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Yoga Journal's Makeover Blogs
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| January 2007 »
I was born in Milan, Italy and came to America on a boat with my parents. We settled in Boston, where I grew up and attended some of the finest schools, including Harvard. After college I realized that San Francisco was where I belonged.
When I was in school I was thin and athletic. I played basketball, and ran track against some of the finest athletes in the world—several of whom went on to the Olympics.
After a few years hiatus post-college, during which I spent some time in Mexico and picked up a passable usage of the Spanish language, I decided on law as a career. I thought it would be something that would hold my interest for a lifetime. Also, I was a frustrated actor and needed an audience that couldn’t leave.
I worked for a year for the late, great Melvin Belli (King of Torts and King of Egos) and then attended Golden Gate Law School. I finished first in my class at Golden Gate Law School, then was accepted as a U. S. Department of Justice Honors Graduate and went to Washington D.C. I was in the organized crime and racketeering program in the hey day of the Mafia. I worked with the FBI to prosecute high level Mafia capos—bigger even than Tony Soprano. We used wiretaps, bugs, and anything else the Attorney General approved.
As interesting as it was working in Washington, I wanted to be in the courtroom, so I returned to San Francisco as a federal prosecutor. This is where the action got heavy! I tried 15 conspiracy cases in a row—mostly large scale international drug dealers as well as the first RICO case ever tried in this area.
In 1981, I began my own law practice and started specializing in taking on big, greedy corporations and stingy insurance companies.
I got married and had two beautiful daughters (who both now practice yoga). Then, about three and a half years ago, crashed and burned in a divorce.
During the latter stages of my marriage, I developed a steady—3-4 times a week Bikram practice, but then popped my knee in Supta Virasana (Reclining Hero Pose). Surgery on my knee was unsuccessful. The doctor said the cartilage was removed, but now I had bone-on-bone! I had to figure out how to walk again—no way was I going to undergo a knee replacement! I swam, lifted weights, rowed, and then, in early 2006, after the most grueling and frustrating jury trial of my life against Wal-mart and an army of lawyers, finally decided that my health had to be first on my list of priorities.
The grace of God led me to Jason and that is how I began to renew the use of my knee. I know now the knee is merely the catalyst for the development of my inner spirit.
All the other stuff was just the beginning. Now, I feel like I am younger (with a bad knee) and I have great hope for the future! I’m almost ready to leave the law profession and become a full time yogi, but still need the money and, after all, how many Downward Dogs can you do in one day?
I should also mention that my Zazen practice has been integral to my life for the past 25 years. I think Zazen and yoga together are a phenomenal combination, which I intend to stay with until I drop. These two arts work like rocket fuel for the soul.
Triathletes are possibly the biggest overachievers I’ve ever been around. Think about it, one sport is not enough. They have to do three sports all in a row—swim, bike, then run! While triathletes have all types of personalities, they are largely united by a fire in their bellies, a drive to persevere through mental and physical challenges. Of course perseverance is a good thing. But sometimes too much of a good thing can be bad. In the sport of triathlon, I have seen how for many athletes, myself included, what starts out as a healthy challenge can become an unhealthy obsessive-compulsive attitude, eventually leading to injuries, illness, burn-out, or worse. Going into my ninth year as a triathlete now, I’ve watched many athletes come and go because of this tendency to do too much.
For me, it was love at first "tri"'. I spent my first few seasons racing every other weekend, traveling for national and world championships, addicted to the exhilaration of getting fitter and faster. I found myself chasing after better race results and a collection of silly trophies and medals. Over time, my body started sending me signals that it had had enough of the traveling and racing. My energy, mood, and health were on a constant rollercoaster ride, and my sports performance suffered from racing and training too aggressively.
Eventually, I paid attention to these signals, raced less, and gave myself time to rekindle my fundamental love for the outdoors. I began to reconnect with the simple joy of swimming, biking, and running with my friends, the reason why I got into the sport in the first place! It was clear that my enjoyment had little to do with the trophies or medals.
During this time of transition, I also began graduate school to study Traditional Chinese Medicine. TCM’s most fundamental principle is about maintaining balance between yin and yang, stress and recovery, work and rest. This basic philosophy was brought to light for me during my clinical training, observing how long-term imbalances led to illness and disease. In time, I came to see my athletics in that same light, and understood that my athletic longevity and sports performance depends on a balanced approach to my training and lifestyle.
To help create that balance in my athletic training and self-care, I looked to practices like QiGong, TaiJi, and very recently, yoga. I have just started studying yoga, and already, it has given me valuable tools for maintaining the sense of balance that I’m seeking. With practice, I know yoga will help me be more attentive to my mind-body needs and take corrective actions before small imbalances become big problems.
Perhaps more importantly, yoga is teaching me how to slow down and experience my mind-body in a completely non-competitive way! I am finding that, by removing the competitive ego, I can better pay attention to and respect early signs of overtraining, injury, or illness. This non-competitive attitude has started carrying over to my athletics. I find that I’m inclined to focus more on swimming/biking/running with ease and fluidity, rather than how fast I can go or how hard I can push myself. In this way, every single training session can be juicy and rewarding in its own right, instead of being a chore in my quest for narrowly defined goals like a podium stand at the next race.
I hope that athletes everywhere will benefit from my six-month experiment with Yoga Journal to uncover what a consistent yoga practice could do for training. Thanks for reading!
Sometimes things are just meant to be. After spending almost seven years as an associate at a large law firm, I changed jobs less than two months ago. I wanted to do something different—something more interesting and more meaningful and more, well, me. But most of all I wanted balance, which is in short supply in the law firm world. So when a friend at my old job forwarded me the e-mail from the Bay Club a mere two days after I started the new job, it felt like it was meant just for me. It was the universe’s way of pushing me along.
I’ve had those moments before . . . a few years ago I was training for a triathlon, and one morning when I was so tired and so sore and so sick of training that I had made up my mind to quit, I got into my office and had a message from my gym that I’d won a bike. You just can’t ignore signs like that. The makeover story e-mail was the same. New job, new mindset, new body—a new me. I’ll be like those women in Yoga Journal who look completely at peace, their bodies still and beautiful while they hold some pose that right now seems a million years away. And, I’m hoping, that peace will permeate everything I do.
I know it would take a lifetime of study to achieve the inner- and outer-peace of a yogini, but hopefully I’ll get part of the way there. Along the way, I want to learn to embrace the process, not the goal. I want balance. I want to take time each day to nourish every part of me. So instead of working like a mad woman one week, relaxing the next, and going to the gym every day the week after that, I want to try integrating each thing into my life every day. Instead of strictly dieting one week and eating doughnuts the next, I want to be health-conscious everyday—with some occasional chocolate.
My natural state is more frenetic than balanced. It will be a struggle to adjust to a calmer way of being. I will need to slow down and develop patience, even though a big part of me is afraid that in doing so, I’ll lose some central part of myself—or that I’ll lose that part of myself, but see no other change. That is, without a doubt, my biggest fear. Change is a funny thing. Because it’s incremental, it’s hard to see (which is why I lose patience with diets and quit them, or get frustrated with the gym and stop going.) I don’t want this to be another thing that I don’t sustain. My hope is that, through yoga, I can learn to embrace and celebrate small changes both to my body and my mind. And of course, that in six months I’ll be strong and slender and able to twist my body like a pretzel!
We’re often asked by people skeptical of yoga, "Can it really help me {lose weight, get fit, heal an injury}?"Of course, we always say yoga can do all that and more. So we decided to put our money where our mouth is and give three novices a yoga makeover. No, we won’t be putting them in the best booty-boosting yoga pants or applying the newest to-die-for vegan mineral makeup. We’re talking about a soul-transforming makeover; one that will introduce the participants to yoga while addressing an issue that’s affecting their quality of life.
After puttingout a call for volunteers, we found three brave souls who fit the bill. They are Leah Castella, a lawyer who wants to lose weight; Edith Chan, a triathlete who wants to prevent injuries and burnout; and Mark Webb, a lawyer with a knee injury.
Please read their stories in the Feburary issue of Yoga Journal (on newsstands now), and follow their progress by reading their weekly blog entries here.
Jason Crandell is the Yoga Director at The San Francisco Bay Club, a regular presenter at Yoga Journal conferences, and staff instructor at Yoga Journal magazine. He has been the Yoga Journal’s "Basics" columnist and has been featured in Natural Health, Yoga For Everybody, 7x7, and San Francisco Magazine. Jason has had the great fortune of apprenticing extensively with Rodney Yee (and studying with countless other teachers with recognizable names). But, more than any other qualifier, Jason just really loves to practice and teach.
"It is teachers and practitioners like Jason that will take the art of yoga and teaching yoga to its next step." Rodney Yee
"(Jason) has a knack for explaining extremely subtle body movements in a way that anyone can understand. With his low-key charm and deadpan humor, Crandell puts students at ease right away." Yoga Journal
"The best. His patience and knowledge of backbends was worth the whole cost of the conference." Beginning student attending 2006 San Francisco Yoga Journal Conference
Mark was on top of the world. He had started his own law practice, which allowed him to take on big, greedy corporations and stingy insurance companies. He was married with two beautiful daughters. And he took pride in his consistent yoga practice (3-4 Bikram sessions a week).
Unfortunately, things started looking down when he injured his knee in an enthusiastic attempt at Supta Virasana (Reclining Hero Pose). Surgery to have his cartilage removed&mash;and other attempts at rehabilitation—proved unsuccessful. He had to learn how to walk again. His marriage dissolved. He lost one of the most grueling and frustrating jury trials of his life.
Suddenly, things started to come into perspecitve for Mark. He realized his health had to be his first priority. Mark began working with yoga teacher Jason Crandell as an effort to nurse his knee, and his emotions, back to health. Can a kinder, gentler approach to yoga help him heal? Keep reading to find out.
Edith Chan has been competing in triathlons (swim-bike-run) since 1998. She is actively involved with the SF Tri Club and coaches their popular indoor cycling program. In 2007, Edith plans to complete her first Ironman distance event (2.4-mile swim, 112-mile bike, 26.2-mile run) at Ironman Austria.
Under the tutelage of Jason Crandell, she is exploring how a consistent yoga practice can enhance recovery between workouts, prevent injuries, and instill a sense of balance and sanity while training for one of the more insane athletic endeavors!
After studying math at Harvard and a four-year stint in cubicles, computers, and stock options, Edith surprised everyone but herself when she decided to pursue her childhood dream of becoming a traditional Chinese healer. She went on to complete a four-year graduate program in Chinese Medicine and is now a Licensed Acupuncturist and Herbalist in private practice in San Francisco. She also specializes in orthopedic bodywork for injury rehabilitation. While she's only a beginning yoga student, she views yoga, along with Taiji and qi gong, to be indispensible in her ongoing education and self-care as a practitioner of holistic sports medicine.
Leah Castella is one of the subjects of Yoga Journal’s Yoga Makeover stories. As a shameless fan of magazine and television makeover stories, Leah is extremely excited to be on the other side of the page for a change.
Leah grew up in Texas, but couldn’t resist the pull of the Pacific. After high school, she moved to Portland, Oregon to attend Lewis and Clark College. She reluctantly left the West Coast for law school in Austin, Texas, but returned immediately after graduation. She has lived in the Bay Area ever since. Leah is an attorney at an East Bay law firm, and breaks up the work day by coaching a high school mock trial team and a law school moot-court team. She also sits on the board of the San Francisco School District’s Law Academy, and is the Executive Director of the Women's Debate Institute.
Leah lives in the Mission District in San Francisco, and spends her spare time throwing dinner parties for friends, reading tarot cards, playing poker, and traveling. She’s a yoga novice, but is excited to develop a favorite pose. She has a sneaking suspicion it’s not going to be Downward-Facing Dog (Adho Mukha Svanasana).
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