New addition to the blogoshere Kimberly Wilson, the creative impulse behind my yoga studio, TranquilSpace, has begun a weblog called tranquiliT thoughts. It's not more than a few days old so it's hard to tell if Kimberly will have the sustaining power to keep it fresh and active. God knows, I've slacked off. Blogging can be a time-consuming endeavor, especially if you don't spend a lot of time in front of the computer and can steal minutes to dash off an entry.

I don't know of any yoga blogger who also runs a studio, provides teacher training and has ambitions to do more than fine-tune her daily practice. The studio has an excellent website (not just a brochure with class schedule) and it's had a monthly newsletter for three years, so she is not a newcomer to the Internet.

I am interested because I am thinking of taking a Kimberly-led retreat this coming weekend at Yogaville in Virginia. My wife and I want to get away for a weekend and recharge batteries, and I've always hope that an yoga intensive would help me breakthrough some of the internal barriers of my practice.

  ¶ 9:40 PM 0 comments

  Searching for a new yoga opportunity On Tuesday evening, my wife and I went exploring at another Bally Fitness, Wheaton, where yoga classes are given. Brand new facilities make the exercise space inviting, especially since it has hardwood floors and a wall of mirrors. The area was also separate from the rest of the gym so it was quiet, without the clanking of weightlifting machines and other distractions. The instructor was an older guy, bald with a flowing white beard -- he kind of looks like Dr. Adam Weil. He led us through a ecclectic routine that included Tao Chi and yogic chanting at the end. He gave good verbal clues for the postures and movements. It was not as physically demanding as my other Bally instructor. It was the first class in the new facilities so it may not be indicative of the usual routine.

The reason that we started exploring is that my Bally instructor at the Rockville gym is cutting back to just Sunday morning classes. Both gyms offer these classes free of charge -- it's part of our monthly dues.

I've been holding back on my more structured classes at TranquilSpace because I still have lower back pain and do not want to stress it. I do miss the more physically challenging classes and the closer supervision of the instructors.

  ¶ 10:35 AM 2 comments

  Scientific confirmation of what many of us already know Last month, Newsweek brought out a cover story about the ties between the body and the mind. Herbert Benson, M.D, the "discoverer" (or first medical observer) of the relaxation response, is the lead voice in the issue. The issue covers what science is saying about the connection, including research on fertility, menopause and cancer. There are also some audio recordings of conversations between Newsweek editors Claudia Kalb and Dr. Michael Miller.

This cover story just reinforces a conviction that I have come to lately: this whole voyage of discovery is putting a new awareness of the power available to me to deal with life. It's a liberating realization, one that also has to be tempered with humility, caution and constant challenge of first impressions.

I used to work for Newsweek when I was a journalist in Peru so I have a preference for the publication. Time has also done similar takeouts.

  ¶ 5:35 PM 0 comments

  Six months of breathwork I have completed a little over six months of daily pranayama. What strikes me is that despite the repetitive nature of the practice (I am doing the standard Art of Living kriya practice), I have not gotten bored. I've developed a more nuanced sensitivity to how my breath affects the whole body. There's a lot more to than just moving the diaphragm up and down.   ¶ 2:50 PM 1 comments

  Reading and reference I bought two books:

Anatomy of Hatha Yoga: A Manual for Students, Teachers, and Practitioners by H. David Coulter. Alan Little recommends this book as essential to any serious yoga student.

Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness by Jon Kabat-Zinn. This book demonstrated the value of meditation in dealing with life's suffering through work with patients at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center. It's quite useful as a manual, with step-by-step exercises and activities. I used Kabat-Zinn's mindfulness tapes (really CDs) for a couple of years, and now regret that I did not accompany them with the book.

600 and 400 pages, respectively. Looks like I have my bedtime reading booked for the rest of the year.

  ¶ 10:53 PM 0 comments

  Thoughts on yoga as a business I finally got my September/October issue of Yoga Journal. It has already been out on the news stands for a month, but my subscription did not arrive. I had to give it a decent time to see if it would finally showed up. When it didn't, I went out and bought a copy. The issue is a full 200 pages long and comes with a DVD promoting the new yoga instructional video series starring Natasha Rizopoulos, with medical commentary by Dr. Timothy McCall. Plus, a Winter issue of Balanced Living (a kind of bonus publication) has just arrived too. Plans are to turn it into a stand-alone magazine next year.

This brings me to a line of thought that's been on my mind. I've noticed commentary in yoga forums and blogs that Yoga Journal has strayed from its original humble beginnings in 1975. It now has a circulation of 310,000 readers, up three fold since 1998, and attracts mainstream advertisers, like Clairol and Sutter House wine, as well as the more typical ads for yoga clothing, vacations and training programs. Yoga Journal holds several conferences a year. Its new publisher, Lynn Lehmkuhl, honed her skills as the publisher of Ladies' Home Journal, and some critics quip that the magazine is starting to look like it. In other words, it's becoming a big business.

I think Yoga Journal is embarked on a spiritual path that is as difficult as being a celibate monk. As a former journalist who lived off what he wrote, I fully appreciate the difficulty of turning a publication into a viable enterprise that appeals to a broad readership and also interests advertisers. Sustaining a commercially viable publication focusing on yoga requires a keen sense of business as well as a loyalty to the core values of yoga.

In Western capitalist, materialist society, it's a tough fit. As strange as it amy seem, you can have just much "semi"-independence if you have a strong commercial product that has broken out of the pack and has a diversified advertising base, rather than a non-profit alwasy drumming up donatoin. Once you decide to be a for-profit organization, you can't say that you're only going to make a little money. You have to prepare for a market downturn or competition from other publications or media.

As yoga moms, rat-race burnouts and other members of this emerging group become an identifiable segment of the market, the stronger the trend of absorbing and co-opting yoga into mainstream culture.

For those who miss the day when Yoga Journal was untainted by commercialism, they can get their daily ration of purity at many of the yoga websites and blogs that are maintained without any money-making interest.

  ¶ 1:12 PM 2 comments

  Flex time in yoga and science I keep coming back to an article, What science Can Teach Us About Flexibility by Fernando Pagés Ruiz, appearing in the Yoga Journal March/April 2000 issue. It's a long read, but it goes into the details of what happens to your muscles, and, more importantly, tendons, ligaments, and muscle fascia when you're stretching.

This reference comes to mind because I went to my Friday evening yoga class and discovered that there was a substitute instructor. She led us in a few sun salutations and then spent the rest of the class doing some Pilates exercises. I don't know whether it was the newness of the exercises, the emphasis on forward bends (pressure on my lumbar area), the different appproach of Pilates or the lack of careful planning for the combination of positions. I ended up not feeling the normal release I get after a class. This morning, I woke up and my lower back had stiffened up.

  ¶ 3:15 PM 0 comments