Striking A Pose By Hanna Rosin
STRIKING A POSE
The Atlantic Monthly | December 2006
*****
Fifty years ago, yoga was the province of California communes and
fringy New Agers. Now it's teetering on the brink of overexposure
and commodification. So, is it a spiritual antidote to the upscale
Western lifestyle, or just the latest manifestation?
By Hanna Rosin
*****
"Is Uma coming?”Asks one of the pack of New York tabloid
photographers.
Alas, not yet. For the moment, the paparazzi will have to make do
with the lesser, two-name celebrities already crowding the VIP room
at this unveiling of the new Jivamukti studio, the center of New
York's yoga scene. In one corner, hip-hop tycoon Russell Simmons is
being interviewed by a six-foot-tall bombshell from the Food Network
about top vegan chefs ("His soy bacon is fabulous!"). In another
corner, Elizabeth Berkley, who made her name pole dancing in
Showgirls, is shifting her bare feet under a hot-pink dress,
insisting to a reporter," Trendy is not really the word I would use
to describe yoga.”
The altars are dusted and polished, the big plywood Ganesh outfitted
with a fresh new lei. Fat, happy tomatoes that have never known the
horror of chemicals glide out on trays from the studio's new vegan
café — which feels more like a cathedral, with its chandeliers and
stained-glass windows and sandwiches named after great, unspecified
powers ("The Creator," "The Preserver," "The Muse"). It's only an
hour into the party, and 400 people are already here.
"It's difficult when you invite half of New York to your opening,
and they show up," says David Life, one of the studio's founders.
Julia"Butterfly"Hill, the woman who lived on a branch of a redwood
for two years to protest logging in ancient forests, is holding
court ("I started to do yoga when I got down from the tree"). She is
unrecognizable. Instead of her usual worn wool hat she is sporting a
black cocktail dress, a new Winona Ryder pixie cut, and a stylish
purse made out of recycled soda tabs. She is trying to sell the
reporters on her new project — enlisting the actress Daryl Hannah to
help save the South Central Farm in Los Angeles — but they keep
coming back to her purse ("Are those real soda tabs? That's so
cool!").
"Sting!"someone yells, and in he walks, with his wife, Trudie.
Sting looks like his just-got-out-of-the-coal-mine self in his
washed-out overalls, but Trudie is all glitzed up in a red satin
getup and silver spike heels.”Trudie, look this way! Look at me!"
the photographers shout, as if it's a fashion shoot, and she does,
expertly turning her head this way and that. At one point an actual
Hare Krishna devotee wanders into the VIP room with her robe and her
drum, a poor pale soul whose only makeup is a slash of white on her
forehead. She's invited, but she seems like a traveler from a lost
era, the last one to have heard the news: in America, yoga has come
out of the ashram.
STRETCHING OUT
For at least fifty years, the prophets of California's communes have
told us how much the denatured, stressed-out West needs the curative
power of yoga. Now, to their great dismay, the West is listening. No
longer does yoga belong to the handful of seekers making their
annual pilgrimage to India. It's everywhere: on every third corner
in New York or Los Angeles, and available in any city big enough for
a gym or a country club.
According to a 2004 Harris study commissioned by Yoga Journal, an
estimated 15 million Americans do some kind of yoga. The study
reported that 25 million more planned to try yoga within the next
year — enough to make it as unexotic an Eastern novelty as Chinese
food or judo.
In Washington, D.C., where I live, there are now roughly twenty-five
yoga studios, many of which opened in the last five years, according
to a Washington Post survey. They share a growth pattern with
Starbucks, and a similar connotation: in a fast-gentrifying city,
yoga studio spaces are attached to developers' fancy new lofts to
signal to potential urban pioneers that the neighborhood is more
cutting-edge than scary.”Let's face it — yoga is something that
people with disposable income can do," one woman, who just moved to
the marginal neighborhood of Petworth and is taking classes at a new
yoga studio there, told The Post.)
I took my first yoga class in the living room of someone who seemed
too old to be using saris as window treatments. That was about eight
years ago, when it was hard to find a studio and practically the
only style of yoga around was one called Iyengar, imported here in
the 1970's by the godfather of modern American yoga, B. K. S.
Iyengar. I'd worn my running shorts and a Nike shirt and quickly
realized my mistake: in this room the body was a temple, and common
exercise gear was proof that you'd defiled it.
After class the teacher pulled me aside to say she couldn't properly
see my alignment in the loose clothes; she suggested I wear
something else. Like what? I asked. She pointed to a picture of
Iyengar himself floating on one hand. As far as I could tell, he was
wearing a black cloth diaper. I wasn't sure what would count as the
matching top.
Now I do yoga at an airy, lavender-painted studio called Down Dog in
Georgetown, Washington's posh shopping district. Like many of the
fast-growing schools of yoga, this studio's style is a subset
of"flow yoga," which involves moving quickly from pose to pose
while breathing in a regulated way. This particular version is
called"power yoga"And is associated with Baron Baptiste, who
perfected it while training the Philadelphia Eagles football team in
the mid-1990s.
On weekends the room is packed with a particular cross section of
Washingtonians: students from Georgetown University wearing next to
nothing, preppy Georgetown moms with their $84 lotus-flower pants
from the studio's boutique, men built like bouncers in tight shorts.
A couple of former Washington Wizards basketball players come
regularly as well, and so does the entire Georgetown lacrosse team.
Once the door shuts on the heated-to-90-degrees room, you are in for
a combination of basic training and morning chapel.
It begins with a grueling routine not meant for the contemplative.
(By the end of class some of us find ourselves in a literal puddle
of sweat, even though we'd laid down towels beforehand.) Usually,
toward the end, the teacher offers what can only be described as
bits of a sermon in which, in another context, the word Jesus would
not be out of place: "Trust in the higher power," the instructor
will say, as you're contorted into some excruciating pose designed
to open your hips.”Your mat is a sacred place.” "This studio is
your sanctuary.” "Find grace! Feel the possibility of that which is
greater!"
Although we are a society known for creative multitasking, it seems
odd that we have mixed up our gym and our church. Monks once
flagellated themselves in hopes of getting to heaven, and it's true
that once or twice the image of Silas, the naked self-whipping monk
assassin in The Da Vinci Code, has popped into my head while I was
holding a particularly difficult pose. But Silas was deferring his
pleasure until after death, whereas I'm just deferring mine until
after class. Where older religions promised heaven, the church of
yoga promises quicker, more practical, earthly gratification, in the
form of better heart rates and well-toned arms.
The yogis say people come to class to get fit, but wind up answering
a more urgent call.”There is a deeper spiritual hunger for
something larger than ourselves, which is many times not answered by
organized religion in 2006," says John Friend, another yoga
celebrity, who founded one of the fastest-growing styles of yoga,
called Anusara.
But yogis have been saying such things to Americans since the
nineteenth century. In fact, yoga had to wait until now, when our
spiritual hunger runs a little more shallow, to reach the American
mainstream. We're attracted to self-denying faiths of all kinds —
Islam, Latin-Mass Catholicism, traditional Judaism. But we tend to
take what suits us and discard the rest. Young Muslim women choose
to wear the veil in defiance of their more assimilated parents.
Jewish Buddhists can meditate for hours on the souls of insects and
rocks but still eat their pastrami and rye. In this atmosphere you
can pick up some of the old familiar language —"higher
power," "grace"— and layer on some incense, and no one will feel
confused, or threatened.
Even being"New Age"doesn't require particular effort anymore. You
can find twelve-step programs at evangelical megachurches, and
holistic language on every label at Whole Foods. When a Jivamukti
teacher says she practices yoga as her lifestyle, she means
something involving great sacrifice: she meditates every morning at
six, doesn't eat meat or wear fur, and applies the yogic moral code
of ahimsa — Do no harm — to all of her life. For the rest of us,
though, yoga is like Red Bull: a midday pick-me-up for the body and
mind. In a world where Butterfly Hill is a fashion trendsetter, yoga
is no longer a spiritual antidote to the upscale Western lifestyle;
it's just the latest manifestation.
THE 'YOGA PRINCE'
Baron Baptiste adjusts his headset and steps up on the platform for
a better view. About 150 people have come here to the Omega
Institute in Rhinebeck, New York, for his famous"Personal
Revolution"Workshop, and they are awaiting his instructions. He
starts them off in the classic yoga pose, downward-facing dog.”Your
thighs are enthusiastic," he says.”Your belly is in.”
I'd come here to see what a guru in the New New Age is like, and
Baptiste is a perfect example. He is often described as a"yoga
prince," because his parents were yoga pioneers in San Francisco.
But he looks more like a white rapper, in his trademark B-boy
bandana and a T-shirt and long shorts — all black except for the red
Nike swoosh.”This is your whole life, right here in this breath,"
he says, between calling out the poses.”This is it.”
As he speaks, heavenly women in tight T-shirts with Baptiste mottos
(DROP WHAT YOU KNOW; SUFFERING IS OPTIONAL) come around and adjust,
massage, and lift various parts of your body, like angelic nurses in
a room full of war wounded. Baptiste's pattern is to send the class
soaring into a mental and physical high, and then, when he's at the
brink of New Age hokum, reel it back with some bit of self-
deprecation or irony.”You're going to be so powerful this weekend,"
he says.”And I'm the jerk who's going to make you powerful.”
Baptiste grew up as the son of the Bay Area guru Walt Baptiste, the
1949 Mr. America and co-founder (with his wife, Maga—a) of the Yoga
Philosophic Health Center. He was raised around incense and chanting
monks and tins of Indian herbs and hundreds of devotees coming to
sit at his father's feet. Now he thinks of that as so much dust in
the attic.”People have so many weird associations with yoga," he
says.”A lot of that 'yoga-nese' just turns people away. So I just
simplified it, invented a new language. I was a pioneer in bringing
yoga to the masses in the mid-'90s. No one was talking the way I was
talking.”
Baptiste banished some of the Hindu and Hare Krishna associations
and made yoga Christian-friendly, quoting Jesus and biblical
scripture in his lectures and interviews. He declined the title
of"guru.” “A guru is someone who says, 'Follow me.' But Americans
don't like to be led, to be told what to do.”Instead, he describes
himself as"A coach. A dialoguing coach, because it's about a
conversation between me and my students.”
In the early '90s, Baptiste would show up in magazines like Self and
Cosmo as one of the yogis to the stars. Then the yoga craze started
to peak, and instead of coaching the stars, Baptiste became a kind
of star himself, with all the attendant dysfunction. He joined
forces with Maxwell Kennedy, brother of the environmentalist Robert
Kennedy Jr., and opened a studio in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the
Baptiste Power Yoga Institute. It was hugely successful, with 3,000
people coming a week, and a local magazine called the packed
Saturday- and Sunday-morning classes a"substitute church service
for his loyal Boston following.”
Five years later the partnership ended in a nasty lawsuit. Baptiste
accused Kennedy of"unprofessional"conduct toward female staff and
students; Kennedy denied it and accused Baptiste of the exact same
bad behavior. Baptiste declined to comment further, though according
to his counsel, they settled the lawsuit to everyone's satisfaction.
Baptiste's wife and three children moved to Utah during this time,
and shortly thereafter he got divorced.
Today, though, Baptiste is floating above all that. It's a clear,
bright Saturday morning but, because the blinds are drawn, it might
as well be night in this little sanctuary. Baptiste is onstage, with
everyone gathered on the floor around him on cushions, looking up.
This is when he fulfills his priestly role, leading the audience
into faith-healing territory. This is the space where yoga causes
miracles — where it cures cancers and prevents suicide and generally
saves lives.
"Any of you have any stories of dramatic shifts in your life due to
yoga?”he asks. One guy raises his hand to say he was a"raw
foodist"And he'd tried everything ("liver, intestinal, gall
bladder, colonic"), but nothing worked like Baptiste yoga.”It's
like I'm having this insane cleansing," he says.”It's like I've
found a way to have direct communication with the cells in my body.”
People talk about losing sixty-five pounds after practicing with
Baptiste for a while, about revealing to their parents or partners —
after an especially intense session of power yoga — deep secrets
they'd never been able to tell. One handsome guy with a crew cut
talks about being diagnosed with ADD and put on Ritalin, and then
antidepressants, then losing his job, and feeling generally adrift
until he came to his first Baptiste yoga class.
Baptiste looks on patiently from the stage and smiles, like a
successful surgeon, or rabbi, at peace with his gifts.”You can
measure this as the day you started a whole new life," he
says.”It's the best day of your life. Yogically speaking, it's your
new birthday.”And everyone claps — for him and for themselves.
NEW AGE, NEW WORLD
America's first gurus, imported from India, neglected their bodies
as a sign of their holiness. When Swami Vivekananda took the boat
over from Bombay in 1893 to attend the World's Parliament of
Religions, in Chicago, he slept in a boxcar, wore a robe and turban,
and begged for his food and lodging. In the streets, people treated
him like a circus freak.
But he was the star of the parliament: the Transcendentalists,
Unitarians, and biblical skeptics in attendance had already begun
studying Hindu texts, and Vivekananda gave a more polite and formal
version of the kind of"One God"talk — about the"beautiful earth"
and sweet harmony and different streams mingling in the great big
sea — that would filter down through the New Age movement and
ultimately make its way to the parking lots of Grateful Dead shows.
Because of the difficulty of travel and immigration restrictions,
very few yogis followed him. But Americans began trekking to ashrams
in India and bringing back their spiritual trinkets. Nobody back
then thought of yoga as exercise. In the '50s and '60s it was
considered either a spiritual practice or an alternative kind of
trip, one of the many ways to get high. Allen Ginsberg praised yoga,
and in 1968 the Beatles and Mia Farrow made a pilgrimage to the
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
By the '70s yoga was part of the flotsam of hippie culture ("If you
like pi—a-coladas, and getting caught in the rain / If you're not
into yoga, if you have half a brain"). In the '80s and '90s yoga
popped up as a West Coast fad. Sting and Raquel Welch were early
adopters. Jane Fonda eventually worked it into her fitness routine.
Madonna played a yoga teacher in a film, Gwyneth Paltrow bragged
about practicing ninety minutes a day, Charlie Sheen took private
lessons to lose weight (and presumably to stay clean). In 2001,
Christy Turlington was outed on the cover of Time, and it seemed
everyone had jumped on board: Jerry Seinfeld, Cameron Diaz, Michelle
Pfeiffer, Nicolas Cage, David Duchovny, Angelina Jolie, Sarah
Jessica Parker, all three Dixie Chicks.
In the meantime, the Baby Boomers were reaching midlife with their
joints aching and crises looming. John Abbott was a Citicorp
executive and marathon runner who started doing yoga after a knee
injury. He bought Yoga Journal in 1998, when it was housed in, as he
put it," a dump in Berkeley, very hippie- dippy, dirty lavatories,
that kind of thing.”It used to be more New Age than yoga, with
articles on crystal gazing and trapeze flying and liberal use of the
word consciousness. Now it's a guidebook to the new yoga nation: a
thick glossy with a readership of more than 1 million, printed in
cheerful hues of melon and saffron and lime.
The new generation of yoga entrepreneurs — Lululemon Athletica, Yoga
Works, Gaiam — compete for attention on its increasingly numerous ad
pages. Meanwhile, mainstream companies — Chevy, Toyota, Nike,
Quaker, Eileen Fisher — try for a piece of the well-toned
demographic.
Abbott is trim and fit, and on the day I interviewed him in the
magazine's new downtown San Francisco office, he was dressed in
soothing light blues and grays. When he bought the magazine he was
new to publishing, but he learned quickly. Once he tried running a
cover story titled"Life Without Sex," but that issue's newsstand
sales were among the lowest in the magazine's recent history. The
day I visited, the editors were laying out the antidote — a feature
on"Sex and Yoga," with a photo of a couple in bed; she's straddling
him, her long, lithe back is bare, her thick curly hair trailing
down it. The staff debated whether this was too much, but then
decided it was OK because this couple was married, and both were
real yogis.
"We have to thread the needle," Abbott told me.”Things have gotten
so mainstream that we want to appeal to broad consumer interest, but
still keep the depth and integrity.”Then he disappeared into a
meeting about ad revenues.
When the old yogis complain about commercialization, who can blame
them? Gucci sells a yoga mat and matching bag for $655. Companies
use famous yogis and yoga lingo to advertise cereal, beer, and
Hormel pork-loin fillets. Jane magazine's new ad shows a foxy
blonde: "She practices yoga," reads the caption.”She's perfected
the keg stand.”Yoga is at a confused, precarious place, teetering
on the edge of overexposure.
On my way to the Jivamukti party I stumbled on a tiny store in the
ultrahip Lower East Side called Fuck Yoga, which features store-
branded T-shirts, matchbooks, skateboards, and neon signs. I figured
this was my proof that yoga had indeed crossed over to the dark
side, becoming a close cousin to the SUV and the fur coat and dental
insurance — all the eternal targets of youthful mockery and protest.
So was this all meant in hostility to yoga? I asked Fuck Yoga's
owner, Barnaby Harris, thinking I was asking the obvious.
"No, not at all," he said," I practice yoga every day. And we sell
yoga mats.”
You do? So what the —?
"Enough already," said Harris.”I mean, OK, [yoga's] great for you,
makes you glowing and healthy, etc., etc. But enough already.” (The
store also sells T-shirts that say FUCK FRANK GEHRY. Same basic
idea.)
THE HERE AND NOW
So yoga may be overexposed and commercialized. But that doesn't mean
we're all hypocrites. This is not the '60s, not an age of
ideological purity. What harm can it do if a rich couple in Beverly
Hills wants to fund yoga for East L.A. schools, or if a psychiatrist
prescribes yoga to one of his patients? It's a tepid approach,
perhaps, but it's harmless, and maybe even a little bit cheering. If
anything major is lost, it's a sense of abandon.
Yoga hurries the trend of what Christopher Lasch called"The
corruption of sports," where"[g]ames quickly lose part of their
charm when pressed into the service of education, character
development, or social improvement," as he wrote in a 1977 essay.
Yet the abandon is still there, if you know where to find it. Late
in the evening at the Jivamukti party, after all the concerts and
speeches, the buzz dies down. Sting is gone; so is Trudie. Russell
Simmons and Kimora Lee, Simmons's diva wife (they are reportedly
separated), have gotten tired of sitting cross-legged on little
folded blankets. Baptiste is gone too. There are yoga celebrities
here, but they're of the old-school kind, known only to real
insiders.
This is the authentic Jivamukti, which better than most studios
seems to effortlessly, unself-consciously hold odd things together:
the fun and the overly earnest, the fringe and the impossibly
trendy. The whole staff once posed in one of those PETA ads"We'd
rather go naked than wear fur") and made it look like the Princeton
Nude Olympics. The Jivamukti teacher who taught my class that
afternoon looked like a fourteen-year-old's fantasy of a camp
counselor: blonde and tan and a little mysterious, a party girl with
a serious side.
Just before midnight, Michael Franti is singing his jokey reggae,
and everyone's dancing. Now that the paparazzi are gone, Uma Thurman
has finally turned up, in the back of the crowd. Her brother teaches
at Jivamukti (he's the central Jesus figure in the naked ad), and
her father is an eminent scholar of Buddhism. Some stars are less
overwhelming in real life than on screen, but Uma is not one of
them. In a cotton dress and a long cream-colored cashmere sweater,
she is some fabulous combination of gigantic and gossamer-light. For
the rest of the night she stands next to a podium, perfectly at
home, instant-messaging on her cell phone, swaying a little to
Franti's music, and you think: this is the only place in the whole
country where — for a night at least — her celebrity is irrelevant.
Striking a Pose by Hanna Rosin, The Atlantic Monthly | December 2006
URL: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200612/rosin-yoga
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