David Regelin, NYMagazine, (Photo: Danny Kim)

UPDATE:

David Regelin responds on his Website and Facebook page to the NYMagzine article discussed here Jan. 10.:

YOU CALL THAT AN ARTICLE!” – When I read the headline of the New York Magazine article about me: “You call that a tree pose?!” my heart sank. I immediately sensed that I had been used to promote the growing popular and reactionary trend of yoga skepticism. …I actually couldn’t read it all at once, I had to lie down for a bit before finishing as I found it nauseating. The very tone of it is sensationalist and off putting. Continued…

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JAN. 10, 2012:

Until recently, New York City instructor David Regelin was an incipient rock star of the yoga world, where famous instructors have lives similar to celebrity D.J.’s, jet-setting between international workshops and sessions with elite clients. But this fall, reports New York Magazine, Regelin joined a growing number of people who suggest that amateur yogis may be doing more harm to their bodies than good.

“Yoga is not about enjoying yourself and having a fun experience that you like; it’s about changing yourself,” Regelin says. “And what changes you is usually stuff you don’t like.”

Regelin takes his cue from master teacher Nevine Michaan, a yoga instructor out of Bedford Hills, New York and founder of  Katonah Yoga. 

Nevine Michaan, Westchester Magazine, Photo by Cathy Pinsky

“Learning yoga from Vinyasa is like learning French in a bar,” Michaan says. “Eventually you need to learn how to conjugate a verb and structure a sentence.”

Regelin accepts his role as confrontational reformer.

 “It’s like going into someone’s house and opening a closet and being like, ‘What the fuck, you’ve got a huge mess in here.’”