Thursday, August 31, 2006

Yoga For Therapy Or Yoga For Weight Loss?

Yoga: inside-out wellness
Lee Welles
August 29, 2006
Recently I saw a new yoga magazine with a cover touting, "Look Great! Lose Weight!" I could practically hear 3,000 years' worth of yogis rolling in their graves (or getting a wicked migraine in their newly reincarnated life; pick your dogma).

If you do a Google search of "yoga," you will get more than 92 million hits. In the first listing, the first word is "diet." Sigh. The second listing is Yoga Journal, a respectable publication that, nonetheless, is getting fatter with glossy advertisements for $80 carrying bags for your yoga mat! The third listing was for products.

It is interesting that a practice that was developed for the benefit of the everlasting soul has devolved into yet another reason to feel that our hips are too wide, another reason to go shopping and try to find the "right" article of clothing, another thing to wish for.

I get a lot of questions about yoga: "Will it make me more flexible? Will I lose weight? Will it keep me from getting into a knockdown, drag-out argument with my sister-in-law this Thanksgiving?" Sigh.


*** I completely agree with Lee.
It is truly amazing how 'we' have managed to take a practice such as yoga, one that is meant for enlightenment, mind/body/spirit connection, and turn it into the next 'weight loss craze'.

What is next, meditate for weight loss?......wait I think I saw that already

Namaste
Nat

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