Yogis for Obama

In New York this weekend, visitng my family...

The yoga studio I frequent in the city is called Laughing Lotus, and I like it, because in a city full of McYogas, it's easy to feel lost in the shuffle. Laughing Lotus is small enough to feel like a community, without losing any sense of legitimacy. The walls are bright pink and orange, and they have tea and cookies as you leave. Classes--vinyasa style (which links breath to movement and is often very flowy, moving at a faster pace) are challenging, and incorporate a refreshing variety of the more spiritual aspects of the practice--mantras (chanting in Sanskrit), pranayama (breathing) and meditation. Parker Posey does yoga here too, but whatever, in New York we don't care about famous people.

Before the practice started, our instructor, Alison, told us how one of her favorite students called her the other evening, saying, "I'm sitting in a bar eating a hamburger and drinking a martini...am I still on the path?"

It was nice, she was like "Do you think you're still on the path? If you think you're on the path, then you're on the path, you know, you take it step by step and learn to let go of things in your life when you're ready to. I smoked for two years and, you know, it was fun, but eventually I was like 'Fun? Or killing myself slowly?' So I quit. You do what you can."

Also, I've noticed that they "Om" louder in New York than they do in Baltimore.

At the 12:00 pm class (yoga is the perfect pre-brunch activity...as Christopher Hitchens says, one of the best parts of working out is the way a cocktail tastes after you're finished) on Saturdays, all proceeds go to benefit a certain cause. Most often, these causes are charities, they pick a new one every month. This month all proceeds go to benefit Barack Obama's campaign.

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It's quite controversial (I told some Baltimore yogini friends and they were shocked...oh you New Yorkers, you're so openly liberal). But Alison did well tying in the spiritual with the political.

In order to make a lasting CHANGE in your life, it's necessary to make space for the new by letting go of the old. Every four years it becomes necessary to throw out the old administration in order to make room for the new one--we can't have two presidents, now can we? We have no problem doing this--esPECially this year. Yet why do we, Alison asked, in our quest to make change, insist on holding on to elements of the past--relationships, habits, past experiences, burgers and martinis--we no longer need?

Laughing Lotus's website tells us more:

Yogis and Hindus alike invoke and honor the elephant headed Ganesha at the beginnings of rituals and other undertakings. As many of us here in the U.S. seek new beginnings through voting in the upcoming election, we too ask for Ganesha's blessings as October's Love Saves The Day benefits the presidential campaign of Barack Obama. Senator Obama embodies many values that yogis too embrace: compassion, honesty, and economic and social justice. Like yogis, he too seeks moksha, or liberation, though of a different kind. As he has said: "Today we are engaged in a deadly global struggle for those who would intimidate, torture, and murder people for exercising the most basic freedoms. If we are to win this struggle and spread those freedoms, we must keep our own moral compass pointed in a true direction." Obama advocates a yogic equanimity that is responsive rather than reactionary, and a humane morality, one that is not lost even in the face of fears about global politics and material well-being.