In time for Christmas, I turn to the the OM-nipresent, the OM-nicient, the OM-nipotent and the ever OM-nificent… to guide me through the minefield that is holiday shopping. And, in case there’s some confusion to whom I might be referring, let me be clear… I’m talking about Google, of course… the arbiter of all things… all things.
Where I, in my Mommy-OM-ness would trend towards the yogic in my gift-giving preferences, it seems that Google is telling me otherwise. According to an article in Canada’s National Post, when it comes to most searched items this year, “yoga” is lucky to squeak into the top ten as Google Zeitgeist, the empire’s trend-tracker tells us that “hula hoop exercise” emerged at number two… second only to P90X exercise program (been there, done that… not for wimps… and sure, feel free to call me a wimp!)
Despite some growth, such as Lululemon, the Vancouver-based clothing giant, with its annual revenue increase by roughly 30% from 2008 to 2009, these recessionary times are sending us looking for less expensive means to our physical fitness and fat-burning ends. And, if you can resist the attempts to cash in on this trend, with companies offering all flavours of hula induced spending from hoops encrusted with fat burning marbles to full service hula fitness kits, you still only pay about $5 bucks for this not-so-modern marvel. And, hey, anyone can do it!
You’ll also do your part to support what might appear as something of a yoga backlash:
Is yoga now on a downward trend? Or has the uber-trendy exercise suffered some sort of backlash due to expensive studio classes or, as Antonia Richmond says in a 2006 article in the San Francisco Chronicle, a growing sense of insecurity from the non-yoga inclined masses:
“These are the yoga people. And they’re better than you…They don’t have the haggard appearance or sensitivity to bright sunlight that I do as I stumble down the street in search of coffee. They appear to … glow.”
Yoga-hater and creator of New York clothing company “It’s a Sickness”, Barnaby Harris went so far as to create an entire f— yoga clothing line.
Harris elegantly summed up the history of the ubiquitous trend, saying:
“Yoga has survived for thousands of years and will survive for thousands more. It’s just that it has gone unopposed for too damn long.”
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I don’t want to characterize myself as a fair-weather yogini… or, to be more precise, a fair-sinus yogini… but in the spirit of full disclosure, I do believe I am.
