Tag Archives: book

Keep it simple, Eve

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I keep hav­ing to remind myself that for most peo­ple, yoga can appear really intim­i­dat­ing, com­pli­cated and alien. After six years, I love to plunge into the history, anatomy or psy­chol­ogy of yoga, but most begin­ners are wor­ried that not nail­ing trikonasana as on the Yoga Jour­nal cover will some­how impair their prac­tice. That worry, bor­der­ing on fear, impairs their prac­tice more than incor­rect alignment.

So I appre­ci­ate a resource that tries to make yoga acces­si­ble. Today, I chanced across Five-​​Minute Yoga, belong­ing to Eve John­son, a Vancouver-​​based Iyen­gar yoga instruc­tor. Another rea­son for lik­ing her blog is that yoga is her sec­ond career: she worked as a jour­nal­ist  mostly for The Van­cou­ver Sun and CBC radio, sim­i­lar to my case. She has a set of audio tapes of five minute yoga ses­sions aimed at begin­ners. You can even get it on a USB flash drive and take it any­where.

Eve John­son pub­lished a insight­ful review of Ste­fanie Syman’s book, The Sub­tle Body, in the Van­cou­ver Sun [no longer avail­able /​ MLS], which is how I came across her site.

A book to add to your must-​​read list

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Jamail Yogis con­tacted me about a month ago ask­ing me to read his book Salt­wa­ter Bud­dha: A Surfer’s Quest to Find Zen on the Sea. He wanted some com­ments and some cov­er­age in my blog. I got a PDF advance copy of the pub­li­ca­tion, which became avail­able Ama­zon and will be offi­cially released on May 1. I started read­ing it and was impressed with the first 25 pages. But, as might be self-​​evident from the fre­quency of post­ing on this blog, I could not keep up with the read­ing. I had a cou­ple of books and mag­a­zine already loaded into my shoul­der bag for read­ing on the Metro, and other mat­ters (2008 taxes, wife’s birth­day, con­sult­ing work, and yoga) keep steal­ing my free time. This lack of follow-​​through should not be viewed as a judg­ment on Jaimal’s writ­ing. All you have to do is look at his list of pub­lished arti­cles to know that he can string words together proficiently.

As we all know, “any­thing can be yoga if you focus on your breath­ing,” so it should be no sur­prise that surf­ing can serve as the plot line for self-​​discovery. There are lots of books on the con­tem­pla­tive side of surf­ing. It still tough to con­dense this kind of daily reflec­tion on a board and wave into a book with­out mean­der­ing all over the expanses of the ocean. But Jamail has the dis­ci­pline to pull it off.

Jaimal will be pro­mot­ing his book in the com­ing months, so you may be able to catch him at a book­store near you — if you live on the West Coast. More info on the book.

I am flat­tered that Jamail thought of me to read his book, and think­ing that my vis­i­tors might also ben­e­fit from read­ing the book. I have promised him that I will get around to read­ing it, but I don’t want to hold up the out­reach so I am post­ing now to give a heads-​​up and let oth­ers now about the book.

The ageless dilemma of the human condition

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This week’s mul­ti­me­dia selec­tion is Audio Archives of Tara Brach’s Dharma talks at the Insight Med­i­ta­tion Com­mu­nity of Wash­ing­ton (IMCW) here in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Each week there is a 40-​​60 minute talk about prac­tic­ing Bud­dhism in the mod­ern world, and then Tara leads the group in a 20-​​25 minute med­i­ta­tion. I’ve lis­tened to sev­eral of these talks, and they are out­stand­ing, insight­ful pieces of devo­tional thought. I come from a Protes­tant church tra­di­tion, my father was a pas­tor and I have heard a few ser­mons in my day. But Tara is not preach­ing. She has an inti­mate tone of voice that draws you into the nar­ra­tive. It’s almost as if she is talk­ing to you over the break­fast table, even though she is address­ing hun­dreds of peo­ple. Her cadence and tim­ber pre­pare you for the for­mal med­i­ta­tion that follows.

Tara Brach is the founder and senior teacher at IMCW. She wrote Rad­i­cal Accep­tance — Embrac­ing Your Life with the Heart of a Bud­dha (Ban­tam Dell, 2003). I read the book a few months ago, and had been mean­ing to put up some com­ments about it. The book is a dia­logue between her prac­tice as a psy­chother­a­pist and the wis­dom that comes from Bud­dhist Dharma. Although her patients’ life sto­ries pro­vide many oppor­tu­ni­ties for insight into the human con­di­tion, she also draws on her own expe­ri­ences. I found a lot of use­ful ways of look­ing at life’s dra­mas and tragedies. The “rad­i­cal accep­tance” that Brach is talk­ing about is the act of free­ing our­selves from the self-​​inflicted pain of feel­ing that there is some­thing wrong with us (rather than use the “royal we,” I should prob­a­bly speak in the first per­son). This is more sim­ply said that done, which is why Brach needs a whole book to just scratch the sur­face. This issue is one of my own per­sonal trau­mas — a deep sense of inad­e­quacy, lack of self-​​worth and self-​​esteem, all of which poi­son my expe­ri­ence. I find myself being pulled back to re-​​read sec­tions and chap­ters to review key points to her calm grasp of what it means to be human and how to get beyond the trap of human suf­fer­ing to live life to its fullest potential.

So you can lis­ten to audio files or read the book, either way you’ll appre­ci­ate the reas­sur­ing mes­sage of hope.

Need a reason to exercise? Read this book

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Cover of the book SparkIf you ever need an intel­lec­tual moti­va­tion to get you off your butt and into an active pro­gram of exer­cise, read Spark: The Rev­o­lu­tion­ary New Sci­ence of Exer­cise and the Brain by John J. Ratey (Lit­tle Brown and Com­pany, New York, 2008). I found it an infor­ma­tive read, which gave com­pelling argu­ments why you should engage in sys­tem­atic phys­i­cal exer­cise. He mined thou­sands of sci­en­tific research papers to under­pin his work in objec­tive find­ings. He syn­the­sizes the infor­ma­tion into 303 pages, but wrapped it in an engag­ing nar­ra­tive around it so that you don’t fall asleep due to dry sci­en­tific writ­ing. He also drew on his own case stud­ies with patients and a few amaz­ing exper­i­ments in apply­ing phys­i­cal exer­cise to learn­ing envi­ron­ments.
Ratey’s sub­head­ing to the title is “Super­charge your men­tal cir­cuits to beat stress, shapen your think­ing, list your mood, boost your mem­ory, and much more.” Sounds as if he’s ped­dling some kind of mir­a­cle drug, but it’s just plain, ol’ sweat, mus­cles and grunts.

“The pre­scrip­tion … varies from varies from per­son to per­son, but the research con­sis­tently shows that the more fit you are, the more resilient your brain becomes and the bet­ter it func­tions both cog­ni­tively and psy­cho­log­i­cally.” (p. 247)

To cut to the chase, his for­mula calls for 30-​​60 min­utes of aer­o­bic exer­cise, usu­ally run­ning or equiv­a­lent inten­sity exer­cise, six times a week. On two days, he rec­om­mends five short sprints (30 sec­onds max) injected into a nor­mal ses­sion (the max inter­vals seem to trig­ger the body’s opti­miza­tion). Strength-​​training helps main­tain or build mus­cle and bone mass, which can be affected by the aging process. Ratey also sug­gests that yoga, tai chi, mar­tial arts or other sim­i­lar activ­i­ties be added to improve bal­ance and flex­i­bil­ity, as well as body aware­ness and con­cen­tra­tion. Obvi­ously, it takes time, dis­ci­pline and effort to work up to the con­di­tion of being able to sus­tain aer­o­bic exer­cise for such long peri­ods, but you will be rewarded.

Exer­cise has an impact on the brain’s neu­ro­plas­tic­ity, cre­at­ing new neu­rons as the build­ing blocks. Ratey cov­ered stress, anx­i­ety, depres­sion, atten­tion deficit dis­or­der, addic­tion, hor­monal change (menopause in women) and aging in sep­a­rate chap­ters. Far and away the best thing you can do for your brain power, men­tal health and phys­i­cal well-​​being is an active daily exer­cise regime.

Ratey gets down to the com­plex, inter-​​related chem­i­cal processes and com­po­nents that cre­ate and bal­ance the neu­ro­trans­mit­ters that fire up the brain within the human body. Ratey’s con­clu­sions are not new. There has been a steady drum­beat of sto­ries in news­pa­pers, mag­a­zines and on the web about how phys­i­cal exer­cise can rad­i­cally improve men­tal per­for­mance, ward off ill­nesses and aging and over­come men­tal dis­or­ders, like depres­sion. He empha­sized that it’s nec­es­sary to engage in phys­i­cal exer­cise every day, both to make it a con­sis­tent habit and to make the body respond appropriately.

Ratey is a researcher and neuro-​​psychiatrist at Har­vard Med­ical School who earned a rep­u­ta­tion work­ing on atten­tion deficit/​hyperactivity dis­or­der (ADHD). More infor­ma­tion is avail­able on his web­site and his blog, which links to news sto­ries and fea­tures about his new book.

Stop what you’re doing and sample a unique vision

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I just got through watch­ing this video from the TED con­fer­ence in Mon­ter­rey, Cal­i­for­nia, Feb­ru­ary 28. Dr. Jill Bolte Tay­lor, a neuro-​​anatomist, recently gave an chat about her life-​​altering expe­ri­ence of a brain stroke. This emo­tion­ally charged story is going to spread like wild­fire because it cap­tures a vital life story and mar­ries it to both sci­ence and spir­i­tual insight. I’m still reel­ing from my first view­ing so just don’t mind me and set aside 18 min­utes to be astounded.

Her web­site also con­tains a link to her self-​​published book, My Stroke of Insight through lulu.com. I got on to this because the New York Times fea­tured it on the Well blog.

TED is heavy-​​weight con­fer­ence that deals in thinkers of great ideas and doers of impres­sive deeds — and good story tellers. TED stands for Tech­nol­ogy, Enter­tain­ment, Design. It’s worth exploring.

Falling to pieces

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While I was away in Colom­bia, my travel read­ing was Going to Pieces With­out Falling Apart: A Bud­dhist Per­spec­tive on Whole­ness (Broad­way Books, 1999) by Mark Epstein. I had read his book Thoughts With­out a Thinker: Psy­chother­apy from a Bud­dhist per­spec­tive and was impressed with his approach to giv­ing insight into life’s threads, knots and tan­gles. He is a New York City-​​based ther­a­pist and is one of the teach­ers at the New York Insight Med­i­ta­tion Cen­ter.

I man­aged to get through the whole book (181 pages) by the end of my meet­ing thanks to Epstein’s effort­less writ­ing style and the com­pelling con­tent. He illus­trates his cen­tral theme draw­ing on his own per­sonal path of dis­cov­ery and on his patients’ case his­to­ries. A sav­ing grace of the book is that Epstein does not bite off too much by try­ing to be an author­i­ta­tive text on Bud­dhism, med­i­ta­tion, patient-​​centered ther­apy or any other big con­cept. He is not sell­ing a par­tic­u­lar the­ory or polit­i­cal line. Instead, he argues that we need to relax into the flow of life, rather than lock into an attempt to con­trol our expe­ri­ence or accu­mu­late pieces of self-​​improvement until we have attained perfection.

Since I fin­ished read­ing the book about four weeks ago, I’m try­ing to recon­struct what I found most reward­ing in the book — with­out re-​​reading the book again. I am going to do some scratch writ­ing off-​​line before post­ing it here.

The pop version of "Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain"

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I fin­ished read­ing Sharon Begley’s book, but I could have put off buy­ing the book all together because Wash­ing­ton Post put out a story GET SMART(ER): You’re No Genius? Don’t Worry. You Can Still Beef Up Your Brain With a Lit­tle Effort. It is a breez­ing fea­ture arti­cle that skims off the cream of neu­ro­science, types of intel­li­gence, nutri­tion, health sci­ence, med­i­ta­tion and curios­ity (and lots of name-​​dropping of schol­ars and researchers at big name uni­ver­si­ties) to let you know that you can improve your men­tal powers:

The idea that there are mul­ti­ple intel­li­gences — that peo­ple can be intel­li­gent visu­ally, musi­cally, math­e­mat­i­cally, ath­let­i­cally, inter­per­son­ally and intrap­er­son­ally — was intro­duced by Har­vard psy­chol­o­gist Howard Gard­ner. (He later added nat­u­ral­is­tic intel­li­gence.) Still, what­ever the type of intel­li­gence, most peo­ple judge brain­power on prac­ti­cal fac­tors, includ­ing how much you know, how well you can access what you know and what you do with it.

The mindful way

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Per­haps just as impor­tant as the Beg­ley book is the recent pub­li­ca­tion of The Mind­ful Way through Depres­sion: Free­ing Your­self from Chronic Unhap­pi­ness (The Guil­ford Press, 2007) by J. Mark G. Williams, John D. Teas­dale, Zin­del V. Segal, and Jon Kabat-​​Zinn. It gives a detailed process of how to imple­ment a med­i­ta­tion prac­tice — and find hap­pi­ness at the same time. Or in more Bud­dhist terms, relieve human suf­fer­ing. The book comes with an audio CD with guided med­i­ta­tions by Jon Kabat-​​Zinn. It’s a much more prac­ti­cal book, com­pared to Begley’s: “Mind­ful­ness is the aware­ness that emerges tho­rugh pay­ing atten­tion on pur­pose, in the present moment, and non-​​judgmentally to things as they are.” Although it may not seem like it, but that is a mouth­ful of mind­ful­ness. You don’t need a psy­cho­log­i­cal study — you just have to sit and focus.

Motive

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My inter­est in the Beg­ley book is really part of an ongo­ing inquiry into the area of mind games &emdash; or rather the chal­lenge of push­ing men­tal abil­ity to its human poten­tial (self-​​realization), or heal­ing from debil­i­tat­ing con­di­tion (depres­sion, for instance), or ward­ing off the effects of aging (I am 58 years old).

The Dana Foun­da­tion, a first-​​rate place for sci­en­tific infor­ma­tion on the brain, recently posted Experts, Dalai Lama Dis­cuss Med­i­ta­tion for Depres­sion about a con­fer­ence at Emory Uni­ver­sity in Atlanta last week. This con­fer­ence was a con­tin­u­a­tion of the dia­logue between the Dalai Lama and sci­en­tists that Beg­ley wrote about. There was a sim­i­lar con­fer­ence, The Sci­ence and Clin­i­cal Appli­ca­tions of Med­i­ta­tion, orga­nized with George­town Uni­ver­sity here in Wash­ing­ton in 2007.

What has struck me is that I’ve been mov­ing in this direc­tion for more four years, well before I started read­ing about these trends in neu­ro­science, men­tal health and well­ness. I was on the right track. Prob­a­bly, this meme had not gelled so cogently into an explicit mes­sage or I was pick­ing up strands of the news and asso­ci­ated them in my mind. After all, this kind of research has been going on for more than 20 years. But is even more mind bog­gling is that I can sit on my mat and expe­ri­ence this same prac­tice in a very per­sonal way.

Follow-​​up on the Begley Mind-​​Brain book

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I fin­ished read­ing the Sharon Beg­ley book, Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain (Bal­lan­tine Books, 2007). Actu­ally, I fin­ished it more than 10 days ago, but have not had a chance to write about it. Now, it’s hard to remem­ber what I wanted to do. I prob­a­bly should have been writ­ing as I was read­ing. Actu­ally, I was trav­el­ing dur­ing some of that time so I could not post to my blog. Lots of excuses, lots of things keep­ing me busy, lots of yoga and med­i­ta­tion that take first priority.

In brief, the book firmed up my own sense of hope about where we are headed in the brain sci­ences. The leap of knowl­edge and under­stand­ing over the past two decades has been huge. And we are only begin­ning to refor­mu­late the­o­ries of the mind and its work­ings. Freud as the great nav­i­ga­tor of the ego and id has been left behind. Even the chem­istry of Prozac and Val­ium seem to be the psy­cho­log­i­cal equiv­a­lent of alchemy.

The nar­ra­tive ran out of gas in the last three chap­ters. Beg­ley depended on psy­cho­log­i­cal stud­ies and inter­views of researchers for the meat of her con­tent. That for­mula can be dry read­ing once it is repeated over 250 pages. Even the lit­er­ary ruse of mak­ing the Dalai Lama the focal point of the nar­ra­tive can squeeze only so much drama. Beg­ley prob­a­bly could have spared us some of the dry details and gone straight to the con­clu­sions of each study.

Other takes

I was struck by the large num­ber of pod­casts that are avail­able on the book. Blog Crit­ics (March). National Pub­lic Radio (NPR) has two pro­grams: Diane Rehm Pro­gram via Odeo and Talk of the Nation. Dr. Gin­ger Camp­bell Brain Sci­ence Pod­cast, Psy­chjour­ney Pod­casts and Heal­ing the Mind. I have not had a chance to lis­ten to all of them.

Psy­chother­apy Net­worker The Won­ders of Neu­ro­plas­tic­ity, Dis­cover: Rewiring the Brain, Brain Tech­nolo­gies and Dana Foun­da­tion.

For addi­tional back­ground, here’s Sharon Begley’s Newsweek bio and the Richard Davidson’s per­sonal page at the Uni­ver­sity of Wisconsin’s Lab for Affec­tive Neuroscience.