Good grief on a stick. Put this in the “yoga nightmares file – stuff that sounds ridiculous enough you say psssht that would never happen.” So imagine you’re chilling out in Savasana at your local studio. There’s no one around so you have a nice break to yourself to meditate and relax. Suddenly you sense the presence of someone hovering. When you go to look, it’s some dude masturbating two feet away. WTF.
This reportedly happened last week to 55-year-old Keiko Herskovitz a female yoga student at NYC’s Zsa Zsa Gabor of studios, Pure Yoga West. She claims was so rudely roused from her savasana by a teenage maintenance employee jacking off. And she’s suing.
According to the court papers obtained by the NY Post,
At first Herskovitz, 55, ignored the noise until “she felt that there was a person next to her, and she opened her eyes to find a Pure Yoga employee, a maintenance associate, about two feet away, masturbating,” the suit alleges.
Herskovitz “confronted the maintenance employee and asked, ‘what are you doing?!'” she recalls in the court papers. The man, described as a 19-year-old, “quickly covered himself with a yoga blanket and ran out of the room,” the documents allege.
The rest of the story plays out with Herskovitz immediately telling the manager, the manager responding he “was a good employee,” Herskovitz reporting the incident to the police after the unsatisfactory nonresponse from Pure except for a later statement in email that the company (parented by Equinox) is “aware of the allegations and takes them seriously. Police have told us there’s no evidence of a crime.”
Herskovitz is suing Related Companies, which owns Equinox, for unspecified damages and she’s hired a private investigator to determine if the maintenance employee “has been involved in additional incidents.”
[photo via sociallysuperlative.com]
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Earlier…
Ok, but hang on a second. What was the yoga teacher doing when this all happened? Why wasn’t s/he intervening before the maintenance worker ran out of the class? I know meditating is a good way to spend the time, but to not notice something like that says the teacher wasn’t present with the class.
Agreed! I don’t partake in Savasana when I teach so I can observe my students and be observant in case there are ever any issues.
I agree. What was the teacher doing, and how was the room open access to the maintenance employee anyway? Doesn’t the studio have a door that closes?
I hope they did not put that yoga blanket back on the rack.
shoulda just given him a hand
Sorry, but the story does not make any sense in my head. I agree with the comment of the teacher being in the room when students are in meditation, I seldom close my eyes during Savanasa so I can observe my students and make sure they are not sleeping. Second, the maintenance worker, was he taking a class, what in the world was he doing in that room, it just doesn’t compute in my head.
If it was during savasana does this count as necrophilia?
Ha! Good one. Maybe he’s a tantric?
ANYTHING’S POSSIBLE
This yoga studio is just another upscale gym.
It is commercial and profit-driven. It can’t vet its employees and can’t afford to test them for the right amount of reverence and attitude before hiring them. This is what happens when the karma yoga cycle can get broken; you have hirees who have no respect for the practice.
That studio shoulda stayed small and not evolved to a megashala …
Yoga works! She must be a hot 55 year old if some guy busts out his junk in broad daylight.
Just. Wow.
Have you heard of the Everyday Sexism Project? Check it out: http://www.everydaysexism.com You may discover why so many women find that sort of comment objectionable.
So easily offended. Maybe your style of yoga isn’t working out for you.
This is nothing compared to those moaning little “yogasms” women in the classes I used to take used to have. And this wasn’t in sivasana, either. Can we sue our fellow students, too?
I do kind of like the implication of this story that a yoga studio is on par with the bus station restroom.
Karen, get a life.
I checked out your “website”. Buncha women bashing on men. Sexism can go both ways.
At what point has yoga become a stormfront for feminism?
Maybe it was John Friend?
A nineteen year old young man who has a job as a maintenance worker in a gym setting who is masturbating while on the job watching people who are supposed to be in corpse pose is certainly inappropriate to say the least, but all in all I would have to say I find this relatively harmless. At that age harmones are raging, and we are a ridiculously puritanical society with some taboos against some very natural, normal behaviors that are, granted, usually carried out behind a locked door or in a dark room. What I find really shocking is that someone would bring in the police and take action by hiring an attorney to file a lawsuit. The young man’s behavior was wholly inappropriate and he a needs a mentor, a counselor, someone to talk to him, but the woman who has taken legal action is the one with the major issues, in my opinion. He didn’t actually harm anyone as far as I can tell, and her highly charged reactive behavior shows a great lack of understanding and compassion.
Wow! I couldn’t disagree more! That’s a form of sexual harassment. A 19 year old is not a little boy. He’s a grown man who knows better than to expose himself in public. The manager should have taken care of the matter, but they didn’t. That’s why the woman is taking legal action.
In addition, it’s not harmless. It’s boundary crossing on a number of levels and can cause psychological harm.
Yes, he could certainly benefit from a mentor or counseling, but what he did is most certainly NOT harmless.
The plaintiff was probably lying in shavasana in between classes. No teacher would have been present.
Vision_Quest2,
How long have you been at Pure? It used to feel like a sanctuary to me, but the atmosphere has changed.