Drama in the Ashtanga Community

If you haven't head the news, and you probably haven't if you're not an avid Ashtanga Yoga practitioner, a lot of information has come out about the Authorized Ashtanga Teacher Taylor Hunt. Just head over to Instagram and you find a myriad of stories from former students and colleagues. To say I'm not surprised would be incorrect, I didn't like him from the first time I met him in Mysore, India probably around 2012 or 2014. 

He was pushy. He was a kiss ass to Sharath, and I felt him to have a very self-important vibe about him, like he was better than others; which is not uncommon in the Sharath Yoga School of Ashtanga (formerly known as the K. Pattabhi Jois Ashtanga Yoga Research Institute). As long as I attended there, from 2007-2018, it was a very competitive place. Students were to pay around $600 for a month of studies there which included morning Ashtanga Mysore and Led Classes 6 days per week, and 30 minutes of Sanskrit chanting (the same monotone mantras year after year.) After traveling to Mysore for several years, Sharath may offer you "Authorization" which costs $1200 USD for level 1 and $2000 for level 2, and $10,000 for Certification. Each level means you are proficient at more asanas that the previous. So the more asanas you can do, the more money you pay. Not whether or not you can teach, just based on the fact of how many asanas you can perform and how well. 

Anyway, in March 2014 I received Level 1 Authorization and felt very happy about it. Shortly thereafter Taylor Hunt received Level 2 Authorization. After that Taylor emailed me inviting himself to the studio where I taught claiming he could "Help me build my Mysore Program." Really? I was pretty offended. Who was this guy, who came out of nowhere, asking other teachers to help them build their Mysore Program? I mean, these are my students whom I have worked with for the past few years and you just want to come in and tell me how to teach them. My thought was, "Who the hell do you think you are?"

Needless to say, I did not respond. But he did eventually come to Orlando to visit another Ashtanga Mysore Program, one where I had taught for 3 years. Boy am I glad I left that toxic place a year prior. The Authorized teacher who ran the place, and whom I thought was a friend, had a similar ideology to Taylor, which made it a good fit for the both of them. That fit? Push students until they feel pain. Manipulate them into giving as much money as they could afford to gain the knowledge that only they could provide, from multiple trips to India. Don't listen to your own body, abide my my instructions. Using terms like "bad lady" when students did not perform asanas as they wanted them, and bad mouthing students to each other when they were not around.

I couldn't take it anymore, and left in 2013. But I had signed a non-compete agreement and this teacher tried to sue me for $50,000! Like, bitch please, if I was worth that to you, then why did you pay me like a pauper and charge me over $100 per month for classes? Especially when I was one of your teachers, subbed for you multiple times per week when you called me at 3am because you were hungover? But I accept my role in this dance. I was just as easily manipulated as any of the other students, and when I could not longer unsee it, I had to get out. I did, for $1000, which I had to pay her to settle the non-compete. 

Fortunately the following year, I received Authorization and had my own Mysore classes on the other side of town. They were doing well, and I continued to travel to India to study with Sharath until everything changed in 2018. That was the year I vowed never to go back to study with Sharath. I thought Sharath was a good man, but the culture under his tutelage was becoming more and more self absorbed. You couldn't go to lunch without overhearing someone talking about what new postures they received from Sharath that week, like it was some sort of competition. People elbowing others to get a "good spot" in the Shala. A few times my mat would be moved, even cast aside while I was in the bathroom because someone else wanted to place where I had already laid my mat. 

I couldn't take it, and with a couple of my close friends, that season we spoke about not returning to this shit show, which is what it felt like. That year, when Sharath asked me to come for a 3rd time to receive Authorization, at that point I knew he didn't even know my name. Eleven YEARS!!! Eleven years I had been practicing with him; twice in NYC, once in Connecticut, Madrid, Stockholm, Copenhagen, not to mention the multiple years in Mysore. It was obvious, he had lost control over his own students, the cracks were showing. There were so many rumors an allegations about his Authorized teachers abusing their students, stealing money, planning retreats, taking the money from them and just not showing up to those retreats, teachers cheating on their spouses with their students, and I am sure much more. 

Again, I wanted to part of this "elite" group of Ashtanga teachers until I did not. It was my journey, which I take full responsibility, because being part of that group of teachers was something that I had wanted for so long, and once I had it, I was inside the machine and saw too much. It was time to stop the insanity.

In 2019 I took a hiatus from teaching Yoga, even practicing Ashtanga. When I left India in 2018, I knew it would be at least 5 years before I returned, and the pandemic made that easy, because I love India and find it hard to stay way for too long. In 2023 I found a new teacher and brought 10 of my students with me to study with him, Ajay Kumar. I had heard only good things of him from my previous travels to India, and decided to make the leap. It was the best decision I had ever made for myself and my personal yoga journey. That was also the year I emailed Sharath Yoga and asked to be taken off the Authorized teachers list. Divine intervention, or divine timing? I can't be sure, all I know is that with all the craziness that's been going on in the Ashtanga community of Authorized Teachers, all I can say is that I am so glad that my name is NOT on that list. 

On the other hand, I made many long lasting friendships over the years I traveled to study with Sharath. When you have good friends that are living yoga like it is taught to us by Patanjali, you know that the whole lot is not bad, but a few rotten apples will spoil the whole bushel. And those rotten apples are getting a lot of attention now, probably not the attention they thought, but who knows? Often times bad press is better than good press because it makes you more well known. 

I am grateful for my Ashtanga Practice now, and especially for Ajay who knows my name, my practice, and even my student's names. The students I met while studying with Ajay are way different. They live what they have been taught, and Ajay will quickly kick you out of his Shala if you don't. He teaches with a firm & compassionate style. He pushes without taking you over the edge. For example, in 2024 I was able to study with him for 6 weeks. Back bends are hard for me, but I love them and always want to do more. One day I was just not feeling it and told him "no" during several adjustments. He backed off quickly and after class I went to apologize for being "so weak, tired, unlike my usual self." Do you know what he said? He said, "Everyday Maureen you push more. Everyday I ask you if you want to do one more back bend and every day you say yes. One day, one day it's ok to say no, because all of the other days you give everything you have." I cried. I have never had an Ashtanga Yoga Teacher speak to me in that way. I'd been abused in those other classes, injured, hamstring, back, ribs, & shoulder. But not anymore. I have found my place of healing, compassion, real yoga education, and above all else, a place where yoga and the lessons it brings are of the utmost importance, and not the postures. A place where we practice real Sadhana, a daily, committed spiritual practice or discipline that a practitioner undertakes with the intention of personal, self-transcendence, and spiritual growth.

As I look back at my Ashtanga Yoga Journey over the past 20 years, I had to go to those places to reach the place I am now. It all lines up eventually, even if you think you know where you are going, the destination can surprise you.