Yoga as ritual

More than a collection of tools and techniques

Hello dear readers!

Thanks to all who subscribed in the past month. I’ve been writing less often as I savor the last month of my sabbatical time. I’ll return to a modified teaching schedule in March - details at the end of this missive.

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For now, though, let’s start with a chemistry metaphor:

Here we see a supersaturated solution of sodium acetate, a beaker of water with much more sodium acetate dissolved than usually possible. Add a tiny crystal of sodium acetate, and a flower of crystals blooms. The dissolved molecules just need a reminder that a crystal lattice is possible, and they rush to self-assemble. More to learn on YouTube.

I experienced a cognitive version of this phenomenon recently while reading the book Selling Yoga: From Counterculture to Pop Culture by Andrea Jain, a history of modern yoga from a religious studies perspective. She makes the simple observation that a yoga class is a ritual process¹. Perhaps this strikes some readers as obvious, but for me it precipitated an idea-crystal that helps me think more clearly about yoga teaching. This conceptual lattice is still forming, so you’re getting a work in progress. I will attempt an overview here, and go into more detail in future writings and teaching.

I'll begin by quoting Jain's basic assertion:

Postural yoga… features an initiatory ritual structure. Citing Arnold van Gennep on rites of passage, Elizabeth de Michelis argues that a postural yoga class functions as a “healing ritual of secular religion”. Also citing Victor Turner, de Michelis argues that the postural yoga class functions as a “liminal space”: “Spatially, practitioners remove themselves from the hustle and bustle of everyday life to attend the yoga class in a designated ‘neutral’ (and ideally somewhat secluded) place” The practitioner undergoes both physical and psychological transformations and healing before being reintroduced to “everyday life”.

The “liminal space” of the postural yoga class is a space set apart from the stresses of everyday life, but it does not represent a renunciation of the profane or conventional life. Rather, the postural yoga class functions as a space in which to undergo physical and psychological healing and transformation so that the practitioner can be reintroduced to everyday life in what is believed to be an improved state. Postural yoga differs dramatically from the disciplined and systematic techniques for training and controlling the mind and body that belonged to elite groups of South Asian renouncers who were concerned with “absolute freedom” with regard to mortality or consciousness. Postural yoga is, rather, as Sarah Strauss suggests, a transnational and sometimes socially critical practice aiming toward “freedom to achieve personal well-being”.

Andrea Jain. Selling Yoga (p. 112). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.*

Though the academic language may feel a bit cold, I find its precision to be a bracing tonic for the sometimes mushy language of Yogaland. Nothing like a little Yang to shape the Yin. Overall, the author defends modern postural yoga as a legitimate development in the yoga tradition, which has been mutating to suit the needs of each place and time that it occupies for millenia (as all religions and cultural practices do). Tons more to discuss², but I want to stay on the topic of ritual.

Let’s first consider: what is yoga if not a ritual? A common framing is to present yoga as a set of tools, techniques, even an “ancient science”. These metaphors suggest a direct, mechanical relationship between yoga practices and their effects, unlike rituals, where the effects depend upon the particular of who, what, where, when and why. For example: bathing is possible anywhere water and soap is found, but a baptism requires more than a bucket of water and someone to pour it.

In this techno-scientific age, it’s natural and appealing to view yoga practices as another kind of technology that functions the same way in all contexts. Do these 5 poses to fix your postures. Breathe like this to calm your nervous system. Meditate on these chakras for these results. No need to ascribe to any beliefs or make religious commitments. There is some truth to this perspective - and it certainly makes for easy marketing - but it blinds us to other aspects of the human condition that meaningfully affect the outcome of yoga (which involves humans, after all, not machines).

First of all, tools are generally used on objects: inert materials that respond predictably to specific forces. If yoga is a tool for self-improvement, this implies the self must be a discrete object… but this simply isn’t true. From a biological perspective, we are a holarchy of intelligences, each new level of complexity transcending and including the prior, from organelles to cells to tissues to organs to organisms (and even further into the societies and ecosystems in which we are enmeshed).

There is no single, solid point where a self exists and can be acted upon by a “tool”. Psychologically, if you have ever undertaken therapy or meditation, it quickly becomes apparent that “we contain multitudes” as Whitman proclaims. And there is little that is predictable about how we respond to a particular yoga exercise, especially at first. In fact, I reckon that it is often the repeated ritual of doing a particular practice with a particular intention that empowers it, not some universal metaphysics.

Then there’s the confounding fact that the doer of yoga is also the receiver. We are the ouroboros, biting our own tail.

We cannot stand outside ourselves to apply leverage. Any choices we make within a yoga practice are inescapably conditioned by the very circumstances we may be seeking to change. As St. Francis put it: “What we are looking for is what is looking.” This marvelously circular state of affairs - the heart of the mystery, in my opinion - gets obscured by the clean subject/object language of “yoga as technology”.

So let’s suppose that modern postural yoga is indeed a kind of ritual, rather than a technological intervention. What do we gain from this perspective? Again, Jain proposes that:

Postural yoga class functions as a space in which to undergo physical and psychological healing and transformation so that the practitioner can be reintroduced to everyday life in what is believed³ to be an improved state.

Let’s examine a typical class through this lens and see what stands out.

First, participants must separate from daily life by entering a neutral, secluded space, donning special clothing, and removing shoes and cumbersome adornments. Communication with the outside world is silenced (hopefully!) Special mats and other implements are selected and serve to delimit the active space for each student. Fellow ritual participants may be greeted, but once the ritual begins there will generally be silence despite close proximity with the others. All this serves to promote a sense of equality between participants, called communitas by anthropologist Victor Turner.

Observation: Zoom yoga does allow for this collective, tangible ritual. It makes me consider how I could more deliberately mark a “separation from worldly life” through ceremonial silencing of devices or gestures of “setting down” what came before. Perhaps three Falling Out Breaths serves in a pinch…

Communitas serves to bring individuals into a more primal, malleable state which can be shaped into something new. Much of the postural yoga ritual literally involves making the body more malleable (warm-ups) and stretching it into unusual shapes. Moving in synchrony can further soften the sense of being a separate individual. The ritual usually culminates in savasana, a deep relaxation where the sense of being a bounded individual dissolves even further. The liminal state may be prolonged with a seated meditation afterwards, in which the mind is “shaped” in different ways while the body remains still.

I’m struck by the similarity to recent advances in biology in which normal, differentiated skin cells can be “convinced” to turn back into stem cells. A microscopic ritual of nudging cells with the right signal molecules induces cellular communitas! Yoga may do something similar by regressing the body back through developmental movement patterns and shifting focus away from personal narrative to nonverbal sensations. Perhaps we can induce a kind of intrapersonal communitas by treating the physical, energetic and psychological dimensions as equally important?

Finally, participants must navigate the threshhold “back to real life” (as many have lamented to me after a good practice). The teacher may guide an explicit integration of insights from practice into the rest of life, offer a final affirmation of the benefits of the practice, or just a hearty OM (which itself is said to symbolize the fundamental unity of all seemingly-different states). Phones are checked, feet are shod, and the ritual ends.

This “reintegration” phase of the yoga ritual is often given short shrift, most immediately because the teacher runs overtime by doing too many postures. Behind this choice - which I am guilty of - is the common modern assumption that what really “makes a difference” is when we are actively doing stuff - techniques - while the beginning and end are just temporal necessities. I plan to experiment with more deliberate transition rituals when I return to teaching.

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For the past couple years, especially during the Zoom times, I have emphasized the educational element of my yoga classes, waxing poetic about mitochondria, medial epicondyles and midbrain nuclei. After a hearty opening talk, I would lead practices devoted to exploring and embodying the concepts I shared. This worked well at first, and folks liked it. I even changed the name of my classes to Yoga Studies.

At some point this summer, though, I began to feel fatigued by the intellectual gyrations. The field of ideas is endless, and the metaphor of exploration began to feel stale since there was nowhere to ever really arrive.

As I consider the ritual process of yoga, I realize that learning - as much as I adore it - is just one element that supports the class ritual, not an end in itself. That is to say, it is fine and lovely to learn how to better align your shoulders in Downward Dog, but the impact of that learning is far greater than sheer mechanical mastery over the body. Among other things, learning to move in new ways could serve to re-enchant the body as a place of mystery and unexpected power. It resonates with ideals of self-improvement, even self-mastery. Depending on the ritual context of the learning, alignment knowledge could also exacerbate habits of obsessive self-control, ascetic discipline that overrides bodily limits, and dependence on an external authority for validation.

So after spending many years refining the content of my teaching, I am inspired to turn my focus to developing the ritual process of yoga classes. While still weaving in my various scientific and philosophical fascinations, I hope my classes can become more effective, impactful weekly rituals for those who wish to attend. In this vein, I am de-emphasizing the “study” aspect by changing my class names back to Hatha Basics (Saturdays at 12:15p) and Hatha Yoga and Meditation (Mondays at 10a). I am also making my classes 15 minutes shorter, so they don’t require such a big commitment.

(Never fear, yoga nerds: “Yoga Studies” will live on as workshops, book clubs and specialized series that take up particular topics.)

I’m aware that one question still looms: if yoga is a ritual, what is the ritual for? As Jain demonstrates in her book and other writings, the purpose of yoga has changed many times over the millenia (as happens to all human cultural products). We can debate what the goal should be but the historical fact is that modern postural yoga now primarily acts as a ritual of healing and self-improvement, congruent with the general vibe of consumer capitalism. Tons more to say about all this, but I will end with this last branch of the crystal.

Let’s grant the validity of modern yoga’s broad aim - becoming a better self through physical and psychological transformation - and wonder about how this can best be fulfilled. As I mentioned earlier, and in prior writing, the self we seek to improve turns out to be quite elusive and deeply enmeshed with the rest of the world. Our attempts to chisel ourselves into “better shape” through heroic effort inevitably get snarled in the sticky strands of our entanglement with the world, and often wreck the web for our fellow spiders. We can’t improve ourselves in isolation from everything else, both because it won’t really work and it generates all kind of negative “externalities” which come back to haunt us (see: just about every crisis humanity currently faces).

Can a yoga class affirm our natural urge to improve our situation without reinforcing the story of separation? As usual, we do well to seek guidance from Mr. Rogers, a masterful practitioner of secular ritual.

I envision rituals of inner and outer neighborliness, tending the web of relationships upon which we depend. More practices of connection with what is beyond us, ideally outdoors. Curiosity about how things happen in the crayon factory of the body and mind. Honoring big feelings, not just calming them. Making space for our messy, tender parts that both grieve and wonder at this vast, spinning world.

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Details on my return to teaching

Mondays 10-11:15a Hatha Yoga and Meditation

• In studio + Zoom

• Begins March 7

  Full yoga ritual, following seasonal themes. I’m not yet sure if I will continue the Earth/Moon/Sun/Fire paradigm or try something new.

Saturdays, 12:15-1:30p Hatha Basics

• In studio + Zoom

• Begins March 5

• Still designed as a comprehensive ritual, but a bit more emphasis on learning the fundamental techniques

Won’t You Be My Neighbor: A Yoga and Meditation Intensive

Sunday, April 3, 2-5p, in studio only. Save the date - details TBA.

1. Many thanks to Frank Senn for pointing this out to me repeatedly over the years. The idea finally reached supersaturation in my brain!

2. I recommend the book to anyone unfamiliar with the gloriously messy, hybridized history of modern yoga.

3. Wait, are modern yoga practitioners believers? That doesn’t sit well with the “spiritual but not religious” crowd. I don’t need to believe anything to do Downward Dog, do I? Maybe not to do a single Downward Dog, but to a religious historian or anthropologist, “belief” is the best word to describe what might motivate someone to spend time and money every week going through a specialized movement ritual. In this case, it’s not belief in a deity or spirit that motivates practitioners, but a constellation of ideas such as the primacy of individual choice, the important of striving for self-improvement, and taking personal responsibility for our health and wellness. More particularly, modern yoga tends to take as a given that being more calm and less reactive counts as an “improved state”. I generally agree with this, but others can and do argue that this self-pacification is inappropriate in a time of crisis.