Fake vs. Real Gurus

December 5, 2015

Baddha Trikonasana
So I got a recommendation to watch the documentary Kumare and wondered if you all saw it and what you thought. If you haven't heard of it, it's a story of a guy who decides to pose as a guru. He puts on an accent, grows out his hair and beard, carries a staff, and enlists his 2 friends to join him as his followers and helpers. He dubs himself Kumare and begins teaching yoga and leading workshops at yoga studios. His students and workshop attendees start to believe him to be a true guru and teacher. He is deceiving them yet he is still helping them in a way. They start changing bad habits, meditating regularly, feeling more at peace, yet it's all under the guise of deceit by the guru who is eliciting this change in them. There are many people claiming to be true gurus or enlightened beings, but so many are just trying to capitalize on people's vulnerabilities. It doesn't feel right to me, yet at the same these gurus still ultimately help people. 

I've seen so many different forms of yoga emerge since I started practicing yoga in 1995. Each one proclaiming a new and more complete form of yoga. I've seen numerous yoga studios pop up on street corners. I've seen entire brands created to capitalize on the yoga phenomenon. I've watched friends I would have never thought would practice yoga, sauntering to class with a yoga mat under their arm. I know many yogis look at this mass media, commercialized version of yoga to be an adulterated, bastardized version. But in the end isn't it still helping to spread the message of yoga? Isn't it still helping people? Aren't people still feeling the effects of a yoga practice? Then is it wrong? Even if people are only doing yoga asana class for the "workout" and aren't into savasana or meditating, one day they will. And in the meantime the hour+ spent on their mat could be helping them in enumerable ways. Yoga can't cure everything or fix every problem, but it can help people. And if something helps someone and it isn't harming them or someone else, does the source really matter?