RON JOHNSON’S REASONS FOR BEING (PT. 1 OF 4)

Kamala Appel: Hello everyone, this is Kamala Appel, and I’m here today with Bodhi Ron Johnson. We’re going to be talking about ways to achieve health, and things that Bodhi Ron has done to achieve them in his own life. Bodhi Ron, please introduce yourself and share a little bit about your background with the listeners.

Ron Johnson: Well thanks Kamala. I’m currently a yoga teacher, and yoga and eastern philosophy are my areas of expertise. I first started to study yoga when I was going to college at UC Santa Cruz, and eventually got a degree in psychology and religious studies from Santa Cruz, and then later I attended the University of Oregon and got a Master’s in writing there. And I’ve also written meditative poetry and music, and I’m working on a book. I’m editing a book that I’ve finished, but I’m rewriting it right now on eastern philosophy and yoga.

Kamala Appel: Okay cool; that’s cool. Tell me a little bit about your journey towards where you are now in terms of health; what happened in your life, if there was an aha moment, please share that or if it’s just a longer process, please feel free to share that with us. But, what made you make the commitment to living a healthier life?

Ron Johnson: Well, there were two moments, two times really; I got back from a spiritual retreat back in 2000. I had attended this spiritual retreat with a teacher, a spiritual teacher, Katherine Ingram, and we did some yoga on that, and I’d been having normal amounts of troubles with child custody and that type of thing when I went to the retreat.

And when I came back, a couple of weeks after I got back, I had this moment where I was having trouble sleeping because of all these things that were running through my mind. And I just got up and went out and laid down on the couch, and suddenly this feeling just washed over me where all that just dissolved, and I was just lying there perfectly at peace, and calm; it was strange.

But, I realized how much of that was just the thought process; it wasn’t anything really bad that was happening at that moment while I was lying there. It was mostly just dwelling on the thoughts about those things that was the problem. That was more of the mental, spiritual side of it.

Kamala Appel: I was going to say what was the second?

Ron Johnson: And then a little later…well I had…and I was working as a juvenile counselor and gradually began putting on quite a bit of extra weight mainly from being a good guy and taking kids out to fast food, and eating my own share of fast food myself. So I got overweight and a certain amount of hypertension, and went to see a doctor who told me that he felt that with his help I could live to be 80.

And that didn’t seem too good; so that was a few years after the retreat. So then I decided to join a gym in the neighborhood where I live in Portland and started working out at the gym. But that was the second aha, big thing when I got to that moment to where the doctor had that prognosis.

Kamala Appel: That you would need his help to live to old age?

Ron Johnson: That what I was doing…yeah exactly. That it was having an effect on life expectancy. But, that was good; it was enough of a shock to get me into a gym.

Kamala Appel: To get motivated. Yeah.

Ron Johnson: Exactly. Very motivating.

Kamala Appel: Who wants to go to the doctor for the next 50 years or something like that?

Ron Johnson: Exactly, but that’s a good point; so then I got on a regular schedule with this gym. And I had studied yoga quite a bit previously; so eventually a job opened up teaching yoga at that gym, which I applied for, and they did… amazingly hired me.

Kamala Appel: That’s great.

Ron Johnson: Yeah.