Kleshas Part 2: Integrating yoga philosophy into day to day life and why yoga is political
I wrote about the 5 Kleshas in my last blog post (did you read the post? If not please read it first as I’m basically continuing on from where I left off last week - to make the reading more digestible because it was getting LONG lol)
How do you work with the Kleshas - sources of suffering - on a daily basis? How do you release yourself from ignorance, egocentrism, attachments, aversions & fear? It’s a constant practice in self observation and reflection on what your natural tendencies are, catching yourself thinking or doing something that would relate to the kleshas and then challenging your way of thinking around it.
When we practice yoga and weave yoga philosophy into our daily lives, we are waking up to what’s going on around us. We are becoming more empathetic and compassionate and our understanding of what’s going on internally not only becomes more apparent, but the inequalities and imbalances outside of ourselves also become more apparent. This is really important to think about, and cannot be ignored when you start to notice (otherwise we are choosing to live in ignorance - instead of being ignorant - which is the base source of suffering/first Klesha).
When we start to wake up and notice what’s going on around us in terms of societal greed, destruction of the environment, inequalities amongst people based on ethnicity, skin colour, gender, sexual preferences, religion, etc, violence towards any marginalised group, the pandemic highlighting everything going on, the black lives matter movement, violence against women and LGBTQ+, breaking down the patriarchy, the migrant crisis..the list of injustices and inequalities over the world go on.... it is not ok to turn our head the other way when we’re not personally involved in whatever injustice is going on because we’re not “part of that group” or believe "that’s their problem, not mine".
Yoga wakes you up to all of this, and because of the clarity, compassion & empathy you gain from this practice, you can't simply ignore the problems our society have. How do we create change then?
Change only happens when we address things that are wrong in the system and actually make covert changes towards something else. We have a lot of work to do as a society in terms of healing hate & greed. All the problems we have in society also come from the Kleshas, they aren’t just individual sources of suffering. Ignorance fuels division, and when society has more division, people develop hate, violence and fear towards the “others”. If ignorance is addressed, we can see each other as equals instead of as different or fearful.
We need to do the work on ourselves first though to really address our own ignorances, deep rooted beliefs & privileges we have or don’t have. The more you can undo your own biases and labels towards yourself and others, the more empathy and compassion you develop, you can “see” better, and then you are free. Free to help others begin to see - through compassionate conscious change, not by being reactive or by judging others, but by being a leader in clearly demonstrating how to live freely, peacefully, in a non-judgmental, non-consuming, non-violent, non-fearful, non-attached way. You can develop all of these qualities through practicing yoga, take them off the mat and out into the wider world to elicit change - from a yogic perspective. Gandhi chose to protest through the yogic principle - non violent actions/Ahimsa and liberated India from the British Empire, so yes it does matter and it does work.
We have a social responsibility to act consciously and be an engaged citizen, because we are all part of society whether we like it or not. Living like this requires bravery.
A lot of people can be resistant to change, maybe they want change, but they're comfortable where they are and not willing to do work to create change or give up any of their deep rooted beliefs to actually illicit real change. What it really boils down to is being scared of change, because it's unknown - where ignorance lays. When things are unknown, we are really good at creating elaborate stories in our minds that cause discomfort, fear and intense emotional responses and therefore reactions to change - reactions that are prompted by an idea in a persons mind rather than by reality. The emotions and reactions are real, but the idea that prompted the response isn’t real (for example “immigrants taking our jobs”, the reaction, Brexit; it comes from a place of fear of change, a scarcity mindset, and that “the others” will “take what’s ours” because they are “different”). In reality, there have been so many studies that show diversity within a group actually boost creativity & innovation. So why has diversity been made into a widespread public fear?
It comes down to the Kleshas - ignorance of the unknown, fear of change and attachments to current comforts.
I'm from a small town in Alberta, Canada, and it's quite a white city - the majority of people living there have white European settler roots, Red Deer is not a diverse place. For example, my high school of 2000 people had (if I remember correctly) 3 Black students, and about 20 Asian, the rest were all white. Canada is a diverse place in terms of where people come from originally (it’s not an old country - 154 years) but it is mostly from descendants of white Europeans who came for a new life. Nowadays people from all over the world are still migrating there for the new life that Canada offers - there are loads of problems in Canada to do with racism, anti immigration, and there are fascist groups gaining popularity there too, because people are scared of change. Despite that there’s a ton of space and abundance and a nice life in Canada - people become scared of the amount of people they perceive to be coming there and they don’t want to share/change (remember this land was stolen from the First Nations/Native Americans and colonised mostly by England and France…)
Contrary to popular belief over here in England and Europe, Canada is not a land of open armed welcoming people, there is a big divide in political and socioeconomic beliefs just like there is anywhere else. Red Deer is particularly white though and because I grew up there without exposure to much diversity, when I left, I started to realise what my personal biases and beliefs I had developed towards anyone different to me were, I had to confront them and had a lot of “undoing” to do. This undoing had a big part in why I became so obsessed with travelling the world. I loved challenging my own biases and meeting and learning from people from different backgrounds. It challenged my narrow way of thinking that I had grown up with and helped to expand my knowledge and mindset into becoming a more global citizen. I still have more work to do and it’s a constant process of recognising the privilege I was born with - a white, English speaking Canadian citizen, having easy access to healthcare, education and a comfortable life. I grew up totally naive, out in the country near a small oil & agricultural city surrounded by similar people. I’m grateful for my upbringing, but it was a shock when I left Red Deer - even going up to Edmonton to attend university was a shock - fancier people here in the “big city” and people from other countries coming to get their education too. I will admit I found it intimidating and scary to even speak to people different than me at first, I was an incredibly shy person growing up (I’m not exaggerating!! I was probably one of the most shy people in my classes growing up).
I realised I had a lot of work to do on myself to become more open to everyone and everything around me - and maybe I was lucky here, because I somehow found the courage in my 20s to tackle my shyness, and put myself into situations on purpose to challenge my shyness and belief systems. I liked the unknown, I liked learning about and from people who had different upbringings than my own.
I like to think of myself as an empathic and compassionate person, I've done years and years of work on myself, but this is still a work in progress and always will be. I have had to do some work this past year on myself and racism after the Black Lives Matter movement happened at the beginning of lockdown. I’m not a racist person, but I had to confront myself with some uncomfortable truths that I hadn’t really worked on before. Addressing my privilege and what I’ve achieved in life may have a lot to do with the colour of my skin, my appearance and my accent. I think I was oblivious to it before because everyone practicing yoga around me in London was similar to me, and I came from Alberta in Canada which is very white. I didn’t even realise that in London, I was still surrounded by mostly white people - despite London being an incredibly diverse place. Why was that? What are the barriers to creating diversity within the yoga community? Was I contributing to diversity and inclusivity or was I contributing to cater to people with privilege? This is still ongoing work as I figure out how to be very mindful with the language I use in promoting diversity, inclusion and being welcoming to all people. And within this there’s a battle of providing physical yoga classes that I believe are transformative (I can only teach what I know and what works for me) yet I know my classes are not super accessible to brand new practitioners or people with big limitations in their ability to move. How do you address this? I have to rest comfortably in the fact that there needs to be a range of yoga classes for people based on what they need as individuals, and that one class cannot (and should not) try to cater to all people (because then you are really not serving anyone by trying to cater to all).
What I’ve found as a yoga teacher watching people practice over the years- is that a persons mindset is all that matters in deciding if they will come back to class or not. It honestly doesn’t have much to do with physical ability, if the determination is there, the work will be done.
I think back to myself early on in my yoga practice as well. I was so incredibly unfit and inflexible when I started taking yoga classes. I wish I could see a video of me practicing at the beginning because I didn’t know left from right or fingers from toes. Despite probably doing everything wrong and most likely causing my early yoga teachers a ton of stress, I kept coming back to class because of the feeling I got - so even for myself, the classes I chose to go to and come back to had nothing to do with my physical ability, but everything to do with my mindset. I loved the challenge and the movement with breath. If classes were slower, I got bored and my mind wandered all over the place (even though these classes were probably better suited to me physically at the time) - I never connected with slow movement because of this, and that’s why I don’t teach it. It serves a big purpose for many people, but I’m not suited to it, and therefore I wouldn’t be the best teacher for those types of classes anyways. So I have to look at who I’m serving from this perspective: I can only teach what works for me, and whoever resonates with this will connect with my teachings, and that has nothing to do with age, race, gender, physical fitness, religion, sexual orientation etc etc.
I also recognise that because of the way I look, I may present a barrier to some people coming to my classes. Lots of people want to go to a yoga teacher that is similar to them, and thats’ totally ok!! Having a teacher that is similar to you can help to make you feel safe, heard and understood. This is why we need more diversity in the yoga classroom, so that more diverse teachers are inspired to take yoga teacher trainings and then to bring it into their wider communities. This is another reason why yoga teachers need to be paid fairly and make a living wage, because if you cannot make a living wage teaching yoga, then that means yoga teachers will have to rely on a partner or another career to pay for their life whilst they teach yoga. This means people from poorer socioeconomic backgrounds will not really be able to be a yoga teacher as a profession, so how will yoga reach poorer socio-economic groups? I don’t have the answer to this but it is something I think about often. Studios say they can’t pay more because there’s too much competition and not enough students, students say yoga is already too expensive (and I agree with this). So I don’t know what the answer is here - but currently there is a big problem with pay rate in the yoga community - so many experienced teachers are leaving because they recognise they need to provide for their futures and families (if they have one). If it doesn’t change though, then the only yoga teachers left will be come from privileged backgrounds, not needing or caring about having to make a living. I’m going on a tangent here so lets get back to kleshas in real life:
Yoga requires you to be honest and work with self observation each and every day. You then have to be honest with yourself about your privilege and it is uncomfortable work. Coming to the realisation that you have maybe lived your whole life being blissfully unaware and ignorant of other people's lived realities, even when they're being vocal about it, is very uncomfortable and upsetting work. Becoming aware of the imbalance in our society and where you fit in is incredibly hard to accept and there are two ways to react to it that I’ve noticed:
When some people are made aware of that ignorance, I’ve noticed that instead of acceptance, people can react to it from a place of: denial, fear of change, aversion to the thought they are contributing to inequality or attachment to what they already have - because they've taken the idea of being ignorant personally and have missed the bigger picture. Becoming aware of privilege isn’t personal - it is what it is - you can’t change what you’ve been born into (and I believe you should not carry guilt around with you for this) but you can change how you act and treat other people who are more marginalised and live with less privilege. If becoming aware of privilege becomes a personal problem, then you’ve made the problem about yourself. The ignorance here is not a personal problem, it is societal problem and we are all members of society causing suffering onto others. If you take it as a personal attack then that is reacting defensively to a problem that was not about you.
The second way to react to learning about ignorance is to listen to what marginalised groups are saying about their lived experience. Listening is hard to do because usually when people are talking, we immediately relate it back to ourselves and start thinking of our response. This is natural because we live from an egocentric point of view and our understanding of the world comes from our own lived experiences. But did we listen to the person who was talking to us? Maybe talking about something we could never possibly relate back to ourselves because we have a totally different lived experience based on our privilege? What happened here? If not listening then again we are making the problem about ourself and not hearing the person who is suffering. We cannot know other peoples lived experiences fully because we don’t walk in their shoes, everyone has a different life and we all have so many different experiences everyday based on who we are, where we are, what we do & what we look like. We’ve got to actually LISTEN and not REACT because if we're reacting then we've made that about ourselves. We've elicited an emotional response from something that we may not want to hear and basically choose to block out - this is important to address.
For example, I’ve been a white female cis-woman my whole life, so this has been central to my lived experiences and how I’ve been treated in the world whether I like it or not. When the #metoo movement started happening and there were open discussions about the daily experience of sexual harassment of women going on, I just assumed everyone knew that this was happening, because it happened to me almost daily too. I was shocked to learn that the men in my life had no idea that I was being verbally sexually assaulted regularly, because I guess I thought they were too and I didn’t think it was a unique experience towards a group, since it was so common to me. I’ve now learned that just being male allows you the freedom to walk around and not be yelled at or generally assaulted by random men (for the most part). I guess this makes sense, that men wouldn’t yell at men or walk up to them and grab them, or say and do vulgar things for absolutely no reason (slut, whore, bitch, prostitute, worthless hoe, spit at, whistled at from cars, followed, gawked at uncomfortably, flashed at, grabbed ass or boob, the list goes on…). Yes there are exceptions but generally it is women who are being harassed by strange men completely unprovoked. How has this gone on for so long and men didn’t know? Women weren’t being heard. This isn’t a battle of the sexes here, but highlights that we need to listen to each other to realise what the marginalised group is actually living through almost daily. Dismissing the lived experiences of others makes them feel worthless and like they were in the wrong for even existing, like gaslighting (did that even happen, did I make a big deal over nothing? did I provoke the situation?)
Once you listen, how do you respond based on things that you hear? It's a big question and it's something that you're going to be asking yourself for the rest of your life.
We have a lot of things that we've learned as children, during this period of development everything experienced is so influential and ways of thinking/patterns can be carried into adulthood. To practice yoga & work with the Kleshas, we have to get to the root cause of what those patterns of thinking are, then we can start to unwind them and live from this place where we simply observe - so we don't have those preconceived thoughts and emotions driving the way that we react. That's why our practice is so important - it’s self-inquiry and learning who you are, learning how to be compassionate, learning to listen to other people, learning that you don't need all this stuff that we're bombarded with in our daily life. When you work on yourself to address these things then you start to understand more and actually listen to other people's lived experiences, and understand better all the things that causes suffering in our minds and in our whole global society.
This work will elicit reactions and we can either give into those reactions or decide to remain calm and really peaceful inside, and try to live from this calm peaceful place going forward so you can approach everything with a more clear and focused mind. These are deep philosophical ideas that are thousands of years old, but we're still working with the same problems now: who we are? why we're here? what can we do as individuals to make ourselves better? And not only ourselves, but the people around us and the world on a much bigger scale.
Yoga is not a selfish practice. You taking the time each day to do your practice is not selfish, it is selfless. BUT it can be very selfish if it's taught and portrayed in a wrong way. This is another whole area that I get very passionate about.
When you practice yoga you learn through direct experience how to be compassionate and to love yourself, and this compassion and love extends out to everyone else.
People can get stuck in the Asana (the physical part of yoga) though and this is fuelled by ego/desire/competition. Physical yoga is an important part of practice because the physical postures allows you to enjoy the achievements along the way (feeling good about yourself, becoming stronger, learning about your tendencies) but one day through the application of philosophy, you end up letting go of the physical desires and the physical part of the practice becomes part of your life instead of an obsession/need. If you're practicing to only achieve physical accomplishments, and you're not working with the deeper parts of what you find when you're there, then it's just gymnastics and ego building: “Look what I can do” “I'm an amazing person and better than the others in the class”.
When I started becoming really curious about what yoga was, Instagram was just in its first phase and there wasn't much information or imagery of yoga on the internet (omg that makes me sound so old - but literally that was in 2011). There certainly wasn't any glossy, sexualised pictures of skinny blonde girls doing a bunch of crazy contortions with their body. I think I was lucky in that respect to have not been exposed to this imagery when I first started because I think I wasn't in a place to understand what the deeper aspects of yoga were, and anything interesting looking I would see others doing in class I remember thinking: I want to do that.
The physical practice serves a purpose for learning about who you are through your body and the body is connected to the environment or senses, but we also have to do those deeper inquiries to be practicing yoga.
I think media sensationalisation of yoga asana is quite detrimental to the practice because people / companies who are selling yoga things rely on this extreme asana imagery to sell to people who want to “be like that” or believe that the people performing these asanas “know more”. I know yoga is a multi billion dollar industry, but believe me, it’s not the teachers who are making bank from yoga - its companies relying on mostly sexualised imagery and selling stuff. And just because you can do an extreme asana has no relevance to how enlightened you are or peaceful you feel inside.
The imagery is a marketing machine, not only isn’t it yoga, but it goes against the core principles of yoga: non-greed, non-hoarding, not looking to the external to satiate or fulfil yourself. You don't need all that stuff to practice yoga. It's there if you want it, and that's fine, but then decide why you want it. Like, does it help you in your practice? Yoga mats help, but they aren’t mandatory. Or do you want a pair of leggings because of external validation / because you simply had to have it as some influencer was wearing them and you admire them and hence owning the same leggings makes you feel like more of a legit yogi? Should they really be selling leggings as a yoga teacher? What kind of teacher does that make them? Someone to admire? Or someone looking to make some side profit from a partnership with an environment destroying company using their following and imagery to sell a product?
This marketing and imagery is also a massive barrier to a lot of people even starting yoga because they just don't feel like they fit into that. This really happens, I do hear a lot of students or people that haven't ever practiced yoga and they're like, “oh, you're a yoga teacher… oh, I can’t do yoga. I can’t do a back bend or a handstand, I’m not flexible enough or skinny enough” Unfortunately when people don’t know what yoga is, and they see this marketing imagery, can you really blame them for not seeing themselves in those pictures and automatically thinking it’s not for them. The message we need to get out there is that anyone can do yoga, the only things needed are a mind and a body - and if I’m not mistaken, literally every person on the planet has both. The other important ingredient is: willingness to learn. The only barrier to practicing yoga is being lazy and closed minded, yoga will not be possible for these types of people unless they take initiative and change their mindset.
I came from a yoga studio in Edmonton (in Canada). Since moving to London, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about how the yoga industry is here compared to what I experienced in Canada. London is a global centre and I love it for that because there's a lot of opportunity here, it’s rich in history, and I’ve met so many amazing creative people. BUT it's also this place where businesses are born and yoga is part of this: yoga has sadly become this beast of appearance & marketing without much substance (I will say it: the general quality of classes in London is well, not up to par in my opinion. There’s a lack of depth). In Edmonton we had a really diverse group of people in our studio. Why in Edmonton, Alberta, which is very, very Caucasian (~65% from a 2016 population census compared to London ~45% from a 2011 census) were all types of people coming to the studio? I remember one of the most dedicated students there was a guy who had complete blindness. Everyone was welcomed there and although it wasn’t perfect (I don’t have demographic data from here, this is from my own observations over 5 years continuous practice), what I was seeing in London didn’t make sense given the general population statistics (90% of practitioners are white according to the paper linked at the end of this post). I really appreciate what my yoga studio in Canada is doing because they make it so inclusive (this is Sattva Yoga that I teach in my Warm Vinyasa classes and most of my online videos).
What is the difference? They were teaching traditional, repetitive sequences that didn’t play music, and included breathing & meditation practices after the asana. Breath was always the focus in the room, not any fancy asanas. We were taught more challenging asanas but in a way that was not show-off-ey or needless. Yoga in London, for the most part, is about the sequencing being creative (random postures strung together over functionality and purpose), a good playlist, learning the tricks without the foundations, no focus on breathing, basically circus classes. Was this yoga? I felt really confused and alone here until I found a small groups of teachers who were actually teaching the real stuff. Who really cared about the quality of a yoga class, cared about being a good teacher, cared about teaching inclusively & safely, and not being a performer or attention seeker.
I am accountable for being apart of this industry as well, and I try to hold myself to a high standard of teaching as best I can, I’m not perfect and still have work to do on this. I've definitely worked at places that hire based on looks and a ‘selling/performing’ perspective, and at places that are non inclusive and elitist. What can we do? We need to start holding people accountable for what they're teaching. If it’s not yoga don’t call it yoga, that is misleading and lying to the public. We need to hold businesses accountable for how they’re marketing a sacred practice. Stop buying from shitty brands that use sexualised, exclusively white skinny women as their models. We need to support teachers who are teaching NOT performing, because otherwise (and this is already happening on a scary scale) yoga will become a complete culturally appropriated popularity contest on who can perform best to fill their classes, vs teach what they truly believe in as a healing, authentic practice to transform people’s lives at the most fundamental level.
It’s human nature to want quick wins, and the way we understand this in our capitalistic society is to buy things that are popular and shiny, to instantly make our lives ‘better’. We can’t blame people for not understanding that this is the wrong way to view yoga. The amount of dedication and effort that is needed for a transformative yoga practice is not for the faint hearted. It’s for courageous people who are willing to put in the hard work, be patient and understand that there are no quick wins for things that are permanent and life changing. As a teacher it is your responsibility to teach this to your students and in the way you communicate outside of your classes/teachings on the internet and to the wider public. Otherwise its false representation and a disservice to all except yourself and companies that profit - again coming back to being the complete opposite of core yogic principles.
Just because someone has completed a 200 hour teacher training does not mean anything in terms of their ability to teach and embody the deeper practices that you can’t take pictures of and post on Instagram. You have to do the real work too: as a teacher, as a practitioner, and to change your life as a human. The rest is just all show and people can unfortunately get stuck there. If you are a yoga teacher you have a responsibility to teach yoga and not gymnastics. As a student unfortunately you will have to find this out for yourself - who is an authentic teacher and who is a performer. Please support the former so we can keep learning and teaching. I mentioned this before but it’s important - if the gyms and studios keep underpaying teachers, they rely on people who don’t need the money to support their life and family, who already have other jobs & teach as a hobby, who have independent wealth or a partner or family that pays for them to live. If this keeps happening the practice will become more and more exclusive, not inclusive, and more and more diluted because the teachers will be casual.