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News Updates - 30 September 2005
A master student of yoga - Washington Post
Yoga for the home - Seattle Times
3.5 year old runs for 30 miles - BBC
A Master
Student takes lifelong discipline to a new level
27 September
2005, By Rita Zeidner, The
Washington
Post
The first sign of trouble came when Tao Porchon-Lynch, the 87-year-old yoga
teacher whom 'Results the Gym' on Capitol Hill flew in last week from
Manhattan, showed up for class wearing stretch slacks, a slinky top and
strappy three-inch heels. Porchon-Lynch then kicked off her shoes and --
after surveying class members for injuries (more than a few had shoulder,
foot, wrist and back issues) -- guided them through a few gentle warm-up
stretches and standing postures such as Warrior, Down Dog and Half Moon.
Once most
students were weary and damp, Porchon-Lynch gave them what they came for: a
demonstration of what a lifelong student of yoga pushing 90 can do. Catlike,
she crouched and without a quaver balanced her body's weight on her hands
while suspending her torso and legs above the ground in Mayurasana (peacock
pose), one of yoga's gravity-defying power moves. Then, in one flowing
motion, she swung her legs around in front and took a seat on the mat. She
finished her show with a graceful twist, bracing her left elbow over her
right knee, looking over her right shoulder and rotating her torso nearly
180 degrees. "How do you think I got to be 87?" she asked. "By doing
twists." Well, it's a bit more complicated than that.
While Porchon-Lynch
has the lithe physique you'd expect from someone who's been practicing yoga
since childhood, her flexibility and strength -- greater than most people
will ever achieve -- speak to a more than casual apprenticeship.
She was one
of the first women to study under Indian master B.K.S. Iyengar, credited
with popularizing yoga in the West. Results yoga director Rozann Stayden, a
former gymnast who has studied yoga for 20 years here and abroad, said she
invited Porchon-Lynch so her own students could appreciate the agelessness
of mastery.
"People are
very intrigued by the idea that yoga can be done at any age," said Stayden.
"The fact that Tao is 87 and is a yoga master, people were just really
interested in seeing her."
As a
discipline, yoga is thousands of years old. But recent market research
suggests the Eastern practice of controlled breathing, stretching and
meditation is coming of age in the
United States.
A 2004 Harris poll commissioned by Yoga Journal estimated that 7.5
percent of U.S. adults -- some 16.5 million people -- practice yoga, up
43 percent from 2002. An even larger group was seen as intending to try yoga
within the next 12 months. Last year Americans spent $3 billion on yoga
classes and related products such as clothing, books, DVDs and yoga-centric
vacations, the poll found.
In the
Washington area, storefront yoga studios have proliferated while virtually
all local gym chains offer yoga classes. Tickets to an Oct. 18 Iyengar
lecture in Washington sold out months in advance at nearly $50 a pop.
Does yoga
offer hope to aging boomers seeking not just to boost strength and
flexibility but stem the effects of aging? Scientists are investigating. The
National Institutes of Health's
National
Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine is funding several studies
to see if yoga helps in the management of lung disease and chronic low back
pain. Another study is exploring whether yoga can increase attention span
and focus in healthy elders.
Breathe
Deeply
As befits a
student of Iyengar, Porchon-Lynch pays mind not just to her students' poses
but to their breathing technique. While she circled the room, tweaking
students' posture here and there, she gently urged them to be mindful of
their breath. ”Think of a water lily moving up through the muddy surface,"
she coaxed, in a voice so tiny the students had to strain to hear. "Let the
breath do the work and you relax, okay? Feel as though all the tension of
life is flowing out of the body."
Porchon-Lynch,
who began practicing yoga as an 8-year-old in India, says she gave informal
yoga classes to friends and associates for free throughout the 1950s and
early '60s. (This was after a storied career that had her dancing in British
nightclubs, being cast in shows by Noel Coward, modeling haute couture in
postwar
France
and appearing in several Hollywood B movies.) But she didn't get a paying
gig teaching yoga until 1968, when Jack LaLanne hired her as a teacher for a
nominal fee. She still maintains a busy teaching schedule, leading classes
most days at several studios around
New York.
Thirty years
after spending a month at Iyengar's institute in Pune, India, she still
praises her former mentor, who's also 87, and -- just as he does --
recommends that people having difficulty with a pose use props like bricks
and ropes to help ease a stretch. "I think no one is more pure in the
alignment of the postures than Iyengar," said Porchon-Lynch. "It's the good
alignment that prevents injuries."
Porchon-Lynch
chatted “I do believe that you can if you work with the breath, you can
relax and feel that power within you. I work with my breath. People have
problems when they keep their noisy thoughts in their throats. When you
learn to breathe properly, you can get rid of those noisy thoughts and
relax. If I can bring people into a quiet place and get rid of their noisy
thoughts, you'd be surprised how they calm down. The purpose of yoga is to join the body,
mind and spirit. If you're being rude and horrible, that's not yoga.”
Top of the page
Book offers yoga for the home
10
September 2005, By
Sandy Dunham,
Seattle Times
Seattle
authors Michael Mastro and Robin Mastro have released a new book, "The Way
of Vastu: Creating Prosperity through the Power of the Vedas". The Mastros
are experts in Vastu Shastra, an environmental and architectural practice
addressed in the Vedas, ancient texts from India. Vastu Shastra, the Mastros
say, is more powerful than feng shui and is based on the electromagnetic
grid; the North and South poles; the impact of the rays of the sun, moon and
planets; and the five elements of earth, air, water, fire and space.
So in a sense, they say, Vastu is yoga for the
home or office — balancing the elements to eliminate stress in a physical
environment. And the book offers ways to do just that, including correcting
geopathic stress and using interior design to create balance and harmony.
The Mastros, authors of last year's "Altars of Power and Grace," also own
Vastu Creations (vastucreations.com), which provides architectural design,
seminars and consultations.
Top of the page
Just 3 1/2, but he's going on 30
18 September 2005,
BBC
He runs seven hours at a stretch, sometimes as much as 30 miles.
Every day. And Budhia Singh is just 3 1/2. A judo coach named Biranchi Das
in
Bhubaneswar, India, says he once scolded Budia for misbehaving. "After he
had done some mischief, I asked him to keep running till I came back," Das
said. "I got busy in some work. When I came back after five hours, I was
stunned to find him still running." He starts running at 5 a.m. each day and
does not stop till
noon. After a few stretching exercises, he
has lunch and goes for a nap. At
4 p.m. it is
time to run again. Das has set his eyes on a place in the Guinness Book of
World Records. That, he says, will be possible when Budhia can run about 56
miles at a stretch. "I have no doubt whatsoever that he will achieve it
soon," Das says.
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