Embryology For Yoga Students

Posted on January 5, 2017 by admin

Embryology for Yoga Students:
Yoga Room Berkeley, January 14 and 15, 2017
embodying the earliest days of embryological growth and development
as a yoga practice/meditation:

In: Non Dual Wholeness

where in the present moment, the unbounded infinite,
containing all, including past, present, future and parallel layers and levels of reality

we recognize forms emerging as

Yin and Yang as Egg and Sperm

Egg and Sperm merge / two become one…. then

One becomes two …

And two become three

And three become 30 trillion…

Out of the infinite, luminous emptiness of the present moment arises the entire cosmos, in a mind boggling multiplicity of forms. The forms to explore today are the echos of our embryological past, still emerging, available when we can be still and feel our inner depths.

Some general principles for contemplation:
1. Embryology for yogis is an investigation of the emergence and transformation of forms through fluid dynamics.
2. The morphology of the embryo is present in the adult human as possibilities of deeper integration.
3. Structures and cavities appear and disappear through time during development.
4. Growth is movement!
5. Not all cells grow/divide at the same rate. This leads to changes in both shape and function.
6. Cells grow by contact along lines of energy, like ants following a chemical trail.
7. Membranes and fluids are primary.
8. The first major differentiation of cells, known as gastrulation, gives rise to three primary types of tissue. The endodermal cells become the gut body, the mesodermal cells become connective tissue structures including the heart, and the ectodermal cells become the nervous system. Most of our explorations will be here. (See day 12 in the diagram below.)

Week 1: Conception, spherical energy: rolling, falling, tumbling, dividing, condensing, hatching, hollowing, fluidity, freedom.

Practice: Being Yin/Egg: Standing calmly, feel yourself as a sphere with your heart as the center. Feel the round, soft receptivity in all directions. Be patient, waiting, internal, grounded, rooted, still.

Practice: Being Yang/Sperm: Feel one of your arms coming alive like a snake waking up, undulating, pulsating. Add your other arm. Let each leg feel snake like. One at a time give each limb a direction and feel the energy surging out into the world. Feel your spine like a snake, ready to move into action,into the world.

Practice: The emergence of the poles. In any supine position like setu bandha, let the upper and lower bodies begin to differentiate. The block here acts as a fulcrum, allowing the pelvis/tail/feet move in the opposite direction of the head, shoulders chest. Feel the dynamic tension in the middle realm of the body – liver-stomach-spleen kidneys like the telophase above. Find the one-two-three: whole body, dividing into two with the middle opening as three. You may discover your own ‘vesica pisces emerging as the gateway to all possibilities.

Practice: Rolling and Pouring, from “How Life Moves”. Lying on your back, quietly feeling your weight, your fluidity. Feel in inner currents and tidal movements even as you lie still. Let those fluid movements invite the body respond in movement, not from the limbs, but from the fluids, like a baby exploring rolling over. Feel and find the omni-directional freedom, felt sense of weight, rotation/spinning in relaxed, supported, quiet environment. This is a very internal, meditative state. Savasana or other restorative poses can take us here as well.

Week 2: Implantation; landing, attaching, making connections, establishing roots.

Practice: Making a connection with floor or wall, feel how a new level of stability allows more types of growth and movement. Attach yourself in one place and allow everywhere else freedom to move. Now we are moving outside ourselves to find support from the world around us. It is a more extroverted state, discovering the ‘other’.

Week 2: Gastrulation: differentiating into front, back and middle; expanding, differential growth. This is a huge shift in perception/awareness as the biological intelligence now differentiates into three modes of being/action/perception.

Practice: Explore each of these three places and modes of being before they complexify and differentiate more completely. This can be done in any pose, as all embryological moments are available at any time, as fields waiting for imagination to re-ignite them. However, new students may want to stay on the floor where you can safely surrender to gravity and feel the awakening of the fluids and membranes. The fluid filled cavities carry nutrients, sound waves, and waves of movement.

Front body as:
Endoderm – yolk sac space- nurturing – gut body, eventually to become upper, middle and lower GI track; Feel the deep support of the yolk sac before it is drawn into the body and elongated. Feel it as expansive, soft, full. Kapha in Ayurveda.

Back body as:
Ectoderm – amnion to become amniotic sac, and primitive nervous system – brain – sense organs – skin; Feel the deep support of the amniotic cavity before in encircles you, before the middle emerges as mesoderm. Feel the wide sensitivity of the future skin/brain/nerves. Vata in Ayurveda.

Middle body as:
Mesoderm: mediator; grows out from middle – all connective tissues, muscles, bones, ligaments, fascia, heart, kidneys and eventually limbs. Pitta in Ayurveda. Find the middle ground as place of balance in all planes and movements.

Week 3: Yolk sac drawn into body as amnion grows around to complete sphere. Deepening the roots. The three layers begin there next level of differentiation. The ectoderm enlarges to become the neural plate and then the neural crest and neural tube. The neural tube will later become spinal cord and various sections of the brain. Mesoderm shows beginning of head and tail, heart. Bones and muscles will emerge. Endoderm begins lengthen to mouth and anus. Lungs, intestines and bladder will emerge.

Practice: Gut body; Hu breath or Vessel breath to active gut body – hollow tubular fluid consciousness. Wake up the fluids and feel the shifts in pressure as the fluids rebound around inside the membranes containing them.

Practice: Emergence of the Mesoderm: Lying on your back, feel the entire floor as your back body/ectoderm and amnion; the ceiling and space above you as your front body/endoderm/yolk sac. Take this into your cells so that all the cells behind your median plane become the ectoderm and all the cells in front become the endoderm. Now imagine the emerging of a middle layer growing along the interphase between endo and ectoderms. This is the median plane feel it spreading sideways and also lengthening to head and tail. Finally find arm buds, leg buds, head and tail emerging.

Practice: Embryonic Folding Click to see short video)

Coiling and Uncoiling pt 1: (right image) Rolling onto your side, use the mesoderm to begin to ‘coil up’, extending through head and tail, to come into a fetal position Keep the back long and feel the yolk sac being drawn into the body as you curl. Now, again from the mesoderm, begin to uncoil, extending through head and tail as you feel the gut body lengthening, carrying the spinal column into a mild back bend. Slowly and mindfully repeat this coiling and uncoiling. Bonnie Cohen calls this physiological flexion and extension as it is driven by the gut body action.

Coiling and Uncoiling pt 2: (left image) Lying on your back, feel/imagine the back body expanding sideways and wrapping around the center mesodermal channel to close the front, as the ribs emerge from the spine and wrap around to protect the heart and lungs. Feel space and openness along the whole back body. Then, gently reverse the action, softening and opening the front body like the petals of a flower unfolding.

Practice: Bring any of these explorations into any yoga pose or sequence of poses. Find where there deep inner movements and fluid waves can support you so there is less ‘muscling’ and more surrender in the poses.

Practice: Shamanic Journeying and Active Dreaming: With the support of your guides and gatekeepers, imagine that your soul awareness can step outside of time and see the soul energy coming in at conception.

Yoga and the Fluid Body

Posted on November 28, 2016 by admin

Yoga and the Fluid Body, November 19, 2016, The Yoga Room Berkeley

Foundation is Non Dual (Advaita) Wisdom: Can we differentiate The Seer from the Seen, Purusha from Prakriiti, Awareness from what arises in Awareness? This essential skill is known as viveka in Sanskrit. (See PYS II-17 – II-26) Differentiating “Now” vs ‘clock time’ is a very practical and easy entry into this.

Why is this essential? Most of the world is caught up in movement and action, completely missing the ever-present unbounded, unchanging stillness that is the source/background of action. In stillness, we can step out of habit and open to new possibilities; we can rest deeply, even if only for a few moments; and hopefully, we can realize that this unconditioned stillness is the very core of being, the home of the soul. Of course, the heart always knows this, which is why all practice begins and returns to the heart again and again.

Out of the unbounded quantum field of possibilities in stillness,
what arises in the human mind field? :
Perception, Intelligence, Action

How do we come to know something? The process of Attention links sensation to intelligence creating perception. This may trigger a memory encoded habit from which action flows. Or, the intelligence, through memory, insight, intuition and discernment, can create spontaneous action. Attention is a mental facultyskill/process that can be trained and refined. It can also follow pathways of old habits. Samyama, the simultaneous practice of dharana, dhyana and samadhi described by Patanjali in the Vibhuti Pada directly addresses the attentional process.

Awareness, directed through attention, to portals of perception, integrated with and through Intelligence (buddhi), to create/sustain of action. In a yoga pose or practice, this is known as ‘samyama in asana’.

We can define ‘Yoga’ as the continuing refinement and expansion of perception, intelligence and action, at all levels of reality and life, while remaining in the stillness of Now.

When we look deeply into the nature of things, we discover ‘Nested Levels of Reality,’ each with its own perceptions, intelligence and action. Please watch the mind expanding video “Powers of Ten” to get a sense of this.

Refinement of perception, intelligence and action engages the Five Outer Senses; seeing, hearing, tasting, touching, smelling; and the Five Inner Senses: proprioception (tracking the internal energy flow of prana), kinesthesia (tracking where and how the body is moving through sapce), psychological perception, (noticing one’s thoughts and emotions), relational field perception and Imaginal perception (Dream Time)

In an embodied yoga practice, we can recognize/perceive/know three basic levels of reality;

Matter / Structure Energy / Flow Information/Fields

Attention usually goes to the structural level, muscle and bones, maybe skin. To refine our skills we need to bring our attention the the energy flow, prana or chi. The fluid body is prefect for this as it has weight, but also energy flow or movement. When we can track the movements inside the body (proprioception) through following the breath, or tracking the fluid flow, and sustain our attention there, we are in the present moment, grounded and alert.

Once we have learned to sustain this state of continuous connection with flow, we then begin to notice the level behind the flow, or the fields. A field gives direction and shape to the flow of energy in the body, just as the sun’s gravity gives shape to the orbits of the planets and other bodies of the solar system. Fields provide a crucial level of stability to the potentially chaotic movements of the life force. (The heart is beating at fluctuating rates, peristalsis is rippling along the digestive track, nerve current is flowing every where, gravity and outer movements are constantly shaking up the inner world.)A healthy filed is both dynamic and stable.

The field we are most interested in is the one involving the heart. In our practice we connect the heart to the organization of the basic physiological movements, known in yoga as the five prana vayus, and the three pressure cavities of the body; head, chest and abdominal-pelvic regions.

As we can see in the image above, the heart sustains a 3 dimensional energy field. There are 3 primary axes: head/tail/, right/left and front/back, or height, width and depth, which lead to our 7 sacred directions of embodiment: 1: to the heart; 2 and 3: head/heaven and tail/earth; 4 and 5: front/east and back/west; 6 and 7: right/south and left/north. Can we find a way to balance the energy flows of the body/mind,
by finding the field sustained by balancing the energies of the 7 sacred directions ?

In the torroidal heart field, the primary axis, connecting head and tail, heaven and earth, can be seen as a hollow tube expanding at the two ends. A two dimensional line becomes a 3 dimensional tube. When we move into the tube in perception/imagination, sustain attention there, feel the environment and how dynamic it is, and then create movement from the inner impulses, a whole new world opens.

The tube is complementary to the sphere, as the line is complementary to the circle in sacred geometry. They both can expand and condense like the hoberman spheres and a dynamic heathy field allows both possibilites to oscillate back and forth. You may feel this energy as wave like, as in the breathing rhythm; pulse like as in the heart beat; or as vibration, as in sounding any vowel. All are present to be felt and explored. All can be used to sustain the field that sustains a yoga posture. When the posture is ‘held’ by the dynamic field, there is minimal over contraction and dullness in the cells and tissues. Thus the field, when strong and stable, helps transform rajas (overworking) and tamas (dullness), into sattva, the clear energy of balance and harmony. This is Patanjali 101.

To begin this exploration, we will do a series of breathing explorations. As these were described in the previous post, I’ll send you there now.

After the breathing work, explore this feeling/possibility in many different relations to gravity: sitting, lying prone or supine, standing, inverting, flexing, extending, and rotating. And in any combination. You can make up your own poses!

All the time of course, staying grounded in Awareness/Silence/Stillness/NOW!

Homework for January: in savasna, begin to imagine ‘Your’ ideal place/space of healing. Use all of your senses to create this imaginal space. What do you see, hear, smell, feel? What other beings are there to help in your healing. As your space evolves (return to it every day), it may begin to offer its own suggestions. Be open to awe and wonder at the possibilities that begin to reveal themselves.

Yoga in the Sault (Soo)

Posted on November 22, 2016 by admin

Much thanks to LSSU in Sault Ste Marie, Michigan for hosting our weekend of yoga explorations, November 11 – 13. The classes were blessed with an amazing spectrum of students. There were parents bringing their children, ranging from 5 months, to 5, 6 and 8 years old; college students, University teachers, yoga teachers, and many of us on the other side of 60 and 70. The college students were a great inspiration, bringing energy, enthusiasm and creativity to the group. What follows is a brief summary of the points covered, some class details, and some links for further studies.

Unique and Universal

Unique: Make your practice your own. Authenticity is crucial in self exploration and self discovery. Every pose and every specific practice can be matched to your needs in the present moment. Learn to be sensitive to what your body/mind soul is requesting right now. In a yoga class, trust your inner instincts about what you are doing. This may not be easy as a beginner, but if you ‘trust’ that the body knows’, even a new student can tell when something does not feel right. Most yoga classes are based on conformity at some level, with students going through the same poses at the same time. (Chaos is not an easy thing to guide!) But even so, you can find a pace that works for you.

Universal, pt 1: There is a spiritual practice, a ‘yoga’ practice available for anyone, from a young child (SBK, born 12/14/96) to someone on their death bed (BKS, born 12/14/18); from a highly trained athlete to an ex-couch potato: from a ‘type A” world conqueror to a laid back hippy. (Your unique needs may require a balancing practice complementary to your dominant mode of being !)

Universal. pt 2: There are also universal principles that apply to all practices. Know these few intimately. “Always stay centered in your heart.” “Keep the breath/prana/chi moving at all times.” “Work with pairs of energy, the yin and yang, in every action, and find the place/feeling of dynamic balance.” “Warm up and cool down if you are practicing dynamically.” ” Constantly check in with ‘how it feels’, using this as the root of your next action. “Bring your practice into the world. Do not leave it on your mat.”

Awareness and Attention:
Awareness is a synonym for the Infinite Silence or Unbounded Stillness, that is the ‘Universal’ source of all. What arises, creation, what we can become aware of, we observe and study through the art of ‘paying attention’. We all create a unique perspective on life through the direction of our attentional field. To grow, we must continually expand the range and variety of our perceptions. In a somatic practice like hatha yoga, we expand our sensitivity into the inner worlds of: proprioception (feeling the breath and other energy) flows coming from within: kinesthesia (the feeling of how the various parts of the body move together. In meditation praction, we expand into self observation of the thoughts and emotions that flow through us moment to moment. In our relational yoga, we notice how our personal energy fields overlap and interact with others. In all of these explorations, we are looking to find more healing, lightness of being, kindness, ease and love.

Matter and Energy: Our attention/identification tends be on abstract thought. When our attention is brought to the body, we often ‘grab onto’ some structure like a muscle or bone to ‘land’. This is a clunky way to be in relationship with the body. If we can shift to an energy based sense of self, we begin to find and feel the chi, the flow that is our aliveness, and our body becomes our teacher, a living presence looking to express the divine light that is our universal fundamental nature. This requires bringing attention to the breath and its more subtle dimensions.

Seven Sacred Directions: please click for a detailed look at these.

Friday Evening Class:

Use a bolster, block or folded blanket for support in sitting. Your lower back will collapse without this and you will either sink down, or overwork trying to sit upright.

Three Limbs of Meditation:
1. Concentration or focal attention: Sustaining your attention in one place over time. Bring your attention to your breathing. If and when it wanders, bring your attention back to the breath.
2. Open Attention or mindfulness: Stay in the present moment, open to whatever arises. If and when you become distracted by following and getting lost in a thought or sensation, come back to open attention.
3. Contemplation: Hold a spiritual question or pithy phrase, (a Zen koan) in the mind field without trying to come up with an immediate answer. Let the question or phrase sit quietly, with the deeper dimensions of mind slowly adding their perspective.

Basic Standing Poses
please click to see the origins of these poses as three basic movements of the pelvis
Relaxation

Saturday Morning Class: Sound and breath: Open up your ‘ahs’ and ‘oohs’ to help clear the energy channels. Sustain the sound by balancing the action of the ribs and diaphragm.

Finding your core channel: Click here for more on the 7 sacred directions and relationship of the navel to the core.

Then, click on following link : Dog Pose and Variations

Pinning the clavicles: To help stabilize the shoulders when the arms are weight bearing, we begin by anchoring the collar bone to the sternum at the sterno-clavicular joint. You can use the fingers of the opposite hand to feel this. Now imagine the other end of the clavicle pinning itself to the shoulder blade at the achromion process. The clavicle feels as it is now extending in two opposite directions. The two ends have to be awake to allow the shoulder a healthy balance of both stability and mobility. Try the dog pose and variations again and compare the feelings. Flipping the dog requires an awakened clavicle to protect the shoulder during the weight bearing rotation it must do.

Now try vasisthasana, the side plank. We just played with the beginning level. If you feel inspired try variations 2 and 3.

Anantasana and variations: more practice on the balance from lateral line. Iyengar is doing the final pose. We began with the legs parallel and stabilized any wobbling through the core.

Saturday Afternoon class: The three pressure cavities, the five Prana Vayus, and Pranayama.
The heart center organizes the field that sustains the breath through the three pressure cavities of the body: the skull, the chest from the roof of the mouth to the diaphragm, and the belly, from the diaphragm to the pelvic floor. The skull and belly have a positive, or higher pressure, relative to the outside, and the chest is lower or negative. This creates a constant flow from skull and belly to the chest, as higher pressure will move toward the lower, and helps support the flow of blood back to the heart.

The problem is that, over time, many humans let the higher belly pressure push out, rather then up and down. Same in the head. And the negative chest pressure leads to a collapse of the ribs in and down. This leads to a very common postural shape. We can begin to restore the happiness of balance by learning to sustain an expanding rib cage, independent of inhalation and exhalation. Imagine the primary action of the heart center is expansion, like the opening of a hoberman sphere. In standing feel how this can help the brain empty downward and the lower body energy rise up. This unified field will then support all other physiological movements in the body.

In yogic terms, physiological movements are divided into five basic categories, known as the Prana Vayus, where vayu refers to the element air or movement. The first is called prana, (with a small p, to differentiate it from the “Prana” which refers to all of the five), is centered in the chest, and governs everything we take in. For our purposes, this is inhalation. From our unified field exploration, the chest should always feel expanding. The second is the apana, governs elimination, and is centered in the lower belly. It is a squeezing energy, and thus the belly should always feel that it is slightly squeezing inward. When prana and apana work as a single intelligence, you have the energetic support for what is now commonly called ‘core strength’.

The samana vayu governs digestion, deciding what to keep, what to eliminate, and generating energy from the oxygen of the breath and the food. Vyana is circulation, distributing the energy throughout the body, and udana is in charge of growth and development.

Breath explorations: pt.1: lying on the floor, supported as necessary to relax the spinal muscles and limbs, begin to relax the breathing more and more. Track the release down through your feet and out through your arms, as well as through head and tail. Pay special attention to the region form the diaphragm downward and try to empty it of as muchtension as possible, so the breath becomes effortless.

Pt.2: Now, without losing that softness, become aware of the ribs and invite them to expand sideways as the primary action of inhalation. Not up and down, not out into the belly, but sideways, like an accordion. On the exhalation, let the belly/abdominal wall squeeze the breaht out by pushing up on the diaphragm. This will ‘stretch’ the diaphragm, which may be tight. The ribs can slowly return, but feel the expanding energy still strong. Keeping the chest open (prana) lets the diaphragm stretch even more as the squeezing apana pushes the diaphragm higher into the more spacious chest.

Pt 3: Viloma Pranayama: here we choose to divide the inhalation and exhalation into stages, rather than a continuous flow. Viloma I divides the inbreath with a normal exhalation; viloma II divides the exhalation with a normal inbreath. The dividing creates a series of pauses, like walking up or down stairs. There may be 2 or 3 pauses, or even more if you are comfortable. What happens during those pauses is what makes Viloma such a rich practice. Our intention here is to balance the expanding prana and the squeezing apana, helping them work together.

Viloma I: on each of the pauses during the inhalation, squeeze the abdomen slightly and open the chest more. As a beginner, you may actually exhale slightly during the pauses. This is just fine. Two steps forward and one back will eventually create a nice soft long inhalation.
Viloma II: on each of the pauses during the exhalation, expand the chest a bit more and squeeze the belly. As a beginner, you may actually inhale slightly during the pauses. This is just fine. Two steps forward and one back will eventually create a nice soft long exhalation.

Pt. 4 feel the effects of the practice and then lie in savasana and enjoy the deep stillness.

Sunday Morning Class: Some fun energy patterns we can play with to help discover more freedom in movement.

Three basic walking gaits: Explore contralateral, (opposite arm and leg move together); homo-lateral (same arm and leg move together); and homologous ( alternating upper and lower limbs like a frog jumping) walking patterns. Walk around and compare the feelings, sensations, and emotions evoked by each pattern.
Walk by isolating each of the three pelvic axes: Flexion/extension, lateral flexion/extension and rotation. How do they feel? Which is most familiar.

Flexion and Extension in the feet knees and hips: to help with knee injuries, learn to act from an integrating flow patterns that includes all joints. From standing, the up lifting or spring loading spiral includes supination (inversion) of the foot, flexion of the knee and hip, and external rotation of the hip. This brings you into a vrksasana like position, or, with a few additional trunk movements, the loaded spring position to begin a martial arts side kick. The down or grounding spiral is the reverse. Internal hip rotation, extension of hip and knee, and pronation (eversion) of the foot. This is the firing of the leg in a side kick.

The pathology is to over work the knees, either by initiating the action from them or jumping in with the quads and bypassing the inner flow. Begin in supta padangusthasana, but use the belt or strap to offer resistance as you bend the knee into the up spiral, and extend out. Do not let the knee overwork. Let it receive the flow and move from flexion through extension and back from within.

Take this into your standing poses, especially triangle and parsvakonasana.

Then explore, beginning in one leg tadasana (see photo right) and then bending and rotating the hips while extending the leg to half moon pose. A wall is helpful.

From half moon, rotate into revolved half moon. Then go back and forth to open the hips. Then carry this awareness into the dog pose series from above. Then, from there, add hand stand, climbing up the wall to find the action in the hips

Preparing the sacrum for backbending poses. Using a block for support, find a fulcrum where the tail and lumbar release in opposite directions away

for the sacrum to open and lengthen the center of the pelvis. Then add the free flowing anemone to the sequence. Keep the chest open without contracting the spine.

From Lying to Standing: the spiral unfolds: 1. Lying on your back, feel how you cannot move well, but your hands are free to explore. Then, from lying on your back, find a way to roll over onto your belly without using arms or legs, hands or feet. Use momentum of your fluid body. Feel the urge to move. Try the homolateral or contralateral actions. Which helps more? 2. Then, find the spiral movement to sitting. Hard to move, but hands are free again. 3. Spiral to crawling pose where contralateral is the easiest. Try all three. 4. Spiral to the ‘almost up position, one knee down, one up. If you are really young, a piece of furniture can help you complete the journey to standing. 5. Otherwise, spiral to standing.