Yoga in a box: Teacher creates action figures

HARRISBURG, Pa. — When Raymond D. Fogleman teaches his yoga class, he demonstrates the precision postures for students. When they're not in class, his students can consult his 3-D action figures.

"When I am showing them poses, I also am giving them a visual," Fogleman said. "It's very hard when you are learning to keep that visual in your mind."

To help novices when they are practicing alone, the Hummelstown, Pa., man created 16 3-D action figures to illustrate yoga's controlled breathing and stretching techniques. He calls his product "3-D Yogis and Yoginis Box of Poses."

Fogleman, 43, started studying yoga 14 years ago and has been teaching full time since 2003. He got the idea for the statuettes after finding a toy soldier in a collection of toys three years ago. He realized that the antithesis to a soldier would be a yoga figure.

The plastic statuettes are 3 inches tall or 3 inches wide depending on the pose. Each has a 1-by-2-inch base. Each of the eight yogis (male) and eight yoginis (female) statuettes has a number and a code embossed in its base. The code corresponds to an explanation of the pose in an accompanying instructional guide.

Yoga has been practiced for thousands of years in India. It is based on the principle of mind-body unity. Estimates are that 20 million people in America practice some form of yoga.

Yoga poses help align muscles, bones, ligaments and tendons to improve posture and give the practitioner a feeling of center and balance, Fogleman said. Yoga exercises allow the spine to become elongated and muscles to become lengthened and stronger.

But yoga is more than physical exercise, Fogleman said. "A lot of yoga is self-reflection. It's meditation. It's making friends with your demons and your internal obstacles as well as external obstacles. ... Yoga teaches us how to perfect our bodies and our minds."

Fogleman hopes the action figures encourage children to become involved in yoga. "A younger person has a lot of energy," Fogleman said. Yoga can help harness that energy and develop a mind pattern to go along with it.

Jenny Shyk of Lower Paxton Township, Pa., said her daughter, Rose, 3, likes the yoga statuettes although she is too young to take a formal yoga course. "She lines them up and will imitate the poses," said Shyk, who has been studying yoga with Fogleman since October 2003.

Fogleman worked with a company in China to manufacture the statuettes. The company produced prototypes and Fogleman verified that the postures were exact.

The statuettes and packaging materials were made with recycled plastic and cardboard and nontoxic paint and plastic.

The "3-D Yogis and Yoginis Box of Poses" is $29.99 and available on Raymond Fogleman's Web site, www.rayzodyssey.com.