Dear Jenni: YSP I:28

Repeating the sacred syllable and pondering its meaning lead to its understanding.

YSP I:28 — Bouanchaud translation

Dear Jenni:

I confess that I struggled with this sutra for most of the week. I was hung up on the mantra aspect of it for too long. The fruit of our vital conversation came immediately upon opening your email Christmas morning: Repetition is the mother of all learning.

Yes, of course. I had allowed myself to bog down on the specifics of the sutra instead of taking a global approach to it. As soon as I read your words, the entire thing snapped into place.

This summer I did a lot of reading and studying on the human brain, neurophysiology and the advances of research in that area. When I studied my introductory anatomy classes, some 25 years ago, it was assumed that adult brains were incapable of change. Essentially, once we reached a certain stage of development, our brain architecture was immutable and all that was left was the unavoidable decline of age or the precipitous decline of injury. Stroke victims weren’t offered much in the way of treatment because, well, we all “knew” that brains couldn’t heal themselves. Thankfully, a lot of the future neurophysiologists were asleep during that lecture because they didn’t “know” what all the rest of us “knew” and they disregarded it completely. Today, because we now do know that brains can ‘rewire’ themselves, stroke victims are given treatments to help heal the brain after injury. People with massive brain traumas aren’t assumed to be beyond help and children born with autistic brains are given help to manage their brain functions.

One of the principles behind all these developments is Hebbsian learning, if you wanted the Google search term for it. It reads:

When an axon of cell A is near enough to excite a cell B and repeatedly or persistently takes part in firing it, some growth process or metabolic change takes place in one or both cells such that A’s efficiency, as one of the cells firing B, is increased.

The somewhat snappier way to remember it is “Neurons that fire together; wire together”. In short, it’s all about repetition. Repeating something, an action, a word, a thought, is an essential part of learning. When we repeat stuff (word, action or thought), we literally make changes in the architecture of the neural pathways of the brain. We reinforce existing pathways. If any of this rings bells with the yogic notion of samskara, you are not alone. It immediately brought it forward in my mind and I suspect that Hebb’s postulate is as large part of the explanation behind the mechanics of yoga teaching on samskarah. We live in exciting times, Jenni. I believe that modern western science, so often seen by some as its enemy, will prove to be yoga’s greatest ally.

So back to the sutra in question. Among many books that I read this summer was The Brain that Changes Itself by Norman Doidge, MD. I can’t lay my hands on my copy of it right now, so I’m rather dancing around my memories of his ideas instead of quoting it exactly. One of the central ideas that stuck in my brain as I was reading was the notion of language and how it impacts the brain. Doidge argues that one of the better things we can do for ourselves as we age is learn additional languages because language acquisition and use works four major functional areas of the brain simultaneously. When we’re chanting (arguably anything and not just “ohm”) we’re working these four major areas of the brain. I “hear” it even if I’m chanting silently. I visualize the word as I’m chanting. I attach meaning to it. It’s part of my symbol manipulation processes and if I’m chanting aloud, I’m activating the speech centers.

So what happens when we chant, either aloud or silently in a meditative sense? I think we’re rewiring our brains with a more godly focus. I suppose it depends on which mantra one chooses for this type of mediation. For the record, I don’t use “ohm”. I’ve replaced it with a phrase imbued with great meaning within my own religious tradition.

Thank you, Jenni,  for having helped me understand this sutra more clearly. Already I’m benefiting from our collaboration in this vital conversation.

Namaste,

Kate

And some days it just doesn’t work out

I tried no less than 4 times to get my feet on the mat yesterday but the universe conspired against me. Phones ringing, errands to run, last minute errands to catch up on, damn I forgot about that errands to do, it all adds up. The feet foundeth the mat not, in spite of the fact that it decorated the middle of the living room floor for the better part of the day.

That’ll teach me to sleep in, now won’t it? At some advanced point in my life, I’m going to figure out how to do yoga at some other time than the morning. No, really, I’m absolutely confident that it can be done. I’ve heard of fakirs from far away places who have even discovered the means of doing yoga practices in the middle of the afternoon, but I strongly suspect that’s just more of that National Geographic propoganada.

In the meanwhile, it’s not yet 5 am. No one in the house is up, let alone capable of a) bugging me or b) finding me something to do. The cat’s been fed and has smartly gone back to bed. It looks like it’s yoga time here on the Nashwaak.

And really, that’s the beauty of yoga. Another breath, another start at this thing called life. There’s no self-recrimination, no need to berate oneself. There is no busted training schedule. I just move on. Next day, get out of bed and place feet on mat. Breathe. Breathe in; breathe out. Simple, isn’t it?

Thanks for reading and Namaste,

Kate

The Fruits of Practice

So why is it that I keep doing this yoga stuff anyway? I mean, after that bit about where it makes me one of the coolest people on the planet…maybe the entire solar system.

Seriously, what is it about this several hundred-year-old tradition that hails from a land so far removed from mine, it might as well be another planet, that draws me back again and again, day after day? I ask myself this question frequently. It’s no surprise to me, or anyone who knows me, that I would be attracted to the philosophy of yoga. I’ve always been a bit on the bookish side. I love to read, and explore new ideas. I enjoy the history of ideas and how they influence and shape culture. It’s no surprise that my bookcases are increasingly crowded with YET another yoga text. It’s something I really never get bored with because there’s such a depth within this thing called YOGA.

It’s also no surprise to people who have known me for a long time that I enjoy the spiritual dimension of yoga. In my youth, I studied a lot of comparative theology and religion courses. I’m very private about my religious convictions and even my closest friends would be pressed to plaster the correct label on me. Nevertheless, people who know me wouldn’t be surprised that I enjoy the study of yoga because it acknowledges the spiritual dimension of our makeup.

What is surprising to everyone, most of all to myself, is the joy I find in the physical practice. I am singularly the most un-athletic person I know. It is generally recognized as a joke from God that I became a yoga teacher. I’m overweight, short limbed, inflexible and bad tempered. So yoga teacher?? How very droll of the Universe to provide.

Why is it that in spite of my life-long aversion to all forms of exercise, do I still keep lining up at the mat? For me, coming as I do from the Viniyoga tradition, is just the sheer acceptance that comes with it. Unlike cycling or any other physical activity I’m involved in, there is nothing competitive about yoga. It’s not even about competing with myself, trying to outdo some fantasy-based notion of “personal best”.

Yeah, sure, I know that there’s always someone who tries to turn this into some kind of contest. Never mind the whole “Yoga Olympics” quest, a colleague once joyfully announced after a morning yoga practice that she had finally out-meditated the rest of the class. True story. Her words. Out-meditated. I’m still working on exactly what that means and no, we’re not good enough friends for me to just ask her how one knows one has out-meditated the competition.

If I’m honest though, I’ll confess I do recognize the mind-set. I’ve had many moments on the mat that have left me feeling hopeless and useless and utterly humiliated. Shoulder stands pretty much shred any semblance of human dignity I may have ever possessed. Dhanurasana, the bow pose, even taken in the half or ardha modification, consistently reduces me to tears. Yet, these postures remain in my repertoire of practice. Why?

In a word, Tapas. And like most Sanskrit yoga words, it takes four paragraphs of English prose to explain that one word-concept. Tapas means to cook and refers to the physical purification of the body. Just as a metallurgist heats metal to the point where impurities are burned away, my asana practice purifies my body. The movements help circulate blood and lymph while releasing tensions I’ve stored in my muscles. Mentally, the stretching and twisting allows my mind to explore the boundaries of my physical self, in a non-threatening manner. For a woman who has lived most of my life inside my skull, these overtures of peace between my body and my brain are therapeutic in nature. As my mind and my body start to become friends again, or at least not-enemies, asana practice gives both of them a non-judgmental way to explore each other and their boundaries.

And part of Tapas is the development of discipline. The discipline it takes to bring myself onto the mat on a daily basis stays with me throughout the day. I’m less self-indulgent on practice days. I find myself automatically making more positive food choices and I’m less likely to try to comfort my emotional stresses with fats, salt and simple carbohydrates.

And those postures I have difficulties with? They too have their gifts. Shoulder stand, although I’ve never successfully completed the posture, has been one of the most instructive of the asanas. I basically need to re-build my shoulders before I’m going to be able to stand on them. I’ve learned more practical anatomy through this posture than I have from any other to date. And Dhanurasana, the bow posture? I have no idea why I cry every time I go into this posture. I don’t understand the overwhelming sense of grief and despair that comes with it. But I do know it’s a letting go of something.

How do I know that? One of the fruits of practice is a sense of self-awareness that helps me discern between an emotion and the memory of an emotion. Whatever is being released during Dhanurasana is not today’s issues. I don’t know the back story on it and frankly, I’m not interested in the “why”. My body is trying to let it go and any attempts to construct a narrative thread around the emotional release defeats that. The solution is to simply breathe and let it go.

So why do I practice on a daily basis? It’s to get me here, to the place where I can let go of that which needs to be released and I can accept that which I need to embrace. It’s not about my abs or my hamstrings; it’s not about bragging rights on how many days in a row of practice I’ve accomplished. I do it solely for the fruits of practice. It’s a blissfully selfish act that becomes its own reward.

Thanks for reading and Namaste,

Kate

Life (and death) intervenes

It’s striking me as moderately ironic that during this World Yoga Practice Month — WoYoPracMo for those of you who are just way cooler than I’ll ever be — that the daily practice should be so frequently disrupted. This time, it was death. My mother in law died on Saturday. Bless you, Delores, for everything you gave in life.

But the last couple of days has given me pause to reflect upon the issue — what other things interrupt our practice? I’m a very routine oriented person. Practice happens to me when I leverage my keister out of bed before the rest of the family and in peace and quiet, I find the mat. Alternatively, it happens when all members of the household, save me, have shuttled themselves off to work and school. Mess with that and my practice goes to hell.

Is there any reason I can’t practice with someone else in the house? Uhhhhhhhhh, no actually, there isn’t. Is there any reason why practice can’t take place later in the day? Uhhhhhhhhh, actually, there isn’t anything stopping me there either. In fact, there’s nothing in the universe stopping me from announcing to my very supportive family, “Excuse me, Momma is buggering off for an hour to her practice. Call me if the house is on fire.” The kidlet is old enough to fend for herself and she’d respect me carving out the hour. Ditto with the husband.

So, what’s the issue here? It’s habit. I have a morning yoga habit. I enjoy the solitude and the peace of the morning. It is deeply calming and very restful. It’s important enough to me to get up long before any sensible human would rise from bed, just so I can savour the beauty of the new day. It’s my time to putter before I have to answer to anyone. I love my morning practice. This is really an attachment issue with me. This is Raga — one of the kleshas, the things that clouds my mind and are the roots of my suffering — an attachment the familiar and pleasurable that keeps me from leaving my comfort zone and moving into more unfamiliar territory.

So when did my morning practice take on this new twist? I suspect it’s probably related to ego, in some respect. Getting up at 4:15 am to hit a yoga mat before you head off to work for 7:00 am? Now that’s bloody dedicated, isn’t it? That’s what you call proof positive that the yogini in question is one serious chickie-momma about this yoga stuff.

I don’t think that there’s anything inherently wrong about morning practices. In fact, there’s a lot of benefits to having one. For me, where it’s fallen off the rails, is when I cling to the MORNING part of morning practice. It’s when I start using the hour of practice as a means of separating myself from the common herd, from the “dabblers”. We’re now safely within the realm of ego gratification as opposed to yoga. When the discipline of practice starts bleeding off into a sense of smugness and self-righteousness and superiority, then I know I’m adding things to practice that don’t belong there.

There’s a good reason Yoga counsels us to cultivate both an abiding practice (Abhyasa) along with non-attachment (Vairagya). Practice alone without the conscious cultivation of its companion, non-attachment, is an excellent prescription for allowing ourselves to become insufferable, pompous asses of the first order.

I’m reminded of the more egregious practices of those who are highly and passionately committed to their own particular cause. I personally respect the right of everyone to make their decisions concerning food and how they chose to feed their families. Omnivore, vegan, vegetarian, raw foodist…it doesn’t matter to me. So I find it very discouraging when well-meaning but ultimately disrespectful people feel compelled to berate others about food choices. If diet is just more ammo to prop up the ego by lashing out at other people, I think it’s time to separate the food on the plate from the politics. When I start thinking along the lines of “my dietary group” are more ethical, sensible, responsible, pragmatic, than the “other dietary group”, it’s no longer about feeding my body’s needs. It’s about feeding my ego needs and making the “I”ness a little bigger. In the end, it’s not what we put into our mouths that makes us “unclean”. Too often, it’s the crap that comes of our mouth that’s the true source of our impurity.

For the most part, I plan to keep the morning practice. For a lot of reasons, it works for me. For one, it’s convenient and it works with the rest of my life quite nicely. But I think I’ll work on letting go of the more sanctimonious bits. It’s time to start divesting some of the ego issues from the mat. Vairagya — non-attachment — something that’s worth not holding onto.

Thanks for reading and Namaste,

Kate

Getting down in the neighbourhood…WoYoPracMo

It’s WOYOPracMO… a mouthful of barely pronounceable syllables that indicates someone has called for World Yoga Practice Month. Cleaver idea really, surely developed by someone who figured out one of the most difficult things for yogis to do is establish and keep the daily practice.

It’s an interesting concept – the idea of fostering a daily practice. First of all, why bother? In the parlance of our times, “what’s in it for me?” I’d like to confess to all that I had some great spiritual revelation way back when and committed myself to the daily practice as a means of armouring my spiritual self. Not so fast – the truth is my daily practice came about because I didn’t know better and I’m cheap. As in frugal, parsimonious. Not mean but a wee bit thrifty.

The fact is my first yoga classes weren’t planned (i.e. budgeted) and the tuition took a bit of creative juggling. I can’t remember what it was … some where in the vicinity of $120 for a 10 week course and it was coming out of the familial electric bill. $12 a week was the cost for my classes unless I did it on a daily basis. $12 divided by 7 days works out to about $1.71 a day. In lean budgetary times, I might not be given to a $12 weekly indulgence but when it’s under $2… I can take that out of the weekly coffee budget and still have change. So my daily practice really started out with the intention of getting my money’s worth out of my classes.

There’s still an element of that going on but it’s fading long into the recesses of what else comes from daily practice. In addition to the whole bit of getting my head together, a topic for another day, there was the physical aspect of practice. Everyday, the stack of blocks I was going towards for my forward bends was getting a little bit easier to find. I remember a sense of ah-ha when I was moving in and out of Parsvottanasana, the intense side stretch. My hamstrings had loosened and softened that suddenly that front leg was straight and my weight was on my back foot. In my very goal oriented brain, this was progress.

I’ll tell you for nothing that I’m not an athlete by any stretch of the imagination. My body and my brain filed for divorce by the time I was 12. I was the last one chosen for any team in gym. And by the time I was 40, I had developed the slack and idle body that was the envy of no one, most particularly myself. Being able to physically do something .. beautiful beautiful Parsvottanasana, was that moment of revelation where my brain finally forgave my body. Maybe there was hope for a truce between them. A dim flutter of hope for reconciliation and forgiveness peaked up from the wasteland.

In retrospect the other saving grace was that Yoga Culture, if you will was completely foreign territory. Until I’d signed up for classes at LifeSong, I’d never darkened the doors of a yoga studio. I had no idea that studios usually supply mats. I just went out and bought myself one before my first class because I was going to need it. If I was taking swimming, I’d need a swimsuit. If I were playing hockey, I’d need skates. If I’m taking yoga, I need a mat. I got a mat. In retrospect, this conveniently provided one less excuse for not practicing.

Not that I needed it. It honesty hadn’t crossed my mind that one wouldn’t practice this on a daily basis. By way of explanation, my formative adult years were spent in the Army. Of course, you roll out of bed and do your yoga, just like you used to roll out of bed and go to PT, back in the day. Yoga, even when it’s done on the Army time of “Oh Dark and Stupid”, usually doesn’t involve running with ruck-sacks in the pitch dark and rain. I now consider Yoga an eminently civilized way to start one’s day.

Ironically enough, the only time my daily practice went to hell was while doing my teacher’s training. I’m still trying to puzzle that one out. But the last month has been about reclaiming the realm of the personal practice. Just my mat and me.

So there you go, it World Yoga Practice Month…have a WOYOPracMO on me. And for my American friends, Happy Independence Day.

Thanks for reading and Namaste,

Kate

Another bridge

Today’s practice was written by Claude Marechal. The principle posture was a held Bridge. I couldn’t help but reflect back on how Bridge has changed for me and changed me. When I started yoga, it was the one posture I hated but it didn’t take too many classes to figure out, this Bridge thing was going to be part of yoga for a long, long while, so I needed to get over myself.

Suck it up, princess… and I made my peace with Bridge. I slowly moved from “Good grief, this crap again” to “Oh well… take the good with the bad.” So today it was a nice observation to realize I was not just doing Bridge because it was called for but truly enjoying the experience.

I’ve been working with the posture for about 6 or 7 months now. I have an injured left shoulder that needs strengthening and flexibility along with some serious postural issues. Bridge was selected as a therapeutic option as I try to rebuild that joint. Somewhere over that period of time, my attitude towards it has changed and softened.

Abiding practice and the capacity for yoga to change us in subtle and fundamental ways — you’d think I’d be used to it by now but it still surprises me when I find it.

Now, it’s off for my final dayshift of this cycle — this would be number 4 — I will be grateful to see it over.

Have a peace-filled day and thanks for reading,

Namaste,

Kate

Practice, practice…

Wow…It’s nearly 9 pm and my 4:30 am practice seems like a lifetime ago. This morning’s practice was a little fractured. I was a little scattered and had problems keeping my head from wandering away and down the lane to La-La Land.

My sleep was equally fractured … I kept dreaming of email. Writing email. Reading email. Correcting and editing email.

But for all the sense of mentally flying off the mat, the grounding nature of this practice has steadied me as I head out in the world. The stuff has a tricky habit of working, even when I’ve written it off as a total loss. No one has managed to say it better that Sri Pattabhi Jois… “Practice, practice and ALL will come.”

Now, it’s time for bed because 4:15 comes early in the morning.

Thanks for reading and Namaste,

Kate

Yoga blahs

The mat is rolled out on the floor behind me. It’s been there for the last….6 hours? … and still my feet haven’t landed on it in any sense of the word. I’m avoiding practice today like my mat was infested with scorpions. Worse yet, I’m self-aware enough to know I’m avoiding.

How many excuses can I cook up today for mat-avoidance-itis? Probably a good half dozen without breaking stride. It’s hot. I’m lazy. My feet hurt. It’s Wednesday. I had word from a friend about her most unhappy news and my heart is breaking for her and her husband. I have a headache.

All perfectly good reasons for avoiding doing my practice. So what’s eventually going to drag my feet to the mat? Partly, I suppose it’s something called discipline. A “We do yoga because we do yoga” kind of mentality. Don’t laugh — it got me through about 3 months of my teacher’s training. Fact is, both mind and body are too scattered for me to find my way to the mat today.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I hear this echo from the Sutras. Abhyasa and vairagya. The aphorism I.12 is a bit of a smack upside the head right now. Using the Bernard Bouanchaud translation:

Control over the mind’s fluctuations comes from persevering practice and non-attachment. (PYS: 1.12)

In short, I’ve spent the last 6 hours gamely trying to put the cart before the horse. It’s not about getting my head clear enough to practice. It’s the practice that’s going to make my head clear. The excuses are starting to look a little lamer by the nanosecond.

One of the things I like about the Bouanchaud translation (The Essence of Yoga, 1997 — out of print in North America, still available at a reasonable cost in India) is each aphorism has a list of questions for the reader to ask him or herself about the meaning of the Sutra. Here’s one of the questions he poses about this one:

To what extent does persevering practice help or hinder my daily life?

Now there’s something for me to think about and if you’ll excuse me, I think I’m going to go visit the mat.

Namaste,

Kate