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The Post fronts the Metro section with a story on area women who have become yoga instructors as a way to deal with their stressful lives. It is, as one would expect, full of insights like, “Because it’s yoga, the students kept a meditation journal to help them connect with the harmony of the world. Because it is yoga in the District, the students discussed ‘branding’ their personal styles.” It is also, as one would expect, rapidly rising up the list of most read stories on the Post website.
While we certainly enjoy a good feature here at City Paper, this is not one. Largely free of context, all the story tells us is that some yoga students are now training to be teachers. And those students don’t want to talk to the reporter because they don’t want their jobs to find out. It raises a couple of questions: How many yoga students are now training to be teachers? Is the increase in the number of instructors on par with the increase in the number of students? Can the yoga market handle so many teachers?
Without the answers, the Post is left treading the same ground as the definitive Onion “news” item on the subject, which noted back in 2005, “According to a Department of Labor report on job retraining, 21 percent of American women are training to be yoga instructors, marking the highest level of female interest in the flexibility-and-spirituality-expansion industry since 1971.”
Photo by mosabua via Flickr/Creative Commons Attribution Generic 2.0 License