Those clever folks at Apple find more ways to skewer PC and Vista users, this time with a savvy yoga scenario in their Get a Mac series. Here, the frustrated, independent studio owner struggling to balance the accounts loses her cool. Ring true?
How often does idealistic yogi and good business person go together anyway?
Not often enough.
A Four Letter Word opened Friday, March 28 in Manhattan to a surprised endorsement from the NYTimes film blogger Jeannette Catsoulis.She writes that this romantic comedy "explores gay relationships with low-budget verve" and has "good-natured raunchiness--a nude yoga class is particularly diverting--that's explicit but never sleazy."Nude yoga class on film, hmmm. Easier than checking it out in person.Directed by Casper Andreas.
Black Voices, an online magazine sponsored by AOL, just published a blog post for its readership on the benefits of yoga.
While the entry itself is basic, basic, basic (as befits the venue), and "yoga photos" posted beneath the entry are downright confusing (*what* are they referring to?), it's nice to think that yoga might not continue to be dominated by white women.
Why is that, exactly?
The answer is no, but they were cool about it. How Stuff Works website hosts two short articles on the Beatles and the Maharishi as well as the influence of Indian gurus like BKS Iyengar on the development of yoga in the west.
Read the articles here.
Jeannette Catsoulis reviews film The Hottie & The Nottie, a Paris Hilton expose-a-thon. Wherein the shockable audience discovers said "most revealing downward dog in yoga history."Pass.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the controversial Indian guru--briefly adopted by the Beatles--who introduced Transcendental Meditation to the West, died Feb 6, 2008 in the Netherlands. He was in his 90s.
"The Maharishi was both an entrepreneur and a monk, a spiritual man who sought a world stage from which to espouse the joys of inner happiness. His critics called his organization a cult business enterprise. And in the press, in the 1960s and ’70s, he was often dismissed as a hippie mystic, the “Giggling Guru,” recognizable in the familiar image of him laughing, sitting cross-legged in a lotus position on a deerskin, wearing a white silk dhoti with a garland of flowers around his neck beneath an oily, scraggly beard."
Read the full obituary in the NYTimes.
The hilarious, tiresome, snotty, shallow, entertaining puhleeze, blog Stuff White People Like, (written by a white person in Canada, perhaps Vancouver) spoofed yoga in entry #15. You can't say that yoga wasn't asking for it.
An out take: "Yoga is also an expensive activity. It gives white people the chance to showcase their $80 pants."
See the Jan 22, 2008 entry, #15.
Iyengar demonstrates a very long inhale and a very long exhale in front of a Western audience.
"Yoga is Universal"
"Internal exercise not external exercise"
"You means your self-knowledge"
Amazing. I can't paraphrase. Read this from the NYTimes City Room blog, "Taking the Yoga 'Corpse' Pose Literally" by Jennifer 8. Lee:
"Have you ever wished you could do downward dog with a decomposing body? Well, City Room hasn’t (doing the crow with an intact body is still an insurmountable challenge), but this combination apparently has been a niche fantasy with some population of New Yorkers.
(Photo: Tyler Hicks/The New York Times)
About 75 people showed up in Williamsburg’s East River State Park for an (online) open casting call for the filming of a yoga zombie video on Sunday. “The zombie blogs were only mildly interested in it, it was the yoga blogs,” said Jason Wishnow, the director of the video.
“The R.S.V.P. responses from the yoga blogs were like: ‘I love yoga and I love zombie movies. I’ve been waiting for this!’ It was the chocolate and the peanut butter thing for all these people.
”While the crew had a make-up artist on set, many of the yoga practitioners showed up in their zombie get-ups, ready to go. Mr. Wishnow was impressed by his extras, saying: “Everyone took zombiedom very seriously. There was a lot of groaning and discomfort of their decomposing bodies as they would attempt yoga maneuvers.”
Wow.
It's true--some yogis--mostly men-- like to practice in their birthday suits. The studio in New York (Hot Nude Yoga) has been open for 7 years, making this niche hardly a new one. But still, who knew?
Gawker's take might be more along the lines of what you're *really* thinking (like, naked? wtf?)
Yoga studios internationally will celebrate the UN's day of World Peace (and the autumnal equinox) on or around Sept 21 with events like trance dance, 108 sun salutations, and a commitment to go vegan--at least for a few days. Global Mala
No date given.
I'm thrilled to see my article in the NYTimes Thursday Styles section today! Read it here.
"THE words “Do you come here often?” are not sweet nothings when you are going into final relaxation during a yoga class. Nor do most yoga practitioners welcome someone who flirts shamelessly as mats are positioned during the lull before the teacher arrives.
Now, a popular online video starring a lech named Ogden has the yoga community chuckling in recognition and talking about the problem of men who come to studios in search of phone numbers rather than enlightenment.
The comedy sketch, aptly named “Inappropriate Yoga Guy,” has racked up nearly 1.8 million views since its debut on YouTube in June... keep reading.
Gawker liked the IYG article in the NYTimes. Their line, "(seriously, watch it and see if you don't spit out your coffee when he does that Ujjayi breath)" made me laugh out loud again. Yep, they got it.
See their post here.
Silent, from a newsreel. Source unknown. But very cool to watch Iyengar as a young man. More to come.
It must suck to have reporters watching you while you practice.
Read the National Post's blow-by-blow blog-style article about Sting's yoga performance.
After San Francisco lawyer, Mark Webb's, successful "total yoga makeover" in which he lost 30 pounds and regained mental clarity, sponsored by (and profiled in) Yoga Journal, he is organizing a yoga course for the legal world. His mission statement says [all caps his!], "WE HAVE GATHERED SEVERAL OF THE FINEST YOGA INSTRUCTORS IN SAN FRANCISCO, WHO ARE DESIGNING A COURSE TAILORED FOR LAWYERS, LAW STUDENTS, & LEGAL SUPPORT STAFF, TO BE GIVEN IN MID-JULY 2007. JUDGES ARE ALSO WELCOME."
Bravo, Mark (but what's the deal with judges?) (and the capital letters?) and long live Yoga Lawyers.com. May we all have a less litigious world.
Arnie Herz of the blog Legal Sanity seconds the motion. Herz has also written about the benefits to the legal profession of yoga and meditation.
Combining principles from Japanese and Indian culture, Japanese Yoga promises to deliver a double-whammy of oriental peace.
The publisher's Web site says: "Emphasizing gentle stretching and meditation exercises, the ultimate goal of Japanese yoga (Shin-shin-toitsu-do) is enhanced mind/body integration, calmness, and willpower for a healthier and fuller life. Developed by Nakamura Tempu Sensei in the early 1900s from Indian Raja yoga, Japanese martial arts and meditation practices, as well as Western medicine and psychotherapy, Japanese yoga offers a new approach to experienced yoga students and a natural methodology that newcomers will find easy to learn."
Fusion is forever.
On May 7, 2007, writer SUKETU MEHTA wrote in the New York Times with a rare Indian perspective on the yoga craze, particularly the craze to copyright poses or sequences of poses instigated by yoga bad boy Bikram Choudury. Choudury has lived in the US since the 70s, and according to one Indian friend of mine, is a classic south-asian businessman.
Mehta says,"I GREW up watching my father stand on his head every morning. He was doing sirsasana, a yoga pose that accounts for his youthful looks well into his 60s. Now he might have to pay a royalty to an American patent holder if he teaches the secrets of his good health to others. The United States government has issued 150 yoga-related copyrights, 134 patents on yoga accessories and 2,315 yoga trademarks. There’s big money in those pretzel twists and contortions — $3 billion a year in America alone.
"It’s a mystery to most Indians that anybody can make that much money from the teaching of a knowledge that is not supposed to be bought or sold like sausages. Should an Indian, in retaliation, patent the Heimlich maneuver, so that he can collect every time a waiter saves a customer from choking on a fishbone?"
Read the whole story on the New York Times site: "A Big Stretch."