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>> AMITA: As a correspondent for NBC news he he covered war and natural disasters and
then his own storm hit a broken back, a cancer diagnoses and a life that put him at death's
door. Bhava Ram wrote a book "warrior pose."
You have covered the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the struggle against apartheid and natural
disasters. While it must have been interesting to cover
you saw the horrors of war. How do you think all of that affected your
health? >> Well, I think that it didn't affect my
health negatively, in fact, it made me happy for what I have in my life when I saw all
of this chaos and suffering and disaster in the world and as a correspondent as opposed
to someone who is involved in the conflict I felt like I could make a difference like
the more I got the news out the more people might seek a greater justice for the victims
of injustice and greater help and aid for those who were living in camps or facing great
natural disasters or in the wars like I saw in the Persian Gulf war.
>> AMITA: How do you end up injurying your back?
In fact, breaking your back? >> On a vacation of all things I had come
out of Afghanistan and I went down to the Bahamas and the last night I was there a storm
came up and I was closing a storm window, I fell and cracked my vertebrae but I continued
to work for seven years chewing painkillers, more war zones and momentous events that I
was covering and drinking more every night like foreign correspondents want to do until
that vertebrae split open and that was the end I had a failed back surgery.
>> AMITA: So, in fact, you were diagnoseded with what is called a surgically irreparable
spine you're in a back brace and you're diagnosed with stage 4 throat cancer and weren't given
long to live and then you're at your 50th birthday party and there is a moment between
you and your 2 year old son that was pivotal, what happened?
>> I was depressed, dark, and didn't have much reason to live except for that boy and
when the cancer diagnoses came I wasn't going to live.
He crawleded up on my lap and he saw that daddy was different and he said with a tier
in his eye "get up daddy" and it hit me in a place I didn't know I had.
I thought I need to do get off all the medications, out of my anger and fear and selfpity and
one day someone will tell that little boy your father died with dignity and that led
me on a journey in which I ultimately found yoga, the the first integrative system of
medicine ever created, very complex, much more complex than most of us think of yoga.
>> AMITA: We have a photograph of you in the warrior pose and this shows you as a different
man than the war correspondent you described earlier.
What made you turn to yoga? >> It was a life line.
I had an inner sense as Jaded and cynical as I was that this was my path to healing.
It was yoga of massive fasting, veganism, breath work, visualization and rethinking
my life along with Yoga pastures and cultivating a profound gratitude for having lost the greatest
career that I ever dreamed of having for having a broken back and stage 4 cancer because they
all became catalysts ultimately for my positive growth and my own personal transformation.
>> AMITA: This book is about your personal journey but you say it's for each of us, explain
that. >>> This is a story for all of us.
We have a great, inner power in which we have disenfranchised by mass media and other things
and we have that power, we have the ability to overcome great obstacles to heal as much
as we can given our circumstance, to change our lives and live our truth and manifest
our fullest potential and no matter what, we have that in us.
No matter what we are facing if we have faith in ourselves and we look deep inside and we're
willing to do the work it takes to change our lives from top to bottom miracles can
happen. >> AMITA: Bhava Ram thank you for sharing
your story with us today. >>> Thank you.