A recent study has shown that if American yoga teachers read one more click-bait article about yoga they will go fucking batshit crazy.
The study was conducted by Jane Tuckernot, a professor of behavioral psychology at George Washington University and author of zero articles, blogs or books because, Tuckernot insists, another piece on yoga would just be inhumane, particularly for teacher training graduates and even herself (given the comments she would invariably have to wade through). Over an eight week period, Tuckernot interviewed one hundred and nine yoga teachers about their reaction to articles that begin with a benign and cutesy expressed desire to help, followed or preceded by a compelling anecdote about a yogi’s discovery that he could get injured/healed/seriously fucked up/magically transformed into a unicorn by using his physical body on a yoga mat, segue into a list of “5 proven facts” or “ten alignment cues” concerning five or ten beneficial or negative things about yoga, peppered with quotes from doctors, physical therapists and Reiki masters emboldened with “wink wink” you-know-I-know-everything-and-I’m-just-trying-to enlighten-you-fools asides, and end with another cheery to dismal anecdote about the yogi, neatly tied into a confounding inconclusive conclusion formulated with at least three of the following eight terms: joy, compassion, love, birds, trees, vibration, Omega Institute, and sukha.
“I wasn’t looking to prove there was too much of this content,” Tuckernot said – “that’s obvious. Duh.” She continued, “I’m a psychologist, not a statistician. Only one piece of this interested me – the fucking batshit crazy part.”
Her study was focused on yoga teachers in American “yoga hub” cities, such as San Francisco, Washington D.C. and New York, but her findings were echoed by yoga teachers across the country and beyond — from bumblefuck towns to the beaches of Tulum and Costa Rica, and, disturbingly, implicated not just yoga teachers but students– including those just in it for the “ass.” (In addition to the 109 teachers, Tuckernot widened her focus to include 109 yoga pracitioners.)
Alicia Morris, a thirty-seven year old math teacher, mother of two and recent teacher training graduate recounted the day she read a blog entitled “everything you’ve learned about chaturanga in your teacher training is wrong”—that accurately described everything she’d just ingested in her ≥200hr Yoga Rainbow Alliance credited TT. “I’d just taught my first real class, telling everyone that their elbows should be at a precise 90-degree angle, so I almost lost it reading the very opposite.” Ms. Morris marched up to the leader of her teacher training, studio owner Kaley Olson, and asked: “so which is right? What is the precise mathematical angle you are forming with your arms, and if it is a right angle, can you calculate the sine of the hypotenuse?” Ms. Olson, after admitting that she doesn’t do chaturanga much because she is too busy leading teacher trainings teaching other people how to teach it, closed her eyes and recited a Rumi quote:
“Beyond our ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.”
“Ok,” Morris said, growing agitated. “When? Should I do chaturangas with my elbows at a 90-degree angle when I get there?” And where exactly is this field?”
Ms. Olson responded with an address that turned out to be the site for an “Essential Oils” party she was hosting. There she finally offered a “solution” – specifically, “SERENZEN” — a custom blend of lavender and vanilla oils designed to help Morris find, conveniently, both serenity and zen.
Morris believes this was when she officially lost it; indeed she has no idea how much time passed before she realized she was buck naked in child’s pose in the kiddie pool. When she finally came to in GWU’s psych ward, her husband, Clive, presented her with Ms. Tuckernot’s findings. “I was so relieved,” Ms. Morris recalled. “I turned to my husband and said, ‘oh, I was just going fucking batshit crazy.’”
Jayden “Hari Om” Thomas, a twenty-eight year old EFG-YRRT-RCYT-√5,267° yoga teacher and IT consultant detailed his journey with tucking and not tucking. Mr. Thomas grew so confused reading conflicting research about the tucktroversy that he took to performing Michael Jackson’s pelvis thrusting moves — with the help of his Nintendo Wii — just to ensure that his pelvis enjoyed an equal amount of time in both positions. As for teaching, Mr. Thomas temporarily solved his problems by avoiding teaching anything at all in his classes. “I’d lay on my back and roll around, avoid eye contact, and offer only the most basic physical directions like ‘left’ or ‘breathe.’ Funny, it was my most popular class– even though I had no idea what happened in there.”
Problems came to a head when Mr. Thomas delved into his Facebook account upon the recommendation of his Abundant Empowering Sacred Universe Passion to Cash-in™ Coach. In one sitting, he recalls, “I read an article detailing the nefarious demons unleashed by headstand, including degenerative arthritis and retinal tears and thus the need to avoid operating heavy machinery within 48 hours after performing headstand and to always carry a wooden stake. The next minute, “I’m perusing a blog a student posted to my wall touting the “10 miraculous health effects” of the same posture.
Thomas called a “headstand” meeting of his yogi friends, where things went from weird to fucking cookoo. “The ashtangi muttered something about bandhas and floated away. The Bikramite told me ‘pulling is the object of stretching.’ The ex-anusari insisted I melt my heart at precisely -218.4oC. The Instagram star showed me her selfie in a bikini in a handstand in the snow in the middle of a four-lane highway during an earthquake with the caption #listentoyourbody. My Iyengar buddy got into headstand and stayed there the entire meeting. The yoga blogger added that I should not just listen to my body but interview it, transcribe it, turn both into a blog, and then a series of podcasts, finally culminating in a 2015 Instagram challenge complete with custom-made burnout t-shirts:’#let’sgetheadstandsexyin2015.’ The vinyasa teacher advised, ‘Be a unicorn.'”
“Ok,” I said — “what comes first? The podcast or the unicorn?”
Thomas has no memory of what happened next. When he woke, he was with Ms. Morris in Tuckernot’s rehab program, along with Ms. Bree Steinroy, a thirty-five year old interior designer and former yoga studio student.
Ms. Steinroy just wanted to learn. But then she read about how Wild Thing pose would inject magic into her life . . . followed by how it would fuck her up (five ways for each, precisely). She read conflicting reports about the 10 Rules of Alignment she needed to know to avoid a lifetime of misery and pain (never the same ten, of course), followed by an article about how it wasn’t worth worrying about alignment at all. She read tweets about how she could get injured doing a headstand and also how yoga could reduce inflammation in cancer patients.
She started going batshit crazy. Having already gone fucking ape shit after a foray into parenting blogs
the year before, Ms. Steinroy knew the signs. She hightailed it to Dr. Tuckernot’s program.
Dr. Tuckernot’s rehabilitation takes place far from any yoga arena –that is, an area without wifi. Over the course of 28 days, Morris, Thomas and Steinroy cancelled their Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts, unsubscribed from all magazine subscriptions, whether print or online, and adhered to a rigorous diet of Dunkin Donuts munchkins, tap water with ice, coffee with processed, artificially flavored creamer and Hart of Dixie episodes. Reference to vegan nut milks, mathematical angles, geometry of any kind, thoracic spines, fantastical imagery (crows, unicorns, lions, etc), as well as kombucha, koshas, kleshas, kapha and karma was strictly forbidden.
Upon completion each walked away with a “Sensory Deprivator 5000” (invented by the fictional character Ted Mosby in the beloved series “How I Met Your Mother”) which functions to cancel out most sound and vision save for the smallest slice of what is in front of you. Back in the wild, most obtained Tuckernot’s patented pre-printed laminated cards, as well as the JPEG version, to hand out whenever they ventured outside or online: The cards read: “Please do not talk to me about yoga, alignment or breathing — or any lists detailing “5 Reasons Why” or “Ten Benefits/Drawbacks of” something concerning yoga or alignment or breathing. Please ignore my Sensory Deprivator 5000.”
“Most people just smile and back away, or click ‘like’ and back off,” said Thomas. “But occasionally, someone wants to talk about deflated footballs or climate change, which is a real treat.”
I am indebted to the smart and witty Ms. Sarah Miller and her piece “New Parenting Study Released” (from the New Yorker Magazine March 24, 2014) for this blog. Ms. Miller did the work; I just transcribed it into the yoga scene. In that article, Ms. Miller details the phenomena of parents going fucking ape shit after reading parenting articles. An incredibly enlightening and inspiring read.