When was growing up, yoga was something done by hairy ascetics in the back pages of musty, badly-printed books smuggled in from ashrams in India. Now it’s been ingested by the American marketing machine and spit out like so many Taco Bells. Check out this wedding announcement about two star American yoga instructors:

… Saidman and …Yee found themselves sitting next to each other in a crowded hot tub after a day of twisting poses. “She put her thumb on my forehead, right on the third eye, and literally I felt something I’d never felt before” … [Link]

There’s the competitive Manhattan scene…

“After 9-11, there was a huge uptick in people taking yoga classes,” she added, “I mean, there’s only so far Xanax will go…”

“Put your hand in the center of your chest. Maybe there’s a jewel in there — maybe it’s the jewel of the jewel of the jewel — how does your throat soften and talk to the center of your chest?” [Link]

This bionic breed of yogis and its command of Sanskrit lingo and pretzel poses put me to shame… The Bhagavad-Gita, the Upanishads, which I didn’t even know about six years ago, now most of the students are pretty well versed in them…”

“There are full wheels in almost every class now — backbends from gymnastic class. People 45 years old or 50 years old learning full wheels…

“It’s a constant source of shame that I have to move my mat to the wall in front of all the people… Not just headstands but the poses — the crow. Now, everybody can just do it immediately. It’s not even considered hard…”

I have not developed the openness to the chanting, scripture and Indian music. I still find them exotic…. the class engaged in a call-and-response invocation of Ganesh, the Hindu deity of new beginnings. They just chanted away, happily and un-self-consciously: “Ganesha shadanum, shadanum Ganesha…” [Link]

… the New Age-y Los Angeles celeb scene…

The Next Best Thing … stars Madonna as Abbie, a yoga teacher whose friendship with a gay man [Rupert Everett] undergoes a dramatic change… “When I was pregnant, I began doing Hatha yoga, and then began doing the more difficult Ashtanga yoga after I had the baby, because I wanted to do something more visceral and physical…” [Link]

Abbie, tired of failed relationships, has a one-night-stand with her gay friend; they agree to raise the resulting baby together. [Link]

… the American Sikh scene, including the Yogatech empire…

Gurmukh’s book, The Eight Human Talents, has been a long time Kundalini Yoga best seller… She has been married for 18 years and has a 16-year-old daughter who attends school in India, where Gurmukh returns every year to teach and study. [Link]

… as a flower child in the Haight [the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco, Calif.], I became addicted to diet pills,” she says. “After speed, I did other drugs.” In her classes and her writings, she is frank about the drugs and what she calls an “excessive” number of “indiscriminate sexual encounters.”

In 1969 she discovered yoga, which promised Technicolor, sitar-soundtracked visions of its own. [Link]

[White American Wahe Guru Kaur Khalsa]… spent 10 years in Northern India attending school and traveled extensively throughout the country. She is a veteran [bhangra] performer… [Link]

… yoga for babies…

Colleen Saidman… enrolled her three-year-old daughter Rachael in Jivamukti’s yoga program…. she is sitting in a corner upset with something and she chants aum, aum”… [Link]

… yoga for dogs and yoga for Christians.

Doggy yoga

In contrast, I’m not sure yoga is even offered at my Bombay gym, where the current crazes are rock climbing and spinning.

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