Why You Should Avoid Power Yoga

This talk goes over why you should avoid power yoga classes such as Bikram, Corepower Yoga classes, and Yoga Sculpt. This talk goes over why this style of yoga provides watered down and often incorrect teachings, along with a superficial culture associated with it. These classes are quite accessible for most people, however, if you are looking to deepen your spiritual practice, these classes will not assist you.

Transcript

Hey this is Ish and today I want to talk to you about why you should avoid power yoga.

So namely I'm talking about the core power yoga classes or Bikram yoga classes or even nowadays they have yoga with weights which I find really weird.

And these types of yoga are starting to become very popular with the masses just because these types of classes and studio have a lot of branding and marketing put into them and they have a workout emphasis that a lot of people just simply relate to.

So people who are going to gyms might see a power yoga class and they might be inclined to start yoga in that sense because it's accessible.

And this type of yoga is found very common in gyms or any kind of workout like setting.

And you can also find that there are over 200 core power yoga chains across the United States and it's very popular and very accessible for most people.

But unfortunately you want to keep in mind that this type of yoga is very watered down from yoga's original roots.

And you can think of it like kind of like Starbucks or coffee.

It's very accessible but it's not really the best quality that you can get.

And today I want to explore just some of the reasons why these types of classes aren't authentic.

So the first reason is that they're more watered down and they also present very incorrect teachings of yoga.

So the yoga sage Patanjali wrote in his Yoga Sutras which is a very classical text on describing what yoga is over 2000 years ago.

He describes that there are eight limbs of yoga.

So this is what constitutes yoga.

So yoga is a combination of these eight limbs and they are as follows.

So they're yamas which are social ethics,

Niyama which are personal observances,

Asana which is the postures that you're very familiar with.

And these power yoga classes tend to overemphasize this part.

Then after you master the asanas or the postures you would then start to bring your attention inwards and start to go deeper into your subtle and inner body for more inner exploration.

You would start with pranayama which is the control of your breath,

Then pratihara which is the withdrawal of your senses,

Then you would go to dharana which is concentration onto one pointed object.

Then if you continue with that then you will get into dhyana which is meditation absorption and then eventually samadhi which is a union.

So keep in mind these are eight different limbs and the asanas or the classes that you take the power yoga classes only emphasize the asana portion and they're actually missing out on the other seven limbs which is very important for the progression or maturation of your spiritual practice.

And you could be saying okay fine that's in a one hour class and you can't really fit all that in but keep in mind many of these classes don't even offer a quick five second period where you just tune inwards and start to focus on your breath or you start to go more inwards.

It's very much focused on the action and asanas.

And I also personally find that teachers who practice these styles of yoga and I've actually personally taken these classes like bhikram and core power for months on end just to see what it's like and really put myself in the shoes of most of my yoga students that are coming in.

I've actually done that and I found that these teachers personally don't have a practice of deepening their inner quality so like doing meditation or focusing on one point or maybe they don't even do paranayama which is the next limb above asana.

And you can find that it's very evident and since they're not practicing it themselves they aren't teaching their students these limbs obviously and that obviously affects their practice and the students aren't getting what they could be getting out of a yoga class.

And also another side note is that the teachers that only focus or emphasize the asanas,

So the postures,

Tend to be very fragile on the inside because they haven't built that foundation,

A strong inner foundation,

So they are pushed really easily or you can say triggered nowadays by different things because they are too involved with their attachments and they haven't explored their inner spiritual life.

And going a little bit further on the asanas,

You would think that because the power yoga classes emphasize the posture so much that they would actually be doing something very good and actually doing it right but this actually isn't the case.

So if we look in the yoga sutras like I mentioned there is the verse 2.

46 which says sthira sukham asana.

And basically what that means is the first word is sthira which means stability or steadiness and then the second word is sukham which is ease and then the last word is asana which is posture.

So if you combine that together it means that your yoga poses should be steady and they should be done with ease.

And the whole point of yoga or doing these asanas rather,

The postures,

Is to do it with ease so you're able to meditate.

That was the whole point of it.

And if you look at many of the power yoga styles today you'll find that they make the poses hard on purpose.

So whenever I've taken a class I've seen that they do these weird variations where you bring your knee to your elbow in downward facing dog or you do like a plank push up just for the fun of it or maybe you do like a side plank and then you turn your arm and you do like another push up.

And basically what I'm trying to say is that they make it very challenging on purpose.

And in addition typically these classes are heated to 100 degrees so it's also very taxing on you.

So the simple poses can be made very difficult by turning up the heat and then also they introduce all these variations.

So totally against what Patanjali was recommending in his yoga sutras.

And now if you look in another yoga text is the Ata Yoga Pradipika and this was a 5th century text that was written on hatha yoga.

And in verse 1.

15 they explain how yoga fails.

There's also another chapter on how yoga succeeds.

But basically yoga will fail if you over exert yourself.

So yoga fails due to over exertion.

And Krishna Macharya who is nicknamed the founder of modern yoga so most of the yoga that you're practicing now is can be traced back to him because he's really well known for bringing the modern yoga from India to the states and actually popularizing that and the students like Mr.

Iyengar and Pratavi Joyce spread his teachings.

But he commented that excess sun salutations should be avoided.

And you know I agree with him because a lot of the yoga classes nowadays use the sun salutations a lot and they repeat it and that actually builds up that heat which you want but it's taken to the extreme where now it interferes with the steadiness and ease that we want to try to bring in our yoga practice.

I'm sure if he saw other modern yoga classes now he'd faint because now it's not just the sun salutations but now they have like you know push ups and just these other random things thrown in there to make the poses hard.

And then when we dive deeper into the Ata Yoga Pradipika we see that they only describe 15 poses in this text and most of these were seated.

So there's not too many standing poses like going to warrior 3 and then transitioning to a half moon and then doing crescent lunge and all that.

Rather most of this were pretty simple seated poses that you can do which will allow you to sit for meditation better and that was the whole point of the postures.

And nowadays you'll find that most of the power yoga classes are 90% standing and they only have maybe you know 2 or 3 if any seated poses and then a 1 minute Shavasana where you just lay back corpse pose.

And when you do this your experience becomes more of this outer shell and your heart rate actually beats faster so your parasympathetic nervous system doesn't actually get the chance to kick in and make you feel relaxed after yoga class.

So you end up coming out of the class more energetic than you did before taking the class.

So that's something that you should change right?

And then the second point I like to make is that yoga isn't exercise and I know that nowadays the trend is to make yoga or power yoga is to make yoga more of like a workout.

And if you really think about the classes that you're taking it's not necessarily a workout because if you look at the muscles and building strength your body gets used to the same static holds so if you go into downward facing dog at first it will feel very difficult and you can maybe only hold it for 2 breaths right?

But if you've been practicing yoga for a couple months or even a couple years the postures become very easy and you just don't break a sweat.

So for instance when I take a yoga class and I'm doing many of the so called hard poses I'm actually relaxed and I can do pretty well and I'm not restraining myself.

And this is because you're using your body weight and eventually if you're doing these static poses your body will adapt to it.

And you'll even find that people who do kinesthetic workouts,

They do a lot of push ups and pull ups,

Their body gets used to that and they could be doing 50 pull ups and 100 pull ups and their body doesn't get any stronger or bigger because their body has eventually adapted to their body weight right?

So now they need to add more resistance so they'll attempt to change their posture by maybe spreading their hands a little bit more apart or they'll do more time under pressure or they'll add weights.

So those are ways to add that strength on there.

But if you're just doing yoga there's no way to really stress your muscles after a certain point.

And if you look at the aerobic portion of it,

Your heart rate doesn't really go up that fast and I'm just reminded of this because I just took a boxing class this morning and my heart rate was up for most of the time and even when I take a light jog my heart rate is going up right?

But when we take up yoga your heart rate doesn't necessarily go up that high.

It's actually goes up as much as taking a slow walk so you're actually not getting that exercise that you think that you're getting.

And I think this whole thing is pretty ironic because this power based yoga is meant or at least its branding is meant for you to think that you're working out but in reality you're not.

But you might be thinking okay there's so many skinny yogis out there right?

And actually this is part of the yoga diet not the actual work itself.

Yoga does make your body feel light and what we call sattvic which is the light quality which ideally that's what you actually want to do but it doesn't actually help your body in a sense of an exercise.

And the yoga diet is usually more vegetarian and sometimes even vegan and that can help you lose weight because there's less calories involved and you're eating more mindfully and eating slowly and when you're eating a lot of veggies you can't really you mean you don't really gain that much weight as you did before.

So when people lose weight doing yoga it's because they've come from a diet of eating a lot of meats and dairy and eating a lot to now having a more mindful approach and also eating more fruits and veggies.

So it makes sense that they would lose weight just naturally.

And the last point I'd like to make on why you should avoid power yoga is because of the culture as well.

So if you think of the prevalent culture nowadays towards yoga it's it's strayed very much from the ancient yogis back in the day and even a couple of decades ago.

A lot of the classes nowadays play pop music,

They play rap music and play indie music and personally I listen to those kind of music when I go to a bar but definitely not in a yoga class because it's distracting number one because they have vocals and they have like you know beats and you tend to lose the inner focus that you're trying to build up in this practice because that's a whole goal right is to bring your attention from the outside to the inside and listening to Drake or one of the cases while you're doing yoga doesn't necessarily help you achieve that.

And then the second thing is that there's an emphasis on superficiality so you can you know there's go to any yoga trendy yoga class and there's little lemon pants which cost 80 bucks and you get this fancy like mad towel and they sell all these kinds of yoga accessories which you don't really need and it's done in the in the name of fashion and marketing and they actually do this pretty well they have a whole team and science behind it and they do sell pretty well but that takes away from the practice of yoga because if we look at one of the limbs of yoga and we talked about the eight limbs of yoga earlier right and one of the limbs was yama and within that we have a quality known as aparigraha which means non-attachment so you can simply do yoga or it also translates to non-greetiness as well but you can do yoga in very simple clothes like shorts and t-shirt or you know just simple leggings and t-shirt right and that can be fine and we don't necessarily need to get all these $80 pants or these are very expensive items but you can just do it in simple clothes if you think about the yogis back in the day they were just wearing loin cloths right so very simple clothing can be fine and it takes away from when you're trying to have this excess consumer culture in yoga that takes away from one of the basic tenants of yoga right so basically just to sum my whole talk up is that the whole power yoga classes and systems and methodology is wrong because it's very watered down it only provides some yoga which is basically the equivalent of getting Starbucks coffee and it also has a lot of incorrect teachings so even when they try to present the right teachings they're incorrect and they are exercise focused when you try to look at those classes that were heated and they have a go go go mentality but this is very ironic because if you look at the classes they don't actually burn the calories that you think you're gonna burn unless you're doing maybe yoga with the weights but that's a story for another day and you know the culture is not in line with promoting the inner peace or the inner observation that is needed in the spiritual practice so your practice doesn't actually mature or develop and you know what are some of the solutions for you your dear listener well some of the things you can do is find a yoga class or you can even practice at home where you're able to go a little bit slower and watch your breath so you're holding a pose and breathing three times for each pose or three to five times and really feeling into the pose so doing one pose and then breathe three to five times and then go to the next pose and be a do that again and then it's very steady so building that steadiness and ease within each pose and you can if you can't find a good studio around you you can always do it at home or nowadays there's YouTube videos so you can really find more of a hot the based class or just a slower class or it can really get in tune with the inner practices and you'll find that when you start to do that use your attention becomes more and more subtle and you go from the outside body which is what most classes of these classes are like to now experiencing the inner body which is kind of the goal of the next step of your spiritual progress progress and the next thing is to explore meditation because that's something that's not covered in most yoga classes today so you can either start read up on books on that or go to your local Zen center meditation center so in your if you live in a big city a lot of these places offer meditation sittings and they have a meditation hall where you can learn the proper techniques of meditation so each side is different so you can learn of a passana style if you'd like or you can learn a Zen style which is what I'm currently practicing and that's awesome that's something I like a lot and you can find your own unique style of meditation something that you can help you deepen your practice and then you can practice pranayama which is the breathing exercises under a qualified teacher and that will help you control the energy body and also control your mind because you'll find that your mind is linked with your breath and that's something that a lot of these parayoga teachers don't really understand and you'll find that they get knocked off their emotional center very easily so the breath is also very important because if you now you can quiet your mind through the pranayama practices then you can start to look more inwards and drop into pratyahara which is the next step of withdrawing your senses inwards and that's a very crucial step in your meditation or spiritual practice and then lastly I would advise you just to read up on more classical texts to really understand the true essence of what yoga was supposed to be and the main message of it so you know obviously a good place to start is the yoga sutras and that's by Patanjali and there are a lot of different translations out there today I would recommend the one by Swami Satchananda and he explains and has a little bit of commentary as well so you can understand what the each verse means and then you can also look up on Anapanasati by all the different translations but that will teach you on the guide to meditation taught by Buddha and you can obviously look at Buddhism as well but that's the story for a different time but there are different classical texts that you can look up either in yoga or Buddhism or one of the cases that can help you understand the ancient texts because there's actually a lot of overlap but the main goal is to explore your spiritual journey and remember that the asanas or the postures that you're learning in these types of classes is just one step to a deeper process so if you can learn to master the asanas and then learn parneyam which is controlling your mind then you can explore these meditative practices on going deeper and bringing the tension more and more inwards so definitely start to look into that and take a journey of self-discovery and just don't settle with just some you know power yoga class that appeals to the masses and is kind of like the Starbucks because sure Starbucks is great but once you've tried some really nice coffee there's no going back and that's the same with a lot of these yoga styles so the original styles of yoga and meditation styles so explore you to find your perfect cup thanks

Reviews

I love this. I made the connection between our surface level culture and how we’ve tried to make yoga surface level too, and it was never meant to be that. Thank you!

Excellent points. I have been attending classes at a studio almost every day and feel that it’s time for a change. The music during class bothers me and there seems to be an emphasis on making postures hard.

Thank you dear Ishar, this was so needed. I don’t even know what lead me to the power yoga but having found you here certainly helped me turn back to my original practice. This time though with more reverence for it. A big thank you. 🙏🏽

Thank you so much for these insights...! It helps me a lot in finding my purpose in Yoga and also explains a lot how I felt so lost in these Power Yoga classes / why they didn't stick for the long haul... Ever since I connected breathing more with the movement, it invites automatically to go more inward afterwards.. Its very refreshing to hear this perspective, especially in a world where things get claimed otherwise.

Very helpful, insightful and affirming. I was recently in a yoga class that was exactly what you described here. I intuitively knew this as clas progressed and the instructors presentation. You confirmed what I intuitively knew, so thank you!

Beautiful! Thank you🌸

This was so informative. I think you’ve just set me on the correct path, the one I’ve been seeking. Merci beaucoup 🙏🏻😌

Excellent!! I will share this with many!!