microchips 77.mic.3 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

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Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire. Indonesia’s Papua province may be the first region in the world to force some HIV/AIDS patients to be implanted with microchip trackers. A controversial bill requiring the extreme measures already has full backing from the provincial parliament and will become law with a majority vote from the provincial legislative body. The microchips are meant to monitor “aggressive” sexual behavior in an effort to control the spread of the disease. Lawmaker John Manangsang said, “It’s a simple technology. A signal from the microchip will track their movements and this will be received by monitoring authorities” [Reuters]. http://louis-j-sheehan-esquire.blog.friendster.com/

The bill does not specify who would qualify as “sexually aggressive” patients, but if the bill is passed, a committee will be formed to decide who will be implanted; the executive director of the committee will be a physician with a knowledge of epidemiology. Supporters say authorities would be in a better position to identify, track and ultimately punish those who deliberately infect others with up to six months in jail or a $5,000 fine [AP]. Meanwhile, health care workers and AIDS activists called the proposal “abhorrent” and a clear violation of human rights. “No one should be subject to unlawful or unnecessary interference of privacy,” [said Nancy Fee, the UNAIDS country coordinator], adding that while other countries have been known to be oppressive in trying to tackle AIDS, such policies don’t work. They make people afraid and push the problem further underground, she said [AP]. http://LOUIS2J2SHEEHAN.US

Indonesia has one of Asia’s fastest growing rates of HIV infection and Papua, the country’s poorest province, has nearly 20 times the national average. Health experts say the disease has been spreading rapidly from prostitutes to housewives in the past years [Reuters]. They say the best way to counter the epidemic is to increase awareness of the disease and encourage condom use.

Manangsang said the bill has to strike a delicate balance: “Do not misunderstand human rights; if we respect the rights of the people living with HIV/Aids, then we must also respect the rights of healthy people”. Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

yoga 999.yog.22 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

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BY PRASANA WILLIAM
For The Patriot-News

Think of it as the therapist's couch turned yoga mat.

At Free Spirit Yoga in Derry Twp., yoga teacher Stephanie Trump uses Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy to help her clients connect physical feeling with life issues.

A mixture of yoga postures and body-mind psychology, Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy creates a consciousness-centric approach to self-exploration.

"For many, our day-to-day lives are about doing, doing, doing. Yoga gives us the opportunity to simply be ... to be present to ourselves. Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy allows us to be present to ourselves in an even more deep and profound way," Trump said.

Through a series of guided stretches and basic questions, Trump leads participants in connecting the sensations their bodies feel to their emotions and thoughts.

"Our body has been with us through everything we've gone through," Trump said, "We can talk about [our problems] all we want, but our bodies can hold onto that and cause [unease]."

Part of the purpose of Phoenix Rising is to create a greater awareness of the mental issues behind some physical unease.

Participants come for a variety of reasons -- ranging from those going through transitional periods to those searching for clarity and people dealing with health issues.

As an occupational therapist, Holly Dietz of Palmyra was well aware of the connection between physical discomfort and life issues. "I [was] aware that when I'm upset, certain muscle groups would get sore," she said, "So [yoga therapy] made sense."

Though she began with the yoga massage, Dietz soon participated in a Phoenix Rising session. Dietz, who describes herself as overweight, credits an eight-week course of sessions with "tun[ing] me into feeling my body physically and dealing with the weight issue."

A TYPICAL SESSION:

The process begins with the act of centering. Participants close their eyes and focus on breathing, then an awareness of their physical body, and finally take note of their thoughts.

The practitioner then moves the participants into various yoga stretches, periodically asking the participant what is happening with their body to keep them in the present moment.

All the assisted postures are determined by the participant's responses. "It is hard to explain what happens in a session because each session is unique and personal to the person receiving the session," Trump explained. "No session looks quite the same as another because it is all about what is happening with the [participant] in that moment."

Stretches can trigger emotional responses. Trump has seen clients begin to cry, laugh, and yawn in response to the yoga positions. "These experiences run the range of really making a deep connection to their physical body for the first time, to having a profound awareness and release of things that have been held in their body," Trump said.

To encourage clients to process their responses, Trump practices emphatic listening -- repeating their verbal responses back to them. She believes that the very presence of another person affirms the revelations clients have during their sessions. "My job as a practitioner is to provide a safe space for the client to have their own experience. I am, in essence, their witness and my presence serves as a way to validate whatever their experience is," she said.

The final stage of the process is integration, where the practitioner helps the participant trace back through all the revelations they received during the entire process. Sometimes unexpected issues surface or participants are made aware of issues they did not know existed.

"You go in expecting this issue to come up because it's the biggest issue in your life, but then something else will come up," Dietz said.

Trump guides clients to an action they can take to deal with the issues revealed during the session. "I lead you through the steps so you can pull it all together and leave knowing 'This is what I need to do.'" She encourages clients to take time to digest what they have learned through journaling or reflection.

BEYOND THE YOGA SESSION:

Trump believes the Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy is an excellent compliment to psychotherapy.

"Awareness that is gained in a Phoenix Rising session can be further processed and discussed with the help of a psychotherapist," she said.

Though the concept of mind and body connection finds its roots in psychology, there is a clear distinction between yoga therapy and traditional psychotherapy. "Psychotherapists are typically not supposed to touch clients during a session in order to keep the boundary between client and therapist crystal clear," Trump explained, "Phoenix Rising at its core is a body-centered approach. It is all about moving and stretching a person's body in order to access deeper awareness so we are obviously going to be touching a person when we provide a session."

Additionally, practitioners avoid asking questions and talking about situations with participants, as a psychotherapist would, and instead focus on keeping the participant cognizant of the moment they are in.

Free Spirit Yoga also offers group sessions of Phoenix Rising as well as yoga massage, reflexology, and yoga classes.

A PRIVATE POSE

You do not have to practice yoga to participate in a Free Spirit Yoga session. The studio is a simple private affair, with relaxing dimmed lighting and large yoga mat. Only the practitioner and participant are present during a session to ensure a safe environment for disclosure. A DEEP CONNECTION

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insight 9993.ins.222222 Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire

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Babies take their first major strides with their eyes, not their legs, as they rapidly distinguish among playpens, pacifiers, and a plethora of other objects. These feats of sight draw on infants' ability to keep track of pairs of shapes that regularly appear in the same spatial arrangement, according to a new study.LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.COM

Sensitivity to such pairings in the visual world provides babies�by 9 months of age�with a foothold for learning to recognize all sorts of items, propose J�zsef Fiser and Richard N. Aslin of the University of Rochester (N.Y.) in an upcoming Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"Infants prefer to look at pairs of [shapes] that have frequently co-occurred in visual scenes and may use them to learn about more-complex visual features," the scientists note.

Fiser and Aslin studied 72 infants, all 9 months old. While sitting on a parent's lap, each child watched a set of randomly displayed scenes on a computer screen. Each scene contained three colored geometric shapes from a pool of 12 shapes. LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.COM Eight shapes were grouped into four pairs that always appeared in the same arrangement, either one above the other or side-to-side. Each of the remaining four shapes was shown with a specific pairmate, but their relative locations varied from one scene to another.LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.COM

The researchers presented the babies with an initial series of 16 scenes that was repeated until infant interest flagged. This usually took about seven repetitions. A new trial then presented a series of paired shapes, including the four pairs from the initial trials, shown on a plain background. Babies usually looked much longer at the pairings that had appeared in the scenes.

This result jibes with prior "looking-time" studies, which suggest that infants prefer to look at familiar material after they've tackled a complex task like viewing series of scenes. When faced with simpler tasks, babies look longer at novel stimuli.

In a second experiment, Fiser and Aslin varied the frequency with which specific pairs of shapes appeared in initial trials. In a subsequent trial, infants looked longer at the pairs that they had seen the greatest number of times.

"It's striking that 9-month-olds are exquisitely attuned to the spatial location of items and the frequency with which they occur together," comments psychologist Scott P. Johnson of Cornell University.

In the March Cognition, Johnson and his coworkers reported that infants as young as 2 months apparently recognize a simple and familiar sequence of six colored shapes shown to them earlier. In that experiment, the babies looked longer at novel sequences of shapes than at familiar sequences.

The precise ways in which such visual recognition by infants fosters their learning of different objects in the environment remain unclear. LOUIS-J-SHEEHAN.COM