Washington Post A Breath of Hope: Walter Reed Tries Yoga to Counter PTSD picks up on the use of mind-body techniques to heal the psychological and physical suffering of war veterans at Walter Reed Army Medical Center:
The yoga that Carnes teaches, a form of guided meditation known as yoga nidra, was added to the program in 2006 after she helped conduct a feasibility study at the medical center... The results of the study were overwhelmingly positive, she said, adding that the service members appreciated learning skills that they could continue to use after they left... However, it's difficult to document the program's impact. Participants, who evaluate their own progress, often say they feel better after sessions, Carnes said, but there's little scientific evidence to back their anecdotal reports.
When Bush unleashed war on Iraq, his administration failed to put a dollar cost on the invasion and occupation of a Middle East country for five years. Now we know that the psychological cost may be even heavier than the financial, maiming a generation of soldiers. Their suffering will linger for decades. Yoga and other disciplines have been identified as key components of any treatment strategy, but it's been hard to pin down the statistical evidence (anecdotal accounts abound) to back this up to the full satisfaction of Western science.
Living Yoga is a feature about the life and teachings of Swami Satchidananda. A couple of trailers are on YouTube or on the website. Swami Satchidananda was a major influence on the US scene when he arrived the 1966 and began re-introducing yoga and Tantric knowledge to a new audience seeking to break out of consumerism. Here in the Washington, DC, Yogaville is a monument to his legacy.
The feature will be shown at St. Mark's Yoga on Capital Hill on May 15 and the Smith Farm Healing and Arts Center on May 30. Check out the Living Yoga blog for exact times, dates and locations. I just chanced across the information about DC-area showings.
Labels: dc_yoga, philosophy, videos
BandhaYoga has brought out a second volume of its eye-popping Scientific Keys series on yoga anatomy, this one entitled The Key Poses of Yoga: Your Guide to Functional Anatomy in Yoga. As with the first book (The Key Muscles of Hatha Yoga), the unique perspective on the details of muscles and bones is an imaginative tool for developing a better understanding of what goes on when practicing yoga. The full color illustrations are very useful for teachers and students alike. You can also purchase both books and save $7.00 over the list price ($97). These are not inexpensive books, but given the printing and paper costs, the price is worth it.
As you will see on this site, I am a member of www.BandhaYoga.com's affiliate program, in which I get a small percentage from book or poster sales resulting from visitors to this site clicking on the ads and then purchasing a book. Let me tell you, it's more an endorsement on my part than a revenue source.
Labels: reading, yoga_resource
I bought a wrist mala from YogaBasics Japa Mala Beads. Twenty-seven beads on an elastic cord. I see the mala beads as a constant reminder that I can take my practice with me through out the day. The slight pressure on my wrist or the beads between my fingers and thumb can be evocative of the healing and strength that I develop on the mat, just as I often feel the same reaction to certain songs or kirtans that often serve as the background music to my practice.
My daughter gave me a full mala for Christmas, two years ago, which I keep hanging near my monitor at home. It's a bit bulky to carry around and I can't put it around my neck while at work. The wrist mala is more inconspicuous and more meaningful to me than wearing one of those colored plastic wristbands that symbolize various causes, like yellow for Lance Armstrong's campaign for cancer research.
YogaBasics Japa Mala Beads has a wide selection of full and wrist malas, as well as bags and boxes to store them. Diverse materials range from gemstones to hand-carved bone to wood.
Labels: hardware, life style, meditation
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar will be back in Washington, DC to lead a yoga, meditation and pranayama workshop on May 9-11 (Friday and Saturday, 6-8 pm; Sunday, 8-10 am). It will take place at the Hyatt Regency in Crystal City, VA and cost $200 (students and seniors: $100). No prior knowledge of the Art of Living courses is needed. This is a rare opportunity to receive insight directly from a major spiritual leader.
For those who are already introduced to the Art of Living program, you can take an advanced course with Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, May 8-12, 6:30 am - 9:30 pm. This will include the celebration of Sri Sri's birthday. This 4-day course will also take place at the Hyatt Regency and there may be some overlap between the advanced course and the workshop open to the public. This course costs between $510 and $660 (see the conditions on the registration site).
Labels: art_of_living, dc_yoga
My friend and infrequent yoga teacher, Rachel Permuth-Levine, is one of the organizers behind 2008 NIH Yoga Week: Exploring the Science and Practice of Yoga. NIH is the National Institutes of Health, for those not up on Washington acronyms. From May 19 to May 23, there will be guest speakers, reports on NIH's own research on yoga and meditation and yoga practice on the NIH campus lawn (weather permitting). Most events are to take place from 11:00 am to 3:00 pm so I will probably not be able to attend.
Among the speakers are Timothy McCall, M.D., Medical Editor of Yoga Journal Magazine and author of Yoga as Medicine: The Yogic Prescription for Health and Healing
Thrive Yoga will be holding an event outside the NIH daytime schedule. Sat Bir S. Khalsa, will speak on " Yoga and Meditation in the Management of Stress" on Thursday, May 22, 6:00 - 8:00 pm. There is limited space so you will have to register Sign up online..
Labels: brain_science, dc_yoga, meditation, therapy
The Dhamma Brothers: East Meets West in the Deep South is a documentary about a vipassana retreat in the Donaldson Correctional Facility in Alabama and the before and after effects of the experience on the prison population, their keepers and the surrounding community, deep in the Bible-Belt South. There was a write-up about in in the New York Times last September.
I've just seen the promo site and a few of the trailers so I cannot vouch for the finished product, but it is intriguing. The film is making its way through the indie film festivals and art film theaters and may eventually make it to a TV screen near you.
This is not the only experience of meditation and yoga reaching into prison walls to relieve human suffering and restore human dignity. Windmill Buddhist Meditation has a section on it, as does S. N. Goenka's website. Here is a link to an academic article . For more links, just follow this Google search.
Following up on my inventory of physical achievements, I want to clarify why that list was important for me. I am negotiating a new contract with my body. When I went through childhood and adolescence, I was laboring under several handicaps about how I perceived myself:
- Trauma: At the age of six, I had an appendectomy. I had felt a pain in my side for several days, but did not recognize it as a serious symptom. I kept asking my mother for aspirins. I was at school when it worsened substantially. After school was out, I tried to walk home, a mere two blocks, but that distance seemed as if it were two miles. (The sense of distance is still engraved on my mind; when I went back last year, I saw that my sense of dimension had been blown out of proportion.) I did make it home. The crossing guard saw that I was doubled over in pain, and got help. I was rushed to the hospital for an emergency operation because it was close to rupturing. While recovering from the operation, an infection set in and I had to stay another week. I was conscious when the doctors drained the abscess. I remember the putrid color of the pus as it flowed out of my belly and into the metallic pan. This was also my first separation from my mother so it must have been traumatic for me to spend the evenings and nights alone. When I went home, I was hit with several other childhood illnesses, which kept me out of school. I ended up repeating first grade.
- Wimp: I had allergies that caused asthma and skin rashes. I did not participate in organized sports or engage in fights or quarrels because I feared an almost pre-ordained defeat because my body could not defend me, it would break first.
- Feet of clay: I had a fungal infection under my toe nails and on my soles. My nails were very disfigured by the time I was a teenager. I did not want to show my feet in public, which meant that I hated going to the beach or the pool. The biblical metaphor of having feet of clay seemed to apply to me. About eight years ago, I saw a dermatologist and had the condition treated. I don't think I could have started practicing yoga if I had not first cured my skin condition; I would never have taken off my socks.
The unspoken conclusion of these visceral experiences was that I could not trust my body. It was going to fail myself. If tested, it was going to break. What's more, I could not anticipate when and how it would betray me. So I discounted it; I ignored it; I concentrated my efforts on a mental realm, in a fantasy world that consumed my energies during childhood and then intellectual efforts once I got into junior high and found that I could distinguish myself in the academic world. I did not participate in sports because I could never push myself to the maximum because I misinterpreted the exertion required for sport competition as a warning that my body was near its limit and close to a breakdown.
Those perceptions of my physical body have followed me for 40 years, shaped my self-image and conditioned how I dealt with the physical world.
Over the past four years, I have been moving slowly, gradually and hesitantly towards a new awareness of my body, a prolonged dialog between my body, mind and spirit to reach a new agreement about how all three hang together and establish a different interface with the outside world. I did not even know why yoga and pranayama felt so "right" to me when I started back in early 2004, or why meditation has been so liberating. But I have kept engaged in this new flux and have gradually changed the terms of the partnership. I am reverting to childhood and the primal tasks of walking, running, bending, lifting, extending. I even find myself re-examining something as fundamental as how I take each step, what parts of my foot are employed and when, and how that changes translates up my limbs and changes the way that I carry myself. It's a much bigger challenge than becoming physically stronger, more flexible, more skillful at moving my body. In a sense, I am taking ownership of my whole body and exercising full dominion over my personal space, rather than being confined to my head. It requires a greater command of sense and awareness. and an extension of my will through my core, out to my fingers and toes -- and beyond.
That's why this physical side of change has taken on so much significance. If I am able to run five miles or push myself into wheel or crow pose, that small achievement means that I can take a childlike joy in possessing my body and its capabilities.
Labels: blessing, life style, philosophy, practice
I just got through watching this video from the TED conference in Monterey, California, February 28. Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroanatomist, recently gave an chat about her life-altering experience of a brain stroke. This emotionally charged story is going to spread like wildfire because it captures a vital life story and marries it to both science and spiritual insight. I'm still reeling from my first viewing so just don't mind me and set aside 18 minutes to be astounded.
Her website also contains a link to her self-published book, My Stroke of Insight through lulu.com. I got on to this because the New York Times featured it on the Well blog.
TED is heavy-weight conference that deals in thinkers of great ideas and doers of impressive deeds — and good story tellers. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It's worth exploring.
Labels: brain_science, inspire, philosophy, videos
New York Times To Stretch or Not to Stretch? The Answer Is Elastic has an intriguing monologue about whether an athlete can get anything out of practicing yoga.
They're (athletes) like one of my running partners, Claire Brown, a 35-year-old triathlete.
"I always feel like, well, athletes should do yoga," Claire said. "It's supposed to be really good for running, and when I do it regularly, it does loosen up my hips and make me feel better for running."
Yet she puts off going to yoga.
"It shouldn't feel like an obligation, but it always does," Claire said. "The good classes are often an hour and a half long, and I'm thinking: 'I could be running, I could be biking. But here I am, stretching and breathing.'
"Isn't it funny, though, that something that should be calming can actually cause stress because you think you have to do it?"
The crux of the article is about the lack of scientific evidence about the value of stretching in preventing injury -- and in many people's minds, yoga is synonymous with stretching. Claire obviously attacks yoga with the same vigor as she applies to her sports conditioning. If she's really after stretching, she would be better off just putting together a routine of exercises that address that need and cut out all the extraneous material that makes yoga more than an Eastern equivalent of calisthenics.
Back in January, I did a Personal Year-End Review. I was bowled away. It's taken me since then to assimilate what this inventory means. I'd like to share part of this review as it pertains changes in my physical conditioning and work methods over the past 12-18 months.
- I started jogging regularly by joining a running group at work and having a weekend run, giving me aerobic activity at about 12-15 miles a week. No injuries have kept me from running. I look forward to my run.
- I kept up with my daily meditation practice, focusing more on mini-sessions rather than 20-minute blocks
- I kept up with my yoga practice 3-5 times a week, and made breakthroughs in several poses, especially improving balance and flexibility
- I took at least 2 weeks of real vacation (travel away from DC) - Ontario and Quebec, Canada; Orlando; Eastern Shore MD
- I upgraded my Omega-3 pills to higher quality and increased intake.
- I found my own personal doctor and had a full physical examination
- I brought down my total cholesterol by 23 points while raising my good cholesterol (HDL) by 5 points, compared to 2 years ago
- I got a specialist to check out my sinuses, finding a long-term infection that had been a drag on my health
- I lost about 15 pounds and 6 inches off my waist while increasing muscle mass and strength.
- I am getting to the gym as often as feasible, doing a few exercises every day at home, fitting other simple things in daily routine (walking up 8 flights of stairs).
I've been doing some of these things for more than the past year and I've mentioned them on this blog, but the intensity has picked up. This progress also meant reducing time spent on other activities, like doing outside consulting, watching TV, surfing the Web, reading the news (magazines and newspapers) and some books.
Measurable success (having concrete milestones) has a reinforcing effect on my motivation. I am also aware of other benefits that I had never expected. I hope you don't think I'm just bragging on myself, but I was not really aware of what I had done until I sat down and listed them in the review -- and this is just the physical side of the change!
The most significant conclusion is that I have made physical well being as a top priority, rather than an afterthought to fit between a 9-5 job, moonlighting and TV. That decision translates into time and energy spent on taking care of myself. I made a conscious decision to take command of my body and be proactive about my health. I decided that maintaining the discipline of physical exercise was the single, most important thing I could do to ensure my mental, physicial and spiritual health and a long-term investment in my future. If I can't do that, other efforts at self-improvement have less of a chance of succeeding.
My son Matt 
had one of his photographs selected for a collective exhibit, Photography Exposed, by dcist. There were over 600 entries by 200 photographers and 60-some photos were finally chosen. The exhibit opened last night.
Matt's been working with photography for a couple of years and he's taken a couple of courses. It's become one of his creative outlets, and he's invested a lot of time, thought and money into it. For his birthday two weeks ago, we (including Stephanie) gave him a Nikon lens. This is the first time that he submitted his work for public viewing. You can see more of work at Flickr.
The opening took place at the Civilian Art Projects, just off the DC Mall. The place was packed, and there was a line that went down two flights of stairs and around the corner in the rain because the gallery could only hold so many people. I suspect that not all of them came to see Matt's work. When you have several scores of aficianados showing their works, they tend to invite a lot of friends and family. Stephanie and her steady squeeze Ron showed up as did several of Matt's house mates.
The exhibit will be shown until March 15, 2:00 pm to 6:00 pm, Wednesday to Saturday. If anyone is interested, you can buy the photo for $135. The selected photo is below. All rights reserved.
Andrea Franchini was my first yoga teacher at Tranquilspace and then she moved to Flow Yoga Center and I soon joined her. I introduced my daughter to Andrea and we took classes with her together. Stephanie and Andy struck some common vibes and kept in contack over time. I was really fortunately to find a teacher like Andy. She has a nurturing, therapeutic approach to yoga, typically of the Anusara tradition, so she helped put to rest a lot of my early nerves about doing yoga in a classroom setting. She's always been a kind of marker in my practice
Two years ago, Andy decided she wanted a change of scene and moved to San Francisco, but once or twice a year she comes back to Washington to give a workshop or a master class. Stephanie, Teresa and I joined her this time around at Flow Yoga. Of course, I was going in part because of the ego trip — I wanted to hear her tell my how far my practice has come in two years. For instance, I realized that I had to use a bolster under my hips and back to get into reclining hero's supta virasana pose when Andy was teaching me, and now I can get by with just a folded blanket. But that was only a sidebar in the rush of mat-focused learning that took place in those five hours. Workshops allow me to push through a lot of artificial barriers that I erect in my mind.
This Saturday-Sunday workshop was back in January and I'm just now getting around to writing about it so I am playing catch up. My yoga practice and its internal processes has pretty much overwhelmed my capacity to digest it through writing, either in a journal or a blog. Blasting off a quick entry about a news item on yoga, a website or my trip to St. Thomas is just a gesture to pacify my angst.
This evening, I was suddenly inspired to stand in tree pose (Vrksasna) as a preparation for heading to bed, a different meditative pose than I usually take. I concentrated on how my feet were supporting me, serving as the foundation for my limbs and torso. It made me sense viscerally what "four corners of the foot" really means. I could feel all four points on the sole of my right feet and the tension of strength that held them together. As I moved into the pose on the left side, I became aware that I was really not standing on the ball of my foot; it was more accurately a midline of the foot, thus turning the base into a narrower and, therefore, more unstable platform. I pressed more firmly into the ball of my foot and immediately felt the shift towards a broader base. As I've been running regularly over the past month, I've become more conscious of my overpronation and literally walking and running on the outside edge of my feet. Now I walk around purposefully pressing in the balls of my feet. That refreshed awareness paid off tonight in understand a structural weakness in my tree pose.
If you are scheduling your calendar around the growing number of yoga-focused events, you can block off the whole month of September, which a coalition of yoga personalities, media outlets and service companies has declared "Yoga Month." It is "a year-round awareness campaign and will peak September 2008 with millions of health and socially conscious individuals practicing yoga at thousands of yoga studios, businesses, parks and homes around the globe." The campaign will highlight the health value of yoga in dealing with obesity, hypertension, heart disease, breast cancer, menopause, chronic back pain, asthma, arthritis and depression, among other illnesses and conditions. So far, there is no event or affiliate from the Washington, DC area.
Labels: dc_yoga, health, yoga, yoga_resource
This morning I had my third yoga class in three days so I've been able to get my body back to homeostasis after a week without a class. Susan Bowen at Thrive Yoga led a hot yoga class, which was packed with people because it was Presidents' Day and more students than normal for a Monday morning put their mats close together to work up a nice sweat. It was a purifying experience because I had already had Saturday and Sunday classes to get my body back into the swing; I was able to get into my poses deeply and with ease so I could concentrate on making micro-adjustments to my posture. I came out of class feeling that I rid myself of a lot of debris and could receive the day to the fullest.
Labels: class
I have not been posting much recently because I had so much to say backlogged in my head that I did not know where to start — so I did not. There's a personal contradiction for you.
My skin is as white as the sands on Salomon Bay beach, St. John, US Virgin Islands.
My wife and I also took a quick trip to St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands, for four days so I was out of circulation for a week. A couple of days getting ready, and then a couple of days to recover. There's another layer of overwhelm that can get in the way of writing. And I get all tied up in knots when I travel so there's another issue to deal with. But sandwiched between the prep and the flying were two days spent chilling on the beaches, Magens Bay on St. Thomas and Salomon Bay on St. John. When we lived in Peru, the Pacific Ocean beaches were something that we took for granted and enjoyed every summer; now residing in the States, beaches are out of easy reach. The Caribbean is just a world apart. There is nothing as mellow as the sound of the surf against the shore. Lots of sun screen to keep from being burned to a crisp, and keeping covered up when not on the beach. During the day, St. Thomas tends to be overrun by day visits from the cruise ships that dock every day in Charlotte Amalie, but the rest of the time, a visitor has plenty of room to enjoy the place. We took a 45-minute ferry to St. John on the second day and came back in the evening. It was worth the trip because more than half of St. John is a US National Park and contains one pristine beach after the other. According to National Geographic magazine, we were told, Magens Bay beach is the number 3 beach in the world. If that's the case, then, there are a dozen other VI beaches that deserve a similar ranking.
