Like many of the people you may know who go vegetarian or vegan, Griff Whalens journey started with a documentary.

You know, those dang documentaries that shock, mortify and guilt you into swearing off all animal products. Youve probably been encouraged to watch one.

Big difference, however, is that you and your friends are probably not NFL players.

As far as he knows, Whalen is the only player in the league that does it 100 percent.

Patriots quarterback Tom Brady attributes his longevity to the vegan diet he has for much of the year. This offseason, Pro Bowl Washington Redskins offensive tackle Trent Williams went vegan, but hes not sure how long hell keep it up.

Whalen has been doing it for four whole years. At first,he intended for it to just be a trial run a 28-day program. A week into it, he started doing major research into how sustainable it would be long term.

I felt so much lighter, Whalen said. My joints felt smoother, everything felt better. I could run and breathe easier.

The biggest difference Whalen found was that his recovery periods were much shorter. After a strenuous workout, he would feel fine a day later instead of two or three days later. He attributed it to better blood flow from not having as much saturated fat.

Ive always been a guy who has done everything I can to help myself, he said. Any little advantage I can find, Im going to do it. I felt like this really gave me an edge.

It shouldnt be surprising that Whalen has that mindset.

The 5-foot-11, 190-pound wideout went undrafted out of Stanford in 2012. He spent three years with the Indianapolis Colts before bouncing between three teams last season (Miami Dolphins, San Diego Chargers and New England Patriots).

The Ravens signed Whalen in late July soon before the start of training camp. He immediately transferred his strict diet to Baltimores Under Armour Performance Center. Other than vitamins, he doesnt use any other supplements.

Heres Whalens typical daily diet, which he shared with Mens Fitness:

Breakfast: Overnight oatmeal with 1 cup oats, 1 cup cashew milk, 2/3 Tbsp. maca powder, Tbsp. hemp seeds, Tbsp. chia seeds, 1/3 Tbsp. cocao powder, 1 date, a dash of cinnamon and Himalayan pink salt

Snack (post-workout): Smoothie with 1 banana, 1 cup almond milk, 2 dates, 1 Tbsp. chia seeds, cup blueberries, 2 Tbsp. hemp seeds, handful spinach and arugula

Lunch: Large portion of grains with vegetables like peas, broccoli, spinach, and legumes like black beans, chickpeas, or lentils

Snack: Raw vegetables and hummus, banana, or a cup of berries

Dinner: Big spinach or kale salad with a ton of toppings like olives, carrots, avocado, corn, cucumbers and sunflower seeds, dressed with apple cider vinegar and olive oil or a scoop of hummus; side of rice

That actually sounds kinda delicious.

Its not too tough now, Whalen said. I would say the first six months, maybe a year, is pretty tough because youre totally reprogramming what you look for to fill your plate up. Like anything, its tough when youre starting over.

The Ravens make sure Whalen has the food he wants both at home and on the road, even if it means cooking up something special for him.

He says most of his teammates have asked him about his veganism. In a profession in which diet and your bodys performance is so important, players care even ones that begin the conversation by busting Whalens chops.

Theyre like, So you dont eat meat, fish, dairy or eggs? Whalen said. And then they look at their plate and its basically all animal products. Its just a huge change from what Americans typically eat. Hey, I grew up in Ohio eating your typical Midwest diet.

One hundred percent of the people say they could never do that. I usually say they dont have to. I think thats a flaw for a lot of people, thinking that if they want to try being vegetarian or vegan, they have to do it 100 percent. The point is to be more healthy, so if you just eat more vegetables and more grains and more fresh whole foods and less processed foods and less meat and less dairy, thats better for you.

Whalen said hes not trying to convert anyone. He just answers whatever questions they have.

Well, he may be changing some diets unintentionally. Defensive tackles Carl Davis and Michael Pierce expressed interest last week on Twitter. Safety Eric Weddle not so much.

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The Caw: Ravens WR Griff Whalen Is Vegan, and He May Be Converting Teammates - BaltimoreRavens.com

Two new plant-based restaurants opened in Maine this summer, expanding the short list of vegan restaurants in the state.

In Brunswick, Farm Fresh Cafe opened as part of a medical center, and in the Mount Desert Island village of Northeast Harbor, a local restaurateur and a teacher opened Crudo. Both restaurants emphasize raw vegan food.

Not counting vegan juice bars, Maine is home to only two other vegan restaurants: Olive Branch Cafe in Lewiston and Taste of Eden in Norway. For the past two summers, celebrity chef Matthew Kenney operated a high-end plant-based restaurant in Belfast (under a different name each summer), but it didnt re-open this season.

Portland used to have a long-running vegan lunch spot with Little Lads Bakery (first on Exchange Street and later Congress), but it closed last year to focus on its retail products (including health food store favorite Herbal Corn).

Meanwhile, plant-based restaurants have grown in prominence and number in major cities around the world, even in such notoriously meat-loving food capitals as Paris. In Maine, a handful of enduring all-vegetarian restaurants (including Chases Daily in Belfast, Cafe DiCocoas in Bethel, and Green Elephant in Portland) are scattered across the state. But plant-based restaurants remain a rarity.

We both thought the town needed a healthy alternative, said Katelyn Moore, who opened Crudo with her sister-in-law Whitney Ciancetta in Northeast Harbor. Moore owns Fork & Table, which has a traditional menu and is located around the corner. She said business is starting to pick up at Crudo as word spreads about the restaurant, which offers a juice and smoothie selection alongside sandwiches, salads and to-go items.

Dishes at Crudo include a tofu banh mi, raw vegan tacos, a coconut bacon BLT, and raw carrot cake cupcakes. Two menu items are vegetarian rather than vegan, and like many restaurants near Acadia National Park, the business is seasonal and will shutter in late fall.

The feedback has been that people are excited to have us here, said Moore.

The menu at Farm Fresh Cafe in Brunswick is also mostly raw, with a changing rotation of soups cooked in a clay pot, such as red lentil and corn chowder. The menu changes every day. Other dishes featured this summer have included spring rolls, watermelon-tomato gazpacho, pineapple-cucumber gazpacho, and a raw flatbread pizza topped with cashew-almond cheese, green olive tapenade, cucumbers, tomatoes and fennel.

Spring rolls with Thai peanut dipping sauce and raw flatbread pizza are featured on the summer menu at Farm Fresh Cafe, a new plant-based restaurant in Brunswick. Photo by Avery Yale Kamila

Im making crackers for this flatbread pizza with zucchini, flax seeds and walnuts, said Faith Crooker, who oversees the cafe and is a nurse at the health center, Therapia, which opened last year. Therapia offers treatments for people with chronic illnesses, particularly Lyme disease, diabetes and heart disease. Therapia practitioners recommend a plant-based diet and since Maine has few restaurants that specialize in such food, the owners realized they needed a cafe to serve patients, and they decided to open it to the public.

We are close to raw and all organic and all gluten-free, said Crooker. We stay away from the word vegan because we do use a little bit of honey.

Organic, heirloom tomatoes from Five Colleges Farm in Hadley, Massachusetts, which Crooker owns with her husband, Ted Crooker, feature prominently on the Farm Fresh menu. Ted Crooker, a former owner of Crooker Construction in Topsham, is also an owner of Pulse Cafe, a 9,000-plus-square-foot vegan restaurant that opened earlier this month in Hadley, Massachusetts, near the college towns of Amherst and Northampton.

Farm Fresh Cafe is also in a college town, but far from campus in the Brunswick Industrial Park. Yet its out-of-the-way location is enhanced by an apple orchard and a kitchen garden. A picnic table allows for garden dining.

In contrast, Crudo is located on the tourist circuit in the Northeast Harbor village, where Moore sees potential for more plant-based restaurants.

Maine is very geared toward a healthy lifestyle within most communities with hiking, farmers markets and even health education in the school systems, Moore said. People are becoming more aware of the benefits of a plant-based diet.

At the Olive Branch Cafe in Lewiston, which was opened by the Auburn Seventh-day Adventist Church four years ago, kitchen manager Kim St. Clair said the states restaurant scene is lagging behind the times, judging by the demand she sees for vegan food.

She said the restaurants customers include a number of regulars who will drive 40 minutes to come here because there just arent any options where they live.

People are constantly asking: Are you going to put one in South Portland? In Augusta? St. Clair said. I think there is a growing demand as people are learning that plant-based food can be delicious.

Michael Tardif, who owns the Taste of Eden in Norway with his wife, Sonya Tardif, gets the same requests. The Tardifs ran the restaurant in Bethel for six years before moving the business to Norway nine years ago.

People ask us to go everywhere, Michael Tardif said. They find us in this little town of Norway, Maine, and say, I wish I had one of these in my hometown.

Avery Yale Kamila is a food writer who lives in Portland. She can be reached at:

[emailprotected]

Twitter: AveryYaleKamila

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Vegan restaurants spreading in Maine, one plate at a time - Press Herald

At churches from Maine to Maryland to Mississippi, the annual community supper means one thing: lobsters.

To animal rights activists, thats a problem.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the prominent advocacy group, has honed its focus on one beloved tradition in Episcopal churches across the country, the lobster boil. The animal-rights group sent a letter Friday to Bishop Michael Curry, the presiding bishop and primate who leads the nationwide church, asking him to end the practice of lobster dinners in favor of something more vegetarian.

Most of us grew up believing that killing lobsters and other animals for food is what must be done, but if we contemplate it, all killing requires conquering, violence, and separating ourselves from the rest of creation, PETA wrote to the bishop. God designed humans to be caretakers, not killers.

[Religious leaders gather in Washington to show moral opposition to Trump]

The letter cited both the Old and New Testaments and the writer David Foster Wallace, who examined the practice of boiling lobsters alive for consumption in his well-known essay Consider the Lobster. PETA described the practice as cruelty that I know doesnt reflect the tenets of the Episcopal Church.

Ben Williamson, a spokesman for PETA, said he didnt know if there was any particular link between Episcopalians and lobsters, and several Episcopal church leaders whom The Washington Post asked about the connection didnt have an answer either. But PETA staff noticed a pattern of lobster dinners as church fundraisers, and decided to look into it. They identified 28 Episcopal congregations advertising lobster fundraisers in more than 10 different states.

The PETA staffers looked into how many lobsters each church cooks at a fundraiser and got answers ranging from 75 to 2,000. In total, PETA said Episcopal churches kill well over 10,000 lobsters a year, a total that could not be verified by The Post.

Its evident, however, that the number is high St. Timothys Episcopal Church in Greenville, N.C., for instance, boasts on its website that its annual fundraiser has sold more than 65,000 lobsters since 1978. Put in perspective, weve sold around 40 tons of lobsters, or the equivalent of a couple of school buses, the website says, with accompanying jovial clip art of buses. (Lobsters at St. Timothys cost $16 each, and children can also enjoy a bouncy house and a hay ride.)

[Raised up by God: Televangelist Paula White compares Trump to Queen Esther]

A spokeswoman for the Episcopal Church said that Curry is on vacation and did not respond to further questions about how the church would respond to PETAs request that it abandon its lobster fests. Many of the churches on PETAs list did not respond to a reporters inquiry.

At St. Christophers Episcopal Church in Springfield, Va., the Rev. Peter Ackerman said that his church would continue its lobster dinner, but PETA raises a thoughtful point. I have shared this with our church board in the hopes that we can respond in a way that keeps the annual celebratory dinner gathering intact but also brings forth our awareness and sensitivity to how we interact with Gods creatures. That sort of reflection, he said, would be in line with the churchs social action activities like offering free physicals and school supplies to local children.

The letter to Curry is one of the first activities of PETAs newly reorganized Christian outreach arm, which in its prior incarnation helped persuadea Wisconsin Catholic church to end its 44-year tradition of human vs. pig mud wrestling, which ended with dozens of pigs being slaughtered after taking a beating. The church replaced the event with human vs. human football in the mud.

Just considering how many Christians there are in the U.S., wed be doing a disservice if we dont cater an animal rights message to them, Williamson said.

Asked what the churches should do to raise money for their parishes and charities, in place of a lobster dinner, Williamson replied, Vegan bake sales would be great.

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Episcopal churches cook thousands of lobsters. PETA asks them to consider vegan bake sales instead. - Washington Post

Written by Katherine Sullivan | August 29, 2017

Did you know that many surfboard wax recipes contain beeswax? Unfortunately, surf wax recipes are often safeguardedas theyre considered trade secrets by many makersand arent regularly listed on packaging labels. This could complicate things if youre hoping to use only animal-friendly wax. Luckily for all you soul surfers, weve got your backand your boardcovered. Check out these vegan, cruelty-free surf-wax options, and hang loosetheyre all a perfect 10.

This company offers four different types of specially formulated surf wax: Original, Quick Humps, Really Tacky, and Bodyboard. Sex Wax uses paraffin wax for a base material, which the company believes helps create what it considers the best surf wax on the planetThe best for your stick since 1972.

The Southern Californiabased company has been family-owned and -operated since 1971, when founder John DahlThe Wax Manfirst launched Wax Research. Since then, Sticky Bumps has evolved immensely, enhancing wax performance and joining surfers on hundreds of millions of waves, producing over 4 million bars of wax annually. According to the companys website, All of our Sticky Bumps products are tested, designed and made for surfers, by surfers, period. Vegan surfer Tia Blanco, who is part of the Sticky Bumps team, even starred in a peta2 ad in 2014 and again this year.

This company is the proud manufacturer of surf fins, leashes, and equipment as well as Double Barrel Surf Wax. This wax is available in cool and cold surf varietiesas well as an all-temperature base coatand is available for purchase on Amazon.

This companys surf wax has been manufactured on a 25-acre farm in Santa Cruz, California, since 1988. The manufacturing team uses 10 percent organic ingredients grown on the farm. The eco-friendly surf wax is nontoxic and biodegradable, and the wrappers are printed with recycled ink on 100 percent recycled paper.

Not only does this company offer surf wax for four different water temperaturescold, cool, warm, and tropicalit also sells two types of wax: the original Famous Surf Wax and an eco-friendly Famous Green Label Surf Wax, which is petrochemical-free, organic, and completely biodegradable. In addition, the company features recycled FSC-certified packaging and printing with soy ink.

*****

Beeswax is obtained by melting a honeycomb with boiling water and then straining and cooling it.

Its not unusual for farmers at larger bee farms to cut off the queen bees wings so that she cant leave the colony or to have her artificially inseminated on a bee-sized version of the factory-farm rape rack. When the beekeeper wants to move a queen to a new colony, shes carried with bodyguard bees, all of whomif they survive transportwill be killed by the bees in the new colony. Large commercial bee farms may also replace the honeywhich bees produce and need to get through the winterwith a cheap sugar substitute that lacks the nutrition of honey. Many bees are killed or their wings and legs are torn off because of haphazard handling.

A vegan lifestyle means embracing every opportunity to reduce the suffering ofall animals, regardless of their species. With their populations in a state of alarming, steady decline, there has never been a better time to give bees a break and make the switch to bee-free products.

Billions of animals are used for food, clothing, and entertainment every year, and just as many arepoisoned, blinded, and killed in archaic product tests for cosmetics, personal-care products, household cleaning products, and even fruit juices.Whether youre waxing up a freshie, choosing a cake for your wedding, or applying mascara before a night out, you dont want to contribute to this cruelty. Luckily, PETA Living E-News makes it easy to stay up to date on the latest animal-friendly trends. Click the buttons below to start getting fashion, recipe, and lifestyle tips delivered straight to your inbox today.

PETA is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide websites with a means to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.

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5 Cruelty-Free, Vegan Surfboard Waxes - PETA

Chicken, fish, ground turkey, turkey bacon (what is this rubber?), pepperoni, bacon, cheese, cheese burgers, tacos, pizza just a short list of the delicious, sometimes assumed healthy, foods I ate until Saturday, Feb. 11. On Sunday, Feb. 12, I walked into a common space in a church right off of City Line Avenue to enter the Vegan Pledge.

Upon arrival I was told I must sign a contract before I could go any further. The primary reason was to get a commitment and to have numbers to give to sponsors of the program. I read the contract. It was simple and to the point, saying essentially: "You promise to not eat meat, eggs, dairy, or any animal products for the next month."

I crossed out a few words and said, "I'll try."

Seriously, the day before, I'd had all the meat and cheese I wanted. So switching from that smorgasbord to lentils and broccoli was going to be a challenge.

I wanted to try something I had heard was very good for your health. Something that would allow me to finally have the energy I've lacked for years, maybe lose weight, and generally have a healthier existence. I was game. They immediately set me up with a mentor whom I could contact anytime during the pledge when I struggled with what I call "meat urges" or general concerns about my process and progress. We met as a group every week at the church and once at the grocery store.

At this first meeting I realized I probably should have prepared at least a little bit before starting. I didn't know. My mentor asked, "What are you going to eat this week?"

Eat? This week? Well, I have butter and eggs in the fridge, so probably nothing.

Thankfully, they provided food at the meetings and there were a few items I liked and there were plenty of leftovers. So I had enough to get me through lunch the next day.

I'm pretty sure I almost died the first two weeks. I was always nauseated, tired, and dag gone hungry. What do you eat for breakfast when, as a child, you ate Cream of Wheat every single day sometimes multiple times a day and now the thought of hot cereal makes your throat close up?

Before starting the pledge, I ate eggs, some kind of meat (bacon, sausage, even Morning Star Farms meatless, but still egg washed) and a piece of bread. So I guess now I'll just eat this loaf of French bread. Yummy gluten.

When I was talking to one of the mentors who was much more compassionate toward those who were starting out, she said, "You're not eating." She was right. I wasn't eating what I needed to eat. It was throwing me all off and essentially making me sick. So we made a plan, and I was able to get what I needed.

One day, after an animal rights presentation, I was so fed up I wanted to eat a whole cow out of spite. There were vegans who were so self-righteous about their vegan lifestyle that it seemed they forgot about humanity and compassion. I wrote an email to my mentor, who had not been at that meeting. She was able to coax me off the ledge and encourage me to continue the pledge knowing that not all vegans hate non-vegans.

A month after our pledge began, we had a "so long, good luck" party. I gave my mentor a card, and she promised to continue communication as long as I wanted it. I was given a "you survived" vegan cookie from Whole Foods and a tiny Philly "LOVE" statue from the group organizer. I left feeling like I could continue a vegan lifestyle.

I also wanted to, because the science and information did make a lot of sense to me. Although I'm not a hardcore "I can't even eat around non-vegans" kind of person, I get it. The vegan diet does make me consider the way we treat animals as a reflection of who we are. So if we are willing to easily cause suffering, maybe we aren't as compassionate as we think we are.

I also think we could use more compassionate vegans in this world.

The world could just use more compassion in general.

Yooooo ... the vegan cheese, though. Nope!

I've almost fought people who tried to tell me vegan cheese is so good. (It is better than it was years ago.)

So, at the moment I'm a vegan in the home. We have not cooked meat, butter, eggs, or cheese since I started. However, when I go out, I sometimes indulge in the dairy. I know ... I know.

Since the summer began, the smell of the grill has made me crave all the meats. So instead I supplement my craving with something that has cheese in it instead. Lies. I threw away all my logic on my birthday recently. I woke up nauseated the next day. I didn't know a meat hangover was real, but when your meat tolerance is low, it will be a rough night.

I hope I don't forget that feeling next time so I can resist temptation and be delivered from evil. I want to be a pure and holy vegan, but I also know that if I am too hard on myself, I will go all the way back and it will take a whole lot of time to get this close again.

At this point I feel confident in my choices. I do know that it doesn't mean I can technically say I'm a vegan. It is a work in progress.

For now I'm just veganish.

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Essay: Vegan-ish - Newsworks.org

In the summer of 2016, the New York Review of Books published a conversation between Marilynne Robinson and President Barack Obama. The details of their conversation were less memorable than the spectacle of a president unspooling long, substantive thoughts with a prominent novelist.

Obama and Robinson are linked by affinity, mutual admiration, and coincidence. Robinsons epistolary novel Gilead launched her back into the heights of American letters in the same month Obama was elected to the U.S. Senate following a masterful oratorical display at the Democratic convention. Two more novels set in the fictional Gilead and three essay collectionswhich sometimes commented assertively on current eventsfollowed during the years Obama served in public office. He cited her in speeches and awarded her the National Humanities Medal. She wrote about her vast admiration for him. It was not hard to see them working on congruent democratic projectshis on the large but tightly constrained stage of national politics, hers on the smaller but infinitely open theater of the page and its reader.

Yet Alan Jacobs, in a thoughtful and widely read essay on the decline of Christian intellectuals in America, took Robinson to task for her conversation with Obama, finding her chat with Obama overly genial. It may be poor form to use a conversation with a friend in order to speak truth to power, but I for one would have appreciated a dose of Cornel Westlike poor form, Jacobs wrote. He cited Obamas failure to close Guantnamo Bay as one topic she might have raised (Harpers, The Watchmen, September 2016). Robinson may well be the finest living American novelist, and at her best a brilliant essayist, Jacobs went on, but whatever her religious beliefs, her culture seems to be fully that of the liberal secular world.

Jacobs does Robinson some injustice in characterizing her as an auxiliary to liberal secular politics and in minimizing the role her religion plays in shaping her views of public life. But the question he poses is a good one: How does Marilynne Robinsons writing on religionand in particular her appreciation of the Calvinist traditionrelate to her political vision? And what does that political vision mean now that the Obama years are over?

Robinson believes that democracy has an ethos, and needs one. Her most political writing is seldom concerned with the institutional machinery of the democratic state, its shifting demographic trends, or its partisan composition. It is instead concerned with the culture, habits, and civil society institutionsmost notably schools, churches, and publicationsthat undergird American democracy, enabling or inhibiting its health and flourishing. When she does comment directly on politicians and elections, it tends to be through this lens of cultural interpretation.

The openness of experience and human potential are central to Robinsons fiction and nonfiction, and the political implications of her appreciation for Obama are clear: an experiment in democratic self-government will not long survive the closure of possibility, either among individuals, in the ongoing development of culture, or in ideology. This is classic American pragmatism, continuous, as Robinson regularly points out, with the literary tradition that includes Whitman, Thoreau, Emerson, and Melville among many others. It is also implicitly theological, even if its theological roots have long been forgotten. Calvinism, on her account, is uniquely the fons et origo of Christian liberalism.

Robinsons characters are marked by yearning, but seem resigned to injustice.

That Calvinist influence, in turn, depends on the Old Testament and its uncannily generous laws. In When I Was a Child I Read Books, Robinson connects liberal in the American sense to the Geneva Bibles use of liberality rather than to the French libert, giving it the sense of generosity rather than the assertion of individual freedom. God creates the world freely and without constraint, and human beings reflect, in miniature, that unconstrained freedom. The laws honoring and defending that freedom for Israel require mutual support and open-handedness.

Consequently, the political history that most interests Robinson is the antebellum abolitionist movement and the era of Republican radicalism that gave America the Homestead Act of 1862, a piece of legislation she compares to Deuteronomy. There was nothing inevitable about the emergence of an American democracy based on mass small-scale land ownership rather than vast plantations. Our development of unprecedented systems of primary and higher education likewise expressed an egalitarian ambition: that access to schooling at all levels would transform people beyond anything envisioned in the more rigorously class-bound societies from which Americans emigrated.

In this perspective, John Ames, the prairie philosopher of Gilead and Lila, is not so much a moral or intellectual hero as he is an odd tendril thrown up by a culture that valued the office of country preacher and positioned him to learn from anything and anyone. An unlikely heir of the words of Moses, and a minor heir of the words of Calvin, Ames exemplifies the miracle of his own possibility and the world that bestowed that possibility with such a free hand.

For some of the contributors to A Political Companion to Marilynne Robinson, this story of liberality and possibility does not constitute an adequate conception of political life and its substantive goods. Ralph Hancock calls it a repudiation of teleology, a conception of human life so open and cosmopolitan that it cannot sustain the doctrine and the social order that created it. Ames, he notes, fails even the basic democratic test of using his influence to make Jack Boughtons biracial family welcome in Gilead. Taking an opposite tack, Christine Maloyed accuses Robinson of sanitizing Christian history to make it useful to progressive politics and making strawmen out of secular discourses like evolutionary theory (which Robinson identifies with the tendency to constrain or roll back the instruments of democratic potential).

Briallen Hopper, writing on the website Religion and Politics, builds an even sharper critique on a puzzling transposition in Home. In that novel, Boughton, secretly married to the African American mother of his child, expresses shock at racial unrest in Montgomery while describing much different events in Birmingham that took place years later. Whether the substitution of one event for another is a troubling oversight on the part of the author or a deliberate anachronism meant to throw her white characters into starker relief, it reveals a dimension of Robinsons fiction: she is not interested in telling the stories of people who fight their fate, alone or together. In hundreds of pages on a small town and its churches, citizens and worshipers barely make an appearance. At the heart of Robinsons work is not the achievement of justice or reconciliation but rather the nobility of yearning. The mere longing is enough, Hopper writes. It feels more satisfying than any real attempt at interracial community or racial justice could ever be.

These critics converge in finding in Robinsons work a disturbing complacency. Just as Jacobs laments that she pulls up short of a stern word to the president on Guantnamo Bay, Hancock finds her work lacking in the virtues and commitments required for the defense of the ordered hierarchy of family and society. For Hopper, Robinsons fiction is too Stoic and resigned to deal adequately with the reality of injustice. Robinsons intellectual generosity does not extend to modern white evangelicalism, which she treats in a summary and dismissive manner, and her considerable curiosity does not extend to the contributions of Catholic or Jewish social thought to Americas democratic institutions.

The critics are not wrong. To the extent that her readers have sought in Robinsons work a fully articulated alternative to ethnic nationalism, neoliberalism, or the Christian Right, they seek in vain. But Robinson has never claimed to offer such an alternative. Only the enthusiasm of her audience would indicate that she has one to offer, and only the parched landscape of modern thought could demand it of her.

If her relentless focus on interiority seems like a political cul-de-sac, and if her continual return to a humanism of awe and mystery seems inadequate for the hard-edged questions of our age, perhaps we should conclude that Robinsons politics are not strictly political after all. What is a community of inwardness, anyway? Ames unburdens his soul most fully in an empty church, or in a letter dropped into the stove. One can no more imagine him wearing out his congressman with phone calls than rousing the Israelites through the sea behind Moses.

Where Robinsons tart critiques and broad reveries do become genuinely political, fierce with unresolved grief, is in her defense of the institutions and habits that created lonely wanderers like Ames in the first place. When she talks about education or the conventions of literary and scientific thought that nurture or despoil it, we see a figure who is anything but complacent.

For all her optimism about human nature and possibility, Robinsons view of institutions is dire and forlorn. Her own University of Iowa, over 150 years old and long sustained by the generosity and good faith of hundreds of little farm towns, is being turned toward gruesomely antihumanistic and profit-seeking ends. It is as if the very idea of a people, a historical community, has died intestate, she concludes, and all its wealth is left to plunder. Built on land grants, subsidized by public budgets, and charged with building up a democratic culture, American universities have become resources to be extracted, endowments to be raided. Something similar is happening to primary education. Instead of equipping citizens for the demands of democracy, schools are training workers for the rigors of global capitalism. You would think from our rhetoric, she writes, that Americans lost the Cold War.

Calvinism and its American progeny, too, are now mostly distant memories. Gilead, set in the time of Robinsons youth, is in no small part a lament for the faded ideals of the abolitionist movement. The eldest John Ames, the narrators grandfather, a veteran of the Kansas unrest and the Civil War, and his comrades harbor a barely suppressed wild grief, Emily C. Nacol writes in the Political Companion. The black church of Gilead, a remnant of its more egalitarian history, was set on fire; its members moved to Chicago. Ames the narrator recalls this event with a discreditable lack of sorrow and fury.

But Amess complacencyand here the term is wholly appropriatewas the complacency of a white America that had long before agreed to put the war, its motives, and its radical potential in the past. It was tired of the rigor and heat of the old evangelical abolitionists, who were never popular enough to keep their printing presses from being destroyed and their leaders from being harassed or worse. Gilead survived, but without its past intact. The novels that document it, despite their aesthetic and spiritual astonishments, have a tragic hue.

What, in Robinsons telling, has replaced the Calvinism that so shaped American institutions and its secularized descendants? In the churches, she claims, nothing much. Outside of the churches, Puritanism has been replaced by what Robinson calls priggishness, a version of sanctity that awards or deducts points as viciously asand more trivially thanany Great Awakening revivalist.

In intellectual life and political ideology, the ideas that command the most prestige are reductive, harsh, and minimizing of human strangeness and possibility. Austerity in politics and economics turns us against the best of our public inheritance and against each other. In the social sciences, human experience is diminished to the flicker of fMRI data or the just-so stories of evolutionary psychology. When our dominant ideologies reduce us to the role of observers in our own collective actions, how could we remain committed to the clumsy genius of plebeian democracy?

In the lecture series published as Absence of Mind, Robinson notes the frequent use of the story of Phineas Gage in the scientific literature she finds so dehumanizing. Gage was a railroad worker who in 1848 survived a blast that lodged an iron rod in his skull. He remained remarkably intact, but his deportment was reported to have become rather poor and unreliable. This case is frequently cited as evidence that our personality traits are functions of our neural hardware. Robinson, however, asks, Did he have hopes? Did he have dependents? Gages afflictions, she suggests, might have shaped his profane and irreverent behavior beyond the damage to his circuitry. When our ideas reduce human beings to things, they require a new sort of mythology. The more we believe in this mythology, the more evidence we find to verify it.

I returned to this passage on Gage as the tide of 2016 election postmortems was at flood and a large swath of the American electorate was receiving a similar analysis. The now proverbial white working class Trump voters, limned in anecdote and aggregate data, were the test subject. What issue would bind them to Trump or pry them back to the progressive coalition? Which survey would chase their real motivations out into the open? What could explain their choices? Behind the questions was the assumption that people are inert; they merely respond to stimuli.

You would think from our rhetoric, writes Robinson, that we lost the Cold War.

This assumption may be true. Or at least it is being made true through repetition and by the scarcity of other claims for what a democratic society should or could be. That we have come to such a moment should not be a shock to anyone who has read Robinsons books. She has been unfolding its possibility for a long time.

The force behind the movement of time, she wrote in Housekeeping, is a mourning that will not be comforted. Memory pulls us forward and prophecy is only brilliant memory. It is easy for readers to lose this mournful theme in Robinsons work, deep and thunderous though it sometimes sounds.

John Ames, at the end of Gilead, prays that his son will grow up brave in a brave country and that he will be useful. Those wizened abolitionists whom he remembersthey were brave and useful. Their bravery and usefulness were a reproach and a warning to their lukewarm, forgetful progeny.

Fictional prayers for fictional children bounded by the page are poignant in their immunity to answer. The youngest Ames, had he existed, would now be eligible for Medicare. We can hazard a judgment on whether he would have grown up in a brave country. If these memories are to become brilliant enough to serve as prophecy in the wilderness of Americas retracting democracy, it will require something more and other than even our greatest living novelist can do for us.

A version of this article appears in the September 13 print edition under the title Liberalism and memory.

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Marilynne Robinson's vision for democracy - The Christian Century

Training is teaching, or developing in oneself or others, any skills and knowledge that relate to specific useful competencies. Training has specific goals of improving one's capability, capacity, productivity and performance. It forms the core of apprenticeships and provides the backbone of content at institutes of technology (also known as technical colleges or polytechnics). In addition to the basic training required for a trade, occupation or profession, observers of the labor-market recognize as of 2008[update] the need to continue training beyond initial qualifications: to maintain, upgrade and update skills throughout working life. People within many professions and occupations may refer to this sort of training as professional development

Physical training concentrates on mechanistic goals: training programs in this area develop specific skills or muscles, often with a view of peaking at a particular time. Some physical training programs focus on raising overall physical fitness.

In military use, training means gaining the physical ability to perform and survive in combat, and learning the many skills needed in a time of war. These include how to use a variety of weapons, outdoor survival skills, and how to survive being captured by the enemy, among many others. See military education and training.

For psychological or physiological reasons, people who believe it may be beneficial to them can choose to practice relaxation training, or autogenic training, in an attempt to increase their ability to relax or deal with stress.[1] While some studies have indicated relaxation training is useful for some medical conditions, autogenic training has limited results or has been the result of few studies.

Some commentators use a similar term for workplace learning to improve performance: "training and development". There are also additional services available online for those who wish to receive training above and beyond that which is offered by their employers. Some examples of these services include career counseling, skill assessment, and supportive services.[2] One can generally categorize such training as on-the-job or off-the-job.

The on-the-job training method takes place in a normal working situation, using the actual tools, equipment, documents or materials that trainees will use when fully trained. On-the-job training has a general reputation as most effective for vocational work[citation needed].It involves employee training at the place of work while he or she is doing the actual job. Usually, a professional trainer (or sometimes an experienced employee) serves as the course instructor using hands-on training often supported by formal classroom training. Sometimes training can occur by using web-based technology or video conferencing tools.

Simulation based training is another method which uses technology to assist in trainee development. This is particularly common in the training of skills requiring a very high degree of practice, and in those which include a significant responsibility for life and property. An advantage is that simulation training allows the trainer to find, study, and remedy skill deficiencies in their trainees in a controlled, virtual environment. This also allows the trainees an opportunity to experience and study events that would otherwise be rare on the job, e.g., in-flight emergencies, system failure, etc., wherein the trainer can run 'scenarios' and study how the trainee reacts, thus assisting in improving his/her skills if the event was to occur in the real world. Examples of skills that commonly include simulator training during stages of development include piloting aircraft, spacecraft, locomotives, and ships, operating air traffic control airspace/sectors, power plant operations training, advanced military/defense system training, and advanced emergency response training.

Off-the-job training method takes place away from normal work situations implying that the employee does not count as a directly productive worker while such training takes place. Off-the-job training method also involves employee training at a site away from the actual work environment. It often utilizes lectures, case studies, role playing, and simulation, having the advantage of allowing people to get away from work and concentrate more thoroughly on the training itself. This type of training has proven more effective in inculcating concepts and ideas[citation needed]. Many personnel selection companies offer a service which would help to improve employee competencies and change the attitude towards the job. The internal personnel training topics can vary from effective problem-solving skills to leadership training.

In religious and spiritual use, training may refer to the purification of the mind, heart, understanding and actions to obtain a variety of spiritual goals such as (for example) closeness to God or freedom from suffering. Note for example the institutionalised spiritual training of Threefold Training in Buddhism, Meditation in Hinduism or discipleship in Christianity. These aspects of training can be short term or last a lifetime, depending on the context of the training and which religious group it is a part of.

Compare religious ritual.

Instructor Guide (IG), is an important document available to an instructor. Specifically, it is used within a Lesson Plan, as the blueprint that ensures instruction is presented in proper sequence and to the depth required by the objectives. Objectives of a lesson plan:

Parochial schools are a fairly widespread institution in the United States. A parochial school is a primary or secondary school supervised by a religious organization, especially a Roman Catholic day school affiliated with a parish or a holy order. As of 2004, out of the approximately 50 million children who were enrolled in American grade schools, 4.2 million children attend a church-affiliated school, which is approximately 1 in 12 students.[5] Within the Christian religion, for example, one can attend a church-affiliated college with the intent of getting a degree in a field associated with religious studies. Some people may also attend church-affiliated colleges in pursuit of a non-religious degree, and typically do it just to deepen their understanding of the specific religion that the school is associated with.[citation needed] The largest non-public school system in the United States, the Catholic school system, operates 5,744 elementary schools and 1,206 secondary schools.

Researchers have developed training methods for artificial-intelligence devices as well. Evolutionary algorithms, including genetic programming and other methods of machine learning, use a system of feedback based on "fitness functions" to allow computer programs to determine how well an entity performs a task. The methods construct a series of programs, known as a population of programs, and then automatically test them for "fitness", observing how well they perform the intended task. The system automatically generates new programs based on members of the population that perform the best. These new members replace programs that perform the worst. The procedure repeats until the achievement of optimum performance.[6] In robotics, such a system can continue to run in real-time after initial training, allowing robots to adapt to new situations and to changes in themselves, for example, due to wear or damage. Researchers have also developed robots that can appear to mimic simple human behavior as a starting point for training.[7]

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Training - Wikipedia

We may live in a culture of distraction, but mindfulness has captured our attention.

Books on the practice are numerous, including guides to A Mindful Pregnancy, Mindful Parenting, Mindful Politics, The Mindful Diet and Mindfulness for Teachers. Corporations, sports teams, even the military and police departments provide mindfulness training to their employees. A bevy of podcasts offer tips for living a mindful life, guided mindful meditation and interviews with mindfulness evangelists. Another sure sign of cultural saturation: You can order a more mindful burger, at Epic Burger in Chicago or an Enjoy the ride trucker hat from Mindful Supply Co.

I was dismayed when mindfulness began to encroach on my field: psychology, and specifically the treatment of suicidal behavior. A psychiatrist colleagues proposal for a book on bipolar disorder prompted a pre-publication reviewer to request less lithium, more mindfulness even though less lithium can lead to more death by suicide in patients with bipolar disorder.

Of course, were all intrigued by interventions that show promise over the standard treatment, especially for the most difficult cases. But I wanted to know whether mindfulness had merit. So I soon found myself immersed in the literature and practice sitting shoes-off in a circle, focused on the coolness of my breath as it hit the back of my throat.

What we might call authentic mindfulness, I found, is a noble and potentially useful idea. But true mindfulness is being usurped by an imposter, and the imposter is loud and strutting enough that it has replaced the original in many peoples understanding of what mindfulness is. This ersatz version provides a vehicle for solipsism and an excuse for self-indulgence. It trumpets its own glories, promising health and spiritual purity with trendiness thrown in for the bargain. And yet it misunderstands human nature, while containing none of the nobility, humility or utility of the true original. Even the best-designed, most robust research on mindfulness has been overhyped.

Although there are various definitions of mindfulness, a workable one, drawn from some of the most respected practitioners, is the nonjudgmental awareness of the richness, subtlety and variety of the present moment all of the present moment, not just the self. Mindfulness is not the same as meditation, although meditative activities and exercises are often deployed in its cultivation. Neither is it the emptying of the mind; far from it, as the emphasis is on full awareness. And it is not about savoring the moment, which would demand dwelling on the positive. True mindfulness recognizes every instant of existence, even those of great misery, as teeming and sundry. It encourages adherents to be dispassionate and nonjudgmental about all thoughts, including those like, I am hopelessly defective. Mindfulness wants us to pause, reflect and gain distance and perspective.

Authentic mindfulness is also humble in the sense that it places the self in its proper, minuscule place within each moments infinitude. The mindful person is attuned to the miasma of sensation that has nothing at all to do with ones own subjectivity, but rather concerns the features of the present moment surrounding ones own mind, in its minute detail and its vastness, too. And, in addition to attunement to this external moiling of sensation, one is also and simultaneously dispassionately attentive to the contents of ones own mind.

Accepting ones thoughts as merely thoughts is very different from treasuring ones thoughts; one may as well treasure ones sweat or saliva. This is about recognizing that each thought is inconsequential and thus not worth getting depressed or anxious about. Viewing the minds moment-to-moment products as of a similar standing as floating motes of dust myriad, ephemeral, individually insignificant is admirable and requires genuine humility.

But mindfulness has become pernicious, diluted and distorted by the prevailing narcissism of our time. The problem has somewhat less to do with how its practiced and more to do with how its promoted. People arent necessarily learning bad breathing techniques. But in many cases they are counting on those breathing techniques to deliver almost magical benefits. And, all the while, they are tediously, nonjudgmentally and in the most extreme cases monstrously focused entirely on themselves. That is troublesome for mental health practice and for our larger culture.

Authentic mindfulness has always been susceptible to this distortion because of its encouragement of an inward gaze. At a mindfulness retreat I attended in 2013, the workshop leader exhorted us to remember the selflessness of genuine mindfulness and not to fetishize it as a cultist solution for self-enhancement or for the affluents petty aggrievements. And yet we spent 90 percent of that retreat focused on our own sensations the minute muscular changes as we engaged in mindful walking, the strain points in our muscles and joints during mindful stretching.

It is easy to see how this emphasis could be misinterpreted. In moderation, self-examination can lead to a reasonable and unobsessed awareness of ones emotional tendencies, thought patterns, impact on others and blind spots. But to encourage an inward gaze among incredibly self-interested creatures is to court excess.

The trendy version of mindfulness tends to be described in terms of what it can do for us as individuals. For example, a recent article on the website of Mindful magazine described How mindfulness gives you an edge at work . Likewise, the book 10-Minute Mindfulness promises: When you are truly experiencing the moment, rather than analyzing it or getting lost in negative thoughts, you enjoy a wide array of physical, emotional and psychological benefits that are truly life changing.

Or consider this promotional language for a workshop this summer co-sponsored by UCLAs Mindful Awareness Research Center: Practitioners report deeper connection to themselves, more self-compassion, and greater insights into their lives. The emphasis is on the individual connection to themselves, self-compassion, insights into their lives.

Indeed, self-compassion and self-care are intertwined with the popular concept of mindfulness. The notion seems to be that it is not selfish to tend to and even to prioritize ones own needs for care and understanding. After all, this line of thought goes, how can one be available for others unless one is fully present, and how can one be fully present unless ones own needs are met? The reasoning here contains a kind of trickle-down logic.

Of course, self-care in the sense of adequate sleep and nutrition is eminently sensible. But it seems that the most ardent fans of self-compassion focus on things like relaxing vacations, restorative massages and rejuvenating skin-care regimens. This preoccupation gives the impression that self-compassion is code, and a rationalization, for doing things people already find pleasant. Theres nothing wrong with pleasant activities, but those already have a name: pleasant activities. Calling them self-care adds little meaning and unhelpfully obscures that such activities are not essential to survival or health or caring for others and that they can be foregone in the service of sacrifice and honor.

What do we really know about what mindfulness can do for us? 10-Minute Mindfulness mentions advantages including reduced levels of stress, anxiety and overthinking, plus improved memory, concentration and sleep. And there is some mild scientific support for those benefits. Headlines regularly announce further breakthrough discoveries. In the past few weeks alone, weve heard that Mindfulness-based intervention significantly improves parenting , Mind-body therapies immediately reduce unmanageable pain in hospital patients and Mindfulness may lower blood sugar levels.

Its true that numerous studies seem to support the benefits of mindfulness for a variety of life problems. Yet headlines tend to oversell what the studies show. And the effects of mindfulness seem to fade under the scrutiny of rigorous and tightly controlled experiments.

Take a look at that parenting study, a fairly typical example of mindfulness research. The study, published by the Journal of Addiction Medicine, didnt look at parenting in general. Its target population was mothers enrolled in treatment for opioid addiction who started with a low level of parenting skills. Thats certainly a worthwhile focus, though narrower than one might have assumed based on the headline. The intervention was a bit of a mishmash. It involved mindfulness themes, such as attention and nonjudgmental acceptance, along with meditation and activities such as the creation of a glitter jar to settle the mind. The mothers also received feedback on how they interacted with their babies, and they learned about the impact of trauma on parenting. So what was the active ingredient that contributed to the observed improvements in parenting behavior? Its impossible to say. And because there was no control group, we dont know if the progress of their addiction treatment or showing up with their children at a treatment center for two hours a week for 12 weeks was what made the difference.

The pain study was more rigorous. Patients reporting unmanageable pain were randomly assigned to one of three 15-minute interventions: mindfulness training focused on acceptance of pain; hypnosis focused on changing the sensation of pain through imagery; or a pain-coping education session. The study authors framed their research in the context of the opioid crisis, but their findings dont suggest that mindfulness will play much of a role in its resolution. Only about a quarter of patients in the mindfulness group reported a decrease in pain substantial enough to be considered of even moderate clinical importance. And the mindfulness group didnt exhibit any meaningful decrease in perceived need for opioid medication. Here, as in the vast majority of well-controlled mindfulness research, an intervention related to mindfulness failed to outperform in fact, slightly underperformed an active comparison treatment (hypnosis) and exceeded only a very inert comparison group (education). Nevertheless, studies like this are held up by mindfulness enthusiasts as proof positive of its special power.

Given my own specialty area, I have been particularly intrigued by the work of British psychologist Mark Williams and his colleagues, who have suggested that mindfulness interventions may be useful for preventing and treating depression. Unfortunately, their impressive 2014 study, which included a large and representative sample of adults, was not particularly supportive of a mindfulness-related approach. Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy with meditation and without failed to outperform treatment as usual (with previously prescribed antidepressant medication) in preventing recurrence of major depressive disorder. More specifically, about half of those in the study experienced a recurrence of depression, regardless of whether they were randomly assigned to the antidepressant plus mindfulness with meditation group, the antidepressant plus mindfulness without meditation group or the antidepressants alone group. (Because taking someone with major depressive disorder off medication can cause their depression to come roaring back, as famously happened with David Foster Wallace, studying mindfulness therapy without medication in this population is not an ethically responsible option.)

I dont mean to suggest that we should thoroughly dismiss the potential of mindfulness. Some reputable studies have shown that mindfulness training can reduce mind wandering and improve cognitive functioning, as measured through GRE scores. They have found that mindfulness mitigates sunk-cost bias when we resist abandoning an effort and cutting our losses. But when many of the supposed effects of mindfulness fade in the hands of highly credentialed teams publishing well-designed studies in the best journals, we should be skeptical of the benefits promulgated by people and in outlets that are not as scientifically rigorous.

Its worth noting, too, that some research suggests that mindfulness may backfire. For instance, one study compared a group of participants who briefly engaged in mindfulness meditation with a group who did not. All the participants were asked to memorize a 15-word list; all the words involved the concept of trash (e.g., rubbish, waste, garbage, etc.). A key point is that the list did not contain the word trash. Close to 40 percent of the mindfulness group members falsely recalled seeing the word trash, compared with about 20 percent of the control participants (who had been advised to think about whatever they liked). Ironically, being mindful meant losing awareness of details.

Mindfulness, as popularly promoted and practiced, can itself be a distraction. It purports to draw on ancient traditions as an antidote to modern living. Yet it exacerbates the modern tendency toward navel-gazing, while asking us to resist useful aspects of our nature.

Snap judgments and mindless but superb performance are two such elements of our evolutionary endowment. Our nervous system perhaps natures crowning achievement evolved to discern figure from ground, to discriminate, to judge, often on an almost reflexive basis. And when we are fully absorbed in an activity, in a state of flow, it can be adaptive to lose self-awareness. A sure way to throw elite golfers off their game is to ask them to think aloud as they putt.

Interestingly, in contrast to much of the hyperbolic praise that is heaped on mindfulness, there is convincing evidence that the repetition of some activities, such as aerobic walking, even if done quite mindlessly, promotes health. Mere walking three times a week for 40 or so minutes at a time has even been shown to increase the volume of peoples brains enough to reverse usual age-related loss by almost two years.

So rather than reading books on mindfulness or attending retreats or ordering a mindful burger, you may want to consider taking a walk.

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Mindfulness would be good for you. If it weren't so selfish. - Washington Post

Yoga Teaching in Santa Barbara

Paul Wellman

Jivana Heyman instructs a course at Santa Barbara Yoga Center.

A Mecca for Training Programs andPractice

Santa Barbara is a yogic place. Its not uncommon to see someone unfolding gracefully over a seaside bluff in dancer pose, or bending their back upon the crowning boulders of Lizards Mouth. Yoga is in our shared lifestyle and our worldwide brand. Our coastal city, whose mountains were likened to the foothills of the Himalayas by famed S.B. yogi Rishi Singh Grewal, has for more than a century drawn mystics, healers, and mind-body enthusiasts. [Santa Barbaras] splendid natural beauty arouses the desire in the individual to stay deeply connected to life, said Yoga Soup founder EddieEllner.

Now, with yoga more popular nationwide than evera joint 2016 study by Yoga Journal and the Yoga Alliance counted more than 36 million practitioners, a roughly 75 percent increase from the 20.4 million tallied in 2012Santa Barbara attracts more and more prospective yoga teachers, with at least nine different training programs offered in the city limits. The city is such an ideal location for yoga, in fact, that it is home to world-renowned master and creator of flow yoga Ganga White and his wife, Tracey Rich, whose influential co-teachings are felt in established studios such as Yoga Soup, as well as newer ones such as DiviniTree Yoga & Art Studio. And the citys instructors arent ones to sit on their laurelsthey continue to invent and innovate on the yogic front, with studios such as Santa Barbara Yoga Center and Let It Go Yoga teaching accessible yoga for the differently abled or branching into onlineteachings.

By PaulWellman

Yoga Soups Eddie Ellner hopes to free teachers from limitations. The more you can grapple with the attachment you have to your ideas of yourself, the less you indulge them, hesaid.

The origins of yoga date back more than 5,000 years, with philosophical roots grounded in a collection of sacred texts and songs developed in the Indus-Sarasvati civilization. Over thousands of years, the spiritual practice evolved to integrate physical movement; most of what we know as yoga is extremely recentlydeveloped.

It turns out yoga is really the result of the global brain, White said, adding that the British Armys occupation of India in the 1800s hugely shaped the practice. Before it was connected with the West, yoga was very rudimentary and simplistic. There is a pretty strong likelihood that many asanas [or poses] came from British burpees, and many of the poses in yoga have been shown to have come not from well-being practice but from circuscontortionists.

In the early 1900s, gurus such as Swami Vivekananda and Paramahansa Yogananda advocated the spiritual benefits to U.S. audiences, and by the psychedelic 60s, many Americans gazes were fixed firmly on the Eastern Hemisphere. Still, yoga wasnt popular the way it is now. You were always the black sheep in your family or neighborhood, recalled Rich of thatera.

In time, however, yoga became commoditized and is now a gigantic and growing industry. The aforementioned survey found that, in 2016, Americans spent $16 billion on classes, gear, and accessories, far surpassing the $10 billion counted four years before. This current era of yoga is also likely the first in its multithousand-year history that has a nonprofit overseeing the nations teaching community. The Yoga Alliance requires any prospective teacher to be certified through the organization, which entails a minimum of 200 hours of training. Thats where the teacher-training studios comein.

One of the first of its kind in Santa Barbara, White Lotus Foundation serves as the origin story for many area teachers. Opened in 1983 by Ganga White, the sprawling site, located on San Marcos Pass Road, encompasses a beautiful waterfall and swimming hole, quietly rustling bay leaves and chaparral, and sweeping views of the city and sea. The Chumash called this area Taklushmon: the gathering place. The ashram offers multiple retreats, and their training programs are intensive, where teachers-to-be liveonsite.

White was drawn to yoga long before he knew what it was. I definitely had the innate inclination to explore things and learn things, and thats why I was so attracted when someone told me yogis were making flowers out of thin air in the Himalayas, he said. But it wasnt until the turbulence of the 60s and everything melting down and the Vietnam War [that] it came into my consciousness that I should really look into this yoga that I had heard about. Whites studies began in 1966; by 1968, he organized and led what is likely the first yoga teacher training in the U.S.: The In-Depth Yoga and Teacher Training. Soon, he became a world-renowned yogi, appearing in Hollywood films, embarking on national lecturing tours, and hosting yogi gurus fromIndia.

By PaulWellman

Pictured sitting at one of White Lotus Foundations swimming holes, Ganga White and Tracey Rich offer a training based on their jointly developed flowsequence.

While he was a teacher in Los Angeles in the late 1960s, Ernst and Ruth Haeckel, two yogis from Santa Barbara, were among Whites first students. The German-born Ernst approached White and said, Young man, I have been doing yoga since I was a child in the 1920s. Use me as a resource. White took him up on his offer and visited the Haeckels at their 40-acre site, then a yoga ashram replete with bomb shelter (which is now a kiva for prayer). White one day dreamed of opening a yoga retreat center on a land likethis.

In the meantime, White taught yoga to hundreds of people across the country and on his journeys met his future wife, Tracey Rich, on Maui. We had a mutual respect, not only for each other, but for the importance of what yoga was in our individual lives, and that it was a very full-spectrum, deeply personal path of living, she said. We are both into the inquiry of the human mind and consciousness and living, and that remains something we teach and share. Together, filming on VHS in L.A., they developed a series of partner yoga videos, which further expanded the practice for manyyogis.

By the 1980s, the Haeckels yoga center had fallen into disarray, with squatters on the land and financial troubles rumbling. In 1983, White and Rich offered to take over the land, settle the Haeckels debts, and allow them to live on the property until their death, which they did. The couple passed away on the property they hoped would become something very much like what White Lotus Foundation istoday.

Courtesy

Summerlands Evolation has grown through a worldwide network of teachers, say founders. Mark Drost and ZefeaSamson.

Now, yogis live here among the trees, rocks, wind, and sky, for 16-day in-depth teacher trainings or shorter-term stays. You get to live the experience fully in nature, which we think is one of the greatest teachers, Rich said. Beyond that, they try to avoid teaching any one approach. You have two schools of thought: one that everything was mapped out in the past, and the other that everything is relativistic and evolutionary, White said. Were in the latter. We really try to teach people how to see forthemselves.

Using their incredibly influential flow serieselements of which can be seen in countless yoga classes todayand Whites book Yoga Beyond Belief as guiding points, the pair offer a vision of yoga as a complementary tool to understand and adjust to lifes ever-changing course. A lot of people hold yoga as a particular solidified practice concept or philosophy, Rich said. There is no one path, White agreed. Its relative; its a constant journey; its constantlearning.

White and Richs lessons trickled down the mountains into the minds and meditations of yogis who went on to open some of S.B.s most venerable studios, including The Yoga Studio, founded by Sue Anne and Jim Parsons in 1986. Not [a] very original [name], Sue Anne admitted, but at the time, it was very original, countered Jim. People had weird ideas [about] what yoga was, Sue Anne explained. They thought it was a cult, Jimsaid.

The Parsons family has developed its own style, Let It Go Yoga, a practice done entirely on the floor, and just about everywhere that offers yoga classes has a Parsons graduate, Sue Anne said. [Its] a style of hatha yoga, done lying down. Its all about surrender; learning where youre holding on and then releasing it, she explained. Let It Go is designed to be something you can do forever, Jimsaid.

Within the last year, the Parsons launched their inaugural online training course, which can be done at home over any length of time. The course teaches not only the Eight Limbs of Yoga (the guiding principles, of which asanas are only one facet), but also emotional-release tools such as instructions on how to write a love letter. This is just one way the family is innovating the yogic landscape. Their daughter Jessica Parsons is the first person in the country with Down syndrome to become a certified yoga instructor. Along with her sisters Lauren and Emily Parsons, also teachers, she has released a series of Yoga by Teens videos, among the first teen-focused yoga videos on themarket.

By PaulWellman

With both their Let It Go sequence and their online training course, Sue Anne and Jim Parsons offer yoga for any time ofday.

Another innovator in town is Yoga Soups Eddie Ellner, who is renowned as one of the most creative, distinctive, and even quirky teachers. A White Lotus graduate, Ellner came here, having witnessed the yoga explosion of the mid 90s in Santa Monica, when now-celeb-status figures like Bryan Kest and Steve Ross brought yoga to L.A.sWestside.

At Yoga Soup, Ellners classes sit on the borderland of playful and powerful, segueing from dance breaks to profound seriousness. As he explained, he likes to prod the mind that thinks it knows everything and has its preferences and is stuck in its ways. Ellner feels yoga, like a persons self-image, doesnt have to look any particular way; thats really the environment that we want to create here. When Yoga Soups inaugural teacher training begins in January 2018, Ellner will tell teachers to expect the unexpected. Training shouldnt just be a diploma mill of easy concepts; training should really challenge you and push your buttons and grow you in ways you never even imagined you couldgrow.

Studios such as Santa Barbara Yoga Center (SBYC), on the other hand, are offering yoga teacher trainings to people who, due to physical incapacities, perhaps never imagined they could do yoga, let alone teach it. In addition to its usual teacher modules, SBYC offers a course in Accessible Yoga Training through co-owner Reverend Jivana Heyman. Heyman and Barbara Hirsch took over the studio from founder Las Ribeiro da Silva, who opened the studio in 1992, making it S.B.s longest-runningstudio.

My vision is about making yoga accessible, Heyman said. He began practicing yoga while working as an HIV/AIDS activist in San Francisco. His best friend died of AIDS in 1995, and he taught me a lot about what healing really is. Theres physical healing, and then theres spiritual healing. When Heyman became a teacher, he wanted to share yoga with the HIV/AIDS community in San Francisco, and he began teaching at hospitals, which soon grew to teaching people with disabilities of all kinds. Now, SBYC frequently offers workshops and classes such as Yoga for Arthritis and Yoga for the Special Child. Heyman likes that yoga is down-to-earth, practical, and not dogmatic; in a way, you could say yoga is like the technology of spiritual practice without thedogma.

In the last decade, Santa Barbara has seen an ever-greater blossoming of yoga studios, practitioners, and teacher-training programs that fill a particular niche, attracting a broader, younger crowd with their variegated approach toyoga.

Yasa Yoga founders Stephanie and Ryan Besler moved their studio from Scottsdale, Arizona, to an astounding church-like structure on Mission Street in 2011, when Stephanie, a UCSB alum, wanted to return to the community she loved deeply. The Beslers style blends the ashtanga and Iyengar lineages, and they wanted to bring something new and different to the community. The Beslers co-teach, balancing masculine and feminine energy in the lessons. You get that mom-and-pop feel, Stephanie said of the training vibe. Beyond equipping their teachers with a tool belt of safe teaching methods and effective marketing skills, the Beslers emphasize a continual willingness to grow. Theres a humble confidence that is so importance in being a good yoga instructor, Stephaniesaid.

By PaulWellman

Yasa Yogas Stephanie and Ryan Besler balance their teacher trainings with a husband-wifeapproach.

Summerlands Evolation is also owned by a husband-wife pairthe word yoga does mean to yoke or unite, after allMark Drost and Zefea Samson, who both have a largely Bikram-influenced lineage. Nestled in a serene Summerland space, their white-walled shelter overlooks the blue Pacific in a mind-clearing oasis. Theirs is a small, hands-on, intensive 500-hour course founded in Bikrams and Iyengarsphilosophies.

The pair take and teach the principles and poses they found accessible and inspiring about Bikrama controversial hot-yoga brand known for its powerful effects, widespread popularity, and litigious founder, Bikram Choudhuryand transform it into something more. What made Bikram so successful its so simple. But we feel like you go in this narrow hallway or doorway of yoga; a lot of people are looking for more; [they want] to keep that simplicity but open a few more doors. Samson said Evolation creates a support system, and the teachers have gone on to spread the practice worldwide, from Madrid to Missoula toMalawi.

For many yogis, its all about the networks and community support, not just as a teacher, but as a resident of the world. At CorePower Yoga, which has locations in Santa Barbara and Goleta among 170 CorePower studios nationwide, owner and director Cara Ferrick said community-building is what keeps yogis coming back400 yogis a day in S.B., 220 in Goleta. At CorePower trainings, teachers learn a foundational vinyasa power yoga sequence, with classes offered on weeknights and weekends so as not to interrupt the flow of regular life. Theres a practicality behind it, said Goleta studio manager Tricia Cook of why she picked CorePowers part-time training schedule. I didnt need to drop everything for two months. You come out with a sequence, how to teach it, [how to] keep students safe intransitions.

Empowerment meets practicality at Power of Your Om, too, where owner Adrienne Smith provides a goal-oriented approach to handling lifes challenges. Smith, who used to work in product development for health-care-products corporation Kimberly-Clark, offers an open, fun environment with a power yoga sequence foundation where unpretentiousness is the key. She remembers her first yoga class giving her a buzzing calm and clarity shed never felt before, and she hopes her teachers-to-be come out clearer not just about what to teach, but about who they are. A lot of it is about personal power, passion, showing up as a yes and seeing whats holding you back from your authenticself.

By PaulWellman

Fostering a fun and unpretentious atmosphere at her Power of Your Om studio, Adrienne Smith provides a practical and empowering curriculum focused on power yogasequences.

Deep truths are all but inescapable to the focused yogic mind, said DiviniTrees Rachel Wilkins; they almost come crashing in. Its a deep churning and peeling back the layers. Youre totally raw, totally bare; you cant really hide when youre up there teaching. At DiviniTree, a very popular spot on East De la Guerra Street that offers teacher trainings this fall, White Lotus graduate Wilkins leads a training program that emphasizes creativity. A dancer whos always trying to channel a little bit of Bowie, Wilkins teaches her teachers a very organic, improvisational flow. Through her, the mountaintop teachings of White Lotus unfold in sensual, musical classes and art projects, with the flow series evolving evermore in electronicrhythms.

Yoga will no doubt continue to expand and to grow in Santa Barbara, a city now forever tied to the evolution of the practice. For yoga itself, as with its poses, there will always be adjustments, White said. The enlightenment of today can become the ignorance oftomorrow.

By PaulWellman

Rachel Wilkins encourages teachers-to-be to get creative in her DiviniTree teachingprogram.

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