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By Diana
Fairechild
This
photo was taken in 1963 when Diana was a student in Paris and started studying
yoga. MORE |
| "Office Yoga should be required
reading for anyone who works at a computer. It is easy to do right in your
chair or standing in front of your desk. Wow! Instant energy." -Carol
McCullough-Dieter, Author, Oracle8 for Dummies |
| "Office Yoga is a wonderful,
thoughtful, practical guide for working professionals to help them stretch
their muscles and relax their nervous systems. Office Yoga can also help
a person improve his or her powers of concentration and thus be more productive
at work." -Arthur Brownstein, MD |
| "Diana Fairechild has done
it again: provided another concise, witty, informed, helpful guide to better
health and performance. This compact book is going to be my friend."
-Lynn Lawson, Canary News |
| "If you spend more than
two or three hours at a desk each day you need Office Yoga. Clearly written
and thoroughly illustrated, Office Yoga is a treasure for anyone who works
at a desk." -Kauai Magazine |
| "If you experience pain
in your shoulders, back, neck or wrists after a long day at the keyboard,
here are simple exercises to make you feel better. Best of all, you only
need to take a few minutes a day to do them." -Freelance Writer's
Report |
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During my college
years, I spent ten months as a student in Paris.
One evening,
coming out of the metro (subway) near my residence on the Left
Bank, I saw a flyer posted on a wall. It said, "yoga"
with an address scribbled in pencil.
All night I was obsessively intrigued with the idea of studying
yoga. The next day, I found the flyer again and copied down the
address -- an apartment on the Right Bank.
After my classes,
I found the apartment. The door was open. Sitting on a Persian
rug was the first yogi I had ever seen.
He was naked except for a white loincloth. I remember wondering,
Why isn't this skinny guy cold, and then, Am I safe? Is he a
nut?
Yes. Yes. I
was safe. He wasn't a nut. He was a Spaniard who spoke almost
no French and absolutely no English.
I was struggling in French and spoke no Spanish. But this turned
out to be good for me because the unusual circumstances quieted
my mind. The yogi couldn't answer my questions, so my mind stopped
questioning. Instead, I'd return every day and copied--without
much difficulty -- all the postures he demonstrated. The lotus.
The head stand. It all seemed so natural and so much fun.
There, on a beautiful old Persian rug on the Right Bank, I re-discovered
my love for yoga. I say "re-discovered" because I believe
I've lived before and done yoga before.
This pattern of re-discovering yoga then repeated itself again
and again during this current incarnation because I lacked the
discipline to persist in my practice of yoga. Foolishly, I would
forget yoga for years, only to come back to it again -- needy,
tired and injured.
During my twenty-one years as an international flight attendant,
I had two major injuries and both nearly killed me.
My first year of flying, I had a pulmonary embolism. I was climbing
the mechanics' stairway to the aircraft in spike heels, my hands
full of aircraft supplies, when the aluminum door swung back
in a gust of wind and hit my leg, bruising the calf.
During two
long flights in pressurized aircraft from the West Coast to Tokyo
and back, the leg swelled up to more than twice normal size.
The night I got home, I woke up with a severe pain in my chest.
A blood clot had passed through my heart and lodged in my right
lung.
At the hospital, I had to stretch the lung open by breathing
pressurized air. Sucking pressurized air is not painful -- but
it is definitely at the edge of pain. My comfort zone became
broader through this therapy, and I now enjoy a similar sensation
while ballooning my lungs when I practice yoga.
It makes me
happy. Maybe that's due to the intense sensation of expanding
my lungs, which brings me right to the edge of my mortality--the
thin thread that offers me life with every breath.
The second
injury came two decades later--this time caused by poisons in
my workplace, toxic air that recirculates in commercial jet cabins.
This injury
ended my flying career. The toxicity in airplane air is a combination of
jet fuel, hydraulic fluid leaks, engine lubricant oil, cleaning
compounds, and pesticides that are sprayed on
passengers and crew as a landing requirement in many countries.
(My book Jet
Smarter
reveals the environmental hazards of air travel and offers tips
on how to beat the system and beat jetlag.)
The chemical injury I suffered while flying is something I still
live with today, more than a decade after being "medically
grounded." Toxic chemicals affect me--even structurally.
I'll explain.
Toxins affect the immune
system, as most people know. But what I also experience is that
my ability to hold myself erect--my structure--is affected by
toxins. In other words, my back can "go out" in the
presence of even small amounts of poisonous chemical vapors.
People who have been systemically poisoned experience recurring
injuries from everyday toxins. Even so-called "normal"
doses of poison (like driving behind a diesel truck or sleeping
in a room with a new carpet) are interpreted by the body as assaults.
My doctor, George Ewing, M.D., explains: "Chemical exposures
work on your nervous system -- and your nervous system is hooked
up to all your muscles. This is why your back is influenced by
your chemical sensitivity."
So, today, for me, these recurring back injuries make yoga a
vital source of recovery--just to be functional.
Life has required me to find a way to set myself straight. This
is the origin of Office
Yoga.
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