No, it was just some anthropological participant-observation research for a book, actually. Sometimes you have to provoke the animals a bit to get a better sense how they survive in their native habitat. Whew, made it our alive! Lost a finger but well worth it.

Seriously, though, this is an entirely valid issue, journalistically and otherwise, I think.

Yoga may be the only "teaching" profession on earth in which the teachers focus far more on themselves and their own development and well-being than they do on the actual benefit of service to those they ostensibly teach.

There are entire blog postings on and by yoga teachers - quite a few in recent months at EJ - that never once mention yoga students at all. Some posters even view their teacher training as an extension of their own personal yoga practice. It's me, myself, and I - even when in theory, it also involves others.

Yoga teaching is the quintessential narcissistic enterprise. One need only read such testimonies - or take classes with the vast majority of yoga teachers in America today. Partly it's the relatively age of the participants, partly it's gender, partly it's the larger narcissistic culture, and party it's just the deeply ingrained mindset and ethos of the yoga industry.

Compare these to the beautiful testimonies of first year English teachers or people working in the public school system, or really practicing servant leadership of any kind, and you see what the true gift of the Spirit and humility is. In theory, yoga students deserve better than this, but it could be that they are just getting what they asked for. Likes do attract.

It's up to consumers to expect and demand a better, healthier more responsive industry - or perhaps not an industry at all? At this point, many just vote with their feet - which is perhaps the ultimate marketing statement. :o)))

No I'm not the Baba. He's Sui Generous that guy. But it is truly comical to watch this whole process untold!

Baba attacks Sadie on his site and poor Waylon, who's probably never stood up to a woman in his life, immediately rushes in with these fawning pro-Sadie pieces, one from her boy pal, and now one from Sadie herself - all in the name of helping the poor girl and righting a personal injury!!!

I will be blunt. All of you guys should all be ashamed of yourselves - all of you who have created this confederacy of self-serving swill known as the yoga blogosphere? You're giving whoring a really bad name. A terrible name!

Why don't you guys just go off and have a giant orgy. Really just literally fuck each other, and get it out of your systems? Rather than doing it virtually, and making us watch. Carol, Jennilyn, Jennifer Waylon. Go for it!!

I'm a serious journalist, and I know there are literally millions of people out there with real questions and experiences of yoga that are not part of this blog circus. And they deserve better.

And the truth is, they don't read this stuff. Any of it. They don't even know about it. I talk to them ever day.
They are not part of this narrow narcissistic orbit of self-congratulatory mush, consisting largely of glorified diary entries.

They are too busy leading real lives and seeking a measure of real healing - and joy. The kind that is priceless, It doesn't require a promo.

Anyway, the blogs serve a purpose - but it's a very narrow one. It's certainly not a broad service. But it works for those who feed on and off them.

Even this stuff though should have some boundaries. Right now all the blogs are just feeding off of each other. Yoga Dork just ran a piece because Baba did.

I have a really really radical suggestion. Go out and do some real reporting on what real people are doing with yoga - not the yoga that in one way or another is for sale.

I have a really beautiful life by the way! Namaste. YS

Thanks, Kate. Appreciate your comments. Here my view of it, though: Police have a real responsibility to pursue cases on behalf of the community as a whole, that is, prospective future victims - not just the victims themselves.

So, as ironic as it sometimes seems, the victims don't really have the final say on how police interpret their crime or pursue their investigations.

In extreme cases, victims even refuse to press charges, but the state moves forward anyway, especially if they don't need the victims' testimony. Why? On behalf of the community - the public, that is, "us."

In DC, this has been a huge huge issue for years between the DC police department and the gay community of which Michael and his boyfriend are evidently a part. And actually the police have gone a long way to focus on these crimes, especially in key areas like Logan Circle and east Dupont Circle where Michael used to live.

So, it would be sad, actually, if in the name of a yoga, the real history of struggle, and the real needs of the DC community are ignored, or displaced by the needs of an online yoga community that doesn't actually live in the area to hype itself and its own worldview.

Second, all this Fox interview is about is how he doesn't have health insurance and whether he should move, and how yogis are rushing to help him. Frankly, is it my fault, or anyone's fault, that Michael doesn't have health insurance? Really? Neither do most of his African-American neighbors, and neither do many of his White neighbors..

Again, people have tried to make this a yoga thing. It's not fundamentally a yoga thing.

Maybe Michael just doesn't know how to take care of himself very well? And that might includes how to walk at night in his own transitional neighborhood?

Come to think of it, maybe we should just be sending him a guidebook for modern urban living? Maybe that's what every yogi who's helping to gentrify our local neighborhoods needs more than anything else?

It's happening everywhere with yoga studios. They are the new magnet stores for the realtors and the developers, ushering in the the 'yuppie" pioneers. It's capitalism. Not only are yoga studios out to make a buck, but the world around them is counting on their presence to make a buck.

Sorry to puncture anyone's bubble, but I would love to have seen Michael use his air time to talk about something besides himself. - and for yogis to talk about this incident as something that isn't just yoga.

The funny thing about this idea about turning the whole world into yoga is that it's really just an attempt to get the whole world to focus on yoga. And in that narcissism, it's distorting many powerfully lived realities outside its own little bubble.

In some of these transitional urban communities, maybe yoga isn't such a "good neighbor" or "community builder" after all. How much free or discounted "community class" yoga is available in that neighborhood?

These are all legitimate questions that arise in the modern yogic setting, if we are dealing with "yoga in the world" - and not just the hermetically sealed "world of yoga."

(Which doesn't mean, by the way, that I won't send a donation, but it's not because he's a yoga instructor or gay, or anything else besides that he looks pretty hangdog and miserable).

It's hard to be a really good "teacher" in anything other than body technique when you don't actually have any more life wisdom than your "students" - and in many, and probably most cases, largely due to your age, you have far less. And what technique training you do have came from a short-course that you paid out the ass for just to help keep a local yoga studio alive.

Rather than trying to fix the teachers - we really need to fix teacher training, from the ground up. Please, let's respect our common sense knowledge - reaffirmed by every sacred spiritual tradition on earth- about how wisdom is actually handed down, and imparted. And let's do it now, before the problem gets even worse.

Otherwise in a decade or so, we will have to establish an entirely new 12-step group entitled Yoga Bimbos Anonymous.

No, I really think good honest reporting is good honest reporting. You do it without fear - or favor. It's a journalistic ethic - like a Hippocratic oath. You either embrace it - or you don't, and that's what defines you.

Unfortunately, it's getting harder and harder to distinguish yoga from yoga "hype" - it's become endemic to the enterprise. This is what "spiritual materialism" naturally engenders, and there's an upside, especially for those in a position to benefit, but overall, a powerful downside, too. Yoga sages have been quite clear on this for a very long time.

This is going on everywhere in the yoga blogopshere, though. At Huff Po, where I frequently write, most of the posting in the yoga section read like infomercials. EJ, Yoga Dork and Yoganonymous all have their favorite celebrities and businesses and do their level best to help market them. And it brings in the page views, and the advertisers.

Yoga is very much a social media marketing phenomenon. Now what that actually has to do with day-to-day, lived community and deeply held values and meaning? Another discussion perhaps.

"GLBL Yoga" had organized a similar campaign, but apparently, they couldn't raise enough money to pay the Yogilettes to entertain the villagers? Darn! Oh well - no pun intended - maybe next year?

That beautiful man who spoke so humbly to the gathering - one of Ethiopia's Coptic Christian communities - was the family's Christian pastor. I guess we'll just have to ignore all the horrible signs of vicious patriarchy, and clutch these oppressors to our bosom?

Whew, I know, it's so haaaaaard. Great post.

For someone who might actually be deeply depressed, this strikes me as borderline malpractice. :o) Another random "magical thinking" riff in place of therapeutic healing. We could probably all make our own random list and come up with different elements that suit us:

Laughter
Connecting with nature, including animals
Community engagement
Intimate conversation over meals with friends
Taking care of children

Etc. etc. etc.

I wonder what the actual source is for this latest bit of EJ "lyrical prose"? When someone makes the "authoritative" statement of the kind the author makes, shouldn't it actually be sourced perhaps?

Excellent, Mithras. It's the spiritual foundation and principles that must guide you always - in love, no less than in work, family and friendships. That's what you surrender to, that's what guides you both. It erases these narcissistic ego conflicts or puts them in perspective. I am always amazed by the failure of faith formation among the New Age spiritualists of every stripe. It's pure blather their "spirituality." There's no surrender at all, because in the end they still want to play God.

The relationship is a celebration of God that leads you both closer to God, however you define this. You help "pastor" each other. Only the great religious traditions teach this. The rest is just endless confusion - and yes, neurosis - masquerading as "freedom." Ah, and once you have children, that's when true "surrender" begins. Best left to spiritual grown-ups!

I live in Washington, DC. The police are not investigating this attack as a "random act of violence." They are investigating it as a Hate crime - but that aspect has ZILCH to do with yoga. They are investigating it as an attack on two openly gay men by a band of Black teenagers.

Because of the proliferation of these attacks over the years, which have racial as well as gender/lifestyle aspects to them, the police set up a special Gay and Lesbian investigative unit which does quite a good job, most people seem to think.

Better reporting please, from a web-site with journalistic pretensions? It really has nothing to do with yoga, and the teacher in question is really not that "well-known." I understand, though, why people will avail themselves of any media resources to raise money for this cause.