The video, three minutes long and posted just a week ago, is tearing up the Internet, causing appreciative reactions among heterosexual men and some yoga fans and disapproval among yoga purists. Shot in the penthouse of the Mondrian SoHo hotel in New York, it shows a gorgeous young woman performing expert yoga moves wearing only a black lace bra and panties. As she contorts herself, a man dozes in a mussed-up bed.
Yoga, the movie seems to say, gives you all this: a great body, hot sex, serenity and a fantastic apartment with a 360-degree view of lower Manhattan. The implicit message neatly dovetails with the slogan of Equinox Holdings, the fitness chain that funded the video: “It’s not fitness, it’s life.” More accurately, it’s a fantasy of the life (body, apartment, boyfriend) many of us wish we had.
