{"id":4082,"date":"2014-07-15T12:44:36","date_gmt":"2014-07-15T17:44:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/?p=4082"},"modified":"2014-07-15T12:44:36","modified_gmt":"2014-07-15T17:44:36","slug":"wawadia-update-10-lazy-people-cant-practice-thoughts-on-a-yoga-meme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/matthewremski.com\/wordpress\/wawadia-update-10-lazy-people-cant-practice-thoughts-on-a-yoga-meme\/","title":{"rendered":"WAWADIA Update #10 \/\/\/ “Lazy people can’t practice”: Thoughts On a Yoga Meme"},"content":{"rendered":"

Y<\/span>\nou\u2019ve probably seen this quote floating around.<\/p>\n

Anyone can practice. Young man can practice. Old man can practice. Very old man can practice. Man who is sick, he can practice. Man who doesn’t have strength can practice. Except lazy people; lazy people can’t practice Ashtanga yoga.\u00a0\u2013 Sri K. Pattabhi Jois<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It sounds a lot like Jois might be citing Pancham Sinh’s 1914 translation of the Ha\u1e6dhaprad\u012bpik\u0101<\/em>, 1.64:<\/p>\n

Whether young, old or too old, sick or lean, one who discards laziness, gets success if he practises Yoga.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

I reached out to Jim Mallinson to ask about where in Svatmarama’s Sanskrit Sinh is pulling “laziness” from. I’m familiar with alasya<\/em> from Patanjali, 1.30, which is described as one of the obstacles to practice. (Ironically, Patanjali names sickness as an obstacle as well, whereas Jois specifically excludes it.) Jim\u00a0kindly took a tea break from working on the Roots of Yoga project<\/a> to reply:<\/p>\n

[The verse is] taken from the Datt\u0101treyayoga\u015b\u0101stra, v.40. The word translated with \u201cone who discards laziness\u201d is a-tandrita\u1e25. Its primary meaning is \u201cnot tired\u201d but at a stretch (;-)) it could be understood as \u201cnot lazy\u201d. It occurs mostly in instructions to do a practice, and means that it should be done keenly. Tandr\u0101 (fatigue\/laziness) is a physical, not mental, condition however. At Ha\u1e6dhaprad\u012bpik\u0101 2.33, tr\u0101\u1e6daka [a fixed gaze upon a candleflame] is said to cure it along with diseases of the eye.<\/em><\/p>\n

Brian Akers’ translation of 2002 doesn’t mention laziness at all. Nor does Muktibhodananda (1985). Both of these translators keep it positive: the former calls for “energetic practice” as the threshold for success, and the latter just calls for “practice”. Christopher Wallis was kind enough to interrupt his thesis marathon to send me this\u00a0impromptu translation that sides more with Akers than Sinh:<\/p>\n

“Even if he is young, old, very old, sick, or weak, a dedicated\/diligent person who practices daily will achieve success (siddhi) in all yogas.”<\/span> <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I wonder if,\u00a0with Jois’ limited English, he was wont\u00a0to reach\u00a0for written translations to explicate the Sanskrit texts he knew so well to his Western students. I have no idea what translations he may have had available, but Sinh’s is at least seventy years older than the other two, and much more likely to have reached his bookshelf. Who knows? He might have picked up the word from some Westerner with some latent work-ethic shadows. The word “lazy” might not have communicated what he meant at all. But it’s still in heavy circulation.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

S<\/span>\no much for\u00a0the\u00a0source\u00a0and\u00a0the Sanskrit nuance. People who never met Jois have to make of it what they can. “Lazy people can’t practice Ashtanga Yoga” is a funny joke, right? Meant to be encouraging, right? So why do I feel this strange niggle of shame whenever it pops up?<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been to enough Ashtanga classes\u00a0to know\u00a0it’s not my thing. I would go so far as to say I know I\u00a0can\u2019t do many of the expected movements. Some of them I wouldn’t want to try. If the instructor insisted that I work through setu bandhasana<\/em> and padmasana<\/em> in order to complete the primary series (I know there are varying approaches here — let’s say I got a more\u00a0“traditional”\u00a0guy), I know I would be too concerned about cervical spine and knee injuries to want to proceed. Would that make me lazy? Are my\u00a0concerns about physical limitations or my ideas about my discomfort threshold actually forms of laziness, until I actually test them? What might\u00a0I do to please the instructor if I didn\u2019t want to appear lazy? What does “lazy” even mean to me? Why does it seem to cut at something so deep?<\/p>\n

Even if I had gotten into the primary series\u00a0in my more wiry\u00a020s, I\u2019m pretty sure I wouldn\u2019t at 42 still be doing the standard 90 minutes per day, six days per week. But that would be for a whole host of reasons that have nothing to do with laziness. Also, if I was\u00a0working manual labour 18 hours a day in the Global South, I also couldn\u2019t do Ashtanga Yoga. Not because I\u2019d be lazy, but because I\u2019d be poor and exhausted.<\/p>\n

So I don’t think Jois\u2019 joke can be directed at me, at anyone else who isn\u2019t attracted to his system, or at poor people. This would just be rude and elitist, and that\u2019s so not yoga. So who is it directed towards, what does it mean, and what does it feel like to give it and take it?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A<\/span>\n\u00a0number of thoughts\u00a0about the quote mushroomed\u00a0in the comment thread of my recent article criticizing a yoga selfie project<\/a> that presents bendy-elite postures as the result of hard work alone — never mind physical build, injury history, or access to what type of instruction. “Stephanie” wrote:<\/p>\n

I don’t think anyone intends this to mean ‘lazy people need not apply.’ I think it’s intended to say Look, this is your choice, if you want to do it, you can do it. It’s encouraging, and it’s inclusive…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Maybe. But then what? How would\u00a0“lazy” apply to the person who has already jumped right in? I only ever hear committed practitioners and teachers quoting it. To me it smacks of an in-group encourashame. I.e., you can be young, old, sick, weak when you start, and as you continue. But once you\u2019ve committed to the system, you really don\u2019t want to be lazy. It sounds like it could be a\u00a0joke meant to stiffen the resolve of people in doubt.<\/p>\n

In my work on injuries, I’m very interested in the lag time between when a person first suspects that something is too intense or painful for them in practice, and when they actually stop or alter practice. In between those two points comes\u00a0a litany\u00a0of things they are told and learn to\u00a0tell themselves — “pain is an opening”, “practice requires\u00a0commitment” etc. — about the necessity of continuing. It’s also in this period that repetitive strain can evolve into chronic injury.<\/p>\n

In a\u00a0further\u00a0comment, Stephanie qualifies her thought:<\/p>\n

____<\/p>\n

[L]laziness in Ashtanga culture, as I interpret it, has always been about choice and ability. If I’m physically able to do something, and I choose not to, then that is being lazy. If I’m not physically able, and don’t do it, then that’s fine — no problem.<\/em> The question for me lately has been more about physical ability and how to determine what that is. To a fundamentalist Ashtangi I probably do seem very lazy! <\/em><\/p>\n

I can hear the old admonishments sometimes when I take breaks between poses. But when I practice too fast, without deliberation and without taking extra breaths, I get injured. So for me, it’s fine to rest.<\/em><\/p>\n

This only becomes a problem, in other words, when the teacher is doing the admonishing and pushing, without listening to the student. I may look like I’m being lazy when I rest for a couple minutes before urdhva dhanurasana at the end of my practice… <\/em> But I feel like I need to do that, and I’m actually working on breathing into my low back to release it and relax any tensions there. So in reality, in my inner world, I’m doing something to the best of my ability, though outwardly this may seem like laziness.<\/em><\/p>\n

Laziness can also mean inattention… There’s a degree of effort and focus and energy that has to be alive when you practice. Otherwise, you might get injured. So it’s not a good idea to sleepwalk through the practice.<\/em><\/p>\n

Ultimately I don’t think there are lazy people — only lazy choices. No one is inherently lazy. So that, to me, was what Pattabhi Jois meant by that quote, and that’s why I’ve always thought of it as encouraging, or as a push towards inclusiveness. I never practiced with either him or Sharath so this is quite possibly an overly optimistic interpretation.<\/em><\/p>\n

I don’t feel like a fear of being seen as ‘lazy’ or a ‘quitter’ has ever kept me from leaving the practice. Though perhaps the push to ‘not be lazy’ has gone too far in the past. This comes down to a teaching style, though. Of course the judgmental push to ‘not be lazy’, coming from an external voice, can cause injury. How can someone else know if I’m being lazy or not, if I’m working to the best of my ability or not, or if I’m paying attention or not?<\/em><\/p>\n

____<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This is quite a balanced view, although we have to look at the issue of “choice”. I’ll do this in a bit. What Stephanie brings up are\u00a0the great questions: what\u00a0are\u00a0the metrics of being \u201clazy\u201d, and how are they internalized?<\/p>\n

“Anonymous”, commenting\u00a0on the same post,\u00a0adds a different\u00a0colour, from deeper within the in-group (emphasis added):<\/p>\n

_____<\/p>\n

hmmmm\u2026.as annoyed as I am with the never ending egos of selfies on Facebook, which is ironically what yoga tries to beat out of us \u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2026 and as someone who has received injuries in yoga, many times because a qualified teacher pulled on my body too much when I wasn\u2019t ready for it<\/strong>\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2026 the bottom line is that I used to not be able to do these \u201cdifficult\u201d poses and now I can. Because I worked on them every day for 10 years \u2026 through injuries and through illness and through it being very boring sometimes.<\/em><\/p>\n

Call it what you will, but I still find it inspiring. Ashtanga is not for quitters and it\u2019s not for lazy people but it IS for everybody else<\/strong> \u2013 lumpy butt or no lumpy butt, old or young, disabled or not. No, not everyone is going to be able to do the posture right off the bat, that\u2019s where the hard work, stamina, and tenacity come in.<\/em><\/p>\n

I think I was at my most humblest when I saw a woman who is at least twice my size (a good 220 lbs) perform yoga asanas better than I can right next to me at the Jois shala in Mysore, India. That\u2019s when it dawned on me that this practice really was for everyone and that no matter your limitations, if this woman could do it, I needed to suck it up and keep trying. I was also inspired by the people who are quite a bit \u201colder\u201d who make the \u201cpilgrimage\u201d to Mysore India \u2014 a few people there are in their 60\u2032s, 70\u2032s, maybe even older. They are doing ashtanga the best they can and not getting pissed off that a younger person next to them is able to practically fly around the room.<\/em><\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

_____<\/p>\n

Anonymous worked through injury and illness and boredom, and didn’t quit. A “qualified teacher” injured them\u00a0with invasive adjustments, and they\u00a0didn’t quit. Not quitting was of great personal value to Anonymous, and I think they’re\u00a0implying that it gave\u00a0valuable lessons in all areas of their\u00a0life. They\u00a0don’t want to be a “quitter”. Anonymous\u00a0was also inspired by whatever they\u00a0projected\u00a0about the internal experiences of their\u00a0heavier or older Mysore colleagues to not quit.<\/p>\n

But let’s consider\u00a0someone of similar age, build and skill to Anonymous.\u00a0If Anonymous B doesn’t want to tolerate being bored or injured in practice or yoinked by aggressive teachers, are they a \u201cquitter\u201d if they bail?<\/p>\n

How do we project our self-striving onto others? How do we internalize our own judgments of the work-capacities of others? How do we internalize the\u00a0eye peering at us from every mirror and CCTV glass bubble in our modern toxic mimic of “witnessing”? How do the words \u201claziness\u201d and \u201cquitting\u201d police us?<\/p>\n

I appreciate that Anonymous has been inspired and has felt many benefits come from practicing with determination. But what is the internal and social currency of that inspiration? Who exactly is a quitter? Who is scared to be a quitter? What do people do when they’re scared of quitting? And what happens when we wrap our devotions up in a key\u00a0mechanism\u00a0that fuels neoliberalism — separating\u00a0the individual from social influence and circumstance to be\u00a0exalted or\u00a0derided as the solitary performer\u00a0of responsibility?<\/p>\n

Maybe what\u00a0Anonymous\u00a0is saying is that the shala provides a laboratory in which people can explore their limitations. Maybe they’re\u00a0saying that “Many people have found that if they work hard at this system, they derive some benefit from it.” So why not just say it that way?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

T<\/span>\nhis could all be primarily a social media boundaries problem. Jois’\u00a0quote floats free of its conversational context and meaning, primed\u00a0to juice\u00a0any impulse and push any button. Or — an in-group cheerlead is leaking into the out-group. An internal memo was never meant to become public advertising, and yet there it is. A\u00a0private affirmation blinks\u00a0out over the internet and is plastered on sandwich boards in front of shalas, and the devoted\u00a0never\u00a0stop to consider what it sounds like from outside the bubble.<\/p>\n

On Facebook especially, it\u2019s hard to know\u00a0who shares your ideology. In a weird way, we wind up mimicking advertisers, but with our heads in the sand. Advertisers actually\u00a0know that they\u2019re reaching people beyond their presumed allies, and they actively want to influence strangers. It may not be what we intend, but we are constantly enabling\u00a0one of\u00a0Facebook’s strangest\u00a0powers: to make\u00a0personal sentiments gradually indistinguishable from sales pitches. Mark Zuckerberg has given us the perfect stage for enacting\u00a0the tension between what we feel, what we want to be seen as feeling, and how we want our feelings to be valued or even monetized. He’s done it so well that most of us are only slightly conscious of being in the strange process of constantly re-branding the self. With quotes like Jois’, I think we\u00a0try to re-brand ourselves out of the entrenched fear of worthlessness.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I<\/span>\nn-group or out-group, it hardly matters. If “lazy\u201d is a joke, it borders on a slur.<\/p>\n

I had a grandmother who used slurs in what she thought was a funny way. It was actually a\u00a0part of her charm to me as a child, until I learned\u00a0that subtle bigotry isn\u2019t charming. She used to go on cruises to Mexico and have her picture taken with barefoot boys trying to sell pencils to her and her white-haired shipmates. She\u2019d show me the pictures and say \u201cHere are my little Chicos!\u201d And we’d laugh.<\/p>\n

Maybe the \u201clazy people\u201d comment is kind of like that, the borderline-unintentionally insensitive quip of an old man with a twinkling eye. Maybe we laugh until the moment it\u00a0doesn\u2019t feel\u00a0right.<\/p>\n

What does\u00a0the “Chico”\u00a0slur cover up? Between me and my grandmother, it helped to cover up the Mexican boys\u2019 bare feet, as well as their inadequate nutrition and schooling, with the image of their happy-go-lucky charm. It helped us normalize the disparity between having and not having. It made me have to work harder to feel empathy.<\/p>\n

If “lazy” is a\u00a0slur, what does it cover up? How about: the shame of not always having the strength to deal with the impossibilities of our lives? How about: not really wanting to acknowledge how the hearts of others can sink so low? Like Stephanie, I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever met a lazy human being. But I\u2019ve met a lot of depressed ones. The clinically depressed\u00a0find it impossible\u00a0to move forward, to decide what to do. Is laziness a form of depression? Does calling someone \u201clazy\u201d moralize this\u00a0sickness of heart and brain? Andrew Solomon puts it this way in his masterwork on depression<\/a>: “In depression, the meaninglessness of every enterprise and every emotion, the meaninglessness of life itself, becomes self-evident. The only feeling left in this loveless state is insignificance.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

H<\/span>\nere’s another question: does the accusation of “lazy”\u00a0broadcast an over-inflated view of free will? I\u00a0posted\u00a0Jois’ aphorism for the yogis of Facebook yesterday, asking for opinions and interpretations of “laziness”.\u00a0An epic and dynamically constructive thread\u00a0ensued<\/a>, unleashing the flood of emotion quivering behind what we hear. I’m not a statistician, and this isn’t a scientific sample, but here’s a rough outline of the data provided by 84 commenters in 11K words over 160 comments\u00a0(24 being mine)\u00a0as of 6am EST this morning.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. wholly positive responses, seeing pure\u00a0encouragement in the quote: 6<\/strong><\/li>\n
  2. moderately positive responses, attempting to frame\u00a0“lazy” in a non-judgmental, yet personally targeted way: 102<\/strong><\/li>\n
  3. negative responses, feeling shamed or bullied by the quote: 13<\/strong><\/li>\n
  4. ambivalent responses, providing scriptural context: 7<\/strong><\/li>\n
  5. social\/political responses to the implications of “lazy”: 4<\/strong><\/li>\n
  6. responses in praise of the “courage” of laziness in a type-A society: 3<\/strong><\/li>\n
  7. responses that frame “laziness” in constitutional as opposed to moral terms: 1<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    There is arguable\u00a0overlap between categories 3-7. Category 2 is quite popular, and it features dozens of ways of positioning “laziness” as an unfortunate or negative choice, made by the person alone.<\/p>\n

    I dumped the comments into Word to do a little keyword crunching. Here’s some of what comes up to describe “laziness”:<\/p>\n