Yoga Bootie Call: Phoning it in

Who needs instructional DVDs these days, with those unsympathetic strangers guiding you coldly through the silver screen, such a energy chasm between the two of you? Hark! Now with the incredible breakthroughs of science, you can still do yoga with your much beloved yoga teacher, no matter where you are! How you ask? Why with this new fandangled contraption called…the telephone! Yes folks we have taken a cool 2 steps forward and 100 paces back to the age of the yoga bootie call. This article in the NY Daily News today really brings a new meaning to “phoning it in” with students rolling out their mats thousands of miles away while their teachers call the class over the phone! We kid you not.

“A lot of our clients travel quite a bit, and are often in remote places or where they’re not able to access yoga,” said Julie Wald, who owns Namaste New York.

“They also have very deep and fulfilling relationships with their yoga instructors.”

Wald says she has conducted about 20 phone yoga sessions, which she says is like putting on a yoga DVD or CD.

“It’s the same concept but totally personalized,” she said.

“It’s such a beautiful way to have a spiritual connection with someone.”

Does this weird anyone else out? The concept is great – if you love your yoga teacher it’d be super to practice with she or he from afar – but doesn’t it kind of sound a little too much like a yoga bootie call?

And quite honestly it’s a bit lazy, making us wonder why they don’t go all out with video chat, with computers! To be fair this really is a true indication of how yoga is being adapted to fit the fast-paced, ever-transient lives of people today and an example of the effect of “technology” in assisting the shift ( a very interesting, and controversial, topic in itself), so we can’t knock it entirely. And at least people are trying, right? But once again, we at YogaDork, sit back, hands folded, awaiting the day when our class is led by a life-sized hologram of our favorite teacher right in our living room. But hey, the telephone is a start!

Yoga Class by Phone Not a Stretch [NY Daily News]