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“At teacher preview screenings so far there’s always someone who gets angry,” says Kate Churchill, writer, director, and producer of Enlighten Up! A Skeptic’s Journey into the World of Yoga, a yoga documentary that premieres in New York on April 1, 2009.
By teachers, she means yoga teachers.
In 2004, Churchill, a die-hard yogini, chose yoga-skeptic Nick Rosen to go in search of answers to the questions many people ask about yoga: what is yoga? and what can yoga do for me? Kate directs Nick’s quest, selecting places to visit, books to read. The journey becomes an accelerated initiation that progresses from first yoga classes in Manhattan to the homes and ashrams of sages worldwide. Both Kate and Nick wonder: will Nick shed his skepticism?
While there is also a lot of laughter at the teacher screenings, Churchill says, some yoga teachers think the film is superficial. “They think the movie is belittles yoga.”
You just want to say, lighten up folks.
Personally, I found the device (skeptic against believer) effective—and probably the best way to make yoga appealing to non-enthusiasts. Still, I wondered why Churchill didn’t make a documentary of herself searching for these gurus?
Churchill, who began making documentaries for TV in 1995, is a long-time yoga practitioner (4x a week under normal conditions, every day under stress). However naively (she says herself), some time before 2004 she wanted to find a truly enlightened being. This yogi would be the last word in yoga and would put her on a direct path to samadhi, or as the Buddhists call it, nirvana: enlightenment.
When the opportunity to make a film arose, she considered it a chance to find that being. The only tiny little teensy-weensy obstacle would be shaping her own quest into a compelling story, while using something — or someone — else as a subject that everyone could relate to.
When Nick Rosen, a 29-year old journalist, agreed to be her guinea pig, and executive producers (who she had met while practicing yoga in Boston) already on board, Churchill began what became a 5-year odyssey. It wasn’t what she’d bargained for.
I spoke to Churchill on a Friday afternoon, a few days before the April 1, 2009, premiere (see interview following).
For full disclosure, I will say that Nick’s interview with Iyengar, the Indian sage, basically sums up my feeling about yoga (you can get the spiritual benefits from the physical practice; benefits come slowly for some, quickly for others, there is no rush, keep practicing) which gave me a warm fuzzy, feeling inside.
But I also had a few problems with the film. First, why was Kate being such a bitch to Nick? He seemed willing enough and, for a skeptic, pretty reflective. “We’ve been throwing around the word ‘transformation’ a lot,” he says. A reasonable comment. (The yoga world often does toss out big concepts without defining them or even understanding them.) Still, Kate’s not pleased.
I also wondered how any newbie would deal with such a fast-track to the yoga stars. In my first six months of practice, I was just happy I could do chaturanga with a herd of other sweating yogis. Flying around the world to meet the most influential men in yoga today could set the stakes freakishly high for anyone.
Lastly, I wanted to know more details from Nick himself about how his journey might have affected him—or not—in the long term. The film ended on a weak note. (post script, April 15 Nick writes his commentary on Huffington Post.)
Within the world of yoga documentaries and commentary, Enlighten Up! isn’t as acerbically insightful as Yoga, Inc, John Philps’ 2006 documentary on the entertaining contradictions of the yoga business. It isn’t as earnest as Gita Desai’s 2006 documentary Yoga Unveiled nor as funny as gentle mockeries from The Onion (see below), or McSweeney’s, nor as freakish as some of the stuff on YouTube such as Kung Fu vs. Yoga.
But I enjoyed it. It was a humanizing look at a couple of impossible questions: What is yoga? We can’t really tell you. How can it work for me? You’ll have to find out for yourself.
© Copyright 2009, Onion, Inc.
Yoga Nation: What benefit did you think you would get from Nick’s journey?
Kate Churchill: I believed I was going to be exposed to encounters with these enlightened masters. In yoga, there’s a lot of talk of coming to a sense of peace and transformation—jivan mukti, liberation of the soul—I was caught up in the promise of yoga: if I could find the right practice I could get all these great benefits. At the same time I wasn’t on the line—the camera was pointed at someone else.
YN: At some point, it seemed you felt you had to push Nick to get him to say meaningful things. For example, later in the film, in India. What happened?
KC: In the beginning, I really thought this is going to be amazing to have this guy who is a challenge to yoga—he’s a really good writer and researcher—who would press hard and investigate. He’d bring his investigative skills to it—dig into and find great stuff. It began as a journey of mutual inquiry.
But through the journey, my expectations made me more and more antagonistic to Nick. I became more wound up and agitated about what was happening. Nick became more determined to cling to his own identity.
The relationship became more conflicted. I was not getting what I wanted.
At the time, we were learning really great lessons from yogis about letting go, about how no one else can tell you what to do, you go on your own trip. Yet there we were muddling along ignoring them.
YN: How does Nick think yoga affected his life? He doesn’t say much about it at the end.
KC: What we tried to do with documenting this story is to ask, well, how do you think he changed? It’s open to debate. We like to let the audience decide.
YN: But the possibility of change runs throughout the film. I was wondering what Nick himself thinks of how he changed.
KC: Nick has said at other screenings that it’s inevitable when you step out of life and take a journey that it impacts you in many different ways, even in ways you can’t even recognize. I think the biggest was in starting to accept his mom….
He had a knee-jerk rejection of any spirituality. He associated it with his mom— she’s a healer. He moved more towards accepting his mom’s work instead of automatically dismissing it. He became more accepting of various practices that others are doing.
YN: How did making this film affect your yoga practice?
KC: When I started this film, I was bound and determined to find the one yoga practice that would work for me. What I realized is that no one practice that would work for me. No one had the ability to tell me what to practice, and I couldn’t tell anyone else what to practice either.
I had to go with whatever practice or teacher worked for me—and I couldn’t tell anyone else what would work for them either.
As talented a yoga teacher as Rodney Yee is, he seems to attract crisis. Now, it’s not him directly involved in the confrontation, but his ex-Ford model-wife, Colleen Saidman, co-ower of Sag Harbor yoga studio, Yoga Shanti.
The situation, as recalled in this amazingly detailed New York Post article (who had access to this level of detail about a complex, fractious situation?), has Saidman filing a lawsuit against her business partner and fellow yoga teacher, Jessica Bellofatto.
According to the Post: “Colleen, 49, is planning to file suit against Jessica, charging she misappropriated nearly a quarter of a million dollars from the business—and spent $12,000 of the embezzled funds on plastic surgery. Jessica, 35, is threatening a suit of her own, claiming libel and slander, and maintaining that her relationship with her former friend and business partner was destroyed by Colleen’s famous husband.”
It gives me shivers–of a bad kind. We readers will likely never know what tensions existed before this blow up, what personality clashes and tensions permeated the relationship, nor what agendas existed in the background. But the crisis is bringing out the crazies, the moralizers, and the vengeful (just read the comments after the article, oy vey).
The situation doesn’t really offer an opportunity for a larger discussion since there’s no clarity on the situation. When yogis go wrong….
Read the article to get the low-down. Three pages of it.
in Celebrity and business.Qatar Airways must have a lot of money. They commissioned a 4-page, in-flight, how-to yoga brochure this month for passengers on long-haul flights from the king of high-end spiritual wellbeing, Deepak Chopra.
Chopra’s Center for Wellbeing, in Carlsbad, CA, charges almost $4,000 for 5 days of spiritual instruction, ayurvedic cleansing, yoga, and gentle vegetarian means. It’s designed for those who can afford it. Chopra, once a practicing MD, is a fantastic entrepreneur.
The Qatar Airways brochure, “Fly Healthy, Fly Fit” is not the first of its kind; other airlines in have also offered yoga instruction in the past. However, this is the first one I can remember that retained a megastar.
The brochure offers simple yoga poses, self-massage techniques, as well as tips for meditation and anxiety-conquering breathing.
“In an attempt to make the in-flight experience more enriching and less a means to pass time, the guide contains meditation practices to reduce stress, so travellers reach their destination relaxed and rejuvenated. In particular, being aware of one’s breathing – the conscious in- and exhale process – is a powerful tool to fight anxiety and jet lag.”
I applaud Qatar Airways for their concern and their investment. But in my experience, the only being who can make a long flight more “enriching” is God (or some equivalent).
(I know, I know, yoga helps. But flying is just awful.)
in Celebrity and Health.It might seem incredibly unlikely that rockers and yogis could mix. Turns out, they’re two great tastes that taste great together.
A recent trendlet in Bon Jovi yoga shows this beautifully. Below, a JBJ yoga chant option thanks to Sadie Nardini, a Brooklyn rocker yogini who teaches in Manhattan and podcasts regularly about yoga. Love the East-Village-of-yore spirit in this video:
What does Bon Jovi think about this? According to Contact Music, Bon Jovi’s all for yoga. In November 2007 he said, ”I’m going to do yoga. I went for my first time, and I enjoyed it. I’m a 21st century man.”
What do other yogis think? According to Rodale’s (magazine chain) yoga site iYogaLife, Bon Jovi is a natural.
“We don’t usually take life lessons from Jon Bon Jovi,” says the writer of “Yoga Cures: The Blues,” “but he was onto some yogic philosophy with his song “It’s My Life”[NICE 80s bods'n'hair in the video, by the way]—where he sings that the key to happiness is a heart “like an open highway.”
“Studies show that sudden emotional stress can release hormones that prevent the heart from pumping normally. Even watching a sad movie can reduce arterial blood flow, according to a study reported recently in the journal Heart.”
There you have it, folks: chanting along (or singing, yelling, yodeling or screeching) to JBJ can help increase arterial blood flow. Like, livin’ on a prayer or what.
For more on humor and yoga classes see the NYTimes’ article from New Year’s Eve 2008, “The Enlightened Path, With a Rubber Duck.”
in Celebrity, Teachings, Trends and Weird.Care of the UK’s Daily Mail comes news of an American ex-Vogue model turned yogic healer. Yogi Cameron, based in NYC, will travel anywhere in the world to give a 24-hr treatment of yoga asana, ayurvedic massage, health and life counseling.
It’s true that many people need to take care of their health basics much, much better. We’d all be better off for it. But the fee to fly Cameron from NY to Hampstead, England, for a 24-hr private, according to the UK rag, is 20,000 pounds (about $40,000 US).
‘Scuse me while I spit out my soup. Uh, wa?
in Celebrity and Health.