New York Times To Stretch or Not to Stretch? The Answer Is Elastic has an intriguing monologue about whether an athlete can get anything out of practicing yoga.

They're (athletes) like one of my running partners, Claire Brown, a 35-year-old triathlete.

"I always feel like, well, athletes should do yoga," Claire said. "It's supposed to be really good for running, and when I do it regularly, it does loosen up my hips and make me feel better for running."

Yet she puts off going to yoga.

"It shouldn't feel like an obligation, but it always does," Claire said. "The good classes are often an hour and a half long, and I'm thinking: 'I could be running, I could be biking. But here I am, stretching and breathing.'

"Isn't it funny, though, that something that should be calming can actually cause stress because you think you have to do it?"

The crux of the article is about the lack of scientific evidence about the value of stretching in preventing injury -- and in many people's minds, yoga is synonymous with stretching. Claire obviously attacks yoga with the same vigor as she applies to her sports conditioning. If she's really after stretching, she would be better off just putting together a routine of exercises that address that need and cut out all the extraneous material that makes yoga more than an Eastern equivalent of calisthenics.

SFGate Breathe in, breathe out. Then get crazy. Yoga Journal held one of its big conferences last weekend and made a big impression with the fusion of music and movement.

More than 2,100 practitioners came to be inspired by yoga's top teachers - some rock stars in their own right - and bask in the glow of shared experience with like-minded souls. The sold-out event was the biggest yet, its popularity thanks, in no small part, to the participation of Michael Franti, front man for San Francisco band Spearhead as well as an activist and dedicated yogi. In addition to being the event's keynote speaker, Franti gave a benefit concert for Youth Aids and his own organization, Power to the Peaceful, and co-taught two workshops that incorporated his music with the ancient practice of yoga.

Washington Post Competitive Yoga? Not a Stretch It's hard to accept the idea that the practice of yoga can be inserted into a competitive system in which one practitioner is matched against others. But Bikram Choudhury, the India-born guru and businessman, likes being outside the mainstream of yoga.

In a pose called the standing full bow, (Sonja) Wyche does the splits while standing, pulling her back leg forward with both hands until her foot touches the back of her head. It's moves like that -- ones that require a trifecta of strength, flexibility and balance -- that landed her in second place out of 16 women in a regional contest in November.

New York Times Bending, Posing and Teaching Beyond the Mat is a nice article about karma yoga, taking the practice to the prisons, shelters and schools as a selfless act of service.

Research in the United States on yoga's effectiveness in helping treat drug addiction or mental illness is limited. Most studies have been done on a small scale in India, and the findings aren't universally accepted... But yoga's function as a stress reliever is not in dispute. “Yoga and meditation do several things, and perhaps one of the most important is that they allow individuals to cope with stress better," said Sat Bir Khalsa, an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School who studies the medical effects of yoga. "At the core of a lot of addiction is a search for that kind of relief from the stressful world."

There have been two recent articles in the Washington Post that I have not mentioned before: "The Family That Ohms Together..." (January 4, 2008) and Om for the 'Olidays: Breathe. Release. Repeat. What Stress? (November 20, 2007). Both mention Thrive Yoga. Also seen the feature on Diamond Dallas Page, a three-time World Wrestling Champion who has taken the virtues of yoga to the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has a Yoga for Regular Guys DVD and a book out. See his site.

New York Times Exercise on the Brain is an op-ed piece by Sandra Aamodt and Sam Wang, who know what they're talking about. The article looks at the computer software programs that claim to delay aging mental abilities, especially memory. The NY Times has a news article, Calisthenics for the Older Mind, on the Home Computer that deals with this type of progam. Aamodt and Wang play down their significance, but point in another direction:

"One form of training, however, has been shown to maintain and improve brain health — physical exercise. In humans, exercise improves what scientists call 'executive function,' the set of abilities that allows you to select behavior that's appropriate to the situation, inhibit inappropriate behavior and focus on the job at hand in spite of distractions. Executive function includes basic functions like processing speed, response speed and working memory, the type used to remember a house number while walking from the car to a party."

I am going jogging at lunch time with some colleagues from work. I am a bit hesitant to exposing my white calves and running habits (or slow times) to others, but it will be a nice change of pace.

Postdata: I ran for about 60 minutes with three friends from my office. We covered six miles on the Mall, running from near the Vietnam Memorial to the Capitol Building and back, and the walk of three blocks from and to our office building, in effect, our warm-up/cool-off period. I surprised myself. I ran for twice the distance as I do in my maximum workout. Once I got warmed up, I glided along at a nice clip without overexerting myself. Towards the end, I could tell that all the bounce had gone out of my legs. We are planning to continue with the CICAD Road Runners Club Tuesdays and Thursdays at lunch time. We'll see how long we can keep it up.

Los Angeles Times Doctor's orders: Cross your legs and say 'Om' reports on the growing interest in the medical applications of meditation and mindfulness:

It appears to work. In a new study, published in October in the journal Pain, Natalia Morone, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh, tracked the effect of mindfulness meditation on chronic lower back pain in adults 65 and older. The randomized, controlled clinical trial found that the 37 people who participated in an eight-week mindfulness meditation program had significantly greater pain acceptance and physical function than a similar size control group. Subsequently, the control group took the same eight-week program and had similar results.

Via SharpBrains blog which is a great place to keep track of trends in neuroscience, "brain fitness" and mental wellness. I check Alvaro Fernandez's site or news feed at least once a day. There are also brain teasers, in-depth articles, links to online resources, book recommendations and other information.

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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