Hi Guys, First let me say that I started Kundalini Yoga with your K. Yoga for Beginners & Beyond 4 years ago and I love your workouts! They've changed my life! I've been seeing a lot lately that people are putting out DVDs etc. with titles like 'No Om Zone,' etc. Other yogis sort of brag that they don't do chanting in their classes and they eat meat, and basically champion a hedonistic mindset. Is this sort of a backlash to spirituality? I would appreciate your take on all of this. Blessings to your both!

Thanks for writing. You bring up a very important point. Everyone has a right to their own opinion, but we do feel that asserting that mantras and what they represent, in the context of yoga, are superfluous, is like a prisoner trying to convince the other prisoners that the outside world doesn't exist. Yoga is trendy (for good reason) now and everyone wants to jump on the bandwagon to make a buck. There's Nude Yoga, Yoga for Your Pets, S & M Yoga, and the list goes on. On the other hand, in certain ways, Yoga is evolving in powerful ways. Part of this evolution is its focus on Spirit. It's good to try to make yoga palatable to the "mainstream," but it's very important not to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Yoga is a technology which has been developed by masterful technicians of the sacred so that regular people can live in the flow of Spirit each day of their lives. Mantras keep us tuned to the frequency of the most beautiful part of us. The sound Om is the Universe itself. In Kundalini Yoga we use the derivation, "Ong," but it's all part of the same continuum of Teachings. We encourage everyone to look into the Spiritual side of yoga. Try to experience it with your Heart, not your head, and be open to where the experience leads. As we've said before, techniques like chanting "Om," etc., are not from a foreign culture, they are beyond culture and help us to experience to the most authentic aspect of each of us..