A few days ago, a helpful person (not me!) posted a new-under-construction website URL on my favorite bulletin board for tracking bad yoga teachers-- [
www.yogascam.com]
Immediately, someone counterposted, attacking this person, suggesting he or she needed to 'get a life.'
Well that original poster was right on. You want to check any yoga teacher or guru right at the beginning, before you become psychologically involved. Here is why:
Some harmful yoga teachers or cults practice 'bait and switch'. Ethical yoga teacher never do this, but Bait & Switch is common enough that we must be aware of it and fact checking the bonafides of teachers.
People spend more time researching what brand laptop to buy then they do checking the claims/backgrounds of spiritual teachers they select to influence their minds. Its easier to recover from a computer virus than from mind-mugging administered by an unqualifed spiritual teacher or yoga guru
Bait and Switch goes like this:
Begin by offering yoga as a health enhancing practice, and down play both the history of the instructor's guru and the religious/doctrinal roots of the practice.
Only after you've experienced physical benefits, bonded with/become fond of the teacher are you gradually indoctrinated into a religious agenda. By that time you're so fond of the instructor, you're in a mindset where [i:d724e3aae0]fact checking feels like an act of betrayal[/i:d724e3aae0].
And by this time you've often become bonded with your yoga class or practice group, and have unconsciously linked your spiritual aspirations to the charisma and claims of the instructor and his/her teacher--and often have made friends among your classmates.
When you're in this mindset, you dont WANT to ask questions because that means disrupting a state of mind that feels good, a state of mind you want to cling to and calling cherished relationships into question.
But its at this point that you're most in need of asking questions, because harmful teachers foster this state of mind in order to exploit you. Which is why its so very important to fact check any yoga teacher, spiritual teacher or human potential group BEFORE you've been led to form this kind of trusting bond with them.
As a friend put it, 'Its not spiritual to set yourself up to be burned because you refuse to ask questions at the start of something.'
Certain teachers can manipulate subtle energies and generate feelings of bliss. But this can become addictive. And the ability to manipulate subtle energy is a neutral skill--exploitative people have known how to do this.
[b:d724e3aae0]You must investigate your yoga teacher's teacher/s before you become so fond of the instructor that you become reluctant to fact check.[/b:d724e3aae0]
And just because you get an initial surge of well being does not necessarily mean that a yoga system is being properly taught or that it has a clean and honorable history. Its common to feel better when you first become active in a new way.
Good resources:
[
www.culteducation.com]
[
www.trancenet.org] (Transcendental Meditation)
Google
(check both Google itself and then do an advanced search of the Google listserves)