I’m very excited to be starting this *new* year with a *new* job, teaching yoga at an all-girls school in the Lower East Side. In preparing for the classes, I’ve been scouring bookstores, the net, my friend’s minds for innovative ideas to keep the class interesting enough for the students who wish their “progressive” school didn’t have this requirement.
America has obviously put its own special “spin” on yoga. I’m pretty sure there’s nothing in the Yoga Sutras about tightening your ass. But there is plenty in the bookstores, along with books about doing yoga in bed (20 asanas in pajamas!) and yoga for the “regular guy” (written by “regular guys” Rob Zombie and Wrestler Diamond Dallas , this book features photos of “regular” men doing down-dog in combat boots and camoflage, alongside “yoga babes”). Both of these books proudly claim they were featured on Regis and Kelly, a sure mark of yoga expertise.
But the yoga fad building the most steam is “Yoga for Indie Rockers.” Led by a girl named Chaos with Suicide Girl style, she constantly reminds the students you don’t have to listen to John Tesh-ie music and burn incense to do yoga. The DVD, classes, movement?, promise to present yoga to a different audience, one whose Warrior One arms are covered in tattoos and whose Yoga Ipod mix is full of 92 KRock type-tracks. Some talk on the blogs compare YIR to Dharma Punx, bringing a contemplative tradition to an “alternative” audience.
This week I took a class with Dharma Mittra, practiced in silence. I asked Dharma Mittra himself about some of these “other” classes, and he responded in a warm, non-judgmental way, saying, those who start there will eventually grow on to true yoga. I alternate between thinking the same, and finding these representations of yoga maddening or hilarious. Is Yoga for Indie Rockers or Regular Guys all about chanting OM to the ching-ching of the cash register? Or is there something to be said for making a variety of people feel comfortable beginning a practice still widely stereotyped as nutty, knit-your-own-granola?
One things for sure…I won’t be incorporating “rock and roll hardbody yoga” or “yoga to kick ass” in my classes. But I do hope to impart the idea that yoga is for everyone, no matter what’s in your Ipod or how you classify yourself.