TOP 10 REASONS NOT TO DO YOGA

Allergies aren’t merely annoying; they can affect sleep, concentration, and productivity—and put you in a bad mood. Moreover, growing evidence shows that allergies and asthma may be two sides of the same coin: Asthmatics are more likely to be allergy sufferers, and those with allergies have a greater chance of developing asthma.

Modifying your yoga practice with calming poses can help you breathe more easily. And a regular yoga practice can help reduce allergy symptoms by tempering your immune system’s response to the perceived offender—pollen.

Inversions can help clear the upper respiratory tract and drain secretions from the nose, allowing freshly oxygenated blood to flow into the oral cavity. Doing Sarvangasana (Shoulderstand) and Halasana (Plow Pose) can open nasal passages, ensuring proper drainage of sinuses.

• Allergy Antidote

 Meditation does make the brain smarter, allowing it to process information faster and improve decision making, according to the latest study.

Eileen Luders, assistant professor at the University of California Los Angeles Lab of Neuro Imaging, and colleagues have found that long-term meditators have larger amounts of gyrification (folding of the cortex, which may allow the brain to act faster, with a host of benefits) than non-meditators.

Further, the amount of gyrification and years of meditation were found to be directly linked, offering more proof of the brain’s adaptability to environmental changes, the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience reports.

The cerebral cortex is the outermost layer of neural (brain) tissue, which plays a key role in memory, attention, thought and consciousness.

Hence, the greater the gyrification or folding, the better the brain is at processing information, making decisions, forming memories and so forth, according to a California statement.

“Rather than just comparing meditators and non-meditators, we wanted to see if there is a link between the amount of meditation practice and the extent of brain alteration,” said Luders. “That is, correlating the number of years of meditation with the degree of folding.”

The researchers took MRI scans of 50 meditators, 28 men and 22 women, and compared them to 50 non-meditators matched for age, handedness and sex. The scans for second group were obtained from an existing MRI database, while the meditators were recruited from various meditation venues.

The meditators had practiced their craft on average for 20 years using a variety of meditation types — Samatha, Vipassana, Zen and more. The researchers applied a well-established and automated whole-brain approach to measure cortical gyrification at thousands of points across the surface of the brain.

They found pronounced group differences. Perhaps most interesting, though, was the positive correlation between the number of meditation years and the amount of gyrification.

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Intro to Yoga: Philosophy

In yoga, stillness is as much a state of mind as a lack of movement.

By Richard Rosen

Most of us don’t spend much time thinking about the material nature of human consciousness, but in classical yoga, consciousness is at the heart of the practice. According to Patanjali‘s Yoga Sutra, the so-called contents of our consciousness—perceptions, thoughts, emotions, memories, fantasies, even dreams—have a kind of material existence (though naturally, the matter is a lot subtler than that of a tree or a rock). Furthermore, these contents are in constant fluctuation. The word Patanjali uses in sutra 1.2 to aptly describe this movement is vritti (pronounced VRIT-tee), which means “to revolve” or “to whirl about.”

While we can’t physically touch the vrittis, or fluctuations of mind, we can easily experience them. Close your eyes and, for a few minutes, direct your awareness away from the outer world. If you’re a contemplative person, you’ve probably done this many times before. It’s possible to consciously step away from the contents of your mind and observe them more or less “objectively,” at least briefly.

Of course, even trained meditators get swept up in the tumultuous vritti parade again and again. That’s because, says Patanjali, we don’t simply have these fluctuations, we unconsciously identify ourselves with them—so closely that we become them and define ourselves through them. This is our big mistake. Because the contents of our consciousness are circumscribed in both time and space, we also believe ourselves to be ephemeral, finite creatures cut off from all other creatures around us and from the world at large. This nagging inkling of impermanence, temporality, and alienation is a source of great existential sorrow, which taints everything we do. In fact, the contents of our minds are simply passing fancies, mere ripples on the surface of the infinite ocean of our consciousness. Our thoughts and feelings are no more us than the waves are the ocean.

This raises a big question then, maybe the biggest: Who are we really? Ask yourself: In the little self-observation exercise above, who was observing the contents? According to Patanjali, it’s the true self, called the Seer (drashtri), who is eternal, illimitable, unchanging, and perpetually joyful (1.3). The Seer is a light source, as it were, that shines on our world—including the contents of our mind, or “consciousness”—but is in no way affected by or attached to whatever happens in those worlds. It isn’t hard to contact the Seer anytime you like. But maintaining this contact for more than a couple of minutes is a huge challenge, especially when going about your worldly business outside a formal meditation session.

But that’s exactly what Patanjali instructs us to do: permanently shift our identity orientation away from the contents and onto the Seer. Yoga, as Patanjali famously defines it, is the “restriction of the fluctuations of consciousness.” The practice begins by sitting and calming the fluctuations of the body, breath, and senses, and then the more elusive whirlings of consciousness.

In the stillness we create, we’re able to recognize the fallacy and unhealthiness of our limited and self-limiting identity, and allow it to spontaneously fall away. What remains, Patanjali concludes, is the self or the Seer, abiding forever in its true essence.

Reasons to Try Yoga

• Stress Relief: The practice of yoga is well-demonstrated to reduce the physical effects of stress on the body. The body responds to stress through a fight-or-flight response, which is a combination of the sympathetic nervous system and hormonal pathways activating, releasing cortisol – the stress hormone – from the adrenal glands. Cortisol is often used to measure the stress response. Yoga practice has been demonstrated to reduce the levels of cortisol. Most yoga classes end with savasana, a relaxation pose, which further reduces the experience of stress.

• Pain Relief: Yoga can ease pain. Studies have shown that practicing yoga asanas (postures), meditation or a combination of the two, reduced pain for people with conditions such as cancer, multiple sclerosis, auto-immune diseases and hypertension as well as arthritis, back and neck pain and other chronic conditions.

• Better Breathing: Yoga includes breathing practices known as pranayama, which can be effective for reducing our stress response, improving lung function and encouraging relaxation. Many pranayamas emphasize slowing down and deepening the breath, which activates the body’s parasympathetic system, or relaxation response. By changing our pattern of breathing, we can significantly affect our body’s experience of and response to stress. This may be one of the most profound lessons we can learn from our yoga practice.

• Flexibility: Yoga can improve flexibility and mobility and increase range of motion. Over time, the ligaments, tendons and muscles lengthen, increasing elasticity.

• Increased Strength: Yoga asanas use every muscle in the body, increasing strength literally from head to toe. A regular yoga practice can also relieve muscular tension throughout the whole body.

• Weight management: While most of the evidence for the effects of yoga on weight loss is anecdotal or experiential, yoga teachers, students and practitioners across the country find that yoga helps to support weight loss. Many teachers specialize in yoga programs to promote weight management and find that even gentle yoga practices help support weight loss. People do not have to practice the most vigorous forms of yoga to lose weight. Yoga encourages development of a positive self-image, as more attention is paid to nutrition and the body as a whole. A study from the Journal of Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine found that regular yoga practice was associated with less age-related weight gain. The lifestyle study of 15,500 adults in their 50’s covered 10 years of participants’ weight history, physical activity, medical history and diet.

• Improved circulation: Yoga helps to improve circulation by efficiently moving oxygenated blood to the body’s cells.

• Cardiovascular Conditioning: Even a gentle yoga practice can provide cardiovascular benefits by lowering resting heart rate, increasing endurance and improving oxygen uptake during exercise.

• Presence: Yoga connects us with the present moment. The more we practice, the more aware we become of our surroundings and the world around us. It opens the way to improved concentration, coordination, reaction time and memory.

• Inner peace: The meditative effects of a consistent yoga practice help many cultivate inner peace and calm.

Still Life

Withdraw your senses from worldly delights and let stillness bloom within, using this ancient breath-awareness technique.

By Richard Rosen

In a culture devoted to sense pleasures—ah, the cashmere caressing your skin, the rosemary-seasoned flatbread enticing your tongue—it can be both difficult and delightful to practice pratyahara, withdrawal of the senses. Pratyahara is a Sanskrit word that means “to hold back,” and it denotes the fifth limb of Patanjali‘s classical eight-limb system of yoga. Simply put, the practice requires you to detach your normal outwardly directed awareness from the world around you, retract it, and redirect it inward toward the self.

The result of such efforts is that the senses—your sight, hearing, taste, and the like, which trot along behind awareness like loyal dogs—naturally turn away from the world, too. This effectively cuts you off from distractions in your environment, collects your usually scattered awareness, and prepares you for the sixth and seventh limbs of classical practice, dharana (concentration) and dhyana (meditation). The process is traditionally likened to a tortoise pulling its head and limbs into its shell. Vyasa, Patanjali‘s earliest commentator, aptly compares our senses to a swarm of bees, equating our awareness with their queen: “Just as bees follow the course of the queen bee and rest when the latter rests, so when the mind stops, the senses also stop their activity.”

The Energy Ladder

While this makes for some fine imagery, Patanjali and his commentators did little to clarify how exactly to practice pratyahara. Thankfully, there are a few concrete techniques. One of them is recorded in the Yoga-Yajnavalkya-Gita (“Yoga Song of Yajnavalkya”), which takes the form of a teaching dialogue between the sage Yajnavalkya and his wife, Gargi.

Yajnavalkya’s technique, called vayu pratyahara (wind withdrawal) or prana pratyahara (life force withdrawal), involves fixing your awareness and your breath sequentially on 18 vital points, called marmans, in your body. Varying sources highlight different points (traditional Ayurvedic sources name 107), but Yajnavalkya’s 18 marmans are the big toes, ankles, midcalves, “roots of the calves,” knees, midthighs, perineum, “center of the body,” generative organs, navel, heart center, “throat well,” root of the tongue, root of the nose, eyes, spot between the eyebrows, forehead, and crown of the head. Yajnavalkya suggests following the sequence from the crown to the toes, but many of my students prefer climbing from toes to crown.

You can use wind withdrawal as a preparation for pranayama or as a self-contained pranayama practice. It’s also possible to work therapeutically with the marmans, as each point is energetically attuned with a particular organ or system (nervous, circulatory, and the like) and can be massaged to affect that area; you can find further guidance in Ayurveda and Marma Therapy, by David Frawley, Subhash Ranade, and Avinash Lele.

Point System

To experience vayu pratyahara, take any comfortable seated yoga pose or your favorite reclining position, such as Savasana (Corpse Pose). Start with a simplified version of the practice by limiting yourself to just a dozen points: the big toes, ankles, midcalves, knees, midthighs, perineum, navel, heart center, throat well, middle of the eyebrows, forehead, and crown. You can add more later.

If you like, touch each marman so that each energy center is clearly anchored in your awareness. You could even imaginatively invest each point with a favorite deity, teacher, or mantra, which is another traditional practice. Then pinpoint your awareness in your big toes for the ascending sequence (or the crown of your head if you’re descending) and imagine you are breathing into and out of them.

Consciously climb the 12-rung marman ladder to your crown. You can run through the points rapidly, spending just a breath or two at each one, or if you have the time and inclination, you can linger at each point for several breaths or longer. The former version of the practice challenges your ability to quickly and decisively direct both your awareness and breath; the latter challenges your ability to concentrate both awareness and breath over time.

You can play with this sequence in a number of ways; for example, you can run through it once, as a sort of warm-up for meditation, or you can climb and descend the marman ladder several times as a self-contained breathing-meditation practice. With the latter version, you’ll want to finish the practice with a short stay in Savasana. As you gain experience with the practice, you can gradually add points until you reach the traditional 18. Then too, you might experiment with nontraditional points: How about your thumbs, the base of your skull, or your ears?

If you’re on the fence about trying the practice, maybe this will convince you: Yajnavalkya says it prevents all disease, leads to self-liberation, and best of all, promotes a really long life—he claims the practitioner “will live as long as the moon and the stars exist.” Hopefully our Social Security will stretch that far.

The Yoga Sutra is not presented in an attempt to control behavior based on moral imperatives. The sutras don’t imply that we are “bad” or “good” based upon our behavior, but rather that if we choose certain behavior we get certain results. If you steal, for example, not only will you harm others, but you will suffer as well.   In the second chapter of his book he presents five specific ethical precepts called yamas, which give us basic guidelines for living a life of personal fulfillment that will also benefit society. He then makes clear the consequence of not following these teachings: It is simply that we will continue to suffer.

The first yama is perhaps the most famous one: ahimsa, usually translated as “nonviolence.” This refers not only to physical violence, but also to the violence of words or thoughts. What we think about ourselves or others can be as powerful as any physical attempt to harm. To practice ahimsa is to be constantly vigilant, to observe ourselves in interaction with others and to notice our thoughts and intentions. Try practicing ahimsa by observing your thoughts when a smoker sits next to you. Your thoughts may be just as damaging to you as his cigarette is to him.  Especially if you are sitting there all disturbed,  he just having a cigerette,  his mind is calm and clear!  Your,  not so much.

It is often said that if one can perfect the practice of ahimsa, one need learn no other practice of yoga, for all the other practices are subsumed in it.  Practicing breathing or postures without ahimsa, for example, negates the benefits these practices offer.

 Patanjali presents the  eight-limbed systemof yoga, for which he is so famous. While Westerners are most familiar with just asana,  (posture) which is the third limb of the yamas (Do’s). The yamas  and niyamas (Don’ts)  are  the first and second limbs in a practice that addresses the whole fabric of our lives, not just your  physical health (asana), which, again is only the 3rd limb, not first or even second. 

THE EIGHT LIMBS:
Yama – Non-violence, Truthfulness, Non-stealing, Control, Non Hoarding
Niyama – Cleanliness, Contempness, Determination, Self-study, Devotion
Asana – Physical Postures
Pranayama – Breath Control
Pratyahara – Conscious Withdrawal Of Your Senses
Dharana – concentration
Dhyana - Meditation
Samadhi – Bliss, Self-realizatio

The rest of the limbs are the niyamas, more personal precepts; pranayama, breathing exercises; pratyahara, conscious withdrawal of energy away from the senses; dharana, concentration; dhyana, meditation; and samadhi, self-actualization.

Sirsasana (Headstand) and Sarvangasana (Shoulderstand) are seductive poses—physically challenging, visually dramatic, and exhilarating. They are also surprisingly accessible. Despite the limitations of a tight lower back or hamstrings, most yoga practitioners can move into an inversion relatively easily.

But beginning and veteran yoga students alike are showing up in the offices of bodyworkers, chiropractors, and medical professionals with compression of the upper spine and impaired mobility in the neck, presumably from the practice of inversions.

Luckily, you don’t have to become a yoga casualty by jumping into inversions before you’re ready. If you are new to yoga, take your time before inverting—a year (or even three) is not too long. Work closely with an observant and knowledgeable teacher. Attend class regularly. Learn the fundamentals: Find the extension of the spine, open the shoulders, and develop balance, clarity, and strength within beginner poses first.