How Much Protein You Need and

Pro Bodybuilders eat about one gram (sometimes even 1.5 grams) of protein per pound of body weight or per pound of non-fat tissue. I'm sure you've seen that the recommended dail

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Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Changing Your Habits with Yoga

by Baxter
Floating Leaf by Melina Meza
Not a day seems to go by that I realize there is some habit I have that I’d love to change. I’m sure that happens to you, too. Fortunately, we have yoga as a great tool for when we want get serious about really changing old, dysfunctional habits. So, what kind of patterns or habits are we talking about? Some examples are:

Physical Habits. Perhaps you discover that the way you hold your posture habitually is resulting in pain, stiffness in your body, or difficulty in doing activities you need or want to do.

Time Management. Perhaps you find your self habitually late for meetings or gatherings, putting your work and relationships at risk.

Cognitive Ability. Perhaps you are becoming more aware of how your recall of names is worsening as you get busier in your daily life, and then notice while on vacation that name recall seems subtly but noticeably better. 


Stress and Emotions. Perhaps you are told by your best friend that he or she is noticing you becoming more emotionally labile and more socially withdrawn as you grapple with some unexpected family crisis around your mother’s worsening physical health. 

Spiritual. Perhaps you become aware of a nagging existential crisis as you grapple with the relentless negative news cycles that you are exposed to and see it tied into your new insomnia. 


But in order to change a habit, you first need to start by personally recognizing an undesirable pattern. This may happen to you while the habit is occurring,  upon reflection after the fact, or after you are informed by an outside observer (friend, family member, co-worker, etc.). Meditation and yoga practice can help you observe such habits and understand the harm they are doing to you, and come to the realization that you are ready to change. This desire to change is the first step in enlisting the tools of yoga towards that goal. 

Your practice can also support you while you are changing your habit. In several earlier posts, Nina wrote about the yogic concept of samskaras (see Changing the Brain's Stressful Habits) or unconscious habits that are particularly embedded in our way of dealing with a whole plethora of situations we encounter both regularly and infrequently. Because of their apparent intractability, changing these kinds of reactive habits seems almost impossible. And yet the experience of many regular yoga practitioners has proven otherwise, and modern research into yoga and meditation has begun to explain how the tools of these traditions can do just that.

On a structural level, we have learned that the human brain has “plasticity,” which allows for new learning and brain growth up until our deaths, replacing the early 20th century belief that the brain did not change much after our early adult years. The establishment of new samskaras or habits that yoga can create takes advantage of this fact. But how? Well, as we have discussed on many occasions (see Life Changer: Understanding Your Autonomic Nervous System), yoga practices can affect the balance of the autonomic nervous system, gradually shifting us from the more reactive Sympathetic branch (Fight, Flight or Freeze) to the calmer Parasympathetic branch (Rest and Digest) of our background operating system. This shift can give us a much-needed pause in our tendency to react quickly with fear and anxiety in stressful moments, so as to have the opportunity to choose our newer habit over our old habitual reactions. A great deal of recent brain research is giving us more and more clues as to how yoga may be doing this.

On the level of form and function, it has been shown that a variety of structural and functional changes occur in the brain as a result of regular yoga and meditation practices that support changing your habits. Certain areas of the brain, such as the prefrontal cortex, become thicker, other areas such as the insula develop deeper depressions in the folds of the brain, and brain’s stem cells are stimulated to differentiate into supportive types of glial cells that increase the insulation of neurons, allowing them to process information more quickly and efficiently. If we just look at the first example of the thickened prefrontal cortex of the brain, the implication is that having more front brain equals a better capacity to inhibit your unwanted behavior, thoughts, actions. 

In other studies, it has been shown that while people are meditating, the brain wave patterns shift to more alpha waves, which assist in filtering out distracting information coming into your brain, thereby improving focus on your task at hand and maybe your memory. Follow-up studies showed that there were was long-term retention of these effects. It has also been demonstrated that an area of the brain that is involved in fear and anxiety, the amygdala, can be down-regulated with regular practice of yoga and meditation. 

And a recent paper Potential self-regulatory mechanisms of yoga for psychological health developed a fairly comprehensive theory as how yoga affects the neurobiology of depression, anxiety, trauma, and addiction, and concluded that it improves “self-regulation” in several ways. There is a top-down mechanism of the brain affecting the body, and a bottom-up mechanism of the body affecting the brain. The authors concluded that yoga promotes self-regulation (which supports changing habits) on the cognitive, emotional, and behavioral levels we introduced above. The changes to the brain I discussed above would seem to support these theories. And, as Ram recently discussed in Vagal Tone and Yoga, yoga improves vagal tone, which supports the bottom-up regulation.

Finally, evidence is mounting that you both get immediate benefits of self-regulatory affects on cognition, emotions, and behavior and that there is sustained change even when you are not on the mat practicing. In other words, you get the goods in real life situations as a benefit of your regular yoga practice.

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Monday, June 29, 2015

Classic Hatha Yoga

by Nina
Yogini by a Stream (1605-40)
12. The Yogi should practice Hatha Yoga in a small room, situated in a solitary place, being 4 cubits square, and free from stones, fire, water, disturbances of all kinds, and in a country where justice is properly administered, where good people live, and food can be obtained easily and plentifully.

13. The room should have a small door, be free from holes, hollows, neither too high nor too low, well plastered with cow-dung and free from dirt, filth and insects. On its outside there should be bowers, raised platform (chabootra), a well, and a compound. These characteristics of a room for Hatha Yogis have been described by adepts in the practice of Hatha.

14. Having seated in such a room and free from all anxieties, he should practice Yoga, as instructed by his guru. — Haṭha Yoga Pradīpikā


Recently I was talking with a yoga therapist about her work, and I asked what type of yoga she used in her work. She replied “classic hatha yoga.” Because I was taken off guard, I’m afraid I didn’t handle that very diplomatically. I told her that there really wasn’t such a thing, unless she was teaching yoga from the 15th century. She looked taken aback for a moment, and then said, well, yoga from the Himalayan Institute (Swami Rama). 

I forget sometimes that not everyone had the same training in yoga history that I did (thank you, Donald). And very few people have actually read the Haṭha Yoga Pradīpikā, the classic Sanskrit manual on hatha yoga written by Svāmi Svātmārāma, a disciple of Swami Groakhnath, in the fifteenth centruy. Although on our blog, we have generally referred to the Bhagavad Gita and the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali as the most important scriptures, it is definitely worth taking a look at the Haṭha Yoga Pradīpikā as well as you may be quite surprised. This is because there are quite a number of myths about yoga circulating in the yoga community, and despite there being quite a bit of information available about the history of yoga (not to mention original scriptures), the myths continue to be propagated.

So I thought that today I’d introduce this short book to you and describe a bit of what’s in it. There are only four chapters.

The first chapter does focus on asana, saying, “Being the first accessory of Hatha Yoga, asana is described first. It should be practiced for gaining steady posture, health and lightness of body.” However, only 15 poses are named and described in the book. The first eleven are described only briefly: Svastikasana (auspicious posture), Gomukhasana (cow face posture, legs), Virasana (hero posture), Kurmasana (tortoise posture), Kukkutasana (cock posture), Uttana karmasana (intense tortoise posture), Dhanurasana (bow posture), Matsyasana (fish posture), Paschimottanasana (intense west side stretch posture), Mayurasana (peacock posture), and Savasana (corpse posture).

The scripture goes on to say: 

Shiva taught 84 asanas. Of these the first four being essential ones.”

The essential poses, which are described in detail, are: Siddhasana (Perfect posture), Padmasana (Lotus posture), Simhasana (Lion posture), and Bhadrasana (fortunate posture).


It is interesting to notice that there is to mention of any standing poses or Headstand/Shoulderstand. Savasana is there, however! If you’d like to learn more about more of what “original” yoga was like, see Richard Rosen’s wonderful book Original Yoga. Richard has even provided a sequence of original yoga poses here: original-yoga-full-sequence.html.

The second chapter discusses cleansing practices, prana, and breath control (pranayama).

1. Posture becoming established, a Yogi, master of himself, eating salutary and moderate food, should practice pranayama, as instructed by his guru.

2. Respiration being disturbed, the mind becomes disturbed. By restraining respiration, the Yogi gets steadiness of mind.

3. So long as the (breathing) air stays in the body, it is called life. Death consists in the passing out of the (breathing) air. It is, therefore, necessary to restrain the breath.

4. The breath does not pass through the middle channel (susumna), owing to the impurities of the nadis. How can then success be attained, and how can there be the unmani avastha.

5. When the whole system of the nadis which is full of impurities, is cleaned, then the Yogi becomes able to control the Prana.

6. Therefore, Pranayama should be performed daily with satwika buddhi (intellect free from raja and tama or activity and sloth), in order to drive out the impurities of the susumna.


The third chapter discusses subtle physiology and techniques, such as the seals (mudra) and locks (bandha), by which the kundalini can be awakened. 

1. As the chief of the snakes is the support of the earth with all the mountains and forests on it, so all the Tantras (Yoga practices) rest on the Kundalini. (The Vertebral column.)

2. When the sleeping Kundalini awakens by favor of a guru, then all the lotuses (in the six chakras or centers) and all the knots are pierced through.

3. Susumna (Sunya Padavi) becomes a main road for the passage of Prana, and the mind then becomes free from all connections (with its objects of enjoyments) and Death is then evaded.

4. Susumna, Sunya, Padavi, Brahma Randhra, Maha Patha, Smasana, Sambhavi, Madhya Marga, are names of one and the same thing.

5. In order, therefore, to awaken this goddess, who is sleeping at the entrance of Brahma Dwara (the great door), mudras should be practiced well.


The concluding chapter deals with the higher stages of yogic practice.

1. Salutation to the Guru, the dispenser of happiness to all, appearing as Nada, Vindu and Kali. One who is devoted to him, obtains the highest bliss.

2. Now I will describe a regular method of attaining to Samadhi, which destroys death, is the means for obtaining happiness, and gives the Brahmananda.


The text quite short, and you can find a translation of the complete text at hatha-yoga-pradipika.htm. How about you? Have you read this book? And what did you think of it?

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Saturday, June 27, 2015

Balance Pose of the Week: Warrior 4

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Friday, June 26, 2015

Friday Q&A: Research on Yoga for Children with Autism

Q: I was wondering if you have any research on yoga for children with special needs especially autism? This is my area of expertise and I teach yoga to children with special needs but also as an behavioural therapist would be great to support my work with research. Many thanks.

A: Yes! There is a growing body of research in the field of yoga therapy in general. An estimated 500 peer-reviewed studies have been published to date. A fraction of them address yoga for children and, as is the case with all research in this field, larger clinical trials are needed. But it’s fun to peek into this emerging field and see that there is indeed research being published to support our valuable work with children. 

There are a few papers specifically on yoga for children with autism, or what is now called Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The International Journal of Yoga Therapy published a paper by Molly Kenny in 2002 Integrated Movement Therapy™: Yoga-Based Therapy as a Viable and Effective Intervention for Autism Spectrum and Related Disorders. In this paper Kenny states that her approach “…has had especially consistent and remarkable results with children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorders.” Read more about her methods and findings here: samaryacenter.org/assets/ijyt2002.pdf.

A study published in November of 2011 is Relaxation Response-Based Yoga Improves Functioning in Young Children with Autism: A Pilot Study. In the conclusion, the study reports, “Robust changes” and, “Unexpectedly, the post-treatment scores on the Atypicality scale of the BASC-2, which measures some of the core features of autism, changed significantly (p=0.003).” Many other papers cited this paper, so those who are interested can find themselves down a rabbit hole of research. 

Kristie Patten Koenig, Anne Buckley-Reen and Satvika Garg published a research article in the American Journal of Occupational Therapy in September 2012 Efficacy of the Get Ready to Learn Yoga Program Among Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders: A Pretest–Posttest Control Group Design.  Children in this study received this specific program daily for 16 weeks as part of their standard morning routine. In the abstract they report, “This study demonstrates that use of daily classroom wide yoga interventions has a significant impact on key classroom behaviors among children with ASD.”

And finally, a study published in the International Journal of Yoga in January of 2010 Application of integrated yoga therapy to increase imitation skills in children with autism spectrum disorder indicates similar positive benefits. Children with ASD tend to socialize less, make less eye contact and imitate others less than their typically developing peers. This study looked at yoga as a modality for improving theses skills. They concluded from this study that their particular program of yoga “…may offer benefits as an effective tool to increase imitation, cognitive skills and social-communicative behaviors in children with ASD. In addition, children exhibited increased skills in eye contact, sitting tolerance, non-verbal communication and receptive skills to verbal commands related to spatial relationship.”

For those interested in further research, type in “yoga” and “autism” and “children” into either pubmed or scholar.google.com. It can be tedious to read through dry academic publications, yet it’s also inspiring to see how much attention is being given to these three words together.

Each child is unique and there is no “one-size-fits-all” formula to be captured in a study. However, these research papers from the field show that there is interest as well as benefit in yoga for children with autism.

—Mira
Mira Binzen is a registered yoga teacher with Yoga Alliance at the 500-hour level (E-RYT, RCYT) and a certified iRest Yoga Nidra teacher, and is a professional Integrative Yoga Therapist (1,000-hour level certificate). She holds a degree in Child Psychology from the University of Minnesota's Institute of Child Development, with specialized study in Communication Disorders. As co-founder of Global Family Yoga, she he has been training people to teach yoga to children since 2002. For more information about Mira, see her website mirabinzen.com.


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Thursday, June 25, 2015

The Benefits and Drawbacks of Yoga as a System: Georg Feuerstein Interviewed by Richard Rosen, Part 3

When Georg Feuerstein died in 2012, I wrote an appreciation of him, Georg Feuerstein, 1947-2012, saying how much his work meant to me and how, even though I’d never met him, I considered him one of my teachers. Now I have learned of the existence of a very long, unpublished interview with him that Richard Rosen did way back in 1996. Richard has now published the interview in full on his website richardrosenyoga.com, but he has give me permission to include excerpts from it our blog.

Here’s the third excerpt, which is about the risks of making an ideology of yoga. Personally, I think Georg's overall message here is very important. How about this for a quote?

"If a system helps you grow, wonderful. If the system closes you down, shuts down your experience and your potential for further development, look at it and say, “Thank you very much, it’s an ideology. I don’t need it.”

—Nina

RR: I’m always trying to impress on my students that classical yoga is a system; it’s a very logical and beautifully thought out way of seeing the world. I’m wondering what the benefits and the drawbacks are of a system. I’m thinking of Krishnamurti, who said, “Truth is a pathless land.”

GF: My take on this is that if we “have a system,” the risk of making an ideology out of it far outweighs the benefits of a system. Because we always reify everything, we always think, “This is how reality is.” All philosophical systems are simply convenient devices to look at something. In our time we can perhaps appreciate that more than any other time, because we’re confronted with so many different systems, and we realize that none of them are the truth. Historically we have more because of our higher level of education than in past centuries—we have more an appreciation that none of these systems amount to reality.

RR: You’ve mentioned in one of your books that we’re more aware now, because of the discoveries of modern physics, how relative all these systems are.

GF: We’re viewing reality through our own lenses, thinking it is reality, but what we see is not reality, what we see is a filtered image. I think the benefit of some system like yoga darshana is simply that it gives us a plausible structure for understanding the yogic process. If we anxiously cling to the idea that there are endless, numberless purushas in liberation, and then there is prakriti separate from all of that, it’s an ideology, it’s not reality. I would say the same thing about Vedanta, if we believe that liberation is the melting of the individual self with the ultimate Self, it’s also just a way of expressing something that’s not like that.

RR: Because you can’t really put an ineffable experience like that into words—it doesn’t translate.

GF: You can’t. We need to have some crutches, so from my point of view it’s good to look for the crutches that make sense to you. If that crutch happens to be a particular yoga philosophy, fine. If that crutch happens to be Christian theology, fine. If it happens to be Heidegger, or Husserl, or Jung, fine, no problem. As long as the system you have can reasonably accommodate the experiences you encounter and can reasonably accommodate possible experiences. If a system like Materialism excludes a whole range of possibilities—dismisses those experiences as nonsensical, or false—you exclude yourself from the experience. Then you diminish your own being. If a system helps you grow, wonderful. If the system closes you down, shuts down your experience and your potential for further development, look at it and say, “Thank you very much, it’s an ideology. I don’t need it.”

RR:
So a system is a guide.


GF: It’s a guide. There is another criteria: if a teacher insists that you swallow lock, stock and barrel his particular brand of teaching without you being allowed to critically examine anything—like the famous saying over the door of Rajneesh’s ashram, something like “Leave your mind with your coat outside”—this is already an indicator to beware, you are expected to be swallowed up by an ideology. You are not engaging the spiritual process. The spiritual process will not demand of you to take on any philosophy; on the contrary, the spiritual process will show the ultimate irrelevance of all philosophies, all theories, all concepts. The truth is pathless, but there is a path to the truth. There has to be a movement to it recognizing what the truth is, and that movement is structured in different ways by different traditions.

In Tibetan Buddhism you have the marvelous Lam Rim teaching, which are the stages of the path, a highly developed, almost formulaic, system of understanding each aspect of the path, far more complex than the eight limbs of classical yoga. As a student it makes perfect sense to encounter this, but it doesn’t mean to say that this is reality. Reality is nirvana; it’s beyond anything that can “blow,” it’s a blow out. [laughs]

I would recommend that if people do practice yoga, they have to practice within a context in which it has been transmitted for millennia. That context is highly diversified, which I have always tried to show in my books. There’s so many yogic approaches, so many different traditions, schools. Unless a yoga practitioner encounters that to some degree, and is enriched by that, there will always be the delusion that the way I’m doing it is the way.

If you, say, join a Bhakti cult, then everything suddenly is filtered through that lens. This may work for some people; it wouldn’t work for me. I would always want to have an overview. This Bhakti approach, this Jnana approach, this Karma approach, all the other approaches, well, what do they share? Really then be informed more by the commonality between traditions than the differences. Appreciate the differences and value them as something that allows the practitioners of that tradition to propel themselves on the path. Essential crutches on the path, but they don’t necessarily have universal validity.

RR: So take on the system, but don’t immerse yourself. Keep your perspective.

GF: Keep your perspective, the understanding that we need crutches but ultimately we need to throw them away. Whatever concepts we use are Band-Aids; we need them because otherwise we’d bleed to death. We put them on, we stop the bleeding, but after we healed, we should take it off. “I never was sick! It was an illusion.” [laughs]

Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Vagal Tone and Yoga

by Ram
Have you ever noticed that a segment of our population consists of people whose body, brain, and mind are more stable and robust under all kinds of situations? These folks are not perturbed by opulence or adversity, and can maintain their equanimity during excitement, enthusiasm, and eagerness or dull, tragic, and dispassionate moments. These individuals tend to be healthier and more resilient, and are classified as people with “high vagal tone.” Such people are more resilient under stress, and can easily shift from an excited state to a relaxed state and vice versa without getting unduly perturbed. These individuals not only easily wade through stressful situations, but they tend to have good resistance power and are healthier. 

In contrast, people with low vagal tone are more sensitive to stress and can easily fall prey to disease. They tend to have challenges such as weak digestion, fluctuating heart rate, and difficulty managing emotions. Furthermore, people with low vagal tone are easily perturbed, have weak digestion, and frequently suffer from physical, mental, and emotional disturbances. Low vagal tone is correlated with such health conditions as depression, anxiety, chronic stress, and pain. 

In summary, a higher vagal tone is linked to physical and psychological wellbeing. A low vagal tone index is linked to inflammation, negative moods, loneliness, and heart attacks. So what exactly is vagal tone? Vagal tone defines the functional status of the vagus nerve and is the degree of activity within the parasympathetic nervous system. The vagus nerve, which is the 10th cranial nerve and the largest of the cranial nerves, relays information between the brain and other internal organs. It starts at the base of the skull and innervates the respiratory and digestive systems thereby connecting these areas with the nervous system. From the base of the brain, the vagus nerve extends all the way down to the neck, chest, and abdomen, and provides information about the state of the body's organs to the central nervous system. Thus, the vagus nerve is responsible for a myriad of tasks, including heart rate, breathing, respiration, and digestion, peristalsis of gut, small intestine and colon, sweating, muscle movements in the mouth, speech, and hearing. It’s no wonder that optimal physiological functioning is a direct reflection of the functional status of the vagus nerve. 

Better prognosis is predicted by optimal vagal tone especially in people who are recovering from chronic diseases. Furthermore, the immune strength and resilience of an individual directly depends on the activity of the vagal nerve. The vagus nerve constantly sends sensory information about the state of the lower body organs to the brain. Gut feelings and instincts are emotional perceptions transferred to the brain through the vagus nerve. Thus, when we use the phrase “gut feeling,” we are unconsciously referring to “the status of the vagus nerve.” 

How does all this relate to yoga? Several research studies suggest that yogic practices such as pranayama, or breathing techniques, can significantly increase vagal tone and improve symptoms of a variety of conditions, including diabetes, chronic pain, anxiety, and depression. In a paper Effects of Yoga on the Autonomic Nervous System, Gamma-aminobutyric-acid, and Allostasis in Epilepsy, Depression, and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, a group of researchers hypothesized what may be the underlying physiological mechanism(s) by which yoga impacts the vagal tone and thus the body and brain. After gathering evidence from previously published literature and analyzing all the data, this group hypothesized that yoga helps regulate the nervous system by modulating the vagal tone thereby reducing the “allostatic load” (allostatic load is the cumulative wear and tear on the body or the total stress that we accumulate over time).

The authors believe that uncontrolled chronic stress:
  1. Creates an imbalance of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) by decreasing the activity of the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS controls body process during normal situations, and is sometimes called the Rest and Digest response) and increasing the activity of the sympathetic nervous system (SNS prepares the body to deal with stressful situations and is also referred to as Fight or Flight response). See Understanding Your Autonomic Nervous System for information.
  2. Lowers the activity of gamma amino-butyric acid (GABA) system, the primary inhibitory neurotransmitter system (GABA plays a central role in suppressing excess neural activity throughout the nervous system). See Anxiety, Yoga, and Brain Chemistry for information.
  3. Elevates the allostatic load. 
Yoga-based practices stimulate the vagal tone thereby increasing the activity of the PNS and GABA systems and reducing the allostatic load. When it comes to specific diseases/ conditions, the authors state that that depression, epilepsy, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and chronic pain, which are all characterized by low vagal tone, high stress and low GABA activity, show improvement with yoga-based interventions. The researchers believe that the reason yoga-based interventions help is because of its positive impact on vagal tone. These observations suggest that conditions/diseases with an underlying reduced vagal tone can be corrected by suitable yoga-based intervention programs, resulting in amelioration of disease symptoms. 

While we wait for more research studies that will shed light on how yoga is effective in alleviating mental and physical health problems, let’s continue our abhyasa of yoga!

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Tuesday, June 23, 2015

The Spiritual Intent of the Teachings: Georg Feuerstein Interviewed by Richard Rosen, Part 2

Matsyendranath
When Georg Feuerstein died in 2012, I wrote an appreciation of him, Georg Feuerstein, 1947-2012, saying how much his work meant to me and how, even though I’d never met him, I considered him one of my teachers. Now I have learned of the existence of a very long, unpublished interview with him that Richard Rosen did way back in 1996. Richard has now published the interview in full on his website richardrosenyoga.com, but he has give me permission to include excerpts from it our blog.

Here’s the second excerpt, which is about what we will miss if we just focus on practicing the asanas.

—Nina

GF: Take the asanas from their spiritual context—I would use the term advisedly—is fateful, because it shortchanges the student who thinks they are doing yoga. Whereas there is this vast background that is really designed to uplift the person from their present state of ordinariness of confusion of basic human suffering and need. Uplift them from that into something far more sublime and give them a vision of who they could be. And it is reducing yoga to a level . . . that’s what it moved away from. That is why it was designed. 

Health.... I have nothing against cultivating health. People say, “You are down on exercise.” I’m not. It is important to cultivate that, especially if you feel the need for it. It is important to cultivate in the same way an intelligent mind to be informed about what is going on, not just live like a zombie, but be up on events, see what this life is about.

But more important than any of that is to see who we are in spiritual terms and to do something about that. Because without that there is no way we can relate to the rest of it in any deep sensitive way.

RR: It just becomes an exercise without any firm basis.

GF: It just becomes a shell. You are exercising the shell; you are training the dog. And you salivate when the bell rings. But beyond that, there is nothing. There is no sense that behind that brain there is a great mind. Behind that great mind there is a great reality. People are not told about that. So the hunger for something more remains. And since there is no pointer in the right direction they will continue to look for happiness in the wrong places. And continue with their cycle of suffering.

When you have understood enough about the traditions, then there is a desire growing in yourself to reduce others’ suffering, like you want to reduce your own. And be a compassionate presence in your work, in your life, in your family life.

RR: I like the way you always relate the teachings to a larger picture, not just yourself you’re concerned with. It’s other people; in fact, it is the whole planet.

GF: We are everyone. The sooner we understand that, the better. Because right now, even our consumption pattern, we live in total isolation and delusion. We think that this is what we deserve. We deserve this great lifestyle we have in America. By the way, not everybody has it in America—there are many, many hungry people on the streets who used to have good jobs—but I think we delude ourselves into believing that we deserve any of that. We delude ourselves into believing that this is how it is pretty much around the world. Pretty much around the world is hunger and frustration. You just need to go to any country in Africa and Asia and you know you encounter what is really happening.

If we think in isolation, we will suffer isolation. We cannot grow. We need to have a sense of our place in the midst of things. To be able to pick up a paperback on the Rig Veda or the Gita or the Upanishad or Kashmir Shaivism is a tremendous privilege. It is not just plunking down your money to get a book. It is a privilege to have that book, to get that teaching. You don’t have to travel for six months to find that teacher who holds the teaching.

RR:
You don’t have to prove yourself.

GF: You don’t have to prove yourself in pain sitting in front of the door [laughs] and the teacher says come back in a month. So I think the quicker we understand that all of us are in this together and that this realm we are in is not a pretty sight. There are nice moments, but on the whole, it is not a pretty sight. We must have not only responsibility for our own upliftment, but for everyone else, because on our own, we are not going to make it. That is part of the process. We have to care for everyone.

RR: That gives a more universal definition to yoga, to the word union, you are aware of your union with everything around you.

GF: It is not a traditional definition. The yogi has always been primarily concerned with his/her own liberation, but the whole moral laws of Yama are how the yogi relates to the environment, the social environment, and there is always profound concern. The concern is to manifest higher values in the social relationships, especially non-harming. How little we respect that law, in so many ways. Even going on the bus and not yielding your chair to someone in need. We just ignore others. Or you walk by someone obviously unhappy, you give a smile, even if you don’t know the person, you know? Give a grin, nod, whatever. This is non-harming. Anything else...if we withhold our own energy we have already failed in the spiritual process.

RR: I remember you making the point about ahimsa, that it is a positive force. It is not just withdrawing and avoiding violence, but it is something that you actively do.

GF: We extend our own life energy to others. I think that in the ideal of the bodhisattva that has become a nicely polished diamond. In previous teachings it was largely implied. But there it was made the idea of the practice, that, yes, we must strive for liberation or enlightenment ourselves.

We must do that—that is the spiritual process—but who do we do it? We do it to uplift everyone, because we cannot bear the idea that all these beings are related to us. We are related to them. We only look at our own family nowadays, and even then…. But in the past, there was more of a sense of belonging to a larger group, whether a clan, the village. Now we don’t have that. We isolate and exclude. In spiritual practice we must then come back—especially in our times—come back more to a sense of “we are everybody.”

To read more of this interview, see Interview with Georg Feuerstein.


Richard Rosen is a yoga teacher and writer from Berkeley, California. He is President of the board of the Yoga Dana Foundation, which supports Northern California teachers bringing yoga to underserved communities. Richard has written three books for Shambhala: The Yoga of Breath: A Step-by-Step Guide to Pranayama (2002), Pranayama: Beyond the Fundamentals (2006), and Original Yoga: Rediscovering Traditional Practices of Hatha Yoga (2012). He also recorded a 7-disc set of instructional CDs for Shambhala titled The Practice of Pranayama: An In-Depth Guide to the Yoga of Breath (2010). For more information about Richard and the workshops he teaches internationally, see http://www.richardrosenyoga.com/.

Georg Feuerstein, Ph.D. became interested in Yoga in his early teens and studied Yoga philosophy and history ever after that . He did his postgraduate studies in England and authored over 50 books—not all on Yoga. His major works are: The Encyclopedia of Yoga and Tantra (Shambhala 2011), The Yoga Tradition (Hohm Press 2008), Yoga Morality (Hohm Press, 2007), The Deeper Dimension of Yoga (Shambhala), and The Bhagavad-Gītā: A New Translation (Shambhala 2011). For more about Georg and the work that is continued by Brenda Feuerstein, see traditionalyogastudies.com.

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Monday, June 22, 2015

Photo Contest: Open for All People Over 50!

by Nina
Baxter Bell, Age 54, by Melina Meza
The YFHA photo contest (see Photo Contest!) is now open to men as well as women. To be eligible, your photo must meet the following specifications:
  1. Portray a woman, a man, or people over 50 doing a yoga pose (of any level of difficulty), meditating, or practicing a mudra. No restorative poses or chair yoga at this time. Any body type or race (diversity is encouraged!). 
  2. Be a digital photograph (or scan) in a reasonably high resolution and in focus.
  3. Have a reasonably attractive physical surrounding (either outside or inside). So no messy rooms, even if we sometimes do yoga in messy rooms. Pets are allowed (though I have a limit on how many cats I can take). Urban environments are as good as nature shots.
  4. If the photo is a single person doing a yoga pose, the alignment must be one that I consider to be healthy. And no body parts can be cropped off, unless in an artistic fashion.
  5. Be aesthetically pleasing.
  6. You must either be in the photo or have taken the photo (that way, I can have your official permission to use it).
Here are some examples of winning photos submitted to me: 
Perry Chattler, Age 60
Vincent, Age 51, Copyright by Sara Bennet 2013
Richard Rosen, Age 67, by Melina Meza
This is a rolling contest  and there is no deadline. I'll keep taking and using photos as long as I'm blogging. So take your time and submit a quality photograph rather than just sending in whatever snaps you have on your phone. I'm going to use the same standards for photos of men that I use for photos of women. Typical reasons a photo is rejected include:

  • Photo is too small (resolution is too low), so it will be blurry on the blog.
  • Photo is out of focus, partly out of focus, and/or lighting is poor, so person is in shadow or whole photo is too dark.
  • Figure is too small within the background, (you will look like an ant on the blog, even though, yes, that mountain is really pretty).
  • A body part or parts is awkwardly cropped off (where are your feet and/or fingertips?), or your face isn't showing in a pose when it normally would (the pose was taken from an odd angle or you are wearing a hat and sunglasses).
  • The facial expression seems unhappy, uncomfortable, or pained.
  • The environment is messy (props, plastic water bottles, bits and pieces of other students in the classroom).
  • Alignment of the pose looks unhealthy in my opinion, for example, the head and neck are not in line with the spine.
  • The photo doesn't feel inspiring or uplifting to me. (Hey, if we want to get positive images of older people doing yoga out there, the images need to feel positive.)

Although I don't by any means require professional photos, typically a quick snapshot done with your phone in a classroom or out on a hike—unless it is really special—isn't going to make the grade. Trust me, I've seen a lot of them at this point. So if you want your images to be seriously considered, take some time in creating them and take multiple shots of a single pose to get a good one. Arrange the setting and move that plastic water bottle somewhere else. Have someone look at your alignment and give you some cues. Take off your hat and sunglasses and smile. Or, at least relax your face.

To submit your photos, you can either email them to me (see Contact Us) or submit via our Yoga for Healthy Aging Facebook Page. There is no deadline because you will not be competing against each other. Multiple submissions allowed. All photos that meet the specifications will be winners!

The prizes? I will use these photos in our posts, with your name, age, and a web address, if desired. I hope there will be a huge number of prizes.

And you should feel free to “borrow” these photographs and give them even more exposure, as long as you give appropriate credits.

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Saturday, June 20, 2015

Balance Pose of the Week: 4 Corners

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Friday, June 19, 2015

Friday Q&A: Dynamic and Static Balancing Options

Joy Sassoon, Age 60
Q: A number of us here in VA are curious about the specific rationale for the balance sequences Baxter shared with us and is sharing with the world on a weekly basis - being first static and then dynamic. I've read Baxter's articles from the dates below and understand that “the main goal of balance training is to continually increase your client’s awareness of his or her balance threshold or limits of stability by creating controlled instability.” .... (Dec 17, 2014, Jan 26, 2015, Mar 3, 2015) ... but am curious what the underlying principles/theories for first holding a pose and then moving dynamically between a couple or more poses.

Is it the "work" the body is doing while static that is helpful (the nervous system, eyes, vestibular system, etc.) in finding balance moment to moment before challenging ourselves with movement into and out of a set of poses? From Mr. Desikachar (and others) the "dynamic then static" model has been so engrained here. Of course there may be other reasons to practice "static then dynamic"; a number of us here are curious specifically how this works for keeping and improving balance.

A: This is a great question, and one I tried to highlight in my post News on Balance, Falling, and Yoga on integrating new concepts on improving balance a while back. And the reader is correct that I am recommending a different sequencing approach to the order dynamic mini-vinyasa to static asana that TKV Desikachar recommends in his book The Heart of Yoga. Before I get why I recommend my to doing a static balance pose first, followed by a dynamic mini-vinyasa version, let’s look at what Desikachar has to say about his recommendations:

“There are 2 ways of practicing asana: The dynamic practice repeats the movement into the asana and out again in rhythm with the breath. In static practice we move into an out of the pose in the same way as with the dynamic practice, but instead of staying in continual movement with the breath, we hold the pose for a certain number of breath cycles [with a certain chosen focus]. Dynamic movements allow the body to get used to the position gently and gradually. For this reason it is always better to practice an asana dynamically first, before attempting to hold it.

“A dynamic performance of asanas therefore not only helps to prepare for difficult static postures but also intensifies the practice of a particular asana or gives it special direction.”


And for quite awhile now I have been practicing and teaching in this way, and finding it useful and generally appropriate. Then I came across this article Integrated Balance Training by the National Academy of Sports Medicine, with their modern recommendations about improving balance specifically. (Although technical in some places, I highly recommend teachers out there to try diving into this paper.) And I am so interested in learning as much as I can about improving balance and helping my students to reduce their risk of falls over time, that I was intrigued to see what they had to add to my understanding.


In this paper, the authors recommend a practical set of steps for a given exercise session: the exercises progress from slow to fast, simple to complex, known to unknown, low force to high force, static to dynamic, two arms to one arm, two legs to one leg, stable to unstable, eyes open to eyes closed, and, most importantly, quality before quantity. Their recommendations utilize a particular training model called the Optimum Performance Training (OPT) model. The program includes three distinct phases:
  • Level 1: Stabilization
  • Level 2: Strength
  • Level 3: Power 
The first level of this training involves stabilization, which is achieved via static held positions, and likely why they recommend starting with static poses and then sequencing dynamic after. The dynamic mini-vinyasa requires more strength and power, but build on the stabilization achieved with the static poses.

So, in making these suggestions to you and using these techniques in my balance videos, I am attempting to meld some modern sports medicine concepts around improving balance with some longer standing sequencing guidelines from the yoga tradition. If I were you, I would utilize the dynamic to static recommendations when designing a balanced asana class, and if I were going to focus on a few balance poses or practices, I would then utilize the static to dynamic option recommended by the NASM for those specific poses within my sequence. And, of course, I would track the results of these sequencing choices for over time. And if the static to dynamic approach to balancing poses proves helpful for improving functional balance (both static situations and real life dynamic situations), I’d consider using that approach for balance poses as part of my sequencing options.

—Baxter


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Thursday, June 18, 2015

6 Ways to Foster Brain Health with Yoga

by Nina and Ram
Mademoiselle Ferrand Meditating on Newton by de La Tour
In his post Mental Exercise, Yoga, and the Perfect Brain, Ram mentioned six basic ways you can help prevent age-associated memory loss and foster brain health. Today I thought we'd look a bit closer at each of those ways, so if brain health is a concern of yours (and, really, who isn’t concerned about this?), you can target your yoga practice to help support your brain health as well as your overall health in general. 

1. Engaging in Physical Activity. Engaging in regular aerobic activity leads to structural changes in the brain that result in improved cognition. Physical exercise increases nerve branching and in some cases triggers regeneration of new nerve cells, especially in the memory centers of the brain. Physical exercises help you learn new things, and to be more alert and attentive owing to the structural changes. Scientists believe that physical exercise triggers increased blood flow to the brain. The greater the blood flow is, the more oxygen and other important nutrients that reach the brain, which may explain the cognitive improvements associated with exercise. Physical exercises will also help maintain optimal blood pressure, control diabetes and lower cholesterol levels, all of which are potential mental risk factors.

A regular, well-rounded asana practice provides an excellent form of exercise, fostering strength, flexibility, balance, and agility. But targeting cardiovascular health with your practice could be especially helpful for brain health (see About Yoga for Heart Health And Circulation). As Ram says, “What is good for the heart is good for the brain.” After all, your brain is one of the important organs of your body, just as your heart is.

2. Staying Mentally Active. Just as exercise and physical activity prompt muscles to grow stronger, mental exercise tones thinking skills and memory. Mental exercises maintain, build, and remodel neural network connectivity, trigger production of nerve growth factors that increase neuronal branching, and stimulate new synthesis of neural cells. The brain actively grows and rewires itself in response to stimulation and learning. Our brain grows stronger from use and from being challenged. This is called brain plasticity. Plasticity is the reason why stroke patients can relearn skills after a brain damage and also explains how a healthy part of the brain might assume the job of a damaged part. The brain is continually morphing/re-sculpting itself in response to new experience and learning. The greater the neural density, stronger and more resilient is the brain and mind that keeps the physical body strong, in turn promotes healthy aging.

According to Baxter’s post How Yoga Sequences are Brain Aerobics, to be a “brain aerobic” an activity: needs to engage your attention, must break a routine activity in an unexpected, nontrivial way, and must involve more than one of the senses. So practicing yoga asana mindfully, which not only engages your attention but involves more than one of your senses, can meet all three of these requirements if you intentionally keep your practice varied (see Practicing Yoga Mindfully and Stuck in a Rut?). Meditation and pranayama can also meet these three requirements, again, if you vary the practices. See How Yoga Sequences Are Brain Aerobics for more ideas. And, of course, simply learning new yoga poses and practices, and studying the scriptures (see The Power of Svadhyaya, Part 2) provide excellent learning opportunities.

3. Being Socially Active. Social engagement reduces the risk of isolation and depression. Remaining socially active also supports brain health and delays the onset of dementia. Because being socially active requires that you plan, participate, engage, and be attentive and alert, it qualifies as mental exercise. Social engagement is also a learning exercise for the brain and mind. As with other mentally stimulating activities, social activities help build up healthy brain cells and the connections between them.

Attending yoga classes and participating in your local yoga community is a good way to stay socially active as well as to keep your practice going strong. See 8 Ways to Join the Yoga Community for more ideas. You can even practice yoga with one or more friends (see Practicing Yoga with a Friend).

4. Eating a Healthy Diet. High blood pressure, obesity, diabetes and high cholesterol are potential mental risk factors and increase the risk of dementia. A healthy diet helps to keep these factors at optimal levels. Some of the consequences of chronological aging are increased oxidative stress, free radical production, and uncontrolled inflammation that not only hasten aging but also trigger rapid brain aging. A healthy diet soaks up free radicals and brings down inflammation, thus preventing brain decay. Eating a healthy diet promotes good blood flow to the organ system, which includes the brain.

Practicing yoga stress management techniques improves digestion, prevents stress eating, and reduces cortisol levels. Cultivating mindfulness with meditation and asana practiced mindfully can help make you more aware of what your body really needs (and what it doesn’t). And using your meditation practice to strengthen you will power will help support you in changing your eating habits. See Yoga for Healthy Eating: An Overview for further information. 

5. Managing Chronic Stress. Chronic stress (see About Stress: Acute vs. Chronic) causes havoc not just to the body but also to the brain. Chronic stress brings with it several health issues, including constant fear, worry, anxiety, depression, and memory deficits. 

While stress hormones do sharpen attention and spur us to take needed action, we are not designed to handle high levels of stress hormones day after day, year after year. In the brain these stress hormones weaken blood vessels, kill off neurons, and shrink the hippocampus, resulting in memory loss. Chronic stress also speeds up the normal aging of other cells that in turn affects normal structure and function of the brain.

Using yoga’s stress management techniques help you dial down stress levels when you are suffering from chronic stress (see The Relaxation Response and Yoga). Cultivating equanimity in the face of life’s difficulties will help you from getting stressed out in the first place (see 7 Ways to Cultivate Equanimity with Yoga). 

6. Sleeping Well. Lack of sleep or sleep deprivation triggers accelerated mental decline. Sleep appears necessary for our nervous systems to work properly. Too little sleep leaves us drowsy and unable to concentrate, and leads to impaired memory and physical performance. If sleep deprivation continues, hallucinations and mood swings may develop. Just as sleep gives the body time to heal itself, sleep allows neurons to lower down their neurochemical activity and repair themselves.

Without sleep, neurons become “fatigued” and begin to malfunction. Sleep helps to clear out toxins from the brain as well as from the body (see Sleep, Alzheimer's Disease, and Yoga). Finally, the brain gets exposed to thousands of stimuli through the five senses, and sleep helps to reduce chaos and bring order to the information flow, helping to put an order to these information inputs and archive them as memories. 

Yoga can be really helpful for improving sleep because you can use it to manage your stress levels and reduce anxiety, both of which are frequent causes of insomnia (see The Relaxation Response and Yoga and 10 Ways to Soothe Anxiety with Yoga). If pain or physical discomfort is keeping you awake, you can use yoga pain management techniques (see Yoga for Pain Management). And soothing practices, such as restorative yoga and simple, calming forms of pranayama, can help you if you wake in the middle of the night. See Yoga for Insomnia, Part 1, Day to Night: Yoga for Better Sleep, and Five Tips for Better Sleep for further information.

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