We haven’t posted any news or thoughts here in what seems like a very long time (have you noticed?), so we thought we’d check in today just to give a wave out there to our online peeps. We’ve been doing great over here at Drishti – business has been steady in both our physical Santa Barbara store and our online store, and our current group of awesome Drishti employees works together seamlessly and loves their jobs. Speaking of our current employees, have you seen the beautiful feather earrings that Rachel is making for the store? Check them out! They are only $29 each and they are goregous – don’t you want one?
Because these earrings are one-of-a-kind by nature, we can’t really add them to our online store. They are more suited for our Santa Barbara-based in-person customers to purchase. However, if you live afar and if you love these earrings, you could try calling our store (805-963-0222) and asking for Rachel – she would be happy to put together a special order and send it to you.
I guess that’s all that’s on our minds at the moment. If you haven’t seen our most recent newsletter (October 2010), why don’t you check it out to read about some more news and noteworthy products at our store? There just might be a nice coupon code hiding in there for you too…
We hope you’re having a wonderful, yoga-filled week, and we’ll talk to you soon!
Guess what! We just launched an iPhone app called Yoga Quiz Cards! Can you believe it? We know, we know – there are an abundance of yoga apps on the market, so a new creation isn’t necessarily that exciting, but our yoga app is actually kind of cool. It’s designed to test and expand your knowledge of yoga pose names – and that’s it. It’s not a yoga class/practice app like all the others are. It’s a great tool for anyone – yoga student or teacher – who might want to deepen their connection to the practice by learning the correct English and Sanskrit names of the poses.
We honestly think our app makes a great contribution to the yoga world by filling a need that’s not being met in the yoga app realm. We’re pretty proud of our creation, and we think you’ll enjoy it too!
From today through next Friday, April 30th, if you download our app and then email us (email(at)drishtiyoga.com) to tell us a little something about it so we know you’ve truly downloaded it, we’ll email you back with a $20 gift code to our store! Bye now!
We know that some of you may have seen this back in June when it debuted, but we have a feeling that many of you missed it (along with us!) and we thought you might enjoy giving it a look-see. It’s the hilarious and geeky comedian John Hodgman speaking at the Radio and TV Correspondents dinner at the White House. We found it highly meaningful and entertaining and wish it had received more attention than it actually did.
P.S. Where do you think yogis fall on the nerd vs. jock spectrum?
The #1 most emailed article on the New York Times’ website today is a new op-ed piece by everyone’s favorite food reform champion Michael Pollan! In this piece, Mr. Pollan insightfully points out the intimate connection between the food industry and the health insurance industry. In the aftermath of President Obama’s significant speech on health care reform last night, it’s important to realize that our current, dysfunctional health care system benefits greatly from our current, dysfunctional food system. According to Michael Pollan, “The American way of eating has become the elephant in the room in the debate over health care.” (We love this quote!)
From the article:
There’s lots of money to be made selling fast food and then treating the diseases that fast food causes. One of the leading products of the American food industry has become patients for the American health care industry.
So poignant! Have you ever wondered why in the world it is that hospitals, whose sole reason for being is to keep people healthy, consistently serve highly-processed, un-fresh, terrible-tasting food to their patients? We have…
And so the government is poised to go on encouraging America’s fast-food diet with its farm policies even as it takes on added responsibilities for covering the medical costs of that diet. To put it more bluntly, the government is putting itself in the uncomfortable position of subsidizing both the costs of treating Type 2 diabetes and the consumption of high-fructose corn syrup.
Luckily, signs from the Obama administration suggest that food reform is, in fact, on the future agenda (i.e. Michele Obama’s White House garden, President Obama’s remarks about a possible soda tax.) And we certainly hope so, because if the food industry giants of today have their way, they’ll be stamping processed, sugar-filled children’s breakfast cereals like Cocoa Krispies and Froot Loops with tragically misleading labels like “Smart Choices”! …Oh wait, they already are.
…the well-known company SIGG announces that that the liners of many of its reusable metal water bottles (i.e. the part of the bottle which comes in direct contact with the water!) contain Bisphenol-A (BPA), an infamous chemical long suspected to be hazardous to humans.
Yes, it’s true, guys. Steve Wasik, the CEO of SIGG, officially announced in a two-page letter on the SIGG website that all of their water bottles manufactured before August of 2008 contain BPA. What’s even more noteworthy is that the company has apparently known for years about this BPA presence and did not disclose the information until now.
Not surprisingly, SIGG has come under much fire since the release of Mr. Wasik’s letter. The blogging world has been full of criticism for the company, and established news organizations like The Boston Globe, Mother Jones, and Salon.com have all covered the story. And in a meaningful move, Patagonia terminated their contract with SIGG over the controversy.
In response to this negative backlash, Mr. Wasik published a second letter with a decidedly more humble, apologetic tone. Here’s an excerpt:
After reading and responding to hundreds of emails and viewing nearly as many blog & Twitter posts, I realize that my first letter may have missed the mark. What I should have said simply and loudly to all of our loyal SIGG fans is: I am sorry that we did not make our communications on the original SIGG liner more clear from the very beginning.
SIGG has initiated a voluntary exchange program (not a recall), in which consumers who own these pre-August 2008 bottles can send their product back to the company for a BPA-free product in exchange. We wonder how many of you own BPA-containing SIGG water bottles. And if you do, do you plan to utilize SIGG’s exchange program, or will you instead apply the dollars you would have spent on shipping your bottle back to the purchase of a new water bottle from a different company?
The New York Times has covered it, so why not Katie Couric of CBS News? This issue has officially transcended the realm of little old yoga blogs like ours! Here she is, weighing in with her opinion that “Both sides should take a deep breath – after all, a compromise isn’t that much of a stretch.”
Have you heard of the Museum of Animal Perspectives, which attaches cameras to the backs of animals and posts the hugely-entertaining, eye-opening videos online? We spent a good part of our morning on their Flickr site, watching a pig’s snout rummage through mud, a scorpion run across the desert floor, a wolf sniff out a squirrel, and more! Here are a few highlights! Visit their site to view all of the engrossing offerings.
According to a newly-released study, those crazy people who regularly rise perkily, happily, and unfathomably early in the morning might just do so due to a genetic mutation. No, really! We’re not making this up, we promise. The esteemed publication Science Journal is reporting that the varying amounts of sleep that different people require is most likely linked to a genetic cause, and that rising early and shorter sleep times are correlated with specific genetic mutations:
And now they say they have found the first genetic mutation in humans that appears to affect sleep duration rather than sleep timing. The mutation lies in DEC2, a gene that codes for a protein that helps turn off expression of other genes, including some that control circadian rhythm, the internal clock that regulates a person’s sleep-wake cycle.
We think it’s wonderful that 6:30am yoga classes like Mysore-Style Ashtanga exist for the mutants out there , but for our part, we’re thankful that afternoon and evening classes are offered as well!
The #1 most emailed article on the New York Times’ website today is a new op-ed piece by everyone’s favorite food reform champion Michael Pollan! In this piece, Mr. Pollan insightfully points out the intimate connection between the food industry and the health insurance industry. In the aftermath of President Obama’s significant speech on health care reform last night, it’s important to realize that our current, dysfunctional health care system benefits greatly from our current, dysfunctional food system. According to Michael Pollan, “The American way of eating has become the elephant in the room in the debate over health care.” (We love this quote!)
…the well-known company SIGG announces that that the liners of many of its reusable metal water bottles (i.e. the part of the bottle which comes in direct contact with the water!) contain Bisphenol-A (BPA), an infamous chemical long suspected to be hazardous to humans.
