Tag Archives: web

The Magazine of Yoga gets a new look

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Photo: a yogini does a handstand in front of a painting of Hindu goddess

At a Desiree Rum­baugh work­shop, Thrive Yoga, 2011

Wow! One of my favorite yoga sites has just under­gone a remod­el­ing: The Mag­a­zine of Yoga has taken on a cleaner look, a more straight-​​forward orga­ni­za­tion and a splen­did use of pho­tos. I could never really under­stand what kind of site it was try­ing to be (but loved its con­tent) because it shirked the stan­dard chrono­log­i­cal order that pre­dom­i­nates on most sites and didn’t seem to fit any other mold. MoY also has under­gone a reshuf­fle of its sec­tions: Con­ver­sa­tions get top play, for good rea­son, and a pen­chant for writerly kind of articles.

I must con­fess that over the past two months, I have not had time to dig into the MoY arti­cles and inter­views, which tend to be longer than most web arti­cles, even run­ning into two parts. I don’t have time at work to steal time for read­ing a long-​​ish arti­cle, and at home my time is occu­pied with other tasks. My par­ents’ deaths have really emp­tied my life of open, reflec­tive space. I am lucky to squeeze in time for meditation.

My prob­lem is that I’m run­ning into more yoga sites that deserve more than a brief visit: Yoga Mod­ern is entic­ing; Ele­phant Jour­nal is just vibrat­ing with life; I just dis­cover YogAnony­mous a few days ago; and Carol Horton/​Books, actu­ally a Face­book site, just knocks me back with its pace and depth (her longer pieces appear on Think Body Elec­tric blog). I can barely find time to check my RSS feed, much less read every­thing on these sites. I don’t even think to go over to Yoga­Jour­nal.

Back to the back

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I came across two articles:

  • If you’re hav­ing dif­fi­culty with for­ward bends, don’t assume it’s your ham­strings. Inflex­i­ble rota­tor mus­cles may be to blame. Judith Han­son Lasater, January/​February 2000 The orig­i­nal Yoga Jour­nal arti­cle or Astanga Dancer, with pix

The pleasure of reading and listening to a vision

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I have to con­fess that I am grow­ing fond of read­ing the Visions of Cody weblog [MLS: appar­ently Mitch Blum has dis­ap­peared his old yoga blog. Selected arti­cles are now on his new site. ]. I come back sev­eral times a week, not just to read the cur­rent blog entry (two a week), but also to go back into his archive. He also brings out a weekly pod­cast that is a ironic com­men­tary on the yoga scene and human foibles under the intense light of prac­tic­ing Ash­tanga yoga, as well as a sam­pling of his love of music. He’s fre­quently pok­ing fun at him­self, but can equally turn it on oth­ers. Because he’s light-​​hearted and ironic, he’s a wel­come relief from my own dead­pan seri­ous­ness. Maybe, I enjoy him because he’s a late comer to yoga and has a beard, like me. And then Cody drops an insight bomb:

” The chal­lenge for us hatha yogis is to apply the faith in action that we read­ily demon­strate on the mat each and every morn­ing into all aspect of our lives.” Five O’Clock Angel

The multiple-​​paragraph entry has sev­eral pas­sages that I wanted to quote, but I had to sin­gle one out. This past week I’ve been think­ing much the same thing. I show up for my classes, some­times with resis­tance because they’ll push me to my edge and beyond, but at the end of class, I don’t feel fatigue (comes closer to bed time). I come out puri­fied, shin­ing, glow­ing with an energy that I did not know was there. And in small ges­tures, I try to apply the lessons from the mat to the rest of my life. My phys­i­cal prac­tice keeps me hon­est and true when what passes for my per­sona can take me off in mis­guided directions.

In other words, I encour­age you to check him out.

A guest at Gaiam Yoga Club

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I’ve been given access to the Gaiam Yoga Club with Rod­ney Yee and Colleen Said­man. I guess, in return, I’m sup­posed to give feed­back about my expe­ri­ence and per­haps write about it here.

The pro­gram of videos, pod­casts and print media runs for 12 weeks, and is meant for the begin­ner who is prac­tic­ing at home. My first impres­sion is that it’s a really pol­ished prod­uct, with high pro­duc­tion val­ues on the hand­ful of videos that I’ve seen so far. There’s a lot of mate­r­ial to be absorbed, even when you’re not start­ing from scratch. Nor­mally, this online ser­vice costs $5 a week, billed quar­terly (every 13 weeks). So I am being offered the equiv­a­lent of $60 to par­tic­i­pate, assum­ing that the invi­ta­tion was for the whole pro­gram. I just wanted to get that out front from the beginning.

What sur­prised me the most is that given the high pro­files of Yee and Said­man on the yoga scene, the back­ing of a major retailer in the lifestyle busi­ness, like Gaiam, and the strong invest­ment already made in the prod­uct, I’m sur­prised that I had not heard about this ser­vice before. It was launched in May, but I have not seen much pro­mo­tion for it, and I do get a fair share of yoga-​​related e-​​mails for prod­ucts, retreats, and other mat­ters. For instance, I was try­ing to find a graphic, a ban­ner ad or some­thing like that to illus­trate this blog post­ing, and I google the web for the one dis­played here. There was no spot on their web­site that offered graph­ics or a media kit.

Fresh perspective on blogging and self-​​development

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Eide Neu­rolearn­ing Blog: Brain of the Blog­ger:

“The pri­mary rea­son can be found in one of the cen­tral tenets of mod­ern neu­ro­science: ‘The neu­rons that fire together, wire together.’ What this basi­cally means is that our men­tal activ­i­ties actu­ally cause changes in the struc­tures of our brains – not only what we think, but how we think as well. Given such activity-​​directed change, it always makes sense to ask when­ever large num­bers of peo­ple start using their brains in new and dif­fer­ent ways, what effects these new activ­i­ties are likely to have on brain struc­ture and func­tion. Blog­ging, which only seems to be accel­er­at­ing in pop­u­lar­ity, is a prime can­di­date for such investigation. “

I knew all this futz­ing around on the Inter­net would do some­thing for me. This analy­sis is highly spec­u­la­tive, but taps into the writ­ers’ own back­ground as doc­tors work­ing with chil­dren with learn­ing dif­fi­cul­ties. You learn so much about the “nor­mal” human by exam­in­ing the excep­tional case — the sick, the dis­ad­van­taged, the hand­i­capped. You should look at the rest of the blog, because it’s chock full of provoca­tive insights.

While you’re at it, you might also look at a cou­ple of sites that go down a sim­i­lar road: The Psy­chol­ogy of Com­bat­ing Stress [no longer online], Depres­sion and Addic­tion [no longer online], Mind Hacks and Inno­va­tion Weblog. I’ve lost many hours wan­der­ing around these hyperlinks.

A finger to the pulse with Yogoogle

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A while ago, I men­tioned Leslie Kaminoff’s Breath­ing Project, and made a pass­ing ref­er­ence to the mail­ing list, e-​​Sutra. At the time, it did not seem to be too active. Over the sum­mer, a few mail­ings came through and it’s really proven to be an wel­come deliv­ery to my Inbox. Kaminoff sends out some­thing called Yogoogle (no longer avail­able), which is a com­pi­la­tion of links to recent news sto­ries about yoga. Some­times, he will add his own com­ments, but mostly the title, source and the lede. He is prob­a­bly using Google’s News Alert
to find the arti­cles. It’s a way of mon­i­tor­ing yoga’s pres­ence in West­ern mass culture.

This kind of exer­cise can be frus­trat­ing since most news sites send their sto­ries to archive within 7-​​30 days of pub­li­ca­tion, requir­ing that you pay for access to their past arti­cles. In any case, it’s no small accom­plish­ment to pull together these news items, throw out the dross, repeats or short­ened ver­sions and put it in a read­able for­mat. I know because I used to do some­thing like this for another site.

He also sends out a bul­letin board in which teach­ers can announce courses and authors their books. These tend to be cen­tered in the New York City area, but can still be far rang­ing. For instance, it recently pointed me to the site of Kelly McGo­ni­gal newslet­ter (no longer avail­able – MLS). She teaches yoga at Stanford.

Kaminoff also issues a syn­op­sis of mail­ing list dis­cus­sions, on a spe­cific topic — for instance, yoga sequencing.

In other words, it’s worth subscribing.

European publication

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An inter­est­ing pub­li­ca­tion looks to be Bindu, that comes out of Scan­di­na­vian Yoga and Med­i­ta­tion School. It says it has only a few of itsis­sues and arti­cles online, but it does peri­od­i­cally change which issue is avail­able. For instance, only issues Five, Eight and Eleven. I found, how­ever, that by sim­ply man­u­ally chang­ing the address to another issue, you can see all back issues. Be fore­warned, how­ever, that Eng­lish is not the native lan­guage of the writ­ers so at times the prose can be a bit tor­tured. The seri­ous­ness of the pub­li­ca­tion makes up for any defi­cien­cies. It puts a lot of empha­sis on pub­lish­ing sci­en­tific research into yoga, med­i­ta­tion and other disciplines.