“He uttered a monosyllabic word: not FUMMO, no even close. I must have looked a bit crestfallen, because he asked what the problem was.

“Fummo,” I said.

“Fu-mow,” he repeated eagerly, placing the emphaisis on the second syllable. “It’s a Kotoko word.”

I looked at him, with astonishment. “What does it mean,” I asked.

“Homeland.”

Abram Petrovich Gannibal was born as a slave in Africa, brought to Europe by slave traders and adopted by Peter the Great, Tsar of Russia. He was given the best education available, brought up in the wealth and intrigue of the Russian Court and became a soldier, diplomat and spy.

In this historical reconstuction, the author is trying to grasp a life that has nearly been erased. Few records remain of Gannibal’s life and the only known portrait was revealed to be a fake. This scarcity is due, in part, to Gannibal himself: In fear of retaliation by Catherine the Great, he burned is own memoirs.

The story is compelling and Gannibal is an interesting figure, so I was disappointed by how dully written, scattered and unfocused this book is. The first half was literally excruciating and I had to force myself to read it. The second half was better, but only because I skimmed parts.

However, despite whatever reservations I have about the writing, the content of the book – the work that Hugh Barnes has done to highlight the life and accomplishments of Europe’s first black intellectual – is commendable. His research is excellent and parts of it read like a good detective novel, with Barnes carefully uncovering the clues that reveal more about Gannibal and his life.

This isn’t a great book, but it’s an important one.

“Does it hurt? Asked the Rabbit. “Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real, you don’t mind being hurt.” (page 13)

It’s funny how ideas and images from childhood will pop up in adulthood. A few weeks ago, I made reference to some themes of the story ‘The Velveteen Rabbit’ while journaling and I was suddenly overcome with a desire to read it again. That night, I dreamt it and the next day, I sought it out in the bookstore.

You can spend a lot of money and get a fancy, specially bound, glossy-paged, remastered edition of this book. Or, you can get the simple, lovely Avon Camelot edition which is under $5. It tickles me that you can still buy a quality and somewhat life-changing book for a pocket full of change.

I don’t remember when I first heard this story, but as a child I always loved it. For those who are unfamiliar with the story, the Velveteen Rabbit is a stuffed toy who became ‘Real’ because a little boy loved him.

The book is filled with sweet quotes and ideas that are, of course, applicable in a metaphorical way to life: being loved may hurt, it may beat the stuffing out of you, it may cause you to droop and lose your hair and become floppy and faded. But only love can make you real. A sweet message for cynical times.

In many ways, this is a typical asana book, filled with photographs of postures and accompanying ‘how-to’ descriptions. The first few chapters of the book, however, set it apart.

These two chapters set the foundation for the book and are worth reading in-depth. I’ve always admired the way Fahri is able to clearly express the ideas and concepts of yoga philosophy. In her chapter ‘Living Principles,’ she clearly sets out the Yamas and Niyamas and gives examples of how we can apply these concepts to our daily lives. She also offers some ideas on why we should practice Asana, the practice of physical yoga postures, and how these can lead to spiritual growth.

The chapter entitled ‘The Seven Moving Principles’ should be required reading for any yoga teacher training. It’s an outstanding overview of the most important elements of Asana practice, with attention given to breathing, anatomy and physiology. I particularly enjoyed her ‘inquiry’ sidebars – these offer exercises and postures that help demonstrate the concept being described.

Fahri’s presentation of basic yoga asanas is well-written and complete, although advanced practitioners may find parts a bit basic (But that said, the last section has an excellent presentation of some advanced postures). As a teacher, I found the language she uses very clear and I’ve integrated some of her word choice and ideas into my own teaching.

This book is a really excellent resource for a beginning yoga student. I highly recommend it!

“I let myself be taken right along with them as they pushed and edged as close as they could to the object of their adoration and celebrations – a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary. She was more brightly adorned than any of Miss B.’s figurines and nearly as large as Sadie Loomer. The dark-haired statue was draped in robes of gold and white and seated within a gaudy, brilliant throne, a gilded, carved canopy over her head. Yards of white and blue ribbons trailed down around her as twenty or more men moved slow and steady, carrying her on their shoulders. The calmness of her painted expression, the kindness of her eyes made me feel safe, made us all the same.” (page 300)

I found Ami McKay’s novel, The Birth House, on Nuke’s list and, amused that a Canadian author was ‘all the rage’ in the States, I decided to check it out.

The Birth House is the story of Dora Rare, a young woman living in the small village of Scot’s Bay, Nova Scotia during the first World War. Dora befriends an old Acadian mid-wife, Miss Babineau and becomes an apprentice of her craft, eventually becoming a mid-wife herself.

After marriage, Dora continues to mid-wife despite her husband’s objections. Modern medicine comes to Scot’s Bay in the form of Dr. Thomas, who opens a ‘maternity home’ in a nearby town. Through an insurance plan called ‘Mother’s Shares’ Dr. Thomas hopes to supplant the traditional mid-wifery with his own obstetrical services.

The book is sprinkled with interested anecdotes and stories, including a vivid description of the Halifax Explosion, alternative lifestyles in Boston (including a token lesbian couple) and a bizarre ‘medical’ techniques, like the use of a doctor-controlled vibrator to ‘cure’ female ‘hysteria’.

The control of women’s bodies is an underlying theme throughout the book. Dr. Thomas represents a new paradigm in which the female body is controlled. The doctor controls the vibrator. Birth is carefully orchestrated, the woman’s body deadened by drugs while the baby is ‘extracted’ by forceps. This control is also exerted by husbands. Dora’s husband forbids her to mid-wife, emphasizing that she (her body) is there to serve his physical needs. Attempts by women in the community to control pregnancy is met with violent resistance by men.

The tradition of mid-wifery gives control back to the women. The book ends on a high note, with the women of Scot’s Bay realising the control they had surrendered and taking it back.

This is an interesting book and, although I found the first few chapters slow, it flowed smoothly. I found Ms. Babineau’s character a bit bizarre and hard to grasp and overall, I found the character-development a bit inconsistent. However, this book is definitely worth reading, particularly for women who are interested in child-birth traditions or are mothers themselves.

“As we become adept at uniting our breath, body and mind into one action, we become intimate with the natural rhythm of life as it arise out of stillness, manifest into forms and then dissolves back into stillness. We start to become comfortable with the fact that everything is changing and in flux and that we can ride this fluctuation skillfully. We also begin to understand that as sensations, thoughts and feelings pass through us, they need not solidify. They need not bunch up inside us as knots of tension. We can be a person who occasionally feels tensions, rather than a tense person.” (page 88-89)

I’m always on the lookout for books that reach beyond asana – the yoga of physical postures – and explore the deeper aspects of yoga. Donna Farhi’s book ‘Bringing Yoga to Life’ is a gem. I found it well written and inspiring – so much so, I bought a copy to add to my library.

Farhi explores the basic concepts of yoga philosophy and puts them into a context that is clear and practical for the average yoga student. She provides real life examples for concepts like the kleshas and the brahmavihara, then explores how they relate to yoga practice on the mat and yoga practice in day-to-day life.

As a teacher and long-time practitioner, I found the chapter on the ‘Seasons of Practice’ very affirming. The last series of chapters, on roadblocks to practice, are a must for any student who is feeling ‘stuck’ in his or her yoga practice.

One of the aspects I really loved about the book was Fahri’s insistence that, as teachers, we are responsible for giving our students the tools they need in order to develop an active independence in their yoga practice. This reminder is very timely for me, as I begin a new sessions of pre-registered yoga classes. My hope has always been that at the end of a ten-week session, I’ve given my students the tools and motivation to begin a home yoga practice.

I also hope to pass on to my students the myriad ways that yoga can travel ‘off the mat’ and enrich other areas of their lives. This book is a wonderful resource for that exploration.

This isn’t a book that you ‘read’ so much as you experience. It’s a fairly standard ‘how to do yoga’ book written by Alice Christensen. I was interested in looking at it because one of my students used this book to nurture a successful home yoga practice.

This book was written back when yoga wasn’t the cultural phenomenon it is today. It’s since been updated, but I found some of the postures odd and the Sanskrit translations a bit off. The Iyengar style of yoga, with its emphasis on alignment and props has greatly influenced Hatha yoga and I found some of the instructions and the alignments pictured in the book to be disconcerting.

The strength of this book is that it provides three ‘courses’, ten week long series of classes for increasing levels of yoga practice. I experimented with some of these courses in my own practice and found them a bit choppy. This is definitely not a ‘flow’ style of yoga. For a raw beginner, however, the pace is appropriate.

The introductory chapters provide a broad outline of yoga practice and lifestyle. Subsequent chapters introduced asana (yoga poses), specialized yoga (pregnancy, sports, stress management). I really enjoyed the chapter of yogic breathing and appreciated the author’s emphasis on this throughout the book.

“As our dark nights deepen, we find ourselves recovering our love of mystery. When we were children, most of us were good friends with mystery. The world was full of it and we loved it. Then we grew older, we slowly accepted the indoctrination that mystery exists only to be solved. For many of us, mystery became an adversary; unknowing became a weakness. The contemplative spiritual lie is an ongoing reversal of this adjustment. It is a slow and sometimes painful process of becoming as little children again, in which we first make friends with mystery and finally fall in love again with it. And in that love we find an ever increasing freedom to be who we really are in an identity that is continually emerging and never defined. We are freed to join the dance of life in fullness without having a clue about what the steps are.” (page 132)

I picked up this book not entirely knowing what to expect. It turned out to be a fairly dense exposition on the writings of the Christian mystics Teresa of Avila and her younger protege, John of the Cross. I’ve always been curious about Teresa, since I love many of the excerpts I’ve stumbled across from her writings. This book gave m a sense of her perspective and made me curious to know more.

I didn’t know very much about John of the Cross before starting the book. The author seems partial towards his apporach and delves in some length into his writings and ideas. John’s more ‘academic’ approach to spirituality was less appealing to me than Teresa’s down-to-earth ideas, but I enjoyed learning about both and the author does as a good job of contrasting them, as well as indicating the ways that John of the Cross developed his ideas from Teresa’s work.

What most amazed me about this book was the similarities between the ideas of the Christian Mystics and the Hindu Mystics. Many of the concepts explored by Teresa and John (such as Teresa’s ‘soul circles’) would be familiar to anyone who has read the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita or the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. For me, finding these similarities was one of the joys of the book.

The book itself is heavy, dense, dense reading. I had to put it down frequently and take a break with lighter tomes. Coincidentally, I was reading this book just as a young friend of mine was dying. I hoped that it would give me insight into the death of a 9-year-old, but it didn’t. I guess I still have yet to experience my ‘dark night of the soul.’

The goal of practice for me is being able to tap into this joyful way of living – to connect with my heart. In any activity I’m doing, I feel the connection with life and experience the beauty within me I am in touch with the glory of knowing tht there is a supreme consiousness functioning in me even as I do whatever task I’m doing. The whole goal of practice is reveling in and fully participarting in and collaborating with that glorious life within me. If one lives in this way, then every moment is a moment of enlightenment. (John Friend; page 231)

Did yoga and meditation change your life?

Stephen Copy poses this question to 24 of North America’s top yoga teachers and the result is 24 inspiring essay and interviews. As editor, Cope does a good job of distilling 24 distinct voices into a common theme. The contributions range the gamut from down-to-earth to completely far-out and everything in between.

A few of the stories really stood out: Esther Myers (a Toronto yoga teacher who passed away recently) wrote about her struggle with breast cancer. Patricia Walden (an Iyengar teacher and a favourite of mine) talked about depression and substance abuse and moving to a healthier place in her life through yoga practice. I was surprised by how moved I was by Judith Lasater contribution (from her books, I had always assumed that her practice had a primarily physical focus – I was wrong!). And, of course, John Friend weighed in with a very straightforward and open interview (quoted here).

As a yoga teacher, I read books like this one for inspiration and insight into Yoga. This book is a fun read with the added bonus: if any one perspective doesn’t speak to you, you can always move on to the next.

“John said to me as he closed the book. ‘Don’t ever tell me again you can’t write. That’s my birthday present to you.’I remember tears coming to my eyes.I feel them now.In retrospect this had been my omen, my message, the early snowfall, the birthday present no one else could give me.He had twenty-five nights to live.” (166)

“Time is the school in which we learn,” writes Joan Dideon in her memoir, ‘The Year of Magical Thinking.’ This book is a chronical of Dideon’s journey through grief following the death of her husband, John Gregory Dunne. Intense, sad and, at times, unapologetically self-indulgent, Dideon draws the reader into her confusion, pain and ‘magical thinking’ – the hope that somehow her husband’s sudden death was a big mistake.

Her story is especially poignant knowing that her daughter Quintana died after the book was published. The back of the dustcover features a photograph of Dideon, Dunne and Quintana at their house in Malibu. Dunne and Quintana are in the foreground, gazing steadfastly at the camera while Dideon gazes wistfully in their direction.

Dideon’s writing is clear and engaging (particularly if you’re a fan of her style) but I found this book difficult to read. Like grief, it’s thick and heavy and trudges on and on and on. Just when you think you’ve seen the light break through the clouds, you’re back in the shadows.

It’s not a book to read for fun, but definitely a book to read for the experience of reading it.

“Sometimes when I walk through the rain, I know that each drop that falls on me wasn’t meant to fall on anyone else. Other times I take an umbrella to shield myself from the randomness.” (9)

I really loved Ariel Gore’s memoir, ‘Atlas of the Human Heart.’ Her new novel, ‘The Traveling Death and Resurrection Show’ is written in a similar style.

The main character, Frankka, lost both her parents when she was four years old. Raised by her grief-stricken grandmother, Frankka accidentally discovers that when she’s hungry she can manifest stigmata, the bleeding wounds of Christ, from small scars on her palms. Initially, she uses this skill to get attention (and food) from her grandmother. As an adult, she uses her special skill as part of a religious freak show with a small troupe of travellers.

While performing in a church in a small town, the show draws the attention of a bored Los Angeles reporter. Far from being skeptical, the reporter believes that Frankka’s stigmata may be for real and she breaks the story in the L.A. Times. The subsequent publicity firestorm overwhelms Frankka and she flees the church through a secret tunnel to the house of the retired minister, and then to the mountains.

In her travels, Frankka meets Dorothy, a spiritual mentor of sorts and Frannka begins to unravel the threads of her spiritual crisis.

The novel is interspersed with stories from Frankka’s ‘book of saints’ and I found these well-places and as enjoyable as the story itself. Gore has a unique voice and I enjoyed the way she interspersed the novel with spiritual relfections. This is a quick read, but a rewarding one.