Graham Norton is this incredibly funny talk show host from the UK. He had a yoga instructor on his show, with hilarity ensuing…
I am starting my yoga teacher training tomorrow, and physically I am soooo not ready. I caught that nasty cold that’s been going around, and my yoga practice in the last week and a half has been practically zilch. I’ll be aching at the end of the weekend. Well, at least the training will force me to get right back into it.
I was reading someone’s yoga blog and stumbled across a now defunct yoga blog called “YogaGlamGirl.” Presumably, because of the “Glam” in her blog name, “YogaGlamGirl” got a job blogging at a site I’ve never heard of, called “Glam.com.” She claims this is the largest website for women. (Umm, I thought iVillage was, or maybe now it’s Oprah.com. Anyway…)
So I go to Glam.com, with few hopes that the site is even vaguely interesting. Sure enough, it’s a piece of consumerist, brainwashing nonsense, a glorified online tabloid meant to encourage women to be insecure about themselves, sell cosmetics and lipgloss, and have us focusing on celebrities instead of ourselves.
There’s a weak little section called “GlamSpirit” (an amusing oxymoron if I ever heard one), where YogaGlamGirl now blogs. Her latest entry as of this writing? A review of liquid blusher. I’m not joking. OK, so it’s organic and more “environmental.” So what? You’re still cluttering up landfill with the refuse of this bottle after you use it. What on earth is a review of liquid blush doing in a wellness blog?
Read the rest of “Yoga: Mind, Body, Spirit and…Lipgloss?” »
I was a late-night gong event at Golden Bridge Yoga once and a mom had her 3-year-old there with her. The event was three hours, from 7-10 pm, and involved some intense Kundalini Yoga and chanting followed by a long gong relaxation. The kid was actually quieter than the noisy woman behind her, so the kid acting out wasn’t the issue. But I was really concerned that a mom felt she needed to bring such a young child into a late-night yoga event for adults.
Imagine if every parent brought a 3-year-old to a late-night yoga event – there would be pandemonium! But beyond that – these kids are too little too appreciate or care about these types of events. All that little girl wanted to do was sleep and that’s precisely what she did, even with all the chanting and gonging going on around her.
There are yoga programs for kids. Keep your kids in them. Don’t take your kid to adult yoga class. It’s in the least possibly going to bore the kid or turn them off from yoga. At worst, if you force your child to follow your intense yoga belief system, you may push them into the opposite direction.
Read the rest of “Don’t Push Yoga On Your Kid” »
I really don’t get this freaky deaky fear that some Christians have over yoga. Is it really so horrible to expose yourself to other religious thought?
Or are certain fundamentalist Christian leaders worried that if people got a taste of something else, they might like it better? People doing yoga may not fill their donation box as much…
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I am very excited; I have signed up for the seven-week 200-hour yoga teacher training at Karuna Yoga in Los Feliz (in Los Angeles). I found out about it from a client of mine who raved about it. So I went over to Karuna Yoga, tried a class with founder and teacher Kelly Wood, and I really liked her. I also spoke to other students there who had taken her teacher training and they said it was fantastic.
It’s also affordable: $1,500 for the early bird pricing (compared to $3,000 or more for trainings with some of the more famous teachers).
I had taken some training with Shiva Rea with the intention of finishing her 200-hour program, but unfortunately the scheduling did not work for me. From what I had originally read on Shiva’s website, the training was offered in modules that could be taken over a two-year period. I just assumed that I might be able to take some of the modules in the two-week intensives she provided. Well, it turns out that you have to take the entire two-week intensive, and you don’t get any credit whatsoever for modules you’ve already taken if you do that. (Meaning, you have to pay twice – Exhale’s policy.) The modules I needed weren’t being offered here separately from what I saw of the new schedule.
Read the rest of “Yoga Teacher Training at Karuna Yoga” »
In going through my old, old yoga videos (from the early 90s), I found one that had an ad for Yoga Journal at the beginning of the tape. What a difference 10+ years makes! Gracing the covers of the old Yoga Journal were a variety of people, young and old. The Dalai Lama was featured on a cover, as well as Swami Vishnu-Devananda of Sivananda fame. Many other gurus were presented…and nary a skinny white woman with a bare midriff to be seen among them!
Now, Yoga Journal hardly distinguishes itself from Cosmopolitan on the magazine rack. Almost all the models on the front are young, skinny white women. In fact, I have yet to see a recent Yoga Journal without a young skinny white woman on the front. The ads are just as bad (I am sooo sick of the Hard Tail ads). In the most recent issue, a back page advertisement shows a white girl stretching up to the sky. We get a really good shot of her entire rib cage. Yikes.
If Yoga Journal insists on having attractive people on the cover, why not mix it up a bit? How about a few men, some older people, and some folks who aren’t white? I mean, please…this is just getting dull and boring.
And then they publish an article questioning why more men aren’t in yoga. Well, maybe more men would be if you didn’t market your magazine like a cheesy women’s tabloid. Get with it, Yoga Journal. Show some vision.
I poke around some yoga forums once in a while, and I can’t help but notice a few yoga snobs online. You know, the kind of yog teachers that YogaDawg loves to make fun of. These are people who MUST write out “adho mukha shvanasana” instead of “downward facing dog” in a casual discussion of yoga. These are the folks who admonish people about how sacred a practice yoga is. To them, “sweaty yoga” is a big no-no. They will also get a bit riled up if you ever suggest that yoga is something that can be done at home without the help of the vaunted yoga teacher.
They are well-meaning, but in such a way that you just want to run screaming to the nearest Best Buy to purchase a cheesy Denise Austin yoga DVD and do a whole series of DOWNDOGS (not “adho mukha shvanasanas”) out of spite.
Now, now, I realize that as a spiritual person, I should smile and accept these overenthusiastic people with grace and humility, but then that wouldn’t make for a good blog post. 
I have a friend who has recently become a fan of Anusara and she’s gotten crazy over arm balancing poses. Unfortunately, this has also made her into somewhat of an arm balance evangelist. When I told her I fell down in crow pose (bakasana), she started lecturing me on how it was all about a certain alignment of the muscles blah blah blah and if I just made this certain kind of adjustment, I’d just “get it.”
And I should just be able to pop into handstand as well, because it’s really all about the alignment, not about strength or body type of anything else. This is what she’s getting from her Anusara teachers.
Well, sorry. I don’t buy that it’s just about alignment. When I fell in crow pose, I was aligned just fine. It’s just that, my wrists gave out. Rather suddenly. And then I toppled over and barely avoided spraining not only a wrist but a foot.
Read the rest of “Arm Balancing Poses: Do I Really Need to Do a Handstand?” »
The Los Angeles Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Center is now offering a free 30-minute silent meditation four nights a week at 8:30 pm: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. (Wednesday night is Satsang starting at 7 pm, which includes meditation, chanting and a reading.) The full schedule is available here.
