FOUR SUN SALUTATIONS

I just finished a really great book by Brian Leaf entitled "Misadventures of a Garden State Yogi".... it is hysterically funny, irreverant, touching and full of wisdom.  The subtitle of the book is "my humble quest to heal my colitis, calm my ADD and find the key to happiness."  Let me set up the scene for the excerpts I am going to site... he is at Georgetown University... 17 years old... never taken a yoga class...his intention was to walk-on to the Georgetown debate team. 

      "I am sitting on a long bench outside a classroom in Georgetown's Yates athletic building waiting for the teacher to show up.  This is 1989, so as you visualize this scene, incorporate lots of very tight spandex, neon sweatbands, leg warmers, and feathered hair.  I'm waiting on the bench as woman after woman shows up.  We've got freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors, and grad students, and they're all women.  No other men.  At all.  I am brand new to yoga, so I have no idea what's going on.  I am seventeen years old and surrounded by thirty-one women, all wearing tight spandex.   " ...soon the yoga teacher showed up.  And he was unmistakeably the yoga teacher.  Either that, or he was from the drama department and had come straight from Georgetown's production of The Ten Commandments."  Oskar even looked Indian to me (though I later found out that he was Peruvian).  He had a big Alan-from The Hanover beard, his clothes were all white and he was wearing leather sandals."

"One of the debaters, who resembled Draco Malfoy in every way, showed me around and informed me, "No one walks onto the Georgetown debate team." 

"Enter Oskar... yoga class began with the prayer of St. Francis, "Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.  Where there is hatred, let me sow love" and ended with "Let there be peace on Earth.  Let peace begin with me.  Let there be peace on Earth, the peace that was meant to be."    Lying in relaxation pose at the end of class, I realized:
                     "This feels good."
                     "I'm going to be doing this a lot."
                     "Wow, I am not going to join the debate team."

So... skip to two years later... he has a bad bout of colitis and the doctor wants to put him on medicine that would make him temporarily sterile, but that he could go off of later in life when he wanted to have children.  Seemed pretty harsh to him.   So....

"One evening in October 1990, I noticed that my symptoms were worse on days that I had skipped yoga.  And I wondered, therefore, if doing more yoga would lessen the symptoms.  For me, this was a giant leap.  I had never heard of a mind-body connection.  I had no clue that the choices I made could affect my health.  I know that sounds crazy, but I was that ignorant.  Once I made the connection, I decided to medicate my condition with yoga.  I self-medicated with four sun salutations, followed by ten minutes of deep relaxation, five times a day.  Taking these twenty-minute yoga breaks five times every day was a huge time investment.  But it felt like the right thing to do.  I was a man on a mission.  I was Rocky in Rocky IV.  And my effort proved worthwhile.  Because three days later my symptoms were gone.  GONE!  No losing weight and becoming lethargic. No medicine that made me sterile.  No colostomy bag.  I was elated.  It actually makes perfect sense that yoga would help colitis.  Sun salutations involve a repeated sequence of forward-and backward bending yoga postures.  These poses stretch, relax and massage the muscles and organs in the abdomen and stimulate circulation and energy flow--all of which increases oxygen levels and improves cellular waste removal."

I LOVE THIS... yoga is powerful!!!   POWERFUL.