{"id":8705,"date":"2010-01-27T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-27T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2010\/01\/27\/when-chakras-and-chocolate-collide\/"},"modified":"2010-01-27T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2010-01-27T12:00:00","slug":"when-chakras-and-chocolate-collide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2010\/01\/27\/when-chakras-and-chocolate-collide\/","title":{"rendered":"When Chakras and Chocolate Collide"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Source: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/01\/27\/dining\/27yoga.html?8dpc\">www.nytimes.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>NEW YORK, January, 2010: 30 people signed up for a strange new hybrid of vigorous yoga, followed by a multicourse dinner of pasta, wine and chocolate, served on the yoga room floor. This almost seamless transition was designed to allow yogis to taste, smell and digest in a heightened state of awareness.<\/p>\n<p>Friday&#8217;s event at Exhale Spa was the first in a series of &#8220;Yoga for Foodies&#8221; sessions devised by yoga teacher, David Romanelli, and coming soon to restaurants in Chicago, Cleveland and Dallas. Calling his mission &#8220;Yoga for Everyman&#8221;, Romanelli says &#8220;it&#8217;s a way of getting people in the door. The world is a better place if people do yoga. If they come because chocolate or wine is involved, I&#8217;m fine with it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The past decade has produced thousands of new foodies and new yogis. In 2007, a combination yoga studio and fine dining restaurant, Ubuntu, opened in Napa California. Yoga retreat centers now offer gourmet cooking classes and wine tastings.<\/p>\n<p>But not everyone agrees that lusty enjoyment of food and wine is compatible with yogic enlightenment. &#8220;The culture of judgement in the yoga community is rampant, and nowhere more than around food. Nowhere is it written that only vegetarians can do yoga.&#8221; said yoga teacher Sadie Nardini.<\/p>\n<p>There are many ways to &#8220;do&#8221; yoga: the term embraces meditation, worship, study, action, and physical movement. Yoga has many schools, like Ashtanga, Iyengar and Tantra, but has always been broadly understood as a route to enlightenment and purification &#8211; which is where consuming bacon and wine in yoga class becomes complicated. &#8220;People are starting to push back against the traditional, serious approach,&#8221; said Romanelli.<\/p>\n<p>[HPI note: Hindu tradition and ayurveda hold that tamasic foods, such as chocolate and &#8212; much more so &#8212; the flesh of dead animals, will keep the person away from higher states of mind, which are the goal of yoga.]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source: www.nytimes.com NEW YORK, January, 2010: 30 people signed up for a strange new hybrid of vigorous yoga, followed by,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8705","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8705\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}