Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not be bent out of shape. Baltimore Ravens' 10-time Pro Bowl linebacker Ray Lewis just admitted that he loves yoga. Lewis has credited yoga with helping him achieve better flexibility after surgeries in 2005 and 2006. ''I would recommend [yoga] to all the linebackers,'' Lewis told The Chicago Sun-Times this week. ''Just because of the mobility of the strength we have in our muscles. You have to keep them flexible.'' Not just linebackers are hearing this: Lewis is exposing thousands of people to yoga who would otherwise not have even entertained the idea of asanas or downward-facing dogs.

One of the few good things that can be said about The Great Recession (if anything good can be said about it at all) is that it seems yoga mats have become ubiquitous. It is almost as if we have cleared the hyper-aggressive materialism of the go-go nineties and the nihilistic aughts and are undergoing, in due course, a restoration of our collective equilibrium. It appears to me that more people are getting in touch with their inner selves, their centers, through yoga than at any other time that I can remember. After thousands of years, yoga is -- for lack of a better word -- chic. And if the NFL wants to join in, then more power yoga to them.

[Image: Wikimedia Commons]