:: March/April 2005 Volume 4/Number 2

SPECIAL SECTION:
The Yoga Studio as "Congregation"

By Julie Deife

Power and strength lie within all belief systems and using it for compassionate action is a universal response within each of us. Every yoga studio I connected with while writing this article has either sponsored a tsunami relief effort or is planning one. The organizational capacity, compassion and generosity of our yoga community, is truly praiseworthy.

After the tsunami yoga studios (and yoga organizations) throughout Southern California became conduits for monetary donations, large and small, that filtered what was raised to various charitable organizations. And, much like churches, synagogues and temples around the world, yoga studios can now count themselves among the organizations that have 'congregations'.

Just like every other institution in the world with a congregation, yoga studios possess the ability to bring people together who are seeking a common outcome, or to take action on common goals, or to support one another in a common journey. When people regularly congregate they form a community, when the community has a spiritual underpinning, it is called a sangha. Yoga studios can be sanghas.

No one can really ever measure the spiritual value that yoga students place on their practice. But the tsunami disaster elicited responses that indicate many studios are indeed offering more than merely a physical practice to keep the body in shape. While we share yoga and our desire to aid those in need, differences exist among how we responded, which can be explained from a yoga perspective. Considering this point of view helps us to better understand yoga, it's variety and the similarities among lineages, forms or styles — and each other. Yoga is a spiritual discipline, a philosophical system and a science. People of many different religions practice yoga. The different styles and traditions and forms of yoga practiced in Southern California are probably more numerous than anywhere else in the western world. We have all chosen a particular kind of yoga to practice.

Part of the reason why we have opted for one form over another is that the way we practice yoga depends not only on the underlying tenets of our spiritual or religious belief system but also on our individual dispositions. In yoga we call this propensity our spiritual prakriti (nature), which means that we each have specific emotional and mental capacities or preferences that serve to point us toward one of the broad approaches within yoga.

Let's use one of the main systems of yoga, Hindu Yoga, to learn more about who we are as individuals, as a yoga community and how our yoga assists in times of need, like in tsunami relief.

Hindu Yoga, which continues the Vedic tradition and is widely accepted among yoga teachers and students in Southern California (though by no means the only one, also common are Buddhist yoga traditions), is characterized by seven main categories. And sure enough, as yoga practitioners, our responses to the tsunami disaster, which are at least partly due to our spiritual prakriti, sort themselves into these seven categories of yoga.
They are:
Raja - the eightfold path of Patanjali's ashtanga-yoga, aiming at liberation through meditation

Hatha - aiming at liberation through physical transformation

Jnana - aiming at liberation through the steady application of higher wisdom

Karma - the Yoga of Action, aiming at liberation through self-transcending service

Bhakti - the Yoga of Devotion, aiming at liberation through self-surrender in the face of the Divine

Mantra - the Yoga of Potent Sound, aiming at liberation through the recitation of empowered sounds

Tantra - or Continuity Yoga, aiming at liberation through ritual, visualization, subtle energy work, and the perception of the identity (or continuity) of the ordinary world and the transcendental reality1

Let's look at how we responded.
Karma Yoga.
More than anything, we all just wanted to help, as quickly as possible. Following the tsunami, yoga students opened their wallets and their donations contributed to the $ 337 million that was raised for emergency relief that U.S. charities alone reported as of January 12, 2005 (Source: www.asianewsnet.net).

The local Karma Yoga tsunami relief movement began largely with Sura, the Hare Krishna leader of the Temple Bhajan Band who emailed approximately 85 yoga studios offering the band and Govinda's vegetarian food, free to any yoga studio holding tsunami fundraisers. Within less than a week of sending the email, Sura had scheduled 15 studios in the region, ranging from the biggest to some of the smallest.

As a result, $ 3,200 was raised and donated to Operation USA, by the small Long Beach studio Free Spirit Yoga, on Sunday, January 29. Owner Andrea Testa and her teachers got in line and through a combination of their strong organizational skills, the donated time of the teachers, volunteer massage therapists and a student population who regularly show up for Free Spirit's various benefits including blood drives a few times a year, they exceeded the donations goal they had set for themselves. Why? Free Spirit Yoga is a sangha in which collective energy and intentions are maximized and their intentions are selfless.
Free Spirit Yoga was behind YogaWorks, which hosted a fundraiser with Sura and Govinda's food on January 15 at their Main Street studio in Santa Monica. There, students collectively contributed $ 1,000 and a particularly generous student donated an additional $ 1000. That being one of two YogaWorks events, including all matching funds from YogaWorks, the grand total came to $ 7,000. It was handed over to the American Red Cross, Unicef and Doctors without Borders.

These two studios, as different from each other as night and day, and the others who responded to the email, have, however, another common characteristic: leaders. Leaders are action-oriented and their spiritual prakriti at some level tends toward the Yoga of Action.

Most people have a tendency toward more than one spiritual prakriti, just like in Ayurveda we all have three doshas and one, sometimes two, are dominant. So, even while we may be inclined toward selfless service (Karma Yoga), we may not merely be Karma Yogis, and that may not be our primary form of practice.

Karma + Hatha
In many instances we combined Karma Yoga with Hatha Yoga. Numerous studios offered a hatha class in exchange for a donation earmarked for tsunami relief. The physical practices, according to Ashtanga yoga teacher Pamela Hollander of Encinitas, are "skill in action taking place on the physical level." Hollander goes on to explain that "people who are practicing on the physical level are moving energy, not only clearing their bodies in order to become clear channels for the vibration of God realization, but with the intention that the energy be used for the highest good of all concerned. Being present in cleansing on the physical plane is the same as addressing the flesh body of the planet directly."

And, many teachers I talked to discussed how simply maintaining their practice was the best service to aid the tsunami victims. Through our actions of continually doing our asana practice we cause energy to move all over the planet.

Karma Yoga + Jnana Yoga
Lynn Kelly-Piper, owner of Yoga Within & Healing Arts Center in Riverside, approached the situation differently. Lynn lost friends in Phuket, Thailand to the tsunami. Proceeds from all of her January classes were donated. Her explanation to students, because of her belief system developed over years of yoga study, applies here as: her friends are simply on another plane now, continuing the work they were already doing. Svadhyaya (study) complements application to the practical disciplines. Like Lynn, other Jnana yogis are always considering what it is that might be learned and applying wisdom aimed at liberation.

1 The Deeper Dimension of Yoga, Georg Feuerstein, PhD, 2003, Shambhala Publications, Inc.
Raja Yoga
Hollander believes that this was a loud alarm for those who have not been listening to their heart and following right action as defined in the yamas and niyamas (the first two limbs of Raja Yoga). "Souls who are ready to advance and are willing to forgive and change and make the shift are going to do it," says Hollander. "Those who have critical minds and a sarcastic nature will not learn and will not wake to their true nature."

For those with a meditation focus, asking for the safe passage of all souls making a transition and praying for grace on their behalf is their form of practice. At Self-Realizatioin Fellowship monks and nuns are doing this thrice daily.

Through Tantra Yoga practices, perhaps the least understood among the yogas discussed here, but widespread (Kundalini and Anusara, for example), specific actions for tsunami relief were offered. At their homes or in studios, Kundalini Yoga teachers led group meditations that availed access to the subtle body and Divine nature and oneness with God. In that way we can realize oneness with all consciousness, and assist in the survivors and victims of the tsunami.

I participated in a powerful, guided visualization with a group of over 300 people led by Tantric meditation teacher Sally Kempton. We created enormous healing energy that we directed at the survivors. It is well known that visualization can be more effective than direct actions.

The interesting thing about all of this is that all anybody really wanted to do following the tsunami was to help in some way. The gift of yoga is one that we have been receiving for a long time now. In Southern California we have had the good fortune to experience teachings offered by Self-Realization Fellowship, or the Krishnamurti Foundation, or Art of Living and more yoga studios with well trained teachers than anywhere else in the U.S.

Yoga is growing up and developing true congregations which together form a very large community. This is a paradigm shift for yoga. This great sea of yoga - even just considering Hindu Yoga as an example - supported in innumerable ways in yoga studios which serve, by my rough calculations over 20,000 students per week in this region alone, means that yoga is redefining itself as more and more of a true spiritual practice in here.

We are one yoga community. We are organized, and we're here to help.

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