As commercial yoga culture is made up primarily of commodities, we as consumers are free to either like or dislike whatever we see. We can choose to enjoy a thing or refuse a thing based on reasons as diverse as “it is in line with my politics,” or “it reminds me of my father.” As a commodity, as an ad for a human, as an object unrelated to my daily yoga practice, I am free to say that the style of this snapdragonfilms.com video pleases me.
Reasons why I like this:
- Pretty colors
- Pretty music
- Pretty scenery
- Pretty certain a few peeps will think we’re selling out
MS RECLUSE SAYS:
I have no idea what she’s like as a person, but I want that hair!
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The Babarazzi 
I made it through 25 seconds, but when she said “I begin to see that there are two realities,” I split. Cinematography is cool, though.
Sincere or show or spectrum thereof, Elena is professional and capable of a stellar class.
I just find her totally uninteresting…
Well made, good music, loverly setting
Torn between being amazing[ still not sure that that is a description or a trophy], and succumbing to ugliness [ being human]
Who makes a movie about themselves in this way?
The opening quote wasn’t attributed until the closing credits. Who really watches the credits?.
Couple that with a mono-tribe about finding your own voice and you got another tear in the fabric of reality.
Then claim that alot of us are hiding…No Shit?
I would rather hide from someone like her.
Crass commercialism.
She does have a kind of Eliza Doolittle / Mary Tyler Moore / Little Bo Peep thing going on though
IN FULL DISCLOSURE:
ittle Bo peep has lost her sheep
And doesn’t know where to find them.
Leave them alone and they’ll come home,
Bringing their tails behind them.
Little Bo peep fell fast asleep
And dreamt she heard them bleating,
But when she awoke, she found it a joke,
For they were all still fleeting.
Then up she took her little crook
Determined for to find them.
She found them indeed, but it made her heart bleed,
For they left their tails behind them.
It happened one day, as Bo peep did stray
Into a meadow hard by,
There she espied their tails side by side
All hung on a tree to dry.
She heaved a sigh, and wiped her eye,
And over the hillocks went rambling,
And tried what she could,
As a shepherdess should,
To tack again each to its lambkin.
I remember my grandmother reading this to me as a kid. I always found the rhyme disturbing and imagined creepy visions of a sinister man running around chopping off lambkin’s tails. I also recall feeling stressed that Bo would not be able to successfully reattach the tails.
The morale of the words in the song are that one must take responsibility of falling asleep or face the consequences
def would rather hide. she is so calculating.
again just all about her, BY her!
i have a contraction in my body as i watch this. then had to turn off because i don’t want that for my life. hey elena, yoga is NOT ONLY ABOUT YOU!
Rock the truth, brother!
9 minutes of narcissism.
But, as an object, it’s very pleasant, no?
Those bright and shiny objects along the journey, merely reflect–rather than transmit–the light you need to banish the darkness … didn’t you know that?
Transmitting the light is beyond their ken.
no…
I gotta agree, no.
I had an odd sense of nostalgia watching this. I’ve never been too big on practicing with music but having Garth play live for a class is quite the sublime experience. That is a really lovely experience I am happy to take from the nyc yoga scene. I miss that and seeing familiar faces in the students on the video makes me smile.
So that’s not much of a critique but perhaps despite the commercialism there lies something tangible and sweet that managed to peek through..
Okay. BulLY! There ARE real people in these kinds of promotional and semi-promotional videos. Be in the more branded NYC yoga scene long enough even if temporarily, be in a class tougher than the beginner classes even if temporarily and you start to realize these people in the videos can even be people who you’ve met.
It happened even to me.
Does anyone else find this person a major over-sharer…and not in a helpful way? This video is opportunistic, yuppified/commercialized, and absolutely NOT what yoga is all about. Not at all.
In the same respect that I appreciate the music of ABBA, I have a soft spot for Elena.
I find this video pretty too. However, having attended Elena’s classes in the last year, I find them to be completely self indulgent like this video. So I stopped going. Elena knows how to work what she’s got. Behind the scenes [DELETED] as pretty. She [DELETED], telling others what to do and how to behave.
You’re not selling out. You’re just avoiding a lawsuit? You did just meet with Ms. Brower didn’t you? Giving someone free air time with the hint of an imprimatur is an age-old solution. I hope it works. “Commodities” generally have lawyers attached to them – like cheap remainders from Lulu.
Met with Elena? You mean the mini FB debate we had? Sorry. Unrelated. The post is a reflection on how the *object* of a commodity can be “pretty” despite its being linked to vapidity. That it can have a subjective appeal in addition to its context. We also enjoyed Travis Eliot, as well as that We are the World type song by Durga Das.
Wonderful try, though. I expect to be seeing about seven super angry aggressive emails from you today? Ugh. Let me get my helmet. One sec.
Don’t forget the kevlar suit.
It’s not that interesting, AB. And you’re confusing aggressive with simply forthright. A common error. One I didn’t think you would make, though? :o))) Peace.
One of the creepiest pathologically disturbed people in yoga I have ever encountered. But the nut never falls far from the tree. I have known and occasionally practiced with the Anusara fun-sters and they are all cut from the same crazy quilt cloth, whether or not, for marketing purposes, they formally separated themselves from Friend and from Anusara, Inc. This illness is beyond medication. It may even be beyond God. It’s no solution to replace the cultic worship of your guru with the cultic worship of yourself. Thanks for the reminder.
i thought there was a vidal sassoon commercial accidentally imbedded in this video’s place when i watched it. god, with all the hair whipping and shininess, it would totally work.
the base emotion this video makes me feel is something along the lines of: “i like it when i feel pretty and also pretty things”.
So many questions I have while watching this. Mainly, what is the point? Where are we, as she says, “elevating our consciousness” to? It’s all so general and feel-good but what’s the conclusion? What are we creating space for, what’s all this space talk? (OK I get that a lot of people are out of touch with their bodies and closed up and needing to become aware of this, but we need MORE, a further or deeper conclusion. Then again maybe we need to create that space to be able to accommodate more, and not all people are as concerned with throwing their visions farther than their mats can take them, ie. father than their own limited bodies and minds which circle around and around and then find some space, like an antsy pup, to finally sit down and nap (savasana?) until they have to get up and circle again).
And while it’s hopeful that she’s engaging lots of people in opening up their minds and ‘create space’, what is she putting in that space, what will we put in that space?
It’s like yoga has gotten so far away from answering the substantial questions and so cozied up with subsisting on the fluff of some notion of ‘spirituality’, forgetting that putting these “vibes” to some practical and, at the same time, non-self-centered purpose is the key to getting out of our need to reconcile hypocrisy and honesty and “unify” within ourselves. MAN how many sadhus would turn over in their ghats if they heard a modern extoller of yogic “truths” saying “yoga is unifying yourself”. Maybe on some level it is, but ultimately, NO WAY JOSE. Sadly, hardly anybody in Amerika is aware of this, teaching this, or propagating this in the yoga scene, the place where people might be wanting to or needing to hear it. It’s getting to be so BASIC and so BORING. And a tad overwrought.
But to be fair, we can only realize what we’re ready for, we can only understand as far as our experiences allow us, or as far as we’ve been allowed to see and understand and realize by some grace far beyond our own toiling and struggling to “make sense of it all in a way that makes sense to me and can be packaged up and sold to people who are not any better off than me in really understanding the point of this (life) all”
Maybe I’m just too much of a cutting edger. But I want to PUSH. We all need a little PUSH n SHAKE.
So who on this forum will “like this Elena Brower video”:
http://hearttoheartcollective.com/straight-to-the-heart/
Pay particular attention to the number of Elena Brower’s answers that are not an actual answer to the question asked, but rather are whatever Elena Brower wants to say about anything having to do with Elena Brower. Make a game of it – drink every time it happens.
brandthyself.com (with Jess of course)….check it out, and yes it exists, I didn’t just make that up….
Check out our article from late last year on brand thyself.
ah, yes I see, silly of me to think you had let that fall through the cracks…thanks!