My Good Life Yoga

You do not mention by name the current hoopla over John Friend and Anusara Yoga. Clearly, as an American businessman, as a yogi trained in a lineage in India, and as a member of Yoga Alliance, Friend knows about business ethics, yamas and niyamas (I have heard him chant Patanjali’s yoga sutras in Sanskrit from memory), and professional ethics.

The reports that Friend depended on staffers and senior teachers to stay mute about his whereabouts during sexual dalliances, and to receive drug deliveries at their studios on his behalf *proves* that he (and they) knew that what he was doing was wrong, unethical and illegal. He compromised his organization, his confidants and his followers, who made significant financial, professional and emotional commitments to Anusara.

On the other hand, yoga centers and ashrams are not the only places where adherents look away from unethical or illegal behavior as we have seen with JFK and others at the White House, Herman Cain at the National Restaurant Association, and “Godfather” knows where else, and in your Catholic diocese, to name only a few.
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

I don’t understand what you mean by “you can’t blame yoga.” I don’t think you have acknowledged Wendyness’ point: your article clearly singles out the dilution of yoga in the West and implies that the yoga taught in a pure tradition in Mysore is superior.

Ethics are ethics and humans are humans. I take the point of your article that yoga is more than asana. I frequently make the same point myself, as that was part of the certified yoga training I received. I believe Wendyness would agree that she is not offended by yoga, but that where and how yogis receive their training has no correlation with ethical or sincere behavior.

Yoga schools and yoga teachers like myself who are registered with Yoga Alliance sign ethics agreements when they are certified. That is the acknowledged modern Western version of the yamas and niyamas. All professionals sign them and many professional certification organizations require yearly ethics CEUs — see lawyers, teachers, therapists, doctors, etc. (alas, not yoga teachers, though many centers require them when they hire or contract a teacher).

Wendyness’ post demonstrates (anecdotaly, of course) that direct transmission of yoga, East or West, does not assume ethical behavior, which seems to me an accurate criticism of your otherwise informative and factual post.
More on Love
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

I would like to test out the idea that you can be more effective when you work smarter, not harder.

The claim – you can get up and running selling something on the web in virtually no time. The key is to come up with an email list that you use to bring people to your site. If the site is designed effectively, with a good story, free stuff that leads you to inexpensive stuff, to more expensive stuff, to most expensive stuff, you can offer a lot of value to people how need your information, while at the same time, you can sit back a watch the sales roll in.

The trick, of course, is putting the model together, then generating the content that provides information people need, and convincing people they need to buy it now before the price goes up or the content goes away (like Disney cartoon movies)

I selected Oprius  as my web-based online Contact Relationship Management (CRM) software some time ago, and I would like to utilize it more effectively. There are many features I haven’t explored. My next step is to run through the online tutorials and see what I missed. They also have customer support, so I will ask for some help in using the product most effectively.

Ann has started a masters group with a few friends who have projects they want to implement.

You know how you get a great idea, but since you don’t know the first thing about starting the project, you give up easily and sometimes forget about it?

Well, Ann’s idea was to start a little informal web group with her friends. The assignment is to come up with one question on Tuesdays that you would need to answer to move the project along.

I’m in the club too. Now I need to think of a question!