Posts Tagged ‘branding’
in summary: the john friend/NYT fiasco
At the Village Anusara at Wanderlust (image via Twitpic)
This week, the yoga universe was ablaze with talk about last week’s NY Times article about John Friend. Unless you were living in a cave, meditating on a mountain top or camping in the bush, you’ve most likely heard and read about it. But the barrage of information can be a bit overwhelming, and you may be confused by all the responses and responses to responses and reactions.
So I’ve gathered up the cream of the crop, the most reliable information out there, and present them here in chronological order. Enjoy!
My Immediate Reaction to the NYT Article on Anusara and John Friend: Amy Ippoloti ~ as reported in my post on the article, there was “subsequent bloggage” from John Friend’s students. This immediate reaction was particularly impassioned and honest.
John Friend Responds to ‘Yoga Mogul’ Status: YogaDork ~ everyone’s favourite yoga gossip girl (also profiled by the NYT this week) broke the news that John Friend tweeted that he will respond to the article. So much drama that the post required *two* updates, and garnered a long comment from senior Anusara teacher, Elena Brower.
John Friend Responds to the New York Times article: John Friend’s blog ~ which he hasn’t updated since August 2009. John Friend sent a very gracious and clear letter from Europe, addressing “significant falsehoods in the article.” More bloggage ensued, I couldn’t even keep up with it.
Exclusive Interview With John Friend: elephant journal ~ Waylon Lewis shares an email exchange between him and John Friend just days after “what is probably the most popular, prominent article re: yoga in recent history.” It is honest and full of integrity.
And finally A response to John Friend’s response to the NYT magazine feature article: elephant journal ~ Jimmy Gleacher writes a brilliant retort to the whole fiasco, pitting the John Friend article up against another “entrepreneurial guru” the paper was following this week: Snooki, from “Jersey Shore.” He compares their recent Tweets and discovers their similarities. Very accurate and laugh out loud funny.
Where's Waldo?: John Friend guides a workshop into Warrior 1 (image via nytimes.com)
The latest (and apparently longest and most detailed) New York Times article on yoga came out this week, with a special focus on John Friend and the Anusara Yoga system. The article can best be described as a loose profile of John Friend, an exposé of Anusara, and an investigation into the state of yoga in North America, and as somebody observed on Facebook, it’s “not uncritical.” John Friend’s work is introduced as:
…his global Anusara expansion (Studio Yoggy, one of the biggest yoga-school chains in Japan, will be offering Anusara yoga classes); his Anusara publishing ventures (he has commissioned a history of yoga and continues to work on his own book, albeit sporadically); and his Anusara yoga-wear business (Friend has his own line, but also works with Adidas, which is using Anusara yoga trainers in its worldwide yoga push). He is also financing historical yoga research in Nepal and Kashmir. (NYT)
Stefanie Syman, the author of ‘The Subtle Body,’ offers commentary on John Friend’s celebrity status. “He has created his own community very self-consciously. Most charismatic teachers do that. What happens is if you are successful deliberately or inadvertently, a lot of students evangelize on your behalf and spread the word.”
Mimi Swartz, the author of the article looks at “the cult of John” and lightly compares him to “Joel Osteen, the magnetic evangelical megachurch minister with the feel-good message and a book-and-television empire.” As well, Anusara Yoga is placed within the current cultural context:
Some 16 million Americans now practice yoga, a 5,000-year-old mental, physical and spiritual discipline brought to us by Indian gurus. Nowadays there aren’t just hourly classes in major American cities but also in places like Deephaven, Minn., and Hattiesburg, Miss. “Namaste,” the traditional end-of-class blessing, has become a punch line. A school in Houston even offers “jello shots” after class. If yoga began as a meditation technique for people all too familiar with physical as well as mental suffering — with poses, or asanas, devised to assist in reaching a transcendentally blissful state — it has taken on a distinctly American cast. It has become much more about doing than being. More about happiness than meaning. It’s a weight-loss technique and a stress-management tool, a gateway to an exploding market for workout clothes and equipment.
In addressing some criticism of Anusara Yoga as being too capitalist, too culty, Swartz also notes that “yoga has become embroiled in head-of-a-pin type arguments. In yoga’s case it centers on authenticity. The fight over whether it is a spiritual or a physical practice has raged virtually since its inception, but now in the United States this question has been tinted with issues of competition, status and sweat.”
The article has generated a buzz in the blogosphere, with an outpouring of commentary by senior Anusara teachers such as Christina Sell and Olga Rasmussen. Many commentors on Facebook find that John Friend and Anusara Yoga are misrepresented. One thing for certain: the article taps into the complexity of yoga in North America, and the fascinating place in which yoga currently resides. Continue Reading
A few weeks ago I wrote a post about Mobile Yoga, the latest yoga hybrid which fuses together yoga and inline skating. I had actually been approached by a publicist at a PR company about the new style and I couldn’t resist questioning the validity of this hybrid (and, looking at the comments on that post, it seems that many yogis were unconvinced as well). After the post went up, the publicist contacted me again and offered an interview with Kris Fondran, the founder of Mobile Yoga. Of course, I had to take this opportunity to ask her all my burning questions, which she so generously responded to.
Mobile Yoga founder Kris Fondran rocks the asanas & the skates.
From what I understand from your bio, you have a long and deep relationship with yoga, having trained in the Satyananda tradition and received mantra initiation. Do you feel that the practice is compromised by blending it with another form of physical exercise? And what do your teachers think about this?
On the surface, Mobile Yoga looks like anything but a traditional yoga practice. However, through my studies and experiences I have found that to be a true practitioner of yoga you need to take what you are doing on the mat off into the world. Since much of my “world” is made up of skating it was not difficult for me to recognize and assimilate yoga elements while skating or teaching skating.
The traditional approach to yoga helps us manage our lives and can inspire many different activities. The Mobile Yoga concept will hopefully attract some people to explore yoga that might otherwise be put off by the classical yogic concepts of linking breath to movement and doing meditation. In turn it may also bring others to skating because they are looking for a way to improve their overall cardiovascular health in a way that is gentle on the body.
I came to yoga to learn stress reduction techniques and to improve my overall physical flexibility. Through study and practice, I have not only managed to reduce the amount of stressors in my life and improve the condition of my physical body, I also managed to enhance my skating ability as well.
Being yoga purists so-to-speak, my teachers are a bit skeptical of many of the “fusion” practices out there as the connection between yoga and whatever activity, seem to be quite weak. However, as long as my teachers have known me they have known me as a skater who has found ways to bring my understanding of yoga to other skaters. Sometimes it is important to meet people where they are and to provide them with techniques and choices that will bring awareness and balance into exploration of fitness in unsuspecting ways. This is the inspiration for Mobile Yoga.
At first glance, it appears that Mobile Yoga was the product of Rollerblade marketing efforts – but the publicist told me that you actually approached Rollerblade with the idea. What inspired you to do that?
My experience teaching a variety of health, wellness, and teacher education classes at Cleveland State University has exposed me to hundreds of students who are seeking ways to improve their physical health and reduce stress in their increasingly time-challenged lives. My recommendation has always been “more skating, more yoga,” so you could say my students were the inspiration. Continue Reading
There’s a new yoga hybrid about to hit the streets: Mobile Yoga. The art of doing yoga postures while inline skating. The Rollerblade brand is stepping out of the 90s and updating its image – by aligning with yoga! It’s so hip, so cool, so now, that perhaps some of that coolness will rub off on lame old inline skating.
YogaDork reported mumblings about the hybrid way back in July, and it looks like Rollerblade has finally got Mobile Yoga ready for the world. The website will launch on April 1. I know I sure can’t wait to see blissed out inline skaters rocking the Warrior pose on the streets of Montréal.
This is one hybrid that I’ll be avoiding. Aside from the fact no amount of association with yoga will make me think inline skating is cool, I also have no interest in doing yoga poses while moving. What about the rest of you? Or do you think this might just be the lamest yoga hybrid yet?
It’s January 27 and do you know where your New Year’s resolution is? Remember, that goal you’d set for yourself in a drunken fit of festive cheer just before the clock struck midnight, back when 2010 was just a distant dream…?
Yes, that resolution. So imagine being Robyn Okrant, who committed to something even bigger than a resolution on January 1, 2008: she challenged herself to do everything that Oprah Winfrey told her to do. For a whole year. She called her project “Living Oprah” and she blogged about her efforts, of course. That blog was recently published as a book, also called Living Oprah and I just finished reading it.
Robyn Okrant is a writer, performer and yoga teacher based in Chicago (Oprah’s hometown). I related to Okrant on many levels, being part of the same demographic (mid-30s) and profession (that strange mix of writing, art and yoga). I have to admit that I wish I’d thought up this idea! A self-confessed pop culture junkie (as y’all know), I am fascinated by Oprah, for many of the same reasons as Robyn. I find Oprah’s rag-to-riches story, her rise to fame (based mostly on intuition), her influence on women and her mastery over the art of making a personal brand completely compelling.
For the whole year, Robyn made her choices based on Oprah’s directives. She heeded Oprah’s wisdom through a daily diet of The Oprah Winfrey Show, O: The Oprah Magazine and oprah.com. And 2008 was a particularly interesting year to take on such a challenge. Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth was the Oprah Book Club choice, one of the most exciting and relevant US presidential elections ever took place, and the global financial system collapsed. Continue Reading
