Episode 9: Yoga as a Philosophy of Integrity with Anjali Rao transcript

Harpinder Mann
I am so excited to be here with Anjali and we're going to dive straight into the first question on: What does yoga mean to you?

Anjali Rao
Hello, thank you for having me for this podcast. I'm so excited to be here. What does yoga mean to me? Yoga is many things, depending upon which… where I am viewing it from, practicing it from, what I'm practicing. So the teachings, the practice is a space of solace, a container of solace, of anchoring into the present moment. It is a connection to the past, and it is hope for the future.

Harpinder Mann
I love that. I love the, in particular, what I find gets lost is that connection to the past. And I love that that's something that you brought in into this answer. Can you say a little bit more on what it means for you, that connection to the past?

Anjali Rao
Well, I think the teachings are, you know, obviously ancient. Most of the teachings are at least a few thousand years old. And they are to me reflections, contemplations, practices that were transformative, liberatory for the people from our land. And it is that connection… and they struggled with it… It's not like it was all revealed in like a flash. So they struggled with it. It was conflicting. It was paradoxical. It was complex, complicated. And to me, it feels like a connection to the struggles of the past, the triumphs, the challenges of the past, of our ancestors. So I think it's important for us to not forget and to remember all of it. And it is—that we are just a continuation of that as a human being, as a species, as people from, you know, from our ancestors. So that's why I really lean into history because I think history is not taught enough and not… not taught enough in a multi-narrative way. It is taught in a very unidirectional, unidimensional way with one narrative. So, yeah, that's why I bring history wherever I go. For me, it's a connection of the past.

Harpinder Mann
And I think that was one big reason that I felt so called to include your perspective and voice in the book and in this podcast is because of your understanding and respect for that history, for the history of this practice, the history of this path that I feel like so often gets missed, say in a lot of 200-hour teacher trainings. And I've come across students and practitioners that are like, “Wait, I didn't know yoga's spiritual? Yoga's from South Asia? Oh, I didn't know any of that.” I'm just like, “Oh my goodness, like you've been practicing and no one's ever taught you that.” And I, I just think that's incredibly ridiculous. Why do you think that that part of like, the history and philosophy gets missed? Why there's that gap?

Anjali Rao
Well, I think the modern everyday practitioner who is learning asana in a gym or just, you know, in a white-centered yoga space typically don't talk about history, don't talk about philosophy because they… because yoga and asana is now synonymous. It's been—whenever we see yoga, it's asana, basically what people talk about. So the bulk of the, and the, you know, the big container of yoga is so much more, you know that. And if you were to understand why it has been the way it is, why it has, you know, sort of changed to asana now, we have to really look at how it came here and what got sort of cherry-picked on, what got more attention was the more body-centric practices because of, again, many, many reasons. One big one being colonization, capitalism, and patriarchy, actually, you know, patriarchy because a certain body type was seen as beautiful or valuable or fit or healthy. And industrial, it was post-industrialization, post-World War, technology started developing more. So a lot of those reasons became, or rather became the shapers of asana being the most important practice of the whole wide gamut and spectrum of the teachings and the practice of yoga. So the answer is very long about how we got here, but we are here. And asana sells, you know, and it's a capitalistic world. We want quick fixes. We want quick answers. We want, you know, we want to make, everybody wants to make money. And how do we make it? We get the most number of people in, into a class. What sells is the physical body being more emphasized than the rest of it, which is under that. So I think that's one of the many, many, many reasons why we are here. 

Harpinder Mann
It is really shocking oftentimes when I speak with practitioners and students and I see what their level of understanding is. And, having empathy for that as well. I know you mentioned earlier, sometimes even the history that's offered is quite unilateral or just offers like one perspective. What would it look like in the perspective of yoga to offer a history that's much more dynamic and covers more of the layers?

Anjali Rao
Well, depends… are you asking like during a teacher training? Are you asking like for the general everyday practitioner? Who is the one who are we talking about here?

Harpinder Mann
I think for both.

Anjali Rao
I think first of all for the everyday practitioner who's not interested in becoming a teacher but just wants to practice yoga, I think one of the most important messages that we can offer is that are you really tapping into the whole potential of yoga? You know, because what you're getting is like a sip of a whole cup of masala chai, right? So is that enough? Does that really quench your thirst? Because what are you really addressing here? Are you addressing a physical pain? Which is very important too, you know, to reduce your physical suffering is a big part of the practice of yoga. But that's not the only thing. There's so much more that we can really learn and transform and reduce our own suffering or dukkha, which is the most basic sort of objective of the practice. So for the everyday practitioner, it would be just to ask those questions perhaps and to just share that, hey, there is so much more here and it will really help your relationships, it will help the way you move, it will help the way you see the world, it will help the way you see yourself, most importantly. So that's the thing. When it comes to a teacher, then the responsibility is far more. When it comes to a teacher who's learning to be a teacher, then I think that I would expect a far more deeper understanding of the histories that got them where they are in the practice and the teachings. And it's a complicated sort of a thing because who are you learning from? What are the sources, what is the makeup of the faculty, you know? How much have they studied, the faculty themselves? How are they in relationship with yoga and the practice and the teachings? What is the relationship there? And it's not just, you know, “learn from South Asian teachers is the only thing.” That is not the thing. That is one of the things. That's not the thing though. Also learn from people who have studied it with full depth and dedication because that's going to shape your understanding of it. And yeah, so I would say there are two things, you know, for an everyday practitioner, just offering them that perspective that there is so much more. And for the teacher, then there's a responsibility for them to learn from various sources. And again, like we talked about, it is a one-dimensional history that we often get. So who is the one who is teaching you that history or where is that book and the source of that history? Learn from different perspectives, learn from different scholars, learn from different lived experiences more than anything else. Because we are a part of that living history. We are taking that forward in our DNA, in our own samskara, in our own conditioning. So making sure we are taking that in as students training to be teachers. And always, always first and foremost, we are students. Then comes everything else.

Harpinder Mann
I think that's always such an important reflection piece is that we're always students first. And even for myself now, practicing being on this path for over 10 years, I find myself every single day just being like, “Wow, there's so much I don't know.” There's so much I don't know about this path in this practice. But also there's so much I don't know about myself. And I don't really know about the nature of my own being and the nature of my mind. And this practice slowly starts to help, like a rough diamond, like kind of slowly helps shine it and I'm able to see a little bit more clearly. And I found for myself the way that helps me to see more clearly is understanding yoga philosophy, is understanding the history. I think asana is important. I think asana is important, like you were saying for improving our connection to our physical body, this home that we're in, but that's just a small piece of it. And there's so much more when we connect to that yogic philosophy. I know you teach yogic philosophy. I had a chance to look at your website, the different workshops that you have. Say you were focused on that 200-hour teacher training. What philosophy do you think they need to understand and learn that maybe is not being taught right now?

Anjali Rao
Well, I'm teaching that right now. So… and I got a chance to actually shape the entire yoga philosophy portion of a 200 hours. I was very excited about that. It was like a container that I could shape. I think we have to go back to the very, very, very beginning. I connect history and philosophy together because without knowing history, then you really don't get the context of the philosophy. What I would share in a 200 hour is the foundation of what yoga is, what are the different definitions, what are the different traditions, what are the different, you know, systems where… what influenced yoga, the social, the political, the economic, gender, and then later race, religion, of course. So all these factors impacted yoga and yoga impacted all these factors.

So I would share a lot of that, like for example, the one which I'm doing right now in the 200-hour. We are now like in the second month, I think, and only now I'm beginning to get into the first part of philosophy, because the first whole more than 10 hours was history. More than 10 hours was just history, just like the basis of everything. And what, you know, the most, the modern, Western look at yoga philosophy, and it is important, and I know why it is that so, is Yoga Sutras, Patanjali's Yoga Sutras. But that's not the only text. There's so many others, but I would say it's a good one because it is a framework. It offers a framework of ethics. It offers a framework for moving in an engaged sort of way in the world. So I would say I still haven't started teaching yoga sutras in this 200-hour. I'm still talking about a little bit of the Vedas. I'm talking about what were the themes that were recurring in the Vedas and the Upanishads because that forms a lot of the teachings of yoga later. And so I would say the Sankhya philosophy because that forms Yoga Sutras, it influences Yoga Sutras. And then I would talk about the Bhagavad Gita and always bringing in, you know, interwoven with that is, again, the society, the culture that created these teachings, that was a container of the teachings in which there were so many, you know, differences of caste and gender and religion and all of that. So the way I look at it is interwoven. The way I teach is like… I basically… I don't, first of all, say I “teach,” I “share the teachings.” So I try to bring in the different threads of different texts and/or different parts of history and then share that through storytelling, through some poetry. But yeah, really placing the teachings in context and placing the teachings in context to who we are also. Like you and me as Desi teachers, as Desi practitioners, we have a certain way, perspective, our culture, our diverse, very diverse cultures. You're from the North, I’m from the South. So, you know, just that. And as well as for a white person, it's a different positionality for a Brown person, for a Black person, you know. So I think it's always great to be mindful of who we are as students and then connect to the teachings that way.

Harpinder Mann
I just so appreciate in your share of how you’re leading the philosophy portion of the 200-hour training where the first 10 hours was just spent on history. Where you haven't even gotten into the Yoga Sutras, that you haven't gotten into the Bhagavad Gita. I was looking into the requirements for like Yoga Alliance, Yoga Australia, I did my first training in Australia for the yoga therapy certification and Yoga Alliance in particular, out of the 200 hours, only 15 hours are required to be philosophy, history and ethics. And when you said you spent that first 10 hours just on history alone, I was like, okay, like, Anjali is already covering more than the bare minimum, than Yoga Alliance is requiring. And I think that's incredibly important that you're doing that and it's needed.

Anjali Rao
It is needed because you know what's happening politically right now is that history is being erased. History is being erased everywhere. History is being erased in the United States of America. It's being erased in India. It's being erased in Tibet, you know. So I think that's crucial because otherwise we are losing so many narratives and we are just only emphasizing the dominant cultural narrative in every country. So what does this mean for our future generations that they will never hear all of this, the wisdom, the struggles, what got us to the point where we are? So I look at yoga history, because yoga history is history. It's not just yoga history, it's history that I'm sharing, right? I'm sharing history of religious fundamentalism, I'm sharing history of caste, I'm sharing a history of how gender got to be where it is and how all this shaped yoga, because it is shaping yoga, you know. Really, we need to look at how yoga and society, yoga and culture are very much an integral part of each other. It is not existing in isolation or in a vacuum.

Harpinder Mann
I think that's also so important because something I was reflecting on in writing the chapter on colonialism and writing about dominant culture is… I was struggling for a while. And the reason I realized I was struggling is we live in these systems and structures that are as a result of colonialism. So to even kind of step back and to observe it, I'm like, “I'm in it.” And I think that's the danger also of when we start to erase history and history in relation to yoga, where then future generations have no idea that there's another path in which they can be on outside of what the dominant culture sets out for them, where they realize like, “Oh, I don't need to just focus on making money and being ‘successful,’ that yoga teaches a very different thing.” And I think the danger that I see now is that yoga gets mixed in with like new age spirituality and abundance mindset. And it's like we're moving away from [what] yoga philosophy’s actually teaching us. And I see that as kind of really scary, honestly, for the future teachers and students of this path and practice.

Anjali Rao
That's what that's why I think we need to continue doing the work we do and centering different voices. It's important. And I think it's just going to… if we don't do it, I think this is just going to be one of the examples of erasure. And we are already erased in so much of the dominant cultural yoga narratives. And it is a symptom of what happens outside yoga spaces. It's a microcosm of the larger social macrocosm, you know?

Harpinder Mann
On that topic, what is maybe one or two or three things that oftentimes gets misunderstood or erased in this conversation in yoga that we can maybe even point to right now and be like, “No, this is what it is” that gets oftentimes misunderstood.

Anjali Rao
By people? By… about yoga? 

Harpinder Mann
About yoga.

Anjali Rao
Well, one of the big ones is that asana is the only thing. And thus, I would say the second one is that, you know, how we get sucked into capitalism or the dominant cultural narrative is to think that we need more, need more of everything. We need more students in our classes. We need more people becoming teachers. We need more teacher trainings. We need more this, we need more that. Everything is about quantity. And we need to do things really fast. We need to, like,produce. We need… so productivity and quantity is emphasized rather than quality and slowing down. And yoga, the teachings were shared in a very intimate way, in a very interpersonal way, in a place of connection and relationship between the teacher and the student. That is lost and being lost in this whole, almost like a factory that we are producing so many like teachers and students and blah, blah, blah. I'm like, “Let's slow it down.” Ideally, when I teach eventually, if I were to ever teach something, I would really want like 10 students. And I don't want to have a big cohort. I want to have a very small cohort where I can actually have a conversation with my students on a one-on-one and understand where they are and what are they struggling with and how can the teaching support that in their path. That is what yoga is really. That is how it used to be taught back in India before the gym culture took over in India. Because what has happened now is that capitalism is everywhere, including India. The framework of, you know, the gym culture, becoming the fitness thing and the bodies being in a certain way.

I mean, it is basically homogenization. We are taking the Western framework and taking it to colonized lands, right? So, again, that whole quantity over quality is the big one, I would say, that we need to really look into about why we need that. Why is it that we need like such large numbers of students? So if it is for money, then let's be honest about it. And say it is for, you know, having, making money and having a certain kind of a livelihood or whatever, then let's be honest about it, right? So I would say that that's something that I also struggle with. It's not an easy answer because we are living in a capitalistic world. We are living in a society where we need X, Y, Z. We have families to support. So I'm not trying to blame anyone or shame anybody who is doing this. It's not an easy answer, but we have to really discern and reflect on why we are doing what we're doing and be honest about it. 

Harpinder Mann
Absolutely. And I think that takes a lot of courage. It takes a lot of courage to take that time to pause, to reflect, and also look at ways that we play a part in these systems and move from that place of self-inquiry instead of just like also doing it and doing it and not even really fully understanding why you're doing something. And I think that is incredibly crucial. The question I also had on that is, I feel like capitalism sells us this idea of success means hitting milestones, it means having more, having a bigger house, having a car. And kind of this like never-ending search for this next thing's gonna give me happiness, this next thing. In comparison to yoga, what does yoga have to say to us about what it looks like for us to have a sense of happiness and contentment?

Anjali Rao
Hmmm, it's a lovely question. Well, some of the teachings of yoga are about really knowing your ashrama, the stage of life that we are in. You know, so that's a big part of the teachings of, I want to say, the Upanishads and then the Gita, Bhagavad Gita, talks about that a lot, right? You know, for the householder, it's important for us to support our families and make a living with integrity… but what is shared there is how are we doing that with integrity, how are we doing that with truthfulness, how are we doing that with, you know, centering ahimsa, knowing our own role and so on, right? So part of the teachings of yoga is that to know from the Vedas and the Upanishads is to know where we are in our life cycle. And also, how are we moving with the least harm? How are we practicing ahimsa as a person in my specific social location, positionality, whatever, you know. I think that would be the two big ones. Because the accumulation that you're talking about, the hoarding of wealth, the hoarding of numbers, the holarding of... I mean, let's just start with students in our yoga classes and all of that. That is because that's that whole deeply embedded samskara that we have that more is better. More money, more students, more teacher trainings, more number of floors that you do on a [map], more everything is better rather than the quality like just pause, and reflect why, and move with honor and integrity.

Harpinder Mann
Absolutely. And I feel like when I first started teaching, I felt that too. I felt that, “Oh, only one person has showed up, only two people have showed up” and feeling like, “Oh, there's something wrong with me.” And seeing in yoga studio models how they would pay more for each additional student that comes to class, rewarding that kind of behavior as well. And I mean, it wasn't very long before I got to a point where I was just like, “You only need one or two students, you need one or two sincere students, and that's all that matters.” And it doesn't matter if you have 20 people in there that are looking for a fun workout versus one or two that are really serious. And which one am I wanting to choose? It's the one or two that are really serious, but it takes a level of inquiry to get to a point where you're like, “Okay, well, that's what I'm wanting.” And if we're just enmeshed in capitalism, then we're like, “Well, more students equals more money, so I want more students.”

Anjali Rao
Right. And it's a tough question. I mean, it's a tough question that we have to ask ourselves, right? It's not an easy answer. And again, that's why I said it's important for us to know who we are, our own social location, before we start understanding what we should do. What's the right action to take, right? 

Harpinder Mann
Yeah, so starting from that place of self-inquiry and then moving from that place.

Anjali Rao
Absolutely.

Harpinder Mann
In that same vein of conversation then—and this might mean… could take hours and hours, but in what way is this capitalism harm? Cause harm to ourselves, cause harm to the world around us? 

Anjali Rao
I mean, the world around us, that's a little like an obvious way. We are in deep, deep trouble when comes to the environment, we are, we… I think more than ever have our in binaries of everything. You know, we are either good versus bad, me versus you, us versus them. There is hardly ever nuance, there's hardly ever pause and like, “Let's see how we can work together, be together.” So that's capitalism, that's social media, our nervous systems are dysregulated. So we are just sort of moving without really thinking in self-awareness. So that's one. And how we are as consumers, right? We are consuming everything. We are consuming our food… everything in what we think is ours to take, without really building a relationship with what that is, be it nature, be it each other. So capitalism, unbridled capitalism is destroying our health—our physical health, our mental health, our spiritual and emotional health. We are made to feel that we are not enough without having all of these things within our homes, in our lives. And yeah, I think that's the evil. And I think it's also important for us to again go back to who we are. For a person whose livelihood is yoga teaching, it's a different relationship that that person has. And for those of us who have privilege economically or education or historically, then the relationship with yoga has to be mindful of that privilege.

Harpinder Mann
Yeah. Where would people start to do some of this self-inquiry? Start to...

Anjali Rao
That I think has to be done by themselves, with themselves. like, swadhyaya is like one of the big ones that, one of the big practices of Niyama is that we have to kind of just embody. And I think a teacher, having a cohort, having a good community who will keep you accountable is important, you know. We don't do this alone. Yes, swadhyaya is important, but who's going to keep you accountable? How open are you to criticism, how open are you to each other, to your friends telling you, “Hey, what are you doing, why are you doing this?” You know, do you have people like that around you? Are you intentionally cultivating a group of people, your peers, who can stop you and you can stop from perpetuating harm? Yeah, I think those are the ways in which we can start cultivating practice of discernment and that I think would change the world. 

Harpinder Mann
I do have to agree with you, where if we took that time to pause and also be intentional with the communities that we're around and the people that we have around. I teach teens at a mental health center and I feel like I see the effects that the current world that we live in and I mean, not even just them, just everybody, me, myself included, like seeing the effects of living in this world, what it does, that constant comparison, looking at other people, social media, having access to just so much and how much pain and harm that that does cause. And I think that's… where if we don't, what you were saying earlier, give this path of yoga as almost like this solace, this reprieve, where it's like, it doesn't have to be this way, that there are teachings and things that we can learn from. For me, that had given me so much solace. And I ask these questions around the capitalism and this kind of more, because I have found myself in that place of thinking I need more, and then that's gonna give me happiness. And then I found with the teachings of yoga and the philosophy, and I was like, “How do I have contentment and gratitude for in this moment exactly as things are?” And whatever I get, if it's more, it's a gift. Even the failure is a gift. But moving from that place of just like, “I'm alive right now.” And that's perfect, that's beautiful. Anything more is just that prashad, that's gift that I get to receive. And it feels like such a weight that just gets lifted off my shoulders to have that understanding.

Anjali Rao
Yeah, I think one of the things that… one of the core teachings of yoga is that, you know, we are all whole, our nature is already whole. And consciousness, we are not really what we think we are. What we think we are is in many ways clouding our discernment about who we are. So that I think comes from a place of slowing down. I don't like the word regulating our nervous system too much because it's sort of like what does that really mean? In many ways is there a deregulated system? But at least coming from a place of, where we are in tune with our breath, with our ease, if there is or not. Do we feel an expansiveness? Do we feel a sense of generosity with each other? Or am I always moving from a place of anger and, you know, insecurity and jealousy and all of this is human. It's not like I'm judging myself when I or I try not to. I used to be far more critical of myself and I still am but I'm getting better. But you know this whole… really… knowing how I feel the most at ease in my skin, in my being, that I think is a place we should aspire to. Our practice should move towards cultivating that.

Harpinder Mann
Absolutely. And that access of that ease, that ease in being, that ease in breath. How is that perhaps not perpetuated in modern yoga as you see it?

Anjali Rao
Because we're always moving from a place of scarcity, especially for us, right? As Brown yoga teachers, as friends, I still see that, you know, patriarchy is so rampant in modern yoga that even Indian Desi teachers who are men get far more credibility. They have to just say one thing and there'll be like 2,000 people saying, “Wow!” The same thing, if it's not said in a particular way or if it's a femme saying it, it's a struggle. And patriarchy is so embedded in yoga narratives. So what was your question again?

Harpinder Mann
What was my question?

Anjali Rao
But what I'm trying to say is that this sort of knowing that we are enough, that there are systems around us that can create and perpetuate insecurities about who we are, and calling in our own communities when somebody is doing something which is not right, I think it's important. And that's how we create a loving, compassionate, courageous community who can be in conflict with each other, too. And it's okay. We don't have to agree with everything that each other says all the time. It's okay to say, “Hey, I don't agree.” Or just not add to the harm.

Harpinder Mann
Yeah, absolutely. I'm going to take this in a slightly different direction, because I know you teach a lot on history and I've kind of had this question. I've seen a lot of times people say yoga is 5,000 years old, and others saying it's 2,500 years old. For you, when you teach, is there a number that you give? What do you trace it back to? How do you answer that question?

Anjali Rao
I need to give like a… what do you say, a succinct answer to like 10 hours of history. [Laughing] Whether it's 5,000 or 2,500 years old. So that I can answer. It's definitely… the word “yoga” itself comes in the Rigveda. And the Rigveda is dated to be at least, I don't know, like 3,000 years old. Now whether it's 5,000 years old or 3,000 years old and what we're actually talking about the word “yoga” has changed. So when we are talking about the word “yoga” the way we mean it, the way you and I mean it, it is not 5,000 years old. Because the teachings evolved or changed. I don't know whether “evolved: is the right word. It changed and it took in all the elements of new thought, of different thought from different traditions, the shamanic traditions and so on and so forth. So I would say it's around 3,000 years old based on my understanding and based on what we think of it as now, what has influenced, like for example if we're talking about the Yoga Sutras as being one of the… a codified system of yoga as what we practice, then it's not 5,000 years old. But the Yoga Sutras were influenced by so many other things that came before that. And the Upanishads came after the Vedas. But all of these have influenced yoga and yoga is included as a part of all of these texts. And so dating these texts, as you know, is very challenging, depending on who is dating them. And so what I try to do is, like, I say, study three different texts, history texts, and then see what are the dates and think what could be the right answer and then offer all of them and say, “Hey, this is something that this person is saying or this person is, you know…” So offer the students that dating a text, it's not even a text, right? It's a composition, it's an oral tradition, and so on. And what we are studying is basically translations of commentaries. That's what we are studying. So, I, yeah, so I would say I would offer my students a gamut of the spectrum and say this is what it is. It's complex. It's not an easy answer. It's not a multiple choice question. It's more like an essay, more like a book. Yeah.

Harpinder Mann
Yeah, thank you for that answer. What I also take from that and what I've been writing about is, South Asia is not a monolith. There's not just that one narrative, one story, here's the answer. There's so many different perspectives. And I love the way that you offer it to your students where it's not just like, “Here's the answer, now you know, okay, great.” Where it's just like, “Here, it could be like this and like this, and we can trace it back in this way.” And I feel like that gives students a deeper breadth of knowledge and understanding. And I appreciate that.

Anjali Rao
Yeah, thank you. No, I also think it's important because what I'm trying to share is that history is not a single narrative. Interpretation, it's based on interpretation, it's based on inference, it is based on so many different things—positionality of the scholar, you know, and it is, it's almost like a meta-learning for the students who are like, “Oh yeah, you know, what I perceive to be true is perception, is based on so many other factors, it's not the universal truth.” There is no such thing as, very rarely there is one universal… the only probably universal truth is that we all die. And that's it. You know, so that's what I try to cultivate in the folks who come in to my classes is this notion that how we study, what we study is as important… or rather, how we study and the sources of what we studied is as important as what is studied, you know, because it is giving us insight into how we are forming our mind, the thoughts. That's the big practice of yoga, is to really know our mind, right?

Harpinder Mann
Absolutely. And I think that's a wonderful point where how we're studying is also just as important and what we're studying. For those people that are interested, say, in learning philosophy, where would you point them towards? How would they go about learning yoga philosophy?

Anjali Rao
Again, it depends on who you're asking. Are you asking a yoga practitioner, like an everyday yoga practitioner? Are you asking a person who's planning to teach? If you're asking a person who's planning to teach, obviously it would be one of the 200-hour, 300-hour, whatever framework, which I disagree with, but it is what we have. I have a lot of thoughts on that, and I struggle with that. If it's an everyday practitioner, I would say start reading up about history and start picking up any text because all the texts actually just point to some similar thematic truths. Right? So, the best way in is to go with what your intuition is leading you to and what your curiosity is leading you to. That is the best way to study anything. What makes you curious? What are you curious about? And dive into that because it is not a prescriptive thing. It's more like… it's more like what is interesting to you and then you study that. I used to study yoga psychology, quote-unquote psychology, for a long time and that really supported so much for my own knowledge as well as what I share. Now I don't study that as much as other things. I study myth-making, I study gender, I study history, you know. So it has shifted, it has changed, but all of it has been important and interesting, obviously, not biased.

Harpinder Mann
That's an interesting point also on the yoga psychology is because oftentimes I'll see people combining, like they'll say asana is this somatic practice, and then we're going to combine this with Western psychology, and then we get a complete practice. And I'm like, “Well, there's…”

Anjali Rao
Who is saying these things?

Harpinder Mann
In many trainings and in my research, where there is a combination of Western psychology and then asana and then that forms say like a trauma-informed yoga teacher training.

Anjali Rao
I'm rolling my eyes because any yoga is trauma-informed. The end. Why are we adding that label quote-unquote trauma-informed is… that is because modern asana is not trauma-informed.

Harpinder Mann
Exactly.

Anjali Rao
Yoga by definition has to be trauma-informed. It is all about freaking trauma! [Laughing] So it is about ending, knowing, ransforming our suffering, dukkha. So, dukkha is an umbrella term for so many things, including trauma. So yeah, I have a problem with people talking about Western psychology and not because Western psychology doesn't have its strengths, of course it does. Western psychology was influenced a lot by the teachings of yoga, from Carl Jung to Freud, to so many others who came after them. The concept of, you know, samskaras, neuroscience… a lot of the concepts around neuroplasticity of the human brain, all of that were influenced by the teachings of the Upanishads and the Sutras and many other texts. So again, it's a case of colonization and it's a case of, you know, Western science being viewed as more superior or more valuable than our sciences. And it's not that all our teachings in our texts are all perfect or they are… they don't have their own inherent biases, and that's where your practice of discernment comes in. None of it is perfect because most of these are created and imagined and reflected and contemplated upon by human beings and human beings are fallible. 

Harpinder Mann
Absolutely, yeah, I think that's a… just such a great point. And I think it's necessary to bring this up because what gets lost in that understanding of yoga is exercise, yoga is asana, is that there's so much more. There is that philosophy, the psychology, there's a complete system and path for us to understand ourselves. And I just keep finding that so many people just don't know that. And they lose sight of that. Along this conversation, what are some other core teachings of yoga—this is a big question too—that get lost? 

Anjali Rao
I would say… I don’t know that it could get lost, but they’re not really centered enough, is interconnectedness of beings, that we are all really part of a seamless, spiritual core. And that we are embodiments of that spiritual core. That's one of the core teachings of yoga. The core teachings of yoga might differ about how consciousness and matter are interlinked or interconnected, but one of the basic underlying premise of, regardless of which school or tradition of yoga we are talking about, is that we have something within us which is beside our physical, emotional, mental self is that essence and that essence is what is immortal and that is what is connecting all of us together. I think if we were to move around in the world that we are all more than our physical, emotional, mental selves, thoughts and bodies and all of that, how would life be? How would we change the way we buy things? How would we change what is successful or failure? Or how would we know that yes, I'm angry, I'm experiencing anger, and I'm not only angry… that we're all going to change our physical forms, that we're all going to die eventually, and something else is going to come in our place. But that essence is always going to be the permanent thing.

Harpinder Mann
I felt like when I truly felt into that wisdom and that truth, it did change a lot of my behaviors and the way that I interacted with the world, where I didn't have such a clinging to the physical body, have such a clinging to the mind, such a clinging to different identities that I hold, outwardly presenting. And it was like, “What is this core, eternal part of myself that's connected to every other single person and being?” And moving from that place and that understanding also brought a lot of that ease that we were talking about earlier. That this body that I have is like a cloak that I get to use in this lifetime and then when the cloak is old, I'll throw it away and then on to the next lifetime until I reach enlightenment and then we'll see what happens. But I think that's such a... And I think that's something, it's not just we learn at one time and then we forget about it.

Anjali Rao
Of course not. 

Harpinder Mann
It's something we have to keep reflecting on and thinking about.

Anjali Rao
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Because we are such deeply conditioned creatures. These conditionings of attachment, these conditioning of samskaras of, you know, either to our culture or to our physical body and our physical identity. It's one of the most deeply embedded samskara, right? So, I might know all this cognitively, but am I an enlightened being? No, I'm not. I'm just as messed up as anybody else. I'm still figuring all this shit out, but I'm figuring it out knowing the framework hopefully and it's getting me step by step in some way and sometimes then you just fall back and you regress back to your—what has caused suffering. You know those patterns emerge and that's why we have to continuously… that's why Abhyasa… that's why practice is what we are trying to do here. It's all a practice. That's what I tell my students too. Everything is a practice. Once you start thinking that everything is a practice: life, living, relationships, teaching, everything. If you think of everything as a practice, then you start holding yourself with compassion. 

Harpinder Mann
Yeah, I… that always brings me such comfort in that. I have learned a lot, but I still have so much more to learn and unlearn. And in this lifetime, a lot of the things that I'm doing are new. And if I don't get it right the first time or I'm confused, it's like, how do I have gentleness? Where like, “Hey, this is also the practice. This is also the practice where you can hold yourself with that self-love and compassion instead of berating and judging and being critical.” And that's been a big shift of noticing, “Okay, when do I need to rest? When do I need to speak kindly to myself? When do I need to offer that same type of support to someone else?” Instead of just like going, going, going, pushing, pushing, pushing. And that's that conditioning that I feel like I've been taught by hustle culture and capitalism and the outwardly-presenting success. And I… just knowing that this is all practice, every single part of it. And that kind of goes into that my next question of, like, how do we live and embody our yoga?

Anjali Rao
I think all we talked about is that, right? We are… I can't separate how we embody it, because I think everything is an embodiment. It should be. How do I move with integrity? How do I move in the world with discernment? How do I move in the world with compassion toward myself and toward another? How do I disrupt harm? How do I address harm? How do I know who are my privileges? All of that, all of this is yoga. So how do I live a life of integrity, I think? That, to me, is yoga.

Harpinder Mann
Yeah, I think that piece around… and I was raised Sikhi and Sikhism, and there's a lot of conversations around living in integrity and working ethically and giving back and that's all within yoga as well. And I think as we don't focus on that part of our… focus on that part of the teachings and instead, like we've been talking about this entire past hour, just to focus on the asana and focus on the physical form. And it's like, “Well, how do we actually live it? And how do we live it with that integrity?” And I think that's an incredibly crucial piece of this.

Anjali Rao
Yeah, absolutely. And it's, again, if you look at it as a practice and that, “Hey, you mess up sometimes.” Let's normalize messing up. Let's normalize apologizing. Let's normalize saying, “I didn't know and now I know better.” Because we are not perfect people. We are not… we are human beings figuring out our stuff, you know? And that's a non-patriarchal way, I think, to look at life and living. Because I don't see many men apologizing for stuff they've done, or they say that they don't know. I don't see many men doing that. I don't see many cis men doing that. I think it's a non-patriarchal way of living, teaching, sharing the teachings, being a student. That's why I personally… I might say something shocking right now, but I cannot learn from a cis man. I just can't. Because I feel that that positionality has given so much of power and privilege that is unacknowledged. And I can’t do that anymore. I used to, not that I didn't, but I try to… I gravitate toward a non-patriarchal system and teacher.

Harpinder Mann
Thank you for sharing that because I think that's important. I think that's important when we're talking about, like, identities that we hold and privilege that we hold because our identity of privileges influences the way that we move through the world and our biases whether unconscious or conscious. And that and that makes an effect and that makes an impact on our own experiences that we had, the way we hold space, the way that we teach. And I just completely agree with you. And I think that's… and this is going to be my next question is… who we learn from matters. And I think that's why in my push also in the book is like, diversify who you're learning from when it comes to yoga. I feel like in, in North America, in the West, who's typically been offered as like the “yoga expert,” the “yoga teacher” is a white person. It's a white heteronormative person in some sort of power that is able-bodied and they're presented as this sort of expert on yoga and that then conforms or changes the conversation around yoga to be from their experience. And it's important then for us as practitioners, as teachers, to diversify who we're learning from because that makes a big impact. And I'm so glad that you brought that up.

Anjali Rao:
100 percent. And I think, you know, I don't know who I was sharing this with, maybe another conversation, but I think even us as like the femme Desi yoga teachers in the West, right… we haven't had a level of mentorship that a lot of the white folks have had for generations here. Right? And that's why I hold what I do with some… with a great deal of, like, it's sacred to me what I do. Because I feel like I'm hopefully shaping, influencing, impacting the future generation of not only teachers, but students and practitioners and human beings in some way, right? Because we've really not had that. All the scholars who we know are all white, European or American teachers, and I'm not dissing that or I'm not saying that they haven't done the work or studied or whatever, that's great that they have that. But we don't have that sort of a lineage in scholarship, in yoga scholarship. And I'm trying to look at Desi scholars, Desi teachers who have studied from the sources, and it's so far and few in between in the modern world who we can access. And that's a gap, you know, that's a real gap. And we need to start filling that gap.

Harpinder Mann
Absolutely. I completely agree. And I thank you for your work in this and for your dedication and devotion to being on this path because I was speaking to another South Asian yoga practitioner yesterday and she tagged me in something where a white studio owner made a meme about Hanuman and it was just very distasteful and she's like, “What do you think about this?” I was like, “Ah… not great.” And then her and a couple other South Asian folks in the comments are saying, “This is disrespectful, this is distasteful.” And the white studio owner saying like, “It's just a joke. I'm sure the gods and goddesses wouldn't mind.”

Anjali Rao
What?

Harpinder Mann
It was—these comments were ridiculous! And he's saying some other crazy things. And finally, like after a couple hours… I left a comment, I just didn't get to it till much later. And I was like, “There are people from the original source culture telling you this is in poor taste, this is disrespectful. These are people in which this is a part of their life, their religion, their practice, and they're directly telling you that this is disrespectful.” And he was saying things about, “Well, the gods and goddesses wouldn't mind, and I heard that in a past life, if you practice yoga now, then you also came from South Asia.” Just ridiculous!And just the level of bypassing where I'm like, “You're not listening to the real human in front of you, telling you that this is a problem.” I finally left a comment and I realized a couple hours later, they just deleted the entire thing. And in that conversation with that person who sent it to me first, they did like, “What do you think?” We were exchanging back and forth and she was like, “Sometimes it just makes me want to throw my hands up and just give up.” And I find that in conversation with other South Asian folks, sometimes where people are just like, “I got burnt out.”

Anjali Rao
Yep.

Harpinder Mann
“It just feels like a fight” And so I'm so thankful for teachers and practitioners that are still continuing. That still are like, “No, we have to! It's important! Maybe it's our duty or it's what I've been placed here to do.” So yeah, thank you so much for your work. 

Anjali Rao
Oh, thank you. Thank you for sharing that. And who is this person? I want to ask you that later.

Harpinder Mann
Yeah, I'll let you know because I was just, I was shocked. I was just shocked.

Anjali Rao
Wow. Wow. That is so much of unbridled power that they know that nothing will happen. You know, there is ethics and there is legal stuff, right? So we are dancing between the two. Yeah, and I don't blame people for being burnt out. I've been there very, you know, sometimes, and just not in the recent… sometimes in the recent past, that I am burnt out too. That's why it's very, very important for us to take time off and center ourselves in the why. Like, why am I doing this? Because I can just say, “Hey, you know what, I'm just gonna do my thing. I'm not gonna sit and fight with everybody. I'm just gonna, you know, study and eat and be a parent.” And yeah, it's easy to understand why there's a burnout. I remember, I don't remember exactly what was the thing in the news cycle, but I remember coming onto Instagram and I see this really popular white billionaire actress coming on her Instagram page, talking about how fantastic it is to have yoga pants with pockets. And there was something huge before that, something about… I don't remember exactly what it was, but that was not what I would have thought about. Celebrating yoga pants with pockets is not what I would have thought about, but she did. And there were like some 25,000 likes under her thing. And I was like, “Doesn't this matter?” And she was modeling it, and it is her yoga, yoga athletic wear or whatever they call it—line. 25,000 likes, how are we going to even counter that? Right? I was, I was like, almost like, “Is this even worth it? Like, this is so insurmountable.” It feels insurmountable, really, sometimes. And then you're like, “You know what, I can't affect that part but I hope I can teach 10 people with integrity with knowing what I know and change their life and hopefully they will go teach whoever or live in a way which is helpful, supportive, you know?” So we can do what we can do and I go back to the teachings, go back to the Sutras, go back to the Bhagavad Gita, the teaching that tell us that—where do we have agency and to work in those spaces where we have agency. Yeah. 

Harpinder Mann
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, when I started writing this book, I remember just kind of putting my head in my hands and I'm like, “I don't think the studios are going to change. I don't think the brands are going to change.” And then I had to really sit down. I was like, “I'm not writing it for them.” I was like, “Who am I writing this book for?” I was like, “Number one, I'm writing it for myself. But number two, I'm writing it for people that do really care, that care about yoga in its full capacity, that care about how they can live the yoga for themselves, that are interested in not only liberating themselves, but those around them and creating these futures that are more expansive and less harmful.” And I think that reframe to me was important because otherwise… you see those 25,000 likes and it's like here, people celebrating pockets on a yoga pant. It's just like… it turns out all I can do is laugh. I'm just like, “Oh my god, no.”

Anjali Rao
Yeah, I usually never really respond or react to things like this in a public way because I'm like, “There's no point, like who cares, they don't know me.” I'm not a quote unquote an influencer or whatever, god forbid, but I actually typed it there. I said, “You know, at least, okay, you want to sell your yoga pants, at least get a Brown or a Black person selling your freaking yoga pants!” Of course, nobody cared. But I at least felt like, “Okay, at least I tried, in the 25,000 likes, to be one of them.” [Laughing] 

Harpinder Mann
Oh, my god. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this also just feels so good to, like, have this space to share with someone else in just like this honest way of sometimes it does get tiring. And I have found for myself in the last couple years, I've almost created a little bubble around myself. It's like the people that I'm speaking to understand, they get it. And then I venture off into a yoga studio and I'm just sitting there, I'm like, “What is going on in here?” And I'm like, “Back to my bubble!” But I think it is important that like you're saying, like we tend to ourselves and we take care of ourselves, we have our communities and then we do the work that we can where we can, but still have that solace for ourselves to continue to do this work.

Anjali Rao
Yep. Absolutely. 

Harpinder Mann
The last question I had for you is, what change or changes do you wish to see in this landscape in relation to yoga?

Anjali Rao
I want people to tell that billionaire white actress that there is more to yoga than celebrating yoga pants with pockets! [Laughing] For starter. I think if we were to actually look at how yoga can help understand why we suffer, because we're all suffering right now, you know, we're all suffering from deep discontent. And that discontent stems from so many things, including capitalism and racial injustice, homophobia, transphobia, all of that. If we were to really tap into the teachings, then we would reduce our own suffering. We would get to understand ourselves. And from that place of deep understanding and deep awareness, we would then move in the world with more compassion, with more courage, with more capacity, actually. So that when you feel like throwing your arms up, when you see all this, you can anchor into those teachings and the practices that can, you know, really take you to the next day. [Laughing] Yeah.

Harpinder Mann
Absolutely. Thank you for sharing that. Because I think even that understanding that we're all suffering in one way or another and just that acceptance of that. There's so much courage and vulnerability there. Where it's like, “How are you suffering today? How am I suffering?” And having that base understanding just offers so much compassion, so much compassion for the nature of our mind, the nature of our being. And instead, we can turn to one another with a desire to help instead of turning to buying things or saying mean things to people. And it's just like, “You're suffering, I'm suffering. Okay! Well, let's talk about it. Let's support one another.” And these teachings and these amazing teachers and practitioners that knew about this, that have known about this for thousands of years and are saying, “Hey, you humans now thousands of years later, we've been thinking about you. We've been also like thinking about our own minds, thinking about you and…”

Anjali Rao
And they've struggled with the same struggles that we did.

Harpinder Mann
Absolutely.

Anjali Rao
The same questions that we should be asking if we are not. You know, what's the purpose and the meaning of our lives? Is it to really accumulate wealth and hurt one another? Is that what we really want to do in our life? Like, what is—why are we here? You know, that's the big question, right? So, um, yeah.

Harpinder Mann
Yeah. Thank you for offering those questions. Because those questions are what took me to yoga. I was like, what am I doing here? Like, why am I here?

Anjali Rao
Yeah.

Harpinder Mann
I think when we have those questions and can inquire and then turn to these teachings, that's huge. It's so huge to understand.

Anjali Rao
Absolutely.

Harpinder Mann
Well, thank you so much, Anjali, for your time and your wisdom. I just absolutely loved having this conversation with you. As we wrap up, is there anything else you want to add? Where can people find you as we close up?

Anjali Rao
Well, thank you for inviting me for this conversation. It was lovely to have this with you, Harpinder. And, well, I have my podcast, The Love of Yoga, where we talk about how yoga is a practice of individual and collective transformation. I center provocative conversations with thought leaders and changemakers who are really working on disrupting a lot of systems of oppression. Because for me, that is yoga. So I invite people to listen to that. And where do you find me? On my website, maybe. On my Instagram, where I share sometimes, not as often, but I do, I have a presence there, which I hope can be informative and inspiring. 

Harpinder Mann
Amazing. Well, I will link all of those things.

Anjali Rao
Thank you.

Harpinder Mann
So people can very easily access it. But thank you so much for your time, your wisdom. This has been so lovely. And I know we'll chat soon.

Anjali Rao
Yes. Thank you. Good luck with everything. Thank you so much.

Harpinder Mann
Thank you, everybody, for tuning in. Bye. Bye. 

Anjali Rao
Bye.