by Nina

Shadow of the Teacher by Nicholas Roerich

”When a billionaire or a celebrity walks into a room,” says Millman, ”everyone looks at him. He’s a prince. He has the power to change your life, and everyone is very conscious of that. So they’re drawn to this person. What happens is that he gets so used to everyone looking at him that he stops looking back at them.” — Stephen Sherrill, “THE YEAR IN IDEAS: A TO Z.; Acquired Situational Narcissism,” New York Times

I’ve been writing about sexual abuse in various yoga lineages since the early days of the blog. So frankly the recent news about Rod Stryker’s sexual misconduct that I learned about in an article by Karina Mirsky The 2021 Rod Stryker Scandal: A Call for Restorative Justice didn’t surprise me. (By the way, although this article addresses an act of sexual misconduct by Stryker—see An Open Letter to the Yoga Community—Karina reports several more students have come forward revealing other forms of psycho-emotional abuse by him.)

During the same period of time, I heard about Tatum Fjerstad’s accusations of emotional and psychological abuse against Elena Brower (see Open Letter to Elena Brower). Although the type of abuse that Elena Brower is being accused of is different in significant ways from the sexual abuse I’ve written about the past, the abuse is still the result of a teacher who has been “elevated” to a such a special status that she expects (and can get away with expecting) her students to work for her for free and pressures them to sell products that will bring income to the teacher.

Rather than digging into these two stories—which at this point just feel terribly familiar—I thought I would propose one way we could help reduce this type of behavior from celebrity yoga teachers and gurus. You see, I believe when we give too much power to a single teacher (as if that teacher alone has all the answers to our problems and who alone can provide us with spiritual guidance we are craving), many of these teachers start to think of themselves as being different than the others around them and as a result may use and/or abuse their students.

Many years ago I read an article in the New York Times about acquired situational narcissism that I thought provided an excellent explanation of how and why this happens (see THE YEAR IN IDEAS: A TO Z.; Acquired Situational Narcissism). In this article, Robert B. Millman, professor of psychiatry at Cornell Medical School, said that this type of narcissism develops in adults only after they achieve celebrity status or otherwise achieve the lofty goals they have set for themselves. At this point, they feel special both because of their achievements and because the people around them treat them as if they are special.

“In the acquired situational narcissist, it is also fed by people who surround him. Even worse, the view of the world the acquired situational narcissist is getting is, when you think about it, quite reasonable. ”They are different,” says Millman. ”They’re not normal. And why would they feel normal when every person in the world who deals with them treats them as if they’re not?”

The article discusses how people with acquired situational narcissism can get help, but it doesn’t address what we, as yoga students, can do to prevent this situation from developing in our teachers and/or remove ourselves from being influenced by these types of people. But I think one thing Millman said is the quote above key: that narcissism is “fed by people who surround” the celebrity.

For a start, one way to stop feeding these people is to question the whole concept of dedicating ourselves to a single teacher and to expand our understanding of yoga by studying other lineages and by learning from our peers as well as our teachers. That way, we will not be giving so much power to a single teacher.

In her article Post-Lineage Yoga & Dandelions, scholar and yoga teacher Theodora Wildcroft introduced the term “post-lineage yoga” to describe that shift in our attitude toward having a single teacher guiding us:

“Post-lineage yoga describes a shift that many yoga teachers and practitioners go through—they might start out only learning from one teacher, and never questioning their authority. But at some point, many look beyond the lineage teachings to expand their understanding of how yoga works in practice. They might or might not maintain a strong respect for their original teachers, but they might read books from other lineages, or be fascinated by the latest neuroscience research, or share a practice with peers or go to workshops with other teachers.

“Post-lineage yoga is incompatible with any doctrinal view that claims that only one way of practicing can ever be valid and that methods should not be mixed between schools.”

Although it has been a journey, I myself have reached the point where I practice post-lineage yoga. I learn from my latest teacher but also from my colleagues and friends. And I also study yoga history and philosophy directly from the traditional yoga texts as well as from various scholars who interpret them.  And as I learn, I change my own practice to incorporate new practices I’ve been introduced to and concepts I’ve reached new levels of understanding about.

As a writer, I communicate these evolving ideas about yoga with a wide range of people, sometimes as a teacher but mostly as a person who just likes to share what’s helped her recently or what she’s currently thinking about. You can see more about my journey here. And for another and very different personal story of a journey to post-lineage yoga, see Jivana Heyman’s post Reflecting on My Teacher Swami Satchidananda.

So I encourage you to look into this alternate approach to studying yoga both for your own wellbeing and to see if we can prevent celebrity yoga teachers and gurus from obtaining too much power over others. By the way, rejecting the idea of a “guru” doesn’t mean we can’t still recognize and honor yoga’s roots in our practice and in our teaching. In addition to studying multiple lineages, we can study yoga history and philosophy on our own so we can learn where the ideas that have been passed on to us actually come from. And if you’ve been part of a lineage that includes an abusive teacher or even have had an abusive teacher, you can take some time to learn about the teachers of your teachers because after all, a single yoga teacher has never come up with all the things they teach on their own.

This following advice from Georg Feuerstein is something I always take to heart, and as we move toward a future where I hope post-lineage yoga will play a big part, I hope you will, too.

“In our struggle for self-understanding and psycho-spiritual growth, we can benefit immensely from a liberal exposure to India’s spiritual legacy. We need not, of course, become converts to any path, or accept yogic ideas and practices without questioning. C.G. Jung’s warning that we should not attempt to transplant Eastern teachings into the West rings true at a certain level; mere imitation definitely does more harm than good. The reason is that if we adopt ideas and lifestyles without truly assimilating them emotionally and intellectually, we run the risk of living inauthentic lives.”

 

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