The Comedy of Yoga by Edward Clark
The last 30 years has seen a remarkable number of innovations and "fusions" in the way yoga is practiced. One of the most curious developments of late has been yoga comedy. To a casual observer of trends in yoga, there might seem to be very little material for comedy - but not, perhaps, good humor - in yoga. It may be that the distinction between that which is humorous and that which is comedic can be drawn - not necessarily to everyone's satisfaction -- to point out why irony, hyperbole, satire and occasionally sarcasm have become threads in current yoga discourse.
Humor could be said to have a genial nature while comedy is often informed by criticism and sometimes cruelty.
Some factions of the yoga community are less than enchanted with both criticism and cruelty as aspects of yoga comedy. For them, the yoga ethos (vague though that may be) should be uncritically accepted and anything that smacks of cruelty is well beyond the pale. Why then, would people (some of whom are yoga insiders) wish to indulge in such allegedly comedic pursuits?
Well maybe yoga isn't funny (adherents to the Cosmic Joke hypothesis might disagree) but there seems to be a lot of scope for poking fun at its practitioners. As yoga entered its state of current popularity, the media, eager to get on the bandwagon, began to extol the virtues of the "latest thing" - ironic considering the long history of yoga. But, it wasn't long before the media then began to exercise its proclivity for jaded circumspection and there was a flurry of articles on the dangers and silliness of yoga - it was easy to poke fun at these pretzel bodies twisting themselves around in the name of spiritual and physical well being. Typically, the writers would be plain Janes who'd been given an assignment - well, they do have to churn out material regularly if they are going to eat and if everyone else is enthusing about a subject, what better way to distinguish yourself as a journalist than by taking the opposing view -- pointing out that everything is not all sweetness and light in the yoga world. These "uninitiated media types" found easy pickings for sarcasm and satire in a yoga community that often lacked intellectual rigour -- as well as opportunities to sneer with disapproval at the moral behavior of leading yoga figures outside the studio.
But, what about the comedy that is being generated from within the loosely based yoga community? For the last few years, yogis have found their inboxes to be full of forwarded bits of yoga related comedy. Allegedly funny youtube flicks come in and are forwarded or deleted depending on the sense of humor of the recipient. And many of these are created by "people in the know" - people who have been practicing yoga for some time and who know their way around a yoga class and have familiarity with the classic texts. What motivates them to indulge in jaded circumspection?
This, then, is the field of play - an increasingly suspicious media versus insiders who are a little bit outside by virtue of the jaundiced eye they turn on their own community. When Martin McDougall and I, Edward Clark first took on the self-appointed task of doing Yoga Comedy for a Yoga Journal Cruise, the field was bare. We were intrigued by the comic and spiritual dimensions of yoga practitioners and the material we devised was about a charlatan yoga guru who had allegedly rediscovered an ancient style of yoga written on coconut shards - Coco Yoga. The sketch featured a bad guru who occasionally proved a good teacher and his seemingly unquestioning acolyte. From there we developed a 3 part Meditation CD which we used as a palate cleanser in the performances of Tripsichore's somewhat highbrow choreography. Not satisfied yet, we spent 3 years knuckled down in front of a computer and microphone creating a double album comedy CD called "Kill The Guru". In the time that it took to develop this material, yoga comedy had taken off big time.
The Yoga Comedy Night that we are performing for Yoga Journal at the upcoming Grand Geneva Conference and then again in Estes Park, features not only ourselves, but also a selection of some of the funniest and most cutting edge material out there - culled from hours of searching the internet. And, it's not only cutting edge; some of it is also quite cutting. But, this is material done by people who know their way around a yoga studio. Do they walk their talk? Are their insights pertinent? Do they have something to say about the way yoga is and should be practiced? Well, needless to say, you'll have to see it to know the answers to these and other pressing questions.
