

Yoga and entrepreneurship - mooreds
http://learntoduck.net/yoga-is-fucking-judgemental

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sgpl
_"Yoga is fucking judgmental"_

Sorry it really isn't. Yoga is its true sense is an individual practice for
improving one's mental, physical, spiritual state of being. Perhaps if you are
a practitioner of Yoga, you might be interested in learning more about its
origins and history [1].

Bikram Yoga which the author took classes for is a commercial take on yoga,
much like Dance Yoga, Jillian Michaels Meltdown Yoga; or something I could
copyright tomorrow called "Dance Dance Yoga Revolution". From my understanding
Bikram Yoga is a fitness product to make money for its founder, which he has
ensured by "copyrighting" his system of poses and by suing numerous studios
and former students, etc. Maybe this is why the author's experience with yoga
was of being judged and why he calls anyone with an opposing view a "hippie".
The practice of saying "namaste" at the end of the session sounds like
something you'd do to add a flavor of east meets west to make this practice
cool/hip because in the context described in the article, it doesn't add much
to the state of the individual aside from this cool "namaste moment."

 _"Choudhury holds a copyright for the 26 poses which constitute Bikram yoga
under the same theory which allows choreographic sequences to be copyrighted.
In September, 2011, Choudhury filed an infringement suit against his former
student, Greg Gumucio, founder of a competing chain of hot yoga studios."_

Disclaimer: I haven't ever taken a Bikram Yoga class, but I've been practicing
Yoga on and off since high school.

[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoga>

[2] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bikram_Yoga#Legal_issues>

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cscurmudgeon
Thanks for posting this. Yoga if done correctly should not make you tired. It
should leave you in euphoric and blissful state devoid of almost all negative
emotions. This then puts in the right state to do meditation. It took me years
to get this right. And you can't commercialize something that takes that long
and is slow and gradual.

Plain and simple: If X makes you tired or judgmental or angry ..., X is not
yoga.

I am not making this up. Google Scholar this.

Also, yoga teachers are not supposed to do it for money. Read up on how
Gurukuls worked.

Yoga removed from its spiritual context is just a kitschy low grade thing that
may hurt you while taking your money.

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rjzzleep
yeah and swimming correctly doesn't make you tired either. but until you
actually reach that point, you have to go through many many hours of painful
practice.

Thinks don't magically happen. You have to work for them.

EDIT: That said, my girlfriend who was indian, disliked bikram yoga a lot,
because of some of the aforementioned issues

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DenisM
Things have to be difficult only if you want them to be difficult. I had the
bliss from yoga classes since probably second or this class. Physically tired,
mentally relaxed.

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rjzzleep
ok, so given the fact that a lot of the difficulty results from being
different levels of flexible, and coming from different fitness level
backgrounds, and having different levels of experience when it comes to
gathering your thoughts.

Are you sure you want to imply that everyone starting a sport has the same
physical fitness, stretchiness and mental attributes when starting out any
sport/yoga?

~~~
DenisM
You start off by saying that only hard work can bring about bliss, and when
confronted with a different experience you pigeonhole it into asserting that
bliss must befall every single person regardless of their circumstances. Step
aside from the false dichotomy - it's not the case that yoga can either bring
about bliss quickly to everyone or no one. It may bring to some and not to
others. Will it work for a particular person? The easiest way to find out is
to try. There is no point in guessing. Sign up for 8-class introductory
course, by the end of it you will have a pretty good idea whether it works for
you. It worked for me, and it worked for other people I know, so it works for
some people. It's not going to be a waste of time.

If you're worried about prerequisite fitness level, I can guarantee you that I
had the worst stretching and the least endurance of the entire group - it's
fairly obvious in class. One thing I had more that others is discipline - I
think I was one of the few to attend all eight classes.

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rjzzleep
replace yoga by any other sport taken seriously(ie. competitively or almost
competitively), any instrument or basically anything humans learn in general,
and the only thing that changes is the temperature(although that also highly
depends on where in the world you do it)

I've been doing martial arts for 18 years and i could say exactly the same.

What is more fascinating in my opinion is that what you're describing is a
tiny bit of what is known as sports psychology, which in turn is very close to
what is observed in military combat psychology, which in turn is very closely
related to entrepreneurship in general.

my point is that while i think that it's good that you wrote down your
experience, and the emotional connection to it, what you're describing is in
no way specific to yoga.

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AshuJoshi
Why is Yoga Judgmental? Does Yoga have a voice or life of its own? Not sure I
understand that comment. I like the parallelism to start-ups and agree that
Yoga is practice. I do Pranayama every single day, and it is form of Yoga. And
yes it is a practice. But judgmental - don't get that...

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mosqutip
Damn, I thought yoga was supposed to help you calm down and chill out.

I did really like the author's parallelisms to entrepreneurship, though.

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luisbebop
Yes, it is. I'm a serial entrepreneur who became a Yoga professor last year I
can say that the author is totally equivocated in some points. He is judging
something that isn't Yoga.

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berkay
There are very different styles in Yoga. Bikram is probably one extreme where
everything is regimented, and there is only way correct way. There are also
Yoga styles that are more kin to jazz improvisation and anything in between.
May be there is a startup analogy somewhere there as well :)

~~~
AshuJoshi
Bikram Yoga has its roots or inheritance in Yoga with respect to the "asanas"
or poses but I would say that's about it.

