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Integumentary System, Energy and Ego

Healing the Total Body: Where Western Anatomy Meets Eastern Spiritual Science

Healing Series, part 4



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...

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Muscular System and Love

Healing the Total Body: Where Western Anatomy Meets Eastern Spiritual Science

Healing Series, part 3



Listen to your heart

Where am I? I sometimes wonder. My heart is the biggest part of my yoga practice. It’s the biggest part of my life, in fact. My physical anatomical heart is affected too. My heightened emotional state increases my heart rate. My yoga helps me reframe my love for myself and others, reversing bad mental, emotional and spiritual habits.

Voices in the subtle body

By moving the secrets I hide in body parts, voices arise spoken through my subtle body. What I hear is not always easy to deal with. I do yoga anyway because I know it’s my path. Whatever I do to open my heart, allowing my heart’s wisdom to speak, is helpful for me.

When it gets too hard and I close up, what stops me from wanting to connect with my heart? I know that to feel the wounds is to release them. Carl G. Jung describes that the,

“Dark night of the Soul sounds like a threatening and much to be avoided experience. There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own soul. One becomes enlightened by making the darkness conscious.”

Creative heart is not a guilty pleasure

Dreams and visualizations come from the open heart space, not a closed place of resistance and internal rebellion. My creative heart is not a guilty pleasure; it is the answer.

The chakra system describes my subtle body: Shoulders are the 4th chakra (Heart Chakra of love), the hips are the 2nd chakra (Sacral Chakra of creativity). My practice is my teacher.

Emotions unlock secrets

Where emotional patterns turn to physical pain and then leave (samskaras burning), I am harnessing this heart pain too—the door to healing. To sit dormant with the anger is only "acting out." Sometimes I keep my composure during my practice and other times I'm emotionally and physically weak.

"Anger is the deepest form of care for another... Stripped of physical imprisonment, anger points toward the purest form of compassion, always illuminates what we belong to, what we wish to protect, and what we are willing to hazard ourselves for." ~David Whyte,

Fearlessly release secrets

This all happens spontaneously because I fearlessly move the body parts that protect my secret, and my breathing circulates it all. Toxins are included with spiritual truths, and they all voice themselves inside me until I break apart. The voice given in this spiritual place I go to is the truth.

When I really feel my emotional heart, my Nervous System relaxes, my subtle body energetically softens and the door to bring love to me opens. Whereas in my “escape”, (fantasy, snide humor, psychological analysis, etc.), I am in denial. Why escape?

Embrace uncertainty

Sometimes paying too much attention to balancing the emotional heart by soothing discomfort should instead be felt as raw emotion for a release. Paying better attention to what the discomfort is saying allows me to learn the important messages about letting go.

Muscle fatigue

With all of this yoga and attention to the emotional heart, next comes muscular pain. It’s an indication of muscle-building, comes up in the form of fatigue, and occurs where we need it most sometimes. I invite the Muscular System into my focus, mainly the voluntary muscles—the ones which contract when stimulated by neurons when I consciously use them to move my leg, arm, etc. and relax by being passive; they are known as the skeletal muscles. I’m also working my involuntary muscles—the ones which work in the walls of the intestines, blood vessels, heart (but I’ll get into this later).

Muscles inflamed with repetition

When I learn a new yoga pose and repeat it daily, this new repetition of certain skeletal muscles are in pain, tightened, and in great need of care. I get monthly deep tissue massages to stabilize the muscle tissue structure—muscle cells separated and wrapped in layers of connective tissue, enclosed in fascia, connected to the bones with tendons.

Muscles contract when I use them, but my feat is to relax them completely after using them so that their contracted state doesn’t build up creating a knot, and touching nerves that trigger unnecessary (and imbalanced) compensations with other muscles. Much of this is reversed and calmed into a stable state after massage.

Fatigued muscles lack oxygen

Why does muscle-building cause fatigue? Healthy muscles (called "red muscles”) have a reserve oxygen supply, permitting them to contract and relax repeatedly while maintaining cellular respiration which resists muscle fatigue. The myosin protein in muscles causes contraction and relaxation acting as enzymes, which break down ATP molecules (adenosine triphosphate). ATP provides energy so we want to keep an ample supply in our muscles. When ATP is used up too quickly without the oxygen to support it, muscles (called "white muscles") become quickly fatigued with the build-up of lactic acid—an indication that muscle cell oxygen has been depleted.

Lactic acid build-up not only causes discomfort but also is delivered to the liver (and too much on this organ causes the Digestive System to overwork). Therefore, I want more red muscles and enough ATP to not only contract muscles but also relax them.

Drinking water flushes lactic acid and toxins

Sometimes I'm told that the TCM pressure points (Traditional Chinese Medicine) on outer top of my feet are sensitive and painful. This points to liver aggravation (eating oily food and extra lactic acid build-up). Drinking a lot of water dilutes this. Drinking water is not good to do before morning Ashtanga yoga, as it makes me spiritually heavier. But drinking water during the day, especially with muscle pain, flushes out the toxins which creates relief; it's become my post-yoga activity.

When I'm most sore, I soak in an Epsom salt bath. Why does this soothe muscle soreness? The magnesium in epsom salts—absorbed through the skin—helps relax skeletal muscles by flushing lactic acid build-up in the muscles. Magnesium is an abundant mineral in our bodies and its role in our overall health is important. It can be found in over 300 different enzymes in our body and is vital for activating muscles and nerves, reating energy in the body and efficiently digesting proteins, carbohydrates and fats. Other ways to replenish magnesium are eating organic foods, lowering sugar intake and lowering stress.

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Skeletal System, fears and spiritual grounding: Healing series

Healing the Total Body: Where Western Anatomy Meets Eastern Spiritual Science

Healing Series, part 2

Courage

Courage is daring. I have many fears that I cover with anger in my pursuit to being competent in the world. I work this out in my Ashtanga yoga each morning and throughout the day.

My first fear was walking into the Mysore yoga room on Day One. For many years, I didn’t think that I was good enough (i.e., my yoga poses weren’t going to be good enough, I wouldn’t have the right alignment, my mind was too scattered, I would be judged, etc.).

Bones and ego

Before arriving, it was all about the yoga positions. This begins with the Skeletal System and also the psychological and spiritual Ego. With this focus, or should I say worry, however, there is no place for breathing and going deeper into who I am—the true reason for practicing yoga.

Yoga's skeletal structure

I had been doing yoga for 18 years so my Skeletal System supported me. I know many of the bones and proper alignment, where I’m off and how to compensate.

Skeletal alignment in yoga

I learned by experience about gravity and skeletal alignment in the yoga poses and that we "use muscular force to bring the bones into a position where they carry the load. Once these positions are attained, muscular force is no longer necessary (or greatly decreased)” (Source: The Key Muscles of Hatha Yoga, Ray Long).

The bones on the right side of my body—arm, leg, sternum bone, foot—are all longer; this creates misalignment in yoga but also in living. What has bothered me the most for years has been my neck, as it slowly crunches to the left, also affecting my left shoulder. I’ve gone to a chiropractor for years to get realigned.

Misalignments highlighted

When I first began Mysore, a deeper pose (Supta Kurmasana) in the Ashtanga Primary Series highlighted a minor scoliosis, a lateral deviation and rotational deformity of the spine, in my lumbar spine, which had never bothered me before. Now I had a new area to protect as I felt pain and repetition inflamed it.

Repetition awakens ego

As I kept going daily—in Mysore-style, you practice the same sequence each day, adding on as you go but do not get taught the next pose in the sequence until you master the previous ones—I went into protection mode and analysis mode. I spoke with the teachers, trying to explain for my own discernment. But, I was also protecting my psychological ego because this pain was stopping me from moving on so I needed to provide an explanation for my failures. It was also stopping me from being spiritually present.

My mind was wired on explanation. Ashtanga Mysore-style of yoga can bring up many of the mind and spirit’s impassable issues with its repetition and ritual. I was running into one of them.

Dedication allows skeletal correction

It would be 8 months later, as I went deeper into the latter half of the Ashtanga Intermediate Series that I realized positive skeletal changes occurring in my lumbar spine. Miraculously, one day this correction was so great that I felt taller, pain free, spine more erect throughout the day and even had to adjust the driver’s seat in my car as its regular setting was now putting pressure on my neck. Anatomically-speaking, the cervical spine (neck) is directly related to the thoracic (rib cage range) and lumbar (lower) vertebrae; it is all one spine! This seems obvious, but for me—deep into my analytical yoga practice—it was a revelation.

Cure yourself - spine

Magically, I no longer needed to perform my daily self-chiropractic cervical neck adjustments. I was cured with my yoga practice.

Transformation is sustained change

In my euphoria, I knew that I’d need to keep moving in that direction daily as the Skeletal System has a memory similar to teeth requiring a nightly retainer after orthodontic braces.

“Change leads to disappointment if it is not sustained. Transformation is sustained change, and it is achieved through practice.” ~ B.K.S. Iyengar.

Listen to voice of fear

It was because I let go of the fear (held in that imbalanced area of the lumbar) and trusted the process that allowed the release that the deepest healing occurred. At this point, what I initially experienced as pain in my lumbar spine for many months now felt warm and begged for more extension, movement and access.

Subtle body speaks

It was speaking to me. Its voice was freed when the blockage was removed as my spine elongated and the correction occurred. I listened to its voice and moved on trusting the process.

This wasn't possible until after I let go of my psychological ego that felt I needed to perform in order to move on to the next pose. When I surrendered, I opened physically, emotionally, psychologically and spiritually. 

"Fear is not what you think it is. Fear is not who you are underneath your facade. Fear is not the real you that you must somehow fix or improve or overcome. Fear is a very useful signal along the path to freedom. The stronger the fear, the closer you are to what you are seeking. If you want to stay "safe" (i.e., stuck where you are), fear tells you to stop what you are doing. If you want to be free, fear lets you know you are on the right track, a signal to push ahead in the same irection, to pick up the pace."
~ Cheri Huber, Buddhist teacher

Surrender the ego

Moving on to the next yoga pose in the Ashtanga Intermediate Series—Pincha Mayurasana—identified another alignment (skeletal) bad habit of mine that I need to ransform: I stick my rib cage out when balancing. I learned this soon after my spine adjustment. This unconscious adjustment is related to a fear of falling and therefore not being perfect.

Putting it together, I realize that the spine adjustment straightened me up more to a point where my rib cage counter balance was no longer needed.

Don't cut off the prana

In the subtle body, I would cut off the Prana (or Qi) traveling up my spine when I kept cracking my neck bones throughout yoga class and at home, a habit I performed for years.

I did something similar with my hip bones as I’d move the femoral head bone out from the acetabulum bone because it felt good; but what I did instead was cut off the chance for muscle-toning and ligament stretching in the hip area as a benefit to external rotation. This would later offer the solution to more opening in a pain free manner. This hip habit of mine affected my later poses which involved putting my foot behind my head in the Ashtanga Intermediate Series (and beyond). This effort is all part of calming the nervous system.

Stay with the sensations

When the subtle body is calmed, my spirit is grounded. What gets me to yoga each morning, despite the uphill physical, emotional, spiritual climb? (I won't set my alarm at 5:00 a.m. for anything else). The intense evolution of my spirit...

Found within the discomfort and pain in my body, I’ve grown to feel euphoria as the energies become identified and not just begin to heal emotional patterns (but actually do as samskaras are burned off), subtle forces leading the way. feel pleasure in this suffering—and I am not a pain person—since it is connected now in my brain waves as the path to healing, which is a big turn on to me.

in a time when
it burns out inside
so that
no longer
it lives and breeds
but instead
a twinge, jubilation
in anatomy and subtle channels
vital just for a time
before evaporating
essence no more

© my secret innuendo®

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Start here, self that hides: A vision into the yoga self

 

i write whatever you say to meMy yoga stirs up emotions in me and sometimes speaks as pasts and present all intermingle. As my body moves, and as I breathe, my stories are told. Here is a conversation with karmas that were burned one morning.

 

vision of yoga self

Dear self who hides,

I don’t want to leave you, or myself, behind. When your words are near (and I hear you speaking through me), I cannot help but smile inside. When I am my body, standing in front of myself, sometimes my heart shuts down. Why? I feel you more after I leave you, as if a piece of me is still with you. And so it is; you are me, left floating through the yoga studio room, melting onto the floor.

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what's up with "moon days" in ashtanga Mysore yoga?

 

Blood Moon in OctoberI practice Ashtanga Mysore-style yoga every morning lately. I love its blissful effects on my entire life. From the intensity of the poses to the self-led regimen to the specific sequencing, it's the real deal. 

no yoga on moon days

I wonder though about the classical necessity to not practice on the Moon Days. This means, there is no class held on New Moon or on Full Moon. Typically, you practice 6 days per week in general, and also take breaks on the Moon Days.

the moon's cycle gives us special energy

With all of my experience with yoga and moon energy and its watery nature

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Are you more right-brained or left-brained while you practice yoga?

Right-brain? Left-brain?

Do you associate more with the right side of your brain while you practice yoga or the left side of your brain?

The two hemispheres of the brain have fascinating connections (Photo credits: Simeon Schatz)

Creative vs. logical

The right-brain/left-brain theory grew out of the work of Roger W. Sperry in the late 1960s, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1981. The cerebral cortex controls rational functions and is made up of two halves, connected by masses of nerve fibers which pass messages between each other. These halves, or hemispheres, are commonly referred to as right-brain and left-brain.

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Can you find stillness and not stiffness?

stillness

Can you find stillness and not stiffness?

Yoga is, no doubt, a great place to work on this. Some yoga classes are all about moving fluidly with your watery nature, as you, like a dance, find your way to balance. This can help with flow in life, moving with the body we are dealt in life and becoming one with it.

life and chaos

Life brings chaos and challenge sometimes. A challenging yoga class can help you mimic this challenge and give you the chance to relax into it. You can come out ahead of the game with your head on your shoulders.

Ashtanga yoga, invigorating and fast-paced, can be a place to find stillness and calm. A serious voice that instructs while also inviting you to find softness in the strength is important, especially in your neck and trapezius muscles that support your neck—a common place to hold tension. 

expansion and contraction

Can you find the perfect balance between expansion and contraction of your muscles so that the end result is soft and still? If you cannot, your yoga could be harming you. Better yet, can you find it in your mind and spirit? It takes patience to traverse your oceans of time...

Other activities such as surfing require focus and strength. Learning how to ride nature's gem—the ocean—allows you to give yourself to it. It is pure fluid so you have no choice but to move with it. Can you find the strength in your muscles to protect you, fuel you, and help you get the most enjoyment possible, while still remaining soft and fluid, especially in the back of your neck?

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