Notes from Minneapolis, 4/13 (part 1)

Posted on May 5, 2013 by admin

What is yoga? Just a reminder….

Patanjali uses the term yoga in two related but different ways. The first and fundamental is yoga as ‘Self Realization’: yogash citta vrtti nirodhah; tada drashtuh svarupe avasthanam’; vrtti sarupyam itaratra, (Sutras I-2 – I-4). When the mind field is no longer distracted by confusion and delusion, one abides in the infinite spaciousness of being. That ‘I am’ open, unbounded, luminous spaciousness is seen (vidya), known (atma jnana) and this seeing/knowing is stable. (avasthanam). When not abiding, one’s identity is entangled in the world of forms (prakriti) and the formless (purusha) is obscured.

The second use involves yoga as a set of practices that lead to the elimination of the obscurations and the awakening to wholeness. Because the overwhelming majority of the yoga sutras are not about resting in stillness, but are addressed to acting in the world of forms, prakriti, it is possible to forget that ‘self realization’ is the true goal. If we are not alert, our self identity can wind up entangled in our practice and not our divinity. “I am a Christian”, “I am a Buddhist”, ‘I am an Iyengar Yogi”, or whatever. This level of identity, full of thoughts, beliefs and dogma, leads to anxiety, (what if I am not doing it ‘right’!): fear (what if the community rejects me?); pride (our method is better than your method!) and many more such openings to suffering.

Practice is about finding balance and harmony in body, mind, spirit and cosmos. The Universe is non-denominational. Our cells are non-denominational. The organic intelligence, emerging and evolving moment to moment, from atoms to galaxies, is non denominational. And the wisdom of the body lives this harmony moment to moment. All we have to do is trust (shraddha) that by dropping our attention into the organic realms (the feminine), feeling the inherent aliveness, and nurturing this connection so that it remains stable and conscious, our own innate divinity will shine through simply and clearly. Practice is not about the endless attempts to be redeemed from a flawed state (original sin?) but about helping to reveal our true nature as always being whole and complete (purna). With awakening, practice, and all of our life’s unfolding, becomes the spontaneous expression of wisdom and compassion that flows straight from the heart of the cosmos. This wisdom and compassion is available to everyone, everywhere, at all times and is used to help bring more light and love into the world.

The intelligence of life begins in the primal oceans we carry around in our cells and the body’s living matrix, Fluid Intelligence knows the rhythms of the sun moon and stars, of gravity and the innate wisdom of water. Can we begin to feel this? Can we discover our innate buoyancy that arises from our cells? Use a bolster, foam roller or folded blanket and explore the happy baby pose. Release hands and feet, arms and legs and allow them to feel like kelp floating in the oceans seeking the sunlight. Drift with the currents, keep releasing into the floor with the spine, spinal muscles and organs and feel the body melting.

Three energy states defined in the Yoga Sutras are: 1. too much, known as rajas; 2. not enough, known as tamas; and 3. just right, known as sattva. Too much includes muscular efforting, where the mind grabs onto the muscle tissue, and excessive tension anywhere, including sense organs and gut body. Not enough is dullness, heaviness without sensitivity, unconsciousness. Just right is the dynamic balance of weight and lightness, perceptual aliveness, effortless action, and a sense of continuous flow moment to moment. This is the state of integration, of moving into increased sensitivity and creativity. Dullness needs fire, dynamism and arousal to get the energy moving. Excessive tension needs water, cooling, quieting to slow the energy down. Learn to play with fire and water, monitoring and modulating moment to moment towards deeper and deeper levels of integration. Feel as free as a jellyfish or octopus (the original ashtanga yogis).

To bring this sensitivity into our human structure, we will utilize Tom Myer’s “Anatomy Trains’ model of fascial continuities to track our own lines of action and perception from cells and organs to structure (muscle/bone/fascia) and vice versa. We will begin in the feet, as tadasana is our home base for understanding the human body. The DFL begins on the soles of the feel witht he flexor muscles and tendons. This is where we get push of from the floor in walking, running or dance. Face a wall, place hands on the wall for balance, and begin to explore reaching down from the metatarsals, like ballet point without the big toe. The ankles rise, but let the heels hang down, even as they lift away from the floor. In other words, try not to use the gastroc/soleus muscles which attach to the heel, but these deeper muscles. As the heel lands, feel the sole of the foot lengthening, not the ankle collapsing. Keep the knees bent so the quads do not try to help, as they inevitably will. Repeat daily until action is clear.

Bring same action to the feet in dog pose. Notice the ankles, knees and hips of the dog as well as the length of the anterior spine and the freedom of the neck. (DFL). Makes it look easy.

From the feet we add the groins and pelvis in the standing forward bends. the primary action is extension through the muladhara learned in squatting. Babies find support when losing balance by activating the anal rooting reflex which awakens the tail end of the spine. We learn this in squatting, but if we have lost the flexibility, we can use ideo-kinesis, imagining a long dynamic tail emerging back from the pelvis. The grounding energy of the muladhara trifurcates (like Shiva’s trident!) into the two legs and tail. In tadasana, the three are parallel and you have a fish body. In forward bending, the tail (and entire spine) differentiates to allow length and stability. Notice how these guys use their tails to balance the weight of their torsos leaning forward. What would it feel like to have that energy available? Imagine a tail as long as your human spine, which makes your ‘human’ tail the center point of the spine and the fulcrum of a movement of the pelvis over the hip joints. Your long spinal muscles are not needed to move you in and out, up and down, if you use the tail energy. You can also imagine having your sitting bones elongating to help find the grounding/lengthening action of the muladhara.

In the next series of standing poses, the fish body series which includes trikonasana, parvakonasana, ardha chandrasana and vira, we add the adductors to keep the DFL engaged. The skaters action integrates the feet to the pelvis along the DFL as it involves the adductors, not the quads or hamstrings. Use a towel or blanket on the floor to practice pushing off on the back leg while the front legs bends and receives the weight of the body. If you are a well trained Iyengar yoga student, you will probably externally rotate the femur to do this and then lift the leg. Don’t !!! Internal rotation engages the adductors. Push down and into the floor like a skater pushing the blade into the ice. This is the action of the back leg in all of these standing poses. (and all legs in all poses to be precise). In figure skating, ardha chandrasana is know as a spiral, shown here by Ilia Kilmkin. Notice the lines of energy extending through arms, legs, head, eyes, crown chakra. In the yoga pose, elongate the inner back leg to lift it up. Don’t grip the outer hip muscles and crank the leg up. Elongate!

Cranial Sacral Rhythms

Posted on January 12, 2013 by admin

I love trinities. The process of cosmic emergence also seems to love threes. So, as we deepen our enquiries into the energetic realms of aliveness, we can add the cranial sacral cycles to the heartbeat and respiratory rhythm to create an energetic trinity of waves and pulses. I was first attuned to this possibility long ago (1979) by Itzak Bentov and his pioneering book “Stalkiing the Wild Pendulum when he described the meditative state manifesting standing waves in the aorta, rhythm-entraining the cerebro-spinal fluid, when the breath was still. (To feel this however has proven to be rather elusive.) Bentov’s next book, ‘A Cosmic Book”, published posthumously, took his explorations way out into the cosmic realms, but I did not yet see the connection to the csf. (Nor did I discover the magnificent sphenoid bone, or the spheno-basilar junction, the fulcrum of the cranial movements.)

The possibilities were further elaborated when B.K.S. Iyengar, is a rare moment of inner disclosure, described how he would monitor his poses by the height and temperature of the cerebro-spinal fluid in the spinal canal. (This might have been during the celebrations and classes for his 70th birthday in 1988.) Again, sensitivities still were behind the conception. It sounded great, but there was still a lot of noise in the system. Some energies I could feel, but not the csf!

A big breakthrough came about 5 years ago when I discovered Charles Ridley’s “Stillness: Biodynamic Cranial Sacral Practice and the Evolution of Consciousness. His bibliography included all of my favorite authors from both science and spirituality and it was like finding a spiritual dharma brother with info on this mysterious realm that has fascinated me for years. His approach is both hands on ad non-dual! Wow! I’ll cover his work in more detail in later posts and articles.

Most recently I am blessed to be the recipient of cranial sacral work from both my friend Caryn McHose, who needs hours for her cranial sacral training, and Pat Cunningham, an amazingly sensitive healer here in Arlington who uses cranial sacral work along with other modalities. The cosmic links are opening up as the causal body and the causal fields directly affect the cranial sacral energies.

From Caryn I discovered Franklyn Sills, founder of “Polarity” and ‘Cranial Sacral Biodynamics. (Just like the yoga scene, the cranial sacral world is full of leaders, followers and politics!) Franklyn, and Roger Gilchrist in Cranial Sacral Therapy and the Energetic Body”, offer even more perspectives and points of view of the energetic nature of aliveness, healing, trauma and awakening. In the coming months I am hoping more clarity will come and I will be adding a new section to the resources menu on this work. I have my new skull. Happy New Year!

Caryn McHose Workshop pt 1

Posted on November 7, 2012 by admin

On Sunday, November 4th, Caryn came to The Watertown Center for the Healing Arts to present a somatic workshop”Explorations in Sound, Movement and Breath”. With over 40 years of experience in teaching creative movement, Caryn’s unique approach to somatic awakening dives headlong into the sacred feminine to reconnect students to the oldest and most cosmically aligned regions of their body/mind.

All cultures have traditions around collective movement and song and we began with an enquiry into group movement. There is something powerful about moving in unison in a group, of dissolving into a larger field in flow, rhythm and harmony, of discovering individuality while remaining in a multiplicity of relationships with the other bodies and the surrounding space. The sacred feminine is about expanding into relationships while strengthening a healthy sense of self.

Then we explored the relationships to ground and space to awaken the gravity response system, a primal, pre-cognitive experience of ‘where am I’ quite different form the ‘who am I ‘ mind state. Gravity or ground is found as a felt sense of weight, through bones and fluids, organs and cells, and always orients downward into the center of Mother Earth. Its cultivation leads to what Patanjali calls ‘sthira’, stability, in his classic description of posture, sthira sukham asanam, posture requires stability and freedom. (Later in the day we focused on feeling a deep sense of grounding through two of the tarsal bones, the navicular (‘the navigator’) and cuboid, to bring even more stability to standing. For most these bones are un-felt, un-conscious, un-moving.) The felt sense of weight builds a healthy sense of self the is able to surrender to the ‘no-self’ field of the living cosmos.

The complement to weight is the felt sense of space, of lightness, of levity that allows us to move out into the world, to be in relationships, to feel spacious and open. We orient to space through ‘vectors’, an extension of energy or intention in a specific direction, with a specific magnitude of energy. Reaching out to pick up a pencil with my hand is one example. B.B.S. Iyengar in trikonasana is demonstrating a multiplicity of vectors. The obvious ones include each arm, each leg, his fingers and toes. But also, his eyes are vectoring upward, his head and tail are extending in opposite directions, his heart is coming right out of the photo to the viewer. This helps explain the nature of complementary or opposite vectors the allow a centered stillness amidst the intensity. Head and tail, right and left arms or legs, and front and back are three obvious possibilities.

Although we did not work with this on Sunday, here is a clip of Caryn demonstrating using vectors in movement in an exploration known as the flight of the eagle, which,as you yogis will recognize, comes from suryanamaskar. Notice how space invites her to move through knees, eyes and skull, fingers, arms, legs and kidneys.

In class we used knees, elbows, different arm bones to experience the sense of reaching out into space from many areas of the body, sometimes working with a partner to ‘entice’ a movement with a direction. Most interesting for me was using the various sensory modalities to experience both reaching out into space and receiving sensation as ‘weight’. This was especially obvious in listening to the sounds of the bowls she was using in the afternoon session. If the sounds came to me, which was the familiar, I could feel the sounds coming in and grounding. If I ‘reached out’ to the sounds with my sense of hearing, not with tension, but with an expansion, I found my skull bones opening sideways and me ‘ears’ becoming huge. This was a total surprise and utterly delightful.

The continuing theme was to release all sense of effort, the ‘gripper/zipper’ state and feel how pure perception/sensation, evoked by orientation to space and ground, allowed movements and openings that were truly effortless. Nothing extra needed. We used this perception/extension process to liberate the hands, arms and shoulder girdle, and feet legs and pelvic girdle, to discover our ‘fish body’. Detailed explorations included differentiating radius and ulna and tibia and fibula to find the inter-osseus membranes. By reaching radius down into the hand and the ulna toward the elbow, the forearms expand and new channels of energy emerge in all arm movements. By rotating the tibia and fibula in relationship to each other, first opening the front compartment in plantar flexion, and then the back compartment in dorsiflexion, the feet and lower legs awaken in new ways.

We also discovered the angle of the rami connecting the pubic bones and the sitting bones are diagonal and in women this angle can be quite large. This creates more vectors when coming into forward flexion of the hips. In finding balance on one leg, stability can increase when the ramus of the standing leg is drawn into the midline of the body and the cuboid and navicular bones release downward. (see above)

(In part 2 we will visit the afternoon sound explorations into organs and the third ventricle of the brain)