Healing the Total Body: Where Western Anatomy Meets Eastern Spiritual Science
Stoke internal fire
With the bones aligned, the muscles supporting me, the next area of focus becomes energy I have within me to sustain my yoga practice day after day, followed by a healthy lifestyle throughout the day. In the end, my goal is vitality, not pain and exhaustion.
Pattabhi Jois says that the heat (tapas) will burn out all impurities, burning away Samskaras, patterns of conditioned behavior, spiritually, emotionally and physically.
Breath and bandhas
Long even breathing is necessary to get the internal fire stoked from lower abdomen, up the Sushumna, to the rib cage. Adding to that is focused attention on the bandhas—the internal locks in the pelvic floor, lower abdomen and throat—which create the firm focus necessary to calm the Nervous System.
This calming is necessary in order to create the intended liveliness of the daily Mysore yoga practice. Mula bandha is an internal muscle engagement around the perineum, uddiyana bandha is at the lower abdomen and jalandhara bandha is at the chin while back of neck is lengthened. Each is intended to seal in subtle energy and tone muscles.
Burn out impurities
Does this internal burning and holding undoubtedly lead to a more energetic life? Start with heat. Sweat can be one physiological reaction to indicate that the body is heated. Sweat is part of the Integumentary System, composed of the skin, hair, nails and other related glands.
Our skin is our biggest organ and is a self-repairing, protective boundary between the body and the external environment. The epidermis is the thin outer layer. The dermis is the second layer, which contains blood vessels, sensory receptors, fat cells and sweat glands—eccrine and apocrine. Eccrine sweat glands produce watery sweat that is important for maintaining temperature regulation and for excreting small amounts of sodium chloride from the body. Apocrine sweat glands produce the cloudy, white substance in which bacteria grow.
Sweat it out with clarity
In Mysore Ashtanga yoga it’s common respect to shower each morning before practice. This is for spiritual reasons, and is the first niyama of the Ashtanga Eight Limbs of Yoga, Saucha, standing for inner and outer cleanliness. Some yoga lineages force heat in the room and require lots of water drinking beforehand and during to induce sweat during class which clears out toxins through the skin. Mysore Ashtanga yoga is performed in a warmed room, but drinking water beforehand or during is frowned upon.
Your body's natural temperature control
The idea is that your own body heat should be an internal self-gauge of your physical asana and vinyasa intensity. Drinking water is meant for the evening before and following practice, to keep the body flushed, and aids in Saucha.
A healthy Ashtangi will sweat during his/her yoga practice, mainly activating the eccrine sweat glands for temperature control.
Electrolyte balance
There are mornings during practice—since I insist on drinking a small cup of coffee first (a diuretic)—that I am still dehydrated or lacking in electrolytes, which I persevere through because to me coffee is worth t. I get head rushes, a brief fall in blood pressure.
Balance your pH
Electrolytes are part of the body’s balance of fluids and pH; the body is selective with elimination in order to remain in balance but when a depletion occurs, the effects are felt immediately. Coconut water is a natural electrolyte that I consider drinking before class.
There is a spiritual component to the light-headedness though. It makes it easier to see the spirit (my observation), if I pace myself accordingly.
Health benefits of turmeric
Part of my energy-sustaining lifestyle is the consumption of Eastern herbs—turmeric, for one. I only drink one cup of coffee—my only caffeine for the day—in the morning. Ginger gives me an energetic boost later in the day. Turmeric is a natural anti-inflammatory, anti-oxidant, anti-depressant and improves brain & heart function; it is even known as a means of cancer prevention as it’s been proven to reduce angiogenesis (growth of new blood vessels in tumors), metastasis (spread of cancer) and contributes to the death of cancer cells. With all of these benefits, I crave it over another cup of coffee; in fact, with my yoga practice, I don’t crave the extra caffeine high at all because I’m already there.
However, on the subject of skin, daily consumption of turmeric did cause itchy skin at first. I wondered if this was the effect of toxins secreting through the skin, as I began to drink more as I practiced daily Mysore. I began to include tea tree oil in my shampoos and soaps to soothe my skin. Since I’m all about getting toxins out, this practice felt beneficial, despite the minor irritation. With my daily epsom salt baths, this is not as much of an issue.
The itchiness went away, however, after a month or so. This is a good indication that the turmeric did a diligent job of ridding my system of a toxin, and some of its process was through the pores in my skin.
Best kept secret: Mysore Ashtanga yoga
I keep coming back to Mysore Ashtanga yoga and can’t imagine not. It’s like a secret people don’t know about because they are scared to try it, or once they do, they quit when it brings up anything strange inside them, often pain of the body or ego.
Ashtanga forces you to face your weakness
I have found that the secret blessings arise after you get over the challenging hump, one which is not easy to get over. I often had fantasies of quitting Ashtanga or my current teacher so that I could take up my practice with a new Mysore teacher (as if that would conceal my weakness).
I read of various stories and reasons why ex-Ashtangis couldn’t handle it (along with harsh remarks); I've heard stories from my own teacher too. From my perception, it would appear that when darkness or psychological patterns and controls arise, it’s human nature to halt the process and to justify why with the utmost of intensity.
Perseverance and consistency tames the ego
I feel very personally powerful that my physical and mental strengths ensue so that I get the unbelievable chance to invite this type of daily practice and energy healing into my life, the key to its depth and benefit being consistency! If I gave up, I'd never have evolved past where I'd been and I'd never be writing this. It's easy to never get to this challenging spot in other yoga classes, especially fast-paced vinyasa, because I stick with what I'm good at, giving my body the chance to keep performing where it's used to being the best.
The benefits of this practice are beyond working hard, resting well and feeling great; it forces me to look at my whole Self, not just physical abilities. The main pressure I experience is that which I put on myself. It’s mainly to tame my ego!
Break down the ego
The psychological Ego needs to perform and be judged. The Mysore practice mirrors back everything that I don’t want to see and am uncomfortable with, so I will indeed feel negativity from onlookers, my teacher or myself when not performing optimally if I’m coming from the psychological ego; and from there, my body will clench up or I’ll get injured while high on performing rather than spirit.
Psychological ego creates injury
With continual practice, this ego melts. For example, when I’m physically challenged—up against a wall (an impasse)—day in and day out, my mind gets frustrated and wants so much to do it right. But at that point, the energy holding the body part needs to relax.
The only way for it to happen is to ignore the ego—for me, that means choosing apathy (surrender). This can sometimes break down decades of holding patterns in the shoulders, hips, spine and sacrum. I’m living proof that it’s possible.
Spiritual ego is reflection
The spiritual Ego (from Advaita Vedanta) carries the misinterpreted reflections of the mind when it is not clear and peaceful. Imagine 3 buckets of water: one muddy, one stirred up, one still and clear. The sun is shining in all 3 buckets equally. Reflection in the first is dim and dull, in the second is agitated, and in the third is peaceful. Sun = Self, water = mind, reflection = ego. My true self is a constant that is independent of how my mind is acting. If I reflect muddy water with my ego, I feel depression; if I reflect agitation, I feel I’m breaking apart; If I reflect stillness, I feel at peaceful oneness with my self.
Three basic parts of the spirituality are the tri-gunas (subtle components): Sattva, Raja and Tama. The answer to feeling the Sattva (purity of the mind) is to calm the Rajas (activity, motion, irritation in mind) and Tamas (inert dullness in the mind).
I have learned to welcome the sound of my breath to do its magic with the ego, especially to find the Sattvic state. In my practice, I am now able to witness the story change from loud to diminished, while dormant energies in my body rise and take its place—some dark, some light. I never know the level I will go to until I’m there. After that I find my spiritual power that hides (sometimes once I return home, sometimes days later). I’m there for a reason though because I know there is a piece inside me that needs to rise to the surface.
Find your truth
As eloquently put in the Bhagavad Gita, yoga
"compares a thought to a seed: [it's] very tiny, but it can grow into a huge, deep-rooted, wide-spreading tree… a seed in a crack in pavement [can grow] into a tree that [tears] up the sidewalk. [It's] difficult to remove such a tree, difficult to undo the effects of a lifetime of negative thinking… but it can be done.”
Undo the effects of negative thinking
My yoga practice has been showing me how, and it’s not because I am focusing on the seed. It happens unconsciously, which is the only way for me—I’ve learned that my own conscious will is too stubborn.
According to Gurdjieff,
"the truth can be approached only if all the parts that make up the human being—the thought, the feeling and the body—are touched with the same force and in the particular way appropriate to each of them. Without an effective understanding of this principle, there will be a mechanical repetition of forms of effort that never go beyond a quite ordinary level.” (Source: The Reality of Being: The Fourth Way of Gurdjieff)
Something to contemplate...
Natarajasana B (Image © Yoga Robin®)This pose feels so good with the strap. The Ashtanga way is to hold the toes, no strap (and for me, this means that all of my energy goes toward not dropping the foot, or even getting it). My favorite Iyengar teacher instructs this one with a strap.
Eka Pada Rajakapotasana (Image © Yoga Robin®)
