Listen: Beautiful podcast about Zen & Art featuring John Daido Loori, Roshi.

Is yoga become just another consumption machine?

It’s a booming business to be sure as new brands pop up at an amazing rate. So what does this mean for yoga?

Will it get usurped by consumerism and lose it’s way in the process?

Or, is the commodification a good thing—a way to widen the audience, increase awareness and grow? Certainly the mainstreaming of yoga can lead to awareness as Oprah and other national sources have put an important light on the health and well-being benefits of yoga.

Others have suggested that the growth will lead to a watering down or stripping away of essential elements that make yoga what it is. At some point is yoga nothing more than another form of exercise akin to Pilates or Kickboxing? That remains to be seen.

Read the post I wrote for Elephant Journal about this topic. Below is an excerpt:

As fast as yoga grows in popularity in the west, yoga brands are exploding on the scene with equal intensity to satisfy our cravings for yogi stuff. According to the Wall Street Journal, Americans are now spending a staggering $5.7 billion a year on yoga classes and products according to a 2008 survey by Yoga Journal. That’s an 87% increase from 2004.

The growth of yoga and yoga classes is great, beautiful, inspired. The idea of more and more Americans getting off the couch, getting in an hour of yoga, reducing stress, finding balance, is a fantastic shoulder-width sized step in the right direction for so much of what ails us as a largely sedate nation.

But what about all the new brands? What about the trendy factor? Yoga is very trendy. It’s also cool and hip and that scares the hell out me. Could yoga simply become another expensive hobby for snobby rich people driving SUVs and Swagger Wagons?

When I attend my $15 Ashtanga class at the local shala, you know the cool one with great chai, gorgeous wooden floors, high ceilings and the giant dancing Shiva statue at the entrance, I see affluence everywhere. From the chic bags and mats to the growing range of really sexy, extremely expensive yoga clothing, yoga is a sacrificial cash cow of opportunity to enterprising yoga companies.

A hot topic with many opinions. This isn’t meant as a critique of any yogi or aspiring yogi regardless of their decisions regarding how they practice or approach their practice. Instead, the post is meant more as an observation and a cautionary tale about motivation and the trend that finds businesses too often capitalizing on people desperately in search of meaning for their lives.

Very fantatic envato productivity site workawesome.com just published a new post I wrote on why everyone needs a manifesto. Give it a read and then write yourself one.

Here is an excerpt:

One really awesome way to give your personal productivity a nice boost is to get your very own manifesto. Not to be confused with the mission statement, a manifesto is like the mission statement’s tougher, cooler older brother or sister. The awesome one that everyone likes, everyone respects and everyone emulates because they’re totally punk rock and better than you at everything.

Don’t let the most famous manifesto dissuade you either. Yes, I know Karl Marx wrote one. But so did Guy Kawasaki, career renegade Jonathan Fields and designer Bruce Mau. In fact, there is a whole website dedicated to people’s manifestos on various topics ranging from change and achievement to creativity and how to give a compelling presentation.

A manifesto is a bold statement, or extended mantra, that sets a tone for your day, your career, heck, even your life. It’s a road map to awesomeness that should induce a surge of adrenaline pulsing through your body with each reading.

Read the rest of the post here. And then get to work.

I love the way this song swings. Great writing music, too.

There is an elegant solution for everything.

I just published a piece over at the very cool productivity site, WorkAwsome. Here is an excerpt:

Imagine stopping in the middle of a busy work day, kicking up your feet on your desk, sitting back, arms cradling the back of the head in daydream mode. Now imagine that this is one of the best things you could do in the course of a busy work day.
It’s okay, let them stare. Because the truth is that your blank stare at the wall is just what the mind needs to slow down, clear out some of the clutter and give the creative brain the opportunity to open up to better thinking, greater creativity and maybe even the next big idea.

Stop by the site and give the post a read. Give the rest of the site a read, too. You’ll find Work Awesome to be full of great work productivity tips. Plus, it’s a fun read.

Check out this article I wrote for Elephant Journal on the Buddhist notion of dukkha, the sense of lack and our collective obsession with buying and having stuff.

Here’s an excerpt:

With all due respect to René Descartes, I think a more accurate characterization of the modern human condition is not his famous, “I think therefore I am,” but rather “I lack therefore I am.” Who we are, or who we think we are, has become inextricably linked to the things we buy and the brands we affiliate with as what we project outward into society is reflected back to us as a form of self validation. This is how we really know who we are.

As a result, we’ve become a society obsessed with stuff. We buy stuff, we buy more stuff and then when we run out of room for the stuff we have, we rent space so we can store the extra stuff. As a result, Self Storage has become one of the fastest growing industries in the United States.

Happy reading.

This is a beautiful quote by Walt Whitman, one of my favorite mystical poets.

This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward toward the people…re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss what insults your very soul, and your very flesh shall become a great poem. – Walt Whitman

Whitman’s writing is timeless and profound. If you haven’t read any of this writings, start with Song of Myself from his collection Leaves of Grass. The entire collection is brilliant, earthy, spiritual, visual, sensual and very moving.

It’s All Yoga, Baby, a great yoga blog I’ve recently discovered, has a great review of A World Out of Balance, a yoga book I’m eager to read. Written by Michael Stone, this book brings the ancient aphorisms of Patanjali into our modern context.

One thing I really like about her review is the opening paragraph which calls attention to something that also has bothered me about the ultra-hip, self-absorbed yogi class. She writes:

One of the drawbacks about being a yogi blogger is that I get regular exposure to some of the most tasteless and depressing aspects of yoga in Western culture (and y’all know what I’m talking about, because I can’t stop myself from commenting on it). Crass commercialism, hypersexualization, narcissism, branding… it’s enough to sometimes make me wonder why I bother with this practice.

Which is why I’m so grateful for Yoga for a World Out of Balance: Teachings on Ethics and Social Action (Shambala Publications, 2009). The latest book by Michael Stone, a Toronto-based yoga teacher, psychotherapist and author, puts to rest my unease about current developments of yoga and assures me that it’s a practice that is not only worthwhile, but essential for modern life.

Agreed. I’ve been put off more than a few times by self-absorbed yogis who are more into image and posing (not the asana kind) than any kind of true practice that leads to change or realization.

I’m off to find this book. I’ll write my own review at some point down the road. In the meantime, check out the

I’ve always loved the way Marty Neumeier thinks. ZAG is still my favorite book on brands. Now, Marty has a DVD available with his famous Innovation Workshop on it. This should be fantastic.

Plus, the Tool Kit includes a copy of his most recent book, The Designful Company which is also a really good read.