YD Links: White People Yoga, Beautiful Work of Body Art, Death Watch Gives Us a Life Countdown

Our weekly roundup of YD links from the interwebs:

• This week saw a shameful lack of self-awareness, or any awareness, with XOJane’s article from Jen Polachek, a white person who had a really tough time focusing in her yoga class because a “young, fairly heavy black woman” was looking on in “despair” and “contempt.” Folks, this is a lesson in how NOT to make progress in tolerance and acceptance in yoga, or in women’s blogs/lives for that matter. Further reading: Yoga Should Be a Culture, Not a Cult by Erika Nicole Kendall via NYMag.

• Speaking of white people, TIME magazine’s cover has seen its fair share, and the Buddhist community was not thrilled with their use of yet another young, blonde lady as its recent “Mindful Revolution” cover model. It has many of us asking, who should be the face of meditation?

• Not to sound morbid, but we all know we’re going die. It’s part of why we do yoga, right? So we can eventually lie peacefully in corpse pose. Just in case you wanted to know exactly when that was going to happen, this watch can tell you! We’re sure that makes you feel better.

• An interesting essay from Charlotte Shane on dissecting and analyzing the “yoga body” from its gross tangible form to the overarching state of its culture is well worth the read.

• Finally, artist Heather Hansen isn’t exactly a yogi but her artwork is like watching meditation in motion. She uses her body to create these beautiful pieces of art.

Visit her website for more images and info.