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"Rachel W from New York City, who asked that her last name be withheld, had a similar experience working for Lululemon last year. Rachel accepted a retail position while applying to graduate school, and said she was alarmed at the work culture starting from day one.

"My interview consisted of a group yoga class, where management would analyze my downward dog. I was confused by the format, but the company seemed focused on a group strategy of expressing themselves, which I thought would be nurturing," Rachel said.

"The tension rose, to the point where I was reprimanded for having bad days. They expected you to constantly reevaluate goals, which I thought was ironic," Rachel added. "The company sells gear for yoga, an ancient practice that preaches a holistic lifestyle. But when it comes to employees, they impose a desired façade of how their employees look, act, and feel. That is not holistic."

Rachel attended Landmark on Lululemon's dime, and said the program seemed beneficial for many participants who were looking to share experiences from traumatic events.

"They go through several levels of what they call "distinctions" and there was a lot of encouragement to open up about past experiences which might hinder future explorations," she said. "Some even strived for public humiliation, citing it as a break-through. I didn't think it was for me, but I felt pressure to attend because all my coworkers had."

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http://goindia.about.com/u/ua/annoyancesinconveniences/How-Do-You-Deal-With-Begging-In-India.htm
Never encourage them

From past 8 years I hv never give a single penny to them .If u hv a kind heart want to help them then pls don't do that bcoz they will never earn money and in Gita there is written that every man hv to pay there guilt in same life and those who help them that guilt passed to them and so on... Logically a govt could raise poor by giving job or work but when the same money spends on parasite like beggar then that amount of money reduces to them . In Gujarat there is very few beggar bcoz there govt hv banned them . and u all know Gujarat has recogniozed by U.N as fastest growing state .—Guest Bharat

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Please don't give money to beggars.
Next time you see a beggar, please don't give them any money. Ok, I might sound a bit cruel but the reality is begging has become a business in India. There are criminals in India who kidnap small children and make them beg. They even cut their limbs, beat them ,etc. so that people will give money out of pity.

Also, if you give only 10 rs thinking that child will get something to eat....then you are wrong.

The whole amount will be taken by the gang leader or their parents and in return the child gets rotten food. I sincerely request you to stop giving any money to beggars. If you really want to help them, donate that amount to an NGO who helps such children get education.

More details can be found at [articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com]

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However, the fact that meditation was primarily designed not to make us happier, but to destroy our sense of individual self – who we feel and think we are most of the time – is often overlooked in the science and media stories about it, which focus almost exclusively on the benefits practitioners can expect.

If you’re considering it, here are seven common beliefs about meditation that are not supported by scientific evidence.

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As Joe Keohane points out in this savvy New Republic essay, mindfulness classes at the office are part of a broader focus on restoring “meaning” to work – not least because, as a 2013 Gallup survey found, “companies whose employees are comparatively more engaged generate 147% higher earnings per share”. There’s something obviously a bit troubling about treating personal meaning (which is, by definition, the ultimate reason for doing anything) as just another means to an organization’s ends. “Workers who are emotionally invested in their work also tend to be less motivated by earthlier enticements, such as pay, vacations, flextime and good hours,” Keohane noted. It’s easy to see how meditation could serve a similarly ideological purpose as an enabler of workaholic culture, rather than a counterweight to it – making a bad situation just a little more bearable, and therefore, in the long run, perpetuating it.

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Either that, or meditation at work could become one more thing in which employees feel obliged to participate, so as to curry favor with bosses. In which case, as with managerially imposed “fun” activities, it’ll simply make a bad situation worse.

In this excerpt from Gelles’s book, we learn how Mark Bertolini, chief executive of the health insurer Aetna, was driven to meditation following a skiing accident in Vermont. That’s the kind of desperate crisis that can invest a spiritual quest with intense personal significance. But Aetna’s employees didn’t encounter meditation in the same way: they were offered classes because Bertolini “decided to use his company as a laboratory” to see if it might help them.

To be clear, he seems like a great boss: at the same time as introducing meditation classes, he gave his lowest-paid employees a 33% pay rise, after reading Thomas Piketty. Yet even the best boss might struggle to avoid communicating a subtle pressure to take part – and meditation undertaken out of a reluctant sense of obligation seems unlikely to be much help.

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Lululemon's Resell Policy Bans Customers - Business Insider
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Feb 7, 2014 - Lululemon Is Banning Customers Who Try To Resell Their Clothing ... of purchasing Lululemon products is that it does hold resale value.".
Lululemon Will No Longer Ban Online Shoppers Who ...
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Feb 19, 2014 - After the latest complaints, Lululemon clarified resale language on its website, Hayes said. The site now says that the company recognizes ...

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Feb 7, 2014 - A yoga pants party this is not. Lululemon has banned customers who resell their gear online. Customers have been raging on Facebook about ...
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Feb 19, 2014 - Lululemon Athletica has once again found new ways to anger its customers with a bizarrely zealous approach to resale policy enforcement.
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The Yoga of Fierce Awakening: Why Your Dogma Cannot Crush My Dharma.

Ramesh Bjonnes on Apr 18, 2011

When I was living in Nepal, one of my best friends, a Nepali shopkeeper, was initiated on the tantric path of yoga by my teacher. In order to receive the teachings, as per customs in some tantric traditions, he had to cut his sacred Brahmin tread.

This simple act, it turns out, was a kind of religious suicide. A few days after his initiation, he vanished without a trace, and some months later I learned he had been abducted by his family. “You remain an upper caste Brahmin,” they threatened, “or we will banish you from the family forever.”

With his tantric tail between his legs, he decided to keep his white cotton thread as a symbol of his superior caste status. The only time he appeared at the ashram after that episode was as an immigration informer. He knew that some of the foreign yogic monks in training had stayed several months past their visa status. So, as revenge for his tantric troubles—for his being scared sacred—they were consequently arrested.

His dogma walked over our karma. His family’s dogma stepped on his yoga and forced him to abide by medieval customs akin to slavery; the Indian caste system. Arcane and inhuman customs often upheld by yogis in both white and orange robes; upheld even by stark naked yogis without robes.

India is indeed a religiously and culturally complex place. You may walk around naked in ashes, but you may not practice your yoga freely for fear that your family will banish you like a rabid dog.

In the powerful and beautifully shot documentary Fierce Light by Velcro Ripper, a dalit woman—a casteless person at the bottom of the Indian social pyramid—tells the story of her people, especially women, who are often beaten, raped, and enslaved without consequence. All in the name of the Hindu caste system; which is officially outlawed since Gandhi’s time, but still widely practiced and silently supported by yogis from many traditions.

Dalits have historically been associated with “impure” occupations such as leatherwork, butchering, or removal of rubbish, animal carcasses, and waste. Dalits also work as manual laborers cleaning streets, latrines, and sewers. Engaging in these activities is considered to be polluting and contagious. Even crossing the shadow of a dalit may pollute the soul of a Brahmin.

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My guru also advocated economic change. Revolutionary economic change. He talked about a maximum wage, not just a minimum wage. He talked about “cosmic property” as opposed to private property. He talked about the earth belonging to us all—not just all humans, but also to animals and plants. He called this concept neo-humanism—the love for all beings.

But spiritual teachers in India are not supposed to talk about such subversive changes, of course. They are supposed to sit peacefully counting the beads on their malas. Not surprisingly, he upset even more people in important places. Finally, in 1971, he was imprisoned on false charges for nearly eight years.

With the help of Amnesty International and attorneys from Europe and Canada, he was finally released. Free of all charges. These attorneys called his trial “politically motivated.” My guru, on the other hand, said he was only motivated by the love of justice and truth.

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So when you see some famous male yogi adorned with the white thread of Brahmin superiority, I urge you to let him know that you do not accept this thinly disguised thread of caste differences.

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Of the major initiatives that Prime Minister http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/narendra_modi/index.html?inline=nyt-per]Narendra Modi[/url] has introduced since taking office, few have generated as much static as http://mea.gov.in/idy.htm]Yoga Day[/url], which will feature a 35-minute public demonstration of poses by more than 35,000 government employees, students and other citizens. Though the Western world regards yoga primarily as physical exercise, Indians are more apt to see its postures and Sanskrit chants as freighted with ideological or religious meaning.

Preparations for the event set off a chorus of criticism, mostly from a handful of Muslim activist groups that say they should not be compelled to chant “Om,” a sound sacred in Hinduism, or perform the sun salutation, which they say violates the monotheistic nature of Islam.

Mr. Modi’s officials have hurried to address those complaints, assuring the public that participation in Yoga Day is optional and that it focuses exclusively on health, not religion. “Om” is not part of the Yoga Day protocol, nor is the sun salutation. The debate so incensed one right-wing member of Parliament that he suggested that those displeased by the sun salutation “http://www.mid-day.com/articles/those-opposing-surya-namaskar-should-drown-in-sea-yogi-aditynath/16277167]drown in the sea[/url].”

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Kuldip Kumar, 38, a clerk in the administration of All-India Radio, gave a little smirk when asked why he had attended the practice session, his first in 25 years.

“There is a stick hanging over all of us,” he said. “When the prime minister comes, if officials do not show up, of course it is bad for their career. The attitude is, we have to beat them with a stick to get the job done.”

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Bal Mukund Singh, the yoga instructor, ended the class by urging his students to become Hanuman, the monkey god, and then watched as they dispersed to the offices where they would spend their days handling dusty file folders and eating fritters.