After Manouso: Questions for Iyengar Yoga Teachers and Leaders

If you haven’t heard: the professional independent and investigation (trigger warning) into decades of allegations of sexual assault by Manouso Manos under the guise of “yoga adjustments” has found enough credible evidence and corroboration to paint a picture of serial criminality, enabled by the propaganda of his genius and the silencing of his survivors.

The report has forced IYNAUS to oust him, and the Iyengar family to withdraw permission to use their trademark. Neither IYNAUS or the Iyengars have offered any public words of apology, support, or restorative justice to the women who gave their testimony. Neither organization has used the appropriate terminology to describe what the investigation substantiated, relying on euphemisms like “inappropriate sexual touching” instead of assault or digital rape.

Perhaps the careful language is meant to shield both organizations against civil suits. But along with the absent apology, the overall impact is the suggestion that Iyengar Yoga and the legacy of BKS Iyengar are the true victims of Manouso Manos — not women like Ann West, whose 2018 assault complaint against Manos was initially dismissed by the IYNAUS Ethics Committee. Ann rights:

The excommunications, however, are having an impact. In the last 24 hours, Manos’s home studio in San Francisco, “The Abobe of Iyengar Yoga”, has removed the “workshops” tab from its site, which had advertised dozens of Manos’s upcoming events in the U.S. and internationally. And sources say pressure is building on IYNAUS and the Iyengar family to make some kind of formal accountability statement at the Iyengar USA National Convention, which begins this Thursday in Dallas, and is being headlined by Abhijata Iyengar, the granddaughter of BKS.

So it looks like Manos is gone. But is that the end of the story? IYNAUS seems to hope so, ending its letter introducing the Manos report with an exhausted-sounding appeal for unity:

All these events are unspeakably sad and tragic.  Our sincere hope is that something positive also results from them: that we will assure the highest ethical standards of our CIYTs and the complete safety of Iyengar Yoga students.  We hope the wounds in our community can now heal and that we can be reunited in our devotion to the brilliant teachings of BKS Iyengar.

The statement is vague. “Events” makes three decades of alleged abuse sound like a car crash. The statement over-promises: no organization, let alone one so compromised, can promise “complete safety”. The statement is premature: healing trauma isn’t like flicking a switch. And the statement is tone-deaf in relation to what the survivors of assault and institutional betrayal might actually need. Who is this “we” — especially when no survivors are quoted by IYNAUS or the Iyengars? Why does the assumption remain that after all of this, everyone’s on the same page?

Using this statement as a critical springboard, here are some questions that every Iyengar Yoga teacher and community leader might now consider:

1. “We can be reunited in our devotion to the brilliant teachings of BKS Iyengar.” Was it not BKS himself who reinstated Manos after the assault scandal in 1991? How many people between then and now complained quietly about Manos and were dismissed with the story that BKS had pardoned him? How did all the other mechanisms of devotion combine to dissuade newcomer students from asking questions to begin with? Did devotion to the brilliant teachings of BKS protect any of the women who testified in the Manos report? Is it not devotion that helped to shield Manos from accountability for more than 30 years? What would a healthier alternative be to devotion?
2. What is the function of “brilliance”? Hasn’t Manos been held to be a “brilliant” teacher himself? Hasn’t his “brilliance” been a key way in which his behaviours have been justified? What about now? What is or was he really brilliant at? There’s now independently substantiated evidence of sexual abuse. Where is the independently substantiated evidence of the “brilliance” for which he was praised and protected?
3. Is Manos now, or was he ever, a “yoga” teacher? Quoting the report: “Person 12 said that there is a class that Manos teaches where Maha Mudra is the culminating pose. She said that she believes that Manos, consciously or unconsciously, uses that pose when he wants an opportunity to grope or violate someone.” To what extent was yoga teaching a disguise for abuse?
4. What about students beyond the world of Iyengar Yoga? IYNAUS can strip his membership and rescind an award. The Iyengar family can revoke his permission to use their trademark. But will they inform his hosts and employers who are not affiliated with Iyengar Yoga? Will Iyengar Yoga students and teachers begin to take an interest in and contribute to industry-wide discussions of standards, ethics codes, and accountability structures? Or will they continue to foster the elitist attitude that organizations like Yoga Alliance aren’t to be taken seriously?
5. What is the real legacy here? Assuming the Manos report is accurate, what is the global Iyengar community going to do about 30 years of students who trained under him, were influenced by him, and had to satisfy his professional standards of an abuser? How many of them have there been? How many have risen to professional prominence? Did Manos’s training set a tone for the regions of the organization over which he had most influence? How many posture assessments did he supervise? Was there a climate of fear and silence in those rooms? Were his colleagues keeping secrets? Were they afraid of him? Were they enablers? And what did his devoted students learn about teaching? What did they learn about power dynamics? What kind of help do they now need? How will their own students be assured that they are not learning yoga in a pattern of intergenerational stress?
6. How many Iyengar Yoga trainees left because of Manos, without telling anyone? How many students abandoned certification or professionalization because they were violated, or afraid, or knew something was corrupt? Can they be found, invited back in, have their investment refunded?
7. Is there a clear definition for “legitimate adjustment”, that comes from outside the group? In her report, the investigator writes that she had to understand the principle of adjustments in Iyengar Yoga in order to evaluate what Manos was ostensibly doing when accused of assault. She writes that many sources from within Iyengar Yoga helped her with this learning curve. Her competence in this area had to meet the challenge of Manos’s lawyers, who argued that as a non-member of the Iyengar community, she couldn’t possibly know what he was doing. In the report, however, things get sticky: the investigator quotes Person 12 as saying that “Manos incorporates his inappropriate sexual touching into legitimate adjustments or what he pretends are legitimate adjustments.” (Emphasis added.) If a legitimate adjustment can be faked, where does that leave the Iyengar student? How is “legitimate” defined? Through a consent protocol? Through a closely-defined scope of practice? Through informed consent, by which the teacher can tell the student exactly why they are touching them, what the benefits and drawbacks may be? Some older Iyengar students claim that the slaps and kicks of BKS were also “legitimate” adjustments. What would it mean for the Iyengar Yoga community to assess the that adjustments have been given through an analysis of charisma and power dynamics?