There, I interviewed a lot of high-profile yoga teachers—Shiva Rea, Gurmukh Kaur Khalsa, Dharma Mittra, Sharon Gannon and David Life, Tias Little—about what they thought of their status in the yoga world. (Rodney Yee was there, too, but he wasn’t giving interviews.)

Rodney Yee and Colleen Saidmain, photographed by Michael O’Neill for Vanity Fair, June 2007

I also interviewed Glen Black who has taught and practiced for 38 years but in contrast to everyone else, has actually avoided the spotlight.

The result of my weekend in Rhinebeck, NY? An article on celebrity yoga teachers. What do we do with them? What do we think about them?

Is a media-friendly yoga teacher a natural outcome of yoga’s presence in America’s consumer culture? Turns out the peaceful yoga crowd at Omega had a lot to say, as well…

Read the article and send in your thoughts…. had any experiences with”celebrity” yogis?

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The white space was hung with long yellow scrims that caught the late afternoon light and brightened the windowless space. The black cushions on the floor were strewn with the petals of red roses, and garlands large and small framed sepia-toned pictures of Guruji at the front of the space. Food was served the back–delicious spicy popped rice with chutney, and samosas and chai.

Four hundred people had RSVPd. Those who came were a good-looking bunch, with a lean, clean, healthy glow. Many had young children with them.  It was a grown-up yoga community, one that has weathered their initial zeal for yoga and matured into seasoned practitioners.

Representing the yoga world were Alison West (Yoga Union), Leslie Kaminoff (Breathing Project), Michelle Demus (Pure Yoga), Hari Kaur (Golden Bridge), Rodney Yee and Colleen Saidman (Urban Zen), James Murphy (Iyengar Yoga NY), Carlos Menjiva (Jivamukti), and someone from Bikram yoga.

On the walls around the space, photos of Guruji, his family, his students, and his travels over the years played in a continuous loop. After Eddie Stern, Jois’ long-time student, director of Ashtanga Yoga New York, introduced the evening, three Hindu priests changed a part of the Upanishads, 18 minutes of piercing, passionate sound meant to disperse the elements back into the world, to help Guruji on his journey. In the background of this austere music, was the sound of children chirping and playing.

“When a great person is born into the world, he affects everyone,” said Stern. “Regardless of whether they follow his teachings or not.”

Other speakers mentioned Pattabhi Jois’ generosity as a teacher, the inclusiveness of his sangha, and his “sympathetic joy”—his availability to all who had even just a flicker of interest in trying yoga.

“He took complete delight that someone was growing through their yoga practice,” said John Campbell, long-time student.

Ruth Lauer-Manenti, a senior Jivamukti teacher, relayed the story of how she first went to Mysore to practice with Pattabhi Jois. “Sharon Gannon [director and co-founder of Jivamukti] had just come back from Mysore. She was thin, thin, thin. She looked kind of green and she had a dislocated shoulder. She said, Ruth, you gotta go. So I went the next day.”

” ‘Yes you can’ was his message—it’s what so many of us took from him,” said Lauer-Manenti whose practice helped her to heal from a near-fatal car accident.

“He always wanted you to do your best, including making it to his birthday every year.”

Jois believed—in fact, he lived the idea—that yoga is the science of transformation: 1% theory, 99% practice. Yoga is mind control: controlling your helter-skelter thoughts and practicing love (plus a 2hr, 6-days-a-week, demanding asana practice) instead.

As he famously said, “Do your practice and all is coming.”

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But each one has been so good that I’ve forgotten any regrets. How could I think of anything else when Gary Kraftsow —a man with sweet gravitas—is explaining the cakras?

Gary Kraftsow

Or, when Roger Cole shows us the four ways to stretch a muscle. It’s more than interesting, it’s riveting. (We did mostly hamstrings, which I’ve overstretched on this body.) Dive deep, bring up pearls.

I’ve also really appreciated the humor here—Judith Hanson Lasater is a firecracker sending hilarious (and too true) comments fizzing and popping around the room faster than a Catherine Wheel. (“I gave up the idea that you could make anyone do anything when I had kids.”)

She seems to instantly read bodies. Then she instantly—with permission—tells (or shows) the owner what’s going on and how to work with it. Trust the body, she says, it’s trying to tell you something. (She was able to tell me something about my stuck left pelvis—a puzzle that’s eluded me for years.)

Also a laugh a minute—who’d have guessed—eminent professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, Robert Thurman. Buddha’s First Noble truth? Life sucks! How to detach yoga students from their obsession with the body? Tell them to watch The Matrix or Star Trek.

Reasons to meditate on happiness for all beings? “If your enemy was happy, do you think he’d be running around enemying on you? You want him to be happy!”

This humor would not resonate as well without presenter’s deep knowledge and abiding passion for their subjects. And, I have to think, their fearlessness in the face of dark or ugly news: we’re all going to die. They seem to get that, as much as anyone can. We humans are infintessimally insignificant.

And their self-driven, but not (seemingly) self-ish desire to know more, be more, grow more, enter more fully into some nourishing mystery seems to help as well.

Thurman: yoga’s true meaning: to yoke yourself to ultimate reality (nirvana, bliss) and unyoke yourself from limited reality (suffering).

The original purpose of asana: to get the body settled for meditation. This is not news. But it was fun to hear it from him. And in case you are wondering, Patanjali agrees with Buddha—life does suck!

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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. 

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