Yoga Hyde - New Online Yoga Gear

I've not tried any of their clothes, but they look lovely. Check out Yoga Hyde - especially the outerwear.

Meditation Can Help Heart Disease, Medical Study Finds

A medical study suggests that meditation provides physiological benefits - at least with people with coronary artery disease. The New York Times time reported the news in a brief blurb, Regimens: Meditation, for the Mind and the Heart.

Money quote:

The participants found transcendental meditation easy to learn and practice, Dr. Schneider said. He suggested that the stress reduction produced by the meditation could cause changes in the brain that cut stress hormones like cortisol and dampen the inflammatory processes associated with atherosclerosis.

Lemons:Cool and Useful Information

Beliefnet.com offers a slide show entitled 15 Hidden Health Secrets of Lemons. Some are pretty cool and news to me - like treating acne or canker sores or corns and calluses, eczema, bad breath, bug bites!

Something about it's akaline properties counteracts acid. That acid/akaline balance seems to be coming up a lot lately.

Arnica Use Backed By Science

Arnica use is now backed by science, according to a New York Times post, The Alternative Medicine Cabinet: Arnica for Pain Relief.

It is believed that the plant contains derivatives of thymol, which seems to have anti-inflammatory effects. Either way, scientists have found good evidence that it works. One randomized study published in 2007 looked at 204 people with osteoarthritis in their hands and found that an arnica gel preparation worked just as well as daily ibuprofen, and with minimal side effects.

This entry is apparently the first of many that Times columnist Anahad O'Connor (I love America!) will do weekly to explore "the claims and the science behind alternative remedies that you may want to consider for your family medicine cabinet"

You can check out other entries for The Alternative Medicine Cabinet here.

A New Line of Yoga Attire

I've not tried any of this line, but it's associated with Seane Corn, whom I respect.  The yoga clothes and supplies look pretty neat.

Check out here.

Has any one else tried?  If so, please provide feedback in the comments section.

Yoga=Mindful Eating=Healthier Weight

Regular yoga practice is associated with mindful eating, and that in turn causes people to be less likely to be overweight, finds a new medical study published in the August issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association.

What seems particularly interesting is that it's yoga - not just any exercise - that provides this associated benefit.

The researchers found that people who ate mindfully—those were aware of why they ate and stopped eating when full—weighed less than those who ate mindlessly, who ate when not hungry or in response to anxiety or depression. The researchers also found a strong association between yoga practice and mindful eating but found no association between other types of physical activity, such as walking or running, and mindful eating.

The key too is that the practice of yoga has to be regular. To the study, that appears to translate to more than one hour a week, a pretty low threshold, it seems to me.

The study measured:

• disinhibition – eating even when full;
• awareness – being aware of how food looks, tastes and smells;
• external cues – eating in response to environmental cues, such as advertising;
• emotional response – eating in response to sadness or stress; and
• distraction – focusing on other things while eating.

You can read more here.

What Trying to Meditate is Really Like

Robert Wright is one of my favorite writers and thinkers.  He just published his third book, The Evolution of God earlier this summer.  In hearing him promote his book, I'd heard him speak of his attraction to Buddhism and meditation, so I was delighted to come across this rendition of time he spent on a meditation retreat on the New York Times Opinionator Blog: Self, Meditating.

As usual, he's brutally honest about the experience of meditation - the frustration, the imperfection, the confusion. And he's funny.  And smart. 

Here's a taste:

This retreat is coming at a good time for me. In June I published a book that I’ve been feverishly promoting. Publishing and promoting a book can bring out the non-Buddhist in a person. For example, when book reviewers make judgments about your book, you may make judgments about the reviewers — ungenerous judgments, even.
Also, you’re inclined to pursue the fruits of your activity — like book sales — rather than just experience the activity. Checking your Amazon ranking every 7 minutes would qualify as what Buddhists call “attachment.” And attachment is bad. (Oops: I just made a judgment about attachment.)

Yoga and Desire

Sally Kempton is a regular columnist for Yoga Journal and I love her essays on yoga philosophy and living.

This one on desire is particularly acute. She incorporates a mythical story of the Hindu god Brahma and from there provides constructive insights on the nature of desire, how to use as a force for good in our lives and avoid the pitfalls.

Here's a taste:

Well-managed desire can inspire you to action and help shape your life. Unmanaged desire—well, distraction is the least of it. Even Brahma, the ancient, ageless creator of the universe, turned into a hormone-crazed teenager when inflamed with desire. In fact, his story reveals the power of desire and what's needed to turn it into a force for good.

And another:

Yet whether deep or superficial, all these desires have the potential to manifest results. Your life situation at this moment is to an amazing extent the product of the desires you've held—often desires that you forgot long ago. As one of the Upanishads says, "As a [person's] desire is, so is his destiny. For as his desire is, so is his will; as his will is, so is his deed; and as his deed is, so are its consequences, good or bad."

Knowing how to direct the power of desire toward growth can help you create a life of beauty, love, and even enlightenment. On the other hand, if the desires you follow are unhealthy, if you have not brought them fully to consciousness, or if you continually follow the distracting impulses of momentary desires, you're likely to find yourself in situations that don't serve your highest goals.

Click through to read the whole thing, Gotta Have It? It's not long and worthwhile.

If you like yoga and you like word puzzles, you might like these products. The puzzles are based on BKS Iyengar's books and teachings and you'd better know your Sanskrit or be prepared to learn some. From the home page:

Whether you are a teacher studying to improve your Sanskrit spelling and vocabulary, or a student just wondering what in the world these words mean, these books will provide you with a few hours of exploration and discovery and definitely some good activity for your brain cells.

Fresh Ginger Ale!

One of my students knows I love and make my own ginger tea. I modified a recipe I got on my first yoga retreat to Parrot Cay - the retreat that changed my life as well as my palate.

Well, ginger is getting more popular and she sent along this New York Times article highlighting the trend of home made ginger ale - Ginger Ale Without the Can.

I couldn't agree more:

But beyond current fashions, homemade ginger ale has a lively bite that is especially appealing as summer nears.

“It’s a very refreshing, vibrant feeling,” said Geoff Alexander, the managing partner of Wow Bao, part of Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises, the Chicago restaurant company.

Typically less sweet than store-bought sodas, the handmade ales get an added zing from fresh ginger.

Here's a recipe to make Ginger Ale at home. Also from the New York Times.

Thanks Sara!

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Clear Your Clutter, Find Your Life

I found this to be a really helpful, succinct article on how to de-clutter your home in this time of spring. Clear Your Clutter, Find Your Life is from Body & Soul's April 2009 issue.

I'm not even going to try and excerpt the good bits, because it all seems very constructive and helpful. So click through and let me know what you think.

Do-It-Yourself Cleaning Tools from Martha Stewart

This link is the portal to all sorts of home remedies and cleaning supplies - how to make your own all purpose cleanser, laundry detergent, silver polish, toilet bowl cleaner, etc. etc. 

Not only will these tips save money but will also reduce chemical residue and are better for the environment.

If you try any, please report back your experience. 

"Yoga IS My Bailout"

Very cool and clever t-shirts. Check them out here.

The Perils of All That Mindfulness

Judith Warner of the New York Times penned a witty, perceptive essay, Being and Mindfulness, on the perils of trendy "mindfulness."

Mindfulness is supposed to bring people together. By embracing your essential humanness, getting in touch with and accepting your body, sensations, emotions and thoughts, you are supposed to join with, and empathetically connect to, all humanity.

This, I think, is true and sort of defeats the purpose:

in real-life encounters, I’ve come lately to wonder whether meaningful bonds are well forged by the extreme solipsism that mindfulness practice often turns out to be. For one thing, there’s the seemingly unavoidable problem that people who are embarked on this particular “journey of self-exploration,” as Pipher has called it, tend to want to talk, or write, about it. A lot.

And one of the problems with this tendency is that everyone's experience with the practice is unique.

And those who talk, write, share it tend to hold out their experiences as ideal, which in turn leaves those who've never felt the "kundalini rising" feeling left out, inadequate and perhaps quit. This difficulty was one of my problems with Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love, as I discussed in my review.

It also bring to mind the passage from Matthew's gospel which tells Christians to pray in secret and not to blab or brag out it (Matthew 6:6-8).

One of Warner's concluding insights:

Some of us experience our emotions always in capital letters and exclamation points. This isn’t always pleasant but, to go all mindful for a moment, it is what it is, and if you are one of these people then probably one of the great pleasures of your life is finding others like you and settling in with them for a good rant. A world devoid of such souls can be cold and forbidding, and above all terribly, terribly dull.

True. But for me, it's still worth while to try and smooth out the edges. To me, the practice is like a calculus curve - always approaching. I'll never get there, but that doesn't mean I stop trying.

Thanks to student Sara for the link.

Yoga as an Olympic Sport?

Apparently if Bikram has his way.

Neal Pollack, Slate, offers a dispatch Top Yogi from the 6th International Yoga Competition. He remarks - "Yoga has done more for my physical and mental well-being than anything else I've tried."

I steeled myself to bear witness to some sort of whacked-out yoga circus, and that's more or less what I got. But a lot of yoga culture feels weird and circuslike to me anyway, so I would have felt disappointed if it had ended up being otherwise.

Well if you're exposure to yoga is Bikram, it is wierd and circuslike and whacked out. It's also not yoga:

At the center of the weekend, wearing flashy suits and various fedoras, stood Bikram Choudhury, the animating force behind the competitive yoga circuit. Here's a man who's copyrighted his style of yoga (26 postures, repeated twice, in a room heated to 105 degrees Fahrenheit), sends cease-and-desist letters to those who dare flout the copyright, and, in interviews, summarily dismisses all other forms of American yoga while also bragging about his love for McDonald's and his large fleet of self-restored Rolls-Royces. He once famously told Business 2.0 magazine that his yoga was the "only yoga." When asked why, he said it was because he has "balls like atom bombs, two of them, 100 megatons each. Nobody fucks with me." Not surprisingly, other yoga circles view him and his particular craft with everything from mildly dismissive amusement to a disdain coming close to disgust.

That sums up Mr. Bikram - but that's not why he disgusts me. Rather it's because he is popularizing only one very small part of yoga. Yoga has 8 limbs, or parts; the poses (asanas) are ONE part. One/eighth.

Regardless of the size of his balls, his pea brain can't apprehend. His ego is simply a symptom of his misunderstanding of all of yoga's component parts. If he understood yoga, his humility wouldn't enable him to say in a recent interview said that prop-heavy Iyengar yoga studios look like "a Santa Monica sex shop."

With out any sense of irony, Mary Jarvis, a San Francisco-based yoga-studio owner who was one of Bikram's first U.S. students, states:

"The more advanced a yoga posture is, the more humble the yogi should be," she said. "If somebody's really arrogant, I won't train them. They can have a great posture on stage and be a total asshole."

SO funny!

Yoga Journal Video on Romance Love and Yoga

A good friend and fellow yoga trainee attended the Yoga Journal conference in San Francisco last month and had a very funny, ironic (?) story about another attendee who appeared to be inebriated at 3:45 in the afternoon!

And now I've discovered that Yoga Journal produces small videos and this one is a treat - On Romance, Love and Yoga. YJ interviews Michael Franti, Scott Blossom, Tias and Surya Little, Rod Stryker and Gary Kraftsow. Cassandra Fox conducted these interviews at that YJ conference last month (and no one seems drunk on anything other than yoga - check out the first guy).

I found Rod Stryker and Gary Krafsow (who come at the end of the 8 minute video) the most helpful with constructive thoughts and perceptions.

Stryker describes the yogi who have partners who - egads! - don't practice yoga or don't practice as much or is not completely in synch - and who seem bothered by this. He dismisses that, suggests that those fixated on our partners' practices, or lack thereof, let that go. He urges us to be kind and be respectful to our beloved.

Kraftsow points out that we have to be fulfilled first and not look for fulfillment in the other. Yoga itself "says you have to do yoga for yourself no one can do it for you. Same lesson is true about successful, loving, romantic and passionate relationships...look for your own inner fulfillment and then share that with another."

Elizabeth Gilbert on the Creative Process

Some of you are aware of TED -  

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader.

The annual conference now brings together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).

Most not in the know heard about Ted with the proliferation of Jill Botle Taylor's talk on her "Stroke of Insight," which you can watch here.   Last week, Bill Gates' 18 minute talk engendered some press because he released a swarm of mosquitoes during his discussion on malaria apparently as a visual aid.

Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray Love (which I reviewed here) gives a 18 minute talk about the creative process, which is actually pretty entertaining.   Just last week I posted an interview she did with the Seattle newspaper, which may also be of interest to her fans. 

You can watch here:

Yoga - The Reliable Raft

Gary Kraftsow has long been a hero of mine but I did not know of his own personal health "opportunity" until I read this piece, Radical Healing, in the current issue of Yoga & Joyful Living (formerly Yoga International). Kraftsow won't allow his brain tumor and surgery to be called an ordeal.

I've admired him because of the medical studies on yoga he conducted which got wide coverage -

Kraftsow may be best known as the architect of rigorous studies of yoga’s efficacy. He showed that yoga can alleviate chronic back pain in a study funded by the National Institutes of Health, the results of which were published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

That's the sort of credibility yoga needs and won't garner with gym rats taking a weekend yoga teaching course and hanging out a shingle.

In the three hour teaching seminar I took with him, Gary Kraftsow also impressed me greatly with his knowledge base, intuition and approach. So I own both his books. Perhaps he simply resonated with me because of my own health opportunities. He articulated my experience. I feel I have a sense now of how and why.

Of his health crisis, he says, “I would never wish it on my worst enemy. But if it happens to you, it’s an extraordinary opportunity to grow.” In the hospital, when the haze lifted, Kraftsow discovered new depths of stillness. “The stillness of meditation is one thing, but this stillness—I hadn’t had any experience of it before,” he says.

I've said, and never lightly, that yoga saved my life. Not simply the poses, but all of it. This article on Kraftsow explains what yoga teaches beyond the asanas.

Kraftsow stresses two aspects of yoga - the individuality (which is the primary difficulty in conducting medical studies) and that yoga is more than the physical poses (asanas). He properly notes that asana is mentioned only twice in Patanjali's Yoga Sutras.

“My desire for all those who have only been exposed to the asana part of yoga is that they have an opportunity to appreciate the depth and breadth of this great tradition,” he says. “When you have a life-threatening or serious condition, you can’t rely on what you could rely on before. Yoga is like a raft that can help you go through these things. But in my case it wasn’t asana. It wasn’t even breathing. It was attitude, prayer. These are going to help you when you can’t do anything else.”

Just as illuminating, the piece fleshes out the Kraftsow's principles by following Ellen Fein's pilgrimage after she became ill. She came to study with Gary Kraftsow and he helped her. Regarding his teaching method -

“It’s so individual,” says Kraftsow. “You never know what it’s going to be, what gives somebody a sense of pleasure, fulfillment. What we as teachers are trained to do is read body language. When someone makes a connection to something that’s meaningful, they’ll light up. That’s like a clue, and then you’re like a treasure hunter. You follow it, try to bring it out, and help them make a connection to something that can give them some sense of joy.”

Here's just a clue to one part of his teaching which touches on the layers of the body (some translations call the layers sheaths).

The cornerstone of Kraftsow’s practice is pancha maya, a model of the human system referenced in ancient Indian texts. According to this model, also known as the kosha model, we are comprised of five dimensions or layers: the physical body (annamaya), the breath or life force (pranamaya), the intellect (manomaya), the personality (vijnanamaya), and the heart, which is the seat of bliss (anandamaya). In the days leading up to surgery, Kraftsow plumbed every dimension of his being.

Yoga teaches so much, so much that is valuable and helpful.

New Interview with Eat, Pray, Love Author

The Seattle Post Intelligencer's John Marshall did a recent interview with Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love.  

Topics covered include her nervousness preceding her appearance on Oprah; the status of her relationship with the Brazilian man she fell in love with at the end of Eat, Pray, Love; the nature of her fan mail and what she likes; what fame has been like; and what's she working on for her next book -  


The alchemy of "Eat, Pray, Love" is specific to that book. That was five years ago -- my life has changed since then, my voice has changed. I can reconstruct that voice, but that would not be authentic. Authenticity is what people want..

Enjoy. 

A Yoga Lesson for Blagojevich? Not Seriously.

A columnist at Huffington Post put together a tongue and cheek yoga lesson for former IL governor Rod Blagojevich.   The primary focus is the "monkey mind"   There's a list and a video.  

I think this does a disservice.  To yoga.  It trivializes yoga.  Her remark about supta virasana (reclined hero's pose) to me is out of line and not funny.   She obviously thinks it is as she repeats it twice.  That's aside from the fact that she doesn't demonstrate it properly adapted for the runner that every one knows that Blagojevich is. 

Yoga and Fun

New York Times outlines the dangerous role ego has come to play in some yoga quarters where yoga and the teachers take themselves and yoga a bit too seriously and self-righteously.   Yoga can be and should be fun.  

It's a fun piece called The Enlightened Path, With a Rubber Duck.

Enjoy.

(I watched the two You Tube videos and didn't think either of them were that funny or worthwhile, but there are two included in the article.