Editor’s Note: A few weeks ago we published what turned out to be a controversial article, questioning the ethics of sexual relationships between yoga students and yoga teachers and presenting an alternative, yet respectful and well-argumented view on the subject. The feedback we received from many people in the yoga community, was to say the least, surprisingly angry, under often hateful, degrading and insulting comments, emails as well as other disrespectful and accusatory open responses published online that clearly misunderstood, in our opinion, the point being made by the author. As a response to the heated discussion, misunderstandings and bigger questions the initial article generated, Cameron Shayne will resume the topic in a three part dialogue, the first of which you can find below.

*****

Sex & the Ethical Yogi: A 3 Part Dialogue.

In this series we will break down the pro-choice argument into three parts.

Part I: Sex & The Guru.

This discussion will serve as an important exercise for yoga instructors and students alike. Prepare yourself to suspend your beliefs, perceptions, and values in order to receive new information. Be willing to learn something outside of your own experience in order to develop compassion and understanding.

We must stop identifying with stories, and beliefs that paralyze possibility and promote judgment. Every person’s truth is absolutely true for them, until it’s not. What you believe now will continue to evolve as you gather more experience to contrast with what you now know.

As you read further, try on both sides of truth so that you can see beyond black and white, good and bad, evil and sanctification. Learn to be a student by listening, rather than hearing what supports your pre-existing limited beliefs.

First, suggesting that a consenting adult teacher/student relationship is social, ethical or even criminal misconduct, is the projection of sexual shame, pain and blame.

Second, this is a conversation about consenting adults’ personal liberties, not rape or sexual exploitation. Any person who seeks to collapse this conversation into “the right to f**k vulnerable students,” cannot be taken seriously. It is the weakest form of debate to demonize the counter culture perspective, rather than addressing the issue.

Below I will present a number of points in support of the pro-choice position.

Pro-choice does not equal pro-exploitation.

Pro-choice does not imply the abuse or mistreatment of another person. It implies the right to exercise personal liberties on the part of consenting adults.

I do not support or promote exploitation of women or men, as students or teachers. I do not support the use of a yoga classroom as a space to seek out sexual partners. It is not, and should not be. Engaging a person sexually, in a deceiving way, is contradictory to all ethics I uphold. Using authority or power for personal gain is in stark contrast to transparency, honesty and consideration of others.

I also believe it is absolutely safe and ethical for consenting adults in modern yoga environments to date. Why? Because these same consenting adults can die in war, procreate, and vote. The suggestion that they are competent only until they enter a classroom, stretch their bodies, and consider that they may be more than a physical manifestation, is contradictory to high standards of reason.

I do not condone any person, teacher or student, to use my experience as justification for their actions. I emphatically support the freedom to exercise personal judgment and ethics, as long as they include the careful consideration of others. I also strongly support any teacher who has a policy that restricts them from dating an adult student.

Adult students can and do assign meanings to experiences they are having with adult teachers in any field of study, i.e., linking their improved state of mind to the teacher. This projection or transference of feeling onto a person due to circumstances, means that caution and care must be taken by both parties, to be clear. And least we not overlook the indisputable point that projection of feelings onto people who inspire us, occurs under numerous uncontrollable conditions.

That was then, this is now.

Yoga has evolved. The Yoga classroom environment has evolved to include different styles, props, and especially women, as they were once forbidden to participate. The relationship between teacher and student has evolved from “guru,” to “certified instructor.”

Traditional Indian cultural values, which promote cast systems, restrictive gender roles, religious ideologies, and guru worship, do not work in the west. Making policy for modern western yoga using transitional Indian yoga values, simply does not translate.

I strongly believe that orthodox yoga practitioners, who strictly adhere to ancient rituals, should be respected, as they should respect those who choose an unorthodox approach to yoga. There is space for everyone’s views and practices without judgment.

There is a time and a place for everything.

The yoga sutras, considered the Bible of Yoga, contain important and relevant guidelines that transcend time and culture. One specific guideline is restraint from sense driven living. It clearly serves the common good when people are not urge driven consumers, yet we are all driven by the urge to be safe, loved and accepted.

The problem stems from one yoga practitioner judging another’s urges as right or wrong. This only underscores the hypocrisy of a community that strives to instill non-judgment as a core value. Drinking a glass of wine, eating good food, being socially accepted, and making love all stem from urges. There is clearly a time and place for all urges.

I personally see the classroom as the wrong place to act on sexual urges. I do however believe that consenting adults, in western yoga classrooms, have the right to conduct their private lives, including intimate relationships, outside of the classroom without interference and judgment.

Adults need to learn to be competent students by discontinuing blind devotion of teachers, projection of accountability, and seeking outside of themselves for ethical and moral guidance.

Why we are all attracted to teachers.

People are attracted to skill, talent, and charisma inside or outside of a yoga class. If the teacher or student possess these qualities they are naturally going to be attractive. A musician, dancer, lecturer, or an artist performing can inspire the same feelings that a dynamic teacher can. All are provoking emotion and feeling. I am personally attracted to anyone who is skilled at their craft.

However, attraction doesn’t cause me to lose sight and application of my personal ethics and values. These are however, my ethics and values, and should not be adopted by anyone. As independent agents operating without force or pressure due to career or financial consequences, an adult teacher and adult student are fully capable and accountable individuals.

I believe that if a female yoga teacher were attracted to a male student, there would be a much less biased proposal, as there would be an assumption that the male would have enough sexual agency to resist his teacher’s advances. Also, suggesting that a female student cannot engage a male teacher with as much competency as a man, discredits the intellectual and emotional power of all women.

You can’t date your guru.

When you deconstruct the differences between the “yoga guru,” and the “certified yoga instructor,” you find stark contrasts that many people are simply collapsing into one archetype.

The guru model clearly demonstrates several problematic power differentials. In order to have a yoga guru, a student must seek a religious teacher, surrender to his or her authority, and be initiated into a specific discipline. Sex or an intimate relationship between these two suggests a complex dynamic to say the least. I believe it would be extremely difficult for the student to see the guru as an equal in or out of the yoga classroom.

The western yoga teacher, in contrast, is holding a casual space for people to come and go, with no commitment, or agreed religious or spiritual discipleship. Yoga certainly implies general spirituality, but this does not suggest people are in danger because they can date in this environment.

Gurus or teachers dating students carries a high risk of conflict of interests. However, whether you or I agree to its merits, there is no controlling consenting adults intimately engaging one another. In fact, partners meeting in yoga class is quite common.

I also recognize that some men see women as sexual objects and not as people. Some men behave in a manner that travels the scale from disrespectful to criminal. That however, cannot be controlled by policing a yoga class, but rather by teaching yoga practitioners to establish their personal ethics and values.

When students stop seeking a spiritual leader to follow blindly, and teachers stop encouraging discipleship, things will inevitably change.

Stop the guru complex.

Teachers need to stop encouraging co-dependent followers by providing them with answers, and start cultivating independent thinkers and competent yoga practitioners.

Western yoga teachers must stop trying to play the role of guru, enlightened being, or one who possess a commodity on truth. We don’t. We are as limited, challenged and deep in it as our “students.” In most cases we are the ones with the greatest pain, seeking hardest for the answers.

Students need to stop believing that teachers possess something they do not. A true teacher is always guiding you back to your own universal wisdom and truth, which we are all endowed with. We have nothing special to offer, other than being able to ask questions that further and ultimately direct you back to yourself.

You can call it the “Kumaré” effect.

*****

Comments