Thank You: A Bow In Your Direction

MY VERY BEST  goes out to those of you who have managed to find this blog and to follow it to some degree.  I am not sure how you have found it.  It doesn't appear easily on Google or other search engines when you look for restorative yoga or yin yoga.  To date, Islands Of Grace has reached over 53 countries.  Restorative and Yin yoga are practices that appeal to people oriented toward the deep heart of body-mind-spirit.   There is, I believe, a global, passionate interest in this approach.   It would be wondrous to be with you in India, Mauritius, Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Australia, Russia, Romania, Canada, and the Philippines, and on and on.

Creative Journey & Yoga

Copyright Lance Kinseth, Penetrating Light / Tetsuko, 2011

WE MIGHT IMAGINE the Earth as having been created eons ago and over-old.  But in geo-time, the world has barely appeared.  Earth has barely begun with the whole of cosmos still in ongoing creation. Despite all of our intellectualization, we continue to be an expression of the Earth and more, and in the process of becoming the beyond of ourselves.

BODY-MIND PRACTICE, if authentic, is inside the cutting edge of ongoing creation rather than something created long-ago and over-old.  In this era, yoga is new, as are all body-mind practices.  We are not going back and replicating an ancient, unchanging yoga.  Still, in all of these changes and this ongoing creation, there is a sense something enduring and eternal.  The ancient path offers a clean way forward—a set of deep guiding principles more than a set of techniques.  We sit down on the mat, and we fall into the cascade of the moment as it falls into the future.  Were we to rigidly follow the ancient path, we would likely be practicing only superficial techniques, not unlike trying to stop a river.  We would have the mental “form,” but not have acquired the “heart-mind” essence that surrenders and opens and listens.  In any body-mind practice, the master-task is one of following a few simple principles.  Then, there is the opportunity for a “no end to technique.”  

Body-mind practices offer creative experiences. In yoga, each pose can speak to us—“child,” “tree,” “dog,” “bridge,” “supine goddess.”  Each pose is an invitation to open, to expand, and to create/transform. 

Language and imagery change with deep relaxation.  With poses that calm and quiet, the everyday chatter stops and words and images become more heart felt, and mind becomes more xin [心 “heart mind,” integrative and heart-felt rather than dissecting].  It’s a little madness, in that it is a different state from everyday life, but a good madness—a softening of roles and expectations.

When the chatter slows, there is the deep eloquence of memory, and the many pathways that you might have taken—still there for the taking, and the power of childhood—a living state, not a stage of life.   There is the genetic remembrance of Earth and still a hunger for the elemental--for fire before the hands and for wind and its breath in wild grass.  There is the primal core of life—the initiations of trauma and sorrows that teach us, and key life rituals of transition of birth/birthing, loving relatedness, and death.  All of this, and more, wait within us as an ember, in that unbreakable place that is both at heart’s center and in the universe.  Our creation comes from our unending capacity to imagine, in a cosmos that is still in creation.  And when we rest and quiet and calm, our imagination can flower from being imaginary or fantasy to become imaginal or deeply mythic and intuitive and real.

Everyone is innately creative.  Human essence might be our never-ending stream of imagination.  We become aware of the continuous nature of imagination perhaps best in meditation, where it seems to continually “interfere” with quieting of the mind.  This process of imagination continues even in sleep where it comes into conscious awareness when we dream.  Our imagination may be dominated by attention to what we did or what we believe we need to do, but there are innumerable doors other than routine waiting to be opened.  We need to acknowledge this ever-present quality, and then, engage in processes that evoke non-routine imagery. 

Creativity training is dominated by training strategies that aspire to enhance business success.  The focus of these programs is upon organizational objectives such as design thinking, critical thinking, problem solving, experimentation, decision-making, and innovation.  While some the elements are common to most efforts to foster creativity, yoga-as-creativity-training might focus on personal objectives such as life-changing transformation and identifying hidden strengths.  And the practice of yoga offers somewhat different training emphases, such as physiological relaxation or de-stressing, quietness to turn off the chatter or noise and listen to intuition, a shift in brain chemistry and integration of right-left hemispheres, more effusive themes such as inspiration/surrender/wholeness, affirmations, and/or imagery of light, inversion, a quiet place where one can reflect as well as listen to the quality of one’s voice.  The dominant creative methodologies target thinking differently, such as “thinking outside the box.”  Yoga’s calmness and quiet methods aspire to step outside thought.  The focus is much more on using the mind to mollify the body, to see what then appears.

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Body-mind practices can be designed to offer provocations for artistic creation and invention and general intuitive inspiration or the nurturance of a deeper sense of clarity and freshness in our imagination rather than an artistic end product.  Creative products [writing, drawing and painting, musical voice/song, movement, specific problem-solving—scientific, work objectives and goals and vision] can certainly be concrete outcomes of along a pathway of a creative life.

A sample brief body-mind practice focused upon stimulating creativity:

Creative Journey: A Good Madness & Yoga

            BRING: Journal, laptop or notebook, sketchbook, other

                           2+ Blankets, shawl, eye-pillow or bandana

                          Personal meaningful/”sacred” objects: stones, feathers, jewelry, etc.

                          3+ hours minimum [Can also be a longer retreat]

Intro: Cutting through chatter, intuition, presence, and favorites: what are not being expressed, crystallizing personal directives/philosophy, and style

Practice: Asana & Creativity—selected and intuitive, with creative expression

Light lunch [veg wraps & tea/juice & treat]

Practice: Perhaps Shaman Drum & Nature

Practice: Asana & Creativity—selected and intuitive, with creative expression

Closing

                        Provocations throughout sessions by facilitator(s): music,

recorded voice, guided imagery, fragrance

Epilogue: A Year Of Restorative-Yin Yoga Practice

Copyright Lance Kinseth, Great Peace / Dainei, 2011

A YEAR OF RESTORATIVE-YIN YOGA practice is completed [1/2011—1/2012] and documented in the blog, Islands Of Grace: Restorative-Yin Yoga Journal [http://santosharestorative-yinyogajournal.blogspot.com].

Some Overall Outcomes:

What might restorative-yin yoga practice offer?

• Obviously, Relaxation: First, “doing nothing” does a lot: neuro, cardio, lymphatic, endocrine, and not something grossly overall, but something reaching down to each cell.

Softness, Calmness, Islands Of Grace

Modern life is inherently stressful—fast paced in work and even in “relaxation” where TV images quick-change, where physical care is a “WORKout,” where meals are quick, where sleep may be restless, and where even holidays are rushes of preparation and travel.  Time maybe the driving force.  As a result, life is becoming faster and faster, and we glance into life rather than gaze and contemplate.  Irritation is daily and frequent, and there is never a surplus of time.  Even sleep is not as relaxing as intentional practice, because in the nightly cycles of dreams we tense muscles as well as experience frustration in our dream content.

• Strength and Flexibility From Holding Poses: Physiologically, “spindles”—sensory receptors within the belly of the muscles that primarily detect changes in the length of the muscle—provoke a chemical release that resists the stretch to protect the muscle.  With time and gentle holding, there may be a “spindle release” or a desensitization of the protective response.  With repeated practice that holds poses long enough to create spindle release, flexibility as well as strength in flexibility can be increased.

Restorative-yin yoga emphasizes “turning off muscles” and focusing on connective tissue, but with fascia and gristly connective tissue, the need to hold poses is amplified.  And work with this connective tissue lies near the heart of long-term health where breakdown of this tissue is the primary cause of debilitation with aging.

• Lumbar Emphasis: In Relax & Renew [p. 7], Judith Lasater writes,

Lower back pain may be the price of being human and standing upright.  A major health problem today, back pain ranks second only to the common cold as a reason for patients to visit a physician.

…. Most of us sit, stand, and move in ways that do mo maintain normal curves of the spinal column.  Spinal muscles are found to overwork to hold the body upright, creating muscular tension and ultimately lower back pain.

           

Restorative-yin pose sequences may alternate between moving the lumbar region outward and then inward.  This attention to the lumbar region incorporates a yin yoga emphasis upon the lumbar region and hips.  Utilizing poses that focus on the lumbar region and continuing consistent restorative-yin practice may be very beneficial in restoring this almost global human health problem.  And because much of the lumber structure is supported by fascia or connective tissue that requires sustained stretching, holding poses rather than quickly flowing through poses also optimizes the benefits to the lumbar region.

Restorative-yin also attends to the hips and to the fascia that wraps the spinal column, and secondarily, to listening to the connective tissue that is found throughout the body, even in the muscles.

• Healing Life: not just body, but your aliveness and others’ lives and the Earth, calmness, peacefulness, contentment, gratitude, balance, restraint, and obeisance (use without destroying the base).           

Quieting and calming provoke physiological calmness, to which the body attends, restoring the neuro, lymphatic, endocrine, cardiovascular, and energy systems of the body.  There is a reduction of the “chatter” of thinking and awareness, making us less reactive and more observant and eliciting a calmness and restored energy that others can see, and perhaps an expanded seeing, especially of events that, heretofore, were ignored and missed, yet that were miraculous.

• Deepening Body-Mind-Spirit Practice: Eloquent concepts may be generated across a year of restorative-yin yoga, from quieting and stillness that evoke expression from a deeper place than everyday chatter: 

For examples, see specific blog posts throughout the year, such as serenity, clarity in defining a pathway ahead, touching a deep ground of being, transformation, deep calmness and contentment, resonance with life experience, release, awakening, flow, spirit, sacred space, stillpoint, lightness, centering, harmony, grace…

• Camaraderie of like-mined practitioners oriented toward contemplative body-mind-spirit practice

• Thriving/Optimizing outweigh surviving that is an evolving shift in our perception of health, moving from referencing the absence of illness, physical fitness, more holistic wellness, to thriving/optimal health:
• Activating an unbreakable space within, an INHERENT HEALTH already present, so that optimal health can even be found in terminal illness.
• COME FROM A PLACE OF STRENGTH rather than from loss, creating a meta-motivator which you need [80% quit fitness after 2 months]
• FOCUS: What is NOT wrong [Thich Nhat Hanh]
• Health is primarily PSYCHO-SPIRITUAL [Viktor Frankl: Man’s Search For Meaning] rather than physical
• Rather than concentrating on symptom, ASPIRING TO OPEN A BLOCK in holistic body
• Problems/ADVERSITY AS OPPORTUNITY/information/ as “initiation” vs. “wound”
• Health involves a COMPREHENSIVE MULTI-FOLD PATHWAY: body, art, contemplation/philosophy
• Awareness of something shared, IDENTITY EXTENDING BEYOND SELF AND “DIVINE/SACRED”
• Relaxation into CALMNESS crucial to access internal unbreakable place: RELAXATION AS A PARADIGM SHIFT: Physiological relaxation begins a sequence of “calmness” that opens awareness, and that “senses” new information, and that fosters “transformation” to be authentic.
• HEALING vs. curing/excising [embracing adversity and personal traits as opportunities and as teachings]
• EMERGENCE OF BODY-MIND-SPIRIT CENTERS pioneering a new health literacy, actualizing concepts such as “thriving,” “optimal health” as more than uber-fitness and nutrition, “creativity,” “flow,” and “intuition.”
• RICH ATTRIBUTES become a part of daily life, becoming normal rather than special or exclusive: Eloquence, grace, wonder, contentment, humor, compassion, and gratitude.

A Gate Of Light Opens

Copyright Lance Kinseth, Wisdom Shine / Chisho, 2011

Birds of many Earthen colors peck at the iced bath

And come in close for seeds.

The teeter-totter of day and night has tipped toward light.

Daylight lengthens almost imperceptibly

But for the perceptive ones in every era

In this ice-cold landscape of death

Light becomes an opening, promising gate

And life slow-spirals forward from ice into fire.

With this change

We are wont to set resolutions to fit such a glorious new start.

All of a sudden,

We aspire to live differently, more richly, more purposively.

We look a little deeper both into the dark and into the growing light.

We see a pathway forward that twists our everyday life into something eloquent.

Still, even finding our life to be inside a vast miracle,

We try to decide if a change is worth our effort

And stand to fall back inside the dream-sleep of the everyday.

Will wind that has suddenly become a prayer cease being a prayer

And the venerable oak cease being a temple

And return to being an irrelevant background?

In this short yet rich miracle that is the life of each of us

Why do we tend to cast the very best aside?

IT IS A NEW YEAR, and a new day.  Perhaps in waking, still lying in bed, we might experience a moment of gratitude for having awakened, and the subtle “joy” that is opened by simply awakening to a new day.  As a “body-mind practice,” we might silently say, “gratitude.”  This word implies much more than one word.  It can become a “culled-down” way of saying so much more, like the Buddhist response to the Anapanasati Sutra wherein Breathing in, I know that I am breathing in gradually might slo-cook down to become simply “In.”

Perhaps this new day is the dramatic first day of the new year or less dramatically a day lost anywhere in the year, just a day after a weekend—a Monday—or perhaps a mid-week “hump day.”  But perhaps on this day, a restorative-yin yoga session is offered nearby.

We come to a restorative-yin practice session. We take off your shoes outside the practice space.  We step through a doorway. The floor is perhaps wooden and solid.  The walls are likely hard surfaces, but painted in a soft, Earthen color, unadorned, and the light subdued. 

Crossing over the threshold of the doorway into the practice room, there is an opportunity for a step—hopefully—through a gateway to a calmer terrain. 

In restorative practice, the harshness of putting the brakes on and slowing down begins, first, by the ritual of gathering supports for practice—blocks and blankets and balls, perhaps accompanied by a facilitator’s addition of the fragrance of incense and the music of soft sacred chants or flute and piano.

We begin, agreeably, to step out of the fast pace of the everyday.  We are not trying to step out of our life, as much as we are aspiring to “swell” our aliveness, to open our experience, to open the “moreness” of our living.  And so we come to the matt, to the First Excellence of yoga: to become fully present in our lives as-they-are in this moment: perhaps stillness first, aspiring to reach an interior stillpoint, but always stilled to some degree wherein breath emerges in our awareness, and we come to pranayama, “breath work.”

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RESTORATIVE-YIN YOGA is not really a set of poses as it is typically presented—a set of poses especially for those “who cannot do regular yoga” due to physical limits.   Restorative-yin yoga endures because it offers great depth, and great penetration into life.  Being in restorative-yin poses provokes a deep listening and quietness that opens dimensions of body—mind-spirit that are not readily accessible in the faster pace of modern yoga. 

Still, for all of its benefits, restorative-yin practice is a dimension of yoga for which there is not enough time for nearly everyone to fit into daily life.  Modern life is jammed, perhaps, with children and work and things-to-get-done and what we did yesterday and how that went for us, all of which that make it so very important to get a good workout, to get physical.  So if it going to be “yoga” in the West, that likely will mean “fitness”—‘sweat and heat”—if possible. 

Oh, yes, it would be nice to add some slow-paced relaxation and eased stretch, but life seems to be about survival, and there is so little time.  In fact, as our lives march forward, the clock appears to be ticking faster, and there is likely to be less time than there was before, even less time than there was last week.  And weeks seem to disappear as fast as days and, in no time at all, months seem to disappear as fast as weeks and, eventually, even years seem to do the same.  Has it been two years, five, ten?

When we really begin to “get it,” to “get what life is really about,” the task is one of  “thriving” rather than “surviving.”  Health swells from being fitness, at first to “wellness,” that is more holistic [involving nutrition and something called “relaxation,” for which there is little time], to become something that is inherent and yet, somehow, vast, and even “spiritual”—something that we begin to sense that has never, really, been lost—something that is NOT wrong, rather than the excision or catharsis of that which appears to be wrong (“disease” or “disorder”).

 

Quieting and calming, “problems” transform from limits to be overcome to events that may offer information and opportunity.  Quieting, there is the discovery that there are no limits, rather than a sense of having limits.  We may be “limited” by the fact that we are different from someone else, but we can discover that “differences” offer a nuance of grace than someone else doesn’t possess.  Paradoxically, the pathway forward for each person is “different” and an unending story/journey of self/life/cosmos, if we have the senses for it.

Yoga And Endocrines

from enocrinesystematlas.gif / ama-assn.org

A VARIETY OF GLANDS produce and secrete hormones needed for normal functioning of the body: energy/lethargy, metabolism, sexual response, water regulation, sleep, mood, reproduction, and basic tissue functioning. 

“Hormones” are complex chemicals, such as melatonin, progesterone, lutropin, dopamine, estrogen, thyroxine, thyrotopin, corticotropin, epinephrine, and testosterone.  There are complex feedback loops between the various glands, and also with the nervous system and other organs that also secrete hormones.  The endocrine glands themselves are complex and have fascinating aspects such as retinal cells and neurons or gastric-like cells so that they “relate” [as an aspect of their evolutionary origins] with other body structures.

Yoga literature praises the benefits of yoga for optimizing the endocrine system, with no references to clinical research on the effect of yoga on the endocrine system.  When statements involving healthful outcomes of many body-mind practices are traced back, they often occur originally as statements by founders and previous practitioners and are essentially beliefs.  Interesting, endocrine glands occur throughout the body and are located almost at the center point of the seven popular chakra psycho-energetic centers (e.g., pineal/6^th chakra/middle of forehead).  For some yoga practitioners, the endocrines are described as the physical manifestation of a subtler, spiritual body.  But here, it might be acknowledged that the popular sense of seven chakra is abstruse rather than an explicit fact, with other models of yoga ranging from 5 to 20+ chakra and, for some practitioners, even a sense of sub-chakras within each major center.

The endocrine system might function somewhat autonomously, for example, with the pituitary gland regulating the amount of thyroxine (controlling cell metabolism) or another gland regulating salt and water balance, etc.  However, the endocrine system might be more accurately termed the neuroendocrine system, wherein central nervous system (CNS) affects the hypothalamus that, in turn, affects the pituitary gland (or “master gland”) to create a system of balances, with one gland capable of stimulating a response and another gland capable of inhibiting this response.  Either an external stimuli that produces fear or an internal disorder such as physiological depression in turn provokes CNS the endocrine system.  Along with the pituitary gland, the pineal, adrenal, thyroid, parathyroid, thymus and reproductive glands form the heart of the endocrine system.

Claims of effects of a spcific pose on a specific gland have not been established.  The key point is to begin to recognize that yoga is affecting the endocrine system, just as it also affecting the respiratory, vascular, lymphatic systems as well as systems less in our awareness such as the digestive system. 

Yoga impacts the neuroendocrine system, just simply as a form of external stimuli.  Intentional or mental stimulating the nervous system to relax by stilling and reducing the breath cycle, the flowing movement of yoga sequences, and the adjunct effect of pressure on the glands through poses such as inversions and neck bends clearly affects the neuroendocrine system.  In the quiet and calmness of restorative-yin yoga, a significant relaxation response is provoked.  This will involve the inhibition of endocrine secretions that stimulate the sympathetic nervous system.

Without any physiological measures of the endocrine system [such as blood levels of endocrine hormones during yoga practice or post-practice], it is logical to assume that either very active poses/active breathing [e.g. Kundalini “Breath Of Fire,” 2-3 breaths per second] or stillness “exercise” the endocrine system.  The healthful outcomes that yoga might provide for the neuroendocrine system [such as “normalized,” “regulated” or “balanced” or “optimized,” as well as the specific degree of change] make sense but remain subjective.

Inversions, such as downward dog and happy baby and shoulder stands/headstands, are strongly associated in yoga practice with stimulation of the endocrine system.  Poses that bend neck back to affect the thyroid and thymus [e.g., throat Lotus Kriya and Breath Of Fire] or that bend the spine back or forward [e.g., Camel or Forward Folds] to affect most endocrine glands.  And the variety of the sequence of poses of a yoga practice session “massage” all of the endocrine glands.

Overall,

• inversions and
• physiological relaxation and
• a sense of poses massaging the endocrine glands (as well as “pumping” the lymphatic system)

are three components that will likely affect the endocrine system in healthful, balancing way that has not been adequately measured [e.g., in terms of immediate or post-practice blood chemistry measures or studies with populations with specific endocrine disorders].

A cautionary sense of healthy” self-criticism in evaluating the benefits of any body-mind practice is recommended.  It is facile and perhaps misleading to assume that a specific pose will optimize specific endocrine functions.  Neuroendrocrinology is an extremely complex field of inquiry that involves all of the tissues of the body in elaborate feedback systems with complex secretions stimulating other secretions and fitting exquisitely to target receptor cells.

Tranquil Abiding / Centering

Copyright Lance Kinseth, Round Full / Enman, 48"x48, 2011

When water becomes stone

And the atmosphere bell-crisp,

Coming in from the cold

Opens the landscapes of memory and deep imagination.

Yule approaches (Winter Solstice):

The dark yields to the light

And yet the deepest part of winter yet to begin.

The bleakness hides a fire:

The vast sweep of serenity in the physical stillness

And in the embers of sleepy seeds and mammals

And in subtle details:

In the wonder of bare, matchstick legs of birds in such cold

And in the tiny leather caps of spring buds on every bush.

IN WINTER, in the Northern Hemisphere, some might perceive a dead, skeletal landscape.  And yet, the barren might be positively equated with an “original ground,” a landscape in which we are dazzled less by the fleeting biotic evanescence of summer.  In this original ground, we might be carried a little deeper.  In a landscape that appears reduced to the skeletal, everything is still deeply present.  There is an opportunity in not being distracted by diverse expressions.  Zen adept Ikkyu lived in Japan at a time of famine, disease, riots and wars, seeing, quite regularly, a landscape of corpses.  In experiencing the desolation and a sense of “life as fleeting,” Ikkyu admonishes us that appearances are delusive.  In Giakotsu (“Skeletons,” 1457 AD),he writes in the voice of a skeleton in a temple graveyard,

            Break open

            A cherry tree

            And there are no flowers,

But the spring breeze

Brings forth myriad blossoms!

In John Stevens, Three Zen Masters: Ikkyu, Hakuin, Ryokan. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1993, p.45

In December in the Northern Hemisphere, the physical Earth has it time of glory.  Snow and ice trigger, in counterpoint, humane fire and shelter.  We might go into a landscape of crows that go easily into the stubble and find gems free for the taking.   Perhaps this canny ability to find resources in desolation is a strong part of the reason that arctic cultures praise the highly evolved family of Corvidae, while in the West, crows and ravens and magpies are disprized.  The crow is mythologized by indigenous Northwest Pacific coastal societies as the “Crow Father”—the creator-spirit that produced dry land by beating its wings—or as “The One Who Brings Light.”  Similarly, the raven might be referenced as the “Great Inventor” or as “The One Whose Voice Is To Be Obeyed” or as the “Real Chief.”

In the cold, there is time for rich fire of contemplation, for the mind, for the art of Raja yoga—“royal yoga”—at least at a preparatory level of meditation/mind-spirit work: “tranquil abiding.”

In “tranquil abiding,” there is the natural tendency to try to go inside an interiority to “strengthen self” against “superficial” / “false” everyday “distractions,” as if we really could subsume life and rise above it.  However, the real task of Raja yoga and initial tranquil abiding is one of emptying the center so that the miracle that is life in all of its expressions [that we might discriminate into “good” and “bad”] can enter and optimize us.  In Opening The Moral Eye, M. C. Richards wrote, “Centering is the discipline of bringing in rather than leaving out.”

In body-mind practices and art and life in general, the “center” is neither a physical point nor an interior place in oneself.  More than a place, Centering is gerund—a noun/verb—a process of balancing real events in life as it is, instead of being swayed this way and then that way, rather than making an “inside” and an “outside.”  Centering is an act of bringing elements that might seem to be at opposite ends of a continuum into balance and harmony: Speech and silence, the everyday and the cosmos, the natural and the artificial.

Centering is a process of developing an interior silence or calmness for clarity and for peace.  It is a process of letting go, with the possibility that by deeply calming and letting go, an interior luminescence might shine outward.

If there is a sense of “center” in the body-mind-spirit, it is perhaps somewhat effusive rather than specific.  It is likely that which is referenced in the Chinese term, xin [心], which might be translated as “heart-mind.”  “Heart-mind” is a balancing of sorts.  And it is a holistic essence that even extends beyond the body, as might be captured in the metaphor of the seventh chakra, Sahasrara, where there is a sense of unity with the cosmos.  A person expressing the attribute xin is felt to be a “good person,” which is to say, simply, that the person is considerate of others, but more than this, that his or her actions are likely to be deeply balanced and luminescent.

In winter, in the Northern Hemisphere, when nothingness seems to prevail over abundance, we are offered this metaphor of emptying, opening, and receiving that which the crows know well—an overlooked abundance that is always present in every season.

In the quiet of restorative practice, we are offered a stillness that might bring us to a center that is not an interior island, but rather, is a process of magical arrival and of the flow of energy.  Each incoming breath is the flow of the Earth, like an incoming wave in the ocean that is, ultimately, the expression of the ocean itself.  Such a perception can seem esoteric or even intellectual at first, and then, by returns, might be understood to be the real, unthinking work of the world, like a snowflake that expressed a whole season, nothing exotic or special, really—just the wondrous way that the world, self, star, cold, and dark simply is.

Five Excellences Of Restorative-Yin Yoga Practice Sessions

Copyright Lance Kinseth, 2011

MODERN PRACTICE of yoga can come to resemble calisthenics—warming up the body, and then increasing the pace.  But rather than being simply physical conditioning, the dynamics of any yoga session may carry over into daily life in skills such as deep relaxation, as inspiration for actions, by promoting balance in encounters with the vicissitudes of life and, finally, by encourage the expression of attributes such as harmony and peace and compassion.  There are at least five key elements that are not new, that practitioners often incorporate to some degree into various phases of a general yoga session.  Their grace lies in their simplicity and freedom from dogma.  In restorative-yin practice, these five elements may become intentional, ritualized components that are likely to be enhanced or deepened by the slow, calm process of restorative-yin practice.

The First Excellence:

“Coming To The Mat”

[Stillpoint and Pranayama]

“Coming to the Mat” implies a number of processes:

Practically, in all yoga practice, “coming to the mat” aspires to trigger a physiology of rest to aid in increasing flexibility and strength in poses and the capacity to sustain relaxation throughout the session and to also contribute to a practical outcome: stress reduction.  In restorative-yin practice, the rational for “coming to the mat” goes much deeper.

Overall, in the process of “coming to the mat,” the sequence of events that occur in your mind guiding body physiology triggers a physiology of rest:

• Crossing a threshold,
• Gathering supports,
• Setting up matt,
• “Settling in:” and “centering,”
• Coming to a “stillpoint” on the mat, and
• “Breath work” [awareness, softening/lengthening, focus on exhalation, cessation of exhalation].

This mind-directed physiological shift, in turn, opens mental shift: When we taste such an elemental force as our breath as freshness and freedom, everything becomes a place of grace.  Everything offers.  Everything offers an “opportunity” for gratitude, wherein life does not simply continue, but rather, has the opportunity to be transformed.

Specific Sequence of “Coming To The Mat:”

In restorative-yin practice, we cross over a threshold from the fast pace of the everyday into a place and a process that aspires to calm.  Crossing over a “threshold” of sorts at the doorway, we are not cut off from our children or from our family or from myriad obligations.  We are not giving up anything or leaving anything behind.  However, “Restorative-Yin Yoga” is not a continuation of the fast pace of everyday modern life.   There is a sense of taking refuge (sharanam) in a larger landscape of support that extends both deep into the tradition of yoga and into the vast universe.  Given this larger context, the details that seem overwhelming and the struggles that seem to make you smaller can be swallowed up by the vastness and released.  And when stresses intrude, you can place them on the other side of the threshold and look at them rather than either be the stressors [e.g., becoming an emotion such as anger] or let them go.  Crossing a threshold of sorts, we enter an inner terrain, where, if we go far enough in our relaxation, the "inner" is found to weave seamlessly into the, heretofore, "outer," forming an overall tapestry of landscape, of self, of identity, that is without boundaries.

Crossing over this threshold, we might aspire to stop our everyday “high-speed cruise control.”  We simply begin to slow, and to quiet, and to still as much as is possible, side-stepping out of the fast pace of everyday life.  But more than either letting go or “calming down,” we begin to make a “space for grace.”  It is a quality that is likely missing from our everyday, from our weekend, from the day after Monday, or from any day that we might choose.

The mat is rolled out and a place of practice is established.  In Restorative practice, the process of gathering supports such as blocks and blankets and settling on the matt creates a small ritual of preparation and entry.  For restorative practice, you might gather blocks and blankets and perhaps a ball or bolsters—all of which build to a “ritual of transition,” not unlike an artist gathering materials before a blank canvas. 

“Coming to the mat” offers a center point.  We might sit or lie down, and even wrap the body on a blanket.  Coming to the mat provides a place to “settle in” and “center” oneself—a “centering process” that aspires to go deeply inward into the heart-mind to the point where, when deeply relaxed, identity might, paradoxically, expand into the larger landscape rather than lead to isolation and self-absorption.  There may be a sense of focusing on the specific actions of the body, as one might focus on an incoming wave in the ocean, and yet with a sense that the wave is expressing the ocean rather than something exclusive to the wave form itself; something inclusive, opening and expansive.

“Settling in,” Stilling the body turns off the everyday “cruise control,” and we apply the brakes, and we are offered a place to stop.  We bring our awareness to the body, to our thoughts and to the sensory stimuli of the practice space: the quality of light, sound, touch, and perhaps fragrance.  Unlike most exercise, we bring mind strongly to the body.  Stilling—non-action—is deep, intentional action that is, paradoxically, doing a lot.  We quiet further—no sound—and the practice seems to take on a sacred quality, and to become something akin to living non-sectarian prayer.  Taking some moments for stilling and quieting and kindness to oneself is not selfish.  Returns to restorative practice radiate outward into the world in the form of reduced reactivity, increased listening and awareness, and kindness and compassion for others.  Stillness reveals non-stillness, breath, perhaps heartbeat, and even activity that is not typically in consciousness—a “rivering” of breath, digestion, a streaming of mental imagery, and perhaps overall energy of the body.

“Pranayama”—breath work and body energy activation—becomes a crucial action.  After stilling the body, intentional focus is brought to the breath, at first, just as it is—enduring, steady, and “present.”  Perhaps still in our everyday mode and given to analysis, we might assess whether or not breathing seems stressed or whether we have sense of breathing for the body rather than following the breath.  However, the intention is to follow the breath—just as it is—no ritual, just breath coming and going.  Just cool air across the lips or nose and warm air exiting.

Presence:  With attention to the continual process of breathing, we come concretely into the present moment.  It is not really an acute “mindfulness” of one sensation after another as much as it is a sense of flow where the “arrow never really strikes a target.”

Then, perhaps, we may be admonished to “soften” the breath.  Softening the breath, inhalations and exhalations become longer.  Aspirations to lengthen the breath or to equalize inhalation and exhalation may be sensed to be akin to “work.”  “Softening” is better, as it is intuitive and relaxing.  The naval may rise, followed by the solar plexus, and then by the lower lungs and finally the inhale may ascend up under the clavicles.  There may a gentle, overall sense of the soft breath being akin to a slow wave and the mind, a “rider.”

Having softened the breath, attention may be directed to exhalation—perhaps first to the sense of relaxation of the muscles of the chest.  Along with each exhalation, participants may be directed to release any sense of tension.

Then, we might aspire to cease the breath as the final part of exhalation. You let the ceased breath—stillness—continue: “Perfectly Peaceful Pause.”  The heartbeat might come into awareness.  In the cessation of each exhale, heartbeats pulse perhaps two times or four times and gradually build to more.  Inhalation of breath is encouraged to occur on its own. This first incoming, spontaneous breath is remarkable.  It is not unlike that first, refreshing—exalting—breath upon coming up from underwater.   And perhaps you awaken to sense that each and every breath is like this—freshness and freedom, in its most basic form.  In this cessation of the breath on exhales, following the breath rather than breathing for the body becomes apparent.

As your breath softens, as the breath cycle slows significantly, body physiology that reduces reactivity strengthens.  Brain chemistry, parasympathetic components of heart rate and blood pressure and endocrine regulation shift toward stress reduction and away from the sympathetic “fight-flight.”  Brain waves change because neuro-chemicals change—beta waves into alpha waves.  Practically, slowing the breath cycle triggers parasympathetic nervous system responses: neuro-cardio-endocrine that set in motion the process of increasingly deep relaxation throughout the restorative-yin practice session.  

The Second Excellence:

“Setting An Intention For this Practice Session”

[Inspiration / Invitation]

“Setting an intention for practice” is not really that goal-driven.  It is more a process of inspiration than a practice outcome.  “Setting an intention” often occurs early in the session, but it can be initiated after a period of relaxation.  When more deeply relaxed, our language may change from everyday chatter to a more heart-felt and intuitive response. 

We might “invite” or offer an invitation to some quality to be in our lives to be in our awareness that is beyond the physical process of the sequence of asanas.  We might offer the practice in behalf of others.

If new to the practice, an intention may simply involve an exploration of the practice and a sense of receptivity and openness to see what it is about.

Perhaps:

• A sense calmness, quietness,
• A sense of respite, taking refuge and release,
• A sense of positive energy,
• A sense of healing or restoration, or revitalization or renewed energy to apply to the everyday,
• Impacting a particular physical issue or emotional issue, especially toward an outcome of release rather than resolution,
• Optimizing creativity by opening, expanding:  In yoga, each pose can speak to us—child, dog, bridge, and supine goddess.  Each pose is an invitation to open, expand and create/transform 

By returns to practice, perhaps the inspiration from, or an invitation for the emergence of spiritual attributes [characteristics of “spiritual persons”]: sacredness, humility, freshness, peace, surrender, grace, and eloquence

The Third Excellence:

“Honoring Oneself: Allowing Practice To Be Just As It Is”

[Santosha: contentment with life as it is, on the mat and in everyday life]

Inspiration, yes, invitation, yes, but release from goals, expectations, striving, performance, anticipation, achievement, comparison with others, competition [as everyone can “win”]

“Abandoning the fruits of our actions:” Full involvement now, without thought of a goal; unending entry vs. either goal attainment or achievement

Intuitive practice: Following the body—breath, tensions, and doing what is needed today in this session. What is frustration with our ability level offering us in this moment? 

Opening rather than answering:  If we strive for a goal or an answer, we may miss very interesting “turns along the pathway” or new questions that may spontaneously emerge, especially in the deep listening of restorative-yin practice where poses are held longer.

Be that which is: body, breath, and mind

Moderating highs and lows: A sense of give and take, as a powerful, de-stressing and opening process

Balance—equanimity across all vicissitudes of life—especially with regard to immanent emotions and thoughts; harmony between Yin and Yang

Finally, “contentment” may open the door to allow getting in touch with the richness of life as it is—deeply inspiring, and miraculous in all of its vicissitudes (highs and lows)]

The Fourth Excellence:

“Acknowledging Gratitude”

[Opening Joy]

Gratitude Flowers Into Joy / Cultivating Humility and Joy: Just saying the word “gratitude” toward some sensation [fresh breath or stillness in yoga practice, or seeing a leaf fall at home] immediately offers an unexpected gift: joy.

Peace is every step, every moment: Acknowledging the peace that is offered by the practice space, the support of other participants, the quietness and calmness.

Finding gratitude finds joy, and joy is much deeper as much less elusive than happiness.  Happiness comes and goes, but by finding gratitude in any moment—regardless of the nature of that moment, be it suffering or calmness or celebration—finds joy. 

Beginning with a moment that might seem to be the greatest challenge: It is difficult to find happiness in suffering, but it is not difficult to find joy in suffering.  Being alive in that moment, being able to experience suffering viscerally and emotionally, offers simply the richness of being alive in that moment, or joy.  There is a deep ground have in both suffering and non-suffering that is beyond belief, in which, as Toni Packer has suggested, is like the sun or the wind.  We don’t have to “believe” in the wind or the sun.  They are there in the moment, and we offer gratitude, and we experience joy.  This is why suffering, adversity, and all of the things that we don't like about ourselves or others, offer us something that transcends our beliefs and habits, and has the capacity to transform us in a way that concepts, values, distinctions, achievements fail us.  Just sun and wind and drinking tea and coffee or clean water, going to the bathroom, evoking a smile in another offer us containers of joy when we simply are grateful.

In the gentleness of restorative-yin yoga, we have a “laboratory” skewed toward experiences that generate gratitude and that reward us with a sense of joy.  We may call this joy but other names such as “calmness” or “grace” or, even though the poses seem simple, “eloquence.”  Restorative-yin practice is so stripped down, so elemental, that we might, at times, melt away the chatter of the everyday, gazing—not quickly glancing--deeply into myriad sensations, memories, and directives for our lives.

The Fifth Excellence:

“Taking/Activating Gratitude Into The World/Into Everyday Life”

The many moments of yoga practice that generate authentic sense of gratitude in yoga carry over into everyday life.  The health benefits for everyday life of yoga practice are well documented.  They are especially strong for restorative practice, creating physical and psychological benefits.

Beyond immediate medical and psychological benefits, there are qualities that can become attributes (in the sense that they become ongoing aspects of one’s life).  Body-mind practices can transform temporary behaviors into persistent attributes.

Very concretely, we are likely to be less reactive to stress and possess autogenic skills to

relax.  Slightly more effusive, there may be an enhanced sense of “harmony,” “balance,” and “energy” and of an enhanced capacity to “lighten up” (releasing negatives and attachments) with repeated practice.

Even more personal, there may be an optimal health or thriving orientation toward life and deeper engagement with all aspects of life, including a sense of richness and meaningfulness in the, heretofore, mundane and overlooked and ignored aspects of life.

There may be an even deeper sense of transformation; wherein identity expands to include experiences that heretofore seemed to be “beyond self.”   Deep relaxation/calmness simply opens awareness that, in turn, opens experience that, in turn, offers new information that, in turn, may be transformative, lifting us out of black-and-white routine to experiences that are more subtle and interwoven and inseparable from others.

There may be a sense of one’s activities as capable of becoming “radiant:” Being capable of radiating gratitude or energy or calmness.