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An article from one of the newspapers in India

 

PURISTS SEEK RETURNING TO THE ROOTS OF YOGA

 

 

New York, March 27: Heated to precisely 105 Fahrenheit, Bikram Yoga

Studio is so hot the windows look like it's raining inside. And then

there are the 25 very sweaty bodies, all trying to stretch themselves

strenuously positions as the teacher calls out an occasional "don't

panic."

 

Sometimes the do, bolting from the carpeted sweatbox for a few

minutes respite in the hall. "t The smell is intense in there." Says

one man, guzzling water and pacing the corridor before heading back

inside to finish the 90 minute class. To some who practice yoga,

there is something far more offensive at the Manhattan studio than

the heat or stench. To them, this newfangled yoga represents the

biggest threat the spiritual discipline has faced since people began

practising it more than 5000 years ago in India, fasting, abstaining

from sex and meditating in search of higher consciousness. They

fear that the discoveru of yoga by millions of Americans in recent

years is killing its soul, distorting the purpose from pursuit of a

better self.

 

Among the things that scare them: dirs 38 skimpy "chatra"tanktops,

disco yog and a web site called "yogasm: where yogga meets fashion."

Aerobics teachers who take two-day courses that supposedly prepare

them to do a job intended for spiritual gurus. Yoga gulf.

 

 

Now a movement is afoot to return yoga to its more traditional roots.

To supplant Madonna as the face of yoga with people more the likes of

Patanjali, the man who standardised the ancient philosophical texts

about 800 years ago.

 

"When yoga was in its womb in India, it was safe and protected, but

as it ventures into the harsh world, it is in danger of

disintegrating." Said Dr Scott Gerson, a prominent alternative

medicine expert and internist in New York who has practiced yog

since the 1970s. Gerson refers to most of the newer yoga classes

as "debauchment."

 

Yoga holy warriors like Gerson are calling for a return to teaching

yoga in its original form, a programme aimed at seeking self-

enlightment by training the mind. The physical postures, or asanas,

most people think of as yoga are just one segment, and were meant to

be part of a years long path of study that includes practicing non-

violence, restraint and meditation.

 

In the past decade, yoga has been vigorously Americanized, repackaged

and remarketed and spit out in a multitude of images, primairly one

with a hard body. It is now taught everywhere from hip city gyms

like cruncon Miami's South Beach to grimy basement studios of

Manhattan's lower east side to the Pennsylvania where class meets

right before quilting and pinochle. AP