Yoga Sites: Exercise in Mediocrity

After some gentle pressuring from my son, who says he cares deeply about my health, I recently attended a yoga class. Not only did it promise a needed physical workout, but I also looked forward to the possibility of reduced stress and perhaps a glimpse of meditation.

Then yogi Stew, the teacher, mentioned he had a Web site.

By the time the spiritual high of his energizing and healing yoga postures had begun to vaporize, I was at the computer to take a look.

Actually, too much of what yogi Stew had to say had gone in one ear and out the other, and I thought the Web might prove useful in discovering more about a centuries-old approach to spiritualism and good health. After all, you hardly ever see an overweight Lama.

I also thought I might better be able to retain information I got from reading rather than from listening as I was turning myself inside-out in an ungainly, although successful, attempt to touch head to toe. I’m used to sitting upright.

I had suspected that the Web would have a ton of sites offering step-by-step sequences that reflect the thinking of the ages, the kind of wisdom that preceded modern medicine by multiples of generations.

It turns out that the Web, such a good source for so many things, generally is pretty mediocre on the yoga score. The karma may be fine, but most yoga sites on the Web are distinctly mundane--text, a few photos and a lot of advertising for services.

For openers, you might be surprised, as I was, that there are only a handful of Web sites about yoga for Southern California. I thought this was supposed to be Lotus Land. I could find only three yoga Web sites in greater Los Angeles, a couple in Orange County and one in Santa Barbara. And most of them, including Stewart Richlin’s Yoga on Melrose site (https://home.earthlink.net/~yoga108) are vague advertising for specific programs.

The local sites are the Yoga College of India of Beverly Hills (https://www.bikramyoga.com), the Yoga Center of California in Costa Mesa (https://www.yogacenter.org), the Yoga Place in Costa Mesa and Mission Viejo (https://www.yogaplace.com) and Bryan Kest’s Power Yoga in Santa Monica (https://www.poweryoga.com).

What the sites seem to share is a lot of persuasive talk. The message is: You should consider doing yoga. They differentiate themselves by offering more or less interesting insight into the historical or spiritual thinking that has brought yoga into the current day.

The Power Yoga site features pictures of bare-chested Bryan, adding in text that yoga should not be confused with a fitness routine based on aesthetics that feeds the ego over the spirit. There is a lot of discussion here about avoiding self-criticism, competition, reactiveness and discomfort. I could live here, I think. Then I look at the pictures of Bryan in yoga poses and wonder.

At the Yoga on Melrose site, Richlin offers an “Ask the Yogi” section with a few unchanging questions and answers that lend a bit more interactivity than most sites, as well as information on nutrition and vitamin supplements and, like others, text that is generally positive about yoga training.

“Yoga practice has the unique ability to put you on the path toward bliss and clarity and away from pain and tension in your body, speech, mind, heart and soul.”

This too sounds as if it is for me; I want bliss.

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Outside of Southern California, there are thousands of sites devoted to yoga exercise. Many are magazine sites, with articles about yoga (https://www.orangecoast.com/yoga.htm) or advertising for yoga-related tapes and videos.

One site (https://www.gigaplex.com/yoga/tenways.htm) offered advice about how to choose the best yoga class and walked through the several options in teaching style, comfort and reputation. (The advice, straightforward, but hardly insightful, was to sample a class.)

More yoga advice at https://www.nashville.net/~yoga/shsdtry.htm offered to answer the question “Should I try yoga?” But the answer was presented in blue type against a purple background--until it resolved to something more readable, but that took awhile--and I was not feeling blissful or enlightened.

A personal favorite, for the content as well as the name, was a site called https://www.navel.com/arianna/arianna3.htm. It also discussed yoga positions, or asanas, offering a portfolio of them being held in extremely photogenic settings, such as mountain ranges.

Of course, after sitting at the computer looking for yoga sites, I found my neck and back muscles were overly tight, the strain of staring at the screen was getting to me and my self-esteem was stressed. It seemed only logical to stop talking about yoga and try some stretches.

Without too much twisting of logic, the exploration was a good reminder that as interesting as the Net can be, sometimes information-seeking is too placid a way to learn. In this case, the calming voice of lawyer-turned-yogi Stew actually proves to be the far better teacher.

I did return to the Net to check out the Yoga Center again because its archive of thoughts-for-the-day drew me, magnet-like, to its would-be transcendent thinking.

It just figured that the thought on my day would be this Henry David Thoreau quote: “Read not the Times, read the Eternities.”

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Terry Schwadron is editor of Life & Style and oversees latimes.com, The Times’ Web site. He can be reached via e-mail at terry.schwadron@latimes.com