Often times the ancient practice of yoga gets lumped into the category of “new age” wishy washy nonsense. This is both unfortunate and inaccurate. Of course, this should be self evident. How can an ANCIENT practice be considered “new” anything? Yoga is at least a couple THOUSAND years old. To put that in perspective, the United States is a few hundred years old. But that doesn’t stop people from labeling yoga as “new” age, while at the same time pretending the u.s. is the longest standing empire of all time. So how and why does this happen?

Propaganda, misinformation and disinformation. It’s the same thing with food. Organic food is considered the “new” thing and chemically sprayed and genetically manipulated food is labeled as “conventional.” Even the various health food movements play into this jedi mind trick. I often see charts comparing organic food vs. “conventional” food. Of course there is nothing conventional about crops that have been genetically altered in a lab, but profits await, so it’s very important for the people selling this food to convince people that spraying our food with pesticides and altering the genetics of our food is the way we’ve always done it, while eating organic food (read: regular, unaltered food) is the new, fringe thing.

And it’s the same thing with running shoes and running form. Shoes that have been around for a few decades are considered conventional or traditional while shoes that have been around for centuries or more are considered the new fad. I never realized fads can last for thousands of years. At what point does it graduate from being a fad? A million years?

I believe in new stuff. I like technology. I believe in the inventiveness of humankind. There is a lot of new technology that I love. The point here isn’t to say anything new is bad and anything old is good, because I get just as annoyed with that argument as anyone, especially when the person arguing that ancient stuff is always better is typing their viewpoint on a computer or smart phone.. The point is to say that if something is new, call it new. If it’s thousands of years old, calling it “new age” is a huge misnomer. Mark my words, soon smart phones will be considered “conventional” communication, while talking face to face will be considered new age or fringe.

The purpose of this post isn’t to complain about semantics, it’s to help you cut through the propaganda and b.s. so you can use the ancient practice of yoga to your benefit, instead of being misled by all the bad information.. The first thing to acknowledge is that there actually is tons of hokey new age nonsense out there. I consider the book/movie http://thesecret.tv/ to be a good example. The secret basically says wish for whatever you want and it will appear. It’s easy, it’s simple, and it promises huge rewards. I’m a big believer in directing positive mental energy towards a goal or desire, but the secret takes this concept and markets it in a cute little package to be consumed by those among us who don’t want to do actual spiritual work and just want to take the fast track.  So I’m not saying that new age fluffy nonsense doesn’t exist, because it most certainly does, often for the sole purpose of discrediting the real stuff.

It’s easy to see the endgame here. By replacing real spiritual philosophy with marketable fluff people remain ignorant to what yoga actually is. The thinking is that by labeling yoga as new age it will only catch on with trendy liberal types who like to participate in anything alternative, while driving away the mainline conservative types who like to participate in what the authorities say they should be participating in. This keeps everyone fighting and bickering amongst themselves making us all easier to control.

Just like any spiritual practice, Yoga is terrifying to the power elite. The reason is simple. How can someone be subservient to the state/dictator/president/presidential-dictator when they are subservient to god? This is why you see such an attack on religion in the schools.  Worshipping government is the new religion.

When I did my yoga teacher training I lived at the Kripalu center for a month. Every single day of that month someone reminded me to check in with the current reality, explore the nature of reality, question reality, question what I’m being told. Often times teachers  would hammer this point home by reminding us that we should question even what they say. This is, of course, very different than the talking heads on the mainstream media who NEVER encourage you to think for yourself. It’s very different than the power elite (politicians and their puppet masters) who want to make you think THEY have all the answers, even when it comes to things like what you put on and in your body. what products you absolutely MUST purchase and so on. And let’s not forget the ultimate guru…the public school system, where the preferred method of teaching is – give kid answer – have kid parrot answer back to you – reward the most obedient- punish anyone who fails to cooperate with the system.

In short, Yoga is all about coming to grips with YOUR OWN PERSONAL REALITY, whatever that might be. It is NOT about accepting some Guru’s idea of reality, whether that Guru is a classical Indian yogi, a talking puppet head on fox news/CNN or whatever globalist propaganda network you prefer. Once you have established some baseline level of reality, you then move towards the mental imagery aspect.

For example, let’s say you do a meditation and check in with your current reality. You are feeling sad. First you acknowledge the sadness. Explore it. Question it. Sit with it. Be with it. THEN after you are anchored in reality, practice the opposite of sadness – happiness. Acknowledge that you are just practicing happiness. The more you practice the better you will become at being happy. This may be extremely difficult depending on your situation. That’s why it’s a practice.


A lot of new age people don’t do the initial grounding phase of this process. They wish, they hope, they dream, they pretend and their entire practice is geared towards leaving the body. They know “the secret” and live completely in their heads. This is not yoga. There are some very good reasons why asana (the physical postures) –is focused on so much. You need to anchor yourself in reality or you will go nuts, and this is precisely what the power elite want.

The saddest part of this is the amount of people who hesitate to try yoga because they refuse to let a guru tell them what to do, while at the same time they completely bow down and lick the boots of whatever guru president is currently in office.