I went to Alive and Shine because my wife suggested it as a way to deal with lower back pain. It's the first time I've ever been to a yoga studio in the U.S., although I did study yoga intensively in India 35 years ago. I took the "Healing Lower Back Pain Workshop" with John Davie. To be fair, I'm hideously inflexible (physically, though my wife might argue that I don't like change of any kind, but she's wrong about that) and surely yoga should be good for me. I figured I'd give it a try because I've been doing what the physical therapist told me to do for a year and, while it works pretty well, it hasn't banished the pain. Basically, when I lift my 38 pound bass speaker, or sleep on the ground, or sit in an unsupportive chair, my lower back hurts. I want to be able to do at least the first two things, so I'll work on it.
John started the session, a scheduled 3 hours, with breathing and OM. Then he gave a lecture on the cause of lower back pain. "Fear and uncontrollability are the programs that we are dealing with in chronic lower back pain. The interververbral (sic) muscles tighten when your subconscious mind is in a state of fear or uncontrollability." That was part of his lecture. He handed it out, and then read it to us. He also read "The average person is ruled by others. They do what the TV tells them to do." One of my classmates said that her back hurts because someone ran into her when she was driving her car. She said it wasn't her fault. John said that if she had really been self aware she wouldn't have been in the accident. Clearly, my back should have started hurting more, because my conscious and subconscious mind isn't tolerant of this kind of metaphysical pap. But it didn't. And, by the way, the TV tells me to do a lot of things and I rarely do any of them. Maybe that means I'm not "average."
John ran us through a series of asanas for the lower back, followed by six moves to open up the hips. He's right on about developing the musculature on the front of the abdomen and about the relationship between proper stance with regard to hips, knees and feet and the back. He's clearly a Yogi, though not quite up to the Yogi Bear standard, and I was impressed with his flexibility and mastery of the nomenclature. He put on a sales pitch for some of the products they sell for adding to your water to improve hydration.
On the whole, though, that was my first and last time at Alive and Shine. I got an immediate headache from the aroma of the place. They sell all kinds of "essential oils," basically medicine show nostrums without the laudanum, and the place stinks of it. The religious element was way too heavy for me. I don't need to be lectured on metaphysics. I was looking for some moves I could practice at home, and the jury's still out as to whether John gave me anything that will actually work. read more
