A Beautiful Inner Support System

by Nina

Ladder by Marie Lossky
(@Marie.Lossky on Instagram)

“Sometimes we don’t fully appreciate the progress or importance of our practices, but there will be a time when our practices show up and show their strength and depth. So practicing both in the times that are easeful and in the times that are not creates this beautiful inner support system that is there for us when things get really rough.” —Jill Satterfield  

The interview Recovering from Heart Surgery that I did with Jill Satterfield recently got me thinking. There were definitely some gems of wisdom in there! And in particular the beautiful quote above got me thinking.

Although our equanimity practices are very effective for supporting us present, allowing us let go of regrets about the past and worries about the future, and to face challenges in the here and now with a sense of balance, practicing regularly will also help prepare you for challenges you may face in the future. So even though it can be tempting to use your equanimity practices on an as-needed basis, we recommend you practice regularly even during “easeful” times. You’ll then have those practices available as a “beautiful inner support system” whenever you need them. (See 7 Ways to Cultivate Equanimity with Yoga.) 

In Jill’s case, she is a long-time practitioner of both Buddhist meditation and yoga. She practices pretty much daily, with meditation, asana, and pranayama all playing a part. And she saw all those practices show their strength for her when she endured a couple of years of uncertainty after being diagnosed with a heart defect and being told she would “know” when the time was right for surgery, and then going through the surgery itself. She says they helped her because after many years of being mindful of her thoughts, emotions, and the sensations in her body, she developed a keen sense of what could be beneficial and when something was too much or too soon. She also said, 

“Having meditated for 30 years, my meditation practice showed up the most as far as supporting me in the post surgery stage. I wasn’t afraid, I wasn’t anxious, I wasn’t angry, I was surprisingly okay with the reality of my situation. My mind, and the training of my mind—of being in the present —not far-flung into the unknown future of fear and anxiety, really was a great blessing. I was at ease with what was happening and that was great considering it went on for two years.”  

That to me is the very essence of equanimity.

(For more info on Jill, see vajrayoga.com)

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What We Mean By Healthy Aging

by Nina

Melitta teaches "Granny Yoga" to her mother,  aunt, and aunt's friend

For us, the life story of our friend Melitta’s mother Nancy is a perfect example of “healthy aging.” Born in San Francisco on December 12, 1921, Nancy died on August 27, 2015, age 93 (or 93 and a half as she liked to say). She was very active all her life. She played sports in school, and was her high school and college track and field champion in shot put and discus. She loved skiing, sailing, hiking, horseback riding—all things outdoors. She even worked as a wrangler at ranches around California. 

Even in her last years, she walked three miles every morning with her walking buddies Elaine and Ellen, power walking along the beach and greeting the other regular walkers. She did have some back problems with spinal stenosis, so Melitta gave her a yoga mat and some back care yoga poses to do. Nancy did them faithfully every morning, and was so pleased that they really improved her back.

Nancy also loved traveling, and during her lifetime, she traveled around the world, visiting every continent. In 2011, she returned to her favorite country, Turkey, and traveled around Eastern Turkey. In 2012, she did her last safari in Africa, and then gave up long haul travel, though she continued to travel within the US to spend time with family. She volunteered at her church until about age 91, and had an amazing network of friends and family. 

She lived independently in her apartment until her last few days. At age 90, she had made her own decision to stop driving. Although she didn’t have any hired help, her friend Elaine, a true force of nature, looked in on her regularly (and considered it an honor to do that). Elaine also helped her by taking shopping after she stopped driving and would send her husband Lloyd over to help her with tech stuff, such as her computer and printer. 

It was only in the last year of her mom’s life that Melitta noticed her mom was slowing down. She and Melitta did discuss her fear of decline, and Melitta’s fear of her decline. She had some gallbladder issues, and in July 2015 she had a bile duct blockage and had surgery. Then, in August 2015, she had emergency surgery for gallstones, but she also developed sepsis. She was in ICU for four days, and although doctors "threw all the antibiotics" they could at her, her organs were failing, so the family followed her directives and discontinued care. When Melitta first got to the hospital, Nancy was still conscious but unable to speak because she was intubated. In the joking way they had with each other, Melitta said, "it must be bad if I am here." Nancy laughed as best she could. She died two days later, with her children holding her as she moved on. 

In our post What is Healthy Aging, Anyway?, we defined what we mean by "healthy aging," describing its three basic components:

Compressed Morbidity. This is the time out of your life span that you spend in ill health. Nancy had a lifetime of excellent health, with some slowing down and her only serious problems limited to her last year of life. (This is generally the best-case scenario for people who live as long as she did.)

Independence. This means not just being able to live on your own, but being able to continue to do the activities that you love and that give your life meaning. And Nancy was not only able to stay in her home until the end of her life, she was able to keep up her active life almost until the end, including walking on the beach with her friends, traveling, volunteering at her church, and spending time with friends and family.  

Equanimity. This means being able to face difficulty and handle challenges with balance and grace. Although there’s much we don’t know about her life and how she faced earlier challenges, we think it’s worth considering how Nancy dealt with the challenges of being older. It sounds like she faced them head on! She realistically decided to stop overseas travel and driving when the time was right. And she was able to discuss her fears of decline and to confront her death. That allowed her to leave directives for her family and to die on her own terms. Finally, being able to laugh at her daughter’s joke at the very end sounds like she was she was able to stay engaged in life and family for all her days. How beautiful!

Thanks, Melitta, for sharing this story with us.

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What to Do When You're Stressed or Angry (or Both)

by Nina

On Peralta Avenue by Nina Zolotow

I have been kind of stressed out lately. Not sleeping well and that kind of stuff. That’s pretty normal for me when I’m worrying about things—personal stuff, family, stuff, the recent tragedy in Orlando, and don’t even get me started on politics. But I’ve also been angry, which is quite unusual for me, and, wow, that’s a really unpleasant feeling, I have to say. Of course, I’ve been doing my go-to 20-minute Legs Up the Wall pose at the end of every practice to try to manage my stress levels. Then on Wednesday I decided I needed more serious treatment, so I took my own advice and did a full-length supported inversion practice, just like the one I wrote about in All About Supported Inversions. And you know what? It was amazing. There was a gradually building up of the effects of the poses so that by the time I got the ending Legs Up the Wall pose, I felt completely different than after just doing that pose solo.

The post All About Supported Inversions that I did on that practice (and those poses) was some time ago, so I just wanted to take a moment to recommend it to you in case you missed it (or forgot about it). So if you're feeling stressed or angry or both, give the practice (or part of it) a try.

But keep in mind, the purpose of using your yoga practice to find equanimity during difficult times isn’t just to make yourself feel better so you can ignore the bad feelings or avoiding taking unpleasant actions. The purpose of equanimity for us householders is to bring yourself to a point where you can think more clearly and not be so reactive. Then you have the opportunity to act in line with your values and ethics. 

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Meditation and Equanimity

by Nina

Of course most of us realize that while meditation is an excellent stress management tool this is not its original goal nor its only benefit. But because I wanted to explain something to people who are newer to yoga about the relationship between meditation and equanimity, I’ve been delving a bit deeper into this subject. In general here’s what I’ve come up with so far. 

One of original goals of meditation was to quiet the mind. Because our minds are typically busy with thoughts, many of which disturb our equanimity—regrets about the past, worries about the future, and dissatisfaction with the present—quieting your mind allows you to experience feelings of peace and contentment. Meditation also fosters feelings of compassion, which improve your relationships with others. And you can use meditation to cultivate feelings of gratitude, which allows you to be more content with what you have and what you don’t have. In addition, the process of meditating allows you to observe your habitual thought patterns and emotional responses, which is the first step in changing them to more positive ones. 

Here are my thoughts about these four different aspects of meditation. If you have any of your own you’d like to contribute, I’d love to hear from you! 

Quieting the Mind

In the Yoga Sutras, Patanjali defines yoga as: 

1.2 “Yoga is the stilling of the changing states of mind.” —Edwin Bryant

Stilling the changing “states of mind”—also translated as the “whirls of consciousness”—means quieting the thoughts that cycle over and over in your mind. While not all our thoughts disturb our equanimity, when we are worried, anxious, sad, depressed, or even overly excited, we can be tormented by thoughts and emotions that whirl uncontrollably through us. What if I miss my deadline? What if the plane crashes? What if I can’t fall asleep tonight? If only my lover hadn’t left me. If only I wasn’t so helpless/afraid/overwhelmed. If only my parents had loved me more. I hate that person. I wish I had a different body. I suck at meditating. 

In classical yoga, quieting the mind is a necessary prerequisite for achieving the union with the divine that is yoga. But it is also recommended as the antidote to the kleshas, our reactions to life that disturb our equanimity and that are the source of our suffering. 

2.3 The five afflictions (klesas) which disturb the equilibrium of consciousness are: ignorance or lack of wisdom, ego, pride of the ego or the sense of ‘I,’ attachment to pleasure, aversion to pain, fear of death and clinging to life. —Edwin Bryant

The simple act of regular meditation quiets your mind, but you may find that certain techniques work more effectively for you than others, depending on your particular personality or even just your current circumstances. So you might wish to experiment with several different techniques, perhaps even keeping record of the state of your mind both before and after practice for several days in a row. See Yoga Meditation Techniques for information about how to meditate. See Thoughts About Quieting the Mind for more information about quieting the mind. 

Self-Study with Meditation 

By using our witness mind as we meditate, we can engage in self study (svadhyaya) to learn more about habitual thought patterns and emotional responses that we might not even be aware of. The witness mind is that part of our minds that allows us to observe ourselves in action while we are acting. The Sankrit word for witness is sākshī (saa-kshe), and it refers to the “pure awareness” that witnesses the world but does not get affected by it or involved with it. The term combines “sa,” which means “with,” and “aksha,” which means “senses or eyes.” So the sakshi is an awareness that can disengage from any identification with thoughts and observe them “with its own eyes.” Another meaning of the word aksha is “the center of a wheel.” When a wheel turns, the spokes revolve and the outer rim rotates, but the center—the hub of the wheel—is still. So the witness mind remains steady while events turn around it. 

In meditation, your witness mind observes when your attention has wandered from the object of your meditation—and to what. Rather than floating down the stream of your thoughts, you sit on the shore and impartially observe from a distance. And as you observe with detachment what’s happening within you—your sensations, thoughts, emotions, and feelings—you start to recognize patterns that you may later decide to change. Observing your habits can help you change the way you react to stress (see Changing the Brain's Stressful Habits). And it can help you in general to change your patterns of reactivity (see Meditation and Brain Strength). All of this will help you cultivate equanimity in your daily life. 

You can also use your witness mind during your asana practice by cultivating mindfulness. To do this, step back and tune into the constant judging and reacting to inner and outer experiences that constantly stream through your mind. Eventually you can use on your witness mind during any activity. 

See The Power of Svadhyaya (Self Study) for more information about self study. See Yoga Meditation Techniques for information about how to meditate. 

Compassion 

1.33 By cultivating an attitude of friendship toward those who are happy, compassion toward those in distress, joy toward those who are virtuous, and equanimity toward those who are nonvirtuous, lucidity arises in the mind. —trans. by Edwin Bryant 

In addition to quieting your mind and teaching you its workings, meditation provides interpersonal benefits. Scientists have shown that the practice of meditation increases compassion. And becoming more compassionate clearly fosters better relationships with people in your life as well as strangers who are suffering.

In general, a regular meditation practices seems to have this effect. Scientists who studied this phenomenon speculated that there are two possible explanations for this. The first is that because meditation improves your ability to pay attention, this might improve your ability to notice what’s going on with someone else (as opposed to being lost in your own thoughts). Another explanation is that meditation helps us to experience the interconnectedness of all beings. Interestingly, a study showed that when people meditated on "non-referentail" compassion, the regions of their brains responsible for planned action were activated, as if they were preparing to aid people in distress. So you may find yourself with an urge to help others—always a good thing, both for them and you.

A regular meditation practice of any kind will foster compassion but if you wish to work on this intentionally, you could: 

1. Choose a person for whom you wish to cultivate compassion and before meditating set the intention that your practice will dedicated to them. Then check in again by thinking of that person after you finish. 
2. Use the word “compassion” as a mantra. 
3. Practice the Loving Kindness Meditation, a structured meditation designed to help you open your heart and cultivate compassion towards people close to you as well as strangers. Or practice any other formal meditation designed to foster compassion. 

See Meditation and Compassion for more information about meditation and compassion. See Yoga Meditation Techniques for information about how to meditate. 

Gratitude

Meditating on gratitude can have a profound effect on your mood and state of mind. In fact, scientists have actually identified the biochemical explanations for this. Apparently feeling grateful activates the brain stem region that produces dopamine, your reward and pleasure center, and gratitude toward others increases activity in your social dopamine circuits, which makes social interactions more enjoyable. And even just trying to think of things you are grateful for forces you to focus on the positive aspects of your life, which boosts our serotonin levels, which increases happiness. 

To cultivate gratitude in your meditation practice, you can use the following techniques: 

1. Use the word “gratitude” as a mantra. 
2. Use one thing for which you are grateful as the object of your meditation, either as a mantra or an image. 
3. Set the intention that as you meditate you will notice things you are grateful for as they naturally arise in your mind. 
4. Practice any formal meditation practice designed to cultivate gratitude. 

Of course, when you are being harassed by negative thoughts, it often isn’t easy to find and focus on things you are grateful for. But apparently the effort of remembering to look for gratitude alone provides the benefits. And just like strengthening a muscle, a regular gratitude practice makes you stronger at being grateful over time. So you’ll be improving in your gratitude practice as you age! See The Biochemical Basis for a Gratitude Practice for more information on a gratitude practice. See Yoga Meditation Techniques for information about how to meditate. 

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Friday Practical Pointers: Changing Your Relationship with Pain

by Baxter and Nina

Jim Coughlin, Age 60

Those of you with health conditions or injuries that have resulted in ongoing, chronic pain or intermittent pain, (think low back injuries, fibromyalgia, and chronic migraine headaches, to name just a few) may have developed a certain adverse relationship with pain over time in the form of feelings of anger, fear, worry, anxiety, despair, sadness, or loss. Unfortunately these responses to pain will often trigger your stress response, which typically increases your pain. And brooding about the pain in general can increase your perception of your pain levels, something we call “the pain on top of the pain.” 

In addition to allowing you to actually reduce your pain levels (as your pain reduces, your attitudes and feelings toward it may also shift), yoga enables you to actively change your adverse relationship to pain in the following ways: 

1. Because brooding or thinking excessively about your pain can distort your accurate perception of your true pain levels, using yoga stress management techniques to quiet your mind allows you to short-circuit your mind’s tendency to focus on pain. In your new, clear state of observation, you may discover that your true pain levels are lower, sometimes significantly, than the pain you experience while focusing on it. 
2. You can improve your pain tolerance by listening to your body and improving your overall self care. You can also improve pain tolerance by cultivating mental and emotional equanimity, which enables you to be more content with what you have and what you don’t have. 

The following sections provide details about how to use this techniques.

How to Quiet Your Mind While in Pain 

To short-circuit your tendency to brood about pain, use any stress management techniques that work for you. We particularly recommend:

• Breath Awareness. Repeatedly coming back to your sensations of breathing interrupts your thoughts about pain 
• Structured Breath Practices. Simple breath practices that require concentration, such as timed 1:1 or 1:2 inhale/exhale patterns and alternate nostril breathing, keep your mind focused on your breathing. 
• Guided Relaxation. Recorded or self-guided relaxation practices keep your mind engaged on physical relaxation or positive imagery. 

As you practice these techniques, your pain levels may decrease, your tolerance for pain may improve, and your typical mental-emotional responses to your pain may become less intense or may even dissipate. 

In addition to quieting your mind, meditating on positive emotions, such as gratitude or joy, or on positive images, enables you to transform feelings of sadness, frustration, fear and anger into more positive states of mind. One study showed that meditating on joy literally activated the areas of the brain that produce positive emotions. This surge of positive emotions may reduce your pain levels, while also improving your pain tolerance and your attitude about the pain.

Meditation also has the long-term benefit of teaching you about mental habits that might be contributing to your pain, allowing you to consciously choose new, healthier ones. For example, your chronic pain may have triggered stress eating, which led weight gain that is worsening your pain (which can happen, for example, with knee arthritis). By observing your thoughts during a meditation practice, you may become aware of the chain of events that leads to your stress eating and then choose a healthier response to the pain, such as taking a short movement break that actually lowers your pain, rather than turning to food. 

How to Improve Your Pain Tolerance 

Mindfulness practices where you focus on your physical sensations other than pain, such as meditation, breath awareness, and mindful practice of asanas, allow you to tune into your body and recognize its needs. These practices teach you to differentiate between chronic, low- level pain and acute surge in pain, which will allow you to have a better sense of when to exercise and when to rest, of how far you can safely move in various yoga poses, and of which practices actually help your pain. (Of course, If your pain becomes severely acute and disabling, it would be wise to get to your doctor urgently.) 

Tuning into your physical sensations will also allow you to improve your self-care in general, as you, for example, realize you need more sleep or to schedule a health care treatment. Becoming an active participant in your self care can give you a sense of control, which can help you move past your adverse relationship towards chronic pain And improving self-care may even allow you to start participating more in the activities that matter to you, improving your overall quality of life.

Another way to improve your pain tolerance is to cultivate equanimity, the original aim of yoga:

When a man has mastered himself,
he is perfectly at ease in cold,
in heat, in pleasure or pain,
in honor or in disgrace. —Bhagavad Gita 

Studying yoga philosophy provides you with an alternative way of thinking about your life, enabling you to be more content with what you have and what you don’t have. And that includes accepting chronic pain as part of your life, which allows you to tolerate the pain more easily. In general, cultivating contentment as described in sutra 1.33 Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, can be very helpful. 

1.33 Through cultivation of friendliness, compassion, joy, and indifference to pleasure and pain, virtue and vice respectively, the consciousness becomes favorably disposed, serene and benevolent.

Another particularly helpful technique for countering the negative reactions of your mind is pratipaksha bhavana, which means “cultivating the opposite.” 

3.3 When disturbed by negative thoughts, opposite [positive] ones should be thought of. —Swami Satchidananda 

Here’s an example of how to apply pratipaksha bhavana: If you had an increase in pain, your first thought might be, “I won’t be able to go to work today with this level of pain.” But practicing pratipaksha bhavana could allow you to reframe this thought to, “I will be able to work today, despite this pain level” or “Let’s see if I can work today, despite this pain level.” See Cultivating the Opposite for more information on pratipaksha bhavana.

But any yoga philosophy that speaks to you and helps you cultivate balance and equanimity in your mental and emotional life is going to help you increase your pain tolerance and improve the quality of your life.

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It's Complicated: Moving Toward Equanimity

by Beth

“It’s complicated.” That was our tour guide speaking from the front of the bus as it rumbled toward La Habana (Havana). She was describing the history, politics, and economics of Cuba. On day one of my 10-day cultural trip to Cuba with Global Arts/Media, I learned that in spite of certain guarantees from the Cuban government—free housing, education, health care and a monthly ration of food for each family—life is hard. Living in poverty is a daily reality for many Cubans, who supplement their meager salaries by selling whatever they can offer. Many simply beg and American tourists are the new target audience. 

When approached by Cubans selling books, CDs, caricature sketches, or food, or simply asking directly for money, our guide informed us that the appropriate response for refusal was “No, gracias,” and that we could expect to repeat that phrase many times as once would not be enough for those who wanted our dollars or CUCs (special tourist pesos). 

How true that turned out to be.

Dealing with the street vendors was easy. Because there was a concrete exchange involved, my answer always came after a few seconds of conscious thought. Dealing with begging was different. I’d seen examples of begging on television travel shows but I’d never experienced it up close and personal. Before leaving on this trip, I did what I do every December, sifting through the pile of solicitation letters from non-profit organizations and writing out checks to those that help feed, clothe, provide medical care for the poor and help children. But give money to people who walked up, looked me in the eye and asked for money directly with an open expectant hand? That was unnerving and I said, “No, gracias.” As an introvert, I felt really uncomfortable. And that feeling was later complicated by an emotional residue of guilt and “maybe I should have.” 

Then two things happened. 

I was standing outside Artesanos Cubanos, an artists’ collective, looking at my purchases, a necklace and a beautiful hand carved box with an OM symbol on the lid. I heard two sounds, a tapping and a clinking. When I looked up, I saw him. His blind eyes were filmed over and unblinking. The cane in his left hand tapped the cobblestones. His right hand shook a can with coins in it. He made his way carefully past me and continued down Obispo Street. Immediately, without a single conscious thought, I wove my way through the throng of tourists and locals to drop a handful of coins into his can. “Gracias,” he said.

“Por nada,” I replied.

The next day, again, spontaneously, without a conscious thought, I gave money to a one-legged man in a wheelchair who silently held out his hat as he sat by the fence at Plaza de Armas where our tour bus dropped us off. 

Back home the phrase, “It’s complicated” filled most of my mind time. After thinking, mulling, and pondering for a couple of weeks I came up with three questions I wanted to answer in order to put my experience with begging in a context that would allow me to find some measure of peace with the emotional residue of guilt and “maybe I should have.” 

1. Why was I so focused on this aspect of the trip as opposed to the artists and musicians I met and the culture I experienced?

This answer to this one was, thankfully, uncomplicated and twofold. First, I needed to understand the “why” behind my emotional response to direct begging. And, second, at this stage of life being free-tired,’ (I prefer the word “free-tired” to “retired”), I find myself blessed with time and a strong inclination to ponder how best to apply the tools of yoga to healthy aging. 

,

2. What factors, conscious and unconscious, influenced my responses? 

Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras is my first go-to source for insight. I wasn’t sure where to begin, so I started from the beginning. My plan was to go one by one until I found what I was looking for. Turns out I didn’t have to go very far. I hit pay dirt at 1.7. I used The Unadorned Thread of Yoga (Salvatore Sambita) to survey 12 translations and then turned to the translation and commentary by I. K. Taimni, The Science of Yoga, which states: 

(Facts of) right knowledge (are based on) direct cognition, inference or testimony. 

My observation of the two men I gave money to offered direct cognition of their situation. One was clearly blind. If he had worn sunglasses, I might not have been able to deduce that fact. The other clearly had one leg. They did not directly ask for money so my “discomfort button” did not get pushed.

The other begging situations felt complicated. Although I had some general background on poverty in Cuba, I could not determine from observation or inference what their personal stories might have been, and since I did not speak the language, first-hand testimony was not possible. And as an introvert, I would not have asked.

3. Did I respond appropriately from a yogic perspective?

This one got really complicated for me. It took more thinking, pondering, and reflecting until I had my answer. In Sutra 1.33, I. K. Taimni states: 

The mind becomes clarified by cultivating attitudes of friendliness, compassion, gladness and indifference respectively toward happiness, misery, virtue and vice.

The word "indifference" threw me. It can be so easily misconstrued as apathy or not caring, so I checked some of the other translations and chose the one by Georg Feuerstein: 

The projection of friendliness, compassion, gladness and equanimity towards objects – [be they] joyful, sorrowful, meritorious or demeritorious – [bring about] the pacification of consciousness. 

The word "equanimity" felt right. It means mental or emotional stability or composure, especially under tension or strain. 

My experience with the blind man and the man with one leg was peaceful. My response was immediate—there was no emotional charge, positive or negative. Equanimity was present. Even though I felt compassion toward those who asked directly for money, I did not experience equanimity, as my discomfort and the emotional residue of guilt and “maybe I should have” clearly demonstrated. I reacted instead of responding. If equanimity had been present, no matter my choice of action, there would not have been that strong emotional charge. 

This was the Aha! moment that uncomplicated my confusion and discomfort, and raised two more questions. How does one respond to both perceived joy and suffering with equanimity? Is it possible to experience life’s ups and downs in this five-senses material world without emotional charges, positive or negative? 

The answers, for me and for many of us, are both complicated and uncomplicated. It can feel complicated when we first confront and grapple with the concept of equanimity. It’s less complicated if we practice svadhyaya (self-study) and reach a point of understanding. It slowly becomes uncomplicated when that understanding filters through body, breath, and mind as we practice equanimity using the wisdom and tools of yoga. 

So, it looks like I have my work cut out for me. It’s been six weeks of thinking, mulling, and contemplation. With this new awareness I can begin practicing. I am sure that it will be a long slog. I will, no doubt, take one step forward and two steps back, and then repeat the process over and over again. The concept of equanimity is now “top of mind,” and will be a new aspect of my yoga practice, from asana to meditation. 

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After Hurricane Katrina

by Mary Ann Avallone-O’Gorman

Natural Disaster by Leonardo da Vinci

Yoga Sutra 1.1 “Now, after having done prior preparation through life and other practices, the study and practice of Yoga begins.” —translation from Jnaneshvara

February 2016 marks my ten-year anniversary of studying and practicing yoga. I first came to the mat after Hurricane Katrina.

I live in Katrina-land, on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, in the shadow of New Orleans, and after the storm, I was ankle deep in mud and devastation. A piece of my porch railing served as a horizontal ladder in my front hall, thrown there by the storm surge that roiled through my house overturning refrigerator and piano, and floating a table loaded with pottery twenty feet down a hall, around a corner, and finally coming rest on top of a fallen mantle with pottery still intact. My life was bayou sludge, dead animals, rotten food, destroyed photographs. I spent months preparing my gutted house for rebuilding and also making the now four-hour drive into New Orleans (90 minutes before Katrina) to work on my destroyed rental property there, where, alone on the desolate city street, I warded off the rumor of armed vandals with the talisman of my large pickup loaded with a generator and shovels.

My marriage had been crumbling before Katrina, and the weaknesses of that structure grew, as if the storm surge had poured its polluted waters into all the fracture lines.

For months my life was hard physical labor. I was forty-seven and in good shape, but my body wasn’t made for lifting wet mattresses, pushing wheel barrows of soaked drywall, or single-handedly pulling down a tilting carport rotted out by the water. I was pretending I had super powers, which included functioning without self-care. I had a makeshift kitchen where I could cook healthy meals, but mostly I lived on rotisserie chicken, take-out, and wine. Lots of wine to help me sleep in the shell of the house within the shell of a marriage.

One afternoon six months after the storm, I drove by the local yoga studio and noticed it was open, so I stopped in. I don’t know why. I’ve always been, and still am, skeptical about any organization of any kind. But I went in and the owner, Eileen, was at the desk. I immediately put up as many walls as I could and looked to see how she was ‘other” from me: tattooed, smiling, warm, friendly. I was none of these. We talked a little, and she noticed my black lab had taken over the driver seat of my car. We shared a good laugh about the large dog in the front seat of my Honda Civic. So I decided to try yoga basics and went back that night.

My whole life I had been an active person. I’ve been a distance swimmer, a weight lifter, and a long walker. I gave up running in my late twenties when my knees just said no, but I took up aerobics when it was the trend. I felt I had a grip on my body. 

I had a grip on my body.

My first yoga class was gentle yoga basics. Our first practice was three-part or dirgha breath. I could not breathe. As the class progressed, the grip I had on my body became more evident. No muscle cooperated, and I blamed the instructor and the ridiculousness of yoga.

As sutra 1.1, says, “through life and other practices” I had prepared myself for yoga. I had trained myself to resist anything my body thought was intelligent. I clung to a completed marriage, I carried glass shower doors over my head for the length of a city block, I loaded a generator and dehumidifiers and thirty pounds of extension cords in a pick-up before sunrise and drove 100 miles to unload it all and spray chemicals on exposed studs to prevent mold. I would not wear a mask. I drank wine for dinner and ate sugar for breakfast. I began the study and practice of yoga with a set of experiences that prepared me for that first class in ways that no one could predict.

I sighed and eye-rolled through the most basic of poses, thinking all along this class was a mistake. Then Eileen instructed us through Savasana. The studio had no windows and as I reclined on my mat, I felt safe for the first time in months. My home’s second story was intact and I lived there, but my first floor—on good days a dramatic space full of water views on three sides—was a windblown, door-less, windowless, wall-less space. The dogs delighted in walking through the studs, but I felt exposed to the elements, the hurricanes that came after Katrina, the cold northeast winter winds, the surviving raccoons, possums, snakes. Here on my mat in Savasana, I was cocooned. Eileen talked us through the pose, and I soon felt the breathlessness that precedes sobbing.

Then I was sobbing. In February 2006, for the first time since August 29, 2005, I was crying. I had smothered the sobs with heavy lifting, heavy drinking, crazy eating, crazy hours, anger, and more anger. And now the sobs could not stop. I tried to stifle them, and left quickly after class. In my car, I sobbed more and had trouble driving the few miles home, staying in second gear because I could not cry and shift. For once, feeling took precedence.

I walked through the dark wind tunnel of the first floor of the house and went upstairs to my bedroom where my then-husband was reading the New York Times on the computer. I sat on the floor and leaned against the bedframe and sobbed until I was retching. He sat in the light of the computer screen and said, “Maybe yoga isn’t for you.”

That’s when I knew so many things, the most important being that yoga was for me. The prior preparation I had done “through life and other practices” had led me to the mat, despite my skepticism. My successful attempts at strong-arming through all adversity—through natural disasters and relationship disasters—painted me into a corner. The only way out was to soften into ease and grace.

As I come up on my ten-year anniversary, I come to my practice every day with new preparation, new practices. I say to my students, “You bring your whole life to the mat. Your wisdom. Your strength. Your failures. Your attitude about all these things. Use what serves you. Observe what does not. Place it gently to the side. That act, in itself, is a yogic practice. Recognize all the traits you bring to all that you do. Allow your yoga practice to be exactly that: a practice of and for your whole life.” But I am talking to myself. Happy anniversary to me, and to all yoga practitioners who come to the mat for a day, week, year, a lifetime. 

Namaste.

Mary Ann Avallone-O’Gorman (E-RYT, MA, MFA) now lives in a home out of the flood zone with a new black lab and various cats. She owns and is the sole teacher at Studio 2.46 (Practice with Strength and Grace) in her yard as well as at the wonderful River Rock Yoga in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, and at two domestic violence shelters on the Gulf Coast. She practices and studies Ayurveda, and writes her heart out on a regular basis. Her chapbook of poetry Life in This House is available through Amazon.

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Keeping Your Cool: Stress Management and Equanimity

by Nina

Karen Knight, Age 54

I learned about dangers of chronic stress the hard way. Back in the early nineties, I had a job as the documentation manager and lead technical writer at a software start-up company, while at the same time I was raising two children. As you might imagine, the pressure was intense as our small company struggled to meet our first deadline, the first test of the product by real customers (who needed my manuals to teach them how to use the product!). As the deadline approached and I started working overtime, I began having difficulty sleeping. I also started losing weight because the stress made me so feel nauseated that I lost my appetite. Eventually I was so anxious, exhausted and nauseated that even though I met my deadline (and the company went on to success), I couldn’t bounce back to normal health. What began as simple, chronic stress had ultimately turned into something more serious: agitated depression. It took a year and half of therapy, medication, and lifestyle changes for me to recover completely.

So, yes, chronic stress is not only dangerous for your physical health, but it can have a strong impact on your mental health, affecting the way you feel, the way you think, and the way you sleep. 

Moods and Emotional Disorders 

To start with, chronic stress has a negative effect on your moods. When your sympathetic nervous system is over-stimulated, you may experience any of the following negative feelings: anxiety, restlessness, lack of motivation or focus, irritability or anger, sadness or depression. Obviously those moods are not only unpleasant but they can interfere with your ability to conduct yourself in a way that is in line with your values and goals. For example, if you’re restless and irritated, it’s hard to be patient with and loving to family members and friends. 

Then, for people who are susceptible, full-blow anxiety or depression may develop. There are several different theories about the mechanisms that cause depression and anxiety. Chronic stress leads to elevated hormones such as the “stress” hormone cortisol and reduced serotonin and other neurotransmitters in the brain , including dopamine, all of which are associated with depression. And, lately, there is a new theory that depression may be caused by inflammation, which itself can be triggered chronic stress (see Depression May Be Caused by Inflammation). High levels of cortisol can also be responsible for causing Generalized Anxiety Disorder, a common anxiety disorder in older adults (see Reducing Cortisol Improves Anxiety).

Even though research about the exact mechanisms is ongoing, the bottom line is that there is agreement that chronic stress can cause a whole range of emotional problems, including both depression and anxiety.

Stress and Your Thoughts

In my post Stress and Your Thought-Behavior Repertoire, I described how when you’re in stress mode, your thoughts narrow and become limited to fight or flight strategies, while when you are calmer, your thoughts are more expansive, and therefore include a much wider range of possibilities. Practicing stress management on a regular basis allows you to keep your level of arousal (the intensity of the Stress or Fight or Flight response) appropriate to your current environment. For example, for a soldier, a very high level of arousal is appropriate in an actual battle, but that same level is not appropriate if he or she is stuck in a traffic jam or working at the office. On the other hand, when your arousal level is "optimum" for your situation, your thoughts and behavior possibilities expand, until it is possible to consider altruistic possibilities and living in line with your basic values and goals. Here’s how psychologist Dan Libby puts it:

"The basic gist is that regulating our autonomic nervous system, which really means activating the more newly evolved part of the parasympathetic nervous system via the vagus nerve, allows for an expansion of your thought-behavior repertoire. Instead of having a limited, narrow, tunnel-vision, like we do when our sympathetic nervous system is dominant, we have more cognitive and behavioral options available to navigate our world."

Obviously being able to live in line with your basic values and goals is going to contribute to your equanimity. You’ll be able to interact with people and solve problems in a more peaceful and productive way. And reducing chronic stress will help you keep your thought-behavior repertoire appropriate to your circumstances.

Stress, Your Sleep, and Your Emotions and Thoughts

One of the common effects of an overactive sympathetic nervous system is insomnia, something I know about all too well. Your nervous system keeps you on the alert—and awake—so you’re prepared to face imminent danger, except in the middle of the night when your worries are about everyday life, that’s rather counterproductive. And, according to Ram, our brain health expert, 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. 

Whew! Do I even have to explain chronic insomnia is going to interfere with your ability to face life’s difficulties with equanimity? So, if sleep is problem for you, it’s a really good idea to consciously manage your daytime stress levels so you don’t go to bed with an over-active nervous system—that’s going to improve your nights as well as your days. 

How to Practice Stress Management for Equanimity

Practicing stress management in general is good preventative medicine for fostering good emotional and mental health, just as it helps foster physical healthy. And when you are trying to deal with existing mood and/or emotional problems as part of a self-care program, you should definitely include stress management techniques in your yoga practice. All the stress management techniques we describe in The Relaxation Response and Yoga will help you reduce chronic stress levels, with the only exception that for people with depression, meditation is not recommended (it can cause a downward spiral). Re-patterning your nervous system as described in Re-Patterning Your Nervous System will train you so you don’t react as intensely to stressors in the first place. And learning to self-regulate as described at Self-Regulation and Yoga: Managing Your Internal States will allow monitor and manage your internal states, so you can take appropriate actions to calm yourself, comfort yourself, uplift yourself, or energize yourself, and bring yourself to a more balanced state. For extra information about improving your sleep, see 5 Tips for Better Sleep.

Although I'm sold on the effectiveness of yoga for keeping us as physically healthy as possible, I actually became a yoga teacher specifically because I realized that my yoga  practice was helping to keep me emotionally healthy and that was something I wanted to share with others. So if you're someone who wants to cultivate emotional stability, I hope this post will inspire your practice!

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What is a Yogi?

by Nina 

“Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains.”—Henry David Thoreau 

A while back, a friend of ours who has been taking yoga classes for many years was stunned to hear me refer to Mohandas K. Gandhi as “the most famous yogi of the 20th century.” He challenged my statement. Apparently in his mind, unless you did Sun Salutations or, perhaps, spent years meditating in a cave, you weren’t a yogi. I explained that not only did Gandhi follow the yogic path of selfless service (karma yoga) and was an dedicated practitioner of the ahimsa (non-violence) but he also considered the Bhagavad Gita, with its message of non-attachment, to be his “mother.”  

“When doubts haunt me, when disappointments stare me in the face, and when I see not one ray of light on the horizon, I turn to the Bhagavad Gita, and find a verse to comfort me; and I immediately begin to smile in the midst of overwhelming sorrow. My life has been full of tragedies and if they have not left any visible and indelible effect on me, I owe it to the teachings of the Bhagavad Gita." —Gandhi

To be honest, I think I failed to convince our friend. In his mind, he said, it was only the classic yoga text the Yoga Sutras that defined what “yoga” meant. But it got me thinking.

Then, later on, Brad and I spent our Thanksgiving holiday in the Boston area. While most of the time we were in central Boston and Cambridge, we also visited friends and family out in what are now suburbs but what used to be—back in the day—small towns. As we were driving through the area, I realized we were very near the original towns where the Transcendentalists, including Emerson and Thoreau, lived. Many people don’t realize that in the mid-19th century both Emerson and Thoreau read early translations of the Bhagavad Gita and both were heavily influenced by this iconic yoga text.

“It was the first of books; it was as if an empire spoke to us, nothing small or unworthy, but large, serene, consistent, the voice of an old intelligence which in another age and climate had pondered and thus disposed of the same questions which exercise us.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson  

"In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagavad-Gita, in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seems puny and trivial." —Henry David Thoreau

In fact, Thoreau, who later became famous for the time he spent in solitude in a cabin on Walden Pond, was so affected by reading this work that he actually said:

“Depend upon it that, rude and careless as I am, I would fain practice the yoga faithfully. . . . To some extent, and at rare intervals, even I am a yogi.” 

Of course this didn’t mean he was doing Sun Salutations or Triangle pose (though he did give meditating a try). For him, after reading the Bhagavad Gita, being a yogi meant adopting a certain attitude toward life.  

"To be calm, to be serene! There is the calmness of the lake when there is not a breath of wind. . . . So it is with us. Sometimes we are clarified and calmed healthily, as we never were before in our lives, not by an opiate, but by some unconscious obedience to the all-just laws, so that we become like a still lake of purest crystal and without an effort our depths are revealed to ourselves. All the world goes by us and is reflected in our deeps. Such clarity!" 

This is one of the things I was getting at when I listed equanimity as one of the three major aspects of healthy aging (see What is Healthy Aging, Anyway?). I believe that it is not just the stress management techniques, meditation, and breath practices that will help me handle with some measure of equanimity whatever life throws at me in the years to come (though I do intend to keep up with those practices), but also the attitude that I take.

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."    

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