Because if there’s ONE thing yoga needs more of it’s reality television. Random awkward yoga on MTV’s Dating Naked and with the Kardashians just doesn’t count. We need a whole reality TV show revolving around yoga because, we don’t know, it just doesn’t feel REAL enough until it’s on TV.
Snarkypants aside, we’re not joking. This may actually end up being a very real thing. According to YAMA Talent’s facebook page, they’re currently shopping around the idea to networks.
YAMA is like a talent agency, booking agency and reaper of your innocent soul marketing/PR agency all rolled into one, focusing on building your brand and helping you make a name for yourself in the yoga world, ie. selling DVDs, headlining Wanderlust, getting a product sponsorship, starring in a reality TV show (apparently), or anything else that speaks success to you as a yoga personality.
This was the official posting shared via “yoga star” Sadie Nardini’s (who we presume would star in said show) and YAMA’s facebook pages:
WOULD YOU WATCH A YOGA REALITY SHOW? PLEASE Like this post if so…we’re showing TV networks that you’ll watch something besides housewives fighting on TV! They’re not sure if you will. THE NUMBER OF LIKES HERE will help us make a difference and create an entertaining show with a fierce, empowering message!!
So there you have it. Your dreams and/or worst nightmare may soon come true! YAMA and Sadie Nardini doing a yoga reality show. This sounds familiar.
We have to wonder, though, what type of reality show would it be this time. Would it be all insidery and uncomfortable like Dance Moms or Duck Dynasty? Or a competition show like American Ninja Warrior or The Amazing Race, or better yet, America’s Got Talent? Or maybe it’s a new makeover show – let’s call it Blissformations – where regular old, unhealthy eating, ungrateful non-yogis get their lives back in order with all the yoga quick fixes the gurus can muster in 30 minutes! Coming to Lifetime this Spring.
Hey, who knows. Maybe it’s the one thing that will bring us all together as a yoga nation, united under strong cores and the perpetual state of self-transcendent bliss. We’ll leave enough space to be surprised.
Are we ready for a yoga reality show? Did we ever really ask for one? Let’s help them out. Take our poll below.
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Earlier…
- Kali Barbie? We’re Not Sure How We Feel About This
- This Video of a Woman Doing Yoga on the Ledge of a Building is Freaking Everyone Out
- Yoga Americana: The Full-Pose Phenomenon
The Interview: Sadie Nardini on Signing to YAMA Talent Agency, “Unyogic” Fame and the Virtual Kula
Here comes more stereotypes that yoga doesn’t need. I can tell right now it will amplify the avidya prevalent in commercialized yoga. Everyone will now want to be a yoga teacher. If you think competition is hard now, you will now be competing with the corporate yoga machine. Can’t say we didn’t see this coming.
OMG!! I hope everyone becomes a yoga teacher! What a wonderful world….
OMG!! I hope everyone becomes a yoga teacher! What a wonderful world….we can all teach and take from each other then. xoSadie
That would be great if everyone was a yoga teacher. All chiefs and no indians. That way yoga would not be commercialized because all the studios would go out of business. Of course there would be no one who would actually show discernment because that would be “very unyogic.”
Why would any young attractive white female NOT want to be a yoga teacher? They are the new trophy girlfriends/wives. Have you ever wondered how a yoga teacher who teaches 3 classes a week and gets paid $40 a class can afford to go to a yoga retreat at a fancy resort in Costa Rica?
Hey all!
Thanks for mentioning our intentions to get a TV show about the yoga world. I do want to say that it’s EXACTLY because reality TV has gotten so dysfunctional and as bad a rap that we as yogis want to come in, create something entertaining and exciting, BUT with a transformative and empowering message in the end. Think of reality shows like Anthony Bourdain’s NO Reservations or Diners, Drives and Dives–these shows are real-life but also informative, fun, and only a little snarky:) Ellen DeGeneres has a talk show, but she does so much good for the world. Like this, only yoga-style. I see some of the commenters here getting reactive to the OLD paradigm of what we think of as reality TV, and trust me, no one is more disgusted at the current state of some of these shows as I am. So I and my innocent, soul-sucking crew (;) are on a mission to change what people watch, and help spread the word about yoga to as broad an audience as possible. I really hope that, especially if you don’t like the things you see on TV now, and you love this practice as much as I, Ava and others who are creating this show do, then you will support us to try and make a difference on the networks–even in our own, small way.
Namaste!
Sadie
It sounds like you have the best intentions, however people are not going to want to see an empowering message, they want to see drama. Once the ratings start to slip, you will be asked to do things against your better nature. I hope for your sake and for yoga’s sake you make the right decision when that time comes.
Hi YogiBattle. I totally get that yours is the prevailing thought, as if the talent are always out of control of the show. Well, they can’t show what you don’t show them. I know because I already wrote and was the host of 65 hourlong episodes of my reality yoga show–called Rock Your Yoga, on Veria TV, now in over 20 million homes and counting. The producers were from other, more standard reality-type shows and yet they were respectful, and I got to make it fun, I hope–funny, important and chock-full of useful information. I know how things work from the inside, and I’m confident that with the right network and the right contract, I can do the same again–only now with my other yoga friends:) If we can’t hold our integrity, it ruins the career I built from scratch for a decade. I’m not likely to jeopardize that for the sake of ratings, or anything else. Once a yogini, always a yogini….never fear:)
Good luck…I quit watching TV about 5 years ago, and say with regret that this project will not motivate me to resume.
reality tv exists to trivialize all and any experience. it is a way of denying reality and the experience of truth, existing so we can think we have experienced the full range of emotions, yet the emotions are limited to those whose nature insists on limits, like contempt and tribalism; they feel good but only insofar as they are maintained as a wholly encompassing presence, for when they are allowed to wane and vanish the limits they insisted on as necessary are shown to be unnecessasary, the product of fear and not the expression of safety they make themselves out to be.
Hi YogiBattle. I totally get that yours is the prevailing thought, as if the talent are always out of control of the show. Well, they can’t show what you don’t show them. I know because I already wrote and was the host of 65 hourlong episodes of my reality yoga show–called Rock Your Yoga, on Veria TV, now in over 20 million homes and counting. The producers were from other, more standard reality-type shows and yet they were respectful, and I got to make it fun, I hope–funny, important and chock-full of useful information. I know how things work from the inside, and I’m confident that with the right network and the right contract, I can do the same again–only now with my other yoga friends:) If we can’t hold our integrity, it ruins the career I built from scratch for a decade. I’m not likely to jeopardize that for the sake of ratings, or anything else. Once a yogini, always a yogini….never fear:)
Hi Paul, I have to respectfully disagree. There are many documentary-style programs on TV that are ‘real’ as TV can be, but also informative and positive. Our will be one of those.
Namaste!
Sadie
please call it a documentary, if that is what it is. please continue to call it a reality show if that is what it is. please use terms as people understand them in the present day, or qualify them to make the meaning clear, for these are the words we use for understanding. victory to the mother!
please call it a documentary, if that is what it is. please continue to call it a reality show if that is what it is. please use terms as people understand them in the present day, or qualify them to make the meaning clear, for these are the words we use for understanding. victory to the mother!
It takes courage to create, and the world is a better place for all if the projects people with integrity have managed to give birth to. I have to wonder why so many people react so negatively to the possibility of something beautiful based upon their negative experiences of the past. I am a yogi and I would watch the reality yogi show because of the many beautiful experiences I have had in yoga studios and because of the beauty and integrity I know that are in the people at Yama and in Sadie. Open up people, and drop the negatives by the wayside. Give the yoga reality show a bit of space to breathe. It won’t topple your world and you just might be surprised. I for one would love to have the option to see the forms that would emerge.
It also takes courage to stand up to the commercialization of something sacred. Please see the poll results, this is not something that the yoga community wants or needs.
The may be a place in broadcast world for a yoga reality show but believe me it won’t come from someone in the yoga world.
Television is a business. If you were are “inside” as you claim to be why not figure out best home for your show, research which production companies provide content (i.e. who they buy from), write a short treatment/proposal and go from there.
I can save you a lot of time and energy – if you don’t have a clear concept you are lost before you begin. Stick to yoga – IN MY OPINION. You don’t need to agree or disagree or comment.
I read this blog not to read or see the likes of “you”, the Nardini, Stiles, Budig etc. just as I don’t expect to eat fast-food in a traditional restaurant.
Stop trying to look cool and “I love you all”-like, cause all you love is your image.
Your “yoga” is flat and photoshoped, and your comment on how the “scholars” explained that nothing is “unyogic” is typically the kind of dangerous manipulation of wisdow that threatens yoga or any other form of spirituality.
Above all, you talking about what is unyogic is like an advertising company talking about the truth.
Where can yogi (ni) s go when they just want to learn and share quietly, without seeing these self-satisfied smiles ?
Brilliant and totally correct. Post of the year.
I think we need this sort of positive shows on TV, but personally, I just don’t have the time to watch anything anymore. Best of luck wherever this goes!
No problem for me. I don’t watch TV. This will not cause me to begin. So many other things to do in life!
wow, tnks this article so give me info….
Your over aggressiveness smacks of insecurity in this thread Sadie.
I guess this would be the perfect vehicle for Sadie to show off her latest hair style. She does sound like an egotistical bore with her bragging about how many of her own shows she did but the average reality tv show viewer might just buy the idea especially if she gets the Miley Cyrus tongue thing going (or get some live naked toesox action going) . Can’t see any interest in serious yoga circles for this kind of self-promotion
Everyone already is a yoga teacher!
I hope this is truly a reality show and now a puff piece of a show where the yogis are sitting around in their hip apartment in Venice drinking kombucha, shopping online for mala beads and taking selfies.
It may work. Here are some suggestions:
1. Show what yoga teachers actually say about other students or fellow yoga teachers. “I can’t stand that douche bag guy who does pushups in between vinyasa”
2. The dilemma of whether or not dating some guy will detract or enhance their yoga image? “I can’t date Josh. He drives a truck and I only date guys who drive Prius’s”
3. How about a special on how what happens at Wanderlust stays at Wanderlust would be cool. Perhaps one where the yoga teacher or teachers try to go to an after party for a particular musical act in order to help on of the band members get in touch with their mūla bandhas.
4. The Breaking Brachmacharya Episode – The yoga teachers go on girls only trip to Vegas to meet guys, drink and actually eat animal products.
5. Finally solve the mystery of how young attractive yoga teachers who teach only 3 classes @ $30 per class can afford to travel to yoga retreats around the world.
Now that’s something I’d watch! 😀
All of them, except possibly for #2, are plausible. I’D watch. And that would be REAL reality. You could also add about their boob jobs. And those first couple months, after they left marketing or high finance, and lived/slept inside their new studio (NOT outfitted as a live-work loft; but a real, bare-bones studio …)
Yawn, I’m bored. TV sucks.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!