Drishti – Santa Barbara Yoga Store: Yoga Clothing, Workout Clothes, & Yoga Supplies

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!

[Science Journal]

We have discussed the “state regulation of the yoga studio world” issue at length here on our blog. (Click here for our post from last week which features a quick refresher on the issue.) New York has taken center stage in the regulation drama as of late. In response to regulation threats by the government there, yoga teachers and studio owners banded together to form the Yoga Association of New York, which succeeded in fending off the regulators, at least temporarily.

Well, it looks like the next state government to take part in this game is Virginia’s! The Washington Post published an article today titled “Seeking Rapture, Not Regulation: Virginia Yogis Take Assertive Position Against State Certification Plan”. The story is much the same in Virginia as in New York: the government is attempting to initiate official regulation of yoga studios which host teacher training programs (this would entail licensing fees, audits, and significant amounts of bureaucratic paperwork), and yoga teachers have joined together to resist the effort. In Virginia, the resistance movement has a Facebook page titled “Virginia Yoga Teachers” (no website yet, but we’re sure it’s in the works!)

From the article:

The tussle has pitted yoga enthusiasts against bureaucrats. At issue: Are yoga teacher training programs akin to vocational classes that should be regulated by the state? Or is Big Brother stretching too far into a centuries-old spiritual practice?

The State Council of Higher Education for Virginia recently declared that studios offering yoga teacher instruction must be certified. That involves a $2,500 fee, audits, annual charges of at least $500 and a pile of paperwork.

Yogis, in an unlikely departure from their usual mission to foster harmony and balance, are pushing back. They launched a letter-writing campaign to Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) and state lawmakers and started a “Virginia Yoga Teachers” page on Facebook to organize it. Even Sen. Mark Warner’s former private yoga instructor said she asked his office to back their effort.

Which state will be pulled into this intriguing yoga drama next? We’ll be sure to stay tuned and let you know!

[Washington Post]

Most readers of our blog are well aware of the controversial issues surrounding food politics in general and the industrialized food industry specifically. (If you need a refresher, just check out the trailer for the movie “Food, Inc.” which we featured here on our blog back in June.) Michael Pollan, the food activist who authored the eye-opening books The Omnivore’s Dilemma and In Defense of Food, has practically become a household name throughout a significant percentage of the yoga community.

It’s wonderful that many of us (yogis and otherwise) are hip to the food activist cause, but today we’re celebrating the fact that the venerable mainstream news establishment TIME Magazine just published a lengthy five-page article about the reality of the industrialized food system. TIME Magazine, guys! This is big-time. From the article:

The U.S. agricultural industry can now produce unlimited quantities of meat and grains at remarkably cheap prices. But it does so at a high cost to the environment, animals and humans… Add to the price tag the acceleration of global warming — our energy-intensive food system uses 19% of U.S. fossil fuels, more than any other sector of the economy.

And perhaps worst of all, our food is increasingly bad for us, even dangerous….

Some Americans are heeding such warnings and working to transform the way the country eats — ranchers and farmers who are raising sustainable food in ways that don’t bankrupt the earth. Documentaries like the scathing Food Inc. and the work of investigative journalists like Eric Schlosser and Michael Pollan are reprising Sinclair’s work, awakening a sleeping public to the uncomfortable realities of how we eat.

Click below to read the full informative article!

[TIME Magazine]

Here we go again with a full list of recent news items you should read in order to be an informed member of the yoga world!

1) The Washington Post highlights yoga people who make a difference! It’s often observed that the overwhelming majority of stories covered by the news media are negative ones, but this Washington Post piece is a shining example to the contrary.  We’re so pleased that a newspaper as established and respected as the Post took the time to write about these amazingly impressive “do-gooder” yoga organizations.  The groups featured include Sprout Yoga, which works to bring free yoga classes to post-traumatic stress and eating disorder sufferers, Upward Bound, which brings yoga to low-income kids, and Street Yoga, which teaches at-risk homeless youths, sexual abuse victims, and more.  We hope that the next time a news journal writes a piece on this topic, they remember to include Yoga Bear, a non-profit dedicated to bringing yoga to cancer survivors.  [Activists Aim to Make Yoga An Exercise in Accessibility]

2) Mercury is basically in every single fish in the universe. Yikes!  Is it the case that while we try to identify specific fish and their home waters as relatively low-risk when it comes to mercury, the truth is that mercury can be found in all fish everywhere?  What’s a lacto-ovo vegetarian to do? [Federal Study Shows Mercury in Fish Widespread]

3) (From the “Is This Really News” Department): Ex-wall street exec quits her job to teach yoga. Really, now – should this story truly be news? People change career tracks every day, and teaching yoga is certainly a popular career option, hence the abundance of yoga teacher training programs offered across the country.  But for some reason (probably a combination of the Wall Street/ivy league/young woman elements of this story), a plethora of news organizations have written about this, including the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and New York Magazine.  Check it out yourself to learn more about one woman’s choice to ditch the high-powered banking exec life in favor of the peace-and-love yoga life. [Princeton Grad Quits Morgan Stanley to Teach Yoga to Bankers]

4) Random fact of the day: Did you know that the uber well-known economist Paul Krugman (a Nobel Prize-winning Princeton professor who regularly writes op-ed pieces for the New York Times) is married to a yoga teacher?  This bit of trivia goes along with the  “Major Political Figures With Yoga Practices” post we ran earlier this year. ) Robin Wells Krugman is an economics professor at Princeton who also happens to teach Forrest Yoga at Four Winds Yoga Studio in Princeton, New Jersey. For proof of this exciting addition to the roster of yogis in politics, just read this.

5) The Landmark Form. It’s a “transformational” personal-growth weekend-workshop around whom the accusation of “cult” has often flittered.  Many of you are probably familiar with this workshop, and some well-known yoga businesses even sponsor their employees to attend it.  Interestingly, the notable magazine Mother Jones recently sent one of their reporters to the Landmark Forum armed with the task of experiencing and writing about it.  The title of the article is “The Landmark Forum: 42 Hours, $500, 65 Breakdowns: My lost weekend with the trademark happy, bathroom-break hating, slightly spooky inheritors of est.”  The article isn’t quite the scathing expose that Landmark opponents might hope for, but it’s certainly critical and eye-rolling in its tone.  Check it out here if you’re so inclined!

6) In the health and science department, the New York Times ran a piece titled “Does Exercise Reduce Your Cancer Risk?” (the answer is a tentative yes) and another about a newly-revealed fact about an insidious connection between the brain and stress: “The sensation of being highly stressed can rewire the brain in ways that promote its sinister persistence.”  Oh no!  (“Brain Is a Co-Conspirator in a Vicious Stress Loop“)

7) From the “Scary Water Bottling Companies You Might Not Want to Support With Your Dollars!” department: A brutal military dictatorship backs Fiji water.

Fiji Water isn’t just devastating to the environment of Fiji, the planet that endures the cost of shipping it, and the environments of the places where it is consumed. It is also the product of a brutal military regime that monitors all outgoing Internet traffic from the island for criticisms of the water business and immediately arrests people who transmit them, bringing them in for intensive questioning and the occasional prison-rape threat, as journalist Anna Lenzer discovered.

[Brutal Military Dictatorship That Backs Fiji Water]

On Thursday we reported about a surprising Whole Foods controversy which had just hit the airwaves.  Today we strolled on over to the New York Times for our regular morning check-up on the news, and we noticed that an article titled “Whole Foods Fight” was in the top-1o list of most emailed articles.  We also noticed that the “Boycott Whole Foods” Facebook fan page has leapt from about 3,000 members at the time of our original post to 13,366members at the time of this writing.  Wow, that’s quite a significant jump!

Apparently this Whole Foods controversy didn’t peter out over the weekend like some people were probably hoping it might.  We wonder what might become of Whole Foods’ controversy-stirring CEO John Mackey in light of the unceasing media coverage this story is receiving.  Will the board decide to oust him at their next meeting and replace him with someone who doesn’t randomly decide to publish pointed op-ed pieces in conservative newspapers at politically-sensitive times which alienate Whole Foods’ entire customer base?  One has to wonder.

While we’re on the topic, we thought we’d share with you an informative web page we stumbled upon while doing some Whole Foods research.  It’s a thorough list of some other questionable aspects of Whole Foods about which you might not have been aware. We appreciate this website’s rather level-headed approach to Whole Foods. They are clear to point out that:

We’re not suggesting that anyone stop shopping at Whole Foods and we’re not calling for any kind of boycott – we just want consumers to realize that even a company that puts on a socially-responsible face doesn’t always live up to its own hype.

If Whole Foods’ recent health care controversy doesn’t really bother you, you might discover something that irks you a bit more on this site…

Remember the yoga studio licensing issue which we’ve discussed several times here on our blog?  The gist is that in some states, governments are attempting to register, license, and collect fees from yoga studios which host teacher training programs. These governments’ justification is that yoga – like massage therapy, auto repair, and hair styling – is a vocation which earns its participants money, and as such it should be subject to licensing.  New York state has taken the most drastic action of all, which has prompted swift and animated action on the part of the yoga studios affected.  In response to the (scary!) cease-and-desist letters that New York’s government sent in May to eighty-one yoga studios threatening them with $50,000 fines, yoga studios throughout the state banded together to form the Yoga Association of New York which has worked to resist the licensing move and has achieved some success, at least temporarily.

The Yoga Association of New York just launched their official website, complete with a nicely-designed “Yoga for NY” logo, photos, and links for visitors to use in order to make donations to the organization.  A website often has the effect of making an organization feel “established” and “real”, and with the creation of this online identity, the association has done just that.  Their mission statement is clearly displayed on the front page of their site:

Your local studio could be fined up to $50,000 for training yoga teachers. Help us get government under control and keep yoga free.

This new website is very well-designed in visual terms – we’re impressed!  However, after visiting the site we must report that we’re a little unclear on the specific name of this yoga organization. Is it Yoga Association of New York (which we’ve been calling it in this blog post), or is it Yoga for New York?  The website’s logo reads “Yoga for NY” and its url is www.yogaforny.org, but the main title of the website is “Yoga Association of New York”, and the name of their Facebook fan page is Yoga Association of New York.  Do you see how we might become a little confused on this point?  If you have an answer to this burning name question, feel free to enlighten us in the comments section.  Bye now!

The corporate chain Whole Foods, many a yogis’ grocery store of choice (except for those yogis who prefer to support local, independently-owned businesses, of course), has come under harsh criticism and even organized boycotting since its CEO and frontman John Mackey published a pointed op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday.

In his commentary, Mackey expressed his wholehearted disagreement with the health care reform plan which is being proposed by Democrats.  In boiled-down terms, he is ardently against universal health care and thinks we should be moving toward “less government control and more individual empowerment” when it comes to the American health care system.  He even argues against the belief that all people have an intrinsic right to health care, instead claiming that:

Health care is a service that we all need, but just like food and shelter it is best provided through voluntary and mutually beneficial market exchanges.

Wow! Whole Foods customers tend to be health-conscious, yoga-practicing, progressive-leaning types who are certainly supporters of universal health care.  With this WSJ piece, Whole Foods’ CEO just opened up the floodgates to controversy and criticism from a huge swath of his most frequent shoppers.

The backlash has so far ranged from an op-ed piece in today’s Los Angeles Times to coordinated boycotts and a new anti-Whole Foods Facebook page.  Whole Foods has also reportedly set up a special hotline to field phone calls from angry customers as well an online forum dedicated to this issue on its website.

What will become of this whole debacle?  Will Whole Foods see any significant drop in dollars from boycotts, and will John Mackey honestly re-evaluate his rather conservative views on health care?  Let’s stay tuned to find out!

P.S. Should it really be that much of a surprise that the CEO of a major, publicly-traded corporation which grossed nearly $8 billion dollars last year would turn out to be… conservative?  Just wonderin’.

Here are pertinent links to explore to find out more about this Whole Foods controversy:

Wall Street Journal op-ed piece by Whole Foods CEO Jack Mackey

Los Angeles Times op-ed piece in response

Whole Foods Boycott Facebook page

Whole Foods website health care reform forum

What if yoga classes today were full of fashion like this?

Would you still be excited to shop at Drishti if the clothing pictured here was what we specialized in?

(From the New York Times – “A Los Angeles Dance Class With a Retro Dress Code“)