RE: If you see me standing on my head at my next Patti show.....

["Gart, Mitchell" <MGart>]

That's GREAT.  I wish my Sunday yoga class would play those songs.
But on the other hand the thought of intense Manhattanites rushing to get to
their
yoga class on time still makes me glad I don't live in the big city.
Namaste,

- Mitch

________________________________

From: owner-babel-list on behalf of Dennis Moore
Sent: Sat 3/11/2006 11:38 PM
To: Babel-list; EternalCafe
Subject: If you see me standing on my head at my next Patti show.....



...you'll know why. (This just HAD to be posted in its entirety!)

unfolding peace. Always, Dennis

Hallelujah and Namaste
By JESSIE TORRISI
Urban Studies
Published: March 12, 2006

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/12/nyregion/thecity/12yoga.html

THREE flights above the rumbling traffic of the Avenue of the
Americas, well-sculptured women and men rushed into Dana Flynn's
Sunday yoga class just before noon. Within minutes, they were lined up
on mats, legs crossed, backs straight, being led in chant as they
stared at mandarin and fuchsia walls.

"Hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm," Ms. Flynn intoned.

"Hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm," her students responded.

This was Sunday soul yoga at Laughing Lotus on West 19th Street in the
Flatiron District, or, as Ms. Flynn calls it, "Sunday morning
revival." For some New Yorkers, this sanctuary is as close as they
will ever come to church. Ms. Flynn is O.K. with that.

"People don't want religion, but they want yoga," she said the other
day after a session in which she melded vinyasa, an ancient flowing
yoga, with gospel hymns and sermons inspired by the music. "It just
feels natural. All of it is to exalt us."

The class had begun with the sound of "Amazing Grace" by the Blind
Boys of Alabama flooding the studio. Soon, 45 students were sweating
through warrior poses and upward and downward dogs. Within minutes,
the 16-foot windows were steamed over.

As students wobbled slightly in a tough pretzel-like position, their
eyes gazing skyward, Ms. Flynn raised the volume of the stereo. "Let
the music fill you with emotion!" she shouted. Bob Marley responded by
crooning, "Thank you, Lord!"

Ms. Flynn leads by example. Students have called her the drill
sergeant of love and the Janis Joplin of yoga.

"Dana has a way of reminding you of the greatness of life," said Nancy
Hess, a guitarist with the rock band Stereovision and a class regular.
"That's why people go to church on Sundays, to be reminded we're all
part of something."

Ms. Flynn, who is 44, came to yoga-as-church from Wall Street. In the
mid-80's, she left her job as a stockbroker at Smith Barney to open
Trixie's, a Hell's Kitchen hotspot that featured drag queen waitresses
and an amateur night at which Madonna was a regular. In 1999, she and
Jasmine Tarkeshi, her partner both at home and at the office, opened
Laughing Lotus.

At the Sunday morning session, Ms. Flynn delivered lines from the Sufi
poet Hafiz, and then some words of her own, with all the fervor and
emotion of a fiery preacher from the pulpit: "You've heard people say,
'I been saved?' Well, yoga saves you  from living the wrong life,
from a bad attitude, from negative thoughts that don't express who you
really are."

The students stood on their heads, then rested on their backs like
corpses. The voice of the rocker Patti Smith wafted over them:
"Everything is holy. Everybody's holy. Everywhere is holy."