Kelly McGonigal sent me a copy of her book Yoga for Pain Relief: Simple Practices to Calm Your Mind & Heal Your Chronic Pain (New Harbinger Publications, 2009) and I've been sitting on it for nearly two months.
Kelly does not need another review of her book. Eighteen endorsements from yoga experts, health advocates, pain relief specialists, and scientific researchers are spread over four pages. Timothy McCall, the medical editor of Yoga Journal and author of Yoga as Medicine, wrote her foreword. She got a review from Yoga Journal in the March issue and also publishes an article on Surya Namaskar (Sun Salulation) in the same issue.
She has a blog, The Science of Will Power, on Psychology Today (looks like it comes out twice a month), as well as her personal blog, Science and Sutras.
She's giving seminars at the Omega Institute (New York). She's quoted in Time magazine and the New York Times, the Washington Post (her listing of interviews). She's starting to make appearances on TV.
As a psychologist at Stanford University, she's uniquely positioned to see where yoga is interfacing with Western scientific investigation and medical practice, both in terms of theory and practice, at a time when neuroscience is redefining and re-dimensioning our understanding of the human mind. She's also an accomplished yoga instructor and teacher of instructors, as well as the editor for the International Journal of Yoga Therapy.
Do we see a pattern developing here?
She definitely does not need another book review or endorsement from a blogger.
New Harbinger has produced an understated book format, looking similar to the scores of other "Yoga for .... [name your disease, symptom or preferred body part]." Clean design, large font size, gray scale photos. So what sets this book apart from all the stock in the self-help section?
Once I started reading her book, it impressed me as an important blueprint for yoga in the United States. It's a book that I would recommended to anyone who wants to understand what you can get from yoga/meditation. The book hits a kind of "sweat spot:" this is yoga's entry point with the minimal initial physical investment, the lowest opportunity cost and the biggest pay-off. You don't have to get in shape, build up your aerobic capacity, muscular strength and flexibility before seeing results. You don't even need to know what's wrong with you for yoga to do you some good.
The book is extraordinarily accessible: No jargon, either from the Sanskrit or from the academic/scientific lingua franca, no intellectual arrogance, no magical incantation, no gateway to esoteric wisdom, no complicated sequences of poses. Within the first 25 pages (out of 183 pp), she's giving you easy routines to start using what's she teaching, in this case, observing your breath.
One of the things that Kelly said five years ago has stayed with me and she repeats it in the book: people seek out yoga because they are suffering, either physically, psychologically or spiritually. Human suffering is a great motivator and a constant of human existence. The book's virtue is simplifying yoga down to a concise, clear message: Relieve your suffering; start with these easy steps. If Patanjali had written like Kelly, yoga would have taken over the world (kidding -- a little).
Kelly also understands the value of personal narrative alongside the findings of randomized, blind control experiments, and she has included compelling stories of people impacted by yoga throughout the book.
I also appreciate her thoughtful listing of resources: meditation and yoga instruction books, audio/DVD, music for movement, meditation and relaxation, books for people with pain, non-profit organizations supporting people with pain, and organizations supporting research, education, and professional training in yoga and meditation. In addition, she has 50-item bibliography. If you poke around her blogs, personal website or her book site, you'll find lots of pointers to central reference texts, scientific studies, resource centers and specialized knowledge hubs -- stuff that she did not include in the book because they would have gotten in the way.
Labels: health, reading, yoga_resource
I want to spotlight to news items:
- Detroit Free Press Matthew Sanford links yoga's self-awareness and healing about a paraplegic whose experience with yoga sheds light on the mind-body connection. Desirée mentioned Matthew at the workshop. She also recommended his book, Waking: A Memoir of Trauma and Transcendence
. He has a team of professionals working with him at MindBodySolutions. Here's a series of videos at a 2008 Yoga Journal confernce.
- San Francisco Chronicle Restorative yoga for those who want to relax because I'm focusing on this facet of yoga and the reputation of West Coast yoga is usually the opposite: upbeat, intense and driven.
-- and I haven't even read it yet. Kelly McGonigal has written a book Yoga for Pain Relief: Simple Practices to Calm Your Mind & Heal Your Chronic Pain (New Harbinger Publications, 2009). Kelly is a health psychologist at Stanford University (and got the PhD to prove it) and teaches multiple classes on campus and in the San Francisco area, as well as workshops and teacher training. She is also the editor of the International Journal of Yoga Therapy, a peer-reviewed journal of research on yoga and meditation.
Why am I so sure that Kelly's book would be worth reading? Because I took an online course on the question of "Can Yoga Really Change Your Life?" and I followed her career over the past six year. She was instrumental in steering me through the first year (maybe, more) of my yoga immersion. She came to yoga because of her own pain, helped others by becoming a teacher, applied the rigors of Western scientific methodology to yoga and finally shared her knowledge, skills and gifts by writing about yoga and editing others' articles.
I'll tell you more once I get my hands on the book.
Postscript: Kelly has contacted me and offered to send me the book.
I've done a quick and dirty assessment of what blogs I'm reading, and also parsed my traffic logs to see what sites are forwarding visitors here. I owe a kind of social capital to those who've been reading the blog and offering words of encouragement every once in a while. it's not a comprehensive listing of yoga bloggers of merit, but it's a start.
Yesterday, I reviewed Trudie Styler's Warrior Yoga and said that it was not appropriate for beginners. It occurred me that I knew exactly where to refer novices interested in good beginner videos, and it's at Gaiam Yoga Club. About a year ago, I was asked to use the service for a month and comment. I wrote one entry and then my knee injury blew up my practice and diverted my energies. My trial pass ran out, and I forgot all about it.
But thinking about what makes a good beginner-focused video, I remembered the weekly videos of Rodney Yee and Coleen Saidman and realized that the online service offered nine hours of video, plus audiocasts, handouts and other assistance so it fits practically all the needs of a novice. Saidman and Yee demo all the poses, showing modifications and adjustments, progressing from simple to more complex. They fully describe all the "invisible" details that you need to know but will not see in a video. They keep up a steady banter, letting their joy in yoga shine through, while moving through sequences and stopping to emphasize details. You never got a sense that they're talking down to you. The filming was confined to a studio so the videos are not as spectacular as the garden vistas in Styler's DVD, but they are still quality productions.
Although Gaiam Yoga Club is charging $5 a week, which works out to about the price of a video per month or $65 for the full 12 week cycle, it really fills a gap in the instructional area. There is a free trial period and discounts. The videos can't be downloaded, but you can save all the other material for later reference. Saidman and Yee also have a Gaiam DVD, The Practical Power of Yoga, which was broadcast on PBS last year as part of bonus gift in a pledge campaign. I didn't see it so I don't know if it's similar to their Gaiam Yoga Club videos. I assume so.
Yee may not be the most highly esteemed yoga master instructor because he's been at the forefront of commercializing yoga in books, videos, conferences, and workshops, as well as some flawed personal conduct that has offended the sensibilities of some, but is common, though not acceptable behavior outside the yoga scene. Yee and Saidman make an exceptional team in explaining yoga's innards to novices.
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.
Labels: health, meditation, news, reading, teachers
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.
Labels: brain_science, dc_yoga, news, reading
If I had the time, energy and intention to upgrade this website into something more substantial, I would probably turn it into the equivalent of YogaDork. It's updated regularly with items on news, trends and worthy manifestations of yogadom in the world. Lots of links to news stories (as I do occasionally), but usually rounded out with additional links for context and background, as well as referencing to previous YogaDork items. It also finds stuff out of the blue. For instance, today it has an interesting pointer to the film Addiction, Recovery and Yoga: "How people have used yoga as part of their journey in recovery programs from serious addiction problems to a new life of well-being and emotional stability."
It can be snarky and opinionated when warranted, but still remain grounded in the yamas and niyamas that guide a virtuous life. It understands the temptations of commercialized yoga, the hot teachers, the quirks of yoga culture. It is short on the insights into personal practice so you may want to go elsewhere for that.
I don't know whether it's written by a "he," a "she" or a "they" so I've been referring to the blog as an "it," but there's too much personality impregnated in the content to classify it as a neutral. In any case, it has relieved me of the imperative to upgrade this blog, for the time being.
An Absence: After four years, Visions of Cody is no longer. It was rarely updated over this summer, and "Cody Pomeroy" announced this week that "the time for this particular blog has passed." I will miss his unique voice as expressed in his podcast and commentary. Mitch Blum, his real name, will still blog about music and life. As a fellow mature yogi, I can appreciate how he's evolved -- to the point that he is not now practicing yoga. It requires time, effort and intention to make a great blog,and sometimes one's life sets other priorities.
Labels: audio, news, reading, videos, yoga_resource
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.
I was approached to review the book, Yoga, Karma, and Rebirth: A Brief History and Philosophy (Columbia University Press, New York: 2009) by Stephen Phillips. Phillips is a man with serious credentials: professor of philosopy and Asian studies at the University of Texas, author of six books, and a long-time practitioner of yoga.
The book arrived a week or so before I would be taking time off to visit my brother. My sister had told me that she spent loads of time reading while she visited him because his chemotherapy required him to have lots of rest. I thought I would be able to apply some concentrated time on the reading so I loaded up on books and magazines for the trip.
Well, I was being ambitiously optimistic that I would be able to plow through most of the book while at my brother's in Dallas. it turned out that I barely had time to crack open the book, just enough to get passed the Introduction. The first 15 pages let me know that this is not a book that would fall into the category of "summer reading." It's going to challenge me to set aside blocks of time, both to read and digest the content. Phillips aims to lay out the philosophic framework that undergirds the yoga practice and informs the serious Western practitioner who may not be familiar with the core principles. Phillips specifically writes for yoga teachers.
As a down payment on the moral debt that I have acquired with the publisher, let me get some initial information out of the way. Five chapters are: Theory and Practice, Yoga and Metaphysics, Karma, Rebirth, and Powers. That's roughly half the book.
The other half is "Appendices," but they are pretty meaty themselves. He included core selections from the yoga classics: the Upnishads, the Bhagavad Gita, the Tantric Kashmiri Shaivite texts, and the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, as well as the complete Yoga Sutra of Patanjali, all framed within Phillips's commentary.
Finally, Phillips throws in a glossary of Sanskrit terms used in yoga philosophy, 65 pages of notes (Phillips is an academic, after all; even the Appendices have notes), a 15-page bibliography and an index.
Assorted Links- Yoga as philosophy and practice course at the University of Texas.
- e-publications
- An interview on the publisher's blog.
- Mahamondo
- Author Interviews
- YogaDawg
Labels: philosophy, reading, yoga
Jamail Yogis contacted me about a month ago asking me to read his book Saltwater Buddha: A Surfer's Quest to Find Zen on the Sea. He wanted some comments and some coverage in my blog. I got a PDF advance copy of the publication, which became available Amazon and will be officially released on May 1. I started reading it and was impressed with the first 25 pages. But, as might be self-evident from the frequency of posting on this blog, I could not keep up with the reading. I had a couple of books and magazine already loaded into my shoulder bag for reading on the Metro, and other matters (2008 taxes, wife's birthday, consulting work, and yoga) keep stealing my free time. This lack of follow-through should not be viewed as a judgment on Jaimal's writing. All you have to do is look at his list of published articles to know that he can string words together proficiently.
As we all know, "anything can be yoga if you focus on your breathing," so it should be no surprise that surfing can serve as the plot line for self-discovery. There are lots of books on the contemplative side of surfing. It still tough to condense this kind of daily reflection on a board and wave into a book without meandering all over the expanses of the ocean. But Jamail has the discipline to pull it off.
Jaimal will be promoting his book in the coming months, so you may be able to catch him at a bookstore near you -- if you live on the West Coast. More info on the book.
I am flattered that Jamail thought of me to read his book, and thinking that my visitors might also benefit from reading the book. I have promised him that I will get around to reading it, but I don't want to hold up the outreach so I am posting now to give a heads-up and let others now about the book.
This is not an xray of my knee, but it will serve to illustrate my plight.
My previous entry about my nagging knee injury brought two comforting comments: Mary suggested that I see a sports specialist/orthopedist, and Melissa mentioned that a yoga therapist might help and pointed me in the direction of Doug Keller. Keller is based here in the DC area, but spends a lot of time traveling to yoga workshops and teacher training around the United States and the world so he is not immediately available. His site does contain an archive of about dozen articles that he wrote for Yoga+ magazine, and one did deal with knee issues. I have downloaded several to apply them to my multiple aches and pains.
The helpful responses reminded me that the yogic path should not be isolated, that we can reach out to others for advice, support and commiseration. That's why we have yoga studios where like-minded practitioners can share their experiences. The Internet itself opens up the whole world, both for giving and receiving. Sometimes, injuries and other obstacles get me all wrapped up in the tangles that my mind gets trapped in.
I think my concern was three-fold: first, my yoga-empowered changes have been altering the way that my body parts are moving and changing at different speeds due to variable flexibility, strength and awareness. Second, the injuries themselves can engender changes in the body, compensations for a gimpy knee that may jeopardize my gains of the past four years. Or at least, that's what my neurotic mind was telling me, which just amplified the repercussions of the injury. Third, my ego was telling me that a good yogi would not be hurt himself so I must be failing in my practice in some respect.
Alternatively, I could also take this incident as an opportunity to learn more about how my body works, how it heals, and how it changes in the face of handicaps and stimuli. Greet it as a kind of anti-vinyasa that I have to recognize, accept, deal with, learn from and then assimilate into my yogic path.
I should note that Melissa Garvey and is based here in Washington, DC where she freelances as a writer and editor, and has her own website and YogaPulse blog. Following a link from her blog, I found a fascinating, even-handed article in June 2007 issue of Self, Bad Karma, about the risks of injury in yoga practice. Mary is "anonymous."
Labels: injury, knee, reading, therapy, yoga_resource
This week's multimedia selection is Audio Archives of Tara Brach's Dharma talks at the Insight Meditation Community of Washington (IMCW) here in Washington, DC. Each week there is a 40-60 minute talk about practicing Buddhism in the modern world, and then Tara leads the group in a 20-25 minute meditation. I've listened to several of these talks, and they are outstanding, insightful pieces of devotional thought. I come from a Protestant church tradition, my father was a pastor and I have heard a few sermons in my day. But Tara is not preaching. She has an intimate tone of voice that draws you into the narrative. It's almost as if she is talking to you over the breakfast table, even though she is addressing hundreds of people. Her cadence and timber prepare you for the formal meditation that follows.
Tara Brach is the founder and senior teacher at IMCW. She wrote Radical Acceptance — Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha (Bantam Dell, 2003). I read the book a few months ago, and had been meaning to put up some comments about it. The book is a dialogue between her practice as a psychotherapist and the wisdom that comes from Buddhist Dharma. Although her patients' life stories provide many opportunities for insight into the human condition, she also draws on her own experiences. I found a lot of useful ways of looking at life's dramas and tragedies. The "radical acceptance" that Brach is talking about is the act of freeing ourselves from the self-inflicted pain of feeling that there is something wrong with us (rather than use the "royal we," I should probably speak in the first person). This is more simply said that done, which is why Brach needs a whole book to just scratch the surface. This issue is one of my own personal traumas -- a deep sense of inadequacy, lack of self-worth and self-esteem, all of which poison my experience. I find myself being pulled back to re-read sections and chapters to review key points to her calm grasp of what it means to be human and how to get beyond the trap of human suffering to live life to its fullest potential.
So you can listen to audio files or read the book, either way you'll appreciate the reassuring message of hope.
Labels: meditation, reading, videos
If you ever need an intellectual motivation to get you off your butt and into an active program of exercise, read Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain
"The prescription ... varies from varies from person to person, but the research consistently shows that the more fit you are, the more resilient your brain becomes and the better it functions both cognitively and psychologically." (p. 247)
To cut to the chase, his formula calls for 30-60 minutes of aerobic exercise, usually running or equivalent intensity exercise, six times a week. On two days, he recommends five short sprints (30 seconds max) injected into a normal session (the max intervals seem to trigger the body's optimization). Strength-training helps maintain or build muscle and bone mass, which can be affected by the aging process. Ratey also suggests that yoga, tai chi, martial arts or other similar activities be added to improve balance and flexibility, as well as body awareness and concentration. Obviously, it takes time, discipline and effort to work up to the condition of being able to sustain aerobic exercise for such long periods, but you will be rewarded.
Exercise has an impact on the brain's neuroplasticity, creating new neurons as the building blocks. Ratey covered stress, anxiety, depression, attention deficit disorder, addiction, hormonal change (menopause in women) and aging in separate chapters. Far and away the best thing you can do for your brain power, mental health and physical well-being is an active daily exercise regime.
Ratey gets down to the complex, inter-related chemical processes and components that create and balance the neurotransmitters that fire up the brain within the human body. Ratey's conclusions are not new. There has been a steady drumbeat of stories in newspapers, magazines and on the web about how physical exercise can radically improve mental performance, ward off illnesses and aging and overcome mental disorders, like depression. He emphasized that it's necessary to engage in physical exercise every day, both to make it a consistent habit and to make the body respond appropriately.
Ratey is a researcher and neuro-psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School who earned a reputation working on attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). More information is available on his website and his blog, which links to news stories and features about his new book.
Labels: brain_science, conditioning, health, reading, running
BandhaYoga has brought out a second volume of its eye-popping Scientific Keys series on yoga anatomy, this one entitled The Key Poses of Yoga: Your Guide to Functional Anatomy in Yoga. As with the first book (The Key Muscles of Hatha Yoga), the unique perspective on the details of muscles and bones is an imaginative tool for developing a better understanding of what goes on when practicing yoga. The full color illustrations are very useful for teachers and students alike. You can also purchase both books and save $7.00 over the list price ($97). These are not inexpensive books, but given the printing and paper costs, the price is worth it.
As you will see on this site, I am a member of www.BandhaYoga.com's affiliate program, in which I get a small percentage from book or poster sales resulting from visitors to this site clicking on the ads and then purchasing a book. Let me tell you, it's more an endorsement on my part than a revenue source.
Labels: reading, yoga_resource
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.
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.
I did five miles of running on the Mall at lunch time, into the cold winds coming off the Potomac. It was the first outside run that I've had since before Christmas, though I did make it to the gym for the treadmill several times. I thought I has not lost much strength over the holiday break, but I felt exhausted by the time I got home.
I am still concerned that the pounding of running will erase the benefits of my yoga practice. I remembered an interview that I heard on NPR about chi-running, a concept started by athletic trainer Danny Dreyer. I looked up his website and found his approach to be a technique that melded well with yoga and mindfulness. The technique combines "the inner focus and flow of T'ai Chi with the power and energy of running to create a revolutionary running form and philosophy that takes the pounding, pain, and potential damage out of the sport of running."
I ordered his book and DVD. Expect reviews shortly after they arrive in the mail. Meanwhile, you can check out what other people think by consulting news links or by reading a collection of longer articles. You can get a clear idea about the program by going through a few of these online resources. This NPR story is a good start.
While I was away in Colombia, my travel reading was Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart: A Buddhist Perspective on Wholeness
I managed to get through the whole book (181 pages) by the end of my meeting thanks to Epstein's effortless writing style and the compelling content. He illustrates his central theme drawing on his own personal path of discovery and on his patients' case histories. A saving grace of the book is that Epstein does not bite off too much by trying to be an authoritative text on Buddhism, meditation, patient-centered therapy or any other big concept. He is not selling a particular theory or political line. Instead, he argues that we need to relax into the flow of life, rather than lock into an attempt to control our experience or accumulate pieces of self-improvement until we have attained perfection.
Since I finished reading the book about four weeks ago, I'm trying to reconstruct what I found most rewarding in the book -- without re-reading the book again. I am going to do some scratch writing off-line before posting it here.
Labels: meditation, philosophy, reading
Susan Bowen has announced the start-up of teacher training at Thrive Yoga. ISHTA Yoga founder and pioneer, Alan Finger, will be leading the four-month process. Alan knows a lot because he was born into a yoga-inspired family, knew original thinkers and grappled with translating these concepts into the U.S. culture as a business and as a philosophy. He co-founded yoga studios, like the Yoga Works studio in LA and the Yoga Zone studios in NYC, which later became the Be Studios.
The training will start in late March, mostly on weekends, and last until June. At 2:00 on January 20 at Thrive Yoga, Alan and Susan will present an overview of the program. Alan is actually based on New York City so he will be commuting a lot next year. I might add that you can take the course without wanting to become a teacher; it's an intensive gateway into a deeper understanding of yoga.
ISHTHA is an acronym for the Integrated Science of Hatha, Tantra and Ayurveda, and also a Sanskrit word meaning that which resonates with an individual's spirit, according to Alan's website. With Katrina Repka, he wrote Chakra Yoga: Balancing Energy for Physical, Spiritual, and Mental Well-being (Shambhala, 2005), which synthesizes his long evolution as a practitioner, teacher and thinker. There are also a bunch of Yoga Zone videos available that feature Alan.
Labels: life style, philosophy, reading, workshop, yoga
I've just spent three days focused on yoga with Beryl Bender Birch at a Thrive Yoga workshop. I am writing this posting on a staggered basis because I'm still putting my thoughts together about the workshop.
Beryl has been a pioneer of introducing yoga in the United States, starting nearly 35 years ago. She now operates out of the Hard and the Soft Yoga Institute on Long Island and has taught several generations of yoga instructors. She built up traction teaching yoga to athletes in New York City in the 1980s. She coined the phrase Power Yoga as a more appropriate tag for Ashtanga yoga that American could understand. She also wrote two books, Power Yoga and Beyond Power Yoga: 8 Levels of Practice for Body and Soul, that were among the first to reach a broader audience.
We had four 2.5 hour sessions, one Friday, two on Saturday and one on Sunday. In the second Saturday session, we did a restorative pose for 15 minutes and closed with a meditation. In between, Beryl distributed a half dozen different translations (or interpretations) of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras and had us read them out loud. Then, she led us in a discussion of what yoga is, why we practice it and what we want to obtain. That was one of the traits of her teaching. In our first class before doing a jump-back or starting ujayay breath, she held up her hand with about an inch between thumb and index finger and said, "Yoga is this much about asana." The conversation was lively and informative.
For the actual practice, Beryl led us through the Ashtanga Primary Series. It was my first time following a traditional sequencing of poses, though many were modified for practitioners who had not mastered a specific pose.
I think that the appeal of a workshop is the chance to discover the alchemy of shared practice, bringing together an experienced teacher and a roomful of bodies and minds focused on getting the most out of the opportunity. 50-60 sets of lungs churning up the prana in unison -- that's some pretty powerful magic. Beryl did an excellent job of creating the right atmosphere. She always spent the first 30 minutes of a session building up a rapport with the students, giving us an idea of where she wanted to take us, letting us tap into her wisdom and getting a feel for how we could handle the work.
There were actually students who had not taken more than 10 hours of yoga before the workshop. On the other hand, several yoga instructors who had trained under Beryl also showed up for the workshop. At several points, Beryl stopped a student from doing the vinyasa and had them looked at other students as they did the practice: "You can learn as much from watching as from doing."
Beryl had a nice gesture at the end of the final session: she brought out a box full of yoga books (a few courtesy copies but most purchased with her own funds) and she gave them away to the students. Spread the wisdom!
I finished reading Sharon Begley's book, but I could have put off buying the book all together because Washington Post put out a story GET SMART(ER): You're No Genius? Don't Worry. You Can Still Beef Up Your Brain With a Little Effort. It is a breezing feature article that skims off the cream of neuroscience, types of intelligence, nutrition, health science, meditation and curiosity (and lots of name-dropping of scholars and researchers at big name universities) to let you know that you can improve your mental powers:
The idea that there are multiple intelligences -- that people can be intelligent visually, musically, mathematically, athletically, interpersonally and intrapersonally -- was introduced by Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner. (He later added naturalistic intelligence.) Still, whatever the type of intelligence, most people judge brainpower on practical factors, including how much you know, how well you can access what you know and what you do with it.
Labels: brain_science, health, reading
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 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
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
What am I reading now? Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain
This whole groundswell of enthusiasm for Buddhism, mindfulness and meditation is sweeping into the business of tending to the mind. If Freud once laid down the law for understanding the contradictions of the human mind, now it's a spiritual practice without a supreme being. I've mentioned before that I like the idea that Buddha developed a sophisticated set of psychological protocols for relieving with human suffering.
What got me started into the book is that the transformation of human spirit can be manifested by remolding mental habits, but also actually alterations of physical manifestations, like spawning neurons and a thriving hippocampus. As someone who has felt the undertow of depression and literally sensed the physical change that it brought on me, the idea that I can take action to heal myself is an uplifting lesson at this stage of my life.
The BrainReady blog gives a rave review of the book.
Labels: life style, philosophy, reading
New York Times In the Classroom, a New Focus on Quieting the Mind:
Mindfulness, while common in hospitals, corporations, professional sports and even prisons, is relatively new in the education of squirming children. But a small but growing number of schools in places like Oakland and Lancaster, Pa., are slowly embracing the concept — as they did yoga five years ago — and institutions, like the psychology department at Stanford University and the Mindfulness Awareness Research Center at the University of California, Los Angeles, are trying to measure the effects
This story has the potential of making it into the punch lines of Jay Leno jokes on late night TV. The story is also honest that the trial run of mindfulness in the classroom is still too early to predict an outcome. As someone who tries to cultivate mindfulness on a daily, even hourly basis (not much luck), I really cheer for this introduction of meditation in the school system. Expect a book to be written about this whole phenomenon in the near future because the kids can come up with jaw-dropping insights out of the blue or live compelling lives in the midst of urban mayhem (and that's not to say that suburban or rural kids don't have their own high-odds struggle to healthy adulthood).
Labels: meditation, news, reading
Can there be any doubt now of yoga's cultural influence among fashion elites? A photo spread in Vanity Fair magazine called Spiritual Stretching:
No wonder Americans are Downward Dogging by the millions: yoga can work wonders on mind, body, and soul. In the U.S., 16.5 million people practice it, and it's thus become a coast-to-coast, Zeitgeist-defining phenomenon as well as a multi-billion-dollar industry. In these outtakes from the yoga portfolio featured in our June issue, Michael O'Neill photographs the movement's leading figures, from Christy Turlington and Sting to Rodney Yee and B.K.S. Iyengar.
The irony is only made more biting by the beauty of O'Neill's photographs of yoga luminaries and celebrities.
This is my third and final installment on Stephen Cope's Yoga and the Quest for the True Self (Bantam Books: 1999) Anyone who wants to embrace yoga in its fullest manifestation should (must!?) read it. There, I said it. I would not recommend it for a novice. The reader should have a few years of regular practice and have a working knowledge of yoga's fundamentals, its history and philosophy. The book wet my appetite for digging deeper into yoga: my daily practice, my lab work in classes, my explorations in meditation and my intellectual engagement, in other words, the whole shebang. I feel that there is so much more that will be opened up to me with acceptance, patience and persistence, and it might come after a second reading. I'd give this book five stars on Amazon.
A trained observer of the human condition and a compelling storyteller, Cope combines his own life experience with those of other people who took up yoga and saw it change their lives, and throws in scientific research, philosophical scholarship and the theory of chakras for the bargain. It also provides an excellent look at how yoga is evolving in American culture, both the points of tension/friction and the synergy. Cope provide wise commentary and eye-opening insight into the human condition -- you can see why he changed the names of the people he chronicled.
I had originally thought that the book focused on the Kripalu Center's transition from a guru-focused institution to a more egalitarian, self-sustaining and more American organization. But only 15 pages (out of 330 pages) actually address the "scandal" of Amrit Desai resigning from the center because of sexual liaisons he had with disciples and the upheaval it brought to the people who had followed him. Cope really does not go into all the details so a full account will have to be found elsewhere. So the "crisis" only plays a minor role in the narrative, though it does give a distinctly different perspective to look at a yoga-centered residence (a kind of mega-studio/monastery, if your will) going through changes and it does influence Cope's own perception because he has gone through this test by fire. By the way, Amrit Desai is still teaching in Florida, and has launched a CD on yoga nidra. No mention of his years in Kripalu.
Here's a blogger's opinion. Here is a negative view from What's Enlightenment magazine. The first and second parts of my review.
Labels: philosophy, reading
I am working my way through Stephen Cope's Yoga and the Quest for the True Self (Bantam Books: 1999) and find it a fascinating read. It's up there with my three favorite yoga books. Cope makes a strong point for seeing yoga and transformation within the context of the community. Given the U.S. tendency to focus just on the physical side and strip away the rest, Cope writes, "Consciousness is transmitted in relationships... Company is more powerful than willpower... A caring community can help us create a safe domain in which personal experiences can be expressed, expanded and enriched." (pp. 166-7 — these are just a few of the sentences that I had highlighted.) Of course, Cope's own experience comes from within the Kripalu Center and naturally reflects that exposure to a sangha.
Most yoga studios are not going to have the capacity to create community, unless there is a very strong personality driving the initiative beyond being a mere business venture. This opens up a lot of other issues because of the bad vibes from gurus and cults. For that matter, not that many of practitioners are actively seeking community.
Cope's insistence on the context of consciousness and the power of human relationships strike a resonant cord with me — I'm a PK and I grew up in the shelter of a church, a natural extension of my family.
In response: Asia Nelson asked in a comment whether I had any tips for promoting sangha. As a writer, I am not qualified to give advice in creating community. I tend to be aloner who shows up for class. Because most studios tend to be swamped by newcomers, there is a certain transience to classes, rarely the same people showing up for a class. The needs of a novice are different from an experienced yogi who would be more inclined to seek community. So the challenge of the instructor and the studio is to find ways that build continuity and collective experience. I've noticed that programs like teacher training, work study exchanges and workshop/retreats tend to instill a deeper sense of community.
Labels: philosophy, reading, yoga
Thanks to a pointer from Yogamum, I came across LibraryThing. This online service allows you to catalogue your personal collection of books, and these then form part of a universal collection (13 million, according to the site). I searched on the tag "yoga," and came up with the following listing of the term, 2,300 times by 742 users. The top 11 books were:
- Light on yoga : yoga dipika by B.K.S. Iyengar (53)
- Yoga : the poetry of the body by Rodney Yee (17)
- The American Yoga Association beginner's manual by Alice Christensen (14)
- Anatomy of Hatha Yoga : a manual for students, teachers, and… by H. David Coulter (14)
- Yoga : the path to holistic health by B.K.S. Iyengar (13)
- The heart of yoga : developing a personal practice by T. K. V. Desikachar (12)
- OM yoga : a guide to daily practice by Cyndi Lee (12)
- The complete idiot's guide to yoga by Joan Budilovsky (12)
- Yoga : the Iyengar way by Silva Mehta (13)
- Yoga for dummies by Georg Feuerstein (13)
- Ashtanga yoga : the practice manual by David Swenson (11)
- Yoga mind, body & spirit : a return to wholeness by Donna Farhi (9)
I am a little surprised by the high ranking of the Christensen and the Budilovsky books. They are kind of generic starter books so I guess it's what might be expected from a non-specialist, average consumer database. I am ashamed to admit that I do not own a copy of the most popular book, Light on Yoga. I have three of the 12.
Labels: reading
I've been reading Stephen Cope's Yoga and the Quest for the True Self (Bantam Books: 1999) for the past few weeks, mainly while on the Metro to and from work. It makes for fitful reading, but Cope has produced a book that is worth thoroughly absorbing and pondering. It is definitely not a book for a yoga novice. It is not a book about asanas, vinyasas and how to fit them together. It is not another book about interpreting the enigmatic refrains of Patanjali (Cope's latest book is actually about that).
Cope's book deals with how yoga can change you in dramatic ways, with why yoga is uniquely equipped to help delve into the human mind and condition, and with the dilemma of self-identity and the real world. But despite its lofty topics, it is still very accessible because it comes at yoga and human change from a personal perspective of his own life, his process of change and the community within which he was working, the Kripalu Center in western Massachusetts. Cope is a trained psychotherapist so he brings a full tool kit to analyze his experience and also a remarkable capacity to communicate a potentially ethereal process in palpable terms.
In order for the book to make sense, you need to have sweated on the mat for at least a year or two. It's also worth trying to discuss it with other practitioners and teachers because it challenges the intellect and benefits from multiple perspectives. At this point in my evolving practice, it has responded to a lot of formless questions that were bouncing around in my head and I could not condense into concrete inquiries.
Labels: philosophy, reading, yoga
I am currently reading Stephen Cope's Yoga and the Quest for the True Self
I had been planning on reading this book for years but never bothered to order it. Last week, I put in an order for other material at Amazon and I said to myself, why not. I should also pick up his other book, The Wisdom of Yoga: A Seeker's Guide to Extraordinary Living
I finished reading Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness
Kabat-Zinn really wrote several books under one cover, and he might have been better served by breaking it into separate publications. He was ambitious, ranging from the intimately personal to the globally political. That's a narrative arch that's pretty hard to sustain. I don't regret have bought and read it, but I've read all Kabat-Zinn's books so I am an exception to the average reader who might want something more focused.
Labels: reading
Slate Magazine The hostile New Age takeover of yoga Ron Rosenbaum takes Yoga Journal to the rhetorical woodshed for a thrashing:
In fact, my impetus for this examination of yoga media came from a sharp-witted woman I know who practices yoga but frankly concedes that -- for her, anyway -- it's less about Inner Peace than Outer Hotness. She called my attention to what she called an amazingly clueless -- and ultimately cruel (to the writer) -- decision by the editors of Yoga Journal to print a first-person story that was ostensibly about the yogic wisdom on forgiveness in relationships.
The actual article does not seem to be available on the website yet so I can't link to it. I have the issue but I can't remember reading it. Rosenbaum reminds all yoga practitioners and evangelists that we have to keep grounded and focused on what we're trying to accomplish on the mat and in the world.
A tip of the hat to SoulJerky for leading me to this tidbit.
Labels: reading
