraint and patience. One of the most forgiving teachers today is Tara Stiles, owner of New York City’s Strala Yoga. While her classes are physically demanding, she invites her students to practice with ease instead of pushing too hard.
“When we push, we get stuck and feed stress and anxiety,” she said. “When we are able to find the ease, we are able to cultivate the best version of our lives, mentally, physically and spiritually. When we fall off and head towards pushing and forcing, we can hopefully draw ourselves right back to ease. The practice of yoga can become a conscious observation and choice to return to center because we intuitively trust it’s the best way to live.”
Top photo courtesy EGIZU Getxo Euskaldun Elkartea
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