Major Yoga Studio and High-End Fitness Chain Defy Advisories, Stay Open During Hurricane Sandy

and what of the rescue workers and police who might’ve had to aid those students and teachers if things got worse? or the people who might’ve needed help more direly and would’ve have gotten it because rescue workers were occupied saving a bunch of yogis who ventured out in a storm, AGAINST the warnings of government officials? did you know that’s how most red cross and rescue workers die in crisises? saving people who went out against better judgement? that’s a yogic concept too: prajna aparadha = offense against wisdom. yoga is about more than just yourself. it’s about understanding that your actions have consequences larger than yourself, and that your negligence or lack of responsible and compassionate forethought can effect others. you may think going to open a studio with happy and willing staff and teachers was noble, but putting people’s lives at risk is against everything those students should have been learning.

Hey Rob A Booey, don’t undercut the discussion by chalking it up to boredom and people not having a life. I work for a yoga corporation and feel very fortunate to do so. I don’t “hate on” yoga corporations, but I see where people contributing to this dialogue are coming from with regards to their critique on the business decision of Pure/Equinox. This yoga corporation (like every corporation) is (and has to be) driven by the bottom line. At the same time, they are selling yoga (in its choice physical and philosophical incarnations) to the West (as the Western customer demands it be dolled out). Trying to stay profitable and give people what they will pay for will always be their first priority, but distorting yoga beyond recognition will eventually devalue their product. So it’s a fine line these yoga corporations walk. From reading the dialogue people have been having on this site, I think it’s been rationally argued that in many ways, what this corporation decided to do during hurricane Sandy was irresponsible. It put people’s lives in danger. Not yogic. (Himsa) If done for profit-motivated reasons instead of just sheer foolishness, super not-yogic (Parigraha and Himsa). However, since fortunately nothing catastrophic happened to the people attending class the evening of the storm, it ended up being a good thing for people. So like all debates, the issue is a little bit more complicated than who’s right and who’s wrong. In fact, this is the type of problem most debates are born from. Cut and dry cases are rarely debated. Black and white issues are boring. I would be “getting pretty bored at home” with a debate about whether or not I should shut my finger in a door, for example. But I digress. What I take issue with is you blowing off the whole debate and chalking it up as “hating on” anyone. Debate, disagreement, and dialogue are exactly the opposite of “hating”. It’s very loving, actually. People are talking because they care. And possibly because they enjoy debating. No surprise there. When have human beings not been known to do (and deeply relish in) that? And thank goodness there are people who don’t have “something better to do” than to carefully consider the choices that corporations are making with regards to how yoga is presented. Unless we look critically at this delicate endeavor, we (who supposedly care about yoga and have nothing better to do than that) will be castaways on a forgotten island that no one ever really got to visit, and therefor don’t plan on looking for anymore either. And then it’ll just be you, me and the other people who chimed in on this thread sitting around without a job or a decent place to do yoga ranting about where we went wrong.