Tag Archives: news

Another DC yoga studio bites the dust

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My friend and ded­i­cated Ash­tangi Don­a­van Wil­son sent me a mes­sage today:

David Ingalls is shut­ting down AYC (Ash­tanga Yoga Cen­ter, for those not in the know). The doors close on May 31. The stu­dio space near Amer­i­can Uni­ver­sity is too expen­sive. Keith Moore (long-​​time AYC teacher) found another loca­tion. The new loca­tion is unof­fi­cially in the MacArthur Boule­vard area (DC). The ten­ta­tive new name is the Ash­tanga Yoga Stu­dio. Moore has not signed a lease. How­ever, the odds pretty good to solid­ify this new loca­tion. All of this (new space and loca­tion) is up in the air. AYC clos­ing is not.

What a bum­mer! And to think, I have not had a chance to take a class there — though I do have until the end of May. What did in AYC was what made it a con­ve­nient place to prac­tice yoga — it was right next to the Amer­i­can University/​Tenlyetown Metro sta­tion, right across from Whole­Food. You could fit in a Mysore class before pick­ing up a bagel and head­ing to work. But eco­nom­i­cally, the rent got too high at that prime loca­tion. Let’s hope that all the instruc­tors and stu­dents find an appro­pri­ate space for their practice.

I should also under­score that the AYC web­site dis­tin­guished itself for exquis­ite pho­tog­ra­phy of yogis and yogi­nis absorbed in their prac­tice. As some­one who has dab­bled in that dark art, I know how dif­fi­cult it is to cap­ture the instance, but when you do, it’s magic.

Post­script: I should also note that DC is not the only place where yoga stu­dios can become unvi­able com­mer­cially: In New York City, Om Yoga will shut down at the end of June because the lease was not renewed. Om Yoga was founded and run by Cyndi Lee, a high-​​profile yoga instruc­tor and pio­neer in fus­ing yoga with Bud­dhism. The owner of the build­ing did not want a ygoa stu­dio on the premises.

Confirmation of meditation’s impact on the brain

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I’ve been keep­ing my head down lately, but I just noticed the fol­low­ing news item that rein­forces the find­ings of more sci­en­tific research into the impact of med­i­ta­tion on the brain:

The unique brain anatomy of med­i­ta­tion prac­ti­tion­ers: alter­ations in cor­ti­cal gyri­fi­ca­tion appeared in mid-​​March and Sci­ence Daily also did an arti­cle, Evi­dence Builds That Med­i­ta­tion Strength­ens the Brain The work was done at  UCLA Lab­o­ra­tory of Neuro Imag­ing by Eileen Lud­ers and col­leagues. The LONI’s lat­est news announce­ments shows the range of their investigations.

I should also point you to The Mind­ful­ness Research Guide which fol­lows the prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tion of med­i­ta­tion to many human are­nas. There is a monthly newslet­ter that has nearly 5,000 subscribers. 

Long feature about an old story

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Where have I been for the past two weeks? I did not even notice that my home­town paper pub­lished a long arti­cle detail­ing the upheaval in the Anusara and broader yoga scene because of John Friend’s misadventures: 

Scan­dal con­torts future of John Friend, Anusara yoga: “Friend’s empire — an inter­na­tional net­work that claims more than 1,500 teach­ers, includ­ing 25 in the Wash­ing­ton metro area, and 600,000 stu­dents — is in cri­sis now, tee­ter­ing under the strain of a sex scan­dal that has split its most loyal prac­ti­tion­ers and prompted an astound­ing vent­ing of emo­tions, from rage and recrim­i­na­tions to com­pas­sion and sadness.”

The Wash­ing­ton Post piece was so long that I could not fin­ish — I’m at work right now so I’ll have to come back to it later.

Crime stains a yoga gear store /​ updated

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Washon­g­ton Post - Woman killed, another sex­u­ally assaulted at Bethesda Lul­ule­mon store (the orig­i­nal story of the break-​​in at Lul­ule­mon Athletica):

Police declined to say how the homi­cide vic­tim, iden­ti­fied as 30-​​year-​​old Jayna T. Mur­ray, of Arling­ton, was killed. But law enforce­ment sources con­firmed a hor­rific, bloody scene inside Lul­ule­mon Ath­let­ica, part of a chain of stores that began pop­ping up across the coun­try a few years ago. The stores sell yoga and sports cloth­ing and are designed to give shop­pers a sense of calm.

Sad to see that a place where yoga is prac­ticed (Lul­ule­mon fre­quently holds yoga ses­sion in their com­mer­cial space) is tainted by this crim­i­nal vio­lence. It really seems odd because this is a part of Bethesda that should be extremely busy, even fol­low­ing the clos­ing of shops. This kind of crime is rare around the DC area so I can fathom why it happened.

Update: Per­sonal pro­file of Jayna Mur­ray and update on inves­ti­ga­tion, both from the Wash­ing­ton Examiner.

Sec­ond Update (March 21): Brit­tney Nor­wood appeared in court today (March 21) for killing Jayna Mur­ray, accord­ing to the Wash­ing­ton Post. Over the week­end, police work turned Nor­wood from a vic­tim of sex­ual assault to the per­pe­tra­tor of the mur­der, appar­ently to avoid being uncov­ered as with stolen mer­chan­dise. Jayna’s par­ents went on national TV this morn­ing to talk about her life.

This story is so bizarre and dis­con­cert­ing, even after the orig­i­nal tale of two men dress in black stalk­ing Bethesda com­mer­cial real estate came unrav­eled. You just don’t expect yoga to be the back­drop for an act of vio­lence wor­thy of crime novel.

Lat­est Update: The Wash­ing­ton Post pro­vides a full write-​​up about the court appear­ance and Norwood’s back­ground. This will prob­a­bly not be the last we hear of this tragedy.

Kabat-​​Zinn reminds us

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Los Ange­les Times Fully expe­ri­enc­ing the present: a prac­tice for every­one, reli­gious or not

Prac­tices such as med­i­ta­tion, yoga or East­ern mar­tial arts can aid the process, but mind­ful­ness is fun­da­men­tally an “accep­tance” or “com­ing to terms with things as they are,” not in the sense of pas­sive res­ig­na­tion but active aware­ness, says Kabat-​​Zinn.

Although this arti­cle from Octo­ber does not break new ground — the Mindfulness-​​Based Stress Reduc­tion (MBSR) approach is well known — but Kabat-Zinn’s insis­tence on mind­ful­ness not being a spir­i­tual or reli­gious expe­ri­ence is ger­mane to the pub­lic dis­cus­sion about all these exotic prac­tices tak­ing over the Amer­i­can mind. He’s so clear in how he opens up the dis­cus­sion by sus­pend­ing the more tra­di­tional terms for defin­ing the expe­ri­ence. I’m going to have to re-​​read one of his books (well, maybe an arti­cle or a chapter).

Escalation in the “Christians can’t practice yoga” theological war

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New York Times Stretch­ing and Bend­ing With a Holy Twist jumps into the “Jesus-and-yoga-don’t-mix” dis­pute. This is a blog is a monthly fea­ture writ­ten by Lizette Alvarez about the New York yoga scene so the reporter gets into the prac­tice and gives her opinion:

As I leaned my own body into a tri­an­gle pose in Ms. Russell’s class at St. Paul’s, I har­bored no doubts about the power of yoga to deepen faith: the peace, the dis­ci­pline, even the occa­sional suf­fer­ing help make room for grat­i­tude, com­pas­sion and humil­ity. It’s not just your body that feels lighter. It’s your soul.

I am sure that South­ern Bap­tist the­olo­gians would find the appraisals of this account as insuf­fi­ciently founded in the Scrip­tures, thus dis­qual­i­fy­ing them as any­thing but a pagan rite. And the fact that the New York Times is prop­a­gat­ing the news makes it even more satanic. Lay­ing it on even thicker, this par­tic­u­lar Chris­t­ian yoga ses­sion takes place in a Catholic church so it goes with­out saying.

Another article on ownership of yoga

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New York Times: Hindu Group Stirs a Debate Over Yoga’s Soul is about the Hindu Amer­i­can Foun­da­tion‘s effort to edu­cate the pub­lic about yoga’s roots. Take Back Yoga:

The ques­tion at the core of the debate — who owns yoga? — has become an endur­ing topic of chat­ter in yoga Web forums, Hindu Amer­i­can news­pa­pers and jour­nals cater­ing to the many con­sumers of what is now a multibillion-​​dollar yoga industry.

It’s inter­est­ing that the arti­cle stirred up 127 com­ments (and grow­ing) since it came out on Sat­ur­day, just 24 hours. It really touches a nerve in the read­er­ship. As always, some reac­tions are kind of mind­less, rather than mind­ful, but are indica­tive of the diverse opin­ions around yoga in America. 

You have to be in Down Dog to appreciate the humor

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NYTimes.com Yoga Classes Play Up the Lighter Side opened the year with a chuckle about the use of laugh­ter in the yoga studio:

“I do think there’s a trend toward light­en­ing up in the yoga com­mu­nity,” said Kelly McGo­ni­gal, 31, the edi­tor in chief of the Inter­na­tional Jour­nal of Yoga Ther­apy (found at iayt.org). “Mostly around the rigid­ity and humor­less­ness of doing things ‘the one right way’ &emdash; always hav­ing to get bet­ter, feel­ing like every yoga prac­tice has to be one big self-​​improvement project.”

I was struck by the lame­ness of some of the attempts at humor cited as exam­ples of a trend in this arti­cle. I really had to search for some text to pull out in a quote. I sus­pect that the con­text gives more mean­ing to the words. The point about yoga being taken too seri­ously is right on tar­get; I am guilty of it myself.

Our garment of destiny

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While list­lessly surf­ing the web, dis­tracted by the boil­ing polit­i­cal soup of the day, I came across the fol­low­ing quote that struck me as so true:

“In a real sense all life is inter­re­lated, all human­ity is caught in an inescapable net­work of mutu­al­ity, united in a sin­gle gar­ment of des­tiny. What­ever affects one directly affects all indi­rectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be.”

The words are those of Mar­tin Luther King, Jr in his most Bud­dhist mind-​​meld. I dis­cov­ered them on the blog of the lat­est boo­gie man of the elec­tion year, Bill Ayers. Then, I read a lit­tle fur­ther through the blog entry. It was the June ’08 Com­mence­ment Address at the New City High School (not sure where, maybe in Kala­ma­zoo, Michi­gan? or some­where else cuz there’s a string of char­ter schools that go by that name). I read through the para­graphs and real­ized that I would have wanted to have heard the speech at my com­mence­ment 35-​​40 years ago, or even five years ago, or even now. But then again, I guess I was a rad­i­cal­ized flower-​​power mal­con­tent. Only I ended run­ning off to Peru where I learned what real blood-​​drinking rev­o­lu­tion­ary Maoists do when they want to lib­er­ate the masses, and how well-​​meaning peo­ple can be trapped in ugly polit­i­cal situations.

And this is the dia­blo being cas­ti­gated by McCain, the Repub­li­cans and Fox News. Of course, what they’re talk­ing about has noth­ing to do with real­ity; it’s a polit­i­cal pas­sion play. But it’s also clear that Ayers’ polit­i­cal posi­tion is far to the left of Obama (into the realm of flack­i­ness since his ide­ol­ogy blinds him to many aspects of Amer­i­can soci­ety and the world) and that he thinks that his oppo­si­tion to the war in Viet­nam was the cor­rect stand even though most Amer­i­cans can­not accept his tac­tics and strate­gies. That’s the “unre­pen­tant” part that inflames the right.

Most com­ments about this issue come from politi­cians and talk­ing heads who have not made a min­i­mal attempt to under­stand what really hap­pened between Obama and Ayers back in Chicago. In Slate, Barack, Bill, and Me by David S. Tanen­haus, a his­tory and law pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­sity of Nevada, Las Vegas, lays out the social land­scape in Chicago in the late 1990s and early 2000s. I rec­om­mend highly the arti­cle Chicago Annen­berg Chal­lenge in Spot­light by Dakarai I. Aarons in Edu­ca­tion Week. Also read Ayer’s own take on the issue: I’M SORRY!!!! i think…. and Episodic Noto­ri­ety – Fact and Fan­tasy. The Wike­pe­dia entry of Ayers has a lot of infor­ma­tion and links.

A question of intention — stretching or yoga

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New York Times To Stretch or Not to Stretch? The Answer Is Elas­tic has an intrigu­ing mono­logue about whether an ath­lete can get any­thing out of prac­tic­ing yoga.

They’re (ath­letes) like one of my run­ning part­ners, Claire Brown, a 35-​​year-​​old triathlete.

“I always feel like, well, ath­letes should do yoga,” Claire said. “It’s sup­posed to be really good for run­ning, and when I do it reg­u­larly, it does loosen up my hips and make me feel bet­ter for running.”

Yet she puts off going to yoga.

“It shouldn’t feel like an oblig­a­tion, but it always does,” Claire said. “The good classes are often an hour and a half long, and I’m think­ing: ‘I could be run­ning, I could be bik­ing. But here I am, stretch­ing and breathing.’

“Isn’t it funny, though, that some­thing that should be calm­ing can actu­ally cause stress because you think you have to do it?”

The crux of the arti­cle is about the lack of sci­en­tific evi­dence about the value of stretch­ing in pre­vent­ing injury — and in many people’s minds, yoga is syn­ony­mous with stretch­ing. Claire obvi­ously attacks yoga with the same vigor as she applies to her sports con­di­tion­ing. If she’s really after stretch­ing, she would be bet­ter off just putting together a rou­tine of exer­cises that address that need and cut out all the extra­ne­ous mate­r­ial that makes yoga more than an East­ern equiv­a­lent of calisthenics.