guruji vs sharath

[Guest guest]

after reading the comments about the question of

guruji taking advantage of women during adjustments, i

watched him and sharath a fair amount today. sharath does

more adjusting than guruji during these classes. he

seems to mainly focus on those who are the farthest

from the correct posture (like me in marichy d). he

adjusts men as often as women. in fact, in our class

there are more men who are at a lower skill level than

women, so he seems to adjust more men. he will place his

hands on the upper buttock (male or female) if needed

but i never saw him touch anyone in the perineum. he

also never "braced" anyone with his groin during an

adjustment from behind.<br>guruji will adjust people as he

walks around. his choice of when to adjust seems to

correlate with the postures he appears to have decided to

make us hold longer that day. he'll get to a 4 count

then walk over and adjust someone for a few breaths

than start counting at 3 again. he did that a couple

of different times in marichy d today--a lot of

groans when jumping back. <br>when adjusting men in an

upright forward bending posture, he will place his hand

on the lower buttock and pull forward more. when

adjusting women, he would place his hands in the same place

but also frequently placed his hand in the midline

right on the perineum. never saw that with any of the

men. he also will put his groin right against a

woman's rear in some postures. i did not see that with

any adjustments for men. i did not see anyone pull

away in anger or surprise but i would have to feel

that most women who might have objected to the touch

did not want to embarrass guruji or themselves in

that setting. perhaps some have talked to him about it

during the greeting session after class.<br>when people

would greet him afer class, he would respond in kind to

the degree of greeting. he would hug, kiss etc if

someone gave him that gesture. he did rest his hands on

the hips and butt of many of those before him but it

seemed from the degree of familiarity demonstrated by

the women that it was a mutually agreeable friendly

gesture. he did not do that with every woman kneeling

before him.<br>after watching him place his hands right

on a woman's vulva and adjust her more fully into

pindasana, when he called for the vinyasa into matsyasana,

she hesitated before moving the head downward. his

push back on her head to get her back where he wanted

her was something i might have expected to be done to

a man-- not forceful, but not close to gentle

either. so, i don't think he is getting vicarious

pleasure out of touching people or in seeing what kind of

behaviour he can get people to put up with. he does it

differently than many would prefer. i guess you have to

decide if that is enough for you to not want to

participate. as one of the encinitas instructors told us once,

"he is not a perfect person, but then i've never met

someone who was". perhaps he will accomodate the

cultural/societal preferences of the rest of us and continue to

show us how to improve ourselves

[Guest guest]

"perhaps he will accomodate the cultural/societal

preferences of the rest of us"<br><br>I wasn't aware that he

came from a society which condoned public vulva

touching. Must look out for that interesting spectacle next

time I'm in India. <br><br>Mind you there is the

tradition of being grappled by Indian men on a pretty

regular basis.