30 ICSA TODAY 28
personal-injury judgment in Arkansas history.” (Arkansas Online,
05/04/17)
Vets use Transcendental Meditation (TM) to treat PTSD—with
the Pentagon’s support
According to Reporter Bryan Schatz, “Mary-Ann Rich rises at
precisely 4:45 every morning. After feeding her cat, she returns to
bed and rests with her back against the headboard, her eyes closed.
There she sits for 20 minutes, motionless, her mind drifting far from
the images of burned and blown up bodies that have haunted
her for a decade. ‘I would rather miss sleep than miss meditation,’
the 63-year-old Rich tells me in her home in San Francisco. ‘I will
be late for work rather than miss my meditation.’ …Rich says she’d
always been ‘suspicious’ of such things. But by the time she found
TM, she was isolated, agitated, and desperate for a breakthrough.
She suffered through recurrent dreams of being covered in blood,
laid out on top of garbage bags stuffed with severed limbs. ‘We
did an awful lot of amputations,’ she explains. She says that TM,
more than any kind of therapy or pharmaceutical, has kept these
horrors at bay. She’s one of thousands of veterans who have turned
to TM to treat their PTSD—with blessing of the Pentagon and the
Veterans Administration, which are struggling to treat the epidemic
levels of PTSD and suicide among Iraq and Afghanistan vets.
(Twenty percent of recent combat vets have PTSD or depression,
and approximately 20 veterans commit suicide every day.) The
effort has been spearheaded by the David Lynch Foundation, a
nonprofit founded by the Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks director to
promote TM worldwide. Aided by $30 million in grants from the
Pentagon and the National Institutes of Health, Lynch’s foundation
has worked with VA centers, Army and Marine bases, and veterans’
organizations to bring TM to vets and active-duty soldiers. …
In 2012, the Department of Defense put up $2.4 million for an
ongoing study comparing TM with prolonged-exposure therapy,
one of the VA’s preferred treatments for PTSD. …In January 2016,
74 active-duty service members with traumatic brain injury and
post-traumatic stress participated in a study on TM at the Medical
College of Georgia at Augusta University. Half learned TM the
other half did not. After a month, only 11 percent of those who
practiced TM had increased their medication levels, compared with
more than 40 percent of those who weren’t meditating. …Vets like
Castano and Rich don’t see TM as a cure for their PTSD. Rich’s eyes
well up when she recalls working on victims of torture who arrived
at her hospital with ‘every bone in their body broken,’ or burn
victims who knew they were going to die. Those painful memories
are still there, but increasingly, they seem like a thing of the past.
‘Very recently,’ she says, ‘I’ve started to feel happiness, which I hadn’t
felt in years.’” (Mother Jones, 07/22/17)
“…Religious group moves to Bohemia after conflicts in
Germany”
“The Twelve Tribes religious group, infamous for its four-year-old
scandal over an alleged maltreatment of children in Germany,
their homeland, has moved to central Bohemia and settled on the
outskirts of the village of Msecke Zehrovice, daily [newspaper]
Mlada fronta Dnes (MfD) writes today. …The situation peaked in
2013 when the German authorities took 40 children away from the
group over maltreatment and a court in Augsburg sentenced the
responsible teacher to two years in prison. Immediately after the
raid, a part of the community moved to the Czech Republic, and
the rest followed in late 2016 and early this year. They joined the
Twelve Tribes Czech community established some ten years ago,
the daily writes. …The German newcomers welcomed … that home
schooling is far from rare in the Czech Republic and the Czech
approach to child punishment is more lenient than that of Germans,
the daily writes. Twelve Tribes are easy to distinguish from the rest
of the locals by their clothing. They say they adhere to an alternative
lifestyle and can support themselves by producing and growing all
they need, the paper writes. …The community follows strict rules.
They call the life under one roof ‘a grape.’ Several families live in
each of the local houses owned by the community. Single persons
each have a single room in the house. Everybody meets for prayers
in the mornings and evenings. All earned money goes to common
coffers, from which the community pays everything as needed.
They say their faith is derived from early Christianity. Following
the first Christians’ example, they mark Shabbat and important
Jewish feasts, the paper writes. …‘They also make excellent cider
and ice cream, I have never tried any better,’ a local resident said,
referring to Twelve Tribes. He said he cannot complain about them
as neighbours. ‘They work through the day and they go to bed early
in the evening. They are ideal neighbours, causing no problems,’ he
told the daily.” (Prague Daily Monitor, 04/10/17)
Hot-yoga guru in hot water over sexual assault allegations,
lawsuit payments, and arrest warrant
“For many of the guru’s millions of followers worldwide, Bikram
Choudhury’s signature ‘hot yoga,’ performed in sweltering, sweaty
rooms, is a euphoric, spiritual practice that promotes healthy,
peaceful living. But over the course of about two years, the yoga
tycoon’s image has been tarnished by numerous sexual assault
allegations and lawsuits. And now, attorneys say, Choudhury is
on the run, dodging court hearings and a legal judgment. …
Choudhury, who is a three-time national yoga champion in his
native India, created his system of yoga in the 1970s, turning it into
a global yoga empire. Bikram [Y]oga, which consists of 26 poses
done in a 105-degree room for over 90 minutes, attracted celebrity
clients such as Raquel Welch and Quincy Jones, the founder
bragged. But for [Minakshi] Jafa-Bodden, who worked as head of
legal and international affairs at Choudhury’s yoga school from
2011 until 2013, there was a grim side to the business. She alleged
that Choudhury sexually harassed and inappropriately touched
her, tried to get her to stay with him in a hotel suite, and subjected
her to obscene comments about women and minority groups. She
accused him of pressuring her to cover up his sexual harassment of
women. …Speaking to CNN in 2015, Choudhury repeatedly denied
sexually assaulting anyone, saying he would never resort to physical
aggression to have sex because he has so many offers. …The
attorneys said Choudhury tried to ship the cars and other property
overseas, and tracked a number of vehicles in Florida and Nevada.
Osten [Jafa-Bodden’s attorney] said the legal team now has court
orders in those states preventing him from moving property from
warehouses. …Despite the allegations, the yoga master continues
to travel and teach classes worldwide, Osten said, including recently
in Acapulco, Mexico. The arrest warrant means authorities can
flag Choudhury at any airport, and the legal team can work with
authorities to arrest the yoga master in Mexico or any country
that is a member of The Hague Convention. …In interviews with
the Los Angeles Times, three of the women who have filed lawsuits
say Choudhury nurtured a cultlike devotion among followers that
allowed him to take advantage of female students. That devotion—
and a fear of being exiled from the yoga community—kept victims
and others from speaking up, the women told the Los Angeles
Times.” (National Post, 05/26/17) n
personal-injury judgment in Arkansas history.” (Arkansas Online,
05/04/17)
Vets use Transcendental Meditation (TM) to treat PTSD—with
the Pentagon’s support
According to Reporter Bryan Schatz, “Mary-Ann Rich rises at
precisely 4:45 every morning. After feeding her cat, she returns to
bed and rests with her back against the headboard, her eyes closed.
There she sits for 20 minutes, motionless, her mind drifting far from
the images of burned and blown up bodies that have haunted
her for a decade. ‘I would rather miss sleep than miss meditation,’
the 63-year-old Rich tells me in her home in San Francisco. ‘I will
be late for work rather than miss my meditation.’ …Rich says she’d
always been ‘suspicious’ of such things. But by the time she found
TM, she was isolated, agitated, and desperate for a breakthrough.
She suffered through recurrent dreams of being covered in blood,
laid out on top of garbage bags stuffed with severed limbs. ‘We
did an awful lot of amputations,’ she explains. She says that TM,
more than any kind of therapy or pharmaceutical, has kept these
horrors at bay. She’s one of thousands of veterans who have turned
to TM to treat their PTSD—with blessing of the Pentagon and the
Veterans Administration, which are struggling to treat the epidemic
levels of PTSD and suicide among Iraq and Afghanistan vets.
(Twenty percent of recent combat vets have PTSD or depression,
and approximately 20 veterans commit suicide every day.) The
effort has been spearheaded by the David Lynch Foundation, a
nonprofit founded by the Blue Velvet and Twin Peaks director to
promote TM worldwide. Aided by $30 million in grants from the
Pentagon and the National Institutes of Health, Lynch’s foundation
has worked with VA centers, Army and Marine bases, and veterans’
organizations to bring TM to vets and active-duty soldiers. …
In 2012, the Department of Defense put up $2.4 million for an
ongoing study comparing TM with prolonged-exposure therapy,
one of the VA’s preferred treatments for PTSD. …In January 2016,
74 active-duty service members with traumatic brain injury and
post-traumatic stress participated in a study on TM at the Medical
College of Georgia at Augusta University. Half learned TM the
other half did not. After a month, only 11 percent of those who
practiced TM had increased their medication levels, compared with
more than 40 percent of those who weren’t meditating. …Vets like
Castano and Rich don’t see TM as a cure for their PTSD. Rich’s eyes
well up when she recalls working on victims of torture who arrived
at her hospital with ‘every bone in their body broken,’ or burn
victims who knew they were going to die. Those painful memories
are still there, but increasingly, they seem like a thing of the past.
‘Very recently,’ she says, ‘I’ve started to feel happiness, which I hadn’t
felt in years.’” (Mother Jones, 07/22/17)
“…Religious group moves to Bohemia after conflicts in
Germany”
“The Twelve Tribes religious group, infamous for its four-year-old
scandal over an alleged maltreatment of children in Germany,
their homeland, has moved to central Bohemia and settled on the
outskirts of the village of Msecke Zehrovice, daily [newspaper]
Mlada fronta Dnes (MfD) writes today. …The situation peaked in
2013 when the German authorities took 40 children away from the
group over maltreatment and a court in Augsburg sentenced the
responsible teacher to two years in prison. Immediately after the
raid, a part of the community moved to the Czech Republic, and
the rest followed in late 2016 and early this year. They joined the
Twelve Tribes Czech community established some ten years ago,
the daily writes. …The German newcomers welcomed … that home
schooling is far from rare in the Czech Republic and the Czech
approach to child punishment is more lenient than that of Germans,
the daily writes. Twelve Tribes are easy to distinguish from the rest
of the locals by their clothing. They say they adhere to an alternative
lifestyle and can support themselves by producing and growing all
they need, the paper writes. …The community follows strict rules.
They call the life under one roof ‘a grape.’ Several families live in
each of the local houses owned by the community. Single persons
each have a single room in the house. Everybody meets for prayers
in the mornings and evenings. All earned money goes to common
coffers, from which the community pays everything as needed.
They say their faith is derived from early Christianity. Following
the first Christians’ example, they mark Shabbat and important
Jewish feasts, the paper writes. …‘They also make excellent cider
and ice cream, I have never tried any better,’ a local resident said,
referring to Twelve Tribes. He said he cannot complain about them
as neighbours. ‘They work through the day and they go to bed early
in the evening. They are ideal neighbours, causing no problems,’ he
told the daily.” (Prague Daily Monitor, 04/10/17)
Hot-yoga guru in hot water over sexual assault allegations,
lawsuit payments, and arrest warrant
“For many of the guru’s millions of followers worldwide, Bikram
Choudhury’s signature ‘hot yoga,’ performed in sweltering, sweaty
rooms, is a euphoric, spiritual practice that promotes healthy,
peaceful living. But over the course of about two years, the yoga
tycoon’s image has been tarnished by numerous sexual assault
allegations and lawsuits. And now, attorneys say, Choudhury is
on the run, dodging court hearings and a legal judgment. …
Choudhury, who is a three-time national yoga champion in his
native India, created his system of yoga in the 1970s, turning it into
a global yoga empire. Bikram [Y]oga, which consists of 26 poses
done in a 105-degree room for over 90 minutes, attracted celebrity
clients such as Raquel Welch and Quincy Jones, the founder
bragged. But for [Minakshi] Jafa-Bodden, who worked as head of
legal and international affairs at Choudhury’s yoga school from
2011 until 2013, there was a grim side to the business. She alleged
that Choudhury sexually harassed and inappropriately touched
her, tried to get her to stay with him in a hotel suite, and subjected
her to obscene comments about women and minority groups. She
accused him of pressuring her to cover up his sexual harassment of
women. …Speaking to CNN in 2015, Choudhury repeatedly denied
sexually assaulting anyone, saying he would never resort to physical
aggression to have sex because he has so many offers. …The
attorneys said Choudhury tried to ship the cars and other property
overseas, and tracked a number of vehicles in Florida and Nevada.
Osten [Jafa-Bodden’s attorney] said the legal team now has court
orders in those states preventing him from moving property from
warehouses. …Despite the allegations, the yoga master continues
to travel and teach classes worldwide, Osten said, including recently
in Acapulco, Mexico. The arrest warrant means authorities can
flag Choudhury at any airport, and the legal team can work with
authorities to arrest the yoga master in Mexico or any country
that is a member of The Hague Convention. …In interviews with
the Los Angeles Times, three of the women who have filed lawsuits
say Choudhury nurtured a cultlike devotion among followers that
allowed him to take advantage of female students. That devotion—
and a fear of being exiled from the yoga community—kept victims
and others from speaking up, the women told the Los Angeles
Times.” (National Post, 05/26/17) n
