Joe Queenan in this past Saturday's WSJ:
Devotees insist that yoga would help me deal with the herniated discs in my neck, would ease pressure on my spine, would lower my blood pressure. They say—thereby providing false hope to my family—that yoga would make me more mellow, more accepting, perhaps even induce me to stop and smell the roses.
But I do not want to stop and smell the roses. I don't even want to smell the roses if it were possible to smell them without stopping. For years, I have told those of the yoga ilk: I can't practice yoga or tai chi or therapeutic jujitsu or dien bien phu because I'm too working class, I'm from Philly, it's just not my style. If my hard-drinking, heavily tattooed Dad ever caught me doing yoga he would come back from the dead and strangle me. Then my neck would really hurt.
Joe... he speaks for me. The rest of the piece... "Assuming the Pose of 'Guy Saying No'" is worth your time (subscription may be required). And when it comes to yoga there's this and we NEVER pass up an opportunity to be self-promoting.
Actually, there's a plethora of New Age crap that should be rejected out of hand. Like crystals (what's so mystical about a clear rock?), "organic-fucking-anything/everything" (I was raised before "organic" took over whole aisles of our food stores and I seem to have turned out alright), feminism (of the strident sort - real men have ALWAYS respected women and women have always known their worth), and left-wing politics (you really need a parenthetical expansionary comment?). Among other things.
"Yamaste"
ReplyDelete?
I've been gone all day.
Did I miss something or is that a v-word?
I'm an idiot and I HATE it when this happens. Fixd.
ReplyDeleteYoga is good exercise, but all that meditation, mood, peace, etc, talk makes me crazy. I just want to stretch my bones a bit and get going.
ReplyDeleteNew Age, Yoga and organic, yeah, I just smile at them and go on!
ReplyDeleteI can imagine when I was a kid, sitting down at the supper table and asking my Mom, "Is this food organic?" and living to tell the tale!
I've tried yoga - both for exercise and meditation. I confess I like it for both. I do have a hard time quieting my mind and the focus required to hold those yoga poses does allow you to just let go of all the other crap.
ReplyDeleteAnd like Lou said - it is great exercise; good stretches and strenghtening.
That said - I've never sustained a yoga program. I find exercise in general to be quite ... boring.
Which may explain why I'm rather - bodacious. :-)
OK, yes, you had non-organic food 50 years ago. But the food was grown on non-corporate farms. By farmers who didn't work for some stockbroker in Zambia.
ReplyDeleteSo, the non-organic shit is now coming in from all over the world, and you can picture a water buffalo taking a crap on what you are eating right now. Or farmed by some communist bastard who wishes you were dead anyway.
Organic, if it means planted, raised, and processed in North America, is now the baseline for real food value to me. It really tastes better, and cooks better.
The rest has so many chemicals, you can't even wash it off. They use chemicals rather than water.
Lou: And that's the problem with this sorta stuff... it's loaded with excess baggage.
ReplyDeleteEd: My mom would've slapped me silly.
Kris: I suppose yoga might have some benefits as you've noted. I just can't get past the other shit.
Imported: You read too much. Or mebbe just the wrong things.