who is YogaDawg?

One of my favorite yoga sites is YogaDawg’s and the Dawg honors me occasionally by popping in to read this blog. He commented on my $49.99 yoga certification post so I thought I’d give him a shout-out.

“Yoga Teacher Sub-classes:

The Clueless

These are new teachers who have graduated from one of the many teacher training courses that Yoga studios offer. The course will be for 4 weekends for a month. They will have taken this course and might have been practicing Yoga for a couple of years.

The Very Clueless

Same as above, but they have taken the Express version of the course that is held for two weekends in the month. You pray they have some Yoga under their belts.

The Extremely Clueless

Same as above but have taken the weekend teacher training course and probably exaggerate about how much Yoga they have done. Your only line of defense is to completely ignore them, do nothing they say to do. If you make the mistake of following their instruction be prepared to get injured.

TIP: It is always a good idea to make sure your health insurance is current before taking a Yoga class with the Extremely Clueless.”

Yoga Students

The $1,000 Classer

The $1,000 Classer is easily identified by their Yoga accoutrements. They usually fall within the Yuppie and BoBo (Bourgeois Bohemian) class. Their mat will be all natural and organic with a surface embedded with grasses from the plains of India, hairs from the Indian Rhino, peacock feathers and dropping from Monkey Temple in Jaipur, India (sanitized and de-odorized of course). This mat will be in a designer mat bag patterned with images of Yoga poses, seated Buddhas and symbols of Shakti and Shiva. They will be wearing designer name yoga clothes made from a mixture of organic hemp and flex. They will sport nifty yoga wristbands and even Yoga shoes.

The $1,000 Classer will be carrying a bottle of water whose bottle is a designer masterpiece. It will contain water melted from the polar ice cap drilled from a mile and a half deep. They will have had so much fun buying this stuff that they will also purchase a yearly, unlimited pass the first day of class. The $1,000 Classer will be secure in the knowledge that the pass will allow them to strut around for a year in their new yoga getup. They will be salivating at all the cool Yoga stuff they see in the Yoga shop within the studio. The $1,000 Classer, however, will end up only attending one class….

No one is spared from Dawg’s scathing wit!

You rock, Dawg! There’s a special place in a Buddhist Hell Realm for both of us! See ya there!

how to be a yoga teacher for $49.99

How do I get certified?

“The process of getting yourself certified is very simple. All you have to do is buy the ExpertRating Yoga Instructor Certification for $49.99. Log in to your ExpertRating account using your password. Go through the Yoga Instructor courseware (which could take you from 1 week to a month depending upon how hard you work) and take the certification exam at your convenience. You can take the exam within 1 year of buying the certification. The result of the exam appears as soon as it is completed, and your certificate is mailed immediately.”

damn! I wish I would have known about this before! Would have saved me two trips to India and THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS!

This would be funny if it wasn’t so freakin’ sad.

good blogs and good laughs

Taking a break from writing about serious things, I want to highlight some good stuff I’ve read lately:

Flower Girl’s Rural India
Flower Girl’s blog is “all about Indian culture and customs, religion and rituals”. Her latest post is about the boat races in Kerala. Kerala is a state in India that’s on the Arabian Sea completely on the opposite side of south India from where I always go, and where I will spend 5 days in January doing yoga, getting ayurvedic massages, and hopefully ride an elephant!

Flower Girl also has her other blogs linked to this one, one of which is a blog with all types of Indian food recipes, some of which are to die for!

India Outside My Window is all about “the colors, sights, and sounds of South India.” What is nice about this blog is that there are sound clips where you can listen to the sounds of India. The one clip I listened to was the train — I closed my eyes and listened and it took me back to my train ride from Rameswaram to Chennai, when we stopped in the stations and I heard the chai and food vendors calling out what they had for sale.

Shirley Two Feathers’ blog Mandala Madness is “an eclectic mixture of mandala art, poetry, and inspirational quotes to expand, enrich, and enliven your experience in the now moment.”

Images like this one can be downloaded to use as your computer’s wallpaper and you can also buy mandala prints.

I’ve written before about Scott Carney’s blog “Trailing Technology” (see blog links in the sidebar) and his latest post is about singing. In that post you’ll find this link to his story on NPR radio: A culture of song in India’s Tamil Nadu.

Scott says, “I love the radio in Chennai. When I’m driving around the city I always tune into FM rainbow and listen to a daily game show called Aantakshri. The game is really simple. One caller starts singing a few bars of a song. They stop and then repeat the last sound from the last line of the song. The second caller starts singing some other song that starts with that last sound. It’s sort of like musical chairs, but with singing.”

It’s very true that if you stop and listen hard enough, you’ll hear someone’s voice singing somewhere amongst the cacophony of the dogs barking, the car horns blaring, and the temple music on the Chennai streets.

Home is where the heart is and my heart is in India.

If you like MadTV watch this episode . Michael McDonald’s character, the rotund and always hilarious, Marvin Tikva, takes a yoga class. I laughed so hard I almost fell out of my chair.

For those of you who know The Jamie Kennedy Experiment, this video needs no explanation. Jamie plays a substitute yoga teacher and most of the students in the class get “X-ed” — watch the expressions on the students’ faces!

Finally, scroll all the way to the bottom of this blog and you’ll see my Meez 3D ID. It’s not animated here, but if you want your own little animated version of you — and who wouldn’t? — click on the link and get your own. It’s free and enter my code “lindias” so we both can get some “coinz”.

Enjoy!