Yoga: Love It? Hate It?

I was beginning to think that practicing yoga was a universal requirement for women, and I’d somehow missed the memo.  Sure, I got the message about pap smears and mammograms, but I missed the one about my needing to get my butt to a yoga class.  I was beginning to suspect I was the only female on the planet not toting a cute little mat to class and learning to breathe out of alternate nostrils.  But it turns out I was wrong--I’ve got company!

Here’s Why I Was Confused:

The evidence was piling up all around me that yoga was taking over womankind:  

1.  Yoga studios started popping up all over the place and all our female friends and neighbors were going dutifully to class.

2.  Sporting goods stores started replacing the women’s clothes designed so you could run and sweat in them with big loose cottony “yoga” items.

3.  Two thirds of the tv and magazine ads showing women doing something “healthy” got rid of their runners and cyclists and replaced them with serene women striking poses by the seashore.

4.   Many of my favorite bloggers swear by it.

5 .  Most health and fitness magazines assume that if we are female, we are all taking yoga classes.

Yoga is Great!  …For Other People

This week’s helpful Juice video on stretching featured some yoga-based tips, and I really do think yoga is an awesome way to combine flexibility, strengthening, and  mind/body awareness.  But it’s just never appealed to me all that much, and I can't seem to make time for a class, and thought that meant there was something wrong with me.  On the other hand, I don't have strong feelings about it one way or another.  But wandering around Blogland, I couldn’t help noticing that there are a number of female bloggers who aren’t big fans of yoga and were happy to articulate their reasons why!

Like Vanessa, who wrote a post on Blogher about why it’s okay to hate yoga.  She takes us through a class and has lots of reasonable reasons why it didn’t work out for her. But in this excerpt, she also  takes on the non-traditional musical selections of her instructor:

 “11:12 – Thank you Mr. Clean for your exemplary skills in selecting suitable yoga music and not subjecting me to chanting music. However, I will be forwarding you a memo with a list of songs that I can’t hear without feeling the need to sing along. My desire to belt out “Levon” is distracting me. Don’t you know he was born a pauper to a pawn on a Christmas Day when the New York Times said God was dead?”

(I have to say, I’m with Vanessa on this one.  Who could concentrate on their downward dog with Elton John music playing?  Especially if you are of a certain age, it is almost physically impossible not to sing along to Elton John). 

Jenny on the Spot  has other reasons to be leery of yoga:  not only does she almost get herself kicked out of class for inappropriate laughter, but shares a brief “laughing yoga video” that is… well, you be the judge, but I thought it was a bit creepy!  I’ll try to post it here, but it doesn't seem to be working on preview. So if the upload turns into a big empty box or explodes or something, be sure to check it out at her site.

And speaking of Creepy Yoga:

Over at Javabeans, a blog about Korean dramas,  I discovered that there’s an upcoming horror movie called “Yoga School!”  Somehow the idea of a yoga horror movie totally cracks me up.  I don’t think it’s a parody either.  Perhaps they’ll make other fitness-themed horror sequels?  “Revenge of the Ellipticals,”  “Texas Chainsaw Zumba”  or “Jaws Part 7:  Terror in Aquaerobics Class?”  

And finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention my own co-blogger at Cranky Fitness, Merry Sunshine, who is not entirely sure whether yoga counts as exercise.

What do you think? Are you a yoga enthusiast or a bit more lukewarm about it?