Thai Yoga to be Protected
http://nationmultimedia.com/2007/02/26/headlines/headlines_30027942.php
According to The Nation magazine, "Thailand will propose that 200 year-old inscriptions and statues that teach traditional Thai yoga at Wat Pra Chetupon Wimolmangalaram be included in the Unesco Memory of the World (MOW) Programme in 2009."
Thailand is trying to do what India tried to do, too late--save its cultural heritage from profitable pirating from other cultures. Still, it didn't work in India because it was extremely difficult to patent the poses. Who owns the poses?
Even yogis who like to sue can only patent sequences, not poses themselves. At least in America.
Be Quiet! UK Yogis Disturb the Neighbours
London's most popular yoga center, TriYoga, disturbs the neighbours with its chanting and drumming. Chief offenders are the lunch time Mommy and Baby classes, and the Prenatal classes. Wooo noisy mamas!!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2004267,00.html#article_continue
From the Guardian:
"The complaints focus on a mother and baby yoga session in which the women sing nursery rhymes while stretching their babies' limbs in yoga-inspired movements, and a pregnancy class in which music by George Harrison, Bob Marley and Aretha Franklin is played. Camden council has issued an enforcement notice which could result in a fine."
India Patents Poses
This from a 2005 article from the London Telegraph. Dated, but still news: outraged that Americans and Europeans are making money off yoga, India started a project to record and patent 1,500 yoga poses.
This argument has been bubbling beneath the surface for a long time: who owns yoga?
Are Americans like Baron Baptiste and John Friend really corrupting yoga? Or, as with Western interpretations of Buddhism and meditation, are they reviving the practice as well as putting their American twist on it? Would yoga be so popular in India today if it hadn't first caught on in America? After all, yoga was nothing to get excited about 50 years ago.
Hmmm...