Fernand Vedrenne Gutierrez: My Experience With Yoga and What Is Yoga for Me Fernand Vedrenne Gutierrez - PVNN
May 28, 2013

It is maybe because I lost nearly 80 pounds with it, or because it taught me to slow down my thought in order to choose my words more wisely before opening my mouth. It can even be because of the fact that even though I’m in essence the very same flawed and bad tempered person I’ve always been, I happen to catch myself more often repeating those unhealthy patterns, thus allowing me to fine tune some of them along the way. Truth is, I love yoga for many reasons, some I can explain, while some others are a bit more subtle to be put in clear and concrete words.

I first came across yoga at the gym I used to attend when I was 17 years old. I quickly became mesmerized by all those challenging contortions with such enigmatic names. The harder the posture looked, the more I wanted to do it.  Eventually, I found that all I was doing at the gym was yoga, so I quit the gym and started practicing yoga at a new and trendy studio in Mexico City. To be honest, I was very inconsistent – for a couple of years, I would skip class for a couple of months, only to take it back for three of four classes, and repeat the same cycle over again. Fortunately, one day I had the great opportunity of meeting the teacher who silently introduced me to the practice I have had for some years already.

The practice of yoga was nothing like what I had in mind the first time I unrolled the matt on the floor and struggled to follow all the instructions a teacher said at the gym: in my experience it has rather been a vigorous, deep, and confronting experience, and at some point of my life I thought of quitting for good. I sometimes really wish it had been as easy as mastering a head balance or being able to sit in silence for 20 minutes with a straight back. True yoga has been happening outside my matt every time I struggle to say no to something that is not really nurturing love, or every time I have to slow down my emotions before acting. Asana, Pranayama and sitting are just some very valuable tools we use to practice the uncomfortable and integrate full attention to the movement of the body: we are looking for full awareness and self-study, especially in the most challenging situations. As one of my teachers once said, we want to “be in our bodies” all the time, we want to be firmly rooted to the ground before jumping up to a full arm balance.

In this second decade of the 21st century, more people than ever are drawn into this interesting phenomenon for lack of a better word (Yoga is neither a religion, nor a sect or a cult). Many people are attracted to the practice because they are looking for inner peace or physical activity, yet they find that yoga doesn’t ask its practitioners to change anything in their lives if they don’t really want to. In addition, some people seek a more therapeutic yoga for recovering from past injuries and physical ailments. In every case, there is a commitment with the practice, yet practicing yoga involves being able to evolve only when you are convinced that this change is necessary. Yoga implies being able to learn what others have experienced, and take what is useful for oneself. As Dona Holleman puts it, when it comes to philosophy, the best approach is to raid the ship like a pirate, take what works for you, and get out of it.

Nevertheless, the massive commercialization of the practice in the modern world has turned yoga into a fragmented discipline, and some of its greatest virtues have gotten lost in the world of names, images, and forms.  It is certainly disheartening to see ourselves becoming slaves of rules and being trapped by clichés and brands while we are preaching quite the opposite.

One of the biggest challenges faced by the modern practice of yoga is coming back to that lost wholeness. We have nowadays a myriad of styles and schools of yoga, each looking for the same through slightly different means, yet it is us who get caught in the differences f.  As students, we also keep looking for gurus, we are so astray and so out of ourselves that we no longer trust our inner voice; we need someone from outside to guide every step of our way. Naturally, it is important to have a teacher, but this means to have someone with more experience who can share his or her insight, but after that, it is our job to humbly question the teaching and adapt it to our reality, mainly because those things that worked for the teacher are not necessarily going to be truth for the student.

It is hard to define yoga, but I could say that in some way it is “the art of existing”. Anybody can learn the different postures, but we are not looking forward to catching our feet or bending forward, it is our approach to the posture what we are most interested in. Studying our attitudes towards the different movements provides great insight of our own existence. In general, we don’t go into the practice of yoga for any reason other than having fun, with time, we also learn how to pay attention to many little details, and eventually we also get many other secondary benefits. But these have never been the main goals. Nevertheless, just as a pianist needs skill to play, practicing yoga requires a very sharp sense of technique. Yoga is a powerful sharp tool that can be quite harmful if it’s no practiced with care and contention. Who cares about the shallowness of external appearances, the bendiness of our neighbors, or about ultimate illumination when the practice itself is enjoyable and sweet?

“When you practice, you don’t practice for an effect. You don’t practice for the onlooker. You don’t practice to get some wonderful enlightenment or whatever. You practice simply and purely because you like practicing. You know, because it feels good, your body feels good. So then it becomes much more simple and it becomes much more honest.” – Dona Holleman

Fernand Vedrenne-Gutiérrez was born and raised in Mexico City. Fernand studied Food Science and Technology at Universidad Iberoamericana of the Society of Jesus. He attended Wageningen University in the Netherlands for one semester, and participated in a Global Health seminar at the Imperial College of London, and is looking forward to start his Master’s in Applied Statistics next summer. Fernand has participated in different research projects dealing with a wide variety of topics such as bioethics and Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes at the Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMSS) and the National Pediatrics Institute (INP). He is interested in the socio-cultural determinants of health, in addition to other topics such as food policy and food preference, and has made contributions to some publications in International Journals such as BMC Medicine. In his free time Fernand is an avid yoga practitioner and amateur piano player who enjoys talking, debating, travelling and meeting new people. His biggest hope is that his work might be useful to society in some way.

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