self-healing

September 23, 2016

The Early Yield of the 40 Day Practice

One of the many things I notice when I am inconsistent with my meditation is that it takes me about twenty minutes to slog through the distractions and unconscious inattention to get to the clear, calm state of concentration. If this happens to you, simply persevere w/o judgement or frustration. With practice you’ll get there, I promise.

This is exactly why I’ve set myself the challenge of a 40 day practice. I’ve grown weary of of the faulty construction I’ve made of my life by inconsistent practice. Forty days of practice helps us to instill new habits, to compose a new song for our lives. As you may know, 40 is a significant number in spiritual traditions the world over.

Speaking of composing a new song for our lives, have you ever seen a metronome? It’s a simple time keeping device used by musicians to set the tempo for a certain time signature of music. The pendulum of the metronome sounds the beat as it sways back and forth according to the speed set by the practitioner.

The breath is the metronome of the human being. As we begin our meditation, we engage the breath not only physically but mentally, psychologically and emotionally as well. We settle into a tempo of slow, regular diaphragmatic rhythm. We sing the sensual song of the body and allow it to suffuse every cell of our anatomy. We find the natural cadence of being that lies in our souls beneath all the competing storms that disturb our peace.

The metronomic rhythm of the attentive breath sweeps away the seeds of potential disturbance before they sprout. We clean the soil of our minds so that we may sow the seeds of peace and steady attention that root and give rise to the creativity that invariably germinates from this fertile state of mind.

Now the garden of the mind is set to become absorbed in the neurochemistry that creates the deep foundational union of the human spirit with our cosmic origins. Persisting in meditation quite simply changes our brains. The work of Harvard neuroscientist, Sara Lazar, demonstrates how meditation stimulates growth in the hippo campus and parietal lobe where memory and empathy respectively reside. At the same time, the amygdala, the fear center of the brain, is soothed and pacified. When we develop a habit of starting our day with this kind of mindset, we open the doors of possibility to being the kinds of people we really want to be–the kinds of people who can make positive, permanent change in our lives and the lives of others.

Another wonderful benefit is the seeming contradiction between feeling elevated and grounded simultaneously. I love this so much because it gives me the assurance that I will be more likely to think, speak and act with greater awareness. I will be less likely to think unkind thoughts and speak and or act out of unconscious reaction.

I am only a four days into my devotional period of 40 days, and the results are already such a joyful relief.

Here’s a good example of how a clear, considered state of mind can make a big difference: I heard a story today on NPR about an airline pilot whose plane was disabled by a broken engine fan blade that tore a hole in the wing of the jet aircraft he was flying. His actions defied my comprehension. The report told of how he sat back, took his hands off the controls and closed his eyes. WOW! He meditated. The instant guidance he got for consciously controlling his response was to treat that big hulking jet like a small Cessna. Rather than reacting to all the alarms and warnings produced by multiple systems failures, he cut through all the noise and carried out the fundamental, necessary actions that saved over 400 passengers and crew.

We may never fly a jet aircraft in an emergency situation, but each day, we know there are triggers and traps that have the ability to make us lose our composure, depress us, or send us careening off into an emotional detour that may have significant consequences. By starting each day with the habit of meditation we reconstruct our minds so that we are able to set the stage for goodness before negative influences confront us. We are ready and equipped to overcome life’s challenges before they gain enough strength to defeat us. The habit of meditation is the guarantor of our ability to respond to life in victory.

September 8, 2016

Self Possession,Soul Retrieval and Concentrating the Life Force with the Habit of Practice

With all the demands and busy-ness of life it is easy for us to get scattered in so many different directions. Our focus and concentration can get dissipated to such an extent that we begin to feel a loss of inner balance. When we get off balance we may feel a loss of confidence or effectiveness in the purpose we’re pursing in life.

My experience of this became very apparent in the irregularity of my meditation practice recently. As I’ve tried to expand my practice and service to my community, maintaining my inner balance with increased demands has been challenging. This has been a signal for me to practice what I preach.

For me that begins with a renewed devotion to meditation practice. Meditation, for me, is a way to call back the disparate parts of myself that can get lost when I’m trying so hard to do all the things I think I should be doing. It’s a way to reconstitute my energy, life force, or prana in the language of yoga.This is my essence, my true being, the genuine expression of my unique individuality.

Meditation is literally a technique to cultivate the power of the human being in body, mind and soul. As we carefully watch the breath at each stage of inhalation and exhalation, we focus until we develop unwavering attention. Pausing at the top and bottom of the breath to reset our focus will then naturally become dharana, or concentration.

As we hold fast to our dharana, we soon make an almost imperceptible shift into dhyana or meditation. I liken this to the process of distilling spirits. The spiritual energy we circulate in meditation is condensed and purified until it infuses our whole being with its power. This is the life force that helps us accomplish our goals on the spiritual path.

But, as I have seen, if I allow myself to lapse in this regular practice, my life force can once again be diluted.

In the Yoga Sutras, Patanjali tells us that spiritual success comes from constant practice. Like the New Testament admonition to pray without ceasing, we are encouraged by the Sutras to develop habits that become attitudes, always pointed in the direction of practice, faith and goodness.

We all have different ways to achieve our goals. One that works for me, and may work for you, is to make a written promise to your self. In your journal or any piece of paper, write a vow to yourself that you will practice at the same time for a particular number of days. Forty days, a particularly meaningful number in the Judeo Christian tradition, is challenging and meaningful. Persevering toward such a goal helps me build self respect. If there’s someone I don’t want to disappoint, it’s me. If I can keep my promises to myself, I’m more likely to keep my promises to others as well.

When you have fulfilled that promise it is easy to relax a bit. Personally that’s when I find that I begin to lose the potency that I had earned from concentrated practice. So, I’m challenging myself to renew my vows as they expire. This, I hope, will ingrain my spiritual habits within me to a point that they are no longer temporary but permanent.

Perhaps you’d like to try a 40 day practice as well. If you do, I’d love to hear how it goes for you. One thing is for certain: If we stick with our practice and renew our vows regularly, we will surpass our goals and find ourselves in fresh, amazing states of being that will lead to even greater fulfillment of our human potential.

All the best to you in your practice. May you be supported by the energies of all the saints past and present.

Om, Om, Om!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

June 23, 2016

Adductors and Abductors

Once in while, but not often enough, I take notes when I do my morning asana practice. This morning I came up with a few things that I think would be helpful for all of us to keep in mind as we practice.

Mountain Pose is where I begin. But in addition to the standard pose, I’ve begun to work with the abductor and the adductor muscles to give the legs a stronger sense of both inward and outward grounding.

The abductor muscles of the legs are on the outside of the thighs, and as the word abduct implies, they pull the legs away from the center. This all begins on the floor at the grounded soles of the feet. Abductor engagement is achieved simply by pulling the knees apart in Mountain Pose. Immediately one feels the feet root into the floor and all the muscles on the outside of the legs contract.

Give this a try. As you do, I invite you to feel the muscles involved. The muscular ridge of the tibialis anterior on the outside of the tibia stands up and the rest of the calf muscles, thighs and even the gluteus muscles are strongly brought to bear in this pulling away action.

As you can tell, with a little practice abduction is a great way to strengthen not only the muscles directly involved, but to enlist the related joints, tendons and ligaments as well. Take a moment to check out the ankles, knees and hips and the connective tissues that hold them to the bones and muscles. Use your hands and feel what’s happening. (Of course, its’ best to do this alone when no one is watching. Perhaps even practice this nude in front of a mirror so you can see and feel what’s happening.)

Look at the tendons in the feet. Feel the ligament and tendon action in the ankles.

Needless to say there’s a lot going on with the simple act of abduction.

Conversely, there is an equal amount of action on the flip side of the anatomical coin in adduction. By grounding the feet and pulling the knees together we involve the muscles on the inside of the thighs.  Again, draw the knees together toward the body’s median line, note the muscles you feel; touch them and notice their tension. Explore their length and thickness. On the top and inside of the thighs there’s a big ligament that connects the femur to the pelvis—the inguinal ligament.

Remember the golden rules in yoga practice—sukha and sthira, or easy, pleasant and steady. Use these rules to explore the amount of exertion used in these two forces.

Consistent practice of adduction and abduction will strengthen your legs as the stable platform they should be for all your standing poses. You can experiment with these two forces as you practice the standing poses as well.

At the same time that I’m abducting and adducting the legs, I’m doing the same kind of isometric techniques with my hands and arms. Hook your fingers together and pull to engage the arms. Change your grip and repeat. Then place the hands in prayer position at the chest and push. Feel the pectoral muscles under the breasts spring into action. This tension supplies massage to the lymph nodes in the chest. You will get full arm engagement from fingers to shoulders and upper back with arm isometrics.

Also use eagle arms, reach over your back to clasp the opposite hand or do any kind of arm stretching or strengthening move you can think of. Or you can rest the arms if you wish.

Standing abduction and adduction is the best way to get total involvement of the legs. Seated weight machines that work these muscles don’t offer the all-engaging grounding that standing does. This leaves the feet, ankles and knees out of the equation. Running doesn’t really help to build these balance muscles either. A friend of mine who is an avid runner has very poor balance, which at his age puts him at risk for falling.

Embracing both aspects of Mountain Pose will serve you well in building strength and awareness as you practice. Adduction and abduction are also foundational practices for building bone density as you pursue mastery of the standing poses.

Remember to use your long, slow, full three-part diaphragmatic breath as you practice. This will help you turn each posture into a meditation on a stable body and a peaceful mind.

I wish you health and peace,

Tim

P.S. As always, I’d love to hear your adventures in yoga. Please drop me a line and let me know what the practice is doing for you.

 

 

 

 

Once in while, but not often enough, I take notes when I do my morning asana practice. This morning I came up with a few things that I think would be helpful for all of us to keep in mind as we practice.

Mountain Pose is where I begin. But in addition to the standard pose, I’ve begun to work with the abductor and the adductor muscles to give the legs a stronger sense of both inward and outward grounding.

The abductor muscles of the legs are on the outside of the thighs, and as the word abduct implies, they pull the legs away from the center. This all begins on the floor at the grounded soles of the feet. Abductor engagement is achieved simply by pulling the knees apart in Mountain Pose. Immediately one feels the feet root into the floor and all the muscles on the outside of the legs contract.

Give this a try. As you do, I invite you to feel the muscles involved. The muscular ridge of the tibialis anterior on the outside of the tibia stands up and the rest of the calf muscles, thighs and even the gluteus muscles are strongly brought to bear in this pulling away action.

As you can tell, with a little practice abduction is a great way to strengthen not only the muscles directly involved, but to enlist the related joints, tendons and ligaments as well. Take a moment to check out the ankles, knees and hips and the connective tissues that hold them to the bones and muscles. Use your hands and feel what’s happening. (Of course, its’ best to do this alone when no one is watching. Perhaps even practice this nude in front of a mirror so you can see and feel what’s happening.)

Look at the tendons in the feet. Feel the ligament and tendon action in the ankles.

Needless to say there’s a lot going on with the simple act of abduction.

Conversely, there is an equal amount of action on the flip side of the anatomical coin in adduction. By grounding the feet and pulling the knees together we involve the muscles on the inside of the thighs.  Again, draw the knees together toward the body’s median line, note the muscles you feel; touch them and notice their tension. Explore their length and thickness. On the top and inside of the thighs there’s a big ligament that connects the femur to the pelvis—the inguinal ligament.

Remember the golden rules in yoga practice—sukha and sthira, or easy, pleasant and steady. Use these rules to explore the amount of exertion used in these two forces.

Consistent practice of adduction and abduction will strengthen your legs as the stable platform they should be for all your standing poses. You can experiment with these two forces as you practice the standing poses as well.

At the same time that I’m abducting and adducting the legs, I’m doing the same kind of isometric techniques with my hands and arms. Hook your fingers together and pull to engage the arms. Change your grip and repeat. Then place the hands in prayer position at the chest and push. Feel the pectoral muscles under the breasts also spring into action. This tension also supplies massage to the lymph nodes in the chest. You will get full arm engagement from fingers to shoulders and upper back with arm isometrics.

Also use eagle arms, reach over your back to clasp the opposite hand or do any kind of arm stretching or strengthening move you can think of. Or you can rest the arms if you wish.

Standing abduction and adduction is the best way to get total involvement of the legs. Seated weight machines that work these muscles don’t offer the all-engaging grounding that standing does. This leaves the feet, ankles and knees out of the equation. Running doesn’t really help to build these balance muscles either. A friend of mine who is an avid runner has very poor balance, which at his age puts him at risk for falling.

Practicing both aspects of Mountain Pose will serve you well in building strength and awareness as you practice. Adduction and abduction are also foundational practices for building bone density as you pursue mastery of the standing poses.

Remember to use your long, slow, full three-part diaphragmatic breath as you practice. This will help you turn each posture into a meditation on a stable body and a peaceful mind.

I wish you health and peace,

Tim

P.S. As always, I’d love to hear your adventures in yoga. Please drop me a line and let me know what the practice is doing for you.

 

 

 

May 12, 2016

The Intimate Breath

The breath is not only how we receive the vitality of life, but it is our most intimate connection with Universal Prana, or creative force. Our first and last breaths define the boundaries of our physical lives. Yet, most of us ignore the breath and remain largely innocent of its power to transform our lives. The breath is automatic. Since it is automatic, we simply let it run on auto pilot as we go about our automatic lives. But the breath can also be transgressive, subversive and revolutionary. It is the sacred tool to break the robotic molds into which popular culture is being used to mold us.

Yoga and other related sciences of transformation like Ayurveda, Qigong, and Tai Chi, invite us to use the breath consciously. Within the conscious breath lie worlds that are hidden from everyday life. The art and science of using the breath with conscious control is the difference between mere existence and plumbing the depth of existence itself.

In Yoga, using the breath consciously is called Pranayama. Pranayama means to expand the life force, to energize ourselves toward a larger potential. To extend our life force with the breath requires only one, but very important feature: one-pointed attention.

In a world with so many stimuli clamoring for our attention, this is something most folks just don’t get around to or are even aware is possible. We have been programmed and dazzled by the media culture to the point that we seldom think our own thoughts. We need only simply look around and see people absorbed in their “devices,” imbibing artificial data streams of often meaningless entertainment to keep us from thinking our own thoughts. Asking people to simply sit quietly, following their breath, the most powerful personal force they will ever know, seems pretty poor competition for the seemingly glamorous distractions offered to us by our media saturated world.

But if you have reached the point of being sick with this saturation, and what is really colonization of your once-autonomous mind, then here is your invitation to break the collective trance under which so many of us have fallen. Here is the chance to develop a love and connection that is the basis for all transformative human experience. Here is the chance to liberate ourselves from the mind gobbling media behemoth that lusts to enslave and consume us. Your simple, life-giving breath is your salvation from a world of ruinous conformity and your ticket to true intimacy with yourself and genuine connection to other human beings who long for humanity, truth and freedom.

The intimate breath is the breath that we use in meditation. It is slow and measured. How do we measure the breath? The intimate breath is not measured with machines, nor is it recorded on graphs. It is measured with attention. When we sit comfortably, we can simply watch the breath as it rises and falls. The intimate breath is a breath where the attention watches each milliliter of breath inhaled and exhaled. By this minute attention we account for every moment of the golden present. This is rapt attention! This is absorption into union with the Universe, the one song, the eternal Presence of cosmic creation. This is the essence of yoga. A taste of this nectar renders its competitors pale by comparison.

This is attention so sharp that it pares away the irrelevance of the colonizing commercial clatter that assaults us daily. This is liberation from a type of possession that seeks to program and use us for the latest trend of mass hypnosis. This attentive breath is a breath so fine that direct knowledge can well up within us from this divine connection to the cosmos without being filtered through the greed of those who would control and dominate us.

The intimate breath is the get out of jail free card that unlocks the door into the intuitive knowledge that precedes all other knowledge.

Using this intimate, attentive breath gives us access to the deep well of knowing, knowing that shines a light into the dark places of the human psyche to help us release our potential as beings of boundlessness.

 

 

February 13, 2016

The Concept of Incurable Disease is Dead

Note: Before I begin, let me say that modern medicine can often be miraculous in its power to heal. Sometimes there is no substitute for a good surgeon, a life-saving antibiotic or the strong medicines that can prolong the quality and quantity of our lives. However, there are many conditions that continue to baffle medicine that can and are successfully treated with alternative practices.

Words can have a big impact on us, especially foreign sounding medical jargon like those long, multi-syllabic concoctions that describe a disease condition. Sometimes it’s as simple and devastating as the word cancer. But whether the words are simple or complex, the fact that they come from a doctor can make them seem as if they were written by the hand of god on a stone tablet.

The psychological impression that medical disease terminology evokes can be deep, and damaging. I’ve seen this happen to some of my yoga therapy clients. For example, degenerative disc disease is neither a disease nor is it degenerative according to one of my yoga therapy teachers, Neil Pearson, founding president of the Canadian Physiotherapy Association. Disc problems are associated with aging and poor condition. Discs may bulge or rupture, but they do not degenerate

But when a patient hears this diagnosis all kinds of fears may be conjured up that actually inhibit the patient from increasing daily function and reducing or eliminating pain. The psychological damage done by those official-sounding words often seem to be a sentence of damnation to which there is little recourse. Nevertheless, a regular practice of therapeutic yoga postures can often relieve the suffering of a person so diagnosed.

Another recent example that comes to mind is Sacroiliac Dysfunction. A new client of mine recently presented with this diagnosis. Often it is associated with cartilage wear and tear in the joint. One of the first results you’ll find if you google the term is a surgical technique that is advertised as “minimally invasive.”

My client, a former dancer, who also has lower lumbar disc ruptures due to an equestrian accident, has responded well to yoga therapy and chiropractic treatment. Her chronic pain is now nearly gone and she moves with a freedom she hasn’t had in a long time. Fortunately, she had previous yoga experience and didn’t let her diagnosis make her feel disempowered.

Often though, patients seem to get locked into a diagnosis like it’s an immutable fact of life about which they can do very little, which is rarely the case. Taking control of our health rather than asking a medical professional to “fix” us can make all the difference in the world. It did for me when I refused to believe that Crohn’s Disease was incurable. For over a decade I have lived without the specter of this awful digestive scourge and have no fear of it ever returning. Though medicine does not have a cure, that doesn’t mean there isn’t a cure or that we can’t heal ourselves without medicine.

Last year, at the age of 62 I had a routine colonoscopy. My results were nearly perfect. The doctor commented that it was very unusual for a person with Crohn’s Disease not to be taking medicine to remain in “remission.” What surprised me though was his utter lack of curiosity about how I had achieved and maintained my excellent condition.

Through the stress management skills I’ve learned from yoga and meditation and a diet of whole foods, I no longer get sick or even have an inkling of symptoms. I’ve got news for the medical profession: I don’t have Crohn’s Disease. I’m the only one among my many family members who have been likewise stricken to reverse my illness and be completely healthy.

The point I’m trying to make is that the human body may get “out of balance” in any number of ways. This doesn’t mean that we are sentenced to a lifetime of suffering, constant medical care and the inconvenience and expense that go along with it. The truth is quite to the contrary. It is more common than we realize that ordinary people like myself refuse to believe that they are helpless. Everyday thousands of people chart a new course for themselves and explore healing methods that lead them to a new world of bountiful health they’d previously been led to believe did not exist.

In her recent book, Radical Remission, Kelly Turner, PhD, studied over a thousand cases of what may be called spontaneous remission from cancer. Or course, these remissions weren’t spontaneous in the sense that they came out of nowhere. Turner identified nine things that all these cancer patients did for themselves that helped them get well, even after their doctors told they were going to die and began hospice care. One of those things was taking control of their health.

When doctors announce these terrifying diagnoses they think they’re being realistic, but often their words crush hope, hope that can and does lead to healing. Andrew Weil calls this “medical hexing.” Because of the position of authority a doctor occupies, patients often take that statement as the last word.

As Lissa Rankin, M.D., points out in her book, Mind Over Medicine, patients frequently imbibe a doctor’s pronouncements about their disease hook, line and sinker. They give up hope and die. This is the “nocebo” effect, where patients believe the worst and suffer accordingly.

Conversely, Rankin, with copious studies and examples demonstrates the power of the famous placebo effect. When given an inert treatment, patients recover from the even the most devastating diseases including cancer. A prime example is Mr. Wright who was dying of terminal cancer. His doctor gave him an experimental drug. Mr. Wright recovered in a miraculously short time. But when news surfaced that showed the medicine to be ineffective, Wright’s cancer returned. His doctor, now quite aware of the powerful placebo effect told him the medicine he’d been given was tainted, but that he now had a pure, more potent batch to give him. Again, Wright recovered. And again, when a national news story proclaimed the medicine worthless, Wright’s health faltered and he died soon thereafter.

What both Turner and Rankin are demonstrating is that there is no such thing as an incurable disease. Just because medicine has no cure, it assumes that no other treatment could possibly stimulate the body to heal itself.

In my next post I’ll explore the nine things that Kelly Turner discovered that help even the most hopeless cancer patients heal and go on to live many years full of accomplishment and happiness.

Until then, remember, a diagnosis is simply a description from a system that does not recognize any other possible way to heal. It is not a prophecy of doom. Rather, it can be the door that opens to a new world of knowledge, liberation and health as we take control of our lives and discover a world of possibilities beyond conventional medicine.

 

September 16, 2014

The Dynamic Dozen on TV in the Triangle

http://www.wncn.com/story/26547411/author-says-yoga-can-heal-osteoporosis

 

Today is the first hopefully many appearances to tell people about my new book The Dynamic Dozen. Yoga can help heal osteoporosis. Please check out the link.

Also, I’ll be giving several talks and demonstrations at bookstores in the coming weeks. What do you like to hear when you attend a book talk or lecture? What do you want to hear from an author? I’d love to hear what you think.

Namaste,

Tim

 

August 19, 2014

The Dynamic Dozen: 12 Accessible Yoga Poses for Building Bone Density, Strength and Balance

Dynamic Dozen Cover

 

Greetings All,

Above is the cover for my recently published book about reversing osteoporosis with yoga. The inspiration for this brief e-book came from my students. As their bone scans showed dramatic improvement in bone density after starting yoga practice, I knew I had to offer this knowledge to others.

Millions of people in the U.S. and around the world are afflicted with this dreadful disease that often leads to bone fractures, loss of independence and progressive debility. Yoga offers a way to reverse this disease,  and live a strong, independent life. The Dynamic Dozen demonstrates how resistance to gravity and weight bearing yoga poses stimulate the body’s bone building cells to start building bone  to restore bone mass lost to osteoporosis.

http://www.amazon.com/Dynamic-Dozen-Accessible-Building-Strength/dp/0991150252/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1408404820&sr=8-1&keywords=The+dynamic+dozen

 

Live long, strong and healthy with The Dynamic Dozen!

 

 

 

November 11, 2013

Slower, Softer, Longer

This entry is a sequel to a previous post titled, “Prana Dance.” It deals with how we use yoga asana practice to distribute prana (life force energy) into the cells and psyche of our beings. This may sound abstract and hard to put your finger on, but actually it is the very physical, experiential act of willfully routing energy throughout the nadis or circuits of our bodies’.

One of the best ways to embody this act is by working with an injury or disease condition. I’m working with a couple of injuries now that are teaching me a lot about how to balance energy in my practice in order to promote healing. Injuries can be great friend and teachers if we are willing to listen to them. So, if you have an active injury or condition that you’re working with—listen carefully to the language of sensation. This language will help you sense the proper relationship you must build with that malady in order to heal yourself. Injuries or disease can deliver us from our own inclinations to keep pushing ahead as we unconsciously ignore our need to heal.

If self-healing is a foreign concept to you, consider this. Our bodies’ have amazing innate healing intelligence. Healing is programmed into our DNA. The most common form of healing we experience everyday is sleep. As a friend of mine likes to say, “Rest is repair.” Whether we are stressed out, banged up or suffering with a cold, a good night’s sleep generally makes things better. This restful repair occurs while we are unconscious. We can build on this rejuvenation with conscious awareness of breath and movement in our yoga asana practice.

A normal, healthy body can usually adapt to periods of high intensity exercise or stress. However, when we exceed our limits and sustain injury we need the slower, softer, longer approach to heal ourselves.

To implement this style of practice we must develop a keen sense of tender loving care toward our injuries. After an initial period of rest following an injury we enter what is called the sub-acute stage of healing. This is when carefully applied asana and breath can speed healing.

As we begin to re-engage a damaged muscle, joint, organ or mental aspect we must do so slowly, more softly, and we hold our posture longer. It may sound like a love relationship. Well, it is. This is part of how we love ourselves. Self-care is born of self-love.

Take a common hamstring injury for example. Over stretching causes tearing and pain. As we heal, we may begin to work the muscle(s) again by slowly pushing into a pose up to the border of discomfort. When we reach that border we softly sustain the pose and hold the pose for a long comfortable engagement. The final ingredient to this elixir of gentleness is the massaging breath. With a slow, soft, long sustain like a beautiful piano chord we infuse the pose with the healing massage of the breath. This combination of mindful actions tells the nervous system that this is a safe practice. As the nervous system gets the message, pain decreases and allows us to work more deeply as we continue our recovery.

This approach also serves as a metaphor for how we live our lives. Living with greater awareness, deliberation and persistence will serve to help us reach our personal goals and in our relationship with our planet and its myriad beings.

September 23, 2013

Your Own Persona Massage Therapist!

 

Wouldn’t it be great to have your own personal massage therapist? You do.

Many of us have enjoyed the deep relaxation of a massage at the hands of a skilled practitioner. When the massage is finished we lie on the table in semi-consciousness with every muscle in our bodies free and released from tension. Ahhhh.

But what about those places that external massage just can’t get to? The organs and glands need stimulation, cleansing and toning too. A massage on a passive body, as glorious as it is, cannot address the body while it’s active.

This is where the conscious breath is used in conjunction with asana and gravity to massage the body in a unique, singular fashion.

Part of the genius of asana, or yoga postures, is how each posture directs energy into the body differently. As we listen to our bodies and breathe deeply we can see where the energy goes and how it pushes into our deep tissues. This is the massaging quality of the breath. Choose any posture and then apply the three-part breath and see where the massaging quality of the breath goes.

An easy, effective way to demonstrate this to yourself is to practice bridge pose. Lie on

your back with the feet just under your knees in front of the buttocks. Push into your feet and raise the sacrum and spinal column off the ground so your torso is suspended like an arched bridge between the feet and shoulder blades. Breathe deeply into your belly and sacrum. Draw the breath up into your heart and push your chin down onto the top of your sternum (breastbone). Keep the breath flowing deeply yet comfortably and be aware of the massage being received by the kidneys and adrenal glands

just above them. Notice also how the wave-like motion of the inhalation compresses all the abdominal organs. Lastly, as the breath fills the lungs from bottom to top, feel it move through the heart and thymus and into the thyroid and parathyroid glands in the throat.

With the chin pushed down onto the sternum, you are performing jalandhara bandha or throat lock. At the fullness of your inhalation this lock forms an energy dam so that the whole interior torso is filled with the energy or prana of the breath. This is the peak of the massaging energy of the breath in this posture.

By applying the deep, three-part breath to this simple pose, so many vital organs and glands are being deeply massaged by the breath from the interior. This is why I tell my students that the breath is your own personal massage therapist.

This is just one example of how the breath plays through the body supplying deep, purifying massage. Use this technique in every pose and note where the breath goes and what gets massaged as a result. Your awareness and practice of this pranayama, or expansion of the universal energy via the breath, will deepen your strength, range of motion and flexibility as it purifies your organs and glands.

Practice in vigor and health!

Namaste!

September 17, 2013

Yoga to the Rescue!

 

I hear such wonderful stories from my students about the truly amazing benefits they are enjoying because of their yoga practice. The range of conditions that yoga treats continues to amaze me.

Karen:

Karen is a 65 year old woman diagnosed with osteoporosis last year. She was adamantly opposed to pharmaceutical treatment. Karen began coming to my yoga class in 2011 or 2012. She told me of her illness and asked if yoga could help. I told her that I was confident that it could. She came to class faithfully, even recruiting her husband, Roger. She practiced daily at home as well. I emphasized the standing postures, especially the one-legged balance poses and other postures that put her body in weight-bearing resistance to gravity. A year later she got another bone scan. Karen’s expectations were low; she hoped that she just wouldn’t lose anymore bone density. Her results astounded her and her doctors. Karen gained eight-percent bone density in her spine and one-and-one-half-percent in her femurs. She was thrilled! She was above the bone fracture threshold and no longer had osteoporosis. She also lost a chronic cough and banished her vertigo during this same time.

Yoga uses the weight of the body to send the signal that it needs to build more bone. The weight bearing poses of yoga asana put the body into many different relationships to gravity. This prompts the body to build bone in response to these weight bearing poses.

Debbie:

I taught a yoga class to Debbie and her co-workers at their work place. Even though she was not in the best condition, this late-thirty something was enthusiastic about yoga practice. We were able to practice together for only about 12 weeks before budget cuts nixed our yoga sessions, but she learned fast and well.

Debbie struggled with asthma and would sometimes wake from sleep at the onset of an asthma attack.

One of the central teachings of yoga is the conscious use of the breath to promote wellness and combat disease.

One night she awoke in a panic with an asthma attack. Suddenly, she remembered the long, slow three-part breathing we practiced in class. She composed herself and began using this technique. As she breathed slowly and deeply she began to relax and her attack melted away. This gave her a feeling of tremendous empowerment. She no longer had to be afraid because she knew how to stop these attacks in their tracks.

Hunter:

Just barely 50, Hunter is the picture of vibrant health and loves her yoga practice. Just weeks ago she was riding a Segway, the two-wheeled personal transport. She crashed, severely spraining her ankle and back. In moments she found herself alone in an emergency department treatment room waiting for a doctor. Hunter felt herself going into shock. She wanted to do something to help herself. She remembered her breath as we’d practiced it so many times in class. As she focused and breathed consciously she blocked the advance of the shock and restored herself to calm, lucid, normal awareness. She, too, had realized the power of her breath and was so grateful that she hadn’t been more badly injured considering the potential consequences of her accident.

These are not uncommon stories among yoga practitioners. They are the results available to us as we increase our consciousness through the use of asana and pranayama, or yogic breathing techniques.