It is with both relief and a tinge of pity for some of the very sincere students I’ve had the privilege of teaching, that I have finally resigned from my classes at the corporate fake yoga and fitness center which for the purposes of this article shall be referred to with poetic justice as Pimp Yoga (abbreviated PY), due to disgust and outrage at the unethical & immoral habit of the mercantile management to repeatedly renege on our agreement and terms.

It is no surprise that the Chinese say “無奸不成商”, “those who do not betray can never succeed in business”. The management has broken every promise they have made and reneged on every condition and term of employment, betraying their complete lack of respect for their teacher’s rights, complete lack of respect for the student’s intelligence to recognize and enjoy quality, real yoga practice, and lack of respect for themselves in showing the management has no honor and no conscience.
One would think only at Pimp Yoga is this a problem, but after speaking to other teachers, as well as my own experience in teaching yoga well over a decade on 3 different continents, I can say with dismay and with certainty, that is the nature of corporate business – emphasis added.

Yoga in essence is a spiritual path, not a materialistic path, what matters is health, harmony, happiness, not money money money, but when unscrupulous merchants prostitute the tradition of yoga that spans literally tens of thousands of years – many yogis, archeologists & researchers say millions of years – then a system of cheaters and the cheated is created in which the quality of yoga does not exist, and everybody loses, both the teachers, and the students, everybody that is except the cheaters and pimps.
Ever wonder why yoga is practiced everywhere but it’s so difficult to find a qualified “real” yogi? How many of today’s “yogis” actually practice ahimsa and satyam, in actions rather than merely words? Better yet, how many of today’s so called “yogis” actually practice yoga? And no, demonstrating occasionally in a classroom does not count, and does not equate to real, personal, daily practice.
Oh real yogis are around, they just don’t work in the yoga-brothels of corporate pimping, which outsources young, unqualified and inexperienced teachers from poor countries, then holds them in absolute bondage & slavery in a country where they don’t speak the language, have no health benefits, no dental, no health insurance, no year end bonus, no pension, housed in barracks not in the teacher’s name and locked into one sided contracts creating a system of absolute, tyrannical control in which teachers have no rights and are acutely aware that the moment they try to voice an opinion and stand by their rights they not only face having their classes cut initially but eventually being fired and kicked out of their apartment all in the same day, only to find themselves stuck in a foreign country where they don’t speak the language, have few friends if any and certainly no savings or hope of finding other employment, in a word, slavery, and these “fitness” centers if you can call them that, are filled not with experienced, qualified real teachers who spend time mentoring and grooming their students, but rather young bodies, any-BODY, and what is pimped and glamorized as “yoga” and “fitness” is nothing more than youthful bodies in their 20’s, and sometimes even younger. You won’t find a qualified, experienced teacher in a pimp center, unless he’s either gay, or irresponsible and clueless career wise.

Real teachers go off and start their own small, privately run, REAL yoga schools. Hong Kong being a very materialistic place, one of the only places in the world you can walk down a single street and literally find a dozen banks, and for the most part being utterly obsessed with money only, unfortunately creates many such large, corporate fake-fitness-centers of pimp-yoga and youth-prostitution disguised as “health” and “fitness”. No, I’m sorry, that is NOT fitness, and I am not deceived. Everybody is healthy when they are under 25 years of age. When you can be in your mid and late years and still look fresh, fit, and strong, then you really got something.

In order to give some explanation to the many concerned and sincere students, friends, and fellow yoga practitioners and teachers, the following is a more specific list of broken promises by PY (Pimp Yoga):

Initial agreement of a monthly salary of X, with a minimum of 75 hours of classes/month and an hourly rate of Y which based on my over 20 years of yoga practice and 15+ years of professional experience was agreed at 66% higher than the average teacher at PY.

A housing allowance of was promised.

I never received the agreed housing allowance.

Then breaking our agreement and shamelessly reneging on their promise they quietly changed the hourly rate to 23% lower than agreed upon, of course without informing me.

Actual hours of class time received was never more than 53 hours in a month, or 30% less classes than agreed, which even if they did keep their word and provide the agreed housing allowance and maintained the agreed upon hourly rate would still have resulted in a salary 30% lower than agreed! But there’s more!

Calculating the reneging on the hourly rate, the reduction in number of class hours, and the withholding of the promised housing allowance, the actual salary received was 53.5% less than agreed upon!

Initially they requested I give them my teacher profile to put on their site, then when I was less than lightning fast in providing one they followed up by calling me multiple times requesting I please provide them with a teacher profile. When I finally did provide them with my teacher profile, listing my training and experience, they suddenly reversed their attitude, became mute and started giving me cold shoulder treatment and did not put my teacher profile up at all, even after harassing me for some time to provide one. Why would that be? One-upped perhaps?

Could it be that some of the pimp-yoga-instructor / managers felt their own qualifications and experience did not measure up in contrast and didn’t want to advertise this fact?

Furthermore, the management very consciously practiced a “divide and conquer” Machiavellian management strategy, intentionally creating division, suspicion, gossip, rumors, tattle tales and quarreling amongst their own instructors in an effort to create an atmosphere of tension, spying, snitching, and above all else, anything but a friendly spirit of camaraderie and unity, the very essence of what real Yoga is all about which is total harmony both inner, as well as outer, in the management’s efforts to keep the teachers in-fighting and competing amongst themselves in order to better maintain control of their slaves. But the management in all their “wisdom’ failed to realize that all they have to do is simply keep their promises and treat their teacher’s with a modicum of respect, and nature would undoubtedly take affect and create reciprocation in teachers who feel respected and appreciated.

On one occasion in which the management was conducting one such “divide and conquer” think tank meeting, with the secondary objective of “whip the dog” session to remind the slaves who is the slave-master, a meeting of instructor-slaves and management was held in a yoga class room. It is customary, mandatory even, for all teachers and students and indeed everybody to take off their shoes when entering the yoga class room as a sign of respect, a cultural custom practiced in all Asian countries from India to Japan, during which the slave-master whose name is not worth mentioning, purposefully and deliberately strutted around like a peacock with his shoes on, slowly, and methodically, making sure everyone noticed his shoes were on, as a means of reminding everybody who has the “big one” and to rub the noses of the instructor-slaves in it. Just one small example of psychological battery and disrespect.

Furthermore, many of the young, completely untrained and without any experience whatsoever fresh-meat-instructor-slaves imported from poor countries, often have no qualification, certification, and indeed display they have no training whatsoever. The management often assists in acquiring fake certificates and forged documents to use as so-called “qualifications” on the slave-instructor’s behalf, instead of real “kung fu’ evident in demonstrable yoga that anyone may bear personal eye witness to, as verily, the proof is in the pudding, which unfortunately for the yoga-pimps and cheaters, CANNOT BE FAKED, BOUGHT, OR PRINTED. It is customary in corporate pimp-yoga centers to simply print or purchase fake certificates that are needed for the never ending supply of fresh instructor-slaves due to the high turnover rate of fresh-meat slaves who live in a tiny pigeon hole, sleep late regularly due to classes that finish late at night, thus guaranteeing they have no possibility of doing any personal daily early morning practice – and how can their be “surya namaskar” without “surya” -, causing such young, fresh-meat-instructor-slaves to quickly age prematurely and lose any bodily luster they may have had due to youth-not-practice, not to mention the all too common practice of such young, fresh-meat slaves in “leasing” their companionship to wealthy, old women. This incidentally also explains the “crash course” style “week end” certification courses, some with as little as “2 day’ training for an “instructor certificate” and the best of which have less than 200 hours of training. 200 hours? Are you freaking kidding me? The average teenage kid in high school in America, or cricket player in India, easily puts in over 300 hours of sweat-and-blood training in a mere 2 months over a summer just to ensure that he will actually get to see some playing time as opposed to merely being a bench-warmer! Would you trust your child on the operation table under the knife of a “doctor” who had less than 200 hours training? Why then would you trust your physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual health of both your gross material body and your subtle, subconscious body with some QUACK who has less training in health, yoga, and fitness than the garbage man or the plumber! The guy who fixes the toilet has more than 200 hours of training…

Many of these pimp-yoga centers employ new age, hippie type so called “gods” and “gurus” who preach free love, promiscuity, experimental “psyche opening” drug use, and wanton, licentiousness and debauchery, and the great mass of innocent members of the public are completely unaware that the “peace sign” is not a sign of peace at all but rather the SYMBOL OF DEATH, being the Elhaz rune of “Life” inverted thus meaning “Death” from the Elder Futhark Viking runes. So remember next time you wear a t-shirt with what you are told is the “Peace Sign” and naively accept without independent critical thinking, education, nor research, is actually the “Death Sign”, an inevitable result of unrighteous living.

I would urge all sincere yoga practitioners everywhere to boycott such unethical, fake, large corporate fitness pimp-yoga prostitution business centers, for that’s all they are, an impersonal business rather than a real school with a progressive, planned syllabus, in favor of small, privately owned, owner-operator type yoga schools, which are actually SCHOOLS that actually teach yoga rather than merely put on a mock and futile show of “keep fit” (futile, because all devouring Kaala or Time eventually makes everyone old and kills everybody anyway and without exception), in which the owner himself is an actual teacher and real yogi, rather than just a cold, calculating, shrewd and “treacherous” merchant who doesn’t know a thing about what yoga is all about and simply peddles and pimps a glorious tradition that embodies the wisdom of the ancients into a sublime, timeless harmony of motion & stillness, tension & relaxation, a melody of tranquility of body, mind, heart & soul that is called Yoga, which is beyond all dry arm chair philosophy and word-jugglery, and in the low estimation of things by such corporate businessmen presume that like themselves, the yoga student is nothing more than a mindless consumer zombie who likewise is helplessly clueless and has no inkling of what real Yoga is all about.

If you want the copy-watch of fake-pimped-yoga, to be cheated by shrewd merchant pimps and bogus slave instructors who at best have a mere 200 hours of training and often have as little as 3 months training, then go to the large corporate so-called fitness centers. They may not have any real Yoga teachers nor any real yogis, nor any clue what actual fitness is as they simply hire youthful human-mannequin-bodies which due to their youth (not knowledge, skill, nor training) are naturally healthy and shapely to begin with, no experience and no real training required, young slaves paid to display their fresh-meat rather than knowledge which they clearly have none, but hey, they have nice showers, fresh towels, pleasant brainless bimbos at the reception desk whose job literally is to wear a fake smile and too much makeup as any phone answering and message forwarding can be done by an automated voicemail anyway (much cheaper albeit without any sex appeal) and who really have no decision making capabilities to begin with hence the legendary phrases of “mo ban fat”(沒辦法), “mo yi si”(不好意思), “I’ll ask” and “I’ll get back to you”, and the slave-instructor is routinely disrespected by students who show up late, leave early, talk loudly on their cell phone in class, where the slave-instructor long ago ceased in trying to actually “teach” yoga because in truth the students aren’t trying to “learn” in the first place, and that if he has any knowledge of yoga at all to begin with, and most importantly the slave-instructor can be shouted at, ridiculed, and treated as a menial servant with the obscene mantra “BUT I PAY YOU MONEY!” hissed in their face, and that’s what’s really important isn’t it? Vanity, false pride, imitation, superficial façade of spiritual opulence, a mockery of impersonal spiritual Godlessness, material pomp and psychological sodomy!

If you want a real “Rolex” of Yoga, and want the real thing, then go to a small, privately owned and operated school, usually run by a single teacher, who invariably is a real life, practicing, bonafide Yogi (not an instructor) with literally YEARS of training, who are often family-trained since childhood, or a small yoga school (unlike a “yoga center” which in yoga circles is the equivalent to a nanny day care center, as opposed to a “school’ where one actually LEARNS something) that is either family owned and operated, or a small yoga school run by a close group of yoga teachers who actually PRACTICE yoga rather than merely lip service and talk about yoga. NOTE: All so called teachers who “teach” but do not “practice” yoga are LIARS, CHEATERS, & SHAMELESS CHARLATANS, no exceptions.

An impersonal corporate business that claims to teach “yoga” and “fitness” which is operated on the principles of despotism and tyranny and the abject lack of any ethical principles in business whatsoever, which is owned by a merchant who does not practice yoga, and whose corporate policies are decided by some one who does not know what yoga is, and couldn’t give you the definition of “What is Yoga?”, is no “yoga” center at all, but rather, is in the copy watch business, otherwise known as Pimp Yoga.

“City life is millions of people being lonesome together.” ~ Henry David Thoreau

A yoga student is not a number. A teacher is not a cog in a wheel.

Love is personal. Life is personal. Yoga is personal. The soul is a person. God is a person.

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