More on the Lesser Sac/Omental Bursa

Posted on April 8, 2020 by admin

Many more somatic delights to explore!

This more detailed view above is from Frank Netter’s Atlas of Human Anatomy, plate 331, if you have your own copy, showing a cross section through T-12. Netter always does his cross sections as if looking from below, so you have to flip your brain to reverse right and left, but the many internal spaces are well illustrated.

This illustration shows yet another perspective, tracking the lesser sac downward, with a great view of the epiploic foramen just below the gall bladder. The pancreas sits just behind, (where the words lesser sac are). Remember that this is not a large volume space, but rather distinct differentiated layers of fascia that ideally are lubricated with fluid to allow the organs to slide around. Think of the plastic supermarket bags for your veggies, before you get them open. Fat can accumulate here, as well as excess fluid in pathological conditions.

The T-12 section in general is one of the more complex and crucial regions of the body. Mechanically, the T-12 vertebrae has lumbar facets (primarily allowing flexion-extension) at L-1 and thoracic facets (primarily allowing rotation) at T-11 which allows it to act as a universal joint; (or not, if it is stuck like mine!) Structurally, we go from ribs/thoracic vertebrae to no ribs/lumbar vertebrae. The quadratus lumborum, the deepest abdominal muscle, runs from the 12th ribs to the top of the pelvis. The psoas (major and minor) has its top attachment at T-12 and connects to the diaphragm through the median arcuate ligament, linking breathing and movement of the legs and pelvis.

The Practice

Begin by dropping into stillness/presence as your ground and let it settle in to your field. We keep coming back when we realize we have lost this. This is step one in somatic meditation, starting in presence, returning to presence when we notice we have wandered away. In presence let your attention/imagination move to the lesser sac/omental bursa and then let go into a state of yin attention. In yang attention, we want to act; to do something, to grab onto something. Somatic meditation is practicing non-doing attention, known as ‘Wu Wei‘ in Taoist practice. Let the subtlest layers of your body be the teacher.

Also, because we have so many choices, if any of the the other areas shown in the diagrams speak to you, imagine/find/feel them in your practice in the same way, Wu Wei. Stay in Awareness/presence even as the subtle energies and insights emerge. It will be easy to become seduced and try to take over the process. Let the yang energy bring and sustain your attention to specific regions in the subtle field, but resist the urge to ‘do’ something.

Remember, in this region of the body we are half way between heart and hara. Here are some other explorations from my current practice. Some are more fruitful then others, but that may be a very personal thing. Find the ones that feed you and stay with them. From presence, you can drop into this any time of the day, not just ‘on the mat’.

Where the epeploic foramen links the lesser sac with the greater sac, directly in front of the inferior vena cava.

Where the falciform ligament of the liver separates the greater sac.

If you look closely at the top diagram, you can find the bottom of the pleural sac and the costo-diaphragmatic recess. Begin your exploration there.

Where the aorta emerges from being behind the diaphragm at the crura or crossing tendons, right in the center of the body.

Any of the stomach – spleen- kidney ligaments.

From the lesser omentum.

The spinal muscles directly posterior to the kidneys, allowing them to soften and melt.

From the psoas – diaphragm linking at the median arcuate ligament.

Please send questions from your practice, if and when they arise, and I can try to answer them in the coming blog posts. (yogarthur@aol.com)

The Dance of Heart and Hara

Posted on April 4, 2020 by admin

Falling Awake

Keep up your meditation practice, with the primary intention to relax into Awareness and let everything flow through you. We can call this resting in Stillness or Silence, with no attempt to inhibit the flow of thoughts, ideas and emotions. There is an inhibition of our reactivity to the stream by shifting in attention from the constantly changing world on the surface of the mind to the inner depths. Then, like falling asleep, we let go, falling awake, dissolving into awareness. Awareness resting in and as itself.

This is not easy to do, or should I say ‘not do’. But if we can open-heartedly accept the reality of your mental states, every once in awhile, we will forget the efforting and, voila, the magic of presence is there, resting as the ultimate stability of the unchanging Ground of Being. This is the ‘Ishvara Pranidhana’ of the Yoga Sutras, (PYS I-23), letting go into Divinity in its fullest sense. We need to practice, abhyasa, with open hearted devotion, continuously, for a long period of time, like forever, to be truly anchored here. (See PYS I-13 and I-14). This is the nivrtti marga mentioned in the previous post.

Now, back to our engagement with the wonderful world of form, or what Patanjali refers to as Prakriti, as we traverse the pravrtti marga in our somatic practice. The on-going goal of our practice is to continue to open our human energy field to become more balanced, integrated and coherent, within our unique selves and the Cosmos as a whole. This allows the Ground of Being to shine more clearly through the world of form, which makes it easier for the meditation practice to get stronger, deeper and more grounded, which allows the energy fields to become more coherent, which strengthens the human collective energy field, in an evolving spiral of deeper integration on the personal level and expansion of the collective intelligence. This is the evolutionary leap of our historical moment. This interplay of the inner and outer journey, our personal and relational lives, and as we will see, heart and hara, is the natural unfolding of a spiritual life.

Awakening the Lesser Peritoneal Sac

To continue to deepen our embodied integration and coherence, we will return to our Daoist models of the human energy field. (This section is long and detailed, and we will continue this theme, in differing ways, over the next few blogs, but this is the core of what you need to know.

The diagram on the right shows the three dantiens, or elixir fields, as they are described in Daoist practice, along with the yin’conception vessel’ and the yang ‘governing vessel’. On a gross level, the dantiens are easy to access as they correspond to the three bony cavities; the skull, rib cage and pelvis. Physiologically, they represent organizing centers of our psycho-biological life activity, further depicted in much more metaphorical detail in the Neijing tu.

On yet another level they can be seen as the centers of the three means of knowing: through the abstraction of the intellect, the relational compassion of the heart and gut level intuitive instinct of the hara. The abstract intellect is the most recent in evolution, and the most problematic in modern times. It took the universe at least 4 billion years to create this mode of knowing, so we must honor it as a precious and valuable gift, but it needs to be integrated into the older wisdom of heart and hara to not be damaging to our evolutionary journey.

The organizing center of the lower dantien, known as the hara in Japanese, is the center of gravity of the human body, or the energetic center of our movements. The first and second chakras can be found in the lower dantien, and this is also the center of the lower burner as we will see in the diagram below. As a movement center, it helps coordinate the action of two legs and tail with the spine. When our attention is centered here, there is a sense of being rooted or grounded, whether while sitting in stillness, or in movement. It is the place of embodied stability, the sthira in shtira sukham asanam. Further cultivated, its opening takes us down into the mysterious depths of Mother Earth and the 4 billion years of wisdom accumulated by life on this planet.

The center of the middle dantien, the heart center, is our spiritual center, the 4th of the seven chakras, the home of Shen, the Daoist term for spirit, and is also home of the upper burner, as we will see later. It is the source of our relational intelligence and our capacity to know we are one with all of creation, manifesting as love and compassion.

This middle dantien is also a movement center for quadrupeds, as it helps coordinate the movements of the upper limbs and head with the spine. Quadrupedal movement involves linking the lower and middle dantiens, the dance of heart and hara. Dogs when running offer a fantastic example of this coordination in action. In the photo above, (thanks to @William_Nettmann), notice the hind legs and tail (lower dantien) extending backward as the upper legs and head (middle and upper dantiens, reach forward.

In the next photo, (courtesy of Dan Gold on Unsplash), we see the next phase of quadrupedal running, where the energy of the limbs is gathered back to the center, like bakasana, even as head and tail continue to extend out in opposite directions for balance. To begin to embody the heart – hara dance, visualize a dog running; extend – gather – extend – gather, yang – yin – yang – yin, etc. Where do you feel this in your body. I love the fact that most of the time their feet are off the ground, like they are flying across the land. Speed and power arise form this powerful movement integration.

How can us bipedal humans utilize this amazing coordinating capacity? This dynamic integration is a key action in the yoga of B.K.S. Iyengar, and can be seen in how he presents all of the forward bends in “Light on Yoga”. Ardha baddha padma pascimottanasana is just one example, but they all begin with anterior extension by opening the yin conception vessel, which is a posture in and of itself.

The forward bend then emerges in the opening/yielding of the yang, back body, governing vessel. These are not spinal muscle actions but pranic/organic releasing in the deep interior structures of the body. Iyengar makes advanced actions look simple, here heart and hara in perfect harmony. But they are not, unless you are a dog!

All yoga beginners know the cat-cow pose which, like the forward bend process of Iyengar, mimics the running action of the dogs through the spine. Unfortunately, as humans, we have less than helpful tail and challenging connection from core to neck and skull. Because of this, and cultural reasons as well, in extending, instead of opening the yin anterior body, we tend to overly contract the ‘yang’ spine (the Governing Vessel or Du Mai), especially the lumbar and cervical regions. Correspondingly, in flexion, instead of softening the yang spinal muscles, we tend to compress the yin fluid body (conception vessel – ren mai).

We must learn to awaken the intelligence/dynamic presence of the organs and connective tissue structures in the core of the body, where the coordination in running takes place as our primary support system for the human upright posture. From an evolutionary perspective, this is where the oldest embodied wisdom is stored. We were a gut tube long before we developed a spine and limbs.

A Detailed Inner Anatomy Lesson

We will include both Daoist and western anatomy in the presentation. The key region for integrating flow between the middle and lower dantiens, known as the middle burner in Daoism, includes the liver, gall bladder, stomach, spleen and pancreas, as well as all of the ligaments that hold it all together. These organs are below the diaphragm, but inside the volume of the ribs. The upper burner is the torso above the diaphragm, the lower burner the rest of the abdominal organs including the kidneys. Sometimes the small intestine is included in the middle burner because the upper part, the duodenum, is intimately connected to the stomach and pancreas. We can visualize the three burners as the process that organizes and balances the fire and water elements in the body.

The diaphragm and heart are the primary movers of the energy flow through this space and the diaphragm especially in the movements of the body through space. The diaphragm is intimately connected to the psoas muscles thus linking the legs to breathing. (The integration of breathing and walking is a basic principle in Ida Rolf’s work). So, surprise, surprise, breathing is primary. In the dogs, and other quadrupeds, the diaphragm and organs are vertically suspended downward from the horizontal spine by ligaments and have tremendous freedom of movement. The diaphragm is ligmentously linked to liver, stomach and spleen below and the heart above. As bipeds, we humans carry a lot of vertical compression in our spine, diaphragm, ligaments and organs, inhibiting energy flow. Finding our vertical plumb line, sitting and standing is a key component to helping the relieve compression.

A subtle approach to softening and opening this region uses the breath and comes from Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen’s explorations of the Daoist ‘Embryological Breathing“, and this will be our practice. Watch this video clip and hear how Bonnie describes ‘allowing the breath to emerge from behind the stomach in the omental bursa’, also known as the lesser peritoneal sac depicted in turquoise in the diagram. She contrasts this with more traditional abdominal breathing which primarily engages the lavender greater peritoneal sac. Observe how the lesser sac divides the greater into a front and back, so it puts you in the center portion of the abdomen. Bonnie also refers to the epiploic foramen, where the lesser and greater sacs are linked, which can be seen below.

Now it is very important to know that the volume of the peritoneal spaces depicted in the first diagram are greatly exaggerated. The organs take up most of the space. This is more obvious in this transverse section, taken at the top of the region. What is difficult to see is is that these sacs are the micro-space between two layers of the peritoneum, the continuous membrane which lines the abdominal/pelvic cavity, covers the abdominal organs, and links with various ligaments to provide them a structural support.

The two layers are the parietal peritoneum lining the inner side of the abdominal wall and the visceral peritoneum which has turned inwards to surround most of the abdominal organs. The organs that are surrounded are called intraperitoneal and include stomach liver and spleen. Organs not surrounded by the visceral peritoneum are called retroperitoneal and include kidneys, pancreas, duodenum, oesophagus, ascending and descending colons, and rectum. These greater and lesser sacs, actually very narrow spaces, are usually filled with a small amount of lubricating fluid to help sustain the mobility of the organs in relationship to each other.

Notice how deep into the core of the body this lesser sac space is, and also how it is right in front of the aorta and inferior vena cava. Notice the retroperitoneal kidneys are even further posterior and very close to the outer spinal muscles. A lot of tension is carried in the kidney region because of our overuse of the large spinal muscles just behind the kidneys. We will comeback to an important kidney-lung relationship in a subsequent post. One more thing to note in the cross section is the green costodiaphragmatic recess. This elusive space separates the ribs and diaphragm and all subtle work with the breath has to eventually flow through and open this to further liberate the diaphragm.

Speaking of the diaphragm, (phreno comes from the Greek root word for diaphragm) there are more ligaments that connect this middle region to the upper burner and these are shown on the left. The phreno-cardiac ligaments connect the heart to the sternum, diaphragm, spine and these are continuous with the ligaments below the diaphragm. If you look carefully at the transverse section, you can see the diaphragm looping around the spine right where the aorta passes through it. These pictures are here to help you navigate/visualize these deep inner spaces when we dive into the practice. Much thanks to the web site, Teachmeanatomy.info and Caryn and Kevin for the drawing of the ligaments.

On to the Practice

The secret is to embryological breathing is to eliminate all effort and tension. It is a letting go into a natural softening and opening that takes on a life of its own, like the embryological development process, outside the will power. Sounds a lot like meditation practice! Begin lying down with legs supported in any of a number of ways:( knees bent-feet on the floor: knees lifted with bolster or blanket: lower legs up on the seat of a chair). Relax and allow a few regular breaths to settle the system. Notice if abdominal breathing is your normal breath. Ideally it is, as this is relaxing, like a baby breathing. Chest breathers often have a constricted diaphragm and some level of anxiety as the norm. (Pranayama breathing is a whole other ballgame.)

Visualize the space behind the stomach (the lesser sac) and allow the breath to emerge from and through here. This is much quieter than abdominal breathing, with much less effort. Allow the breath to take on a life of its own. It is not about controlling the breath willfully. If you find yourself tensing through effort, back off and wait a few minutes. Then begin again. Like our sitting meditation practice, patience and a quiet presence are the key. As you allow the breath to flow, it may start to subtly move in all sorts of directions, through all sorts of tissues, through the spaces between layers, in anywhere or everywhere in the body. Let your attention be on the sensations, without trying to manipulate or control them. This is a very yin practice; feeling, listening, noticing and letting go more and more. Patanjali, in his second sutra on posture, PYS II-47, says “keep letting go of effort and allow the cosmic wisdom to flow”.

Once you get a feel for this, you can take the practice into any pose where you can stay alert and relaxed, allowing the pose to flow. Restorative postures are perfect. Supported bridge pose, in any variation, is excellent as it helps you experience the inner opening of the chest as a flow from within, rather than from spinal/muscular effort. Imbalances in the neck and throat, as seen here, can be explored as well by allowing the oesophagus to soften away from the trachea. Some extra height under the shoulders might be helpful here.

Seated twists also work if you can quietly sustain the double spiral action (right and left). Supported backbends, supported forward bends … be creative. Just remember Patanjali’s instruction: “keep letting go of effort and allow the cosmic wisdom to flow”. Finally, take it into your sitting meditation as another ‘seed’ of attention. By resting in stillness and simultaneously being present to the subtle breathing, the breathing begins to teach you. Both of the spiritual instincts are present, informing each other. Feel the radiance (heart) and the stillness (hara) embracing each other, moment to moment, in the timeless dimension of your True Nature.

The Spiritual Instinct

Posted on March 28, 2020 by admin

Life has existed and thrived on our planet for four billion years because somehow, embedded in the intelligence of the Universe, is the survival instinct. Whatever it takes, keep the evolutionary journey alive and moving towards more and more complexity. The Universe Story, a mind expanding book by two of my mentors, Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme, offers many examples of how threats to the continuation of life on Mother Earth were met with a tremendous burst of cosmic creativity and a leap in evolution. This is survival instinct acting as a collective intelligence, but each individual also has a biological survival instinct that manifests as both “I need to survive” and ‘the species needs to survive’.

This survival instinct has served life well until the arrival of the human. Because evolution has provided humans with a whole new series of brain cells, leading to an emerging capacity for abstract thinking, we now can imagine and feel threats to our survival that are not based on real time physical ones. There are many ways this manifests. Unresolved stored trauma from the past can be triggered. A conceptual ‘me’, a self sense based totally on thought, can feel threatened by ‘them’ who disagree with my beliefs, or dress and talk differently, or whatever threats our imaginations can conger up. Or perhaps ‘they’ have something we think we need for our survival and we will do anything to get it. It gets even crazier when the collective human, expressed in culture, takes on this threat. Wars emerge.

The Universe, in its evolutionary wisdom, has provided an antidote to this pathological twist to the survival instinct by giving the human another instinct, the spiritual instinct. I first came across this, in different terminology and perspective, from B.K.S. Iyengar when he described the two traditional spiritual paths of Indian or Vedic culture. The first, the nivritti marga is the path of the sunnyasin or renunciate who chooses to leave the outer world and devote their lives to the inner journey of transcendence. We might also call this the path of wisdom which is depicted in India by the image of Shiva sitting alone on a mountain top. In masculine dominant cultures, this is the only spiritual path. In traditional Vedic Culture, householders, after raising a family and participating in the community, often spend the last years of their lives as sunnyasin.

The second, the pravritti marga or path of the householder, who remains engaged in the world of time and space, can be called the path of the heart. It’s Vedic representation is Parvati, Shiva’s wife and the Divine Mother. Iyengar, a married man with six children, was on the pravrtti marga his entire life, and did not always receive respect as a spiritual teacher from the Indian culture because he was not a sunnyasin. There has always been confusion about the spiritual validity of the householders path, and this is directly addressed in the definitive guide to yogic and Vedic wisdom, the Bhagavad Gita. Arjuna, the warrior, wants to walk away from the responsibilities life events have presented him and become a sunnyasin, as he feel that this is the true path to enlightenment. Krishna, both kindly and sternly points out that karma yoga, the yoga of action in the world, the pravritti marga, can very much be a Divine practice. For Arjuna, because he has karmic responsibilities to maintain dharma, (the spiritual integrity of Vedic culture), this is the only path for him. Iyengar knew this intuitively and poured his lifes’ energy into his practice and teaching.

In esoteric Christianity, the pravritti marga is also the Jesus Story. In the Gospel of John, I-14, it is said ‘ and Spirit became flesh and dwelt among us.” Unfortunately the subtlety that we are all spirit made flesh and Jesus was only trying to point this out was totally missed by egoic consciousness. Exploring the Ultimate Mystery of incarnation is far more important to us than re-incarnation.

Lately, my spiritual mentor, Adyashanti, has been using the term ‘spiritual instinct’ to describe the same two paths, only he is really refining their meaning and application for our times. As Adya describes, our True Nature is the source of our spiritual instinct and it comes in two forms. The first is similar to the nivrtti marga, but instead of being a life style choice, like the sunnyasin, Adya calls this instinct a universal desire of True Nature to know itself, for the Ground of Being to become conscious of itself, through the human’s awakening. Another of my mentors, Thomas Berry, describes this his Twelve Principles of the Universe: “The human is that being in whom Universe attains reflexive consciousness of itself.” It is the human’s calling to journey inwards to the depths of Being.

The second expression of the spiritual instinct is for True Nature to continuously express its divinity and wholeness through action in the world of forms. This is an outward journey, from the depths of Being into creation, the Divine world of forms. We see this in the billions of years of amazing fecundity of the natural world and in the dazzling displays of the heavens, recently expanded to us with modern telescopes and space probes. In the human, it is similar to the pravrtti marga, where, as Krishna teaches Arjuna, action in the world can flow directly from the spiritual instinct of True Nature and thus be a spiritual path. Our lives are an expression of True Nature. However, as we all know, human action in the world usually flows from the survival instinct driven by the greed and ignorance of egoic consciousness. The path of yoga is designed to transform our lives back into harmony with our True Nature.

Because egoic consciousness’s can and will co-opt the spiritual instinct for its own purposes, it can and will use a spiritual practice such as yoga or meditation as a means to either gain something; freedom perhaps, but more often recognition, fame or power. Ego driven spiritual practice also usually wants to or to get rid unpleasant things so it can be comfortable. Arising from the ego’s sense of incompleteness that desperately and impossibly needs filling, these forms of ‘spiritual practice’ can have you spinning your wheels for years and decades.

A more subtle egoic intrusion is the judging of the quality of your meditation. Beginners really struggle with this, but it happens to all. From the ego’s perspective, there are good and bad days of practice. When relaxation and stillness seems to come easily, that is ‘good’ When your whole sitting practice is consumed with distraction or agitation, that is ‘bad’. The spiritual instinct has no judgment. Whatever arises is what arises. It is open to every possibility. Developing discrimination and knowing your underlying motivations is the key. Ask yourself, what are the yearnings that come from the deepest part of my Being? If there is judging, or wanting to acquire or avoid something, the ego is driving the bus.

In meditation we are called to listen deeply to our inner world, way down below the surface flow of thoughts, desires, emotions and images, and wait for our True Nature, through the spiritual instinct, to begin to reveal itself. Although ultimately totally mysterious, unbounded and ungraspable, we can feel its calling. It cannot be reached through will power or thought, but by letting go, moment by moment, until letting go becomes natural. Feel your heart softening and opening in this letting go. Impermanence is the natural state of the world of form. Allow it to be, without grasping or avoiding, and the deeper dimensions of stillness will begin to reveal themselves. Let your meditation be the natural expression of True Nature, not something you have to do.

When you are out in the world, see Divinity everywhere and feel you own moment to moment alive as Divinity expressing itself through you. Allow both aspects of your spiritual instinct flower. Let the survival instinct remain in the background, until life calls it forward. Then let your actions flow from both wisdom and love.

For some further insight, check out the Voices of Awakening Page on this website.