டிராபிக்கில் மாட்டிக்கொண்டீர்களா? யோகா செய்யுங்கள்!

டிராபிக்கில் மாட்டிக்கொண்டீர்களா? யோகா செய்யுங்கள்!

அதன் வழிமுறைகள். செய்யக்கூடிய யோகாக்கள்..
தொடர்ந்து படியுங்கள்..

வாழ்க வளமுடன்


Stuck in traffic? Do your yoga
01:00 AM EDT on Saturday, August 25, 2007
By Pamela Reinsel Cotter
projo.com online producer
The Providence Journal / Illustration by Dave Weyermann
Almost every driving enthusiast has to put up with one part of the road that can spoil the ride: the traffic jam. Many drivers have thoughts about making better use of that time, trying everything from audio books to talking endlessly on their cell phones.

Now, a Rhode Island native who makes her home in Los Angeles has come up with a way for drivers to slow down as they’re stopped – think and breathe and maybe even improve their health.

Yoga in the Car with Jen Swain: Bumper to Bumper a 13-track CD consisting of basic breathing and movement exercises designed to reduce stress, increase energy and awareness, hopes to provide a sense of calm to millions of drivers battling traffic every day, according to North Kingstown native Jen Swain.

Swain notes that a 2002 Urban Mobility Report from the Texas Transportation Institute stated that in data gathered from 75 U.S. cities, the average motorist spent 62 hours per year sitting in rush-hour traffic. Census figures from 2000 show that the average Rhode Islander clocks about 22 minutes commuting each way, with riders from Jamestown to Providence experiencing the longest workday travel, 40 to 50 minutes one way.

“When I moved out here to L.A, I found out that just about everyone here spends an hour and a half in the car –and that’s just for a 14-mile commute,” Swain says.

“In most cities, that means the most creative and intelligent minds in the world stuck on the freeway — where claustrophobia and frustration is at its height,” says Swain.

But doing yoga in a car? Swain’s method makes it possible, largely because it consists of “awareness meditation,” keeping eyes on the road and one hand on the wheel at all times. The movements start with breathing, and work down along the body at the neck, torso, hips, legs and feet. The exercises are small, which means anyone can do them, in addition to keeping them confined to the driver’s seat.

Swain, who holds an MFA in acting and directing from Trinity Repertory Theatre in Providence, and worked for many years as an actress both in Rhode Island and New York City, says she first got the idea for doing yoga in the car while on a road trip to an antiwar protest in Washington, D.C. During that trip, Swain and her friends got stuck in their cars behind military barricades. “We were so angry. We were in Washington, D.C. to protest the war and there we were, going nowhere. It occurred to me that [yoga], and being at peace was the one thing that we should do rather than being [angry at] the military.”

That was the seed of the idea, but it wasn’t until later, after a 2004 diagnosis of Hodgkin’s lymphoma and her recovery from that, that Swain was brought back to the idea that yoga could do a world of good.

“I had cancer, I had no health insurance, I was going through a family lawsuit and the war was happening,” all at the same time, Swain recalls. “Yoga was the one thing I kept coming back to: breathing and meditating all the time. Even when I had to talk to social services, or about my insurance – I kept coming back to it. During a difficult phone call, the radiation or IV treatments, yoga was there. And, I made sure I laughed every day.”

Swain is the daughter of David Swain, a former Jamestown councilman whom a civil jury last year found liable in the death of his second wife while on a 1999 diving vacation in the Caribbean. “Yoga helped me through that too,” Jen Swain says of the difficult trial years, adding her father is still appealing that decision.

Laughing comes easy to Swain, who has worked in about all the major theater companies in Rhode Island, including Trinity Rep. Her laughter also makes its way into her yoga-in-the-car CD. “She is a warm and personable individual,” says P. William Hutchinson, professor emeritus of theatre at Rhode Island College. “[Swain] is more interested in assisting others in their growth and development than in her own aggrandizement.”

When she found out that she had a 2-inch tumor “wedged between my right lung and my heart, right where I bring my palms together for blessings, prayers and yoga dozens of times a day,” friends at the Gamm Theatre in Pawtucket and local producer and director Ricardo Pitts-Wiley held benefits for her. “They knew it could be them” faced with no insurance — as actors — during a health crisis. “I was a vegetarian and a yoga teacher, if it could happen to me, it could happen to anyone.”

Swain credits the support of her friends in the “very tight-knit” Rhode Island theatre community for helping her through, and of course, her yoga practice. “Yoga brought me back to recovery in about six months,” she says. “Yoga always works.”

When she was certified as a yoga teacher, Swain says she spent many years “preaching to the choir,” teaching yoga to enthusiasts who didn’t have much to learn. “American yoga seems to be very focused on flexibility,” she says. “Some of the poses on magazine the average person just can’t do, and yoga magazines always show someone Zen’d out.”

But it was while also teaching at Rhode Island Hospital that she noticed that people “of all ages, sizes and speeds respond to yoga.”

“I was teaching amazing athletes [at Synergy power yoga studio in Barrington], and at the very same time some very sick people at the hospital,” she explains. “Then I got sick.” Swain says.

She decided it was important to make the most of time. “That problem can be solved in the car. We’re fighting a sedentary lifestyle: we sit in the car; sit on the couch.”

According to Swain, many people who haven’t tried it yet still talk about doing yoga. “In one study, 39 percent say they’d like to try it this year,” says the North Kingstown High School graduate. “They can’t use [the excuse that they don’t have enough time] when you can do yoga in the car.

“Most people feel very safe in the car,” she adds. “I love the car. I love driving cross-country. The car is your own space, and you can make it what you want to. It’s small, everything’s within your reach — right around you. We women, we park, get out our planners and start our day there.”

Swain points out that yoga is “the union of two opposites,” much like driving in a car. “[Inside a car] it’s a controlled environment, even if what’s happening outside the car is not.”

“It’s an interesting way of dealing with time/space, these tin boxes we drive around in. In that space we change, going from the spaces between work and home — it’s living a transition, and in yoga our bodies can change if we put our minds to that change, too.”

Swain says she has high hopes for further spin-offs of her product. Her company, which includes boyfriend Eric Bloom on the CD soundtrack, is planning three more yoga-in-the-car releases, including one for busy mothers and their children. “I think I can offer something for everyone, especially those who like to laugh,” she says, adding that a partnership with Apple is in the works to develop software products for yogis.

“People are stressed in life. This can help.”

pcotter@projo.com