pt at large

Showering on Venus

Soap, water, maybe a washcloth. Pull back the grody shower curtain in a man’s domicile and that’s what you’ll find hanging in his bathtub. Guys just dont want to think too hard as they perform their daily ablutions. Stand outside the shower, turn the water on full blast, adjust to preferred temperature, and step in. Suds up, maybe apply shampoo, sing some popular tunes, off key and occasionally off color, rinse off, shut down, dry off. Apply deodorant and shave if it’s a work day. Done.

Women, on the other hand, have enough beauty and comfort products to stock a small mall, a closet sized version of the Body Shop lining every flat and hanging space behind their shower curtains. Recently, the Columnist had occasion to shower in his lady friend’s bathroom. Bathroom may actually be the inappropriate term for this area, a day spa in the Berkshires would be a more apt description.

Your unsuspecting columnist blithely pulled back the shower curtains, (another column may be necessary to fathom the reason women need an outer and an inner shower curtain), twirled the correct knobs and stepped in for a refreshing morning rub a dub dub. Water cascading off his back, he surveyed the scenery, searching for the shampoo.

In his own shower, the shampoo is easily detected since it is the only standup bottle in the compound. Here, however, your columnist was perplexed to see seven or eight tall plastic bottles, none of which had Shampoo written plainly and largely on its side. Recalling women talk about depilitating while in the shower intimidated this columnist, convincing him not to try an empirical approach by indiscriminately loading a handful of lotion on his head and then screaming in horror as handfulls of his hair fell out and began to clog the drain.

A major examination period followed in which the columnist, battling clouds of steam which would have forced a 747 to perform an instrument landing, tried to read the labels on a regiment of uniquely shaped bottles, any of which might have contained a simple shampoo. Hmmm, deep fortifying treatment, undo months of damage, restore and renew intensive... I dont think so. Caswell and Massey lavendar and Elder flower body wash, well, maybe if nothing else comes close. Aha, Seleca shine hairspa conditioner, good, put that aside for use after I find the shampoo. Lavendar salt scrub, nope, but geez doesnt this remind him of how his lady friend smelled last night? Neutrogena body oil. Nope. What’s this one? Avalon organic botanicals lavender glycerine soap. Nope. Running out of options here. If this takes much longer, my skin is going to resemble a pachyderm’s.

Whoa, what’s this over here? Says “Dove” on the label. Isn’t that a woman’s soap? Keep reading the smaller print. Shampoo? Yes!

In the meantime, I’ve single handedly lowered the height of the Quabbin Reservoir by several inches just while looking for the shampoo. Now, where the hell was that soap?

Yoga:exercise that's good for the body and soul

The Dartmouth-Westport Chronicle
Yoga:exercise that's good for the body and soul
November 24, 2004
By Paul Tamburello

It’s 9:20 on a clear November morning and eight women have assembled for their weekly yoga class in Caryl Sickul’s spacious living room studio on Horseneck Road in South Dartmouth. Cell phones are turned off, kids have been dropped off at school, coffee has been digested. A quiet energy envelopes the room as the women get caught up on their personal news fronts and unroll their yoga mats onto the smoothly polished oak floor. Sunlight filters in from a series of oversized windows that line the upper level studio of the modern home that offers a commanding view of the fields sloping down to the Slocum River.

At 9:30, Sickul, a tall woman with a dancer’s graceful gait, assumes a cross-legged position on her own mat facing her students. A silken stillness descends upon the room, strands of soothing music seep from speakers embedded in the walls.

“Clear your minds and make space for your breath,” she gently coaxes in a mellifluous voice that seems related to one of the instruments in the background. ”Center on the sensation of the breath and release tension and stress with one-mindedness.”

With their first exhaled breath, an audible sigh of “Oooooommmmm”, they’ve begun a practice that links them to a tradition of yoga that stretches back to the Indian subcontinent 5000 years ago.

Through several millennia, a succession of scriptures and literature, often popularized by enlightened teachers and sages, built upon one other to advance how yoga was practiced. The establishment of Buddhism in the 6th century emphasized the importance of meditation and ethics as well as the physical postures that had predominated earlier forms of yoga.

Yoga continued to evolve through the centuries and crossed the cultural divide into the west in the 1960s and 70s through vehicles as improbable as the Beatles and Hippie Generation. The forms of yoga practiced in America today generally focus on five principles: proper relaxation, proper exercise, proper breathing, proper diet, and positive thinking/meditation. Practitioners swear that this results in improved circulation, a light and strong body, and a calm mind.

A sixth principle, laughter, seems to have been added to the Vinyasa Flowing Yoga class being practiced here today. “Vinyasa yoga is flowing yoga, breathing into one sequence from another,” says Sickul. Today’s ninety minute class is a strenuous combination of breath control and classic yoga poses, a combination of stillness and motion, meditation and movement.

Sickul, the lithe yogi in charge, demonstrates the postures with grace of the dancer she’s been during her 40 year career in yoga, dance, and movement. The atmosphere in the studio may be serene but these movements are strenuous. Her students, dressed in tee shirts and tights, follow her lead with light hearts and heavy breathing. This is no hard core aerobics class with music blaring and participants yahooing but the sweat produced here has the same saline quality and salubrious effect.

One of the appealing aspects of yoga is that it can be practiced at any age. The aspiring yogis in today’s class range in age from 30 something to 70 something and, surprisingly, their age is not the determining factor to their respective limberness or strength.

“Go to the edge of what you can do,” Sickul calmly coaches, as her pupils ease into the next posture. While being flexible helps, just attempting to do the exercises gets points. Their technique may not mirror their teacher’s but their enthusiasm compensates for it. And they’re having fun.

“Yeah, right!” you can hear a few of them joke as she demonstrates the demanding ‘pedestal’ pose. Then they go right ahead and give it the old college try. Her long auburn hair pulled into a tight bun, Sickul occasionally roams the floor, applying a gentle hand to adjust an errant arm or leg angle and occasionally chirps “Yes, that’s exactly it!” as the class masters a pose in unison.

Sickul, an extraordinarily fit and limber sixty year old, has studied in India, Indonesia, and Europe, led guest classes for the World Health Organization, and taught yoga to doctors, nurses, and even breast cancer patients in area hospitals. “I’m a movement specialist and have taught modern dance, yoga, world dance creative movement and dance appreciation at Bridgewater and Fitchburg State Colleges and at Bristol Community College,” she says.

Janet Pietsch of South Dartmouth has been coming to this class for two years. “I come out of here tired but positively energized. You forget all your stuff as you go through the exercises. Although I’m not strong, it helps my flexibility and makes me feel good. I’m 57, what can I say?”

As it turns out, feeling good is a terrific thing to say. The breathing techniques, movement, and concentration that are embedded in the several types of yoga practiced in the U.S. can reduce stress. Yoga has quietly morphed from a shadowy “alternative” medicine to a more accepted “complementary” medicine status and helped establish the concept of the “mind/body connection”.

Dr. Herbert Benson, the founding President of Boston’s Mind/Body Medical Institute and the Mind/Body Medical Institute Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, has spent nearly 40 years bridging the gap between East and West, between mind, body, belief, and science. As Sickul knows, Benson’s use of what he describes as the “relaxation response” has been scientifically proven to moderate the effects of stress and employs elements of repetitive movement and slow breathing which are hallmarks of yoga.

“The relaxation response is a physical state of deep rest that changes the physical and emotional responses to stress, resulting in a decrease in heart rate, blood pressure, and muscle tension. If practiced regularly, it can have lasting effects when encountering stress throughout the day and can improve health,” says Dr. Benson.

Dr. James Huddleston of the Mind/Body Medical Institute seems to circle back that first “Oooommmmm” exhaled by Caryl Sickul and her yoga students. “We consider exercise not just a physical regime, but an opportunity to gain self-awareness and enhance spiritual growth. In ancient traditions, physical activity and exercise had less of a physical and more of a spiritual focus. Its purpose was to rejuvenate the body, and cultivate the mind and spirit; harmonious perfection of body/mind/soul was the ultimate goal.”

Lucky for those interested in experiencing a mind/body connection, one needn’t perform a pilgrimage to India. Take a deep breath, pick up the phone book, and look under “S” for Sickul or “Y” for yoga. You’re on your way to harmonious perfection.