Category Archives: yoga

5 Physiological Fun Facts for Yoga Teachers and Practitioners

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5.) FACT: People who lose weight often still feel heavy and commonly maintain the body language and movement characteristic of an overweight person.

REASON: A conflict exists between the body schema (which is largely up-to-date on the current state of the body, but is largely unconscious) and body image (which relates to how we feel about our bodies, can lag behind the state of the body, and of which we are conscious.)

RELEVANCE: It may take unconventional activities to help a student realign his or her body schema and body image. e.g. Wobble boards have been shown to be effective.

REFERENCE: “The Body Has a Mind of Its Own” by Blakeslee and Blakeslee

 

4.) FACT: The busiest skeletal muscles in the body are the extraocular muscles (i.e. more than 100,000 moves per day.)

REASON: We don’t see over a broad area as clearly as we think we do. The illusion that we can is created by rapid saccades by which the eye is constantly moving to take in sights from the point at which our sight is best. You can prove this to yourself by fixing your gaze forward, and then–from the side–draw a playing card at random so the face is towards your cheek while holding the card out to one’s side at shoulder height, and then–eyes still fixed forward–gradually move it in an arc at arm’s length towards one’s center-line until you can make out which card it is. You might think you’d be able to make it out at say a 30-degree angle from center-line, but you’ll find it’s almost directly in front of your eye when you can make it out. If if isn’t: a.) your eyes made a cheating saccade so quickly you didn’t notice it or, b.) you are an android and have eyes (and nervous system interface) that aren’t constructed on the same principles as the human system of vision.

RELEVANCE: One may want to brush up on eye yoga. Yes, there is such a thing.

REFERENCE: There’s a section on exercises for the eyes in Swami Saraswati’s “Asana Pranayama Mudra Bandha” (commonly called APMB.)

 

3.) FACT: The gut has its own nervous system (i.e. the enteric nervous system) that can interact with our body’s nervous system, and increasing evidence suggests that it’s not always mental stress that causes stomach aches, but sometimes problems in the gut result in mental / emotional turmoil.

REASON: There’s a lot that remains unknown at the moment, but a lot of research is going on in this area. It seems reasonable to guess that there’s probably an evolutionary advantage for the digestive tract to be able to express its dissatisfaction in a way that changes behavior (and emotions are all about behavior change.)

RELEVANCE: Unexplained depression or emotional outbursts may have unexpected origins.

REFERENCE: I can highly recommend “Gut” by Giulia Enders, but I’ve also heard great things about the more recent “I Contain Multitudes” by Ed Young, though I haven’t gotten around to reading it yet myself.

 

2.) FACT: The problems that can arise due to hyperventilation aren’t about oxygen levels, they are about too little carbon dioxide.

REASON: Lack of carbon dioxide can cause arteries and arterioles of the brain and spinal cord to constrict.

RELEVANCE: Introduce kapalbhati and bhastrika with caution.

REFERENCE: H. David Coulter’s “Anatomy of Hatha Yoga” chapter on breathing (Ch. 2) deals with the physiology of breathing in an excellent fashion.

 

1.) There are oh-so-many more than five senses in the human body. Within the realm of “felt sensation” alone there’s not only touch (one of the five senses we usually think of), but also: thermoception (sense of temperature), nociception (sensation of pain), proprioception (sense of the location and motion of our various body parts, and balance (which relies on vision and proprioception but also vestibular sensation.)

REASON: Without these sensations we couldn’t function as we do. I don’t have to tell experienced meditators how difficult it can be to simply stand up or walk when proprioception is dampened by the pins-and-needles from sitting cross-legged such that one doesn’t notice one’s drooping foot.

RELEVANCE: At some point one should begin to practice relying on proprioception more and visual confirmation less. (Proper drishti–focal points–rarely allow one to visually confirm one’s position.)

REFERENCE: Besides the book mentioned in #5, check out David J. Linden’s “Touch.” I’ve also begun reading a Harvard Medical School Guide entitled “Better Balance” that gives insight into how to improve the sense of balance–particularly if one serves senior citizen students.

 

The Thai Yoga Bodywork / Yoga Nexus

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[Note: This article was first posted on the IMOSHA website.]

 

It was October of 2013 and I found my way to the Meditation Hall at the Fireflies Ashram off Kanakapura Road outside Bangalore’s southern sprawl.  That morning, I’d begin learning the sequence of actions of the Chiang Mai style of Thai Yoga Bodywork (TYB.) I would struggle to remember that sequence as I awkwardly groped about trying not to drive my thumb into the bones or nerve junctions of my fellow students. But over the course of those ten days, I progressed to the point that my awkwardness was less apparent, and I could get through the sequence without forgetting much.

 

I’d arrived in India with a long list of activities to try and skills to learn as part of a plan of self-betterment. That TYB course was the first item on the list to be scratched off. I’d been in the country a little over a month.  The strange thing about that was that TYB was the activity farthest outside my comfort zone. I wasn’t a complete stranger to yoga or meditation when I arrived in India. And while I was new to the martial arts of Kalaripayattu and Muaythai, I’d practiced a Japanese martial art my entire adult life.  So while I wasn’t skilled at those arts, I had a level of transferable confidence to counterbalance my lack of skill. The same couldn’t be said TYB. It was all new. But that’s the magic of moving around the world, everything is outside your comfort zone, so you might as well go big or go home.

 

Small world.  A couple of years later, I’d be in that same Meditation Hall for the capstone weekend of my 500-hour yoga teacher’s course.  I remember lying in that Meditation Hall, resting after having learned the advanced cleansing practices (shatkarma) of hatha yoga. (By then there was an entirely new level outside my “comfort zone” as I’d purged my entire alimentary canal.) At any rate, the Fireflies Meditation Hall was just a piece of geographic connective tissue that linked my yogic and TYB educations. I’d like to discuss five more substantial links.

 

5.) Anxiety management:  Let me begin with a theme that I mentioned in my introduction. It’s an aspect of personal development that I’ve spent a lot of time working on recently, and that’s moving outside one’s comfort zone to dispassionately observe one’s anxieties.   Both Yoga and TYB present practitioners with opportunities to observe and tame anxieties in a safe way. In TYB, one’s anxiety might be about injuring the person one is working on, about doing a poor job, or it could even be just about touching strangers. People have various reasons—from various social anxieties to germophobia—for discomfort with physically touching people they don’t know well. (Being an introvert, I have a tinge of this discomfort that would likely be much worse if I hadn’t studied martial arts. But, having studied a grappling-centric martial art for so many years, I’d developed a bit of transferable confidence about being in close physical proximity with people I didn’t necessarily know well.)

Anxiety about injuring another

 

In yoga, the sources of anxiety are often gravity related (e.g. inversions and arm balances), but can be quite varied. I mentioned shatkarma as another example. And I’ve found external breath retentions from pranayama to be a potent area in my own personal practice.

 

Anxiety about injuring oneself

 

At any rate, what both Yoga and TYB do to help one take on one’s anxiety is to insist that one confront it in a mindful way. Just practicing forces one to experience the anxieties, but the crucial second ingredient is that one must keep one’s attention on the action—preventing one’s mind from engaging in the escalatory patterns by which it makes molehills into mountains. While it’s true that there are many other activities that this should be true of, it’s common in many fitness activities to practice distractions. People often blare portable music devices to drown out their body and mind as they exercise and practice other self-betterment activities. Such distractions aren’t an option in [good] TYB or Yoga instruction (Note: I say “good” because one can see a sad wave of distraction yogas out there that bury the sensations of practice in cute animals, alcohol, and—even–frat-house style raves.)

 

4.) Anatomical intuition: Both TYB and Yoga expand one’s understanding of the human body. A great feature for those who practice both systems is that the two systems are complementary. They present both overlapping and non-overlapping means to insight into the body. Yoga provides insight through all of one’s senses—not just the five we think of, but including proprioception (the sense by which a person is aware of the position of his or her own body parts and their movement) and balance. In other words, yoga allows one to see inside one’s own body as fully as possible. On the other hand, TYB offers the opportunity to learn about the wide range of variance in human bodies—feeling all their varied characteristics, strengths, and weaknesses.

Finding the limits of another

 

I think a yoga teacher can learn a great deal by practicing TYB. It encourages a greater understanding of the strengths and limitations of others. At the same time, TYB practitioners benefit from yoga’s high degree of intra-bodily awareness because the Thai style involves many assisted stretches that require strength, balance, and awareness.

 

Finding one’s own limits

 

3.) Appreciating the Slow: Modern life shouts at one to do everything faster. Yoga and TYB are two activities in which there isn’t any payoff for being faster, and, in fact, there are costs. In TYB, the massaged individual will find a fast tempo massage less relaxing. If one has ever been handled by a masseuse or masseur like a baker making bread, one knows exactly what I’m talking about. Hatha Yoga also emphasizes slow movement. Even when one is doing an active style like Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga, there’s an emphasis on maintaining control of the body throughout, and that requires engaging musculature to counter the forces of gravity and momentum.

FYI- this is the aforementioned Meditation Hall during that first training

 

Sometimes slow is the only way to succeed

 

2.) Core stability and muscular endurance:  Both TYB and Yoga build and require core strength and muscular endurance. Bodywork is a physically demanding job. When one learns TYB, a great deal of attention goes into the minutiae of handling the client so as to minimize the stress and strain on one’s body. Still, there’s no way around the fact that one is manipulating another person’s body  and one has to bear that weight so that the client can be relaxed as one stretches them out or turns them over. Commonly, those people will be larger and heavier than the person delivering the massage.  Even if one isn’t doing TYB all day, one will likely feel it—perhaps all the more because one hasn’t developed that core strength and muscular endurance. Yoga can also help the TYB practitioner to keep supple in a job that can easily make a person sinewy.

 

On the other hand, yogis and yoginis can learn a thing or two about balance and control of the core from the challenging act of manipulating another person through their stretches.

 

1.) Attentiveness to Subtle Sensations:  In yoga teacher training, one is often shown Wilder Penfield’s homunculus. Penfield was a doctor who studied the functional organization of the brain, and particularly the sensory and motor cortexes (the parts that process sensations and commands to move body parts.) He was eager to map the motor cortex so that he’d know what portions of damaged or cancerous tissue could be removed without causing paralysis or the like.  At any rate, you’ve probably seen either a flat or 3-D version of the homunculus. It’s notable for its huge lips and hands and comparatively tiny chest and thighs. That’s because the size of a body part on the model doesn’t represent its anatomical size but rather its size in the brain, and our hands have a truly astounding piece of cerebral real estate.

 

What’s fascinating is that for all this capacity for feeling through our fingers, one has to practice to get the fullest out of that ability. In the beginning, it can be quite different to feel huge knots in the muscle during TYB sessions—even though our ability to differentiate tiny tactile differences is tremendous.  In yoga one isn’t so much engaged in feeling with one’s fingertips as one is with one’s internal sensory suite, but the point remains that we have a great deal of capacity that most people leave unused.

 

I suspect there are many more points of confluence between TYB and Yoga that haven’t occurred to me. If you’ve got one, feel free to comment below.

BOOK REVIEW: Jnana Sankalini Tantra by P. Prajnanananda

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Jnana Sankalini TantraJnana Sankalini Tantra by P. Prajnananda
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

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Tantra is in a class with quantum physics as a topic that everybody likes to talk about but no one seems to understand. But the situation is worse because everybody can have an opinion about what Tantra is and who’s to say one is correct and another is not. Therefore, there are many conceptions of Tantra floating around out there. Unfortunately, I can’t say that this book will clear up the topic, though it does offer a great deal of information in a readable package.

In the West, Tantra is mostly about having longer and more satisfying orgasms during sex. In India, that is seen a great oversimplification, but there’s an entirely different muddling of the topic. If there were pro-Tantra and anti-Tantra parties, the topic could remain clear despite differing views on the validity of the approach. Everybody might agree about what Tantra is, but veer apart as they say why they like it or loath it. However, there’s another faction, and that’s the mainstream religious personalities who want to selectively utilize bits and pieces of Tantra that they find useful, while suggesting other parts of it are all just a misunderstanding. And, again unfortunately, that is where this book stands.

As my criticism may not make sense otherwise, I’ll try to explain something I was taught about Tantra. As it was described to me, Tantra (the yogic version, Buddhist Tantra may vary entirely) was—at least, in part–a practice of engaging in endeavors that might be considered distractions on the path to overcome them. Whereas, mainstream religion says, “x is bad, never do x,” Tantra says “x can be a distraction, and so I should engage in x in a mindful way so that it no longer controls me.” This is where the focus on sex comes in. It’s not that Tantrics were perverts; they just believed they could achieve some manner of transcendence through its practice.

My primary complaint is that this book selectively takes what it likes and strains credulity by suggesting the material it dislikes is all a misunderstanding of a selective code. So there is this idea of the five principles (panchatattvas or panchamakara) and they are five practices of Tantrics consisting of consumption of: alcohol, meat, fish, roasted/fried foods, as well as sexual activity. Now, most of these are objectionable to the modern Hindu, but the author says that these were all just code for a practice of breathing with one’s tongue pressed to a certain spot on the roof of one’s mouth. Why was kechari mudra so super-secret that one had to call it sex or fish-eating? (And why would one use a code consisting of activities one finds severely objectionable?) I don’t know, the reader is just left to believe that it makes sense.

Now, should I conclude that the entire work is in code? For example, when it says that finding a good teacher and following them is important, might they really be saying that I should “Find a river otter to take to Disneyland?” No. Because only the parts that the author and his sect finds contrary are encoded, everything else is to be taken literally.

Now, the offending section is only a small part of the book, and the topic of yogic Tantra. However, the degree to which it strains credulity makes it difficult to believe anything else the books says.

The book is in two parts. The first part is an introduction to jnana sankalini tantra (JST), and the second part is the 110 verses of the JST—said to be a dialogue between Shiva and Parvathi on Tantra—with analyses by the author.

I believe that this book contains a lot of interesting ideas, but, being a neophyte to the subject but with a degree of expertise in detecting faulty logic and religious dogma, I didn’t feel I could trust the book entirely.

If you are a mainstream Hindu who wants a palatable description of Tantra that doesn’t offend your sensibilities, this is probably a great book for you. If not, I don’t think you’ll have any better idea of Tantra is than when you started.

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BOOK REVIEW: Anatomy of Hatha Yoga by H. David Coulter

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Anatomy of Hatha Yoga: A Manual for Students, Teachers, and PractitionersAnatomy of Hatha Yoga: A Manual for Students, Teachers, and Practitioners by H. David Coulter
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Amazon page

 

There are many books on anatomy for yoga, and I’ve read my share, but this is my favorite.

What did I like about it? First, Coulter examines the anatomy and physiology of breathing in some detail, and that’s an important topic that is overlooked by many others. A lot of yoga anatomy books stick exclusively to the musculo-skeletal system. Second, this book doesn’t mix science and pseudo-scientific mythology. Sometimes books shift from talking about arteries and veins to nadis and chakras in a manner that can be confusing and counterproductive. Third, the book discusses how postures can be safely varied for individuals with limits, as well as discussing the most advanced expression of postures for more flexible or skilled students.

What’s the catch? There must be a downside? Well the book is dense and it’s a challenging read. It’s not that the writer uses too many technical terms. That isn’t the case at all. In fact, Coulter is careful not only about using anatomical terms, but also avoids reliance on Sanskrit names as well. It’s just that there is a lot of material that one must read painstakingly while visualizing and–in some cases—tactically probing around one’s body (or someone else’s–if they’ll let you.) I don’t know that there’s much that could be done about this, given the desire to convey the material that the book does—and it’s valuable information. The book has a large number of graphics that mostly consist of anatomical drawings and photographs of the various versions of the postures. It’s possible that more graphics could have been used to reduce the amount of descriptive text, but—on the other hand—reading it slowly and carefully is a useful and productive exercise. And, if you’re not reading it for your RYT-500, you can take your time and read it section by section, as time permits, over the course of more than a year as I did.

The ten chapters of the book are mostly divided up by classes of posture (asana.) Chapter 1 is about “movement and posture” and provides the necessary background that one will need to understand the later chapters. Chapter 2 is on breathing–both the musculature involved and the physiology of it. The rest of the chapters are on core exercises, standing postures, back bends, forward bends, twists, headstands, shoulder-stands, and meditative postures, respectively.

The book has a glossary, a short bibliography, and two indexes (one by anatomical parts and the other by practices/postures.) I normally don’t bother to mention indexes, but in this case it’s useful to know because the book’s organization is by type of posture, and so it’s not always straight forward where various muscles or tissues are being covered.

As I say, I found this book to be tremendously informative. I recommend it for yoga teachers as well as intermediate / advanced practitioners.

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BOOK REVIEW: The Way of the Iceman by Wim Hof and Koen De Jong

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The Way of The Iceman: How The Wim Hof Method Creates Radiant Longterm Health--Using The Science and Secrets of Breath Control, Cold-Training and CommitmentThe Way of The Iceman: How The Wim Hof Method Creates Radiant Longterm Health–Using The Science and Secrets of Breath Control, Cold-Training and Commitment by Wim Hof
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Amazon page

 

Wim Hof is often presented as a freak of nature. If you’re flipping through the science channels, you might see a segment that shows him subjecting himself to extremely cold temperatures with no ill effects. This book is an attempt by Hof, and co-author Koen De Jong, to counter the proposition that he’s some sort of mutant (or—worse–that his demonstrations are cons) by offering a method by which anyone can achieve the same feats. It should be noted that long before Hof and YouTube came on the scene, there were people [notably Taoist and Tibetan Buddhist monks] performing similar acts.

Hof’s method (called the “Wim Hof Method” or WHM herein and in this book) consists of three components: cold training, breath exercises, and commitment building. The book explores this three-legged stool from both the scientific and practical dimensions. There’s one chapter on each of these elements that describes what it does to the body and how it contributes to well-being, and later chapters both describe what scientific studies have found so far and outline the approach by which the reader can explore the WHM on their own.

There’s a lot of front matter in this book (two forwards, a prologue, and an introduction), but the book more-or-less consists of seven chapters. The first of these is a mini-bio of Hof. It describes a fascinating event in Hof’s youth in which he was exposed to cold, as well as his travels to India in an attempt to find a yoga teacher. [As is the case with most people who come to India seeking to find that quintessential guru—i.e. a half-naked, weather-beaten, and forehead paint-streaked classical guru—he found that he had to wade through a sea of charlatans and shysters while never finding the true masters who are likely hidden away in caves in the Himalayas. Note: this is not to say that one can’t find excellent yoga instruction in India but it’ll likely be by someone fully clothed and not someone smoking pot on a ghat in Varanasi.] This resulted in Hof taking an experimental approach in which he studied the effects of various activities on himself (and such experimentation is what he advocates for others as well.) It should be noted that Hof didn’t invent this method from scratch—e.g. the breath component is based on Tibetan Tummo meditation.

As mentioned, Chapters 2 through 4 explore the three components of the WHM, i.e. cold training, breath exercise, and commitment building, respectively. These chapters describe the science of how these three elements generally (as opposed to a later chapter that describes studies in more depth) act upon the body. The commitment section describes a number of arduous feats such as climbing Kilimanjaro in a T-shirt and shorts, but also describes the role of diet (with particular emphasis on the fast-5 diet which is similar to, but not precisely, what Hof came to practice organically.)

Chapter 5 dives more deeply into the science than does the preceding chapters, and focuses on the studies in which Hof has participated in his attempt to facilitate a better understanding of his method.

The penultimate chapter suggests what the WHM might do for people in various classes, including: healthy people, athletes, and people suffering from various physical and mental ailments. With respect to the latter, there is discussion of exemplary cases as well as the possible means by which the training might act.

The final chapter is a brief outline of how the WHM can be put into practice by readers. There is also a sample log by which practitioners can chart their experience.

There are a range of graphics including line diagrams and photographs. Most of the photographs are inspirational shots of Hof in action, but there are diagrams and other graphics used to convey scientific ideas. There’s a recommended reading page as well as a works cited page. Both lists are small and confined to a few key sources of information, with the latter being the more scholarly works. There is also a glossary that may prove handy for some readers.

This book is illuminating and many stand to benefit from it. I found the approach of the authors to be sound; it’s basically “see for yourself.” This book could easily have been a sales brochure, and in some ways it is, but the fact that it emphasizes the science and the suggestion that the reader try the practice lends credibility. I’d highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to expand and explore the limits of their capability.

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BOOK REVIEW: The Science of Breath by Swami Rama et. al.

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Science of BreathScience of Breath by Swami Rama
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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This is an oldie, but a goody. The first edition came out in 1979, but as its intent is to provide an overview of the anatomy and physiology of breath for yoga practitioners, the fact that it doesn’t access the bleeding edge of respiratory science isn’t all that detrimental.

This short book consists of four chapters. Two chapters are by the famous yogi Swami Rama, and the other two are written by medical doctors. The first chapter is an introduction to breath from the yogic perspective. It both explains why it’s so important to understand and work with breath and introduces the mythic physiology (prana, nadi, chakra, etc.) that has historically been used to explain pranayama (breath exercises.)

The second chapter is written by Dr. Alan Hymes and it explains the mechanics of respiration. While Chapter 2 focuses on the anatomy of breathing, it begins with an explanation of cellular respiration to introduce the role of breath in powering muscles. There is a fine explanation of the operation of the diaphragm and the intercostal muscles in breathing.

Chapter 3 is written by Dr. Rudolph Ballentine, and it delves into the role of the nose and nasal cavities in respiration. Breathing through the nose is emphasized in both yoga and many other systems of breath training (e.g. the Buteyko and Wim Hof methods.) This is because the nasal cavities perform many useful functions such as moisturizing and warming air, capturing pollutants, and extract heating and moisture from exhaled breath. Besides exploring nasal anatomy and physiology, Dr. Ballentine describes jala neti shatkarma (nasal cleansing with salt water) and nadi shoudhana (alternate nostril breathing.)

The final chapter, written by Swami Rama, mostly describes various techniques of pranayama (breathing exercises) and related practices bandhas and mudras (locks and seals in which bodily parts are contracted or constricted.) However, the chapter begins with a mix of physiology and mythic physiology. That is, it explains some topics not addressed earlier–such as the interaction between the nervous and the cardiovascular systems as well as chakra.

My standing complaint about books that weave together science and pseudo-science is mitigated a bit herein. My problem with putting these ideas together is that it can be difficult for the reader to determine what concepts reflect reality and which offer models to help one visualize energy. However, except for the last chapter, this book does a good job of keeping these ideas separate. The chapters by the medical doctors present the science with minimal intrusion of unscientific concepts. Swami Rama does present science and mythology together, but not so much scrambled together in a confusing mish-mash.

Chapters 2 through 4 use a number of graphics to help present the material. In the middle chapters these largely consist of line drawings to convey the relevant anatomical features or physical actions. The last chapter adds photographs to demonstrate relevant postures. There is a page of recommended readings, but it’s more of an advertisement for other books put out by the Himalayan Institute than the recommendation of books on the science of breath.

I found this book to be educational. It packs a lot of useful information into a concise package and is readable to a layman. I’d recommend it for yoga practitioners and others who are engaged in breath work.

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DAILY PHOTO: Two Camels in the Himalayas [Yoga Folks Will Get This]

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Taken in the summer of 2015 in Kullu District, Himachal Pradesh

Taken in the summer of 2015 in Kullu District, Himachal Pradesh

 

Taken in the Summer of 2016 in Nubra Valley, Ladakh

Taken in the Summer of 2016 in Nubra Valley, Ladakh

5 Ways to Manage Your Email & Social Media Addiction

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Addiction? That seems harsh. It feels like I’m equating a person who has his phone in hand several times every hour with a heroin junky or a nymphomaniac. But, the difference is in the word “Manage.” I wouldn’t write a post entitled “How to Manage your Heroin Addition.” I’d write one called, “Quit that Shit Before it Kills You.”  I’m not suggesting that one needs to do away with checking email and social media. These are great tools that allow us to be much more productive (potentially.)

 

Still, if we’re honest about it, most of us at some point get caught up in the compulsive checking of emails, social media, internet feeds, click-bait sites, sale pages for online retailers, and stats pages. There’s no denying it. A pile of evidence has accumulated about the extent to which people are dismayed by their own e-world activities. I just started reading Kotler and Wheal’s “Stealing Fire” (out February 21, 2017) and they site a study that found that about 2/3rds of those surveyed admitted checking their status page when they woke up in the middle of the night. It might seem off topic for book about altered states of consciousness to report on such matters, but its not because it’s all about the pursuit of a neurochemical bump. (Also, as I’ll discuss, a major problem of this addiction is in keeping one from slipping into the Flow with one’s work, family, or hobby activities.)

 

So, below are five methods I’ve found useful in my own on-going struggle with this addiction.

 

5.) Set a timer:  The problem with this addiction is that when one falls into habitually checking one’s status, one isn’t able to stay on task, and that means that one won’t achieve that elusive state of optimal performance called Flow. One needs time to immerse oneself in a task.

 

When I’m writing and editing, I set a timer, and until it beeps I do nothing off topic. I don’t make it some Herculean effort. I use 60 and 90 minute intervals. After the alarm rings, I can check email, do Tai Chi, get a cup of coffee, or work on my handstands. A longer time period may be more–or less–beneficial for you. (Isaac Asimov was said to only take a break after 5,000 words, but few writers have that in them.) The point is to make it long enough that one can get into a focused state of mind, but not so long that you become distracted and run down.

 

 

4.) Know your high energy period: This point relates to the last because it’s about blocking one’s productive time, and putting the more Flow-demanding activities when one is at one’s best. e.g. Are you a lark or an owl? (i.e. morning person or evening person.)

 

For example, I’m a morning person. This creates a potential problem. While I find it easy to get up with the sun, I’m at risk of saying, “Oh, I’ll just check emails, Facebook, my blog stats, a couple YouTube channels, and then I’ll get to work.” Then it’s noon, and the hours in which my mind was at its very best are gone. From 7pm until I go to sleep is when I should check these feeds because by that time my mind isn’t good for editing or writing tasks that require a high level of attention to detail.

 

 

3.) Go Cold Turkey [for a few days]: Sometimes it’s easier to make changes when one is forced by circumstance to quit. Then one can be more conscientious in resumption of the activity in question. (Moving to India helped me break a lot of bad habits.) If nothing else, this will help to give you confidence that the Earth won’t roll off it’s axis just because you aren’t checking on it twice an hour.

 

I can offer two examples from my own life. Every year my wife and I go on an extended trek in a place where there are no bars and saving batteries is essential. The past couple years, this has been in the Himalayas because we’ve been living in India, but anywhere remote will work. I also did the Vipassana Meditation Course last year. (If you’re interested in the latter, you can read my account of it here.)

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2.) Meditate: Why? Because when you start meditating regularly, you tend to do less and less out of mindless habit. You become conscious of what you’re doing, and that’s the first step to making changes. You also start to become attuned to those very subtle dopamine bumps, and in that way you  aren’t fighting it the impulse blindly. The high of the click is infinitesimally more subtle than taking mind altering substances, and so it’s easy for this all to take place below the waterline (analogizing the mind to an iceberg but instead of the majority of the mass of ice below the waterline, it’s the conscious mind above and the subconscious below.)

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1.) Substitute: In the immortal word of the rock band “The Who.” If your problem is so extensive that it does more than block your attempts to hit the Flow, you may need to find a healthier alternative to wean yourself away.

 

What does one look for in a substitute? If it’s going to fill the same space, it requires immediate feedback and a mix of “fails” mixed in with “successes.” These are the components that make the e-world so addictive. We know immediately whether we got something or not, and that keeps us clicking–not unlike the famous rats that would keep pressing a button for pleasure even to the point of forgetting to eat.

 

Some people may work on games that will help build their brain. (Warning: just don’t trade one unproductive addiction for another.) I’m an advocate of working on physical activities (e.g. trying to develop new capabilities in calisthenics or yoga), but these often involve a demoralizing amount of fails to reach the optimal level (the optimal being that one has enough fails to keep it from being boring but not so many that one is brutalized.)

5 Hyphenated Yogas That Miss the Point of Yoga

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The laissez-faire and easy-going yoga community has spawned some phenomenally ridiculous mergers. I have “yoga” as a term on Google News, and almost every week I get fed a new example. I’m not saying every new approach to yoga is bad, but there’s one disturbing trend–i.e. the distraction yoga.

 

In the title, I refer to “hyphenated yogas,” but what I’m really ranting about is “distraction yogas.” A distraction yoga is one in which an element is brought into the practice so that one doesn’t have to keep one’s mind on one’s breath, alignment, and / or mental state. (Because who wants to think about that shit when one can be thinking “Wow, that kitten sure is cute.” or–believe it or not–“This beer has hoppy undertones.”)

 

Now before I get accused of hating puppies or beer, let me point out that nothing could be further from the truth. What I’m ranting against is the notion that you can marry any two good things and make a great thing. If you don’t believe me, please allow me to dip my nachos in your banana split. See, there are plenty of things that are awesome independently that make abominations when forced together.

 

I’ll include links as I go, lest you think I made this stuff up for hilarity’s sake.

 

5.) Beer Yoga: This is one of the most recent and intriguing distraction yogas. I’m not saying that one needs to follow a strict Vedic approach to life to practice yoga, but–come on–could you stop drinking for a couple hours to pretend your body is a temple (or at least that it’s not sitting in a trailer park with the windows busted out.) Unless “calf slaughter-yoga” catches on, it’s hard to imagine a less yoga-like practice than consuming intoxicants during the practice of yoga. By the way, there’s also a marijuana yoga, but I’ll lump these together as intoxicant yogas.

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4.) Goat Yoga: This is one of many “animal yogas.” Like the others, the point is to have cute creatures around. How it’s supposed to help one’s yoga, I can’t fathom. Actually, I can fathom the suggested logic, probably something to do with calming and engendering feelings of compassion and well-being. But, ultimately it’s distraction by cuteness. Note: you can also do yoga with cats, dogs, horses, and probably river otters.

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3.) Karaoke Yoga: Talk about distraction–nothing better than pounding music and reading a prompter to keep one’s mind off that ache in one’s hamstring.

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2.) Rave Yoga / Club Yoga: This might be a cheat because it’s similar to the previous one on the list, and I’m trying to lump these together so as to not be too repetitive. However, it’s not exactly the same, and is the perfect example of a distraction yoga. (There’s also Harmonica yoga and other musical yogas, but I won’t double-dip anymore.)

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1.) Tantrum Yoga: It wasn’t easy to determine whether I’d include this one or not. On the one hand, it’s not a distraction yoga in the sense that the others are. On the other hand, it takes the award for being least yoga like on the grounds that it’s not about dispassionately witnessing one’s emotional state but rather feeding one’s negative emotions. Note that I don’t group laughter yoga into the same class. I’m not sure whether laughter yoga is beneficial (or to what degree it’s a yoga), but I know that many people benefit from it because it bolsters positive emotional states.

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Now, one may have noticed that there are many seemingly strange (hyphenated) yogas that I haven’t mentioned. I haven’t said a thing about surf board-yoga, stripper pole-yoga, or acro-yoga–and I specifically excluded Laughter Yoga from the wrath of my rant. That’s because this isn’t a rant about people being innovative or non-traditional, it’s about people missing the point of what yoga is supposed to be (i.e. a means to quiet the mind.) I don’t know whether I can see myself doing yoga on a surf board or a stripper pole, but I’m certain that one has to give it one’s full attention–it’s not about finding a distraction to make yoga more palatable to hipsters.

BOOK REVIEW: Light on Pranayama by B.K.S. Iyengar

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Light on Pranayama: The Definitive Guide to the Art of BreathingLight on Pranayama: The Definitive Guide to the Art of Breathing by B.K.S. Iyengar
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Amazon page

 

This is B.K.S. Iyengar’s A-Z guide to breath and breathing exercises (pranayama.) It’s meant to do for pranayama practice what “Light on Yoga” did for asana (postural) practice. That is, it presents all the classic techniques, offers variants to meet individual needs, and provides the background necessary to put pranayama into the context of a balanced yoga practice.

Let me begin by discussing the book’s organization, and this book is organized to the n-th degree. There are parts, sections, chapters, and even the paragraphs are numbered (though–near as I can tell–the latter serves no purpose for a typical reader and may be more for the help of the writer and his assistants. It does create a somewhat biblical scheme, so maybe it was assumed there would be a need to quote this guide “chapter and verse,” as they say in Bible study.)

The bulk of the book consists of the first of two parts, and Part I is divided into three sections. The first of those sections is “The Theory of Pranayama,” and it puts pranayama in the context of yoga’s entirety. If you’ve read other B.K.S. Iyengar titles, much in these nine chapters will be familiar (e.g. discussion of the eight limbs.) However, chapter 4 offers a nice description of the anatomy and physiology of respiration. There are many anatomical drawings and diagrams in it to help convey the complex information. There’s also additional information about the traditional Indian notions of breath encapsulated in the concepts of prana, nadis, and chakras.

Section II is entitled “The Art of Pranayama” and it covers those topics necessary regardless of what technique of breath exercise one is practicing. It includes seated postures, mudras, bandhas, inhalation, exhalation, retention, etc. This section, too, has nine chapters. The final section of Part I describes the various techniques of pranayama. The chapters of this section are arrayed in lists, and they systematically build from the basic technique towards more advanced variations (e.g. by inserting retentions.)

Part II covers meditation (dhyana) and the corpse pose (savasana.) With respect to the former, it suggests how one’s body, mind, and sense organs should be conducted in the act of meditation. In the case of the chapter on corpse pose (after cross-legged seating position, this being the most common position for practice) there’s an extensive look at the details of that pose.

There are a number of helpful features incorporated into the book. In addition to the drawings mentioned in Chapter 4, there are black-and-white photos throughout to clarify the textual instructions. There is also a glossary of Sanskrit terms and an Appendix of courses of pranayama (i.e. recommendations as to how to sequence breathing techniques for optimal results with guidance as to how many sets or repetitions of each to use.)

My major criticism is one I’ve offered about previous books from this author and others. There’s a muddle of science and mythology that makes it hard to know how much weight to give particular instructions. It may be that a given piece of advice (e.g. a contraindication) is based on repeated observations of the physical or mental effects, or on a sound understanding of anatomy & physiology. In which case, it makes sense to heed such advice. However, advice can also be based on myths and the desire to preserve a way of thinking about the human body which is wholly unsupported by evidence. In which case, if one has no dog in the fight to preserve egos, it makes sense to disregard said advice. I suspect the vast majority of statements of what to do (or not to) fall into the first category, but some may fall in the latter, and it’s not easy to tell which is which.

I would recommend this book for students and teachers of yoga. It’s a good reference for one’s pranayama practice.

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