I’ve been studying and teaching yoga in the Iyengar tradition for more than 30 years. The field has changed. In Liberating Yoga, Harpinder Mann relates her own frustration with finding an authentic yoga path. The path of yoga is very broad, but I agree with Mann about what’s authentic: real yoga comes from India and thereabouts, with a lot of history and context. Students may choose to engage with this context or not, but they must be taught of its existence. A Los Angeles resident of Indian descent, Mann was put off by the fitness-yoga classes she found in LA and only discovered an appropriate practice when she went to India. There is real yoga in LA just as there is in my hometown of Portland, Oregon, but it can be hard to find among the hundreds of fitness-industry classes. Mann frames the problem as a result of colonialism, but I think the problem is simpler. After all, colonialism has been around for a long time while the dominance of superficial yoga is relatively recent.

When I began practicing yoga, you learned to teach only when your teacher thought you were ready. It was not a path you would take to a career, not reliably anyway. You helped with classes as an apprentice, remained a student in advanced classes, and paid your teacher for their time for individual mentorship. You substituted during absences. When your teacher thought you were capable, you got your own classes. If the students liked you, you kept those classes and grew them. When your teacher grew old, you were there to carry the knowledge forward. The cost depended on your and your teacher’s needs and resources. Apprenticeship was the way yoga had been taught since the beginning. People who learned as I did trace their lineages back for generations. Understanding yoga lineages is still the best way to put any yoga school into perspective.

But that doesn’t matter much anymore, because almost all the yoga schools closed down with the pandemic. Classes at fitness centers are cheap or free, and they generally don’t ask for the sort of commitment a real yoga teacher wants from their students. Drop in whenever it’s convenient! You will not be asked to chant or engage in other strange practices. And those weird poses – those upside down ones and twisty ones?—never mind; they’re too hard.

From my perspective, the problem began when teacher training courses proved to be profitable. If it looks like a career path, people are willing to spend much more than they would for their own development. And, just like the Wizard of Oz, these courses give certifications. Tada! A yoga teacher is made, in a standardized process that the insurance industry might recognize (one day if we’re lucky). If you have the money and the time, you too can be certified as a yoga teacher; you do not need to demonstrate any knowledge or ability whatsoever. Oh, and you can do most of your studies on retreats somewhere fun like Costa Rica!

Not surprisingly, we now have hundreds and hundreds of certified yoga teachers. When I ran my own center, I received applications weekly. I was desperate for good teachers and subs, but when I responded with a list of minimum qualifications, I never heard back (well, once I did and you were a gem, Alison!). I had some more advanced students, and I needed teachers who were at least as capable as the students; these certified teachers were not. Serving advanced students isn’t much of a problem anymore either. I fear they ended their studies early to become teachers.

In Liberating Yoga, Mann uses the framing of colonialism loosely, because she wants to highlight the issue of racism. I don’t exactly disagree; colonialism was always about the money too.  Still, I’m interested in the differences. A country may someday expel the colonist, as India eventually did. Can we liberate yoga from its mercantile oppressor? Systemically? Mann advocates learning and honoring yoga’s past, and this is the work of individuals: teachers, apprentices, and students. Some individuals have and always will do the right thing. They, at least, will carry the thread of knowledge forward, we hope to a wiser era where it can blossom. Now, I’m afraid, the practice is struggling in the weeds.