The Situationists were a radicalized group of international post-Dada ex-artists and political theorists who in the 1950s and 60s attempted to expose everything from the banality of grid-like city planning to the mediation of reality through images and commerce. One graffitied statement attributed to them reads, “Boredom is counterrevolutionary.” An unabashed declarative such as this has always had a special place in my heart. Yet, lately I have been wondering if an obsession with subverting boredom has led us down a rather boring path itself. Especially when it comes to the commercialization of spirituality, perhaps raising our hands and admitting to an excessive ennui is just what we need to do.

Once there was a time when the person on your block who did yoga was a dangerous person. This was the person who had a little extra knowledge into what’s really going on—the person who walked to the mailbox with an intention matched only by his great posture. And yet, these days it’s almost cliché to say, “I do yoga.” While once a person who claimed to have a yogic practice might have been a menace to the complacent status quo, today all that’s required to take a noon yoga “power hour” is an interest in staying fit on your lunch break.

What’s at stake when spiritual practices become so embedded in the consumer culture that their rebellious roots become overgrown with conformist identities? Does the tradition itself become tarnished, or must “serious” practitioners simply wait for the herd to get bored and mosey on down the line? In Chogyam Trungpa’s seminal text The Myth of Freedom Trungpa discusses the role of boredom in Zen practice. He states, “[Zen] is trying to bring about boredom, which is a necessary aspect of the narrow path of discipline, but instead [for the American novice] the practice turns out to be an archeological, sociological survey of interesting things to do, something you could tell your friends about: ‘Last year I spent the whole fall sitting in a Zen monastery for six months…. It was a wonderful experience and I did not get bored at all’” (Trungpa, 55–56).

Eventually, yoga, like all commodities, will get boring. And what will happen when, rather then bringing about mental clarity, yoga asanas simply induce widespread yawning? Is the fact that so many New York City yoga classes blast pop music and invent names like “Lotus Flow” and “Cosmic Play” just an attempt to keep yoga fresh and interesting so that huge Manhattan lofts won’t become abandoned?

Is boredom in spiritual practice something to be so worried about?

For a number of years I have been practicing a specific type of yoga. Like most people I have talked to, my first experience of taking yoga in this lineage was blissful and invigorating. I left my first class feeling like I had more energy running through my body than I had ever had. I was happy. I was positive. I was a pleasure to be around. I was also, ironically, incredibly bored. Not bored with the practices, they were completely foreign and therefore exotic to me, but bored with the way the teachings of the yoga were presented. It seemed the organization that promoted this yoga lineage was interested in one thing: accessibility. Everything about their marketing is an attempt to make palatable the teachings. Soften the edges, make fuzzy the angles, and water down the language. In essence, make the yoga almost invisible. And yet, the funny thing is, I never stopped going. Very little about the presentation of this yoga interests me, and yet not only did I continue to build a personal practice, I eventually became certified to teach within this lineage.

So what’s going on here? Has boredom won me over? Am I a masochist? Is my sticking with this yoga simply indicative that boredom has become the hottest new trend? Are we entering a new phase where unemphatically bored yogis will be flooding yoga studios begrudging, but in huge numbers, buying yearly unlimited passes? I’ll just stop right there.