Reviewed by Mark Mathew Braunstein
Age Like a Yogi: A Heavenly Path to a Dazzling Third Act
by Victoria Moran
Foreword by Sharon Gannon
Monkfish E-book Publishing
January 2025, Softcover, 234 pages, ISBN: 978-1958972595, additionally audiobook, audio CD, and eBook
Enumerated as 75 years, three-quarters of a century is a pleasant roundish quantity that makes reaching the age of 75 a milestone. For an writer, publishing your roundish-numbered fifteenth e book shortly earlier than reaching your seventy fifth birthday marks an extra milestone. Each landmarks describe Victoria Moran’s Age Like a Yogi, printed in a 12 months with one other rounded-off quantity, 2025.
The dual topics of Age Like a Yogi are the sister sciences of yoga and ayurveda, each derived from Vedic information. On this e book with a contemporary vibe, their historical wisdoms are demystified and westernized. Drawing from each disciplines, Victoria Moran compiles well being hints and way of life hacks for getting older gracefully. Many Westerners are acquainted with yoga. Many might need engaged in it as an train routine reaping its bodily advantages. Some have achieved enhancements of their psychological well being. Nonetheless others have extra deeply explored its non secular realm. And a few might need sought by yoga all three.
Ayurveda is one other matter, till not too long ago comparatively unknown to most Westerners. As a standard Indian modality of medication and remedy, it’s similar to our Western therapeutic programs comparable to allopathic, homeopathic, osteopathic, and naturopathic medicines. Essentially the most celebrated modern proponent who has merged standard allopathy with conventional ayurveda is Deepak Chopra, MD.
Moran’s e book is akin to letters to her readers during which she shares her enthusiasm concerning the two historical Japanese traditions. Keen about her topics, her impressed writing makes for uplifting and easy studying. In her radio exhibits, podcasts, and movies about different topics, you get the sensation that she’s talking on to you. Equally, her conversational writing fashion could make you are feeling like she’s writing on to you.
The writer covers numerous territory, specifically the Indian subcontinent and its 5 millennia of traditions. Condensing all this historical knowledge and their advanced ideas right into a single quantity is an bold venture. Whereas summarizing conventional practices, this e book avoids sounding like “Yoga for the Plenty” or “Ayurveda for Dummies.”
Moran will not be pushy in the best way a sports activities coach would possibly push her staff. As a substitute, she cheers us on. In Chapter 5, “Train, Bodily and Metaphysical,” she motivates us to recurrently have interaction in strenuous train, which is universally acknowledged as a prerequisite for well being. In Chapter 35, “Focus, Mediation, Connection,” she explores meditation as bodily exercise’s complement. In Chapter 6, “Asana: The Proof is within the Posture,” she explains how yoga unifies train with mediation.
When Moran first investigated yoga in 1967, it was nonetheless a “misunderstood oddity.” These days, “Yoga is much extra a apply than a perception system.” (193) By simplifying its practices, this e book would possibly encourage you to adapt a couple of of them as a result of, “Yoga is a buffet, not a menu.” (web page xxii) First dabbling in it in 1976 although quickly abandoning it, I already knew a factor or two about yoga. Now I do know extra. I particularly admire Chapter 36, “What Form of Yogi Are You?” a survey that skillfully kinds out the assorted branches of the yoga tree that has taken root in our Western world. I savor that chapter as if it have been titled,“Yoga for Armchair Vacationers.”
The e book equally simplifies ayurveda. As an example, in Chapter 13, “First Factor within the Morning,” the writer admits that if we tried to perform every little thing that non secular academics and ayurvedic medical doctors advise us “… to do very first thing within the morning, it might take till afternoon.” (72) As a substitute, she has decreased their suggestions to “The Foremost 5.” Working towards yoga’s asanas (poses) is a type of 5, but it, too, is non-obligatory.
Earlier than studying this e book, I knew nothing about ayurveda, so now I’m higher knowledgeable. By shining mild upon them, the e book serves as a subject information for exploring the unfamiliar worlds of ayurveda and yoga. In some locations, nevertheless, I felt misplaced and at nighttime. Discussions concerning the three Doshas, the three Gunas, the seven Chakras, and the numerous Yamas and Niyamas, all named by their multisyllabic transliterations from Sanskrit, typically washed over me with out fairly sinking in. Mundane me.
In distinction, Half Ten, the e book’s grand finale, was absorbing studying. That means, I absorbed all of it. Probably it is because as a substitute of being named Dharmas they’re known as, in plain English, “Dares.” Its penultimate chapter, Chapter 39, “Dare to Make Peace with Mortality,” is the e book’s shining crown. Its preliminary paragraph is value quoting at size:
Loss of life is such a nuisance. It’s exhausting to get right here within the first place – ask any mom – and studying to function a physique and domesticate a thoughts takes twenty years or extra. We’ve got little time as it’s, but we spend a 3rd of it in sleep. Even when we’re blessed with longevity, indicators floor – cloudy imaginative and prescient, a bum knee, a senior second – to remind us that we’re solely passing by. (192)
As within the above passage, a few of the thought-provoking chapters function folksy sermons that would have been delivered by a Sunday college instructor or a Unitarian minister. Others are like pep talks with which some nonsectarian yoga instructors provoke or conclude their courses. Such chapters remind me of Moran’s fifth e book, her 1999 bestseller, Making a Charmed Life. (I refer you to my detailed reader assessment posted on Amazon in 2019, twenty years after the e book’s publication.) Nonetheless in-print, that e book’s 75 brief essays might be described as inspirational, or perhaps as motivational, or perhaps even (horrors! horrors!) as self-help.
No fan of the class of New Age self-help books that usually are churned out by the spiritual-industrial advanced, I’m baffled by its gravity-defying idea. “Self-help” conjures in my thoughts a picture of a drowning man desperately attempting to save lots of his life by tugging on his hair in an effort to tug his head out of the water. Regardless of my reservations about its style, I applaud many of the heartfelt recommendation distributed in Making a Charmed Life, and had thought of that e book to be Moran’s magnum opus. Till now.
As you’d count on from an writer of a number of books concerning the plant-based eating regimen, she emphasizes in Age Like a Yogi that meals is a key think about selling well being and longevity. In spite of everything, in pursuit of optimum well being, you aren’t required to rise earlier than daybreak each morning. You don’t must do yoga. You aren’t obligated to run round in circles on a observe subject. You don’t want to sit down in meditation. However (right here’s the large “however”) all of us should eat. She advises us to eat solely actual meals that gives nourishment “… so we’re much less prone to search the which means of life in a bakery.” (web page 65)
Moran is properly conscious that hers is predominantly an prosperous readership endowed with the money to purchase the e book and with the time to learn it. Therefore, in issues of meals, “These of us lucky sufficient to have a selection would do properly to decide on properly.” (67) Certainly, correct vitamin has the next goal than simply to make us look good and really feel good. “Ideally, breakfast will make you are feeling that you simply’re up for the grandest reward anybody was ever given: another day.” (75)
Make that another day freed from debility or illness. As a result of the intention will not be merely to delay our lifespans, however to increase what’s not too long ago been coined our “well being spans,” in order that our elder years wil stay as vibrant and lively as after we have been youthful. As a result of the objective will not be merely outer magnificence, however internal peace. As a result of the trail to internal peace is steep and rocky if we undergo ill from “… soreness that may’t be blamed on being over the hill or having simply climbed one.” (35) As a result of internal peace fosters compassion, a present of “… peace and energy and goal, all wrapped up in a field along with your title on it.” (127)
Ninety-five % of the well being recommendation that the writer gleaned from ayurveda and yoga is related for any age group, not only for elders immersed of their “dazzling third act.” Therefore this e book is value studying no matter your well being or age. I ponder why its title addresses solely getting older, and its subtitle solely elders. Maybe they’re e book advertising instruments supposed to tell apart this e book from different surveys of ayurveda and yoga, some that Moran has listed in her bibliography for additional studying, eloquently titled, “Sensible Books.” No matter its title, this, too, is an excellent e book.
However (that daunting and foreboding, “however”), this e book has one slight shortcoming. The writer has constructed a stately mansion, however on a lower than agency basis. The e book’s title is a premise primarily based extra on fancy than on information. “To age like a yogi” is a conference or catchphrase whose validity appears elusive to me. Do yogis and yoginis actually stay longer and age slower?
Chapter One, “Yoga and Prolonged Youthfulness,” gives a fleeting reference to the idea of Blue Zones, geographic places of cultures “… across the globe the place folks have been dwelling each lengthy and properly,” and the place “… strong longevity is widespread.” (web page 4) None of those Blue Zones seems on any map of India. The closest is the distant Hunza Valley of what’s now known as Pakistan, on its northern tip bordering Afghanistan and China. Its dominant faith had been Buddhism, not Hinduism. Its dominant faith now’s Islam. No yogis there.
Legendary Shangri-La might be greater than wistful thought or wishful pondering. I level to the 2016 e book, Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Lengthy and Pleased Life, which references the World Well being Group (WHO) for in accordance Japan because the nation with the world’s highest human life expectancy and the very best ratio of centenarians. (121) And whereas its life expectancy is excessive general, the residents on the Japanese island of Okinawa exceed Japan’s nationwide common. (122) For additional documentation, I cite the 2002 e book, The Okinawa Program.
Age Like a Yogi is lacking a chapter. The writer supplied solely anecdotal proof of the position fashions that she has been privileged to have met in her personal lively life wealthy with private experiences. Whereas short-term scientific research attest that particular person adherents of yoga or meditation do certainly reap many bodily and psychological advantages that may delay longevity, such people are scattered all over the world.
India is an immense continent teeming with various cultures, so no shock that no overwhelming proof might be pinpointed there. And no shock if no long-term epidemiological research have been carried out of lifelong residents in ashrams or yogic communities. But even within the absence of such research, legal professionals know that the absence of proof will not be the proof of absence.
Absent of such multi-generational scientific analysis, for its subsequent version the writer might compile a listing of celebrated yoga academics or ayurvedic medical doctors. She might cite their achievements as elders throughout their very own “dazzling third acts” and will determine the superior ages to which they’d lived or nonetheless live. Not too long ago skilled as a yoga teacher whereas a septuagenarian, she might head that record.
As for me, I’m an excellent forest bather, however a nasty meditator. And an excellent vegan, however a nasty yogi. This e book taught me quite a bit about yoga and ayurveda. Whereas awaiting its subsequent version, I embrace it with wholesome skepticism. Yogic and ayurvedic practices can enrich my life, but I’m not altogether satisfied that they will lengthen it. My one protected guess is that none will shorten it.
Concerning the reviewer: Mark Mathew Braunstein is the septuagenarian writer of six books about well being, meals, and medicines, most not too long ago the 2022 e book, Aware Marijuana Smoking. He has additionally contributed numerous articles, essays, and evaluations to periodicals, together with in December 14, 2024, a assessment of Seeing by the Smoke in Compulsive Reader. Discover the assessment Right here.
