Rox Does Yoga

Yoga, Wellness, and Life

Nine Obstacles to Mental Clarity August 24, 2011

Filed under: yoga lifestyle,yoga philosophy — R. H. Ward @ 2:25 pm
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Today we’ll talk about the nine obstacles to mental clarity. These are also obstacles to practicing yoga or to succeeding in anything else that requires hard work and practice. The nine obstacles are:

  1. Lack of effort
  2. Fatigue or disease
  3. Dullness, inertia (tamas)
  4. Doubt
  5. Carelessness
  6. Laziness
  7. Inability to turn the mind inward
  8. Distorted thinking
  9. Lack of perseverance

The first and last obstacles are of particular interest. Lack of effort is in many ways the most powerful obstacle and the key to all of them: if you don’t put any effort into your practice, you can’t possibly make progress. In addition, a lack of effort opens the door for the other obstacles to come in: if you’re working hard, you’ll be focused on your work, but if you’re not putting in any effort, you’re more likely to become lazy and careless. If you can avoid experiencing a lack of effort – if you strive to put your best effort into all you do – it will be easier to avoid the other obstacles as well.

The last obstacle, lack of perseverance, is also important. J defined “perseverance” as “practicing for an extended period of time without break”. While this concept can be applied to an individual practice or yoga class (powering through a full hour instead of copping out after 20 minutes), it shouldn’t be understood to mean practicing for hours and hours on end, day after day, which wouldn’t be healthy. Instead think about perseverance as the willpower to go do the work regularly, to do it without break, every day if you can. Practicing yoga once a month at random won’t help you very much, but if you practice every Tuesday or twice a week or every morning, you’ll see yourself making progress. Lack of perseverance goes hand in hand with lack of effort: to get anything accomplished you need to show up and try!

Another of the obstacles I want to talk about is laziness. In our lecture J gave us a definition for laziness that’s stuck with me: “laziness” is “the inability to take action even though there’s a longing for action in the mind”. Most of us have experienced this. You know you should go clean the bathroom but you think you’ll just sit down for a minute, and oh, Pawn Stars is on and you haven’t seen this one. Or it’s some movie, like Ferris Buehler’s Day Off, that you’ve seen a dozen times and don’t really care about seeing again, but you get sucked in and you stay on the couch even through the commercials and there goes your whole Saturday afternoon. You know you don’t really care about the movie, and that if you did care you could rent it or get it on Netflix with no commercials, but you sit there anyway. In class, we asked J, how do you fight laziness? And he said, um, get up. So even the big sage guy doesn’t have a magical answer. You know you need to get up, so turn off the TV, let Ferris go about his crazy day, and get back to your own life.

To me, the thing that seems so insidious about the nine obstacles is the way they feed on each other. Say you’re feeling lazy, so you shorten your yoga practice or do it carelessly, maybe you skip it entirely – there’s lack of effort and lack of perseverance. Let it go and a pattern develops: the longer you sit around, the easier it is to keep sitting around, and inertia sets in. Soon you begin to doubt your purpose, whether there’s any point to this yoga stuff, even though you know you feel better and stronger when you do yoga. And without your regular practice you lose the ability you’d been building to focus and turn the mind inward, becoming even more distracted by what’s on TV. The nine obstacles draw you in, drag you down, and keep you there.

That’s an overblown worst-case scenario, but we all deal with these obstacles every day, not just in yoga but in our jobs and other work, and over time they can keep us from achieving our goals. However, by identifying the obstacles and knowing their tricks, we can fight against them. The next time I’m tempted to watch just one more episode of Pawn Stars, I’ll remember: this is laziness! I don’t want to be lazy! And I’ll turn off the TV.

So what do the nine obstacles look like in your life? Which one is hardest for you, and what do you do to fight it?

 

Yardwork Meditation July 21, 2011

Filed under: meditation,reflections — R. H. Ward @ 2:20 pm
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When F and I were first talking about buying a house, doing yardwork was one of the things I was least looking forward to. I’d never mowed a lawn in my life – my parents’ next door neighbor when I was a kid was an old guy who just liked to mow, so they let him have at it. Ever since moving out of my parents’ house for college, my idea of yardwork has been repotting a houseplant. Then we bought a house with a big backyard – a house that hadn’t been lived in for over a year, and before that had been owned by an older man in poor health. To say that the yard was in need of attention was an understatement: the lawn hadn’t been mowed in weeks, the bushes were determinedly trying to take over the front walk, the rose bushes had been engulfed by weeds for so long that the weeds had grown into 15-foot weed trees, and the ivy was everywhere. As a housewarming gift, my parents bought us a lawn mower and a weedwacker (among other things) and lent us their hedge trimmers, and… we got to work.

My first try at mowing the lawn was surprisingly satisfying: getting all the little clumps, making the lines straight and even, mowing around all the obstacles. Going after the weed trees was even better – clipping and chopping and hacking until we found the fence under there! (It’s a six foot fence. I’m serious, weed trees.) I spent close to two hours on Sunday turning the huge bushes out front into smooth, neat hedges again, even though my arms hurt from the vibrations of the hedge trimmers. And after each yardwork session, we bag up all the clippings and take them out to the curb.

It struck me that meditation is a lot like yardwork, and yardwork can be a form of meditation. When I’m doing yardwork, I’m completely focused on the task in front of me – the sort of one-pointed concentration I strive for in my meditation practice. In yardwork, you can see immediate results – the weeds are gone, the lawn mowed – similar to the calm feeling you may get at the end of a meditation practice, but the real satisfaction, I imagine, comes in taking good care of your lawn in the long term, planting your garden and watching it grow. This too is like meditation, where the practice we do now sets the stage for future growth. Maybe in meditation you discover something unexpected, like the wasps’ nest I found under the second hedge on the right. (I’m not dealing with the wasps’ nest yet, but it’s sure good to know it’s there!) And, finally, you don’t have to be particularly good at yardwork to be successful, just like in meditation. Whether you’re a professional lawn care expert or a newbie like me, at the end of the day, the grass is shorter. All you have to do is show up and do the work.

 

Meditation Round-Up July 15, 2011

Filed under: checking in,meditation — R. H. Ward @ 1:32 pm
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This month has been incredibly challenging on a personal level. Two days after our last teacher training weekend ended, my husband and I bought our first house, and since then, we’ve either been packing, moving, arranging for repairs, spending hours looking for tools we never needed before at Lowe’s, learning how to do yard work, and just plain settling in. I haven’t had any time for reading other than when I’m on the train to and from the office, and my personal yoga practice has suffered too. Add to that the fact that this was a short yoga month with just three weeks between teacher training weekend sessions, so it’s been difficult for me to complete all my homework this month, and with all the chaos, difficult to see whether the meditation was having any effect in my life.

However, I do feel like I’ve made some progress with meditation this month. I have meditated every single day: even if I was just sitting down for four minutes in a room full of boxes, I still did it. Most days, I was able to do a little yoga or basic stretching before meditation, and every day I’ve done some sort of pranayama before meditation. I feel really glad that I’ve been able to make this a priority.

During this month, I’ve practiced either counting meditation or passage meditation. When I know I only have a few minutes, counting meditation has been a good option because it only takes a few minutes to count down from fifty; it’s like a built-in timer. For the most part, I have been able to keep my mind relatively on track during counting meditation; I’ve had some distractions, but never so much that I lose my place in the count. I’ve become amazed by how many thoughts I’m able to have between exhales! Staying focused on the breath and the count is difficult, especially with so many tasks on my mind this month, but I’ve mostly been able to stick with it.

I’ve also practiced passage meditation. With so little time available to read spiritual books or to meditate at all, I chose a line from a Rumi poem as my passage and have just stuck with that – it’s short enough that I feel like I can get somewhere with it in the few minutes I have available to meditate, but long enough that there’s good spiritual content to get somewhere with. Meditating on the passage has been interesting in different ways. Occasionally I’ve caught myself daydreaming in the background while the words of the passage float on the surface; once I found myself getting sleepy and substituting in other words and images that weren’t part of the passage. Overall, though, I find the passage technique to be really helpful for me in relaxing my mind and having something to focus on. The passage technique has also led me to consider different interpretations of my passage. For example, it occurred to me that one phrase that I had thought was about worship could just as easily be about service; I realized that another phrase that I’d thought was about natural physical beauty could also be interpreted as being about kindness. These realizations have carried beyond my meditation practice and led me to consider how I practice service and kindness in my life.

I’ve also found myself thinking about more spiritual topics this month. Usually when I’m moving, I get very caught up in the physical tasks that need to be done, and I have been caught up in those things, but I’ve also been thinking about more spiritual concepts. For example, I reflected on patience: how slowing down is mentioned in almost every text we’ve read, and how slowing down and being patient can help us in our daily lives. I also did some thinking about striving for excellence, and reflecting on how teacher training has influenced my thoughts, opinions, and actions in this realm. My reading in the yoga sutras this month has also affected my spiritual reflections. I’ve also been thinking a lot about practicing non-attachment (especially as I pack all my worldly possessions into boxes and carry them around).

Overall, in spite of all the personal challenges in my life this month, I feel good about the time I was able to create in my schedule for meditation practice, and I’m happy about the progress I’ve made. I look forward to continuing the journey.

 

Practicing Patience, Patient Practice July 8, 2011

Filed under: reflections,yoga lifestyle,yoga philosophy — R. H. Ward @ 2:29 pm
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The other day in the car at rush hour, I was stuck at a red light behind a guy in a jeep. His mind clearly wasn’t on the the road. First he vigorously dug around on the floor on both the passenger side and all over the backseat, all while letting his car inch forward bit by bit as cars progressed through the light, barely glancing ahead as he did so. Then he leaned out the window to fix his hair in the side mirror. When the light turned green, he was all ready to move forward, only to throw his hands up in frustration when it changed to red before he made it through the intersection. When he did finally make it through, he stomped on the gas going up the hill… only to have to stop at the next light. Watching him, I couldn’t help but realize that I know I act like that all the time, but how silly it looks to see it! I had a much better experience in traffic that day than the guy in the jeep did, partly because I was entertained and horrified by his antics, and partly because I spent the time practicing patience.

I have always had a really difficult time being patient. As a kid, if I wasn’t good enough at something to do it right the very first time, I just wasn’t interested. Patience? Practice? Nah. Everything to do with reading and books and school came naturally to me, so that’s what I did and that’s what I got better at, and I decided sports were stupid. I could have been good at sports too if I’d wanted to be, if I’d practiced hard, but I wasn’t interested in being patient. I didn’t understand that good things come to those who wait; I wanted good things right now.

Many of the different texts I’ve read so far in yoga teacher training have emphasized being patient, slowing down, using time more mindfully. Mr. Easwaran includes a whole chapter on slowing down in Passage Meditation, because going slower allows us to think through our choices before we decide, helps us remember to be kinder to others. All the pranayama breathing techniques I learned last month emphasize that the breath should be slow and deep and even; the breath and the mind are closely related, so if you slow down the breath, you calm the mind too. Calm minds generally make better decisions, and calm people are often more content.

In the yoga sutras about the yamas and niyamas, we read about asteya (non-stealing), which includes being generous with our time. If we stop rushing around and leave when we need to leave to get to our destination on time, we’re going to have a much more pleasant experience. Don’t be distracted thinking about the next thing, but focus your attention on what’s going on right now. Sometimes what’s going on right now may be boring, but if we’re patient, we may learn something useful.

It’s important, too, to practice patience in yoga class. We can only do what our bodies are able to do that day. Sometimes I can get my leg straight in revolved triangle, and sometimes I can’t. Sometimes I feel strong enough to hold side plank pose comfortably; sometimes, no matter how I modify it, I wobble around. When we see someone demonstrate an exciting new pose, of course we want to try it right away, but our bodies might not be ready for that pose, or it might be hard to get the hang of it on the first try. We have to be mindful of our limits as we practice, be patient with ourselves, and not force our bodies into postures that could harm us. A patient practice is a healthy practice.

 

Pratyahara and Non-Attachment July 3, 2011

Filed under: reflections,yoga lifestyle,yoga philosophy — R. H. Ward @ 1:39 pm
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One thing I’ve been thinking a lot about lately is pratyahara, the drawing-in of the senses. When we practice pratyahara, we refuse to let our senses make our decisions for us. So often, our senses will identify something they like and want more of it. That pizza tastes good! I like watching this show! It’s comfortable to relax on the couch! and so we eat more pizza, we watch two more episodes of Doctor Who, and we curl up on the couch for four hours. The problem is not in any one of those things in themselves. It’s fine to eat pizza sometimes, and Doctor Who is probably my favorite show. The issue arises when I’m not making my decision for myself but rather letting my senses make the decision. Two or three slices of pizza is great, but I don’t need to eat the whole pie, and I don’t need to order another pizza tomorrow. When I let myself binge out on something, I’m not consciously making that decision but rather allowing my senses to overdose on things that I like. Practicing pratyahara means that maybe I have some pizza today, but not every day, and I have a side salad or maybe go jogging afterwards; it means that I watch one episode of Doctor Who, but then I get up off the couch and start my evening routine so I can be in bed on time and get a good night’s sleep. If I make decisions consciously, then I will be taking better care of myself.

Non-attachment goes hand in hand with pratyahara. When our senses get used to having their way all the time, they begin to crave the things they like. When I haven’t had any pizza for a few days, I start to feel it. I WANT pizza. If somebody in my office gets pizza for lunch, the smell wafts over and I get all jittery and want it so badly. If I let my senses be in charge, I’d be running for the elevator, walking down to my favorite pizza shop, and trying to justify it because after all I did get the veggie slice. Practicing non-attachment, though, allows me to separate myself from that craving. I take a minute and think, do I really need pizza today? The craving doesn’t run my life, I do not NEED a slice of pizza right now, and I have a perfectly good lunch in the fridge waiting for me.

When we practice non-attachment with the objects in our lives, we can still enjoy things, still go shopping, still have stuff, but all those things don’t run our lives. We’re able to clean out our closets and take the old clothes to Goodwill. We’re able to lend out our books without stressing out about when or if we’ll get them back. If a vase gets broken, oh well, there are plenty more vases. If your husband eats the ice cream you were saving for Saturday, it’s not a big deal. Any one of those things could be upsetting or frustrating, but if you’re practicing non-attachment, you can come at the situation more calmly, with a little bit of distance that allows you to see things more clearly. Your husband didn’t know you were saving that ice cream; whoever broke the vase feels terribly about it. Having a little distance allows you to choose how you’ll react, so that rather than just yelling, you can choose to treat the other person with kindness and make a bad situation better instead of worse.

What are some ways you know to take control of your senses, rather than letting them rule over you? How do you cultivate non-attachment in your daily life?

 

Meditation progress: five days July 1, 2011

Filed under: meditation,reflections — R. H. Ward @ 9:12 am
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For all of May and a lot of June, things were really up in the air in my life. All the upheaval affected my home practice of yoga in a big way. Even once things began to calm down, I think I still used it as an excuse, a little bit. Also, I typically used to practice yoga at home in the morning before work; now that I’m doing the teacher training program, I have to go to the studio at least once a week, which means skipping my morning practice and going to work early so I can leave the office early and get to the studio. Doing that throws my schedule off for the day, but I’ve also been letting it throw my whole week off.

Last month, I managed to do my pranayama breathing practice almost every day, but I could never get into a rhythm with it; I kept realizing at the very end of the day that I hadn’t done my pranayama yet. At least I was doing it, but I always felt like things would go better if I could have a regular schedule.

For the past five days, I have practiced my pranayama and meditation every morning. I also practiced yoga on four of those mornings. I started the week feeling really pumped up and excited about my commitment to my new schedule. Today I feel less like that.

On Monday, I had taken a personal day from work, so I had a 40 minute yoga asana practice. I worked on some savasana relaxation techniques, did all my pranayama breathing, and meditated for four minutes. Really felt calm and content afterwards.

On Tuesday I squeezed in a 20 minute yoga asana practice, which is better than nothing, did an abbreviated version of my pranayama breathing, practiced yoni mudra (which is a pratyahara thing I’ll post more about later), and meditated for 4:30. I felt distracted during the meditation, like my mind was drifting a lot. I think I might have been trying to shove too many activities into one practice.

On Wednesday I skipped yoga asana because I had to get to work early. Did an abbreviated version of pranayama breathing, practiced yoni mudra, and found that meditation is more difficult without some yoga stretching first, because my back hurt all through my meditation practice.

Thursday, I did 20 minutes of yoga asana, all my pranayama breathing, and tried passage meditation for the first time (based on the book I’m currently reading: basically, you meditate on a brief passage from inspirational literature). I loved it and the time went by really quickly.

Today, I had time to practice, but I only did 30 minutes of yoga asana and an abbreviated pranayama breathing practice. I started off strongly with meditation, but when my alarm went off at the end of 5:30 minutes, I realized I had dozed off. I was still saying my passage in my head, but I was mixing it up with other things and all kind of dreamy stuff was drifting in. I got up from meditation feeling sleepy and heavy and unrefreshed.

This morning, I staggered back to the bedroom after my sleepy meditation, feeling bad and upset and like I would never be able to succeed at this thing. Looking back over my journal and typing it all up now, though, I can see that I had a mostly successful week of meditation: a lot of good experiences.

I think that this week has just caught up with me today. The reason I took a personal day on Monday is because we bought a house and we had our settlement on Monday; we’ve been either been packing or over at the house every night this week. I have slept really well all week, but I don’t know if that’s being tired or if it’s the meditation helping me calm my mind. Maybe a little of both?

My hope for this month is that I can keep up with the good habits I started this week. Mr. Easwaran writes in Passage Meditation that when you are the busiest, you need meditation the most, to help you deal with all the things in your life. He also writes that missing even one day of meditation can really set you back, and that you should persevere and keep at it no matter what happens. So that’s what I’m going to try to do this month. We will be moving into our new house, dealing with repairs and settling in and tons and tons of yardwork, so we’ll see if meditation can carry me through all that.

 

Meditation introduction June 30, 2011

Filed under: meditation,yoga philosophy — R. H. Ward @ 2:17 pm
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Recently I talked with a friend who mentioned having some medical problems. I said I’d heard that yoga could help with the problem she was experiencing (because really, what else do I talk about these days), and she said, “I tried yoga once in college but I couldn’t get into it! That last pose – the instructor kept saying we had to make our minds TOTALLY BLANK. And I just can’t do that!” I wanted to hug my poor friend because she got cheated so badly! Here’s someone willing to give yoga a try, who could really be helped by it, who’s been turned off from yoga because of bad and inaccurate teaching. I wish I could give her old instructor a talking-to! Instead, all I could do was tell my friend I hoped she’d give it another try with a new teacher and that it might be different for her this time.

Contrary to what a lot of people may believe, meditation isn’t about making the mind a blank. The mind is never blank! Anyone who says that to practice meditation we need to make our minds completely blank is dead wrong. Our minds are like crazy drunk monkeys, careening around from one thing to another. Meditation, savasana, pratyahara, the pranayama breathing exercises I did last month – it’s all about calming down the monkey in our brains and training it to do what we want it to do. It’s still a monkey – it’s always going to be a little crazy! But you can teach the monkey to listen. Meditation isn’t about making the mind a blank, because that’s impossible; meditation is about working with what you have and learning to calm your monkey down.

The first step in meditation is to give your mind as little to worry about as possible. Sit in a comfortable position, arrange your clothing so nothing’s bothering you, take off your sweatshirt or put on some socks, blow your nose, drink some water, shut the door, tell your family not to come in for a few minutes. Eliminate the distractions before you get started, so that once you start, you can stay put. Before meditation, do some yoga poses: they keep the body limber and healthy, so that when we sit for meditation, we can be still for a while without the body distracting us. (I got a reminder of that this morning, when I skipped yoga and went right to meditation, and my back ached the whole time.) You could also take a walk, which allows you get some fresh air and some exercise, refreshing you before meditation. Try reading from a sacred book or inspirational text to get in the mood for spiritual practice. It’s also good to do some pranayama breathing exercises like alternate-nostril breathing: this slows down your breathing and gets the mind starting to focus on the breath.

When we sit down to practice meditation, our crazy monkey brains are going to be bored. They’re going to want to do anything other than meditate. If you sit down and try to just make your mind a blank, your mind will fight you! It’ll make lists of everything you need to do after this, it’ll wonder what happened to Kristin who sat next to you in third grade, it’ll replay every embarrassing moment with every past sweetheart, it’ll remind you to call your mother. But if you give the mind something to do, something to focus on, it won’t have a chance to do all those things, and this makes the whole process easier.

The simplest thing to do is just to focus on the breath. Make the breath quiet and calm; on each inhale, say to yourself “inhale”, and on each exhale, say “exhale”. You could also try working with your breath energy: inhale “peace” and feel peacefulness flooding through your body; exhale “love” and imagine your love and compassion going out to all beings in the world. Choose any concept or word that resonates with you. You’ll get distracted at some point, because that’s what happens, you can’t avoid it. Don’t get angry or upset, as that just gives your monkey brain more ammunition to work with. When you get distracted, just accept it calmly and start over, bringing it back to your practice, inhaling and exhaling.

There are a few other meditation practices that I’ll share with you over the course of this month. What’s key is to remember two things. First, meditation is hard work, requiring a lot of self-control and self-discipline. Second, anyone can meditate. Not just Buddhist monks in orange robes, not just really holy people, but everybody. The more crazy stuff you have going on in your life, the more you probably need to meditate! Be open to learning, be gentle with yourself, and pretty soon you’ll start to enjoy those quiet moments.

 

June Teacher Training Weekend: Saturday: pratyahara, meditation, and teaching practice June 29, 2011

Filed under: meditation,teacher training,yoga,yoga philosophy — R. H. Ward @ 1:50 pm
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In Saturday’s teacher training class, we continued our discussion of relaxation and moved on to pratyahara and meditation.

Pratyahara refers to the drawing-in of the senses. It’s a gateway to higher levels of consciousness, which makes sense when you think about it, because it’s our senses that distract us from meditation and spiritual practice. We want to look out the window, we hear a strange sound, we adjust our clothing or shift around, something smells funny, and it all leads to distraction, whether you’re in a church or on your yoga mat. Our senses exist to protect us and help us to survive, but in the modern day and age, we rarely need to rely on our senses for survival anymore. Drawing in the senses, blocking out the outside world, can help us to focus on our meditation or spiritual practice.

J gave a great talk on meditation as well. Meditation begins with concentration, and we actually start meditation right in the middle of yoga practice as we concentrate on our asana postures. Then we take that concentration and apply it to focusing our minds. This month, I’ll be talking a lot about concentration and meditation as I practice these things every day. Here are this month’s homework projects:

  • Read the book Passage Meditation by Eknath Easwaran
  • Read book II of the Yoga Sutras (we’ve read some of this; just need to finish whatever we haven’t done yet)
  • Practice meditation daily
  • Keep a journal of my meditation practice; write a reflection paper based on the experience
  • Write up a guided relaxation sequence
  • Pose of the Month write-ups: two backbends

When I first heard the homework assignments, I was excited because I’ve wanted to do more with meditation for a long time. Then J began to talk about how important it is to practice meditation every single day, always at the same time and in the same place. This month, F and I are going to be moving to a new home – there won’t be a same time, same place for a while, at least not every day. As J talked, I began to feel discouraged before I even began. I asked J for advice, and he said, “Then practice meditation sitting with your boxes.” He said not to let the situation get in the way of my practice, and to focus on appreciating the boxes – after all, they mean we’re moving to a beautiful new home! I felt so much better and was glad I’d said something.

Saturday’s class was a big help to me because I always feel like I’m doing meditation wrong. I read a lot of books by Buddhist monks and other spiritual authors, and they always say that it’s difficult to calm the mind, but I figured, a Buddhist monk has no experience with the insanity going on in my brain. I thought I must be terrible at meditation because I keep getting so distracted. Now, though, I feel a little more reassured that getting distracted is part of the experience – that’s just what happens, and it happens to everybody. I’m not doing it wrong, and I’m actually doing it not too badly. I have a variety of meditation exercises to try this month, and I’ll share them all with you here.

At the end of Saturday’s class, we did some yoga teaching practice. J told us to pair up, but my pair decided to join with another pair into a group of four. This meant that none of us got quite as much teaching practice – instead of teaching half of the time, we each taught a quarter of the time – but the experience more than made up for this. It was really good to work with my classmates and hear their voices as teachers. We’re all getting much more confident! We also had the freedom this time to teach poses that aren’t necessarily part of J’s or N’s usual repertoire. Sarah gave us some challenging standing poses to do, and I taught some of my favorite seated poses. We’re all getting there! I don’t know if I’ll have time to practice teaching on friends and family this month, but I hope I get the chance soon.

 

June Teacher Training Weekend: Friday: relaxation/savasana discussion June 28, 2011

Filed under: teacher training,yoga,yoga philosophy — R. H. Ward @ 8:40 pm
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Friday night was the start of our fourth teacher training weekend. This month, our topics were relaxation, pratyahara, and meditation; on Friday we talked about relaxation, and savasana in particular.

In Western culture, we tend to rely on external things in order to relax: TV, computers, music, video games, alcohol, social events, all kinds of things that are external. We fill our lives with these things, telling ourselves that they help us to relax, but really when we depend on external things to help us relax, we become unable to relax without those things. In yoga, all you need to relax is yourself. Relaxation in savasana is an active, conscious process, but one that relies on nothing but your own mind and body.

Savasana, or corpse/rest pose, is the final pose at the end of a yoga class. After working hard and exerting yourself throughout your yoga practice, you come down to the floor, lie on your back, let your feet flop open and your arms rest and your eyes close. Although it’s an easy pose physically, savasana is said to be the most difficult of all yoga poses, because it’s here that you lie still, quieting and slowing down your mind. For many people, it’s incredibly difficult simply to be still; for others, it’s hard to release all the tension that builds up in the body. Many students come into savasana but can’t keep their eyes shut, can’t stop moving (maybe scratching an itch, maybe adjusting their clothing, maybe just moving around), can’t quiet the mind. I’m a victim of this too as much as anybody.

What I learned on Friday night is that savasana, like any yoga pose, needs to be practiced actively. In most yoga poses, you’re active physically; for example, in Warrior 2, I’m always thinking, is my knee right over my ankle, is my back leg straight, am I pressing through the back foot, are my arms high enough, is my core balanced, are my abs engaged. Even when I’m just holding the pose, I’m actively working to improve my posture. In savasana, you do the same work, but you do it just in your mind, working to observe the breathing and observe the mind, to let the body relax, and to learn to enjoy being still. In yoga asana practice we exert conscious effort; in savasana we enter conscious relaxation.

As a yoga teacher in training, it’s important that I learn how to teach savasana. If even I still have trouble surrendering and relaxing in this pose, then my future students certainly will. Many yoga studios, and especially yoga teachers at gyms and fitness centers, do not really teach their students how to relax, so this is crucially important for me to learn.

Savasana is valuable because it allows the body to truly relax. Did you ever have a night where your dreams were so vivid and so engaging that, when you woke up in the morning, you felt like you didn’t get any rest? The mind interprets dreams as if they’re really happening, so all night long while we dream we’re still working. In savasana, when it’s done correctly, you can properly, consciously relax. J told us about a past teacher of his who never seemed to sleep, because he got all his rest during savasana so that he didn’t need to sleep at night. That’s a little extreme, but savasana or conscious relaxation can give us that little bit of extra rest to help us feel refreshed and ready to tackle the day’s problems.

On Friday night, we talked about all these aspects of savasana. We did a little basic stretching, and then N put us into a deep relaxation. She used a 61-point relaxation exercise and talked us through it. We all left the yoga center on Friday night feeling profoundly relaxed and calm. I got a great night’s sleep on Friday night (although at least one of my classmates reported a restless night, as if the deep relaxation had thrown off her usual rest patterns). The experience made me think a lot about my usual practice of savasana, and ways to consciously improve my experience of this pose.

 

Pranayama Round-up, part 1 June 21, 2011

Filed under: breath,reflections — R. H. Ward @ 9:01 pm
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This month, my homework was to practice pranayama exercises (diaphragmatic breathing, three-part breathing, and alternate-nostril breathing) every day, and to keep a journal of my reflections and observances. Overall I felt like this was pretty difficult for me, because I still have trouble observing myself internally without altering the behavior I’m observing. In terms of pranayama, that meant that while I was sitting there breathing, I’d be wondering if I’m doing the breathing technique correctly, wondering if I should be feeling calmer right now, and wondering if I’ve felt more calm over the past few weeks. I know that pranayama practice and meditation are supposed to be two different things, but for me right now they sure look and feel the same: I’m sitting quietly on the floor paying attention to my breathing and trying not to get distracted.

So. The stats for my breathing. I can do stats. Since the last teacher training weekend, I neglected to practice breathing on 4 days, but I did practice on 26 days. I may not have been really engaged every time I practiced, and my practice sessions may have been shorter or longer in duration, but I did some sort of pranayama practice on 26 of the past 30 days. I feel proud that I accomplished this.

I’ll talk about each pranayama technique in order. I did try to practice them in this order in each session, but there were times when I skipped one or another technique, and at bedtime, it seemed to make more sense to practice them in the opposite order (alternate nostril first, then three-part, then diaphragmatic). Also, I strove to practice ujjayi breathing during all the pranayama techniques; this seemed to help me get a deeper stronger inhale, and it also helped me to inhale at all through a clogged nostril during alternate nostril breathing.

Diaphragmatic breathing: I struggled with this during the course of the month. I kept thinking that I wasn’t doing the technique correctly; diaphragmatic breath is supposed to be a deep lung-filling breath, but as I experienced it, using just the diaphragm to breathe and not the chest didn’t fill me up enough. I often found myself yawning or sighing with relief after a round of diaphragmatic breath. I did discover that diaphragmatic breath seemed easier and more comfortable when I was lying on my back, and so it was pleasant to practice it at bedtime. After continued practice, I do think I’ve improved in my practice of this technique, and my seated practice has become more comfortable and satisfying, but even up until a few days ago I was still experiencing shortness of breath after practicing. I think I need more work on this.

Three-part breathing: By far this was my favorite technique to practice. This technique combines the deep diaphragmatic breath with chest and clavicular action to really fill up the whole lung. I found it really satisfying and calming as well, and I often practiced this technique on its own (for example, between emails at work, or on the train). At the beginning of the month, I sometimes felt dizzy or light-headed after 10-15 three-part breaths, but that feeling faded. I do sometimes feel the need for a yawn or deep sigh after practicing this technique, but not nearly as often as with diaphragmatic breath. I found that this technique was not comfortable to practice while lying down (this is why it made more sense to me to work in backwards order at bedtime – I did the seated practices first, then laid down for diaphragmatic breath).

In part 2: my experiences with alternate nostril breathing (the technique I felt most conflicted about) and my feelings about how the pranayama practice affected my life and my attitudes over the past month (because I think it did)!