Shari in the Miami Herald in 2009

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McClatchy-Tribune

Yoga student Shari Portnoy, foreground, hangs upside down with the rest of the group during an AntiGravity Yoga Wings class.

McClatchy-Tribune

MIAMI -

You can do it in the air. Or by sea.

You can do it if you're young. Or old. Or in 100-plus-degree rooms (Bikram yoga).

Indeed, yoga - the ancient Hindu practice for the mind, body and spirit - has evolved from breathing exercises and meditative poses to physical therapy, aerial choreography to a new way to firm your face, a way calm your child or a way limber up while pregnant.

"The thing about yoga is it's such a vast system, there's a million variations you can do," said Dayna Macy, spokeswoman for Yoga Journal, a monthly magazine. "Like any other pursuit in any other area, you can make lots of different judgments on what's good, what's not good, who knows, who doesn't know."

Macy has been a practitioner for two decades. She said the practice has grown into a fad over the last few years, thanks to its popularity among stars like Madonna and Sting.

Here are some of the more unusual yoga classes out there:

AntiGravity Yoga Wings

Like a high-flying circus act, with acrobats snaking up a rollicking trapeze, AntiGravity Yoga Wings promises the thrill of dance-defying gravity yoga in the air, albeit at a safer altitude.

Practitioners of AntiGravity Yoga Wings perform traditional yoga poses - or asanas - while suspended in a hanging fabric hammock.

"The class is a fusion of everything," said Robin Retherford, a former dancer and fitness buff.

Retherford teaches a weekly class at Crunch Fitness in Miami Beach, Fla.

"It combines yoga postures, dance and Pilates movements that help align the body and really strengthen the body from the core out," she said.

It is also something else: not for the faint of heart.

For first-timers, moves like the monkey wrap (hanging upside down with legs wrapped around the hammock, palms free or touching the ground) can prove daunting.

"You have to be muscular for that; you have to be a little bit trained," said Pascale Cowell, 45, a dancer from France, who has taken a handful of classes.

With the finesse of a ballerina and flexibility of a gymnast, Cowell executes a perfect midair arabesque and jumping pliés - all while straddling or holding the hammock.

The moves, she said, keep her muscles strong.

"Yes, you are sore after," she admitted, laughing.

There are occasional collisions, noted Dylan Giordano, an exceptionally flexible 16-year-old, who has found that out the hard way.

"It's the perfect class to get exercise and relax at the same time," Giordano said. "I'm not the scared type. You pick up on it. Even if you fall a few times, you get back up."

Prenatal yoga

Bending, stretching and pregnant bellies? In Elizabeth Bonet's class, it makes sense.

Part yoga class, part group therapy session, the twice-weekly prenatal yoga classes at Lisa's School of Dance & Gymnastics in Plantation, Fla., appeal to pregnant women looking for a different yoga class.

Many have tried regular

Shari in the Wall Street Journal 1/3/12

As a registered dietitian and public-health advocate and reader of peer-reviewed literature, I disagree with your Dec. 22 editorial "Nasty, Rotty Stuff."

Research has shown that when given healthy food versus fast food over time, people enjoy the healthy food. Maybe the school system mentioned in your editorial made poor choices in deciding how to alter the food. Cooking is a skill, not just reading a recipe, so trained chefs can make just about anything taste good, but more importantly, they don't need to.

If people start out with good habits, they continue them. Colorful fruits and vegetable are delicious, ripe melon is sweeter than taffy, and kids love colors and sweets. So, if you start them out right, they will continue. If you start them out with drive-thru fast-food restaurants and television commercials where junk-food marketing prevails, they will go that way.

Don't blame it on desserts, because fresh fruit is a dessert devoured by all. Blame it on commercials produced by big business, which cares about profit, not health.

Shari Portnoy

New York

Healthy food isn't more expensive,,,verified by NY times

Is Junk Food Really Cheaper?

By MARK BITTMAN

Published: September 24, 2011

THE “fact” that junk food is cheaper than real food has become a reflexive part of how we explain why so many Americans are overweight, particularly those with lower incomes. I frequently read confident statements like, “when a bag of chips is cheaper than a head of broccoli ...” or “it’s more affordable to feed a family of four at McDonald’s than to cook a healthy meal for them at home.”

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Daniel Borris for The New York Times

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• Read All Comments (122) »

This is just plain wrong. In fact it isn’t cheaper to eat highly processed food: a typical order for a family of four — for example, two Big Macs, a cheeseburger, six chicken McNuggets, two medium and two small fries, and two medium and two small sodas — costs, at the McDonald’s a hundred steps from where I write, about $28. (Judicious ordering of “Happy Meals” can reduce that to about $23 — and you get a few apple slices in addition to the fries!)
In general, despite extensive government subsidies, hyperprocessed food remains more expensive than food cooked at home. You can serve a roasted chicken with vegetables along with a simple salad and milk for about $14, and feed four or even six people. If that’s too much money, substitute a meal of rice and canned beans with bacon, green peppers and onions; it’s easily enough for four people and costs about $9. (Omitting the bacon, using dried beans, which are also lower in sodium, or substituting carrots for the peppers reduces the price further, of course.)
Another argument runs that junk food is cheaper when measured by the calorie, and that this makes fast food essential for the poor because they need cheap calories. But given that half of the people in this country (and a higher percentage of poor people) consume too many calories rather than too few, measuring food’s value by the calorie makes as much sense as measuring a drink’s value by its alcohol content. (Why not drink 95 percent neutral grain spirit, the cheapest way to get drunk?)
Besides, that argument, even if we all needed to gain weight, is not always true. A meal of real food cooked at home can easily contain more calories, most of them of the “healthy” variety. (Olive oil accounts for many of the calories in the roast chicken meal, for example.)In comparing prices of real food and junk food, I used supermarket ingredients, not the pricier organic or local food that many people would consider ideal. But food choices are not black and white; the alternative to fast food is not necessarily organic food, any more than the alternative to soda is Bordeaux.
The alternative to soda is water.

I said it all along, it is cheap to eat HEALTHY!