The New York Times has an interesting piece on how some yoga instructors are trying to change the image of what their favorite activity is all about. To the layperson, yoga enthusiasts are super thin maybe even overly earnest people who only eat tofu and bean sprouts. This is, of course, a gross exaggeration.
The interesting thing is there doesn’t appear to be an organized movement into yoga levity. It just seems to be happening organically across the country. Here are several examples:
Amanda Wegner, 28, a yoga teacher in Madison, Wisconsin, uses a variation of standing-knee-to-chest that she calls the “Captain Morgan pose.” Rum-drunk pirates and yoga don’t seem to be the perfect marriage, but it’s all about spicing up her sessions with a little levity.
“Not exactly yogic, but it keeps it interesting, and most often, the students know exactly what I mean,” Wegner says.
Sadie Nardini, the director of yoga at East West Yoga in Manhattan, calls herself “reverently irreverent,” and says she runs a kind of “punk rock” practice. I’m not sure what’s exactly punk rock about doing a Bon Jovi chant, but I digress:
Then you can check out “The Inappropriate Yoga Guy.” It looks like a bit of a spoof of Mike Meyers’ horrendous The Love Guru. With the bar so low, it was pretty easy to be funnier.
For more yoga yucks, check out the article at the New York Times, which includes one instructor and a rubber duck.
