Program Particulars
*Times indicated refer to web version of audio

(01:28) Sanford's Book
Matthew Sanford's book is Waking: A Memoir of Trauma and Transcendence.

(01:59–03:59) Music
"The Multiples of One" from Awakening, performed by Joseph Curiale

(02:38) Reading from Waking
In the introduction to Waking, Sanford writes about how his insights into consciousness have come about because of his "unusual experiences with mind and body":

In principle, my experience is not different from yours. It is only more extreme. If I asked you to stretch the muscles between your ribs or to directly lift your arches, chances are you would have no idea how to proceed. We all live with versions of mind-body disconnection.

My mind-body relationship changed in an instant — the time it took for my back to break. But the changing relationship between mind and body is a defining feature of everyone's life. We are all leaving our bodies — this is the inevitable arc of living. Death cannot be avoided; neither can the inward silence that comes with the aging process.

I now experience a different, more subtle connection between mind and body. It does not require that I flex muscles. It does not dissipate in the presence of increasing inward silence. In fact, this connection depends on it. It does require, however, that I seek more profoundly within my own experience and do so with an open mind. It means that I must reach intuitively into what may feel like darkness.

(04:13) Preferential Icing
Preferential icing is a condition where ice forms on a bridge deck while the adjacent roadways are clear. This condition leads to numerous accidents each year. A number of bridge deck heating systems have been developed for the purpose of eliminating preferential icing. Most systems have been economically unfeasible, but alternatives using ground source heat pumps, ground loop heat exchangers, and plastic pipes embedded in the bridge deck are being researched.

(07:14–08:55) Music
"Fleeting Smile " from Music For Films, Volume 3, performed by Roger Eno

(07:23) Reading from Waking
The following reading is taken from the chapter, "Into Your Arms," from Matthew Sanford's memoir Waking. The passage read in the broadcast was edited for time. You can read the unedited version below:

My weight lifting is not going so well. I am told repeatedly that my arms must now do "double time for both my arms and my legs." Building in my mind is an image of my arms, a fantasy of bodybuilder arms, rippling with flex. Many people add to this image. The rehab specialists do it to motivate me; a male nurse tells me that "chicks are going to dig it," and, with approving eyes, my friends and family beam, "Wow, those arms are going to be huge." In fact, this healing story is still projected at me some twenty-five years later, now mostly by strangers. They see me pushing my wheelchair up a hill or putting it in my car and want to say something, empower me somehow, encourage the will they imagine it takes to overcome a disability. From the sidewalk, they might give me a thumbs-up, maybe even yell "Rock on." Of course, the unspoken subtext of this cultural healing story is "You may not have legs, but wow, do you have arms."

During my workouts in rehab, however, I drift out the window, not into my arms. I sit at the arm pulleys intending to do my five sets of twelve. Instead, time stretches out. I watch the flurry of activity in front of me. The rehab gym is full of people: standing people, walking people, sitting people, unable-to-talk people. Most of them are older, their dysfunction brought on by age. I am in between, too old for pediatric rehabilitation and definitely the lone boy beginning puberty. As I watch this scene, I set it against the view out the large, south-facing windows. My eyes are out of focus and gazing into the gray sky. This scene repeats over and over, day after day. I am not making the progress they would like, but through silence I continue to smile. I am aging much too quickly.

(15:14–16:26) Music
"Isa Lei" from Meeting By The River , performed by Ry Cooder and Vishwa Mohan Bhatt

(15:40) Yoga
Yoga is one of six classical systems (darshans) of Indian philosophy. Its guiding text is the Yoga Sutras, which was written by Patanjali in the second century BCE. Many believe that the ecstatics mentioned in Hindu's ancient, sacred scriptures, the Vedas, are predecessors to today's yogis, or followers of Yoga. One legend defines yoga as being divine in origin — the Hindu god Lord Shiva passed it down to his wife Parvati who then gave it as a gift to humankind.

The word "yoga" comes from the Sanskrit root yuj, which means "to yoke," "to unite." This ancient discipline uses movement, breath, and posture to bring mind and body into convergence and balance. A yogic practitioner aspires to control and suppress one's conscious mental activities until the self re-enters its original state of purity. Once a practitioner is able to relinquish his or her attachment to material things, he will be able to enter samadhi — a state of deep concentration that results in a blissful union with ultimate reality.

The general Yoga process has eight stages:

Ethical Preparation (2)
1. yama, "restraint" – abstinence from injury, lying, stealing, lust, and avarice
2. niyama, "observance" – bodily cleanliness, contentment, austerity, study, and devotion to God

Physical Preparation (2)
3. asana, "seat" – physical postures for training the body to be more flexible and healthy
4. pranayama, "breath control" – breathing exercises for stabilizing the body's rhythm and bodily relaxation

Mental Preparation, External (1)
5. pratyahara, "withdrawal" – controlling the senses in order to look inward

Mental Preparation, Internal (3)
6. dharana, "holding on" – concentration on an object for an extended period of time
7. dhyana, "concentrated meditation" – uninterrupted contemplation of the object of meditation falling outside of one's memory and ego
8. samadhi, "self-collectedness" – the practitioner becomes one with the object of meditation and is ready for attaining release

(16:19) Citation from Waking
Krista's first cites a passage that appears in the introduction to Waking:

Silence is the word I use to describe the empty presence we experience within our experience — between our thoughts, between each other, between ourselves and the world. We feel the silence when we daydream, when we appreciate the beauty of a sunset, or when the love of our life truly walks away. It is an inward sense, often experienced as a longing or an ache. It is a feeling of emptiness and fullness at the same time. The silence is the aspect of our consciousness that makes us feel slightly heavy. It is the source of the feeling of loss, but also of a sense of awe.

And, she later cites a line from the chapter "Into Your Arms":

They keep changing my physical therapist. I suspect that they want to jump-start my progress, find a PT for whom I will work harder. I am gaining skills but at a slow pace, being just as happy to socialize with the therapists as I am to work. I like knowing about them and their lives. I like the feeling of them liking me, but not the feeling of my muscles against their weights. Something feels intuitively wrong about how I am being told to work. I am to press aggressiveness through my upper body: push, pull, jerk, and get the job done. But hasn't enough of that energy already traveled through me? I am tired of bouncing and crashing and crawling back to center. I am willing to work, but let it be smooth, balanced, and even, like shooting a perfect free throw. This silence demands grace, not rupture.

(19:36–21:27) Music
"Err" from Music For Films, Volume 3, performed by Brian Eno

(20:11) Reading from Waking
In the tenth chapter of Waking: A Memoir of Trauma and Transcendence, "Broken Again," Sanford writes:

Imagine walking from a well-lit room into a dark one. Imagine the darkness as a visual expression of silence. My rehabilitation made a mistake with the silence by focusing on the absence of light. It too quickly accepted the loss and taught me to willfully strike out against the darkness. It told me to move faster rather than slower, push harder rather than softer. It guided me to compensate for what I could not see.

Another course of action, however, is patience. Stop moving, wait for the eyes to adjust, allow for stillness, and then see what's possible. Although full-fledged vision does not return, usually there is enough light to find one's way across the room. After a while, the moon may come out, sounds might gain texture, and the world might reveal itself once again, only darker.

(22:30) Sanford Meeting Yoga Instructor
Sanford's first yoga instructor, Jo Zukovich, is the co-founder of the San Diego Yoga Studio. He first met her 12 years after his accident in April 1991 while living in Santa Barbara:

As I approached the aikido dojo that day, it was sunny and unusually bright. I had no idea what to expect, no idea if yoga was even possible for a paralyzed person. When I rolled up to the doorway, I heard no voices, nothing. I didn't dare look in. To make my apprehension worse, there was a tattoo shop above the dojo, and out of its windows was blaring Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. A more surreal frame for this experience would be hard to imagine. This was the moment before my life would make an unexpected turn, a moment with sun, music, and me hovering uneasily at the door.

Did my path to yoga begin that day? Life's experiences are all open to interpretation, stories willing to be told.

(24:55) Iyengar Yoga
Bellur Krishnamachar Sundararaja Iyengar devised the discipline of Iyengar yoga while living in Pune, India. Rather than concentrating on a sequence of movements as is common with yoga, Iyengar yoga places special emphasis on precision and alignment within each individual physical posture, or asana, and through focused breathing, or pranayama. Iyengar yoga involves the use of props such as wooden gadgets, belts, and ropes that help the practitioner to achieve perfection in all the postures.

The Iyengar method makes yoga accessible to anybody, regardless of physical limitations. More than 200 classical asanas and 14 pranayamas are grouped from the simple to the extremely difficult. The progressive approach allows a beginner to work his or her way to the most advanced poses by slowly mastering techniques that increase strength, flexibility, stamina, balance, and a heightened sense of well-being.

(27:22–29:54) Music
"Just Another Day " from Another Day On Earth, performed by Brian Eno

(29:59–30:52) Music
"Legal High: Menthology " from Combo Platter, performed by Marimolin, Allan Chase, Michael Formanek, et al.

(30:33) Reading from Waking
Following is an unedited version of the reading from Sanford's memoir, Waking:

As I wake up to the horror of traumatically induced body memories, I am forced to feel death — not the end of my life, but the death of my life as a walking person. I absorbed death as I watched that young boy having screws twisted into his skull. The silence within which I found refuge was a level of dying.

In principle, my experience is not that uncommon, only more extreme. We all experience different levels of dying throughout our lives — the process of living guarantees it. As each day passes, especially in our later years, we become increasingly aware of our own mortality. If we can see death as more than black and white, as more than on and off, there are many versions of realized death short of physically dying. The death of a loved one sets so much in motion: grief, a sense of loss, tears, anger, a transcendent sense of love, an appreciation of the present moment, a desire to die, and on and on.

Then there are also the quiet deaths. How about the day you realized you weren't going to be an astronaut or the queen of Sheba? Feel the silent distance between yourself and how you felt as a child, between yourself and those feelings of wonder and splendor and trust. Feel your mature fondness for who you once were, and your current need to protect innocence wherever you might find it. The silence that surrounds the loss of innocence is a most serious death, and yet it is necessary for the onset of maturity.

What about the day we began working not for ourselves, but rather with the hope that our kids might have a better life? Or the day we realized that, on the whole, adult life is deeply repetitive? As our lives roll into the ordinary, when our ideals sputter and dissipate, as we wash the dishes after yet another meal, we are integrating death; a little part of us is dying so that another part can live.

(31:49–32:29) Music
"Legal High: Menthology " from Combo Platter, performed by Marimolin, Allan Chase, Michael Formanek, et al.

(37:35) Quote of Sanford
The sentence cited appears in the chapter "Falling Gracefully" from Matthew Sanford's memoir, Waking:

If nothing else, my life has taught me one thing: The mind and body that I have are the only mind and body that I have. They deserve my attention. And when I give it, I receive so much more in return. Learning to fall gracefully through one's mind-body relationship is not a submission. One learns to fall gracefully in order to roll.

There is still so much to realize. My experience tells me that the silence within us can be experienced energetically as a nourishing sap. When this happens, consciousness changes shape. For example, I have never seen anyone truly become more aware of his or her body without becoming more compassionate. A mental state like tolerance can deepen into a three-dimensional state of true patience. Nonviolence can become more than a moral principle, it can become an integrated state of consciousness that includes the body. And, of course, for good or for bad, the silence within us also contains the opportunity for choice.

(38:26) Recording from Adaptive Yoga Class
The audio clip was recorded during Sanford's adaptive yoga class at The Courage Center in Golden Valley, Minnesota:

So now everyone that's, we're trying to get everyone else set, but if you're already laid on your back take your arms over your head, take your arms over your head. Straighten your arms, straighten your arms, and stretch out through your heels. Literally grow, get taller. But then I want to have you pick a point in the center of your body, where your back is touching the floor in the mid back, like literally try to grow from the center of your body out through your finger tips, out through your heels. One of the things we give up, you know, when we have difficult mind body relationships, is we give up presence, stretching from the finger tips out through the feet. And I don't even care if you can't physically do it, right. I want you to start seeing your presence in your body as if it's growing, like it's organic and it includes your body. Mm-hmm.

(45:15) Pranayama, Yogic Breathing
Pranayama is a series of techniques used by Yogic practitioners to control the rhythm of their breathing. The word is a derivative of three Sanskrit terms: prana, meaning "life force" or "life energy"; yama, "discipline" or "control"; and ayama, or "expansion," "non-restraint," or "extension." In Yoga, training one's self to breath properly goes hand-in-hand with the execution of prescribed postures.

(47:57–48:33) Music
"Concerning The UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois" from Come On Feel The Illinoise, performed by Sufjan Stevens

(49:46–52:42) Music
"Tony" from Unspeakable, performed by Bill Frisell

(51:20) Recording from Adaptive Yoga Class
The audio clip was recorded during Sanford's adaptive yoga class at The Courage Center in Golden Valley, Minnesota:

And then now, take your hands out straight, straight over you like you're getting long, like you're superman flying through the air. And then, even if you can't do what I'm about to say it's okay, cause I can't do it either, right. I want you to lift both your hands and your legs off the mat and extend. Salabhasana. Even if you can't do it Tim, come on, do it anyway. And breath. And then release, take a break. That's a hard pose, by the way…