Yoga

[GeneChing]

This new study is making the rounds and eliciting some pop news reports. I'm curious about the measures involved.

Mind-body practices and the self: yoga and meditation do not quiet the ego, but instead boost self-enhancement
Gebauer, Jochen, Nehrlich, A.D., Stahlberg, D., Sedikides, Constantine, Hackenschmidt, D, Schick, D, Stegmaie, C A, Windfelder, C. C, Bruk, A and Mander, J V (2018) Mind-body practices and the self: yoga and meditation do not quiet the ego, but instead boost self-enhancement. Psychological Science, 1-22. (In Press)

Record type: Article
Abstract
Mind-body practices enjoy immense public and scientific interest. Yoga and meditation are highly popular. Purportedly, they foster well-being by “quieting the ego” or, more specifically, curtailing self-enhancement. However, this ego-quieting effect contradicts an apparent psychological universal, the self-centrality principle. According to this principle, practicing any skill renders it self-central, and self-centrality breeds self-enhancement. We examined those opposing predictions in the first tests of mind-body practices’ self-enhancement effects. Experiment 1 followed 93 yoga students over 15 weeks, assessing self-centrality and self-enhancement after yoga practice (yoga condition, n = 246) and without practice (control condition, n = 231). Experiment 2 followed 162 meditators over 4 weeks (meditation condition: n = 246; control condition: n = 245). Self-enhancement was higher in the yoga (Experiment 1) and meditation (Experiment 2) conditions, and those effects were mediated by greater self-centrality. Additionally, greater self-enhancement mediated mind-body practices’ well-being benefits. Evidently, neither yoga nor meditation quiet the ego; instead, they boost self-enhancement.

Text Gebauer et al. 2018 Psych Science
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Accepted/In Press date: 3 February 2018
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 420273
URI: https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/420273
ISSN: 0956-7976
PURE UUID: fddff633-c628-428b-8c58-c51cfe7695de
Catalogue record
Date deposited: 03 May 2018 16:30
Last modified: 04 May 2018 04:01

THREADS:
Meditation
Yoga

[GeneChing]

Just out of curiosity, who here had done cadaver work? I did it when I took Anatomy & Physiology in college. That was one of the best college courses I ever took as an undergrad. I still tap on the knowledge I gained from that course.

Meet the yogis who hang out in cadaver labs
You can hone your corpse pose by hanging out with actual corpses.
By Erin Blakemore Yesterday at 10:30am


Corpse pose.
Zohar Lazar

Beverly Boyer knows bodies—the registered massage therapist soothes living muscles every day. But when Boyer describes the first time she peered inside a corpse, her voice lowers as if she’s recalling the start of a great romance. “Everything clicked,” she says. “Everything I had learned through my education—the anatomy, the physiology—I could see it right there.”

It’s a Tuesday night in February, and Boyer, standing in the basement of a funeral parlor, is doing her best to share her macabre love interest with others. In 2014, she founded what’s now called the Colorado Learning Center of Human Anatomy, which rents space in a Longmont mortuary, to give other flesh professionals—massage therapists, yoga teachers, acupuncturists, and energy workers, among others—access to deceased and donated bodies. Each week, dozens of Boyer’s students gather here to manipulate the soft tissue of cadavers, hoping to gain anatomical insight to apply to their own day jobs.

Hers is one of a handful of cadaver schools for the *nonmedical crowd that has risen up in the past several years. They promise unconventional students a sort of anatomical enlightenment, focusing on the body’s fascial layers, muscular origins, insertion points, nervous systems, and biomechanical functions (and dysfunctions).

As a local lover of science, yoga, and all things strange, I’ve long wondered what these idiosyncratic dissection *enthusiasts get out of their evenings with the deceased.

Tonight, I’m watching Boyer run a class for about a dozen yoga instructors. But she is not the teacher. That title belongs to Vesalius—the dead man whose foot the students are now passing around. Just prior to this, the students had nervously chattered while donning paper gowns, rubber gloves, and masks sometimes daubed in eucalyptus oil to staunch the stench of formaldehyde. But with Vesalius’ sole laid bare—whitish-yellow, oddly plush, threaded through with fibrous muscle and tendon—they fall silent.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” asks Boyer. She encourages them to feel the heft of their teacher’s heel in their hands.

As the foot makes its rounds, Boyer removes a towel covering the torso. She lifts layers of muscle and bone from his skinless, dissected midsection. “It looks like turkey,” says one of the students. Someone giggles, then stops abruptly.

Boyer is rooting around for Vesalius’ erector *spinae—​a muscle group that spans the length of the vertebral column. In yin yoga, the specialty of today’s group of students, one might access it with a long child’s pose, a forward bend that relaxes both the muscle and the fascia that covers it. The theory is that this release activates the parasympathetic nervous system, calming the body’s fight-or-flight impulse and unraveling physical stress.

As Boyer dips her hand into Vesalius’ hollowed-out torso, one student bounces from foot to foot; another’s eyes shine with what look like tears.

Dana Balafas, a bespectacled woman with *Instagram-​worthy bangs, stands away from the rest of class. As Boyer describes the erector spinae’s role in helping the body fold forward, Balafas suddenly drops her head down to her legs. Boyer pauses to ask if she’s feeling well.

“Yeah,” says Balafas, snapping back upright. She’s just trying to make sense of her own erector spinae.

Not long ago, few who weren’t doctors, coroners, or med students had a chance to handle a dissected cadaver. And as late as the 19th century, the corporeal cleavage that gave medical professionals their best pre-MRI glimpse into bodies came from plundered graves or the victims of public executions. Curious vivisectors broke all kinds of laws and social taboos to practice their craft.

“Even doctors and staff at medical schools were *involved in grave robbing,” says Raphael Hulkower, an endocrinologist who penned a research article on the history of dissection. The means may have been unsavory, he says, but grave robbing supported students’ desperate need to understand the workings of the biological machines they sought to repair. Even in our age of digital medicine and computer simulations, academics still believe that cadavers are the best way for students to study anatomy. It’s little wonder that yogis, driven as much by a desire to respect the body as to see its inner workings, have gotten into the act. And *Colo*rado—with two other facilities within a 100-mile radius of here regularly offering similar courses to Boyer’s—turns out to be a unique haven for those *looking to get out of corpse pose and into some actual corpses.

Boyer beat them all by a couple of decades. In 1995, two years into her career as a massage therapist, she persuaded a professor at Ohio State University to give her a tour of the cadaver lab. It would take a while, but she finally got into the business for herself. Nearly 400 students came through her doors in 2016, and more than 700 in 2017.

Among those who donate their remains to the stretch-and-release sciences: lawyers, construction workers, nurses, and teachers, most of them from the community and some of whom were yoga practitioners themselves. While still alive, donors can help decide which classes they will teach in the academic afterlife. They can also choose how much Boyer reveals to students about their lives and professions, information that can assist in the teaching.

Tonight’s teacher arrived at the center with only two identifiers (88, colon cancer). Boyer has named him *Vesalius for a 16th-century Flemish physician known as the founder of modern human anatomy. To encourage her students to connect to Vesalius, she shares the backstory she has given him based on his distinct physiology; she calls him her “rancher” because his right supraspinatus muscle—part of the rotator cuff—*carries tension lines that suggest repeated overhead use, lasso-style. And because his knees show hardly any signs of arthritis (very odd for a man his age), Boyer proposes that maybe he spent more time on a horse than his feet.

“He had really nice knees,” she says.

continued next post

[GeneChing]

Vesalius—the dead man whose foot the students are now passing around.
Zohar Lazar

Though devoted to my own yoga practice, I’m wary of the exaggerated claims and pseudoscience *often associated with the discipline. It might offer stress relief, help with pain management, and make people more flexible, but at its core, yoga is spiritual—and more often than not, spirit and science seem to diverge. So my ears perk up when Boyer veers off the hard-science stuff and pronounces the word “chakra,” the wheel-like energy centers that Eastern religions associate with one’s life force.

Is she about to show us some cluster of nerves that can *explain the “blockages” or “vibrations” of the third eye, or why a hip-opening yoga pose might realign out-of-whack sacral chakras and restore emotional well-being?

Not exactly. She stops short of making any scientific *extrapolations, but she’s happy to connect the dots.

“Here’s where his heart chakra would have been,” she says. She gestures toward Vesalius’ thoracic cavity in a moment more of meditative reflection than instruction. “The heart takes earth and stomach and connects it to heaven.”

Vesalius’ heart may connect him to heaven, but his butt is in a plastic bin by his feet. Boyer hands the tissue to a student. “That’s the glute,” she says. “Here, pull.” The student tugs on a long, leathery piece of iliotibial (IT) band.

His butt is in a plastic bin by his feet."

When attached to a leg, the IT band stretches from the posterior iliac crest above the gluteus maximus to the knee, helping the hip move. Tonight, Boyer uses Vesalius’ backside to demonstrate the resilience of connective tissue.

“Pull harder,” Boyer says. As the student lets it go, it *settles back into place. Boyer puts the butt back in the bin.

Boyer conveys a profound respect for people who donate their organs to science. She’s already committed her mortal remains to lie on the same steel slab one day. “Please thank the teachers in your own way *tonight,” she tells the students as the class breaks up.

Chattiness returns as the trainees slide out of their gowns, shoving used gloves into the trash and washing their hands. The towel-covered bodies still lie splayed on tables beside them. (A few quietly agree that Vesalius does indeed look a lot like turkey jerky.) But from now on, they concede, they’ll see dead people when they downward dog.

I gaze around at the mysterious-looking spray bottles, the moisture that drips from the cadavers and down drains in the metal tables, the quote about kindness displayed beside anatomical charts. Balafas tells me she’ll think of Vesalius’ spine whenever she’s tempted to skimp on her stretches, and as she prepares sequences for her yoga students. But having earlier handled the heart of “Miss V,” a teacher who died of brain cancer in her 80s, Balafas now has a curious request: She’d like to see inside the woman’s skull. Balafas’ mother, it turns out, died of the same. Boyer reveals an open cranium with the flick of a towel, explaining where the cancer was located and how little of the brain it compromised.

“She has a beautiful brain,” Boyer muses.

Erin Blakemore is a Boulder, Colorado–based journalist and author.

This article was originally published in the Summer 2018 Life/Death issue of Popular Science.

THREADS:
Can anyone recommend a good, clear anatomy book?
Yoga

[mrshungkuen]

Just wandering how many here practice yoga and how many days a week and how long is your practice?



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I practise Yin Yoga 2 times a week. Normally is a daily practise the best way to do it. But i also like other things

[GeneChing]

[GeneChing]

Aleda E. Lutz VA welcomes veterans to yoga and Tai Chi classes
Midland Daily News Published 9:18 am EDT, Monday, July 23, 2018

The Aleda E. Lutz VAMC in Saginaw has been heavily engaged in promoting integrative therapies, as part of the Whole Health Approach, to help veterans deal with pain, anxiety, depression, flexibility and other chronic health conditions.

Just recently, they have developed classes for veterans who are enrolled in VA health care in Tai Chi and yoga. Veterans can stop in on Thursdays for yoga which begins at 8:30 a.m. or Tai Chi which begins at 10 a.m. All classes are held at the VA Medical Center, 1500 Weiss St. in Saginaw, at the activities pavilion, located near the north parking lot.

"These types of exercise have helped many veterans achieve their health goals, reduce or manage pain, provide a sense of calm, and much more. We are fortunate to have the opportunity to offer these classes to veterans," said Dr. Barbara Bates, acting medical center director.

Veterans who would like to learn more about Whole Health and Integrative Therapies are encouraged to talk with their VA health care provider and team.

More information about the Aleda E. Lutz VAMC can be found at www.saginaw.va.gov

THREADS:
Tai Chi, Veterans & PTSD
Yoga

[GeneChing]

I'm posting this on our Beginnings of Shaolin Boxing - history thread because it has a lot of yoga talk, and also copying it to our yoga thread.

Yoga meets Zen in Shaolin Temple(1/8)
2018-08-27 15:30:35Ecns.cn Editor :Yao Lan
查看原图










Yoga and kung fu enthusiasts perform in a cultural festival on Mount Song, home to the Shaolin Temple, in Dengfeng, Central China’s Henan Province, Aug. 25, 2018. (Photo: China News Service/Wang Zhongju)

[GeneChing]

I was wondering what the photos above were about. The article below runs the same pix, except for what I've copied here.

Shaolin kung fu shares stage with yoga
chinadaily.com.cn | Updated: 2018-08-27 14:40

A yoga master and a Shaolin warrior monk perform similar movement on a shared stage of the closing ceremony of the 2018 Shaolin Martial Arts General Assembly at Mount Songshan, Henan province, Aug 25, 2018. [Photo/IC]
Yoga lovers and Shaolin monks performed together at the zen culture festival, a theme activity on the last day of the 2018 Shaolin Martial Arts General Assembly on Aug 25, at Mount Songshan, location of the Shaolin Temple, in Henan province.

The two exercises have been deeply influenced by zen Buddhism in their development. By inviting yoga lovers to the event, the audience had a better understanding and different experience of the zen culture.

Yoga and martial arts performers exercised on the various scenic spots of Mount Songshan. The world-renowned yoga masters were on the scene to lead the audience to practice yoga.

THREADS
Beginnings of Shaolin Boxing - history yoga

[GeneChing]

Why don't we have Death Metal Tai Chi? Cuz that would ROCK!!!

| Some of us Need a Little Bad to be Good
Brooklyn based Saskia Thode pushes her students to peak fitness using death metal and grindcore

Written by JESSICA BRINTON Photography by MARI SARAI
SEPTEMBER 21, 2015

Meet Saskia Thode, founder of Metal Yoga Bones, a Vinyasa-style yoga class based out of the Cobra Club in Bushwick, New York. A Brooklynite by way of Hamburg, Thode’s prescription for inner peace is an hour and a half of screaming and growling soundtracked by thrash metal and grindcore. This is not everyone’s path to bliss, but her growing following confirms what the Romans always knew: that some of us need to be a little bad before we can be good, even when it’s wellbeing that’s waiting for us at the end. Travel through the darkness and you will find the light.



Jessica Brinton: What happens in your classes?
Saskia Thode: I try to bring anger out in people. Sometimes you need to release it and where else is the space to do that? We warm up by jumping and boxing into the air, growling and having dance-offs. I play Black Sabbath, Def Leppard, Motorhead, some hair metal – whatever has a distinct beat. I want people to do what they would do at a show in front of the stage, except now they have all the room they need to express themselves.

“We don’t do sun salutations because we’re saluting the darkness.”

When did you first get into metal?
My mother was a metalhead so I grew up listening to Manowar, Iron Maiden, Terroriser and Sodom. When I was a kid, we went to metal festivals in Europe and even with 8,000 people, there were never any fights because there was an outlet for negative emotions.

How did Metal Yoga Bones start?
When I was going my teacher training, I would be playing metal at home. We were supposed to come up with a playlist and my teacher said, it’s important to do whatever you feel like doing. So I made a metal playlist. I started playing it for yoga with friends in the park, and one day the Cobra Club said, why don’t you do that in the back of the club?

Yoga is sacred and metal is profane. How can they co-exist?
They’re way more aligned than that. Metal has a lot of spiritual aspects to it and they are both very connected to nature. The difference is that metal acknowledges the darkness we carry too. The sound of it can be a trigger for letting that out, and releasing some aggression and anger. Extreme music actually makes you calmer, not angrier. When the music is faster than your feelings, it can help you clear out your head.

How does that express itself in your classes?
The classes are as intense as possible. Halfway through, I play death metal and grind to push the students further. I put on Death, Suffocation, Sodom, Possessed, Venom, Nile, and Onslaught, and try to **** them off by having them hold standing poses for ages. I’ll say; “Are you angry now? I can’t hear you! Tell me how angry you are …” The emotions and the energy in the music and the endorphins releases so much positive energy in the body.

Does it mean that it’s okay to have vices after all?
I think it’s about having a choice. Sometimes after a yoga class, your body doesn’t want a drink, but if you do want one, have one. It’s the same in the metal world.

“It isn’t about being a cannibal and drinking blood; it’s about being who you are and feeling a passion for the music.”

Do you think metal yoga is an opportunity to dive into the darker of your sexuality too?
A lot of yoga poses, like bridge pose, are beneficial for your sex life, particularly your pelvic floor muscles. But I think it is far more about learning to be comfortable in your body. The best outcome is to show that everyone is beautiful in their own way, no matter what you look like. It’s the one place where you should be able to just be who you are, focussing on your connection with your own body, and being content with yourself.

How has Metal Yoga Bones been received by the New York metal scene?
A lot of the bands have come to the classes. Sometimes they don’t want to put on work out wear so they come in jeans. If it restricts their movement, they can take smaller steps.

Is it essential to wear a metal t-shirt?
You can wear whatever you want. I have straight guys coming with painted fingernails and face makeup, and another guy came in a skirt. Everything is possible. There’s no discrimination of any kind.

How often do you play Iron Maiden?
There’s never a class when I don’t play a Maiden song [laughs]: ‘Fear of the Dark’ is one of my favourites. That’s what I listen to on my bike. It’s kind of groovy but also heart opening.

A friend who runs the Live Evil Festival in the UK was speculating about how your classes would go down at his festival.
I would love to take yoga to some of the festivals. I think the scene is ready to embrace being healthier. There are already so many people who are vegan and eat really well. Drinking comes with the territory but at festivals there’s always down time in the day. It would be nice to have something to do when you have a hangover.

Yoga language must sound strange to your average metalhead.
I’ve tried to rename each pose from the feeling it gives you. Warrior 1 is The Destroyer, because you’re getting ready to go into battle and destroy. Warrior 2 is the **** You pose, because it’s the pose when you know that you’re better than everyone else.

If one of your students was going into a mosh pit next week, which pose would you recommend practicing beforehand?
During shows, a lot of people do Warrior 1 and Warrior 2. It’s a metalhead impulse. To do it well, it’s good to make sure your posture is correct. You need to be really grounded and in my classes, I will always try to push over my students to test how strong they are. Metal yoga is also an attitude.

Some teachers say that the end of a yoga class is the most important part. After all the craziness, how do you end yours?
I have a track I always play for Savassana [the last pose of the class, also known as Corpse pose]. It’s by Celtic Frost and it’s called ‘Winter’.

“We don’t do Oms. To connect as a community, we howl to the moon like werewolves.”

Has anyone ever properly lost it in one of your classes?
They get angry, they scream, and then they are just laughing.

www.metalyogabones.com

[GeneChing]

Paddleboard yoga may have landed this Seattle man in prison
By Spencer Parlier and Christina Zdanowicz, CNN
Updated 5:56 PM ET, Wed October 3, 2018


Paul LaMarche performs yoga on a paddleboard, right, while collecting disability.

(CNN)Getting caught doing yoga on a paddleboard is not a good look for someone claiming disability. Paul LaMarche of Seattle learned this lesson the hard way.
LaMarche was sentenced to nine months in prison on Monday. He had pleaded guilty to theft of government property and wire fraud in March, admitting he collected more than $177,000 in disability payments, according to the Department of Justice.
While receiving disability payments, LaMarche owned and operated Emerald City Charters, a sailing outfit whose promotional video showed him sailing the boats.
Investigators from the Railroad Retirement Board Office and the US Coast guard also dug up a Seattle tourism video that showed LaMarche and others doing yoga on paddleboards.
Both videos were used to incriminate LaMarche, according to the US District Court for the Western District of Washington.
The 67-year-old's scheme began in 1988, when LaMarche claimed he could no longer work as a railway conductor due to a back injury. Five years later, he began receiving a disability annuity from the Railroad Retirement Board.
Despite the Railroad Board investigating the disability claim in 2015, LaMarche continued to submit false reports, saying he could not "lift, pull or carry heavy items," was "unable to run or jump" and had "debilitating headaches daily," the Justice Department said.
US District Judge James Robart called LaMarche a "thief" at his sentencing.
"He's obviously made a lot of money, but he's stealing every year," Robart said.
The investigation ordered LaMarche to pay $177,369 in restitution as well as an additional $177,369 in penalties, according to the US Attorney's Office in the Western District of Washington.
Although Emerald City Charters' website claims "the fun isn't stopping anytime soon," their head captain won't be able to man the decks until 2019. After the nine months in prison, LaMarche will be under supervised release for two years.
His captains license is currently under review by the US Coast Guard, a Coast Guard spokesman told CNN.
LaMarche was ordered to report to prison on Tuesday.

I can see doing yoga for rehab - heck I revert to my yoga training whenever I'm injured - but not paddleboard yoga. That's not rehab. That's stunt yoga. I'm just trying to imagine him meeting his cell mate. "I'm doing 10 for forced sodomy. You?" "ummm, yoga" "You sure look purty in those yoga pants."

[GeneChing]

So horrifying.

The very notion of incels is the epitome of entitlement.

Gunman in Yoga Studio Shooting Recorded Misogynistic Videos and Faced Battery Charges

The police in Tallahassee, Fla., said Scott Beierle, 40, shot and killed two women at a yoga studio on Friday before shooting and killing himself. CreditTori Schneider/Tallahassee Democrat, via Associated Press

By Mihir Zaveri, Julia Jacobs and Sarah Mervosh
Nov. 3, 2018

In online videos, he spewed misogynistic and racist vitriol — and railed against all the women who had turned him down.

In real life, records show, he had a history of harassing women and was accused of touching women’s buttocks without their consent.

And on Friday, the authorities said, he shot two women to death and injured five other people at a Florida yoga studio before killing himself.

The gunman, Scott P. Beierle, 40, posed as a customer at the studio in Tallahassee, Fla., and then opened fire without warning, the police said. The authorities were investigating to determine Mr. Beierle’s connection to the yoga studio and the victims.

Officials identified the victims who were killed as Dr. Nancy Van Vessem, 61, a faculty member at Florida State University, and Maura Binkley, 21, a student there. Four women and one man suffered non-life-threatening injuries.

“There are no words to express the shock and grief we feel,” John Thrasher, the president of Florida State, said on Twitter on Saturday. He added, “To lose one of our students and one of our faculty members in this tragic and violent way is just devastating to the FSU family.”

Mr. Beierle, who the authorities said had prior military service, lived in Deltona, Fla., and had been staying at a hotel while visiting Tallahassee, the police said. He was a graduate of Florida State, where he had been arrested at least twice, once on charges of battery against women, according to records and the police.

He also had a history of expressing misogynistic and racist views. In a series of videos posted over a three-day period in August 2014, he ranted against women and minorities, the police and the Army — anyone and everyone who he believed had wronged him.

BuzzFeed News first reported on the videos.

In the videos, Mr. Beierle pontificated from a dimly lit bedroom, with an unmade bed and a pile of cardboard boxes in the background. He lamented his inability to connect with other people — from Army comrades who he said would not travel with him while stationed in Europe to women who refused to go out with him.

He identified with “involuntary celibates” and told personal stories of rejection, naming multiple girls who he said had wronged him.

“Made one date, didn’t show up,” he said of one woman. “Made another date, didn’t show up. Kept making excuses. Ah, I could’ve ripped her head off.”

He expressed sympathy with Elliot O. Rodger, who killed six people in Isla Vista, Calif., three months before Mr. Beierle recorded the videos. Mr. Rodger had expressed his disgust at women online and urged “incels” — shorthand for involuntary celibates — to fight back.


Scott Paul Beierle
Credit Tallahassee Police Department

In the videos, Mr. Beierle also railed against interracial dating, and used racist and disparaging language when talking about black people.

He also referred to trouble with the Army after an incident in Amsterdam in which he said four women complained about his behavior. “I got too rowdy for their sensibilities,” he said.

Records show that Mr. Beierle moved from Vestal, N.Y., near Binghamton, to Tallahassee in 2011.

In December 2012, Mr. Beierle was charged with battery after a woman accused him of grabbing her buttocks at a dining hall on Florida State’s campus in Tallahassee. The charges were dismissed in May 2013, court records show.

In 2014, Mr. Beierle was charged with trespassing at a dining hall on campus and was given pretrial intervention, though it was unclear exactly what that entailed or how the case was resolved.

Mr. Beierle was again charged with battery in June 2016, but the charge was dismissed in 2017, records show.

In that case, Tallahassee police records show, Mr. Beierle was arrested after he approached a woman sunbathing at a pool and complimented her on her figure. He offered to put sunscreen on her buttocks, but she told him no and he groped her without her permission, according to the police report.

On Friday, Mr. Beierle entered Hot Yoga Tallahassee with a handgun, the police said. When he began shooting, some people inside fought back, preventing a greater tragedy, Michael DeLeo, the chief of the Tallahassee Police Department, said in a statement on Saturday.

Ms. Binkley, a senior at Florida State, was set to graduate in May, said Azalee Vereen, her aunt. Ms. Binkley studied journalism and German, and was preparing for life after college by applying for programs like Fulbright and Teach for America.

Ms. Binkley, who grew up in a northern suburb of Atlanta, was “very smart, very beautiful and just very giving,” Ms. Vereen said.

Dr. Van Vessem was responsible for coordinating the third- and fourth-year clerkship rotations in internal medicine at the Tallahassee campus of Florida State, according to a profile on the university’s website.

“She was an outstanding physician with a passion for access to health care,” said Pam Irwin, the executive director of Capital Medical Society, a Tallahassee-based professional organization for doctors, of which Dr. Van Vessem was a member. “Without being aware, she was a mentor. She represented how to serve others with wisdom, ethics, compassion and collaboration.”

Myra Hurt, a medical professor and senior associate dean at Florida State, called Dr. Van Vessem “a formidable woman.”

“I knew going into a meeting with her that I had to be ready,” she said. “Even if we didn’t agree on something, you knew she was operating from a position of protecting her patients. She was a woman of substance. She was the real thing.”

Ashley Calloway-Blatch and Jacey Fortin contributed reporting. Alain Delaquérière contributed research.

Follow Mihir Zaveri on Twitter: @MihirZaveri.

[GeneChing]

I've always anticipated similar criticisms of Kung Fu and Tai Chi for our Daoist/Buddhist connections.

MISSOURI MEGACHURCH PASTOR CONDEMNS YOGA, CALLS HINDUISM 'DEMONIC'
BY KATHERINE HIGNETT ON 11/13/18 AT 7:35 AM

A pastor has called Hinduism "demonic," meditation “spiritually dangerous” and yoga “diametrically opposed to Christianity."

Speaking at the James River Church in Ozark, Missouri, Pastor John Lindell delivered a sermon called “Haunted: Pursuing the Paranormal,” whcih encouraged Christians to stop practicing yoga.

James River Church
✔
@jamesriver
For more information on the recent sermon, “Haunted: Pursuing the Paranormal” follow the link: http://jamesriver.org/haunted-sermon-resources …
_____
Watch the sermon| Haunted: Pursuing the Paranormal / http://jamesriver.org/sermon/haunted...the-paranormal …#jrclife

17
5:42 PM - Nov 12, 2018
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Haunted: Pursuing the Paranormal | Sermon by Pastor John Lindell
Pastor John Lindell shares a truth-packed sermon titled, "Haunted: Pursuing the Paranormal" and shares a biblical perspective on the paranormal.

jamesriver.org
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Lindell made his comments on October 28, but yogis have since spoken out against his claims, USA Today reported. The megachurch reportedly had a congregation of about 10,500 people in 2016, the newspaper noted, and local instructors said they were experiencing the effects of the pastor's condemnation.

Lindell said the practice of yoga, meditation and forms of Eastern mysticism was evidence that Western society’s obsession with the “paranormal” had “worked its way into everyday life.”

He claimed that “Hinduism is demonic,” and that “yoga poses were created with demonic intent, to open you up to demonic power.

"To say the positions of yoga are no more than exercise are tantamount to saying water baptism is just aqua aerobics," Lindell said.

The “dangerous” meditation often practiced during yoga leaves Christians “spiritually” vulnerable, he said.

Local yoga instructors have spoken out against the sermon, noting a drop in attendance at their classes following his remarks. “It hurt... It could have been a coincidence, but it's interesting," yoga teacher Heather Worthy told USA Today. The sermon was “quite ludicrous,” she added.


People participate in an outdoor yoga event in Bryant Park in New York City, July 12. A Missouri pastor called yoga “diametrically opposed to Christianity."
TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

"This is our sole source of livelihood," local yoga studio owner Stephanie Wubbena told USA Today. "One yoga studio lost over 10 members the Monday after the sermon." She said Lindell was right to say the practice had “pagan origins,” but added that Christmas and Easter did too.

Just as Christians mark Christmas with evergreen trees today, ancient Romans used to celebrate the mid-December feast of Saturnalia by decorating their homes with such plants, for example. Ancient Celtic priests and Vikings also revered the trees, according to History.com.

"The blatant hypocrisy was just so overwhelming," Wubbena said.

The church responded to USA Today with a statement defending the sermon. “As a church our heart is to provide people with Biblical insight and teaching that will strengthen their faith and their daily walk with God,” it read, adding that the church would encourage anyone interested in Lindell's sermon to watch it online.

The church did not immediately respond to Newsweek's request for comment.

Although yoga has roots in Hinduism, modern yoga performed in the West often incorporates elements unrelated to its religious history, including British Army gymnastics and movements from Indian wrestling, The New Yorker has reported.

“Yoga can be practiced without barriers of age, race, religion, culture or station,” India’s External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj told the European Parliament earlier this year. “Today, more than ever, the world needs yoga."

[Jimbo]

So-called pastors (and other religious zealots like him) who only see 'the devil' and/or demonic influences in others with different belief systems than theirs would best be served to look in a mirror. You are what you always see/preach. If all you see everywhere is the demonic in others or what they do solely because they are different, then YOU are the one who is demonic. Like attracts like. Intent is everything. Sociopathic 'spiritual leaders' like him feed off of spreading fear, intolerance and division, often with big smiles on their faces.

If anyone has actually quit a positive activity like yoga (or martial arts) because they listened to and believed this 'pastor' or his ilk, I almost feel sorry for them. Almost.

[GeneChing]

Your gym mats may be breeding antibiotic-resistant germs
Science Dec 11, 2018 10:39 PM EST

We spend a tremendous amount of time at the gym in close contact with all kinds of surfaces — yoga mats, treadmill handles, basketball court tiles and aerobics platforms.

As you have likely noticed, these items are often covered in dust, and this dust may be filled with antibiotic-resistant microbes, according to a study published Tuesday in the journal mSystems. A survey of 42 athletic facilities in Oregon — private fitness clubs, public recreation centers and studios for dance, yoga and martial arts — found living germs that were resistant to common antibiotics in all but one facility.

Here is the wild part. These microbes may not have developed this resistance because of the overuse of antibiotics, but because of a chemical commonly used in sanitizers: triclosan.

The team found the athletic facilities with the most triclosan in its dust had the highest abundance of antibiotic-resistant microbes.

Though the U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned triclosan from soaps and body washes in Sept. 2016, manufacturers continue to use the ingredient in everyday goods like cleaning supplies, deodorants and toothpaste.

The team found the athletic facilities with the most triclosan in its dust had the highest abundance of antibiotic-resistant microbes. They didn’t find deadly bacteria like Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), but they discovered enough benign, drug-resistant microbes to raise the specter of gym dust being contaminated with hazardous organisms elsewhere.

Gross, right? Well, before you launch a campaign to burn your gym’s yoga mats, there are few things that you need to know about the scope of the findings — plus some simple tips to avoid dust and germs during your next gym visit.

What the scientists did

Though the dust collection for these experiments happened entirely in Oregon, the investigation was led by Erica Hartmann, an environmental engineer and microbial ecologist at the Northwestern University in Chicago.

Hartmann enlisted the help of architecture students at the University of Oregon’s Biology and the Built Environment Center, a collaborative unit of evolutionary biologists, ecologists and architects, where Hartmann used to work and started this study. This center examines how the design of human-made structures influences microbe populations in the environment.

Five years ago, these students grabbed some vacuums and headed to 42 athletic facilities, where they sucked up dust from hallways, offices and athletic spaces.

“We got the backpack vacuums that made us look kind of like Ghostbusters,” Hartmann told the PBS NewsHour.

After collecting the dust samples, they divided them into thirds. One third went toward conducting analytical chemistry — to assess the presence of antimicrobial chemicals and their quantities. Another third was analyzed to see whether any microorganisms would grow out of it.


Bacteria isolated from gym dust growing on a petri plate. The photo shows a disc diffusion test, where each disc contains a different antibiotic. The discs covered in growing microbe contain bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics. Photo by Taylor Brown/Northwestern University

The final third was saved for metagenomics, a laboratory technique that sifts for genetic material in environmental samples in order to identify organisms living or traveling through that particular location. In the past, metagenomics could only offer a picture of microbes living in a germ-dense location.

“The microbiomes that we know the most about are associated with the human gut because there’s just bajillions of microbes, and it’s pretty easy to get samples,” Hartmann said, referring to fecal matter. Human guts contain about 10 times as many antibiotic-resistant microbes relative to what she found in gym dust.

But “with buildings, it is much more technically challenging because you might need to basically suck all of the air out of a room and run it through a filter to get enough microbes.”

Luckily, metagenomics and its DNA sequencing procedures have advanced enough in the past few years, and the method is now sensitive enough to uncover microbial populations in samples like dust.

Dust happens to also serve as a final resting place for many of the chemicals that humans spray, wipe, exhale and generally emit on a daily basis.

What they found

Hartmann and company learned the highest concentrations of all antimicrobial chemicals in dust occurred in gym spaces and moist locations. Rooms with rubber matting and carpet floors had higher levels of these compounds as well. Offices and hallways were less of an issue.

Though an antimicrobial chemical called methylparaben was the most common, the team found antibiotic-resistant microbes most often corresponded with the presence of triclosan and its cousin triclocarban.

What are antimicrobials anyway?

Here we might want to pause and review the difference an antimicrobials, antibiotics and a third realm called antibacterials. An antimicrobial is the umbrella term for any chemical that kills or stymies the growth of any microorganism, such as fungus, mold or bacteria. An antibacterial is a type of antimicrobial, specifically any chemical built to destroy bacteria. An antibiotic is a type of antibacterial that most often refers to the medical drugs — the compounds that we humans ingest, inject, rub or otherwise apply to our bodies to stop bacterial infections like E.coli or strep throat.

Here’s why this matters. Triclosan is an antibacterial that we use to disinfect surfaces in the environment, but Hartmann’s study found that its presence in dust may be leading to microbes developing resistance to the antibiotics that put into our bodies.

That’s somewhat mind blowing because typically if a germ is exposed to a chemical like triclosan in a lab, it should develop resistance to triclosan. But in gyms, these germs appear to be learning how to avoid other unrelated compounds, namely medically relevant drugs.

continued next post

[GeneChing]

What this means and why it might be happening

Though the mere presence of triclosan and these heartier germs in the same place doesn’t absolutely prove that triclosan in dust caused the antibiotic resistance to develop in the places where these microbes were found, Hartmann said the association is highly suspicious.

…just because we stopped using it in one context (hand soap), doesn’t mean that it is just going to disappear from the environment.

That’s because they discovered a relationship between the amount of triclosan and the number of antibiotic-resistant microbes in gym dust. The 11 athletic facilities with most antibiotic-resistant microbes had dust samples with triclosan at levels three times higher than all other buildings on average.

Hartmann said if there is a causal relationship between triclosan in dust and the development of antibiotic resistance, it suggests that microbes in the wild behave differently than those raised in petri dishes in the lab, which is basically where “everything we know about antibiotic resistance genes” has been discovered, Hartmann said.

These earlier lab-based studies may have found that a gene grants resistance to an antibiotic medicine, when in the wild, the gene’s actions are broader and can have multiple functions — like also providing protection against a substance like triclosan. So, when germs in the wild get exposed to triclosan, that means it’s possible that they can develop resistance to it and to a medicine at the same time.

Another theory revolves around the fact that antibiotic-resistant genes are mobile — meaning they can be traded between individual microbes like baseball cards. “It could be that there’s a gene that helps resist triclosan, but trading this gene sends along neighboring genes that confer resistance to other antibiotics.”

You should be worried but shouldn’t burn your exercise mats…yet

Don’t toss your gym membership yet. Hartmann’s study doesn’t pin down exactly how triclosan and these antibiotic-resistant organisms landed in these gyms.

“The main thing the study can’t tell us is how this all happened.”

“The main thing the study can’t tell us is how this all happened,” said Jordan Peccia, an environmental engineer at the Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science, who specializes in the exploration of indoor microbiomes and how they relate to our health. “It can only point to an association, but it can’t tell us if that’s actually happening inside of a building.”

Remember: Triclosan may be banned in soaps, but it is still pervasive in consumer products. So, Peccia said these bacterial adaptations could be happening on the skin of gym-goers who are using triclosan products at home or are exposed to other antibiotics constantly due to an illness.

“And then they could be just shedding antibiotic-resistant microorganisms on the surfaces of gym mats or into the air of buildings,” said Peccia, who described Hartmann’s study as somewhere between an “important step for the field” and “groundbreaking” because it revealed so much about microbial ecology in buildings.


These antibiotic-resistant bacteria could have developed on human skin before they shedded into gym dust. Photo by franckreporter/via Getty Images

But he raises this alternative scenario because he suspects that gyms are generally too dry for bacteria to be active or evolve antibiotic-resistance.

“In a gym environment, which might be around 50 percent humidity, microorganisms aren’t necessarily dead but it’s very stressful to them. They kind of shut down and are relatively dormant,” Peccia said. “In a normal building, most microorganisms are not active … they’re not responding to chemicals.”

So the open question is do antibacterial spray bottles filled with triclosan provide enough moisture to awaken these bacteria and trigger the development of antibiotic resistance? Or maybe our sweaty palms on treadmill railings or “swamp butts” on yoga mats provide the necessary moisture? Peccia’s lab has found that fungus and molds can thrive at 50 percent humidity, and this appears to involve metabolic pathways that were enriched in the bacteria identified in Hartmann’s study.

Lab-based studies show exposure to triclosan can boost multidrug resistance leading to hazardous strains of bacteria, but it is unclear if this also happens in the general environment. But both Hartmann and Peccia think that antibiotic resistance is a big enough public health threat in places like hospitals that it’s worth just assuming that this is an issue for gyms right now.


Before you use that spray bottle, you should probably ask what’s in it? Photo by Marko/via Stock Adobe

Triclosan, Hartmann said, has all of the characteristics of what’s called a “persistent organic pollutant” — meaning just because we stopped using it in one context (hand soap), doesn’t mean that it is just going to disappear from the environment. Her lab is currently assessing if other disinfectants can spawn this tainted dust and which surfaces inside of a gym contain the highest amounts.

Until then, people should avoid using triclosan and potentially similar sanitizers because “there’s so little evidence justifying the use of these chemicals in the first place,” she said.

If you’re one of those gym attendees who likes to use the cleaning sprays (this is me), she said first ask an attendant: “What’s in that spray?” If it’s just water, then go to town. But if it has triclosan or benzalkonium chloride, which is more common in gyms these days, she said think twice before spraying it if you’re worried about antibiotic resistance. You could always just wipe the machine down with a plain towel.

If you’re nervous about cleaning your hands — because the triclosan ban didn’t apply to hand sanitizers — Hartmann said you should follow the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s advice of using plain ol’ soap and water.

Just make sure to lather and scrub for at least 20 seconds — one study of 3,700 bathroom users found people only wash their hands for six seconds on average (this is also me).

“Anything we can do to try to contain the problem of antibiotic resistance, we should be doing,” Hartmann said.

Left: A survey of dust in 42 athletic facilities in Oregon found living germs that were resistant to common antibiotics in all but one facility. These germs arose potentially because of the widespread use of triclosan in sanitizers and other everyday goods. Photo by StockPhotoPro/via Stock Adobe

By — Nsikan Akpan
Nsikan Akpan is the digital science producer for PBS NewsHour and co-creator of the award-winning, NewsHour digital series ScienceScope. For secure communication, he can be reached via Signal (240) 516-8357 or PGP Fingerprint: 06D0 E6A5 AC19 3074 13B0 9F87 A332 744F E4D1 95DF.

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