Weight-loss surgeon finds another way to help people as a yoga instructor
By Richard Seven
From The Seattle Times, June 1, 2008

After performing more than 3,000 weight-loss surgeries during a three-decade career, James Weber closes his practice this month to become a yoga instructor. Consider it a quality-of-life move.

His quality of life improves by stepping away from the stress and demands of high-risk operations and the on-call leash that comes with surgery. He also believes he can pass along what yoga has taught him to change the lives of others, including those at-risk people who, without intervention, will wind up on operating tables like the ones he stooped over all those years."I see making the leap to yoga as a sort of continuation," says Weber, a tall, slim man. "I think I can reach more people in a more positive and preventive way. The incidences of obesity in this country have doubled the past 29 years in adults and it has tripled in kids! Skimming off the top and taking care of some of the heaviest people is not the ultimate answer."

And there are plenty of other surgeons to handle the extraordinary number of extreme cases, he figures. Ten years ago, there were only about 290 weight-loss surgeons in this country, he says, and now there are about 2,000.

Weber gets his teaching certificate this month, at age 59, after passing an intensive 200-hour program. He already is planning classes geared to helping not only the immediately at-risk, but also those groups, like men and teens, who often avoid yoga.

He avoided yoga, too, until four years ago when his wife, Mary Mitchell, nagged him into it.

"I told him he was looking like an old man, that guy who walks around bent over at a 50-degree angle," says Mitchell, an etiquette expert. "I told him if he tried yoga he'd feel better and at least have better posture."

A counterbalance

Before then, competition, not contemplation, drove his life. Both his parents were doctors. He knew as a boy growing up in New York City he'd be one, too. He graduated from Yale and got his medical degree from Columbia University. He helped handle the first weight-loss procedure at the University of Washington Medical Center. He served as chief of staff and chief of surgery in two hospitals during his career.

So when, at 55, he scanned the beginning class at Sound Mind and Body in Fremont and saw a room full of younger and suppler people, he asked himself a logical question: "What am I doing here?" In fact, he wrote a poem about his early doubts and futility titled, "A Reach."

His instructor, Judy Pet, saw all the signs of a newbie when he tried to sit cross-legged on the floor with knees angled high and back rounded. His transformation has been amazing, she says, not because of its pace, but because of his doggedness.

"He seemed to realize early on that he needed this as a counterbalance in his life," says Pet, who had quit her job as a technical project manager to become a yoga instructor years before. "He really stood out with his intelligence in understanding the body and concepts. Most of all, he had faith in himself."

Eventually his poses, posture and sleep improved. Occasionally, after a grueling surgery, he'd do a pose or two right in the operation room and try to get assistants to join him.

Mitchell noticed the pronounced changes and knew he loved teaching medical students and residents throughout his career. She found a yoga-teaching accreditation program rigorous enough to appeal to his academic bent. (Curiosity comes naturally to Weber. After becoming interested in President Theodore Roosevelt many years ago, he amassed more than 150 books about him and became a member of an association that celebrates the former president's life.)

His initial reaction to teaching yoga, though, was much the same as when she told him to take a class: Why would I do this?

Mitchell recalls his excitement when he realized all the homework and research would be demanding. Catherine Munro taught Weber in his certification course. She says many of her students over the years have been in the midst of transforming their careers and lives through yoga. She lives in Victoria, B.C., and teaches all over the country, and says what sets Seattle apart is the level of formal education students have. She considered Weber at the head of the class in that regard.

"I can tell a lot about a person by how they practice," says Munro. "He's tenacious. He digs deep, asks the hard questions. He challenges me. He won't accept something just because I say it. I love that."

Sharing the wisdom

Weber finished his training just days before he performed his last surgery. He has already sent letters to colleagues letting them know that he might be able to help their patients and he has found work with a studio in town that he says seems happy to have a Western-trained doctor interpreting and applying the Eastern discipline. In fact, he does not see his approach to yoga being much different from pre- and post-op urging to his patients to take control of their lives.

"I have never taken credit for taking weight off anybody. I was just giving them a tool — of fullness — that they could use to take the weight off. But they had to do the work themselves."

He's making the transition because he believes he can still change people's lives, but Mitchell has gone out of her way to thank Pet and Munro for changing her husband's life. He knows it, too.

"I feel I belong in yoga, and that, as I look back, I had sort of made myself belong in surgery," he muses. "Yoga has given me a totally new perspective. I am learning that there is unity and value in everything. I hope I was always compassionate, but I feel I am more at peace now. And I'd like to share that."

Copyright © 2008 The Seattle Times Company