My friend and infrequent yoga teacher, Rachel Permuth-Levine, is one of the organizers behind 2008 NIH Yoga Week: Exploring the Science and Practice of Yoga. NIH is the National Institutes of Health, for those not up on Washington acronyms. From May 19 to May 23, there will be guest speakers, reports on NIH's own research on yoga and meditation and yoga practice on the NIH campus lawn (weather permitting). Most events are to take place from 11:00 am to 3:00 pm so I will probably not be able to attend.
Among the speakers are Timothy McCall, M.D., Medical Editor of Yoga Journal Magazine and author of Yoga as Medicine: The Yogic Prescription for Health and Healing
Thrive Yoga will be holding an event outside the NIH daytime schedule. Sat Bir S. Khalsa, will speak on " Yoga and Meditation in the Management of Stress" on Thursday, May 22, 6:00 - 8:00 pm. There is limited space so you will have to register Sign up online..
Labels: brain_science, dc_yoga, meditation, therapy
Mindfulness and Psychotherapy: Cultivating Well-Being in the Present Moment is offered by UCLA Extension and Lifespan Learning Institute in collaboration with the Center for Mindfulness and Psychotherapy and InsightLA on October 5-7. If you're not going to fly to California on 24 hours notice, you might want to check out the speaker handouts page because the convergence of interests is stirring up a lot of heat and insight. Some of the handouts are more detailed than just an outline. As mentioned here before, I am plodding my way through Sharon Begley's Change Your Mind, Change Your Brain, and this conference offers similar material.
One speaker, Sarah Lazar from Harvard, has a site with her research information on meditation, called Meditation Research (catchy title). She has a link to New Yorker cartoons on yoga, always good for a yuk.
Labels: meditation, therapy
New York Times: The Yoga Therapist Will See You Now underscores the recent growth of yoga therapy, but also carries a warning:
But experts inside and outside the industry say yoga therapy should be approached with caution. In general, a person can practice as a yoga therapist after 200 hours of yoga teacher training, which might include basic training in anatomy, breathing, meditation and giving adjustments.
At the end of the article, there is a paragraph about NY-based designer Donna Karan "sponsoring a 10-day Well-Being Forum in Manhattan to bring together doctors, yoga therapists and yoga teachers..." That may explain why the article got commissioned in the first place. The event is organized by UrbanZen with Rodney Yee, Christy Turlington and a host of big names serving on the board. Karan is pushing integrative medicine that combines alternative health with conventional medicine following the death of her husband from lung cancer.
