{"id":2830,"date":"2003-02-06T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2003-02-06T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2003\/02\/06\/2003-02-06-new-york-s-firefighters-fight-post-911-stress-with-yoga\/"},"modified":"2003-02-06T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2003-02-06T12:00:00","slug":"2003-02-06-new-york-s-firefighters-fight-post-911-stress-with-yoga","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/2003\/02\/06\/2003-02-06-new-york-s-firefighters-fight-post-911-stress-with-yoga\/","title":{"rendered":"New York&#8217;s Firefighters Fight Post 9\/11 Stress with Yoga"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><A HREF=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/aponline\/national\/AP-Firefighter-Yoga.html\">GO TO SOURCE<\/A><\/P><br \/>\n<P><\/p>\n<p>NEW YORK, U.S.A., February 6, 2003: Told to shut his eyes and shake his body vigorously, Kevin Guy began to reconsider whether he should have signed up for the workshop. &#8220;Is this guy for real?&#8221; the strapping Bronx-born firefighter wondered as he began Dr. Jim Gordon&#8217;s program of meditation, yoga and alternative therapies to help firefighters deal with the emotional stress of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. That one-time workshop was offered last summer, not long after the end of a nine-month cleanup of human remains and structural debris at the World Trade Center site. Now, Guy meditates and shakes stress away nearly every day and helped Gordon launch a regular program for city firefighters. The sessions began a week after Mount Sinai Medical Center released preliminary findings from a federal program that screened workers who responded to the terrorist attack and aided in its cleanup. Ten months after the attacks, 52 percent reported mental health problems such as post-traumatic stress disorder, doctors said. The findings were based on a random sample of 250 people from the first 500 workers examined; 3,500 people have been screened in six months. Basic techniques include relaxation, meditation, yoga, visual imagery, self-hypnosis and group support. The center also works with cancer patients and people suffering from other chronic illnesses. The challenge was getting a firefighter to stretch out on a mat in a yoga pose, meditate to soft music or learn to do focused breathing &#8212; practices initially deemed &#8220;ridiculous and crazy&#8221; by most first-timers, Gordon said. However, more than 40 people attended the new class. Guy wants to recruit more by convincing his tough-minded brethren that Gordon&#8217;s program is a take-charge, independent type of therapy. &#8220;You&#8217;re not on a psychiatrist&#8217;s couch &#8212; it&#8217;s just basic things that you can do to help yourself. It really calms you down,&#8221; Guy said.<br \/>\n<\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>GO TO SOURCE NEW YORK, U.S.A., February 6, 2003: Told to shut his eyes and shake his body vigorously, Kevin,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2830\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hinduismtoday.com\/hpi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}