“Yogaflation” (as I’m now calling it) might make sense when times are good, but when we’re in a “Great Recession” (as they are now calling it), it seems bit counterintuitive. It may be that these yoga studios are charging more because they are getting less customers, but is that the smart thing to do?

I know the recession is hitting Los Angeles…why? Because commercial real estate is tanking and you’ll find storefronts and actually entire blocks empty and for rent now. Is this the time to be raising prices? Maybe it’s time to be lowering them.

I’ve personally curtailed my yoga classes…and it’s actually been that way since the end of 2008 when the financial crash hit. I’ve missed the kundalini yoga classes a little, but not hatha yoga for the most part.

Is paying $20 per class worth it? If you’re not buying monthly passes (which are also getting more expensive), you could end up paying $80 just to take one yoga class per week. I also have some sort of mental stopping point when it comes to yoga classes. At Yoga West, $16 seemed an OK price to pay for a single class. When it was raised just $1, my mind rebelled. It’s just too much now.

Think about it…you’re now paying upwards of $20 per class…to battle traffic…and try to stake a good spot in the class…and deal with the sweaty person next to you…and attempt to not get distracted by the outside sounds, if the yoga studio isn’t perfectly sound-insulated…and feel more pressure in class because you’re trying to keep up with the teacher or impress the sweaty person next to you…and all of this ends up taking two hours or more of time to accomplish.

Compare that to a nice quiet home practice. Less than $20 will get you a DVD by a teacher you like that you can watch over and over again to master. Or you can get an online subscription at a yoga website and watch new videos each week. Or make up your own home practice.

Whatever the format for your home yoga practice, you don’t have to fight traffic or the person next to you for floor space. You can work out for a half hour or an hour and be done. And your cost per yoga hour will be much, much less than if you were going out to classes all the time.

One good yoga video at $20 could give you a year’s worth of exercise, not just an hour and a half.

I’m personally enjoying my home yoga, and more and more I’m finding I don’t miss going to yoga class so much. Maybe it’s just me, but it’s not like I was making friends at yoga classes for the most part…I’d show up, take the class, and go home! So why the need for the expense, other than the fact that once in a while, if you are lucky, you’ll get an adjustment here and there in a hatha class?

Certainly, there is a certain high you could get sometimes in a group doing kundalini yoga, but on the flip side, doing kundalini yoga meditations at home can take you much more deeply inward because you are there, with yourself, able to go within. (Never mind the fact that if you are serious about kundalini yoga you should be doing the same yoga set each and every day on 40-day rotations as part of your personal sadhana!)

I wonder how many yoga studios are going to be able to survive in this economy what with higher prices and people cutting back. I know the yoga studio I got my teacher training at closed. I think it was because there was some sort of issue with the space…maybe the rent went up? But when a new space was not found, the place shut down. Sad.

So, take heed, yoga instructors…in this economy, if your yoga studio keeps jacking up prices you may find yourself eventually out of work. (Unless you are super famous, which is mostly none of you.)

I think the savvy yoga instructor in this day and age should consider some sort of Internet video model, where the price per class can be kept extremely low but new content can be easily added to keep it fresh.

Certainly, there will always be a need for some in-person instruction. For certain difficult poses I’m stuck on, I’d love to have some help from a teacher. But I’m more inclined to take a workshop about that problem area, or even find a yoga teacher to trade a private with, than to pay a lot of money for a yoga class where I’m not guaranteed an adjustment or personal attention anyway.

So…will yoga prices keep going up? Or start dropping to attract new customers? How this will all play out as the recession continues will be interesting.

Note: I’ve been getting a lot of comments on my arms lately…about how in shape they are. I do believe it’s from doing all those kundalini yoga kriyas and meditations that involve holding or moving the arms for various lengths of time. So try it and stick with it!

Turns out Forbes has just published an article/expose about Dahn Yoga possibly being a mind-controlling cult. Some of the allegations aren’t pretty:

Shipley, now 25, is one of 27 former Dahn practitioners who filed suit in Arizona in May claiming the group subjected them to psychological manipulation and fraudulently induced them to spend thousands of dollars on Dahn yoga classes and retreats in Sedona, Ariz. and other places. The punishing techniques, they say, included forced isolation from friends and families, exercises like bowing 3,000 times all night long without breaks, disciplining members by sticking their heads in the toilet and making them lick other members’ feet, and having them hold certain poses, like the push-up position, for 20 to 30 minutes at a time. On top of those charges, the suit alleges that Ilchi Lee, the 57-year-old Korean founder of Dahn and its spiritual leader, sexually preyed on young female disciples.

Read the rest here.

(Big surprise – the guru being accused of sex with female disciples, will wonders never cease!)

The only comment (as of this writing) on the Forbes article tries to paint the woman featured as someone with a gripe against the company. I think a far fairer thing to look at are some of the past reviews of Dahn Yoga on places like Citysearch and Yelp. Here’s a postive review on Citysearch:

After a lifetime of bad habits, in 2001 I got severely ill. After not being able to work because of a series of viral infection problems, I looked for a yoga/fitness program that I could really commit to and that would be flexible in meeting my schedule. I found all that and more at the Dahn Center. I’ve been a member for over 5 years. 3 at the Torrance center and now 2 years in Glendale. The masters and other members are some of the most supportive and loving people I’ve known. I’ve now been basically health problem free since I joined. It’s not a traditional yoga, but more like pilates, kundalini and mediation combined together. Make sure to check out Friday’s vibration classes.

Seems like a real review to me and not just a PR person making that one up. But here’s a negative review on Yelp:

RUN!!!!!!!!! RUN AWAY FAST!!!!!!!!!!!!!

DO NOT USE THIS PLACE!!! RUN!!!

Probably like many “cults,” if you go and enjoy the classes without getting sucked into the deeper workings of the place, you may actually get some decent benefits. It’s when you get yourself involved to the point where you’re mortgaging your house to pay for trainings that things start to get bad. It may also be that some local centers truly do have genuine, caring instructors who mean well, even if the organization itself is run as a cynical mind control cult.

Moral of the story – curb your enthusiasm! Don’t put all your eggs into one cult basket.

NEW DELHI—Krishna Pattabhi Jois, a yoga teacher and practitioner famous for popularizing Ashtanga yoga in the West, has died. He was 93.

Jois died in the southern Indian city of Mysore on Monday, a press statement from the K. Pattabhi Jois Ashtanga Yoga Institute said.

More: http://www.chicoer.com/news/national/ci_12410237

So my alternative is to place my back against one wall in my narrow hallway and walk up the other wall. I can’t seem to get both legs straight up at once, but I think that might have something to do with where my hands are placed. With the door jamb method, you are supposed to place the hands around either side of the jamb. In the hallway, the hands have nowhere to go except next to the wall.

Well, at least I’m getting somewhat vertical.

I have an opportunity to write for a new online yoga publication, but the founder is obsessed with focusing on celebrities and gossip as a way to get more people doing yoga. I’m torn…I could use the money and writing credits, but I personally don’t find an excessive focus on celebrities to be appealing, nor is this the direction I want to see yoga go. However, I understand the desire to pander to the lowest common denominator to reach more eyeballs – said founder has a theory that celebrities will “inspire” others, and the more people who do yoga, the better.

Thoughts? Should I whore myself out in the name of trendy yoga gossip or what?

As they say…inquiring minds want to know…

Today is the start of a massive worldwide “sadhana” or daily spiritual practice aimed at helping us transition to the Aquarian Age. The meditation was given to us by Yogi Bhajan, and it is now being shared by the kundalini yoga community. The suggested meditation is daily for 11 minutes for the next 1,000 days (which translates to 3 years!), but you can join in at any time and fit the meditation in as works best for you.

(I have a friend who is a kundalini yoga teacher who plans on performing this sadhana weekly, as she is focused on her own personal sadhana right now.)

The instructions along with an audio track are available for free on the KRI website.

What I found somewhat amusing was the video of Yogi Bhajan leading this meditation from 1992. I noticed that the kundalini yoga clothing styles have changed quite a bit since then, which is surprising when you consider that the general guidelines are all white with a head covering. In the video, you can see a lot of women wearing very stiff, formal looking turbans. Nowadays, most kundalini yoga practitioners wear loose white bandanas or knit caps as head coverings.

I also loved how Yogi Bhajan ended the meditation, very abruptly, in the middle of the chant: “OK, relax, relax, you’re going too deep now.” And…we’re done! No formal inhale or holding of breath, just STOP now, OK?

At any rate, I don’t personally feel guided to do this meditation for the next 1,000 days, though I might do it once in a while and I expect we’ll be doing it a lot in kundalini yoga classes. No offense to the person who created the song that goes with the chant, but it’s one of those things that sticks to your brain and I think after a 1,000 days of hearing it, my brain might explode. But I’ve heard there are other musical versions of it out there somewhere, if you aren’t keen on the music. My friend from Israel said the military march was too reminiscent of all the wars she’s been in, so it’s perfectly OK to find music that works for you.

I always like to know what I’m getting into and a quick search on the Internet reveals that Brahma Kumaris is considered a cult by many. Brahma Kumaris has some heavy duty critics. It’s apparently not just your usual yoga cult – this one is a “doomsday cult,” where the belief is that the world will end soon and those who participate in Brahma Kumaris will ascend to become deities in the new Golden Age.

The doomsday stuff was enough to convince me that the free meditation classes probably weren’t worth my time. I also shy away from organizations that rely on guilt-trip donations and do a heavy sell on tithing.

But I’m not automatically scared off by cult charges. I regularly take kundalini yoga classes even though the kundalini yoga organization, 3HO, has been considered a cult for a long time. In both organizations you’ll find vegetarians who get up at 4 am for meditation, wear all white, and follow other strict rules for living.

Most of the kundalini yoga teachers I go to actually do seem to be “Happy Healthy and Holy” as the 3HO name suggests. These are fantastic spiritual teachers who really do seem to walk the talk. I can tell you, however, from the stories that these folks tell, that I would have never gotten along with Yogi Bhajan. I am too independent by nature. Regular life in an ashram wouldn’t sit well with me. As I mentioned in my last blog post, I believe there are some people who want direction and authority in their lives, and that makes them happy. As long as they aren’t harmed by it, it’s fine with me. If they want to wear all white and wake up at 4 am to take a cold shower every morning, then more power to them. No 3HO member has ever given me a high pressure sell in any kundalini yoga class, ever. I’ve never been asked to tithe away my live savings, though I suppose yoga classes can add up.

I do think, though, that it’s good to be skeptical of charismatic leaders and rigid authority, whether it’s yoga or not. I know of a teacher (not a yoga teacher) who has such tight control of her little community that her students are emotional prisoners. Rather than encouraging the students to leave the nest for bigger and better things, the teacher has emotionally crippled the students so they are dependent on her.

From observing that, I don’t think it’s meditation or yoga that creates a cult, but psychological manipulation, which can occur without these things. People are drawn to yoga-specific cults because meditation and yoga does bring such tremendous benefits.

So some cult watchers go a bit too far, perhaps, when they bash spiritual organizations simply for being weird, or having problem people in it. (Yes, apparently some guy at 3HO was growing marijuana but what does that have to do with the rest of the sincere members?) Leading anti-cult guru (irony intended) Rick Ross has actually gone so far as to warn people against Yoga Alliance, simply because some board members were involved in 3HO and other yoga organizations he deems cults. He wrote back in 2003:

“Anyone considering yoga classes with teachers and/or schools registered by the Yoga Alliance might want to exercise a bit of caution, before beginning any of their exercises.”

A bit over the top, I think. Well, maybe he was unaware that Yoga Alliance is pretty much the de facto yoga certifying organization in America, and that almost all mainstream yoga teachers in the US have their certification through them now.

At any rate, I personally like to keep my toe into organizations without jumping full in to the point where an organization takes over my life. I enjoy the exercises and meditations I have learned in kundalini yoga, but I do not need to go full on American Sikh in white clothes and a turban to benefit. If it works for you, great, but it’s not for me. But I think the key here is that kundalini yoga people allow you to be who you are – on the other hand, those strict organizations that are the cults to be wary of do not.

Apparently, the KGB thought that people who were “stupid” enough to get involved in meditation would be inclined towards brainwashing and could be used to help demoralize America. The interviewee also explains that people who focus too much on meditation might become complacent and not be alert to a possible Soviet takeover of the United States.

I don’t think meditation has made me complacent whatsoever. I have seen a disturbing tendency among certain yogis to get really wrapped up with gurus, however. This type of hero worship seemed to extend to the election of Obama this year, where the man was deified and set up to be some sort of new age messiah. (Never mind that most of his cabinet appointments show that he’s just a regular politician like everyone else.)

I don’t think this is the fault of yoga or meditation. I think people who are inclined to worship a guru are the same people who’d be worshiping a televangelist if they were a fundamentalist Christian. It’s simply a personality type that likes authority and being told what to do – it makes life easier. Or they are enamored with celebrity worship as a means of giving their bland lives some excitement and meaning.

I’m not suggesting all gurus are bad, but I think the unconditional, uncritical acceptance of a guru can lead to bad things. We’ve heard plenty of stories of gurus taking advantage of their students sexually, for example. Politically, I believe it is quite dangerous to set up any politician as a guru, however well-meaning the leader is on the surface, because that can lead to all sorts of problems if the leader’s ego gets in the way of the needs of the people. (Remember: Absolute power corrupts absolutely.)

The KGB interview is available below, and the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi section starts at about 10 minutes in.

The 12-week self-paced course is geared towards beginners (though I’d have to suggest it would be better for fitter beginners and not those with serious physical limitations), but experienced practitioners can also benefit. Each week begins with a video illustrating the various postures, followed by daily audio practices with PDF guides to show the poses.

Rodney and Colleen are happily married and it shows in their comfort and obvious joy in each other’s company. (I must admit – I’m a bit envious and wish I had a relationship like that!) They are very free and casual in showing the postures and yet quite specific.

I’m impressed by the comprehensive nature of the program. It is very well designed and executed, and definitely an excellent investment if you want to learn yoga from home.

I’ve only finished week one – I had gotten a cheap yoga pass at a local studio with a special and thus have been taking more outside classes than doing home practice lately – but the nice thing is, there’s no deadline.

I’ll perhaps review more later as I go.