Another closely related packaging strategy is to envelop yoga in an overall romanticised experience. The student is then not just buying yoga but an experience of soothing spirituality; de-stressing, rejuvenation and detoxification; one-ness with nature or the sense of authenticity of an ancient culture’. Other new market opportunities have been to promote yoga through self-help-books, TV classes, DVDs & videos, web based streaming and magazines. This again opens up possibilities for further specialisations like yoga for pregnant women, stiff backs, old people, golfers, kids, stress, happiness, performance improvements, eyes. Other recent markets have been to sell yoga exercise programs to gyms and corporations. Clearly yoga commodification means dynamic change and product fragmentation! The yoga sign is put into various contexts, which increasingly envelop it with various new meanings.
The re-contextualisation, commodification and competitive pressure also imply that the yoga product and know-how has been constantly improved and refined. This means that yoga teachers themselves are continually attending courses in further education to deepen their understanding and to obtain new ideas. Intensive studies in Western medicine and anatomy are obligatory. For the product itself this means that for instance the asanas are refined and modified. There has been a strong tendency to aestheticise asanas so that you move in and out of poses with the grace of a ballet dancer or a circus acrobat. Precision, flexibility, elegance and strength are pushed in the name of perfection. In other words asana has been transformed into a modernist sign charged with meaning from signs in Western discourses and aesthetics.
Iyengar’s methods, that we find helpful in the sacroiliac area Locust Pose Yoga are as follows: 7oundation Set your feet carefully. Placing the feet parallel will allow for Locust Pose Yoga proper spacing in the joint, whereas a turned-out stance can compress it.
Muscular Energy An unstable sacroiliac joint is extremely painful. Proper coordination of the muscles in the pelvis will help to stabilize the sacroiliac joints. nner Spiral Turn the thighs in, move them back, and widen them apart. These actions provide lateral space in the joint, and are balanced by Outer Spiral and Organic Energy, described below. uter Spiral Pull the tailbone down and revolve the thighs out enough for the knees to face forward without losing the width from Inner Spiral.
Organic Energy From the Focal Point at the base of the sacrum, stretch down through the legs and simultaneously up through the spine.
