Teaching Yoga Nidra and especially running teacher trainings I feel it’s important to talk about the abuses in the yoga world in general and Yoga Nidra in particular. I have tried to write something about this several times but never felt I fully understood my own place in all this and nothing I wrote could really communicate what I felt.
After having been part of the yoga world in a big way - I’d say yoga to a large extent has been my life - it was with horror and huge sadness in the past few years that I witnessed the disclosure of abuse after abuse.
I have had to come to terms with the fact that I was abused myself.
I have had to deal with the pain of that being denied by a large section of my community and people I considered to be my yoga family.
One of the big issues I (and I know many others) been wrestling with is: can I continue to practice and teach these practices when they come from an abuser. It’s a serious and knotty problem and one I’ve given a lot of serious thought and contemplation.
What I have come to at present is this:
No one owns yoga, no one owns any practice individually. Nothing exists in isolation - the knowledge and teachings have come from many lineages and many sources. Yoga Nidra comes from yogic traditions but also influences such as Buddhism and from Western philosophy as far back as the ancient Greeks and as recently as modern psychology. This rich background is one of the things that makes yoga so deep and rich and so healing. Yoga Nidra does not just come "from an abuser" but is positioned very firmly in a confluence of influences from many sources.
It would be a huge shame if as well as experiencing the pain of abuse of ourselves and our community that we lost the practices that are so healing and rich and powerful.
The yoga world is going through a paradigm shift away from the guru model of “I am the teacher and you will do what I say and I will give you the knowledge if I deem you are worthy” to a cooperation between the teacher and student. The yoga “teacher” is now a facilitator who supports and guides a student to find their own inner knowledge and wisdom - from the “sage on the stage to the guide by your side”.
So after thinking long and hard: should I stop teaching Yoga Nidra? Should I change its name to distance myself from the abuse? I have decided to carry on teaching - to keep what’s good and healing and nurturing.
I absolutely condemn abuse of all kinds and completely stand with those who have been abused.
I will continue to talk about these abuses on my courses - to share what’s happened - to try to make sure we don’t accept cult dynamics and accept being touched and treated in ways that are wrong. I encourage open debate and learning from past mistakes to make sure this never happens again.
Here is a very full clear write up on Yoga Nidra and abuse from Uma Dinasmore-Tuli. She states Yoga Nidra wasn’t “invented” by the Bihar School but a book written by Dennis Boyes in French pre-dates Satyananda’s book.