Prana Journal
Crash Course - Art of Living
My daughter, Stephanie, started taking the introductory course to
Art of Living, inspired by the work of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. I encouraged her to take it because I thought it would be a good transition between college and real life -- a time to think, share ideas with interesting people and get some new skills. It costs more than just the equivalent of a yoga class -- about $250 full fare or $125 for students -- but I felt that it was well worth the money.
I took my intro course two months ago and it was a powerful experience. It stretches over six days, four weekdays and a weekend. The weekday classes were about three hours long, while the weekend classes five hours each. In a way, it's a bit like a cross between a workshop and a retreat. It takes you out of your routine and molds your activities around the learning experience.
I took it with a small group, just five people, while Stephanie has about 20 in her course. Sometimes, they give the course to 100 or more people. In India, the course is giving in massive gatherings -- it has to be that way in a country of billions. The core of the AOL practice is the Sudarshan Kriya, a purification process. A longer form is done regularly in a group (60 minutes) while a shortened form (20-30 minutes) is done daily. A summary of its benefits can be found on Lifepositive.com.
You are not supposed to revel what goes on in the classes, but I have found several websites that details what happens. The best summary is Bharani's Revelations.
You can read a long portrait of Sri Sri, Emperor of Air, in Yoga Journal. The DC Chapter will be welcoming Sri Sri next week, May 6. Details are on the site. If I have one reservation about AOL, it's the reverence and adulation with which Sri Sri is held by many of his followers. He is definitely charismatic in a quirky, Hindu way -- kind of a call back to the Beatles and the Maharishi. One thing is sure -- the Art of Living Foundation is a huge international organization, sustaining operations in over 100 countries and reaching into new areas. It gives APEX course for corporate management and staff as well as maintains an aggressive presence on university campuses.
What does AOL add to my yoga practice? It's increased my lung capacity in a really short time; it's increased my alertness; it's given me methods to refresh my mind throughout the day. By giving me greater awareness and sensitivity to my breath, I've improved my concentration and meditation. By coming to AOL and yoga together, I was able to see how much yoga could benefit me. At my first yoga class after the AOL intro course, I was able to get into deep bends and other poses and hold them because I was breathing more easily and deeply. I suppose I could have to come the same condition through other methods, but it would have taken more time.
Yoga Journal - Essential Reading
I just wanted to mention that I consider
Yoga Journal a first-class publication. I've been really impressed by the thorough and thoughtful coverage of all things yogic -- from meditation to props. Just looking at the list of authors demonstrates the quality of people buying into their product. I have a subscription to the magazine and will probably renew shortly for 2 more years. I visit the site a couple of times a week to look up old articles. It's a kind of online encyclopedia about yoga. For instance, I found an
excellent article (March/April 2002 issue) about the different approaches to pranayama among six yogic traditions: Integral, Kripalu, Astanga, Viniyoga, Iyengar, and Kundalini. The article was written by
Claudia Cummings.
I have my PDA loaded with about 20 articles that I have been reading at my lunch break. I use iSilox to grab web pages and format them for a handheld. The trick is to first get a print version of the web page to eliminate ads and other non-essential graphics and links.
The Brain, Science and Meditation -- clashing value systems?
MIT Technology Review Meditation and the Brain: "Of course, the monk lifestyle isn’t for everyone. So a recently published study on the effects of short meditation sessions with novice practitioners is perhaps of greater relevance to the rest of us. As reported in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine, Davidson and Jon Kabat-Zinn, a medical professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, conducted a small controlled study of “mindfulness meditation” training for employees of a small biotech firm. Four months after an eight-week meditation course, the researchers found that emotional and immune system benefits persisted—with just 15-minute meditation sessions only two or three times a week."
I came back to this article after reading it two month ago. It caught my attention because it captured my penchant for rationalizing my intellectual queries and my emotional satisfaction with my yoga and meditation practice. Whenever I ease into meditation mode, it's like slipping into a hot bath. You think to yourself -- "This is so right."
But I suddenly realized that there is another level in which this feeling of satisfaction can border on self-righteousness. There can be all kinds of claims about the value of yoga and meditation that cannot be confirmed objectively. You can see it a lot in the "life style" choices that surround these traditions. Do I have to become a vegitarian to follow through on my new yoga-based options. How can you prove some of the claims made about yoga and meditation -- curing back pain, managing mood swings or increased holiness.
The interesting angle is the collaboration between Western science and Eastern wisdom.
You can find out more about this trend by going to Investigating the Mind for the September 2003 conference that brought the Dai Lama to Cambridge, Mass or the Mind and Life Institute, the organization that has been exploring the trend for the past decade or so.
More pages for your pleasure
I have separate some weblog content into their pages:
Yoga Resource Gateway and
Recommended Reading. Placing them on separate pages makes it easier to update and add to the resources. There's also something symbolic of having pages that a more polished, permanent record than a blog.
Founding Spirit
I think I should spell out my objectives here. I am not an expert yoga practitioner, but a part-time novice with no pretenses of knowing much. Don't ask me for the Sanskrit name of a posture or whether to inhale or exhale or hold your breath on a particular movement. I don't think a blog is where I should be pouring out the details of my spiritual quest. I'll save that for my personal log of meditation, prana and practice.
On yoga and related topics, there are plenty of excellent portals, directories and sites on the Web that provide references, pointers and links to other resources. There are people who have put large parts of their books online (for instance, Erich Shiffmann ). Here the emphasis will be on link quality and contextual commentary so that visitors can get a handle on the resources. Today I chance across Vancouver Yoga, a Canadian studio run by Eoin Finn. It has MP3 demos of yoga routines and other resources. It looks like a great place to explore.
In my favor, I am Web-savvy and eager to let others ride on my learning curve. And I am a writer so I do not let web development or graphics get the upper hand on flesh-and-blood accounts of life on the mat. I've noticed on lots of yoga studio websites, Flash-based design and professional quality pictures shows the expert hands of design teams. But these sites seem to me to be expressions of PR, rather than the first-hand accounts of the creative force behind the studio. It would be a lot to ask for a yoga instructor to add web development or writing to his/her skill set (There are probably exceptions to this career trait, and I will point them out when I find them.)
As in any good blog, this is a conversation with those who visit these pages. I hope to implement comments soon to get feedback. This site is more in the spirit of giving back some of the rewards that yoga has given to me in a short time.
What makes a difference
Sometime late last year, I suddenly realized that this yoga thing (understood in its broadest interpretation) had a chance to change my life. By that, I mean a radical renovation of my emotional makeup, my physical constitution and my intellectual focus. I had a few informal, groping sessions that simply took my breath away. And it's more than a simple mindgame. It's a silent process.
Since then, I have been engaged in an effort to speed up the process, even though the idea of racing towards a goal goes against the nature of yoga. I mean that I am trying to remove obstacles to the process -- and when you're a 55-year-old, fully employed adult, there can be a lot of them. You'd be fooling yourself if you thought you could overcome them quickly. But over the past four months, I've seen enough gradual changes to encourage me to think that I can improve my quality of life.
Just trying to help
Last week a colleague at work mentioned that he'd been absent-minded recently and thought he should try meditation to clear his mind. I told him that he was on the right track. I explained a little about my practice and how easy it was to get started with meditating (like falling donw is easy). I didn't want to burden him with the details of why meditating fit my needs or how to do it. I'm not an expert. Later that day, I pulled together some links, some of which are at the bottom of this page, and sent them to him.
That's one of the reasons that I decided to start up this site -- I wanted a repository for my daily discoveries and resources that I chance across on the Web. Some place that I can point to when I want to help out someone -- just as I do with Peru or tech. This is like leaving tracks or trail markings so that a traveler can find his way.
I have a diary in which I write my experience from my pranayama and meditation practices. But that's for my own personal reference -- a different set of datas than what will be recorded here.
Quick Start
I wanted to get this weblog up and running as quickly as possible. The domain registrar sanctioned my domain name -- I am really happy that I got something meaningful -- and the settings have rippled through the Internet so that
PranaJournal.com will bring up this website. I am using
Blogger for easy setup. I thought about
pMachine or even
ExpressionEngine, but they require too much prep work. I had this blog up and running in five minutes while I would need a couple of hours to get pMachine running.
I first became interested in yoga when I was working on my master's degree about two years ago. I was looking for a means of relieving the stress of pursuing a graduate studies while working full time. I wanted to refresh my mind as well as my body, even though I had started going to the gym to get back some stamina. I played around with it, bought a book for reference and followed a DVD. But I was never able to sustain this interest.
In the past four months, I've really stepped up my effort. I've started taking yoga classes at TranquilSpace in Washington once a week. I took an Art of Living course. I have intertwined yoga into my daily routine. This has led to a daily practice of pranayama (breathing exercises). I've also begun a daily practice of meditation. For the first time in ages, I have no problem failling to sleep at night -- I lay my head on the pillow and I am out within 30 seconds. Before I used to toss and turn for what seemed like hours.
What do I want to accomplish with this site? There are some really great resources on the Web about yoga, meditation, spirituality and other truths. I will take the role of a novice feeling his way towards enlightenment and bliss. Supposedly, I will never reach my destination, but the journey will be reported here.
Online Resources
The links that were originally in this entry have been moved to their own pages:
Yoga Resource Gateway and
Recommended Reading. Placing them on separate pages makes it easier to update and add to the resources. I will be adding to them on a regular basis. Check back often.
Namaste
