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Madonna teaches Ashtunga yoga

A P Kamath

This is where a Sanskrit shloka meets Madonna. But hold off the demonstrations. For The Next Best Thing is not another Eyes WideShut.

There is no orgy scene as was present in Stanley Kubrick's film before it was cut (in several versions) following protests by Hindu groups in America and Britain.

In The Next Best Thing, which stars Madonna as Abbie, a yoga teacher whose friendship with a gay man undergoes a dramatic change, yoga gets royal treatment.

The $ 30 million-film, directed by John Schlesinger (best known for Midnight Cowboy with Dustin Hoffman and Madam Sousatzka with Shirley MacLaine and Shabana Azmi) opens in the United States early next month.

In one of the important sequences in the movie Madonna demonstrates a series of difficult yoga poses with many of her instructors.

"The kind of yoga that I am doing in the film is Ashtunga yoga, which is a kind I practice in real life," she says.

"When I was pregnant, I began doing Hatha yoga, and then began doing the more difficult Ashtunga yoga after I had the baby, because I wanted to do something more visceral and physical."

The movie's credits thank Sri K Pattabhi Jois "for illuminating the teaching of yoga". What impressed Madonna about Jois, who taught yoga mostly in Mysore, is his simplicity and rigorous demands, her associates say. He was never tempted to rush to Hollywood to make the big bucks. However, the Toronto-based Downward Dog Yoga Centre teaches Jois's kind of Ashtunga yoga.

Madonna takes special pride in the Ashtunga yoga sequence.

"Several of my real yoga teachers are in this scene, people I really look up to in my real practice," she says. "It was odd, because in the film I portray that instructor and I had to go around correcting their poses, acting like I know they do."

The film's yoga consultant Kimberley Flynn worked with Madonna to prepare her for the film.

"Madonna is an extraordinary yoga student. She has tremendous discipline. And because of her dance background and years of working out, she has a lot of strength that she brings to the practice," says Flynn. "She is very strong, very flexible and very focused. During the shooting, Madonna's abilities in Ashtunga yoga amazed the cast and crew."

"Her yoga skills are incredible," says producer Tom Rosenberg. "Her physical condition is amazing. She is very serious about yoga and quite impressive at it."

Flynn says she made arrangements for Madonna to study the harmonium, which she while singing a Sanskrit chant. But the scene, according to insiders, is either cut to fleeting moments or eliminated completely from the final version of the film.

"The wonderful thing about yoga is that it is for the body, mind and the spirit," Flynn says.

Madonna could not have agreed more. She took special care to have the home look Indian.

Production designer Howard Cummings says he took great care to present the home Abbie (the yoga instructor).

"We created a workout/meditation room and decorated the home with Indian-inspired wall hangings and artefacts," he says.

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