As our new season begins, YTA is gearing up with greater success and energy since the Pandemic, and I am excited to share some little known (by me) information with our membership. I was prompted to research Kemetic yoga and was thrilled and amazed (hard to do with my duration of practice) at what I learned.

Kemetic yoga is an ancient practice originally from Africa and Egypt. It embodies the benefits found in all other known systems:

Breath-led
Strengthens connections between the body, mind, and spirit
Promotes flexibility
Provides more complete oxygenation and blood circulation
Slows you down, rejuvenates, and empowers

At this point, I was in total amazement by the confluence of universal consciousness in our practice emerging simultaneously in different parts of the world and whether or not the physical postures inspired the temple carvings of the Egyptian gods and their positions or vice-versa. Along these lines, studies have shown similarities between ancient Hebrew and Sanskrit, originating independently.

Many forms of ancient history have been erased by harsh transatlantic cultural disruptions, but thankfully and gratefully, Kemetic yoga highlights inclusivity, attracting many people of color. Check online teaching with Sarah Wes. At this time in the world, yoga again shines as a beacon for peace and the understanding of all beings sharing the planet.

Hopefully, you as a practitioner will join us and add your expertise and energy at this exciting time for YTA’s regrouping and expansion. The monthly workshops and activities are there to support YOU—whoever or wherever you are!

Light and Love,

Paula Renuka Heitzner

YTA Workshops and Events

Saturday, September 14
1:30–4:30 p.m.

In Person*** and via Zoom

*** NOW BEING HELD AT MARIANDALE ***

Yoga as a Pathway to Cure:
Scoliosis, Osteoporosis, and Rotator Cuff Syndrome

with Loren Fishman, MD,
and Liz Larson

Join Loren Fishman, MD, and Liz Larson, RYT, to discover how therapeutic yoga can provide significant improvement to sufferers of scoliosis, osteoporosis, and rotator cuff syndrome.

In this workshop, you will discover how to spot scoliosis in yourself or your students and explore the four different spinal curves. One or two yoga poses for each of the curves will be given.

Osteoporosis, which affects 44 million Americans and causes a million fractures every year (mostly in the vertebrae and hip) has been proved to be reversed with a series of 12 poses, all part of the standard yoga canon, but with some differences: Dr. Fishman will be using yoga for a medical effect, not for liberation or relaxation.

Rotator cuff syndrome, a common and painful shoulder injury, is treated with a single yoga pose that’s modified for the uninitiated or those with cervical, cerebral, or ophthalmological conditions. Learn the basics of avoiding shoulder injuries in yoga, which is one of the most common yoga injuries. There will be a discussion of the anatomy of how this particular technique for using yoga to heal rotator cuff tears works, and how to instruct students to make sure it is done the right way so that they can experience a greater range of motion and less pain.

We will do many of the poses together. Eligible for three hours IAYT CEUs upon completion of the online exam.

A recording will be made available to all registrants for two weeks following the workshop

Recommended props: mat, block, strap, & blanket

In-person attendees, please see notes below!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Loren Fishman, MD, BPhil, is a practicing doctor who was fortunate enough to spend the year 1973 with Mr. Iyengar in Pune. To date, he has helpfully applied yoga to osteoporosis, scoliosis, rotator cuff syndrome, arthritis, knee and hip problems, insomnia, weight management, anxiety, restless leg syndrome, and an objective scale for pain. The British Medical Journal uses his system for low back pain in I-pocrates, its online tool for doctors. His work has been reviewed in articles by Jane Brody of the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Spine, Muscle and Nerve, and international periodicals. He has been extensively interviewed in the media, including on Diane Sawyer’s World News, NPR, J. Brown Yogaberry and Yoga Dork. He has been listed in Castle and Connolly’s “Best Doctors” more than 10 times. His twelve books include the best-selling Yoga for Osteoporosis, Yoga for Arthritis with Ellen Saltonstall, Yoga and Multiple Sclerosis with Eric Small, and Yoga for Weight Loss with Carol Ardman, and Healing Yoga—Yoga Cures for 20 Common Conditions.He has two granddaughters.

Liz Larson, MS, MA, RYT, is the study administrator for Dr. Fishman’s Yoga vs. Osteoporosis Dose-Response study. She has studied with Dr. Fishman for ten years and holds all of the yoga teacher certifications offered by the Fishman Method. Liz is passionate about using yoga to improve health, arguably our most valuable resource.

YTA's 2024–25 Season

Thursday, September 26
6:30–8 p.m.
Via Zoom
YTA's Inaugural Book Club Discussion—Eastern Body, Western Mind by Anodea Judith
Learn more and register now!

October 19
In Person and via Zoom
Merging Movement

with Meditation with Betsy Ceva
Experience a playful exploration of the body in motion and discover how movement can become meditation. The heart of this workshop focuses on merging movement, breath, intention, and meditation to invite a tranquil mind.
Learn more and register now!

November 16
TBD

December 8
Via Zoom
The Issues Live in Our Tissues with Nikki Myers, founder of Y12SR

January 11
Via Zoom
Something Amazing TBD with Lee Albert

February 8
Via Zoom
Something Wonderful TBD with Nicolai Bachman

March 8
In Person and via Zoom
Yoga and Archetypes with Judith Rose

April 12
Via Zoom
Something Fabulous TBD with Dr. Gail Parker

May 10
TBD

June 14
In Person and via Zoom Sound Bath: The Origins and Science Behind the Healing Practice with

Aura Soleil

Important information
for in-person attendees

The Center at Mariandale
299 North Highland Avenue
Ossining, NY 10562

PROPS

PLEASE BRING YOUR PROPS (mat, block, strap, blanket)—Mariandale has limited yoga mats and blocks and no straps or blankets. YTA will provide as many straps and blankets as possible.

DIRECTIONS

Be sure to use the street address (299 No. Highland Ave., Ossining, NY 10562) in your GPS; using "Mariandale" as the destination may not bring you to the correct spot.

PARKING and LOGISTICS

Please park in the large visitor lot on the left as you drive in.
We are meeting in the Evergreen Room.
You can enter the building through the main front door or by the side Shield Door (at the left-hand side of the building); the Shield Door is closest to the Evergreen Room.
An entry code will be provided.
Please plan to arrive with enough time to park, get to the room, register, and get set up so that we can start promptly at 1:30 p.m.

Unless otherwise stated, workshops are $45 members / $65 nonmembers in advance ($55 / $75 day of) and count toward Yoga Alliance certification requirements. Preregistration is highly recommended in order to guarantee a space in the workshop. Cancellation within 24 hours of a workshop may result in forfeiture of the registration fee.

Pathways to Healing

by Loren Fishman, MD

After graduating from Christ Church, Oxford, in Foundations of Mathematics, a philosophical subject, it seemed to me the most related field was grammar: only language-users know numbers and they both have rules for well-formed expressions, etc. It turned out that the first grammar book was written by a man named Patanjali.

I resolved to go to India and learn Sanskrit. I was there only about three weeks when I realized the average three-year old would know more Sanskrit than I would ever learn, and this was just about that time that I came upon Mr. Iyengar’s book. The yoga stood head and shoulders above any I had ever seen. A few weeks later I went to his house, and after an electric meeting with him, stayed in a hotel for about a year and learned all this highly intelligent and righteous man could teach me. Among many other things, I learned that the same Patanjali had written the Yoga Sutra and was a physician.

Even then, I was using yoga to help drug addicts and those with orthopedic injuries in the “expatriate” community, but after returning to the United States for medical school, my interest in how yoga works deepened.

Curious stories attend each of the topics in this workshop. Risking a spoiler effect, the following descriptions show my pathway to healing.

Scoliosis

My first patient was a little bird of a woman, a hospital administrator whose yoga-teaching daughter had brought her from another state. She had a curve above 100°, and was dying due to the constricting effects on her heart and respiration. I tried to slow down the progression, thinking perhaps we could stop it. After five months, I thought maybe I was fooling myself, but she looked better. A follow-up x-ray showed her curve to now be 68°!

Possibly 20 years later, my neighbor had a niece with scoliosis whom I treated successfully just about the same way. When she improved the neighbor, a Yale MBA exclaimed, “you’re a genius! The world must know about this!” That had never occurred to me but then I started recruiting patients to see if this was more broadly applicable.

Now I’ve seen all kinds of scoliosis and believe that it is based on muscular asymmetry in the vast majority of cases. I treat it by equalizing the muscular strength on both sides of the curve. Currently I’m doing an FDA-approved study, using both yoga to strengthen the weak side and botulinum toxin to temporarily weaken the strong side. The results are so striking I’ve already published it, although I’m still accepting patients for the study.

Osteoporosis

Just before leaving India I had a goodbye party for the Iyengar community in my rooftop rooms at the hotel. It was a great party and afterward, when I blew out a candle in one of the lanterns, I had a vision of Mr. Iyengar’s bones. Their strength and integrity made them glisten. They were not at all grisly, but rather strikingly wholesome and robust.

In my medical residency, another wonderful teacher, Edward F. Delagi, MD, taught me Wolff’s Law—“The architectonic (basic support) of a bone follows the lines of force to which the bone is exposed.” It explains many biological phenomena, including why we have that curious crook in our hip bones.

I put Wolff’s Law together with the vision on the hotel roof and surmised that yoga might help with osteoporosis. My friends said, “Loren, you’re crazy. Yoga for people with osteoporosis? you’ll break their bones!” So I did a controlled pilot study with my own patients after office hours. I used poses that put pressure on the hip, the femur, and the spine, the most common and serious sites of fracture, and not coincidentally, the ones measured in the DEXA (dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry) scan.

Examining the data one evening I found no fractures, no herniated discs, nothing but a few sore muscles. My middle son walked by my desk and asked me what I was doing. When I told him he asked if I was going to publish it. I said, “No, this is just to see if yoga is safe.” He said, “Give me the data.” Five minutes later he came out of his room: “Dad, it’s significant!” I went to do my next study on the subject, making 1000 disks and gave them away to interested parties. Eight years later it too was significant.

Rotator cuff syndrome

This time I was the first patient, having ripped my shoulder apart in what they called a massive tear. I could not raise my left arm. Even though I’m a doctor, it took months to get an appointment with the leading orthopedic surgeons. In the meantime, I missed some yoga poses so much that one day I stood on my head despite my injury. Maybe three minutes later my wife came downstairs and gasped, “Loren! What are you doing?” When I got up, I could raise my arm to vertical. And painlessly! This requires more explaining than we have room for here; it too will be a point of discussion in the workshop. And coincidentally, we just completed an NIH (National Institutes of Health) study with 167 patients: highly significant.

Mic drop

Superimposing these empirical results on the highly theoretical and spiritual practice of yoga was not difficult. Painlessly adapting yoga to medical ends is greatly simplified by

Mr. Iyengar’s work perfecting the poses: they are elegant, physiologically relevant, and safe. What I will present is both the end of these troubling conditions for many people, and the beginning of the quest to refine and improve the yoga. We know the poses we’ll discuss are effective, but we have no reason to believe that they are the only ones, or the best ones for the task.

Learn more about Loren at sciatica.org or manhattanphysicalmedicine.com.

Yoga Q & A

What is Kemetic Yoga?

This question was intriguing because I wasn’t sure if what was meant was “kinetic” yoga. I checked into this matter and was very surprised and rewarded by my effort, as yoga always teaches. I came upon information about another early and obscure system of practice originating in ancient Egypt and Africa.

Being very inspired by this discovery, I am sharing what I learned with you and our YTA membership in my letter at the beginning of the newsletter. The welcoming message will better answer the question.

This section is dedicated to answering your questions about yoga—as a student or as a teacher. Questions? Comments? Send them to yta_editor@ytayoga.com or go to our Facebook page to share your thoughts!

Paula Heitzner, ERYT500, is a master yoga teacher. She has taught yoga for over 50 years and has trained many others in the time-honored principles, practices, and philosophy of yoga. The “teacher of teachers,” as she is called by her students, can be found at her studio, the Nyack Yoga Center, in its new location at the American Legion Hall.

Learn more about Paula at nyackyogacenter.com.

Community News

Mariandale's Hope Harvest is taking place on Sunday, October 13. This is an annual fundraiser for this local center for personal and group spiritual retreats that also supports the community by providing organic produce, sheltering refugees and marginalized populations, and protecting a vital wildlife corridor in the Hudson Valley. This year's Hope Harvest will also be honoring local nonprofit Open Door Family Medical Center and other supporters.

In addition to attending the event or making a financial donation, you can donate products or services to be included in themed gift baskets to be raffled off at the event. To make a donation of your yoga or other wellness or business services or art or other handiwork, or to get more information, contact one of the below:

Carole Burton: 914 271-4423

Angela Reyes: 914 815-7050

The Center at Mariandale: 914 941-4455

Final Thoughts

The art of healing comes from nature, not from the physician. Therefore, the physician must start from nature, with an open mind.

—Paracelsus

Yoga Teachers Association was created in 1979 by a small group of pioneering yoga teachers who saw the need for affordable and continuing education. Today, YTA continues as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to expanding learning opportunities for teachers and committed students in the Hudson Valley. We offer monthly workshops presented by the leading yoga teachers of our time for the benefit of the community. All are invited. Membership dues and additional contributions are deductible to the extent allowable by law.

ANNUAL DUES
$50 for individual membership
$75 for studio membership

WORKSHOP FEES
unless otherwise stated
(In advance / day of)
YTA members: $45 / $55
Club Fit members: $55 / $65
Nonmembers: $65 / $75