On Fear…Another Bikram Studio Owner’s Thoughts
The studio owners and teachers in the Bikram Yoga community are some of the most strongly committed yoga practitioners anywhere. Many have firsthand experience of yoga’s power to transform bodies and lives, and this experience moved them to then spend nine weeks, countless hours, and thousands of dollars in order to become proficient at sharing the healing power of yoga with others. They are a community of people who see daily, class by class, posture by posture, the power people have to transform their lives, to heal what has been broken, to restore what is injured, to develop what is already beautiful and strong.
And now this community faces a huge challenge: will it transform itself? Will it heal what is broken? Will it restore what has been damaged? Will it build something more beautiful, something stronger than what has gone before?
We know from our own practices that a huge part of any change is struggle. To transform this community will be a struggle, mostly against the myriad fears that assail us all when change is imminent. Many will struggle with fear of the suddenly unclear future where the rules of the game seem to have changed, where the training they worked so hard to complete may need to be reworked and revised, amended and supplemented. And others will fear that their market will be flooded with competitors all fighting over the same pool of customers. Some fear the loss of what they have known and loved for so long. Others fear that whatever comes next, it won’t be as good as what they had before.
IF the community is to move forward in a positive way, these fears must be faced, the struggle against these natural fears engaged. Change IS happening, but we can insure that the what comes next is better than what came before. By engaging in the struggle to overcome our fears and shepherd in a new era, we can salvage what is best from the past while opening up bright new horizons for our future. We all can succeed in a world without IP and battles for control of asanas and contracts that act as straightjackets on our creativity and people owning what is ancient and rightly available to everyone. It is not the asanas themselves, or a particular group or sequence of asanas, that build thriving communities and studios! Success comes from the passion and love with which we share the asanas with our students. We CAN succeed if we return to the thing that set our feet on this path in the first place: yoga, and our belief that the more people practice yoga, the healthier and happier the world becomes. We practiced because it changed our lives for the better. We went to training so we could share our passionate belief in its healing powers with other practitioners. We opened studios so that we could bring the yoga to our communities and work that same transformation in our towns and cities. A world of yoga practitioners is a world where studios that offer great instruction, delivered by loving knowledgeable teachers, are thriving. The more voices students have to choose from , the more enthusiastically they will embrace the voices that offer them that passion and knowledge; the more students we shower with love and compassion, the more they will want to share that love, and yoga, with their friends and neighbors. But first we must stop being afraid! We must return to our love, our passion, our mission: to love our students until they learn to love themselves…and to do this through the power of yoga.
To live in a world without IP agreements and ownership of asanas is a world where more people get to think, learn, practice, share, embrace YOGA. And the more people think, learn, practice, share, and embrace yoga, the more studios there will be to meet this increasing demand for great instruction. That is the world that is waiting on the other side of fear.
