Washington Post Pursuing Rapture Without Regulation, Yogis Take Position Against Va. Policy is about the Virginia state government waking up to yoga teacher training and laying down the law about registration.

The State Council of Higher Education for Virginia recently declared that studios offering yoga teacher instruction must be certified. That involves a $2,500 fee, audits, annual charges of at least $500 and a pile of paperwork.

Yogis, in an unlikely departure from their usual mission to foster harmony and balance, are pushing back. They launched a letter-writing campaign to Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) and state lawmakers and started a "Virginia Yoga Teachers" page on Facebook to organize it. Even Sen. Mark Warner's former private yoga instructor said she asked his office to back their effort.

New York Times Mental Stress Training Is Planned for U.S. Soldiers is about how to prepare soldiers for the psychological rigors of war. It's heartening to see that the top brass are finally seeking assistance in dealing with the surge in suicides, post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD), depression and other problems in the wake of nearly a decade of conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan:

And in the interview, General Casey said the mental effects of repeated deployments — rising suicide rates in the Army, mild traumatic brain injuries, post-traumatic stress — had convinced commanders "that we need a program that gives soldiers and their families better ways to cope."

The general agreed to the interview after The New York Times learned of the program from Dr. Martin E. P. Seligman, chairman of the University of Pennsylvania Positive Psychology Center, who has been consulting with the Pentagon.

In recent studies, psychologists at Penn and elsewhere have found that the techniques can reduce mental distress in some children and teenagers. But outside experts cautioned that the Army program was more an experiment than a proven solution.

The Philadelphia Inquirer had an article (Penn center to help Army on stress) on this same issue.

Seligman is the lead thinker behind positive psychology and has had a major impact on how people are treated. I recommend that anyone with an interest should visit Happier.com, an initiative to take good mental practices to the masses. Seligman and his crew have developed a series of easy to follow exercises and routines that help you shift your mind set.

Almost Buddhist in nature, the approach aims to relieve human suffering. Although not mindfulness, it asks that you change the story that you're telling yourself inside your head. It asks you to examine your thoughts, which any bodhisattva would appreciate.

Finally, this effort is far better use of psychology than what the idiotic Bush Administration by employing psychologists to develop interrogation techniques that crossed the line into torture. Ironically, the quacks that advised the Pentagon distorted a concept, "learned helplessness" that Seligman (see Wikipedia entry) developed 30 years ago.

Bloomberg.com Princeton Grad Quits Morgan Stanley to Teach Yoga to Bankers:

Imparato, 28, is tapping into yoga's growing appeal among the result-oriented financial brokers and dealers who want to de-stress and work out at the same time. Hedge funds, including Karsch Capital Management LP and Blue Ridge Capital LLC, offer onsite yoga classes to their employees. Pimco's Bill Gross has said that he gets some of his best investment ideas while standing on his head.

Rivaling stories about athletes that practice yoga to improve their competitive edge, bankers-turned-yogis is a rising meme in the media coverage about yoga in the American mainstream, especially in the wake of the Wall Street crash last year. The irony of financiers meditating on the impermanence of reality is irresistible. Imparato has a nice website. Her studio is in her loft. I suspect that when she goes to the banks and hedge funds to give classes she charges more than $20 a session per student.

Washington Post Yoga Activists Say Classes Shouldn't Require a Financial Stretch is about increasing efforts to broaden yoga's appeal and utility in dealing with multiple issues:

The class, for students in Upward Bound, a program that prepares low-income youths for college, is part of a growing movement to take yoga beyond its reputation as boutique exercise for the well-to-do and use it as therapy for groups such as at-risk and homeless youths, HIV/AIDS patients and torture survivors.

Of course, this trends has been going on for far more than three years; it's just that this reporter noticed the outreach efforts now and needs to cloak the article in newsworthiness.

Over at Huffington Post, Sadie Nardini makes an excellent point in her Om Scampi: A Top Yogi Comes Out of the Meat-Eating Closet in which she discusses the cultural quicksand of vegetarianism and self-righteousness of many US gurus.

One result of this is that yoga is getting a bad rap, as a culture of Yogier-Than-Thou, which has people running back to the gym in droves. No one wants to be made to feel like a lesser being, especially while already lurching around in Tree Pose like a drunken sailor. And I'm sick and tired of seeing it happen again and again in studios across the country, proving to potential students that they are not welcome as they are...but will be only if they plan to change.

As my personal eating habits have evolved, I no longer eat much red meat, but am far from being a vegetarian. This article looks at a lot of angles of the issue in yoga studios. It may go on beyond what's needed to get its message across, but it does paint an insightful picture of the yoga scene.