Tag Archives: interview

Bikram interviewed again

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This arti­cle in the Boston Globe, Yogi Bikram Choud­hury likes the finer things in life, is a short piece with a big photo. Post data: And this arti­cle, Yoga Fever: Bikram Choudhury’s 105-​​degree work­out is a hot ticket, came out on Sun­day in the same paper and is a much longer fea­ture piece that focuses on some of Bikram’s ego-​​centric rants and com­mer­cial hyper­drive. Ten­ley Wood­man, the colum­nist, ends her piece with her own per­sonal expe­ri­ence in a Bikram class: “The last 20 mintues of class leaves me feel­ing nau­seous and exhausted. I begin to ques­tion my san­ity. My heart races, my knees shake from fatigue. I swear I will never, ever sub­mit myself to this tor­ture again.” But she does. The arti­cle is accom­pa­nied by a nice photo gallery.

To com­pen­sate for this fluff, here is a more sub­stan­tive arti­cle about a woman tak­ing a Bikram class from the Everett (Wa.) Her­ald.

Deepening my yoga practice

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I’ve been tak­ing some class of For­est Yoga from Chris­tine Peter­son at Thrive Yoga. So I was bounc­ing around my usual surf­ing points and came across an audio inter­view with Ana For­est her­self at Yoga Peeps. I lis­tened and was impressed by her life story and atti­tude towards yoga (I was already impressed by her yoga per­for­mances). She is explor­ing the depth of yoga by bring­ing the optics from her Native Amer­i­can her­itage and her own phys­i­cal handicaps:

“What I’ve been found, no mat­ter what age we are, we can build healthy mus­cle tis­sue or we can rot. And the choice is always ours. And I’m not into rot.”

For­est Yoga classes are intense and phys­i­cally demand­ing, focused on phys­i­cal core strength and body integrity. They hurt, but I know that they tar­get areas that I need to strengthen to get to the next level. I find it a nice coun­ter­bal­ance to vinyasa classes that empha­size ease of move­ment, bal­ance and flex­i­bil­ity. There are not many instruc­tors that are cer­ti­fied to teach For­est Yoga, so prob­a­bly the easy way to incor­po­rate some of her tech­niques is to her DVD Strength & Spirit at her web­site. If you want to read arti­cles and inter­views, she has an exhaus­tive selec­tion.

Krishna Das

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Thanks to Daily Cup of Yoga, I ran across a recent audio inter­view with Krisha Das on CBC Radio. [MLS: A shame, but the archive only goes back to 2009 now.] I’ve com­mented before that he’s kinda been the sound­track of my yoga prac­tice. The lengthy dis­cus­sion cen­ters on his spir­i­tual prac­tice that par­al­lels his expe­ri­ence with kir­tan music. It really gave new insight into his music. I’ll Krishna Das speak for himself.

Yoga Peeps

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I spent part of my lunch break­ing lis­ten­ing to an audio inter­view with Cyndi Lee while I was fill­ing out checks to pay the monthly bills. I really enjoyed the con­ver­sa­tion. Cyndi brings a Bud­dhist vibe to yoga so she empha­sizes med­i­ta­tion and life style. She’s involved in a lot of inter­est­ing projects in New York and around the world.

Lara Ces­tone, the found­ing spirit behind Yoga Peeps, really does a fan­tas­tic job bring­ing together lengthy (30-​​60 min­utes, I think) inter­views with yoga instruc­tors around the United States and Canada. She has 19 episodes now, avail­able as pod­casts or mp3 files, with peo­ple like Ana For­est, Shiva Rea, and Kelly McGo­ni­gal, as well as lesser known instruc­tors. Lara does this out of the good­ness of her heart because there are no ads on the site and there does not seem to be a busi­ness model behind it.

NPR : A Father Bounces Back

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NPR : A Father Bounces Back: “After com­bat­ing depres­sion and rebuild­ing his life, a middle-​​aged father recon­nects with his adult daugh­ter.” The audio is now avail­able online. I guess that this counts as five min­utes against my “15 min­utes of fame.”

I heard the story as I was about to get on the Metro, my wife sigh­ing beside me, “And you told them about liv­ing in your par­ents’ base­ment, too?” Teresa does not believe in wear­ing your neu­roses — or their con­se­quences — on your sleeve. I could quib­ble with some phras­ing, but it’s really hard to con­dense 30 years of life into a sen­tence or two. As much as pos­si­ble, Alli­son tried to let Stephanie and me do the talk­ing in the report. Of course, I am used to hav­ing 100% con­trol over con­tent in this medium.

When I was a jour­nal­ist in Peru, I used to do radio news report­ing and hated it. I was self-​​conscious about how my voice sounded, about the spon­tane­ity and quick reac­tions to news sto­ries, about the inabil­ity to cor­rect word­ing a story once it was phoned in. And I never did it enough to get a han­dle on it, mean­ing my angst meter was mov­ing into red when­ever I had to do a story. This lat­est expe­ri­ence reminded me of those days with a tape record and alli­ga­tor clips.

I am going to be a star!

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Unless there’s a major break­ing news story on Fri­day, June 17, National Pub­lic Radio’s Morn­ing Edi­tion pro­gram will broad­cast a spe­cial report on the topic of — well, I’m not entirely sure — yoga, depres­sion, father­hood — and me, I think.

Last Wednes­day, I spent four hours with an NPR reporter, Alli­son Aubrey who cov­ers the con­sumer health front, talk­ing about how I got involved in yoga, how it’s helped me deal with my depres­sion, how I share my yoga expe­ri­ence with my daugh­ter, Stephanie, and wife, Teresa. She recorded my Wednes­day class, talked to my instruc­tor, then we chat­ted until 10 at night. Well, Stephanie and I said lots of stuff dur­ing 4 hours of record­ing so I have no idea what the final prod­uct will be like. Alli­son was orig­i­nally look­ing to do some­thing on “male baby boomers who belat­edly get into yoga” (that’s me), and my yoga stu­dio put us in contact.

Alli­son came by on Mon­day to record me doing my breath­work rou­tine, and ask a few more ques­tions. She said that the story looks firm, being pegged to Father’s Day, June 19. I have more infor­ma­tion about the exact time, which can prob­a­bly vary because NPR is broad­cast by local sta­tions. I will try to post a link here so that those who can’t lis­ten to NPR can get the story on the Web. Since the story does not fit into a neat news niche, I don’t know if it will appear on the Health and Sci­ence page. I will post the link once it become avail­able. Last Fri­day, there was an inter­est­ing piece on cut­ting, called The His­tory and Men­tal­ity of Self-​​Mutilation, which might give an idea of the style for laid-​​back end-​​of-​​week features.