How Yoga Works (Part III)

In my last post we looked at two different situations. The two situations were easy to write because I was writing about myself. I have been the ideal and I have been the not so ideal. As time moves along and I continue to practice yoga I become wiser and more aligned with what is skillful and what is unskillful action. Skillful promotes peace and unskillful acerbates confusion.

It is really important that we take a look at how our sleep, time management, nutrition and movement choices play a role in our life and how we think. We only practice Hatha yoga for 60-90 minutes on a mat and the average student shows up twice a week. At some point within our yoga practice the question, “how am I living?” becomes a dominant question. Do we carry an undernourished, over caffeinated, under-slept and stressed out body to the mat or are we taking care of ourselves?

I always say that at some point, something has got to go! The lifestyle has to change or you just have to quit coming to yoga because the pain of confronting your lifestyle over and over again becomes too exhausting. Unfortunately most people choose to discontinue the yoga. Only 10% of people who try yoga continue past one year.

Many people find this depressing but the fact is that it is more comfortable to stay stuck in habits and unconscious living. It's easy to make excuses about why you can not continue yoga. After fifteen years of teaching I have truly found a great appreciation of the understanding that as human beings we ourselves are our biggest obstacle.

This is one of the ways that yoga works. We learn to look at our own mind. How is our life manifesting within our body? This becomes the very ground upon which we can draw some conclusions. If we continue the way we are living what are the predictable mistakes and outcomes? If we courageously change some things where does that point the direction of our life? How does our courageous redirection alter the lives of those around us?

How Yoga Works (part two) Two Situations

Ideal situation

You wake with gentle zen chimes (this really makes a difference for me, available on itunes yet they also sell Zen alarm clocks) from a good night sleep where you were predominantly resting in theta and delta waves. You wake up with sufficient time to prepare for work. You get out of bed and are not rushing so you are calmly moving about your day and are now in alpha waves. If you drink caffeine you have a small dose of just one cup which will bring you into beta waves.

You move throughout your morning and enjoy a tempered drive to work listening to something that promotes relaxing. Throughout your work day you take momentary breaks to stand up and stretch your arms overhead (this severely disperses compressional forces on lower spine and increase blood flow promoting energy). It only takes 30 seconds to stand and stretch. This also helps reset your attention span.

You keep a glass of water next to your desk and drink water because you realize that dehydration is one of the easiest ways to misconstrue hungry and promote lower energy levels. You shift into beta waves as needed throughout the day yet maintain a constant foundation of alpha waves as you move through your tasks with great efficiency.

You practice mindful breathing throughout the day which helps you maintain a sense of calmness yet alertness. Your take a walk at lunch or engage in some light reading and enjoy a healthy lunch. You go back to work and by mid afternoon you eat another healthy snack which will help prevent energy crash. You leave work and exercise before coming home. Once home you spend time with your family and have a healthy dinner with possibly one glass of wine without the TV on. You finish the night sipping tea and reading which helps shift your gears down from alpha-theta-delta.

Not so ideal

You wake up to loud buzzer from alarm with not a lot of time to get to work. You just shifted from delta or theta right into beta and skipped alpha. You move quickly to get ready for work and drink 2-3 cups of coffee. You drive to work in a rush listening to music or something that aids in maintaining beta mind.

Get into work and start working feeling overwhelmed by the day tasks maintaining beta mind. You don’t drink any water pushing you into a dehydrated state. Due to the feeling of being overwhelmed you never get up at your desk till lunch. You have spent a large majority of your morning in beta mind. For lunch you eat something not so healthy loaded in high glycemic carbs and saturated fats. Your blood sugars drop an hour or so after lunch and you are tired and bouncing from alpha to theta with brief periods of beta.

To stay awake you go for more coffee or a candy bar. This helps you make it through the day yet your ability to focus is poor due to the brain waves. There is no exercise after work and instead grab a few beers. You get home and have the munchies so you eat something unhealthy. You eat too much because your blood sugars are off from too much alcohol and dehydration because you drank no water throughout the day. This puts you into a food coma on the couch where you pass out. You wake up around midnight and make your way up to bed where falling back to sleep can be difficult due to the fact that your brain waves are confused as to what part of the day it is. You eventually fall asleep yet you wake up periodically throughout the night depriving yourself from ever really spending time healing in theta and delta.

How Yoga Works (part one)

I was teaching in Charlotte this weekend at the Laughing Buddha and during one of the sessions, a student asked “How does yoga work?” I recently read a book entitled “How Yoga Works” and I cannot recommend it enough to anyone that has a yoga practice or is looking for a reason to take up the practice. I will take the next several blogs to explore this question from a different perspective than what the book focuses on.

Before we dive in, it is important to understand the etymology of the word yoga. The word means union. It is a study of polarities and it indicates two forces becoming one. It denotes the idea of finding balance between these two forces so that they can become one action. First let’s look at the mind with regards to the study of yoga.

Your body is made of trillions of cells. These cells are called neurons and they communicate with each other through electrochemical processes. The human brain has approximately 100 billion neurons. A frequency is the speed at which they are traveling. Brain waves are characterized in four different frequencies:

Beta- Fastest impulses at 13-40 cycles per second. This is associated with our normal waking state. Beta helps in logical thinking, analysis and active attention function. Stress and neurotic behaviors could throw the frequency to continuos elevated beta levels. The busier your mind the more beta waves are omitted.

Alpha- 7-13 cycles per second. This occurs during daydreaming, fantasizing and creative visualization. This is often associated with a deeply relaxed state and meditation. This is the state of mind where the mind can be calmly attentive. This is where the mind is less neurotic and more open.

Theta 4-8 cycles per second. Theta is associated with intuition, otherwise known as 'sixth sense' and allows us to access our subconscious. It is activated during deep states of meditation and dream sleep. Theta is also associated with creative thinking, and allows us to tap into our inner genius.

Delta- .5-4 cycles per second produced in deep sleep

At any given time throughout your day your brain is omitting one of these signals. We can look at these mind sets like the gears of a car. First gear is Delta, second is Theta, Alpha is Third and Beta is Fourth. Our bodies have evolved and developed so that they can shift gears throughout the appropriate states and times of the day. When we are healthy we use all of the gears for appropriate situations. If we are going to talk about how yoga works understanding brain waves is critical. In the next blog we will look at two different situations.

Yoga in a Bottle

Until the onset of electricity 100 years ago, human beings went to bed after sun down and arose at sunrise. We slept 10-12 hours a day, ate foods from the earth, walked everywhere or rode a horse. There were no tv's, ipods or emails. Life was more organic and slower, allowing us to spend more time being and inhabiting the fullness of our name as human beings. It is important to realize this is our evolutionary genetics and the way we have been living for thousands upon thousands of years. Fast forward to the 21st century, our worlds have become lightening fast. Both parents work to maintain the American lifestyle. Processed food and caffeinated beverages have become a staple in the American diet. The normal chores that are required in order to operate a household, and a family, become something that happens at night, shortening our sleep and increasing our overall workload. Things move at lightening speed with cell phones, emails and modern day efficiencies of travel. All of this can leave us under slept, over processed and in many ways out of touch. We take on the name "Human Doing" and throw our evolutionary clocks out of whack!

These are facts in the 21st century. American life is not going to slow down. If we allow ourselves to speed up with it we will find ourselves in the middle of a speeding tornado, missing our life and potentially falling prey to the three D's: dissatisfaction, depression and disease. The famous Tibetan Lama Chogyam Trungpa would often say, "where there is speed many times you find struggle". In my own life I now notice when I am moving too fast, I have developed the practice of pausing. Many times I discover a feeling of unease and struggle when I pause. A decade ago, I began the practice of Hatha Yoga to help me deal with the speed of life. Hatha Yoga is the exercise system that involves movement and breathing exercises that help bring the nervous system into a greater state of balance. Eventually, I created a style and approach to Hatha Yoga, Empowered Yoga. Our methodology is a three step process that begins with stabilizing your attention on your body and breathing. From the process of stabilizing yourself, you can't help but notice the second step which is resting in a feeling of calmness and clarity. As your practice becomes more consistent, the third step happens which is the arising of wisdom. You begin making better choices that help you become more skillful in working with the speed of the 21st century. Empowered Yoga has made a big difference in my life!

Recently, I was turned onto a product called Suntheanine. Within Suntheanine is a natural occurring amino acid called L-theanine, found mostly in teas. Clinical research suggests that 50mg - 200 mg Suntheanine naturally stimulates activity in the brain known as alpha waves, which are associated with a relaxed but alert mental state. Within 15 minutes of ingesting Suntheanine my wife and I noticed that we both felt calmer. We were doing chores around the house and we both felt more focused. Since then, we have been incorporating Suntheanine into our nutritional habits and have noticed less feelings of speediness and a greater sense of clarity. This product is like yoga in a bottle! The world needs yoga and if someone can get that yoga attitude in a bottle then maybe they will find their way into Empowered Yoga.

The Antidote

This is where the practice of yoga steps in. Yoga is the science and art of steadying the mind in this moment. We can do this on a yoga mat or in a seated mediation posture. I use both techniques yet find the seated meditation practice to be a more solid ground to understand and work with my mind.

The Hatha Yoga practice serves as the physical exercise systems that strengthens and purifies the body while cultivating a mind that is steady and familiar with breathing and the body. The Hatha Yoga practice is means to bring us into deeper states of stillness and to prepare us to sit in meditation.

In meditation practices, you are not shutting your mind down or attaining a state of non-thinking, rather, you are learning to make friends with and understand how your mind works. And this becomes the very ground upon which you can make wise decisions on the direction your life is taking.

When you sit and get still and settled. It becomes a place where you can begin to see which voices are driving your life and which direction you are headed. Our lives carry with them a lot of momentum. The practice helps slow down and cultivate a heightened state of awareness--intimacy with ourselves. It also helps us begin to develop a relationship with the presence inside of us that can see and feel thought and emotion from a third party perspective.

My friend and mentor, David Nichtern, calls meditation a burn. He says that when we sit we can burn up our karmas. We can begin to rewire our brain and we can cultivate qualities that can help change our relationship to life.

This process is challenging. The momentum our lives possess is like a river that is carrying us. In the beginning it can be like swimming up a stream. Daily practice and a relentless commitment are required.

Karma

Last night I was watching an interview with Drew Brees who is the

quarterback for the New Orleans Saints. He said, "I believe in karma:

what goes around comes around". He was referring to his team's hard

work attributing to their undefeated 13-0 record.

Karma has become a widely used word and now we even are hearing it on Sports Center.

Karma means energy. There are many ways to understand Karma and there

are numerous different takes on the word and its meaning. It is a word

that originated in eastern philosophy. Many people think of the past when they hear the word karma.

In order to understand karma, we need to begin with the present moment and then take a 360 degree view. I get quiet and still and I hone into this moment. How does it feel? How does my body feel? How does my mind feel? How is my life going? What

is going on at this very moment?

Whatever my observations are I find they are a result of my past thoughts and actions. The way I feel has to do with how I take care of my body on a day to day basis. My view of this moment or attitude has to do with the way I am thinking. Considering the average person has 60,000 thoughts and over 95% of them are reoccurring it is safe to say that our thinking is conditioning. We meet this moment with the lenses of the past. It is our parents, the churches we went to, the neighborhood we grew up in, our friends and all of our experiences that paints the texture of our present moment awareness.

Over the past two decades neuroscience has given this a name: neuroplasticity. This is the science of how the brain gets wired. We think a thought and the more we repeat this thought the stronger it becomes. This would explain why we tend to think the same way over and

over again. It would also explain why we can have a hard time changing and

why our country and world at large is in a perpetual state of dissatisfaction.

We sincerely want one thing yet we are stuck with a past prison that is rooted in repetitive patterns. We want to break free from our conditioning and be dynamic, fresh and positive everyday yet we find it impossible to change our behaviors. We tend to let go

of things we need to hold onto and hold onto the things that we need to let go

of. As we move along with life we become harder and harder and less flexible while the gap between our life and the life we want to live gets broader and broader.

Am I depressing you? I don't mean to yet there is a way out......will handle that next week in my next blog

Boston

I spent this past weekend up in Boston teaching at Metrowest Yoga. Boston is a mature yoga community and they are pretty serious about their yoga. The weekend started with a three hour intensive with a discussion on what it meant to be empowered and concluded Sunday with a discussion on what it meant to live an Empowered Life. The group was energized and their thoughts were sound and provoking.

Sunday, I read a quote by Carl Jung. The quote was, "the greatest influence on our own life and the life of children is the unlived life of our parents". Those that spoke up were parents and shared their ideas of raising children. Towards the end of the discussion, I presented a different view, "we are all children here....how has your life reflected this quote?" We had to get moving and begin a Hatha yoga practice so we never really got a chance to discuss. Maybe this blog will get some discussion going?

When I contemplate this quote I can immediately look at it two ways (although there are numerous ways of viewing it). The first, how am I perpetuating the unlived life of my parents? Second, what part of their unlived life has influenced me to be different and to go in a different direction? It reminds me of the Buddhist lessons on karma. Karma is energy. The teachings of karma are the teachings of cause and effect.

Because karma has become a fashionable word these days you will often hear people say, "That is your karma". A more accurate understanding would be this is happening right now because of karma. Your karma is the sum total of everything you have thought and experienced up until this very moment of your life.

There is no better way to understand karma than to sit still, get quiet and notice where you are right here and right now in this very moment in your life. Our lives are truly the sum total of all past thoughts and deeds. For me the whole point of practicing Yoga is to get still and pay attention non-judgmentally to how we are framing this moment of our life.

Sit with it long enough, we can literally feel our whole life narrow down to this very moment. This is a very courageous thing do to. It can also become the very ground upon which we can awaken to a new direction or reconfirm the direction our life is headed.

If you do have children a worthy contemplation is how is your unlived life affecting your children--come on Boston yogis and yoginis what do you think? We never finished this discussion.