From the category archives:

Yoga News and Culture

Yoga and Fibromyalgia – First Steps

September 27, 2010

Yoga Can Ease the Chronic Pain of Fibromyalgia — You Web News youwb.com. It is good to see yoga being investigated as a treatment in this insidious mind-body disease that is so strangely characteristic of the twenty-first century. Why has this disease arisen? And why does yoga seem to work so well for alleviating the [...]

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How Yoga Sold Out – WSJ

September 26, 2010

Academics who study *religion* are all about fostering an objectivity that makes what they study a caricature of itself by accentuating certain elements of the picture, and omitting others. This article is a great example of how the process works. First, to associate money and corruption itself smacks of colonialism. Traditions must generate and distribute [...]

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Cannabis and Yoga?

September 25, 2010

Ganja Yoga Getting Popular in Toronto | TopNews United States. Ganja yoga may be a growing fad in both Canada and America, and it probably seems like a gross debasement of the tradition to many. Now Indian yogins (especially Shaivite) have used cannabis in meditation practice for centuries. According to some quite reputable authorities, it [...]

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Texas to Close Yoga Studios?

September 23, 2010

The Yoga Alliance comes to Texas « posting from the path. Am I reading this correctly? Is the Texas Workforce Commission closing YA-approved teacher training programs because they are *vocational* and thus must meet its regulatory standards? I would like to independently verify these claims, for if accurate, they are yet another sign of things [...]

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Measuring Consciousness? NY Times

September 22, 2010

Sizing Up Consciousness by Its Bits – NYTimes.com. Tononi maintains that consciousness can be measured. In his work, consciousness is operationally defined as the  level of information integration in the brain. Now yoga claims to be the experiential and experimental science of consciousness as explored from within. So how might yoga view the idea of [...]

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What Makes a Real Yoga Teacher?

September 20, 2010

so you think you can teach yoga?  « it’s all yoga, baby. This is one of the richest and most important blog entries of the year. The issues are convoluted and recursive, but they have to be addressed. Does yoga training fall under the *educational* rubric? If so, it is open to regulation a la [...]

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Pure Yoga, Corporate Yoga (?!)

September 20, 2010

Poised for Global Expansion, Equinox Fitness Clubs One of the most potent forces in modern American yoga is Pure Yoga, a *brand* (!) completely connected with the corporate force that IS Equinox Fitness Clubs. This represents complete commodification of the tradition – even if NYC yoga students rate its teachers quite highly. So here’s my [...]

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Sex, Exploitation and Yoga

September 17, 2010

Yoga instructor found guilty | Aspen Daily News Online. Why do so many men who teach spiritual subjects engage in inappropriate sexual behavior? Over the past half-century, it seems that prominent gurus and preachers from every tradition have transgressed. Is is a power trip? Beautiful yoga bodies provoking uncontrollable lust? Or was Freud right about [...]

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Yoga and Mental Health: 45 Years Later

September 17, 2010

Yoga May Improve Social, Occupational Functioning in Schizophrenia Patients | Psych Central News. Baba Ram Dass and the late Tim Leary left Harvard after working with mental illness and psychedelics. Perhaps yoga practice presents a less violent means of psychic reintegration from those suffering from mental diseases.

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Real Men Do Yoga: The Growing Trend for Guys

September 17, 2010

Real Men Do Yoga: The Growing Trend for Guys Right now, 85% of Yoga Journal’s conference-goers are female. Male boomers, however, may well be the source from which American yoga ceases to be gender-biased. There may be something more at stake as well: older persons may well have psychological capacities and accumulated experience such that [...]

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