I took my first Jivamukti class at Flow Yoga. The teacher was Jill Abelson, who happens to be featured in the December issue of Yoga Journal. There are only two certified Jivamukti teachers in the DC area, and they both call Flow Yoga their home studio. The 300-hour residential teacher training program is demanding and requires big bucks and tons of commitment.
For those who are familiar with this style of yoga, Jivamukti flows from a New York City yoga studio run by Sharon Gannon and David Life. Despite being on the trendy edge of urban chic, Gannon and Life are respected innovators in American yoga. It draws a lot on Hindu spiritual practices to expand yoga beyond being just physical exercise.
The class was fast-paced and I sweated up a storm, in part due to the fact that the class was packed. Jill kept things interesting and challenging. Aside from more chanting and pranayama than in most classes, I was not able to put my finger on what makes the Jivamukti style so distinctive. Of course, one class just gives you a short taste of the approach so I should probably hold off on any judgments.
Perhaps just as important as the Begley book is the recent publication of The Mindful Way through Depression: Freeing Yourself from Chronic Unhappiness 
Labels: meditation, reading
My interest in the Begley book is really part of an ongoing inquiry into the area of mind games &emdash; or rather the challenge of pushing mental ability to its human potential (self-realization), or healing from debilitating condition (depression, for instance), or warding off the effects of aging (I am 58 years old).
The Dana Foundation, a first-rate place for scientific information on the brain, recently posted Experts, Dalai Lama Discuss Meditation for Depression about a conference at Emory University in Atlanta last week. This conference was a continuation of the dialogue between the Dalai Lama and scientists that Begley wrote about. There was a similar conference, The Science and Clinical Applications of Meditation, organized with Georgetown University here in Washington in 2007.
What has struck me is that I've been moving in this direction for more four years, well before I started reading about these trends in neuroscience, mental health and wellness. I was on the right track. Probably, this meme had not gelled so cogently into an explicit message or I was picking up strands of the news and associated them in my mind. After all, this kind of research has been going on for more than 20 years. But is even more mind boggling is that I can sit on my mat and experience this same practice in a very personal way.
Labels: health, meditation, reading
I went to Thrive Yoga at 8:00 am today to take the meditation and pranayama session before Susan Bower's Sunday morning class of yoga. Several friends had told what a great prep, putting them in a mellow state before they started their practice on the mat. I have to confess that it was a real change of pace for me. This time around, the pranayama practice was designed to slow down and calm the mind. I've been more accustomed to an energized pranayama practice. We used bolsters with added blankets under our backs, and the position threw me off. It took me a while to realize that the accentuated curvature of my spin was shortening my breath. Finally, we sat for about 20 minutes. Susan's voice guided us through the process. I am used to silence during my meditation. So, all in all, I was outside my comfort zone.
I had been promising myself to take this Sunday meditation class since it started up about a month ago. But I am not an early bird by nature and Sunday mornings have their rituals that are hard to break. Despite my quibbling about the session and it being my first time, I will definitely go again. It really did help prepare me for a more mindful yoga practice: it usually takes me 20-30 minutes to shake off what I call the "debris of life" (all the to-do lists, internal dialog and white noise that go on in my head) and surrender to my practice; this time around, I eased into almost immediately. Should I have expected anything less?
Labels: class, meditation
I finished reading the Sharon Begley book, Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain (Ballantine Books, 2007). Actually, I finished it more than 10 days ago, but have not had a chance to write about it. Now, it's hard to remember what I wanted to do. I probably should have been writing as I was reading. Actually, I was traveling during some of that time so I could not post to my blog. Lots of excuses, lots of things keeping me busy, lots of yoga and meditation that take first priority.
In brief, the book firmed up my own sense of hope about where we are headed in the brain sciences. The leap of knowledge and understanding over the past two decades has been huge. And we are only beginning to reformulate theories of the mind and its workings. Freud as the great navigator of the ego and id has been left behind. Even the chemistry of Prozac and Valium seem to be the psychological equivalent of alchemy.
The narrative ran out of gas in the last three chapters. Begley depended on psychological studies and interviews of researchers for the meat of her content. That formula can be dry reading once it is repeated over 250 pages. Even the literary ruse of making the Dalai Lama the focal point of the narrative can squeeze only so much drama. Begley probably could have spared us some of the dry details and gone straight to the conclusions of each study.
Other takes
I was struck by the large number of podcasts that are available on the book. Blog Critics (March). National Public Radio (NPR) has two programs: Diane Rehm Program via Odeo and Talk of the Nation. Dr. Ginger Campbell Brain Science Podcast, Psychjourney Podcasts and Healing the Mind. I have not had a chance to listen to all of them.
Earth and Sky, Psychotherapy Networker The Wonders of Neuroplasticity, Discover: Rewiring the Brain, Brain Technologies and Dana Foundation.
For additional background, here's Sharon Begley's Newsweek bio and the Richard Davidson's personal page at the University of Wisconsin's Lab for Affective Neuroscience.
Labels: meditation, reading, yoga_resource
My weight has fluctuated between 191 and 196 pounds, depending when I weigh myself and whether I've abused dessert at dinner time, for most of the year. I've tried not to obsess about it, but I know that I could make things easier on me in a number of ways if I carried around fewer pounds. This week, the lower end of my weight range dropped consistently below 190 for the first time in years. My waist has hit 36 inches (on a good day), but I've been there before (briefly). It's amazing how the body is not a static container-vehicle. It will change and shift as we exert mental and physical efforts. It will change and shift without us doing anything. Thanks to my new running routine, I've now got cute, thin ankles.
Labels: conditioning, core
I've started jogging three times a week to improve my physical conditioning. It's been almost a decade since the last time I tried running. I stopped because I developed shin splints and never got up the energy to go running again. Since taking up yoga, I've looked down my nose at running as repetitive torture of my joints and hamstrings, but I've changed my mind. It's just so convenient to put on my running shoes, plug in my MP3 player and head to the Rockville High School track and jog alone -- or go to the gym if the weather is bad. I know I need to fit in 30-40 minutes of physical exercise on my off-days for yoga.
I've been jogging about 2 miles, plus another miles for warm-up and cooling off, for the past two weeks. I was surprised that I was able to manage that distance with ease, though I was not pushing myself, just jogging. So far, no sore joints. In my yoga class yesterday, extended and repeated holds in chair (http://www.yogajournal.com/poses/493) pose finally made me collapse into child's pose. I did not have any stamina in my thighs. I had depleted my reserves by jogging during the week -- not that there were lots of reserves under normal conditions. That's precisely why I started running, because I wanted to gain strength in my legs and hips.
At this stage, I'm being very gentle with myself, warming up thoroughly, stretching before and after, keeping the pace under control and concentrating on form. The running certainly makes me appreciate the stretching in yoga.
Labels: conditioning, practice
The Thrive Yoga website has undergone an incremental revamping to make it a better resource. The biggest change is that Susan Bowen has decided to start blogging. Her opening salvos have been riffs on the Yogi Sutras of Patanjali. That's a pretty tall order, to turn those sometimes cryptic, frequently insightful refrains into meaningful nuggets for modern-day yogis. She says that other Thrive teachers will be chipping in with blog entries. The blog will also be open to comments, so hopefully it will become a sounding board for the community. There are not many studios that have blogs so this initiative is breaking new ground. Kudos to Susan for being open. Elsewhere on the site, feedback from Thrive students tell how yoga has changed their lives.
Labels: class, reading, yoga_resource
Time When Yoga Hurts is an example of the backlash in the media against trendy yoga. It points out that "over the past three years, 13,000 Americans were treated in an emergency room or a doctor's office for yoga-related injuries, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission." What else does the article say: that people overextend themselves because they think that yoga is benign; that some classes take place in adverse conditions (Bikram's 105 degrees F) or many teachers are not well-prepared to deal with students. In other words, practitioners face the same risks with yoga as they do with other exercise regimes. More to the point, the Time writer says that yoga is just plain wimpy as a way to get into shape:
The truth is, yoga, regardless of the form, doesn't offer a comprehensive way to get fit. According to a study by the American Council on Exercise, a national nonprofit organization that certifies fitness instructors and promotes physical fitness, dedicated yoga practitioners show no improvement in cardiovascular health. It's not the best way to lose weight either. A typical 50-min. class of hatha yoga, one of the most popular styles of yoga in the U.S., burns off fewer calories than are in three Oreos--about the same as a slow, 50-min. walk. Even power yoga burns fewer calories than a comparable session of calisthenics. And while yoga has been shown to alleviate stress and osteoarthritis, it doesn't develop the muscle-bearing strength needed to help with osteoporosis.
There are so many types of yoga and varying paces of classes even within styles, that it's really hard to say flat out what the final balance sheet is for yoga. Yoga never evolved as the complete answer for physical conditioning. I am sure that some teachers could make a case for their style of yoga (Baron Baptiste, for one) being better suited that more sedentary styles.
Yoga's a lot better than no exercise at all. It deals with aspects that are ignored by other exercise regimes by taping into the spiritual and mental realms. I have started to adding more work in the gym, getting back to jogging after giving it up nearly a decade ago, and adding some weight-lifting for strength. But I don't think that I would have approached physical exercise as consistently, systematically and sensitively without the body awareness that yoga has given me. It also addresses flexibility, which is a major constraint for me.
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Mindfulness and Psychotherapy: Cultivating Well-Being in the Present Moment is offered by UCLA Extension and Lifespan Learning Institute in collaboration with the Center for Mindfulness and Psychotherapy and InsightLA on October 5-7. If you're not going to fly to California on 24 hours notice, you might want to check out the speaker handouts page because the convergence of interests is stirring up a lot of heat and insight. Some of the handouts are more detailed than just an outline. As mentioned here before, I am plodding my way through Sharon Begley's Change Your Mind, Change Your Brain, and this conference offers similar material.
One speaker, Sarah Lazar from Harvard, has a site with her research information on meditation, called Meditation Research (catchy title). She has a link to New Yorker cartoons on yoga, always good for a yuk.
Labels: meditation, therapy
I have had to swear off the wheel or upward bow (Urdvha Dhanurasana) pose after 5:00 pm. Whenever I've done it at an evening class, I have been unable to get to sleep that night. It became to be one of my favorite poses because I've been able to get into the pose only the past year and every time I do it, I can go a little deeper. But it's just too intense for late in the day. It's as if I drank a couple of double expresos before bedtime, a jolt of energy. I substitute Bridge (Setu Bandha Sarvangasana) pose, instead.
