A Great Question

“I’ve been practicing yoga for seven years,” says Kate Churchill. “The purest, most peaceful moments of my life have happened on my yoga mat.” This sounds about right. For those who do yoga, whether hardcore or weekend, the most frequently cited effect is some sort of peace—spiritual, physical, emotional.

But for Churchill, something else is niggling. What to make of the paradoxes that seem so obvious and unresolved in yoga—that is, yoga the multibillion dollar industry as much as yoga the earnest individual practice? In the first few moments of her documentary, Enlighten Up!, Churchill stands beneath a storefront studio sign that reads, “yoga core fusion spa.” What, she muses, can this possibly mean? Who is it pitching to? And who can feel peace under such circumstances?

In an effort to find out whether she’s right to believe that, “despite its obvious contradictions… there is a true yoga, a life-changing practice that can lead a person to happiness, maybe even enlightenment,” Churchill enlists a guinea pig. Erstwhile journalist Nick Rosen, 29 years old, agrees to start yoga classes and sincerely pursue Churchill’s quest of “transformation.” She picks him because he is, she says, “a novice, someone who will truly investigate yoga, yet is primed for change.” He agrees because, well, maybe he needs the work, and maybe he’s interested in the project.

The film offers some predictable moments, including montages that show Nick’s troubles seeking a class or style that suits him and generally adjusting to the rigors of yoga (“Stretching, stretching, stretching,” instructs one yogi, “Make sure that you’re breathing”). One instructor suggests that numerology is key; after learning Nick’s birthday, he concludes, “It must be easy for you to be friends with a woman.” In fact, in these early montagey moments, Nick is often surrounded by solemn-looking young Caucasian women, as he twists his body, makes faces, and sweats (gulping water while his classmates continue their “stretching, stretching”). He decides his favorite of his initial options is Alan Finger, because, Nick says, “He’s funny and doesn’t take himself all that seriously.” Following another encounter, this one with Dharma Mitra, Nick says, “I loved your class today, you have a great teaching style, very spiritually oriented. You talk a lot about devotion. I’m not really a spiritual guy: how can I start to think about it?”

Churchill decides to take her project to another level.

They make a few short-term journeys to see other yogis of various inclinations. While Nick keeps something of a journal (his typing appears on a laptop screen), most of the film’s philosophical concerns are raised in conversations between Nick and Churchill, as she presses him to think about his goals and his reasoning. They worry that “18 million Americans now practice a Baskin Robbins variety of yoga styles,” as this suggests a commercial motivation has made “purity” all but impossible. Nick, being a journalist by training (as he reminds us more than once), wants to find evidence, wants to premise his conclusions, if he comes to them, on something he considers concrete. He wants to write an article about his experiences, as a way to make his education available to others. “I always think it’s important for people to learn about things if they’re true,” he says.

Cryptic as this assessment may be, the film is not precisely going to reveal things that are absolutely “true.” To its credit, Enlighten Up! is at least occasionally skeptical of the premise that true “things” might be articulated and disseminated. It does, however, maintain at least a seeming investment in the notion that these “things” might be made known to individuals, subjective and nontransferable. The “path,” as yoga is often termed here, may be a function of instruction and “practice, practice, practice,” but it won’t lead to a same place for all practitioners.

Churchill and Nick head to India, where they stay for six months, visiting with yogis. Nick’s increasingly complex physical endeavors are submitted as evidence of the effort, but again, the verbal exchanges are most intriguing. Pattabhi Jois “grants” them an interview, wherein he observes that Nick must practice mind control (“Your mind does not control you”). They take a moment to show a Hasya Yoga session with Dr. Madan Kataria, where all participants laugh loudly and happily. Nick joins in, but he also confides in voiceover, “I was laughing at the laughter, laughing at the absurdity of the situation, laughing at the absurdity of all existence.”

If this seems like a good place to find, Nick presses on, inspired to recall his father’s injunction, “The most important thing is to accept yourself and be happy.” He still doesn’t feel any “transformation,” though he appreciates the path as he’s on it. “It’s not important what you are doing,” a yogi tells him. “It’s important why you are doing.” Nick sighs. He’s not going to make the same sort of religious change that appears the goal of so many. “I am a godless guy from New York City,” he says. “It doesn’t make sense for me to embrace Krishna or God.” Right, says the yogi. “Be your true self.”

And so we’re back where we started. How can you know what’s true? How can you determine a “self” amid daily changes, some trivial and some monumental? The film doesn’t pretend to know. It does offer minor entertainments (Nick’s efforts to go on a date with a girl he meets in yoga class, or more precisely, his efforts to get out from under Churchill’s camera) as well as some lovely imagery—markets in Mysore, mountains in New York State. As she and Nick part ways, Churchill sounds satisfied with what they’ve done. “Sometimes you find the answers to your questions and sometimes you find much more,” she says. Whatever that is.