Yoga
The agendas set forth by the network include their attempts to control the increasing awareness of subtler energies. From the mainstream platforms, anything having to do with psychic abilities is mocked. From the new age agenda, all these abilities are conflated with true spirituality.
The ancient science of yoga has been poured entirely into the third limb of the eight-fold path, asana, or seat, also translated as posture. The entire physical side of yoga is not actually part of the yogic path at all; the postures are meant to make the body healthy and strong in order to be able to sit longer and without discomfort in the meditation seat, but this could be done in other ways as well. The third “limb” or step of the Yoga path as laid down by the sage Patanjali, really only refers to the body sitting still in mediation. The first two are the 10 commandments of yoga, five yamas and five niyamas, that are very similar to the 10 commandments in Christianity.
In true spirituality it is more important to behave properly than to have a strong and healthy body. The very first yama, ahimsa; means to do no harm. A yogi could focus their entire life only on that first of five yamas of the first “limb” (of eight) of yoga, doing everything in their power to avoid harming other humans and all living creatures, in order to reach the goal of enlightenment.
New age philosophy was initially brought in through the Luciferian Alistair Crowley and Madame Blavatsky and later instilled in the masses through the carefully engineered 1960’s cultural revolution, in which yoga was popularized in the west. The idea was to use real spiritual concepts and put them up for grabs as a bypass, to create a cult of good-hearted but blind rebels believing in peace for all, while instilling hypocrisy and pretend-holiness in both gurus and followers to avoid the truth of the shadows.
This is how people without a strong moral compass end up practicing advanced techniques of meditation, which will produce results, only these results will be used to inflate the ego and help the person accumulate power, or widen the gap between one’s belief of being love and light and the suppressed trauma.
Practicing breathing exercises or movement synchronized with breathing induce relaxation and good health and the overall personal benefits are obvious. For me, hatha yoga has always served as the best physical therapy, whereas the yoga teachings of Yogananda, which do not include hatha, showed me the true spiritual path, which is much more difficult without the temptations to make yourself appear better than you are.
Certain elements of the ashtanga yoga practice can replicate abuse insofar as that it can feel really good to be warm, sweaty, with strong, loose limbs. The self-created heat in the practice serves as a natural SRRI inhibitor and keep depression at bay. However, such intense activity combined with Ujjayi Pranayama, or "oceanic breath" used to build internal heat and stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system can put you into a trance. Then, when the guru or teacher comes to give an adjustment in an extreme pose, the body goes into freeze mode. Any resistance makes the adjustment dangerous.
In the above pose, dwi pada sirsasana or two-feet-behind-head pose, a teacher might come and pull your crossed feet further apart, to deepen the hip opening. In kapotasana or pigeon pose in the photo below, they may stand over you and pull your hands or push your elbows in, like a human vice, getting you deeper into the back bend.
The freeze response is essentially a dissociated state, when "fight" or "flight" appear impossible to one's body/mind system during a life threat. You are immobilized, and thus able NOT to experience the dread, the enormity of the threat, and instead numb out. The endorphins that are secreted in this state function as an analgesic, so the pain of the injury to your body or psyche is also numbed. In fact, often, because of the slowing of the blood flow mixed with the flooding of hormones, pleasure may be experienced.
Feeling pleasure is not an uncommon side-effect of rape or sexual abuse and it is linked to the body/mind going into the Freeze mode for survival. For most survivors, the shame of having experienced pleasure during abuse is too deep-seated to overcome, and the confusion too great to be sorted out - causing the abuse to remain dissociated from the conscious mind, leading to minimization, rationalization, or forgetting. Depending on circumstances, the abuse may never even enter the conscious mind, and remains dissociated, hidden in the body and subconscious.
In certain yoga circles sexual abuse happens right in front of people’s eyes, and no one does anything. The entire group is dissociated, and minimizes, jokes, or rationalizes the abuse in a prolonged trauma freeze.
A survivor might be drawn to ashtanga yoga, or to a teacher who forces their bodies into extreme poses, causing the most shameful aspect of former abuse to be replicated in a perfectly acceptable manner. If the teacher is also a sexual perpetrator, the replication is even more direct.
Repressed parts need to find expression in some way. Without conscious awareness, many elements of abuse can be recycled doing yoga. As a child I always had to be strong to withstand the abuse as a sex slave and then was praised for it. As a yogi I relived that pleasure when people expressed surprise over my physical strength. Practice in a space with others brought back other shadows from my years in the network, such as that I unconsciously attuned to the desirous gaze of certain men as my form adapted to their idea of grace of beauty.
The years of therapy I had behind me by the time I came to ashtanga yoga prevented me from engaging in literal replications; I never had a physical relationship with anyone I met in the yoga context. However, the big ashtanga guru from India did grope me during a workshop he was teaching in New York City. This happened while all four hundred students were curled up in halasana, plow pose, in which no one could see what was going on - including me. Ashtanga was a good looking group with a great secret, just like my normal-looking family who trafficked me and Western society hiding pedophilia. I confronted the ashtanga guru a few days after the abuse. Though I never traveled to India to study with this sexual predator as everyone else seemed to do, I did remain in the environment in which he was revered as a saint, confronted daily with his inflated image on the walls. I spoke freely about the big guru’s sexual assault, and yet no one in my ashtanga circle ever changed anything or thought differently about their guru after they had heard. The most common reply I received to my telling of my experience of sexual abuse was that the guru was also just “human.” This vibration, in which I felt entirely invisible, was familiar. It took me seven years after I had learned that the guru was a sexual deviant to leave the studio.
The cult dynamics at the studio repeated both network and family dynamics, with my rank in the power structure as lowly or the reviled whistleblower. Never having studied directly with the guru, never having committed to this system, I never quite fit in - also exactly how I felt in my family of origin. I spoke up about the abuse by the ashtanga guru without being heard, just as when I was six and first taken to be abused at a network event I told my mother and nothing changed. In fact, in both instances things got worse, since my mother took over from the pimps that had first trafficked me and then drove me herself to places where I was abused. When I came home with injuries, my mother ignored those as if nothing had happened or told lies about them. I told my yoga teacher about physical injuries from my childhood torture and he gave directions to adjust certain poses without assimilating the information. He went on to scapegoat me after I went public about his guru’s sexual abuse, spreading vicious lies. After I confronted my family about the abuse from childhood, they disowned me.
Allegiances to the guru and enabling behavior stand in for the fear-based love of an abusive authority figure of the past, and often correspond closely to one’s role inside an incestuous or dysfunctional family.
When trauma is not addressed, it sends one in a downward spiral of endless story loops - repetitions of the original power abuse and unconscious attempts to get on the other side of power. The societal structure, and how this translates to any group setting such as a yoga community, invites running from personal trauma by gaining status, expertise and power.
While this can look good on the outside, while the postures can look impressive, while the practice does much for one’s physical health, to heal from childhood trauma, to overcome emotional/psychological issues regarding love and loss, is a sacred duty imposed upon us by life itself, in that we need to go through the pain in order to heal and grow and and neutralize the power imbalances so that we can become empowered from within. The way of power to run from trauma can look great and appear to work on the outside, only it has nothing whatsoever to do with spirituality and truth.
