Yoga in Togas

Ok, here is the dilemma: Yoga is supposed to be more about internal change, through physical challenges; about "working in" instead of "working out". Right?
Well if that were the case we would all be practicing in solitude or with one personal guru, in the hills somewhere wearing nothing but strategically placed pieces of cotton. But we don't, we don't and we definitely don't! Instead the number of Yoga and pilates participants has begun to surpass the national numbers for any other physical endeavor individually. We practice everywhere in public: yoga studios, gyms, dance studios, karate dojos and community centres. We clad our bodies in Luon, spandex and coolmax; in bright and garish colours; and in styles that resemble leotards more than the traditional loin cloth!

Does all THIS make our yoga better? Or does it dilute the practice? Does it make it superficial and conceited? Yoga used to be elitist. For the chosen few, handpicked and then nurtured from childhood. Now yoga is for the masses of adult-onset stretchers, broken jocks, mundainly average desk-jockies and frustrated dancers.

Every day when I teach I wonder if I am doing right by my students. Do I only teach them what I think they can digest and leave all the other more esoteric stuff for some braver teacher to discuss? Am I doing right by the art of yoga? Am I allowing a centuries old art to die in it's truest form because a bunch of spoon fed North Americans can't wrap their brains around chanting and meditation.

But then I realize that I am like Mother Nature with her swift hand of Natural Selection. North America has become the Galapagos Islands of the yoga world. Our style of Yoga has morphed into what we need it to be. It has become a coping mechanism for broken bodies, minds and spirits. Not just an Eastern Philosophical practice. Just as Darwin found new and wonderful species of familiar animals on his voyage; so too would Vedavyasa find a species of yoga that was strange and wonderful, all at once.

I try not to worry too much about what my yoga IS or if my love penchant for yoga fashions changes my practice. After all my booty and butt need the scaffholding that luon affords, just like anyone else. Sometimes I wonder if I don't go to an ashram for vacation because I can't afford it or if it is out of a fear of coming to a realization that what I know, love, practice and teach isn't really yoga at all. Sometimes I wonder if true yoga and togas go hand in hand.