Medicated Yoga

by Jen Whinnen

As a yoga teaching community it is important that we know that depression and anxiety are two very popular reasons people come to the practice. Yoga is an effective tool in managing many illnesses, depression and anxiety included, so this is not unusual. It is imperative however, that we understand that when someone comes to the practice looking for tools to manage their illness, they are not served by our opinions about how they “should” manage it off the mat. 

In each training I ask my student-teachers about how they feel about “western medicine” because I’ve found that people’s feelings about this subject are similar to their political beliefs; they do not change easily. How they feel about about medications, namely antidepressants and anti anxiety medication, will often dictate how they intend to talk to their classes. If they fall into the “no meds” camp, they are running a great danger of creating conditions for suffering in their students. Therefore, it’s important that we as a learning community suss out our feelings before stepping into a classroom. 

The United States is a melting pot of split personalities when it comes to our relationship with mental health. We have the best medications on the planet, the best psychiatric care, we know more than we ever have about potential causes and triggers of mental illness, yet we persist in stigmatizing it. Psychotherapy is still the butt of cocktail party jokes and medications are largely condemned as the means by which Big Pharma gets richer. If you need help and accept help, there’s something intrinsically wrong with you. A kind of wrong that makes you “less than” those who don’t need help. Accepting help is often seen as a flaw, something to overcome. If you go through a rough patch and come out the other side, you are a hero, a warrior. If you need this help the rest of your life, you have somehow failed as a person. It separates you from the rest of humanity. It keeps you from being able to make friends, from getting a decent job, it isolates you. It can be a twisted, painful situation for someone suffering from a mental illness. A dirty little secret you can’t tell anyone. Just imagine what it is like to live in a world that says “here are things that can help you, but if you need them you are bad. Oh and don’t tell anyone you are taking advantage of these things because they won’t want to hire you or be your friend.” 

My family’s mental illness pedigree goes back many generations. It is a colorful patchwork quilt of alcoholism, anorexia, depression, suicide, bipolar disorder, mania and PTSD. Each of us contributes to the quilt in our own special way, but some of us add more squares than others.  One of the greatest contributors has been my dad. He suffered from type 1 bipolar disorder. Diagnosed when I was six and in and out of institutions, hospitals and prisons for most of my childhood, his life was a roller coaster of manic highs and debilitating lows. He would regularly take his medications and regularly throw them out, both with varying degrees of success. At the time of his death he was being weaned off one medication and onto something else. This caused him to slip into a hypomanic state. In his hypomania, he walked into the woods, got lost and died from exposure. 

His meds basically killed him. The first medication made things worse, the second didn’t fix it. If he’d never started on that one he wouldn’t have had to move him onto something else. If the second had been more effective, he never would have had the anxiety attack that caused his brain to switch over into hypomania, etc. He died because of the drugs. 

So, I am violently anti-meds right? No. I am 100% pro meds. GO meds! 

Why?

Because, although my father’s case is extreme, I still believe modern medicine saved his life. Because, I have other bipolar family members who have done amazingly well on meds. Because, without meds, these family members would be dead by now. 

Because, no matter what I think about the pharmaceutical industry or about healthcare in the United States, no matter how many close family members and friends I’ve seen suffer, I still do not know what it is like to live with a chronic mental illness.

And because of all this, I know that I can not judge someone else’s life.

My student-teachers will often say “yeah, but you are talking about extreme cases. Those people are really, really sick. What I am talking about is the person who just feels sad and can’t deal.” And no, I’m not. I’m also talking about the sad guy who “can’t deal” and goes to his doctor and asks for Zoloft. Him too. We don’t get to pass judgement on the degree of someone’s pain any more than we get to decide someone’s sexuality. Their choice is not a reflection of our hurts or our recovery, it is not related to our friend who was on meds and successfully got off them or about the family member who committed suicide because of them. No matter the belief; whether it’s that we are an overmedicated society that is too dependent on drugs, or everyone should be on something, we are not the judge and jury of someone else’s mental health. 

Yoga teaches us first and foremost that the practice is personal. The first sutra of The Yoga Sutras says Atha Yoganusanam (1.1), Now the exposition of Yoga is being made. Now, meaning this moment, we chose to take this audience. We chose to sit at the feet of the learning right now. Not “when you are ready, turn to page six” or “next week we will cover this topic” but we do it in the present. We make a conscious choice. The doing is done by us. We chose. The second sutra, Yogas chitta vritti nirodhah (1.2), The restraint of the modifications of the mind-stuff is Yoga, means to practice yoga, we control our mind’s chatter. We learn to reign in our mind and focus it. 

Now I choose to control my thoughts.  

Not; “Now I choose to control the thoughts of others.” 

Even when I am sure I know what everyone else should do, I must come to grips with the fact that that conviction is a distraction. A distraction that keeps me from doing the work of knowing my true Self. 

If you have a visceral reaction to medications, if you feel strongly that everyone can and should get off their meds, that the world is overmedicated, that is totally, totally fine. You are free to believe whatever you want. Go for it. But, know that how you feel about medication is just a feeling. Feelings, even strong ones, don’t make us right. They just makes us opinionated. Opinions are not facts. Opinions are not truth. They are distractions. 

Whether Prozac and its brethren are a deplorable representation of the state of life in the modern age, a reflection of our inability to cope, or a need being filled, doesn’t matter. Because yoga teachers are not preachers. We teach yoga. That’s it.

Teach yoga and practice Ahimsa by holding your tongue. As Satchidananda says “If by being honest we will cause trouble, difficulty or harm to anyone, we should keep quiet.”  

And if you can’t hold your tongue, then don’t teach yoga. Your visceral feelings about meds will not help someone decide what’s the best course of action for him/herself. 

Each time you think about commenting on psyche meds or making a statement like “you don’t need that crap” try and remember that there is a human being on the receiving end of that statement. A person who showed up to the mat. They showed up. That’s enough. 

That’s all we can ask of anyone who comes to our class.

The Schism of Yoga and Capitalism

by Jen Whinnen

I am a professional yoga teacher. This is my career. I use my philosophical and spiritual practices to make a living. As such, I live in an irreconcilable paradox. By profiting from my spiritual work, I willingly participate in the system of capitalism. Capitalism is in direct contrast to the principles of yoga. Capitalism is an economic and political system that is interested in profit, in gain. Yogic practices aim to free oneself from the things capitalism relies upon to thrive; desire and attachment. Capitalism aims to produce an experience in the material world. Yoga aims to release the consciousness from the material world. Capitalism does not care about yoga. Yoga cares not for capitalism. They are irreconcilable.

However, I do not feel the need to bring these two systems to a peace accord. I do not believe, as is often touted in yoga circles, that I can make my capitalistic career yogic. “Conscious Capitalism” is an oxymoron. It places morality upon a concept, a thing. Things are not moral or amoral. They are things. A natural disaster is a disaster in name only. Nature shines and produces, rages and destroys. That’s what it does. Our feelings about destruction are not shared by nature. Capitalism produces and consumes for profit. That’s what it does. Therefore, conscious capitalism is a distraction. It takes the responsibility of consciousness off me. It anthropomorphizes a thing, giving it a moral compass it does not have. This is the antithesis of the yoga practice. I can not rewrite the terms of capitalism because it makes me uncomfortable.

I can, however, get comfortable with the fact that, in terms of my yoga practice, choosing to participate in capitalism is an imperfect choice. I, being a sentient being with a mind and body to govern, must acknowledge that I am making an imperfect choice.

Imperfect however, does not mean “bad.” It simply means not perfect. Perfect Love, Universal Consciousness, the Ultimate, is a concept that is nearly impossible to conceive, let alone achieve. How many of my day-to-day actions reflect this kind of experience? Very little. Probably none. But that doesn’t mean I am bad. It simply means I am not perfect. I am not fully realized.

Ironically, this imperfection is the thing that assists in revealing the Perfect to me. This is the yogic paradigm. We have to be in the world, to use the world, to reveal the truth that is beyond the world. Accepting my imperfection, my limitedness, accepting that my experience is skewed by my misconceptions is the thing that will afford me an opportunity to change. Understanding my actions as being imperfect calms down the constant babble of “Oh no I am right for doing this because I want it. And because I want it, it must be the thing I need to do!” These thoughts keep me furiously racing in the hamster wheel.

However, when I start to think “Wait, do I need this? Do I want this? Does the thing need to change or do I need to change?” then I slow down. Once I slow down, I see that I can also moderate my pace. I can get off the wheel if I want. It’s not until I come to the point of realizing my imperfection that I can even conceive of the notion that I made a choice. I choose to run fast or run slow. I choose to stay on or get off. The wheel is just a thing. The wheel is there, but I choose my participation. If I stay, according to the yogic paradigm, I am doing so consciously. I am here of my own free will. I am participating in my own experience. I can not change the storms or stop the rains, I can not change the wheel. But I can change my relationship to the wheel. I can change the way I think. That is the only thing I can do.

Making money as a teacher is not a yogic act. Giving away my teaching for free is not a yogic act. I can be just as invested in my generosity as I can in my greed. Both are actions. What is yogic is how I manage my mind when I act. Krishna tells Arjuna “You have the rights to action, but not its fruit” (2.47). How easy is it to act without wanting a reward? This is No. Small. Task. This is a Big Idea. A big concept to wrangle with and work on.  In order to do so I must accept that I willingly make imperfect choices. In doing so I become aware of my desires, my attachments to the fruits of my actions.

As a “householder,” a mother, a wife, lover of chocolate and cheese, a teacher, a writer, I work trying to let go of my desires for romantic love, praise, stuff and try. Invariably I fall short, but that is not a reason to bemoan the effort. The efforting is the thing. Consciously accepting that I miss the mark keeps me from getting distracted with useless attempts at justifying my choices as valid or invalid. It liberates me. It allows me to be forgiving of myself and forgiving of others for doing the same stuff. I am in it too. Being imperfect opens me to the Perfect because I see that we are all, everyone one of us, doing the best we can.

I often joke with my students that I have no misconceptions about my place in the cycle of samsara (the cycles of reincarnation). If reincarnation is real, I accept that I am coming around again. I tell them, “So, I’ll see you next time. We’ll get together and have a coffee!”

My treat.

Refining Your Teaching; What’s Going on in the World Around You?

by Jen Whinnen

A significant part of my work is spent teaching my teacher trainees how to “see” better, meaning how to look at each class as a real time event that needs to be tended to in the present moment. Classes need to be organized around our understanding of what is going on around us, but to do that effectively, we need to cultivate better vision.  Part of cultivating better vision is simply learning what goes where and how. This is the grossest form of teaching.  Beyond that a teacher must become competent at discerning if what I say either improves or compromises the class. To do that we first look for misalignment, for grunts and groans, for caught breathing, for lags and peaks in the classroom energy, then modify our teaching from there.

To refine our teaching even further, we can work towards cultivating awareness by observing the world around us and creating classes that take into consideration the experience of our students in the world.  To do this well, it’s best to start with the basics.  Remember that human beings are both organic and social creatures.  As such, two of the biggest contributing factors in our lives, either consciously or unconsciously, will be the seasons and culturally significant events.  It has been my experience that these two things are the greatest classroom temperament gauges. The season and culturally significant events influence how we function together.  One dictates our biological response to the world the other significantly influences our interactions with each other.

Let’s take our current season, winter, and its correlating holidays. In the winter, the days are shorter and the nights are longer. In many places, the ground freezes and growing stops.  For some plants and animals, this season is required for them to reproduce or gestate.  The “death” of winter is often a necessary period of respite that allows for rejuvenation. The body, being bound to the earth, often wants to obey this rhythm. When the days are shorter and colder, the body metabolizes slower because it is striving to conserve energy and stay warm. Additionally, because there is less light, people may find that they feel blue or crave more sleep. This is a natural response to winter. No matter how modern we are, how completely turned into electronics we may be, when winter is upon us we feel the effects of it, especially when we are in a group environment. This, when approached with understanding and acceptance, is the boon of being born in a body, of being a part of the natural world and part of community. When we attend well to the effects of the seasons on us we will be comfortable and successful. We will be embodied.

Additionally, it is no coincidence that one of our most significant holidays is connected to the lessening and lengthening of daylight. Winter rituals at their heart reflect our desire to be close and cuddle. They represent our need to become more reflective and introspective. They represent our hope that we will move through darkness and back out into light. And, because Christmas in particular tends to be one of the most hyped holidays, expectations high, the push for spending is high, and over indulgence is expected, it is also one of the most stressful times of year for many.

Our classes should take these factors into consideration. Winter practices should be forward bending practices. Forward bending is a turning in, a folding and refolding. It’s the image of the earth during its death. It’s introspective and restorative.

Does this mean we take 3 – 4 months of only forward bending? No, that is silly. It means we create balanced classes with an emphasis on those practices that enhance our relationship to what’s going on around us. This is a tantric practice, an entering into the world to work through the world. In the Iyengar system classes are taught in a series. Each week has a different focus. One of the weeks is back bending. The back bending week would not be skipped over in the winter, however, the backbends are going to be different in the winter then they are in the summer. This is a good example of conscientious sequencing.

I recently attended a series of classes at a studio where their December “practice of the month” was back bending. Deep, intensive back bending and a month of deep, intensive back bending is not a winter practice. Of all the pose categories, back bending tends to be the most allusive to people because it is the least natural of all our body’s movements. In order to backbend well all the other parts need to be prepared. You need good vertical extension, a very open front body and the spine must be protected and strong. Additionally, there needs to be an understanding of the basic mechanics of the spine to back bend well lest the student take the brunt of the work in the lumbar. Back bending must be worked up to and warmed up to and therefore we need the long daylight hours, the open warmth of summer to bring us into the open mindedness of continuous, deep back bending.  When we are in a season of conservation, when the body is “hibernating” asking it to work against that is counter-intuitive.

Of course, the counter argument may be, “but back bending is enlivening! It opens your heart and wakes you up! It gets you out of that funk of winter!”  Who says winter is a funk? It’s a funk when we identify too closely with summer. That attachment, like all attachments, creates suffering. The practice teaches us to accept life as it is, to be receptive to things rather than working to bend it to our will.  Asking students to back bend aggressively during the winter season is too much of a “good” thing. It stresses out the nervous system and causes injuries. In fact, one of the teacher’s at the above mentioned studio commented that she’d noticed decline in class size as the month went on.  Her rational was that it was because people are afraid of back bending and so they were avoiding it. This is a common teacher mistake.  The student must be doing something wrong. It’s not them. It’s us. A decline in a class size during a “pose of the month” means we are not paying attention. We have missed the cues that our students are giving us and failed to modify our classes accordingly.

When students come to your class they come to be in community.  They come to be seen. One of the surest ways of guaranteeing that students know we see them is to acknowledge the greater influences around them. As teachers it’s important that we are mindful of that. In your on-going efforts to learn and grow, try and remember that life is playing a part in how your students arrive in class.  There is a teaming mass of activity going on outside the doors of our yoga space and although we want to be able to put that aside for the hour or so, class doesn’t exist in a bubble.  Our students are organic, social creatures who pulse with life around them. Work to see this, respond to this and you will be pleasantly surprised at how your students respond to you.