Friday Reading Report: Dynamic Aging

Katy Bowman’s book Dynamic Aging is not just for those of us who are senior citizens.  It’s for all of us who happen to be getting older (hey, that’s me, and you, and everybody else!).  Yes, the target market is what she calls “goldeners,” but the very goldeners featured in the book all say that they could have benefitted from the movement practices earlier.

 

This is not a book about really tough workouts.  It is a book about the small adjustments that make a big difference to our alignment, our movement patterns, and our quality of life.  It affirmed me in my commitment to working on balance, beginning with the feet, with every single client and I learned some fresh approaches to some common issues.

 

The prose is clear, the type is large and well-spaced, and the illustrations add useful information.  Highly recommended.

Friday Book Report: What Fresh Hell Is This?

I was given What Fresh Hell Is This:  Perimenopause, Menopause, Other Indignities, and You by Heather Corinna by my kids.  It was a highly appropriate gift from several perspectives.  Captain Obvious here:  I’m somewhere in the menopause process (hard to tell exactly where, since I had my uterus removed a few years back, but my ovaries are still in there doing things or maybe not).  But also, my dear daughter in law Sam is a social worker with Scarleteen, which Corinna founded and runs.

 

I have been making a point of talking about menopause things out loud often because I felt like I came into this process totally unprepared.  I mean, I’d heard about hot flashes, but cold flashes?  Who knew?  Not me.  I think it’s time for whatever cultural reticence or taboo (or, you know, men thinking women’s processes are icky) to get out of the way so we can know what the heck is going on.

 

This book is extremely helpful.  It’s full of useful information presented in plain and inclusive language.  Ageism, sexism, racism, and ableism are called out repeatedly.  Those who are uncomfortable with swear words, LGBTQ+ issues, varieties of sexual practice, and less conventional relationship choices will have some adjusting to do and/or might prefer a different messenger for this particular message, but again, the data is sound and the aim is uplifting, encouraging, and hopeful without being bright-siding (in other words, when stuff sucks, Corinna says it sucks).

 

I highly recommend it for people in the process, or who are with people in the process, or for people who will sooner or later be in the process.

Friday Book Report: Yoga and the Quest for the True Self

Stephen Cope’s book Yoga and the Quest for the True Self is not the one to pick up for how to do poses.  It’s more about why to do poses, and I don’t mean to achieve yoga butt.

 

Cope is both a psychotherapist and a yogi from Kripalu.  His book has a lot of the characteristics of the usual self-help and pop psychology books (stories about people with various problems and their victories through yoga).  It’s also a history of the Kripalu ashram, which provides some cautionary ballast to the happy joy love story.  Cope’s writing style is conversational and clear.  He doesn’t throw out a whole bunch of Sanskrit and leave the reader to sort it out.

 

While at times he strays a little far along the woo-woo spectrum, he remains grounded and practical.  He does not look at yoga as a cure for everything and does, from time to time, note that he did refer various people in his stories to therapy.  He seems to believe that yoga, by freeing the body, helps us get to what we need to free our minds, which is where therapy is a useful adjunct.

 

For me, the price of the book was worth it for these five words:  “breathe, relax, feel, watch, allow” (p. 210).  This is his recipe for integrating physical, emotional, and energy experience.

 

Definitely an interesting read; may not be for everyone.

Friday Reading Report: The Yoga Tradition

In the West, yoga tends to be regarded as an exercise thing, but the tradition is much richer and deeper than that.  Anyone who would like an exhaustive (and exhausting) overview of that panoply might want to check out Georg Feuerstein’s book The Yoga Tradition:  Its History, Literature, Philosophy, and Practice.

 

This is not the book to turn to if you want to know how to do various asanas or if you want a concise description of the various yoga schools.  It’s not even the right book if you want a fluid translation of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras with commentary.  My Sanskrit is nonexistent, but having read more than one translation of the sutras, I can say confidently that Feuerstein did not concentrate on style or flow in that particular translation.  I’m unfamiliar with many/most of the other texts he translates, but my sense is that he is more of a literalist than a stylist, which may be fine for scholars, but tends to wear out and confuse the regular reader.

 

I think I am glad I read it, but I’m not entirely sure.  There is some truly weird stuff in the annals of yoga.  I don’t know how or if this book will influence my own practice, but I do know more than when I started, so that’s something. 

Friday Reading Repot: The Body Keeps the Score

Bessel Van Der Kolk’s book The Body Keeps the Score:  Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma is only tangentially related to what I do, but it is related enough that I think it is worth discussing in this context rather than in my regular monthly book post on my personal blog.  The central thesis of the book is that traumatic events change our bodies and change our brains.  We live after trauma differently than we did before.

 

Dr. Van Der Kolk cites tons of data and provides pictures of brain scans, EEG readouts, and plenty of other things to support his thesis.  He, as a psychiatrist, doctor, and trauma researcher, then interprets this data to suggest how to treat trauma survivors effectively.  In most cases, our culture simply throws a bunch of labels at people and gives them drugs.  Drugs certainly have a role in treating depression, anxiety, and the like, but they are not the whole story.  Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is also not an answer all by itself.

 

What Dr. Van Der Kolk suggests is a more holistic approach, one that reconnects sufferers with their bodies, helps to reassure their survival brains that they can find safety, and reignites the ability to play, laugh, and create.  One of the many treatments that he has found to be effective is yoga, with an emphasis on the pranayama and meditative aspects, but he also mentions Pilates as a useful tool to help the mind and body attune to each other.

 

It is not an easy book to read—story after story of people who have had to deal with horrific events can be tough to take—but it does shed some interesting light on how we function and how we might want to approach helping those of us who need it most.

Friday Reading Report: Intangibles

It has been a while since I read a book that was even tangentially fitness-related.  But at last, the incomparable Joan Ryan has a newish book out, Intangibles:  Unlocking the Science and Soul of Team Chemistry. 

 

I have been reading and enjoying Ryan’s work from the time she used to write for the San Francisco Chronicle sports page.  Her book Little Girls in Pretty Boxes about the participants in women’s gymnastics and figure skating sounded an early (ignored) alarm about the abuses that those athletes were subject to in pursuit of some societal ideal of what gymnasts and figure skaters should be.  Her other books are also entirely worth reading for the grace of her prose and the depth of her insight and knowledge.  So now you know:  I’m a fan.

 

All the things I like about her work are present in this current book.  She brings her inquisitive mind and deep experience to bear on what team chemistry is (or isn’t).  She does not shy away from the people who flat out deny that it exists.  It is a useful reminder to all the data nuts out there that just because something can’t be quantified does not mean that it doesn’t exist.

 

Defining team chemistry turns out to be a difficult question in and of itself.  She writes, “I had experienced it myself in my first job out of college, in the Orlando Sentinel’s sports department.  We were a tight-knit staff of a few rookies like me and a slate of veterans who deleted our adverbs and introduced us to scotch.” (p. 7)  Ultimately, she ends up defining it as a complex of factors that improve performance.

 

She does research with psychiatrists and coaches and members of teams that had notoriously good chemistry.  She develops a series of archetypes that teams need to have good chemistry.  It’s all useful and fascinating, full of great stories and memorable characters.

 

My caveat:  the book has a bit of an identity problem.  It’s mostly a sports book, but it is also trying to be a business book.  From time to time, Ryan tries to make the point that business teams need the same kind of performance-enhancing chemistry as well.  Maybe so.  Managers have been using sports analogies roughly forever, so a more direct application of sports science might make sense.  Also, professional sports are, in fact, businesses.

 

I’m still a fan.  I hope lots of people go out and buy her book because more people need a little Joan Ryan in their lives.  She tells a great story and she finds great stories to tell.