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Beyond Doing, Beyond Understanding
Tias Little writes another Yoga Koan article for Elephant Journal.
Easter Sunday April 8, 2012
We had a most unusual Easter in Northern New Mexico, just outside the town of Abiquiu. Abiquiu is where Georgia O’Keeffe painted her most striking images while living at Ghost Ranch, images of saffron and rose colored sandstone bluffs and steer heads against a backdrop of turquoise sky. We drove 13 miles off highway 285 along a dirt road to the Christ in the Desert Monastery. The monastery, founded in 1964 is perched in the Chama River canyon beneath behemoth sandstone cliffs. Thomas Merton a Trappist monk spent time at the monastery in 1968 and published a lovely book based on his time at Christ in the Desert called Woods, Shore and Desert.
The monastery is Benedictine and given Surya’s Catholic upbringing, she identified readily with the Easter Mass service. The hominy was delivered by Father Antonio and was full of passion and delight. Afterwards we shared a meal with the community of 20-25 monks and got to know several of the Brothers. Brother Om Prakash from North India (who told us that he practices pranayama in his cell each morning) and Brother John from Long Island, a former athlete who lives in a hermitage just North of the Monastery grounds.
The community grows organic hops along the river and brews their own Monks Ale. It was a delight to drink some with the Easter meal!
Poses for the Throat Chakra
In most anatomical discussions relating to the body and movement, the esophagus often gets ignored. Yet the role of the esophagus is critical, for it is the beginning of the GI (gastro-intestinal) tract. It passes from the back of the oral cavity to the stomach and is 9-10 in. or 23-25 cm long. In this sense it is an integral part of the throat chakra, the throat is subject to both physical and emotional strain.
At the top, the esophagus descends behind the epiglottis. It is here where the sound of ujjayi breath is made. Should there be strain or holding in the esophagus the clear resonance of ujjayi breath may be difficult to make. In the English language we have expressions like, “cat got your tongue”, “choked up” and “gagged with a spoon”. These all allude to mechanical strain in the upper part of the digestive tract. Strain in the upper digestive tract may be coupled by strain at the base of the colon. In the esophagus, this may show up as belching, hiccups, dryness, excess coughing, heartburn, scratchy throat, difficulty swallowing or the urge to vomit. In the colon it may reflect gas, loose stool, hemorrhoids etc.
Like the rest of the GI tract, the esophagus has a peristaltic movement. Food transits down to the stomach in little wave-like movements. If there is rigidity in the throat this peristaltic movement is inhibited.
The juncture of the esophagus and stomach is a common place for tension (see Pl 232 Netter 3rd Edition). Here is where the narrow muscular tube of the esophagus becomes the broad holding sac of the stomach. There is a sphincter-like structure at this junction that is often under duress. This stress can be due to people eating too fast, eating too much, swallowing air when they eat, or improperly chewing their food. It is also due to the stomach pressing up against the under-side of the diaphragm. The vagus nerve that enervates the stomach and esophagus is affected when under stress, especially relevant to eating disorders.
The esophagus perforates the diaphragm at the posterior margin of the diaphragm. This is where the crus (central tendon) of the diaphragm attaches to the spine (T12-L2). This is also where the psoas fibers inter-weave with the fibers of the respiratory diaphragm. When there is constriction in the diaphragm due to improper breathing, stress or trauma, the esophagus may be constricted. Tension on the left psoas can contribute to restriction at the gastroesophageal junction.
When the upper stomach is tense it rides upward against the diaphragm, like the way a helium balloon gets pinned upward against the ceiling. Due to nervous tension, stress when eating, poor food combining or high acidic levels in the stomach, contents from the stomach can spit up through the diaphragm into the lower esophagus. This is called GERD (gastroesophageal reflux disease). In a hiatal hernia a small portion of the stomach passes into the thorax through the esophageal junction.
It is important in yoga practice and meditation training to relax the tongue, soften the throat and jaw. Try to visualize the length of the esophagus and bring relaxation into the entire length of the tube. Visualize the juncture of the esophagus and stomach relaxing and spreading wide. Breathe into the left hemisphere of your diaphragm to ease tension at the top of the stomach.
Practice prasarita padottanasana with your head supported by a block or bolster. Keep your head perpendicular to the floor so that the weight is forward of the very top of your skull. Raise your scapula but release the small of your neck downward toward the floor. Be sure to relax your face, jaw and tongue and release any pressure around your throat. Use a light soft ujjayi breath.
Then do upavista konasana and parsva upavista konasana with your forehead supported on a block or bolster. Be sure to extend your side ribs and side waist away from your pelvis and to lengthen the front of your spine. Support the center of your brow in order to release the skin of your face and relax your tongue. Keep your entire throat soft and allow the esophagus to traction passively. Swallow several times to encourage a gentle peristaltic rhythm in your throat. Visualize your throat widening and softening. Focus on your inhalation breathing into T12-L2, the vertebrae associated with the gastroesophageal junction. Visualize and feel your breath moving into your left chest and upper abdominal cavity. Feel the left side of your diaphragm gliding down against your stomach in order to create more fluid movement in this area.
Perform tryanga mukha eka pada pascimottanasana, janu sirsasana and pascimottanasana in the same way with head supported.
Then do halasana on 4 blankets. Take the blanket support to the base of your neck at T1-C7. Be sure to turn your shoulders far underneath you so that you do not weight bear on your upper vertebrae. Actively raise your side body, side ribs and side waist toward the ceiling. Actively press your thigh bones away from your face to avoid spinal compression.
If you experience strain on your throat then place your feet onto a chair or against the wall.
Visualize again a feeling of ease and relaxation in your neck and throat. Keep your face, tongue and jaw soft. If you experience any neck compression then transfer more weight to your shoulders, in particular your outer shoulder blades.
Then you can raise up into sarvangasana (shoulderstand) and keep the same ease around your neck! Do not jam your chin toward your sternum. Continue to use active inhale to open your left chest cavity.
Once you are down, do supported matsyasana. Place a block width-wise under your shoulder blades and allow your neck to extend so that the back of your head rests to the floor. Avoid compressing the back of your neck. Visualize the smooth muscle fibers along your esophagus stretching and your diaphragm spreading wide. Use a soft steady breath. Allow your jaw to hang open so that the stretch receptors in your esophagus lengthen.
Then in seated meditation relax your tongue, soften your throat and jaw. Swallow a few times to introduce natural peristalsis. Visualize the length of your esophagus from the root of your tongue, along the front of your spine, through your diaphragm and into your stomach. Bring relaxation into the entire length of the tube. Visualize the juncture of the esophagus, stomach and diaphragm relaxing and spreading wide. Breathe into the left hemisphere of your diaphragm to ease tension at the top of your stomach.
Finish with the lion’s breath (simhasana). Exhale forcefully through your mouth with tongue extended. Actively stretch your tongue forward and down. Visualize the exhalation beginning at the lower end of your esophagus. Avoid causing irritation in your throat. Simhasana simultaneously tones the pelvis, respiratory and upper thoracic diaphragms. It helps release the tmj (temporomandibular joint and stretch the strong muscles of the jaw (masseter and pterygoids). It helps maintain elasticity in the esophageal tube. Repeat 5-7 times and relax afterwards in savasana.
Zen Motion 2012
Designed by Tias Little, Zen Motion is a unique walking meditation. This movement piece is a living meditation brought into a group form where people are engaged with each other creating a singular consciousness.
Thanks to Lynn Sanchez for doing the video on the Zen Motion class at OneTree Yoga March 2012!
Yoga, Sensationalism and the Fall from Grace by Tias Little
The current popularity of yoga in the world today is due to a very bizarre combination of things. One is the overall benefits that the practice has on the body and the mind, the other is the limelight effect where so many things related to yoga get trumped up and made into a kind of show. From the chic “Salutation” pants of Athleta yogawear to the storefront façade of the new splashy Jois yoga center in Encinitas CA, to the ads of buffed dudes in one handed arm balances. Now comes the Feb 28 New York Times article, “Yoga and Sex Scandals, No Surprise Here”, an article by William Broad, the suddenly go-to authority on yoga. This article follows on the heels of his Jan 8 piece in the NY Times “How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body”, an equally sensational title that like-wise has prompted considerable hand-wringing among many of us who are committed to the benefits and integrity of yoga instruction.
The current yoga spectacle involves John Friend, the founder of Anusara Yoga and his fall from grace (in the Anusara system “grace” is a mantra of sorts along with “open your heart”). The shame of John’s sexual and financial exploits, is significant, both in terms of the way it renders cracks in the Anusara empire, but also for the bad press it gives the practice of yoga. What is most evident is that certain aspects of yoga have basked in the light of sensationalism.
The Anusara Yoga appeal is due in part to its spectacle, the wow of the “blow your heart” experience. The spectacle was partly created by Friend’s extroverted personality and love of life, and partly by a carefully marketed yoga philosophy. The Anusara class setting includes a kind of show, where a demonstrator performs a bendy feat and the audience claps at the appropriate moment. Anusara has thrived on the stagey feel good experience. Like yoga instructors Pierre Bernard and Bikram Choudhury before him, Friend is a great showman who has developed a cult following. Any yoga built around exuberance, excitation and feelings of transcendence is bound to crash.
As dismaying as the Anusara scandal appears, equally unsettling is Broad’s recent article on the scandal. For Broad addresses the problem of male yoga teachers sleeping with female students, but then lunges into a claim about the sexual origins of hatha yoga: “Yoga teachers and how-to books seldom mention that the discipline began as a sex cult — an omission that leaves many practitioners open to libidinal surprise.” While it is undeniable that the psycho-sexual current, known in yoga as kundalini (a basic yoga term that Broad fails to mention) is a force that yogis seek to channel, it is overly-simplistic to suggest that states of sexual ecstasy lie at the root of yoga practice. Broad moves too quickly from the John Friend fiasco to an expose of how yoga is inextricably linked to sex. His view is proffered with tidbits of scientific research that he has garnered for his recent book “The Science of Yoga: The Risks and Rewards”. Broad fails to touch on yoga’s rich and complex philosophical and social history. By casting yoga in the light of sexual physiology, he not only does yoga a disservice, but he vicariously participates in the same sensationalist wow effect that is antithetical to authentic yogic principles.
While citing other male yogis who have fallen prey to their own libidinal impulses, such as Swami Rama, Muktanda and Amrit Desai, Broad misses the essential point that power can corrupt, in particular the power of a male yogi. As a high-profile male yoga teacher myself, I think it is critical not to get swept away in the sensationalist aspects of contemporary yoga. It is essential that male yoga teachers hold to the same standard of professionalism shared by all places of employment. When this level of professionalism is not maintained, the yoga teacher can become blinded by his own physical or psychological cravings.
Traditional yoga involves opening an inner eye (in esoteric yoga, a “third eye” or eye of wisdom), one that looks carefully at one’s own urges, moods, thoughts and behavior. A yogi who has trained with both sensitivity and rigor in the body-mind connection, should have the self-awareness to note (to use the well-known directive in Vipassana meditation) what is arising inside of him. This relates to the scientific findings that Broad elaborates—changes in blood pressure, breathing and the surge of adreno-testosterone. The male teacher must also be able to see the larger context and conditions — his status, position of authority and the adoration of largely female students. In the yoga practice, the mirror of mindfulness is essential along with attitudes of thoughtfulness, care and non-harming. This enables one to skillfully negotiate the powerful feelings of desire, anger and greed that might arise (known in classical Buddhism as the “three poisons”). My Tibetan meditation teacher Tsoknyi Rinpoche identifies this as the “love-hate problem”. The love-hate problem is a mind (and heart) that splits when caught in the throes of attraction/aversion. Anusara yoga is now stuck in this polarity, as Friend’s lack of moral clarity has divided his community.
When spiritual gurus presume that their actions transcend the realm of cause and effect, they create harm and suffering. One of the primary motives of the yoga discipline is to reduce suffering (dhuka) not perpetuate it.
The “Yoga and Sex Scandals” article does little to shed light on the complexity of the yoga tradition or the complex personal history of John Friend. Instead, Broad is opportunistic, as he turns the issue of male yoga teachers sleeping with female students into an expose on yoga and sexual ecstasy. Thus the caption of his piece “Yoga and Sex Scandals” includes the wry joiner, “No Surprise Here”. This addendum, combined with his focus on yoga and sex, is meant to verify the sexual underpinnings of the yogic experience. This kind of reporting may pique the interest of readers, but is misleading in terms of the aspirations of traditional yoga. What it really does is participate in the culture of sensationalism that sweeps through yoga today.
The More Medicine, the Worse the Sickness
http://www.elephantjournal.
Tias discusses this Yoga Koan in an article for Elephant Journal
Backbends, the Enso and Coming Full Circle
Tias talks of backbends, the Enso and coming full circle during the January 7, 2012 Day Long event – Arching Back Into the New Year.
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Zen Motion Experience
Here is a great article by Devon Ward-Thommes about her experience with Tias’ Zen Motion:
http://www.elephantjournal.
Tias at St. Louis Yogasource 2012
This is a great view into what a weekend intensive with Tias is like.
Thanks to Muse Sharon for putting this together!
Latissimus Dorsi
This muscle resembles a cape, for its shape is wide and triangular. Yet rather than this cape draping from the shoulders, it sweeps upward from the lower back. It is a muscle that joins the back body and side body, thus it is part of the dorsal and lateral sheaths (and has a strong spiral component so is part of the spiral sheath). It inserts into the last six thoracic vertebrae and attaches to the lumbar vertebra, the sacrum and the crest of the ilia. Its upper insertion is at the inner edge of the arm bone. Thus when in a downward dog, any extension and span between the arm and the sacrum is established in part by the lats!
Notice the fan-like shape of this muscle and its attachments to the last four ribs. Given that it has slips that attach directly to the ribs, it is a muscle that assists in breathing (deep inhale). Thus it serves as a pranayama muscle and correlates to the respiratory diaphragm, for the diaphragm attaches to the lower ribs on the interior. One way to gain a sense for the expansion of the costal attachments of the lats is to loop a strap a over your trunk and position it over your lower rib basket. Sit in a comfortable position and expand your inhale against the strap so as to flare your side ribs.
When the muscle contracts it serves to draw the arms backward behind the body. This is done simply by interlacing your fingers behind you and drawing your arms back. This is a primary prep for positioning the arms for shoulderstand. If people are tight in the lats they cannot hold their hands to their back in shoulderstand! Given that the lat fibers lace over the base of the scapula, the lat aids in retracting the shoulder blade and in anchoring the shoulder down.
Notice how the lower fibers of the muscle are vertically oriented and the upper fibers horizontal. This suggests that this muscle allows for both vertical lift and lateral expansion.
When people have a “bendy back” or excess lumbar (and lower thoracic) curvature, then the lat fibers need to extend, so that the cape flares. This spreading occurs in bakasana (the crane pose) or bhujapidasana (see current description for this pose under Asana) or in squatting position. Aim to bring your in-breath to your kidneys which are located just under the lat and lower most ribs.
It is all too common for this mid back area to pinch in headstand in which case the lats have lost their wing-like capacity to expand. In sirsasana, practice broadening the horizontal fibers. In order to find this lift the upper inner arm in headstand where the lat attaches. Then lift your sacrum and back ilia upward away from the lumbar to get a feel for the entire length of the lat muscle.