Thoughts on Yoga

Lynn—thanks for getting the brother some action in your screenplay. But remember: I never said people don’t make and release such movies. I said that white folks won’t turn out to them in numbers sufficient to cross the 100-million mark. Big difference in implication.
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Regarding Yoga. I’ve done yoga on and off my whole life, starting with Richard Hittleman on television when I was about five. There are some opinions I’d like to express, in no particular order:
1) Yoga is the most advanced body-mind science available to the general public. Having been around six thousand years, they’ve gotten the bugs out.
2) The secret to Yoga is the breathing. Find a smooth, even breath (it can be intense, like Ujai breathing) and keep it through the entire session. NEVER break the “thread” of the breath. If you find your breath struggling, it means one thing: you are going too deeply into the posture. Regardless of what the teacher says, NEVER allow your breathing to interrupt. You can slow it, or speed it, but never hold it. Period.
3) If you have no other standard, find a female teacher over fifty who is in gnarly shape.
4) Yoga only seems to be about stretching. It is about focus, and unifying mind and body through breath. The first problem most people encounter is flexibility. There are other challenges: strength, balance, endurance, coordination.
5) Flexibility is more in the mind than the body. You literally have forgotten how to tell your body to relax.
6) A good pose is intense enough to require total attention, but not too tense to allow smooth breathing.
7) If you’re very athletic and confident: try Ashtanga. If you don’t have any idea how to judge a teacher, try Bikram. Both are real yoga systems that will get you there. The most conservative yoga system is Iyengar. Basic, powerful, smart. Hard to go wrong.
8) Avoid yoga classes taught by 19 year old aerobics instructors. Unless she’s a genius, she’s mistaking fitness-flexibility with the body-mind link. Come back and see her in twenty years.