by JULIET WATERS

Reading Inspired Lives, a collection of articles from Ascent Magazine, I thought of Geoff Dyer’s collection of travel essays: Yoga for People Who Can’t Be Bothered to Do It. Dyer, a brilliant drifter and writer, could not be labelled a yoga person. It’s unlikely you’ll ever find him in a lotus position, or talking in ethereal tones about conscious breathing. He’s merely a devoted writer, cynical at times, but honestly on a quest for how to live a meaningful life in our distracted, disconnected world. And that, according to some people’s definition of the word, is yoga.

Dyer wouldn’t be too out of place in Inspired Lives. Founded 30 years ago as a newsletter for an Ashram in B.C., Ascent went international in 1999, moved its editorial staff to Montreal and has become one of the most respected magazines in the alternative publishing world. It promotes “real life yoga” and the magazine actively avoids articles that focus on the latest trends in what has become a multi-billion-dollar industry. Inspired Lives includes articles that focus mostly on yoga as a serious call to social activism, though an episode of the comic strip “Boy Priest” by Billy Mavreas, and a thoughtful, quirky piece about a toy pig by Catherine Kidd provide some pleasant patches of Montreal slack.

“Part of Ascent’s passion,” former editor Clea McDougall writes, “is being able to present an alternative to popular yoga.” Still, the first article in Inspired Lives is about an alternative to one of the most formal practices around, Tibetan Buddhism. Tenzin Palmo is a buddhist nun who is building a nunnery for women on the Himalayan border region. Women in this area of Tibet have traditionally been excluded from deeper levels of practice. Palmo has vowed to attain enlightenment in a woman’s body, rebelling against the traditional belief that a good nun is rewarded by reincarnation as a man.

Other articles focus on the challenge of doing serious yoga in the Western world. Bo Lozoff is one of the original founders of the Prison-Ashram project. A little over a decade ago, he founded the Kindness House, a spiritual community so stripped down that prisoners who join regularly complain about conditions. Lozoff puts this in context in an interview with Soren Gordhamer: “I’m talking about people who have been raped, people who have been brutalized, people who have seen their cellmates killed over a pack of cigarettes. They have come to Kindness House and said, ‘This is harder than it ever was in prison.’ Every single one of them. Dozens.” This may have something to do with Lozoff’s authoritarian bent. “It is NOT egalitarian, it is NOT a democracy. I want to be emphatic about that. It is a spiritual community. I am the director.” But Lozoff has good points to make about the naïvete of people who come to spiritual communities thinking it will make their lives easier.

Gordhamer himself has started a project that involves teaching meditation classes to teens incarcerated in New York City Juvenile system, though he has a different approach. “This is bullshit” complains Michael, a 15-year-old taking a class for the first time. Michael’s attitude is an initiation ritual Gordhamer is used to. These teens, most of whom are ex-members of gangs, are generally looking for acceptance, not structure. If Gordhamer can convey to him somehow that this class is about him, not about meditation, if he can start some of these kids on the path of exploring alternative ways to deal with stress than drugs and hyped up culture, then there’s a good chance of engaging them. His goals are modest: “My job is not to save or to change people, but to help provide a space where compassion and wisdom have a slightly better chance of sneaking into all of our lives.”

Despite its lofty title, this seems more or less to be the mission of Ascent.

Inspired Lives: The Best of Real Life Yoga from Ascent Magazine, Ed. Clea Mcdougall, Timeless, pb, 300pp, $32.95