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Jessamyn Stanley needs you to know what yoga is really about - and it's not the poses. In her new book Yoke: My Yoga of Self-Acceptance, the yoga instructor and body activist shares reflective personal essays that touch upon everything from racism to the cultural appropriation of American yoga, from consumerism to cannabis. And while the timing couldn't be better considering the current cultural climate, the idea for the book came to her years ago while she was writing her first book, Every Body Yoga, a guide to developing a yoga practice. "I realized yoga is a lot more than postures," she tells PEOPLE. "The postures get to be more complicated, not because you're practicing harder gymnastics or physical postures, but because you're practicing emotional and mental and really spiritual postures." In fact, she says, yoga is not supposed to feel good. Take the example of someone expecting a Zen-like experience from a yoga practice - only to be disappointed. "You're like, 'This is hard. Everyone else seems to know what they're doing. I am not good enough, I shouldn't be doing this, maybe my body is supposed to look different, maybe my life's supposed to be different.' All these feelings start to come up. That's what the postures are leading you towards, is to have that experience." RELATED: Jessamyn Stanley Found Body Acceptance Through Yoga and Can Help You Do the Same Stanley has been nurturing this self-awareness in the nearly 10 years since she has been breaking barriers in the yoga world, tackling topics like fat-shaming, her queer Black identity and unattainable beauty standards. In Yoke - which means yoga in Sanskrit - she uses her own life as a a metaphor to further explore the coming together of mind and body, light and the dark, good and the bad - both on and off the mat. "I wanted to reflect on what it is to practice yoga when we are as a society being forced to reckon with the long, deep, systemic, down-to-the-bone problems. We're being forced to look at things that we've never wanted to look at. And that's all that yoga is, is looking at the things that you don't want to look at. And ultimately, come hell or high water, accepting them." Story continues Workman Publishing
MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Having scraped money together following medical studies abroad, Somali doctor Abdullahi Sheikdon Dini opened Mogadishu’s first advanced diagnostic laboratory in January.
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| Dr. Abdullahi Sheikdon |
Its arrival could hardly have been better timed because, just two months later, the coronavirus epidemic reached the Horn of Africa country.
Since then Medipark Diagnostics, which he runs with five other doctors who pooled $1 million to buy equipment, has become a linchpin of the country’s creaking, donor-supported health infrastructure.
Hospitals in the battle-scarred city that once had to wait weeks for blood test results now use the lab to test for conditions including HIV and hepatitis.
But, as the Somali government has acknowledged, it is in the fight against COVID-19 that Medipark has made its most visible mark.
We had the supplies and our molecular pathologists were in touch with other pathologists doing COVID-19 tests in other countries, said Dini, 37, whose studies took him to India and China.
Until July, Medipark was the only private lab in the city testing for the virus, but since then its technicians have trained government health workers to conduct tests.
“We were needed ... and we were appreciated,” he said.
Medipark has arranged import pipelines of reagents needed for tests, including the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test used for COVID-19. It employs staff from Kenya, Lebanon and India to operate and maintain equipment imported from Europe, Asia and the United States.
Somalia has been plagued by conflict since 1991, and outbreaks of diseases such as cholera are common.
More than 2 million people do not have enough food. Many live in crowded, unsanitary camps, creating fears COVID-19 could scythe through a vulnerable population.
So far, that hasn’t happened. The health ministry has recorded 4,229 infections and 107 deaths in the pandemic though, with large swathes of the country are off limits due to the fighting, that is likely to be an undercount.
Medipark lab is next to Hotel Shamo, where a 2009 bombing killed 19 people during a medical student graduation. Dini was there and the memories are still raw, but he and his fellow doctors are proud to be back home.
“I am glad to help my community and make a difference,” said Ali Muse, who practiced in Rwanda and South Sudan before returning two years ago to help open the lab.
Jessamyn Stanley needs you to know what yoga is really about - and it's not the poses. In her new book Yoke: My Yoga of Self-Acceptance, the yoga instructor and body activist shares reflective personal essays that touch upon everything from racism to the cultural appropriation of American yoga, from consumerism to cannabis. And while the timing couldn't be better considering the current cultural climate, the idea for the book came to her years ago while she was writing her first book, Every Body Yoga, a guide to developing a yoga practice. "I realized yoga is a lot more than postures," she tells PEOPLE. "The postures get to be more complicated, not because you're practicing harder gymnastics or physical postures, but because you're practicing emotional and mental and really spiritual postures." In fact, she says, yoga is not supposed to feel good. Take the example of someone expecting a Zen-like experience from a yoga practice - only to be disappointed. "You're like, 'This is hard. Everyone else seems to know what they're doing. I am not good enough, I shouldn't be doing this, maybe my body is supposed to look different, maybe my life's supposed to be different.' All these feelings start to come up. That's what the postures are leading you towards, is to have that experience." RELATED: Jessamyn Stanley Found Body Acceptance Through Yoga and Can Help You Do the Same Stanley has been nurturing this self-awareness in the nearly 10 years since she has been breaking barriers in the yoga world, tackling topics like fat-shaming, her queer Black identity and unattainable beauty standards. In Yoke - which means yoga in Sanskrit - she uses her own life as a a metaphor to further explore the coming together of mind and body, light and the dark, good and the bad - both on and off the mat. "I wanted to reflect on what it is to practice yoga when we are as a society being forced to reckon with the long, deep, systemic, down-to-the-bone problems. We're being forced to look at things that we've never wanted to look at. And that's all that yoga is, is looking at the things that you don't want to look at. And ultimately, come hell or high water, accepting them." Story continues Workman Publishing