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This blog at this point is a bit of chronicling of my Yoga Therapy training – 800 hours of pure learning …what I come across along the way on this path. It’s not checking into a cave to get enlightened or a remote tropical island retreat for a month at a time (sure if you can afford the time-away – someday:) but a process in which … living this mundane ordinary life … doing it.

Muscular system module with Baxter Bell, MD & Yoga Therapist

It’s as though my body is my own laboratory … Last year in August I weighed 114 lbs returning from Tokyo depleted and today … OMG 130 lb… I’ve managed to gain over 10 lbs and here one wonders – WhAT !? And here she’s rattling off the benefits of yoga? Well – that’s just it. My lab proves the point – what’s changed from last year? Have not done restorative yoga FOR MYSELF – a year ago, I was able to do more yoga, especially, I had a restorative yoga “practice” on regular basis – but for the last year – no. I have not been doing restorative unless I am at the invitational with my teacher. Why?

My teacher training to become a yoga therapist is taking up any and all free time! that was previously devoted to yoga practice. Ironic, isn’t it that this weight gain appears to be caused by the fact that I started my advance certification program in yoga therapy. It’s like first year in the dorms your Freshman year, many students put on the Freshman pounds – why? Because of stress; lack of sleep from demands of studies; and lack of time to do the yoga you love. Here I am enrolled in this program in order to grow from being an “instructor” to a “healer” (while I now realize how naive that notion was), I am less able to care for myself the way I used to. So currently, I am brainstorming as I invest the hours to all the reading, all the video watching – anatomy …and sitting in front of the computer over and above what I already do at it.

The program is for 500 hrs. with Yoga Alliance and 800 hrs. with IAYT (International Association of Yoga Therapists) … I have taken many workshops in yoga therapy – such as Yoga for Back Care; Yoga for Pelvic Health; Yoga for Anxiety & Depression; Yoga for Insomnia; Yoga for this and that but this program will take every common chronic illnesses and find ways to if not cure; manage or counter the ill effects with yoga protocols. And … it works.

I guess it’s worth a little bit of weight gain. All my life, it’s been up and down like a yoyo but I had hoped to just hover around 114 … well … upon graduation this program, I have a feeling, it will just taper off as I will be back on the mat ! Less theories, more actual practice coming.

Here trying out this method shared by Loren Fishman, MD, apparently from one of the past IAYT confrences – IAYT stands for International Association of Yoga Therapists to which Baxer Bell MD serves as a board member. He will be covering the upcoming Endocrine system module which I will miss due to my trip to Japan.

Notes PLEASE – calling out to the fellow-cohorts on this program. Hate to miss out but … have to go. Anyone willing to share notes from this module, much appreciate.

Negative feelings, such as violence, are damaging to life, whether we act upon them ourselves, or cause or condone them in others. They are born of greed, anger, or delusion, and may be slight, moderate, or intense. Their fruit is endless ignorance and suffering. To remember this and cultivate the opposite.
– Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, Ch2, v34

When we are firmly established in nonviolence, all beings around us cease to feel hostility.
– Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, Ch2, v35
translated by Alistair Shearer

“May all beings everywhere be happy and free, and may the thoughts, words, and actions of my own life contribute in some way to that happiness and to that freedom for all”.

There’s nothing to be gained by harming others … but exasperating your own suffering so find another way. Why set up such self-defeating Karma …
Every path we tread is a choice. Such naivete? I think many many many think the same more often than we give each other credit for.

We will be fine as long as we do not let fear rule us.
Out of fear comes anger … that manifests as violence and hatred to promote intolerance.
Where there’s intolerance, creativity, beauty and abundance is stifled and we are all collectively impoverished, living lives of less than the lowest denominator.
To be on guard to take protective cover is one thing but to have fear limit us is another.

It takes courage to stand up against those who use fear as their weapon with use of violence.
How do we overcome this? Get depressed and go numb? How does that help?

The current news really make you think about justice, freedom and peace.　And more you find out, more you realize that the enemy is not out there but within. More often than not, it’s homegrown on this land where there is intolerance, prejudice borne out of ignorance and self-hate masked as extreme patriotism or fanatical rhetoric favoring separation and exclusions rather than unity, inclusions and tolerance for diversity.

Sometimes a total shift of perspective and placing oneself in the other’s shoes …& think back on words of great peace workers.
Why do we have weapons that can hurt and destroy amongst us? Why is mentally and emotionally disturbed people, people with malice and intent to harm, able to easily purchase guns in this country?

In my old/home country, only people with guns are either the peace officers (legal possession) or the gangsters (illegal possession). If no-one had guns, then no-one needs guns.
Am I too simple minded? Why is it so complicated to protect innocent lives? We create our own hell, our own imprisonment. Why?

So anyway, rather than have the recent news of violent actions and words make us feel hopeless, why not use the opportunity for us to firm up our purpose. Why are we placed on this planet? So that we can hate each other and destroy it ? OR? All these doctors both medical and philosophical (MD’s & PhD’s) and religious leaders and cultural setters always talk about the secret or key to happiness – that being – purposeful life. Why not pursuit of happiness = pursuit of peace. Peace within and out; all around infectious contagious abundant love and peace. It’s not all soft and easy fluff but quite challenging to lead a purposeful life of peace when we sometimes feel the opposite – all those human emotions covered in the Yamas. Here again, yoga to the rescue.