Anusara Yoga: The Friend(ly) Cult?

On and on this article went--for five seemingly endless pages! Thanks to my father-in-law (who does NOT practice yoga but keeps tabs on the very exciting BIGBIZ of yoga) for forwarding this. In case you were not certain, I guess you have a friend in John.

Intro to Kundalini Yoga with GURMUKH

Oh, what can I say??? I'm in love! Gurmukh rocks the chakra house!

I practiced with her using this DVD this morning. Oh the sweat! Oh the fun! Check out Kundalini Yoga if you have not yet. Feel like a child, an artist, a soul, a warrior...all at once. Check out this sample of her 60 minute work-out, which I'm going to call a work-IN:

Yoga, Inc.

I heart yoga! But it's sometimes laughable and eye-rolling to me how in the U.S. it's Big Business; there are even yoga chains now. I love Bikram Yoga as a practice and enjoy teaching hot yoga though I'm amused and confused by hot yoga competitions. For extracted to its essence, yoga offers an incredible key to right living for the individual and for communities and seems to have evolved in our cultures for that purpose, though we'll never know exactly its very ancient purposes.

Increasingly, there dwells in me the cringe factor when I think of U.S. Yoga and my fellow yoga instructors' and my role in the biz. Dubious of American capitalism, I often now see yoga as just another cog in the greed wheel. Its irony escapes no one: Is it better to have the affluent practicing yoga and buying $110 yoga jeans (!!???) than spending their energies and buckeroos on non-yoga things? Yogis and economists might have similar answers. Either way, I am grateful for the John Philip's book, Yoga, Inc. Trailer:

Superstar Yoga: LeBron WHO?

I admit it without flinching. I don’t like sports. Even though I live in Cleveland, where I understand they have some, I just don’t care. I don’t play ‘em, I don’t watch ‘em, I don’t talk about ‘em, and I don’t bet on ‘em. Sports+Yogalove Pinkpunk=total disconnect, or as we used to say in the cable world (night auditor job in college), “total disco.”

Even so, I’d be living under a rock not to know that fay-moos LeBron James is now a free agent in the world of basketball. All I can say is that I hope he does the right thing for himself in this next venture.

But what about for us who might be left behind?

We are saved. If he leaves, I just want to let you know that he will be immortalized here in Cleveland, at least in the Cleveland yoga scene. How?

He has a YOGA POSE named after him! Yes. He does.

And that’s better than his face appearing on every third shoreway billboard! Or IS it? Here’s how it came down.

I was at a yoga studio several months ago, and we students were doing our thing: sweating and posing and (some of us) breathing and tuning in and stretching and focusing. All that yoga goodness.

Suddenly, the teacher, who’d been calling out poses for us to practice said--all too perkily cheerleader-ish, I might add—“Okay everyone, rise up and do the LeBron James Pose!”

I thought I’d misheard her, but we all rose up and did the pose she was demonstrating, which breaks down to being nothing more than a Warrior Lunge with the arms outstretched shoulder height and fingers outstretched to represent, what?, the easy holding of a basketball in each hand? My good hearing was affirmed when after about 30 seconds she said, “Okay, everybody, LeBron James Pose on the other side!”

Truthfully, I felt as though I had stepped out of the groovy zone of yoga and into the land of competitive athletic grunt, or into that annoying land of American Yoga, Inc., where corporations, sponsors, clothing lines, hugely paid athletes, and sportstocracy drive the day and the yoga itself.

But then, letting go of that as best I could, I laughed to myself.

Americans are always naming things like highways and park benches in order to honor their heroes and those who’ve left the scene. Yoga is not immune to this practice, either. As much as I wish it were, it isn’t. Right?

So if LeBron goes, practice his pose. Someone will thank you. I guess. But you might not get offered a contract for anything by doing so. After all, it's just yoga.