Photo: Joslyn Hamilton. Art Direction: The Magazine of Yoga

Joslyn Hamilton and Vanessa Fiola

BFFs and fellow yoga gulag survivors talk about splitting the scene, getting clean, “so-called yogis” – and woo woo

RecoveringYogi, Part Two

website RecoveringYogi

We love to laugh. When we read Joslyn Hamilton, we really laugh. “Let’s just put it this way: The Secret was definitely not written by a Buddhist.” Excellent, vintage Hamilton.

We often start our East Coast morning with the dregs of her late night West Coast Twitter stream, so we’re pleased to discover a whole new world of Joslyn Hamilton created in cahoots with her hot-shot many-media artist and writer pal Vanessa Fiola (a self described “Girl Who Makes Stuff”).

Freshly launched, their project RecoveringYogi is

a safe space for those who have had less than awesome experiences in the yoga world. For those of us that are just kind of over it. We’re not a place for ignorant bullies, but rather, for smart, fearless renegades who say what we mean.

We also like to cuss a lot.

Fair warning. They do like to cuss a lot.

Vagabonds of old new age

Joslyn Hamilton Did you ever think when we met—working for the yoga gulag—that we would end up here as artistic collaborateurs talking shit about the yoga world?

Vanessa Fiola Umm, no, not at all. Well, first, when I met you I was totally intimidated because, you know, the whole “cold and aloof” thing, but I liked you anyway ’cause you dressed cute and were literally the only person in the room who got my self-deprecating jokes. I’m pretty sure the others just felt sorry for me.

Joslyn [Laughs]

Vanessa And then second, I was so in love with the yoga scene at that time that I couldn’t ever imagine becoming jaded. So… no.

What about you? How’d you come up with RecoveringYogi, and why?

Joslyn I have binge domain name purchasing and hoarding problem. Sometime last spring the name just came to me, so I bought the domain, not yet knowing what I was going to do with it.

I’ve known a lot of people in the recovery world, and one of my favorite Buddhist teachers is Noah Levine, who teaches mindfulness based on his own personal recovery from drugs and alcohol. At some point I had the sort of sardonic thought, “I’m in recovery too, but from the vapid yoga scene.”

So I bought the name, and right around that same time I started a secret, invite-only blog called Spiritual Bromide –

Vanessa That’s a genius blog, by the way.

Joslyn Thanks. So I had already been blogging publicly for a long time, but I wanted a forum where I could really speak my mind without offending anyone.

I still have a lot of friends in the yoga world—and the truth is, I love yoga—so I didn’t want to kvetch all over the Internet about my issues with it. At least, not yet. I wasn’t ready.
Now I am.

Josyln Hamilton and Vanessa Fiola aka RecoveringYogi

Vanessa So, what’s the point of RecoveringYogi, exactly?

Joslyn In a few words, it’s a refuge for the spiritually disenfranchised. An online refuge, that is. It’s a web site where people can come together to talk East Coast trash about the lame woo woo side of the yoga world that makes us roll our eyeballs.

That’s the flippant description. The more earnest truth is that it’s a place where people can come to have real, honest conversations about the things in the yoga world that don’t work for them, that maybe seem packaged, trite, shallow, or even scary.

This is the side of yoga you don’t often hear about. Because it’s a cult, in many ways. At least where I live, in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The religious right(eous)

Joslyn What are your thoughts on the yoga world? Maybe you can help me articulate this a little bit better.

Vanessa Well, I too love yoga. So I think, like you alluded to, it’s important to distinguish the practice from everything else.

For me, the longer I spent in the yoga scene, the more I felt like it was religion masquerading as spirituality – and I’m not talking about Hinduism here.

It’s hard to put your finger on what doesn’t feel right about it, because it’s cloaked in all these well-meaning things.


©Vanessa Fiola, RecoveringYogi

Vanessa Ultimately, I came to find the righteousness off-putting. Almost like yoga is the new 700 Club where famous teachers are the new Pat Robertsons, and the rhetoric—be it alignment agendas or fanatical veganism—have replaced, say, homophobic sentiment. You know, two sides of the same coin kind of thing.

Of course, I say all of this knowing that there’s a picture of me somewhere at a teacher training, wearing a VOTE t-shirt w/ a little Om for the O, so yeah… I was a pusher too. You have a saying—that you allow yourself the freedom of changing your mind—I like that.

My Yoga Breakup

Vanessa Joslyn, let’s talk about Elephant Journal.

You’re a writer for them, and one of the things that has been so eye-opening for me has been seeing the mean-spirited comments you’ve gotten from a crowd who considers themselves “on the path” [toward enlightenment]. Can you go into that experience?

Joslyn I started out writing quite timidly for Elephant Journal.

My first piece for them was a short, cute post called “My Yoga Breakup”, which I thought quite cheekily described my ambivalent relationship with the yoga world.

But the feedback was so polarized—people either loved it and related, or they hated it and me for daring to talk trash about yoga—that I was really shocked. And having an essentially rebellious personality, that just made me write more and get braver with my subject matter.

Vanessa, you have a casual slogan that I love: Don’t boss me. That’s how I feel about some of the comments I get on my writing.

Like, you can have your opinion, and you can express it, but don’t tell me what to do!

And yeah, the hypocrisy, the meanness, the lack of compassion in some of these so-called “yogis,” it’s pretty revealing. At the end of the day, we’re all human. Even so-called yoga “gurus.”

Vanessa So are your expectations lower for people in the yoga industry than for secular folks?

Joslyn Unfortunately, when you spend enough time behind the scenes, you do realize that it’s often the broken people who gravitate to teaching yoga. Myself included. And that brokenness can sometimes turn into a pretty nasty case of hypocritical behavior and, even worse, false humility.

On the other hand, I can name more than a few really genuine, heartful people who are using yoga for good. I want RecoveringYogi to illuminate those people. They deserve to stand out, not get lost in a sea of smug vapid yogis.

Making woo whoopee

Vanessa Do you still practice yoga?

Joslyn Absolutely. Well, sort of. Whereas I used to be really rigid in my idea of what “practicing yoga” means, I now practice more of a, shall we say, eight-limbed approach to yoga. I practice yoga, but not necessarily asana. For example, I’m chillin’ in Samadhi right now.
[Laughter]

I once had a mad crush on a cute boy yoga teacher, and during our wooing stage I asked him, how often do you practice yoga? His answer was one of the wisest things I’ve ever heard a yoga teacher say. He said, “I practice every single day. Just not always on the mat. Sometimes I go surfing, sometimes I go for a hike in the Headlands, sometimes I play my guitar, and sometimes I meditate.” It was all yoga to him.

So, if you’re asking me how often I get on my mat, I’d say very special occasions. But I try to practice yoga every day. I think anyone who is on a path at all is practicing yoga, in a sense, any time they are conscious of their behavior and intentions.

Wow, I just got woo woo for a second there, didn’t I?

Vanessa Easy, tiger.

In Part Two of Vanessa and Joslyn’s Conversation, RecoveringYogi contrasts the positive force of working in the yoga world with the mush of “positivity.”

© 2011, The Magazine of Yoga, LLC.