Madonna’s tryst with Ashtanga Yoga

The noted pop singer Madonna, who donned the role of a yoga teacher in a movie, is into Ashtanga Yoga in real life also.

In the film ‘The Next Best Thing’ (released in 2000) which stars Madonna as Abbie, a yoga teacher, whose friendship with a gay man undergoes a dramatic change, yoga gets royal treatment. The $ 30 million-film was directed by John Schlesinger. In one of the important sequences in the movie, Madonna demonstrates a series of difficult yoga poses with many of her instructors. “The kind of yoga that I am doing in the film is Ashtanga Yoga, which is a kind I practice in real life,” she says.

“When I was pregnant, I began doing Hatha Yoga and then began doing the more difficult Ashtanga Yoga after I had the baby, because I wanted to do something more visceral and physical.”

The movie thanks K. Pattabhi Jois “for illuminating the teaching of yoga.”

What impressed Madonna about Jois, is his simplicity and rigorous demands, her associates say. He was never tempted to rush to Hollywood to make the big bucks. However, the Toronto-based Downward Dog Yoga Centre, teaches Jois’ kind of Ashtanga Yoga.

Madonna takes special pride in the Ashtanga Yoga sequence. “Several of my real yoga teachers are in this scene, people I really look up to in my real practice,” she says. “It was odd, because in the film I portray that instructor and I had to go around correcting their poses, acting like I know they do.”