Mile 567.3 - Woodbourne, NY

Yoga Politics - even yoga have politics. I decided to join the Deaf Yoga retreat for a few reasons (regardless of the fact that I might think some of the stuff was / were too new ageish) - try out yoga, to see if I like it, to meet new people, and just to have a cool and positive way to mark the start of my trip out West.

The classes were fun, five different teachers teaching a few different styles of yoga, and I found one type that I liked which was more of a workout, westernized fitness type of thing rather than some of the traditional types. The people were fun as well - it was cool to meet pretty much almost entirely a new group of people, and I made a couple of nice connections.

Now, naturally when you put together more than 30 people and bring up the topic of language / ways of instruction, usage of ASL, usage of Indian Sign Language, leadership of the Deaf Yoga Foundation, politics have a way of rearing its ugly head. I was interested (but probably should have known that) in the concept that there is politics in everything, even something that is supposed to be as peaceful as yoga. It is not my battle - at least, not one that I plan to invest much of my energy into. The Deaf yoga community is still pretty small, hopefully it will grow and more instructors will provide yoga classes in ASL, so it will be curious to see how the chips fall in that community.