Enlighten Up!

[fajrdrako]

Beulah and I went to see a documentary movie about yoga this afternoon. It's called Enlighten Up!.

Through the first few minutes, the film-maker, Kate Churchill, briefly interviews a montage of American yoga teachers, asking what yoga is, or what it means to them. I was excited to see familiar faces (like Rodney Yee) - faces familiar from the pages of Yoga Journal and the DVDs.

Kate was setting out to prove the transformational nature of yoga, and wanted to do this by taking a student who was a newcomer to yoga, but prepared to dedicate himself to yoga for a while and to allow the documentary to be made. She chose Nick Rosen, a journalist, aged 29, living in New York. I wondered whether it was Nick's interest in yoga or his rather stunning cinematic good looks that made Kate choose him as her subject. There are a lot of close-ups of his expressive, attractive face throughout the movie.

Nick is an atheist, skeptical about the claims of yoga as a path to enlightenment. He was already a rock-climber and in good physical shape; but the scenes of him going to yoga classes and watching in bewilderment as his fellow-students lithely and smoothly achieve impossible positions are extremely funny - the "been there, done that" kind of funny.



One after one, Nick visits the American teachers, from the New Age to the Macho "T&A" yoga style taught by a former pro wrestler. Then he goes to India for the heavy-hitters like B.K.S. Iyengar, Sri K. Pattabhi, Dharma Mittra, and Dr. Katarya's "Laughter Yoga", becoming ever more bemused and confused by the different forms of practice and the different definitions of yoga held by the different practitioners. Is yoga God? Is yoga a health regimen? Is yoga transformational or illusory? And just what is the point, anyway?

The turning point of the movie is in Nick's interview with Sri K. Patthabhi, who tells him, in heavily accented English, that essentially yoga is what you make it, and each person finds his or her own yoga. Nick finds himself fiercely missing his parents and his home, and leaves India earlier than he expected. He goes back to the US, stops his yoga practice, and teacher rock climbing in Colorado. He asks himself: did yoga do anything but make him feel better? His answer: yes. But he doesn't tell the viewers exactly what.

The movie doesn't articulate my own definition of yoga. I would call it a pattern for living the best life you can. For some, this means physical work for the health. For others, it means finding spiritual meaning through religion - or otherwise. For others, it's a means to a goal, or a way of relaxing. And whatever one's motives and goals, yoga is probably not going to end up being only one thing, or to have only one result. And the answer to "what is yoga" is very like the answer to the question Sri K. Pattabhi asks Nick: "What is happiness?"

I took to yoga at eighteen because, after a childhood of illness and auto-immune disease, it was at a last an exercise system that I could actually do. And my health blossomed. Yoga has brought me through Epstein-Barr and candidiasis: if health issues are the big challenges in my life, then yoga has been the answer.

I thought this was a delightful movie, a positive and funny look at yoga that is respectful of the discipline without complicating or oversimplifying it. The viewer can make whatever conclusions seem appropriate - the movie is food for thought, posing questions rather than giving answers.

And it's fun.