A video of a lightly-clothed yogi meditating in the middle of a snowstorm in the Himalayas has gone viral online sparking a heated debate about its authenticity.

We live in a time when the old saying “seeing is believing” just doesn’t apply anymore. The advent of artificial intelligence and deepfake technology has made it possible to create virtually anything and make it look authentic. Realistic-looking AI news anchors and digital influencers are a part of this new reality, so you can’t blame people for doubting their eyes. Case in point, a viral video out of India showing a yogi with his hair and beard caked with snow meditating high up in the mountains during a snowstorm. He looks so comfortable in one of the harshest environments on Earth that many people rightly believed it was staged or the result of AI digital manipulation.

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Khecarī Mudrā is an obscure and somewhat controversial yoga practice that involves gradually severing parts of the tongue and then curling it back until it enters the nasal cavity.

Can you even imagine pulling your tongue back enough for the tip to slide into the nose through the mouth? It sounds impossible, and even if you could do it, wouldn’t that pose a risk of choking? Well, diehard hatha yoga practitioners must not worry about that too much, because that’s exactly what the advanced stages of a practice called “khecarī mudrā” require. Well, that, and gradually cutting the frenulum, the small piece of skin connecting the tongue to the floor of the mouth…

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Most yoga practitioners struggle to pull off the Niralamba Poorna Chakrasana contortion just once in their lives, but one 11-year-old girl recently managed to do it a whopping 21 time in one minute, setting a new world record.

On January 20, Riya Paladia, a gymnastics and yoga practitioner from the village of Gaulapar, in India’s Uttarakhand state, stunned a local crowd with her amazing flexibility and speed, performing the tough Niralamba Poorna Chakrasana yoga position 21 times in one minute. Described as one of the very hardest yoga contortions, the move didn’t seem to pose any problem to the 11-year-old girl who slid on her back with ease before rising up on her feet again, without using her hands as support. It almost looks like she is being pulled up by invisible strings.

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They say age is just a number, and watching 98-year-old V Nanammal effortlessly execute a wide range of difficult yoga poses that practitioners decades her junior still struggle with, I’m inclined to believe that they’re absolutely right. Recognized as the oldest yoga instructor in India, and the second oldest in the world, Nanammal has inspired a whole generation of Indian youths to take the ancient art.

V Nanammal started doing yoga when she was 8, picking up the basics from her father, who was a martial artist. She then continued learning the secrets of the practice under the guidance of her grandfather, in her home town of Coimbatore, India’s Tamid Nadu state. After getting married, Nanammal continued learning yoga from her father-in-law, and soon started teaching others. The elderly yoga instructor says that she never stopped practicing yoga for the last nine decades of her life, and credits it for her good health and incredible flexibility. She claims to have never been to the hospital or even taken any kind of medicine. “I never stopped practicing yoga at any point in my life. That’s the secret of my health,” she says.

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Heavy metal music and yoga may seem incompatible, but one New York yoga instructor with a passion for metal has mixed them together in a series of classes that help people relax and unleash their inner beast at the same time.

Headbanging, death growls or “devil horns” hand gestures, all executed to a background of loud metal music, aren’t exactly elements associated with yoga, but it’s exactly what you can expect while attending a Metal Yoga Bones class run by Saskia Thode. It’s not the most Zen experience in the world, that’s for sure, but the Brooklyn-based yoga instructor claims that her classes are just as liberating, if not more so, than regular yoga.

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The name “Goat Yoga” can be a bit misleading, but no, it’s not yoga for goats, but yoga for humans on a picturesque farm in Oregon where practitioners can relax in the presence of adorable friendly goats.

Lainey Morse, who owns the No Regrets Farm, in Willamette Valley, Oregon, had worked as a photographer for 10 years, but last year, after dealing with some health problems, she decided to quit shooting portraiture and focus on starting a business around her farm. She has been hosting various outdoor events, and at a recent children’s birthday party, one of the parents, who happened to be a yoga instructor, asked if she could hold a class there. Morse agreed, and the class turned out to be a huge hit, with some people driving over 100 miles from Portland just so they could take part.

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In a bid to make their workouts more exciting, German fitness enthusiasts in Berlin have come up with ‘Beer Yoga’ or ‘boga’ – a new form of yoga that integrates beer bottles into standard poses. Participants are welcome to use the bottles in any way they like, including holding it in their hands, balancing it on their heads, or even taking a sip in between poses!

Some of the students who have indulged in beer drinking during yoga class say that it’s fun at first, but becomes quite difficult after the second or third bottle. That isn’t stopping people from attending these classes, which are often described as highly amusing and interesting. Sure, yoga and beer don’t exactly go hand in hand, but yoga instructor Jhula, the inventor of boga, says she knew a lot of people who loved both yoga and drinking beer, so combining the two did make some sense. 

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‘Rage Yoga’ sounds like an oxymoron, but it’s actually all the rage in Calgary right now thanks to unconventional yoga instructor Lindsay Istace. During her classes, she combines regular yoga poses with swear words, offensive gestures, and beer, as a way for participants let go of their rage!

“Rather than doing the namaste (at the end of the class), we do a really big ‘f*ck yea,’” Istace told Metro News. “It was pretty awesome because I had a whole room of people turning to one another saying ‘F*ck yea, f*ck yea’. It was good.”

If you’re really into yoga you might find this blasphemous, but Istace claims that it’s really therapeutic. A trained contortionist and fire eater, she says she came up with the idea while going through a painful breakup. She started swearing and screaming during her yoga practice, and that helped her get over her issues with addiction and anger.

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Busting the myth of the perfect-bodied yoga poster girl is San Francisco plus-sized yogi Valerie Sagun. For the past three years, she has been photographed performing a range of complicated yoga poses, including headstands and handstands.

Valerie has a massive Instagram following of over 80,000 people, with whom she regularly shares videos of her yoga journey. “I just want to make sure that people don’t feel like they have to be scared or intimidated by learning yoga from someone who doesn’t look like them,” she wrote on her Tumblr page. “All of us have body issues whether you are big or small, but it’s good to just take the time to look at yourself and just love it as it is now.”

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Although he claims to be 95 years old, Turkish yoga guru Kazim Gurbuz looks like he’s closer to 50 than 100! In a recent interview, he revealed the secrets behind his youthful appearance – regular yoga practice and a diet consisting of specific superfoods.

Born in 1920, Gurbuz believes that everyone has the potential to live to the age of 130 if they do the right things. In fact, he believes that life starts at 65. “We can live to be 130 years old,” he said. “I have such an intention… everyone has the power if they take good care of themselves. Then they will live to age like me.”

Gurbuz claims that he greets the sun every morning before going for a swim, claiming that it is a great source of energy. He also practices more difficult yoga positions, like the ‘knot pose’ for up to 48 hours, and can hold his breath for four to five minutes. He says he’s sexually active too, enjoying three to five orgasms a day. “I am the same as I was when I was 25-30 years old,” he said. “They challenged me to prove it in Europe, so I did.”

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When yoga first came to the United States it was mostly regarded as a chick thing, and the few men who rarely walked into a yoga studio were only waiting for their girlfriends. Things have changed a lot in the last few years, and now almost 50% of attendants are men, but there are still stiff guys out there who don’t feel comfortable in the same room with a bunch of flexible women. That’s where broga comes in.

As its name suggests, broga is a variation of yoga tailored for “bros”. It’s based on the idea that most men want to keep fit without feeling emasculated by silly posies, meditation and Sanskrit chanting.  Co-founders Robert Sidoti and Adam O’Neill have found a way to combine yoga routines with manly exercises like push-ups and squats to make the original Indian practice more appealing to men. Guys usually engage in other types of physical activity, like tennis or basketball, because it feels like a better workout, but broga is brutal enough to make you sweat and catch your breath, while at the same time improving your muscle and joint flexibility and reducing stress. Sidoti and O’Neill also design their studios with men in mind, and although they don’t look like regular man caves, the two always opt for neutral colors and use a soundtrack featuring the Black Keys, Radiohead, Awolnation and Bon Iver instead of the traditional New Age music commonly used for yoga. Their instructors don’t sound like the usual zen types either, but more like buddies giving you pointers.

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If the years are starting to take their toll on your once flawless visage, there may yet be a way to turn back the clock, before turning to Botox injections and other cosmetic procedures. It’s called face yoga and is apparently allows practitioners to control the way their face ages.

Face yoga was developed by Annelise Hagen, who calls is the ultimate face-lift. The New York yoga instructor says her technique is meant to be a natural alternative to Botox and cosmetic procedures, which cost Americans billions of dollars every year. She started working on her unique set of facial exercises after she learned her students, most of them well-educated professionals, were practicing yoga, but also getting Botox shots during their lunch breaks to hide their wrinkles. Hagen just didn’t feel that was in the spirit of yoga, so she decided to create a proper alternative. Based on the premise that, like any other muscles in the human body, facial muscles need exercise to stay toned, face yoga offers a range of exercises to help people looking younger for longer. And the best part, face yoga poses, like Smiling Fish (purse your lips and smile slightly), the Marilyn (blow kisses while keeping your forehead smooth) and the Satchmo (puff out your face and transfer air from cheek to cheek), also give you a chance to act silly and release accumulated tension.

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To promote the upcoming Progressive International Motorcycle Show, advertising and branding studio i.d.e.a. created a series of human motorcycles from the contorted bodies of yoga experts and circus performers.

We’ve seen impressive body-painting and displays of yoga skills before, but these human motorcycles are in a category of their own. “We sought to combine the art of the motorcycle with true art, thereby elevating the ads to something people would want to look at, enjoy, and share,” i.d.e.a. said about their unique project, and they’ve certainly achieved their goal. Photos and posters of their creations have gone viral on the Internet, and for good reason – they are simply spectacular. They employed the talents of professional body painted Trina Mery to turn a team of yoga experts, circus performers and flexible dancers into a speed bike, cruiser, and dirt bike to be ridden by the Progressive International Motorcycle Show’s host, Erin Bates. They did such a good job that in some photos you can’t even tell she’s just riding a bunch of people, not a real motorcycle.

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For people like Tao Porchon-Lynch, old is the new young. There’s literally nothing about her that suggests she is 93. The woman has been practicing yoga for over 70 years now, and teaching it to students in India, France, and the US for more than 45 years. What’s more, she participates in ballroom dancing in her free time, an activity she took up at the age of 87.

If the mere mention of her physical prowess is awe-inspiring, wait till you hear the story of how she took to dancing. When Tao Porchon-Lynch had just turned 87, she fell down outside a grocery store and broke her hip. She had to undergo a major hip-replacement surgery, something that would leave most people confined to bed for the rest of their life. But Tao would have none of that. Completely disregarding her doctor’s advice to slow things down, she walked into a ballroom-dancing studio merely one month after the surgery, starting lessons that very night. Today, at the age of 93, Tao participates in ballroom-dancing competitions in New Jersey, New York and Puerto Rico along with her 23-year-old dance partner. All this, while teaching 12 Yoga classes a week.

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Yoga has been around for thousands of years, and the benefits it has for the mind and body are unquestionable, so its ever-growing popularity is not surprising . But what is very surprising is  6-year-old Shruti Pandey, who has been a successful Yoga teacher for two years now.

Interestingly enough, she is not the only “miracle” in her family, as her older brother, Harsh Kumar, mastered all 84 yoga positions by the age of five, making it into the Limca Book of Records and becoming a source of inspiration and motivation for Shruti. But he has never been interested in becoming a teacher.

67 year-old Hari Chetan, Shruti’s instructor, who set up the Swami Brahmachand Saraswati Kaivalya Dham Ashram 35 years ago, is simply amazed not only with her flexibility, which many may find normal for a child this age, but also with her talent and determination. She proved to be e vary quick learner and as she mastered this art for herself, it didn’t come as a surprise when she started teaching others, in classes of around 30 adults that start at 5:30am. Everyone is amazed with her talent and the patience she puts in for everything and every one.

“The best thing about Shruti is she tries to provide an alternative position for the complicated ones that are difficult for an older person like me to do. She’s very patient,” says 90-year-old retired teacher Swami Bhanu.

After only three months of attending Shruti’s classes, 48-year-old businessman Lokendra Pal Singh says: “I have noticed a positive change in my life. I used to be short-tempered, but now I’m able to control my anger to quite an extent and it’s all thanks to a little six-year old.”

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