The Dude Experience: A Method for Wellbeing

By Robert Busch and Casey Michelle Wakely

Not just another book about self development that tells you to think positive. The author is offering a controversial perspective on Yoga, Coaching and other services surrounding the wellness cult. Coming from his own experience he offers a new perspective on evolving as a human being, that does not leave out all the struggles along the way.
Find out what Goddess Circles and Conspiracy theories have in common.

If you ever felt stuck within your practice, this is the inspiration you are looking for.

• Language: English
• Publisher: tredition
• Release date: Dec 4, 2019
• ISBN: 9783749789313

Book preview

1. Intro

About five years ago I stepped into the world of social media marketing. I had been teaching Yoga for a couple of years and tried to find new ways on how to present my services. At that time I was clearing out my apartment in Germany and decided to spend some time abroad. The beginning of a long journey towards finding the meaning of life.

Years before that I had experienced clinical depression, which led me to a therapy and Yoga. Way before that, as a teenager, I was dreaming of becoming an author. My whole life had been an emotional rollercoaster with many highs and lows. Going through these experiences I found a way of somehow dealing with my inner struggles and finally became an author. In this process I came up with the brand name Yoga Dude.

This branding was meant to emphasise the fact that I am just a normal dude trying to find his way in life. Not a super yogi or a warrior, just a dude.

In the beginning some people made fun of that simplistic branding, which I fully understand and respect. People often got surprised, when I told them that D.U.D.E. is an acronym, that describes a method I created along the way. In this book we will find out what these letters stand for.

When I started as a Yoga teacher this was more a thesis, than a method. I did my best to apply that method within my own life and found myself pretty happy with the results. The goal had always been writing a book about this, but I wasn’t ready yet.

When I moved to Morocco in 2016 I set up an Instagram account with the name Yoga_Dude. This page became my public diary and I invite you to check it out while reading, as there are no pictures in this book, but it can be nice to get an idea about where I made all the experiences that I am writing about.

I had set up a website called The Dude Experience, that was not only about my Yoga teachings, but also about other activities such as writing, playing music and doing sports. These things are all connected with my Yoga practice.

Throughout the last four years I have experienced many different aspects of life. Some of them made me laugh, some of them made me cry.

I am thankful for both ends of that spectrum. These experiences became my teacher.

I wrote two autobiographical books in German language in 2019. Working on these books was my way of preparing to write this English book. This is not an autobiography, it is a book about what I am teaching in my classes. Writing this book about my approach to Yoga has been in the making for the last four years, while living abroad. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

This book is about my experiences and how they connect with the D.U.D.E. method.

Therefore we will start by getting to know who I was before I started practicing Yoga. We are all unique beings and in order to understand our values and perception of things, it is essential to look at where we are coming from.

The first chapters will give you an idea of who you are dealing with. We will be looking at different stages of my life that brought me towards Yoga.

After that I am giving you an insight on how I became a Yoga teacher and the challenges I was facing along that path.

We will explore different aspects of the practice itself and take a closer look at everything around it. This will lead us to observations about the marketing that surrounds Yoga and how we can choose the right teacher. With all that in mind I will be sharing my take on anxiety with you, and hopefully offer a way of dealing with that feeling that many of us suffer from. Towards the end we will take a look at the history of Yoga and put my method into its context. At the very end I will offer suggestions on how to evolve your own practice in a way that is beneficial for your well-being.

There will be a lot of controversial perspectives on Yoga and its surroundings. My goal is to make you think about your own practice and inspire you to evolve it. Most possibly you won’t be agreeing with all my thoughts and the good news is that you don’t have to. This book is written as a source of inspiration, that hopefully reminds you of something that you had already known a long time ago or at least had a feeling about.

At no point I intend to offend anyone with my observations. They might sound harsh at certain points, just to give you a heads up before reading. I grew up in an area of Germany were we have a saying that goes something like this:

Making fun of someone or criticising them shows that we care about them.

I know this sounds counter-intuitive. The idea behind that is, that every time we make fun of someone or criticise them, we give power to them. We admit that their actions matter to us and that we care about them. As much as I will question approaches within the world of Yoga, I have a lot of respect towards all people teaching and offering their services. Please always keep that in mind, while reading this book.

If I happen to offend you, I sincerely apologise for that.

2. Snowboarding

I grew up in a town far away from the mountains. All we had was a little hill next to a playground. For a few days in winter this little dune was covered in snow and we were more than excited to sled down this slope. All the kids were gathering and used anything they could find to slide down this little bump. Most of them would use plastic bags, as if they were sleds. One day one of my friends came up with the idea to dismantle the wheels of his skateboard and give it a go. His first attempt epically failed. He fell down, hurt himself and the board went down the hill without him and hit another kid. Everyone was quite upset with him for that experiment. All the parents agreed, that we shouldn’t use our skateboards on that slope anymore.

When I told my parents about it my dad came up with an idea. He had a friend that helped him get one of the first snowboards with soft boot bindings on them. My dad bought the equipment from him and gave it to me. Without any instruction I took the board and went back to the playground. Pretty quickly I figured that the bindings were not fitting my normal shoes. Besides that I had no idea how snowboarding works. Still I tried to ride down that mountain and shared the board with other kids. Nobody was really able to go down those few feet without falling, but it was still fun and we felt like real snowboarders.

My parents were not into winter sports at all. They were when they were young, but had no interest in going on a ski trip. They tried once after I was born, but the logistics got over their head and they decided to spend their vacations at beaches instead. At the same time they were always very supportive and tried to find a way for me to follow my interests. Our town had a ski club at that time that was offering one week camps for teenagers twice a year. They signed me up for one of these trips. After getting all the other gear, like proper boots, clothing and of course protection, I was ready to go.

A few weeks later I went on my first skiing trip, actually it was a snowboarding trip, but for some reason most people call everything happening in the alps skiing trip, no matter what you do there. Either way I was very excited. A few of my friends from the playground were with me on that trip. Before there was any snowboarding or attempts of it happening, we had to endure a 12 hour bus ride to our final destination in the Italian Alps.

Our bus had a few little screens on it. One of our instructors brought a VHS tape of a snowboarding movie. We loved what we saw there. Funky dudes living it up and doing insane jumps and tricks on their boards. It all looked so easy how these dudes were riding down huge mountains and flying through the air performing spins and some of them even did flips.

How hard can that be?

We were asking ourselves.

I am gonna do a 180 spin on my first day

One of the boys claimed.

We were pretty optimistic towards our first day at the real mountains with real gear. As we all had limited knowledge of the sport itself, we focussed mainly on our outfits and the designs of our boards. Apparently looking like a pro doesn’t make you one. The first night at the hostel we were up late and were quite tired the next morning. Nevertheless we were highly motivated to get going.

Instead of styling it out on our snowboards,