It is confirmed, cats own the internet! And according to this feline expert, cats probably own yoga, too. Jeffrey Boussolini is a sociologist, philosopher and a feline expert who runs his (own self-funded?) Center for Feline Studies, something that captures his interest and fascination when he’s not studying his other subject, nuclear weapons. One of his main focuses at the Center for Feline Studies is cat yoga.
A yogi himself, Jeffrey found cats would imitate yoga moves or join in during practice so he decided to launch an official and highly scientific study in his lab (he even has a lab coat!) to try to “systematically look at yoga with cats” since their basic movements are pretty much yoga, being so limber and all, and they like to join in when we do it “as a kind of intersubjective, communicative experience.” Unfortunately, Quatrina and Prima aren’t into exhibiting this for the cameras. (It’s a long-ish video in internet terms. Cat yoga around the 5:16 mark.)
This Vice produced video tries to make sense of our kitty cuteness obsession, pointing out its frivolity while poking fun at the rather bizarre kooksterness. But crazy or not, any cat owning yogi will agree with Jeffrey that there is definitely some innate yoga-ness in those fuzzy felines and you don’t even need a lab coat, just a mat and a cat. If you don’t believe us, you haven’t seen this.
“It seems like a very likely story that yoga and a number of martial arts were developed based on a really careful observation of the way that animals behaved and then trying to imitate that for humans,” Jeffrey posits.
It’s true, in yoga we often look like this…
And this…
And this…
Or this…
But one day, we’ll look like this…
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Earlier…