From Rebel to Dictator – How Tara Stiles became as dogmatic as the people whose „rules“ she tried to break

I remember seeing one video of Tara Stiles in the very early 2000s, when she was still a Ford Model and posting short clips to alleviate this and that. It was a video for the wrists.

I saw her and thought: „God, if Americans didn´t have these strange voices, she´d be the perfect woman.“

Years later, I found her again and, thanks to Social Media, could stay on track of her and receive updates of what she was doing over facebook and her newsletters.

I spent a lot of time being completely amazed by this beautiful graceful being.

„Rebel“ I tought, Wow!“, though upon watching the sequences she posted on youtube, I wasn´t able to figure out wherein her rebellion lay. Her stile seemed to me regularly Flow/Power Yogarish but I didn´t want to judge without having a deeper picture. So I read all texts of her I could find.

A rebellion against what dogmatic, unflexible men teached back in her days. Aha.

Not my perception of the world, but as she started Yoga way earlier than me, I might simply have missed that part.

So I remained a follower.

Logging into facebook and first thing seeing a picture of her sleepy eyes she took while waiting on an airport or a sequence of perfection shot beside a pool with a breathtaking view of the sorroundings – she knew how to keep up the mood.

The first dissonance in her communication I noticed was when she started condemning exact alignment. While I agreed with her concept, to move wth ease and don´t force oneself too deep into the positions, I couldn´t help but disagree about alignment, since some people are simply unable to feel themselves and thus to move with real, unhurting ease.

Alignments also help to enhance body knowledge and increase the ease, when applied correctly.

I then started to see the contradition between what she showed in her videos – a professionally trained dancer and model, perfectly performing challenging asanas in HD setting – and her sermon to move to the point of ease, which is a probably a different one for the largest part of the human population.

But to be fair: It was probably her point of ease, so maybe she just wasn´t able to perform differently and as I had never attended a class of hers personally, I was not in the position to criticize her teaching style, for I couldn´t see how she conveyed it to the people.

But there were more discussable points.

She preached simplicity and meditation – and sold Reebok.

She emphasized the connection to nature – and went jet skiing before a tropical island on camera.

Not to speak of the absolute contradiction of always and ever emphasizing that yoga is not about how it looks like on the outside and performing her famous tour inside that pope mobile device.

I noticed people reacting to some of her points on facebook with what I deemed to be correct criticism and she replied with posts about ignoring negative people. I had a picture of her trying to cross a street with heavy traffic over a red sign and telling the person that tried to stop her to not be so negative.

While there are of course lots of haters and negative people – there is a different thing called criticism. Without criticism, without being proved wrong from time to time, there will be no learning after a certain point, no evolution, no „flexibility and constant movement“ another one of her favourites.

Then her posts began to become more and more aggressive. While I tried to blend out most of it, today I reached my personal limit.

Her newest Newsletter is headlined: „Everything we´ve ever been told about achieving is wrong.“

It follows a sermon about how she was told to „follow it diligently, work really hard, keep our head down, and push on through all the stress and struggle“ and the usual ‘this is all wrong, you just have to soften, breathe, be at ease’. I had heard all of this before and with her emphasis on her personal experience, her headline was simply technically wrong.

But, while – again – I mostly agree with her, especially in relation to how people should dose the intensity of their asanas, she establishes this concept as universal and the only true one.

Now, imagine you want to learn a really challenging profession – to be a surgeon, a judge, etc.

There are some parts to that study where you just have to memorize dry boring stuff in huge amounts.

Doing this will one day save peoples lives. There is just no way around it. And when taking time to think about it, you will find many example where the easy way is just not the way.

Think of saving smeone out of a burning house. Every fireman has to „follow it diligently, work really hard, keep his head down, and push on through all the stress and struggle“.

It is the same problem as with most of what Tara Stiles utters: It is corect, but she is trying to sell it as the only truth.

Which ironically is called a Dogma.

Tara has become what she allegedly is a Rebel against. (Who made the rules?)

But all of this has been there before and Tara is only a human beeing and humans make mistakes.

The thing that will make me „leave her“ today is the end of her newsletter.

There she claims: „So this brings me back around to all those sacred yoga and philosophy texts. I think we can rewrite the message in a way that makes sense for us now.“

The most substantial and pragmatic text for Yoga are the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.

The core is made of three sentences:

1) sthira-sukham-asanam (46)

2) srayatna-saithilya-ananta-samāpatti-bhyām (47)

3) tato dvandva-an-abhighatah (48)

meaning:

1) the posture be firm but comfortable

2) ease your mind and focus on the breath

3) then you will transcend the dualistic world (all the suffering and stress) and connect to the eternal.

Everything Tara sells as her invention, her “rebellion” – it is all there and always has been.

Dear Tara, Goodbye.

Thank you for some nice times.

I sincerely hope one day you will learn what Yoga is and maybe we´ll meet again.

Until then: farewell

Aum shanti.