LauraPratt33's blog

There are lots of things I like about yoga.
I like the way my muscles are like elastics when I’ve finished a class and bounced into the sunshine.
I like the way my brain feels like something John Lennon might have sung about after the last asana has unfolded and my instructor has bid me peace.
I like the way my day runs like water when it starts out on a mat.
But every bit as much as I like all of that, I like the company I keep when I hang with the yoga freaks.

It had been an unusual day from the start.

First, there was the hail. Then, there was the pizza. And then, at last, there was the yoga.

Exactly what gifts yoga has to bestow on those chronic conditions modern medicine diagnoses in our fragile, mortal selves is not yet clear. But it's becoming so.

Increasingly, stories surface of the myriad ways in which yoga is curing diabetes, cancelling cancer, erasing arthritis. The life-healing energy produced by yoga's efforts, say those who believe, help us to "negotiate" our diseases.

It sounds unlikely, frankly, but the argument is based on science. Years of research have confirmed that stress has an important part to play in the functioning of the immune system, and that it contributes to the development and progression of immune-based diseases such as cancer, juvenile diabetes and AIDS.

Blame it on whatever you will-the sagging economy, the snoring schnauzer, the bedtime guzzles of caffeinated refreshment-but I have been suffering some serious sleeplessness over the last little bit.

My routines haven't changed: I still drop into bed with David Letterman every night and wait for sleep to claim me before the musical guest takes the stage.

But something's gone wonky recently and my sweet nightly withdrawal from the buzz of conscious existence has inexplicably gone south. Indeed, I'm still alive and kicking when Craig Ferguson's welcoming his musical guest to his little dog-and-pony show.

And that's simply not acceptable.

It's the easiest thing in the world. Breathe. Draw air into your lungs and then release. Doesn't require a speck of effort or an ounce of thought. Hell, try not breathing. Now that would be a feat.

This is what I believed before I knew better. Things are different now.

My first exposure to the art of breathing was actually in theatre class. There, in pursuit of a degree in performance, I came to understand that the act I'd performed so naturally up until then was not the reflexive, take-for-granted activity I'd always assumed. Breathing, it turns out, is not a breeze.

I was sitting at my desk today, peering out my window into sunshine, lamenting a season that had worn on too long, and reflecting on how little is actually asked of the human body over the course of a day. Wouldn't it be extraordinary, I mused from my cubicle, if we could somehow engage both body and mind more mutually, as a matter of course? Which got me thinking about corporate yoga.

It's a subject that occupies the minds of an increasing number of folks these days, as the concept of doing yoga on the job bridges successfully the divide between "out there" and "in here."

I stumbled upon a rare and beautiful display of yoga today in a spot no less sublime than youtube.com-and it gave me the most curious sense of calm.

The Krisnamacharya yoga film is a silent movie produced in 1938 (watch it at www.youtube.com/watch?v=cd_eTupTCbI) that shows the great yoga teacher Sri Tirumala Krisnamacharya demonstrating asana and pranyama. The thing is so old that any claim it once had to copyright has expired.

A recent Gallup poll reports that the average soul out there is now floating about the place without the usual confidence in the salvation that organized religion extends as part of its packaged deal. Where just three years ago, half of the American population declared the influence of religion on their lives to be on the climb, new numbers show that just a quarter of them are as optimistic today. And a full two-thirds say religion as a whole is losing ground in their daily grinds.

This past week, I went to a new Moksha yoga studio that opened in my neighbourhood to try my hand at hot yoga. While I find I get plenty hot in my regular yoga classes, I had yet to attend a bona fide hot yoga session and was curious. And, I'm here to tell you, I got hot. But not entirely for those reasons you might think.

It was an insanely frigid day and I was craving a hit of heat like salvation. So I bounced up the stairs to the second-floor studio, which spreads itself handsomely above a tattered variety store, and sallied into a classroom almost too late for admittance (there's a strictly observed 15-minutes-before-class arrival expectation here).

There are a lot of stories floating around the recession-stung ether these days that seek to pluck thin silver linings from an abundance of dense grey cloud cover. These are the pieces intent on celebrating the current economic crisis, by pointing out opportunities for clever, conscious entrepreneurs to capitalize on widespread reversal of fortune. Those same articles make reference to businesses that are so-called "recession proof" or, better yet, "recession friendly."

Yoga, I would submit, falls tidily into both of these categories.