How to Exercise When You Have COPD

If you’ve been diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD, you probably have shortness of breath during physical exertion. Regular exercise may seem intimidating, but it’s actually a powerful medicine to improve how you feel when you’re active.

COPD is a progressive lung condition occurring in several forms, in which structural changes obstruct airflow, making it harder to breathe. It’s often caused by long-term exposure to tobacco smoke, chemical pollutants, and mineral, wood, or metal dusts that irritate the lungs; examples include emphysema and chronic bronchitis. Around 16 million people in the U.S. have COPD, and anxiety about gasping for air leads many to avoid physical activity altogether. But inactivity can drive a downward cycle that worsens breathlessness and the overall condition. 

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With exercise, “people can do more with less shortness of breath,” says Dr. Carolyn Rochester, professor of medicine and director of Yale University’s COPD Program. “It improves participation in daily activities and quality of life.” 

But not just any approach to exercise will do. It’s important to get started under the supervision of medical professionals. A specific program involving exercise, called pulmonary rehabilitation, is proven to help people with COPD. “I can’t recall a patient who didn’t think pulmonary rehabilitation benefited them a great deal,” says Dr. David Mannino, co-founder and chief medical officer of the COPD Foundation. “Typically, they wish they’d done it years ago.”

Research shows that pulmonary rehab is highly effective, with large improvements in endurance and quality of life compared to people’s conditions before the program. Rehab also increases survival rates with fewer hospitalizations. You can locate programs through an online directory.

Why exercise matters

Exercise offers multiple benefits that improve the ability to engage in everyday activities, such as bathing, dressing, walking to the mailbox, grocery shopping, and playing with grandkids. While a COPD patient’s exercise won’t improve the inner workings of their lungs, it does make breathing and daily activities easier by increasing cardio fitness and strengthening muscles throughout the body, particularly the legs and arms, Rochester says.

“Especially with aerobic exercise, you get changes in certain cells of the muscles to become more efficient at using oxygen,” says Kerry Stewart, a Johns Hopkins University exercise physiologist who has worked with many COPD patients. Phyliss DiLorenzo, a 66-year-old from Jersey City, N.J., was diagnosed with severe COPD in 2013. The disease interfered with her ability to walk to meetings as a mental health counselor in Manhattan. But an exercise regimen improved her endurance, letting her resume those walks. “I can keep up the pace, knowing I won’t get short of breath,” she says. “I can get up that hill.”  

Jean Rommes, an 80-year-old Iowan, has one-third of the average person’s lung capacity for her age, but “you can do a lot with that,” she says. “Your body just has to be as efficient as possible. And that’s what exercise really does.” 

Tailoring your exercise program to your body

It’s important to speak with a doctor about personalizing exercise for your specific form of COPD. The disease affects people at different fitness levels, and patients with COPD may have additional illnesses like heart disease, osteoporosis, and anemia that should be considered when crafting an exercise plan. 

If you have moderate to severe COPD, your doctor may refer you to an accredited pulmonary rehab program. Lasting four to 12 weeks, these programs help you manage COPD through exercise, under the guidance of a team of experts. Rehab is covered by Medicare, most Medicaid plans, and many private policies. Yet, studies show that less than 5% of people with COPD who’d benefit from rehab actually receive it—mainly because they never learn about it or have limited access.

“We’re extremely underutilized,” says Debbie Koehl, manager of pulmonary rehab at Indiana University Health Methodist Hospital. DiLorenzo, the New Jerseyan, didn’t hear about pulmonary rehab until four years after her COPD diagnosis. Before rehab, physical activity was often too demanding. “I was depressed and isolated,” she says.

Read More: Why You Should Change Your Exercise Routine—and How to Do It

When rehab starts, specialists will determine your fitness level. For instance, they’ll check your resting heart rate and how far you can walk in six minutes. Initially, rehab seemed like “baby exercises,” DiLorenzo says. With each session, though, “it became more difficult.” The expert team—respiratory therapists, physical therapists, exercise physiologists, occupational nurses, and physicians—monitors your improvement and adjusts your fitness plan based on your progress. 

“We don’t push you too hard at the beginning,” says Kimberly Wiles, a respiratory therapist with the Allegheny Health Network in Pennsylvania. The goal is incremental improvements. If a patient can only walk for six minutes at 1 mile per hour on a treadmill, she’ll edge them up to seven minutes the next time. 

Grace Anne Dorney-Koppel, from Maryland, was diagnosed in 2001 with just 26% lung function and given three to five years to live. During her first rehab workouts, “I was exhausted after 15 minutes,” she says. “But I threw myself into the program.” By the time it ended, she could walk the treadmill for 40 minutes—going 3.5 miles per hour at an incline.

If you have supplemental oxygen, ask your doctor if it should be turned up during exercise. “If you need oxygen at rest, it’s almost certainly needed with exercise,” typically at higher flows, Mannino says.

The best exercises

Try to get cardio exercise at least three days per week, and strength training every other day. For the greatest benefits, aim for moderate activity most days or every day if you can.

“Aerobic training fosters endurance,” Rochester says. This could mean walking on a treadmill or through the neighborhood. Riding a stationary bike occasionally is good for working other muscle groups. “You don’t want to train only one set of muscles,” Koehl explains. It’s beneficial to sustain activity throughout a workout, or you could try intervals, alternating exertion with periods of rest. 

DiLorenzo does cardio, either on a treadmill or a stationary bike, three to five days per week. Rommes, the Iowan, prefers a NuStep, or a seated elliptical machine. Before starting with exercise, Rommes couldn’t walk from the parking lot to a nearby soccer field to watch her grandkids play. “It became easier and easier,” she says, until she could get there without any trouble.

Strength training is essential. “With more strength, any work being done becomes easier,” Stewart says. You can exercise muscles with fitness bands or weights. This helps many patients with COPD who become breathless when lifting their arms above their heads, Mannino explains.

Read More: How to Start Strength Training if You’ve Never Done It Before

Rommes benefits from strength training. “It’s nice when I’m on an airplane and can put my own bag in the overhead,” she says. Dorney-Koppel was initially challenged to lift her forearms without any resistance, but she progressed to biceps curls with weights. 

Balance exercises are another priority. “People with COPD often have balance problems as the disease progresses,” Dorney-Koppel says. In 2014, she founded the Dorney-Koppel Foundation to provide pulmonary rehab in places without access. Workouts that improve balance include single-leg stands, chair yoga, and tai chi.

The COPD Foundation website offers further exercise guidance for those who can’t access in-person rehabilitation. Exercise classes for people with COPD are available online, but they often require payment and range widely in effectiveness, Rochester says. 

Make it safe

Before starting a new fitness program, seek expert advice to ensure proper form because “you don’t want to make things worse by causing an injury,” Mannino says. 

The most common setback patients experience from exercise doesn’t involve the lungs, but rather muscle strains or tears, Mannino says. These injuries can interfere with exercise for weeks. During such inactivity, the lungs get worse. To avoid this predicament, warm up for five to 10 minutes before workouts.

If you have other illnesses besides COPD, consult with your healthcare provider to learn if you should limit or avoid any specific exercises, Rochester says. Patients with COPD should also be especially careful to avoid exercising outdoors when air quality warnings have been issued, due to their lung sensitivities.

Push yourself during exercise, but not too hard. COPD experts ask patients to refer to a 10-point scale of effort, fatigue and breathlessness, with 0 meaning the person is at rest. It’s good to exercise mostly at a moderate intensity, about 3 or 4. “We want people to get to 9 or 10 for a short period and then back off,” Mannino says. With excessive exertion, researchers find fewer benefits for COPD patients, and there’s greater risk of falls and related injuries.

Warning signs of too much intensity include extreme shortness of breath, dizziness, chest pain, palpitations, and joint or muscle pain, Rochester says. “We tell people to listen to their bodies,” Mannino says.  

Such self-knowledge requires experience. Stewart notes that patients with COPD often underestimate their ability to exercise. “That’s the most common category of people coming into a program,” he explains. Over time, confidence increases as “they prove to themselves that they’re doing okay,” he says. Other patients are overconfident, which could lead to injuries. In a supervised program, each patient learns the right approach for them, Stewart says.

Breathing and nutrition for exercise

Certain breathing strategies help people with COPD enjoy physical activity. These strategies, primarily pursed-lip breathing and diaphragmatic breathing, move air through their lungs more efficiently. “They really help to minimize the shortness of breath during exertion,” Rochester says.

Pursed-lip breathing is especially effective, according to Rochester. Because it takes longer for patients with COPD to exhale for any given breath, compared to people without COPD, their lungs often don’t fully deflate. This is called air trapping, and the leftover air makes it hard to take a full breath. A slower, deeper breathing pattern reduces the amount of trapped air. It’s fostered when patients practice inhaling through the nose while exhaling slowly through pursed lips, as if whistling or playing the harmonica. In fact, the COPD Foundation runs a program called Harmonicas for Health to improve breathing by playing the instrument.

Through pursed-lip breathing, patients get better at pacing their breaths during exertion. Otherwise, the instinct is to inhale and hold the breath—for example, while climbing stairs. “You want to do the opposite,” Wiles says, breathing slowly in and blowing out through pursed-lips until reaching the top of the stairs. “When in doubt, exhale.”

Read More: The Most Exciting New Advances in Managing COPD

With another strategy, diaphragmatic breathing, patients concentrate on distending their abdomen while taking in air. This approach counters a tendency among patients to breathe shallowly, Dorney-Koppel says. 

Box breathing may help as well. With this technique, people inhale, hold their breath, exhale, and hold breath again for equal intervals, such as three or four seconds, repeating the cycle for several minutes. “A variety of breathing exercises, mostly pursed-lip and diaphragmatic breathing, is very important,” DiLorenzo says. “Many of us have trouble exhaling enough. By working on that, we extend our ability to be active.”

For nutrition, avoid large meals and high-carb foods before working out, as they can make breathing harder. Diets high in carbs may increase air trapped in the lungs. Once consumed, carbs release gasses like carbon dioxide that cause this problem. “People without COPD have no problem with these gasses, but with COPD it’s more of an issue,” Mannino says. “I avoid carbs before exercise,” DiLorenzo says.

Achieve exercise goals

Speak with your doctor about setting realistic goals for exercise. Through exercise, some patients improve so much that they no longer require supplemental oxygen but, “I never guarantee that,” Koehl says. As people improve and set their sights on more activity, sometimes it’s actually helpful to increase supplemental oxygen to support this activity, Koehl notes.

Other patients seek improvement on important metrics like walking distances. “There’s nothing better than watching a patient go from walking 200 feet to 1,000 feet,” Koehl says. 

The ultimate goal for COPD patients is to cultivate a lifelong exercise habit that allows them to live their fullest. “By finding exercise, I managed to have the life I had before my diagnosis,” DiLorenzo says. Dorney-Koppel has exercised regularly for 23 years, far surpassing her three- to five-year prognosis. “I’ve been able to travel to give presentations for work,” she says. “It’s a triumph. I have survived.”

source https://time.com/7097021/copd-exercise-recommendations/

People 50 and Older Should Now Get the Pneumococcal Vaccine

NEW YORK — U.S. health officials on Wednesday recommended that people 50 and older get a shot against bacteria that can cause pneumonia and other dangerous illnesses.

The recommendation was made by a scientific advisory panel and then accepted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The decision lowered—from 65—the minimum recommended age for older adults to get the shot.

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“Now is a great time to get vaccinated against pneumococcal disease in preparation for the winter respiratory season,” CDC Director Dr. Mandy Cohen said in a statement Wednesday night.

The advisory committee voted 14-1 to make the change during a meeting earlier in the day in Atlanta. The guidance is widely heeded by doctors and prompts health insurers to pay for recommended shots.

Pneumococcal shot recommendations are sometimes called the most complicated vaccination guidance that the government issues. The CDC currently recommends shots for children younger than 5 and adults 65 or older, as long as they have never been vaccinated against pneumococcal disease. Officials also recommend the shots for children and adults at increased risk for pneumococcal disease, such as those with diabetes, chronic liver disease, or a weakened immune system.

Read More: The Surprising Health Benefits of Pain

There are more than 100 known types of pneumococci bacteria, which can cause serious infections in the lungs and other parts of the body. Each year, the U.S. sees roughly 30,000 cases of invasive pneumococcal disease, which includes blood infections, brain and spine inflammation, and other illnesses. About 30% of cases are among 50- to 64-year-olds.

The first pneumococcal vaccine was licensed in the U.S. in 1977, and since then pharmaceutical companies have been coming up with newer versions that target a dozen or more types in a single shot. Different vaccines have fallen in and out of favor, including Pfizer’s Prevnar 13, which was once a top-seller but is no longer available.

There are four vaccines now in use. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration this year approved the newest—Merck’s Capvaxive, which can cost around $300 a dose and protects against 21 types, including eight not included in other pneumococcal vaccines. A Merck spokesperson said it was specifically designed to help protect against the bacteria types that cause the majority of severe disease in adults aged 50 and older.

The CDC advisory panel in June recommended the vaccine as an option for adults at higher risk. At the time, the committee also talked about the possibility of lowering the age recommendation for older adults. They noted that illness-causing infections peak at age 55 to 59 in Black Americans—a lower age than what’s seen in white people. But the committee put off that decision until this week’s meeting.

Some concerns: A booster shot may prove to be necessary, perhaps in about 15 years. And there are some new vaccines in development that could force another update to the recommendations.

“Pneumococcal has been a very confusing recommendation for many, many years and it’s hard to have a new recommendation every two or three years,” said Dr. Jamie Loehr, chair of the committee’s pneumococcal working group. He was the only person to vote against the proposal.

source https://time.com/7097020/who-should-get-pneumococcal-vaccine/

The Long History of the ‘October Surprise’

The specter of a possible “October surprise” looms over Kamala Harris and Donald Trump as they hurtle toward the conclusion of their race for the White House. William Safire, the Richard Nixon speechwriter who became a New York Times columnist, once defined “October surprise” as a “[l]ast minute disruption before an election.” The audiotape released in 2016 in which Trump discussed groping women and the Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020 are its most recent examples.

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While regarded as a feature of modern politics, the history of the October surprise dates to the late 19th century. Then, as now, embarrassing revelations, last-minute disclosures, or ill-chosen rhetoric threatened to alter the outcome of a closely fought presidential campaign. A letter published in October 1880 over the forged signature of Republican candidate James A. Garfield appeared to endorse the use of immigrant Chinese labor. Republicans exposed the letter as a fraud and Garfield hung on to win in the fall.

In 1884, the surprise emerged when a group of religious leaders endorsed Republican candidate James G. Blaine in late October. Overshadowing the endorsement was a foolhardy rhetorical flourish that insulted key voting blocs courted by the Republican nominee in his campaign against the Democratic nominee, New York Governor Grover Cleveland.

Read More: Why We Might Not Know the Winner on Election Night

A former House Speaker and U.S. Senator, Blaine was a well-known but controversial figure. Admirers hailed him as the “Plumed Knight” of the Republican Party for his ability to foil Democrats. Detractors called him a “continental liar” who exploited his power for personal gain.

In 1876, Blaine was the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination until the publication of the “Mulligan letters”—correspondence that detailed Blaine’s involvement with investors in an Arkansas railroad he aided while Speaker. Named for the bookkeeper who kept the correspondence, the Mulligan letters derailed Blaine’s nomination and haunted him for the rest of his career.

Blaine failed in a second bid for the Republican nomination in 1880 but went on to serve as secretary of state under Garfield. In 1884, Blaine finally won his party’s nomination for president, but reform-minded Republicans—derided as “mugwumps”—bolted to Cleveland.

While Blaine had been at the forefront of Republican party politics for decades, Cleveland was a newcomer with a reputation as an upright, honest politician. As governor, he challenged the power of New York City’s Democratic bosses and worked with reform-minded legislators in Albany, including Republican Theodore Roosevelt.

But Cleveland’s image suffered a body blow when a Buffalo newspaper reported in July that he had fathered a child out of wedlock before becoming governor. Cleveland famously urged supporters to “tell the truth” about the episode, but some of Cleveland’s allies went on the attack. They alleged that Blaine falsified the date of his marriage to cover up pre-marital sex leading to the birth of his first son, who died in infancy. Blaine explained his side of the story in a letter to a supporter, but as historian Mark Wahlgren Summers has noted, that only kept the story in the headlines.

With character issues dominating the campaign, Blaine needed the blessing of the religious leaders he met at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York on Oct. 29. Taking Blaine by the hand, the Rev. Samuel D. Burchard pledged the backing of the clerics with shots at Blaine’s critics and veiled allusions to Cleveland’s private life.

“Notwithstanding all the calumnies that have been waged in the papers against you, we stand by your side,” Burchard declared. “We have a higher expectation, which is that you will be President of the United States, and that you will do honor to your name, to the United States and to the high office you will occupy.”

Burchard then went too far. He questioned the temperance and patriotism of Democrats and employed a nativist euphemism for Catholicism to slander the faith of immigrant voters, particularly Irish Catholics.

“We are Republicans, and don’t propose to leave our party and identify ourselves with the party whose antecedents have been rum, Romanism, and rebellion. We are loyal to the flag, and we are loyal to you.”

Blaine stood by mutely after Burchard’s declaration. In the years that followed, Blaine—and many historians—suggested he didn’t hear what Burchard said. But in the months after the election, Blaine confided to Supreme Court Justice John Harlan that he stayed silent because he believed Burchard’s provocative declaration would be overlooked.

It was a disastrous miscalculation. Democratic newspapers in New York immediately published Burchard’s statement. Burchard insulted Catholics by referring to their faith as “Romanism,” the Brooklyn Eagle thundered the next day, knowing that the phrase “is offensive to a great number of Christians.” Adding to the aspersion, the newspaper asserted, Burchard linked Catholicism “with intemperance, which he calls ‘rum,’ and with the ‘rebellion,’ which multitudes of Catholic Irishmen gave their lives to suppress.”

It took two days for Blaine to repudiate Burchard’s comments. Meanwhile, Democrats circulated them nationwide. “If anything will elect Cleveland, these words will do it,” Cleveland campaign manager Arthur P. Gorman predicted.

Burchard’s remarks proved particularly problematic for Blaine in New York, where Blaine’s managers believed voters would decide the election. To carry the Empire State, Blaine courted Irish Catholics and hoped to exploit the discontent of New York City’s Democratic bosses with Cleveland.

Blaine’s failure to quickly distance himself from Burchard wasn’t the only blunder he made that day. Blaine attended a lavish dinner at Delmonico’s with millionaires including Andrew Carnegie and Jay Gould. The opulent gathering made headlines nationwide and indelibly fixed Blaine’s reputation as a servant of monied interests.

Read More: Joe Biden Meets With the Pope As Tensions With Catholics Bubble Up Back Home

But Burchard’s inflammatory alliteration proved especially damaging by dampening enthusiasm for Blaine in New York among disaffected Democrats and Irish Catholic voters, Summers and historian Robert D. Marcus conclude. An immediate, forceful repudiation of Burchard’s comments might have minimized the damage. As it was, Blaine lost New York by 1,047 votes and became the first Republican to lose a presidential election since John Frémont in 1856.

After the election, Blaine cited the ill-chosen remarks of his clerical supporter as a significant factor in his defeat. “[T]he Lord,” Blaine admitted to Republican journalist Murat Halstead, “sent upon us an ass in the shape of a preacher.”

As Harris and Trump sprint to the end of the campaign, they would do well to expect the unexpected. The October surprise emerged in the era of the telegraph and the steam engine, but its potential to alter the outcome of a close election remains as current as today’s headlines.

Robert B. Mitchell is a retired Washington Post news service editor and author of the forthcoming The Partisans: James G. Blaine, Roscoe Conkling and the Politics of Rivalry and Revenge in the Gilded Age (Edinborough Press).

Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors.

source https://time.com/7095847/october-surprise-history/

U.S. Defense Chief Says There’s Evidence North Korea Has Sent Troops to Russia

SEOUL, South Korea — The U.S. defense secretary said Wednesday there is evidence that North Korea has sent troops to Russia, calling it a “very, very serious issue” if they join the war in Ukraine on Moscow’s side and warning of possible consequences.

South Korea’s spy chief, meanwhile, told lawmakers that 3,000 North Korean troops are now in Russia receiving training on drones and other equipment before being deployed to battlefields in Ukraine.

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The U.S. had not previously formally confirmed North Korea’s reported troop dispatch.

“We are seeing evidence that there are North Korean troops” that have gone to Russia, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters during a visit to Rome. “What exactly they’re doing — left to be seen.”

He added: “If they’re co-belligerents, their intention is to participate in this war on Russia’s behalf, that is a very, very serious issue, and it will have impacts not only in Europe, it will also impact things in the Indo-Pacific.”

He called it a “next step” after the North has provided Russia with arms, and said Pyongyang could face consequences for aiding Russia directly. He did not provide details, saying analysts were assessing the situation.

South Korean intelligence first publicized reports that the Russian navy had taken 1,500 North Korean special warfare troops to Russia this month, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said his government had intelligence that 10,000 North Korea soldiers were being prepared to join the invading Russian forces.

Russia and North Korea have denied the troop movements. They have sharply boosted their cooperation in the past two years, and in June they signed a major defense deal requiring both countries to use all available means to provide immediate military assistance if either is attacked.

South Korean officials worry that Russia may reward North Korea by giving it sophisticated weapons technologies that could boost its nuclear and missile programs that target South Korea. South Korea said Tuesday it would consider supplying weaponsto Ukraine in response to the reported troop dispatch.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte on Tuesday said North Korea sending troops to Ukraine would mark a “significant escalation,” and said he asked South Korea’s president to send experts to Brussels next week to brief the military alliance.

On Wednesday, South Korean National Intelligence Service Director Cho Tae-yong told lawmakers that another 1,500 North Korean troops have entered Russia, according to lawmaker Park Sunwon, who attended Cho’s closed-door briefing.

Cho told lawmakers his agency assessed that North Korea aims to deploy a total of 10,000 troops to Russia by December, Park told reporters.

Park cited Cho as saying the 3,000 North Korean soldiers sent to Russia have been split among multiple military bases. Cho told lawmakers that NIS believes they have yet to be deployed in battle, Park said.

Also speaking jointly about the briefing, lawmaker Lee Seong Kweun said the NIS found that the Russian military is teaching those North Korean soldiers how to use military equipment such as drones.

Lee cited the NIS chief as saying Russian instructors have high opinions of the morale and physical strength of the North Korean soldiers but think they will eventually suffer heavy causalities because they lack an understanding of modern warfare. Lee, citing Cho, said Russia is recruiting a large number of interpreters.

Lee said NIS has detected signs that North Korea is relocating family members of soldiers chosen to be sent to Russia to special sites to isolate them. The NIS chief told lawmakers that North Korea hasn’t disclosed its troop dispatch to its own people.

Ukraine’s Military Intelligence Directorate head, Kyrylo Budanov, told the online military news outlet The War Zone on Tuesday that North Korean troops were to arrive to Russia’s Kursk regionon Wednesday to help Russian troops fighting off a Ukrainian incursion.

Last week, South Korea’s spy agency said North Korea had sent more than 13,000 containers of artillery, missiles and other conventional arms to Russia since August 2023 to replenish its dwindling weapons stockpiles.

Reports that the North is sending troops to Russia stoked security jitters in South Korea. It has shipped humanitarian and financial support to Ukraine, but it has so far avoided directly supplying arms in line with its policy of not supplying weapons to countries actively engaged in conflicts.

North Korea has 1.2 million troops, one of the largest standing armies in the world, but it hasn’t fought in large-scale conflicts since the 1950-53 Korean War. Experts question how much North Korean troops would help Russia, citing a shortage of battle experiences.

Experts say North Korea wants Russia’s economic support and its help to modernize the North’s outdated conventional weapons systems as well as its high-tech weapons technology transfers.

Following a meeting in London with his German counterpart Boris Pistorius, U.K. Defense Secretary John Healey said it looks “highly likely” that North Korean troops have been deployed to Russia. Pistorius said it underscores the challenges of dealing with international conflicts that are “getting more and more closer to each other and linked to each other.”

___

Baldor reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Kim Tong-hyung in Seoul, Illia Novikov and Hanna Arhirova in Kyiv, Ukraine, Danica Kirka in London and Jari Tanner in Helsinki contributed to this report.

source https://time.com/7096532/u-s-defense-chief-says-evidence-north-korea-sent-troops-russia/

HBO’s Breath of Fire Explores the Sudden Fall of Celebrity Yoga Teacher Guru Jagat

A new documentary series, Breath of Fire, focuses on the rise and sudden fall of a Kundalini yoga teacher known as Guru Jagat, whose story was brought to wider attention in journalist Haley Phelan’s 2021Vanity Fair story “The Second Coming of Guru Jagat.”

The four-episode series, premiering Oct. 23 on HBO, expands on the Vanity Fair piece by bringing together, on camera, friends, family, and former employees of Jagat and Kundalini yogis, who practice across a range of levels, to talk about who Guru Jagat really was as a person and the irony of her yoga business, which aimed to help people succeed in business, struggling to make ends meet.

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Breath of Fire comes three years after Jagat, who was born Katie Griggs, died suddenly of cardiac arrest at the age of 41. But her friends and family do not hold back in Breath of Fire. As her own mother, Nansy Steinhorn-Galloway, says: “I mean it’s hard to think of her as a cult leader, but what else would you call her?”

Kundalini yoga, explained

Of the many different ways to practice yoga, Kundalini yoga is considered to be on the fringe.

“If yoga is like a tree, Kundalini is kind of like a wayward branch off of that tree,” says Philip Deslippe, an expert history of yoga and a doctoral candidate in department of religious studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who is featured in the series.

Kundalini yoga is focused on calisthenic movements, breath work, and chanting. “Kundalini is kind of like a weird hodgepodge of different exercises, so it can be very different from one class to the next,” Deslippe explains, “whereas, there’s kind of more of a regularity from one Hatha yoga class to the next.”

Kundalini yoga is the brainchild of customs officer-turned-yoga teacher Harbhajan Singh Khalsa, who called himself Yogi Bhajan, the “Supreme Religious and Administrative Authority of the Sikh Religion in the Western Hemisphere,” according to a 1977 TIME report that noted there were 110 “ashrams,” communes with a spiritual focus, of his followers worldwide. Today, his business is best known for creating Yogi Tea.

A promoter of vegetarianism and meditation, Yogi Bhajan was in the right place at the right time, striking a chord with the values of the counterculture movement. As Deslippe puts it, what Yogi Bhajan did was “read all of the hippies around him and quickly adapt and pitch himself as the yoga guru that they’re hoping for. So he cobbles together various things into what he calls Kundalini yoga.”

Guru Jagat’s rise to fame

How did Katie Griggs, born on a Colorado farm in 1979, become “Guru Jagat,” one of the most popular yogis of all-time? 

Jagat had been looking for spiritual alternatives to rehab during a very dark place in her life. She had been raped in college, and the trauma led to drug and alcohol abuse. Breath of Fire features a clip of Jagat talking about how she got into Kundalini yoga. “I was healing from addiction, from heartbreak,” she says.

According to the series, Jagat began to view her Kundalini yoga teacher, Harijiwan—who learned Kundalini yoga from Yogi Bhajan—as a father figure. Her biological father left when she was a year old.

“She spent the rest of her life looking for a father and a spiritual mentor,” her mother, Steinhorn-Galloway, says in the docu-series.

Her step-father Rabbit Galloway adds, “the daddy issue thing allowed [Harijiwan] to infiltrate more into her psyche…If you know somebody has a trauma around a subject like daddy, you can use that to exploit that person. And I think that’s what took place.”

It’s not clear when Jagat started to practice with Harijiwan, but by 2011, she was trying to make a name for herself in his world, calling herself “Kundalini Katie.” Friends noticed that she had begun wearing a turban. In 2012, she started going by Guru Jagat publicly and in 2013, she founded a yoga studio called Ra Ma Los Angeles. Sister studios subsequently opened in cities like Boulder, New York, and Mallorca. At the height of her Kundalini yoga career, Jagat’s classes drew in celebrities like Christy Turlington, Russell Brand, and Alicia Keys.

Phelan, who interviewed several associates of Jagat, says she became Harijiwan’s face for what he saw as the future of yoga.

“Harijiwan was casting about for a young female face to help him start a yoga studio and kind of build his profile up, and I think he knew that as a middle aged white guy, he wasn’t the one to kind of front this new venture,” Phelan says in Breath of Fire. “I think that he wanted a girl because he could see that that was where the yoga industry was going and that was where wellness was going.”

According to Deslippe, Jagat was able to successfully use social media to build a following of mostly young women focused on self-help, who felt unfulfilled in their lives, in terms of money, their relationships, and their jobs. One of its bestselling programs was its business school, virtual workshops in which Guru Jagat would give spiritual advice geared towards people trying to climb the corporate ladder.

Jagat was also an early adopter of Instagram, where she would always post snippets from her classes, which could be streamed online to paying subscribers. Clips of her rocking out to music made her seem relatable and garnered gushing comments from fans.

Guru Jagat’s fall from grace

Kundalini yoga has been controversial for as long as it has existed. In 1977, TIME reported that Bhajan’s supporters viewed the founder as “the holiest man of this era,” while “opponents denounce him as a charlatan and a heretic.”

Bhajan faced accusations of rape and sexual misconduct before his death in 2004, but the allegations did not gain wider attention until after the #MeToo movement in 2017.

In 2020, Pamela Dyson, a former lover and employee of Bhajan, wrote in her memoir that Bhajan made her have an abortion when he found out she was carrying his child. Her account inspired other followers to come forward with allegations of abuse. In the docuseries, Mahan Kirn Khalsa, who was born in a Kundalini ashram, talks about how she was raped by Bhajan, yet is determined not to be defined by that trauma. “It felt good just to say it,” she says in the doc, “just to say those words, what took me so long—25 years—it was OK because I was free.” She continues to teach yoga and got married and started a family.

As allegations against Bhajan came to light, “it created a crisis among everyone who practiced Kundalini yoga,” says Deslippe. Harijiwan, Guru Jagat, and every Kundalini yoga teacher had to field questions and scrutiny. Followers of Jagat began to lose their confidence in her when she cast doubt on the sexual abuse survivors by defending Bhajan online. Phelan writes in Vanity Fair that Jagat shared a video that dismissed Dyson’s story on Instagram and captioned it, “This tale is no truer than any other tale—the Truth as always lies in the eye of the Beholder.” Nicole Norton, who had been Guru Jagat’s personal assistant, talks in the series about the irony of Jagat preaching feminism, but telling her employees of her yoga studio to post messages of support for controversial figures like Bhajan.

The post angered Jagat’s employees, who began speaking out anonymously online about their toxic work environment. Former employees talk about their experiences in Breath of Fire, saying they were paid less than minimum wage while Jagat navigated financial difficulties with the studio. One of her desperate attempts to raise money involved offering potential followers a mentorship with Jagat—at the price of around $20,000—which required filling out an application that asked intrusive questions about applicants’ relationship with food. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Jagat started promoting COVID denialism and anti-masking conspiracy theories.

But before there could be a real reckoning, Guru Jagat died suddenly of a heart attack on Aug. 1, 2021, at the age of 41. She suffered a pulmonary embolism following an ankle surgery. Ra Ma had just celebrated eight years in business, with a website that boasted about 2 million unique visitors a month and 20,000 online subscribers. It still exists today.

source https://time.com/7096209/breath-of-fire-hbo-guru-jagat/

Trump’s Formal Complaint Against the U.K. Labour Party, Explained

American presidential elections are as much a domestic affair as they are a global spectacle—one that foreign leaders are often reluctant to wade in on, lest they risk being seen as impartial. Unfortunately for British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, that is a perception he can no longer avoid after former President Donald Trump’s campaign filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC), the U.S. election watchdog, accusing the ruling Labour Party of “blatant election interference” in support of his rival, Vice President Kamala Harris.

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“In recent weeks, [Labour] have recruited and sent party members to campaign for Kamala in critical battleground states, attempting to influence our election,” the Trump campaign alleged on Tuesday night in a press release titled “The British Are Coming!” In its six-page complaint dated Oct. 21, the Trump campaign cited as evidence news reports by The Washington Post and others detailing close ties between Labour and the Harris campaign, as well as a LinkedIn post, which has seemingly since been deleted, from Labour’s Head of Operations Sofia Patel, in which she said that there were “nearly 100 Labour Party staff (current and former)” ready to campaign for Harris in a number of swing states, and that there were 10 spots left for whoever would be available to join.

“This past week marked the 243 anniversary of the surrender of British forces at the Battle of Yorktown, a military victory that ensured that the United States would be politically independent of Great Britian[sic],” the complaint reads. “It appears that the Labour Party and the Harris for President campaign have forgotten the message.”

While it’s not unusual nor illegal for individuals from other countries to get involved in U.S. political campaigns—indeed, British Foreign Secretary David Lammy canvassed for former President Obama during his first presidential campaign, as did Italy’s center-left opposition leader Elly Schlein—the Trump campaign contends that Patel’s offer to provide housing for volunteers amounts to a foreign national contribution to the Harris campaign, which is prohibited.

Starmer brushed off the allegations, telling reporters on Wednesday that Labour volunteers “have gone over pretty much every election.” A Labour Party spokesperson echoed that sentiment, telling TIME in an email that “it is common practice for campaigners of all political persuasions from around the world to volunteer in U.S. elections.” When Labour activists do so, the spokesperson adds, it is “at their own expense, in accordance with the laws and rules.”

Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner similarly downplayed the allegations on Wednesday, telling British lawmakers that “people in their own time often go and campaign … they do what they want to do in their own time.”

The extraordinary nature of the allegations notwithstanding, there is a longstanding tradition of British politicos being involved in U.S. politics, and vice versa. When preparing for the prospect of government as leader of the opposition, Starmer told TIME in a 2023 interview that he was studying the U.S. and, in particular, President Biden’s path to office, “because [the Democrats are] our sister party.” Similar ties are evident between the British right and their American counterparts. Indeed, former Conservative Prime Ministers Boris Johnson and Liz Truss have endorsed Trump’s re-election campaign, having both attended the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee over the summer.

Trump, who hasn’t yet addressed the topic, has himself waded into British politics in the past. As President, he endorsed Johnson’s 2019 bid for the Conservative Party leadership and, while weighing into the country’s election campaign months later, said that the then-opposition Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn would be “so bad” for Britain.

When it comes to U.S. elections, the reality is that “everyone is invested,” says Anand Menon, the director of U.K. in a Changing Europe, a London-based think tank. “I don’t think [Starmer] has bungled it in the sense that he’s done stuff that everyone always used to do. But he’s done it in a context where you have a candidate who’s willing to lash out about things like this.”

If anything, Menon adds, the furore over Labour members campaigning may have less to do with genuine concerns of foreign interference and more to do with the Trump campaign’s desire to lay the groundwork for future legal complaints should their candidate come up short.

Still, any suggestion of impropriety will no doubt grate within Labour, which is perhaps more sensitive to allegations of improper political contributions than most other parties of late. Last month, the party came under fire over Starmer’s acceptance of gifts and other hospitality from wealthy Labour donors, including clothing and tickets to soccer matches and a Taylor Swift concert. Starmer, who declared all of the gifts in line with parliamentary rules, has since repaid more than £6,000 pounds (around $7,800) to cover the cost of the gifts.

But for Starmer, the most immediate concern will be what impact, if any, the fallout of these allegations will have on the much-vaunted special relationship between London and Washington. Should Labour be found to have run afoul of the rules, it could cost the Harris campaign. Such was the case in 2016 when the Australian Labour Party was found to have violated a prohibition on foreign contributions when it paid for its delegates to campaign in support of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ unsuccessful presidential bid. In the end, both the party and Sanders’ campaign were each fined $14,500.

The saga also risks jeopardizing Starmer’s relationship with Trump, whose ties with other world leaders have crumbled on much less. While Starmer has insisted that he can maintain a “good relationship” with Trump, who he dined with during a visit to New York for the U.N. General Assembly last month, surrogates of the former President suggest that the partnership could be strained. “I think whenever a foreign government tries to interfere in an election, that’s desperation,” Richard Grenell, Trump’s former intelligence director who is tipped to be a potential candidate for Secretary of State should Trump win re-election, told the BBC. “We shouldn’t be having that.”

source https://time.com/7096467/donald-trump-election-interference-complaint-uk-labour-party/

Indigenous Australian Who Confronted King Charles III Criticizes British Monarchy Again

CANBERRA, Australia — An Indigenous senator has intensified her criticism of King Charles III, again accusing the British monarch of complicity in the “genocide” against Australia’s First Nations peoples and declaring on Wednesday she will not be “shut down.”

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Sen. Lidia Thorpe’s comments followed an encounter with the monarch at a parliamentary reception Monday where she was escorted out after shouting at him for British colonizers taking Indigenous land and bones.

Despite facing political and public backlash, Thorpe was resolute in a television interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and said she would continue to press for justice.

“The colonial system is all about shutting black women down in this country,” Thorpe said from Melbourne. “For those that don’t agree with what I have said and what I have done, I can tell you now there are elders, there are grassroots Aboriginal people across this country and Torres Strait Islander people who are just so proud.”

“I have decided to be a Black sovereign woman and continue our fight against the colony and for justice for our people,” she added.

Thorpe particularly highlighted the ongoing harm to Australia’s First Nations peoples, including holding on to the remains of Indigenous ancestors.

“I’m sorry, Charlie, but you can’t come here and think you can say a few nice words about our people while you still have stolen goods. You are in receipt of stolen goods, which makes you complicit in theft,” she said.

Thorpe also pressed on the endemic social disadvantage that Indigenous Australians continue to experience and that it was being papered over by platitudes that fail to address the systemic issues.

At the parliamentary reception, Charles spoke quietly with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese while security officials stopped Thorpe from approaching and ushered her from the hall.

Charles concluded his visit to Australia and traveled Wednesday to Samoa, where he will open the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting.

source https://time.com/7096395/indigenous-australian-confronted-king-charles-criticizes-british-monarchy/