Express Night Out (Washington Post) A House Divided: Strength Meets Yoga at Stroga highlights a newcomer on the DC yoga scene.

... Stroga resides in a mansion with floor-to-ceiling windows, stained glass, chandeliers, exquisite detailing and, most important, a heck of a lot of space. The entire second floor will be devoted to classes that can fit up to 125 people — comfortably. "There will be a foot between mats. We want people to be able to do a pose without getting a foot in the face," he (Doug Jeffries, the co-founder of Stroga) adds.

Jeffries is a smart businessman, as seen with his four Results gyms in the downtown Washington, but in this article he only provides a partial strategy for his yoga venture -- the facilities and amenities, but what kind of yoga is he going to offer?

I open my daily Google news alert e-mail this morning and a pattern immediately emerged from the selection.

• WOOD TV8 Yoga for better sleep - informative five-minute video feature on a bedtime routine
• Huffington Post How Laughing Yoga Helped Me Take Relaxation Seriously about this twist. Also see Yogalaff.com
• Globe and Mail Night moves: Sleep yoga may be better than counting sheep- more info about yoga as "foreplay before bed to set the mood before sleep."
• SFGate Restorative yoga for those who want to relax
• Reuters Rwandans reach to yoga as a trauma therapy

I had made a decision to refrain from posting a lot of news items on yoga and meditation unless I could really add something to the content. These short entries were easy to fire off, but others sites, like YogaDorks, do this job well and with a lot more humor that I can muster about the yoga scene here in the States and around the world. I wanted to refocus my blog on my practice, photography, reading, and other assets that a reader would not find elsewhere.

And to contradict what I just said, let me close by pointing to this New York Times article, When Chocolate and Chakras Collide about the trend towards mixing yoga and food. Anything that appears in the NY Times is an indicator of what's happening culturally around yoga.

Let's just say that I appreciate the photographs of the Yoga Day USA event YoGA at MoMA. My problem when shooting at a yoga studio is that I have a limited range of angles from which to take a pictures, none of them giving me a wide shot that takes in the full array of yogis and yoginis. I also encourage you to take a look at the videos on Elena Brower's Virayoga. Elena was the lead instructor at the event, and has a beautiful practice. Better yet, I'll show it here.

City Brights' Yumi Wilson reminds us with Yoga: Pleasure ... and pain that a drill sargeant is not needed to lead a yoga class:

Over the years, I've tried my hand at a variety of styles of yoga. In the '90s, I devoted myself to Bikram and returned periodically when I sought the need to stretch and sauna at the same time. In the first decade of 2000, I tried Hatha and Ashtanga or a combination thereof, hoping to calm my busy mind and loosen the tightness around my right hip. But each time I take a class, I am always left with the same question: When did group yoga become the new form of Basic Training?

It's so easy for an instructor to overdo the emphasis on alignment and perfection until it alienates students into avoiding the classes all together. You see so many students start out with the Fundamentals class for six or eight weeks, and then when they have to make the transition to a regular class, the sudden increase in just turns them off completely to yoga practice. Thrive Yoga, for instance, does a solid business with Fundamentals I and II, but I can't see that many of these students can make the transition to regular practice. Some will make it to the Hatha Yoga classes, but a vinyasa flow class is a "bridge too far." I think Thrive's teachers are not exceptionally overwhelming in their instruction style; if anything, they are adaptive to the skill level of each student. But it's so easy to make assumptions about ability based on one's own competence in practice. If students come out of the class feeling failure, rather than savoring the rewards of yoga no matter their skill level, then it's just going to make it more difficult to come back for another class.

Washingtonv Post Virginia overreaches in trying to certify yoga programs - Editorial supports yoga instructors' complaint against Virginia bureaucrats:

Training yoga instructors may not be legally distinguishable from training hairdressers or massage therapists or bartenders. But the schools that undertake it are few and, generally speaking, modest operations that have not been the target of consumer complaints. Better to leave well enough alone or, at the least, exempt smaller schools from regulatory fees that in some cases could put yoga programs out of business.

Washington Post Va. yoga instructors sue state on plan to regulate training:

The State Council of Higher Education for Virginia requires certification of all sorts of vocational training programs, including bartending schools, dog-grooming schools and the Ballroom Dance Teachers Academy. Certification requires a $2,500 fee, audits, annual charges of at least $500 and paperwork. Yoga teacher training had long fallen below the council's radar. Then, late last year, a state employee conducting school audits noticed an advertisement for it.

The skirmishing between state bureaucracies and yoga teachers continues. I am not sure if I am comfortable with the Libertarian slant to some arguments against regulations, on top of the muddled perspective of whether yoga has a religious nature and therefore should remain outside the reach of the State. Yoga teacher training is definitely small fry in the vocational training business. For that matter, only a handful of "graduates" actually end up teaching more than a few classes a week. Who's making a living off of yoga? How many students feel cheated by substandard teaching?

Also see the Cato Institute's blog, which in turn points to the Institute of Justice's case report, this You Tube video and this editorial in the Richmond Times Dispatch. An AP wire story. And Reason's Hit and Run blog lends moral support.

New York Times Doctor and Patient - How Mindfulness Can Make for Better Doctors is not just an example of the use of meditation and mindfulness as something abstract or removed from the daily grind. Mindfulness is applied to a concrete challenge.

Last month, The Journal of the American Medical Association published the results of a study examining the effects of a year-long course for primary care physicians on mindfulness, that ability to be in the zone and present in the moment purposefully and without judgment. Seventy physicians enrolled and participated in the four components of the course — mindfulness meditation; writing sessions; discussions; and lectures on topics like managing conflict, setting boundaries and self-care.

The effects of the sessions were dramatic. The participating doctors became more mindful, less burned out and less emotionally exhausted. But two additional findings surprised the investigators. Several of the improvements persisted even after the yearlong course ended. And, those changes correlated with a significant increase in attributes that contribute to patient-centered care, such as empathy and valuing the psychosocial factors that might affect a patient's illness experience.

The Globe and Mail Trouble on the Om front - Some Toronto yoga instructors go to the mats with as little as two days training. That's left students bent out of shape reminds us that yoga practice incorrectly can lead to injuries and a contributor to this risk is the inexperience of instructors who are not adequately trained to be aware of and adapt to the needs of each student:

Mr. Canning, who originally trained in Bikram, or hot yoga, in Los Angeles, has seen firsthand how important teacher programs are in ensuring a safe and inspiring environment. After ending up with two excruciatingly painful herniated discs in his spine from an aggressive teacher-training program that was "push, push, push," Mr. Canning built a studio devoted to a practice where instructors focus on listening to the needs of their students. And he mandates that they have a year of training behind them.

"That 'push' attitude - we all moved away from that," says Mr. Canning. "If anything, yoga should heal."

ChicagoNow's BreathBodybalance blog reminds us in A Closer Look at Yoga Chicago Magazine that local magazines or newsletters like YogaChicago don't have to try to replicate Yoga Journal to be of value:

It started at eight pages and this year it's 72. People use to come to me with ads and stories on a disc until the printer was like, you gotta go digital! (laughs). I write and edit a majority of the stories then send it off to a professional editor, Ellen Bernstein. Besides teaching three times a week, this is my full-time job. Ads pay for everything, but I try to keep the fees low because I know most studios don't make a lot of money. I even trade some articles for ad space.

CNN Prison inmates go Zen to deal with life behind bars is abou the Prison Darma Network:

There is no group tracking the number of inmates converting to Buddhism or engaging in meditation practices. But programs and workshops educating inmates about meditation and yoga are sprouting up across the country. Meditation can help the convicts find calmness in a prison culture ripe with violence and chaos. The practice provides them a chance to reflect on their crimes, wrestle through feelings of guilt and transform themselves during their rehabilitative journey, Buddhist experts say.

Educators, Scientists and Contemplatives Dialogue on Cultivating a Healthy Mind, Brain and Heart

How can our educational system evolve to meet the challenges of the 21st century? How will we educate people to be compassionate, competent, ethical, and engaged citizens in an increasingly complex and interconnected world? The urgent challenges of a globalized and interdependent world demand a new vision of world citizenship that is not confined to national boundaries, but encompasses moral and ethical responsibilities to all humanity.

In this case, there will be conversation with educators, including the US Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, as well as the usual suspects from previous encounters. Universities like Harvard, George Washington , Stanford, Virginia, Penn State, and Wisconsin are sponsoring the event, along with the American Psychological Association and the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning.

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.

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.

New York Times Ricky Williams Is Hoping to Heal Others, and His Image:

To Williams, 32, this represents another step toward a career in holistic healing and away from his self-described reputation as "the poster child for marijuana." The process has been messy and public and shaped into an all-too-familiar narrative: superstar spits on the American dream, travels the world in search of enlightenment and returns reformed.

Just like yesterday's entry about baseball players practicing yoga, Ricky Williams has often fit the stereotype of edgy athlete (on the brink of falling into marijuana abuse), and this article shows he continues to amend the traditional plot line of pampered pro gone wrong and then redeemed.

Please note that I mentioned to get through this whole blog entry without saying "New Age." Until now.

Star-Telegram.com Fort Worth Cats perfect their best yoga poses:

The pitching thing did not stick for Gulledge, even though he struck out two batters in a perfect inning, but the yoga has. Gulledge noticed in the off-season that he was faster. "Unbelievably faster," actually. He said his endurance and flexibility improved, too.

I can't resist it &mdash another sports story about pro athletes taking up yoga to give them an edge in their competitive game. This time it's a minor league team in Fort Worth, Texas. This time, the middle-aged sports writer puts down his pen and joins the mini-session before a ball game. Like the previous story, this has photos, too.

CharlotteObserver.com Mary Lou Buck's yoga journey:

Buck, now a petite 72-year-old with silver hair, would become one of Charlotte's pioneer yoga instructors. After teaching and studying for years, she opened the city's second private studio, Yoga for Life in Dilworth, in 1998. Phyllis Rollins opened the 8th Street Studio believed to be the first, in 1993.

Who says you can't start something new late in life? Buck founded her studio in 1998 when she was 62 years old, but had already been teaching since 1980. She still teaches even though she just sold the studio. Even more intriguing, Buck lives in North Carolina, not one of the hotbeds of yoga in the country so she was a pioneer in a region where it was not trendy to take up yoga.

Be sure to take in the accompanying photographs of Buck's class.

washingtonpost.com Nonprofit Group Teaches D.C. How to Take a Breather also has some great photos of the open-air event in downtown Washington.

"Take a Breath DC" ran from Wednesday to Saturday and culminated in a group meditation for about 600 in Lafayette Park. The course was organized by the Art of Living Foundation, a nonprofit group that has its national headquarters on 15th Street NW. The cornerstone of Art of Living is a rhythmic breathing technique called Sudarshan Kriya. About 30 years ago, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar (not the sitarist who knew the Beatles; different guy) discovered that this type of breathing, combined with yoga and meditation, can bring inner peace; he and his followers have taught the art of better breathing to millions since then.

I learned the AOL routines back in early 2004 and have continued them to this day, though I don't do them everyday because it's hard to fit all my practices into a single day. If I do yoga, I usually won't do a kriya unless I'm really dead tired and need to revive my energy. I haven't been to a Art of Living weekly session for several years and need to go back just to refresh my memory of the whole process.

This article in the Boston Globe, Yogi Bikram Choudhury likes the finer things in life, is a short piece with a big photo. Post data: And this article, Yoga Fever: Bikram Choudhury's 105-degree workout is a hot ticket, came out on Sunday in the same paper and is a much longer feature piece that focuses on some of Bikram's ego-centric rants and commercial hyperdrive. Tenley Woodman, the columnist, ends her piece with her own personal experience in a Bikram class: "The last 20 mintues of class leaves me feeling nauseous and exhausted. I begin to question my sanity. My heart races, my knees shake from fatigue. I swear I will never, ever submit myself to this torture again." But she does. The article is accompanied by a nice photo gallery.

To compensate for this fluff, here is a more substantive article about a woman taking a Bikram class from the Everett (Wa.) Herald.

Los Angeles Times Yoga opened doors she had long ago closed - Writer and teacher Colette LaBouff Atkinson describes how she came to her yoga practice when her body seemed to be breaking down:

But in yoga, as anyone and everyone who's ever benefited from it will say, all kinds of things became possible. I was there only to breathe; nothing to revise or make again. The yoga instructor -- more than one, really -- would walk by me and say, "Soft face." Sometimes the teacher would put her fingers into my furrowed brow as she passed.

Catching up on the news about Pattabhi Jois's death, I pulled together more obits from major media: The Economist (a good article), Guardian,Times (UK), Examiner (this chain of suburban tabloids has a lot of yoga articles because many local editions have independently contributed articles.).

Indian newspapers seemed to give less space to his obit than international media: rediff news Deccan Herald The Hindu with a nod to Churumuri for the Indian links.

New York Times He Rocks, They Flock: The Yoga King is Vinnie Marino, a former drug addict and New Yorker:

Mr. Marino leads challenging classes of nearly 90 people, six days a week, twice a day, at the Yoga Works studios. His class fuses different types of yoga that incorporate flowing from one pose to another (vinyasa and Ashtanga) and holding certain poses for a long time while focusing on alignment (Iyengar). The sweat alone makes it seem closer to a high-impact aerobics class than a discipline with a meditational aspect.

In many ways, this piece runs though the usual clichés of personality profiles of yoga/spirituality teachers, whether he/she's a street-smart Buddhist or a business tychoon on a mat. But you always learn something new. For instance, Marino teaches the actor Robert Downey Jr.; somehow, I knew that Downey's turn-around from drug- addled trouble-maker to elite actor would have a different twist.

A global yoga pioneer has died, as announced on SHRI K. PATTABHI JOIS ASHTANGA YOGA INSTITUTE:

May 18, 2009 Guruji passed away today at 2:30pm (Indian Standard Time). Thank you for all your condolences and prayers. Please kindly refrain from contacting the family directly at this time.

Sad news for anyone who has been touched by his work. Below, I am posting the best articles and tributes that I come across:

• New York Times: Krishna Pattabhi Jois, Leading Expert in Yoga, Dies at 93 (nice piece, not just a news wire story)
• Guardian: Yoga Guru Dies
• USA Today: Major yoga figure dies
• Hawaii Health Guide: Sri Krishna Pattabhi Jois- Ashtanga yoga legend passes

The great master guru Shri K. Pattabhi Jois has been hospitalized, according to the K. Pattabhi Jois Ashtanga Yoga Institute. His son, Sharath, who was a guest teacher in the United States, has been called home so it must be serious. Last year, Pattabhi Jois had to postpone a scheduled trip to inaugurate a yoga training center in Florida. He is going to be 94 in July.

Denver Post Delicate balance of a yoga master It's unusual that the paper gives this much space to a yoga teacher, Baron Baptiste, who will be going to Denver in October for a one-day workshop. Baron is not even a high profile teacher these days. He has a strong following, a large list of certified instructors, three books and multiple videos. The article has extensive quotes:

Baptiste, 43, is the scion of yoga pioneers Magana and Walt Baptiste, who co-founded the first yoga center in San Francisco in 1955 and owned one of the original health food stores. He is married and the father of three boys. He and his family split their time among Boston, Los Angeles and Park City, Utah, where Baptiste enjoys snowboarding. Despite a demanding schedule that includes teaching, traveling and television appearances, Baptiste manages to practice from three to six days per week.

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.

Guardian India moves to protect traditional medicines from foreign patents: India fights to protect ancient treatments from western pharmaceutical companies.

Yoga, too, is considered a traditional medicine and one that is already a billion-dollar industry in the US. [Dr Vinod Kumar Gupta, who heads the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library,] said the Indian government had already asked the US to register yoga as a "well-known" mark and raised concerns over the 130 yoga-related patents issued.

Gupta is referring specifically to Bikram hot yoga.

New York Times Chanting Is an Exercise in Body and Spirit is about the rising tide that kirtan is riding on.

"It has left the churches and the yoga studios because it's such a simple practice," said Krishna Das, 61, who grew up on Long Island as Jeff Kagel and traveled to India in the early 1970s. "It's not about belief in any religions, so people are coming from all walks of life. You give it a try and if it works, you're in fat city. If not, you do something else."

Although kirtan is rooted in India's devotional religions and involves chanting the names of God, Krishna Das says the practice requires no allegiance to any deity or set of beliefs, and he is dismayed that many associate the chant "Hare Krishna" with people who begged on the streets and danced in airports in the 1970s.

As I've said before here, Krishna Das is the soundtrack of my yoga experience. What is really interesting is the fusion that's happening in the United States as musicians and yogis take the Hindi core and combine it with pop, gospel, reggae, hip-hop and rapping, plus all the other world music influences, to produce a unique, innovative sound, nurtured in the small venues of yoga studios and churches. It's part of the mainstreaming of yoga in America. Purists probably hate it and it will never achieve broad popularity, but that's not the point. It's what is happening to yoga itself, starting out with the "pure" Indian practice (which may be a relatively modern application of ancient rites) and then layering on multiple riffs and licks of Pilates, marital arts, gymnastics and dance. The market and society are bending it in new ways that make it more relevant and "marketable" in our society.

New York Times Leonard Cohen Returns to the Road, for Reasons Both Practical and Spiritual is about a musician whose songs have influenced me deeply, especially "Suzanne" and "Hallelujah." Now I learn that he is deeply grounded in Zen Buddhism to the point of spending five years in a monastery.

Roscoe Beck, Mr. Cohen' s musical director, says that even on the longest flights Mr. Cohen sits cross-legged and straight-backed in his seat, in a monk’s posture. Asked whether he also does yoga to build strength and agility for his stage shows, Mr. Cohen, his demeanor courtly but reserved, smiled and replied, “That is my yoga.”

So now I have a reason to explore the music archives for Cohen songs, and to listen for the intention that inspired them and moved him towards Zen discipline in the latter years of his life.

By the way, the Times journalist Larry Rohter, author of this profile, is an old Latin America hand whom I met in my days in Peru. That goes back 30 years.

Neal Pollack, a practicing Ashtanga yogi himself, writes Top Yogi: Rabbit poses, coconut water, and a Bikram-practicing dance team at the international yoga championship in Slate Magazine from the scene of the sixth annual international yoga championship sponsored by Bikram Yoga:

When I returned the next morning, the room had been transformed into a legitimate athletic stage, with no evidence of the previous night's variety-show nuttiness save a few stray red balloons in the rafters. Everything ran with precision and efficiency. The video and audio were of professional quality and the emcee had a classy, sonorous voice. Most impressively, the competitors, judged under strict and consistent standards, continually wafted into beautiful and magnificent yoga postures.

It was refreshing to read an article in a mainstream outlet that was not pulled by an undercurrent of snarky cynicism or cozy boosterism. Pollack respected the skilled discipline of the competitors and certainly did not commit the sins of other journalists, as reported in his 2005 Slate article, Big Men Stretching: Quarterbacks who do yoga and the journalists who love them. Pollack is also writing a book about yoga culture in the States.

For me, the whole competition thing is wrong-headed. I am constantly trying to beat down my own competitive urges on the mat, catching myself watching someone else's wheel out of the corner of my eye or comparing the volume of my ujjayi breathing to the rest of the room. I'm even competing against myself, stacking up pre-injury performance against how I'm doing now. The way the Bikram people explain it, you have to surrender your competitive instincts in order to score in their competition.

One quick word on the attitude problem that Pollack noted among some of the Bikram yogis, who tended to look down on other yoga lineages, like Ashtanga and Iyengar. Bikram followers do not have a monopoly on this mental distortion. My daughter recently helped out at a Shiva Rea workshop and found the assistants and some of the participants really obnoxious. I've heard the "holier-than-thou" shroud laid on the Jivamukti clan. Hell, even Pollack's own Ashtanga school's been known to disparage other approaches. Whenever someone invests as much time, energy and emotional capital into a goal or activity, it's human to justify it as the only "right" choice. But as Pollack points out at the end of the story, once you get on the mat, all the differences should disappear.

The Washington Post gave the NIH CORE (COnditioning and RElaxation) Week (February 9-13) a nice curtain-raiser for the event in A Free Opportunity to Give Your Body and Your Brain a Boost:

The offerings include a talk by Acklin, a neurologist and founder of All Is Well Yoga, on "Responsibility and Empowerment in Creating a Life of Vitality"; a time management workshop; an intro to the "energy-balancing" practice of reiki; a whole lot of Pilates classes; and a number of surprises, such as a hip-hop dance tutorial led by CORE Week organizer Rachel Permuth-Levine.

The fact that Rachel has earned good street cred allowed her to get such a nice writeup before the event actually took place, which is when you need the publicity, not after the fact. Of course, I should have spotted this article earlier in the week and pointed to it, but at least I posted about the NIH CORE Week before. I hear that all the sessions really went well.

New York Times Dress Codes &mdasj; What's a Guy to Wear for Yoga?: I used to fall for this question when I started out in yoga.

While the market in yoga-centric clothing for women is bursting at its fashionable seams, the choices for men are laughably sparse. They range from absurdly large, overly modest basketball shorts that bag downward in inversion poses to alarmingly tiny shorts that provide freedom of movement but give your classmates a far-too-clear view of your, uh, chakras.

I've come to the conclusion that the reason why yoga-specific men's clothing is so scarce is because the demand is adequately met by the existing market, despite what the article says. The abundance of sweat-dispersing, quick drying athletic wear, from Under Armour to Prana, means that there's no problem to put find something to wear on the upper half of the torso. The issue of shorts requires a fabric with lots of give, but even swim suites will do. Besides, trying to find bargains at Lululemon is a lot harder than at Sports Authority or TJ Maxx.

Exceptions: where I will concede the point, is when a yogi has gone well beyond the intermediate phase, and gets into balances that require legs to get placed on arms. Sweat is a superb lubricant on skins so it requires inordinate amounts of strength to hold something like One-Legged Arm Balance (Eka Pada Koundinyasana), and having long pant's leg to provide some friction is a welcome aid. But this is a small percentage of the men who do yoga. Of course, if you want to require environmentally correct fabric choices (hemp, for instance), then all bets are off.

The real issue for men is that going to a yoga studio is intimidating because of all the women, usually much better at the discipline, in attendance. So the "what-to-wear" question is really an excuse for not going. I think women have a much tougher challenge for appropriate yoga clothing, which is why there's an abundance of options.

I was doing a mental inventory of how my practice went this week, composed of two evening vinyasa classes with Dana Cohen at Thrive Yoga. If my yogic intention for the year is "listening with my whole body," my body was screaming "Why are you torturing me tonight!" I felt an almost combative resistance in my shoulders that made Warrior I and II a real struggle. But I could also sense that my breathing offered a depth that promised to counterbalance the weight of my heavy muscles and bones. Surfing the web at lunchtime today, I came across a November article in my hometown WashingtonPost.com Yoga Can Give You Strength, Balance, Flexibility. Isn't That Enough?. Somehow, I had missed it. It helped put things in perspective:

My own sense, buttressed in talks with Willow Street owner Suzie Hurley and others, is that regular participation in yoga, regardless of the style or level, is going to produce at least two surefire benefits: It will identify and help strengthen weak points in your body, and it will help reawaken muscles that tend to be underused in even active people.

Howard Schneider, one of the Washington Post's Misfit columnists, gives an excellent rundown of the relevance of yoga and other mindful disciplines to fitness. Of course, it helps that he has Suzie Hurley as a reference authority. I appreciated that he did not dip into the standard clichés about yoga (even good writers seem to recur to the pretzel metaphor all too easily).

By the way, Dana Cohen is an inspired teacher. I really enjoy her classes, which usually end with her signing a gospel or chanting a kirtan. She has been teaching at Thrive on an off-and-on basis for the past year -- Rockville is her family's home, but she seems to lead a nomadic life that leads her to the West Coast, India and beyond. Catch her while she's in town by checking the Thrive Yoga online schedule. She also gives Thai yoga massages. The easiest way to contact her is giving Thrive a call.

NYTimes.com Yoga Classes Play Up the Lighter Side opened the year with a chuckle about the use of laughter in the yoga studio:

"I do think there's a trend toward lightening up in the yoga community," said Kelly McGonigal, 31, the editor in chief of the International Journal of Yoga Therapy (found at iayt.org). "Mostly around the rigidity and humorlessness of doing things 'the one right way' &emdash; always having to get better, feeling like every yoga practice has to be one big self-improvement project."

I was struck by the lameness of some of the attempts at humor cited as examples of a trend in this article. I really had to search for some text to pull out in a quote. I suspect that the context gives more meaning to the words. The point about yoga being taken too seriously is right on target; I am guilty of it myself.

NY Times H. M., an Unforgettable Amnesiac, Dies at 82 is about Henry Molaison, who opened the way for modern neuroscience because he revealed the crucial role of memory:

"And for those five decades, he was recognized as the most important patient in the history of brain science. As a participant in hundreds of studies, he helped scientists understand the biology of learning, memory and physical dexterity, as well as the fragile nature of human identity."

Molaison could not form long-term memory, and had to live each day as if its events were the first time he had faced them. He lived in an eternal present, without the weight of a future and with only a remote past (prior to the surgery that cut his hippocampus in 1953). He then went through years of investigations into how the operation affected his mental processes. He was known in the scientific literature as "H.M."

Expect to see more articles and blogs about H.M.'s importance in science in the coming days. For a start: A Blog Around the Clock ::: NPR ::: The Day His Day Stood Still ::: Wikepedia

In New York Times Magazine On Language - Namaste, a yoga teacher and writer Jaimie Epstein gives a primer of the Sanskrit that creeps in the vocabulary of people willing to get on the yoga mat.

Guru means "remover of darkness" and is someone who sheds light on your ignorance. Although the word guru (with a big G) is associated with spiritual guides, anyone or any situation can be your guru (small g) if he/she/it teaches you something, and there is surely no end to the opportunities presented to us every day.

Today's Wall Street Journal published Yoga Bears: It's No Stretch to Say Traders Are Taking Deep Breaths on the front page. The article explains how financiers, traders and hedge fund managers are seeking refuge in yoga:

Yoga, of course, has been growing in popularity for years in the West. The magazine Yoga Journal estimates that about 15.8 million people in the U.S., or 7% of adults, now practice it. Today, studios and private teachers in New York and London report increasing demand from financiers. Allianz SE's Pacific Investment Management Co., D.E. Shaw & Co. and Karsch Capital are among the companies playing host to yoga classes.

Of course, the article is sprinkled with dollars figures about assets and total yearly sales, as appropriate for a business publication, but it does provide a glimpse of how one slice of the market is reconsidering yoga. Apparently, some clients find it hard to chant aum, but every yogi modifies the practice to his/her own needs and skills. In effect, these heavy payers are subsidizing yoga as a viable option in the US market.

Leslie Kaminoff at e-Sutra spotted the article first, so a tip of the hat to him.

PranaJournal.com reader Kelly Sonora tipped me off to an article on yoga, NursingDegree.net >> 77 Surprising Health Benefits of Yoga, that also contains links to other online resources:

Over the past several years, yoga has experienced an upsurge in popularity in the western world. While many associate yoga with new age mysticism or the latest fad at the gym, yoga is actually an ancient practice that connects the mind, body, and spirit through body poses, controlled breathing, and meditation. The practice of yoga has many health benefits associated with it, so read below to discover 77 benefits to be gained.

NY Times Kripalu, a New Age Retreat, Makes Hard Choices in Finding the Courses With the Most Appeal looks at the business end of running a life style center:

But behind the scenes in a crowded second-floor suite at Kripalu's sprawling lakefront campus here in the Berkshires, things are a tad less restful. Beneath a long expanse of whiteboard and corkboard plastered with thousands of color-coded sheets and dots laying out each day's offerings from 2007 through the end of next year, phones ring ceaselessly. Gaps between projected and actual attendance are tracked like stock prices, and self-proclaimed visionaries and healers are subjected to the scrutiny of veteran vetters.

My daughter, Stephanie, went to Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health earlier this year and thoroughly enjoyed her stay. It was both nurturing and intellectually challenging. If anything, she was overwhelmed by all the offerings that were available. It's really a great opportunity to get unplugged and into a different realm. For Kripalu, this approach is a big change from its era as ashram and HQ for a guru. When your staff is no longer working for room, board and guidance to nirvana, then you've got to be ready to fight for survival in the consumer market. It's the same with yoga studios, which are competing with fitness centers and spas, martial arts and tai chi, with the price of gasoline biting into discretionary spending. Do you put a $100-140 into your monthly unlimited yoga pass or in the tank?

Washington Post A Breath of Hope: Walter Reed Tries Yoga to Counter PTSD picks up on the use of mind-body techniques to heal the psychological and physical suffering of war veterans at Walter Reed Army Medical Center:

The yoga that Carnes teaches, a form of guided meditation known as yoga nidra, was added to the program in 2006 after she helped conduct a feasibility study at the medical center... The results of the study were overwhelmingly positive, she said, adding that the service members appreciated learning skills that they could continue to use after they left... However, it's difficult to document the program's impact. Participants, who evaluate their own progress, often say they feel better after sessions, Carnes said, but there's little scientific evidence to back their anecdotal reports.

When Bush unleashed war on Iraq, his administration failed to put a dollar cost on the invasion and occupation of a Middle East country for five years. Now we know that the psychological cost may be even heavier than the financial, maiming a generation of soldiers. Their suffering will linger for decades. Yoga and other disciplines have been identified as key components of any treatment strategy, but it's been hard to pin down the statistical evidence (anecdotal accounts abound) to back this up to the full satisfaction of Western science.

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.