"What type of yoga are you teaching?"

A woman called me yesterday.

I answered the phone and said, "Hello"

She said, "I want to ask about your yoga class."

I said, "Yes."

She said, "How much is one session?"

I said, "50 for 2 hours class."

She said, "2 hours...!? Are you teaching different types of yoga in the 2 hours class?"

I said, "Just yoga. Yoga is only one. There's no different types of yoga."

She said, "I know yoga is one type only... But what type of yoga are you teaching?"

I said, "Yoga..."

She said, "What I mean is, is it power yoga? hot yoga?...?"

I said, "Aah..., Hatha yoga. Traditional Hatha yoga..."

End of conversation.


Well, nowadays not many people can understand or accept the word "yoga" as it is, unless there is something in front of it to clarify what "type" of "yoga". Such like "power" yoga, "hot" yoga, "ashtanga" yoga, "iyengar" yoga, "sivananda" yoga, "acro" yoga, "flow" yoga, "vinyasa" yoga, "dance" yoga, "restorative" yoga, "yin" yoga, "hatha" yoga, "Adidas" yoga, "Nike" yoga, and so on...

People can only grasp the word in front of yoga but not just the word yoga...

I told her we are teaching "yoga", she couldn't understand what is "yoga" and couldn't accept that the class is about "yoga", just yoga. In her perception, there are many different types of yoga classes... but not "yoga".

There's nothing wrong about people to think like that. It's because they were being told and being given so many different choices of "xxxxx yoga" in the yoga "industry", or yoga "market", or yoga "business" nowadays.

There's nothing wrong with many different types of yoga class to cater different types of individual's needs, desires and personality. But then not many people can understand what is a "yoga" class, unless there is another word or name in front of the word yoga...

It's just like, people are looking for the features or characteristics of yoga, but don't know about the meanings or the essence of yoga. It is like we are longing to see the face, the eyes, the nose, the mouth, the hands, the feet, or the 'appearance' of God, but we don't know who or what 'God' is...

Om shanti.