The economy may be bad right now, but yoga, it appears, is thriving during the downturn.
More than 400 people have signed up for the New England Iyengar Yoga Conference at the Rhode Island Convention Center on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, even though fees for the event range from $175 for a full day pass to $375 for the entire weekend, and many are also booking hotel rooms in Providence and will have travel and meal expenses.
Patricia Walden, founder of the BKS Iyengar Yogamala center in Cambridge, Mass., who is a popular seller of yoga DVDs and one of the biggest draws of this weekend's conference, says that although it's not an issue for her as an established teacher, she's been wondering about the economic health of smaller yoga studios.
'But it hasn't affected [many classes] because people are going through a period of stress' right now that yoga helps its practitioners handle, Walden says.
'One of the greatest gifts' of a yoga practice is 'to learn to relax, to cope with stress,' she says. She says that she often notices how her students look as they enter her class, and then after 'savasana' - 'corpse pose' - at the end of their session. 'It's a mini transformation. 'With Iyengar, increasing as I teach workshops all over country, I find fuller and fuller workshops. The future of Iyengar is good, my yoga classes are larger than ever before, and other teachers are doing very well.'
By Pamela Reinsel Cotter
THE LATEST YOGA NEWS, FROM IT IS YOGA
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