As the crew is in the final stages of submitting their forthcoming book, Julian and Derek reflect on how yoga has evolved in their personal lives. In Part 2, they talk about yoga in aging bodies, the pursuit of philosophy, and leaving the damn cell phone out of yoga studios.
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Thank you.
Yeah, coming from having been injured so many times, like, forward bends were always easy to me.
I can still, even though I still do practice, but I'm not as flexible because of my other workouts now.
But in a forward bend, I can pull my head to my knees as soon as I wake up.
Like, that's not a problem.
Back bending is completely different, and I've gotten better at it.
But yeah, that was the whole, and this is, you know, the crossover with, even though I don't know Matthew, it comes from the Michael Roach thing, because he was very influential on Jeeva Mukti, and this whole, like, body map.
This whole body mapping idea that you have these metaphors of the body which relate to emotions and spirituality.
And so if you couldn't backbend, if you couldn't do a wheel, your heart wasn't open.
That was something I heard for a while.
And I feel fortunate that my bullshit radar was up even then.
But it was up in the sense that I never felt bad because I couldn't backbend.
But it did make me be like, why isn't my body letting this in?
It made me focus on it probably a little bit.
I never got obsessive with it.
It did still affect me when you hear those things.
When you're in these emotional states, when you've been moving and breathing together as a group, and you're in this group flow state, which makes you susceptible and vulnerable to the information you're being told, and then you're being told you have a shortcoming because you can't do the pose the way the teacher's showing, that's going to affect you.
And I always thought that was really unfortunate.
That that language infiltrated that community and any community that I've ever been in.
And to see what I feel like are well-intentioned people just spout this bullshit, I don't think they really understand what that can do to people in those states.
And it leads to a cult of personality, which can be, as we know and we cover, can be very dangerous.
Yeah, I remember seeing teachers do that, and Anna would do that to some extent, but I've seen on video people like Rodney Yee and John Friend do that sort of stuff in workshops where they would bring people up in front of the room and then sort of diagnose their posture and where their postural imbalances were and what kind of poses they should do that would help them and then what that had to do with
With I guess how their psychology perhaps showed up in their posture, in their physical contractions and I was definitely very captivated by that in my late 20s early 30s and I was reading a lot of Ken Wilber and I was very interested in synthesis and in like You know, East, Eastern and Western psychology, but then also getting more esoteric.
So I, I did spend a good chunk of time and this is where our Joseph Campbell overlap I think is it's, it's an interesting point of reference because I, I saw the chakra system as a really interesting way of thinking about mind body relationships and, and thinking about how How yoga could be a way of exploring how the mind lives in the body.
And that was very captivating for me.
I had a whole set of workshops that I taught about that.
They were very popular.
I got a lot of, you know, good feedback because of that.
And it created kind of a structure within which people felt like they could go pretty deep and have a lot of meaningful experiences.
And I still think that was valuable and beautiful, but over time, I did start to see that, okay, this was another version of the same thing that I'd been critical about and was trying not to do in terms of what I'd seen with other teachers.
What's fascinating about what you said is that first part of it, because I also taught and studied in an Anusaras school for two years.
I very much know the circles and everything that friend was doing, and the first part of what you said about that, pulling someone up and looking at their body, I don't think there's anything wrong with that if the person's amenable to it.
One of my favorite Instagram feeds is Squat University, and Aaron does such a good job at diagnosing, he's a physical therapist, so he shows you the imbalances, and then he shows you exercise to correct them.
It's when you then map the psychology and spirituality on top of that, That it becomes problematic.
Because Tim Ferriss' book, Tools of Titans, he interviews this gymnastics coach whose name is escaping me, but he says, you know, focus on your limitations, like what is it that you're not good at or that you're struggling with, and focus yourself there.
If you want to be holistic and well-rounded as a movement practitioner, And that was such good advice because I started doing abduction and adduction and things that I wasn't doing that really helped to make me stronger at the other things.
But there was no shaming on top of that.
There was no psychologizing.
There was no psychotherapy for people who aren't qualified to do that.
It was just like, oh, in my case, you've broken your leg three times.
Well, you have this hip imbalance.
You have one leg shorter than the other.
How can we address that?
What movements can... That's one thing that can be very helpful for people, but as soon as you start to map some sort of philosophy on top of that, then it becomes extremely problematic.
And of course, I'm speaking Specifically to people who aren't trained in psychotherapy or psychiatry.
Because the maps of the body and the mental maps can make sense on an emotional level.
I understand that.
But when you're just blanket doing it to someone without understanding their history and what brought them there, that is... I mean, we're really talking about what is at the heart of a lot of conspirituality that we discuss.
Yeah.
It's the piece, you know, we've been, we've been talking about this the last couple of weeks in terms of pseudoscience as, as we work on, on one aspect of the book.
And I do recognize in myself that, and this had to do with mentors that I had as well and, and things I was reading and, you know, people I was emulating, but there was definitely a pseudoscience aspect.
to how I was thinking about this.
And it seemed scientific to me at the time.
And that's sort of the, to me, that's one of the takeaways is that when you're really invested in pseudoscience, you think that it is scientific.
And so I thought I was integrating science and spirituality in this very kind of cutting edge way.
And I was, I was part of the sort of the new, the new way of thinking about all of this.
And some of that included organ cleansing, as we talk about in the book.
And I had, I had a mentor who, you know, would have people come to his office.
He had this office way up in Malibu, you know, like high up with this incredible view in a secluded area.
And people would go for like three hours and he would do this whole intake.
And he would do the, you know, the setup with the computer where you have a plugged in kind of, it's like a pen that has a point on the end that you put on different acupressure points or acupuncture points.
And you read how strong the energy is that's coming off the person's different meridian lines, right?
And then hooked up to that, you have a little tray that...
That you put the different supplements on that you have for sale in your little store and you you based on this very scientific method of diagnosis if the energy gets stronger through the reading that's coming from like I'm touching my finger right now as if I have like this this pen like needle on it that's hooked up to the wires of the computer if that reading gets stronger when you have the bottle of supplements on the tray in the circuit well then these supplements are going to be good for you