I went to the Wednesday evening dharma talk at the Insight Meditation Community of Washington. Tara Brach led the group in several rounds of meditation. Every time I've heard her speak, I've struck by how she always manages to deliver a message that is extraordinarily meaningful to me. That evening, she spoke about the importance of listening, opening our ears, indeed the whole body, to awareness of what's going on around us. Listening is the first step towards being mindful about the present. Tara's words struck a cord with me because my father is increasingly impaired in hearing and I've experienced how this isolation is walling him off from his family, his community, the world around him. I came away from the session with a commitment to find a way to break through to my father so that he gives in to buying a new hearing aid.
This was my first time, though I know several of the IMCW teachers, like Hugh Byrne, who I know from Flow Yoga Center. I'd been meaning to go to one of IMCW's classes or dharma talks for some time. Since my wife is off in Peru and I take the car to the Metro everyday, it's easy to go to the IMCW Wednesday evening session in Potomac, instead of heading home. It just means that I get home close to 10 pm. There must have been 300-plus people at the Wednesday session, and parking was a hassle.
I highly recommend the IMCW dharma talk archive. Whenever I've felt the need for a dose of mindfulness, like during the February snow storm, I turn to Tara's talks. These weekly talks and meditations, mainly of Brach, but also of guest speakers, go back until 2006. If you listen to an audio file, I encourage you to make a donation to IMCW's work.
Labels: dc_yoga, meditation
As part of my intention of "not working so hard" at my yoga, I've been practicing more seated poses, usually cross-legged Easy Pose (Sukhasana). In the evenings, I get up from my computer and take a seat on a zafu cushion in the middle of my study. I'll listen to some music, read or simply rest my attention on my body. I don't necessarily intend to meditate, but it often moves in that direction. Sometimes, I will transition into yoga nidra or a restorative pose as a release from being seated more than 15-20 minutes.
I notice that it takes a while to sink into the seated posture. It feels different after 10 minutes, and not just because my legs are losing sensation. I start working through my musculature, which is pretty substantial, lots of thick muscles working all day to keep me upright and moving. It takes time to get through the resistance and "touch bottom." By the end, I feel that I'm resting more on my sit bones than on the muscles. I also notice a change in my breathing as my upper torso (rib cage, diaphragm, solar plexus, thoracic spine) gains freedom from the lower half.
Obviously, if I lived in a non-Western culture, I would be spending a lot more time seated on the floor and the uniqueness of what I experience on the zafu would be routine.
One benefit I find so far is that it makes for much sounder sleep. Because I am really working my core in seated Easy Pose, my torso and thighs are really grateful for the relief of lying doing. I've exerted a lot of effort holding the upright position without really working up a sweat or increased aerobic activity. I sense that it bleeds off a lot of the nervous energy that builds up during the day.
Labels: breathing, core, meditation
The Holiday season is a disruptive time. Routines are thrown to the wind. Even though I've been off work, I have not been able to fit yoga classes in since last Friday, a full week. The blizzard locked us in for two days, and then I was too sore to go to class on Monday. My wife has been using the car a lot so that pins me in the house, especially with the heavy snow and messy streets. And when I do have the car, I need to run my own errands to the stores or visit my parents. Because my daughter is coming back home to live, it's been doubly hard to clean up for the festivities. All the boxes (for storage, donations, and logistics) get hidden in my new office space.
Last night, after our guests left and my wife went to bed, I cleared out a spot in the middle of my office space and sat in meditation for about 20 minutes and then did an extended yoga nidra session. No special intention, just the need to find some stillness and dwell in it for a while. I got off my mat, went to bed and was asleep in seconds. I'll have to remember that trick the next time I can't seem to turn off the mental overdrive in the evening.
In any case, I want to wish all visitors to this site "Happy Holidays and a Prosperous New Year." May you all find renewal and faith in the stillness that comes in the wake of celebration and fellowship.
Labels: blessing, meditation, website
For the first time since the Kest workshop two weeks ago, I took a Vinyasa 2/3 with Susan Bowen at Thrive Yoga. I got my butt kicked. I had taken one Hatha yoga class on Sunday and another on Tuesday, along with some aerobic work at the fitness room in the hotel during my brother's funeral. That frequency and intensity of class was not going to maintain my aerobic conditioning unless I combined it with some running or work in the gym on the stationary bike or elliptical trainer. But even that is not going to allow me to keep up with Susan's class. She did a Brian Kest routine on us -- she went through a long sequence on one side of the body that worked deeper and deeper into the hips. I was lost half way through. Then, she had us do the other side, just as deeply. I could not sustain Warrior III at the end of the sequence.
I really enjoy my Hatha yoga classes, and I get really deep into them, as I see them as a kind of remedial yoga practice that allows me to relearn my poses, focusing on alignment and ease. Thrive Yoga has teachers who can really open the way into poses. It may be the strong Anusara influence. I am trying to gain access to my hips, my psoas, my shoulders and rhomboids, areas that were densely tensed muscles or fibers that I could not even feel, much less activate. If we're wizzing by the asanas without a chance to settle in, that defeats my intention. I've seen some "yogis" pick up their mats and leave if the practice does not have enough pace, lots of vinyasas and challenging poses.
I love my Hatha yoga classes, but that's not going to substitute the more physically challenging classes that I can get on the weekends, and Thursday evenings. It wouldn't hurt if I could fit in more home practice as well, but that's another story.
On the good side, I must say that I have been fairly consistent sitting in meditation for 15-20 minutes in the evening, and grabbing shorter sessions during the day. I am constantly amazed by the rush, a refreshing rinse of my mindset, that I get by just taking a few moment of mindfulness; I say to myself, "Boy, I needed that".
Labels: class, conditioning, meditation
New York Times Doctor and Patient - How Mindfulness Can Make for Better Doctors is not just an example of the use of meditation and mindfulness as something abstract or removed from the daily grind. Mindfulness is applied to a concrete challenge.
Last month, The Journal of the American Medical Association published the results of a study examining the effects of a year-long course for primary care physicians on mindfulness, that ability to be in the zone and present in the moment purposefully and without judgment. Seventy physicians enrolled and participated in the four components of the course — mindfulness meditation; writing sessions; discussions; and lectures on topics like managing conflict, setting boundaries and self-care.
The effects of the sessions were dramatic. The participating doctors became more mindful, less burned out and less emotionally exhausted. But two additional findings surprised the investigators. Several of the improvements persisted even after the yearlong course ended. And, those changes correlated with a significant increase in attributes that contribute to patient-centered care, such as empathy and valuing the psychosocial factors that might affect a patient's illness experience.
Labels: brain_science, health, meditation, news
The Globe and Mail Trouble on the Om front - Some Toronto yoga instructors go to the mats with as little as two days training. That's left students bent out of shape reminds us that yoga practice incorrectly can lead to injuries and a contributor to this risk is the inexperience of instructors who are not adequately trained to be aware of and adapt to the needs of each student:
Mr. Canning, who originally trained in Bikram, or hot yoga, in Los Angeles, has seen firsthand how important teacher programs are in ensuring a safe and inspiring environment. After ending up with two excruciatingly painful herniated discs in his spine from an aggressive teacher-training program that was "push, push, push," Mr. Canning built a studio devoted to a practice where instructors focus on listening to the needs of their students. And he mandates that they have a year of training behind them.
"That 'push' attitude - we all moved away from that," says Mr. Canning. "If anything, yoga should heal."
ChicagoNow's BreathBodybalance blog reminds us in A Closer Look at Yoga Chicago Magazine that local magazines or newsletters like YogaChicago don't have to try to replicate Yoga Journal to be of value:
It started at eight pages and this year it's 72. People use to come to me with ads and stories on a disc until the printer was like, you gotta go digital! (laughs). I write and edit a majority of the stories then send it off to a professional editor, Ellen Bernstein. Besides teaching three times a week, this is my full-time job. Ads pay for everything, but I try to keep the fees low because I know most studios don't make a lot of money. I even trade some articles for ad space.
CNN Prison inmates go Zen to deal with life behind bars is abou the Prison Darma Network:
There is no group tracking the number of inmates converting to Buddhism or engaging in meditation practices. But programs and workshops educating inmates about meditation and yoga are sprouting up across the country. Meditation can help the convicts find calmness in a prison culture ripe with violence and chaos. The practice provides them a chance to reflect on their crimes, wrestle through feelings of guilt and transform themselves during their rehabilitative journey, Buddhist experts say.
Labels: health, meditation, news, reading, teachers
I had been meaning to point to GoogleTalks as a fabulous source of videos of interesting people talking about interesting things. Today, I chanced across this video Transform Your Mind, Change Your Brain, by Richard J. Davidson at the Google Campus in California, just a few weeks ago, September 23. Davidson has been the academic research pointman for the contemplative sciences, and I've mentioned him in the blog before. His new research center is Center for Investigating Healthy Minds. Here he speaks about the latest work in that field. Be advised that he can slip into neuroscience geek speak on a few slides but he quickly switches back to plain English.
Google has thrown itself behind some ideas that have nothing to do with Internet search, advertising or computer sciences. Scores of insightful people are brought to speak about their work for the betterment of the staff, and these chats are made available online to the general public. This list below is not comprehensive and there are other interesting chats in other areas of personal development.
- Mindsight: The New Science of Personal Transformation by Daniel J. Siegel
- Cognitive Neuroscience of Mindfulness Meditation and The Neuroscience of Emotions by Philippe Goldin
- Mindfulness, Stress Reduction and Healing by Jon Kabat-Zinn
- The Inner Condition of Authentic Happiness by Matthieu Ricard
- Stress Relief for the Creative and Constantly Connected by Soren Gordhamer
- Lululemon Founder Chip Wilson on yoga, lulu and more...
- Yoga: Personal Transformation and Global Sustainability by BK Bose
Labels: brain_science, meditation, mind health
Washington Post Breathing Properly Puts the Body in the Right Frame of Mind:
Exercise can often seem like the opposite of relaxation. Our goal is to exhaust our muscles, shoot our heart rates up and overcome the competition (whether that be a person or a personal best). But performance actually improves when you figure out how to keep your calm while exerting yourself. "Breathing badly is something that's going to make you fatigued faster and hurts form, and that's what gets you injured," says Emory Land, a triathlon coach and assistant general manager of the Vida Fitness location at Logan Circle. "You'll never reach your potential."
Missed this article when it came out a couple of days ago. Also this points to a new yoga studio, Mindfulness Center, at 4963 Elm St. in Bethesda. It's stronger on the meditation side of practice (as obvious form its name) than yoga, but it does have classes.
Labels: breathing, dc_yoga, meditation, yoga
At Thrive Yoga, Dana Cohen was substituting for Susan, the studio owner, so I got a double dose of Dana's hybrid style, vinyasa flow 2/3 on Saturday and vinyasa flow all levels today. I don't think I could really tag Dana with a specific yoga brand (Iyengar, Ashtanga or Anusara). Or maybe she draws on multiple sources, both from yoga and beyond (Thai massage, for instance). Both classes were about the same intensity, but today's pace was a bit slower since we were working on opening up hamstrings and hips. The constant in both classes was that Dana reserved a good 15 minutes to savasana/meditation at the end. Of all my teachers, she is the most reliable for fitting in that cool down phase.
Labels: class, meditation, teachers
This week's multimedia selection is Audio Archives of Tara Brach's Dharma talks at the Insight Meditation Community of Washington (IMCW) here in Washington, DC. Each week there is a 40-60 minute talk about practicing Buddhism in the modern world, and then Tara leads the group in a 20-25 minute meditation. I've listened to several of these talks, and they are outstanding, insightful pieces of devotional thought. I come from a Protestant church tradition, my father was a pastor and I have heard a few sermons in my day. But Tara is not preaching. She has an intimate tone of voice that draws you into the narrative. It's almost as if she is talking to you over the breakfast table, even though she is addressing hundreds of people. Her cadence and timber prepare you for the formal meditation that follows.
Tara Brach is the founder and senior teacher at IMCW. She wrote Radical Acceptance — Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha (Bantam Dell, 2003). I read the book a few months ago, and had been meaning to put up some comments about it. The book is a dialogue between her practice as a psychotherapist and the wisdom that comes from Buddhist Dharma. Although her patients' life stories provide many opportunities for insight into the human condition, she also draws on her own experiences. I found a lot of useful ways of looking at life's dramas and tragedies. The "radical acceptance" that Brach is talking about is the act of freeing ourselves from the self-inflicted pain of feeling that there is something wrong with us (rather than use the "royal we," I should probably speak in the first person). This is more simply said that done, which is why Brach needs a whole book to just scratch the surface. This issue is one of my own personal traumas -- a deep sense of inadequacy, lack of self-worth and self-esteem, all of which poison my experience. I find myself being pulled back to re-read sections and chapters to review key points to her calm grasp of what it means to be human and how to get beyond the trap of human suffering to live life to its fullest potential.
So you can listen to audio files or read the book, either way you'll appreciate the reassuring message of hope.
Labels: meditation, reading, videos
I bought a wrist mala from YogaBasics Japa Mala Beads. Twenty-seven beads on an elastic cord. I see the mala beads as a constant reminder that I can take my practice with me through out the day. The slight pressure on my wrist or the beads between my fingers and thumb can be evocative of the healing and strength that I develop on the mat, just as I often feel the same reaction to certain songs or kirtans that often serve as the background music to my practice.
My daughter gave me a full mala for Christmas, two years ago, which I keep hanging near my monitor at home. It's a bit bulky to carry around and I can't put it around my neck while at work. The wrist mala is more inconspicuous and more meaningful to me than wearing one of those colored plastic wristbands that symbolize various causes, like yellow for Lance Armstrong's campaign for cancer research.
YogaBasics Japa Mala Beads has a wide selection of full and wrist malas, as well as bags and boxes to store them. Diverse materials range from gemstones to hand-carved bone to wood.
Labels: hardware, life style, meditation
My friend and infrequent yoga teacher, Rachel Permuth-Levine, is one of the organizers behind 2008 NIH Yoga Week: Exploring the Science and Practice of Yoga. NIH is the National Institutes of Health, for those not up on Washington acronyms. From May 19 to May 23, there will be guest speakers, reports on NIH's own research on yoga and meditation and yoga practice on the NIH campus lawn (weather permitting). Most events are to take place from 11:00 am to 3:00 pm so I will probably not be able to attend.
Among the speakers are Timothy McCall, M.D., Medical Editor of Yoga Journal Magazine and author of Yoga as Medicine: The Yogic Prescription for Health and Healing
Thrive Yoga will be holding an event outside the NIH daytime schedule. Sat Bir S. Khalsa, will speak on " Yoga and Meditation in the Management of Stress" on Thursday, May 22, 6:00 - 8:00 pm. There is limited space so you will have to register Sign up online..
Labels: brain_science, dc_yoga, meditation, therapy
While I was away in Colombia, my travel reading was Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart: A Buddhist Perspective on Wholeness
I managed to get through the whole book (181 pages) by the end of my meeting thanks to Epstein's effortless writing style and the compelling content. He illustrates his central theme drawing on his own personal path of discovery and on his patients' case histories. A saving grace of the book is that Epstein does not bite off too much by trying to be an authoritative text on Buddhism, meditation, patient-centered therapy or any other big concept. He is not selling a particular theory or political line. Instead, he argues that we need to relax into the flow of life, rather than lock into an attempt to control our experience or accumulate pieces of self-improvement until we have attained perfection.
Since I finished reading the book about four weeks ago, I'm trying to reconstruct what I found most rewarding in the book -- without re-reading the book again. I am going to do some scratch writing off-line before posting it here.
Labels: meditation, philosophy, reading
That past few weeks have confirmed that the quality of meditation/yoga that appeals me to me most is stillness or samahdi; it's the pay-off for the investment of time and energy in practice. There are many definitions for it. In the Buddhist lineage, it is "concentration of the mind." It's not the easiest quality to attain and it can be fleeting, but even a short exposure to it can pull you up from a stormy emotional current. It's that instant when the white noise of our minds goes silent and we can turn our gaze inward.
Labels: blessing, meditation, yoga
Los Angeles Times Doctor's orders: Cross your legs and say 'Om' reports on the growing interest in the medical applications of meditation and mindfulness:
It appears to work. In a new study, published in October in the journal Pain, Natalia Morone, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh, tracked the effect of mindfulness meditation on chronic lower back pain in adults 65 and older. The randomized, controlled clinical trial found that the 37 people who participated in an eight-week mindfulness meditation program had significantly greater pain acceptance and physical function than a similar size control group. Subsequently, the control group took the same eight-week program and had similar results.
Via SharpBrains blog which is a great place to keep track of trends in neuroscience, "brain fitness" and mental wellness. I check Alvaro Fernandez's site or news feed at least once a day. There are also brain teasers, in-depth articles, links to online resources, book recommendations and other information.
Labels: health, meditation, news
Perhaps just as important as the Begley book is the recent publication of The Mindful Way through Depression: Freeing Yourself from Chronic Unhappiness
Labels: meditation, reading
My interest in the Begley book is really part of an ongoing inquiry into the area of mind games &emdash; or rather the challenge of pushing mental ability to its human potential (self-realization), or healing from debilitating condition (depression, for instance), or warding off the effects of aging (I am 58 years old).
The Dana Foundation, a first-rate place for scientific information on the brain, recently posted Experts, Dalai Lama Discuss Meditation for Depression about a conference at Emory University in Atlanta last week. This conference was a continuation of the dialogue between the Dalai Lama and scientists that Begley wrote about. There was a similar conference, The Science and Clinical Applications of Meditation, organized with Georgetown University here in Washington in 2007.
What has struck me is that I've been moving in this direction for more four years, well before I started reading about these trends in neuroscience, mental health and wellness. I was on the right track. Probably, this meme had not gelled so cogently into an explicit message or I was picking up strands of the news and associated them in my mind. After all, this kind of research has been going on for more than 20 years. But is even more mind boggling is that I can sit on my mat and experience this same practice in a very personal way.
Labels: health, meditation, reading
I went to Thrive Yoga at 8:00 am today to take the meditation and pranayama session before Susan Bower's Sunday morning class of yoga. Several friends had told what a great prep, putting them in a mellow state before they started their practice on the mat. I have to confess that it was a real change of pace for me. This time around, the pranayama practice was designed to slow down and calm the mind. I've been more accustomed to an energized pranayama practice. We used bolsters with added blankets under our backs, and the position threw me off. It took me a while to realize that the accentuated curvature of my spin was shortening my breath. Finally, we sat for about 20 minutes. Susan's voice guided us through the process. I am used to silence during my meditation. So, all in all, I was outside my comfort zone.
I had been promising myself to take this Sunday meditation class since it started up about a month ago. But I am not an early bird by nature and Sunday mornings have their rituals that are hard to break. Despite my quibbling about the session and it being my first time, I will definitely go again. It really did help prepare me for a more mindful yoga practice: it usually takes me 20-30 minutes to shake off what I call the "debris of life" (all the to-do lists, internal dialog and white noise that go on in my head) and surrender to my practice; this time around, I eased into almost immediately. Should I have expected anything less?
Labels: class, meditation
I finished reading the Sharon Begley book, Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain (Ballantine Books, 2007). Actually, I finished it more than 10 days ago, but have not had a chance to write about it. Now, it's hard to remember what I wanted to do. I probably should have been writing as I was reading. Actually, I was traveling during some of that time so I could not post to my blog. Lots of excuses, lots of things keeping me busy, lots of yoga and meditation that take first priority.
In brief, the book firmed up my own sense of hope about where we are headed in the brain sciences. The leap of knowledge and understanding over the past two decades has been huge. And we are only beginning to reformulate theories of the mind and its workings. Freud as the great navigator of the ego and id has been left behind. Even the chemistry of Prozac and Valium seem to be the psychological equivalent of alchemy.
The narrative ran out of gas in the last three chapters. Begley depended on psychological studies and interviews of researchers for the meat of her content. That formula can be dry reading once it is repeated over 250 pages. Even the literary ruse of making the Dalai Lama the focal point of the narrative can squeeze only so much drama. Begley probably could have spared us some of the dry details and gone straight to the conclusions of each study.
Other takes
I was struck by the large number of podcasts that are available on the book. Blog Critics (March). National Public Radio (NPR) has two programs: Diane Rehm Program via Odeo and Talk of the Nation. Dr. Ginger Campbell Brain Science Podcast, Psychjourney Podcasts and Healing the Mind. I have not had a chance to listen to all of them.
Earth and Sky, Psychotherapy Networker The Wonders of Neuroplasticity, Discover: Rewiring the Brain, Brain Technologies and Dana Foundation.
For additional background, here's Sharon Begley's Newsweek bio and the Richard Davidson's personal page at the University of Wisconsin's Lab for Affective Neuroscience.
Labels: meditation, reading, yoga_resource
Mindfulness and Psychotherapy: Cultivating Well-Being in the Present Moment is offered by UCLA Extension and Lifespan Learning Institute in collaboration with the Center for Mindfulness and Psychotherapy and InsightLA on October 5-7. If you're not going to fly to California on 24 hours notice, you might want to check out the speaker handouts page because the convergence of interests is stirring up a lot of heat and insight. Some of the handouts are more detailed than just an outline. As mentioned here before, I am plodding my way through Sharon Begley's Change Your Mind, Change Your Brain, and this conference offers similar material.
One speaker, Sarah Lazar from Harvard, has a site with her research information on meditation, called Meditation Research (catchy title). She has a link to New Yorker cartoons on yoga, always good for a yuk.
Labels: meditation, therapy
I have been paying closer attention to my breathing during my yoga sessions and meditation since I've regained some space in my nasal passages. It's almost as if I were breathing for the first time. I've noticed that what might appear a slight adjustment in my spine can result in a dramatic difference in the quality and depth of my breathing. As a person who works constantly stooped before a keyboard and monitor, I have a strong tendency to round my spine forward. That's the direction that my body is being pushed By keeping a small curvature to my lower back and a slight tilt forward of by pelvis, I seem to find the optimal position for getting maximum movement from my diaphragm, my rib cage opens up and my shoulder blades draw together. If I ever so slightly move towards a straight back (no natural curvature in my lower back), my breathing seems to start shutting off. It's almost as if my diaphragm got turned off.
Why is this important for me? Because I've noticed times in my practice when my breathing seems to shut down. I could never understand why. Now I think that in certain movements or positions, I lose form in my lower back and that triggers what seems like a diaphragm freeze.
I first felt the difference when I was seated in meditation. I usually sit on a block because I want to keep my knees below my hips. In that position, it's very easy to slip out of the correct posture because the back gets tired of holding the position and I start gradually slipping into rounding my back forward. I then sensed the quality of my breath as I tilted my hips forward (putting in curvature) and then released my hips to a lazier position. This has almost before a focus of meditation as I savor the quality of my breath depending on the slant of my back.
Labels: breathing, meditation, practice, spine
I bought two videos produced and distributed by Pranamaya: Anatomy of Yoga with Paul Grilley and Insight Yoga with Sarah Powers. I took advantage of a 10% discount when you buy more than one video at a time. These DVDs are more expensive than most demo and instructional videos because they have a huge amount of material in. Both DVD have nearly four hours each of lectures and practice material, plus other instructional aids.
Why these two DVDs? I wanted to explore yang style of yoga with a strong fusion of Buddhadharma. The idea of slowing down the pace of my practice appeals to me. I want to understand the physical limits that the body imposes on yoga practice. I also needed to learn visually, as opposed to my normal use of reading.
Pranamaya has very high production values and seems to pick instructors and themes that dig deep into yoga practice. They don't produce DVDs for beginners. Gary Kraftsow, who heads the American Yoga Institute, has just released two DVDs on viniyoga therapy for back problems. Andrey Lappa has multiple releases that record his unique vision of yoga practice. Dharma Mittra, the NYC-based teacher who gained renown for a 908-pose chart, has two DVDs.
Labels: hardware, meditation, practice, videos
I've been doing my body scans nightly as a kind of back-to-the-basics initiative to rein in my central nervous system. I have not had another bad scan in which I get jittery and overanxious for nearly two weeks. At most, I've had a couple of arm jerks in which my hand and forearm snap up. A more serious problem is not dozing off momentarily. Laying prone on the ground at 11:00 pm at the end of a long day is probably an invitation for sleep so I should not be surprised. I'll just have to find a coping strategy — maybe opening my eyes for the whole session.
This week, I've been fitting in my sudarshan kriya practice in the morning before heading off to work. It has really kept me upbeat the whole day. It's amazing how a breathing practice can change my outlook to sunny. Why do I ever skip my breathwork?
Labels: breathing, meditation, practice
New York Times In the Classroom, a New Focus on Quieting the Mind:
Mindfulness, while common in hospitals, corporations, professional sports and even prisons, is relatively new in the education of squirming children. But a small but growing number of schools in places like Oakland and Lancaster, Pa., are slowly embracing the concept — as they did yoga five years ago — and institutions, like the psychology department at Stanford University and the Mindfulness Awareness Research Center at the University of California, Los Angeles, are trying to measure the effects
This story has the potential of making it into the punch lines of Jay Leno jokes on late night TV. The story is also honest that the trial run of mindfulness in the classroom is still too early to predict an outcome. As someone who tries to cultivate mindfulness on a daily, even hourly basis (not much luck), I really cheer for this introduction of meditation in the school system. Expect a book to be written about this whole phenomenon in the near future because the kids can come up with jaw-dropping insights out of the blue or live compelling lives in the midst of urban mayhem (and that's not to say that suburban or rural kids don't have their own high-odds struggle to healthy adulthood).
Labels: meditation, news, reading
I have a problem with savasana or more precisely the flat-on-my-back position that I take in order to do a body scan, following the audio instructions of Jon Kabat-Zinn. This exercise is part of a process to increase awareness of the body and sensitize the mind. In effect, I focus my attention on specific parts of my body progressively -- my toes, ankles, knees, thighs, hips, etc., up both legs, both arms, through my torso and up to the crown of my head. Kabat-Zinn recommends that a novice to meditation do this exercise for at least two-three weeks before actually starting to meditate in a seated practice.
What happens? After I settle prone onto my mat for five minutes, I start feeling really fidgety, antsy and with a strong desire to get out of there. My leg muscle become jittery and I feel tingling in my fingers. I feel as if there's a little motor running inside me and I can't turn it off. My mind becomes restless and all kinds of reasons for getting up bubble to the surface. I start paying more attention to this anxious sensation than to the narrator's voice. I am definitely not at ease. I've cut the session off a couple of times and on some evenings, I've avoided doing the exercise.
It's really disconcerting because I can easily maintain meditation in seated pose for 15-20 minutes. After a good yoga session, savasana is a welcome respite and I do not have the urge to bounce up. When I go to bed, I usually drop off into sleep immediately and do not lie in bed twitching. In this case, with the CD, I actually have a voice to listen to and explicit instructions to follow. I don't have to purge my head of mental processes or zone out everything but my meditative focus.
Three years ago, when I got my first Kabat-Zinn CDs, I tried to do the body scan and I had the same edgy feeling to the point that I did the exercise seated in a chair, rather than lying on the ground. After a while, I stopped doing it. Since then, I've been practicing meditation and added yoga to squeeze out the pent-up energy in body and train the mind to spiritual disciplines. I thought I would have outgrown this reaction to the body scan.
A friend of mine said that I should not get too uptight about the whole thing, looking at the phenomenon as a symptom of some kind of disorder. It may be a natural way that the body has of venting energy or it could actually be something like restless leg syndrome that might need medical treatment. But I am not going to cure the problem by fretting about it -- if anything, it will make it worse. I just need to observe dispassionately what's happening as I move through the process.
Labels: breathing, meditation
New York Times Study Suggests Meditation Can Help Train Attention: Although this findings of this study does not surprise anyone who has become familiar with meditation, it does provide scientific validation of its powers.
...three months of rigorous training in this kind of meditation leads to a profound shift in how the brain allocates attention.
It appears that the ability to release thoughts that pop into mind frees the brain to attend to more rapidly changing things and events in the world at large, said the study’s lead author, Richard Davidson, a professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
We need to use all our senses optimally through awareness.
Labels: meditation, news
The separation of ownership at Thrive Yoga has altered my yoga routine, as I mentioned two months ago, in unexpected way. I studied under both owners and maintain the studio website, which gives me no-costs yoga sessions at Thrive. I have just gotten through working with the site designer to purge the site of pictures of Kim Groark (at her request) and bring the graphic design into alignment with the current status at the studio. So much work that I missed two class this week, and I probably missed a few the previous week.
Over the past couple of months, Susan Bowen has brought in several new teachers, which required me to adjust to different voices, paces and sequencing. And there's been a swell of new people taking classes, many of them just getting their feet wet with yoga. Combined with my frequent travels, I seem to be practicing in a different environment even though the physical facilities remain the same.
Kim Groark, the renegade owner, as she likes to call herself, has started teaching elsewhere, and uses the facilities at the American Dance Institute for three classes a week. Her schedule has not fit mine so I have yet to take one of her classes, and not because I am taking sides in the split. She has a newsletter (PDF and a whopping 2.6 mb) that conveys her love for yoga and unique approach to the practice. She does not have website yet, but I would probably offer her the same deal as I have with Thrive -- hosting for classes.
My first reaction was that yoga and meditation should have prevented this breakup that was due to bad vibs between two friends. If yoga is going to bring harmony to the world, why can't it heal a business partnership? But then, I realized that yoga does not keep people from being human. I am sure that both Kim and Susan struggled with this contradiction and decided that the split was the best way to restore their own personal and separate balances. All these changes have meant I have become more detached from my instructors and listen more to my inner teacher about how and where my practice should be headed. They can lead me skillfully in a vinyasa, but they are not going to give me wisdom necessarily.
Labels: blessing, class, meditation, yoga
