Sign of the Times? OM Yoga to Close After 15 Years

Cyndi Lee

On Sunday, yoga doyenne (and former Cyndi Lauper choreographer) Cyndi Lee gave the closing remarks at last weekend's Yoga Journal 3rd conference in New York.By Monday---the day after the conference---she announced, via email to long-time students, that the studio had lost its lease and would be closing by the end of June.(Read the announcement on the studio's Web site.)Lee, who established OM in 1997 on 14th street, said the landlord at 826 Broadway, OM's home above The Strand bookstore for about 7 years, didn't give her an option to renew. According to an interview on Well+Good:

She gave us 90 days notice and rented it to someone else. She just didn’t want a yoga studio there anymore.

OM yoga studio

According to some long-time NYC yogis, OM had begun to lose its fire a little while ago. Once-loyal students had already moved on to other studios or classes that seemed eager to move with the changing trends of yoga.Still, the pioneer studio had nurtured beloved NYC teachers such as Margi Young, Christy Clark, Lippy Orem, Joe Miller, and Brian Liem, and gave others such as Brooklyn maverick Jonathan FitzGordon his start.It also was one of the first to explicitly bring yoga asana practice and Buddhist meditation techniques together. Lee frequently hosted her Tibetan teacher, and held workshops by David Nichtern, music producer and senior teacher in the Shambhala Buddhist lineage (and Lee's husband), and her step-son, Ethan Nicthern, author of One City: A Declaration of Interdependence and founder of the popular Interdependence Project.Teachers and students recite the dedication of merit at the end of (most!) classes, offering their work to the greater good of all beings.OM is not completely going away---it's transforming its teachings and services into more of a "homeless" or online-based studio. Lee and her senior teachers will continue to give workshops and trainings, although there are speculations that some may branch off altogether.For now, enjoy the last 2 months of this breezy and popular studio that trained a lot of eager new teachers, brought teachers as diverse as Judith Lasater and Meredith Monk to students, and gave a very chill American spin to a practice that can be be altogether too many things to too many people.

New York Times Reports on Licensing Issue

Alison West

Today, none other than Arthur Sulzberger's 28-yr old son, A.G., reported on the still hot-ticket issue of licensing New York yoga studios. Thank you, A.G.! Your press helps the cause.

Yoga Association of New York (YANY) was officially ratified on Wednesday, at OM Yoga, at its second official meeting. For more news on what's been happening since I last wrote, see my upcoming post on YogaDork. (I'll remind you!) Alison West, president of the newly ratified YANY, teaching at her studio, Yoga Union. Photo for NYTimes by Ruby Washington.For now, Sulzberger, who attended YANY's first meeting, traces the origin of the conflict to the very creation of the Yoga Alliance in 1999. This attempt at self-regulation, according to Leslie Kaminoff of the Breathing Project, made yoga studios a sitting duck for cash-flow challenged government looking for new sources of income. (A government that thinks yoga's popularity means that studios are raking in the big bucks.)

“We made it very, very easy for them to do what they’re doing right now,” said Leslie Kaminoff, founder of the Breathing Project, a nonprofit yoga center in New York City, who had opposed the formation of the Yoga Alliance. “The industry of yoga is a big, juicy target.”

Sulzberger continues, "In New York State, though, teachers fought back, complaining that the new rules could erode thin bottom lines, contradict religious underpinnings and, most important, shut down every school in the state during an eight-month licensing period."

“It basically destroys the essence of yoga, to control and manipulate the whole situation,” said Jhon Tamayo of Atmananda Yoga Sequence in Manhattan, shortly after receiving one of the warning letters from the state. “No one can regulate yoga.”

The dispute is far from over. But there's a sense that YANY, at least, is in it for the long haul. And, in the immediate, there is some light at the end of the tunnel---stay tuned for my report via YogaDork! (With pics and docs)

(On another note, A.G. Sulzberger's piece marks a nice departure from the usual isn't-that-weird tone that a lot of articles on yoga take. Thanks again, A.G., for taking the cause seriously.)

Parsing "Namaste"

A pithy, energetic, and not-too dumbed down article (I mean, c'mon, we've had 10-years of that style of yoga reporting--the, 'wow, it's really weird, but I kind of like it,' stuff) on the cultural background of Om, Hatha, and other fundamentals of yoga class. Nice to see yoga in the "grammar" section, though it's not exactly grammar. B.K.S. Iyengar does more parsing of "Om" in the intro to his classic book, Light on Yoga. It's more of a history lesson. But who's counting?

The writer, Jaimie Epstein, a Jivamukti-trained yoga teacher, former copy editor and sometime-stand-in for William Safire's "On Language" column for the NYT Magazine, says that Hatha yoga's, "present-day roots go back to the Nathas, an Orc-like breed of mercenaries in medieval India who resurrected the methods of hathayoga in the hope of developing the supernatural powers, like invisibility."

The article is a handy little primer with personality on the various styles of yoga popular right now and how they got there, and of the poses you'll find in it. "After an hour or so of pretending you’re three-cornered and sitting like a hero, you’ll get to play dead in savasana, corpse pose, which isn’t a gruesome nod to slasher movies but a way of allowing you to experience the lightness of total surrender."

Lastly, be sure to check out the line of figures in poses at the top of the article. The one third from the end seems to have aquired an extra thigh joint.

Pure Yoga Hits Town and Everyone Says, "Wow!"

Here's a round-up of comments so far about Pure Yoga in NYC:

July 30, Fashion Week Daily on "the scene" at Pure YogaJuly 30, Yoga Journal blog, Valerie Reiss

July 7, New York Sun 

June 15, New York Magazine (in the shopping section, ahem)

Dec 30, 2007, New York Magazine

From blogs:A range of responses like the not so critical Om La La on June 18th, "I dont think you can do drop in classes, its membership only, but something to check out when it finally opens!  Plus if the yoga is good, $140 for unlimited yoga is pretty good!"... to Om Yoga trained teacher, Lauren Cahn,'s worry on June 13, "On another note, Pure Yoga hired two non ashtanga people to run their ashtanga program. I think this decision was made before Christopher was available. Pure made a very bad decision. I have been in touch with the people at Pure. They claim their selection of teachers is temporary and if ashtanga does not do well at Pure, they may change teachers..."...to the refreshingly blunt, Valerie Reiss writing on the Yoga Journal blog Samadhi & The City, back in January. Titled, "Pure Yoga? or Pure Insanity?" her entry reads, "The quote Equinox gave New York is incredibly telling: "we will continue to expand and pursue an aggressive yoga strategy." I will be curious to see more responses as this giant moves in.