Via yogadork.com
Heads up New Yorkers, if you blink you could miss Tara Stiles doing yoga in a glass box on wheels. You heard that right. Celeb “rebel yoga” teacher, Tara Stiles, is promoting her new “FIT with Tara Stiles” yoga program at W Hotels by traveling around NYC all day in a “Yoga Truck” where her yoga show is on display for all the lucky city folks to see in a somewhat unfortunate caged-animal scenario. Because a skinny, model-y white woman doing yoga in a box for everyone else to gawk at isn’t a metaphor for anything. Nope. (Sometimes we have to wonder if we’re all on some sort of Yoga Candid Camera.)
Ok This is how we know that the world is coming to an end as we know it….
Is it not bad enough that Westerns have taken the sacred and once spiritual practice of yoga and commercialized it, created a line of fashion attire around it, or that a pimp-like Indian man, named Bikram capitalized on Westerns desire to concomitantly seem spiritual while looking “hot” by heating the yoga room, reducing the physical science of the practice to a mere 26 postures (and 2 breathing exercises) while teaching in a Speedo. There is even a yoga competition where avid practitioners and teachers alike put on their skimpiest outfits and perform a 3minute yoga routine in front of an audience for a trophy, bragging rights, and I am certain a fair amount of cash. This had always struck me as rock bottom, that is before I heard about Tara Stiles’ shenanigans. The very last thing most women in New York City need is to see a skinny white woman in a leotard, with her legs behind her ears riding by as they bob and weave, dodging slow walking, texting, spatially unaware folks, and tourists. Is it not bad enough that we have constant printed reminders of how far we are from the ideal on every billboard and bus that goes by? Do we need a human being in a glass box telling us we need to do better? I just have to say, when you have just dipped out of the office to indulge in a “this never happened cookie” the last thing you need is Tara Stiles in a downward facing dog shaking her head. Instead of saying Namaste, she says “You’regonnastay… FAT!”
I get it we all get it, it’s about marketing and promotion and I am sure that she will not be fighting to hold that tree pose as the truck rolls by, but I DO know that most who see her will hope that one of the wheels hits a pothole!!!
Namaste