Yoga in United States: Our top choices

Cultural influences abound here with food, fashion, and neighborhoods varying wildly depending on the ethnicity of the people living there. India’s presence is also felt, not least in the abundance of yoga opportunities. There are ashrams and slick spa retreats, yoga studios and beach sessions, lectures, yoga teacher training, groups heading overseas, and even the occasional university course that studies yoga. Yoga is big business in the US, and weeding out the valuable from the superficial can be a time-consuming endeavor.

Getting into the US can be an event by itself, with post-911 strategies including full-body scans, iris scans, and random searches. Also, make sure your visa is current and that you have a return ticket booked or you’re likely to never make it out of the airport. Once customs has been cleared and the ocean of homogenous malls and suburbs has been passed though, America begins to shine. Natural beauty like none other (it doesn’t matter how many photos of the Grand Canyon you see, there is nothing that can replace the haunting and humbling experience of being there), and climates so diverse it’s easy to believe you’ve somehow been transported to another continent.

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