【○隻字片羽○雪泥鴻爪○】

○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○○

既然有緣到此一訪，
何妨放鬆一下妳(你)的心緒，
歇一歇妳(你)的腳步，

讓我陪妳(你)喝一杯香醇的咖啡吧！

這裡是一個完全開放的交心空間，
躺在綠意漾然的草原上，望著晴空的藍天，
白雲和微風嬉鬧著，無拘無束的赤著腳，
可以輕輕鬆鬆的道出心中情。

天馬行空的釋放著胸懷，緊緊擁抱著彼此的情緒。
共同分享著彼此悲歡離合的酸甜苦辣。
互相激勵，互相撫慰，互相提攜，
一齊向前邁進。

也因為有妳(你)的來訪，我們認識了。
請讓我能擁有機會回拜於妳(你)空間的機會。
謝謝妳(你)！

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2018年1月9日星期二

Technology Isn’t Actually New to Yoga: A History of Multimedia & the Practice in America

https://www.yogajournal.com/yoga-101/a-history-of-multimedia-yoga-practice-in-america

Technology Isn’t Actually New to Yoga: A History of Multimedia & the Practice in America

In the age of Instagram, yoga historian Philip Deslippe takes a look at how yoga has in fact embraced new forms of media and technology since its debut in the West. The question now: What will be next?

PHILIP DESLIPPE

SEP 28, 2017

In the introduction to the 2014 book Gurus of Modern Yoga, editors Mark Singleton and Ellen Goldberg tell readers that throughout the history of yoga “teachings, and gurus, have always adapted to the times and circumstances in which they find themselves.” The use of new forms of media and technology are one of the most significant ways that yoga has adapted over the last 125 years in America. The current popularity of yoga is due as much to its charismatic and influential teachers as it is to the printed page, the television camera, and the DVD. It may seem strange to place PBS stations on par with B.K.S. Iyengar, but it is doubtful that yoga in America would be as popular and prominent as it is today without both.

For many who see direct, in-person instruction as the touchstone for valid yogic practice, teaching through various forms of media can seem inferior, or even invalid, but they have also been incredibly democratic and given millions of people access to yoga despite being separated from direct contact with a teacher because of geographical distance, circumstance, or cost. A close look at many of the teachers who have used the printed page or screen finds them to be both aware of the limitations of their mediums and actively trying to expand beyond those limits. What follows are a few of the forms of media that have helped to shape the practice of yoga in America over the course of its history.

mail order lessons rishi singh gherwal book

Yoga taught on television faced fewer limitations than audio and allowed Americans to encounter yoga in the privacy of their own homes at a time when the practice was often seen as something foreign and bizarre. The immediacy and familiarity of regularly scheduled yoga on TV allowed many to build a rapport with teachers. Richard Hittleman was the first yoga teacher in America with a television program, Yoga for Health, which initially aired in Los Angeles in 1961 and then went national and continued for decades. One of the people inspired by Hittleman was Lilias Folan, who started her own show Yoga and You in 1970 through a local public television station in Cincinnati that eventually saw 500 episodes aired nationally on PBS stations for almost three decades. Folan described the process of filming her shows as one of connection and innovation, saying “because I could not see my students, their comfort and safety in poses was always a prime concern. Going slowly through the postures, pulling them apart, and being clear about details and alignment became a style of teaching.”Kathleen Hitchcock-Warrick, a contemporary of Folan, hosted her own Hatha Yoga show through a Milwaukee-based PBS station in the 1970s and 1980s. Today, the most popular televised yoga teacher in America is Wai Lana, whose show has seen over 200 episodes and been on air for over 18 years. It is hard to measure the exact audience of these televised yoga teachers. It was commonly claimed that these programs “reached millions of people,” and the long runs of shows like Yoga for Health and Yoga and You certainly attest to a sizable and consistent viewing audience. Perhaps even more importantly, the visibility of these programs over the decades and their presentation of yoga to Americans as accessible and approachable certainly set the stage for the massive popularity of yoga that followed.See also The Ancient & Modern Roots of Yoga

Rodney Yee’s Yoga for Beginners Gaiam DVD

Mail-Order Lessons (Early 20th Century)

In America during the 19th and early 20th centuries, there were massive movements of democratic adult education and self-improvement outside of traditional schooling. In addition to lectures, night schools, and programs for vocational training, by the early 20th century and up until the Second World War, there was a host of correspondence courses that allowed students to receive instruction on various subjects via the postal service. Yoga in America had its own robust form of distance education through mail-order courses. William Walker Atkinson, a Baltimore-born lawyer turned New Thought author, was one of the first Americans to write on yoga and did so under the pseudonym “Yogi Ramacharaka.” While Yogi Ramacharaka is now associated with the dark blue hard-covered books of his publisher, his yogic writings were initially offered to the public in late 1903 as a series of monthly lessons through the mail, and were only later bound together in book form.

In 1910, Sakharam Ganesh Pandit, a South Asian yoga teacher who came to America through the Theosophical Society (and inversely ended up becoming an attorney), also offered weekly correspondence lessons in “Yoga and Metaphysics.” Other teachers such as Rishi Singh Gherwal, A.K. Mozumdar, and Yogananda offered instruction through the post as well. These lessons were much more personable and powerful than a typical mail-order course in shorthand or radio repair. Often they echoed a special guru-student relationship and contained instructions or warnings to keep the teachings secret and away from the eyes of others. Atkinson wrote his Yogi Ramacharaka lessons in a direct and affable style and addressed his readers as if they were an actual class of students. Not only did thousands of people receive those lessons when they were first printed, but over 60 years later, a commune of Hippies felt so connected to them that they made and flew a flag with the digits zero-four, a tribute to the opening lines of Ramacharaka’s first lesson, addressed to “our students of the Yogi class of 1904.”

See also 10 Things We Didn’t Know About Yoga Until This New Must-Read Dropped

About Our ExpertPhilip Deslippe is a doctoral student in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California Santa Barbara. More at philipdeslippe.com