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A $20 million yoga and Ayurveda center, modeled after Swami Ramdev's Patanjali Yog Peeth in Haridwar, India, is being built in Rosenberg, Texas, reports Rediff India Abroad.
"As many as 30 percent people in the U.S. cannot afford medical treatment because of the cost. Our aim at this center would be to treat and cure such people through yoga and traditional Indian medical systems," Swami Ramdev told Rediff.
The center is scheduled to open in two years, although Swami Ramdev would like it to open next summer. Swami Ramdev claims to have cured millions of people in India of diabetes, asthma, hypertension, obesity, and arthritis solely through yoga. He hopes to do the same in the United States and is striving to create a "disease-free world." Possible? What do you think?
According to Gawker.com, an editor at the the Wall Street Journal owns a yoga studio, and in a piece on the business of yoga, one of her employees was quoted. "Tina Gaudoin was brought over to the WSJ from the UK early this year to edit the paper's upcoming 'lifestyle magazine.' She's also the owner of Triyoga, a chain of yoga studios in the UK . . . it was so hard for the WSJ to find a good yoga-as-business quote that they ended up using this one, from Claire Missingham: Finance 'is the antithesis of what yoga is about in terms of inner peace,' says Claire Missingham, a yoga teacher in London. But Ms. Missingham, whose pupils have included bankers and hedge-fund managers, says it can be highly beneficial for them. Yoga traditionalists say practicing yoga should be about more than just gaining physical benefits: It's a way of approaching life, including work. 'Yoga teaches you to embrace fear and cultivate patience,' says Ms. Missingham. That's the Claire Missingham who happens to work at Gaudoin's Triyoga Soho!" What do you think of the quote itself and using Missingham as a source?
One of the most powerful ways you can affect change is by carefully choosing how you spend (or don't spend) your money, right? Imagine if everyone bought organic! One way to learn more about investing is www.ethicalmarkets.com. You can watch Ethical Markets TV, link to social investment indexes, and more. How do you choose to spend, or not spend, your money? Do you avoid certain retailers, invest, buy organic?
Yoga clubs and classes are providing stress relief for high-pressure MBA students, reports Business Week magazine. Yoga is growing in popularity among MBA candidates at University of Chicago, MIT, Harvard, and Northwestern. Business students "tend to be extremely self-driven and highly competitive. To have an hour [that's] not about self-improvement prevents burnout to get through the hectic part of the semester." Do you think it is possible for the tenets of yoga to creep into the business world? Or are business and yoga, for the most part, incompatible?
On August 24 and 25, during the Democratic National Convention in Denver, the Yoga Health Foundation and OmPass will produce the Yoga Month Denver Health Festival at the Minsuk Cho Architectural Pavilion for Public Discourse. The yoga festival, which will feature yoga experts, green and holistic vendors, and medical practitioners, is geared toward cultivating an action plan for conquering the U.S. health care crisis. For more information, please visit www.yogamonth.org. Do you think politicians will take notice?
Swami Ramdev just finished conducting two "camps" in New York and New Jersey, yet, unlike B.K.S. Iyengar and others, he is not a household name in America. He is particularly well-known for his efforts in popularizing pranayama and yoga (which he pronounces "yog") in India and Europe. Sri Sri Ravi Shankar is quoted as saying "If an individual can be credited with reviving yoga in this country (India), it is solely Swami Ramdev. Yoga can cure even fatal diseases and Swami Ramdev has definitely proved it time and again." Do you follow Swami Ramdev? What have you learned from his style of yoga?
Maybe you've quit caffeine because you think it undermines the peace and balance that comes from your yoga practice. But, in addition to its cancer-preventing properties, here's another reason to drink green tea: A study published in the European Journal of Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation showed that green tea improves blood flow and the ability of arteries to relax, thus helping to prevent heart disease, reports Reuters. Are you a green tea drinker? If so, why? Which type do you like best?
Sherry Zak Morris, who co-owns The Yoga Vista Studio in Vista, Calif., and Gayna Scott have created a simple way to learn about health, nutrition, yoga, meditation, and more. The website www.take5moment.com is a library of five-minute informative videos. Let me know what you think.
Researchers have discovered how meditation and yoga improve health, reports The Washington Post. "It's not all in your head," said Dr. Herbert Benson, president emeritus of the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind/Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. "What we have found is that when you evoke the relaxation response, the very genes that are turned on or off by stress are turned the other way. The mind can actively turn on and turn off genes. The mind is not separated from the body."
"We all are under stress and have many manifestations of that stress," Benson added. "To adequately protect ourselves against stress, we should use an approach and a technique that we believe evokes the relaxation response 20 minutes, once a day."
I'm sure many yogis out there are not surprised by this news, but did you ever think yoga might actually be affecting your genes?
Some New Yorkers are bringing their phones to the mat. Why? Because a group of yoga instructors are now offering "one-on-one phone yoga sessions for clients who are out of town but in need of a holistic workout," reports the New York Daily News. "Phone yoga has been adopted by a group of students at Namaste New York, which offers yoga, Pilates, massage therapy and nutrition counseling. They are all intermediate or advanced level pupils who normally have in-person solo lessons, but because of work or family demands, occasionally need an alternative." Is this something your would be will to try as a student, or offer as a yoga teacher?
On June 22nd, a group of yogis rolled out their mats on both sides of the fence that separates Tijuana, Mexico, and San Diego. "The international group stretched and meditated together before exchanging hugs through the fence bars," reports the Associated Press. "The session was organized by the Border Meetup Group, which promotes cross-border understanding by staging social events on the divided beach." Did anyone participate? What do you think about using yoga "to make friends across cultural, political, societal, even emotional barriers?"
If you are a vegan yogis, you are already well on your way to fighting prostate cancer. Researchers found that this combination "seems to switch on genes that fight disease, while effectively turning off others that can promote cancer," reports the U.K.'s Telegraph. The findings were reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Dr. Dean Ornish, working with Dr. Christopher Haqq and Prof. Peter Carroll. How has a vegan diet and yoga affected your health?
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