tenderwoman
Novice
Aug 18, 2004, 9:11 AM
Post #3 of 75
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Hello guys,
I was inspired to answer in the morning, but I had some duties. Now I see two postings on yoga and money, and I have even greater inspiration to add my "opinion" to this topic, living, working, practising yoga-iyengar in Eastern Europe.
Many times I see, that people in western world have this imagination - the best yogi, guru, teacher, has to live somewhere in the forests, begging for food, no clothing, no shelter, that only this yogi is really devoted to his own path and his students.
Most of us, we live between many people, in "civilized" world, or if escaping to the nature during the weekend, always coming back to the city, to work, being in contact with different people. Always, some people live in the middle of the nature, in beautiful villages, mostly working outside in the nature, living very naturally. Somebody can say - oh, lucky people.
It s upon the individual, how and where, he or she decides to live and work. Sometimes such a decision takes a lots of courage. And also everybody has some karma, nobody escapes it, but yoga gives the power that we can transform bad karma into positive way, or postpone, when being more stronger to go through such experiences, or "delete" it. We can become the creators of our lives being in harmony with God´s rules.
Perfect, ideal yogis, gurus are also living in the middle of busy "civilization", not attached to their material surrounding.
From my experience living a certain time in Western Europe-UK, also in Canada, and what I hear from people who live there now, maybe it is really difficult to find yoga teachers, who are more personal to their students in western world. As I watched local relationships, and people, comparing with Slovan nature, which I know and live from the moment I was born in this life, I see the relationships in western world being more "cold", more impersonal. I can understand that, because the society forces people to function this way, if they want to survive, but it is not very intelligent system, it always brings lots of problems, mostly psychological ones.
The society always depends on individuals, who create their individual lives, like the individual cells in the body, with their individual psychics create the society of cells, in some organ-planet, stars and the whole body-universe with other organs and tissues.
So it alwyas depends on the individual, which way in relationships with other people he or she chooses in life. More people with warm approach to others in the society, more warmth in the society, different inner society realtioships, lifestyles, culture, civilization.
I was "lucky" to meet warm people in western world, but I was still able to see some of their customs, they are used to, maybe being more cautious in contacts with others, considering the sincerity of their emotions. I always saw, more fears in such a behaviour.
My teacher of yoga has really warm realtionship with her students. She used to go with us for a tea, she knows us very well, and sometimes we feel we are like her children and she is our mum. Also other teacher from Poland, I used to go to his seminars, has this warm slovan nature, and between the exercises on one week seminar he goes for a walk with his students, we have space to talk with him a lot.
People here in my country are more emotional, so more relaxed, but when I see the negative sides of "westernisation" of Eastern Europe, I see people are becoming the same as in western world, living their lives with "hunting the money" if they want to survive, to have basic conditions for living.
The emotional mix of quite fresh memory on socialism and relatively comfortable slow living style and new emotions connected with western style of living, creates really strong new quality of human relationships here, which is not very positive too.
So again it depends on individual here to save the old emotions, warm human relationships.
Especially on yogis.
Sometimes one of my friends says, she would like to live her life in the "old", ancient society, in the times when people lived together with more love, warmth, understanding, without wars, all that technology, stress, living more naturally, ecologically, creating real culture and art in all dimensions of human life.
Such a society was on many places of the Earth, but was slowly destroyed by "new culture", "civilised people". Today are are born in the middle of "civilization" and wondering what we are doing on such a place, why we are here. We are entangled into this world.
It again depends on individual whether he or she will prefer "new" values, or the "old" ones.
But sometimes we have to addopt our behaviour to the system, dress on the "clothes" of maja, ilusion, but follow the rules of the God, skillfully "skate" in situations without creating new karma.
Some people here think, they get a lot of something in business for a few money. They still remember the old style of bussiness-barter business. The new style of business, with money has no logic for them.The barter business still survived between good friends here.
Also the students in ancient times were in this realtionship of barter business with guru. They were also his servants, to bring him food, to take care of his living place.
Now, nobody can pay a rent for a flat, or business office "just for a basket of tomatoes, or freh fruit from the garden".
It would be really nicer, to live simple natural life with barter business, but if you try something like that, people usually abuse this, because they have less morality and values left, and everybody wants to survive somehow.
So than, you have to accept the money, as the change article for a service.
Yoga teachers have in former Czechoslovakia have still good prices, but sometimes it is at the border-line for them to survive, because they have to pay their own continual expensive teacher training education in western world. For people from eastern world those prices are much bigger than for people from western, at home. I still wonder how clever they are to survive, they really are not having big property, and have very humble living needs.
So for an average individual here without the help of family, or sponsors, are the western prices non-reachable. So the applicants for the teacher training here have to wait for somebody from Eastern Europe, Czechoslovakia, who will be certified for teaching the other teachers having „normal“ prices for us.
I m trying the private practise on my skin now (it s quite fresh), so I see that it is really not so easy, even to spare some money for casual iyengar yoga classes here and yoga seminars with „our eastern prices“, with having all the expenses around the business and basic humble living.
Maybe this topic of yoga and money will have to be considered somehow in the future. Yogis are the part of this world, it depends on them, and they know what they do, are responsible for that, and I agree, they have their own problems too.
Are the yogis from economically weaker countries worse ? No, I don t think. There is some karma, why who was born where in space and time, that s true, and has to seek his own reasons how to get out from „bad“ economical and life situation, to work on him/herself, and the best way is really again yoga. Practising yoga at home everyday, every second of life, but everybody who wants to make progress, wants to be checked, if his/her practise is right or not in many details. Somebody wants to go further, not only take but also give the knowledge and love to others, make the sense of this effort in yoga, being useful in society in this way. He/she has to again wait for a right moment in life, when will be really ready, enough mature and experienced for such a responsible and interesting task in life-being the trainer of yoga asanas.
Everybody has to consider his own opportunities and make some effort to find the teacher, who will „fit like the key to the lock“ to our desires and faith, or consider the desires and faith, if it’s in harmony with „reality“.
Sometimes we just have to wait for the precise time, place and person. Not to force our life.
Namaste
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![[Homepage of Iyengar Yoga Resources]](/images/iyrlogo_A.gif)
However, there would be people out there who would take advantage of people like him, who just take, take, take. Still, he probably wouldn't make that kind of offer to people like that. 
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