First off, a disclaimer: I’ve only been to three yoga classes, and two of them were at Jivamukti, which merits a whole entry to itself. (Any facility with an elevator from the eleventh century that takes 20 minutes to go three floors should probably tone down the attitude, for starters.) My third yoga experience was at New York Sports, wherein roughly two dozen people were doing headstands at seven am. I consider myself in fine stead if I can stand upright at that hour. 

Personally, I think there’s a conspiracy between yoga teachers and the manufacturers of cotton capri pants, which just weren’t such high-ticket items way back in, oh, say, the good old pre-yoga days.  Somehow, by hiring skinny women with kick-ass shoulders to sit in front of the room, they’ve managed to sell overpriced workout tights and twenty-buck pieces of purple rubber, along with mind-numbing “clarity” and some false promise of inner peace. The People’s Temple offered similar results, with the added benefit of sugary beverages and a tax-free, tropical location.

The poor marketing of eastern philosophy isn’t even what gets me, though. It’s my paranoia that those mirrors in front of the room are really one-way, and the entire staff of the gym is behind them, along with the Republic of China (manufacturers of said capri pants), laughing their sculpted butts off at millions of misled Americans, desperate to twist ourselves into poses that just aren’t natural, no matter what kind of tree-hugging names you give them. One day we will be on Yoga Tube. Or you will. I bought my footage back from the Chinese, for a few bucks and a plug for the Beijing Olympics.

Myanmar, schmyanmar. Ra, Ra, Ra!