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Maharishi Mahesh Yogi introduced The Beatles, and the West, to gurus, mantras, and meditation in the late 1960s.[1][2]

Modern yoga gurus are people widely acknowledged to be gurus of modern yoga in any of its forms, whether religious or not. The role implies being well-known and having a large following; in contrast to the old guru-shishya tradition, the modern guru-follower relationship is not secretive, not exclusive, and does not necessarily involve a tradition. Many such gurus, but not all, teach a form of yoga as exercise; others teach forms which are more devotional or meditational; many teach a combination. Some have been affected by scandals of various kinds.

Guru-shishya tradition

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Further information: Guru–shishya tradition
The guru–shishya tradition involved a long-term, one-to-one relationship between master and pupil.[3] Watercolour, Punjab Hills, India, 1740

Before the creation of modern yoga, hatha yoga was practised in secret by solitary, ascetic yogins, learning the tradition as a long-term pupil or shishya apprenticed to their master or guru.[4][5][6][7] The ancient relationship was the primary means by which spirituality was expressed in India.[8] Traditional yoga was often exclusive and secretive: the shishya submitted to and obeyed the guru, understanding that lengthy initiation and training under the guru was essential for progress.[3] So strong was the guru-shishya relationship that Vivekananda stated that "The guru must be worshipped as God. He is God, he is nothing less than that".[8]

Transformed role

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The role of the guru in the modern world is radically transformed. Globalisation has extended the guru's reach into environments where they may be a stranger, and where the religion, purpose, and status of the guru is poorly understood. Modern yoga practices are often open to everyone, without any sort of initiation into any organisation or doctrine. The modern guru Jaggi Vasudev explicitly rejected "all that traditional whatever";[3] all the same, some yoga traditions still emphasise and respect a teacher's lineage (parampara).[3] For example, Gurumayi's Siddha Yoga pays careful attention to her predecessors, Muktananda and Bhagawan Nityananda.[9] Another major change was introduced by Vivekananda; his Ramakrishna Mission set the example of public service in education and medicine, something now practised by many other Indian religious movements. These religions thus shifted from a focus on personal salvation to public altruism.[8]

Yogendra, an acknowledged pioneer of modern yoga,[10] rejected the traditional guru role in favour of something more modern.[11]

A further radical shift was from spiritual to physical in yoga as exercise, as pioneered by Yogendra, Kuvalayananda, and Krishnamacharya.[12] The transformed role of the guru can be seen in the case of one of these pioneers,[10] Yogendra, who explicitly rejected the role of traditional guru for a single pupil or shishya.[11] The physical context, too, is transformed along with the nature of the teacher's authority; yoga as exercise is often taught in an urban yoga studio, where the instructor's yoga teacher training stands in for the old guru-shishya relationship.[3] The trend away from authority is continued in post-lineage yoga, which is practised outside any major school or guru's lineage.[13][14]

The concept of the guru, along with mantra and meditation, reached the West in the 1960s with The Beatles' trip to India, for a Transcendental Meditation training course at Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's ashram in Rishikesh.[1][2] Modern gurus since then have used the divine status of the traditional guru to claim that they were gods or goddesses. Some asserted they were avatars, earthly incarnations of a god, fulfilling the prophecy in the Bhagavad Gita that Vishnu would take on earthly form when the world was threatened by evil.[8]

Abuse

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Further information: Sexual abuse by yoga gurus

The potential for abuse in the transformed guru-follower relationship is large, and there have been multiple instances of apparent or proven sexual, mental, and emotional abuse by gurus.[15][16][17][18][19] Anthony Storr has documented, for example, the excesses of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh;[20] Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad have examined the betrayal of trust that is involved.[21] Swami Vivekananda said early in the modern era that there are many incompetent gurus, and that a true guru should understand the spirit of the scriptures, have a pure character and be free from sin, and should be selfless, without desire for money and fame.[22] Following the downfalls of several gurus accused of misconduct, practitioners have publicly debated whether gurus are still necessary.[23] As for how gurus can get away with abuse for so long, there is evidence both from research in psychology and from the recollections of former devotees like Daniel Shaw, once a senior member of staff in Gurumayi's Siddha Yoga organisation, that even if a guru is seen to be lying, devotees will ignore the matter and "keep on believing".[24]

Acknowledged gurus

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Well-known gurus of modern yoga
Guru Dates Gender Country Lineage (guru) School
or order		 Postures
(Asana)		 Meditation
(Dhyana)		 Devotion
(Bhakti)		 Other
practices		 Scandal
(alleged abuses)
Anandamayi Ma[25][26][27] 1896–1982 Female India Self-realization No Yes
Sri Aurobindo[28][29] 1872–1950 Male India Sri Aurobindo Ashram No Yes
Beryl Bender Birch[30] 1942– Female US K. Pattabhi Jois Power Yoga Yes No No
Yogi Bhajan[31][32] 1929–2004 Male India Kundalini Yoga Yes Yes Guru Nanak Sexual[33][34]
Bikram Choudhury[35][25][36][18] 1944– Male India Bikram Yoga Yes No No Fixed sequence of postures, in heated room Sexual, assault, racism, homophobia[37][38]
Amrit Desai[39][40][41][42] 1932– Male India Kripalvananda Kripalu Yoga[43] Yes Kundalini yoga, Hatha yoga[39] Sexual[44][45][40]
John Friend[36][18][46] 1959– Male US Anusara Yoga Yes Yes No Sexual[47][48]
Gurmukh[49][50] 1943– Female US Yogi Bhajan Kundalini Yoga No Yes Yoga in pregnancy
Gurumayi Chidvilasananda[51][52] 1955– Female India Muktananda Siddha Yoga No Yes Yes Shaktipat, japa
B. K. S. Iyengar[35][36][53][54][55][56] 1918–2014 Male India Krishnamacharya Iyengar Yoga Yes No No Yoga props
Jaggi Vasudev[35][54][57] 1957– Male India Malladihalli Raghavendra Isha Foundation Yes Yes "Inner Engineering", japa, pranayama
K. Pattabhi Jois[35][53][54][58][1][59] 1915–2009 Male India Krishnamacharya Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga Yes No No Vinyasas Sexual[60]
Krishnamacharya[35][53][54][61] 1888–1989 Male India Vinyasa Krama Yoga Yes No No Vinyasas
Kriyananda[62][63] 1926–2013 Male US Yogananda Ananda yoga No Yes Yes Copyright disputes[64] Sexual[65][66]
Kuvalayananda[54] 1883–1966 Male India Paramahamsa Madhavdas Kaivalyadhama Yes Ayurveda
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi[35][53][54][59] 1918–2008 Male India Brahmananda Saraswati Transcendental Meditation No Yes
Meher Baba[25] 1894–1969 Male India Avatar Meher Baba Trust No Sufism
Dharma Mittra[67] 1939– Male Brazil Kailashananda Dharma Yoga Center Yes
Muktananda[68][69][70] 1908–1982 Male India Bhagawan Nityananda Siddha Yoga No Yes Shaktipat Sexual[71][72]
Nirmala Srivastava
(Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi)[73]		 1923–2011 Female India Sahaja Yoga No Yes Kundalini awakening
Swami Rama[54] 1925–1996 Male India Himalayan Institute No Yes Sexual[74]
Ram Dass[75][76] 1931–2019 Male US Neem Karoli Baba No Yes Pranayama
Baba Ramdev[35][67][53][77] 1965– Male India Patanjali Yogpeeth Yes Yes Ayurveda, pranayama
Sivananda[35][78][53][54] 1887–1963 Male India Divine Life Society No Yes
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar[35][57] 1956– Male India Maharishi Mahesh Yogi Art of Living Foundation Yes Yes Sudarshan Kriya, pranayama
Satchidananda Saraswati[79][80] 1914–2002 Male India Sivananda Integral Yoga Yes Yes Yes Pranayama, Karma Yoga, Jnana Yoga, Japa Sexual[79][81]
Sathya Sai Baba[82][83] 1926–2011 Male India Sathya Sai Organization No
Shankarananda[84][85] 1942– Male US Shiva Yoga No Yes Sexual[84][85]
Vishnudevananda Saraswati[86][56] 1927–1993 Male India Sivananda Sivananda Yoga Yes Yes Pranayama, Sattvic diet Sexual[86]
Vivekananda[87][88] 1863–1902 Male India Ramakrishna Vedanta No Yes
Paramahansa Yogananda[35][25][53][54] 1893–1952 Male India Sri Yukteswar Giri Self-Realization Fellowship Yes Yes Yes Kriya Yoga
Yogendra[10][59] 1897–1989 Male India The Yoga Institute Yes Yes

References

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  1. ^ a b c Shearer 2020, p. 211.
  2. ^ a b Goldberg 2010, p. 152.
  3. ^ a b c d e Singleton & Goldberg 2014, pp. 4–8.
  4. ^ Bühnemann, Gudrun (2007). Eighty-Four Asanas in Yoga: A Survey of Traditions. New Delhi: D. K. Printworld. pp. 20–21. ISBN 978-8124604175.
  5. ^ Mallinson, James (2011). Knut A. Jacobsen; et al. (eds.). Haṭha Yoga in the Brill Encyclopedia of Hinduism. Vol. 3. Brill Academic. pp. 770–781. ISBN 978-90-04-27128-9.
  6. ^ Singleton 2010, p. 173.
  7. ^ Neehan, Jack (21 March 2017). "Yoga: James Mallinson uncovers the ancient traditions of the great yogis". SOAS. Retrieved 5 March 2019.
  8. ^ a b c d Dubey, Rajeev (2015). "New Hindu Religious Movements in Contemporary India: A Review of Literature". Sociological Bulletin. 64 (2): 152–170. doi:10.1177/0038022920150202. JSTOR 26290776. S2CID 157640220.
  9. ^ Pechilis, Karen (2004). "Gurumayi, the Play of Shakti and Guru". The Graceful Guru: Hindu Female Gurus in India and the United States. Oxford University Press. pp. 219–243. ISBN 0-19-514538-0.
  10. ^ a b c Singleton & Goldberg 2014, pp. 60–79.
  11. ^ a b Goldberg 2016, pp. 7–15.
  12. ^ Singleton & Goldberg 2014, pp. 1–4.
  13. ^ Lucia, Amanda J. (2020). White Utopias: The Religious Exoticism of Transformational Festivals. University of California Press. pp. 75 ff, 136 ff. ISBN 978-0-520-37695-3.
  14. ^ Wildcroft 2020, pp. 5–22.
  15. ^ Singleton & Goldberg 2014, pp. 7–8.
  16. ^ Horton, Adrian (20 November 2019). "'He got away with it': how the founder of Bikram yoga built an empire on abuse". The Guardian.
  17. ^ "International Yoga Day: 5 yoga gurus who were accused of sexual assault". Indian Express. 21 June 2018.
  18. ^ a b c Park, Tosca (11 February 2015). "Modern Yoga: Turning a Blind Eye on Sexual Abuse Allegations?". Yoga Basics. Other yoga masters have also been involved in sexual abuse scandals with their students, notably, Kausthub Desikachar, Sai Baba, Swami Shyam, Swami Satchidananda, Swami Rama, Swami Muktananada, and Amrit Desai.
  19. ^ Stuart, Gwynedd (15 July 2020). "Yogi Bhajan Turned an L.A. Yoga Studio into a Juggernaut, and Left Two Generations of Followers Reeling from Alleged Abuse". Los Angeles Magazine. Retrieved 26 February 2021.
  20. ^ Storr 1996, pp. 45–64.
  21. ^ Kramer & Alstad 1993, Gurus & Sexual Manipulation: The Betrayal of Trust.
  22. ^ Sheldrake, Philip (25 September 2014). Spirituality: A Guide for the Perplexed. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 142. ISBN 978-1441187215.
  23. ^ Yoga Unify (27 April 2021). "Do Modern Yoga Students Need a Guru?". Yoga Journal. Retrieved 16 August 2021.
  24. ^ Beck, Julie (13 March 2017). "This Article Won't Change Your Mind" (PDF). The Atlantic. Retrieved 22 August 2021.
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  26. ^ Wagner, Paul (30 May 2019). "Sri Anandamayi Ma: The Perfect, Profound and Mysterious Flower". Gaia. Retrieved 16 August 2021. The Non-organized, Non-Proclaimed Guru
  27. ^ "Anandamayi Ma". Om-Guru. Retrieved 16 August 2021. Though she was never formally initiated by a guru, one evening she spontaneously performed her own initiation, visualizing both the ritual scene and movements. Simultaneously, she heard the chanting of initiatory sacred words (mantras) inwardly.
  28. ^ Singleton & Goldberg 2014, pp. 38–59.
  29. ^ Chaama, Sridhar (16 August 2012). "Remembering a guru". The Hindu. Retrieved 16 August 2021.
  30. ^ Hatfield, Julie (23 April 1996). "Yoga on steroids, or feel the yearn Health: Practitioners say they get sweat and a sense of calm out of Ashtanga, a vigorous series of postures that looks conventional, but a lot faster". The Baltimore Sun. Retrieved 3 September 2021. Beryl Bender Birch, author of the book "Power Yoga" and generally regarded as the ultimate power yoga guru.
  31. ^ Shearer 2020, p. 210.
  32. ^ Syman 2010, p. 260.
  33. ^ Stukin, Stacie (15 July 2020). "Yogi Bhajan Turned an L.A. Yoga Studio into a Juggernaut, and Left Two Generations of Followers Reeling from Alleged Abuse". Los Angeles Magazine.
  34. ^ "A New Report Details Decades of Abuse at the Hands of Yogi Bhajan". Yoga Journal. 15 August 2020.
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  36. ^ a b c Jain 2015, p. 66.
  37. ^ Godwin, Richard (18 February 2017). "'He said he could do what he wanted': the Scandal that Rocked Bikram Yoga". The Guardian.
  38. ^ Griswold, Eliza (23 July 2019). "Yoga Reconsiders the Role of the Guru in the Age of #MeToo". The New Yorker.
  39. ^ a b Leviton 1990, pp. 123–124.
  40. ^ a b Jones & Ryan 2007, pp. 124–125, Desai, Guru Amrit.
  41. ^ Beck, Phillipa (4 December 2019). "Power and Prana: When Yoga Leads to Abuse". Retrieved 17 August 2021. Amrit Desai was the spiritual head of Kripalu from the 1970s until his abrupt departure in 1994. The charismatic, kundalini-raising guru was a master at creating a powerful, direct experience of prana, or life-force energy
  42. ^ Goldberg, Ellen. "Amrit Desai and the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health" in Gleig & Williamson 2013, pp. 63–86
  43. ^ Jones & Ryan 2007, p. 237, Kripalu Yoga.
  44. ^ Cushman, Anne; Montgomery, Lizette (February 1995). "Yogi Desai Resigns From Kripalu". Yoga Journal (January/February 1995): 40, 42.
  45. ^ Schneider 2003, p. 116.
  46. ^ Singleton & Goldberg 2014, pp. 210–233.
  47. ^ Roig-Franzia, Manuel (29 March 2012). "Scandal contorts future of John Friend, Anusara yoga". The Washington Post. Retrieved 29 March 2012.
  48. ^ Singleton & Goldberg 2014, p. 210.
  49. ^ Gilbert, Sophie (19 September 2000). "At last: a guru for the impatient". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 26 February 2021.
  50. ^ Sloane, Carly (24 May 2019). "Celebrity Yoga Guru Gurmukh Kaur Khalsa Explains Why Cindy Crawford, Demi Moore, Miranda Kerr and More Stars Love Her Style of Teaching". US Magazine. Retrieved 2 September 2022.
  51. ^ Pechilis, Karen (2004). "Gurumayi, the Play of Shakti and Guru". The Graceful Guru: Hindu Female Gurus in India and the United States. Oxford University Press. pp. 219–243. ISBN 0-19-514538-0.
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  73. ^ Lewis, James R.; Tollefsen, Inga B. (2016). The Oxford Handbook of New Religious Movements: Volume II. Oxford University Press. p. 293. ISBN 9780190466190. A few female gurus have gained international recognition... Sahaja Yoga's guru, Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi.
  74. ^ Webster, K. (December 1990). "The case against Swami Rama of the Himalayas". Yoga Journal.
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  79. ^ a b Landau, Meryl Davids (February 2012). "In Times of Scandal". Elephant Journal. Retrieved 17 August 2021. Here I was, eager to learn yogic principles like nonharming and truthfulness, while Swami Satchidananda, the guru at the head of this teaching center, was being accused of harming and lying aplenty. I don't know if the accusations were ever proven, but the disciple who claimed she'd had a longstanding, not-really-welcome sexual relationship with the supposedly celibate swami was pretty convincing
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Sources

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