-When: Saturday, February 11, 10:00am-7:00pm

-What: 25% off everything in the store (everything!!), 50% off all jewelry, and a huge selection of clothing & other items at 50% or more off.

-Also: Celebratory refreshments served! (Did someone say… mini cupcakes from Crushcafe? )

Online Customers: You can be a part of our sale too!  Use coupon code 10YEARSOLD in our online store anytime on 2/11/12 for 25% off all items in your order.  It’s a great time to stock up on your favorite Hard Tail and Beyond Yoga pants, or to score on a brand new Manduka mat at a super cool price.
Hope to see everybody there, either personally or virtually! Bye for now!

Check out their write-up about their time with us in SB!

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]

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]

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!