Yoga Meets Science

Speaking as yogini, yoga teacher and librarian, I relish when new books are published on the subject of yoga. The Science of Yoga, which was five years in the making by New York Times science writer, William J. Broad, offers a collection of “scientific evidence” regarding yoga.

In yoga’s social media scene, (facebook and twitter) this book has gotten a lot of attention. Most of the book’s buzz relates to the portion of the book dedicated to “risks.” For dedicated yoga practitioners and teachers this "risks" perspective can be alarming.

I once had a yoga teacher say, “all feedback is neutral, it’s how we respond to the information that makes it positive or negative.” I’m taking that approach to Broad’s book. Sure, there’s plenty of content that makes me scowl a little. I feel skeptical regarding the methods of certain cited scientific studies. Although, ultimately, this book gets more information out there on the topic of yoga and science. As a librarian, I think more information is always a good thing. Access to information is how we make graceful, educated decisions about many things in life including the bigger stuff like how to live each day. I especially like Mr. Broad’s plea, near the end of the book, for more scientific research on the effects of yoga.

Several of the book’s most potent bits of information come right at the beginning. There’s a useful yoga history timeline and a list of yoga “characters” with brief summaries. Both of these tools are detailed and in alignment with what I’ve studied, without being too complex, esoteric or inaccessible to yoga novices. The book’s reporting is delivered through endearing stories of how the author came to discover it, which makes it easy to relate to and conversational. Broad concentrates on the topic of the physical poses (asana) and their effects, while avoiding the more veiled and complex subject of yoga philosophy and its effects.

Although much of the book’s media hype is a result of the controversial image of yoga portrayed by Mr. Broad, it’s worthwhile to know that Broad has been practicing yoga since the early 1970s and continues today. He read, studied and collected all this scientific information, thought it over, incorporated it into his personal practice and decided to share the information with others, (meanwhile making some extra bucks selling a book). The fact that he keeps on doing yoga after learning all that he did, is testament enough to me that the rewards far outweigh the risks. And what’s the risk of getting more information anyway? That you might make an educated choice about how you do your yoga. I think that’s pretty positive!

For this book and other books on the topic of yoga please see this month’s 2nd floor book display.

Fever Crumb

Assassins made of paper able to slip in the narrowest of openings. Skinners who work to eliminate the world of Patchskins. And, an army of living dead made up of Stalkers. For 14 year old Fever Crumb, these are just the beginnings of her troubles. An orphan raised by a college of engineers to value logic above all else, she stumbles upon a secret that threatens to shed light on who she really is and where she came from. Follow her as she races around a futuristic London trying to find out the truth of her past as chaos and bloodshed blossom around her.

Exciting and suspenseful, FEVER CRUMB by Philip Reeve is a believable fantasy with a satisfying ending. Not your typical coming of age story, Fever is a character who struggles between being rational and giving in to her emotions as she desperately tries to find out who she really is. Full of science and humorous references to our daily indulgences, "blog off!," it enables us to connect to a future which is not as sleek or highly cultured as we commonly imagine.

This prequel to the Mortal Engines Quartet (Hungry City Chronicles) is able to stand alone as its own story. Or, it can become the doorway that invites you to read on, following the path of society after the Sixty Minute War.

Spring Is Here ... and the Bugs Too

In this video from Big Think, anthropologist Hugh Raffles at The New School asks us to resist the urge to kill insects and explains why:

Don’t swat a fly and don’t smush a spider. You don’t need to do that and just think about how interesting they are and maybe just look at them. I think we can--I really do think it enriches our lives to look at them and to pay attention to them.

Man Up: Paul Offit

The NY Times reports that Paul Offit, a doctor and author of the new book Autism's False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine, and the Search for a Cure, is under siege.

Some opponents of his book--and his position on vaccines--have submitted death threats and forced him to cancel his book tour.

In recent years, the debate over vaccines and autism, which began in fear and confusion, has hardened into anger. As Dr. Offit’s book details, numerous studies of thimerosal, measles virus and other alleged autism triggers in vaccines have been conducted, and hundreds of children with diagnoses of autism have undergone what he considers sham treatments and been "cured." Both sides insist that the medical evidence backs them ...

Dr. Offit’s book traces the history of autism theories, starting with the child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim’s blaming "refrigerator mothers." It describes early false cures, including "facilitated communication," in which assistants helped mute children type their thoughts; head-squeezing by osteopaths; cod liver oil; diets; and a 1998 fad for secretin, a pig hormone. It sums up 16 epidemiological studies showing no link between autism and either measles or thimerosal, a vaccine preservative.

To the newer argument that vaccines overwhelm babies’ immune systems, Dr. Offit notes that current shots against 14 diseases contain 153 proteins, while babies cope with thousands of new foreign proteins daily in food, dirt and animal hair, and that the smallpox vaccine that nearly every American over age 30 got as a child contained 200 proteins.

If this subject interests you, have a look at Vaccine: The Controversial Story of Medicine's Greatest Lifesaver by Arthur Allen.

Or try Evidence of Harm: Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic: A Medical Controversy by David Kirby.

Earth Day 2008

A National Wildlife Foundation blogger offers a checklist of activities you might do to celebrate Earth Day. Here's one example:

Turning Off [Your] Computer to Walk Outside: There's so much noise during the day that I'm feeling the need to find a quiet place and listen to sounds that don't resemble a keyboard. I'm sure most people aren't online as much as I am, but I truly feel recharged when I'm away from plugs that feed my laptop. And since it's Earth Day I'm going to try and make it longer than just a green hour.

Other ideas can be gleaned from publications like The Green Book by Elizabeth Rogers and Thomas Kostigen and The Lazy Environmentalist by Josh Dorfman. Or maybe you've not yet seen An Inconvenient Truth, available on DVD.

Illinois Lt. Governor Pat Quinn yesterday commended the city of Urbana for being a charter member of the Tree City program and for other earth-conscious projects.

Tree City USA has four main requirements, which includes spending $2 per capita on trees, establishing a tree board or having a city arborist, celebrating Arbor Day and having a tree ordinance. The tree ordinance guides the community on how to care for their trees ... Urbana has 120 trees per linear mile of street, making it one of the most densely populated cities for trees in the country.

Man Up: One-Way Mission to Mars

Jim McLane, a former NASA engineer, wants to see a manned craft sent to the Red Planet. His proposal: find someone to go alone and with no expectation of return.

“When we eliminate the need to launch off Mars, we remove the mission’s most daunting obstacle,” said McLane. And because of a small crew size, the spacecraft could be smaller and the need for consumables and supplies would be decreased, making the mission cheaper and less complicated.

While some might classify this as a suicide mission, McLane feels the concept is completely logical ... "People do dangerous things all the time, and this would be something really unique, to go to Mars. I don’t think there would be any shortage of people willing to volunteer for the mission."

And who might such people be?

According to psychologist Molly Dooley from Springfield, Ill., ... “Usually it’s the disenfranchised that are willing to take those kinds of risks,” she said. “When our present situation no longer works for us, we become more willing to take risks. The difference between the folks who are interested and those who aren’t is their attachment to their current situation.”

NASA is waiting for you.

Convergence

Karl Iagnemma's remarkable debut novel The Expeditions is a book of journeys both real and metaphorical. In 1844, Massachusetts runaway Elisha Stone makes it to the frontier town of Detroit, Michigan and signs on to an exploratory expedition to the uncharted territory of the Upper Peninsula. Before he embarks, he sends a letter back home to his mother, his first communication in three years. Unbeknownst to Elisha, his mother has died and the letter inspires his father, the Reverend William Edward Stone, to set forth on his own expedition in an attempt to reconnect with his son.

The novel is at heart Elisha's coming-of-age story, but the mid-nineteenth century was a tumultuous period in our nation's history and Iagnemma offers a rich portrait of the time, with its growing confrontation between science and religion, the rise of sectarian division and spiritualism in the American religious tradition, and continuing racial and ethnic conflict as the nation grew in diversity and pushed westward.

Karl Iagnemma is a bit of an oddity in the world of fiction: his day job is with the mechanical engineering department at MIT where he specializes in robotics research. Most robotics engineers do not write fiction and this scientific and technical background brings an interesting perspective to his writing. Iagnemma is a native of Michigan and is fascinated with both the history of science and of the Great Lakes. Prior to this novel, he published a prize-winning collection of short stories: On the Nature of Human Romantic Interaction. Those who have enjoyed the works of Andrea Barrett should definitely check out Karl Iagnemma.