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Standing on your head?

This week's op-piece in The New York Times by Maureen Dowd "How Garbo Learned to Stand on Her Head" is, for once, not acerbic.    It's about yoga.    Is it good for one or not?

"Sometimes it feels as though I spend half my time working and the other half trying to ameliorate the strain of working.

Ever since one particularly clenched day of columnizing years ago, when I found myself curled up on the floor of my house davening, I’ve tried various remedies for the ravages of stress: better nutrition, caramels, gym, green tea Popsicles, kavakava, kale, kombucha, cupcakes, chocolate, chardonnay — sometimes in concurrent combinations.

The one that works best is yoga.

So I was intrigued to open my mail on Friday and find the galley of an upcoming book by the Times science writer William Broad, who made his name reporting about space weapons and biological warfare, on “The Science of Yoga: The Myths and the Rewards.”

I stopped reading about the Rick Perry supporter who denounced Mormonism as a cult, and started reading about my own cult. I was eager to know the science behind the blissful state of mind produced by savasana — corpse pose. It can’t just be the buckwheat-scented eye pillow.

Broad suggests that only an ancient tradition of centering — “an anti-civilization pill” — may be able to neutralize the “dissipating influence” of the Internet and the frantic information flow.

Once esoteric and exotic, yoga is now so prevalent that in 2010, the city of Cambridge, Mass., began printing soothing yoga poses on parking tickets.

But as I read on, I began to feel a little stressed out."

 

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