Is it just me or did 2011 feel like a complete wash? Nothing particularly horrible or great stands out. The small triumph of not letting daily mundane tribulations get the best of me may not rank high on a scorecard but I am nonetheless grateful for having managed to get through relatively unscathed.

Flipping through the catalog for a big name yoga and retreat center, I was shocked to notice that they advertised their yoga teacher training programs as "Yoga Alliance Approved." Misrepresentations like this are the dirty little secret of the yoga industry. No one really wants to admit there is no accreditation for Yoga.

Trolling yoga blogs and the comment threads that ensue reveals a prevailing sentiment of tough love. Sure, there are a few hold-outs from the sixties still hanging around but the new breed of yogi is way too savvy to be fooled by any fluff and seems more interested in what you can do than how what you do makes you think or behave.

Ever heard the one about the Dalai Lama and the hotdog vendor? Make me one with everything. This has always been my favorite joke. Recently, I was made aware of how, like a lot of effective humor, the punchline is based on a not so funny premise. As a Shakespearean scholar once pointed out: "As long as there is pain and suffering in the world, there will always be something to laugh at."

Exploitation of yoga in advertising is nothing new. When a product wants to associate with a low-stress or healthy lifestyle, invariably, the commercial features people doing yoga poses. Increasing popularity of yoga makes the marketing demographic undeniable. A recent Advil campaign has taken this phenomenon to another level.

The first yama of Patanjali's Yoga Sutra's is ahimsa, often translated as "non-harming." Aligning myself with Yoga turned something that I had always seen as a weakness into a strength. Yet, somewhere along the way, an unconscious loophole developed. While I was incapable of intentionally doing others wrong, I seemed to have no problem doing considerable inadvertent harm to myself.

I continually assert that yoga practice encompasses more than physical fitness. As much as I generally try to avoid admitting it, this does implicitly question whether the use of yoga poses for physical fitness alone can even be considered yoga practice. I am thinking of a specific example where a principle of exercise science is at odds with a holistic perspective.

I have this tendency to be overly provocative, sometimes to a fault. I have managed to temper this but changing old patterns requires continued attention. The title of this post is a perfect example. I really wanted to call it "F*** Union with the Divine" but I decided to exercise better judgement. I have traced my relapse back to an email I recently received from Yoga Journal Magazine.

My wife and daughter have been away for almost two weeks and I have reverted to the ways of my bachelorhood. This morning, I was forced to do dishes only because there were no more cereal bowls left. Even worse, I only washed one bowl so I could eat and then put it back on the stack when I was done.

Let there be no doubt that life can be severely ironic. Two weeks after I sent out remarks on the sacrifices my wife was making for our family, she got laid off from that soul-sucking job that was providing us health insurance. She worked at the same company for more than six years. They gave her three days notice. Corporate management sure is cruel. The health insurance racket is worse.

Does life ever get easier? Short answer: no. I realize that doesn't sound altogether yogic. Not to mention, it was only last month that I waxed poetic on living through the difficulty of winter as the fertile soil of new possibilities. While those ideas hold true and offer useful perspective, they are of little comfort when the rubber meets the road and the tires are running a bit flat.

"Look for the flower to bloom in the silence that follows the storm; not till then. It shall grow, it will shoot up, it will make branches and leaves and form buds, while the storm continues, while the battle lasts. Then will come a calm such as comes in a tropical country after the heavy rain, when nature works so swiftly that one may see her action. Such a calm will come to the harassed spirit."