Hacker News Reader

Comment by cscurmudgeon | Hacker News Reader

Thanks for posting this. Yoga if done correctly should not make you tired. It should leave you in euphoric and blissful state devoid of almost all negative emotions. This then puts in the right state to do meditation. It took me years to get this right. And you can't commercialize something that takes that long and is slow and gradual.

Plain and simple: If X makes you tired or judgmental or angry ..., X is not yoga.

I am not making this up. Google Scholar this.

Also, yoga teachers are not supposed to do it for money. Read up on how Gurukuls worked.

Yoga removed from its spiritual context is just a kitschy low grade thing that may hurt you while taking your money.

View on HN

"Also, yoga teachers are not supposed to do it for money. Read up on how Gurukuls worked."

Yeah I suppose you'll want to practice guruseva instead -- work for your instructor, such as cleaning his restroom, cooking, or going to the street begging for money on his behalf. No thanks, as much a traditionalist that I can be wrt yoga, some things are better the modern/western way.

"Yoga removed from its spiritual context is just a kitschy low grade thing"

No, yoga can be an awesome practice removed from any religion/spirituality. There's support from that even in traditional practices and texts. And if you get all dogmatic about this, I think you're doing it wrong unless you're practicing yoga associated with some form of Hinduism (most mantras are Vedantic chants, etc.). Get off my atheistic yoga mat :))

But I agree with the general stupidity of many commercial yogas. For one thing, heated rooms are a no-no, yoga has a purist approach as a biological and self-sufficient practice so it doesn't use any artificial support: no weights, stands, Pilates balls, etc., the ONLY thing you need is your own body (not just for the physical exercises / asanas, but all practices including meditation).

> Yeah I suppose you'll want to practice guruseva instead -- work for your instructor, such as cleaning his restroom, cooking, or going to the street begging for money on his behalf. No thanks, as much a traditionalist that I can be wrt yoga, some things are better the modern/western way.

Why do you assume that? I learnt yoga for free without doing any of that. If you can't find a reasonable person to teach you, all the source material is available for free. There are some benefits to doing those kind of activities. People nowadays are too egotistic. Those things are a nice way of curbing that.

Yoga was developed for spiritual reasons. That can't be denied. There have been people trying to remove its spiritual dimension through the ages. That can't be denied too. You can always use a church for just shelter. That does not make false that it was built for another purpose.

You have a finite life span. Do you want to use yoga to get a better body to increase your chances of finding a mate (or something equally trivial) or do you want to transcend finiteness? I thought all this was drivel too, till I got terribly fat and sick and was forced to do yoga.

The caution about being dogmatic applies to you too. Approach yoga with an open mindset while not thinking that the founders were complete morons when it came to spirituality. An analogy: just a few decades back almost everyone in the mainstream thought yoga had nil benefits. Nobody is stopping you from doing yoga on your atheistic mat. Don't belittle us by assuming so :)

"Yoga removed from its spiritual context is just a kitschy low grade thing that may hurt you while taking your money."

As I yoga professor and a software developer I can say your definition is perfect.

yeah and swimming correctly doesn't make you tired either. but until you actually reach that point, you have to go through many many hours of painful practice.

Thinks don't magically happen. You have to work for them.

EDIT: That said, my girlfriend who was indian, disliked bikram yoga a lot, because of some of the aforementioned issues

Things have to be difficult only if you want them to be difficult. I had the bliss from yoga classes since probably second or this class. Physically tired, mentally relaxed.

ok, so given the fact that a lot of the difficulty results from being different levels of flexible, and coming from different fitness level backgrounds, and having different levels of experience when it comes to gathering your thoughts.

Are you sure you want to imply that everyone starting a sport has the same physical fitness, stretchiness and mental attributes when starting out any sport/yoga?

You start off by saying that only hard work can bring about bliss, and when confronted with a different experience you pigeonhole it into asserting that bliss must befall every single person regardless of their circumstances. Step aside from the false dichotomy - it's not the case that yoga can either bring about bliss quickly to everyone or no one. It may bring to some and not to others. Will it work for a particular person? The easiest way to find out is to try. There is no point in guessing. Sign up for 8-class introductory course, by the end of it you will have a pretty good idea whether it works for you. It worked for me, and it worked for other people I know, so it works for some people. It's not going to be a waste of time.

If you're worried about prerequisite fitness level, I can guarantee you that I had the worst stretching and the least endurance of the entire group - it's fairly obvious in class. One thing I had more that others is discipline - I think I was one of the few to attend all eight classes.

Swimming does not make you blissful like yoga does. This is like explaining vision to a person who was born blind.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com