I fell in love with yoga
By KC Carmichael

Yogis believe that modern human beings are sitting on a huge reservoir of untapped, unlocked energy that has the ability to heal, among other things.

Indeed, there isn’t any real historical evidence that suggests that diseases that plague our society existed until recently.

In a sort of Dickensonian vein, modern people can boast that it is the best and worst of times. Many maladies that beset our ancestors are relegated to memories of ancient lore: Pleurisy, consumption, measles, cholera, smallpox, tuberculosis, pneumonia, and something called bilharziasis, were all killers. It also wasn’t uncommon for a woman to die during childbirth.

Our ancestors didn’t live long, by our standards. You were considered to be pretty old if you lived to be forty back in the 16th century. Until about 1400, life expectancy was 20 to 30 years. In the 20th century, the amount of time that you had on this earth in this lifetime had increased by over twenty years. Today, you can expect to live until, at least, 77.2 years.

Still, our ancestors had a lot to worry about just staying alive. They didn’t have time to suffer and die from the ailments that are the curse of the relatively easy life of today. They were also active. The human body was designed for a physical existence. It wasn’t designed to sit on a couch and eat potato chips while watching television.

Today’s person has challenges that are something of the opposites of those of our forbears. These days, we don’t have to worry about getting killed off by the elements or the larger, four-legged varieties of god’s creatures. In fact, if you live in the United States, the only things you have to worry about killing you are the effects of a sedentary and misguided lifestyle. We have so many choices that, ironically, we often choose to do....NOTHING.

Michigan, as you are probably aware, recently got the dubious distinction of being the fattest state in the union. Oh boy, how’s that for an item on a travel brochure: "Come to Michigan and meet the fattest people in the country. Have a Big Mac with us! Yum Yum." That sure will attract people who want to migrate, eh?

The root of the problem is that as we go along, we seem to divorce ourselves more and more from a natural life. We’ve become so disconnected from the natural world that even the remedies drive us further away. Case in point, recent articles in a business periodical that I read regularly have all mentioned diseases that are common these days that are the result of modern living: Diabetes, chronic insomnia, obesity, heart disease, cardiovascular disease... all problems that are caused by poor diet and lack of exercise for a long period of time. The "cures"? Pills... medications.

Of course, the twin evils: laziness of the people suffering from the problems and the greed of big pharma. There isn’t any money in telling people to eat a vegan diet and get off their couches and exercise. And best of all, the people don’t want to listen anyway.

Is that great or what? In fact, doctors don’t even learn anything about nutrition in medical school. That would help explain why some misguided doctors would tell people that the only way to lose weight is to stuff themselves full of red meat while cowering from an essential nutrient like carbohydrates. Gee, there’s no chance of the general population, who’s always looking for the easy way out, to misunderstand that message. Yeah, right.

People spend decades throwing care to the wind as they gorge themselves on meat and dairy products. None of their food choices have any real nutrition to them but they’re filling and they taste good. Or so they’re led to believe. They spend the last couple of decades living in ever-increasing agony. It’s written off as being a product of old age. But it isn’t, is it?

Fortunately, there is hope. A minority, one that has been increasing in size as time goes on, of people have begun to explore alternative medicine, better diets and, generally, a more natural way of life. The health food supermarkets that I frequent, as well as the yoga studio at which I’ve practiced for over two years, have seen more and more people showing up in a laudable attempt to turn away from the unnatural lifestyle that is the bane of modern people.

Before I discovered yoga, which led me eventually to veganism, I had a whole range of health problems: A set of very tight hips, a weak upper body, pains in my chest in which EEGs could find no problem, headaches, constant sickness during the winter... the list could go on forever.
I had been what is known as a semi-vegetarian for quite awhile. It was fortuitous, though. I had been working out religiously for a long time and had to forgo meat and dairy, normally, because it interfered with my workouts. Eating a hamburger at lunchtime caused cramps when I ran on the track after work. I was lucky in that regard.

As time went on, I began getting injured in my workouts more frequently. Initially, I could work out for months before getting a muscle strain that would sideline me for a few days. That changed to the point where I was getting injured every few weeks and having to stop for a couple of weeks. 
Since I no longer worked out regularly, I found it easy to eat a steak at Appleby’s or a hamburger at Wendy’s. Heck, I can’t work out tonight, why not eat the worst thing for me? Sure, it tastes so darned good. What a nightmare. That’s when the chest pains started up.

After a couple of years of total sloth behavior, I finally got back in the workout groove, joining a gym and opting for the deluxe package where I could take all the classes that I wanted along with the weight training and the cardiovascular workout machines, such as the treadmill. The classes were pretty diverse. Spinning, kickboxing (a personal favorite), aerobics and yoga. One day, while waiting for the kickboxing class to begin, I saw the sign-up sheet for yoga and thought "yeah, I’ve always wanted to try yoga." So, I signed up.

To make a long story short, I fell in love with yoga from the first class that I took. After that fateful first class, driving home, my body was literally, buzzing with energy coursing through it. Sure enough, I started getting injuries while on the treadmill and in the kickboxing room. Yoga would always heal me. Eventually, I gave up everything else and only did yoga.

After a year of nearly daily yoga practice, the excess weight disappeared, the chest pains were gone and I was ready for the next step. After reading Pamela Rice’s “101 Reasons Why I’m a Vegetarian,” I decided to give it an earnest try and gave up meat and dairy for a week. Then two weeks. Then a month. Eventually I realized that I had turned my back on meat and dairy for good.

These days, I never get sick. I’m surrounded by coworkers who are sick with colds and the flu. In the bad old days, I would have caught whatever germ was around but they bounce off of me the way bullets bounce off of Superman.

Veganism has cleared out my body of all the crap that pervades modern dietary content and I’ve never felt cleaner. But I must confess that if it wasn’t for yoga, I may never have tapped in to the self-awareness that led me to it in the first place. My hips are supple now, and my upper body is so strong that it surprises me.

The gist of this amazing experience is that I’ve tapped in to that huge reservoir of energy that can course through the human body. I’ve turned my back, as much as possible, on the unnatural way of life that plagues modern society and embraced the natural world -- the world that the human race used to belong to. The greatest joy is that there are hundreds of other people who are waking up to the same thing. That’s the best part about our society’s situation; it’s not terminal. It is self-inflicted, but all we have to do is stop stumbling blindly towards self-destruction. We simply have to wake up and rejoin the natural world. The answers to all of our modern-day problems are not only right in front of us, they’re also within us.

KC Carmichael