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I see less of the deep, let’s-interrogate-reality approach. When I started practicing, the idea of yoga as blowing your mind was dominant.

BY MAGAZINE EDITOR SUSAN MAIER-MOUL

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Related post Conversation: Stefanie Syman Part One

Susan Maier-Moul Let’s pick up on your motivation to write The Subtle Body. It’s interesting that you emerged from a major foray in digital culture into writing a book about yoga, like coming off a wave onto the beach.

Stefanie Syman I saw the book as an attempt to contextualize yoga, to show how it’s connected to our literary tradition and these other really monumental culture forces. And I am actually trying to do the same thing in real life, which is to bring all these disparate strands together – literary culture, yoga, and eventually digital media.

With Joanna Yas, who’s been the longtime editor of Open City, we’re launching biannual gatherings that bring together writers, thinkers, and artists to talk process and share work in progress for a weekend in the Hudson Valley. We’ll be asking participants to unplug for the weekend, and we’ll offer yoga and meditation. And eventually, if we succeed, we’ll create media connected to the gatherings for the iPad and other tablets.

We’re calling the whole thing “FEED your head,” which points to one of the sources of inspiration for this project. And the gatherings will definitely draw on the extended FEED network.

[For updates on FEED your head feedyourhead12@gmail.com]

Deepening practice with Ashtanga teacher Eddie Stern

Susan I wonder if there’s any way you could have known when you began a practice and an internet startup at the same time that you would end up working much of your adult life to bring these two cultures together.

Stefanie I don’t know how seriously I took it. I didn’t take yoga (or starting FEED, for that matter) as seriously as one does when you’re older, or coming into it with certain expectations. In some ways I was a very typical story of an American Yoga student.

I had been running for ten years, and I had to stop running because I had a knee injury. In a sense I was looking for something to take the place of running.

So when I first started I wasn’t focused on the philosophy of yoga. Then slowly, I started to take it a little bit more seriously and became more curious. And then, I decided to write the book – and after 18 months, sold the proposal – which gave me an excuse to really try to figure it out.

Susan Do you think that there’s a difference between coming into the practice and experiencing its effects, without being cued about them?

Stefanie So sort of being naive to its claims?

Susan Yes, you’re just having the experience.

Stefanie I think you always have some expectations of things, it’s impossible to be a blank slate.

I wasn’t expecting some grand transcendent message so I wasn’t disappointed by what I found, and I was actually quite pleased and excited by what I found. I didn’t feel pressure from any direction to make yoga more than that what I was experiencing. That’s partly because I practice Ashtanga Yoga. During class, there’s very little talk except to make sure you’re doing the postures correctly, and even that is pretty limited.

I did get a subtle pressure from my teacher, Eddie Stern, but only in the best sort of way. He’s very funny and wry. His version of leading you to things is never pedantic. He’s more like a Jewish mother, and I can say this, being Jewish; he has high standards, and if you don’t meet them it’s clear you’ll disappoint him, and you’d really just rather not disappoint him – though I doubt that’s how he sees it.

The funniest memory I have of starting to study yoga with him was in the early FEED days, when he was early in his teaching career, so his studio was fairly empty, even during the morning rush. I suggested (idiotically, given the traffic at the time), he might want to advertise on the web.

He wisely demurred. Within two years, you’d have to wait for a spot on the floor no matter how early you arrived, and the coat racks would be jammed full.

Seven years writing with FSG editor Paul Elie

Susan What was your favorite part of writing a book?

Stefanie Weirdly, what I remember the most were the blockages. I’d have these moments where I’d think, this chapter is so not working yet, I have rewritten it five times, I guess I’m going to rewrite it one more time. And then I’d have to get up from my computer and go for a walk so that I could think.

Some of the most fun moments came during my research. I found out where the pictures of Gloria Swanson and Indra Devi were taken. I located the house, its resident at the time, Robert Balzer, who was Gloria Swanson’s lover. He was in his mid-90s. We talked by phone, and he gave me the whole back story.

I had a lot of hunches, and it was very satisfying when they were borne out.

Susan So that was an interesting experience, following your gut.

Stefanie Yes. But, for better or worse, that tends to be my navigational system in all things in life.

Another high point: my editor at FSG, Paul Elie. Working with Paul was a hugely wonderful part of writing the book.

At FEED Sam Lipsyte or Steven Johnson would edit me. And, of course, when I’ve done magazine pieces I’ve had all sorts of editors, but this was a much bigger project.

Susan So how do you think you got the nerve to go from writing magazine length pieces to writing such a large project?

Stefanie I think we have to credit my own stupidity for that one.

I knew it was a big project. I had known for some time I wanted to write a book. At the same time, I’m not the type of person who’s had these crystal clear goals that I’ve always been driving towards. I didn’t show much propensity for writing as kid, for example. I wanted to be a doctor and then a painter. But once I get a hold of an idea that I think is worthwhile, I just don’t let it go.

And if you had told me it would take seven years to write this book, during which time I’d help launch another digital media startup and have my two daughters, I’m sure I wouldn’t have taken it on.

Susan As the years went by, did it take courage to stay with it?

Stefanie I had a contract, and an editor I was committed to. And I was just not going to disappoint him. There was no way. If I had it within my power, I would not disappoint him.

I guess that’s a theme, not wanting to fail in the eyes of people I admire. It makes it much easier to turn on the computer every morning, when you’ve got your own self-respect on the line.

The readers, the critics and The Subtle Body

Susan The practice environment varies between simmering and boiling these days, but it’s never really still waters. Do you feel good about the contribution your book has made to creating a conversation?

Stefanie I’m not always sure what the contribution is. I hoped to give people at least some direction and some historical perspective about where we are.

Susan Is the book ahead of its time, or to put it another way, are its best days ahead of it?

Stefanie Could be. I think it’s a word-of-mouth book, and paperback will be really good for it.

Susan Part of what you’re pointing at is technology, which is a lovely through line here, the technology of the hardcover in this situation, not so useful, but paperback? Maybe yes.

Do you feel there’s a sense of gate-keeping, or being held out of the yoga community by people who ought to have taken up the book and discussed it seriously in its proper context?

Stefanie I really saw the book as American cultural history. I really felt, and still feel, it’s a story of American Culture, and anyone who is interested in American Culture should enjoy reading it.

On the flip side, people who read yoga books tend to read instructional books or translations of the key texts, like the Yoga Sutras.

So my book is kind of an odd format, which is why I think word-of-mouth is so important. If someone who you practice yoga with says “you have to read this,” that is how this book will get read. That has started, and I’m hoping it will gain some momentum with paperback.

Susan We’re excited that this conversation with you is happening as the paperback is coming out.

I feel like your book is a little bit like a ticking bomb. People know your book exists, people have opinions about you who haven’t read your book.

Stefanie Yes, I’m sure that’s true. I certainly see heated opinions in the Amazon reviews.

But in writing the book, I really did not want to be polemical. I just personally don’t think that way. I wanted to be fair and respectful but I was not going to shy away from bad stuff if I felt it was important to the story.

Media coverage of yoga has historically been disdainful or trivializing or both. I started in the opposite place. I assumed that there was something worthwhile to talk about and understand.

A process of assimilation, a gradually receding bias

Susan I’m going to give you two questions, you can think of them as related if you feel they are.

Was there anything anybody said about the book that was just patently unfair or missed the point?

And, is there anything that people who don’t do yoga, misunderstand about yoga that you were hoping your book might address?

Stefanie Let’s just say that [New York Times columnist] Michiko Kakutani reviewed me, and I’m really happy that she didn’t tear me to shreds.

I feel like the reviewers got very caught up in the fact that this is a yoga book. Maybe I didn’t succeed, but I very much wanted to demonstrate the degree to which this is a story of American culture, broadly speaking, and a process of assimilation.

Yoga did influence American culture very decisively. The potency of its cultural impact far outstrips the actual number of people who practice. I’d hoped – and still do – that people who read Louis Menand or Rebecca Skloot will read my book.

Susan Have you read Catherine Albanese’s A Republic of Mind and Spirit? The Subtle Body is a more accessible cousin of that book.

Stefanie Yes, I’ve read her. Thanks, yes.

Susan I think of your book as the story of what makes yoga be practiced the way it is by people who would have received it the way we as Americans originally received it. I mean there’s not a neutral or somewhere outside of history place that could have happened.

Stefanie To answer your second question: Right now I feel like we’re back in the 50s with yoga. It’s an enabler of your high-powered lifestyle. I feel like most people are turning to yoga in a kind of therapeutic, superficial way. I see less of the deep, let’s-interrogate-reality approach to the practice.

Susan Don’t you think given your own entry under similar circumstances, as somebody looking for a replacement for running, don’t you think that people who come to yoga, even within the American “do better” ethos, that they might actually begin to examine other aspects of reality more closely as a result of practicing?

Stefanie Oh yeah, absolutely. But when I started practicing yoga, the idea of yoga as blowing your mind was dominant in certain circles. And it doesn’t seem like that’s where the conversation starts now as much, though I think it can go there.

But again, I have such a narrow perspective on what’s happening now because it’s so determined by who I am in contact with and my life stage. There are probably 30 people who are 25 years-old intensely meditating who I could run in to if I only knew where to find them.

Susan And what about the people who don’t do yoga, for example, the derision of the press that you mention earlier. What does that class of response typically misunderstand? Is it a context? A lack of information? Did what you ended up writing in The Subtle Body confirm this impression, in your opinion?

Stefanie Reporters are professional skeptics for one, and they also tend to dip into subjects and move on; plus, they’re trained to not get deeply personally involved, which is the only way yoga is going to have an impact on you.

It’s not possible to measure the impact of yoga on someone else. It’s almost entirely subjective, and, as people like Theos Bernard and Margaret Wilson and many others have shown us, its most powerful effects are very difficult to put into words.

Add to this a general bias against spiritual topics, and you have a recipe for derision. What’s worse, the reporters were often proven right. A bunch of swamis and gurus were, and no doubt still are, corrupt and did and will abuse their power.

This should just serve as a lesson in human nature, rather than a condemnation of yoga, but that’s not usually how outsiders have read these situations. Instead, they tend to unconsciously repeat early 20th century tropes, which carry a strong whiff of racism and sexism.

Now there’s no excuse. There’s so much more solid information about yoga out there. And I’ve already seen some signs of change. I get calls from reporters who genuinely want to understand yoga and its context. That’s cheering.

© 2011, The Magazine of Yoga, LLC.