Enlighten Up! The Truth About Yoga
Director Kate Churchill 's Documentary Looks at Fact and Fiction
Yoga has acquired a special lustre in North America where it is considered a high-end, transformative, an almost magical pursuit. Books, DVDs, classes, workshops, clothes and entire prescribed lifestyles seem as integral to yoga as the stretching. It’s a multi-billion dollar industry.
So does yoga have the power to transform? In India where yoga began – either 40,000 or 100 years ago, depending on who’s talking - it’s changing. Some yogis are dispensing with traditional practices altogether for new paths to transformation. But in the west, practioners who seem somehow more ‘evolved’ are launching aggressive marketing campaigns that fly in the face of yoga’s origins.
So what does it all mean?
Filmmaker Kate Churchill, a daily yoga practitioner, went to the ends of the earth to find out. She and skeptic Nick Rosen embarked on a two year journey of exploration, from Woodstock, New York to Mysore, India to Hawaii and points in their quest for transformation through yoga. Enlighten Up! lays their findings on the line.
AB - What do you think of the western yoga culture?
KC - It’s a good thing if it works for people. When I started the film I was disillusioned with it. Emphasising it upfront, I really felt so much about the message of yoga is about letting go. It’s ironic that to achieve that role you have to purchase to gain these things. I felt in an odd place. I believe but the message was conflicted.
AB – Because it can be elitist and expensive?
KC - There is also a lot of dogma so people get really serious about yoga and all high mighty and again it’s really funny because certain teachers have committed their lives to practicing are light and sweet and funny. They don’t take anything seriously. There is a twinkle in their eye. Yoga is all about releasing, how can you impose a dogma?
AB - Your task was to find if yoga could transform Nick, but as you admitted in the film, you got sick of it. Why?
KC - The tension between Nick and me was growing through the film, and a lot of that was fuelled by my expectations and the reality. I just got so sick of the effort of trying to have Nick say or do something profound. All these theories. I was so frustrated. It was a classic director’s meltdown. It was right around then that things started to turn around, where we let go of the tensions and agendas and fears and expectations. That’s when things started to get totally different when we went to northern India. We met these teachers and everything we’ve known about yoga didn’t exist.
AB – What happened?
KC - We thought we’d go to India and everywhere we were we'd see the yoga we know from home, the one familiar to us was much more popular at home than with us. A big Bombay trend was to open a power yoga studio because Madonna did yoga. The physical practice was coming back with this interest to a certain population that did it because it was fashionable in the west.
AB – Do you have any advice for “seekers”? People like you and Nick who want to explore yoga? How do you separate what’s good for you and what potentially isn’t?
KC - I can’t tell you what yoga to practice. Try all different styles and most importantly that’s convenient that works for you in a practical way. In our western world I do think schedule and location are just as important as what you’re doing because it means you'll go. Practice may never happen otherwise. It has to make sense, a person has to try to sort out what they want to pursue. If I go to a yoga class and the teacher says this is the pure yoga, I am out of there. It might not be good for me or it’s dogmatic and rigid. And what about my knees?
Enlighten Up
|
More in Film & TV
Latest Articles