Revelry Review.

Yesterday I saw the new documentary, "Enlighten Up!".  

The basic premise is that the director picks an ordinary guy--Nick-- who doesn't practice yoga and has him commit to trying different kinds of yoga for an extended period of time.  She sets out to prove that yoga has some level of a transformative impact on its practitioners and to capture that on film.  Many important and interesting yogis appear here--Pattahbi Jois, BKS Iyengar, Dharma Mittra, Cyndi Lee, Ana Brett and Ravi Singh, Sharon Gannon and David Life, etc.  Nick takes classes in New York, Hawaii and India. 

Without giving anything away, I will say that I thought this was an interesting way of examining the multitude of ways that yoga is practiced today, what yoga is and is not, and, more importantly, why it is practiced.  

This was the kind of movie where I wished a discussion session for the audience was built in afterward.  I wanted to hear the other yogis in the audience talk about their experiences too.  

I wish the whole world would do yoga, but I know from my own experience and from others close to me that yoga tends to appear to us when we need it the most.  For example, I thought I was trying out yoga to lose weight but I can see now that I was drawn to the mat, and stayed there, for reasons much bigger than that.  In fact, if I only wanted to lose weight, I probably would've been better off spending those 1.25 hours on a treadmill.  I often say, and it's true, that I pay for not-exactly-cheap yoga classes because without them, I'd need to pay a much more expensive therapist.   Yoga has taught me to listen to my body, to slow down, to value and believe in myself, to get out of my head, to stay present, to choose happiness and to follow my heart.  I simply cannot put a price on all of that.  I am convinced that yoga saves me from myself time and time again.

So, for my fellow yogis and yoginis out there, why do you practice yoga?

{Photo credit: IMDB}