Bali profits from business of soul-searching

Google/AFP, by Angela Dewan (AFP), March 31, 2011

Bali is an obvious hub for yoga fanatics

UBUD, Indonesia — Being a Hindu yogi once meant renouncing worldly pleasures for a life of solitary meditation, wandering the jungle in search of union with god.

Today, new-age yogis wander the globe from one retreat to another, stay in luxury hotels and preach to the converted masses through a headset microphone.

Yoga industry in the United States alone
is valued at almost $6 billion a year

At the Bali Spirit Festival last week, yogis sold their take on life -- along with complementary DVDs -- as visitors from as far afield as the United States, Australia and Europe lapped up expensive yoga apparel, mats and mala beads. Just stepping through the festival gates cost $100 a day.

"I bought a gold pass for $500 and I find it hard to get $100 worth of yoga a day. At the same time, all the classes have been amazing, so in the end, I?m happy to have paid that," said Australian Jean Cameron, 39.

A 2008 study published by the Yoga Journal valued the yoga industry in the United States alone at almost $6 billion a year, with some more recent estimates for the global industry rising to $18 billion.

Bali is an obvious hub for yoga fanatics. The Balinese are Hindu, the Indonesian island is rich with natural beauty and the government supports spiritual tourism including temple tours and visits to traditional healers.

Demand for such experiences spiked recently with the publication of Elizabeth Gilbert's best-selling memoir "Eat, Pray, Love" -- a romantic journey of self-discovery featuring a mystical encounter with a Balinese soothsayer.

Uma Inder, a Hatha yoga teacher, has witnessed the radical transformation of yoga in Bali. She moved from England to the island 22 years ago, spending her first seven years practising yoga alone in the jungle.

This year, around 4,000 people
participated in the Bali Spirit
Festival

"In those days you didn?t talk about yoga and no one really knew about it. Nowadays, it?s a social buzz. It?s now talked about, it?s paraded and it?s very much about entertainment," Inder said.

Festival organiser Meghan Pappenheim makes no apologies for the commerciality of the event, and sees it as a positive way to draw more people to yoga.

"I?m the first to admit I?m an entrepreneur, I?m a capitalist. This event has a target market, and those are the people with the money who can go home and make a difference," she said.

"My philosophy is that you make money and then you give it away. You make enough to buy a phone and a nice car, and you give the rest away."

Only four years old, the festival itself is yet to turn a profit. But Pappenheim and her Balinese husband, Kadek Gunarta, say they have used the yoga boom to raise $36,000 for charity through various events.

The festival has a sponsor, Fiesta condoms, which donated $25,000 for an HIV/AIDS outreach programme for Balinese high school students.

So far, Pappenheim and her husband have funded the festival from money they make from a small empire of businesses, which include a yoga centre, an art gallery, an eco-friendly furniture studio and a cafe.

Pappenheim is optimistic that the festival too will become profitable as attendance numbers double annually. This year, she estimates 4,000 people participated.

Southern Baptist leader on yoga: Not Christianity

Jakarta Post, Dylan Lovan, The Associated Press, Louisville, Kentucky | Thu, 10/07/2010 9:05 PM

A Southern Baptist leader who is calling for Christians to avoid yoga and its spiritual attachments is getting plenty of pushback from enthusiasts who defend the ancient practice.

Southern Baptist Seminary President Albert Mohler says the stretching and meditative discipline derived from Eastern religions is not a Christian pathway to God.

Mohler said he objects to "the idea that the body is a vehicle for reaching consciousness with the divine."

"That's just not Cristianity," Mohler told The Associated Press.

Mohler said feedback has come through e-mail and comments on blogs and other websites since he wrote an essay to address questions about yoga he has heard for years.

"I'm really surprised by the depth of the commitment to yoga found on the part of many ho identify as Christians," Mohler said.

Yoga fans say their numbers have been growing in the U.S. A 2008 study by the Yoga Journal put the number at 15.8 million, or nearly 7 percent of adults. About 6.7 percent of American adults are Southern Baptists, according to a 2007 survey by the Pew Research Centr Forum on Religion & Public Life.

Mohler argued in his online essay last month that Christians who practice yoga "must either deny the reality of what yoga represents or fail to see the contradictions between their Christian commitments and their embrace of yoga."

He said his view is "not an eccentic Christian position."

Other Christian leaders have said practicing yoga is incompatible with the teachings of Jesus. Pat Robertson has called the chanting and other spiritual components that go along with yoga "really spooky." California megachurch pastor John MacArthur called yoga a "false religon." Muslim clerics have banned Muslims from practicing yoga in Egypt, Malaysia and Indonesia, citing similar concerns.

Yoga proponents say the wide-ranging discipline, which originated in India, offers physical and mental healing through stretching poses and concentration.

"Lots of people come to yoga because they are often in chronic pain. Others come because they think it's a nice workout," said Allison Terracio, who runs the Infinite Bliss studio in Louisville.

And some yoga studios have made the techniques more palatable for Christians by removing the chanting and associations to eastern religions, namely Hinduism and its multiple deities.

Stephanie Dillon, who has injected Christian themes into her studio in Louisville, said yoga brought her closer to her Christian faith, which had faded after college and service in the Army.

"What I found is that it opened my spirit, it renewed my spirituality," Dillon said. "That happened first and then I went back to church." Dillon attends Southeast Christian Church in Louisville and says many evangelical Christians from the church attend her yoga classes.

She said she prayed on the question of whether to mix yoga and Christianity before opening her studio, PM Yoga, where she discusses her relationship with Jesus during classes.

"My objection (to Mohler's view) personally is that I feel that yoga enhances a person's spirituality," Dillon said. "I don't like to look at religion from a law standpoint but a relationship standpoint, a relationship with Jesus Christ specifically."

Mohler wrote the essay after reading "The Subtle Body," in which author Stefanie Syman traces the history of yoga in America. Syman noted the growing popularity of yoga in the U.S. by pointing out that first lady Michelle Obama has added it to the festivities at the annual White House Easter Egg Roll on the front lawn.

Mohler said many people have written him to say they're simply doing exercises and forgoing yoga's eastern mysticism and meditation.

"My response to that would be simple and straightforward: You're just not doing yoga," Mohler said.

Online: Albert Mohler's website: http://www.albertmohler.com/

Related Article:

The Greatest Story Ever Told (video)

Sunrise in Sanur

Wayan Juniartha, The Jakarta Post, Sanur | Thu, 08/05/2010 9:27 AM | Feature

Sunrise has always been associated with beauty. As the new light embraces the earth, people see the end of darkness and the beginning of new hope.

Morning Sunshine. Courtesy I Made Adi Dharmawan

Naturally, sunrise has also become a perennial source of inspiration for those who seek to narrate beauty — including poets, painters, photographers — as well as people seeking to be part of the beauty itself — meditators and spiritualists.

An ongoing exhibit “Sunrise in Sanur” is the most recent evidence of photographers’ affixation with the beauty of sunrise. Held at the Griya Santrian Gallery, the exhibit features the works of 31 local photographers, and runs until Aug. 15.

“The displayed works provide the audience with diverse visual interpretations of sunrise and on Sanur,” Denpasar Photographers Club chairman Iwan Darmawan said.

Iwan, a former Bali Post chief photojournalist-turned promising novelist, is the brains behind the

exhibition. The concept for the exhibit, he said, was triggered by a simple event.

“I browsed the Net and was surprised to see a large number of photographs on Sanur and sunrise posted on various sites and blogs. And the number kept growing,” he said.

This observation drove Iwan to organize an exhibit focused on that theme. He presented his idea to I.B. Gde Sidharta Putra, the owner of Griya Santrian Gallery and an influential community figure in Sanur.

Sidharta praised the idea and readily came up with the money to fund the selection process and the exhibit.

Sunrise At Sanur. Courtesy Iwan Latief

Iwan set up a Facebook account “Sunrise in Sanur” through which he invited members of the Denpasar Photographers Club and other photographers to submit selected images on sunrise in Sanur.

The response he received was tremendous. By the end of the submission period, 596 photographs had been uploaded to the account by no less than 286 photographers.

“Selecting 31 works from the 596 images was a headache for me. But I relied on the images’ ability to not only present beauty but also present diverse facets of Sanur,” Iwan said.

The end result is a display of stunning images, and some of them do present surprising stories. For instance, an image about the city’s lowly officers tasked with cleaning up the beach. They do their chore early at dawn so as not to disturb visitors or tourists who would flock the beach to watch sunrise.

“We often forget about their existence. We come to the beach, a clean one, and watch sunrise and often we don’t even notice that the beach is clean, let alone contemplate on the existence of these workers who clean the beach on daily basis,” Iwan said.

To some extent, the exhibit is an effort to provide sunrise with meanings and contexts, different visual narratives on the different meanings of sunrise and Sanur to the photographers behind the camera as well as the people who were in front of their lenses.

Training In The Morning. Courtesy Nyoman Widiyana

The displayed images also underline technical experimentations pursued by the local photographers.

Some used HDR (High Dynamic Range) techniques to render their images dramatic colors and haunting contrasts, while others played with fish eye lenses to give birth to images with extreme perspectives.

Young photographer Krisna Wirajaya employed a classical technique of multiple exposures to capture a series of movements in a single frame in Morning Rhythm.

As it happens, “Sunrise in Sanur” also has a non-photographic agenda.

“Through the images displayed here and in the Facebook account, we would like to send a message to potential travelers and photographers abroad, that Sanur is a good place to visit, a good place with many outstanding spots to take photographs,” Iwan Darmawan said.

Once a small fishing village ruled by influential Brahmin families, tourism has transformed Sanur into a modern, upscale resort village with luxurious eateries, avant-garde galleries and exotic boutique hotels.

Yet, the influential Brahmin families are still there, guiding the modern community with age-old wisdoms.

Each morning, the Brahmin priests commence their day by conducting Surya Sewana, the devotion to the sun. They will utter a sacred mantra wishing for the well-being of all creatures, Hindus and non-Hindus alike, as well as for the happiness of the whole universe.

The sun is considered the perfect symbol of this universality of good hope since it provides warmth and light to everybody and everything on this Earth.