\u201cThe loss of quality that is so evident at every level of spectacular language, from the objects it glorifies to the behavior it regulates, stems from the basic nature of a production system that shuns reality.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2015 Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle<\/em><\/p>\n _____<\/p>\n Two very similar yoga stories splashed across the web this week.<\/p>\n In what she called her \u201cDavid Blaine moment in New York\u201d, Tara Stiles busted out all the asanas in a glass box<\/a> decked out like a miniature high-end hotel room, complete with stilettoes and a champagne-bucket, mounted on the back of the W hotels Yoga Truck, which rolled slowly from one W location to another. It was a promotion<\/a> for \u2013 oh, so many things.<\/p>\n Another story emerged from Jalandhar, India. A high court there has been asked to determine whether the wealthy guru Ashutosh Maharaj, who his followers have been keeping in a commercial freezer under armed guard<\/em> (you might want to read that twice) is as dead as one might\u00a0guess, or whether he is in a state of profound meditation. His family insists he died of a heart attack back in January. His followers are expecting him to resurrect from his mahasamadhi when he\u2019s good and ready, and are committed to preserving his corpse for his saintly re-entry.<\/p>\n The Telegraph<\/a> quotes an unnamed aide: “Maharaj has been in deep meditation. He has spent many years meditating in sub-zero temperatures in the Himalayas, there is nothing unusual in it. He will return to life as soon as he feels and we will ensure his body is preserved until then.” In the interim, the aide and his cohorts will maintain control of the guru\u2019s $170M estate, thank you very much. The family really, really wants him declared dead, so all\u00a0frozen assets can\u00a0be released.<\/p>\n Now there are<\/em> superficial differences between the stories. Like the fact that Deepak Chopra\u2019s favourite yoga teacher is quite bendy, possibly quite overheated in her gridlocked cube, and likely limits herself to\u00a0simple pranayama. The Maharaj, of course, is a little stiff with the cold, but apparently matchless in breath retention.<\/p>\n There\u2019s also the fact that Stiles\u2019 performance out-ironizes the guru\u2019s. Her display echoes the travails of street yogis in early 1900s Calcutta and Delhi, who were forced by colonial expansion to surrender ancestral lands and pose for paisas in the gutters. Vedantins like Vivekananda and scientizers like Kuvalyananda expressed disgust at their bendy antics, seeing them as impediments to Indian physical dignity and the advancement of rational medicine. Stiles\u2019 performance of the body beautiful in a rolling Red-Light window reclaims a prouder yogabitionism, even as she\u2019s imprisoned in glass as a perfect specimen of healthist objectification. Comparatively, Maharaj\u2019s game is about as complex as a five year-old\u2019s lie, so we\u2019ll have to say that Tara wins this round\u00a0in the shark-jumping competition known as popular yoga culture.<\/p>\n But both stories feature the worship of human flesh, and the battle over its politics and meanings. The tales\u00a0become fully indistinguishable in the responses they generate in the faithful, who are endlessly resourceful in protecting their dreams.<\/p>\n In Jalandhar the process\u00a0is quite straightforward. Guard the freezer with soldiers. Do not disturb the Maharaj\u2019s \u201cmeditation\u201d. Compare his frosty sojourn with a spiritual junket to the Himalayas. Forbid jokes about sno-cones and slushies. Screw his family over: they never really<\/em> knew him. Protect the legacy that predicted his immortality. Soothe all believers.\u00a0He’s astral traveling. He’s running the estate from the ethers. He loves you. The kids will be all right.<\/p>\n Tara\u2019s airbrushed performance of samadhi is also very well-guarded. Not by thuggish regents with guns, but by the smiling denizens of modern Yogaland, unconsciously armed with the rationalizations\u00a0of neoliberalism.<\/p>\n When Jennilyn Carson<\/a> and Roseanne Harvey<\/a> offer some basic criticism of the yoga selfie complex to the New York Post<\/a>, we should expect that mainstream-y sources<\/a> will trip over themselves to intelli-shame them.\u00a0But these aren\u2019t the real guards. The real guards are the well-meaning, committed practitioners who either cannot see what\u2019s obvious \u2013 that Stiles\u2019 product display\u00a0is as dead and packaged as the frozen steaks in a W hotel walk-in \u2013 or they cannot bear to admit it, and so they reframe it into what the dominant culture says it must<\/em> be: a manifestation of Tara\u2019s perfectly free self-expression of perfect freedom, because reasons!<\/p>\n Well, not reasons exactly, but the usual dissociative deflections. Here\u2019s a selection from the comment thread to my status update, which snarked about the whole thing:<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s all expression of consciousness. [sic] Let people break free from dogma, none of this is right or wrong. If [Stiles et al] can bring more attention to Yoga and spread it and inspire people to practice, why not?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cChange your perception \ud83d\ude42 you can find darkness and dark motive [sic] in anything you find.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou do your yoga and let the lovely lady do hers!\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe should all stop being yoga snobs \ud83d\ude09 myself included \u2013 it\u2019s all good.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The Telegraph reports: \u201cAlthough Punjab Police initially confirmed [the Maharaj\u2019s] death, the Punjab High Court later dismissed its status report and local governmental officials said it was a spiritual matter and that the guru’s followers cannot be forced to believe he is dead<\/em>.\u201d [Emphasis mine.]<\/p>\n Nor can some very\u00a0earnest yogis, it seems, be forced to believe that their beloved practice is so easily co-opted by the evils it is meant to resist. But why can’t they see it? Are we given so few crumbs of hope that it’s irresistible\u00a0to see glass-box yoga rolling past Tiffany’s as\u00a0a sign of the paradigm shift? Or is it that we all feel Tara’s obvious tender humanity, and want to assert that she’s in control, empowered — when we haven’t got a clue? If we don’t assert her freedom, will we realize we are complicit\u00a0in something extremely sad? How will the kids be all right, if we don’t put\u00a0a good face on it?<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s all good\u201d is such a flexible<\/em>\u00a0mantra, innit? Serving not only yoga marketing, but also global capitalism and hyperindividualism, which sells a crucial lie: Tara Stiles is a free agent whose wealth and fame are the natural outcomes of hard work and a positive attitude \u2013 and we should\u00a0all<\/em> enjoy such blessings, regardless of race, class, education, or body type. Of course<\/em> the social constructions of her desirability are erased<\/em> by her flawless pigeon pose. Of course<\/em> she is being asked to advertise a totally<\/em> accessible physical ideal and economic reality that would never<\/em> depress the self-esteem of women or the poor. Of course<\/em> she inspires more people than she alienates. Of course<\/em> she isn’t emphasizing flexibility over stability and extreme-range movement over pleasure and function. Of course<\/em> she is honouring the great introspective traditions of India by being gawked at in what looks like a porno web-cam set. Of course<\/em> she\u2019s not being objectified while shilling for a multinational hotel chain. Of course<\/em> her Slim Calm Sexy hypermobility is not being sexualized by dysmorphic delusion. Could her submissive display trigger some people? No way! Not a chance! None of the bad things those haters are whining\u00a0about are\u00a0really happening. Because if they\u00a0are, we\u2019d have to do something. We’d have to give up guarding the freezer, and making money by lying about\u00a0what’s really inside.<\/p>\n But doing something about it has external consequences we\u2019d like to ignore so badly, internal control is really the best\u00a0option. For hidden behind the self-policing of the neoliberal religion, we know there\u00a0are guns trained on\u00a0our hearts and pepper spray aimed at our faces. For anyone who challenges the cruel logic of patriarchal capitalism, there\u2019s a cop ready to grab you by the breast<\/a> and a jury ready to throw you in jail for elbowing him away. When First Nations people blockade a multinational\u2019s fracking development<\/a> that will destroy their unceded earth and water, the military shows up with armoured vehicles, full camouflage and assault weaponry.<\/p>\n What a buzzkill! So much better to breathe and remember that it\u2019s all good! So much easier to use yoga to unite with the mystical truths of capitalism than to fight against it with every breath! Adam Smith apparently has two<\/em> invisible hands. One holds a taser and the other flashes\u00a0a calming mudra, but occasionally they\u2019re joined in Namaste<\/em>.<\/p>\n I had a strange dream of international yoga intrigue that I\u2019ll have to bring to my therapist. There were these\u00a0radical feminist yoga teachers dressed up like Pussy Riot. They formed two squads. One hijacked\u00a0a freight plane to the Punjab and raided the ashram compound, overpowering the guards to steel the freezer with the guru inside, along with mad stacks of cash. They buried the rupees in a field and texted the coordinates to the Maharaj’s family as they piled onto the waiting plane with his body.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the other squad stormed\u00a0the Stilesmobile, greeted Tara like an old friend, and then they all spirited\u00a0off to a New Jersey airfield. They skipped up\u00a0the gangplank\u00a0laughing as the freezer was wheeled down.<\/p>\n Then I was walking on Fifth Avenue, and the glass cube\u00a0inched along beside me with pink stocking-headed\u00a0yoginis riding on top, shouting \u201cImperialists! Behold the corpse of your appropriated yoga!\u201d into megaphones. Below them\u00a0was the Maharaj himself, propped up in full lotus, looking grey and a little damp with his own melt, staining the white duvet brownish-pink. But it all ended well: Pussy Riot\u00a0mummified him for a long ocean journey home, paying for his fare and an elaborate cremation that\u00a0his family alone could attend in peace. I don’t think they got news of the performance art bit.<\/p>\n Suddenly I was in Jalandhar, but in the outskirts, far away from the ashram, bumping along with Tara and her new comrades\u00a0in a baubled and bangled Tata lorry. She was sleeping with her head in the lap of the squad leader, who was gently stroking her cheek. We stopped in the middle of nowhere, in the foothills of some mountain range. There was a little cottage with a garden and a goat. We all\u00a0got out and the leader turned to Tara and said\u00a0in a thick Russian accent: \u201cHere\u00a0is room of your own. Nice windows. No glass wall. You rest here. We have good soup. No one see you here. You can feel like\u00a0yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n The guru is dead. Long live Tara, but not in a glass box. If she really wants to get the David Blaine reference right, she\u00a0and her handlers\u00a0should know that his trick is to first survive bondage, and then escape<\/em> it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Deepak Chopra\u2019s favourite yoga teacher is quite bendy, possibly quite overheated in her gridlocked cube, and likely focuses on very simple pranayama in her trainings. 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