Tag Archives: Yoga

BOOK REVIEW: The Science of Yoga by William Broad

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The Science of Yoga: The Risks and the RewardsThe Science of Yoga: The Risks and the Rewards by William J. Broad

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I brought a great deal of interest and enthusiasm towards this subject as I began reading this book. As I proceeded to read, my feelings about The Science of Yoga became much more mixed. At its best, the book shows the state of scientific research on yoga and crushes myths that are deeply ingrained, and it points out risks of which yogis and yoginis should take notice. At its worst, it is sensationalism run-amok–suggesting hugely expensive solutions to issues that are either relatively small problems or that the author fails to prove are really problems at all. Put more simply, at its best it’s outstanding, but at its worst it’s tripe. What I will say about this book is the same thing that its author says about yoga, which is that—on balance—it does more good than harm.

The book is arranged into seven chapters, each of which discusses the scientific research on a different dimension of controversial beliefs about yoga. These include the historic claims of supernatural yogic abilities, the issue of whether yoga increases cardiovascular health, the role of yoga in mental health and well-being, the safety of practicing yoga, the role of yoga in healing, the sexual claims of yogis, and whether yoga enhances creativity. It is written in a scholarly format, heavily end-noted and with bibliographic citations. There is front matter giving information about key people, time lines, and yoga styles in outline form.

In an afterword, Broad points out that this has been his most controversial book to date. I can see why, but, to be fair, I’m sure much of the criticism is unfairly based on a failure to read the book or a desire for the author to treat many of yoga’s mythical aspects as science (as many of its practitioners do.) The former problem was exacerbated by the fact that a single chapter excerpt was published in the New York Times as a teaser for the book. Designed to spark controversy (always good for readership), it was one of the most negative of chapters—the one dealing with yoga injuries. Some who took umbrage probably didn’t realize that Broad is a yoga practitioner, and that there are chapters that are overwhelmingly positive on yoga (e.g. the chapter on “mood” which deals with yoga’s influence on psychology has mostly great things to say about the discipline.) While all of the chapters combine a mix of good and bad news, one comes away from some of them seeing a positive picture of yoga and others with a negative one. In the first half of the book it seems as though chapters may have been arranged to alternate positive and negative dimensions.

Of course, there will also be people who are outraged because of the discussions of the debunking of the con games of their beloved yogis, or for a failure to discuss the critical importance of things like Chakra fluffing. It should be noted that Broad doesn’t deride or mock such spiritual beliefs, he more or less ignores them beyond the occasional off-hand mention—as one would expect in a book about science.

My primary criticism with The Science of Yoga is a common one consideration of problem-solving utilizing public policy (not just with respect to yoga), which is to become so impassioned about a problem that you lose all sight of cost-benefit considerations or the negative feedback effects incentivized by your “solutions.” The problems about which Broad gets so exercised as to suggest an overhaul of yoga as we know it, largely fall into two categories. First, there are problems that are exceedingly rare but catastrophic for in individual involved. This is exemplified by the apparent heightened incidence of strokes among individuals engaged in certain inversions (e.g. a shoulder stand in which the neck is under compression.)

In an interesting turn away from science, Broad makes assumptions in the face of lack of evidence about the incidence of stroke in yoga practitioners. He assumes that yogis have at least the same incidence of stroke due to vertebral artery injury as the general population because of inversions and other yogic activities that put pressure on blood vessels in the neck. He does make clear that it’s just a guess, but one could equally well speculate that those who practice yoga suffer a diminished rate of such strokes because of greater flexibility and strength in the neck. (For the most part the human body is an anti-fragile system, i.e. it grows stronger when subjected to stresses—up to a point—than when shielded from stresses.) While he does call for increased study of the issue, he’s also simultaneously calling for expensive reforms. In essence, he’s calling for a solution before awaiting the evidence that there’s actually a real problem. Stroke is the 800 pound gorilla of the risks the Broad writes about in terms of damage, and so it’s not surprising that he paints the risk in ominous terms. He criticizes the Yoga Journal for dismissing it as a “minuscule number of cases”, but even taking his estimate of 300 (and realizing it could be much lower and is compared to 800,000 cases of stroke per year in the US according to the CDC) “minuscule” does not sound that out of line in a country of 314 million people.

Second, there is the issue of bad information being spread by yoga teachers and authors either because they don’t know any better or because they have an incentive to deceive. This is exemplified by the widespread notion that yoga (and particularly pranayama— breathing exercises) increases one’s cardiovascular fitness. Is it wrong? Yes, but it’s not clear that this propagation of bad information has hurt anybody. That may sound harsh, but—think about it–many people lead long and fruitful lives believing things that aren’t true. Now you may say, “Yes, but people who believe the Earth is flat can’t get hurt believing that, but yoga practitioners can be hurt by wrong information.” I would agree that some wrong information could be damaging, but consider the example given, which–I might add–is one of the main thrusts of Broad’s book. If it were the case that many people got fat because they thought yoga would help their cardio when instead it decreased their metabolism (as the evidence suggests it does), then no one would believe the myth. The idea wouldn’t have the strong hold that it does. What happens more often is that people either lose weight because they stress and eat less or they stay the same—either way they haven’t been hurt any more by bad information. Even if someone came to yoga to lose weight and gained some, they will abandon yoga and go to Zumba or Taebo with greater flexibility and probably a diminished risk of injury for having done yoga.

By spreading information about the risks and the state of scientific understanding of them Broad is doing good work. However, he goes on to suggest that we need lots of bureaucrats to monitor and license yoga and that we need much more rigorous requirements for yoga teachers than the 200 or 500 hour Yoga Alliance certifications that currently exist (or the teaching certificates issued by the gurus or teacher trainers of various styles of yoga), and herein lies two problems. It’s not clear that a problem exists to merit such an expensive solution.

First of all, many of the worst cases that he points out were people engaged in questionable practices on their own. I’m sorry for my frankness, but you can’t regulate stupid out of existence. There was one kid who sat for hours in Vajrasana (sitting on haunches), one who fell asleep in a forward bend, and another who had a stroke after holding a shoulder stand on a hard surface for hours. Now, my experience may not be as extensive as others, but I’ve attended yoga classes in the US, India, and Thailand. I’ve had teachers tell me to hold a pose for 5 deep breaths. I’ve even had teachers tell me to hold a pose for 10 deep breaths. No teacher has ever said to me, “Hold that pose for four hours or until you have a stroke, whichever comes first.” Even teachers with a couple hundred hours of instruction and a couple hundred more of experience don’t—as a rule—give patently stupid advice. (To the degree that there are rare exceptions, thinking that no teacher would ever again give a piece of bad advice if they just all had PhDs is a little presumptuous.)

The major problem with Broad’s suggestion of a need to overhaul the system and install bureaucratic gatekeepers and overseers and to make teachers jump through vastly more educational hoops is that it increases the cost of doing yoga with a teacher. Now, I know that yoga is associated with relatively affluent people, but—believe it or not–there are yoga practitioners who aren’t SUV-driving, Abercrombie&Fitch-wearing, maid-hiring suburbanites. If the monthly cost of attending yoga class goes from tens of dollars to hundreds of dollars because every yoga teacher has to have a PhD in Kinesiology and every studio has to comply with the extensive regulations and licensing fees of the newly formed Department of Yoga Management, then many people who are happy with the level of instruction they are currently getting are going to be emulating books and videos and injury rates could actually go up.

Another example of a “problem” that is not definitively shown to be a problem is Broad’s extensive criticism of an author of a popular book on yoga (i.e. Larry Payne) for using a Ph.D. designation that was from a southern Californian diploma-mill. While there is something objectionable about putting a PhD behind one’s name that wasn’t justly earned, it’s not at all clear that this was a problem. One expects to hear how Larry Payne left a pile of wrecked souls in his wake. However, while Broad devotes pages to ridiculing Payne for putting PhD after his name, the few mentions of the Payne’s interactions with others suggest that he helped them get healthier (e.g. Dr. Ursatine) and that he furthered the state of his professional field. The implication being that the credential matters vastly more than the individual’s experience and diligence. Interestingly, Dr. Fishman (for whom Broad has nothing but kind words—presumably because he holds an MD) is quoted as speaking glowingly about Payne and his contributions to the field.

Another example of sensationalism can be seen in the chapter on sexuality. While we would expect this chapter to be entirely about the claims of yoga being able to enhance one’s sex life, a fair amount of it is devoted to pointing out instances of lecherousness among yogis. I’m not saying that it’s bad to point out bad behavior of gurus in terms of harassing or molesting their female students, but unless there’s some evidence that this inclination is tied the sexual practices of yoga, this would seem to be the wrong venue for the discussion. In other words, if yogis are no more lecherous on the whole than other teachers or coaches, then it would seem that mention of this issue is just to titillate. If yogis are uncontrollable horn-dogs because of yogic practices, then fine, but you’ve got to establish that there’s evidence for that somehow.

Overall, I’d recommend that individuals interested in the scientific literature on yoga read this book. It provides a good overview of the literature, and is well-cited. The books weakness comes from insisting that a large number of mole hills are really the Himalayas. These mole hills can be addressed with education, but can never be eliminated. Suggesting we upend the apple cart to produce “solutions” to marginal problems is ridiculous. We may think a world in which there was never another fatal traffic accident would be nice, but I assure you we would not want to live in the world in which all the actions were taken necessary to achieve said goal. If one compares the extrapolated estimates of hospital visits for yoga injuries, they are really quite few and we have no reason to believe that the vast majority aren’t life-threatening or permanently disabling.

For me it would have been a great book if it laid out the risks and rewards, and suggested caution. Of course, then it probably wouldn’t have gotten any more attention than the many books that already exist on the subject of yoga injuries, so maybe some good can come of Broad’s implication that going to the yoga studio is akin to storming the beaches at Normandy and that we need to stop the horrors or yoga practice.

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Yoga for Martial Artists

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Long before I ever took a yoga class, I was doing a kind of yoga. It may have even had its roots in India, but it also might have blossomed independently. In the Japanese martial art I study, we called it junan taiso, and many of the poses would be recognizable to a yogi. While it didn’t include the complex and balance-challenging poses seen in yoga, stretches like the butterfly (Poorna Titali Asana), straddle stretch (Upavistha Konasana), and the back stretch (Pashchimottanasana) were virtually identical. As with yoga, the manner of breathing was as important as the nature of the stretch.

Butterfly Stretch (Poorna Titali Asana)

Butterfly Stretch (Poorna Titali Asana)

Back Stretch (Paschimottanasana)

Back Stretch (Paschimottanasana)

Straddle Stretch (Upavisthakonasana)

Straddle Stretch (Upavisthakonasana)

Flexibility is key in the martial arts, and not just the ones with high-flying kicks. Even grapplers and practitioners of the less fancy striking systems gain from increased flexibility, but it isn’t only increases in range of motion that yoga offers.

Let’s consider a modest front kick to a target no higher than the solar plexus. One might be inclined to say, “I don’t need yoga to help with that, I do that kick all the time, and have no problem reaching my target.” Do an experiment. Take a full 30 seconds to do the kick, from the time the foot leaves the floor to the time it extends out, and then hold it for 15 seconds, or so. If you succeeded in this without any problem, you may be good to go.

Front kick, slow-motion style.

Front kick, slow-motion style.

However, there are three problems that might plague one, and yoga is tailor-made to fix two of them. First, you may not have adequate range of motion. You may have thought you did because you can kick at speed and reach the target. But, you say, “Why would I need to kick in slow motion?” You wouldn’t, but this exercise shows you that you are having to use inertia to kick through the resistance of your own muscles. Unless you’re a hardcore bodybuilder that resistance might not seem too daunting, but you are essentially having the brakes applied–albeit softly–to your kick and that’s costing you speed and power.  Yoga can help you develop that range of motion. Consider the pose below, which requires the same type of flexibility.

Hand to Big Toe (Utthita Hasta Padangusthasana)

Hand to Big Toe (Utthita Hasta Padangusthasana)

Maybe you can raise your leg, but keeping it cantilevered in place is too much for you. This means you don’t have the strength to support your own leg. Either your leg is  heavy, your strength is lacking, or both. Building this kind of strength isn’t necessarily yoga’s forte. There are styles and approaches that may help you build that strength, but there are other things you can do that may be more efficient for that purpose–not the least of which is doing a whole bunch of kicks one after the other without a break until your leg is burning, and then doing some more.

You may have had the strength and flexibility, but found it hard to stay on balance. The naysayer says, “Yeah, but that imbalance would never be noticeable at speed. That is (as with the lack of flexibility) one can hide weaknesses with speed. While there maybe some truth in this, a lack of balance will cost you in subtle ways, and yoga can help. There are a number of postures that enhance one’s balance, balance on one’s foot, one’s head, or one’s hands (the latter could be useful for the ground grapplers.)

Warrior III (Virabhadrasana III)

Warrior III (Virabhadrasana III)

Headstand (Shirshasana)

Headstand (Shirshasana)

The Crane (Bakasana)

The Crane (Bakasana)

Tree (Vrksasana)

Tree (Vrksasana)

There are a couple of other areas in which yoga can help one’s performance as a martial artist. One is expansion of bodily awareness of issues of alignment and posture. These might not seem so crucial, but if you are in the martial arts for the long-haul, then having the awareness to make small adjustments can be the difference between chronic ailments or a lack thereof. It can be difficult to discover a misalignment in the quasi-combative environment of martial arts training. It’s easier to notice these issues in the slow and controlled practice of yoga.

Postures like Warrior II and the Side Angle Pose and show you where you are holding tension that you might not otherwise be aware of.

Warrior II (Virabhadrasana II)

Warrior II (Virabhadrasana II)

Side Angle Pose (Utthita Parsvakonasana)

Side Angle Pose (Utthita Parsvakonasana)

It must also be remembered that asana (postures) are only a part of yoga. Another aspect that can be extremely helpful for martial arts is pranayama, or the discipline of breathing.  There’s no substitute for cardio, but that doesn’t mean that one can’t benefit greatly from learning more about how to breath, and the science of breath. This is an area in which yoga excels. The great yogis made extensive study of breath and the effects that are achieved by various types of breathing, and these exercises can expand and strengthen the diaphragm and the muscles of the rib-cage. One tends to see the coup de grace strike and think, “There’s your problem.” However, often it’s fatigue that’s the underlying culprit. Better breathing can reduce fatigue.

Of course, meditation is another critical skill for calming the mind and learning to live in the present. Many martial artists already practice some form of meditation, but this is another option.

There is one more benefit and that is building greater confidence in your ability to exercise control over your body. There are many challenging postures in yoga. I don’t advocate all asana that have been taught historically because there can be such a thing as too much flexibility for a martial artist and some poses exercise joints in ways that were not meant to operate. There needs to be a proper balance of strength and flexibility, a proper tension within /between the skeletal and muscular systems. However, there are many poses that just take a bit of time and effort to develop the skill without putting too much wear on the body.

8-Twists Pose (Astavakrasana)

8-Twists Pose (Astavakrasana)

Tradition v. Modernity in Fitness and Movement Arts

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TheScienceofYoga_BroadOne of my favorite professors (and I had a lot of them) was in the Religious Studies department of Indiana University in Indianapolis (IUPUI.) Among the lessons he taught us were the various forms of fallacious reasoning applicable to the discipline. He did so in a way that was both erudite and folksy, often in a humorous way.

 

 

 

While I don’t remember the formal names he gave these concepts or their technical definitions, I do remember the more colorful variations. One was the “firstist-is-bestist” fallacy in which it’s assumed that the old ways are inherently superior because bad ideas die out, and young ideas are at least as likely to be crap as not. This is sometimes called “appeal to tradition.” Over a sufficiently long time horizon this assumption may prove true (i.e. the time horizon beyond which Keynes warned we’d all be dead), but we know that wrong ideas can live on for centuries.

 

 

 

Another was the “outhouse” fallacy, which says that because pre-modern man didn’t have indoor plumbing they must have been complete idiots, and we should assume newer is better. This is sometimes called the “appeal to modernity.”  While there is some advantage to having access to the compiled knowledge of history, this doesn’t keep people from coming up with idiotic ideas regularly.

 

 

 

What made me think about these conflicting fallacies is that I’ve been reading a lot about the science of yoga–and other systems of movement–lately. Specifically, I was reading The Science of Yoga by William Broad. During the 20th century, yoga went from not giving a whit about science to trying to show that it wasn’t at all at odds with science–if not that it was grounded in science. (Note: this statement could be applied to many of the old ways—e.g. religions—which sought to prove themselves consistent with scientific evidence out of fear that–in the age of rationality–to be inconsistent with scientific observation would be death to old beliefs.) While the hucksters and con men seeking to bilk people out of money through shows of yoga “magic” have lost power (though some still exist and prey on the gullible regularly), this isn’t to say that science has yet won the day entirely.

 

 

 

Chapter two of Broad’s book discusses the findings of the scientific community on whether yoga has any merit as aerobic exercise. (The consensus is that it doesn’t.) Now, one would think that the whole yoga community would be pleased that academia has for the most part shown that yoga has a range of positive benefits that make it a worthwhile endeavor when practiced safely and conscientiously, but some have been unwilling to accept that yoga isn’t excellent cardio on top of all its unambiguous benefits. The established consensus is being ignored and a single seriously flawed study (small sample size, no control group, and—while peer-reviewed—the author was the journal editor) is cited, that one—of course—suggests that yoga meets all one’s cardio needs.

 

 

 

It’s easy to follow the incentives. For example, if one runs a yoga studio one would like to be able to say that yoga is a panacea for all of a person’s health needs. People are busy and lazy, and if someone else can sell them a silver bullet then they’ll lose business.  If one gives the matter thought, it becomes hard to imagine an exercise panacea. Consider a list of health goals that includes reduced stress, improved balance, greater flexibility, more strength, and enhanced cardiovascular capacity. One should see that some of these goals are at odds with each other. The first three goals—at which yoga excels–require holding a static position for a time while engaging in deep and controlled breathing. The fourth goal, strength enhancement, (which yoga achieves only in a limited way) requires repeated alternation of stressing and relaxing a muscle. And cardio, the fifth goal,–for which yoga is less than helpful–requires rapid and sustained motion so as to cause the heart to be stressed.

 

 

 

Of course, individuals have tried to rectify yoga’s cardio deficit by creating yoga styles that add speed and repetition. If one does five sun salutations per minute for 45 minutes, then—congratulations–you are now getting cardio and strength building. Unfortunately, you are now losing out on the first three goals of stress reduction, balance enhancement, and flexibility improvement. Those three things requiring holding poses while engaging in relaxed and controlled breathing. So the question is whether one is happy having sacrificed the benefits yoga does better than everything else in a desire to have yoga gain benefits that other exercise systems probably still do better.

 

 

 

The old systems of movement and exercise, be it yoga or chi kung, have shown themselves to have merit. However, the mechanisms by which that merit is achieved (or the nature of the merit) are often not what the system’s mythology suggests. There’s no need to fear science, but one should be ready to embrace what is shown true and set aside what is shown to be false.

 

 

 

On the other hand, this modern idea that we can have our cake and eat it too by throwing together disparate systems, which often have conflicting goals and modes of operation, needs to be reevaluated. All of these fads have been created where someone crams together tai chi and yoga or yoga and jazz dance or Zen meditation and parkour and they think they have the ultimate system based on a more complete picture of modernity, and what they’ve got is a muddle.

 

 

 

What we need is the tested merit of tradition without its voodoo, and the compiled knowledge of modernity without its hubris.

 

DAILY PHOTO: Swami Vivekananda

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Taken February 25, 2014 in Bangalore

Taken February 25, 2014 in Bangalore

This little park devoted to Swami Vivekananda is located on Bull Temple Road in Bangalore. Swami Vivekananda was a 19th century yogi and Hindu holy man. He was the chief disciple of Swami Ramakrishna, and is often credited with introducing yoga to the West.  This statue is located across the street from the Ramakrishna Math near Gandhi Bazaar (there is another Ramakrishna Math closer to Ulsoor Lake.)

The park has a series of quotes from the Swami in English and Kannada. The one above says, “Education is the manifestation of the perfection already in man.”

DAILY PHOTO: Spiraling Sun Salutations

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Taken October 16, 2013 at Indira Gandhi International Airport.

Taken October 16, 2013 at Indira Gandhi International Airport.

In the Delhi airport, there is a series of 12 bronze sculptures set up on a spiral platform that together demonstrate the yoga sequence called Surya Namaskara (i.e. Sun Salutation) The sculptor is Nikhil Bhandari.

I think this was a nice move. If ever one needed yoga, it’s in an airport–having been packed into a tiny space for hours and with high stress about whether one will get where one wants to go, it’s the perfect place to bust out the yoga.

Delhi10

BOOK REVIEW: Living Your Yoga by Judith Hanson Lasater

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Living Your Yoga: Finding the Spiritual in Everyday LifeLiving Your Yoga: Finding the Spiritual in Everyday Life by Judith Hanson Lasater

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Amazon page

If you’re the average joe, you probably think of yoga as a series of stretchy postures–many or most of which seem physically impossible for a run-of-the-mill human. If you’re a little more sophisticated on the subject–perhaps you’ve even done a few yoga classes–you realize that breathing exercises (pranayama) and meditation (dhyana) are also an essential part of the practice. However, if you’re hardcore, you realize that there is an entire moral, ethical, spiritual, and philosophical approach to life embodied in yoga.

Lasater’s book is aimed at the latter group or people who plan to one day be in that group. You will not find out how to do a single posture (asana), and you won’t learn how to do breathing exercises or meditation. So, the book might sound like one of those navel-gazing, pie-in-the-sky, philosophical tomes. But it’s not. On the contrary, the chapters are short and readable, and each one ends with exercises to put that chapter’s lesson into practice. Now, it probably sounds more like a how-to workbook. It is, but the exercises can only be carried out in everyday life.

Admittedly, I don’t know that much about yoga, but I suspect such a book is much-needed. I do know that in the martial arts there is also a rich and well-defined moral, philosophical, and–for lack of a better term–spiritual component, and that it gets lost much of the time by a large percentage of students as soon as they step out the door of the dōjō. I suspect this is true of yoga practitioners as well. I imagine that as yoga has spread globally many of the less visible and tangible aspects of the system get left behind. I know this happens in the realm of martial arts–sometimes these elements even get lost in the homeland. It’s a natural side-effect of busy lives; people take on what they can grasp and don’t go looking for the rest.

Living Your Yoga is divided into three parts of seven chapters each (21 chapters in total.) The social circle widens as one goes through the parts. Part I deals with the yoga practitioner as an individual. Part II considers the practitioner’s relationships with others in their immediate domain–family, friends, co-workers, etc. The final part looks at the practitioner in the global context.

Each chapter focuses on a particular virtue or vice and how to cultivate it or mitigate against it, respectively. All of the chapters begin with a quote, most from the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali or the Bhagavad Gita, then there is the body of the chapter, followed by a practice on that particular theme, supplementary practices, and a few mantras.

The chapters in the first part are: spiritual seeking, discipline, letting go, self-judgment, faith, perspective, and courage. The second part deals with compassion, control, fear, patience, attachment / aversion, suffering, and impermanence. And the final part considers greed, service, connection, truth, success, nonviolence, and love.

While I suggested this book is for the hardcore yogi/yogini, it has value for a more general readership than that. It’s really for anybody interested in working on self-improvement on a daily basis, as opposed to those who restrict their development pursuits to inside the yoga studio (or dōjō or ashram.) The advice is sound, regardless of whether one ever practices an asana or not.

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9 Nights at an Ashram

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Taken October 20, 2013 at Fireflies Ashram.

Taken October 20, 2013 at Fireflies Ashram.

Indian cities don’t whisper. They are often lovely, always lively, but offer little relief from bombardment of the senses. Horns are relentless. Bus and truck air-horns can make a person jump from one’s skin. The smells may be pleasing or putrid, but they’re never faint. There is sign pollution, wherein it’s often impossible to find what one is looking for in the sea of signage–even when it lies right in front of one’s face. Colors pop and glow, not smooth pastels, but oranges and purples that you can practically taste.

It shouldn’t have surprised me when I got to the southern edge of the city to find one of the major land uses was Ashrams. Ashrams in all shapes and sizes, from the small but authentic Narayana Gurukula (mentioned a few DAILY PHOTO installments back) to the massive Art of Living International Center–headed by Bangalore’s most famous guru, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. Out Kanakapura Road, where monkeys sling through trees and fields of corn remind me of my own Hoosier upbringing, lies a diverse collection of houses of spirituality and reflection. They offer a much-needed island of tranquility amid a sea of chaos.

I stayed for nine nights at one of the most singular of these ashrams, Fireflies. One way in which it’s unique is that it’s a “guruless” ashram. That may seem oxymoronic. The terms “guru” and “ashram” seem to go hand in hand. Guru means teacher. My dictionary defines ashram as, “the home of a small community of Hindus.” [I think this definition could be challenged both on the necessity of “smallness” and “Hindu-ness.” As indicated, there are some pretty massive ashrams and there are ones that are associated with non-aligned spiritual groups.] It’s true that the typical ashram has a spiritual leader or yogi as its head. At Fireflies the gurus come and go with the groups that visit. While I was there, besides our group of Thai Yoga Bodywork practitioners, there was a group of psychotherapists and an organization of past life regressionists. Rather than housing a single unified set of beliefs, at this ashram a diverse and sometimes conflicting set of beliefs are harmoniously housed.

As I have little experience with ashrams, I can’t speak authoritatively about other differences. However, it’s my understanding that one other difference between Fireflies and many–more typical–ashrams is that the latter often have limited or non-existent staff. This means that the visitors may do much, if not the bulk, of the work. Fireflies has a staff that does the cooking and takes care of many needs of the visitors. This isn’t to suggest that it’s like a hotel stay. There’s somewhat of an expectation that visitors will take care of the things that they can do for themselves, and the accommodations are basic.

I found the experience of my stay to be beneficial, if not always stress-free. The main source of my stress had little to do with the Ashram. I received my phone sim card right before I left. After a couple of days I got my phone working for a day or two only to have the phone company turn it off because no one was home when they randomly dropped by to verify my address. [Showing up unannounced in the middle of the day and then treating you as non-existent if no one is home is one of the annoying little hallmarks of Indian institutions (corporate and government) that I’ve experienced on more than one occasion.] I will admit that it is a mark of both society’s and my own wussification that we can’t go a few days without being in contact with home and news of the world. Twenty years ago no one would have expected to have such constant verification that all was well in the world. People could go days back then without worrying that the sky was falling. While it wasn’t pleasant to be cut off, it was an eye-opening experience. [I will note that the Ashram property is on a slope and at the low end I got no reception at all, but on the high end I’d get a bar or two–enough to do the job if the phone company wasn’t screwing me over.]

It was also useful to go without brain candy for a while–that is without television and related entertainment. Part of what I hoped to learn from my stay was whether I was prepared to take the 10-day Vipassana meditation course in the spring. The Vipassana course is considerably more spartan level of existence than that of Fireflies.

On some levels, I proved ready, and on others I have yet to do so. I did just fine eating two vegetarian meals and a snack for dinner each day. (I could have had three full meals per day, but I wanted to make sure I was ready to cut my intake adequately. Therefore, I stuck with a snack in the evening and ate reasonable portions for breakfast and lunch.) I found the meals at Fireflies to be quite good, and I had no complaints in that regard. It should be noted that the ashram is not an easy walk to any restaurants or substantial stores (there are a couple small shops up on the corner, but they’re geared toward locals and don’t necessarily have what a traveler needs) so it’s not easy to go out for something–though I did see one auto-rickshaw around the premises at times.

The true test of preparation for the Vipassana course is that there are no books or notebooks allowed. This will be my greatest challenge. I finished two novels and two nonfiction books on Kindle during my stay, plus probably another 100 pages of other books, and I filled 2/3rds of a journal–mostly with notes from the TYB workshop.

Also, at the Vipassana meditation course one is not allowed to speak to anyone but the instructor at a specific time when they take questions about the course. I wasn’t nearly so cut off from humanity at Fireflies. The workshop participants and teachers were around all day and I had occasional conversations in the evening with others at the ashram. Furthermore, I’m a fairly solitary creature.

It was interesting that during the weekends there were so many people around, but during the middle of the week there were few. For a while I thought I was the only non-staff member person at the ashram—though I later found that to be incorrect.

So my time at the ashram was Spartan, but that’s part of the beauty of it.

I should point out that there are some impressive stone carvings located throughout the property. The artists are international in scope. Each of these carvings or sculptures offers its own story. I’ll attach a few pics for your edification.

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Why I Study Thai Yoga Bodywork

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Receiving my 60 hour course certificate from the teacher.

Receiving my 60 hour course certificate from the teacher

Thai Yoga Bodywork (TYB), also called Nuad Boran (ancient bodywork) or Thai Massage, is a system that integrates assisted yoga-style stretching, reflexology, acupressure massage, and elements of Ayurvedic healing to stretch and massage the body. Its history is believed to date back 2,500 years to Northern India, where its roots lay with Jivaka Kumar Bhaccha–a physician in Buddha’s community. However, the art reached its perfection in Thailand, the nation with which it remains most closely associated.

I recently completed an introductory course in this system in Bangalore through the Inner Mountain School of Healing Arts.

Before I moved to India, I thought a lot about what I would like to learn while I was on the other side of the planet. There’s a great deal of expertise on subjects sparsely taught in the US, and it can often be had at a bargain in comparison to American prices.

Some of the skills I wanted to foster were to be expected. I wanted to learn more about meditation and the ways of living in the moment and with a quieter mind. I’ve played with such practice for a long time, and I came to believe that becoming a better martial artist  and person depended upon cultivating fudōshin— an immovable spirit. I’ve seen no route to that state that circumvents quieting the mind, and that requires observing and training the mind. One can only become more physically capable for a time, then growth depends upon the mind, on shedding petty impulses, on being incapable of manipulation, and on being unswayed my the vagaries of emotion. I’ve begun working on this objective through visits to meditation centers and by making my own practice more regular.

I also want to learn about other martial arts, besides the one I’ve been learning my entire adult life. It makes sense to learn something about the indigenous martial arts of the places I visit. I want to experience the similarities and differences of these arts, and to learn about the cultural elements that shape those differences and elements of uniqueness.

However, one of the biggest surprises has been my new-found interest in studying Thai Yoga Bodywork (TYB.) When I visited Thailand last fall I studied Muay Thai (Thai kickboxing) for a week and Thai cooking for a day, but it didn’t occur to me to take one of the many Thai Massage short courses until I was back home. My interest in TYB is reflective of a broader desire to learn more about the indigenous healing methods of Asia, and that goes back a few years.  I developed a vague feeling that I wanted to study such things a couple of years back when I realized my body was deteriorating too fast for comfort, and Western medical treatment consisted of advising me to stop doing a number of the activities that I love.  Still, I must admit that I didn’t really give  a lot of thought to this interest until I started this course.

Having now thought about it, my interest in studying TYB is closely linked to my interest in martial arts. This notion might seem hard to reconcile.  TYB is a healing art, and martial arts, while they should be grounded in a sound moral philosophy, are essentially about inflicting damage on a body. The  two disciplines seem to be at odds. Still, they have a great deal in common. In each, mindfulness is key. Control of the breath is a common element of both. In Japanese martial arts there is a word, taijutsu, which means body skills, but which implies efficient use of the body. This means favoring bigger muscle groups over smaller ones where possible and taking advantage of the body’s natural alignment (e.g. straight spine) and body weight. These concepts that I had long practiced in budō were also ubiquitous in TYB. Furthermore, a number of the points that I had learned to attack, were now targeted to heal.

Still, some of these same points could be said to be common to any system of movement done properly, be it dance or exercise. So why I was drawn to TYB in particular? The most direct reason is to learn how to fix the failings of my body, and those that I’ve witnessed in others. I experienced these methods as a recipient in Thailand, and could see their value at once.

There’s also a benefit from increased understanding of anatomy and bodily awareness. One learns about how the musculature works to move the body in a way that isn’t easily picked up from textbooks. One begins to read bodies like others read books. One gains insight into the bodily deficiencies that one has taken on without even being cognizant of them. A martial artist may, on average, be a hundred times more bodily aware than the average person, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t great room for growth. (It speaks to how sadly lacking in bodily awareness most people are as much as anything.)

Still, this isn’t the full story of why I wanted to learn this art. Another reason came to mind in the introductory session, before we even began learning the technique. The teacher was talking about how TYB teaches humility, and how one has to learn to touch a stranger’s feet with compassion and devotion to that person’s well-being–an act that doesn’t come naturally to most of us.  Admittedly, this isn’t a level of humility and compassion that I have developed in life to date. Though I am the son of a mother who–as a nurse as well as a mother–was probably more at ease with putting the well-being others above her own comfort than anyone else I’ve ever met, for me this is a struggle outside my comfort zone. The martial arts teach a kind of humility (a lesson that all too many practitioners find a way to make an end run around), but if one’s practice is separate from one’s career field it’s easy for the notion of service to be so abstract as to lose meaning.

This, of course, returns back to my earlier mention of the mind. One’s ego is the biggest barrier to personal growth. Ego makes one easily manipulated. Ego makes one subject to petty impulses. Ego makes one give into fear and anger.

Learning a stretch

Learning a stretching technique

BOOK REVIEW: The Mind of the Guru by Rajiv Mehrotra

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The Mind of the Guru: Conversations with Spiritual MastersThe Mind of the Guru: Conversations with Spiritual Masters by Rajiv Mehrotra

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

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The Mind of the Guru is a compilation of 20 interviews with various teachers and spiritual leaders. While most of the individuals are from Indian spiritual traditions or offshoots thereof, the author makes concerted efforts to represent a range of religious and spiritual traditions.

The list of interview subjects is impressive and includes: The Dalai Lama (Tibetan Buddhism), Thich Nhat Hanh (Zen), S.N. Goenka (Vipassana), BKS Iyengar (yoga), Deepak Chopra (medical doctor and spiritual pundit), Sri Sri Ravi Shankar (Art of Living founder), Desmond Tutu (Christianity), and The Aga Khan (Islam.)

The book is at its best when these gurus are discussing their thoughts on development of the mind and spirit. Obviously, there is a lot of this type of discussion as that is the expertise of most all of the assembled teachers.

A brief forward by The Dalai Lama sets the theme of the discussion. His Holiness states that in Buddhist tradition one becomes a teacher because one has students. Consider this in contrast to traditions that fallaciously believe the title of teacher is granted from above. A master teacher may grant a teaching licence, but that’s just a piece of paper unless someone shows up to one’s lessons. He then goes on to say that one should abandon teachers who act in an unwholesome manner. This, too, is an important point. Having invested oneself in loyalty, it can feel like betrayal to leave a teacher who no longer suits one.

His Holiness is the lead chapter interviewee. In the early part of the chapter, he presents many thoughts on Tibetan mind science. “Mind science” may seem like a strange term, but there’s an important part of Tibetan Buddhism that deals not with deities and conceptions of morality, but with understanding and improving how the mind operates.

If one comes from a tradition in which science and religion are in tension, this may seem unusual, but there is a definite scientific approach (observing the mind and playing out experiments with it.) One doesn’t see a rift between science and religion in Tibetan Buddhism. In fact, His Holiness says that if certain parts of the religious tradition were proved not to exist, they would have to be abandoned. (For those beginning to raise objections, shown to be unlikely and disproven are two different things.)

A second Tibetan Buddhist, Sogyal Rinpoche, addresses the topic of death, and lends the book one of my favorite quotes: “If you are worried about dying, don’t worry, you will all die successfully.”

The first part of this five part book also includes interviews with Thich Nhat Hanh and S.N. Goenka. The former talks about mindfulness and the “interbeing,” and the latter describes the Vipassana approach to meditation and its development. Interbeing is a term coined by Hanh to address a being who is connected to all things. For those unfamiliar with Vipassana, it’s a meditation practice that emphasizes 10-day intensive meditation retreats. There are many retreat centers where this is practiced around the world, including one in the city in which I currently live, Bangalore.

The second part deals with the unity of mind and body. BKS Igenyar, head of a self-named branch of Hatha yoga, opens the chapter with discussion of his background and approach to yoga. Deepak Chopra talks about the intersection of science and spirituality. David Frawley talks about Ayurvedic medicine as well as some more “out there” subjects, such as astrology.

I hadn’t heard of two of the three interviewees in part three, Swami Ranganathananda and Mata Amritanandamayi. However the third interview was Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, a guru well-known internationally for his soft-spoken teachings that combine yoga with a secular spiritualism rooted in Hinduism but not explicitly advocating it. Swami Ranganathananda is from Ramakrishna’s order, which was a secular spiritualism movement rooted in Vedantic traditions but embracing diversity of belief. Mata Amritanandamayi is one of only two women interviewed for the book, indicating women haven’t achieved equality in guru-hood just yet–for all the talk of enlightened thinking. (This is not a dig at the author, who probably went out of his way to include these two to have diversity in gender as well as diversity of tradition.)

The fourth part adds to the diversity by opening with an interview with Sufi Muslim, Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan. Sufi is the mystical branch of Islam. (Mysticism meaning a belief structure in which God is considered to be part of one and is accessed by mindfulness and introspection. This in contrast to the largest strands of the world’s major religions in which God is conceptually something distinct from the self and is an entity to be worshiped. Most major religions have mystical elements or a mystical branch, including Christianity and Islam.) This interview eases us away from the traditions that are either of India or have their roots in India. (By that I mean that Buddhism has its roots in India, though, for example, Zen is different from Buddhism as practiced in India today.)I say “eases us away” because the mystical nature of Sufi would not create much cognitive dissonance in yoga practitioners, Hindu spiritualists, or Zen monks, but, instead, shares much common ground.

The second chapter in part 4 is that by the other female guru, Radha Burnier, who is a practitioner of Theosophy, which means “divine wisdom.” This modern development is secular in that it doesn’t advocate a particular religion, but rather engagement to fix societal problems and eliminate biases and divisions. In the interview we get a hint of the divides that plagued this organization.

Part four is rounded out by interviews with Swami Parthasarathy and U.G. Krishnamurti (not to be confused with Jiddu Krishnamurti, who probably would have been included in this book if he hadn’t died in the 1980’s.)The former speaks about the end of knowledge and the latter about his role as an anti-guru, rejecting traditional approaches to thinking about spirituality.

The fifth part of the book is entitled “The Ethics of Engagement” and I’m afraid it’s where the wheels roll off. It has six excellent authorities, Desmond Tutu, Baba Amte, Ajarn Sulak Sivaraksa, Swami Agnivesh, The Aga Khan, and Karan Singh.I don’t criticize the selection of interviewees, but what happens here is that the chapters predominantly become about politics and policy. Some of this discussion is present throughout the earlier chapters, it’s a point that the author/interviewer finds either intriguing or salable. For example, he asks The Dalai Lama about the politics of Tibet and China, but only after much wisdom is shared.

Here is my–sure to be highly controversial–view on the subject. Wise people show the least wisdom when they’re speaking of politics and policy. I understand why readers may want to hear their thoughts, and I know that as leaders they shape movements in these domains. However, their thoughts on such subjects rarely pack the wallop of value they do when they are talking about subjects like improving one’s mind or living a moral life–subjects on which they have great authority.

What happens when the wise talk about policy is the same thing that happens when most people do, they fail to understand the complexity of the issues and they end up making a lot of “have our cake and eat it too” statements. The most common of these is that we need to: a.) raise all the poor to a certain standard of living (a noble cause), b.) eliminate attachment to materialism and consumerism (also a fine cause, no one should be addicted to “stuff.”)

As one trained as an economist, however, when I see these statements issued by the same person in the same interview, I laugh. We have no idea how to achieve these two things simultaneously; anybody who tells you they do is living in a dream world or is deceiving you. If everybody decided tomorrow that they didn’t need a bunch of new gadgets and widgets, this wouldn’t help pull the poor out of poverty. On the contrary, it would lessen their opportunities to raise their quality of life. Conversely, if you want to pull people out of poverty, they have to produce and sell things that other people want. Rising incomes result from rising productivity, and rising productivity comes with rising production–but someone has to buy that increased production. If you have a way to truly get around this dilemma and it’s one that economist haven’t thought of before and which hasn’t either been proved wrong or internally inconsistent, I will personally lobby for you to be nominated for next year’s Nobel Prize in Economics, and would place a bet on you to win.

I will say that some of the authors seem more savvy of the political and societal domain than others. For example, Mata Amritanandamayi says, “Even if we remove all nuclear weapons from our armories and transfer the to a museum [that last bit is, admittedly, a really bad idea], it wouldn’t bring an end to war. The real nuclear weapons, the negative thoughts in our mind, should be eliminated.” In other words, you can’t fix society’s problems through dictates, particularly when those dictates are in contradiction.

One of my lesser complaints with the book is that the author sometimes asks leading questions (i.e. he subsumes a conclusion in the way he forms the question.) However, almost invariably the speaker sets the record straight, but it makes one wonder about how the message is shaped by the interviewer.

There may be a little too much cultural self-congratulation going on throughout the book for some. There’s a primacy fallacy theme throughout the book that India had everything perfect until it was infected by Western ideas. This isn’t to imply there aren’t fantastic ideas and cultural developments that have come out of India. I wouldn’t have read the book if I didn’t believe there were, but there was also the caste system and some other fairly giant issues of institutionalized injustice like women essentially being sold off into marriage.

An example of this bias can be seen in the talk of Swami Ranganathananda. He says of Socrates, “Had he been in India, he would have been honored and worshipped.” Yeah, if he were of the right caste, maybe, but he also might have been bludgeoned to death in a fashion far more brutal than having to drink hemlock.

Overall, I would recommend the book. It is an impressive collection of teachers and all of them have something intriguing to offer in food for thought. One just needs to go back to The Dalai Lama’s Forward and not be so awe-inspired that you fail to look critically at the message of each.

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BOOK REVIEW: Know Your Mind by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

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Know Your MindKnow Your Mind by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar is an Indian guru headquartered in Bangalore, India. In addition to his work as a spiritual leader, he heads up an organization called the “The Art of Living,” which has both a philanthropic mission and a role in spreading knowledge of yoga. Among his most important accomplishments is the development of a breathing technique for helping to attain greater emotional well-being. However, he may be most broadly known for occasional appearances on television programs such as those of CNN International.

The slim volume K(no)w Your Mind contains a series of short chapters, many of which are partly in Q&A form–coming from talks he has given internationally. The common theme of these discourses are how one can understand one’s mind and learn to live in a way that maximizes happiness.

Sri Sri’s approach is quite mainstream when compared to more controversial gurus such as the late Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (i.e. Osho.) There is little that would raise hackles of most people. It proposes nothing magical–though Shankar supports belief in some, broadly defined and mystical, deity. His approach doesn’t rely on said deity. The book is essentially just about training the mind to look at the world in a different way.

One example that the author uses in various permutations is that people dwell on the negative. As he says, “When you are healthy, you never ask the question, ‘Why am I healthy?’When you are sick you say, ‘Oh, why am I sick?'” Similarly he mentions that, if someone tells us they like us we don’t question it, but if they tell us they hate us, then we do.

When asked how to avoid stress, he states flatly that one shouldn’t avoid it, but rather learn hope to cope with it more effectively.

On the positive side, the book conveys a lot of good information in a highly readable format. Shankar explains the mind with humor and occasionally with a parable or narrative to help make the lessons more memorable.

However, if one is looking for a systematic approach, one won’t so much find that here. It’s clear that this is a series of snippets from talks combined together. If that’s what you’re expecting, then it shouldn’t be a problem. However, if one is expecting a step-by-step guide, this book may not suit one. Occasionally it’s helpful if on has some yoga terminology in one’s head like samadhi or pranayama, but context should make the meaning clear.

I’d recommend it for someone looking for food-for-thought on bite-sized pieces on issues like memory, emotion, and mindfulness.

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