Los Angeles Times Yin yoga: yang-style's less aggressive counterpart explains the payoff in doing less, citing Paul Grilley, Sarah Powers, Kelly McGonigal, Dina Amsterdam, Via Page and Molly Lannon Kenny:

Yin yoga's proponents say the physical effects can have a profound emotional component as well, by teaching practitioners how to handle discomfort and strong sensations. For that reason, yin yoga is being used in some addiction and trauma recovery programs.

Washington Post D.C. Homeless Men Take Path to Serenity, One Yoga Lesson at a Time:

When they do yoga, after being hunched over in a defensive crouch for years, aching from carrying their worldly possessions in duffels slung over their shoulders, hurting from years of sleeping on pavement, it can be transformative.

"I'm suffering from back pain. Aches, you know, it's the life," said Junior Amarzon, 32, who has been living at the St. Elizabeths homeless shelter in Southeast Washington for nine months and is a dedicated yoga student. "Yoga is great for me, for my body."

Being out on the streets and helpless requires a lot of healing, both physically and mentally.

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.

TIME plays up Psychotherapy Goes from Couch to Yoga Mat, which is about five years behind the wave of awareness, at least mine:

Since the days of Freud, research into the mind-body relationship has come a long way. Studies show that not only are your mental health and mood dependent in large part on physical factors like exercise, but also unchecked stress, anxiety and depression can affect physical health, increasing blood pressure, heart disease and even risk of death. So it was perhaps inevitable that patients would start bringing their yoga mats into therapy.

The latest conference of the International Association of Yoga Therapists shows that momentum is building for yoga's benefit for both the mental and physical wellbeing. Over at respected World of Psychology blog, Alicia Sparks is also looking at the rise of yoga as therapy. Just a week before, she had laid out her own experience with yoga.

For those who missed it from eight years ago, the TIME article The Power of Yoga was a milestone for yoga's emergence into the American mainstream. The article used to be buried in a pay-to-see archive.

New York Times Musical Pharmacology - Concerto in the Key of RX gives some interesting insights in efforts to marry music to the healing sciences. Most of this stuff is in the early stages of investigation and trial, but it all rings true.

Stefan Koelsch, a senior research fellow in neurocognition of music and language at the University of Sussex in Brighton, England, agrees, and is working on participatory musical treatments for depression. But in the long term, he sees broader possibilities. "Physiologically, it's perfectly plausible that music would affect not only psychiatric conditions but also endocrine, autonomic and autoimmune disorders," he said. "I can't say music is a pill to abolish these diseases. But my vision is that we can come up with things to help. This work is so important. So many pills have horrible side effects, both physiological and psychological. Music has no side effects, or no harmful ones."

One discovery is that if the music is too familiar or has identifiable words it does not have the same effect as "anonymous music." I suspect that's one of the reasons why kirtan chants and Sanskrit lyrics are so appealing.

Washington Post Happiness Can Spread Among People Like a Contagion, Study Indicates:

"Stanley Wasserman, who studies social networks at Indiana University, said: "We've known that one's network ties are important, but we've never looked at anything on this scale. The implications are you can't look at individuals as little entities devoid of their social context." Others, however, questioned the findings, noting that it is difficult to account for every variable that might affect the outcomes of such studies."