Yoga, a practice thousands of years old, is still in it's infancy in the West. As recently as the seventies a handful of western students have brought back what they have learned on the mat from gurus in India and the result is, especially in the last ten years, a study in expotential growth. You can not go into a health club in this country that doesn't offer at least one yoga class. In it's replacement of aerobics in the eighties as the vanguard fitness craze, much of the subtleties and directives of yoga have been left by the way side. Indeed, the postures--only a fraction of what yoga is--are designed to enable sitting for prolonged time in meditation postures.
Not to sound like a malcontent, much of what yoga journal encapsulates is good. Each issue has at least one good article from one of the handfuls of present day western yoga gurus. I can't help wince, however, at some of the shameless advertisments and the move to incorporate yoga into the path of a ravenous consumer culture. You can buy all the props, tapes, books and yoga clothes that you want, but when it comes right down to it, it is about you just doing that first sun salutation everyday.
Yoga journal has a huge readership, and I wish it would spend less time on advertisements and more on the fabric and intracacies of a mercurial and wonderful science.
