Did you know that Yoga Dork was ALMOST the title of my book? It's true! But instead, it's someone else's website, and was before I even thought of the book. She was kind enough to write up my little campaign.

http://www.yogadork.com/2010/03/19/semi-well-known-author-yoga-dude-seeks-donations-for-yoga-school/

Here's a link to a piece about my exciting quest. Forward to friends and family, or send it to the trash. Regardless, it's the last two minutes, full-court press, and other basketball cliches. Thanks for all your support!

Namaste,
NP

http://nealpollack.com/2010/03/drag-me-to-yoga.html

Some folks have asked to know a bit more about the book project that my yoga training will support. Well, here's a little summary that I ran on nealpollack.com a few months ago. Hope it clarifies the stakes a little bit. Feel free to post around if you're so inclined. Namaste, NP.

STRETCH: The Unlikely Making Of A Yoga Dude
Coming August 2010 from Harper Perennial

Years after achieving literary stardom as the author of The Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature, Neal Pollack has fallen into a rut. He’s overweight, the hair on his head is thinning, and the hair on his face is pretentious—all of which a New York Times critic points out while panning his second book, Never Mind the Pollacks. That review, combined with the complete failure of his attempt to become the front man for a rock band, leaves Pollack lying face down in a puddle of his own tears, pounding the mattress and sobbing into his pillow. His wife intervenes by saying: “You should do yoga with me.” “Yoga,” he writes, “didn’t occur to me, ever. Why would it have? EA Sports had never put out a yoga video game.”

Yet Pollack is desperate enough to try anything—even if it means trying to stand on his head in the exercise room of the Lance Armstrong 24-Hour Fitness in Austin, Texas. As he struggles to master the “alligator pose” and keep from kicking other people in the face, Pollack begins to feel better. Soon, he’s working his way through the chakra system and coming closer and closer, he mistakenly believes, to dharma megha samadhi, “a state of enlightened bliss where the ego separates from the self and the practitioner realizes that he's powerless to control the vagaries of an endlessly shifting universe.”

Pollack moves his family to Los Angeles and soon finds himself immersed in its “weird and circuslike” yoga scene. He takes part in a 24-Hour Yogathon, volunteers at his neighborhood yoga studio, attends a “yoga Olympics” in an airport hotel ballroom, becomes a reporter for Yoga Journal magazine, gets invited to yoga conferences and yoga rock shows, travels to Thailand for a two-week yoga retreat, and starts teaching yoga himself. Though Pollack mercilessly lampoons America’s seemingly omnipresent yoga culture, he also undergoes a profound personal transformation. His dedicated yoga practice, he writes, “has done more for my physical and mental well-being than anything else I've tried.”

Well, it's been a little more than 24 hours since I took the insane leap of faith to request funds for my yoga teacher training. While I've never been shy about begging people for money (as a professional writer, that's essentially my job) doing it in the context of yoga charity for myself seemed like an outrageous boundary to cross, even for me.

But here I am, asking. Writing is my art, and right now I'm writing about yoga. Since I'm simultaneously taking yoga seriously while also taking the piss out of it, I feel like I should know as much as I possibly can. And I can only know as much as I possibly can if I train with a wonderful teacher. Now I've received an opportunity, and, in the spirit of yoga, I'm throwing my fate into the financial hands of strangers.

This will be a nearly two-month campaign, waged virally and on the extreme cheap. Thank you beyond thank you to the half-dozen people who've already donated to the cause. They include people who I've only met on Facebook, someone who once sold my house in Austin, fellow writers, fellow yogis, and a woman who found my page through a Google alert for the words "Namaste, motherfucker." You can go buy her T-shirts at www.namastemofo.com.

If I can do this training, I'm going to be able to take my show on the road properly, and hopefully spread the word about yoga to other overweight, cynical comedy dorks, as well as anyone else who might listen. You won't lose your sense of humor by doing yoga, people, and you probably won't lose your virginity, either. Mostly, you'll just feel better and have a calmer, clearer mind. Those are the only symptoms of the yoga disease that matter.

That's all for now. And remember: The faster you give me a buck or two or ten, the faster I'll leave you alone. That's a direct quote from the Mahatma himself. Would I lie?

Namaste,
NP