namasteph yoga blog

The New York Times just published an in-depth profile on celebriguru and former Ford model Tara Stiles titled “Rebel Yoga.” The article tries to spin her anti-yoga-establishment approach as some sort of Robin Hood Does Yoga “rebel” streak, making her out to be some sort of noble, ego-less avenger on a mission to take back yoga from the mean, prudish traditionalists who want to keep yoga all to themselves.

While I’d recommend reading the article, it’s not because I think Tara Stiles should be idolized. Nor do I think all of her intentions are entirely selfless. Rather, if you are a thinking yogi, you might find the article an interesting lens on the intersection of celebrity and yoga. And, if you are concerned about the exploitation of women’s bodies in yoga, you’ll get a glimpse into the mindset of one young women, who obviously capitalizes on her own body for her fame and fortune, while simultaneously being in denial about it.

Never having met Tara Stiles, I can’t laud her nor nor bash her with impunity. My personal feeling, however, from reading the article, seeing some of her YouTube videos in the past, and perusing her website, is that she’s young and idealistic, and simply a bit misguided on a few things.

On the one hand, her idea of making yoga more approachable by throwing out sanskrit terms and being more “real” is something I can get behind. She also has an issue with the yoga establishment charging high prices for classes, and so the classes at her Strala Yoga studio are only $10. To this I say, you go, girl!

It’s not that I think we should throw out all tradition in yoga, but sometimes overdone sanskrit terminology and high yoga prices are more about being pretentious, not spiritual. So some of what Tara is doing is a good thing, I feel.

Where Tara is a little disingenuous is in the intersection of her personal celebrity, her exploitation of her own body, and her poo-pooing of formal teacher training.

Tara got her start as a yoga “guru” by doing YouTube videos for the Ford modeling company. Without the backing of Ford, and without having been a model in the first place, Tara would be just another anonymous yogini who maybe teaches a few classes here and there…or maybe not any at all – it’s not clear that she actually has a 200-hour yoga certification.

According to the New York Times article:

But Ms. Stiles, who said she has a 200-hour certification but refused to say from where because she does not want to sanction the program (it is also absent from her bio), believes much of the training available in New York and elsewhere does little to actually prepare someone to teach yoga, and can give people a false sense of confidence. “I did training in New York City to teach yoga,” she said. “It was absolute crap. It’s not useful.”

It’s no wonder that Tara’s bio on her own website sounds like a press release for a celebrity self-help guru as opposed to someone with actual training and knowledge:

Tara Stiles, author of Slim Calm Sexy, yoga expert for Women’s Health magazine, and personal yoga instructor to Deepak Chopra, founded Strala to provide an authentic form of yoga that clears the body and mind, and brings you back to your self.

Tara has been featured in publications including Elle, InStyle, Esquire, Men’s Health, Ascent, and Yoga Journal, and has inspired a wide audience around the world with her healthy and relatable approaches to exercise, awareness, nutrition and everyday well being. She?s (sic) also the Yoga Master in Nissan?s (sic) nationwide race program, together with Lance Armstrong and Ryan Hall. Tara is making yoga part of cross-training for athletes, preventive health care, and all-around feeling good. As Vanity Fair noted, “Tara Stiles has got to be the coolest yoga instructor ever.”

Speaking of celebrity self-help gurus, I can’t help but feel a little creeped out that she’s advertising everywhere on her website and she teaches yoga to Deepak Chopra! And I’m thinking to myself, why on earth would Chopra need to be taught by a 20-something model when there are so many other more experienced teachers out there? The guy is from India! Shouldn’t he have already been taking yoga from some wizened old Indian guru? So now I’m wondering if Chopra is not just a dirty old man, getting kicks from his hot young yoga model teacher.

And yes, these things do cross your mind, when a young woman claims she needs no formal yoga teacher training experience, but only got her “guru” credentials because of her pretty face and slim body.

So you are right, Tara, who needs an actual yoga certification when you are a 20-something model and have the trendiest modeling company pushing your yoga videos? When you have Deepak Chopra on your resume? Or when Vanity Fair, obviously the arbiter of all things yoga, makes you out to be the queen of yoga…not just for this year, but forever!

Wake up, Tara! the rest of us peons, who don’t have a Ford modeling pedigree, have to actually put some actual training and hard-work into our yoga careers. (Cue the creepy horny yoga guys coming to this blog entry to rant about how old, fat, ugly and bitter anyone who criticizes yoga models must be…they are so darn predictable.)

And while I don’t fault Tara for taking advantage of the lucky hand she was dealt in life, she’s a bit oblivious as to how her “as seen on TV” bio and dismissal of yoga training comes off to other hard-working yoga teachers. It’s no wonder then, that she gets a bit of yoga shit in the blogosphere.

Sexploitation in Yoga

There’s a bigger issue here. Many feminist-minded female yogis (such as myself) are trying to fight the rising tide of yoga porn and exploitation of women in yoga. It’s a losing battle. And it’s made even harder when young, 20something women such as Tara, who grew up in a post-feminist world, don’t get that they are contributing to an environment that is ultimately toxic to women.

Tara wrote a book titled “Slim, Calm, Sexy Yoga.” That right there is going to steam a lot of serious yoga practitioners. What about yoga is inherently slim? Or sexy? I agree only with the “calm” part.

So yes, it distresses me to see young women who obviously have some talent and ambition sink to the lowest common denominator in order to sell things. Why does everything we women do, including our personal fitness and spiritual practices, have to return to the core issue of making us “slimmer” and more “sexy”? Is this the only value we women have to the world? Because that’s kind of what Tara is saying with that book title. It’s not like she titled it: “Smart, Relaxed, Free Yoga.” Or “Inspired, Intelligent, Amazing Yoga.”

We need to stop making “sexy” the highest aspiration to which women strive.

But like a lot of young women whose egos are unwittingly caught up in the attention they receive from their bodies, Tara just doesn’t get it. At least not yet. But I’m hoping she will someday.

I get it, because I’m older (and not so freakin’ old I can’t get a date, guys-who-will-come-here-and-post-in-my-comments-that-I’m-just-a-bitter-old-hag). I’ve been a 20something, and gotten the thrill of having men pay attention to me for my looks alone. And then it gets old after a while. You realize it is meaningless. And you move on to more important things, like developing other sources of self-esteem and realizing that deep relationships are more important than strange creepy men giving you catcalls.

The New York Times pieces tries to make this big issue about how “down-to-earth” Tara is and how she normally is no fuss, no make-up, baggy clothes and what not. So why then, is her midriff showing on her book cover? Why does she continue to do photoshoots in sexy poses? It really doesn’t matter if she doesn’t wear much make-up at home – the upshot is, she chooses to do photoshoots that are exploitative.

Yoga Dork wrote a good piece on a provocative spread (literally) that Tara did for American Apparel. In it, Tara is wearing a white leotard with see-through white tights. This in and of itself isn’t bad, although it’s very 1980′s, and no-one wears that attire these days in yoga studios. So why is she wearing it? Could it be that it shows off her ass, which is the focal point of the main photo, where she’s perched on a couch with her back arched, one leg seducingly up in the air, as if she’s waiting to be mounted from behind?

I’m sorry if that’s a crass description, but we need to really dissect this sort of imagery. I think it’s harmful to women and to women in yoga.

Sadly, Tara doesn’t see the problem with this sort of thing. From the New York Times article:

But Ms. Stiles, who is beanpole thin, makes no apologies. “We should not be hiding behind our bodies,” she said. “Our bodies should be empowering.”

Groan. Oblivious. Totally oblivious.

Let’s set the record straight, Tara: Your body is empowering solely because you are 20something and you are hot right now. Because of your body, you have gotten fame, attention, and adulation. So of course your body is empowering.

Let’s try an experiment. Go and gain 20, 30, 40, 50 pounds. Then see how many photoshoots you do. And tell me how empowering your body is then.

Now, I don’t think Tara means to be sticking her middle finger up to the average American woman, but she just doesn’t get it. She’s young, clueless, and doesn’t understand. She’s caught up in the fever, in the press, and in all the opportunities she has. So is she going to kill the cash cow by telling her photographers, “No, I don’t want you to take sleazy pictures of me in revealing yoga clothes. Take pictures of me in baggy pants instead”?

At her age, probably not. Now, maybe she’ll take a cue from Jessica Simpson and start to fight some of this media exploitation. And maybe, as she gets older, she’ll understand a little more why feminist yoginis are concerned about the exploitation of women in yoga. Because the thing is, all pretty young women become old someday. All of them. And at some point, they will realize that what they had in their 20s and early 30s is gone forever. Men will slowly start to treat them differently, and eventually ignore them altogether. And then they will do one of two things: Accept this, or fight against the tide with all their might, wasting time, money and energy on plastic surgery that ends up making them look pathetic and desperate.

Unfortunately, we older and wiser women do not seem to be doing a very good job of educating younger women as to why they shouldn’t get so seduced by the attention they get because of their bodies.

Quite the opposite: We’re indoctrinating them into the cult of beauty at an even younger age. Witness the travesty and horror of shows such as “Toddlers and Tiaras.”

In this case, we can’t really blame Tara for being blithely unaware of the sexploitation that fuels her little yoga empire. But I hope, in her fever to toss out all tradition and training, she’ll start to mature a little bit and respect those who came before her. Which brings me to the issue of her dismissal of formal training. While I do appreciate that some people can be naturally good at teaching, and she obviously has a knack for explaining things in easy-to-understand language, there’s a lot more to yoga than just that. After my 200-hour teacher training, which was excellent, I know that there’s a lot more I don’t know.

I understand that there’s much more I could learn about anatomy, and physical limitations, and proper alignment. I want to learn more, so why doesn’t she? Why does she feel that she’s above learning? That she knows it all before the age of 30? And hell, I don’t even want to be a full-time yoga teacher! I just want to learn to learn!

So it does concern me that she’s starting her own teacher training program, not certified by Yoga Alliance, in which one of the main activities for the students is to blog and tweet during the program. “We want to bring out you in your yoga and teaching,” the training webpage says breathlessly.

Tara, we can’t all be yoga celebrities. And not all of us want to be anyway. I’m actually quite content that my ass is not plastered in the spread of some magazine, because I’m not really interested in being the subject of some strange dude’s masturbatory fantasies. I’m quite OK with not being that, thank you very much.

Share on Facebook

In an article on the Huffington Post, a Hindu scholar tries to shoo Christians away from yoga:

While yoga is not a “religion” in the sense that the Abrahamic religions are, it is a well-established spiritual path. Its physical postures are only the tip of an iceberg, beneath which is a distinct metaphysics with profound depth and breadth. Its spiritual benefits are undoubtedly available to anyone regardless of religion. However, the assumptions and consequences of yoga do run counter to much of Christianity as understood today…..

Yoga’s metaphysics center around the quest to attain liberation from one’s conditioning caused by past karma. Karma includes the baggage from prior lives, underscoring the importance of reincarnation. While it is fashionable for many Westerners to say they believe in karma and reincarnation, they have seldom worked out the contradictions with core Biblical doctrines. For instance, according to karma theory, Adam and Eve’s deeds would produce effects only on their individual future lives, but not on all their progeny ad infinitum. Karma is not a sexually transmitted problem flowing from ancestors. This view obviates the doctrine of original sin and eternal damnation. An individual’s karmic debts accrue by personal action alone, in a separate and self-contained account. The view of an individual having multiple births also contradicts Christian ideas of eternal heaven and hell seen as a system of rewards and punishments in an afterlife. Yogic liberation is here and now, in the bodily state referred to and celebrated as jivanmukti, a concept unavailable in Christianity and in an afterlife somewhere else. Ironically, the very same Christians who espouse reincarnation also long to have family reunions in heaven.

The first problem with this argument is that it bases its theories on fundamentalist Christian theology, which is not necessarily representative of all Christian thought.

My personal take is this:

1. Jesus was the ultimate forgiver of karma. Dying on the cross was about cleansing karma. Trade the word “sin” for “karma” and you realize that Christianity isn’t necessarily in opposition to Eastern religions.

2. I believe the story of Adam and Eve is a metaphor of the fall of the collective human soul from the divine. This fits into Kabbalah and many other, more “esoteric” philosophies.

3. Some scholars believe the theory of reincarnation was originally in the Biblical texts but softened or removed by the Nicene Council in the early days of Christianity (Elaine Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels). When Christians say they believe in the “resurrection of the body,” I believe that’s actually a coded reference to reincarnation.

4. Heaven doesn’t have to be a place, it can be a state of mind. Once again, talk about pearly gates and whatnot is a metaphor to describe a reality beyond this one. Or do Hindus actually believe that their gods flew around in flying chariots? (Some folks, you know, believe that these “flying chariots” were actually UFOs.)

But ultimately, it doesn’t matter whether the original roots of yoga mesh with today’s Christianity. The thing is, yoga has evolved and is evolving. And what most Westerners call yoga, which is actually simply the practice of asana, is not Hinduism – sorry. Christians who want to use the practice of asana and blend it with Christian prayer have every right to do so. Nobody owns yoga – and certainly, nobody owns the certain types of body movements and placements that make asanas.

Now, that said, I do understand trying to keep some reverence to yoga and not letting it completely become a gym sport. I also get very concerned about yoga being “pornogrified” and used to exploit young women’s bodies. But the exploitation of women is a cultural issue that goes beyond yoga (yoga is just a casualty), and this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t welcome innovation and new additions to what we Westerners call “yoga.”

I think Christian Yoga is a good thing. I figure, the more we can bring different spiritual philosophies together and find common ground, or create ways to share and evolve, the better.

In Religion Dispatches, Roman Palitsy responds to the strict interpretation of “what is yoga?”:

Unfortunately Shukla’s claim falls apart under scrutiny. While the Take Yoga Back movement positions itself against the secularization and de-Hinduization of yoga, it can also be seen as an answer to one of the most fruitful decades in yoga research to date. A corpus of literature has emerged over the past ten years, including David Gordon White’s “Siddha” trilogy, several volumes by Joseph Alter, Elizabeth DeMichelis’ A History of Modern Yoga and just last year Stefanie Syman’s Subtle Body and Mark Singleton’s Yoga Body, all of which oppose the straightforward message of the Take Yoga Back movement.

These works reveal the formative influence of (wait for it) Buddhism, Jainism, Sufism, television, military calisthenics, Swedish gymnastics and the YMCA, as well as of radical Hindu nationalism, upon today’s postural yoga practice. There is no doubt that the Vedas, Upanishads, and folk traditions of India have been formative toward yoga: yoga is almost inseparable from them. Nevertheless to assert that yoga is essentially and primarily a Hindu practice means to ignore millennia of generative influence from other quarters. Worse still, it means to step blindly into a political fight for the heart of India that has simmered for over two hundred years.

The bottom line: Yoga is going to continue to change and grow in the West. We might like some of the changes, and we might not like some others. While we cannot control what others do, we can put out there “our” vision of yoga. Do you want more Hindu yoga? Get some people together, raise some money, and start a Hindu yoga chain. But don’t think for one second that you’re going to stop the big yoga studios who are raking in money hand over fist selling non-spiritual hatha flow classes. Not gonna happen.

Share on Facebook

I’m excited! YogiEarth just sent me a yoga towel to review. I haven’t had a chance to use it yet, but it is a very nice burgundy towel with lots of little non-stick nubbies on it. I will actually try it directly on my carpet…I hate having to pull out a full yoga mat when I am home and have enough carpet padding…and of course I’ll also be testing it out on a yoga mat too. But I can already tell this is a high-quality towel. More later…

Share on Facebook

I’ve taken a few kundalini yoga classes in Austin, and it’s funny how they are the same, and yet different, from the ones in Los Angeles. First off, Austin being a much smaller city than Los Angeles, there aren’t as many yoga studios in general. And as far as I know, Austin does not have standalone kundalini yoga studios, though kundalini classes are offered at studios that offer hatha yoga. There’s no Golden Bridge or Yoga West here (although, it should be noted, Golden Bridge offered hatha classes too, with kundalini as the primary focus).

I’ve only taken classes at Yoga Yoga North, so I don’t know if the studio sizes are different at the other locations. The main classroom for kundalini yoga is moderately small room, where you can fit three rows of four across comfortably (and squeeze more in when needed).

The two teachers I’ve taken are great – Mehtab and Sirgun. I guess Mehtab is one of the resident gurus in Austin. He seems really laid back and jolly (though he’s the opposite of Santa Claus in that he’s quite lean).

The pace in these classes is a bit less intense than what you get in Los Angeles. Gurmukh, possibly the most famous living kundalini yogi, is of course well-known for her sweet, gentle voice leading some of the most excruciating workouts you’ll ever have. But I like the slower pace in the Austin classes – it’s still challenging, for sure – but it seems these Austin yogis take a their time to gently explain things and let you rest a bit. Maybe it’s a Texas/Southern thing.

One thing that struck me on my first class visit was the white board – the teacher was using it to write down the chants for the new people who might not know the mantras. What a great idea! Why don’t all kundalini yoga classes have one of these?! Heck – I know a ton of kundalini yoga mantras. But darned if I know them all, and some are quite complex. It’s really great to have them written down phonetically.

One more little observation – while I realize I’m taking classes at the “north” studio, which may by its location attract older students, I do find that the kundalini yoga vibe here is much less “trendy” than it seems in LA. Golden Bridge was excessively trendy, especially due to the celebrities who frequent there. Yoga West was a bit less so, but it still had a slight trendy vibe to it. And that trendy vibe seemed to lead to some very overly intense people acting downright nutty in class – where they would do cat/cow so fast it looked like their head might fly right off. Frankly, I don’t miss that energy.

This lack of “trendy” also means fewer kundalini yoga trappings. Here in Austin, you won’t find a ton of sheepskin being used, though wool blankets are, which frankly, I prefer. Hardly anyone in class is wearing white, nor do they wear head coverings such as the white knit caps you’ll see often at Golden Bridge. Mehtab himself wears white but eschews the typical Sikh turban, so maybe that’s why. Though I have to wonder – not to stereotype Texas – but perhaps people here are just a wee bit uncomfortable walking around in white turbans and white caps than they might be in Los Angeles. It’s not that I think they might be accosted violently on the street, it’s more of a feeling of…it’s just not seen that much. And it might feel a bit cult-y to the Austin vibe.

One more difference: They sing the Long Time Sun at the end a cappella, rather than using a recording by Snatam. I do miss the Snatam at the end – her songs are so beautiful, that’s usually what made me tear up. The a cappella…not so inspiring, though it is more traditional.

Overall, I am really enjoying my Austin kundalini yoga experience and quite happy to find great teachers in a laid back environment. Hurrah!

Share on Facebook

A lot of things that aren’t really yoga get called yoga these days, but by far the creepiest is the following: Some women in Russia have put up Internet videos showing them swinging their babies around like they are ragdolls…and calling this “baby yoga.” This “baby-swinging yoga” has now been covered on the Gawker website, and people are still debating as to whether the babies being swung around are even real.

If you want to see the videos, you can check out these two pages from Gawker:

This Baby-Swinging Yoga Video Can’t Be Real, Right?

Baby-Swinging Yoga Mystery Deepens: New Video, More Babies

Warning: These videos may be very disturbing, and if you are a sensitive person, you might want to skip them! While the original video is disturbing enough, the second video is even worse and shows a woman swinging the baby casually while hanging out with friends, swinging the baby topless in a bikini, and shoving her baby’s head into a water, first in a stream and then in a bucket.

One thing is for sure, as much as these crazy women might want to call this yoga, this is not yoga. It’s child abuse.

A website called “Brillbaby” is being cited as also promoting baby swinging as a way to help the baby develop equilibrium, but it’s clear from reading their page on baby swinging that they don’t suggest taking a baby by its arms and swinging it around at full force:

When your baby can hold her head steady, you can start swinging her left and right, forward and backwards. Initially, you can swing her by holding her by your hands under her arms close to the armpits (she is facing away from you)….When your baby is physically much stronger (usually closer to her first birthday), you can also swing her by letting her sit with her upper thighs on your hands (your hands clasping her thighs tight) and her back leaning against your forearms. This is like she were sitting in a playground swing.

There’s a big difference between holding your baby by the chest and swinging gently versus grabbing your baby by the extremities and pulling the arms out of the sockets through careless, violent swinging.

I truly hope this “baby-swinging yoga” does not “catch on” – or we’re going to be hearing about some hurt and possibly even dead babies in the news over this.

If it’s not a hoax, I have to wonder if the people doing this aren’t on drugs or something. What do you think?

Share on Facebook

There’s a great post on SpiritVoyage about the proliferation of “yoga porn.” She writes:

I was searching through youtube with the keyword “yoga” yesterday and I was a little dismayed by the fact that so many of the results on the first few pages returned scantily clad yoginis with a camera focused on their rear during downward dog. Search google for the term “tantric yoga” and you’ll get a number of results about tantric sex, but you’ll have to scroll to the bottom of the page for anything related to “white tantric yoga”. Yoga on the web seems to be more about sex and vanity than union with the Divine.

Read the rest here: http://www.spiritvoyage.com/blog/index.php/help-stop-yoga-porn/

She suggests the following to help bring yoga porn down in the search engines while lifting up better yoga:

1. Don’t comment on the yoga porn. It just brings more attention to it.
2. Do comment on yoga articles that you like, to help with their search engine rankings.
3. Bookmark positive representations of yoga on social bookmarking sites like Delicious or Digg.
4. Share good yoga on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

I’d also like to add the following:

Don’t spend your money on yoga exploitation if you can help it. Let the companies know why you are not buying their product or service.

For example: Yoga Journal regularly shows 20something women on their covers and not enough men or older women. Nor do they show women of various levels of physical fitness or body types. All the women of Yoga Journal tend to be long, lean women with dancer bodies. I do not have a Yoga Journal subscription because of this, and I’d encourage you to write them and ask them to change. If enough people complain, they may finally “get it.”

Read my reviews of Namaste Yoga and “Kundalini Yoga for Beginners and Beyond” for what I feel are prime examples of yoga exploitation starting to cross that line into yoga porn. You’ll notice a good number of guys posting comments suggesting that I must be mad because I’m ugly. Seriously. That’s about the level of person that gets attracted to these types of yoga videos.

Share on Facebook

Just a quick note that I will be posting up some yoga reviews here soon. I’m finally starting to feel settled here in Austin and can begin to go through a small backlog of items that are in the “review queue.” This includes a yoga music album, a book (or two) and some websites offering online yoga courses. If you have something you’d like me to review, just send an email via the contact link on the right. Namaste.

Share on Facebook

I’ve just moved to a new city and instead of jumping right into yoga classes, I decided to take Aikido instead. I still plan on checking out the yoga options here soon. A 10-minute walk will get me to a branch of the big yoga “chain” here in Austin. (It reminds of Little Caesar’s: It’s called “Yoga Yoga.” [Pizza Pizza!]) Yoga Yoga offers a yoga smorgasbord – hatha, vinyasa flow, ashtanga, kundalini…so there’s plenty of things to explore (though sadly, it’s not any cheaper than Los Angeles yoga – darn!).

So while yoga is definitely on the agenda, Aikido wins out as my first workout choice because it’s right next door to my apartment building (a 2 minutes walk vs. 10 minutes!), and $80/month for unlimited classes.

But there’s a little more to it than that. I wanted a new challenge, and yoga in some respects has been frustrating me lately. In part, I feel that yoga gets repetitive after a while (especially hatha yoga…not so much kundalini yoga), and once you hit a certain level, you can plateau. I’m also at this age and level of flexibility where I just don’t think I’ll ever be able to do certain advanced poses. That’s OK. (Look, I’m not ancient, but at 40 I’m not 20 either!) Part of it this: I’m just not seeing why I should have to learn how to balance on my hands while doing a split…is there a practical purpose? (See 14 Yoga Poses That Could Kill You.)

So to keep your practice fresh, sometimes it’s good to branch out a bit. I’ve wanted to try Aikido for a while (my dad took it for years), and self-defense has been on my “to-do” list for a while. While I may never be able to do the splits, and I may never be a black belt, learning a martial art is not only great for your health, but you learn practical skills that can help you in potentially dangerous situations. I’ve read stories of people who have avoided or deflected attacks by doing a simple throw they learned in Aikido. While you certainly won’t become invincible (no matter what martial art you learn), you will have a leg up.

There’s also a sense of community you get at a dojo that you just don’t get at a yoga studio, no matter how nice people are. This is a big plus when being a stranger in a new city. You can’t help but meet people when pairing up to practice martial arts techniques (and this is one negative to yoga…no way to connect with others on the mat unless doing partner yoga, which is still pretty rare).

There’s an even better reason to pair the study with Aikido with yoga: Aikido, out of all the martial arts, is the one that is about non-confrontation. It’s about self-defense, not offense. In Aikido, you aren’t punching and kicking. You are learning how to use the force of the attacker to your advantage. You aren’t trying to kill or maim, just disable. This is probably the most “peaceful” of the martial arts and the philosophy of Aikido has even spread into the self-help movement.

But most importantly: In order to be good at Aikido, you have to learn how to relax and be in your center. The “relax” part is what makes me feel it is an excellent complement to yoga. Even though yoga is supposed to be about relaxing, I often find myself tensing up when I am holding yoga poses. Even in yoga flow, I don’t feel entirely fluid because I am thinking about my “alignment” in each pose.

The upshot is that, no matter how much yoga I take, I still hold a lot of stress in my shoulders. Doing plank and downdog doesn’t help the stress, it seems to add to it. So trying a martial art that is all about fluid movement and relaxation seems to be a good way to teach my body to be less rigid.

While I’m doing my Aikido practice, I plan on continuing a simply home yoga practice and going to some group yoga classes (mostly kundalini) once a week or so. I’m curious to see how my yoga evolves with my Aikido training.

Share on Facebook

By and far, the most traffic I get to this blog comes from a review of Steve Ross’s Inhale Yoga I wrote back in 2007. Inhale Yoga was made about 10 years ago, but it is still very popular!

Inhale usually airs on the Oxygen television network but has been on hiatus. Ever since Inhale went off the air, people have been asking on this blog (and emailing me) wondering where they can get DVDs or begging for the show to come back on the air. (I have absolutely no say in that! I do not work for Oxygen!)

Here’s some info, best as I know for now:

1. There are no DVDs for Inhale Yoga. As far as I know, there are no plans to put Inhale Yoga on DVD.

2. Steve Ross may be working on his own yoga DVD, but I don’t know for a fact.

3. Inhale Yoga is sometimes taken off of Oxygen (for the summer) but rumor has it will return September 11 this year.

Now, there is one place you can maybe get Inhale Yoga, and that would be perhaps through BitTorrent. But that is not really legal. You have to decide for yourself whether you want to risk it. I am not endorsing this method of obtaining Inhale Yoga.

But one thing is for sure, I cannot get you Inhale Yoga DVDs, I can’t force Oxygen to put it back on the air, and no, I don’t know anything about the soundtrack. If you have questions about Inhale Yoga, please go bug Steve Ross over at his website.

Share on Facebook

The folks at Kushyfoot mailed me their new product, Kushyfoot yoga socks, so I gave them a spin. These yoga socks are primarily for those times your feet might get cold in the yoga studio, and I was reviewing them in the summer in Los Angeles, so I can’t speak to their warming capabilities. However, they would also make a good, portable alternative to a yoga mat if you happen to be traveling and want to be able to tackle your standing poses without sliding all over the floor.

Kushyfoot’s yoga socks have the toes cut out so you can have the same level of control as being barefoot. The bottoms have non-stick patterns that enable you to go into a warrior poses without sliding into the splits accidentally.

I didn’t run the yoga socks through months of testing, so I don’t know how long they will hold up after repeated abuse, but for the cost of a pair of socks, they are easily replaced.

I found them to be quite comfortable and definitely usable as a yoga accessory. Were I in a cold climate and suffering from frozen feet, I would definitely use them in my yoga practice. I also plan on taking them with me when I travel.

Share on Facebook