Source: www.nytimes.com
NEW YORK, January, 2010: 30 people signed up for a strange new hybrid of vigorous yoga, followed by a multicourse dinner of pasta, wine and chocolate, served on the yoga room floor. This almost seamless transition was designed to allow yogis to taste, smell and digest in a heightened state of awareness.
Friday’s event at Exhale Spa was the first in a series of “Yoga for Foodies” sessions devised by yoga teacher, David Romanelli, and coming soon to restaurants in Chicago, Cleveland and Dallas. Calling his mission “Yoga for Everyman”, Romanelli says “it’s a way of getting people in the door. The world is a better place if people do yoga. If they come because chocolate or wine is involved, I’m fine with it.”
The past decade has produced thousands of new foodies and new yogis. In 2007, a combination yoga studio and fine dining restaurant, Ubuntu, opened in Napa California. Yoga retreat centers now offer gourmet cooking classes and wine tastings.
But not everyone agrees that lusty enjoyment of food and wine is compatible with yogic enlightenment. “The culture of judgement in the yoga community is rampant, and nowhere more than around food. Nowhere is it written that only vegetarians can do yoga.” said yoga teacher Sadie Nardini.
There are many ways to “do” yoga: the term embraces meditation, worship, study, action, and physical movement. Yoga has many schools, like Ashtanga, Iyengar and Tantra, but has always been broadly understood as a route to enlightenment and purification - which is where consuming bacon and wine in yoga class becomes complicated. “People are starting to push back against the traditional, serious approach,” said Romanelli.
[HPI note: Hindu tradition and ayurveda hold that tamasic foods, such as chocolate and -- much more so -- the flesh of dead animals, will keep the person away from higher states of mind, which are the goal of yoga.]
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