When being a yogi had an exotic air

Starring Krishna Das, George Harrison and Hiendra Wadhwa. Directed by Paola di Florio and Lisa Leeman.

Rated PG for thematic elements, some violent images and brief smoking. Check listings for theaters. 1 hour, 27 minutes.

Bottom line: Storytelling is straightforward, but story itself is compelling

By Anita Gates

New York Times

This could be a good movie to do yoga by. In “Awake: The Life of Yogananda,” gentle sitar music, languorous camerawork and soothing narration set a haunting mood. We hear the Indian-born Paramahansa Yogananda, who arrived in Boston in 1920 and in Los Angeles in 1925, tell members of a Jazz Age lecture audience that they are dangerously busy.

“If you keep running after too many hobbies,” he warns paternally, “you won’t have any time left for bliss.”

Today in the United States, yoga is pretty much about health and fitness; almost a century ago, it was presented to Americans as a religion. And rapt attention was paid to its prophet, a berobed man with long, wavy hair and piercing eyes (sometimes they seem kind; at other times, Rasputin comes to mind).

Yogananda was invited to the White House, and his activities were reported with amiable newspaper headlines like “East Indian Mystic Starts on Motor Tour.” Then a yellow-journalism campaign painted yoga as a “love cult,” and although no evidence was found, damage was done. But Yogananda staged a comeback and died in 1952, in the middle of making a speech.

The film’s storytelling is straightforward, almost standard-issue, but the story itself is compelling, as is the testimony of devotees. It’s not surprising to see interviews with Ravi Shankar, Deepak Chopra and George Harrison (who died in 2001). It’s a bit more so to hear contemporary scientists marvel at Yogananda’s understanding of neuroplasticity decades before Western science considered it.

Much is made of a report that the only book on Steve Jobs’s iPad was Yogananda’s “Autobiography of a Yogi.” That’s enough to make a modern soul look inward.