Yogini: The Power of Women in Yoga

FOR MY DAUGHTER

Sacha Grace

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword by Linda Sparrowe

Introduction

A History of Women in Yoga

YOGINIS: ONE OCEAN, MANY RIVERS

NISCHALA JOY DEVI

DONNA FARHI

ANGELA FARMER

LILIAS FOLAN

SHARON GANNON

SALLY KEMPTON

GURMUKH KAUR KHALSA

JUDITH HANSON LASATER

SWAMINI MAYATITANANDA

SONIA NELSON

SARAH POWERS

SHIVA REA

PATRICIA SULLIVAN

RAMA JYOTI VERNON

LUMINARIES

INDRA DEVI

VANDA SCARAVELLI

SWAMI SIVANANDA RADHA

Acknowledgments

Bibliography

Endnotes

Colophon

Yogini with disciple, from West Bengal, India, 18th century.

FOREWORD

by Linda Sparrowe

A few thousand years ago yoga, a mere whisper of a concept, began to emerge as a powerful vehicle for enlightenment. For men, that is. Sitting at the feet of their guru, these guys learned (and religiously practiced) what it took to prepare their bodies and minds for the rigors of meditation, which would ultimately liberate them from suffering.

Women on the other hand: not invited. And so it continued until 1937 when Indra Devi (fondly known as Mataji) convinced Krishnamacharya, one of the greatest yogis of modern times, to become her teacher. He, in turn, sent her out into the world to teach.

Despite Mataji’s enormous popularity and her success bringing yoga to the masses, the masculine emphasis on physicality and rigorous discipline prevailed. We women flocked to male gurus and yoga teachers, unfolding our mats to learn the canon of asanas previously withheld. Before long we could execute difficult poses just as easily as a man could, and found a sense of power, equanimity, and discipline we had been searching for. But somewhere along the way, we lost the true spirit of yoga and a little of ourselves. Strengthening the body for sitting somehow became equated with learning harder and harder arm balances and inversions; discipline often took a nasty turn, as teachers controlled what students could and couldn’t do in class and outside, too.

As more women began to teach, the face of yoga began to change, but that change didn’t happen overnight. How could it have? Everything we had learned came from men; the advice we got from the scriptures was decidedly male-oriented—there’s even a text that tells men what to do with their scrotums when practicing yoga but nothing that shows us what do to with our breasts! The language we used, the alignment cues we gave, the relationships we carved out with our students—that all came from our teachers. Every woman whose story Janice tells in this book owes a huge debt to at least one male teacher and freely honors his place in her life and in her teaching.

But luckily women have a way of bringing out the feminine aspects of anything we are passionate about, and yoga has proved to be no exception. At some point along her path, each of these women started to make the teachings her own. For some, the changes were subtle: softer language, different (gentler) metaphors, and new ways of explaining. It was the same practice, but with a different voice. For others, the need to break away proved irresistible, and they created their own unique brand of yoga.

No matter how these teachers redefined the path, today they appear united in their mission: to teach us what it means to be fully alive and truly at home with ourselves, and how to take the message of yoga out into the world. Yoga has always been about transformation and liberation.

Unfortunately, many women become fixated on the transforming part; that is, they think that by transforming their hips, thighs, breasts, or bellies, they’ll find happiness. I like to think that the feminization of yoga starts with the premise that we are all perfect just the way we are. The transformation comes not in those hips and bellies, but in our attitudes about them as we learn to let go of (and thus become liberated from) society’s dictates. We start on our yoga mats, but thanks to teachers like these, we take these concepts off the mat and into our everyday lives. We learn to see ourselves as we really are, without judgment, and embrace the power we have to enact change through kindness and compassion.

Yoga teaches us that out of small beginnings come great accomplishments, breath by breath, moment by moment. Think of a yoga class as a laboratory (or even a metaphor) for your life. It can teach you to recognize behaviors and patterns in your life, encouraging you to let go of what doesn’t work and embrace what does. Learning to stay in discomfort for ten breaths in a yoga pose may seem like a small beginning, but it can become a great accomplishment when you discover you can be in an uncomfortable situation in your life and not fall apart—for at least ten breaths. Indeed stepping onto your yoga mat is the first step in changing the world, because yoga has the power to change your relationship with yourself. It helps you to become friends with yourself, to make conscious and compassionate choices, and to pay attention to the outcome of those choices. This small beginning can indeed change the world, for if your yoga practice makes you a happier, calmer, and more present person, chances are the world you inhabit will be a happier, calmer place.

Over the years I’ve been blessed to call each of these women my teachers and many of them my friends. In their actions on and off the mat they have all reminded me of the true message of yoga written down in the Yoga Sutras centuries ago: act with discipline and compassion, reflect on those actions without judgment, and accept the outcome with loving curiosity. By thinking with my heart instead of my head, they say, I can bring the power of yoga to bear on the world’s challenges, big and small. In fact, it is my duty as a woman and as a yogini to offer up the fruits of my yoga practice to benefit all living beings. I can start on my mat, paying attention to my own breath, carving out a loving relationship with my own body, but ultimately I can’t be content just to practice yoga for myself; I must live it in everything I do. Yoga calls for a healthy dose of skillful action mixed with the right blend of open-mindedness, humor, and willingness. Put that all together and you have the means to discover the gifts you have to give. The next step is to move forward with clarity and compassion. Any of these women can help you do that. Read their stories. I guarantee they’ll inspire you to take that next step.

LINDA SPARROWE has written numerous articles on women’s health, herbs, and complementary medicine, as well as on yoga and Pilates. She is the former managing editor of Yoga Journal and is now a contributing editor. She is the author of several books, including Yoga Journal’s book, Yoga, featuring the beauty of yoga poses; and co-author, with Patricia Walden, of The Woman’s Book of Yoga and Health: A Lifelong Guide to Wellness.

The Hindu goddess and yogini Parvati is regarded as a representation of Shakti, the dynamic creative power inherent in reality.

INTRODUCTION

For thousands of years, the deep river of women’s wisdom has gone underground. It has been repressed, denied, and negated over centuries of patriarchy worldwide. In the United States today, the external chatter telling women how to look, what to buy, where to worship, what to do with our bodies is so loud that many of us no longer recognize who we truly are. Swept up in the current of a culture that values intellect over intuition, doing over being, repression over emotion, we lose contact with our own rhythms. We become too busy, we do too much. Losing this connection to our source, we dry up. How can we, as women, reconnect with our deep inner knowing? What is the path to revitalizing our spirit?

The teachings of yoga point the way home to reclaiming our female wisdom. Yoga is part of a spiritual practice which cultivates an awakening to our true Self. It is a vehicle for growth and development, whose ultimate goal is freedom from our limited perception of who we are and from the stories we allow to run and control our lives. The yoga postures we see today are only a small part of a vast tradition that includes overlapping—and sometimes conflicting—philosophies. But what they all have as their goal is moksha, liberation.

Yoga offers a path, a practice, and a way of life that honors the body, cultivates our vital life energy, and invites us to look closely at what binds us. The practice of yoga creates space for those outer voices to subside, so that we can tune in to what is true for us. Our lives don’t suddenly become a seamless fairy tale where everything fits perfectly into place, but we learn to navigate our way with clear vision and deep inner knowing. We take time to turn our attention inward. We remember who we truly are, why we’re here, and how to discover our personal path. As we slow down and return to our natural cycles, we can once again feel the rhythm of the universe and our place in it. That deep river comes back to life, winding, curving, ebbing and flowing, raging and subsiding.

The ancient spiritual traditions, including yoga, have come to us primarily through the words of men. Many women have been conditioned to accept this as the norm and perhaps unconsciously seek out masculine figures of authority or project our own inner knowing onto some outer image of the masculine Divine, God, or guru. Although the teachings themselves are universal and genderless, they have always been presented through a masculine filter. Most of the yoga texts were written, translated, and rewritten by men. As a result, the female perspective in yoga, as in most spiritual traditions, has been significantly underrepresented.

This book offers an opportunity to experience yoga through a new lens. You will get a glimpse of the original yoginis and luminaries who paved the way. And you’ll meet inspiring women who are evolving the living practice of yoga to meet the needs of our culture and our time, like Rama Jyoti Vernon, whose global diplomacy offers a yogic model of how we can actualize our intentions in the outer world; Angela Farmer, who broke from tradition and form to develop her own unique approach to yoga; Nischala Devi, who spent eighteen years as a monk and pioneered programs integrating yoga with Western medicine; Sharon Gannon, whose in-your-face spirituality demands close examination of all our actions; Gurmukh Khalsa, who midwives women through their pregnancies with kundalini yoga; and Shiva Rea, a yogic river guide who reminds us, Don’t push the river, let it flow.

These yoginis have all come down from the mountain and integrated yoga into their daily lives. They are evolving the practice of yoga for women and men today and can serve as guides for our journey, encouraging us to look inside ourselves, to inquire within our own being, to find our own way. They are shaping and creating history in the spirit of the original yogis and yoginis. They balance their extensive study within the yoga tradition with their own experimentation. They stay close to their own hearts to find what is true for them. In the process, they empower other women to do the same and provide much-needed balance to the men who study and teach alongside them.

This book is the product of my own personal journey. My mother instilled feminist values in me: she made it clear that I could be anything and do anything, and that I didn’t need a man to get there. I later discovered, however, that the internal barriers were set long ago, handed down over many generations and constantly reinforced in our modern culture. As I freely pursued my dreams as an adult—going to college, traveling, and studying—I continually sought external validation. I judged my body based on the idealized images in the media, and I doubted my decisions. In a world where practically every figure of authority was a man, I often looked to them for that validation, whether it was a teacher, father, or partner. Everywhere I turned, I found myself falling into the same old trap. So I kept moving.

At one point, I had read that meditation was the most direct path to peace and freedom. In search of these, I attended a ten-day silent meditation retreat in Thailand in 1989. By the third day, my entire body ached from sitting on the ground for hours at a time and I was exhausted from watching the endless stream of thoughts parading across the screen of my mind. I couldn’t seem to find the off switch. That day, a woman offered a silent hatha yoga class, guiding us through gentle, flowing sun salutations. It was like a