“Master Your Core” by Dr Bohdanna Zazulak

In this day and age, the “Do It Yourself” or DIY trend has become commonplace all over the world. You are expected to do most things yourself. How about fitness and taking care of your body? Avoiding injuries? Keeping fit and getting the best performance possible from your body? Can you do this yourself too? A new soon to be published book by Dr Bohdanna Zazulak and published by TCK Publishing seems to suggest so. This can be pre-ordered on Amazon.

In this highly detailed yet interesting book , the author who has over three decades of experience in the field of physical therapy shares her experience on how to master your core. This is not one of those read and forget kind of books. It is more like a manual which you can refer to from time to time as you commence your journey to becoming and staying fit. It has been described as a science-based guide to achieve peak performance and resilience to injury. The author shares her Core BASE, an integrative, holistic guide for breathing, awareness, stability, and empowerment of your core in body, mind, and spirit.

Dr. Zazulak won the highly regarded and prestigious Rose Award from the American Physical Therapy Association for her groundbreaking research, and has three decades of experience as an American Physical Therapy Association Orthopedic Certified Specialist, a Doctor of Physical Therapy in Sports Medicine and Orthopedics, and a researcher and faculty member at Yale New Haven Hospital and Yale University School of Medicine.

Broadly speaking, on one hand we have the Western view of fitness through the study of modern science and medicine. On the other we have the age old Oriental take on keeping well through a mix of exercise and meditation. In my view, the best part of Dr Zazulak ‘s book is that she has creatively uses the best of both worlds. Although she now lives and works in the United States, she is able to effectively comprehend both the western and oriental schools of thought and use them appropriately.

The book begins with some basic gleanings from her experience. Amongst them are that too much exercise and that too of the wrong sort or done at the wrong time can cause more damage than too less exercise which is bad in itself. She also spends a lot of time explaining the physiological factors which seem to make women, especially in the realm of sports, more injury prone than men. She gives her advice on what can be done to reverse this trend. Every woman athlete or sports person will benefit from reading this book!

Each chapter has crisp summaries of the key points, which I thought was an extremely good way of getting the reader to recapitulate learnings and develop action plans.

Based on her practice over the decades, Dr Zazulak has catalogued a very elaborate regimen of exercises of different kinds that one needs to follow to Master The Core. There are backed with illustrations for ease of understanding.

I enjoyed the liberal sprinkling of quotations strewn all over the book. Dr Zazulak has chosen some of the best quotations.She has placed them appropriately because after all putting things into practice to master the core required changes in mind set as much as changes in physiological routines. Here is an example: “Health is a state of complete harmony of the body, mind and spirit. When one is free from physical disabilities and mental distractions, the gates of the soul open. B K S Iyengar

The book ends with a glossary for easy reference and an exhaustive list of scientific. technical and philosophical work and papers that the author has referred to help you master your core.

I would say this book has value not just for world class athletes and sports people though they have benefited from Dr Zazulak’s lessons but also for every person keen on becoming and staying physically and mentally fit.