The Yoga Teacher in the Postmodern age

One wonders what the role of the Yoga teacher could be in this postmodern era. As it's clear to everyone, Yoga, among all motor activities, is the one that has lent itself most to postmodernist transformation where everything is digital and practitioners are virtually interconnected, everyone practicing in their home convinced that their energies are exchanged through the ether while the earthly reality is called solitude.

Yoga, however, can leverage its other characteristics to get out of the digital quagmire at least in part. Thanks to its intrinsic characteristic that pushes the practitioner in search of a relatively slow pace and its consequent characteristic of leaving more space for the dialogic relationship, it can be transformed into what it was originally that is a revolutionary activity.

Clearly, as always, it's not the medium itself that makes the difference. So not so much WHICH (Yoga?) but HOW. It will not be the practice of Yoga but the CONTEXT in which it is practiced. It will be the teacher's responsibility to create a context "around" the class that promotes sociability and aggregation. That pushes people to human interaction and ask questions, nurturing doubt. A "healthy" context that creates bonds between participants, that gives them a sense of belonging, that makes them feel useful and part of something. This is the real challenge of Yoga today. A difficult passage that few will do, but that gives a deep and not superficial meaning to the whole, by moving the center from the practice itself to the context in which the practice is carried out. Those who do not take this step will be shredded by the "market" and set aside as useless. First replaced by glossy "Hollywood" Yoga teachers who will do "unmissable" online classes then by artificial intelligences that will replace the still imperfect Hollywood actors.

m.m.