Patience: A Cooling Elixir

Copyright Lance Kinseth, 2012

SUMMER 2012 in the Northern Hemisphere has been a string of record high temperatures.  And so, the idea of “cooling down” presses more into our awareness anywhere in Earth in this season.  While we can’t really change the larger environment, we might look at what we can do to cool internally—“body-mind.”

Upon the heat and flame of thy distemper sprinkle cool patience.

Wm. Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act IV, sc. 4

In any season, impatience is likely to heat us.  And unlike something coming from the outside, it is we who are turning on the heat.  And patience is rarely so over-present that it likely to be a problem, keeping us from taking a needed action. 

In tai chi, it is difficult to continue practice without having a sense of patience.  You can find out very quickly if you have enough patience for the slow practice. 

In yoga, patience is advocated, but primarily with one’s expectations about improved flexibility or balance or strength.  The primary classes in modern yoga studios tend to appeal to people seeking a workout.  And as a workout, the focus may be more on releasing energy.

Especially in restorative-yin yoga, where quiet and calmness and holding poses are the norm, a certain degree of patience is required to simply do the practice.  And yet, even “trying to be calm,” we might still harbor impatience, disappointed that we are not yet calm enough.  But when you actually become patient, you are really doing or actualizing and calmness.  Patience is not simply a moral virtue, but rather is an optimal expression of mature body-mind, expressed in very real physiological and mental health, be it tai chi or yoga or marital art.

And so, how to optimize patience?  How to deepen its value?

Especially in restorative-yin yoga, as we relax and still the body, and since we are in motion less do to holding poses and can attend more deeply to breath, we might just say the word patience as we exhale.  And we might invite patience as our underlying intention for a body-mind practice session.

Patience is the companion of wisdom.

St. Augustine

Let us be less impatient.  Let us be more wise and take things easy.
If the asanas are done peacefully, this yoga will indirectly slow us
down (also improving the immune system which suffers from stress)
and strips us out of many useless and harmful efforts, giving us the
feeling of a different quality and introducing a delicate fragrance
into each day's existence.
Vanda Scaravelli, Awakening The Spine [p. 130]

Balance: A Little Restorative-Yin Yoga Can Offer A Lot Of Balance

Copyright Lance Kinseth, 2012

RATHER THAN REFERENCING balance poses such as “tree” or “dancer,” the physical practice of all yoga is a process of balance in every pose:  poses done on both sides, back complementing forward poses, intuitive choice to flow into poses that come from listening to the body that suggest a need to bring some aspect into balance, and in each pose—even seated and prone poses—having a intention/invitation of aspiring toward listening for that “completion” that offers balance, and that balance that comes to the body especially flat on our backs in savasana.

Rather than simply improving one’s ability to balance on one leg, the important contributions of yoga and gentle body-mind practices such as tai chi are their capacity to offer some balance in everyday life.  Perhaps even more than physical effort, due perhaps especially to the fast pace of modern life, there is a demand for an emphasis upon calmness.

Modern life can be a chaotic process of trying to balance the demands of vocation, family, nutrition/exercise, social life, and finances.  In addition, there are the perpetual high-speed micro-moments of traffic, TV, computer, phone, as well as the slow drag of the “gray of work,” and routine, self-doubt and self-criticism [I am not good enough].  And there are much larger issues of degrading global environmental quality, weather disasters, poverty to the point of famine for millions, disease, and extreme violence that either form a concerning backdrop or are a direct component of one’s life.   Life is, as it has always been, a juggling act and there is a cost to trying to keep all of these balls in the air.  And for all of the comforts of modernity, the quest for a sense of balance strongly endures.

More active yoga concentrates on musculoskeletal balance throughout the body by practicing a sequence of poses.  Perhaps even more in modern times as yoga has exploded in popularity, yoga and asanas [poses] can seem to be synonymous. But asana practice alone can miss the deeper intent of yoga and most body-mind practices. 

Restorative-Yin poses do not utilize typical balancing poses that typically come to mind, such as balancing on hand(s) or leg(s) or head or some combination of these parts.  And yet, this practice contributes strongly to the deep intent of yoga to restore balance to one’s life in a way that can surpass these obvious poses.  Restorative-yin yoga concentrates on a more internal physiological balance that the mind-body opens by intentional quieting and calming.

The calmness and quiet and sustained poses of restorative-yin yoga offer a powerful counter against the fast pace of modern life.  And just a few hours of this practice might go a long way against the 100+ waking hours in the rest of the week.  And restorative-yin yoga is not simply a step out of the everyday for a period of recuperation, but rather a practice that, when regular, may be carried forward into everyday life to de-stress and help us react less to events that we find either irritating or traumatic.  In facing “problems, this “training in deep relaxation may, first, counteract overreacting.  Calmness can introduce an opportunity for observing, for stepping to the outside of the “problem” to see what it might be offering.

Restorative practice is not just a respite for some moments of mental and physical relaxation.  It is not primarily a mental process where we aspire to do nothing to relax.  It is a concrete, active physiological process.  In fact, the power of this practice to begin to reach beyond the practice sessions to affect everyday life comes from its capacity to make a very intentional, active shift in body physiology.  If activated, the process of “doing nothing” makes a quantum qualitative shift from the sympathetic nervous system to the parasympathetic nervous system.  Restorative-yin practice impacts the major respiratory, cardiovascular, lymphatic, neuro-endocrine processes.

Stillness in restorative practice reduces metabolism.  Reduced physical activity/metabolism activates complex chemicals to increase alpha wave amplitude, and to diminish the various endocrine glands’ chemical responses to stress.  Stilling the body paradoxically sets off a storm of activity, allowing the body systems to “listen” to the subtle processes of the body that might be obscured by more external demands of everyday life—such as water levels and salt levels and cell vitality—and regulate these processes to bring them into balance that the cells of the body favor for optimal development.

Sleep offers important rest, but it can be tossing and turning especially with aging, frustration being worked out in dreams, cycles of deep to very light REM sleep.  Deep relaxation in restorative-yin yoga is intentional and typically builds as the session continues.  It brings the mind to the body to intentionally induce stillness and to soften/lengthen and to slow the breath cycle (while retaining some carbon dioxide that provokes vascular expansion).  And as the breath cycle slows, attention might shift from guiding the body to follow the body, to ride the “wave” of the breath.  Frustration is not really displaced through hard effort, but rather, let go. 

Balance is not bliss.  And restorative-yin yoga or any other body-mind practice is not a “cure.”  Life is a rich rollercoaster of experiences—pain, aches, “darkness,’ self-illusion, and routine, but also joy and little pleasantries that are often overlooked.

Restorative-yin yoga is a body-mind practice that tips experience toward tranquility.  Without really pressing for it or seeking it, restorative-yin practice developing more than just physical and mental calmness.  This calmness can open a pathway toward the deeper terrains toward which yoga aspires—sacredness in life and a realistic sense of sacred space and miracles everywhere rather than either missing or rare, and harmony, grace, and eloquence. Surprisingly, calm practice is not only very active but also pro-active; making some real time for those qualities that are generally acknowledged as valuable, instead of saying there is not enough time.  And as this relaxation skill begins to come into everyday life, it can transform limiting patterns.  Errands and activities can be rethought and some time found, because this time for balance begins to be experienced as a way to enter the richness of life for which we should be making time rather than a “medicinal” antidote for stress.

In calmness, we can go deep.  We have the time to see that the sun is not moving across the sky from east to west as much as the Earth is rotating from west to east.  We can engage the oft-missed self-reality that we are more than just ourselves, that we are inseparable from all of our experience, and that we express a universe.  For a time at least in restorative-yin practice, we stand to become fully present.  Then, our being-ness is active and our personality takes a back seat.  In turn, this shift opens a rich opportunity for that which we find meaningful in life to dramatically expand.  We can become at least a little better at balancing the dimensions of life as they present themselves while also attending to these aspects that are all around us but that are overlooked and free for the taking.  

Kindness Yoga: No Pain—GAIN!

You will be amazed to discover that, if you are kind to your body,

it will respond in an incredible way.

Vanda Scaravelli, Awakening The Spine [16]

The practice of yoga is fundamentally an act of kindness toward oneself.

Judith Lasater, [judithlasater.com]

IN MODERN YOGA PRACTICE, the idea that yoga is an act of kindness toward oneself is likely to be more of a dream or aspiration than a reality.  If “kindness” only references taking time for exercise to enhance body-mind health, then all exercise, no matter how stressful or anxiety-driven might be referenced as “kind”.  But if “kindness” references practices that relax and listen to the body and, at the same time, enhance body physiology and functional strength and suppleness, then many sequences of yoga are far from “kind”.  Body-mind practices such as tai chi and qigong are universally more physiologically and mentally “kind”. 

Contemporary yoga practice is dominated by a fitness orientation, with the most popular classes in fitness centers and yoga-specific studios offering a flowing “workout” aimed at toning and trimming.  And yet, even with this orientation, there is often an inherent quality that underlies the physicality that offers something mentally soothing which participants cannot find in general exercise.

Speeding up the flow of typical yoga asanas [poses] may decrease the soothing quality and be more akin to interval training and classes such as “cardio-pump” where the emphasis is on fitness. Slowing down the flow of typical yoga asanas opens up this soothing quality and brings this soothing quality more to center-point as yoga itself, as something beyond exercise.  And this shift to slowing/holding may optimize gains in flexibility and strength because more time is spent in releasing and expanding muscle and joint tension.  The language of the health objectives may gradually evolve from fitness terms such as “flexibility and power/strength” to wellness terms such as “mobility and functionality,” and even go to very cutting-edge thriving terms such as “suppleness and balance/proportion.”

Fitness  

flexibility                                   

strength [power/core]  

Wellness

mobility

functional strength

Thriving

suppleness

proportional body balance

An intentional emphasis upon kindness is not simply something of ethical value or for spiritual transcendence, but a process that may directly affect and improve the physiology of practitioners.  Writing on the impact of yoga on endocrine glands, Yogiraj Sri Swami Satchidananda writes, The glands are stimulated not only by your physical movements, but by your thoughts as well. [p. xx,  Integral Yoga Hatha.  Buckingham, Virginia: Integral Yoga Publications, 1995].  And so, an intentional orientation toward yoga as a process of kindness toward oneself, directs mental activity to direct physical actions to be qualitatively different.  And has been described in detail in the posts in this blog [Islands Of Grace], the process of intentionally calming and quieting and holding asanas largely flip-flops all body systems [neuro-endocrine-cardio-lymphatic] from a sympathetic [fight-flight] response to a parasympathetic response.

Let us be less impatient.  Let us move wise and take things easy.

 If the asanas are done peacefully, this yoga will indirectly slow us

 down (also improving the immune system which suffers from stress)

and strip us from many useless and harmful efforts, giving us the

 feeling of a different quality and introducing a delicate fragrance

 into each day’s existence.

Vanda Scaravelli, Awakening The Spine [130]

Restorative-Yin Yoga can be the penultimate (near the pinnacle) expression of “kindness yoga.”   Restorative practices are “gentle, gentle” yoga to optimize both a qualitative leap in physiological restoration/rebalancing and high-level listening to the body-mind-spirit.

Other forms of “kindness yoga:” 

Soft “Cat-Stretch” Yoga that moves beyond restorative poses to increase the variety of yoga poses but with a primary emphasis on

·      [A] Stretching without discomfort [like a cat waking up in the morning],

·      [B] Selection of a sequence of poses that stretch and that do so with comfort,

·      [C] Calmness/slow movement into and out of poses.

Target Populations: 

·      Those who would like to stretch but finding stretching agony [involving those who have done little intentional exercise and athletes who have become very inflexible], and

·      Those who can stretch, and want to deepen their relaxation/body-mind work

Soft Power Yoga incorporates the full vocabulary of yoga poses but with an emphasis on holding poses and relaxing into them [See Islands Of Grace 10/11/2011 post: “Soft Power: A Remarkable Outcome Of Restorative-Yin Yoga” and 4/5/12 post: “Soft Power Mini-Workshop [3/14/2012] Post-Workshop Notes.”

“Kindness Yoga” is a QUALITATIVE SHIFT in body-mind work:  It is a shift from a mindset of  “no pain, no gain” to one of “no pain, GAIN.”

            In “no pain, no gain,”

            We work against the body, not with the body….

In “no pain, GAIN,”

            No self-centered attitude, no self-immolation, no violence against ourselves, all

these things belong to the past and it is an old-fashioned way of behaving.

Vanda Scaravelli, Awakening The Spine [87]

The Earth Is In Our Practice

Copyright Lance Kinseth, 2012

From their impossible distances,

The swallow and hummingbird have returned.

Either here in this season or far off, there, in our winter (esi or la),

They are always homeward bound.

May our lives be like a swallow’s flight.

In the Northern hemisphere,

The roses have awakened from their sleep

With luminous sunsets finishing the days.

The blooming sorrel and the plushest grasses of the year—

Everything softens.

Born in ice-cold winter, 

Young red squirrels, having quick-learned gymnastics,

Come down out of the trees.

In the garden, the first litters of cottontails emerge,

And the first nestlings—robins and cardinals—

And the taste of small, dense, sweet strawberries.

The longest days quick-build toward their coming crescendo,

But still, all of this daylight will remain a cool fire, and

Far from the hottest fires of the year in the lessened light of late summer.

Now, in sweet June, Thoreau admonished us,

            We are more of the Earth, farther from the heavens these days.

In the swelling richest of the landscape,

With the Earth pressing more into our senses,

BODY-MIND PRACTICES may be more visceral—“more of the Earth.”

And so, perhaps we lean more intuitively into our Earthen bones and ligaments,

Leaning softly, like waking cats,

Savoring the stretching melt of all of the back

And the outward reach of the fingertips

And reach of the tailbone,

Opening on freedom more than control.

Asymmetry As Functional/Harmonious In Body-Mind Practice

Obscure White Oak Branch, 2012:

Few straight/identical branches (making them stronger and accessing light for leaves) and patterned chaos of lichens on its surface

I

Everyone has an “easy” side and a “hard” side in this pose [Janu Sirsasana] because of the inherent asymmetries of the human body. [p.86]

Leslie Kaminoff, Yoga Anatomy

A POPULAR ASSUMPTION in yoga is that differences between the right and left side are the result of dysfunction.  However, to assume that differences are the result of injury or misuse may be incorrect/false.  The differences can be inherent and natural.  They may be exaggerated across time by favoring one side or the other, but asymmetry is an inherent design of the human body, and these differences can optimize function.

Symmetry in yoga can express a drive toward bringing bond-mind into harmony, but asymmetry is also a natural expression of harmony.

Functional, inherent physiological/morphological asymmetries are found throughout the body and, paradoxically, form natural “patterns of irregularity”—beautiful “chaos” theory that appear to be random but that are patterned and the essence of everyday process throughout nature.  The random appearance of a forest has a pattern involving perhaps two dominant tree species, a specific set of vines, a pattern of layers from canopy to sub-soil, as well as fauna in rather predictable populations per acre.  Utilizing chaos theory even the “randomness” of where flora appear in a forest play out into a pattern.

Functional human body asymmetry examples:

Brain, right/left

Heart on side vs. centered [as in popular image of heart]

Right/left handedness

Vision/hearing, rt/left dominance

“Universal” variation between individuals in many aspects of body structure

A popular assumption in yoga is that skeletons and muscles are largely identical except for differences in height and gender. Thus, for example, illustrations of the human skeleton appear to be universal.  However, Yin Yoga stresses that skeletal structures are variable, with hips possibly angled differently [e.g., more forward or back leaning] or femur ball going into the socket at different angles.  Occasionally, there are other processes, such as being “double-jointed,” and likely many other aspects of the body were we to give more attention to asymmetry.  And these occurrences are natural rather than the result of disorder or accident, and not subject to change.  This can make a significant difference in how a yoga pose will be expressed vs. a universal expression as the only way. 

Human femurs showing natural variations in length and width, torque, head angles and length of necks, and variations between the neck and shaft affecting abduction

[Photos from Biff Mithoefer, The Yin Yoga Kit. Rochester, NY: Healing Arts Press, 2006, pp. 97 and 99 respectively]

II

Meaningful symmetry/asymmetry work in yoga: physiological and spiritual

Physiological Symmetry:

• [A] Pose sequences that are “symmetrical” in, for example, a balance between front and back-bending poses, or a balance, for example, across a week of daily yoga practices that might balance out front and back-bending poses.  Symmetry in yoga can focus on equalizing attention to both right and left, and especially to front and back body.  Front body tends to be more visible and back work can also be more intense, so that more time may be less consciously directed toward the front body.  Symmetry in yoga might also lead to practice that balances emphases such as flexibility and strength, or seated practices and standing practices.
• [B] Yoga therapy to correct imbalances caused by injury or over-reliance/”favoring” to protect on certain body structure that leads to irritation and physical problems

Spiritual symmetry:

• “Meridians/chakras” reference inherent “energy structures” that are described as universal and identical in all persons that can be related to but not identical with physiological structures such as nerves. 
• From a Western psycho-spiritual perspective, these are “Eastern” examples of terms that can reference a process of integration vs. having to be physical symmetry.

Spiritual “Asymmetry:” 

In the spiritual orientation that is expressed in Zen aesthetics—irregularity is prized as natural/organic, as a reflection of the process of the larger universe/cosmos.  Example: tea bowl/chawan—irregularity (with different sides revealed as it turns), and variations in the finished piece that result from “give and take” between artist and kiln.

akirasatake.com/gallery

In yoga, we might explore an “integration” of body asymmetry into practice as functional rather than as deficit. Positively, differences may allow for

• Innovation
• Honoring diversity:  “individuation” is an expression of ongoing creation, testing variations for “fittedness” with the larger ecosystem that ultimately favors one over the other and leads to adaptation and even morphological change of the species across the long run so that we become the “beyond of ourselves,” as our ancestors did to become you and I. 

Spring Has Sprung!

Copyright Lance Kinseth, cardinals and robins, 2012

Yoga And A Rightward Brain Shift?

h2w2.blogspot.com

QUIETING AND CALMING—“doing next to nothing”—sets off a burst of activity—a qualitative shift throughout the body that may be less conscious but operant in large systems—neurological, circulatory, endocrine, lymphatic—and down into microscopic nuances.  Search Islands Of Grace blog for specific posts on these systems in relationship to body-mind practices.

Quieting and calming can produce significant neurological effects: See Islands Of Grace post: “Neurological Changes In Restorative-Yin Yoga Practice,” 8/12/11.

One underplayed neuro-aspect of yoga in general can involve stimulation of the brain activity relating to explicit organizing and more implicit aspects such as emotional response and the experience of joy and wonder.  Quieting and calming may amplify a general “mind shift”.  This is popularly described as a shift from dominance of the left cerebral hemisphere (that is sensed to be more analytical) to the right cerebral hemisphere (that is sensed to be more emotional).  Having discovered right and left hemisphere distinctions in both normal and brain-damaged populations, there is a public sense of each hemisphere having completely distinct functions.  However, our understanding of the function of the brain is still in its infancy, and it is known, for example that language may provoke activity in either hemisphere rather than be exclusive to one hemisphere.   The lateralization of brain function into right and left is not an explicit given as it is popularly described to be in stimulating creativity or logic or rationality or irrationality. 

There is likely some truth to the position that yoga poses may stimulate right brain activity as, for example, William J. Broad writes in The Science Of Yoga [NY: Simon & Schuster, 2012, pp. 203-204]

  

The right brain (which controls the body’s left side) does its handiwork in parallel fashion—taking in many streams of information simultaneously from the senses and creating an overall impression of smell and sound, appearance and texture, feeling and sensation.  For instance, the right brain dominates an inconspicuous type of sensory activity that yoga seeks to develop—proprioception, or inner knowledge of limb position.  On the mat or in life, it tells us the position of our arms and legs—even with eyes shut.  Proprioception, like other body functions dominated by the right brain, works best at portraying the big picture, at delivering impressions.  It produces what is known in psychology as a gestalt, where the whole is greater that the sum of its parts.  It is holistic.

However, the sense of domination by the right cerebral hemisphere to guide proprioception, or to focus exclusively on the immediate moment, or to be largely unconcerned with aspects of language and speech, or to dominate the production of spontaneous response, intuition, enjoyment and the experience of “wonder,” are not clearly established.

If truth be known, accomplishing a task [left brain] and enjoying it {right brain] can complement each other, and likely be a subtle combination of each other.  Language, for example, might be stimulated by the right brain to a significant degree in some left-handed individuals.  Further, in the case of injury, processes that seem to be related to one hemisphere may be performed by the “less dominant” hemisphere.  It is even reasonable to assume that proprioception and even a complex perception such as “wonder” may be a composite of brain functions.

What is clear is that a qualitative shift in experience—a “brain shift” as well as a variety of body system shifts—may occur in the shift from everyday activity to calmness and quietness.  The “brain shift” may, in fact, be much more of an exquisite melding of hemispheres than a shift toward one hemisphere.  The brain is analyzing feedback from various endocrines regarding a variety of body conditions such as salt and water levels that ultimately might generate awareness of balance and harmony.

Restorative-yin yoga and other body-mind practices such as tai chi and qigong slow activity and may amplify a holistic body systems shift.  And it is certainly clear that quieting and calming may generate qualities in direct practice that may not be emphasized in everyday activity.  And it is posited that these qualities may evolve into longstanding attributes in everyday life.