Tag Archive for 'New York Times'

RIP Jack the Cat

Published on November 8, 2011 0 Comments

Maybe it’s pre-11.11.11 vibes—you know, on Friday we shift into the long-awaited Acquarian age, according to Yogi Bhajan. Oct 28 marked the long-awaited end of one big cycle of the Mayan calendar.

Or maybe it’s just me—I’ve  spontaneously stopped eating much meat or drinking much alcohol lately, and it’s making me sensitive to, you know, broccoli, kale, and stories about animals.

Jack in good health

This story about Jack the Cat really got to me today.

Jack the Cat escaped his carrying case before being loaded onto and American Airlines flight bound for California on August 25, where his owner, Karen, was moving.

Lost in the airport for 61 days, he fell through the ceiling at JFK customs on October 25 and was rushed to pet hospital in Manhattan.

American Airlines flew Karen back to New York to attend to her cat. But he was too weak from malnutrition and dehydration to continue on. On Sunday, after Karen had flown back home, Jack was put to sleep, surrounded by Karen’s friends and supporters.

Despite measures like a feeding tube, intravenous fluids, antibiotics and one operation, veterinarians finally recommended euthanasia.

“Forty to 60 percent of his body area was affected by devitalized tissue, tissue without blood flow,” Dr. Daly said.

A Facebook page devoted to Jack, Jack the Cat Is Lost in AA Baggage at J.F.K., had more than 24,400 “likes” as of Monday morning. On Sunday, a post entitled “RIP Jack — Full Info” reported that Jack had “gone over the rainbow bridge.”

Rest in peace, furry friend.

Sniff.

in Culture, Event and World.

Adding “Namaste” to Bachelorette Parties

Published on October 20, 2011 2 Comments

As reported in the New York Times today, more young brides are adding fitness to their bachelorette parties. And that includes yoga.

Are you surprised?

What surprises me (constantly, sigh) is the endless creative ways that entrepreneurs organize yoga for busy brides-to-be. Writes the Times:

It’s not just New Yorkers: The Los Angeles-based company Yoga for Weddings (slogan: “Bringing the Deep Breath to the Big Day”) offers private 90-minute classes, with a focus on “heart-opening poses” like the Cobra, for brides-to-be and their pals in nine United States cities (cost: $500). Innerlight Center for Yoga and Meditation in Middletown, R.I., started offering $200-an-hour bachelorette parties last year; already demand this year has tripled, said Kim Chandler, the center’s director.

That’s a lot of cash for a little namaste with your girlfriends…. but it’s about priorities.

I’m guessing smart companies know that a few sweaty down dogs with your closest lady friends might work out better in the long run than a big drunken glitter-covered mess that you don’t remember well even the next morning.

Photo c/o the New York Times

in Culture and Trends.

Yoga + Infertility = Baby?

Published on February 7, 2011 0 Comments

Women battling infertility is a familiar (though harrowing) story these days. Women using yoga to reduce stress and love themselves better is another familiar story. So it comes as no surprise that yoga is helping women to cope with the physical and emotional stress of infertility and its treatments…

It’s also not a new idea. My ob/gyn, Dr. Eden Fromberg, opened Lila Wellness Center in New York several years ago to meet women’s pre-and post- (and pre- pre-) natal needs. And there have been programs such as Receptive Nest, and studios such as Brooklyn’s Bend & Bloom, helping women to reach full “bloom” in their childbearing years. Other renegade yoga specialists have been helping women for years to make the all-important mind-body connection necessary.

But the NYTime’s article this weekend, “Yoga as Stress Relief: An Aid for Infertility?” raises this issue with a new twist: once-skeptical fertility professionals (doctors) are giving yoga the green light. The tide is turning in how acceptable yoga is to support women in their quest to become pregnant.

Medical acceptance of yoga as a stress reliever for infertility patients is slowly growing. In 1990, when Dr. Domar first published research advocating a role for stress reduction in infertility treatment, “I wasn’t just laughed at by physicians,” she said. “I was laughed at by Resolve, the national infertility organization. They all said I was perpetuating a myth of ‘Just relax, and you’ll get pregnant.’ ” At the last meeting for the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, Dr. Domar, now on the national board of Resolve, gave multiple talks, including one about how to help the mind and body work together in infertile couples.

And this is a national phenomenon, not just a jag in New York or San Francisco where there are always a handful of people pushing the envelope.


Still, even with yoga’s help, infertility doesn’t sound like too much fun.

“A lot of people want to boil it down to ‘If you relax, it will happen,’ ” Ms. Petigara, a former in vitro fertilization patient who adopted a son, wrote in an e-mail. “I absolutely feel that yoga can have a very positive impact on infertility, but infertility is a lot more than ‘just relaxing.’ ”

Oh!!! As in, lie back and think of England? Well, yoga never was really about passivity.

If you happen to be dealing with infertility right now, you can attend the March 17th tele-seminar on “Yoga for Fertility” led by Jill Petigara, who teaches in the Philadelphia area. But you’ll have to Google the details.

Food for thought

in Culture, Health and Trends.

New York Times Reports on Licensing Issue

Published on July 10, 2009 5 Comments

Today, none other than Arthur Sulzberger’s 28-yr old son, A.G., reported on the still hot-ticket issue of licensing New York yoga studios. Thank you, A.G.! Your press helps the cause.

Yoga Association of New York (YANY) was officially ratified on Wednesday, at OM Yoga, at its second official meeting. For more news on what’s been happening since I last wrote, see my upcoming post on YogaDork. (I’ll remind you!)

Alison West

Alison West, president of the newly ratified YANY, teaching at her studio, Yoga Union. Photo for NYTimes by Ruby Washington.

For now, Sulzberger, who attended YANY’s first meeting, traces the origin of the conflict to the very creation of the Yoga Alliance in 1999. This attempt at self-regulation, according to Leslie Kaminoff of the Breathing Project, made yoga studios a sitting duck for cash-flow challenged government looking for new sources of income. (A government that thinks yoga’s popularity means that studios are raking in the big bucks.)

” “We made it very, very easy for them to do what they’re doing right now,” said Leslie Kaminoff, founder of the Breathing Project, a nonprofit yoga center in New York City, who had opposed the formation of the Yoga Alliance. “The industry of yoga is a big, juicy target.” ”

Sulzberger continues, “In New York State, though, teachers fought back, complaining that the new rules could erode thin bottom lines, contradict religious underpinnings and, most important, shut down every school in the state during an eight-month licensing period.”

“It basically destroys the essence of yoga, to control and manipulate the whole situation,” said Jhon Tamayo of Atmananda Yoga Sequence in Manhattan, shortly after receiving one of the warning letters from the state. “No one can regulate yoga.””

The dispute is far from over. But there’s a sense that YANY, at least, is in it for the long haul. And, in the immediate, there is some light at the end of the tunnel—stay tuned for my report via YogaDork! (With pics and docs)

(On another note, A.G. Sulzberger’s piece marks a nice departure from the usual isn’t-that-weird tone that a lot of articles on yoga take. Thanks again, A.G., for taking the cause seriously.)

in Culture and business.

Coming Back to Mainstream–It’s All Good

Published on July 1, 2009 1 Comment

Last week, The New York Times’ Social Q’s column by Phillip Galaines ran a Q from a yoga student pissed off about a loud OM-er in her class. Here’s the letter, and Galaines’ reply:

“Spare Us the Om

A new person joined my yoga class and has a habit of yelling her “Om!” She ignores the soft beginning and jumps in with a deafening wail, which she continues long after the rest of us are finished. Any suggestions?

Leslie Dumont, Manhattan

Smells like a hit: “Downward Dog” starring Ethel Merman!

A Zen yogi would find a way to accept the deafening chant as a lesson in tolerance — which is probably why you came to me instead. So, if the Human Foghorn is really bothering you, ask your yoga teacher to intervene. Or take a deep breath as you sit cross-legged on your mat and repeat after me: “May this be the worst problem I have today.” ”

What’s so remarkable about this complaint and reply is not the content—who hasn’t been in a yoga class where someone chanted too loudly, off key, with bad breath etc? (or did something else that got under your skin)—but that a social ettiquette columnist for the New York Times knew how to answer the question.

Maybe he’s a yogi?

Or, maybe our culture is getting a lot more savvy about yoga.

Culturally, this is light years away from general consciousness about yoga 40 years ago. Not in a good or bad way—just different.

Compare this to the “feel” of this review of Paul McCartney’s benefit concert for the David Lynch Foundation from April– read it here–populated by people who really lived the ’60s. It’s got that groovy, pre-hippie, peace, love, and dope-smoking feel to it.

By contrast, the Social Q is very status quo.

(Cool thing is, the April benefit was to raise money to teach meditation to children. That’s right—says it right here:

“The concert was a benefit for the David Lynch Foundation, which seeks to teach Transcendental Meditation to a million students worldwide. “Every child should have one class period a day to dive within himself,” reads the manifesto at davidlynchfoundation.org. “This is the way to save the coming generation.” ”

McCartney, joined by Ringo Starr, sang some songs “that Mr. McCartney wrote during a 1968 trip that the Beatles (and Donovan) took to learn Transcendental Meditation at the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s ashram in Rishikesh, India.” “)

In the end, it’s all good. Even the loud OM-er.

in Culture.

Recession Blues Quite Real for Yoga Teachers

Published on June 28, 2009 6 Comments

A few weeks ago, the NYTimes Magazine did a piece on freelance professionals who are suffering under the recession. ( Dristi Yoga blog tipped me off—thanks Dristi!)

The opening anecdote gives a nice, succint picture of what it’s like to be a yoga teacher, recession or no recession. You freelance, you shuttle yourself around the city. At some places all your regulars show up, at others no one comes. You wonder if you might make more money doing something else.

Emily Bazeldon, the reporter, writes: “From Greene Hill, [yoga teacher Lisa] Feuer went to teach a prenatal class elsewhere in Brooklyn; she teaches in Manhattan too, and sometimes she crosses back and forth between the boroughs two or three times a day to get to her web of workplaces. “I spend a lot of time on the train,” she said on the subway to Greene Hill, “and it makes you wonder: If you had a regular job and you didn’t have all that travel time, would you make better money in the end?” She gave a small laugh. “But I love what I do. So I try not to think about that.”

So yes, love is the answer. And the desire to be free of the 9 – 5 shackles. But the article’s outlook is pretty dire.

“Even in her best years, Feuer was never affluent, but with child support she was able to live what she considered a middle-class life. This year, however, because of the classes and students she has lost, Feuer is on track to make as little as $15,000, a 30 percent drop from the past. But because she is underemployed rather than out of work, she is not eligible for unemployment insurance. She also doesn’t show up in the unemployment statistics.”

Yikes! That’s pretty bad.

Times are hard for all freelancers, writes Bazeldon, but when the economy turns (whenever that is), things should pick up again. It’s just hard for the middle-class, used to its i-Phones and coffee shops, to slip into poverty. In the meantime, be extra nice to your yoga teachers—they might be on a steady diet of rice and beans with a side of water. And yoga teachers, creativity might be the answer….

Angel Franco for NYTimes

Angel Franco for the NYTimes. Karl Allen in Manhattan performance (as in performance art) space.

…As in, those with a creative streak seem to be doing better than most  with this best of this batch of lemons. They’re pursuing projects they never had the time for when they were running hither and thither across the city for work. “Defiantly upbeat inspite of grim circumstances” says this inspiring May 19 Times article. An inspiring perspective.

Anyone had a recent experience of losing work then gaining something unexpected and super?

in Culture.

“Yogi, Take Me to a Higher Place”

Published on June 3, 2008 0 Comments

Practitioner at Kula Yoga Project, TriBeCa, NY

I’m thrilled to have another piece published in the New York Times’ Thursday Styles section. “Yogi, Take Me to a Higher Place” appeared on May 29, 2008.

Read the full piece here.

It was a pleasure to research and write this piece. I spoke to many, many inspired teachers and students who were eloquent and insightful. Would that there had been room to publish even half of their words. I love how people give so much in interviews. A 1200 word piece is a tiny space for the kinds of things one wants to say about advanced practices.

Here are some of great quotes that didn’t make it in:

Linda DiCarlo, President of the Iyengar Yoga National Association of the US defines “advanced” as having facility with the physical poses, a nuanced understanding of the body, and importantly, a deep and sustained meditative focus during practice.

“Beginners are counting the seconds until it’s time to come out—more advanced students will come into that same pose and take 30 seconds or so to refine it. Then they stay. During that experience their nervous system doesn’t jolt them to come out.” In fact, DiCarlo describes the subsequent effects on the intellect as meditative, soothing and delicious.

“Advanced is a little asana a lot of pranayama and then you sit—that’s the ultimate yoga practice,” says Annie Carpenter referring to meditation. “That’s when you get connected and changes happen in ourselves and we bring that into the world.”

“As you get more advanced that narrows the field. And it’s hard if there’s no guru in your town. ” Kino MacGregor’s teacher is in India.

“We have working people rearranging their schedule to come at 9:30am on Friday,” says Anne Phyfe Palmer, director of 8 Limbs Yoga Centers in Seattle. Richard Simone, 45, managing partner of the Global Capital Partners hedge fund in Manhattan, arrives early every day so he can make the advanced classes at Kula Yoga Center nearby. The classes start at 4:15.

Read blog comments about it:

MahaMondo: “I’ve been thinking about being a senior practitioner and its connotation as my teacher mentioned in passing last Saturday that it was MAHA I had brought my SENIOR energy to a studio full of newbies ( & their inseparable water bottles , chug-a-lug) . And on my way out of class this evening, I was asked, “How long have you been doing this ? ” My response being ” going on 7 years, but I’m still learning .” Peter Alejandro is based in LA.

Darren Main: Darren, a senior teacher based in SF, posted the piece in its entirety on his resourceful site.

Sophieherbert.com: Sophie Herbert says, “My teachers in New York and India, who I respect so deeply for selflessly and devotedly pursuing the path of yoga over a course many years, would never label themselves as accomplished or “advanced”.”

A Dissertation on Disillusionment: Blake Cooper grasps the issue of spiritual materialism implicit in the piece: “The duality below: the practicing of and passion for health and yoga vs. the perceived need to spend and accumulate in order to achieve its progress…”

in Trends.