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Comment by Mountain_Skies | Hacker News Reader

I don't go to yoga for authenticity. I enjoy the stretches and flexibility that comes from it. The endorphins are a nice side effect too. I can understand if some in India or even those around the world who practice traditional yoga or see it as a spiritual practice dislike western variants using the name yoga. Changing the name however wouldn't push me into traditional yoga. I'd still go to "Hot Core Power" class and enjoy it.

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In India, do yoga, workup great sweat.

There are thousands of path reaching to the same goal - in some you workup sweat, in some not so. All good.

Go to office, raise family, give 100% = Karma Yoga.

I was in India once and spent the night in an ashram. One of the monks told me that yoga literally just means "practice" and that there were many different types of yoga including spiritual yoga and yoga for clearing out your nose etc. etc.

What we call “yoga” in the West is actually “asana” which is only a small part of the yoga path. It’s preparation for higher practices like pranayama, mediation and sense withdrawal. On the spiritual path asana is really not very important.

>actually “asana” which is only a small part of the yoga path

"Small" only in the "Raja Yoga" path.

Apparently "yoga" means "union" [1]. There are practices for clearing out the nose (neti) but they're not yoga in and of themselves. If you follow Patanjali [2] the ultimate aim of yoga is spiritual, and there are multiple paths to reach the same experience.

[1] https://www.quora.com/What-does-the-word-yoga-mean-in-Sanskr...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoga_Sutras_of_Patanjali

This is correct but Patanjali explicitly defines the yogic path as synonymous with 'perfect discipline' so while he acknowledges other paths he says this one is the one of discipline (so saying yoga means practice gives the right intuition imo)

"Yog" is a concatenation of all the things you do, and "Bhog" is the concatenation of consequences you get depending on your yog.

I prefer the more “mental” aspects of yoga practice. (I acknowledge my complete naïveté.) Where I practice tends to be “American vinyasa”-centric however. I try to keep an open mind.

There are a few classes from teachers who deviate from this, and I simply try to vote with my attendance at classes I prefer.

When I explain to my english friends there are 4 types of Yoga they give me blank faces. I try and explain that if you believe in the science of the physical yoga that you do, invented by Hindu sages, then they clearly knew something and were onto something, try the others. But unfortunately I find most people will only follow something if its commercialised and mainstream.

I personally didn’t interpret the article as arguing for authenticity in and of itself, more that this lady beliefs her approach provides health benefits of a particular kind.

Nothing spiritual is prominently mentioned.

They do briefly mention her diet, which sounds Ayurvedic.

I too like the endorphins from yoga and hot yoga.

It’s not only about spirituality but about health. Sure, a hot core power class gives you flexibility for that time because breathing more makes your body alkaline. But afterwards you crave acidic food to balance the body. The food you crave is high in protein, table salt, processed, leaches calcium from your bones and makes you stiff in the long run and for the rest of your day.

Food does not leech calcium from the bones. High protein foods improve calcium absorption and increase calcium in your urine as a side-effect. No bone lost there.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/12936953/

Can't find the study, but they made people eat irradiated calcium, and those with higher protein just peed out the irradiated calcium. Bones stay intact.

Let me summarize what I took away from the study you posted:

> One mechanism by which high dietary protein could induce bone loss may be related to the metabolic acid load engendered by such a diet. Meat and fish, which are high in sulfur-containing amino acids, generate appreciable fixed metabolic acid loads, whereas fruits and vegetables generate little acid and, in fact, may under certain circumstances generate more base than acid.

> Paradoxically, when fracture is the principal outcome, low protein intakes are associated with lower rates of fracture in most epidemiologic studies

My point about craving processed food high in table salt and sulfur-containing amino acids—which ought to be also high in protein—after an alkalizing high intensity training is still valid.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15546911

Here's the study I was looking for. It's all radioactive calcium.

There might be an effect on muscle tissue but it's still quite unresearched as to how does the body counter the acidity.

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