Prana Journal
New Art of Living group
This weekend I realized that I had not done the long
kriya in nearly two months. My original group had stopped meeting because it lost its borrowed office space. I looked up another group in my area (Rockville, MD), made contact to confirm the meeting, went to Stephen and Amita Cupp's house this Sunday afternoon and participated in the weekly gathering. It was a very Indian setting -- we sat in a living room without chairs or couches, just a beautiful carpet. In addition to the long kriya, we spent some time singing AoL songs. Apparently my DC group was musically challenged and skipped the singing part.
It's important to keep doing the long kriya because you can check your form and timing. I noticed that I was cutting my intervals in 3-part breathing too short.
Last week in my acupuncture session, Kelly told me that he was going to work at opening up my lungs and heart, in addition to dealing with my lower back strain. I noticed on Friday during my morning kriya that my breathing was exceptionally deep and fluid. That also made me want to do the long kriya as well.
It fits together.
Achilles's Ankles II
In response to my call for help with stiff ankles,
Alan Little sent me a message with some excellent advance, which I will pass on here:
Does your practice involve ashtanga-style sun salutations where you roll forward from a pushup position into upward-facing dog? If it does, make a big effort to be sure you're extending your ankles and rolling onto the tops of your arches rather than staying on your toes. If you don't normally practice upward-facing dog it might be worth trying - pay attention to what your feet are doing, but also be sure to keep the knees off the floor and avoid letting your lower back sag passively (dangerous)
Virasana without your butt on the floor is dangerous - too much knee strain. Sit on a cushion/block -- or -- sit *on* instead of *between* your heels. Either way, quite a good & safe ankle & knee opener. (Squatting - heels on the floor, feet as close together as you can get them while still keeping them reasonably parallel - is also a good knee opener, but more strain than supported virasana and does less for the ankles)
If you don't have big knee problems and can do half lotus safely, Marichyasana B is the ultimate ankle stretch.
(I had a hideous scary moment in Mysore, when I was in Marichyasana D for only about the second or third time and there was this *huge* ripping/crunching noise from my right ankle. Absolutely terrifying, thought I'd torn a ligament or something, but as it turned out it didn't hurt at all, just swelled a bit for a few days. I suspect some things that had calcified or otherwise stuck together had suddenly come un-stuck.)
PS: A good one for toes, that I learned in martial arts class rather than yoga, is kneeling with the knees apart about 90 degrees, balls of the feet on the floor and toes tucked under, butt on the heels. We had to do this for ages in the karate class I used to go to - hurts like hell for the first ten minutes or so.
Alan would have posted these suggestions as a comment but he was behind a firewall that did not permit him to do so.
Achilles's ankle
You've all heard me complain about lack of flexibility in my shoulders, spin, hips, and what not. Well, let me add another -- ankles and feet. It's curious how problems with one area can ripple through the body and affect the whole yoga practice.
And it's more important than you might think. For instance, when I sit in Hero's pose (Virasana - kneeling ), all my weight bears down on two points on each limb, the top of my ankle and my knee. The load is not spread along the length of my shin and the whole foot. For that matter, my butt does not reach the floor because there's a lot of flesh above and below my knees so I stay up pretty high, instead of my butt sitting on the floor. That makes it really uncomfortable to sit for extended time in Hero's pose -- so rule out kneeling for meditation.
Another surprising consequence is that it makes it really hard to balance in Tree pose (Vrikshasana -standing on one leg) -- or an other one-footed pose, for that matter. My ankle is rigid (one solid block of calcium?) and that means that the micro-adjustments required in balancing are not made -- so I try to do them elsewhere, with much less success.
It's the whole foot from the ankle down to the toes that is extremely stiff. Even my toes don't seem to have much range of movement. Fortunately for me, my feet are slowly responding.
Acupuncture, breaththroughs and convalescence
Last night my yoga class really wrang the last ounce of energy out of me. I had noticed that I had good flexibility in my spin, being able to do twists that had proven hard, if not impossible, before my acupuncture treatment last week (But it could also have been due to continuing work that I've been doing since I injured my lower back a month ago). I was more flexible, but because my stiffness and rigidity had been propping up my core, I struggled to hold positions. My breath got out off control and I had to drop out of a couple of poses. I committed myself to accompanying my body through the process -- not judging it or getting discouraged.
Later at home, I really felt drained. I had a late supper and went to bed. I got up this morning still feeling fatigued, and dragged myself to my acupuncture appointment at 9:00. One hour later, I was reenergized and feeling fine. I had spent about 20 minutes on the table and felt as if I had taken a long nap. Kelly Welch also prescribed some Chinese medicinal herbs to help improve blood flow.
In general, my back is much better. The day after my first treatment, my ache was no longer concentrated on one side, but had dissipated across my whole lower back and lessened. It was like a knot had loosened. Over the weekend, the pain became an afterthought. I only had a twinge of stiffness in the mornings when I got up, and that usually disappeared before Iwas out of the door for work.
Over in the Moving into Stillness forum, a participant said: "Sounds like you got a dedicated doc! I'd say that you are one of the lucky people." He's right.
I have not posted here much over the past few days because the acupuncture treatment has loosen up some other emotional things that I have been working through in a private journal. I don't want to turn this blog into a confessional.
Playing Simon Says -- Paying Attention versus Being Attentive
In Unity Woods Yoga Centers quarterly newsletter (
Unity Woods website), John Schumacher responds to a question that students frequently ask him: "Why isn't my practice at home like it is in class?" He provides some really good reflexions on this dilemma.
"Gathering, coalescing, and focusing your attention creates an intensity of physiopsychospiritual energy that quiets the mind and uncovers the underlying capacity for awareness. To be aware is to be awake, and to be awake in this way is to be alive in the fullest sense of the word. This is the goal of yoga. It is what the teacher guides you toward. And for most of you, because you haven't learned to do that for yourself, your home practice doesn't feel quite as good as your class. Yet."
I've found that my pranayama and meditative practice comes very easy now. I look forward to each sessions. By sheer repetition, I have become comfortable with these parts of my practice. On the other hand, I have to force myself to do asanas. Part of the resistance is that I have to think so hard to get them right so I really can't feel the flow. I know that I am not going to make progress until I work on my asanas everyday because that's when you make breakthroughs.
European publication
An interesting publication looks to be
Bindu, that comes out of
Scandinavian Yoga and Meditation School. It says it has only a few of itsissues and articles online, but it does periodically change which issue is available. For instance, only issues
Five,
Eight and
Eleven. I found, however, that by simply manually changing the address to another issue, you can see all back issues. Be forewarned, however, that English is not the native language of the writers so at times the prose can be a bit tortured. The seriousness of the publication makes up for any deficiencies. It puts a lot of emphasis on publishing scientific research into yoga, meditation and other disciplines.
Acupuncture treatment for back pain
I had a session of acupuncture treatment for the back pain that I've been suffering from for the past month. One of my yoga instructors, Anne Thiel, recommended that I try acupuncture, instead of a chiropractor or doctor for dealing with the lower back sprain. She recommended a young couple, Kelly Welch and Katherine Yonkers, here in downtown DC, only a few blocks from my work place. They were on my CareFirst approved list of alternative medicine providers so I got a discount. I would have gone sooner, but they were on vacation for the week prior to July 4th so I got an appointment as early as I could fit into Welch's schedule. Since this was the first time, the session lasted 90 minutes -- the first half for a general evaluation and history taking, and the second half was the treatment. Welch explained the principles behind the Chinese medical practice and explained how it would be applied to my problem.
I came out of the office without feeling even an ache in my lower back, a relaxing flush in my body and a new appreciation for an "occult science." Admittedly, as soon as I made my appointment this week, the pain began to subside sharply. Today, it was not that severe and I even had some problems pinpointing it once I was lying on my stomach. I will have to see how I feel after my yoga class this afternoon.
I will have two more sessions, the first in a weeks time', and then assess if additional treatment is necessary. I have read that back pain has a really low success rate for treatment, though my is not chronic pain so it may not be more prone to treatment. I liked that the treatment was holistic in approach and fit smoothly and neatly with my yoga practices: there's no meaningful difference between Chi and prana -- both are life energy.
Postdata: I noticed during my yoga class that I felt energized and in touch, even though it's been a while since I had a class and I was out of form. It was a very emotionally satisfying session, even though my thighs ached from the deep lunges.
Art of Living Update
Even though there have not been many additions to this weblog, I have been busy. I have made some changes to my
Art of Living page, creating a page exclusively for
sudarshan kriya and the introductory course and a second page for
Sahaj Samadhi meditation. Most of the people coming to the site through Google are making inquiries about Art of Living and
sudarshan kriya.
The Downtown DC kriya practice has been on hold for the past month because it lost the site where we were meeting. I have definitely reached the point that I want to do the Maja Kriya (long version) so I will have to look up a group near my home.
