Enlighten Up! - Yoga For Dummies

It’s high time, I started posting something rather than helping my lazy bum thrive forever.

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Enlighten Up! – Directed by Kate Churchill, this cracking little documentary is about the journey to understand the ultimate destination of Yoga. Her subject: New York journalist, Nick Rosen. Kate & Nick travel from NYC to Hawaii and finally to the motherland of Yogis, India to find a logical, rational and most importantly plausible answer to the spiritual realization element of Yoga.

I would assume that the target audience for this documentary is basically people like me, who have no freaking clue about Yoga. I do get the most confused look on my face while looking at the postures (the asanas). What are they doing?! Let me tell you something. I was sitting with 100+ people in REAL ART WAYS and everyone had the same look. Nick felt like, he is one among of us. You are automatically tuned to this guy’s frequency. Within 10 minutes in to the film, we are already engaged to his journey.

The film plays between light & high moments. Humor is unavoidable in this premise. We do laugh with Nick and get back to skeptical mode. Is yoga just an exercise for both mind and body? Is there any spiritual connection to this practice? This is a very simple concept for a documentary which expects all the meat to come out of the conception itself. In this case, the journey! Throughout the film, Kate, Nick and us, the audience waits for the moment - the ultimate payoff of this journey! I’m not going to spoil the ending yet. But the journey is worth watching. It’s hilarious, satiric and emotional all the way.

I don’t want to use swooping phrases like “masterpiece” or “must-see” but I would consider this as a nice little study on yoga. It doesn’t promise much but delivers something heavy in the end.

Spoiler Alert from here .........

After the show, I happened to have a long chat with one of my friends. She read the movie in a totally different way. So I would consider the ending very subjective. In my perspective, I felt, the ending was very strong and absolutely emotional. Yoga is basically soul searching and finding thyself. I don’t remember the Yogi’s name but the one who gives a charming speech in the end – he basically sets this journey’s payoff. It goes something like – a human reaches the pinnacle of self realization and existence, while performing an activity beyond the physical and mental capabilities. This can be reached by anything you love – Swimming, Hiking, Rock Climbing, Racing and ……. Yoga as well! That’s the supreme enlightenment from this movie.