yoga

Yoga Guru or CEO? Saving the Brand When Scandal Strikes

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The accusations facing Anusara yoga founder John Friend include suggestions that he heads a Wiccan coven in which he has sex with female members; that he’s had several sexual relationships with married Anusara employees and teachers; that he violated federal regulations regarding employee benefits by suddenly freezing Anusara, Inc.’s pension fund; and finally, that Friend put his employees at legal risk by arranging for them to accept packages of marijuana for his personal use.

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What’s in an “Om”?: How Women are Transforming Yoga

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At first, Michael McIntyre admits, he wasn’t sure why they weren’t making a documentary on yoga, as opposed to women and yoga. I wondered the same thing. Isn’t the stereotype of men that they are even more out of touch with their bodies than women; overscheduled and torn between conflicting demands that don’t allow a minute for introspection, contemplation, or the stillness from which groundedness is born? All these reasons are why the film claims women should do the practice. But Michael came to believe that they were documenting something momentous, and women were leading it. “As a man going to classes taught by men, I was getting the practice, but not the phenomenon,” he said. “Women are taking it to the next level.”

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Is Yoga Hindu?

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Recent studies of yoga 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.

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