Walnuts and other nuts help maintain our heart's health as we age

As we age, our organs go through wear and tear over time. This wear and tear may not be completely avoidable but can be slowed down. What we eat significantly Influences our health and can help slow down this ageing.

Superfoods are foods that contain exceptional nutritive value and provide various benefits to our bodies. Superfoods can help maintain better heart health. These foods can help maintain better heart health for people over the age of 50.

Superfoods for heart health at 50:

1. Whole grains

Unlike refined grains, whole grains provide much more benefits to the body, especially the heart. While refined foods increase the risk of heart diseases, whole grains protect the heart against general wear and tear.

2. Dark chocolate

Eating foods rich in antioxidants ensures your body and heart stay protected against toxins present around us. Dark chocolate is abundant in antioxidants and also rich in essential minerals that improve the heart's functioning.

3. Cruciferous vegetables

Cruciferous vegetables also known as green leafy vegetables include lettuce, cabbage, spinach, broccoli, cauliflower, and so on. These vegetables are rich in fibre, and various other nutrients and promote better functioning of the muscles.

4. Fatty fish

Fatty fish such as salmon, tuna, etc. are a great source of protein and healthy fats. The body requires protein for various functions. Along with this, healthy fats help absorb other vitamins the body requires to function properly.

5. Nuts

Nuts are one of the most nutritious superfoods. They are packed with nutrients and improve various functions in the body. Studies have shown, that walnuts can shield one against many coronary diseases.

6. Tomatoes

As mentioned under dark chocolate, an antioxidant-rich diet protects us against external radicals and toxins. Tomatoes reduce inflammation and have been proven to reduce symptoms of various coronary diseases.

7. Olive oil

Olive oil is another food abundant in antioxidants. Various oils may increase one's risk of developing coronary diseases while olive oil can help reduce it. A significant improvement was shown in the heart health of people that started using olive oil in their diet.

8. Cottage cheese

Cottage cheese more commonly known as paneer is a great food to add to your diet if you want to maintain a healthy heart. We start losing our bone density past the age of 35. If you wish to maintain a healthy heart at 50, it is important to consume nutrient-rich foods in abundance.

9. Legumes

One of the most common heart diseases in people over 50 is cholesterol. Legumes such as lentils, beans, and chickpeas have been proven to reduce cholesterol. They are also rich in essential minerals iron, magnesium, and potassium which help in our body's functioning.

10. Berries

Berries are rich in fibre, vista ins, and antioxidants. These components maintain and improve the health of our hearts. Post 40 you should be very careful about your diet. Berries such as strawberries and blueberries act as great snacks and substitutes for unhealthy candies and sugary foods.

It is ideal to incorporate these superfoods into your diet to ensure you have a healthy and disease-free heart. Besides this, we also encourage you to exercise regularly. Exercise has been proven to reduce the risk for various chronic and acute heart-related diseases.

Disclaimer: This content including advice provides generic information only. It is in no way a substitute for a qualified medical opinion. Always consult a specialist or your own doctor for more information. NDTV does not claim responsibility for this information.

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10 Superfoods To Improve Heart Health At 50 - NDTV

Before we get into the nitty-gritty of thyroid diseaseWhat is the number one symptom to look out for? How can you keep your thyroid healthy?let's start with the basics: What exactly is the thyroid, and what does it do?

"The thyroid gland is a tiny, butterfly-shaped organ found directly behind the voice box on the front of the neck (larynx)," explains Saroj Kumar, MD, owner of Health Review Live. "The thyroid's primary function is to regulate your metabolism." And that's essential: Your metabolism never stops working and is the source of energy for basic bodily functions, according to the Cleveland Clinic. These functions include breathing, blood circulation, regulating temperature and hormone levels, and digesting food.

In other words, you want to keep the process going smoothly. Read on for seven ways to keep your thyroid healthy and your metabolism ticking.

READ THIS NEXT: If You Can't Stop Doing This at Night, Get Your Thyroid Checked.

Stress is harmful to our health in many different ways. It can cause headaches, raise blood pressure, affect libido, and lower immunityand that's just for starters. Chronic stress can also affect thyroid function by interfering with hormone synthesis, says Kumar, who recommends meditation and deep breathing as two of the many things you can try to reduce stress.

"A zinc deficiency may increase the chance of developing hypothyroidism, since zinc regulates the immune system and thyroid," advises Kumar, who lists foods such as oysters, pork, chicken, beans, nuts, and whole grains as rich sources of zinc. Just be mindful to not consume too much, as an excessive amount of zinc can cause a copper deficiency.

A healthy gut is crucial to our well-being in almost too many ways to count, including our brain health and thyroid function. "Because the bulk of the immune system sits in the gut, it is crucial to enhance gut function via lifestyle modifications," says Kumar, who recommends several ways to boost your gut health, including taking probiotics and eating a gut-healthy diet.

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Cutting processed and junk foods from your diet can help boost your metabolism (among other benefits; too much junk food can increase your risk for dementia). "Once you learn to detect and eliminate the offenders, you will notice a noticeable improvement in your health," notes Kumar. "Processed food has become so ingrained in our everyday lives that it may seem like a daunting task to eliminate it."

You may not be aware of which foods contain iodine; these include table (iodized) salt, fish and shellfish, dairy, chicken, and beef liver. "A deficiency in iodine is one of the dietary causes of hypothyroidism," explains Kumar. "Iodine is necessary for optimal thyroid function. Consuming the appropriate quantity might provide a boost."ae0fcc31ae342fd3a1346ebb1f342fcb

As stated above, stress can have a negative effect on your thyroid healthand "inadequate sleep may increase your body's stress burden," warns Kumar. "Prioritizing quality sleep is essential for repairing your thyroid, [and] there are several techniques to sleep better, including establishing a bedtime routine and minimizing caffeine use throughout the day."

Improved thyroid health and a boosted metabolism are just two great reasons to get regular exercise (along with other benefits like brain health). Kumar recommends resistance training to help keep your thyroid healthy, noting that the activity "contributes to muscle growth, which indirectly influences thyroid function." Kumar adds that "exercise can also help people regulate their weight. Many individuals with hypothyroidism are concerned about their weight, since the condition slows the metabolism, making it more difficult to shed or maintain weight."

Continued here:
7 Ways to Heal Your Thyroid and Boost Your Metabolism, Doctors Say - Best Life

WORTHINGTON Annual wellness checks can save lives, help people avoid health scares and catch small problems before they become major health issues, as a Worthington man learned recently.

Jose Estanisla Aguirre went to Sanford Worthington Clinic for a routine physical that included a blood test in 2018, and learned he was prediabetic. Prediabetes often doesnt have any symptoms, and while it can lead to diabetes, it doesnt always.

It was a small change, at first. Aguirre worked nights, and he started feeling thirsty a lot of the time. Hed drink two whole bottles of water a night, and then it started getting worse. He was up to drinking five whole bottles of water a night, and still felt thirsty on his half-hour drive to work every night.

I say this is not normal, I gotta go see a doctor, he recalled.

Aguirre visited the clinic in January 2021, where they did more lab work and found he had indeed become diabetic. He was prescribed two medications, but had a reaction to one, which was then stopped. Aguirre also began some home remedies, like eating vegetable smoothies in the morning, and got his blood sugar back down.

He hasnt lost a lot of weight, but hes switched to working days rather than nights, which has helped. He feels better, and his stress levels have gone down too.

Submitted photo

And Im more active too, at home, he said.

Now he advises people to make sure to have their annual physicals and screenings.

Detecting it early can help to better control illness, Aguirre said. If they wait, sometimes its too late. It will take more to heal or recover.

His primary physician, Dr. Charles Dike, said its pretty common that people dont follow up with their annual wellness checks and screenings, particularly when they arent having any symptoms which is common with issues like prediabetes and high blood pressure.

It takes time, costs money to see a provider, so its not something that people like to do, especially in situations where they work during the day, Dike explained. And they cant afford to take some time off and see a provider for something theyre not even sure exists.

Annual physicals are important, but depending on peoples age and gender, there are other screenings too. Men age 45 and older need to be screened for colon cancer, and when they reach age 50, they should also be checked specifically for prostate cancer, Dike said.

Women need cervical cancer screenings every three years, starting at age 21, then every five years after that. Mammograms are annual starting at age 40, but those at high risk may need to start them sooner. And they, too, need colorectal cancer screenings.

But even before that, in their 20s, people need to get those routine physicals so they can be screened for diabetes, lipid disorders and thyroid issues.

That will help to catch some of these preventable or treatable diseases early, and that will minimize complications of those diseases, Dike said. And they will be counseled on weight, diet, exercise and things that will help you improve your health outcomes.

Those screenings are for people who are healthy, too.

Everyone should realize that its safer, better, cheaper to make time to see your provider at least once a year. It really is helpful it is. If you dont need to be seen every year, the provider will tell you, Dike said.

Excerpt from:
Regular health screenings can save lives, even for the young and healthy - The Globe

The Troike program helps students prepare for the TACHs test by emphasizing religion, math, science, and language arts, but they also experience other subjects, such as theater arts. This year, journalism and creative writing are joining the mix. (Photo: Courtesy of Cathedral Prep)

ELMHURST Social and political chaos dominated 1968, with the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Sen. Robert Kennedy, as well as violent protests over U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.

The faculty of Cathedral Preparatory School and Seminary saw the need to divert young men from the turmoil. So they developed a summertime program that fed their spiritual development, basic academics, and teamwork via organized sports.

The annual month-long Troike program returns this year, July 5-29, at the Cathedral Prep campus in Elmhurst, Queens.

Just as much has changed in the U.S. since 1968, the program has also evolved. This year brings a new slate of activities for boys participating from grades 6, 7, and 8.

The morning academics portion helps them prepare for high school and the Test for Admission into Catholic High Schools (TACHS) by building knowledge in religion, science, English/Language Arts, and math. But theater arts were added in recent years. And this summer, for the first time, is journalism and creative writing.

Were always evaluating and always trying to grow to make things better, said Father James Kuroly, rector and president of the school.

The afternoon athletics continues to foster teamwork and camaraderie, but new this year is a soccer clinic.

We try our best to keep things updated and exciting for the kids, said Deacon Phil Franco, assistant principal and director of the program. In our organized games, there will be soccer this year, which weve never had before to my knowledge. But there was a little more of a call for soccer than ever before.

And last year, the program added video games.

There are those young people who dont like playing sports, Father Kuroly said. And we respect that. So theres opportunities for them in the cafeteria where they can play chess, ping pong, other board games, and video games.

Also new this year will be on-site lunches. In years past, students brought their own food, but now they can buy meals in the cafeteria.

It usually shuts down for the summer, but this year, we will have it open, Father Kuroly said. Thats one of the things that the parents consistently asked for the last couple of years.

The programs evolution included a name change in the early years, from Summer Program.

Leading its development was popular math teacher Father Ed Troike, who died five years later of cancer at age 44. The school honored his memory by renaming it the Father Troike Leadership Program.

That leadership part was training our students to be counselors, and to really take upon a leadership role of service and of a servant leader, Father Kuroly said. Over the years, obviously, it has been a great recruitment tool.

A lot of those who go to Troike ended up coming to the school, such as myself.

The lead counselor this year is Daniel Schilling, who will be in the 11th grade this fall.

The summer program speaks to the message of Cathedral Prep, which is forming men for greatness, Schilling said.

His brother, John (Class of 2018) is still involved as the associate director and the schools new admissions and enrollment coordinator.

Its a full-circle moment for me, John Schilling said. I was a student here at Cathedral, and I worked as a (Troike) counselor for three summers. I used to sit in on classes when I was a counselor, and now I teach a class, which is really cool. I couldnt have imagined that I would be doing that many years ago.

The cost is $500 for the entire month. Lunch costs extra, but on a per meal basis.

Because it is summer and some people may go away on vacation, we encourage students who are only able to come for one, two, or three weeks to still come anyway, John Schilling said. We adjust the price accordingly. Each week costs $125, essentially, but we prefer if students come for the full program so that they can get the most out of it.

Parents can fill out a registration form and pay the $500 fee by logging on to cathedralprep.org or calling the admissions office at 718-592-6800 Ext.150. For more information email John Schilling at jschilling@cathedralprep.org.

Read the rest here:
'Troike' Summer Program Returns to Cathedral Prep with New Classes and Sports - The Tablet Catholic Newspaper

Megan Rapinoe is aware of the elephant in the room.

She turns 37 soon and she has started only one game for OL Reign this season in the National Women's Soccer League season due to injuries. Still, U.S. women's national team head coach Vlatko Andonovski selected her for the 23-player roster for the upcoming World Cup qualifying tournament, which starts July 4, one day before her birthday.

Rapinoe -- both she and Andonovski say -- will play a very different role from the one that the world is accustomed to seeing her in.

"We have a really young squad," Rapinoe told ESPN, "and I feel like what I can bring to them in a mentor role, at training, being in their ear, the level of professionalism and understanding the style that Vlatko wants to play, and [being] that conduit to what the coaching staff wants and what the players are going to ultimately do on the field, was part of the roster selection.

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"If people don't like that, that's fine. They're not the coach of the national team. Vlatko's the coach, and ultimately it falls on him and what he wants and what he's willing to put his reputation on and the team's reputation on. Ultimately, if he's unsuccessful, he'll be fired, and he knows that, and I think he's OK with that. If we're unsuccessful -- if I'm unsuccessful -- I'll be cut from the team, and that's fine, too."

Most of the world knows Rapinoe for her role as the leader of the United States' triumph at the 2019 Women's World Cup. With her unmistakable pink hair, Rapinoe won the Golden Ball and Golden Boot as the top player and scorer while the U.S. clinched a second straight World Cup title, all while fighting the U.S. Soccer Federation for equal pay and protesting against the Trump administration.

After that magical month in France, Rapinoe says now, she felt stuck in a "hamster wheel." Her life changed completely as her celebrity increased, and she found herself struggling to balance the emotional, mental and spiritual aspects with the usual physical demands made harder as she aged. The Olympics were delayed a year until 2021, and the U.S. eventually slogged through some poor stretches of play at that tournament to win a bronze medal. Rapinoe scored twice in the 4-3 win over Australia in that third-place game.

Then came the break. Beginning in November, Andonovski purposely left out longtime veteran national team players -- including Rapinoe -- from training camps. His plan was to get a better look at young, less experienced players in order to determine whether they could contribute to more important moments like qualifying and, ultimately, the World Cup. Andonovski revealed earlier this month that he and Rapinoe had a discussion in late 2021 about her eventual return to the team.

"With that conversation, she understood that we are going to bring in a lot of players, we are going to test a lot of players," Andonovski said. "We want to give the young players lots of minutes and opportunities to play and give us a chance to evaluate as much as possible. But after everything is said and done, if she is healthy and if she is fit to get minutes, that she will be on the roster. We know what Megan is capable of doing."

At some point during qualifying, Andonovski says, younger U.S. players will need Rapinoe's experience to navigate a difficult situation. Rapinoe was around for qualifying in 2010 -- the previous time Mexico hosted the tournament -- when the U.S. lost to Mexico in the semifinals and had to eke through a playoff with Italy to become the final team to qualify for the 2011 World Cup. It was the closest the U.S. women's national team had ever gotten to not qualifying for a World Cup.

Several veterans from that near disaster remain active. Rapinoe said that no two players' situations are the same, and that people very generally grouped veterans together over the past nine months of this roster overhaul process. (Alex Morgan also returns to the squad for qualifying. She leads the NWSL with 11 goals in 10 games.) Everyone who got called up deserves to be, Rapinoe said, and even players who did not get the call deserved inclusion, too.

"Rosters are not a compilation just of, go pick the best players and hope for the best," Rapinoe said. "It's about constructing an organism that works together on and off the field, that works not necessarily harmoniously all the time, but that the right pieces fit for certain reasons and for reasons most people don't understand."

Injuries played a role in the public skepticism of Rapinoe's return to the national team. A day after feeling like she completely recovered from a nagging ankle injury this spring, she pulled her calf muscle. Her return to the field for OL Reign, something she needed to do to show she was fit for national team selection, was then delayed.

Personal frustrations mounted for Rapinoe during that time, she says, so much so that sometimes retirement became a thought of hers -- not because it was what she wanted to do, but because it felt like the only way to break the cycle. Rapinoe credits her fiance, Sue Bird -- who announced last week that she would retire at the end of this WNBA season, her 21st -- with helping her manage those feelings as someone going through a similar process. Those are thoughts of the past, Rapinoe says.

"I think being able to have someone who intimately knows what it means when I say, 'I want to retire right now I'm so frustrated,' it may not actually mean that," Rapinoe said. "It actually means a lot of different things. So, being able to be there for her, and her be there for me, is the greatest gift ever."

As U.S. national team training camp convenes in Colorado this week ahead of World Cup qualifying, Rapinoe said she's in a much better place now. The outside world saw some of her physical struggles as she tried to get back on the field this spring, but they did not see her daily, internal battles with herself.

"I feel like I'm just now on the other side of healing, physically and emotionally, and getting to a place where this feels new," Rapinoe said. "Because I couldn't have done what I was just kind of continuing to do after 2019. That felt like a hamster wheel, and it didn't feel like a choice, and now I feel like I'm actually making a choice. My role is different, and I think I understand what my role is and I'm comfortable with it -- I'm really excited about that. It's kind of a combination of those things where I feel like in the last couple of weeks, I feel like a weight has been lifted. But also, I'm like, 'Oh my God, I'm excited again.' "

Beyond leadership, Rapinoe still has an uncanny ability to change results on a dime by being unpredictable from both open play and set pieces. She is also just reliable, and that matters to coaches in pressure-filled situations. As Reign head coach Laura Harvey said in May, "I would put my mortgage on Megan Rapinoe to score a penalty."

Harvey and Andonovski played significant roles in Rapinoe's career arc. The affable winger is best known for her triumphs at the world stage, but Rapinoe credits the evolution of her game -- one that helped the Americans win both the 2015 and 2019 World Cups -- to her time with the Seattle-based club, and specifically Harvey and Andonovski, who have both served as her coaches at the Reign.

"I feel like I owe so much of my national team career to the Reign," Rapinoe said. "I've had two of the best, if not the best coaches in the world, coach here and to be able to play under them. Some of the best players in the world [were here]... I feel like it's where my game grew up. I think up until I got here it was like, 'Yeah, I'm talented, I'm on the national team, we're doing stuff, we're successful.' But I feel like when I got here, my game changed completely, and I really took it to the next level. I just owe so much to this club."

Andonovski coached the Reign prior to taking over the national team job and in that role he insisted that Rapinoe could still be better by improving her crossing accuracy and influencing the game in small moments, like a quick throw-in to catch an opponent off guard. He said that one year before Rapinoe dominated the 2019 World Cup.

"I didn't want her to be known as Pinoe who can serve the ball," Andonovski said in 2018, as coach of the Reign. "I wanted her to be known as Pinoe who can change the game. How? Who cares? One time she'll serve, one time she'll slice a through ball, one time she'll shoot. One time she'll get a restart -- it doesn't matter. Be unpredictable."

Harvey was the original coach of the team -- then called the Seattle Reign prior to being bought by the owners of Olympique Lyonnais -- and she oversaw arguably the most dominant team in NWSL history in 2014 and 2015. The Reign went 16 games unbeaten in 2014 on their way to the first of two consecutive NWSL Shields, but they lost the NWSL championship each year to Andonovski-coached FC Kansas City sides.

Ten years into the NWSL and many great Reign teams later, a playoff championship trophy still eludes the franchise. Rapinoe is one of three original Reign players to have been with the team from the inaugural season in 2013 (among 21 who remain active leaguewide from that first season). Jess Fishlock is one of the others, and while she was the league MVP in 2021, she will turn 36 before next season. Add that context to the short-term loan acquisition of Kim Little -- who was the engine of those Reign glory teams and the 2014 league MVP -- and the arrivals of Tobin Heath and striker Jordyn Huitema, and it suggests the Reign are all-in on finally ending the drought this year.

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"I'm really motivated and focused to bring a title to a club that I feel like really deserves it and has done things the right way," Rapinoe said. "I feel like [we play] a style of soccer that has been inspirational not only here but around the world."

Before she returns to the Reign for the stretch run of the NWSL season, Rapinoe will help guide a very different-looking U.S. team at World Cup qualifying in Mexico. Four automatic qualification berths from the region lower the stakes a bit, but only the winner of the CONCACAF W Championship tournament will earn an automatic berth to the 2024 Olympics. (Second and third place go to a playoff.)

Rapinoe's inclusion in World Cup qualifying both reinvigorated her and provided clarity for her path ahead. If Rapinoe is to play in a fourth World Cup next year, it will have to be in a much different capacity than the previous cycles. She is at peace with that, so long as it is the best path for the team.

"Now, I can imagine myself in qualifiers," Rapinoe said. "Now, I can imagine, potentially, what a run to a World Cup would look like and what's going to be required of me, where I feel comfortable and where I can push myself, where I can be of the utmost help to the team. Ultimately, that's what it's about. It's about winning, period. It's about getting another championship and going for a three-peat, which is f---ing ridiculous and amazing. If I can be a part of that, that excites me."

Link:
Megan Rapinoe's USWNT role has changed and she's at peace: 'A weight has been lifted' - ESPN

The Army has adopted an all-around health program that targets a range of areas, including mental, spiritual and physical health. The Holistic Health and Fitness, or H2F, program aims to take the best of current mental and physical health science to improve the condition of soldiers across the force.

But this isnt the first time, by far, that the service has looked for ways to better mold soldiers for the rigors of modern battle.

Army Maj. Garrett Gatzemeyer, 37, has now documented this long and fascinating history in his recent book, Bodies for Battle: U.S. Army Physical Culture and Systematic Training, 1885-1957.

Gatzemeyer was commissioned out of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 2007, and later taught history there as an assistant professor from 2016 to 2019. Like soldiers everywhere, Gatzemeyer did his dose of calisthenics without fail when he hit the regular Army.

And, like many in uniform over the past century, he had a limited understanding of how the Army produced those bodyweight physical routines, its run distance and other measures of fitness.

As the service began revamping its protocols with combat fitness tests and other ways to keep soldiers in fighting shape, the Fruitland, Idaho, native was leafing through old Army manuals as he sought a dissertation topic while working on his doctoral degree at the University of Kansas.

Army Maj. Garrett Gatzemeyer, author of "Bodies for Battle," analyzes Army physical training between 1885 and 1957. (Garrett Gatzemeyer and University Press of Kansas)

The old physical training manuals from the 1920s and 1940s drew his attention.

The language was really rich and interesting, Gatzemeyer told Army Times. And in many ways, the PT manuals felt really, really familiar to me as an Army officer.

The pages, which dated to the pre-World War II era, had instructions on how to do burpees and a series of drills that soldiers had performed for generations.

That finding and a few more years of research led Gatzemeyer to draft his dissertation, obtain his doctoral degree and publish Bodies for Battle.

The first lesson for todays soldiers: What you do now has an origin story, and PT wasnt always the way it is now.

Gatzemeyer talked to Army Times recently about his findings. The interview was edited for length and clarity.

Q: Young students can ignore history. But there are cultural aspects in the military on how leaders and troops view physical fitness. What did you notice while you were researching that stood out?

A: That was about the time, mid-2015 to 2016, that the Army was working itself away from the Army Physical Fitness Test and moving toward what became the Army Combat Fitness Test. The study for what comes next had just concluded and one of the findings in the study was that the Army should reduce its run to 1.5 miles down from the 2-mile run, because science indicated that was the optimal distance to test cardiovascular fitness. I remember reading that the sergeant major of the Army wanted that overruled because, he said, that last half mile tested your spirit and your heart.

I was reading these old manuals at the time, and I said, theres clearly more to fitness than just measures of physiological performance, given the sergeant majors comments and then kind of reflecting on my own experience with how we associate good leaders or good soldiers with high PT scores.

A U.S. Army recruiting poster circa 1919, left, boasts that it will build men. A recruiting poster from 2019, conceived in response to the perceived shrinking of qualified recruits, targets Generation Z young adults with a focus that goes beyond traditional combat roles. (Army)

Q: On the civilian side, fitness goes through various trends and fads. From the jogging-centric 1970s to the bodybuilding craze of the 1980s and 90s and even CrossFit in recent decades. Has the Army seen such shifts?

A: Early in the period of my research I saw a tug-of-war in Army leadership, mostly at West Point, between cavalry, drill, organized sport and later systematic group exercise. And the science was just emerging. It was not just exercise for exercises sake. People are starting to learn that if you repeatedly work a muscle, for instance, that muscle can become larger or stronger and capable of carrying more weight. But theyre also trying to apply that concept more broadly and in an educative sense. So, they make connections between physical and bodily health and things like mental health, social well-being and morality.

The beginning of my research, the late 1800s to the early 1900s is also the Progressive Era. Thats when many people were looking to scientific methods to improve society, hygiene and community planning to make better citizens. The question they were asking was what the physical training was supposed to produce. Some saw it as simply a matter of becoming better horsemen, better at drill and other soldier tasks. That fit the tactics of the time, which required discipline and obedience. But some saw athletics to both improve fitness and create teamwork. But sport often meant injuries and often a focus on the talented star athletes on one team, instead of total force fitness development.

U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York, cadets drill in group exercise circa 1903. (West Point archives)

Q: Itd be easy to see how some thought that combat-focused physical training was the priority, especially in the more physically demanding era of early 1900s soldiering. Was that always the case?

A: The Armys physical culture didnt start with training for specific skills or tasks. It was a little bit more abstract. It was about training the soldier and cultivating some characteristics that would be useful on the battlefield but not translate directly. So, theyre not, for instance, teaching grappling or combatives in this early period of the 1880s-1890s. But they are doing things to instill discipline and making a unit work well together.

Q: Much of physical fitness and physical culture came from a variety of other sources. How did the Army bring that knowledge into the force?

A: A lot of it was up to the individual unit commander to create. Then, with the rapid increase in the size of the Army for World War I and World War II, the force needed a more uniform way to bring all soldiers up to a standard. The Army just didnt have the depth and breadth of expertise among its physical trainers at that time. So, they had to turn to civilians and bring in experts from the outside. The institute was forced, in a way, to accept this outside advice and cede some of that territory. But, when the demands were gone, after the two world wars, military leadership took back more control and you see more of the traditional culture reemerge.

Q: You covered a lot of events in your book, from 1885 through 1957. Why did you pick those as the starting and ending points?

A: Within the Army, physical training began gaining traction after 1885 and physical educators took a major step forward, more broadly, with the founding of the American Association for the Advancement of Physical Education at that time. There are three evolutionary periods for the Armys physical culture between 1885 and 1957; the disciplinary era led by Herman Koehler, Master of the Sword at West Point; the combat-readiness interregnum of 1917-1919; and the rise of the scientific measurement school of thought after 1942. In 1957, the debate between drill and sport and systematic training had essentially ended, and Army leaders in a conference that year brought together all the leading physical fitness experts, establishing a doctrine and culture that is like what the Army has today. At that conference, for the first time since 1885, you dont see any question anymore that systematic training is valuable. A lot of it feels like consensus when you read the conference report about what the Army should be doing in terms of exercise and a daily routine for soldiers.

A U.S. Army training circular, published circa 1944, shows different body movements during exercises. (Army)

Q: What did you draw from your historical work thats applicable in thinking about soldier fitness today?

The total fitness model outline of the U.S. Army, circa 1957. (Army)

And it absolutely continues today. There is good evidence that Americans bodies are changing. I know it concerns a lot of people who are thinking on its national security implications. But one thing I can derive from looking at the past century of physical fitness in the Army is that generations tend to rise to the occasions; and the standards by which we measure people in peacetime, when we can afford to be very selective, change in wartime. Physical standards by which we measure the quality of a soldier, are all malleable, those standards are not set precisely down in stone. So, as military service changes, the character of combat evolves, and perhaps our definitions of physical fitness can also evolve alongside that. There is a lot to think about. For instance, when Space Force is standing up and thinking about what it wants its physical culture to look like, there are some big questions to ask.

Spc. Ryan Schultzman, an aircraft power plant repairer with the 404th Aviation Support Battalion, 4th Combat Aviation Brigade, 4th Infantry Division, completes the final lap of a two-mile run during the Best Army Combat Fitness Test Competition May 24 at Fort Carson, Colo. (Sgt. Clara Harty/Army)

Todd South has written about crime, courts, government and the military for multiple publications since 2004 and was named a 2014 Pulitzer finalist for a co-written project on witness intimidation. Todd is a Marine veteran of the Iraq War.

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As the Army pushes holistic health, an officer examines the history of soldier fitness - ArmyTimes.com

Riley Cotes journey to enlightenment began in earnest when a hulking man punched him in the face. Cote, now 40 and retired from professional hockey, remembers the moment with a dark laugh. Hed gotten into this particular bust-up one night during the 2009 season with one of the NHLs most vicious fighters, and took the worst of it, waking the next day with his left eye blackened shut.

What, he asked himself, am I doing?

He drove to the Philadelphia Flyers training facility and got into the shower. Feeling congested, he reached for a tissue. He didnt realize hed suffered a cracked sinus, so what happened next was physics. When he blew his nose, the air rather than coming out of his nostrils inflated his face. The pressure surged instantly behind his good eye and closed it tight.

Team trainer Derek Settlemyre heard Cote scream. His whole face had swollen up, Settlemyre recalls. We tell them, if they think they have a fracture, Dont blow your nose and he did.

After eight years in pro hockey (four in the NHL, four hopping around its minor-league teams), Cote felt his retirement bearing down. As an NHL enforcer a player whose main role is to get into fights hed taken countless hits on the ice. Off it, he self-medicated with booze and drugs. Hed brutalized his body inside and out by the tender age of 28. I damaged my brain, Cote says. Punching it and dehydrating it and partying my ass off.

Today, Cote is a new man, with a mane of long brown hair, a yoga-trimmed physique, and an aura of ease in his own skin. It is a transformation he credits largely to psychedelic drugs. Since retiring, Cote has emerged as one of the sports worlds most vocal advocates for what he calls plant medicines from cannabis, itself a light psychedelic, to weightier hallucinogens including DMT and magic mushrooms to treat post-concussion symptoms (think headaches, insomnia, depression, and possibly, the degenerative brain condition known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE). In 2017, Cote co-founded Athletes for Care, a group that promotes research into the physical and emotional health issues athletes face and novel paths for treatment. He regularly speaks at conferences on the benefits of psychedelics. And, perhaps most important, he reaches out to players who are known to be struggling post-career, even arranging magic-mushroom ceremonies where they can safely experiment with the drug.

Cote understands the hesitation surrounding these substances. While psychedelics fill him with love, gratitude, and a connection to a higher energy source, they are technically illegal throughout most of the U.S. Beyond that, the experience, whether good or bad, can be intense. Certain users experience not just so-called bad trips, but also psychotic breaks from reality. Cote says talking to a first-timer about using psychedelics is basically like asking them: Do you want to see God? Are you sure? The ask is so big, the answer is often no.

Cote was worried when he walked into the lunch area at the Good Hope House Retreat Center in Jamaica one day in April, got a green smoothie, and waited for one of the biggest weekends of his life to unfold.An ESPN crew was coming to film a magic-mushroom ceremony hed helped organize for a group of retired athletes, including former players from the NHL and NFL. All had pledged to eat breakthrough doses enough, that is, to induce a mystical state of mushrooms containing psilocybin, which is legal in Jamaica.

The opportunity to showcase mushrooms as medicine to a mainstream television audience was a precious thing, but as Cote sat with some early arrivals, he couldnt enjoy it. He kept mulling a more practical concern: Would everyone actually show up?Two people in particular Steve Downie, an ex-Flyers teammate, and Justin Renfrow, a former NFL lineman were due any minute. Or not.In the past 11 years, Cote has invited a lot of people to venture down the magic-mushroom path, and most who say yes subsequently run into excuses not to follow through. In fact, second-thought declinations are so common in Cotes experience that he doesnt judge anyone for them.

Its scary, right? Cote says. Theres a fear associated with it. Theres a lot of unknowns, like, Where am I going? What am I getting myself into? It all sounds grand when youre sitting on your couch, you know, and talking about it via text or phone. But when youve actually got to be committed to something and actually do it, its another story.

There is some irony here. Since Cote began proselytizing, scientific research bolstering the case for psychedelics has accumulated.Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore established a center for psychedelic and consciousness research in 2019, and has published 50 peer-reviewed papers that indicate psychedelics help treat depression, promote psychological insight, alleviate anxiety in cancer patients, break smoking addiction, and improve overall life satisfaction.In 2018, the Food and Drug Administration, which had for decades held the line against psychedelics, granted breakthrough therapy status to psilocybin use for severe depression, an act designed to accelerate the drug development and review process. MDMA, better known as the club drug Ecstasy, also won breakthrough status, and could receive full approval to treat post-traumatic stress disorder next year.

At the same time, the discovery of CTE has created a crisis across all contact sports, linked to myriad symptoms, including memory loss, confusion, impaired judgment, impulse-control problems, aggression, depression, anxiety, suicidality, and progressive dementia. The condition can only be confirmed after death, but the list of the dead with CTE is long, including four soccer players, more than 300 NFL players, and at least a dozen high-profile hockey players: Stan Mikita, Bob Probert, Derek Boogaard, Jeff Parker, Wade Belak, Larry Zeidel, Reggie Fleming, Rick Martin, Steve Montador, Zarley Zalapski, Todd Ewen, and Dan Maloney.

Dr. Julie Holland, a practicing New York psychiatrist and psychedelics expert, says the application of psychedelics to sports medicine is new, but makes sense based on the current scientific literature.We know that many psychedelics have really potent anti-inflammatory effects, says Holland, who is also a longtime medical adviser for the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, or MAPS. The other thing is, theyre being explored for treating neurodegenerative disorders, including chronic traumatic encephalopathy. These athletes that get multiple blows to the head [represent] a case where you really need not only anti-inflammatory effects, but this purported neuroplasticity that comes with psychedelics.

Cote during his playing days with the Flyers, in December 2008.

Jeff Vinnick/Getty Images

Studies largely involving rodents suggest that psychedelics reduce neuroinflammation, a key component of both Alzheimers disease and CTE; produce healing from brain injury; and possibly even prompt neurogenesis, or the birth of new neurons. They have also been shown to increase the density of dendritic spines small protrusions found on nerve cells in turn spurring the growth of neuronal connections that can be lost in cases of chronic stress or depression. Some human experiments suggest that psychedelics reduce activity in the default mode network (DMN), a web of connected brain regions responsible for self-awareness, social thinking, and thoughts about the past and future. The mystic feelings that users like Cote report such as the loss of a sense of self, and the ability to set aside the past or think afresh about the future are thought to arise from this reset of the DMN.

Cote started Athletes for Care with such edgier therapies in mind initially just cannabis, and then psychedelics as the encouraging science grew. And while he might not be the groups most famous retiree (members include former NFL star running backs Tiki Barber and Chris Johnson, and former UFC champ Bas Rutten), he looms as perhaps its most pivotal figure.He is a partner in a hemp-derived CBD recovery product line called BodyChek Wellness and an adviser to Wake, a multipronged company that is collaborating with Baltimores Lieber Institute for Brain Medicine to use genetics research for the development of psilocybin-based treatments tailored to individual patients a potentially dramatic step toward eliminating bad or ineffective trips. At AFCs most recent board meeting, in March, Cote led a deep discussion around psychedelics, presenting the current body of research and urging the group to strengthen its commitment to incorporate psychedelics into its work.

Riley has been a leader in this space for a long, long time, says Marvin Washington, a former NFL defensive lineman, who won a Super Bowl with the Denver Broncos in the late Nineties and became a pro-cannabis activist in retirement. He was the first athlete I ever heard talking about psychedelics.

The pair were at a cannabis-related conference several years ago when Cote waxed on about the mental-health benefits associated with taking both small and reality-shifting doses of psilocybin. Washington was surprised and started checking out Cotes claims. He was right, he says. He deserves a lot of credit for being in early on all plant medicines.

In his early days playing hockey, as a teenager, Cote discovered that a bong hit in the morning helped him maintain his focus through a long workout. Later, after his skill set proved unequal to becoming a scorer, he remodeled himself as an enforcer, or goon, a hockey player whose main job is to punish opponents for any penalties the referee missed. Undersized for the role at six feet one and a playing weight of 220 pounds, Cote brawled his way into the league, racking up more than 200 professional hockey fights. He increased his cannabis use then, smoking weed on a regular basis and finding that it helped him sleep, recover, and manage the anxiety and trauma of bare-knuckle fighting. Magic mushrooms, when he took them, were more of a party drug, a way to enhance the lights and music at a concert.

Cotes delivery while retelling his own journey is understated. But his presence speaks loudly. His face is rugged, with a nose that moves this way and that, like a switchback trail, to suggest his past. His hands are gnarled. By the time he retired, he had accumulated a litany of injuries: torn ligaments in both knees, a dislocated finger, broken ankle, separated shoulder, three broken noses, and at least four diagnosed concussions. Cote knew back then that he needed to heal up, and intuitively wanted to build on his past experiences with cannabis and psychedelics. So he began reading deeply, discovering that cannabis and psychedelics bore rich histories as natural medicines.

Cote also did as he learned, securing five grams of mushrooms, or whats known as a heroic dose, for his first ceremonial trip. He set an intention to treat the experience as important, even sacred, and arranged his house for the occasion, putting on some ambient music, turning off the electric lights, and setting out a couple of candles. Still, nothing hed read or done truly prepared him.

Acknowledging the experience was ineffable, indescribable, Cote reaches for language, doing his best. It was bliss, he says, and delivered an incredible sense of knowing. Eventually, he lands on something particularly hard to explain to potential initiates: I felt my ego dissolve.

This specific result suggests an additional, perhaps unexpected use for psychedelics that might be uniquely valuable to athletes: For a lot of athletes, and these could be amateurs or professionals, says Cote, everything you do from a very young age is geared toward achieving success in that sport. It becomes your identity.

In Cotes case, the identity hed spent so long forging for himself with blood and terror, jacking up his emotions to punch people he didnt hate and often admired, lifted off his shoulders during that first trip like he was shedding his skin with no more importance or difficulty than he would remove a coat. I felt free, he says.

What Cote experienced was actually a typical effect reported by users, and left him feeling like he could set hockey aside to do whatever I wanted. He spent the next several years banging away at his new cause, eventually finding a high-profile supporter in Lindy Snider, former vice president for sales with the Flyers and daughter of the teams beloved late owner, Ed Snider. Cote called her and asked for a meeting, Snider says, and came in quoting the science as it stood at the time. She was impressed.

Hes by far one of the leading voices in sports around these issues, Snider says. And the athletes hes brought into Athletes for Care are all very similar. Theyve run the gauntlet in the physical realm like nobody else. And, you know, theres associated deeper meaning with looking at all of these alternative ways to ameliorate your health, your mental wellness, your state of being, and Riley is always looking at a higher state of being. Whatever those tools look like that help us get there is what his mission is.

Snider was open to cannabis. She ran a skin-care company that made products for cancer patients and knew of the drugs potential as medicine. She also helped get her father some cannabis for relief as he lay dying in 2016. But the evolution of Cotes story has educated her, helping her see that psychedelics, too, bear importance not just in the treatment of brain injury and CTE, but also to help former athletes lead productive, enjoyable post-career lives.

Within the Flyers family, Snider says, she had too often witnessed players suffer a failure to launch after retirement. She sadly recalls one player she declines to name who felt so lost after hockey he succumbed to alcoholism and died of liver failure. I felt we failed him, Snider says. And it was this notion that there were things that could have helped him, and he didnt have access to this stuff.

It is easy to imagine that athletes would prove particularly challenging to invite on this kind of a trip, the hippie-dippy side of the experience too off-putting for people so deeply task-oriented and rooted in their physical bodies. But Cote says they are no more resistant on that front than anyone else. The spiritual side of this is always more difficult to address, in general, he explains. Thats the world were living in. Still, he routinely pitches the physical benefits as his way in, and finds retired sports stars uniquely receptive. Elite athletes are always looking for the next best thing and how to optimize their performance, he says. The average Joe in the Western world doesnt give a shit about optimization. They dont even know what that word means. They dont understand theres higher levels of performance. So they just think that wherever theyre at, thats just the hand that God dealt them.

Washington, the retired NFL player and cannabis activist, tried psilocybin after listening to Cote talk about it. He now describes it as the next moonshot beyond cannabis legalization. He also credits the drug with helping him find a sense of himself far greater than football.

From left: Justin Renfrow; Daniel Carcillo.

Brett Carlsen/Getty Images; Dale MacMillan/Getty Images

One of Cotes biggest success stories might be retired NHL star and two-time Stanley Cup champion Daniel Carcillo. Nine years of pro hockey had left Carcillo suffering from light sensitivity, headaches, insomnia, anxiety, depression, slurred speech, suicidal ideation, and more. He was public about it, speaking out toward the end of his career, in 2015, about his concussion history, hockeys disregard for players health, and his own failed attempts to find some solution in modern medicine.

After Carcillo retired, Cote says he reached out to him for more than a year about trying cannabis and psilocybin. No luck. It was only when Carcillo reached his darkest point, and started thinking about how he might get a rope around the big wood beams in his ceiling, that desperation, as he describes it, drove him to meet with Cote and learn more.

Cote made arrangements for Carcillo to attend a mushroom ceremony in Colorado, a decriminalized state. That first experience, says Carcillo, included the spiritual sensations that psilocybin is known to induce and something more. A few days later, Carcillo realized that he could start crossing off symptoms: light sensitivity, slurred speech, his suicidal feelings giving way to hope.

Carcillo came home from Colorado and started taking microdoses of psilocybin and occasional breakthrough amounts. He began to enjoy that sense of rebirth that Cote, Washington, and so many others describe. Soon, he was in the news, crediting Cote with saving my life.

In May 2020, Carcillo founded Wesana, a startup trying to develop its own psilocybin treatment and earn FDA approval. He is, perhaps out of necessity, more buttoned up than Cote. In the space that Rileys in, Carcillo says, you can talk more freely about what this does for the spirit. For me, when you go down the FDA path, they dont care about that. Like, they dont want to hear that. In fact, Carcillo says, he no longer uses words like psychedelic at all in his work. I say its a compound found in nature. Most all of our medicines are a single extract from a plant found in nature, or fungi. Thats the reality.

The effects of that compound on his psyche have been profound: This medicine, the biggest stuff that it does there is always that feeling that you are enough. And one of the things that Im really interested in is showing people not only can we recover and be a beacon of hope, but you can break out of what you think you need to stay in and do new things.

In science, a story like Carcillos might be dismissed as only an anecdote. But his recovery is seemingly validated through brain scans. The images Carcillo received from neurologists before he tried psilocybin showed a brain suffering from decreased connectivity. Big pockets of red signified areas of the brain that werent communicating. His slurred speech was a byproduct the signals from one part of his brain having to travel around these red areas, a slowdown that affected his enunciation. According to Mark Wingertzahn, Wesanas chief scientific officer, those initial scans qualified Carcillo for a diagnosis of moderate traumatic brain injury.

After hed come home, however, and continued his own ad hoc psilocybin therapy for about six months, Carcillo got another set of scans. What [doctors] were able to see is, those areas of red may have gone down to blue, or in some cases white, which is consistent with that normal brain pattern, says Wingertzahn, meaning Carcillos brain was suddenly showing greater connectivity and function. What interested Wingertzahn most, though, was what happened to Carcillos symptoms, which the former hockey player says have been reduced, on a scale from one to 10, to a number not even on the menu: Zero.

The reduction of symptoms is what the FDA does care about, says Wingertzahn, who spent 25 years at pharma companies, including Pfizer, getting new drugs to market. He thinks psilocybin-based medicines will be approved in three to five years.

Human trials have shown significant success in the areas of depression, death anxiety, smoking cessation, positive personality changes, and more. Not only that, a pair of studies have suggested that psilocybin treats depression at rates at least equal to, and by some measures much better than, todays available meds along with a whole different class of side effects.

Listed side effects for drugs like Lexapro include nausea, sleepiness, weakness, dizziness, anxiety, trouble sleeping, delayed ejaculation, painful erections, difficulty with orgasms, sweating, shaking, reduced appetite, and dry mouth. Noted side effects of psychedelics, aside from that small number who experience a psychotic break, and the occasional bout of nausea or insomnia, include joy, calm, increased awareness, self-confidence, and a sometimes obnoxious desire to tell everybody you meet about your awesome fucking experience.

Carcillo, during a Zoom call, smiles and asks: Are you interested in something like that? Its the same question, essentially, that Cote has been asking for years the seemingly obvious answer left hanging in the air.

In the days before Cote left for Jamaica, a few of the people scheduled to come canceled, including the former offensive lineman Justin Renfrow.

I was trying to make a lot of excuses, says Renfrow, who has a lot in common with Cote, having made it to the pros as an undrafted free agent and carved out a difficult career bouncing between NFL squads and the Canadian Football League. I played football injured since my sophomore year of high school, he says, explaining that the grind slowly took its toll.

The journeyman tackle told Cote he wasnt going to make it to the retreat, then secretly asked the universe for a sign. The night before the scheduled trip, he got one: a text message from Wake, the psilocybin research company, delivered at 11:11, a time his family had always invested with mystical meaning. He felt it was his deceased grandmother encouraging him to go.

Cotes old teammate Downie, meanwhile, said yes to Jamaica, and then complained that he did not have a valid passport, so he would not be able to travel. Cote talked him through that episode. Still, he couldnt be sure either man would actually get on the plane.

Cote, left, with his former teammate Steve Downie at a magic-mushroom retreat in Jamaica.

Courtesy of Riley Cote

Khara Cartagena, vice president of business development with the Spore Group, one of many startups across the country prepping for the Wild West of psychedelic legalization, was sitting with Cote as he waited to see if Downie and Renfrow would arrive.

I could see he was distracted, says Cartagena. He was clear that it meant a lot to him to help these people.

But eventually, after an anxious several minutes, Cote lit up at the appearance of Renfrow. And again when he saw a figure he thought he could recognize at a distance the height just about right, the shape in silhouette familiar, until finally the man got close enough that Cote could see the trademark missing tooth in his smile: Steve Downie, Cotes old teammate.

It was all just really beautiful, says Cote. I shouldnt be surprised. Plant medicine delivers, you know. But it was really maybe even better than I expected.

Both men were moved by their magic-mushroom experiences. Downie teared up after his first dose, and spoke during a subsequent integration session held to help people process the intense experience about how his father had died in a car accident while taking him to hockey practice. The ceremony had given Downie an incredible sense of relief.

Perhaps the most powerful moment, though, came when Cote looked at Renfrow deep into the ceremony. Renfrow had spoken to Cote beforehand about his personal uncertainty: Should he continue playing in the CFL, or pursue his passion for the YouTube food show hes created, Whats Cooking, and try to grow it? A hulking man at six feet five and 320 pounds, Renfrow was wearing a T-shirt with his initials on it in a circle. Then, methodically, he took it off. Cote felt he was watching a peace settle over the big man as it had once settled over him: a shedding of the skin and the birth of someone new.

Renfrow, in a tearful interview after the trip, confirms Cotes observation: It felt like my grandma was taking that weight, the pain and stress of playing through all those injuries, he says. I didnt need to keep going through that. He emerged knowing that he could leave football behind.

Cote, for his part, says that bringing people like Renfrow this kind of existential healing is his calling now, and he marvels at the dichotomy between the old Riley and the new. In Flyers-related photos, his eyes are often filled with terror, bestial anger, and sadness. Now, he says, here I am talking about a flower.

He laughs.

Its been an incredible journey, he says, and really, I just want to take as many people with me as possible.

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How an NHL Enforcer Broke His Body and Turned to Psychedelics to Heal His Brain - Rolling Stone

Yoga, an Indian tradition that we have gifted the world, is a powerful tool for inner engineering through which one can explore the metaphysical and achieve spiritual oneness.

Yoga enables one to truly connect with oneself. It enables an expansion of physical and mental abilities and helps us become the best version of ourselves. Afterall, inner tranquility is the recipe for greatness. This is the reason Yoga has gained unprecedented popularity across the globe with people in the United States of America, Canada, countries in Europe, Japan and South Korea adopting and practicing yoga in large numbers. The beginning and peak of the global pandemic were definite inflection points. Today, the popularity of Yoga has soared from Los Angeles to Okinawa and from London and Paris to Sydney and Auckland.

Yoga is a drugless Indian system that emphasizes stress management, lifestyle, and diet correction to reduce the increasing prevalence of non-communicable diseases like diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, obesity and even cancer. The Ministry of Ayush has, since its inception, gone the extra mile in promoting Indian traditional medicine systems of Ayurveda, Yoga, Unani, Siddha, Homeopathy and Sowa Rigpa. It has made these endeavors in a bid to establish India as the holistic health capital of the world.

The Indian Prime Minister had proposed at the United Nations, in 2014, the idea of celebrating June 21 as the International Day of Yoga. The proposal was passed by the general assembly with a record 175 countries supporting India. On June 21, 2022, the Prime Minister of India will, once again, be leading the celebrations of the Eighth International Day of Yoga 2022, in Mysuru, performing yoga with 15,000 people. Additionally, the celebrations will feature a whole host of attractions. There will be a two-day physical and digital exhibition. The physical exhibition will have around 148 stalls exhibiting the latest innovation in the field of yoga and in other Indian traditional medicine systems.

The digital exhibition will allow for unique features like Yoga with the Prime Minister, a display where users can do an instructed yoga session (with a three-dimensional projection of the Prime Minister) and their movement is detected and shown on a giant display. This has been made into a challenge with posture recognition Kinect technology where users will have to complete five yoga asanas in a limited time frame and score maximum points. The user will have to do each asana correctly to move onto the next one.

The Digital Yoga Exhibition will showcase the evolution of Yoga from the pre-historic to the modern period. It will feature a Heal in India and Heal by India wall which will showcase career opportunities in yoga, training, institutions, and research in Yoga and its efficacy in disease mitigation and prevention. The digital exhibition will also highlight COVID success stories, Yogas impact on peoples lives, and practical demonstrations.

The theme of International Day of Yoga 2022, Yoga for Humanity, is indeed yoga for health for all. Yoga alone is inner engineering in the truest sense. Yoga is Indias gift to the world. Yoga is Indian tradition, embraced by the world. In a divided world, Yoga is a uniting force bringing people together through compassion and kindness. It is all-inclusive, and respects diversity. Practicing Yoga brings joy, health, and inner peace. It deepens the connection between an individuals inner consciousness and the external world. For these intrinsic values embedded in Yoga this years International Day of Yoga has been given the theme Yoga for Humanity.

Apart from its obvious health and spiritual benefits aside, yoga has become an important avenue for professional growth.

As per some industry estimates, the size of the global yoga market analyzed by enrolment in online and offline yoga courses, and yoga accreditation training programs was valued at USD 38 billion in 2019 and is projected to reach USD 66 billion by 2027, growing at a compounded annual growth rate of 9.6% from 2021 to 2027. North America leads by the sheer size of its yoga market, but the Indo-Pacific region is expected to grow at the highest compounded annual growth rate at least until 2027. Yoga has emerged as an important area of commerce, employment generation and entrepreneurship development.

It is with this in mind that the International Day of Yoga, 2022, being observed on June 21, has instituted the Startup Yoga Challenge Contest, to invigorate the youth to innovate for India and for the world. Thanks to its global popularity, yoga institutes in India and across the world will require several qualified and certified trainers. India can supply well-qualified, and accredited yoga teachers and practitioners to the world.

Yoga truly is one of the many ways India contributes to making the world a better place, a place with healthy, content people who step up for the collective good of humanity, eliminating war and strife. As Indians, it is our duty to not just embrace this great Indian tradition but also to promote it globally as a tool for harmony and universal brotherhood.

Views expressed above are the author's own.

END OF ARTICLE

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Yoga, one of the many ways India contributes to making the world a better place - Times of India

Building a culture of adaptability among leadership and staff starts with clarity and transparency about the companys objectives if you want to get everyone on board from the top down.

As you train and encourage your team to be fearless about facing challenges, they will become much more resilient and willing to go the distance, implementing a new direction at the company that is positive and beneficial for all.

Below, 15 members of Fast Company Executive Board present their best practices for introducing a new approach to the business process that makes employees feel confident about embracing a flexible mindset and becoming more involved as valuable company stakeholders in their role to move the organization forward.

1. BE THE CHANGE YOU WANT TO SEE.

Use a decision-making log and publish it for the whole company to see. Help your people see the tangible results of senior leaders trying to adapt the company to change while staying true to a core set of values or principles. This provides a clear example of the right behavior and a tangible tool anyone can use to adapt to change. Brian McCann, Intergalactic

2. STAY TRANSPARENT.

Leadership must be honest with employees. Keep them informed of risks and potential opportunities. Make it a collaborative exercise to discuss tasks and execute towards mitigating risks or capturing opportunities. This creates a sense of ownership and excitement to navigate and overcome any challenge. Together, everyone learns to become a nimble and important element in future endeavors. Alice Hayden, H2 IT Solutions

3. ARM YOUR TEAMS WITH CLARITY.

There exist opportunities to identify influential teams in an organization. Therefore, arm them with clear objectives and outside resources with the aim to work through an iterative process that is set up to test hypotheses, learn, regroup, make a new version, and repeat. This experience is at the heart of design thinking and will flip fear of failure into learning adaptability. Michelle Hayward, Bluedog

4. DEVELOP A CONFIDENT AND RESILIENT STAFF.

Train employees as if they need to vertically and horizontally integrate their skill sets. We found that when we do this in acquisition scenarios, employees gain confidence to be resilient to new ideas and new, challenging processes. It also creates a greater spirit of resiliency within the organization when staff can say, I can do hard things because Ive done them in the past. Tyrone Foster, InvestNet, LLC

5. ENGAGE IN CONSTANT COMMUNICATION.

Transparency ensures companies build adaptability within their organization because it shows trust and understanding from the top down. Adaptability is usually tough for companies because theres a lack of communication and employees are typically thrown into predicaments without any previous knowledge of a situation. A level of transparency removes that barrier and makes the process easier. Josh Perlstein, Response Media

6. EXPLAIN WHY A CHANGE IS NEEDED.

Role model it. Dont react negatively to change without understanding the rationale, and be transparent when you make a change and explain it as well. Sunil Rajasekar, Mindbody

7. ENSURE YOUR GOALS AND METRICS ARE ALIGNED.

A practical way to foster change is through organization metrics. What and how you measure communicates what is important. Your cultural organizational goals and metrics must be aligned to make sure that people have the proper guidance and incentive. Capture creative and strategic thinking, teamwork, and problem-solving metrics in order to avoid over-indexing execution and individual performance. Bruno Guicardi, CI&T

8. INVITE ONGOING FEEDBACK FROM STAFF MEMBERS.

You must first be aware of what needs to be changed and why. A practical tip for this is to consistently invite feedback from team members on your organizations processes. Regularly providing open, safe spaces for honest dialogue is a great way to understand whats working and whats not and cultivate a team thats comfortable with a consistent cycle of assessment, adaptation, and reevaluation. Bilal Aijazi, Polly

9. HIRE PEOPLE WHO ARE PASSIONATE ABOUT WHAT THEY DO.

A culture of adaptability starts with a transparent hiring process. At sunday, we look for team members who are not only talented but also passionate about the restaurant industry and ready to challenge the status quo. This means adding team members who will ask the tough questions. Working in both the United States and France throughout my career has taught me to value diverse opinions. Christine de Wendel, sunday

10. ENCOURAGE A NEW BUSINESS MINDSET.

A great way to build a culture of adaptability is by implementing disruptive thinking. Practice new ways of looking at situations before your team faces an external challenge. This will develop their capacity for change, so they are ready to adapt. When a team is adaptable, they are clear on their capabilities and understand the landscape enough to react calmly in the face of a challenge. Tony Martignetti, Inspired Purpose Coaching

11. FOSTER TRUST AND CREATIVITY.

Cross-functional teams are a great way to build adaptability into the culture. By exposing different perspectives, different ways of working, and different work structures, you build trust into the system and foster creative thinking in every situation. Candice Georgiadis, Digital Agency, Inc

12. PROMOTE FLEXIBILITY TO KEEP THINGS FRESH.

Be constantly evolving. Introduce new training, new ideas, new methods, and processes on a regular basis. You dont want to focus on the same old day-to-day forever, make small edits to keep things fresh and introduce new methods to mix up normal operations. This will enable your team to be more flexible, especially if it is urgently needed. Christopher Tompkins, The Go! Agency

13. HELP EMPLOYEES UNDERSTAND AND OVERCOME FEARS.

Build resilience and fearlessness across your organization. Educate employees on how to navigate stressful situations effectively, how to understand their fears, and overcome them, since these skills will allow them to embrace evolution and be more adaptable, not only at work but in their personal lives as well. With these skills, they will become more agile, proactive, motivated, and productive. Andreea Vanacker, SPARKX5

14. USE MULTIPLE CHANNELS TO SHARE YOUR MESSAGE.

Organizations can build a culture of adaptability by starting with systemic transparency in communication. It will help employees understand the why, which builds trust and increases the likelihood of a positive reaction. Your means of communication should also be omnichannel so it is repeated and can be accessed through multiple sites. Mark Bryan, M+A Architects

15. USE MISTAKES AS A LEARNING TOOL.

Encourage employees to take risks and learn from mistakes. This is not only a good way for employees to get the opportunity to try new things and make mistakes, but it also creates a more innovative company culture. Kristin Marquet, Marquet Media, LLC

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15 ideas to cultivate an open mindset for change in the workplace - Fast Company

Western Universitys Own Your Future program reflects a partnership between units across the institution.

Many doctoral students end up in careers outside tenure-stream academia. Consequently, universities are placing more and more emphasis on broad skills development for their PhD students to equip them for a variety of careers. But it can be challenging and resource-intensive to construct doctoral-level programming that is both effective and works across all disciplines.

Western Universitys Own Your Future program seeks to help change that with a doctoral professional development program that is in-depth, comprehensive and can be replicated and shared beyond the institution.

The program has two main components: skills identification and skills building.

With the former, students complete the programs Power Skills Assessment tool, in which they self-assess their skills in six competency areas: communication and relationship building; leadership; thriving; teaching and learning; intercultural and social fluency; and career engagement. Based on this self-assessment, students receive a report that identifies their current strengths, growth areas, and areas requiring experience. The student report also directs students to workshop opportunities to build their strengths.

When it comes to skills building, PhD students have access to approximately 80 workshops, each tied to at least one skill. For example, students can use understanding of comic design to increase their skill in communicating ideas broadly, or complete anti-oppression training to strengthen their ability to work and engage with others effectively. Many of the skills training workshops provide students with training that will benefit their immediate research needs as well as their future career skills needs, such as time management and project management.

Lorraine Davies, associate vice-provost in the school of graduate and postdoctoral studies at Western, is the Own Your Future academic lead. She is also the primary investigator for an assessment of the program funded by the Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO). As part of the HEQCO Skills Consortium, Dr. Davies and her team will consider three key questions:

In the evaluation project, which is still ongoing, Dr. Davies and her team had students complete mock job interviews with a team of career evaluators, including an employer, and the Power Skills Assessment at the start of the study. After completing three workshops, the students again completed mock job interviews and the Power Skills Assessment. Dr. Davies and her team will compare the pre- and post-training data, among other data, to assess the program. (See the project description on page 18 of the HEQCO Skills Consortium Interim Report for fuller details.)

The goal of this evaluation project is not simply program improvement, but also the creation of evidence-informed resources that can be adopted and adapted by other institutions. As Dr. Davies told me, We are committed to sharing our work with others, and to learning from best practices at other universities. To this end, Own Your Future has a creative commons license, and Dr. Davies team intends to share the results nationally.

There are a number of things about the Own Your Future program that catch my attention. The first is that the program reflects a partnership between units across the university, including (but not limited to) the careers and experience department and the school of graduate and postdoctoral studies. My own research on best practices in graduate professional development suggests that these collaborative models are more effective than other approaches.

Second, I am pleased to see the explicit ties between the student self-assessments and the workshop offerings (through the student report), and the explicit identification of career skills in the workshops. As I have discussed, explicit instruction is an evidence-based teaching practice that can advance skills training effectiveness.

And finally, I am impressed by the desire of Westerns school of graduate and postdoctoral studies to share resources to benefit doctoral students across Canada. While universities can be highly competitive, there is a more collaborative spirit in the graduate professional development space, as demonstrated by the work of the Graduate and Postdoctoral Development Network. Given the importance of doctoral professional development, Westerns school of graduate and postdoctoral studies willingness to share its work is admirable.

I will watch the evolution of Westerns Own Your Future program with interest and encourage you to check it out for yourself.

Is your university doing innovative things regarding student skills training and professional development? If so, I would love to hear about it. I also welcome opportunities to speak with universities about skills training. Please connect with me at loleen.berdahl@usask.ca using the subject line The Skills Agenda.

I look forward to hearing from you. Until next time, stay well, my colleagues.

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