Subscribe to RSS.
Become a Fan on Facebook
Follow on Twitter (Named #1 in US 4 Green)
Subscribe to Free Weekly E-Newsletter
Get on Elephant
Non-vegetarian Yoga Instructors?
One of my jobs for this publication is to interview yoga instructors (very respectable people in my humble opinion). I’ve been shocked to find that about half of those interviewed are not strict vegetarians.
While I am not judging them, I am curious as to how carnivorous yoga teachers justify breaking the number one rule in this ancient tradition.
Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras (basically the Raja Yoga bible) outline the path to enlightenment through yoga, step one being yama, or what not to do. Among these yama vows is ahimsa, or non-violence. Traditionally, practicing non-violence includes a vegetarian diet. Many Hindu temples in India won’t allow people in if they eat eggs, let alone cow.
To quote Pancham Sinh’s translation of The Hatha Yoga Pradipika (aka the hatha yoga bible), possibly the oldest surviving text on Hatha Yoga: “Food injurious to a yogi: bitter, sour, saltish, hot,…intoxicating liquors, fish, meat,…etc., should not be eaten.” In a later passage, the text clarifies: “Success cannot be attained by adopting a particular dress. It cannot be gained by telling tales. Practice alone is the means to success. This is true, there is no doubt.”
And here’s a quote from Stephen Sturgess, a practitioner of Kriya Yoga for 35+ years. In The Yoga Book, he writes “A vegetarian diet is essential for one who wants to follow a spiritual life. If you sincerely wish to progress and grow from the ordinary and materialistic life to a higher spiritual consciousness, then it becomes important to live on a vegetarian diet. For there are certain foods that help the mind and body to become more refined, and others that keep it down to the consciousness level of an animal.”
It should be clear to all yoga practitioners that the tradition instructs to follow a strict vegetarian diet. In this day and age, we aren’t hunter-gatherers – we choose our foods off the shelf. Yoga, on the mat or off, involves choice, intent, and restraint.
Now, I trust the yoga teachers in America to instruct me how to do a push-up, but how can we learn a sacred tradition from teachers who break the root precepts?
Please enlighten me.
Bonus, via Sharon Gannon: Yoga & Vegetarianism:
Sharon Gannon on Yoga and Vegetarianism from SwanRiverYoga on Vimeo.
I do not judge yoga instructors that choose a non-vegetarian lifestyle, but I can say without hesitation that these ancient texts are correct… in this day and age especially. If yoga means to yoke, to connect with the divinity of being, then one cannot live their lives like an Ostrich with their head stuck in the sand bc they will miss the whole point. Eating a non-vegetarian diet (even a little here and there) is doing just that. Not only does a meat diet promote violence of which there is no lesser or greater degree (meaning a chicken raised on a nice organic farm feels the same pain that a factory farmed chicken does), but it is destroying our environment. It wastes more water than any given product in this country (the production of flesh for consumption.) You CANNOT call yourself an environmentalist and eat flesh of any kind. If you want to connect to the divinity of being, you must connect to the earth and take responsibility for your own actions. I hear a lot "I just feel better when I eat meat." Well sure, that may be true, I myself grew up on meat and potatoes, but since when is the practice of yoga about the egotistic "I"? There is a shift going on across this country and more vegetarians than ever before and it's not because people are falling asleep, it's because they are waking up.
Aubrey, I could not agree more!
And we are not living the value of ahimsa if we forgo animal products but then treat our fellow humans with anything less than compassion in every situation. I submit that to live it truthfully, we should strive to live it through our diet, words, deeds, ans thoughts.
I have to disagree.
I have been a yoga teacher for three years, and I’ve explored vegetarianism as a way to practice ahimsa. However I don’t think that being a vegetarian is the only way to practice ahimsa in my life. I’ve always said that if I had to see where my meat came from or kill it myself, I wouldn’t eat meat at all, and it’s very easy for our society to be blissfully ignorant to what goes on in slaughter houses. But there are times when eating meat actually allows me to be less violent in my practice of life. (1)
I maintained a vegetarian diet until I became pregnant with my first child. During my pregnancy, I found it truly difficult, even with supplements, to get the proper nutrition I needed to healthily grow another person without eating meat. I know many vegetarians who are able to maintain their diet during and after pregnancy, but my yoga practice has taught me above all to truly listen to my body. And I needed to eat meat. After my daughter was born, I tried to ease meat back out of my diet and found that my breast milk decreased significantly, to the point that I would have had to start giving her formula. It seems more violent and selfish for me to malnourish my body and to compromise the well being and health of my growing child than it would be for me to consume the meat of another animal when my body needs it. (2)
There are also times in my life where consuming meat actually allows me to practice nonviolence. I am the only person in my family or group of friends who has practiced vegetarianism, and while many around me were understanding and accommodating, a lot of times I was presented with home cooked meals, made mindfully and with deep passion and love that included meat. I could choose to refuse the meals, but at what expense? By refusing to eat the Christmas Eve fish dinner that my grandmother has put her heart and soul into preparing for a week, I am not only hurting her feelings, but causing feelings of resentment and creating inner violence. There can also be a stigma that can come along with being vegetarian. Beryl Bender Birch, author of power yoga and member of PETA put it very well: “I think if you refuse meat and announce it’s because you’re a vegetarian, you’re projecting a position of superiority that may make the person offering the meat feel less spiritual than you.” (3)
In some situations, I believe how you approach what you are eating is more important than what you eat. If I can mindfully consume food that was prepared with kindness and love with a grateful attitude for the animal that died to sustain my energy, it seems to be far less violent than refusing the food and causing violence elsewhere.
While most people agree that practicing ahimsa includes not eating meat, the Yoga Sutra does not list any specific foods for following a “yogic diet”, and even if it did, it’s highly unlikely that the foods prescribed in India thousands of years ago would be appropriate for each of us today. (4)
As far as trusting yoga teachers who consume meat – that, like vegetarianism itself is a personal choice. If learning and practicing ahimsa for you means studying with a spiritual teacher who doesn’t eat meat, I’m sure you can find a teacher that you connect with and can learn from. But there are many excellent yoga instructors across America who are caring, conscious omnivores – Anna Forrest being one of them. Yoga Journal did several polls and national surveys, and they discovered that only about 12 percent of people who practice yoga say they are vegetarian. That leaves 88 percent of yogis who consume meat at least some of the time. Would it be fair to say that all of those people have less of a yoga practice, or are getting less benefit from living their yoga? As a teacher, I feel that it is my job to share the journey of yoga, help people live authentically the way that it works best in their lives, and above all to listen to their bodies. Just like one asana is never the same for any two people, so are the yogic journeys of our lives, and no teacher or student should ever be told they are less valued because of the way that they practice. (5)
I find I often crave a cigarette. Nobody ever says to me "That must be your body telling you you need a cigarette" I spent a large part of my life addicted to a drug. So when I crave eggs or fish why do people assume that my body is telling me I need them? Partly because we live in a culture of addiction and denial. We are addicted to animal protiens. Animal proteins are incredibly tamasic. They weigh our bodies down keeping our bodies attached to the earth in an increasingly vata imbalanced world. We overly intellectualize things. The reality is this- we are conscious beings trying to bring about a positive shift for ALL life on the planet. We deny that this effects our yoga or the global consciousness we strive for. Suffering is suffering, and as the buddha said "Desire is the root of sorrow" The exact word he used was avidya, or non vision. As yoga teachers we are visionaries. To not try to uproot suffering of any kind is to condone it's existence.
BRILLIANT!!!!!
Ahimsa is a touchy subject- true, but I am grateful to my Jivamukti teachers who shared with me the truth of the violence that goes into the consumption of animals for our pleasures, I am grateful for they courage to break us free from avidya, (ignorance, or the long version of ignoring the truth). Yoga means to unite, and what I believe is that we are all energy, we are all vibration, we are all one (united), harm that is done to the animal for our consumption is harm done to us all, karma is the law of cause and effect, and the violence (war, poverty, greed) that has consumed our world (mostly western) is manifesting this imbalance. The health benefits to a vegetarian lifestyle are staggering and as a whole our society, including myself at time is just to lazy to learn and take action to learn and live another way. Dairy and Meat are addictive( Pattabi Jois originally didn't want to teach Westerners because of the generazation that we were all meat eaters) and there is much research to support this, check out Sharon Gannon's new book "Yoga and Vegertarianism"- I could do on and on… but won't, again a sensitive subject for all, I found what works for me, and find that to each it's own.. but do your research!
continuing the conversation, I had to comment on blog, I realize I may have lost students due to this which is sad, but I felt I needed to share the teachings as I believe them.
Every person is responsible for how they feel and whether they perceive harm has been done (ie people offended by your choices… this is what makes yoga so juicy and life challenging, is' a constant process of enlightenment, and since I have stopped eating meat I am a more compassionate and kind person, instead of non harming I like to think of ahima as kindness and compassion!
Isn't eating plants killing to?
Cows eat more plants than any human- from conception to death a cow's life could float an ocean liner with the amount of water it takes to keep it alive. It's about doing less harm- the least amount possible and if the cow or chicken or pig you're eating has eaten thousands of plants then that's your karma too- instead of just eating the plants yourself.
I understand now Thanks Aubrey
This vegetarian brahminism is what caused Patanjali and Hatha Yoga to disappear from India in the Medieval era. It also led to the spwaning of various Tantra and Yoga groups dedicated to Shakti or the female force which justified the eating of non-vegetarian food for strength and muscle building and treated non-vegetarian food as a prasad of the goddess. Being fanatic about food is not Yoga and vegetarians cannot claim a monopoly over teaching and practicing Yoga. Nor can the vegetarians claim a monopoly over human values. The trader caste in India, the Banias, have always been vegetarian but they along with the Brahmins are responsible for the worst economic exploitation of people from other communities. In other words, they might have been vegetarian in terms of food but were completely non-vegetarian when it came to having people and their lives for breakfast. Food has always been held to be an important but tertiary factor (as compared to Sadhana) in Yoga and it should be acknowleged and practiced as such.
This is so true, thank you!
We did a whole issue of Integral Yoga Magazine (Spring 2009) on this subject. The standard "reasons" Yoga teachers give are all to be found in the comments people left on your blog. They have become the "norm" now for teachers who argue that (1) not what you eat, it's attitude with which you eat (2) medical reasons (3) I used to be but am now beyond bodily issues (4) why get hung up on this when there are so many other ways we cause himsa (harm).
There are a few more I could add to the list but when really questioned deeply, the real bottom line pretty much always revealed itself with all the yogis we interviewed & this which rings much more true: people don't want to be told what to eat–even by scriptures!
Patanjali addressed this issue thousands of years ago in the sutra about "slipping from ground gained." It's human nature but our Yoga practice should give us the strength to a) not slip or b) get back the ground lost asap!
Reasons, excuses may abound but there really is no legitimate argument. I'd feel better if all non-veg yogis would just say: I just don't want to be veg. Then, they'd really be practicing satya…
The Buddha ate meat. The Dalai Lama tried being a vegetarian in the 1960s, developed jaundice (hepatitis), and was ordered by his doctors to eat meat again.
You should never blame other's ADD for your own actions and I think we can all understand that the situation in Tibet and for the DL in hiding was not one of convenience. In addition, you may also want to look up the DL within the last year or 2 asking people to switch to a vegetarian diet. Also, this is the first I've heard about the jaundice thing and if you're going to claim such, maybe you should site it exactly where you heard of this from. I am no doctor, but I've never heard of nor can understand how a veg diet can cause jaundice. There may have been external reasons going on and no one is going to say that a meat diet isn't more easily nutritious. I think the issue at hand is violence. If you don't want to be a vegetarian, that's totally fine and is up to you, but don't blame others for your actions. In addition, where exactly does it say the Buddha ate meat?
I’m a meat eating yogi, and only recently had the courage to admit that!
I suffered from an eating disorder for 6 years, and cutting out meat used to = cutting out calories for me. As part of y recovery I had to learn to accept nutrition back into my life, to feel that it is ok to give my body what it needs.
Yoga really helped me get through the tough times. In fact, the final breakthrough moment for me that opened the door to recovery occured on my mat. I am eternally grateful to my practice for that. So for me, it saddens me that some in our community pressure others to give up meat, without questioning why they might have chosen to eat it. Surely you can give your fellow yogis the benefit of the doubt – they have probably heard about ahisima, they understand the principles of non-violence, so surely they have made their choice for reasons they don’t feel the need to broadcast?
Anyway, I am going to keep eating meat, and keep practicing yoga. For me personally, growing as a person and learning to love myself means these two go hand in hand for now. I think everyone should be free to make this decision for themselves.
Namaste
Yes, as far as His Holiness the Dalai Lama, it's true that there was some talk about him being vegetarian and then non-veg for health reasons, however, this is the statement from his official website (http://www.dalailama.com)
"His Holiness's kitchen in Dharamsala is vegetarian. However, during visits outside of Dharamsala, His Holiness is not necessarily vegetarian." There is no further explanation given, though it is reported he encourages all his monks to be vegetarian. There is a good list of links to interviews he has given on the subject here: http://rawveg.info/buddhistvegetarian.html.
People shouldn't get so hung up on being vegetarian, but rather being a respectatarian! It is unfair to say that someone cannot be an effective yoga teacher if they eat meat. There are plenty of fruits and vegetables that are products of violence; no animal may have died in their production, but workers may have suffered as well as the environment. I believe it is more important to buy local and eat organic than it is to be a strict vegetarian or pescatarian. I do recognize the health value in eating less meat and mostly greens as well as the environmental cost of meat production. The meat industry in the US is cruel and violent towards animals, workers and anyone who speaks out against the industry. However, I must also think about the underpaid banana farmers, mal-treated undocumented agriculture workers and families of those who have lost their loved ones to cancer due to pesticide exposure whenever I visit my local grocery store, co-op or farmers market. To reduce the ahimsa debate to vegetarians versus carnivores is oversimplifying a vast and complicated issue. Let us not forget the environmental and social impact of our dietary choices even if we choose to forgo meat.
Thank you for creating this blog with Sharon Gannon's discussion. You can certainly attend or teach a yoga class and not be a yogi/yogini and in effect you are not truly practicing yoga. Ahimsa is a major tenant. It's not about how convenient it is – nor how difficult you find it to put together a nutritionally sound diet. If you're going to pick and choose which Yama or Niyama suits you and drop the ones that don't then you might as well name what it is you're practicing after yourself. It isn't yoga.
I am curious what you think of yoga instructors that get breast implants?
Personally, as a matter of fact they would get in the way. Ahimsa is not the only issue here, what about Samtosa, being content with the body that God gave you? Perhaps an evaluation of Aparigraha would remind us that non-grasping at physical perfection that society forces on us is relevant as well. Yoga has been the force that has broken the chains of my bodily fixations, insecurities and has given me the ease of existence that allows me to celebrate my "imperfectness."
I was once a meat eating yogini and instructor and often had many of the same reasons for eathing meat as stated here. I invite everyone in the discussion to not get too attached to whatever their opinion is either way…you may end up eating your words
I think i was a good teacher before…but I believe I am a better teacher as a vegan…I do not EVER preach to my students about it…I feel, believe that people will come to it when they are ready. I believe as a TEACHER it is my responsibility to more closely follow the steps to hold myself to a higher standard so that I can be the best channel to teach…
I think you can be an incredible yogi and eat meat — I just sort of believe that you can't go to the next level with meat in your diet (ps I agree that eating local organic is just as important) I have to say that one of the reasons I found veganism is because my teacher did not guilt or push or shame me…she simply lived the example and gave me info and when I was ready I came to it…and I have truly moved forward in many areas since making that commitment. I also do not put alcohol in my body, or prescription medications or any chemicals if I can help it (organic cleaning products etc) …for me it's about being the clearest channel possible… and that is no "superiority" it was an admission that I need LOTS of work and I can get more done without distractions… but I ask if you get "offended" or "angry" when people suggest you don't eat meat examine that reaction…
meat eating yogis? of course they are on their path where they are…maybe students will feel more comfortable with them and gets them started on their journey. Perhaps we need not worry about it so much…put the info out there and let people come to their place on the journey as they are ready …Of course I don't mind nudging — soooooo if you are still eating meat I suggest "the world peace diet" book
if you aren't heatlhy on a vegan diet maybe it isn't your time — I "tried" it once about 15 years ago and was a pale sickly person…and for many years assumed it wasn't healthy and NOW?? as a vegan I am healthier than I have ever been… the mind/the reason/ the belief plays into it…lower your meat consumption and go vegan when it resonates with you.
Live Love