by Jamie Shane
Even as the organic vessel breaks down, the space remains. The space—if attended—remains infinitely whole. It even grows. It never dissipates. It can’t. That is it’s eternal nature.
Correction—your eternal nature.
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When it comes to human survival, you have probably already heard the rule of three: Three weeks without food, three days without water, three minutes without air. And of these, it is obvious which necessity holds pre-eminence.
The importance of breath in yoga is well-documented. It is one of the many aspects of the discipline that sets yoga apart from other exercises. Unlike other trainings, yoga places the breath very high in its priorities. So much so that to attempt yoga without a strong grasp of proper breath is to misunderstand the process entirely. Yoga is built on this foundation of breath. A true breath — that is, not your average, everyday huffing that we laughingly call "breathing." To truly breathe is to surpass the autonomic function and move into a conscious awareness that utilizes not only the body's full capacity to process oxygen, but the mind's ability to remain fully present.
This takes a little practice, and a lot of awareness. This asks you to question something that you have never, ever had to think about. To truly breathe is to move away from existing and into living. Making this transition requires a deep recognition of where you are. It is imperative that you understand your own breathing process, taking a firm grasp of what your body considers its "resting" breath. Discovering that point is quite simple. All you have to do is listen to your body with a few questions for it in mind.
Arrange your body comfortably, resting on your back, making yourself as long and straight as possible. Think of your spine as a supple snake, extended fully and resting in the sun. Become quiet. Then breathe. And listen. Where does your breath sit? Do you breathe into your chest? Does the breath sit low down in the belly? Is your breath long and slow, or shallow and rapid? And how does this breath make you feel?
As we move unconsciously through life, we never make the connection between the state of breath and the state of mind. To allow your breath to cruise on autopilot is to allow the mind free reign, without any checks or balances. It is to permit ourselves to exist in a constant state of reaction as opposed to a state of action.
A rapid, shallow breath, sitting high in the chest is essentially the body in a state of panic. It is our primal "fight or flight" response that has taken over and insinuated itself into our unconscious habits. Daily stresses have put us all in a perpetual state of autonomic response and this is seen most clearly in our breathing. Our breath then becomes a self-destructive cycle that perpetuates this very stress we seek to dissolve. In other words, stress creates poor breathing habits, and poor breathing habits generate stress. See what happens when you aren't paying attention?
To break this cycle we need to become aware. Aware of every aspect of ourselves and our functions. The very best place to start is by modifying the breath. Armed with knowledge of how you breathe, return to your quiet place and begin to modify your breath.
Lengthen and deepen the inhalation and the exhalation. Move the inhalation low down into the belly, allowing it to swell with air like a balloon. Now, keeping the air in the belly, continue to inhale, drawing the breath up into the ribs. Keeping the air in the ribs, continue to inhale, drawing the breath all the way up into the chest until the whole torso is filled with air. Then slowly exhale from the chest, the ribs, then the belly. Long and slow, inhaling and exhaling. Take your time. Do this for a few minutes and then listen again. How do you feel?
That's what I thought.
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There is more to life than increasing its pace.
Don’t credit me with that nugget of wisdom. We can all thank Mahatma Gandhi who offered the advice more than fifty years ago. Can you imagine what he would say today?
I guess one could suppose that life has always been busy. Even before cell phones and rampant consumerism. Perhaps it is the very nature of our existence to be mobbed by the tasks of living. Perhaps we are just creatures in a hurry. Maybe that is part of the reason why yoga came to be…over five thousand years ago.
Now there’s some food for thought. Right?
One’s yoga practice is a haven from all of this. It is a time when you can abandon that apparently natural instinct for speed and enjoy the flip side of the coin. Slowness. Presence. Stillness.
This is not an easy skill to cultivate. Asking many people to slow down is like asking a hummingbird to only flap its wings once a second. It goes against their grain. And that’s unfortunate. But what’s more unfortunate is handling your yoga in the same manner as you handle your life.
Yoga is time free of your life. It is never a task in your ‘busy-ness’. It defeats the purpose to cruise through class as if it were a board meeting. Forward fold, check. Deep kneed squat, check. Relaxation, check. Yoga class, check. Thank you people, this has been very productive. Next!
All yoga moments, all yoga postures, all yoga classes, should be treated with delight, attention and discovery. They have something to teach you. They have an experience to show you. Yoga is so much, much more than just the movement if the body. It is so much more than a prescriptive fad to manage stress. Every motion can give you a better understanding of yourself. If you take the time to discover it.
Take something as simple as Neck Rolls. We have all done them, yoga class or no. You do them in the car, at the desk, wherever. The motion is an inherent one to release tension in the neck. But most people just whip that head around in a big circle, crack the neck a few times and move on.
But if you really take the time with a Neck Roll, if you really experience the entire range of motion a centimeter at a time, you can learn a lot about your body and your mind. But you have to do it slowly. So slowly that you feel like you are underwater. Inhale deeply as the head rolls back, exhale completely as the head rolls down. Keep the awareness on the neck and listen to your body. This simple motion can tell you where you tuck your problems, where you store your emotions, how you hang on to your tension. If you listen closely to what the neck says, it can tell you about your spine, shoulders and mind. How?
By giving you an experience of the self. When you really learn about how deeply your body feels, you learn about you. You learn whether you store your upset or whether you release it. You learn about your fears and your resistance. Not just of the body, but of the mind, too. These things cannot be experienced and handled if you do not take the time to look for them. Speeding through teaches you nothing and bypasses everything.
If you can miss all that in a Neck Roll, what are you missing in your life?
65
I had a fifth grade teacher named Mrs. Byers. She was a perfectly sweet, pumpkin shaped lady whom we all believed to be incredibly odd. If you craft in your mind the very image of a movie-style elementary school teacher, you will see my Mrs. Byers. But she was no ordinary lady. What made her so odd to us at the time, I believe, was that she just might have been a yogi.
We used to call her ‘the flamingo’ behind her back because she always herded us into the lunch line standing on one foot. She would always—always-- tuck her left foot up under her grey wool skirts and fold the palms of her hands together in the very picture of tree posture. I know this now. But just imagine what it must have been like for a passel of ten year olds.
Furthermore, when she was teaching us our writing lessons, she would always insist we perform these strange hand exercises. To “loosen up the joints” she would say. I certainly don’t believe they were part of standard public school curriculum circa 1984. The more I think about it, the more I am convinced that my very first yoga teacher was none other than that strange Mrs. Byers. God bless.
Now, I have never seen her particular hand exercises in any yoga journal. But the importance of the hands is widely documented in many yoga theories. This is because the hands are connected to the body in a number of incredible ways. As I briefly mentioned last week,
they have huge associations metaphysically. But they also have astonishing associations physically.
There are literally thousands of nerve endings in the hands that are connected to almost every part of the body. Like the feet, it is believed that problems in the muscles, organs, mind and so on can be remedied through various pressure points in the hands. For instance, did you know that you can get rid of a headache by firmly pinching the muscle between the thumb and first finger for only a minute? Or that you can alleviate nausea by pressing the thumb to the first and second fingertips of the right hand while pressing the thumb to the second and third fingertips of the left hand? Trust me, it works. The hands are a medicine chest all their own.
What I also find interesting is the connection between tension in the fingers and tension in the neck. Those of you with chronic neck problems may need to look a little further south for the solution to your suffering. If you lace all of the fingers together and twist the palms in opposite circles, you will find that the fingers loosen—and so does the neck. Strange but true. Or, pinch the webs of the fingers in turn, pulling until the pinching fingers slide off. Then stretch your fingers as far away from each other as you can manage and reach the arms all the way out to the sides a few times. Now try those neck rolls and see how much deeper you can get.
And for those of you curious few who would like to give Mrs. Byers’ hand yoga a try…. Form ‘hand giraffes’ with your fingers. The thumbs, forefingers, ring and pinky fingers become legs. The middle fingers become the long neck and head. Now make these animals walk across the surface of a desk. Reach the head up like you were trying to eat a leaf off of a tree, or wriggle it down like you were sniffing the earth. Play around for a few minutes and then see how incredibly loose your hands and fingers feel.
I told you she was odd. But damned if she wasn’t right.
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I like to think that I am pretty tough. You know, more grrrrrl than girl. Maybe it was my upbringing. Maybe it was one too many episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
But I can sit on my tailbone with my legs in the air holding on to the soles of my feet quite comfortably for an impressively long time. I can hold my body in the top position of a push-up, straight as a board with the patience of Buddha for as long as it takes most Marines to ‘drop and give me fifty’. I can stand on one leg with the other stretched straight out to the side—shoulder height—without shaking and coach others into this strangely comfortable position. I’m strong as a freakin’ ox. That makes me pretty tough.
My husband thinks I am a wuss.
He can stand in front of a set of five hundred degree ovens and a dozen gas burners and co-ordinate seven other sweaty guys into an oddly beautiful choreographed dance that will somehow miraculously provide four hundred people with gourmet meals. Without losing his temper. This apparently makes him a ‘tough guy’. But he cannot stand on one foot longer than it takes him to scratch his calf with his toes. (The pansy.)
My mother was a single mother in the eighties when there was still stigma attached to the condition. She never lost her sense of humour, managed to house, feed, and clothe us quite nicely and learned how to fix her own toilet. She is fearless about wielding power tools that make contractors grunt and her husband cringe. Mom’s a pretty tough bird. Yet put her in my husband’s shoes for ten minutes and she’d pitch a truly frightening screaming Mimi and flee towards the nearest cocktail. (Pantyweight.)
So what is ‘tough’? What is ‘strong’? Is it our skills? Is it our physical capabilities? Perhaps in part. But as I age I am beginning to believe that being truly strong is a matter of discovering that all boundaries are but lines drawn in the sand—easily erased by the wind and the waves of necessity. Once you can move beyond the frustration of a situation or a task and discover your patience with it, you discover that you are capable of more than you dreamed. This is exercising your nerves. And with nerves of steel your impatient, fear based boundaries will disappear. This is being ‘tough’.
You can train your nerves to be both patient and strong. It is very important to do so. And while the example I present to you now may seem like a ‘so-what-big-deal’ motion, I hope that within a few seconds you will begin to see the correlation between physical based movement and mental patience. This is serene fortitude in practicum. (A small disclaimer: Shoulder and cervical spine impaired—this is not for you. Trust me.)
Sit comfortably, preferably on the floor, but a chair with no arms will do if it must. Find a clock so you can time yourself. Stretch your arms out to the sides and barely bend your elbows. Palms up, curl your fingers like claws. Now. Inhale, sweep the arms overhead and cross the wrists--left in front. Exhale back to starting position. Inhale and bring the arms back overhead, right wrist in front. Exhale to starting position. Now keep going—inhale up, exhale down fast like a steam engine.
For nine minutes. Don’t think about it, just keep going. After your mind is screaming, just keep going. After your shoulders are weeping, just keep going. You’ll see those boundaries in the sand sooner than you believe. Be patient. Be strong. Keep going. If you can do this, you can do anything.
Who’s the tough guy now?
67
Rarely is one posture as imperfectly performed as Downward Facing Dog. Despite my feelings on perfection, which I think should be abundantly clear by this time, I am always chagrined to see how students tend to toss off this asana because it appears simple.
Down Dog is one of the few asanas that act as an all-around gauge for bodily flexibility, telling the practitioner about the condition of almost every muscle and joint in the entire system. To learn to hear your body in this posture is to discover your own points of tension and resistance. To find your own holding patterns in both body and mind. To practice Down Dog is to learn the importance of breath as it relates to effort within rest. Down Dog is a lynchpin pose, critical to any practice and uniquely valuable all on its own. It is, in short, the perfect posture.
Downward Facing Dog, sometimes called inverted ‘V’, places both the hands and feet wide away on the floor with the tail raised to the sky. Simple, right? Yet, despite this inherent simplicity, there are so many adjustments to be made in this position that a student can become confused if they do not approach the posture with full awareness and due diligence. You have to know where your body is and what, exactly, it is doing to reap the benefits. Practiced without this effort towards awareness, Down Dog is a tiring struggle.
It is important not to mistake the perfect posture with the perfect attempt at posture. Not everybody can get into an asana exactly right. And, as I have said before, that is not my focus. But to recognize that there is a right and a wrong way to try is critical. This hinges on knowing yourself, your limitations and your expectations, and then finding the mean line between them. Using a posture like Down Dog is an excellent way to discover this.
Let’s give it a go, shall we?
Bring your body into a push-up position. Orient the wrists beneath the shoulders and feel the strength of the toes in the earth. The body is long and strong here, not sagging down in the middle. Take a moment to feel this strength in the body and the mind. Breathe slowly and completely. On an exhalation jackknife the hips into the air, bringing yourself into Downward Facing Dog. And then we adjust.
The length of forefinger and thumb is pressed into the floor. The fingers are spread wide with the middle finger pointed forward. The hands will root you into your posture. Now we need to lift, lengthen and push back. So bringing the weight of the body out of the wrists, lengthen the arms from wrist to shoulder, lightening the load that the hands carry. Soften the shoulders, and expand the shoulder blades. You want to feel a sensation of breadth in the chest and back. This soft opening allows the chest to press back towards the thighs. The spine lengthens behind you from neck to tail and then presses up. I like to think of Mickey Mouse’s Pluto before he leaps, tail pointing to the air like an eager antenna. Soften tension from the knees and allow the heels to rela
x towards the earth. You should feel and all-over body stretch and a sense of expansion that travels from the mind to the soles of the feet. Every inch of you is communicating.
So rest. And breathe. And listen. What does your body have to say to you?
The answer is what yoga asana is all about.
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Sometimes, when I’m in front of a class, I wonder if the students are looking at me and thinking, “When are we going to get to the real postures?”
There is an emerging image of yoga, perpetuated by the recent onslaught of yoga-themed advertising, that presents yoga classes as a bunch of skinny women twisted into impossibly beautiful positions. Even those who have no relationship to yoga at all could probably identify any number of asana simply from this type of media. Warrior. Dancer. Headstand. Tree.
But as I’ve said before (and surely will again) the stark truth is that yoga is not all twisty asana. It is not all lithe grace and the lovely flexibility of the ultimate pose. Much of the time, yoga is about the transition. It is about the spaces in between these fantastic postures. When it comes to a strong practice, it is not necessarily as much about the destination as it is the process of getting there. And I so want my students to get that when they are waiting for their perfect Warrior to arrive.
Think about it. We are all of us always in a state of transition. Those diamond moments of completion are rare and fleeting. Those perfect instances of achievement only come around once in a while. That’s what makes them so incredibly moving. So special. The rest of our days are spent in movement, getting ourselves from one place to another so that we can eventually experience that sense of completion. We live in the transition.