March 2007 Volume 6/Number 2
--------------------- Is Yoga Medicine?
Yoga Therapy enters the Arena. By JULIE DEIFE
--------------------- The battleground is the healthcare industry, an industry that represents nearly 20% of our gross national product and doesn’t pay cash on the barrelhead for talking to patients about spirit and ego and transcendence. But it does like cost-effective treatments for asthma, stress and lower back pain. Read article...
Standing Tall Yoga and Chiropractic Science By FELICIA M. TOMASKO Our upright spine is one of the hallmarks of our human body, and one for which an owner’s manual might be welcome. Yoga practice and the science of chiropractic have the potential to serve as that missing manual. Both methodologies are focused on the idiosyncracies of the spine and how to maintain the optimal alignment, health and well-being of this crucial living structure. Read article...
Yoga Injuries: On the Rise and Unreported. By FELICIA M. TOMASKO Whispers exchanged on elevators, furtive confessions or rumors circulating as to why a certain teacher doesn’t teach at a particular center. These are not scandals spreading, but the undercover revelations of injuries sustained in yoga practice – particularly within a classroom setting. Read article...
The Rise of the Spiritual Class By BOB BELINOFF
Loose affiliations of intelligent and compassionate people can get out of hand, grow into organizations and become really dangerous.
I am beginning to see the same spiritual faces over and over again.
They come to me in the mail and over the internet, as promotions for workshops, mind body conferences, books and tapes. I must be on just the right lists for someone like me. Read article...
Ayurveda Q&A: By DR. JAY APTE Ayurveda has been practiced in the U.S. only about 25 years, yet it is the 5000 year old Indian system of medicine and yoga's sister science. Readers are invited to submit questions for "Ayurveda Q & A" to ayurveda@layogamagazine.comom
Q: Recently I have developed floaters in my right eye and they are bothering me a lot. Is there any permanent cure for this in Ayurveda? Do you recommend any specific medicines and food habits to stop this? Read article...
Nischala Joy Devi has dedicated her life to yoga since she was in her twenties. Prior to that she had been a physician assistant, trained in modern medicine. At the Integral Yoga Institute, where she served as a monastic disciple for 25 years, Swami Satchidananda guided her in spiritual teachings and in the direction of merging Western medicine with yoga. She is the author of The Healing Path of Yoga and a March 2007 release The Secret Power of Yoga, A Woman's Guide to the Heart and Spirit of the Yoga Sutras. There are more than 1500 translations of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, the overwhelming majority of them by men. In writing the Secret Power of Yoga, Nischala Joy Devi has become the first woman to interpret the 2500 year-old Yoga Sutras of Patanjali from a heart-centered perspective.
Julie: Without intending to do so, it seems you were one of the early yoga therapists in this country.
Nischala: When I started using yoga as therapy at our ashram in Connecticut, we had one of the first holistic clinics, I didn't have a title. We didn't call ourselves yoga therapists in those days. I just taught yoga to the patients with amazing results. Later I worked with Dean Ornish, MD, in the Lifestyle Heart Trial and Michael Lerner from the Commonweal Cancer Program. I had no idea it would make an impact on society as it has.
A teacher once told Jo Zukovich: “You won’t understand the value of teaching until you’ve been teaching for 20 years.” At the time, Jo couldn’t imagine what fruits her teaching career would bear in the future. But now that she’s been teaching for 20 years, Jo understands. She sees the nature of our physical beings, and describes our bodies as tiny universes, as beautiful and vast as the outer universe we live in.
The practice of yoga has been a steady companion in Jo's life. She remembers practicing in 1968 - the year her first child was born, and the year Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy were both assassinated. She embraced the practice of yoga as an art form, so she became a serious student and started teaching full-time.
Nischala Joy Devi has dedicated her life to yoga since she was in her twenties. Prior to that she had been a physician assistant, trained in modern medicine. At the Integral Yoga Institute, where she served as a monastic disciple for 25 years, Swami Satchidananda guided her in spiritual teachings and in the direction of merging Western medicine with yoga. She is the author of The Healing Path of Yoga and a March 2007 release The Secret Power of Yoga, A Woman's Guide to the Heart and Spirit of the Yoga Sutras. There are more than 1500 translations of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, the overwhelming majority of them by men. In writing the Secret Power of Yoga, Nischala Joy Devi has become the first woman to interpret the 2500 year-old Yoga Sutras of Patanjali from a heart-centered perspective.
Graceful, Light and Tuned In.