Convened by Diana Woodall
Table F 3 pm
Attendees: Julia Dunst, Maria Bowman, Bruce Lundeen, Catherine Muman, Stan Mailer, Bal Krishna, Steve Smith, Diana Woodall
Julia: I’m attending Summer Peace Building Institute, (SPI) I want to incorporate yoga and other body awareness modalities in my work with women who are sexual abuse survivors, suffering from PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder)
Katherine: I’m representing the Anabaptist center, I’m interested in what yoga can offer in the way of tools for relaxation
Maria: I’m the community resource “go-to” person for SPI, and I’m also interested in tools to help me shift out of doing and doing, into more personal reflection
Bruce: I learned Bikram yoga from a book, which I still practice. I’m also interested in the work of John Kabat Zinn, who pioneered Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction
Stan: I’ve founded the Harriet Tubman Cultural Center. Because of some personal health issues, I started meditating.
Bal Krishna: I’m also with SPI, from Nepal. Yoga is growing more popular there because we’re close to India. My mother, who is now 70, practices yoga. She started 5 years ago because of back pain. Now she no longer has back pain.
Steve: I’m also with SPI, and work with offenders in the criminal justice system, in Winchester. I’m interested in yoga and mental health.
Diana: If you get nothing else out of this session, please understand that there are many, many different styles of yoga. Some are very physically demanding, some are more gentle. Just like T’ai Chi is quite different from Karate, which is different from Aikido, yet they are all Martial Arts.
What we in the west understand as yoga is really just a small part of yoga. To me it’s really sad that yoga has been reduced, in many gyms and health centers, to just an exercise system, when it is so much more than that, and has so much more to offer.
I have a DVD—which I am willing to share—called the Fire of Yoga. It is a profile of 3 yoga practitioners from 3 very different cultural, ethnic, and geographic areas. The first is a young man who was jailed at age 15 for 4 years. Using yoga, he turns his life around, and now part of a program that teaches yoga to young men and women at risk in the South Bronx..
The second profile is that of a devout Southern Baptist woman in Jackson MS whose encounter with cancer opens her up to yoga. She finds passages in the Bible to support her practice.
The third is a man who, in his 50′s, is an alcoholic in Hollywood. He finds yoga late in life, but finds yoga not only helps him heal physically but helps him mend is relationship with his adult children.
There is so much going on now with yoga being offered in service— I read of recently of yoga being taught to women of the Congo who are survivors of genocide, and rape survivors as well. You can’t just expect these women to be able to lie down and relax. They may not feel safe. They may have been told to lie down, and then everyone was shot.
Judith Lasater, one of my yoga teachers, tells a story of a rape survivor who was only able to feel safe lying on her side with her back against a wall. So we adapt the practice to the person, not the other way around.
I think it’s important that we don’t water yoga down and just call it stretching. It’s not the same thing. In fact in a study done in India and reported by John Hopkins, people who had low back pain were divided into 2 groups and followed for 3 months. The group that did yoga fared much better than the control group that did standard stretching exercises.
What makes yoga yoga is the element of mindfulness,awareness, paying attention. . .
It’s not about making your body into a certain shape. If you can’t down onto the floor, you can do many yoga postures in a chair or standing. I attend a local meditation group, on occasion, and most of the participants sit in a chair, only a few are on the floor.
In the traditional eightfold path of yoga, two branches deal with moral and ethical guidelines, two deal with yoga postures and breathing, and then four are preparations for and practices of meditation. There are meditation traditions in all religions, including Christianity.
Stan: I’m diabetic—it runs in my family—and when it began, it affected my eyes. I was loosing my vision. I decided: I’m going to develop a positive attitude. I’m going to meditate, use positive thoughts. My eyesight improved—even my doctor was surprised. I’m a Christian, and meditation made a huge difference in my life.
Julia: When we feel better, then we start to eat better, and take better care of ourselves. Ultimately it brings us closer to a sense we are part of something larger than ourselves.
In my work as a counselor, there is so much talk, but so little chance to release the tensions and memories in the body.
Diana: I once taught a 10-week yoga class for women prisoners in a day release program. Their day was full of talking, counseling sessions. The only thing they did that was physical was to go outside and have a cigarette!
Steve: I’d like to hear about yoga and mental health
Diana: In my family, I’ve had two siblings, an uncle on one side and a niece on the other, hospitalized for mental illness. In addition, both my parents were at times depressed an on medication for depression. When my niece was hospitalized as a teenager—I think she was misdiagnosed as bipolar—I was researching yoga for teenagers with mental health issues. Here again, you don’t teach teenagers the same way you would teach adults. It has to be modified.
Some of you have mentioned other health issues as well. Here’s an inspiring story: when BKS Iyengar was a teenager in India, he had tuberculosis and was quite a sickly youth. He came from a large family who couldn’t afford to take care of him, so he was sent to live with his brother-in-law, who happened to be the great yoga teacher, Krishnamachaya.. Through the dedicated practice of yoga, Iyengar was able to heal himself and now—after 70 years of yoga practice, is considered the greatest living yoga master in the world.
Articles on yoga for Post Traumatic Stress: http://www.yogajournal.com/health/2532
Diana Woodall, local yoga teacher: www.agoodstretch.com no action items were discussed
