I’m doing something this weekend that I very rarely do– I’m getting on an airplane and flying to Chicago to take part in a family member’s wedding. I say rarely because I last flew nearly three years ago and that seemed like a good place to leave it. Yet, here I go again, and of course it’s not going easily.
People who fly without the white-knuckled, jaw-clenching anxiety that I endure before flying seem like the bravest, shiniest people in the world to me. I, in contrast, often feel like Hoggle from Labyrinth as I enter the concourse – shabby, muddy, troll-like, and in need of a place to hide.
In the scramble to soothe my nerves prior to this upcoming trip, I was poring through Bill Moyers’ Healing and the Mind. In the section Healing from Within, Mr. Moyers interviews Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn, who specializes in using yoga as a means of stress reduction in his patients. Dr. Kabat-Zinn says this about the real value of yoga: “If you do this (practice yoga) for any period of time, lo and behold, you’ll find the real value of yoga: to work at your limits non-judgmentally.” Read more »