Yoga

Image: 

Breath gives us life, and with yoga, breath, and life, takes on a whole new dimension.

This is the central theme of Why We Breathe, the latest yoga documentary released in late February, which explores the practice of yoga from the perspective of six nationally recognized yoga teachers. The 50-minute documentary rotates between interview clips with the teachers as they share how they discovered yoga, what they love about it, and why they still come back to their yoga practice day after day.

“People are initially drawn to yoga…for the physical side of it, because people are looking for ways to get in shape and look fit and be healthy, and that’s definitely what helps get people through the door,” sas yoga teacher Angela Tara Hsu. “But what keeps them there and what hooks them and keeps them coming back is once they cross over the physical part of it, and they reach the mental benefits, the spiritual benefits, the healing benefits, on a much deeper level.”

John Yax, another interviewee, had been practicing martial arts for years before his sister, a longtime yoga practitioner, agreed to teach a yoga class to the group that Yax practiced martial arts with. “We felt amazing afterwards, so it sparked my interest,” he said. His brother Chris, part of the martial arts group as well, was also hooked.

“Once I started practicing [yoga], it didn’t take long for me to realize how powerful it was in terms of healing the body,” Chris said. “We were always practicing martial arts with the intention of dissolving the ego and being able to see clearly when you’re in a confrontation. And I realized through this practice of yoga that it was like the rocket ship to where we were going, where in one class, it took years for me to achieve that state of presence or stillness in the midst of the martial arts world. And within one or two classes, I’d experienced it, and realized that there was something more than just the physical healing of it—it was the space that was created in my mind and body that just felt amazing.”

All the teachers interviewed had slightly different introductions to yoga, of course, as well as different reasons for falling head over heels for it. It seems like the practice gave each of the teachers exactly what they had been searching for, as if yoga morphs to fit the needs of whoever is using it.

For Briohny Smith, yoga helped her get out of her head, as she puts it. “I think that a lot of our insecurities and fears come from us believing the thoughts that are in our heads all the time, and yoga helped me…quiet those thoughts down.” And while she realizes that yoga won’t rid her of all her negative thoughts all the time, she said that she is now better able to deal with it when she does have those thoughts, thanks to all the tools that her yoga practice offers.

For Briohny's husband, up-and-coming yoga star Dice Iida-Klein, it was the calming, stress-relieving benefits that originally attracted him to yoga. “I’ve always needed something physical to at least allow me to sleep and allow me to calm down," says Iida-Klein. "There’s a lot that goes on in my head, so it’s always been a good way of chilling out—really just working myself physically.”

Although he was a competitive athlete for most of his life, doing baseball and hockey for several years each, plus cross country, tennis and wrestling in his teenage years, Iida-Klein said yoga was something entirely different and unexpected. During one of his first yoga classes, a Vinyasa flow 2-3 level course, he said, “I remember 40 minutes in thinking I’ve never had my butt handed to me like this before—just sweat, all over the floor. Inversion time came…and that was the first time something had ever made me like ‘I need to relax; I need to chill.’” Pleased with the sudden and unexpected response to calm down, the seasoned athlete was hooked. 

Why We Breathe, is a wonderful inspiring movie about the many ways in which yoga touches and inspires us. Watch the full documentary for free and catch all of the interview clips at www.whywebreathe.com. It opens with a beautifully inspiring slow-mo rendition of yoga on the beach, and is sure to get you feeling motivated to hit your mat.

Why We Breathe - A Yoga Documentary from BackToAwake on Vimeo.

It’s the warrior pose for warriors: the US Army has introduced yoga as part of its new fitness regimen.  It is the first overhaul of the soldiers’ exercise plan in 30 years and the first time that the army has used yoga to improve soldiers’ physical fitness.

Although this is the first time yoga has been part of the military’s fitness regimen, the army has actually been using yoga for many years, albeit for different reasons.  Yoga has often been used to treat PTSD and other anxiety-based mental disorders for recently returned veterans, with remarkable results.  But now the focus is on combat readiness, not inner peace, as the new exercise curriculum is phased in.

Yoga will be introduced to the troops at several different bases over the next six months.  General Mark Hertlin, the Deputy Commanding General for military training says that traditional fitness training often leads to muscle stress, fractured bones and other injuries.  Yoga’s emphasis on flexibility will be a safeguard against that as well as a way for soldiers to gain new skills necessary for combat.

Gladys Morris is a yoga teacher from Manchester, UK.  Popular among her students, she teaches four classes a week, and spent her last birthday teaching her usual Monday class.  But Morris has something that sets her apart from most other yoga teachers: she’s 90 years old.

"For a 90-year-old, she's absolutely grand. She's an inspiration to us all." said Lynne Grimes, one of Morris’ longtime students.

Morris began teaching yoga 40 years ago.  Now her students are petitioning the Guiness Book of World Records to bestow upon her the title of World’s Oldest Yoga Teacher.  If she gets in, she’ll beat the current record holder by five years and three months. 

But Morris isn’t the only nonagenarian yoga teacher around.  Tao Porchon-Lynch is a 90-year-old former screenwriter turned yogi and competitive ballroom dancer.  Her feats might be daunting to someone half her age, but Porchon-Lynch isn’t phased by anything.

“I’ve never thought about age in my life,” she said. “In fact, it’s only when I had a hip replacement that somebody said, ‘You won’t be able to do this anymore.’ So I sent the doctor a photograph lifting off the ground in lotus, and he was amazed I could do it.”

Embedding is disabled, but watch a video of Porchon-Lynch here.

And then there’s Canadian Ida Herbert.  Herbert is 93, and didn’t start practicing yoga until she was 50 years old.  Now she teaches regular classes, and attributes her yoga practice to her health and vitality.  And others are taking notice, too: recently, CARP (the Canadian Association of Retired People) named her one of the top 50 Canadians over 45.

No matter who gets to be in the Book, all three women are impressive examples of the yoga lifestyle.  And just to further prove that yoga teachers can come in all shapes and sizes, here’s one of the more valiant efforts we’ve seen in awhile.

by Emma Needleman

For serious yogis, the term “yama” means the intense ethical discipline practitioners undertake to enhance their practice and achieve the ultimate union between mind and body.  But it’s also the name of one of the yoga industry’s most intensely capitalistic ventures yet: a talent agency for yoga teachers aspiring to guru status.

YAMA, which stands for Yoga Artist Management Agency, is the first yogi-only representation firm.  Founded by Ava Taylor (a former Lululemon marketing agent), it’s a small but powerful operation.   YAMA is meant to help rockstar yoga teachers manage their schedules: planning teaching tours, juggling speaking engagements and launching DVDs—all the things a traditional talent agency does, but with a yoga twist.

Critics will say that it’s a ploy to maximize profits, but Taylor says her motivation behind YAMA was to reconcile the “duality between being a [yoga] teacher and living in the real world.”  And in an interview with YogaDork.com, client Sadie Nardini defended her involvement with the agency as necessary to maintaining her “sanity”:

If [people] knew the amount of work it takes to organize just one teacher training at one studio, then multiply that by a hundred for all the classes, workshops, trainings, retreats and travel we are asked (and want) to do each year, just to be able to reach and then teach all our students, they might see past the apparent quest for stardom, and into our desire for plain old sanity!

The fact remains that yoga is a $5.7 billion industry and is only growing.  Are endeavors like YAMA necessary to keep up with the growing demand for yoga, or are they merely symptoms of our yoga industrial complex? 

But, whatever the response, there seems to be no stopping YAMA. At the time of its launch in spring 2010, it already had bicoastal representatives and a roster full of heavy-hitter clients, and has only grown since then.  You can definitely expect to hear more from them in 2011.

Yoga Dork has more coverage here.

Whether you’re an actual Pacific Northwest resident or just a hippie at heart, you might find that the new PEMCO insurance ads hit just a little too close to home.  The campaign features more than 50 profiles of archetypal Seattle residents like “Urban Chicken Farmer,” “Oblivious Left-Lane Occupant” and, of course, “Type-‘A’ Yoga Girl.”

The Washington-based insurance company unveiled these ads in 2007.  Since then, they’ve become wildly popular amongst the self-aware, quirky residents of the Pacific Northwest, so much so that the introduction of new characters warrants a flurry of activity on Facebook and other social networking sites.

Type-“A” Yoga girl, for instance, sports serious workout gear and a battle-ready expression on her face.  “The minute the meeting ends, she’s off—with hair in a ponytail and a yoga mat wrapped so tightly under arm it’d take two downward facing dogs to rip it away from her,” the ad’s copy reads.  “She’s going to find her inner peace.  So don’t even consider getting in her way.”

Yoga girl’s opposite is the Oblivious Left-Lane Occupant, whose laid-back Seattle style is getting on everyone’s nerves.  Apparently, spaced-out drivers going just below the speed limit in the left lane is a common sight in the Pacific Northwest.  Accordingly, Oblivious Left-Lane Occupant has a dopey facial expression and “hands that aren’t even close to flipping on that turn signal.”  Her beverage of choice?  “Decaf tea.”

The ads are featured on billboard and in TV commercials around the Seattle area, but super-crunchy folks they satirize can be found anywhere there’s a yoga studio or a natural foods market.  As the PEMCO ads say, “We’re a lot like you. A little different.”