When the Mind Wanders, Happiness Also Strays

By JOHN TIERNEY

Published: November 15, 2010

A quick experiment. Before proceeding to the next paragraph, let your mind wander wherever it wants to go. Close your eyes for a few seconds, starting ... now.

And now, welcome back for the hypothesis of our experiment: Wherever your mind went — the South Seas, your job, your lunch, your unpaid bills — that daydreaming is not likely to make you as happy as focusing intensely on the rest of this column will.

I’m not sure I believe this prediction, but I can assure you it is based on an enormous amount of daydreaming cataloged in the current issue of Science. Using an iPhone app called trackyourhappiness, psychologists at Harvard contacted people around the world at random intervals to ask how they were feeling, what they were doing and what they were thinking.

The least surprising finding, based on a quarter-million responses from more than 2,200 people, was that the happiest people in the world were the ones in the midst of enjoying sex. Or at least they were enjoying it until the iPhone interrupted.

The researchers are not sure how many of them stopped to pick up the phone and how many waited until afterward to respond. Nor, unfortunately, is there any way to gauge what thoughts — happy, unhappy, murderous — went through their partners’ minds when they tried to resume.

When asked to rate their feelings on a scale of 0 to 100, with 100 being “very good,” the people having sex gave an average rating of 90. That was a good 15 points higher than the next-best activity, exercising, which was followed closely by conversation, listening to music, taking a walk, eating, praying and meditating, cooking, shopping, taking care of one’s children and reading. Near the bottom of the list were personal grooming, commuting and working.

When asked their thoughts, the people in flagrante were models of concentration: only 10 percent of the time did their thoughts stray from their endeavors. But when people were doing anything else, their minds wandered at least 30 percent of the time, and as much as 65 percent of the time (recorded during moments of personal grooming, clearly a less than scintillating enterprise).

On average throughout all the quarter-million responses, minds were wandering 47 percent of the time. That figure surprised the researchers, Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert.

“I find it kind of weird now to look down a crowded street and realize that half the people aren’t really there,” Dr. Gilbert says.

You might suppose that if people’s minds wander while they’re having fun, then those stray thoughts are liable to be about something pleasant — and that was indeed the case with those happy campers having sex. But for the other 99.5 percent of the people, there was no correlation between the joy of the activity and the pleasantness of their thoughts.

“Even if you’re doing something that’s really enjoyable,” Mr. Killingsworth says, “that doesn’t seem to protect against negative thoughts. The rate of mind-wandering is lower for more enjoyable activities, but when people wander they are just as likely to wander toward negative thoughts.”

Whatever people were doing, whether it was having sex or reading or shopping, they tended to be happier if they focused on the activity instead of thinking about something else. In fact, whether and where their minds wandered was a better predictor of happiness than what they were doing.

“If you ask people to imagine winning the lottery,” Dr. Gilbert says, “they typically talk about the things they would do — ‘I’d go to Italy, I’d buy a boat, I’d lay on the beach’ — and they rarely mention the things they would think. But our data suggest that the location of the body is much less important than the location of the mind, and that the former has surprisingly little influence on the latter. The heart goes where the head takes it, and neither cares much about the whereabouts of the feet.”

Still, even if people are less happy when their minds wander, which causes which? Could the mind-wandering be a consequence rather than a cause of unhappiness?

To investigate cause and effect, the Harvard psychologists compared each person’s moods and thoughts as the day went on. They found that if someone’s mind wandered at, say, 10 in the morning, then at 10:15 that person was likely to be less happy than at 10 , perhaps because of those stray thoughts. But if people were in a bad mood at 10, they weren’t more likely to be worrying or daydreaming at 10:15.

“We see evidence for mind-wandering causing unhappiness, but no evidence for unhappiness causing mind-wandering,” Mr. Killingsworth says.

This result may disappoint daydreamers, but it’s in keeping with the religious and philosophical admonitions to “Be Here Now,” as the yogi Ram Dass titled his 1971 book. The phrase later became the title of a George Harrison song warning that “a mind that likes to wander ’round the corner is an unwise mind.”

What psychologists call “flow” — immersing your mind fully in activity — has long been advocated by nonpsychologists. “Life is not long,” Samuel Johnson said, “and too much of it must not pass in idle deliberation how it shall be spent.” Henry Ford was more blunt: “Idleness warps the mind.” The iPhone results jibe nicely with one of the favorite sayings of William F. Buckley Jr.: “Industry is the enemy of melancholy.”

Alternatively, you could interpret the iPhone data as support for the philosophical dictum of Bobby McFerrin: “Don’t worry, be happy.” The unhappiness produced by mind-wandering was largely a result of the episodes involving “unpleasant” topics. Such stray thoughts made people more miserable than commuting or working or any other activity.

But the people having stray thoughts on “neutral” topics ranked only a little below the overall average in happiness. And the ones daydreaming about “pleasant” topics were actually a bit above the average, although not quite as happy as the people whose minds were not wandering.

There are times, of course, when unpleasant thoughts are the most useful thoughts. “Happiness in the moment is not the only reason to do something,” says Jonathan Schooler, a psychologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research has shown that mind-wandering can lead people to creative solutions of problems, which could make them happier in the long term.

Over the several months of the iPhone study, though, the more frequent mind-wanderers remained less happy than the rest, and the moral — at least for the short-term — seems to be: you stray, you pay. So if you’ve been able to stay focused to the end of this column, perhaps you’re happier than when you daydreamed at the beginning. If not, you can go back to daydreaming starting...now.

Or you could try focusing on something else that is now, at long last, scientifically guaranteed to improve your mood. Just make sure you turn the phone off.

Pasted from <http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/16/science/16tier.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=homepage>

Finally! It is here, Ganja Yoga. Yes I!!

David Silverberg

From Thursday's Globe and Mail Published on Wednesday, Sep. 08, 2010 5:07PM EDT

They chat away breezily between vaporizer tokes, sometimes veering off into conspiracy theories about the government or discussions of the healthiest way to smoke marijuana. Then the 12 yoga lovers extend their arms and breathe deeply. Yoga mats cover the floor. A guitarist strums chords as incense weaves its tendrils across the room.

As the light haze of pot smoke dissipates in the downtown Toronto living room, the ganja yoga session begins.

“When you’re high, you can focus better on your breath,” says Dee Dussault, who runs a monthly session of “cannabis-enhanced yoga” at her home dubbed Follow Your Bliss.

“ Yoga and marijuana, together... It’s like putting salt on your food. It’s just a little enhancement.”— Tanya Pillay

She says smoking marijuana in small doses before a yoga class also makes students more receptive to the poses and philosophies behind the activities. “For some people, it makes them uninhibited and open to the idea of the heart chakra, for example.”

Heart chakras aside, ganja yoga has the THC whiff of being the latest yoga fad, following on the heels of hot yoga, circus yoga, pre- and postnatal yoga, acro yoga (acrobatics), even hip-hop yoga. While cannabis has been deeply entwined with spiritualism over the centuries, some yoga practitioners say that a pure body is ideal for the exercise and that smoking pot could cause an unwieldy imbalance. As one online-forum commenter opined: “Why should we try to purify our body and soul through yoga if we later intoxicate it again with marijuana or other substances?”

Yoga instructor Dee Duss teaches to participants of her "ganja yoga" class, where people smoke marijuana before starting their yoga session at her studio on Grange Ave., Toronto Ontario September 01, 2010.

But Dan Skye, senior editor at New York-based High Times magazine, which tracks marijuana trends, disagrees with yoga purists who believe getting high before a class is detrimental. “Pot is changing medicine; it’s changing recreational habits,” he says. The latest research seems to back up his claim: A recent McGill University study found that cannabis helped alleviate chronic neuropathic pain.

Ms. Dussault remains unfazed. For the past year, she has run ganja yoga out of her home studio as well as at the Hot Box Café in Toronto’s Kensington Market. The class takes place on the last Friday of the month, after work, and she charges $15 for each session. Often, she invites a musician to play some relaxing tunes during the 90 minutes, and she gives out munchies – fruits, nuts, tea – after the class.

Because Ms. Dussault publicizes ganja yoga openly, there is the question of legal repercussions. But she’s quick to say, “No, I’ve never been worried about cops. I think they have bigger fish to fry.”

Among the ground rules at the studio, participants must bring their own pot – and there’s no dealing or mooching. And she makes a point of meeting students before the session “to determine if they want to come just to get stoned.”

Ms. Dussault also encourages participants to fine-tune their yoga skills before embracing ganja yoga. She wants to ensure that people “first experience the true teachings of yoga” and then try ganja yoga to enjoy a different yoga flavour.

Her studio isn’t the only site for cannabis-enhanced yoga. The B.C. Compassion Club Society, a full-service compassion club in Vancouver, offers yoga sessions for those who use medicinal marijuana. Nicole Marcia, the club’s yoga therapist, says she notices that many yoga patrons are “medicated” once they start the session, but for one important reason.

“They need marijuana in order to fight the chronic pain and anxiety they feel,” Ms. Marcia says. She notices that some patients with multiple sclerosis, for instance, are able to “be present” and practise yoga once they’ve gotten high.

“ Marijuana quells those voices in your mind. ”— Melinda Reidl, yoga practitioner

Many pot dispensaries and compassion clubs in California and Colorado – where pot is decriminalized – offer yoga classes, including The Herb Shoppe in Colorado Springs. Qat Carter, who teaches there, says that some of her students prefer to eat marijuana edibles, such as pot brownies, because ingesting cooked pot lengthens the high. “My husband says it helps him increase his body awareness and makes him more relaxed when he does the poses.”

Torontonian Melinda Reidl, 36, enjoys how the marijuana buzz complements the yoga experience. “Marijuana quells those voices in your mind,” she says, adding that ganja yoga encourages more deliberate movements. It’s not a competition to push you to sweat hard, like in some hot yoga studios, Ms. Reidl notes. She calls Ms. Dussault’s sessions “a slow-dub version of yoga.”

Blending a stoned perspective and the precision of yoga could be dangerous, warns Monica Voss, an instructor of 30 years who practises out of Esther Myers Yoga Studio in Toronto. “Some people might not be aware of their body when they’re high and maybe they would injure themselves,” she points out.

She would like to see academic studies done to determine cannabis’s relation with pain release and concentration. That way, yoga practitioners may feel more comfortable recommending this type of yoga combination. “It’s healthy to see all these yoga variations, but buyer beware,” she adds.

But Mr. Skye, who used to work in the fitness industry, says he saw many people smoking before stretching. “I knew a few muscle heads who used to toke up on the gym’s fire escape just before class,” he says.

“I like the idea of smoking pot as a spiritual experience, not just for recreational use,” says Tanya Pillay, 35, who attended her first ganja yoga class in August. “When you take an activity like yoga and take the altered state smoking pot creates, it combines to make the whole greater than the sum of its parts.”

“Yoga and marijuana, together,” Ms. Pillay says, “it’s like putting salt on your food. It’s just a little enhancement.”

Special to The Globe and Mail

Pasted from <http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health/ganja-yoga-combines-marijuana-and-meditation/article1700170/>

Can you patent wisdom?

By Suketu Mehta
Published: Monday, May 7, 2007 (from the NY Times, click to link)

I grew up watching my father stand on his head every morning. He was doing sirsasana, a yoga pose that accounts for his youthful looks well into his 60s. Now he might have to pay a royalty to an American patent holder if he teaches the secrets of his good health to others.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued 150 yoga-related copyrights, 134 patents on yoga accessories, and 2,315 yoga trademarks. There's big money in those pretzel twists and contortions - $3 billion a year in America alone. It's a mystery to most Indians that anybody can make that much money from the teaching of a knowledge that is not supposed to be bought or sold like sausages.

The Indian government is not laughing. It has set up a task force that is cataloging traditional knowledge, including ayurvedic remedies and hundreds of yoga poses, to protect them from being pirated and copyrighted by foreign hucksters. The data will be translated from ancient Sanskrit and Tamil texts, stored digitally, and available in five international languages, so that patent offices in other countries can see that yoga didn't originate in a San Francisco commune.

It is worth noting that the people in the forefront of the patenting of traditional Indian wisdom are Indians, mostly overseas. We know a business opportunity when we see one and have exported generations of gurus skilled in peddling enlightenment for a buck. But as Indians, they ought to know that the very idea of patenting knowledge is a gross violation of the tradition of yoga.

In Sanskrit, "yoga" means "union." Indians believe in a universal mind - brahman - of which we are all a part, and which ponders eternally. Everyone has access to this knowledge.
Knowledge in ancient India was protected by caste lines, not legal or economic ones. The term "intellectual property" was an oxymoron: the intellect could not be anybody's property. Perhaps it is for this reason that Indians do not feel obligated to pay for knowledge. Pirated copies of my book are openly sold on the Bombay streets, for a fourth of its official price. Many of the plots and the music in Bollywood movies are lifted wholesale from Hollywood.

Still, Indians get upset every time they hear reports - often overblown - of Westerners' stealing their age-old wisdom through the mechanism of copyright law. The fears may be exaggerated, but they are widespread and reflect India's mixed experience with globalization.
Western pharmaceutical companies make billions on drugs that are often first discovered in developing countries. But herbal remedies like bitter gourd or turmeric, which are known to be effective against everything from diabetes to piles, earn nothing for the country whose sages first isolated their virtues. The Indian government estimates that worldwide, 2,000 patents are issued a year based on traditional Indian medicines.

Drugs and hatha yoga have the same aim: to help us lead healthier lives. India has given the world yoga for free. No wonder so many in the country feel that the world should return the favor by making lifesaving drugs available at reduced prices, or at least letting Indian companies make cheap generics. If the lotus position belongs to all mankind, so should the formula for Gleevec, the leukemia drug over whose patent a Swiss pharmaceuticals company is suing the Indian government.

For decades, Indian law allowed its pharmaceutical companies to replicate Western-patented drugs and sell them at a lower price to countries too poor to afford them otherwise. In this way, India supplied half of the drugs used by HIV-positive people in the developing world.
But in March 2005, the Indian Parliament, under pressure to bring the country into compliance with the World Trade Organization's rules on intellectual property, passed a bill declaring it illegal to make generic copies of patented drugs.
This has put life-saving antiretroviral medications out of reach of many of the nearly 6 million Indians who have AIDS. Yet the very international drug companies that so fiercely protect their patents oppose India's attempts to amend World Trade Organization rules to protect its traditional remedies.

There's more at stake than just the money. There is also the perception that the world trading system is unfair, that the deck is stacked against developing countries. If the copying of Western drugs is illegal, so should be the patenting of yoga. It is also intellectual piracy, stood on its head.
Suketu Mehta is the author of "Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found."

Some Observations of a Yoga Class in USA

I recently stopped in on the Bikram "hot yoga" school in San Francisco, just to have a look at the sweaty yoga in the fish bowl. For those of you who don't know, it is done in an intensely hot room, like you were doing yoga on a rooftop at noon in april in Rajasthan. OW! But it is said to be opening and cleansing... however... i observed a few things while there: it struck me when i walked into the studio that the air was absolutely foul. It smelled awful and felt toxic; obviously those who go there don't mind it or are used to it. Maybe they even associate it with the yogic feeling.

To me, the air was an indicator that the yoga is not altogether healthy. Air is our primary source of Prana (subtle energy) and good air gives good Prana and bad air gives us toxic Prana. This is one of the reasons that yoga is really best done outside, in nature, where the air is pure, clean and free of bad smells. In fact, the Hatha Yoga Pradipika (a primary rescource book on Hatha Yoga) states that yoga should be done in a clean and airy place, free from dirt, bad smells, insects and noise.

To experience this toxic horror in the Bikram studio made me actually worry about the health of the yogis and yoginis there. Will they cleanse their own toxins only to absorb those of others? The Golden Gate Park was only a block away... they should grab their mats and do some Bikram in fresh air and see what happens!

The other thing I observed was a condition of people's bodies and postures. Americans are known world-wide to be extra large and extra loud; the obesity problem in America is an epidemic if you ask me. Finally the junk food that has been a part of American life for a few decades now is coming back to haunt them; children are raised on it and suffer the ill effects of making it an integral part of the diet. It has been proved in studies that the average person living in shanty towns in Calcutta in healthier in general than the average American college student.

Anyhow, when i was at the studio i got to observe many nearly naked torsos doing yoga, which always interests me. I love to observe posture, gesture, movement, alignment, spine, etc. I got a face-full there and obseved a very interesting thing in nearly everyone's body. I noticed that the core strength and support in the abdomen and lower back was severly lacking in most people. The abdominal wall was collapsed, sagging and unsupported by any type of internal tone or strength.

To me, the root and foundation of yoga and good health in general is a strong and open core. (By core i mean the strength and tone of the area of the torso between the lower ribs and the pelvis, namely the abdominal muscles, lower back muscles and certain deep muscles in the hips.) This areas not only supports the spinal posture (essential to good health) but keeps the organs functioning properly, as well as the nervous impulses, digestion, respiration, reproduction, etc. In fact, the health of the core is the foundation for health in every system of the body.

Thus i think it is a crisis when i observe a room full of 'yogis' who have no core strength, no matter how much yoga they do, if the core strength is not there, there will be problems eventually. What to do? The easiest thing is just to do a variety of sit-ups and back strengtheners in conjunction with good breathing. 5 to 10 minutes of this every day will do wonders for the body and the mind. Don't take my word for it, try it yourself!

Hallucinogenic plant' in Keresley woman's garden

(From the BBC World Service, 7 Aug. 2010)

A woman from Coventry claims she has discovered a toxic, hallucinogenic plant native to South America growing in her garden. Anne Nowell, 66, from Keresley, said she saw an "alien green shoot" among the geraniums and tulips in a flowerbed in her back garden last month.

The plant is 4ft (1.2m) high by 4ft wide, has white flowers and spiky pods. The retired teaching assistant said she had been led to believe by experts that it was datura stramonium, or locoweed.
Mrs Nowell, who has lived at the house for about 30 years with her husband Norman, a 64-year-old retired miner, said she thought the seed might have been deposited by a migrating bird.

'Poison tips'

"I know this garden like the back of my hand and I know my weeds from my flowers.
"I knew it was like nothing I had seen before so I said to my husband, 'shall we just let it grow out of curiosity?' "At first we thought it was part of the cucumber or marrow family because it smelt like a vegetable.

"Then my daughter showed me a description of it on the internet that said it was a native South American plant that hunters used to poison the tips of their arrows and spears with."
Mrs Nowell said she had been led to believe by experts from the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew and the Royal Horticultural Society that it was datura stramonium.
The pod contains mind-altering seeds which are poisonous, Mrs Nowell said
She has offered the seeds to anyone who may be interested for research."

United's Ryan Giggs puts yoga ahead of parties

Ryan Giggs says he enjoys a "more boring life" these days involving yoga rather than boozy nights out with mates.
The Manchester United and former Wales star, who is 36, is careful to look after himself so he can continue his remarkable career for as long as possible.
Giggs, who hopes to help United to victory over Bayern Munich in the Champions League on Wednesday evening, said he hardly drank alcohol nowadays and did not go out as much as his younger team-mates.

"I have enjoyed my football more in the last three or four years than ever before because I don't take any of it for granted," he told Zoo Magazine.
"But at the same time, I have had to make a lot of sacrifices.
"I can't get away with the things I did in my early 20s, like going out drinking and eating fast food.
"I hardly drink any alcohol these days. I have taken up yoga, which is great. I just lead a more boring life."

Cardiff-born Giggs has won 11 Premier League titles, two Champions League trophies, four FA Cups and four League Cups in a distinguished career.
Although he has retired from international football, he has said he would not rule out returning for Wales in an emergency.
He retired to extend his club career and is now United's all-time appearance record holder.
Clean-living Giggs has rarely made tabloid headlines although he did once have a celebrity girlfriend - TV presenter Dani Behr.

David Beckham's emergence in the same United team meant journalists searching for gossip tended to overlook the unassuming Welshman.
Giggs even had to put the brakes on his love of fast cars because he was told by a specialist the different clutch pedals might be aggravating his hamstring.
Nowadays, Giggs is happy to let his team-mates get excited about their new cars while he goes home to look after his children.
He said he was aware the younger players looked up to him, and he made an effort to look after them.

"I can relate to them a bit. We like the same music - well, most of the time - and I get on with them," he said.
"We are all footballers and we share a lot of the same interests, so it's no problem.
"But our lives are very different away from the training ground.
"I will just go home and play with the children, but they go out more and come into training each day in mad clothes and talk about their cars all the time - the same things I did at their age."

Great News!!

Guinness is good for you - it's official

The old advertising slogan "Guinness is Good for You" may be true after all, according to researchers.A pint of the black stuff a day may work as well as a low dose aspirin to prevent heart clots that raise the risk of heart attacks.

Drinking lager does not yield the same benefits, experts from University of Wisconsin (my home town and a big drinking town as well!- editor) told a conference in the US.

Guinness was told to stop using the slogan decades ago - and the firm still makes no health claims for the drink.

The Wisconsin team tested the health-giving properties of stout against lager by giving it to dogs who had narrowed arteries similar to those in heart disease. They found that those given the Guinness had reduced clotting activity in their blood, but not those given lager.

Heart trigger

Clotting is important for patients who are at risk of a heart attack because they have hardened arteries. A heart attack is triggered when a clot lodges in one of these arteries supplying the heart.

Many patients are prescribed low-dose aspirin as this cuts the ability of the blood to form these dangerous clots. The researchers told a meeting of the American Heart Association in Orlando, Florida, that the most benefit they saw was from 24 fluid ounces of Guinness - just over a pint - taken at mealtimes.

"We already know that most of the clotting effects are due to the alcohol itself, rather than any other ingredients."
~Spokesman, Brewing Research International

They believe that "antioxidant compounds" in the Guinness, similar to those found in certain fruits and vegetables, are responsible for the health benefits because they slow down the deposit of harmful cholesterol on the artery walls. However, Diageo, the company that now manufactures Guinness, said: "We never make any medical claims for our drinks."

The company now runs advertisements that call for "responsible drinking". A spokesman for Brewing Research International, which conducts research for the industry, said she would be "wary" of placing the health benefits of any alcohol brand above another.

She said: "We already know that most of the clotting effects are due to the alcohol itself, rather than any other ingredients. "It is possible that there is an extra effect due to the antioxidants in Guinness - but I would like to see this research repeated."

She said that reviving the old adverts for Guinness might be problematic - at least in the EU. Draft legislation could outlaw any health claims in adverts for alcohol in Europe, she said.

Feelgood factor

The original campaign in the 1920s stemmed from market research - when people told the company that they felt good after their pint, the slogan was born. In England, post-operative patients used to be given Guinness, as were blood donors, based on the belief that it was high in iron.

Pregnant women and nursing mothers were at one stage advised to drink Guinness - the present advice is against this. The UK is still the largest market in the world for Guinness, although the drink does not feature in the UK's top ten beer brands according to the latest research.

Problems in America with Yoga Schools and State Licensing

Ruby Washington/The New York Times; July 10, 2009

Alison West, teaching a class in Manhattan, has led a campaign that persuaded New York State to rethink a licensing rule.

But that list — which now includes nearly 1,000 yoga schools nationwide, many of them tiny — is being put to a use for which it was never intended. It is the key document in a crackdown that pits free-spirited yogis against lumbering state governments, which, unlike those they are trying to regulate, are not always known for their flexibility.

Citing laws that govern vocational schools, like those for hairdressers and truck drivers, regulators have begun to require licenses for yoga schools that train instructors, with all the fees, inspections and paperwork that entails. While confrontations have played out differently in different states, threats of shutdowns and fines have, in some cases, been met with accusations of power grabs and religious infringement — disputes that seem far removed from the meditative world yoga calls to mind.

In April, New York State sent letters to about 80 schools warning them to suspend teacher training programs immediately or risk fines of up to $50,000. But yogis around the state joined in opposition, and the state has, for now, backed down.

In other states, regulators were not moved. In March, Michigan gave schools a week to be certified by the state or cease operations. Virginia’s cumbersome licensing rules include a $2,500 fee — a big hit for modest studios that are often little more than one-room storefronts.

Lisa Rapp, who owns My Yoga Spirit in Norfolk, Va., said she was closing her seven-year-old business this summer. “This caused us to shut down the studio altogether,” Ms. Rapp said. “It’s too bad, because this community really needs yoga.”

The conflict started in January when a Virginia official directed regulators from more than a dozen states to an online national registry of schools that teach yoga and, in the words of a Kansas official, earn a “handsome income.” Until then, only a few states had been aware of the registry and had acted to regulate yoga instruction, though courses in other disciplines like massage therapy have long been subject to oversight.

The registry was created by the Yoga Alliance, a nonprofit group started in 1999 to establish teaching standards in an effort to have the industry regulate itself. In a recent newsletter, the alliance warned its members that nationwide licensing might be inevitable, “forcing this ancient tradition to conform to Western business practices.”

“We made it very, very easy for them to do what they’re doing right now,” said Leslie Kaminoff, founder of the Breathing Project, a nonprofit yoga center in New York City, who had opposed the formation of the Yoga Alliance. “The industry of yoga is a big, juicy target.”

New state regulations would not directly affect the drop-in classes attended by many of the 16 million Americans estimated to practice yoga. But the classes they would affect are an important source of revenue for many schools, and, of course, train future instructors.

“It’s the perpetuation of the species,” said S. J. Khalsa, who operates Kundalini Yoga East in Manhattan, a school that offers teacher training courses. “We’re not in it to make tons of money.”

However, Sybil Killian, general manager for the OM Yoga Center, also in Manhattan, questioned whether yoga could fairly claim to be a spiritual pursuit in an era when, according to an industry estimate, it earns $6 billion a year in the United States.

“People buy $1,000 pants to sweat in because while they’re getting enlightened they need to look good,” Ms. Killian wrote in an e-mail message to other New York yoga teachers. “Make no mistake, ladies and gentlemen, yoga is an industry. One need only leaf through the advertising section of Yoga Journal to know that.”

Regulators said licensing the schools would allow states to enforce basic standards and protect customers who usually spend $2,000 to $5,000 on training courses, not to mention provide revenue for cash-starved governments. “If you’re going to start a school and take people’s money, you should play by a set of rules,” said Patrick Sweeney, a Wisconsin licensing official, who believes that in 2004 he was the first to discover the online registry and use it to begin regulating yoga teaching.

“Sooner or later, probably every state will do this,” said Patricia Kearney, an instructor of health and exercise science at Bridgewater College in Virginia, who has been researching the trend. “Once people get used to it, it will ultimately benefit yoga. But it will not be without loss. Some good small programs will close. But so will some not-so-good programs that probably should close.”

In New York State, though, teachers fought back, complaining that the new rules could erode thin bottom lines, contradict religious underpinnings and, most important, shut down every school in the state during an eight-month licensing period.

“It basically destroys the essence of yoga, to control and manipulate the whole situation,” said Jhon Tamayo of Atmananda Yoga Sequence in Manhattan. “No one can regulate yoga.”

Brette Popper, a co-founder of Yoga City NYC, a Web site that has chronicled licensing developments, said the yoga community — described on the site as “a group that doesn’t even always agree about how to pronounce ‘Om’ ” — was uniting around a common enemy.

The teachers formed a coalition and enlisted a state senator, Eric T. Schneiderman of Manhattan, to take up their cause, hoping that New York would buck the national trend. “It’s really kind of historic in the yoga community,” Ms. Popper said.

That unity was on display last month in a small studio in Midtown Manhattan, where nearly 100 devotees from around the state sat barefoot and cross-legged on the wood floor. The group, whose members ranged from lithe young teachers in spandex to older ones in religious garb, opened with a traditional chant and ended two hours later struggling with parliamentary procedure as it established a formal organization. One attendee cast the conflict as “bureaucracy versus freedom.”

Alison West, who was selected to lead the new coalition, the Yoga Association of New York State, prayed for “some joyful conclusion we’ve never conceived.”

Within days, Joseph P. Frey, an associate commissioner with the State Education Department, said in an interview that the department would suspend the licensing effort, allow the classes to continue and instead lobby for legislation adding yoga to a list of activities that are exempt from regulation.

“I understand how folks could get upset,” he said.

Pasted from <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/11/nyregion/11yoga.html?_r=1>

From Yoga Journal  http://www.yogaalliance.org/documents/YogaJournalLicensedtoTeach_000.pdf

Licensed to Teach

How will state licensing of yoga schools affect yoga teachers and their businesses?

September 10, 2009

By Molly M. Ginty

As they geared up with excitement to launch their second teacher training, Ananda Ashram administrators never expected that the state would derail their plans.

"In April, two weeks before we were supposed to welcome 10 trainees, we received an unexpected letter saying we had to suspend our program immediately or face fines of up to $50,000," says Jennifer Schmid, codirector of Ananda's School of Hatha Yoga. "New York State said we had to finish a monthlong licensing process that required exhaustive paperwork, site inspections, and new course protocols. People were all set to come to our four-week, live-in, intensive training. But we had to cancel it at the last minute, refund the students' money, and postpone it indefinitely."

Demands that yoga teacher training be state approved are upsetting the peace not only at Ananda Ashram—an 84-acre refuge of rolling hills and pine trees in Monroe, New York—but at yoga schools across the United States. This controversial push doesn't affect regular teachers' standing today, and state officials say it likely won't in the future, insisting that instructors with established certification should not be impacted by newer teachers having state-approved vocational training. Even so, every yoga instructor should know about these requirements, and every instructor who trains teachers should be prepared to face them.

According to Patricia Kearney, a health and exercise science instructor at Bridgewater College in Bridgewater, Virginia, such requirements are being enforced in at least 14 states: Arizona, Colorado, Delaware, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin; New York is now in limbo over regulation due to a push-back from yoga teachers there. "Regulating yoga training programs—like regulating vocational schools—is becoming standard practice in a growing number of states," says Kearney. "Some states require that a program be of a certain size before it must be licensed or certified. Some states have low one-time fees for this; some have high, repeated fees; and some require an initially low fee but renewal fees that are double the original amount."

Though laws that govern vocational and training programs have been on the books since as early the 1930s, states didn't start enforcing them at yoga training schools until 2004, when Wisconsin kicked off the trend. "We wanted to make sure that yoga schools, like other training programs, were financially stable and had a solid set of rules governing how they operated," says Patrick Sweeney, a Wisconsin licensing official. "Eventually, other state consumer protection agencies decided to follow in our footsteps."

Most states base their regulation requirements on guidelines from the Yoga Alliance, an Arlington, Virginia-based nonprofit that helps the industry regulate itself.

"When we formed in 1999, we decided to recommend that instructors have 200 hours of training, including philosophy, anatomy, physiology, and study of the poses," says Mark Davis, the president of Yoga Alliance. "Those guidelines were meant to be entirely voluntary. But some unethical yoga teacher trainers went into the business and, in response, states started approaching the 1,000 schools in our online registry and asking them to prove they followed our guidelines and undergo formal licensing."

As yoga regulation spreads, what do teacher training operators need to know? Experts following this trend recommend taking the four following steps:

Know the Ropes

"Find out exactly what your state requires now or is planning to require in the future," says Becca Hewes, who offers teacher training at YogaLife in Norman, Oklahoma, and who recently finished the licensing process. You may need to create a course catalog; obtain financial bonding; pass a site inspection; create a business plan; and establish policies for absences, cancellations, and refunds. This could take several weeks to several months and require fees ranging from $250 to $2,500—excluding extras such as the $800 that Hewes had to spend on an accountant and new exit signs.

Know the Process

Schools that are already regulated say the exhaustive process does have an upside. "We hated going through this, but the finished product is just amazing," says Gusti Ratliff, founder of the Divine School of Yoga Therapy in Southlake, Texas. "We now have comprehensive, clear-cut rules that protect our trainees and us, too." Like the Divine School's cozy space—a haven of soft music, herbal teas, and sun-flooded practice rooms—its certification, according to Ratliff, makes it more reputable in the eyes of its trainees.

Consider the Costs

Given the time and money required to get licensed, running a teacher training program could threaten your studio's bottom line—especially if the studio is small, just starting out, already squeezed by the recession, or facing especially high fees. Rather than jeopardize their financial security, some yoga schools are reconsidering whether they should even offer teacher training, which can cost students $2,000 to $5,000 but can leave studios barely breaking even.

"Here in New York, one bill before the state legislature would exempt yoga schools from licensing, and another would require it for a fee of $5,000," says Swami Ramananda, president of the Integral Yoga Institute. "If the second bill passes, it's hard to imagine that we would cancel teacher training, which is part of our spiritual mission and comprises 15 percent of our revenue. But continuing our program—even though it's of long standing and is well respected—could prove to be too expensive for our students, and financially problematic for us."

Join the Debate

"Some people feel that yoga shouldn't have any regulations because of its spiritual and philosophical origins, while others feel that this is a necessary business practice," says Yoga Alliance's Davis. Regardless of whether regulation is required in your state, consider reaching out to other teacher trainers and sparking a discussion. You may find yourself part of a growing resistance movement, such as that led by the Yoga Association of New York, which is fighting local licensing—and its proposed $5,000 fee. Or you may find yourself sharing tips with already-regulated schools about how to make the process go more smoothly.

"Regulation isn't easy," says Debbie Williamson, who owns Midwest Power Yoga in Appleton, Wisconsin, and licensed it in 2004. "But if we support each other as peers, we can help each other through this—and ultimately improve the field of yoga."

Molly M. Ginty is a health writer who teaches yoga at Bayview Correctional Facility in New York City.

From Yoga Journal  http://www.yogaalliance.org/documents/YogaJournalLicensedtoTeach_000.pdf

Researchers Erase Memory in Mice

Times of India, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/HealthSci/Now_a_way_to_erase_bad_memories/articleshow/3634487.cms

WASHINGTON: US researchers have said they are able to selectively erase memories from mice in a laboratory, raising hopes human memory afflictions

like post-traumatic stress syndrome can one day be cured.

“Targeted memory erasure is no longer limited to the realm of science fiction,” the research team headed by Joe Tsien, from the Brain and Behavior Discovery Institute at the Medical College of Georgia, said in Thursday’s issue of Cell Press magazine. The new technique, which the team stress is at a very early stage, could be applied one day to the human brain to erase traumatic memories or deep-set fears, and leave all other memories unaffected.

Memory is generally separated into four different stages: acquisition, consolidation, storage, and retrieval. Earlier research identified specific molecules that appear to play a role in the various phases of the memory process.

But Tsien said his team found a way to quickly manipulate the activity of the “memory molecule,” the protein CaMKII (calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II) that plays a key role in brain cell communication, and so is linked to many aspects of memory.

Researchers developed a “chemical genetic strategy,” which made it possible to manipulate the protein in transgenic mice. “Using this technique, we examined the manipulation of transgenic CaMKII activity on the retrieval of short-term and long-term fear memories and novel object recognition memory” in transgenic mice, Tsien said.

The team figured out they could manipulate the protein in the mice’s brain as the animal was stimulated, and observe the brain’s ability to recall memory of the stimulation. Through the protein manipulation, researchers then found a way to not just block the mice’s memory of the stimulation, but erase them without impacting the brain’s ability to recall other memories.

Pasted from:

Times of India