When Did Yoga Start Causing Injuries?

So let me get this straight: yoga now has a "bad boy?" Yoga features "competitive trash talk?" Yoga needs a "road warrior" to preach its many benefits? This is yoga we're talking about - meditative poses like downward facing dog, saying "namaste" to our mat neighbor. We now need to be warned about the injuries that might result from undertaking yoga too strenuously, too sweatily? You can get a drink after performing the lotus position during Happy Hour Yoga in the Twin Cities?

What about the folks who just want 20 minutes to sit on their mats, breathe, and be calm? Like dedicated but subdued sports fans, they have been banished to the margins of the media's discourse on exercise. 

It seems we've taken a peaceful activity like yoga and turned it into a multimedia, multiplatform business run by zealous folks like John Friend, a multitasking dynamo and founder of Ansuara, a form of yoga that's "nothing like the more rigid schools that demand students repeat the same poses in the same way at every single class." Friend claims his spin on yoga is "accessible. Easily applicable. And yet it has depth and sophistication." 

Friend's response to all that rigidity sounds comforting, even empowering; the latter is the point of pretty much every activity we undertake in our cost-benefit happy society. "Failing to execute a post meant nothing more than that you might succeed next time," wrote Mimi Swartz of The New York Times Magazine. Friend quietly encourages to "contain divinity within ourselves," Swartz explained, and "express our inner goodness to fulfill our obligation to better our world."

Deadly, But Made to Seem Desirable

They’re a Sunday School standard: The Seven Deadly Sins. Behaviors in which we’re never supposed to engage. Attributes we’re never supposed to exhibit. Big-time no-nos. Way beyond the humble faux pas.

But is it possible the mass media today tell us the Sins are actually desirable behavioral traits? Put another way, what do the media ask us, through the narratives they present, to believe about the Sins? I’m not a fan of “hypodermic” models of media effects, which suggest a numbed audience instantly impacted by the onslaught of information it receives. Still, the media can suggest what we should be thinking about. By paying a lot of attention to a person, place, or event, the media persuade us that they are, well, worth paying attention to.

            

So after resisting the temptation to put actor Charlie “Winning” Sheen at the top of each list, I compiled a few examples that support my point. Here goes (the sins are listed in alphabetical order):

Envy:  This is right in the media’s wheelhouse. To survive, they must sell audience to advertisers; we have to be made to want the goods and the lifestyle they sell. In this world, you can’t be happy with who you are. It’s not a matter “of wanting what you’ve got,” to quote singer/songwriter Sheryl Crow in Soak Up The Sun. A constant state of envy theoretically keeps you coming back for more goods. It’s kind of like a self-help expert who tells you strike out on your own – seize the day, find your spirit, unleash your personal power – but demands that in doing so you return from time to time for advice. So we end up arranging the most outlandish wedding or making over our home to include granite counter tops, a dual vanity, and enough distance between we and our neighbors, in a house so large and garish it screws up property values. In preparation for the wedding all time, most women, suggest the media, turn into fire-breathing, overly pampered whiners who spend most of their time barking orders and spewing bleeped obscenities at the bridal party – all so they can have two-story terrarium centerpieces, a horse-drawn carriage to bring them to the church, and fireworks behind the altar designed to ignite when “I dos” are exchanged. Our desire to be envied purportedly extends to education, where we’re on our kids to attend the right schools as soon as they outgrow the bassinet. Parents frantically seek kindergarten slots given out with an eyedropper, as they teach their kids to begin their legacies with classroom and on-field/on-court excellence.

In Defense of Santa

I didn’t think it was possible for Christmas-themed television commercials to get any more aggressive. I thought the ponytailed woman in the Target ads, who gleefully shouts to unseen neighbors as she reads a store sale circular on her front porch, and trains for holiday shopping – and present wrapping – with the dedication of an Olympic athlete, was as zealous as it got.  

And I remain hopeful that society will overcome the breathless news coverage of Black Friday, which this year predictably highlighted the handful of dysfunctional folks who took matters of consumer justice into their own hands while the rest of us held open doors and places in line or, as in the case of our local big box store, stayed home, having stashed their wallets until the economy improves.

Then Best Buy decided to go after Santa Claus.

The Christmas ads created for the electronics store chain take media holiday zealotry in a troubling new direction. In one, a salesperson punctuates an assurance that the store will match a competitor’s price with “look out, Santa.” The shopper’s happiness in getting a good price turns to competitive fervor: “Oh, yeah,” she says with a level of fierceness that would startle Tyra Banks.

We next see Santa about to put a bottle of cologne in the stocking of the shopper’s husband. The woman turns on the lights. “Daddy don’t want no cologne,” she says, a massive HDTV sitting on a table to her left. “Wow,” Santa says as a lion attacks a zebra in full flat-screen splendor. “Yeah – wow,” the woman proudly retorts. “Look at that.” Cologne still in hand, Santa recoils slightly, although it’s not clear whether it’s a reaction to the Darwinian violence unfolding in front of him, or because he senses that the creators of the Christmas play may want to “go in another direction.”

In another spot, a shopper marvels at how many gifts Best Buy has available for less than $100. “Guess Santa better watch out, huh?” suggests a chipper employee. The woman, holding a digital camera in one hand and an e-reader in the other, fires a knowing “Santa is toast” nod.

Next we see Santa attempting to put a toy truck into a stocking already bulging with snazzier goodies. The woman we saw moments earlier waits for him. She leans against a jam in the entryway, holding a mug of coffee.

“Awww…guess I didn’t leave any room for you,” she says with high-pitched arrogance, sweep-pointing at the largesse under her family’s tree.

“Awkward,” she adds in a slightly higher voice with a mocking pout.

Santa sniffs and nods slightly, his leg having just been swept by the bully in The Karate Kid.

“Maybe you could fill his,” the triumphant woman suggests. She points downward, where Ralph, a small dog dressed as a reindeer, waits, a stocking in his mouth. She gestures to Santa with her mug and whispers “good night” before heading off to bed.  The dog’s off-camera bark startles Santa as “Game On, Santa” appears onscreen.

A third ad ends with yet another victorious shopper seated in her living room, menacingly drinking the glass of milk meant for Santa. The accompanying cookies sit untouched nearby, with a kid-made “For Santa” sign reminding us of their intended recipient. They’ll be devoured next.

Is this what Christmas has come to? Gloating over vanquishing Santa? Before you feign surprise or indignation, consider that we’ve recently taken to celebrating breathing and stringing together consecutive steps, so in need of calibration is our national “hero” meter.